Little Lost Angel (34 page)

As soon as Paije was through, Melinda began to wail again. Long, wild screams shook her body and rocked the table on which she rested her head.

If it was an act, as Shanda’s mother had suggested after an earlier outburst, it was a convincing one. Perhaps Melinda was feeling genuine remorse for what she had done to Shanda but, more probably, what she was experiencing was the realization that she was going to pay for her crime. The testimony against her had been damaging, and the hatred that Shanda’s family felt toward her was palpable. Whatever she might have seemed to herself, however she might have rationalized Shanda’s murder, it was suddenly clear to Melinda that everyone else in the courtroom—with the possible exception of her family—now saw her as a murderer.

Melinda was still moaning when Russell Johnson asked Judge Todd for a recess. After Todd nodded his approval, Johnson slipped an arm around Melinda and hoisted her to her feet. Then, with Johnson and Hammerle holding onto
her arms, the quivering young murderess was escorted from the courtroom.

*  *  *

After a twenty-minute recess everyone was back in their seats. Melinda’s face was ashen and haggard, her eyes deep-set and red. Townsend had rested his case, and it was now the defense’s turn.

Larry Leatherbury flashed a self-confident grin as he strode into the courtroom. The day before he had paraded around the courthouse wearing a pair of black lace gloves with the fingers cut out. The garb he’d chosen for his courtroom appearance was no less showy. He wore black boots, black jeans, and a black T-shirt that was decorated with hundreds of safety pins. He waved at Melinda as he walked past her to the witness chair. Melinda just stared back blankly.

Russell Johnson had met with Leatherbury a month earlier to go over his testimony.

“I never met a cockier young man in my life,” Johnson would say later. “He marched into my office, perched his feet up on my desk, and related how thrilled he was to be a witness in a murder trial.”

Knowing how volatile Leatherbury could be, Johnson started slowly by asking him about his relationship with Laurie Tackett. Leatherbury related that he’d been friends with Laurie for five or six years and that he’d visited her in prison several times since her arrest.

“Okay,” Johnson said, “now I want to direct you to some statements Laurie made to you. Has Laurie Tackett ever told you that she would like to kill someone?”

“On several occasions,” Leatherbury answered nonchalantly. “Oh, I’d say about ten or twenty.”

Judge Todd studied the witness as if he were a specimen under glass. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of the young man’s cavalier attitude. Was he telling the truth or just boasting?

“Has she talked to you about a dream that you two shared in common?” Johnson continued.

“Yes, she has spoken about that dream.”

“And what was that dream?”

“It consisted of charred, mutilated bodies of young babies burned hanging from trees.”

Over the course of the week, the spectators had become hardened by what they’d heard from the witness stand, and they were no longer easily shocked. But the image of charred babies stirred some gasps and murmurs. None of this was lost on Leatherbury, who was getting a kick out of shocking his audience. In short order, he reported that Laurie didn’t believe in God and that he’d observed her drinking her own blood.

“Have you ever been involved with her doing artwork that would cause her to use blood?”

“Yes.”

“Describe that to the court.”

“Well, it was a trio, I’d say, a trio effort,” Leatherbury said, sounding pleased that he could elaborate on his artwork. “There was me, Danielle, and Laurie. We cut ourselves. It was for release of stress, and then we got a towel and we dabbed the blood all over it and deemed it blood art and signed it.”

“While in the women’s prison, did Laurie Tackett discuss the death of Shanda Sharer?” Johnson asked.

“She said that she was kind of glad she did it and she said that it was exhilarating. She said she remembered the feeling of the skull giving way to the tire iron.”

“Did Laurie Tackett talk to you about any fascinations that she had?”

“She did speak of the fascination of wanting to burn someone.”

Johnson was satisfied. “That’s all I have.”

Townsend smiled benignly as he approached the witness.

“Mr. Leatherbury, have you and I met before?”

“Yes, we have, Mr. Townsend.”

“Were you sitting over there?” Townsend pointed toward the defense table, and Leatherbury nodded in acknowledgment. “Would you remind His Honor why it was that you were sitting over there?”

Johnson sprung to his feet. “I object to this unless a foundation is laid. I assume he’s trying to impeach this
witness, but I haven’t been given any criminal history of this witness.”

Judge Todd’s curiosity had been tweaked. He allowed Townsend to continue.

“Were you not in this courtroom last year?”

“I would not go as far as to say it was last year,” Leatherbury said with an air of superiority. “More than a year ago.”

“Tell the court about your altercation at school with another student.”

Leatherbury seemed to be growing bored with the whole scene. In a haughty tone he said, “Being that I wasn’t really in the norm at school . . .”

“What do you mean by that?” Townsend interrupted.

“Well, I was so outstandingly different in every aspect. I had been ridiculed for many years for being so different. Ridiculed.”

Johnson slumped back in his chair. His fears about calling Leatherbury as a witness were being realized. The kid was just too damn cocky for his own good.

“And so,” Leatherbury continued, “I went to school and I intended to intimidate someone.”

“How did you intend to do that?”

“I intended to intimidate them with a knife.” Leatherbury was coolly confident and reveling in his ability to shock others. “I intended to intimidate the person by applying an element of fear.”

“And how did you apply an element of fear, Mr. Leatherbury?”

“With a blade,” Leatherbury explained. “I must stress that it was an accidental injury to the person.”

“Where was the blade when the injury occurred?”

Leatherbury considered the question for a long time, rubbing his chin in the process. “I would say it was to the left side of the neck.”

Through his own admissions, Leatherbury had almost literally cut his own throat as a witness against Laurie. Even in her worst moments on the stand, Laurie had not seemed as casually cruel as her former friend. With no more
questions to answer, Leatherbury, looking a bit disappointed that the fun was over, sauntered past Melinda, waving to her as he exited.

*  *  *

On the fifth day of the hearing, Melinda’s attorneys put their attacks on Laurie on hold and focused on another villain: Melinda’s father, Larry Loveless.

Johnson had tried to get Larry Loveless to testify on his daughter’s behalf, but Loveless, who now lived in Florida, did not respond to Johnson’s inquiries. His absence made him fair game, and Melinda’s sisters, Michelle and Melissa, and cousins Teddy Lynn Barber and Eddie Rager didn’t hold back, repeating their tales of sexual abuse at the hands of Melinda’s father.

Barber’s testimony was the most explicit. She related an incident in which Larry Loveless allegedly raped Barber and his three daughters.

“There was one time when he took me and the three girls into the garage and stripped us from our night clothes and laid us on the concrete floor and used some type of chain to bind us together,” Barber testified. “He worked his way down the line. We were all close together. Melinda was three or four.”

Townsend and his chief deputy, Don Currie, raised some questions about the validity of the tales of abuse, particularly those of Barber and Rager. Rager testified that she told her mother about the sexual abuse when she was thirteen and her sister, Barber, was ten. If that was true, why had their mother allowed Barber to babysit at the Loveless home for another six years?

Townsend also pointed out that neither of the Loveless sisters had confirmed Barber’s claim that they were raped in the garage.

Russ Johnson’s next witness was Dr. Richard Lawlor, the first of two clinical psychologists who had been hired to testify on Melinda’s behalf.

Lawlor said that Melinda suffered from, among other things, a borderline personality disorder, a condition characterized by sudden mood swings, an inability to take the middle ground on any issue, and a lack of self-esteem.

“Borderlines totally love or totally hate,” Lawlor said. “They fail to see aspects of gray. Everything is black or white. You never know if you’re going to meet the happy or the depressed one. One minute they can tell you they love you, the next they are spewing venom and hatred. They yell, they scream, but to be physically violent against another person is not typical.”

Even though Melinda denied that her father sexually molested her, Lawlor said, “Our feeling is that something bad did happen and it was blocked out. I think her environment was abusive to the extreme. There were no clear memories of molestation, but there were memories of something that occurred at an early age that involved being bathed by her father. There are indications that Larry Loveless used Melinda to make his wife jealous. There was a sexualization of the relationship between her and her father, and when she desired a relationship with another girl, it was with a girl who she felt resembled her father.”

Under cross-examination by Deputy Prosecutor Don Currie, Lawlor said that Melinda was someone who was constantly aware of her seductiveness.

“One of the hallmarks of the borderline is sexual provocativeness,” Lawlor said. “They send out messages that they themselves aren’t even aware of that can entice people. She sits in ways that at times are provocative. She tends to lean forward in ways that move into personal distance and space. She has a way of looking at you. Even in a jail uniform there was a cleavage so that when she would lean forward one could see that. I think that there’s many things like that that she displayed that I think is second nature with the way she interacts.”

With Currie pressing him, Lawlor acknowledged that Melinda was someone who always wanted her way. “She is very narcissistic, very egocentric,” Lawlor said.

“Is rage a common factor when she doesn’t get her way?” Currie asked.

“She will become angry, yes,” Lawlor said.

*  *  *

The defense’s final witness, Dr. Elgan L. Baker, concurred with Lawlor’s diagnosis and said that Melinda functioned
emotionally as a three- or four-year-old rather than a teenager.

After a lengthy discussion about Melinda’s mental state, Johnson asked Baker, who had also studied psychological reports on Laurie Tackett, to compare the two.

Baker said the reports from Laurie’s psychologists concluded that Laurie was a sociopath, and “that impression of her as a psychopath is consistent with my own view. I see her as an individual who is probably of above-average intelligence, somewhat oppositional and easily prone to violence. I would say that she is an antisocial personality.”

As far as comparing Melinda and Laurie, “I wouldn’t say one was sicker than the other,” Baker said. “I think they both have significant emotional problems, but I think Melinda’s largely have to do with what’s going on inside her in terms of her ability to think and deal with her emotions and depression. Miss Tackett’s have more to do with her involvement in the world, her impulsivity, her acting out, her capacity for violence.”

Johnson asked, “In your professional opinion, do you consider Melinda Loveless a violent person?”

“Absolutely not.”

“What about Laurie Tackett?”

“I think the risk of violence with her is very high.”

After those last two answers, Townsend was rocking back and forth in his chair, eagerly awaiting his chance at Baker. He would say later that he considered the hired psychologists as nothing more than “high-priced whores. Pay them enough and they’ll give you anything you want.”

“Dr. Baker,” he asked sternly, “do you consider murder a violent act?”

“Yes, I do.”

Reminding Baker that Melinda had pleaded guilty to murder, Townsend asked what conclusions he would draw about her capacity for violent acts.

“Clearly, she has been capable of that behavior in the past.”

“Now, Doctor,” Townsend said smugly. “How many times, Doctor, have you seen and talked to Melinda Loveless?”

“I met with her on one occasion.”

“For how long?”

“About an hour.”

Townsend paused a few seconds to let Baker’s answer linger.

“Doctor, have you had the opportunity to interview Laurie Tackett?

“No, I have not met her.”

With a satisfied smile, Townsend dismissed the witness.

*  *  *

In Indiana murder cases, the courts appoint one member of the victim’s family to serve as the victim’s representative and allow them to speak after all the evidence has been presented.

Jacque Vaught walked slowly toward the judge’s bench, her lips held tight, her face hardened with determination. She knew this was her only opportunity to affect the future of the girl who’d masterminded her daughter’s murder.

She began by showing Judge Todd the two large shadow boxes containing Shanda’s mementos, then asked the court to view a videotape of photographs and film of Shanda. Melinda whimpered and moaned as pictures of Shanda were shown. The screen was turned away from the spectators, but they listened intently as Jacque described scenes from Shanda’s short life.

“This is her as a baby. Her first Christmas. This is her and her grandmother. She was always with her grandmother because she spoiled her rotten. This is her grandmother serving her breakfast in bed. Shanda was never camera shy.” Jacque smiled faintly. “As you can see, she enjoyed life.”

Jacque asked the judge to listen to Shanda’s laughter. “One thing Sharon always says is how much she misses Shanda’s laughter. She laughed all the time. Her laughter was something we cherished.” Jacque turned to Melinda. “She took that away from us.”

The confrontation was too much for Melinda. She began crying and moaned loudly, “Oh God.” Attorney Mike Walro threw an arm around her shoulder and settled her down again.