I Want To Believe Notes

Shanda Sharer

The year is 1992. Shanda Sharer is 12 years old and in the seventh grade, living in Madison Indiana.

Shanda met a girl named Amanda Heavrin who was 15 and in eighth grade. Their relationship soon became more than platonic with Shanda and Heavrin sending each other romantic letters and attended dances together.

Enter 16 year old Melinda Loveless. Melinda had been dating Heavrin for two years before meeting Shanda. The reason their relationship deteriorated wasn't because of Sharer, but because after Melinda's father abandoned her family she started behaving erratically, getting into fights and showing signs of depression.

In October of 1991, after Sharer and Heavrin went to a festival together, Loveless who was overcome with jealousy started to discuss killing Sharer and would threaten her in public.

On January 10th, 1992, Loveless and three other girls, Toni Lawrence (15), Hope Rippey (15) and Laurie Tackett (17) drove in Tackett's car to Loveless' house where they hung out for a bit.

Loveless specifically chose Tackett to come along because she had a "need to be violent" and Tackett had told the two others that they were going to kill a little girl that night although neither of them believed her.

At the time the Lawrence and Rippey hardly knew Loveless and only Loveless had ever met Sharer. Loveless showed the girls a knife and told them she planned to scare Sharer with it, saying that she disliked Sharer because she was a copycat who stole her girlfriend but also admitted she was sexy (reminder this is a 16 year old talking about a 12 yo).

The girls all drove to Shanda's father's house after stopping at McDonald's to ask for directions. They parked two blocks away and made Rippey and Lawrence both went to the door and told Sharer that they were friend's of Heavrin. They invited her to come with them to see Heavrin who was waiting for her at "The Witch's Castle" which was an old ruined stone house located on an isolated hill that overlooked Ohio River.

Sharer, who was not aware that the girls were with Loveless, told the girls to come back at midnight as her parents would be asleep then and she could sneak out.

Loveless was angry when the two girls returned without Sharer but they promised they would come back later. The four girls then went to a rock concert and after losing interest in the music, both Lawrence and Rippey "engaged in sexual activities with two boys in Tackett's car" and Loveless called Heavrin, telling her for the last time that she was going to kill Shanda.

On the way back to Sharer's house, Loveless kept saying two conflicting things. One being that she just intended to use the knife to frighten Sharer but the other being that she couldn't wait to kill her.

The girl's arrived at Sharer's house at 12:30am and Lawrence refused to collect Sharer so this time Tackett went with Rippey to collect Shanda. Loveless meanwhile was hiding under a blanket in the back seat so that Sharer wouldn't know she was there.

Sharer was reluctant at first but agreed to go after changing her clothes. On the drive to the Witch's Castle, Rippey started to question Sharer on her relationship with Heavrin as an attempt to aggravate Loveless. This worked as Loveless jumped from the backseat and held the knife to Sharer's throat yelling "Surprise! I bet you didn't expect me here you bitch". Shanda began crying and promised to leave Heavrin alone.

Tackett then told the girls of the legend of the Witch's Castle.

Apparently the house was once owned by nine witches and the townspeople burnt it down to get rid of the witches- that's it.

Once they arrived they took a still sobbing Sharer inside and bound her arms and legs with rope. Loveless told her she had pretty hair and wondered if it would look as pretty once cut off. She then took off the rings on Shanda's fingers and handed them to the other girls. Rippey then took off Sharer's Mickey Mouse wristwatch and started dancing to it's tune.