LISA: In middle school,
you have a lot of girls that are mean.
NIKKI: She was the ringleader of that group.
That was her gang where she'd go
and feel like she was in charge.
CRAIG: She believes that she had
just walked into her yard.
She's trespassing on her property.
NIKKI: I feel like she wanted that girl to suffer.
I think she did it with the full joy in her heart.
[theme music playing]
[theme music ends]
[eerie music playing]
NIKKI: I remember being fast asleep, and my mother starts
screaming my entire government name.
Usually, that means I'm in a lot of trouble.
So I freak out, come in the living room, and my mom is
just pointing at the TV.
REPORTER: Her cut, beaten, and burned body
was found by hunters on Saturday,
burned beyond recognition.
NIKKI: As we're listening to the news...
REPORTER: Detectives believe the victim
is a young female with possible connection
to a missing girl from Hazelwood Junior High.
NIKKI: My mom fell down in her chair.
She started bawling for this girl and bawling over me,
because my mom knew.
What would they have done to me had I gone?
Like, it would have been me in that place.
In the fall of '91, I started ninth grade at
Hazelwood Junior High School in New Albany, Indiana.
New Albany, Indiana is located at the southern point of
Indiana, just across from Louisville, Kentucky.
NIKKI: Hazelwood Junior High, it started from seventh grade
and went up to ninth grade.
When I was there, youngest was 12 in the seventh grade,
oldest was 17.
You know, people start late, they were a little bit older.
The high school was pretty much right next door to
the junior high school, so we all intermingled a lot.
Younger kids with much older kids.
You get a lot of peer pressure.
I felt like I was only as worthy as the amount of
friends that I had.
Break!
NARRATOR: And just like every other
junior high school in America,
it's the popular girls who rule the school at Hazelwood.
NIKKI: They were little princesses.
They were in the most expensive stuff.
Some of them were pulling up in brand-new Volvos
and things like that.
They were just like the quintessential mean girl,
always bullying me for being different,
because I wanted to wear a trench coat, ride a skateboard,
and that wasn't the thing to do back then.
NARRATOR: But not every girl at Hazelwood wears designer brands
and drives fancy cars.
There's another clique at Hazelwood that rebels against
everything the princesses stand for.
They're the hoodlums, aka the hoods.
CRAIG: The girls that were considered the hood girls
were girls from the other side of the tracks.
They were a little rough around the edges.
They all smoked cigarettes, had sex,
and they all fought.
The hoodlum girls had a lot of attitude.
You know, they were never real feminine.
It was your traditional, you know, Def Leppard shirts
and Kmart Keds.
NARRATOR: Every clique, no matter how different,
has its mean girls.
And there's one hood girl who rules the rest.
The first day at Hazelwood, holy [bleep],
Melinda Loveless is right in front of me.
Now, we're face to face.
This unmatched beauty that she possessed,
the long, brown, curly hair.
She kind of had this sort of '50s greaser
style going on.
She was definitely out of my league.
NARRATOR: Whether hood or not, everyone at Hazelwood
knows Melinda Loveless.
The guys want her, and the girls want to be her.
CRAIG: She wasn't the prom girl, wasn't a cheerleader.
She was running with the kids that were
going against the grain.
She was the ringleader of that group.
That was her gang where she'd go and feel like
she was in charge.
Melinda was still in the ninth grade at age 16.
NIKKI: I don't personally know why
she was held back a grade,
but I feel like Melinda being older, she seemed more
cool than others.
I really liked Melinda.
I definitely wanted to be her friend.
I had one class where I literally sat next to
her the whole year.
She was always pretty quiet.
But Melinda came off as someone who couldn't be bothered
or like everyone was kind of beneath her.
To be her friend, you have to accept that
she's going to be in charge.
If you crossed her, not only were you going to lose her as
a friend, but she would make sure you lost
all of your other friends.
NARRATOR: And Melinda's love life was a constant source of
gossip in the hallways.
Melinda was openly lesbian at a time where that was not
normally accepted in the Midwest.
And so, you know, she had the confidence to be like,
this is who I am, I don't really care what you think.
NARRATOR: There's only one person
at Hazelwood whose opinion matters to Melinda.
CRAIG: The first time I saw Amanda Heavrin,
I had no idea she was a girl.
Short hair, dressed like a boy.
In Podunk, Indiana, you just didn't see a girl
that looked and acted just like a boy.
It was a foreign concept.
Amanda was a jock, and like,
nobody [bleep] with her.
I'd always heard that if she wanted someone,
she didn't back down.
NIKKI: The only other outed lesbian that I was aware
of was Melinda.
I knew in the fall of '91, Amanda and Melinda
were the couple.
Amanda was one of our basketball stars.
And Melinda would wear her Letterman jacket to every
class, every day.
Like, it was serious for some junior high.
GINA: But Amanda and Melinda's relationship was very volatile.
They had this on and off again,
hot and cold relationship.
Melinda Loveless was a 16-year-old ninth grader,
and Amanda Heavrin was a 15-year-old eighth grader.
And so when Amanda was with Melinda,
she was more subservient.
Melinda definitely had this dominant part
in their relationship.
And so Melinda had control of Amanda.
NARRATOR: Or so Melinda thought.
[school bell rings]
GINA: Early in the 1991, 1992 school year,
Melinda gets a detention.
When she walks in the room, she sees Amanda,
but instead of paying attention to her,
she watches as her girlfriend passes notes and giggles
with this other girl right in front of Melinda's eyes.
[school bell rings]
When detention is over, Amanda introduces Melinda
to her new friend, Shanda Sharer.
CRAIG: In the fall of 1991,
Shanda Sharer was a seventh grader and was
a new student at Hazelwood Junior High School.
Before Shanda moved to New Albany, she was living
in Louisville, Kentucky.
JACQUELINE: So I was from New Albany.
My family was all there.
When I got divorced from my husband in Louisville,
that's where I wanted to go back to.
So, that's when I went ahead and enrolled her
in the public school.
And Shanda started going to Hazelwood.
NARRATOR: The transition hasn't been entirely smooth.
A fight in the hallway lands Shanda in detention.
But she comes out with a brand-new friend,
Amanda Heavrin.
JACQUELINE: Amanda was a little older than her.
Shanda thought Amanda was somebody everybody knew and that
that was a way in, you know, to make friends.
NARRATOR: Shanda may think that Amanda's friendship
will get her on the fast track to popularity,
but it will be the biggest mistake of her life.
GINA: Amanda was getting a little bit tired
of being expected to shower
Melinda with attention and love and affection.
She meets Shanda, and she thinks this is a way
she could have more control.
JACQUELINE: I certainly would hope that
Shanda would have stayed away from somebody like Amanda,
but, you know, I guess she
was just really desperate to make friends.
JACQUELINE: When she was in Louisville,
everybody knew Shanda.
She was a big fish in a little pond.
And then I moved her over to Indiana,
and she was going to a school where she didn't know anybody.
When we were in school together, Shanda did hang out
with, you know, the more popular group of kids.
So that's why it was so important for her to be liked.
NARRATOR: And Shanda senses right away
that to be cool at Hazelwood,
it pays to run with the older teens.
Shanda was not happy that she was 12 years old.
She wanted desperately to be 13 and to be able to tell
all the kids at her new school she was a teenager.
She thought that would really help her make friends.
The night before the first day, she tried on
10 different outfits.
She wanted it all to be perfect.
She wanted to have the best clothes and look good
and, you know, look like everybody else.
Shanda had to have the biggest hair.
She used curling irons and then teased it
like crazy.
She really wanted to fit in and to be accepted.
But I think Shanda might've done things that she
might not normally do, to hang out with the popular girls.
NARRATOR: That includes cultivating
her friendship with Amanda,
even if it risks pissing off the meanest
girl in Hazelwood.
When Melinda started to notice that Shanda was getting
close to Amanda,
she wasn't going to have any part of that,
you know, from the very beginning.
She hated Shanda.
GINA: Shanda looked much older than 12 years old.
That is probably why she attracted Amanda Heavrin.
But Melinda most likely felt very threatened by Shanda,
because not only was she losing control, she was losing control
to someone much younger than her.
NARRATOR: Unwilling to lose ground to
a measly seventh grader,
Melinda tightens the already short leash
she keeps Amanda on.
But middle school girls will always find
a way to connect.
On September 13, 1991, Amanda writes a note to Shanda.
"I have a question to ask you.
"Do you kind of, in a way, like girls?
Do you think I'm cute or something?"
Shanda was beautiful.
She was a beautiful, beautiful girl.
And Amanda was attracted to her.
GINA: Amanda's telling her that she thinks she's pretty, really
aggressively throwing out hints that maybe there's more
to their relationship than just friendship.
She liked the compliments and the attention.
I mean, as preteens, we like the attention.
JACQUELINE: I discouraged it from the very beginning.
As Shanda and Amanda's relationship progressed,
there were things Amanda was
encouraging her to do.
It was things like physical contact, like kissing.
She would say, this is what girls at Hazelwood do.
GINA: Amanda Heavrin had a lot of comfort with her sexuality
for such a young age.
JACQUELINE: And being a lesbian is fine with me,
but Shanda was 12.
She wasn't old enough to know her sexuality.
NARRATOR: But one morning, Amanda's luck
juggling Shanda behind
Melinda's back runs out.
NIKKI: When Melinda saw Shanda's name on the folder
and the little love letter,
she imploded.
She was very vocal about how dare Amanda be
exchanging letters with another girl.
Melinda's insecurities were bubbling up inside of her.
Melinda had control of the social circle, but she
feels like because of Shanda, Melinda starts to lose
control of Amanda.
NIKKI: It was seventh period.
I'm coming down from the third floor,
and I see Melinda yelling at Amanda, calling her
a cheater and a liar.
Melinda's just losing her [bleep].
She's screaming, she's yelling,
"Can't believe you did this to me."
And then here goes Melinda, taking this jacket off
and throws it at her.
Melinda was spiraling.
I just looked at Amanda, and I'm like, "Are you okay?"
And she's like, "Yeah, this is crazy.
I'm done."
And she picks up her coat, and she walks on her own.
She don't say nothing else.
Obviously, Melinda and Amanda's relationship was
over after that.
NARRATOR: But Melinda Loveless isn't one to just get mad.
She also gets even.
I'm sitting next to Melinda the whole class,
and she's fuming.
She won't quit talking about wanting to beat this girl up,
Shanda.
I told her to calm down.
Melinda was 16.
I'm like, I know you're not upset with this little
12-year-old little girl over a relationship that you were
having in junior high school.
Let's get a grip, you know?
And she's like, "No, you're right, you're right."
I felt like she took me seriously, and I talked
some sense into her.
Our school dances were pretty live.
A lot of music, a lot of dancing,
a lot of intermingling.
They were fun.
Amanda had asked Shanda to go to the dance at school,
and they went together.
NARRATOR: Amanda knows she's starting some drama
by showing up at the dance with Shanda.
GINA: A friend of Melinda's calls her and tells her
that Amanda is not only at the dance, but she's at
the dance with Shanda.
CRAIG: Even though she and Amanda broke up,
Melinda was possessive over Amanda.
To Melinda, Shanda just walked into her yard,
so to speak.
She's trespassing on her property.
NIKKI: That's just straight crazy.
But that's how Melinda thought it to be.
CRAIG: It's not a long distance from the front door of
Melinda's house through the cemetery to
the entrance to the gymnasium.
We're talking maybe 300, 400 yards, maybe.
I saw Melinda moving with a head of steam,
and then Melinda snuck up on Shanda.
I can just remember being like, oh, [bleep].
I was off in the corner with a whole other group of friends
doing dance-offs.
I was in my zone.
I heard commotion, and I just saw the crowds of people
forming, and we went looking around to see
who it was, because we love the drama.
Shanda was ambushed by Melinda, and then she just
started beating on her in front of Amanda.
But Amanda did not do anything to intervene.
In my opinion, I think Amanda was like, hell yeah.
Well, I got two cute girls fighting over me.
Watching Melinda get upset and throw punches over her made
Amanda feel important, powerful, and in control.
Melinda leaves Shanda disheveled, upset, crying,
and tells her to stay away from Amanda.
NARRATOR: Melinda's beatdown and Amanda's betrayal at
the dance leaves Shanda broken.
JACQUELINE: It was a day and night change.
Shanda didn't talk to me a lot anymore.
She'd come home, and she'd go to her room.
She didn't dress up, and she wore, like, baggy clothes.
That wasn't her.
When I saw that, that's when I knew things were bad.
And I know there's a lot of parents that think children
have a right to their privacy and all that, but they don't.
I have every right to look in their room,
to go into their diary.
I thought that Shanda was not having anything
to do with Amanda.
And then I found a lot of letters that Amanda had
written after the dance.
NARRATOR: Despite the beatdown at the dance,
Amanda Heavrin just can't quit Shanda Sharer
and tries to win her back.
JACQUELINE: Amanda was giving her compliments
and telling her she was sorry.
Shanda had even made comments to people that she wishes
Amanda would just leave her alone.
And there was a letter Shanda had wrote to Amanda.
When I read that letter, I knew how dire the situation
was with Shanda.
There had been sexual contact between her and Amanda.
I knew she was unhappy, and that's when I found out
how ashamed she was of herself.
She was so conflicted whether or not
she was a lesbian.
It just broke my heart, because she was 12 years old.
LISA: The situation with Amanda was toxic, so Shanda's mom
decided to move her to another school to start fresh.
Shanda left Hazelwood, and I put her in
Our Lady of Perpetual Help.
NARRATOR: By Christmas 1991, Shanda manages to tune out
Amanda's continued advances and seems to be bouncing back
to her former self at her new Catholic school.
Now she's in an environment that's indicative to kids
acting like kids.
That was like her safe space away from the hoodlums,
especially Melinda and Amanda.
JACQUELINE: I think she still was ashamed,
but she was happy again.
She had made new friends.
She was kind of getting back to where
she had been before.
She started to prosper, and her grades came up.
NARRATOR: The new year marks a fresh start for Shanda,
but back at Hazelwood,
Melinda is still living in the drama.
Turns out beating up a 12-year-old is a bad look,
and Queen Bee Melinda has fallen from her throne.
CRAIG: If Melinda would have tried to recruit some girls from
Hazelwood, they would have looked at her
like she's got three heads.
So she had to look for the backing,
if you will, from other areas.
We were going up to the skate park in Louisville,
like, every weekend.
Melinda used to hang out at the skate park.
Skateboarders, in general, are really accepting of
the different kids.
So a lot of the hoods would hang out at the skate park.
GINA: Melinda met Laurie Tackett through mutual friends.
Laurie is a 17-year-old girl from Madison, Indiana.
And she was a student at Madison High School
before she dropped out of school.
And she moves to Louisville.
If Laurie had been a student at Hazelwood Junior High, she very
much would have been part of the hood's clique.
She was the daughter of fundamentalist Christians,
and she becomes obsessed with things that are the absolute
opposite of what her parents are trying to instill in her.
She had a fascination with death in and of itself,
the occult, witchcraft, very dark things of that nature.
She suffered from wanting to fit in just as much
as any other teenage kid, except for she's a lost soul.
So she's willing to do whatever just so she could be
called Melinda's friend.
GINA: January of 1992,
Melinda starts to confide in Laurie that she was very
unhappy and angry about Amanda.
Amanda was trying to get back with Melinda and in
Melinda's good graces.
Amanda leads Melinda to believe that she is the only person
she wants to be with.
But then her actions totally contradict that,
because at the same time, she's doing things to make
Melinda jealous and to keep some control in
that relationship dynamic.
JACQUELINE: Even months after Shanda left Hazelwood,
Amanda was still taunting Melinda with Shanda.
Melinda was obsessed with Amanda Heavrin,
and she couldn't let go of that jealousy.
Melinda has to figure out now how to either move on
or how to get her control and power back.
And I think for Laurie, seeing how angry Melinda was,
it sort of excited her.
So she encouraged Melinda to get more
and more worked up.
And Melinda chooses to get her power back over Amanda,
however she can.
She wanted somebody to help egg her on, and she found that
in Laurie Tackett.
That Saturday morning, on the 11th, an officer who
worked for the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department
received a call about a possible homicide,
12, 14 miles from Madison.
So we drove out, and we talked to
two hunters who'd been out hunting that morning,
and they saw the body.
The victim appeared to be a young female, and her body
was severely burned.
Not every day that you would see a body, you know,
badly burned like that.
So it's just...
it was really horrible.
Who is this person?
[sirens wailing]
CURTIS: We went up to the body on Lemon Road.
And she looked maybe 17, 18 years old.
We had to wonder, why would somebody do this
and then leave her out in the wide open?
Because if they'd just went a few more yards, they
could have placed her in the woods, and she may have
been there till next winter.
I saw that it appeared she was wrapped in some
type of blanket -- it was red in color.
You could see the blanket had melted.
And we did find a plastic two-liter bottle
you could smell gasoline had been in.
We've been out at the crime scene all day,
and the sheriff says, "Let's go. Let's go.
"We got somebody down there at the jail, waiting,
that knows something about a murder in Jefferson County."
We find that a mother and father had come in with their daughter
who says that she knows something about a murder.
NARRATOR: The girl is 15-year-old
Madison High School student, Toni Lawrence.
The petite sophomore looks like the last person
who would have intel on a murder.
CURTIS: She seemed to be crying a lot.
She seemed to be a little bit unhinged.
So detectives went to the room to interview her,
to hear what she has to say.
Toni tells detectives that on the night of January 10,
1992, her best friend, Hope Rippey, another student at
Madison High School, asked her to go with her and some
other friends to a concert in Louisville,
about an hour from Madison, Indiana.
Hope and Toni are picked up by Hope's
friend, Laurie Tackett.
When Toni gets in the car, Laurie tells her, "We're gonna
kill a little girl tonight."
Toni tells detectives that she really didn't believe that
that was going to happen.
She thought that they were maybe going to beat up a girl.
But Toni wanted to be with her friends and be accepted, so she
just kind of goes along for the ride.
The three girls drive for about an hour to
the skate park that Melinda and Laurie hang out at frequently.
When Melinda gets there, the whole
atmosphere changes.
She has a very dominating presence.
She is angry, and she has a butcher knife.
Melinda is stating what she is going to do to get
back at Amanda.
GINA: Immediately, Melinda is calling the shots, telling
them where to go and what they're going to do.
And the girls just kind of comply.
They go along with whatever she says.
And Hope and Toni are instantly intimidated by her, even though
they've never met her before.
She directs Laurie to drive to a house in New Albany.
They show up at this small but cute, well-kept house.
Melinda tells Toni and Hope, "You go up
and knock at the door."
They asked if they could talk to Shanda.
There's Shanda standing right here.
They didn't even recognize her, because they'd never
met her before.
They told her that Amanda wanted to see her
and was waiting for her at the Witch's Castle.
NIKKI: Witch's Castle is very well known.
It was kind of like the spooky place to go.
It was just this old run-down structure in
the back part of the woods.
I was too chicken to go in there, because I was
petrified of the spirit realm.
But all my other friends would.
They'd smoke weed and hang out.
LISA: Shanda explained to Toni and Hope that she couldn't come
right now, but said, okay, come back later.
I think that Shanda thought nothing of it, and she hadn't
seen Amanda in a while.
She just wanted to see what Amanda had to say to her.
Hope and Toni go back to the car, and they tell Melinda
and Laurie they should come back later after Shanda's dad
and stepmom go to sleep.
The whole house is dark, except there's somebody
watching television in the living room.
This time, Laurie goes with Hope up to the door.
They knock very softly, and Shanda comes to the door.
Shanda remembers Hope from earlier in the evening.
They said to her, "Amanda is in the car,
and she's right at the end of the driveway."
She walked down to the car from her dad's house.
It was January 11th.
It was extremely cold, frigid night.
Her purse, her coat, everything was
still in the house.
And I can tell you, she wouldn't have left without her
purse because she didn't go anywhere without her purse.
I think that she went to that car out of
curiosity, just to see what Amanda had to say to her.
Shanda had never snuck out.
She hadn't progressed to all that.
But, you know, a lot of us get in trouble
when we're curious.
NARRATOR: Whether forced or willing, once in the car,
there's no sign of Amanda.
GINA: She asked the other girls where Amanda is.
Amanda's not with them, but Melinda is.
CURTIS: Toni said that the victim is from Jeffersonville,
and she knew that her name was Shanda.
And so I called the Clark County Police
Department, and I said, "Did you take a missing persons report?"
And they said, "Yes, I did."
NARRATOR: Earlier that day,
Shanda's parents had reported her
missing to the Indiana State Police.
CURTIS: Now I had her identified.
We go out to where Shanda lived at,
and we examine her home.
I was able to get fingerprints that belonged
to her, and Jackie Vaught gave me Shanda's dental records.
NARRATOR: While Shanda's parents desperately wait for news,
the autopsy results from the burned body in Madison
come back.
Her fingerprints and the dental records
positively established
the body at the scene was Shanda Sharer.
JACQUELINE: It was late when the state police officer
sat down at the table, and he just said,
"Your daughter is gone."
And I looked at him, and I said,
"What do you mean, she's gone?"
And he said, "She's dead."
I just started crying, screaming.
I was in shock.
But then when they add to it by teenage girls, you just hope
you're having a nightmare.
They were kids.
They didn't look like murderers.
People think murderers have the word monster written
across their forehead.
But bad people can be people that look
exactly like you.
Why would Shanda be scared to open a door to another kid?
This cannot be reality.
It's just horrendous.
CURTIS: Toni Lawrence said she and Hope Rippey,
Laurie Tackett, and, of course, Melinda Loveless, drive
Shanda out to Witch's Castle in Utica.
While on that property, Laurie Tackett takes part of Shanda's
clothing, and she sets it on fire, turns and looks
at Shanda, and says, "Before the night's over,
that's what's gonna happen to you."
Shanda was so terrified and so scared.
CRAIG: Melinda, Laurie, Hope, they fed off of each other.
And once that ball was rolling, there became a mob
mentality where one was trying to outdo the other
and vice versa.
JACQUELINE: For 10 and 1/2 hours, Melinda,
Laurie, Hope, and Toni tried
to kill Shanda Sharer.
They stab her, and they strangle her,
and they beat her.
They tie her up, put her in the trunk,
and they literally thought she was dead.
And then, all of a sudden, they started hearing her
banging on the trunk.
She wouldn't die.
I think it was Melinda that said, "Well, I heard if you
"burn a body, it'll just turn into ashes, and then nobody
will ever know who she was."
CURTIS: Then they drive back into Madison and stop at
a gas station.
They went and got a two-liter soft drink bottle, poured
the soft drink out, filled the bottle with gas.
Then they took this poor little girl out to
Lemon Road near Madison.
This poor girl
was carried out of the car,
wrapped in the red blanket.
Hope is a follower.
So when Melinda instructs Hope to pour the gasoline on
Shanda, Hope does so.
And Melinda lights her on fire.
Toni said Melinda thought it was really funny to see
Shanda struggling to breathe.
She thought that was funny.
There's no hell big enough for these girls.
REPORTER: Indiana teenagers are charged with killing
12-year-old Shanda Sharer.
NIKKI: My mother and I, as we're listening to the news,
we're finding out what Melinda did.
The day that all this happened, Melinda had invited
me to a sleepover.
I'm like, sure, I'll go.
So I get to Melinda's house, and Melinda's mom
opens the front door.
She was like, "Oh, you just missed them.
They literally just left five minutes ago."
I wholeheartedly feel like, had I gone, they would have had
to harm me to even get to that girl.
So I've always felt responsible, because
what happened if I got there?
Would Shanda be okay?
I've carried a lot of guilt, because had I just been
on time, things could have been so different.
GINA: Because Toni had been the one who had come forward
and was willing to testify about the events of that night,
she accepted a plea deal where her charges were dropped
to criminal confinement.
Hope, Laurie, and Melinda eventually plead guilty to
first-degree murder and criminal confinement.
CRAIG: Hope Rippey was just a follower.
Toni Lawrence was just a scared little rabbit.
Toni Lawrence brought the information to the police,
but Toni, you did it a little bit too late, sweetheart.
GINA: Laurie Tackett is the one that I think really wanted
to kill someone.
Laurie gave Melinda the support to be able to do
something so terrible.
NIKKI: Melinda wanted that girl to suffer.
And I feel like she did it with the full joy in her heart.
GINA: Although Amanda was not directly there
or involved, many people place a lot of blame on her for
perpetuating anger and jealousy and resentment.
CRAIG: She will always be associated with this.
And that's something that she is gonna have to
live with for the rest of her life.
It's really hard to conceive that some people could be
so mean-spirited, so jealous,
so outraged, that they let
their emotions lead to murder.
It still shocks me today.
JACQUELINE: You know, the only thing that I ever asked of them
was to serve the time the court gave you.
But appeal after appeal after appeal,
their sentences were cut.
Honestly, I don't care what the sentence is,
it's never enough.
I've lost a child.
Any way a child dies is horrendous, and every parent's
pain is the same.
The day of the funeral,
in the very front of the church were all the little kids.
All the little kids from first grade on.
And Father John literally spoke to them during this
service, and he walked down to them, and he said,
"I want you to think about Shanda as a butterfly.
Take your hands and put them together."
This was just the sweetest thing.
They all put their hands together, and he said,
"I want you to hold your butterfly,
and that butterfly is Shanda."
And he said, "Okay."
He said, "Now I want you all to let your hands open
and let Shanda go."
And they all opened their hands.
It was just wonderful.
On her tombstone is hands with a butterfly in it.
I see butterflies every time I go to her grave.
Every time.
I know I'll be with her again.
And that alone is what makes me get up every day.
Love your kids.
Watch your kids.
Take care of your kids.
Make them feel wanted.
It's the most important in the whole world.
On the next Mean Girl Murders...
You had to have the looks, personality,
and it also depended on who you were friends with.
She was crowned the Dairy Princess.
It would be easy to see where someone could be jealous.
She was number one in every thing she did. Even crime.