Michael Quinlan - Little Lost Angel

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For Jacque and Steve

and in memory of

Shanda

Many people deserve my thanks but none more than Detective Steve Henry and Prosecutor Guy Townsend. Their graciousness never wavered during my lengthy interviews and my dozens of phone calls to their homes and offices.

My appreciation to Judge Ted Todd and his staff, especially Jenny Redwine. Thanks to Sheriff Buck Shipley, Sgt. Curtis Wells, Deputy Randy Spry, Madison Courier reporter Wayne Engle, photographer Joe Trotter, and attorneys Russ Johnson, Wil Goering, and Bob Donald. Also thanks to Donn Foley, Marc Botts, and everyone else who helped me gather the facts, and to Eileen and Mike for their computer help.

At the Louisville Courier-Journal , thanks to editors Hunt Helm and Karen Merk, reporters Pam Runquist and David Goetz, and the photo and library staffs.

Thanks to my literary agent, Ann Rittenberg, and my editors at Pocket Books, Claire Zion and Amy Einhorn, for guiding me through uncharted waters.

And thanks to my family for their love and support.

Most of all, thanks to Jacque and Steve and the rest of Shandas family for sharing their memories and friendship.

This is a true story. In order to tell it in narrative form I re-created some dialogue and descriptive details from my interviews with one or more of the people involved or from police reports, depositions, and court testimonies.

All of the names, places, dates, and events in this book are real.

Jealousy is cruel as the grave; the coals thereof are coals for fire, which hath a most vehement flame.

Song of Solomon 8:6, Old Testament

U nder cover of darkness, the blood-stained sedan moved slowly along the narrow, winding roads of the southern Indiana countryside. With each turn the cars headlights threw a momentary flash of illumination through a black forest of pines, hickories, and elms. The silence of the cold winter night was marred by the constant growl of the sedans broken tailpipe.

As a pair of headlights approached from the other direction, the driver let up on the gas, easing the tailpipes rumble. It might be a police car, and they couldnt take the chance of being stopped for a noisy muffler. A nosy cop might notice the scarlet handprints on the trunk or find the bloody tire iron lying under the seat. Holding their breath, the driver and front-seat passenger watched the car pass them by. The drivers steely eyes shifted to the rear-view mirror, following the cars tail lights until they disappeared over a hill.

The sedan picked up speed as it passed through a small town with the biblical name of Canaan, then entered the woods again and drove deeper into the darkness. They drove for hours, searching the edges of the road for a place to dump the body of the twelve-year-old girl locked in the trunk.

Tired of arguing, they traveled now in silence. The driver, a hard-edged blonde, had wanted to throw the body off a bridge into a creek. But the passenger, a slim brunette, had called the driver a fool. Dont you know shell float.

They were far from Canaan, in a stretch of deep woods, when they heard a noise barely audible over the tailpipes roar, a soft thumping coming from the trunk.

The blonde stopped the car in the middle of the road and left the engine idling. She pulled the trunk key from the key chain and reached under the seat for the tire iron, then stepped out into the cold air. She instructed the brunette to slide over behind the steering wheel. Rev it, she said, in case she screams again.

The blonde walked stiffly, purposefully, to the rear of the car and opened the trunk where Shanda Sharer lay imprisoned, still clinging to life.

S handa Sharers normally neat bedroom was in disarray.

The closet door hung open, and skirts, blouses, and jeans were strewn about. A cassette tape of Mariah Carey blared in the background as the twelve-year-old primped in front of her mirror, studying her latest outfit from every angle. After three years of drab Catholic school uniforms, she was in a tizzy deciding what to wear the next dayher first day at Hazelwood Junior High.

Ta-da! Shanda announced as she slowly descended the stairway, mimicking the elegant style of a Paris fashion model.

Jacque Ott turned her attention from the television and smiled in appreciation at her daughter, something shed done a dozen times that night. Thats it. I like that one best, she said with a hint of finality, hoping her daughter would get the point. The modeling had dragged on for hours, and Jacque was eager for Shanda to go to bed.

Me too, Shanda said with a sigh, relieved to have finally settled on the perfect ensemble for her debut into Hazelwood society.

Putting things away wasnt nearly as much fun as getting them out. Exhausted, Shanda flopped onto her bed and reached for her diary.

Well, this year Im going to a different school, she wrote. Im sort of scared I wont fit in because I heard that there were hoods, pretty girls, and all-that guys. I wish my mom would understand that I dont want to be twelve. I want to be thirteen. I wish I could tell everyone at Hazelwood Im thirteen but I know my mom wont go along with it.

Shanda could easily have pulled off such a charade. Shed just celebrated her twelfth birthday that June and was already losing the awkwardness of adolescence. She had a trim, athletic figure, long blond hair, dark eyebrows, wide hazel eyes, and a dimpled smile. These pleasant attributes had not gone unnoticed by the boys at her previous school, St. Paul Catholic. Theyd flirted with all their young charms and shed enjoyed the attention, often giggling about the young Romeos with her girlfriends.

But that seemed so long ago now. She and her mother had moved across the Ohio River from Louisville, Kentucky, to the small town of New Albany, Indiana, and tomorrow she would walk into an unfamiliar school filled with unfamiliar faces. Through her uncertainty, Shanda clung to the thought that her life would be so much easier if she were only a little older.

I love my mom very much but she doesnt understand how much I want to be thirteen and have people spend the night on school nights, Shanda wrote. I cant talk on the phone past ten. At everybody elses house I can but not here. I love my mom but sometimes she doesnt understand. But I still love her!!!!!!

Shanda had slipped the diary under her bed and was snuggled beneath the covers when Jacque entered the room and sat down beside her. For what must have been the tenth time that day, Shanda lamented, I dont know anybody at Hazelwood. Then she asked the usual follow-up question: Mom, do you think everybody will like me?

Shanda was exaggerating a bit when she said she wouldnt know anyone. Her cousin Amanda Edrington went to Hazelwood, and just the day before Shanda had met a girl in the neighborhood, Kristie Farnsley, who was also starting the seventh grade there.

Youll meet friends just like you did at St. Paul, Jacque assured her. Youve never had any problem making friends. You know that.