The 1990s: The Deadliest Decade - Are Shanda Sharer's killers out of prison? 

The next episode of Investigation Discovery's The 1990s: The Deadliest Decade will explore the horrifying torture and murder of 12-year-old Shanda Sharer in 1992. The perpetrators were four teenage girls who committed unspeakable crimes under the influence of teenage jealousy and peer pressure.

All four of them were tried as adults and received lengthy sentences instead of the death penalty due to the plea bargain they entered after pleading guilty to their crimes. At present, all of them are out of prison, much before the end of their sentences.

WARNING: This article contains graphic content related to physical and s*xual violence and murder.

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The 1990s: The Deadliest Decade - What happened to Shanda Sharer?

In January 1992, Shanda Sharer was brutally tortured and murdered by four teenage girls, led by Melinda Loveless, a 17-year-old girl from Louisville. Sharer moved to New Albany with her mother in 1991 and developed a romantic relationship with Amanda Heavrin, a 15-year-old she met at school.

However, Amanda was in an on-and-off relationship with Loveless, who could not handle the jealousy and made public threats to kill Sharer. She enlisted the help of her friend Laurie Tackett, 17, and the latter's childhood friends Hope Rippey, 15, and Toni Lawrence, 15.

The four girls abducted Sharer from her house at midnight on the pretext of driving her to meet Amanda in an abandoned building, where they tied her up and taunted her. Eventually, they took her to another abandoned location and beat her mercilessly before stabbing her in the chest repeatedly.

For hours, they tortured a barely conscious Sharer by assaulting her with a tire iron before ultimately taking her to a field and burning her alive.

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The 1990s: The Deadliest Decade - Melinda Loveless was released from prison in 2019

All four girls who perpetrated the assault and murder of Shanda Sharer were tried as adults. They entered plea bargains to avoid the death penalty. Loveless and Tackett were sentenced to 60 years in prison at the Indiana Women's Prison in Indianapolis.

Rippey was sentenced to 60 years, with 10 years suspended due to mitigating circumstances plus 10 years of medium-supervision probation. Upon further appeal, the judge reduced her sentence to 35 years.

In exchange for her cooperation, Lawrence was allowed to plead guilty to one count of criminal confinement and was sentenced to a maximum of 20 years. She was released on December 14, 2000 after serving nine years in prison. She remained on parole until December 2002.

Rippey was released on parole on April 28, 2006, from Indiana Women's Prison after serving 14 years of her original sentence. She remained on supervised parole until April 2011.

Tackett was released from Rockville Correctional Facility on September 11, 2018, after serving nearly 26 years in prison and completing a year of probation.

Lastly, Loveless was released from Indiana Women's Prison on September 5, 2019. She served over 26 years in prison and will continue to serve parole in Jefferson County, Kentucky.

In 2012, Shanda Sharer's mother Jackie Vaught made headlines when she publicly forgave Melinda Loveless. She donated a puppy in her daughter's honor to the Indiana Canine Assistance Network program, where Loveless had taken to training dogs for the disabled.

Catch the episode of The 1990s: The Deadliest Decade, titled The New Girl, on Investigation Discovery on August 19, 2022.