Melinda Loveless first apologized for the murder of twelve-year-old Shanda Sharer on December 19, 1992, when she turned to Shanda’s mother at her sentencing hearing and said, “If I could, I would trade places with your daughter. I really would.”1UPI. Teen Apologizes for Mutilation Slaying She was seventeen. In the decades since, her remorse took on a different and more sustained shape inside prison, eventually reaching the victim’s mother through an unlikely channel.
The 1992 Courtroom Apology
Loveless spoke on the final day of her sentencing hearing in Jefferson Circuit Court, addressing Shanda’s mother, Jacque Vaught, directly. Her statement was short, and it was the first public expression of remorse she had offered. The proceedings were underway to determine whether her sentence would exceed the thirty-year minimum; she ultimately received sixty years after pleading guilty to murder, arson, and criminal confinement before Judge Ted R. Todd.2Los Angeles Times. Sentencing in Murder of Shanda Sharer
The apology was not accompanied by any extended explanation from Loveless herself. Testimony that week from her sisters, cousins, and a family therapist described severe childhood sexual abuse by her father and a violent home, offered as mitigation rather than as justification.3UPI. Family Members Say Teenage Murderer Was Abused
How Shanda’s Mother Received It
Whatever Jacque Vaught made of the courtroom statement at the time, her public view of Loveless in the years that followed was unsparing. In 2007, when Loveless sought early release, Vaught told reporters: “Melinda is, of the four girls, she is just evil. If it wasn’t for her, Shanda would still be alive. She was the one that started it all… she brutally murdered my child, and when I say brutal, it was brutal. There was 10 hours of torture.”4FOX19. Melinda Loveless, Teens Charged With Brutal Murder, Released From Prison
That position softened later, but only in a particular way, and only after something else happened in prison.
Remorse Through the Prison Dog Program
At the Indiana Women’s Prison, Loveless spent seven years as a trainer in the Indiana Canine Assistance Network, which raises service dogs for people with disabilities. Staff described her as one of the program’s “most trusted and competent trainers.”5WAVE 3 News. Shanda Sharer’s Mother and Murderer Form Unlikely Alliance
Charlie Petrizzo, a burn victim who bred dogs for the program, persuaded Vaught to watch a video of Loveless’s work with the dogs. Vaught’s response surprised her. “I saw someone who was almost reborn,” she said. “Melinda was someone who had learned to nurture something.” Vaught donated a puppy named “Angel” in Shanda’s honor and asked that Loveless be the one to train it.5WAVE 3 News. Shanda Sharer’s Mother and Murderer Form Unlikely Alliance
Loveless’s response was the fullest statement of remorse she has made publicly. “I was the monster. So I get it. I was the bad person,” she said. Through tears, she addressed what Vaught’s gesture had meant: “She helped me to heal, forgive and grow, whether she wanted that or not… She did a good thing. And I would thank her. I couldn’t thank her enough.” She said she trained the dogs “for Shanda.”5WAVE 3 News. Shanda Sharer’s Mother and Murderer Form Unlikely Alliance
Vaught kept a line. She had no plans to meet Loveless in person, and her reasoning was not a declaration of forgiveness. “If you don’t let good things come from bad things, nothing gets better,” she said. “And I know what my child would want.”5WAVE 3 News. Shanda Sharer’s Mother and Murderer Form Unlikely Alliance
Where Things Stand
Loveless was released from the Indiana Women’s Prison on September 5, 2019, at forty-three, after serving twenty-three years and eight months of her sixty-year sentence. She was the last of the four perpetrators to leave prison.6WAVE 3 News. Melinda Loveless, Teens Charged With Brutal Murder, Released From Prison No public statement from Loveless at the time of her release has been reported.
The seventeen-year-old who said “I would trade places with your daughter” and the woman who later called herself “the monster” and trained service dogs in Shanda’s name offered two very different apologies, separated by more than twenty years. Vaught never declared full forgiveness, and the distance she kept said as much about the crime as her donation of the puppy said about the trainer. Whether the change amounted to genuine atonement is a question the people closest to the case answered differently, and at different points in their lives.