Little Lost Angel (24 page)

Stumbling half flying with its hideous smile,

Then reaching the knees of an innocent baby

crying in fear

As the forest burns on,

Listen and hear.

On June 1 Laurie tried to explain herself and begged Kary to be understanding:

Dear Kary.

I guess I’ll answer the question you asked me on the phone. About Melinda. No, I never loved her, only as a friend. After you came back from Jefferson Hospital and had Tracy [Kary’s new lover] I just sort of clung onto the first person that came around, and the emotions and feelings I had for you never left but in my mind I substituted Melinda in your place. Never did I substitute anyone for you in my heart. And you still have a place in my heart that nobody else could ever touch. The way we split up was really fucked up. Can I ask you one question? Why didn’t you tell me I scared you? Why didn’t we talk it out? I could have stopped channeling for you. It was just a part of my life before I met you. I mean it was natural to me, Larry and Terry. That one night we had a séance, I can’t remember half of it because of all the channeling I was doing. That lets me know it’s real. Sometimes I even wondered whether it was real or not, but when you go into something and can’t remember it afterwards, something there tells you it’s not fake. Maybe in a way it was an attention getter—but never fake. Please believe that.

Kary, I’m so scared. I bet you never thought you’d see me falling on my knees because I always tried to be strong. I always cut myself because of my problems. I never felt like I had anybody I could go to, so I held everything in. You know I was never violent. Two nights ago I was sleeping and reliving that night with Shanda and there were people all around us and they weren’t alive but they were crying and watching. It was a crazy dream.

But in a letter sent just one week later, Laurie abruptly changed her tune:

Kary,

Listen I can’t take your visits anymore. They hurt too
bad. I’m sorry. I deserve this, everything I’m getting, I deserve. I want to die, so the death sentence doesn’t really matter. I can’t fight anymore. I’m tired. I’m pulling you from my visiting list. Everything has changed because of me. Please forgive what I have done.

I love you,
Laurie       

When Kary visited the prison unannounced a short time later, she learned the reason for Laurie’s standoffishness. Laurie had found a female lover, who was jealous of Kary’s attentions. Laurie wrote Kary afterward:

Kary,

This is hard for me because I still love you but not in a way that I want to be with you. At one time I loved you so much and if you would’ve let me I would have shown you. For the last two weeks I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching and I realize that I do love Kim. She has stuck beside me from the beginning and she has never judged me. The first night I was here I was crying and upset. I didn’t know her and she didn’t know me but she told me that if I needed someone to talk to that she was there for me. She lived up to her word. Sure, she’s overprotective, but now I understand why. Kary, I love her and if anything ever happens to us, I could never have anyone else. What we have is real. And I hope you can understand. She knows things about me that nobody else knows. Things that if given time, you would have known. But we never had that time. Now my love has been passed on to someone else and it has had a chance to grow. Please understand. I’m sorry.

Love, 
Laurie

To make sure that Kary got the message, Laurie’s lover, Kim, sent her the following letter on July 31:

Kary,

We got your letter yesterday and Mary asked me to respond. Mary—known to you as Laurie—explained to you that she wished no communication with you.

I’ve read your statement against her and I really don’t see how you even have the nerve to write. To me, you’re a very mixed up kid that Mary doesn’t need or want in her life. At any rate, all of your letters will be returned, and all of your visits will be refused.

Mary is and will be doing fine, because she has realness in her life now—me—therefore you should spend your time on something that won’t be a waste of your time. Understand, or would you like me to draw you a picture? You’ve got my address if you’re not bright enough to understand this letter. I’m always willing to help a kid out!

Bye, Kim.

Mary’s wife

But Kary was not ready to give up. After she showed up at the prison unannounced again, Kim got mad and broke up with Laurie. A few days later, Laurie fired off the following letter:

Kary,

You have fucked up my life again. I asked you to stay away from me. Why couldn’t you listen? No, you had to keep coming when you knew I had somebody who I loved dearly. You have made me lose the only person I had and the only person who I knew loved me and was real. I was beginning to feel like everything was going to be OK. I was beginning to feel like I had a reason to live, but now all of that is gone. You lied to the police about me and who knows what else you said about me that I don’t know about. Just please stay out of my life. There is no way you can make up for what you’ve done. No way. You will be pulled off my visiting list tomorrow. I don’t want anything else to do with you. What we had—our relationship, our friendship—is all in the past. Face reality and just stay away. Find someone
who will love you, I don’t. Yes, I did but I will never love anyone ever again. Kim is gone and so is all the love I ever had.

But within a week or so Laurie was apologetic again, as shown in this letter dated August 13:

Kary,

I need you. I still do. If you really want to testify against me, then do it. All I ask is still be my friend. Laurie has been dead for a long time. They took her away when I got arrested. Kim was right about one thing—she told me that you would testify against me in the end. That was one of the main reasons she didn’t want me to see you. I didn’t believe her. I believed in our friendship. I love you guys. I love Melinda. I always will no matter what happens. The times we had, the things we shared, I’ll never forget. You may not need me but I know I will always need you. I swear I was never a devil worshiper, I never had any evil intentions and I think deep down in your heart you know that. Kary, there’s one saying I’ve always went by: where there is genuine love there is understanding. Please don’t leave me. You can help Melinda—just don’t go away.

By the end of the summer, Kary was confused and despondent. She wrote Laurie the following letter:

Laurie (Mary),

You have got to understand something. I do not want to testify against you. I want out. You and Melinda have really messed me up. My life will never be the same. I don’t trust anybody. Not even Larry and Terry. Laurie, I’m very upset with you because you took my feelings and emotions and messed them up. I don’t want to live. I just want to die. I really did love you but you pushed me away. Every time I care about someone they leave or die. I can’t handle my life anymore. I’m so alone. No one cares anymore. Look what I was going to
do just to be with you. I’m not going to trial. They are going to have to arrest me. You left me. Why? Over some stupid bitch who never has or never will care for you as much as I did or still do. I care for Melinda and you. Nothing will ever change how I feel about both of you all. Where is Kim? This letter better not be a joke to mess with my feelings. I hope it’s not because you will put me in an early grave. This is your last chance. Push me away again and it’s over.

Throughout the summer Laurie had also been corresponding with Mysi Thornton, a friend from Madison. Mysi ran with the crowd Laurie had hung with before she met Kary and Melinda. Mysi was also friends with Hope and the Leatherburys. Laurie had just begun to introduce Mysi to the mystical world of the occult when she was arrested. She considered herself the tutor and Mysi her pupil. Her letters to Mysi indicate just how seriously Laurie had submerged herself into her unusual beliefs. In a letter sent on August 18, Laurie schooled Mysi in the finer points of communicating with a spirit that Mysi claimed had made contact with her.

Be careful. I’ll tell you why. If you are her from a past life, she wouldn’t be able to communicate with you. You would be her and vice versa. By the way you described her she is a spirit. She has been dead a long time and her spirit is lost. Your spirit is yours and it’s still with you. You and her are two different souls—two different spirits. Can you understand all what I’m trying to explain to you? Are you into witchcraft and becoming a young vampire? Me and Hope talked to a spirit a while back in a field close to my house and she warned us about a cliff. Ask Hope. I know she remembers. It’s the same spirit that is trying to contact you, I can feel it. Her husband might come after you—but not likely—he isn’t even alive right now.

At the end of the letter Laurie vented her contempt of Toni:

Toni already made a statement against Hope that will hurt her. Toni is a backstabbing bitch, who can only be in the police’s face telling them shit. It just makes me mad to even think about it.

In a letter sent to Mysi three weeks later, Laurie revealed her resentment of Melinda and promised her pupil that good times lay ahead.

Melinda is blaming me and Hope for that little girl’s death. Kary said that Melinda hates me but I could care less. Melinda is a bitch. She’s proud to know that Shanda is dead and she caused it. She doesn’t have one ounce of remorse. And if she regrets doing it at all, she probably only wishes that she’d have done it differently. I don’t know why we left Shanda where we did. We were all scared and I guess we were just desperate to have her out of the car. I miss you and the times we had. Just take care of yourself and I promise to find you whenever me and Hope get released and we’ll come see you and we’ll all party. You’ll swear all hell broke loose when we do!!! We’ll have fun times again I promise. And I never break a promise. I mean there’s nothing we can do to change the past but we create our future. Just remember that, OK.

At the close of the letter, Laurie responded to Mysi’s claims that she’d met a vampire:

If you really do know a true-to-god vampire, please tell him that I love vamps and would give my life to be one. Does he have fangs and is he immortal? If so, I’m more serious in what I said than in anything. Be careful in drinking blood. Don’t take it from just anyone!!! And I’m talking about AIDS, so please be careful!!!

In a letter sent on September 12, Laurie was once again preoccupied with thoughts of Melinda:

I think I’m going to take psychology here. I think I would be a good one. I hate it here. I hate the people (especially the fucking niggers). They better not give me a lot of time. I can’t handle it. All I ever want to do is cry or kill myself or sleep. I don’t have a fucking criminal record. Why did this have to happen to me? I hate Melinda so damn much. Killing someone and laughing about it afterward. I mean, what kind of freak is she? And what was the purpose? Shanda was only twelve. God, when I was twelve all I knew was how much I wanted to have a friend. I have to live with this for the rest of my life. I wake up sometimes screaming—having nightmares about that night. Isn’t that punishment enough???

If I see Melinda while we’re at court this month I’ll scream at her and tell her how much of a bitch she is. She doesn’t deserve anything but a hot curling iron shoved up her ass. Excuse my language, but I hate her.

One month later, Melinda was moved from the Clark County jail to the Indiana Women’s Prison. Now that they were fellow inmates, Laurie’s opinion of Melinda changed dramatically, as she wrote in this October 15 letter to Mysi:

Melinda is here now and we are friends again. She saw me out her window and flipped her light on and off about six or seven times and waved and I waved back. She’s so cute. I couldn’t be mad at her anymore. But the real reason I’m not mad anymore is because I’m as guilty as she is. We were in it together and I can’t be mad. I mean, she didn’t force me to be there, she just sort of trapped me. At any rate, I won’t hate her. I could’ve stopped it from happening but I didn’t. We’re all at fault and we’re all as guilty. There’s not one of us who is more guilty. We’re all the same. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?

This letter was sent shortly after Laurie made an appearance at the Madison courthouse, dressed demurely in a flower-print dress. “About my dress last Tuesday,” Laurie
wrote, “that was merely something of innocence. A dress for the judge. As for my religion. That religion fucked my mind up when I was little and I’ll never get back into their fucking fellowship and fire and brimstone bullshit.”

After a curious signoff—“Happy exploiting, Love Laurie”—Laurie added an even weirder postscript: “Monkey see, Monkey do, Monkey will destroy you. Bad Monkey, Bad Monkey, Bad Monkey, Bad Monkey. Ahhgh!!!!”

*  *  *

Detective Steve Henry had felt that, of the four girls, Laurie would adapt best to prison life. She was tough enough to handle herself in a fight, and since her home life had been so bleak beforehand, she wouldn’t miss her family as much as the other girls. Henry’s opinion may prove correct in the long run, but Laurie’s first six months in prison were filled with turmoil. In February she cut her wrist and was placed in isolation. In July she lost two weeks of privileges because of disorderly conduct. After she broke up with Kim, her former lover threatened her. In preparation for a conflict, Laurie managed to steal a razor blade and conceal it in her cell. When jailers found it she was given a full year of isolation for possession of a deadly weapon. While there she got into even more trouble when she ripped a sink out of a wall.

In Indiana prisoners have one day taken off the end of their sentence for each day served of good time. After six months, Laurie had accumulated no good time.