Charges Against Girls in Torture Slaying Stun Town in Indiana : Crime: The teen-agers stand accused of beating, abusing and burning to death another girl to avenge a case of jealousy.

The subject is seldom mentioned in this small town, maybe because it’s too painful to accept that four teen-age girls were charged with torturing and killing a 12-year-old girl.

Prosecutors say the teen-agers bludgeoned and sodomized Shanda Renee Sharer with a tire tool on Jan. 11, sliced her legs with a knife, then doused her with gasoline and burned her alive on a back road.

“You wonder who would be capable of something like that,” Damon Welch said while working at his restaurant’s griddle.

Patrons trading banter with him from the counter nodded their shared dismay that such a horror could happen in Madison, an Ohio River town of 13,000 where antique shops, restaurants and an emerging bed-and-breakfast trade cater to tourists lured by its antebellum charm.

Three of the suspects are from Madison, one from a town 50 miles away. None had a violent past that might betray such brutality.

“When you first hear it, it stuns everybody. I guess we never think something like that will happen in a small town like this. Pretty frightening, isn’t it?” Welch said.

According to court documents, Mary Laurine Tackett, Hope Rippey and Toni Lawrence, all of Madison, were in a car with Melinda Loveless of New Albany, cruising southwestern Indiana when Loveless mentioned Sharer.

The documents include a statement in which Lawrence said Loveless told the others she believed Sharer was stealing away her girlfriend and said she wanted to kill her. The others agreed, the document alleges. Prosecutors wouldn’t identify the girlfriend.

The girls went to Sharer’s house and lured her into the car, where Loveless pressed a knife against her, and hours of torture ensued, according to the statement.

A melted one-liter bottle, believed to have held gasoline, lay near the site where Sharer’s burned body was discovered, police said.

Jefferson County Prosecutor Guy Townsend has reserved the right to seek the death penalty against Loveless and Tackett, both 17. Rippey, who turned 16 this month, is too young under Indiana law for capital punishment.

Lawrence, 17, agreed in April to plead guilty to criminal confinement and testify against the others. In return, prosecutors agreed to drop six charges against her, including murder. The plea will not be entered and Lawrence will not be sentenced until the other cases are concluded.

Rippey’s sister, Tina Rippey, struggled to comprehend the charges after a brief courthouse visit with Hope.

“She says she didn’t do it, other girls say different,” Tina Rippey, 17, said without emotion. “When she’s put on trial for murder, what am I supposed to do, say she’s guilty like everyone else? She’s my baby sister and I’ll stand by her.”

Tina Rippey’s boyfriend, Roy Newby, 19, was acquainted with the girls. He had gone to Madison High School with them and said he can’t believe they could carry out so grisly a deed.

“Hope was real shy. From what I know, this was the first time she’d met this girl (Sharer), and she tried to kill her? I can’t believe that.

“And Toni Lawrence, she’s scared of a bug,” Newby said. “I can’t believe she would even be in the car. You throw a frog at her and she’d scream.”

He said he did not know Loveless.

Mayor Morris Wooden said residents realize that Madison’s bucolic appeal will take a back seat to news of the girls’ trials this fall.

“I don’t guess that’s unfair. It happened here,” Wooden said.

“But I think Madison has such a good image in the area, people will see that what happened is a fluke. And the people here know it’s not typical of their town. They’ll just go about their business and hope for a better day.”