The Murder of Laurie Show

Thursday night a guidance counselor at Conestoga Valley High School, where Laurie was a sophomore, called to ask Hazel Show to come in to talk about her daughter — or so Mrs. Show thought. When the divorced mother arrived at the school at 7:00 a.m. the next day, the counselor wasn't there, and there was no record of anyone having made an appointment, or of any problems with her likable 16-year-old daughter. Mrs. Show went home, where her daughter should have been getting ready for her last day of school before winter vacation. Outside, a panicked neighbor asked if something was wrong; she had heard suspicious noises. Inside a shocking scene greeted Hazel Show. Her only child lay covered in blood from multiple wounds, with a rope around her neck. As she untied the rope, Mrs. Show saw the worst of the wounds: a long, deep cut along her daughter's neck, pulsing blood at an alarming rate. It was then, cradling her dying daughter and trying in vain to hold the horrible wound together and staunch the bleeding, she would later testify that she heard Laurie declare troubled, abrasive Lisa Michelle Lambert the killer.

Conestoga Valley High School

Mrs. Show already knew of Michelle's vendetta against Laurie. The two girls were open enemies. When Michelle, then 19, and her longtime boyfriend, Butch, 20, had split up over the summer, Laurie had gone out on a few dates with him. Butch allegedly had raped Laurie in his truck at the end of their last date. He had then reunited with Michelle, who was already pregnant with his child. By fall, Michelle was living with him again, in his remote trailer on the other side of town. And yet Michelle's hatred of Laurie not only continued to simmer after she got her boyfriend back, it publicly boiled over. She regularly taunted and humiliated the younger girl in front of their friends. After Michelle attacked Laurie in a local mall, Mrs. Show changed the family's phone number and even tried to file an order of protection against the girl.

Butch seems to have been afraid that he might do jail time for raping Laurie. He urged Michelle and Tabitha, a 17-year old Conestoga student who'd recently moved from Oregon, to beat Laurie up. The three were spotted around the Shows' condominium complex the morning of the 21st, East Lampeter Township Police Department and state troopers confirmed. By the time the trio left, Laurie had suffered a five-inch gash to the throat; a stab wound that punctured a lung and another that grazed her spine; several wounds to the head; and a number of defensive wounds. Police picked up Michelle, Tabitha and Lawrence at the Garden Spot Bowling Alley in nearby Strasburg later that day, and charged each of them that Saturday.