A naive and trusting 16 year old Laurie Show became entangled in the lives of Lisa Michelle Lambert and her boyfriend, Lawrence Yunkin. Lambert initially befriended Show, but after Yunkin allegedly raped Show, Lambert became jealous and enraged, convinced Show was pursuing Yunkin. Lambert began a campaign of harassment, stalking Show, often with the assistance of friends.

On December 20, 1991, Laurie Show was murdered in her home by Lambert and Lambert's friend, Tabitha Buck; Show's mother found her. Lambert, Yunkin, and Buck were quickly arrested. Yunkin pled guilty and testified against Lambert in exchange for a reduced sentence of 20 years, and Lambert and Buck were convicted and sentenced to life without parole.

Lisa Michelle Lambert is currently incarcerated at Massachusetts Correctional Institute at Framingham, Framingham, Massachusetts serving life without parole for first degree murder of 15 year old Laurie Show.

Lambert was convicted on July 20, 1992 for the December 19th, 1991 stalking, and brutal stabbing murder. Investigators for the defense stated that it'd been brought to their attention by those they'd interviwed that "Lisa Lambert was a serious liar and very good at it." Between her various changing stories about the killing, claims against her co-conspirators/killers, and her claims against local police officers who were investigating the murder, Lambert has certainly lived up to those claims.

Lambert was previously incarcerated in Cambridge Springs Correctional Facility, Pennsylvania but was transferred to Clinton, New Jersey, then to the Women's Correctional Facility at Baylor, Delaware. Later she was transferred to Framingham, Massachusetts.

Lambert's co-conspirators Tabitha Buck was convicted of second degree murder and received a life sentence. Lawrence Yunkin intially received a year in prison under a plea bargain, but that deal fell through because of his perjury and he was sentenced to 10 to 20 years. Yunkin served 12 years and was released in 2004.

1992: Lambert filed post verdict motions claiming that her conviction was "against the weight of the evidence."

1994: The physical findings at the crime scene, the testimony at trial of the defendant, the trial testimony of Hazel Show, the history of ill will between defendant and the victim and the circumstantial evidence developed at trial all lead to the conclusion that defendant was guilty of the murder of Laurie Show.

1996: Lambert filed a lawsuit claiming that prison guard James Eicher had attacked her six times during 1994, and that another official had fondled her. Further, that she was videotaped during a strip search. Eicher was convicted of aggravated indecent assault and sentenced to two years in prison.

1997: Lambert was freed briefly when a federal district judge ruled that Lambert was "actually innocent." A Federal Appeals court overturned the ruling and Lambert was returned to prison. The court found that Lambert had brought her case to the Federal Courts prematurely without exhausting her opportunities for appeal in Pennsylvania.

1997: Lisa Lambert's appeal - DENIED

1998: Conviction upheld, Lambert's claim that she was framed by prosecutors rejected.

1998: Request for release during appeal- DENIED

2003: Eight Law Enforcement Officers cleared of misconduct in Lambert's case.

2005: Appeal to the Supreme Court - Supreme Court refused to hear her case. Incarcerated in Clinton, N.J. Lambert has now exhausted all of her appeals. She will continue to serve out her life sentence.

2007: A Lancaster County judge has determined that a civil lawsuit filed by State Correctional Institution-Cambridge Springs inmate Lisa Michelle Lambert against administrators at the facility for allegedly failing to prevent her from being sexually abused by employees was scheduled to be heard by a jury.

2007: The state of Pennsylvania has decided to settle a lawsuit brought by convicted killer Lisa Michelle Lambert, who claimed she was sexually assaulted by guards at the Cambridge Springs State Correctional Institution. The civil lawsuit had been placed on hold until Lambert had exhausted all of her appeals in her criminal case. The money, $35K, will go to pay court costs, restitution, and if any is left, will go to Lambert's parents, who are raising her and Lawrence Yunkin's daughter.

Bugbuster2.blogspot.com

Laurie is never far from their minds

Teen was murdered 20 years ago Tuesday

By Cindy Stauffer - LancasterOnline.com

December 19, 2011

Lisa Michelle Lambert is 39 years old and lives inside a Massachusetts prison. The convicted killer earned a college degree behind bars, where she has spent almost all of her adult life, save for a 10-month period of freedom.

Tabitha Buck is 37 and housed at a state prison for women in Muncy in northeastern Pennsylvania, where she has tutored other inmates as she serves out a life sentence that began before she graduated from high school.

Lawrence Yunkin is 40. Now freed from prison and living in the area, he has become a good bowler and has 302 friends on Facebook.

But Laurie Show is forever 16, a pretty, dark-haired teen who was looking forward to getting her driver's license and hoped to some day be a nurse or a hairdresser.

Exactly 20 years ago this morning, Yunkin drove Lambert and Buck to Laurie's mom's East Lampeter Township condominium.

The two young women burst inside and attacked Laurie. Lambert slit the young woman's throat and killed her in a fit of jealous rage, while Buck sat on Laurie's legs.

The case is perhaps the county's best-known murder case.

It catapulted onto the national stage in the late 1990s, when Lambert appealed her life sentence. She alleged prosecutors tampered with evidence to frame her for the murder so they could silence her about an alleged gang rape by police, a charge later rejected by the court.

A federal judge agreed, briefly freeing Lambert from prison in a move that stunned many here. She then had a series of well-publicized appeals — one which reversed the federal judge — that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The highest court refused to hear Lambert's case in 2005. In recent years, the national spotlight has turned to Amanda Knox, Casey Anthony and others involved in lurid crimes.

Time, and life, has moved on.

The district attorney at the time became a county judge.

The county judge who heard her case and declared her guilty — twice — became a federal judge who works in the same courthouse as the federal judge who freed Lambert after declaring her "actually innocent."

The two see each other regularly but never speak of the case.

The Philadelphia attorney who handled Lambert's defense appeal  moved to Vermont, where she now works on the other side of the lawyering aisle, prosecuting sex crimes.

Life marched on for Show's parents, John Show and Hazel Whitehead, who lost their only daughter on Dec. 20, 1991.

But much remains painfully unchanged.

Divorced from John Show at the time of the murder, Whitehead , now 60, remarried 10 years ago but is separated. She works at a local outlet store.

She has stayed in the same condominium. Despite the murder, it is the spot of her happiest memories with her daughter, she said, and she would not consider leaving it.

Whitehead feels her daughter's presence there, she said, when her television set and vacuum cleaner switch on by themselves or a light flickers.

"It makes you more comfortable to think she's nearby," she said. "I know, technically, she's in heaven, but sometimes I think she's saying, 'Hey mom, I'm still here. I'm watching out for you.' "

Show, 60, retired from his job working for a farm machinery manufacturer a few years ago, but then got called back to work. 

He enjoys his godchildren but thinks about the grandchildren he never will have. He speaks to others who have lost loved ones, and hosts an annual candlelight service for them.

To most people, he will always be simply Laurie Show's father.

A horrific day

Hazel Whitehead left her home 20 years ago today for what she thought was an appointment with her daughter's guidance counselor at school.

She did not know the call was a ruse to get her out of the house.

1991 had brought a difficult fall for Whitehead and her daughter. Yunkin had briefly dated Laurie, during a time he had broken up with Lambert.

Later, Lambert and Yunkin got back together, and Lambert allegedly was furious that Yunkin had dated the younger girl.

Lambert called Laurie's home, harassed her and made plans to cut off her hair, Whitehead and other witnesses said.

Things were about to come to a terrible climax.

After Whitehead left her home, Yunkin dropped off Lambert and Buck nearby, according to trial testimony. Buck knocked on the door, the two forced their way in and Laurie was killed in a terrible struggle.

Buck said Lambert sliced Laurie's throat. Lambert said Buck and Yunkin did the killing.

A 1992 trial followed, and Lambert chose to have her case heard solely by a judge. Lancaster County Judge Lawrence Stengel got the case.

"I remember the high level of emotion," said Stengel, now a U.S. District  Court judge who has offices in Philadelphia and Reading. "It was a horrific story that was difficult to believe."

At the end of the trial, Stengel found Lambert guilty and sentenced her to life in prison.

In separate proceedings, Buck was found guilty and also sentenced to life in prison. Yunkin pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 to 20 years for his part in the murder — driving the two young women back and forth and helping to get rid of evidence.

Lambert doggedly appealed her case. In 1997, after a three-week federal hearing, U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell freed her, saying she was "actually innocent" and noting there was "wholesale prosecutorial misconduct" in the handling of her case.

Joseph Madenspacher was the district attorney, the county's top prosecutor at the time. On that day, he asked Dalzell if Lambert could be reimprisoned or placed on bail during her pending appeal.

Newspaper accounts from the time noted that Dalzell chuckled and peered over his bifocals at Madenspacher, saying, "Motion denied."

It was a rough moment but Madenspacher, now a Lancaster County judge, said he was "virtually 100 percent certain" at the time that the full court would reverse Dalzell's decision.

It did.

Almost 10 months later, Lambert was returned to prison. She then ended up in Stengel's courtroom again as he presided over a hearing in her case that drew national attention with its wide-ranging and often bizarre accusations of prosecutorial misconduct.

Lambert's Philadelphia attorneys, Christina Rainville and Peter Greenberg, accused prosecutors of moving Show's body to shoot bogus crime-scene photos, switching pieces of evidence, tampering with crime-scene videotapes and committing dozens of deceitful acts.

All of the prosecutors were later cleared following a federal probe of the case. Dalzell, whose chambers are in the same federal building as Stengel's, declined to comment when contacted about the case.

Christy Fawcett was the prosecutor in the case before Stengel. Then with the state attorney general's office, she's now a U.S. attorney in Harrisburg.

The Lambert case consumed three years of her life, she said. The elements of it — the teenage love triangle, the "lurid allegations" of prosecutorial misconduct — made it a riveting case.

Fawcett said the case came along just as court cases began to capture the  entire country's attention on television.

The national media descended on Lancaster for the hearing before Stengel. ABC later featured it on "20/20." The Los Angeles Times wrote about it. The New York Times editorialized on it. There was a book and television movies.

The case also helped to spawn state anti-stalking laws in Pennsylvania.

"It was totally engrossing," Fawcett said, noting that she still thinks about it.

She believes the case showed how important is the responsibility of a lawyer, and the danger of becoming overzealous in representing a client.

Though her job and her life has changed in the past 20 years, her opinion of the case has not, she said.

Lambert was and is guilty, she said.

Still innocent

Rainville disagrees.

Now 48 and living in Bennington County in southern Vermont, Rainville said the Lambert case still deeply disturbs her, as does the fact that Lambert remains in prison.

Rainville and Greenberg retired to Vermont in 2005, the same year that the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Lambert's case.

She volunteered for a while at her children's elementary school, volunteered at a public defender's office and then, bored, decided to go back to work. Greenberg remains retired, she said.

Rainville is the chief deputy state's attorney in Bennington County, a role similar to that of an assistant district attorney in Pennsylvania. She feels comfortable as a prosecutor in Vermont, where she said the procedural rules are different from Pennsylvania's.

She specializes in the prosecution of child sex offenders, work she finds satisfying.

"Working with children and giving them a voice, it's very rewarding work and I totally love it," she said.

Though her professional contact with Lambert ended, her personal contact did not. Rainville said she remains in touch with Lambert, and communicated with her as recently as a few weeks ago.

While in prison, Lambert earned a degree from Boston University, graduating with honors, Rainville said. She believed Lambert's major was criminal justice.

"She's just an exemplary person," Rainville said. "And she's lived an exemplary life in prisom."

Lambert's time in prison, however, has not gone smoothly.

She has bounced around, spending time in prisons in Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey and Massachusetts.

In 2007, Pennsylvania paid her $35,000 to settle her allegations of sexual abuse by prison guards. One of those guards was fired and convicted of indecently assaulting her.

In addition to earning a degree behind bars, Lambert became a mother.

She was pregnant with Yunkin's baby at the time of Laurie Show's murder. She gave birth to a daughter a few months later.

Her parents, Leonard and Judy, obtained custody of the child. The couple divorced in 2009, local court records show.

Now a 19-year-old, Lambert's daughter is the same age her mother was at the time of Laurie Show's death.

It is not known where she lives. Rainville said she did not want to discuss the personal details of Lambert's life.

Rainville said she has never wavered in her belief that Lambert is innocent.

"Not one bit," she said. "I think all the more she didn't do what she was convicted of."

"For me, professionally, it remains the most disturbing outcome of any case," she said. "It's upsetting to think of her being in jail that long.

"That's a life lost."

The life forever lost

For Hazel Whitehead and John Show, the life that has been lost is that of their only child.

There has been no graduation from high school or college to celebrate. No one to walk down the aisle. No grandchildren to hold.

Though 20 years have passed, for them, the loss of their daughter seems like it happened just yesterday.

Whitehead said she has worked hard not to become angry. She gets up and faces every day and tries to make it the best she can.

"I just look back on the life that I had with Laurie, and the good times, and try to stay focused on that," she said.

She keeps things to herself, she added. Other people's lives have moved on, and she does not want to bore them with talk of her 16-year-old daughter who is never far from her thoughts. Her daughter's photos remain in her house. Her memories remain vivid.

"I don't see me, in my lifetime, at a point where she's not in my present thoughts," she said.

Show said he is glad he is still working. It keeps him occupied and busy. He's grateful for his godchildren and tries to treat them like his own grandchildren.

An only child, he is the last of his immediate family. Both of his parents have died since Laurie's death.

Today, he'll carry a single rose to the cemetery where his daughter is buried.

"It hurts," he said. "I see people who have children, family. Hazel and I don't have any grandchildren. It's tough and it hurts."

Neither he nor Whitehead have run into Yunkin since he was released from prison in 2003.

Yunkin's probation ends today, on the 20th anniversary of Laurie's killing.

Since his release, newspaper records show he was a regular bowler at Garden Spot bowling alley in Strasburg, the same bowling alley where he bowled with Lambert and Buck before the killing and where he was arrested afterward.

Yunkin returned to Garden Spot  about two years after he left prison and continued bowling there until a fire destroyed the alley  this summer.

He has a Facebook page, which shows a tattoo of a purple ribbon with the words "Live Strong" and "Just Do It."

He could not be reached for comment.

Whitehead said she receives an occasional restitution payment from Yunkin. He was ordered to pay almost $12,000, and still owes more than $7,000, court records show.

It's her reminder that he's out there, and that he has to think of her daughter from time to time, she said.

"The money doesn't matter but he should be made accountable for what he helped to do," she said.

Whitehead and Show also have not heard much about Buck in recent years.

Her family left the area after her arrest and are believed to live in Oregon, thousands of miles away from where she is imprisoned.

In the past two decades, Whitehead said she has had time to come to a certain sort of peace about what happened.

"Life goes on," she said. "You have to do your best to continue to do what you can to make your life better and to help others.

"I truly believe God has a plan for me. I don't know if I've totally figured out what it is, but I'll keep working at it."

Actual Innocence?

Over the Memorial Day Weekend, buried in a long list of orders connected to petitions for review of lower court rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court finally put to rest the tortuous case of murderer Lisa Michelle Lambert.