July 20, 1992: In Pennsylvania, Lisa Lambert is convicted of the murder of another teenage girl, Laurie Show.
Also known as Michelle Lambert or more fully as Lisa Michelle Lambert, hers would be a bizarre tale even without the false rape allegations.
On December 20, 1991, the 15 year old Laurie Show was murdered in her own home. Two teenage girls and Lawrence Yunkin were arrested. Yunkin would plead guilty to third degree murder, while Lisa Lambert and Tabitha Buck were convicted of first and second degree murder respectively.
A detailed background to the case can be found here, but very briefly, after her conviction, Lambert wrote to a Federal judge in a direct appeal. He was duped, ordered a retrial, and cleared her. This was quite extraordinary, and Lambert was released, however, the Prosecution appealed, and the acquittal was rightly overturned. In the United States, an appeal must be made to the State court before it can move up the chain to the Federal court, and eventually to the United States Supreme Court, a process that takes years.
Lambert was convicted again, and at the time of writing – 2017 – remains behind bars where she belongs.
This video clip is from a documentary about the Laurie Show murder, not the only one, and covers not only the false rape allegations Lambert made against no fewer than eleven individuals but the truly bizarre claim about the police staging the crime scene after the murder by bringing the body back from the mortuary. Her two attorneys appear to have drunk the Kool-Aid!
Not mentioned here is the fact that there was a grain of truth in one of Lambert’s myriad claims; in 1996, a prison guard was convicted of indecently assaulting her. It may have been that Lambert set this guy up, as might be inferred from this article, but neither prison officers nor police officers should have sex with women in their charge or power; this database contains many examples of especially the latter who have thrown away their careers on this account, the first one back in 1844.
Finally, it should also be pointed out that Yunkin has been accused of date raping Laurie Show. If he did have sex with her that would have been at least statutory rape, but he was never charged with any sexual offense, so it is best not to speculate as to the veracity of any such claims. Whatever, the murder of Laurie Show does not appear to have been inspired by any such allegation, but by the blind, obsessive hatred of Lisa Michelle Lambert.
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