“He was always coming over, and I still expect to hear the back door open and to hear him holler, ‘Mom,’” said Mildred Pierce.
Lisa Shuler, 32, knew Mildred’s son, Charles Pierce, 49, had nude photos of her. They weren’t just pictures of Lisa naked. They were photos of her and Charles having sex.
She was scared that the pictures would wind up in the hands of her estranged husband, Brandon.
The southern Indiana woman did the only thing she could think of to correct the situation. It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing. Lisa had a problem, so she created a plan to solve that problem. And then, she worked the plan.
Lisa invited Charles to her home. Obviously, it wasn’t the first time. They had a history. The Louisville, Ky. man had no reason to expect anything from Lisa except sex.
And that is what he got.
Not long after Charles arrived, Lisa dropped to her knees. She undid the buckle of her illicit lover’s pants, pulled them to his knees, smiled at Charles, and then pulled down his underwear.
It was perfect for both of them.
When they were finished, before Charles could catch his breath and pull up his pants, Lisa drew a .45 handgun from a holster on her belt. She unloaded the entire clip into his body.
The deed was done. Charles was still breathing. But Lisa was confident he would soon die. Her soon-to-be ex-husband would never see Lisa’s nude photos.
Now Lisa had to do her best to stay out of prison.
She didn’t think that would be a problem. It was part of her plan, too.
Lisa got herself together. She collected her thoughts, picked up Charles’ phone, and started trying to delete the racy texts she and he had exchanged during their affair.
She deleted close to 200 texts from her phone.
Lisa did the best she could with Charles’ phone. She knew the texts had not been completely deleted. But if police bought into her story, Lisa saw no reason that the messages would matter.
So she dropped Charles’ phone, grabbed hers, and punched in 9-1-1.
When the operator answered, Lisa breathlessly described how a man had broken into her home and tried to rape her. She had no choice but to shoot him dead.
It was self-defense, pure and simple.
Charles was still breathing when police and an ambulance arrived. Since Lisa had reported a shooting, paramedics and the officers who took her statement had been dispatched.
Lisa had to be worried that Charles was still alive. After all, she had emptied a clip of .45 bullets into him. What was it going to take to kill this guy?
She didn’t have to be concerned. Charles just barely made it to the hospital before he died.
That was one part of her problem out of the way. Now she just had to convince investigators that it was a case of self-defense.
Lisa deleted hundreds of text messages from her phone and Charles’ phone. But she would have been better off disposing of both of the devices.
Once police got into those deleted texts — Lisa discovered belatedly that no e-message, mail, or text, was ever deleted — investigators had evidence of Lisa’s racy affair with Charles.
Lisa couldn’t keep up her act. She was not a career criminal. At least Lisa could not be even close to a match for a trained police detective. Certainly not a cop who had evidence that Lisa not only knew the man who had allegedly broken into her home — she had slept with the guy.
Lisa cracked.
She confessed.
Lisa told detectives she and Charles had done this before. It was a “rape fantasy” game she said they played together.
Lisa told them the whole story. She talked about the breakup of her ten-year marriage with Brandon. Lisa spoke of the fear that Charles would release the naked pictures they had taken together.
Lisa admitted she had planned to kill Charles and took a plea bargain.
She got forty-five years in prison for a guilty plea.
Charles’ mother said Lisa should have gotten life.
Mildred Pierce was too torn up to read her statement when Lisa was sentenced. Chief Deputy Prosecutor Steven Owen did it for her.
“I lost my youngest son,” Owen read to the court. “The hole that has been left cannot ever be filled.”
Lisa apologized to the Pierce family while dressed in a green-and-white striped jumpsuit.
Her grandmother, Iretta Michael, said Lisa’s family had also experienced a loss.
“She was raised in a Christian family. I don’t know. She went down, she chose to go the other way, but she’s repented of it. She’s going to pay for it in 45 years,” Iretta told reporters. “But we’ve lost her as well as they’ve lost their son.”
“If it hadn’t been for drugs, alcohol, and perverse sex,” Iretta said, “neither one of them would be lost.”
“...drugs, alcohol, and perverse sex” is one of the Shocking True Crime Stories you’ll read in “Murder’s Always Murder.”