Pardons Board to hear petition from ‘show and tell’ murderer

Tuesday, July 15, 1997 | 1:48 a.m.

Ten years later, Shaw still says she didn't do it.

This week she'll try to convince the state Pardons Board that her role in the murder of 21-year-old James Cotton Kelly wasn't that of a killer, but one of a teen-ager who simply made a bad choice.

Kelly's body was found in the desert in 1986. Shot several times through the head, his corpse had been left to rot, face-up, for nearly a week.

Shaw, then 15, was arrested along with two teen-age boys. Prosecutors said she planned the murder to steal $1,400 to bail her boyfriend out of jail. She contended she had only asked the boys to slap Kelly around because he had been annoying her.

But several teen-agers testified she bragged about Kelly's slaying and took them to view the body. One of those teens admitted to stealing jewelry from the dead man and pawning it.

Shaw, too young to legally be sentenced to death, received a life prison term without the possibility of parole. After an appeal, her sentence was changed to two consecutive life terms with the possibility of parole - one for the murder and one for the use of the deadly weapon.

In her application to the Pardons Board, Shaw is asking to have the life terms run at the same time. That means if she is paroled from one, she wouldn't have to serve out the other.

William Watters, an attorney and one of Kelly's closest friends in Las Vegas, is opposed to any further reduction of Shaw's sentence.

"If this young girl shouldn't stay in prison forever who should?" Watters said.

The victim's brother, George Thiede, said he's shocked Shaw's petition is being heard.

"When the trial got finished we thought we would be able to relax for 40 years before we had to deal with keeping her in for the rest of her life," he said.

But in her application, Shaw said Kelly was pestering her to pose for nude photos and that she was "frightened and confused."