After 21 years on hold, she’s ready for life

Jack Sheehan talks with Sandy Shaw, fresh out of prison for her role in the “show and tell” murder

Monday, March 17, 2008 | 2 a.m.

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

Sandy Shaw

I expected to meet a hardened woman, her face a steely mask of contempt and resignation for a life that has dealt her one cruel blow after another.

But somehow, some way, Sandy Shaw has come through her nightmares unscathed on the surface. She smiles readily, has perfect manners, and looks forward with hope and optimism to the years that lie ahead, rather than back at the mistakes of her youth and the arguable injustices dealt her by a legal system that made her pay too great a price for a bad decision she’s been forced to relive every day for more than two decades.

“I survived 21 years in prison because I didn’t want to become a product of my environment,” Shaw says. “I try not to look back too much. My purpose now is to continue to find myself, to move forward, and to try and build a productive life.”

Shaw was paroled in December, having spent 60 percent of her time on earth incarcerated for her involvement in the 1986 killing of James “Cotton” Kelly. That crime was given a sexy label by the local press: the “show and tell” murder. If you lived in Las Vegas 22 years ago, you probably recall the bare elements of the story, but you probably don’t know all the backroom deal-cutting and testimony-shaping that took place to get a first-degree murder conviction of Shaw.

Troy Kell, the lone triggerman in the case, is on death row in Utah for stabbing to death another inmate. He has nothing to gain by backing Sandy Shaw’s story, yet he has signed an affidavit claiming Sandy had no foreknowledge that he had brought a gun with him the night Kelly was killed.

And Dave Fletcher, a teenager back then who five times took other teens to view the victim’s corpse and thereby gave the crime its alluring tag line, also says Sandy got a raw deal.

“When it all went down, I told my side of the story in court, but then the prosecutor called me out to a private room and told me if I didn’t testify the way he wanted, I would go to jail. He was hell-bent to get a conviction, and I wasn’t goin’ to jail for nobody back then,” Fletcher told me in a recent interview.

“When I changed my testimony, I thought the jury would throw out what I said as unreliable, but I guess they didn’t. All these years later, I feel horrible about what happened to Sandy. She was a cocky kid back then, but she didn’t deserve what happened.”

Yet Shaw received a double life sentence without parole for the murder, and was placed in an adult prison population while still a teenager.

“I made a horrible, immature decision to ask a friend to rough this man up so he would leave me alone,” Sandy says. “Cotton Kelly had been hassling me and pestering me to go out with him and to pose for nude pictures. He would call our house at all hours of the day and was so persistent that my mom phoned the police to request that they keep him away from me. But they didn’t have stalking laws in place then like we have today.”

Subsequently she asked Troy Kell, a neighbor and lifelong friend, to slap Kelly around a little to keep him from bothering her. Sandy has sworn from day one that she had no idea that Troy had a gun with him that night, much less that he would use it.

“I accept that I put a man in harm’s way and I take full responsibility for the eventual loss of his life because of that,” Shaw says. “I deserved to spend some time in jail for that bad decision. But not 21 years.”

Although her court-appointed attorney, a man conducting his first murder-trial defense, was offered a plea bargain for Sandy that would have resulted in her release from prison in four to 12 years, he turned it down. The attorney instructed her to fight the charges, arguing that a jury would not convict a baby-faced 15-year-old like her on trumped up first-degree murder charges.

It turned out to be yet one more poor decision and bad break in a life chock full of them.

How this young woman got in this predicament, and how she’s handled it since then, is equal parts tragic and inspirational.

•••

It all started to go wrong for Sandy two years before the Cotton Kelly murder, when she happened to be in a horribly bad place at the horribly wrong time.

In September 1984, 13-year-old Sandy was spending the night with her best friend, Jessica Mallin, on the night Jessica’s mother, Virginia Mallin Egyed, and two other people were murdered in a Rancho Circle home. The shooter was Virginia’s husband, Alex Egyed. (Virginia’s former husband was Stanley Mallin, who with Jay Sarno built Caesars Palace and Circus Circus. That grisly story also spent weeks on the front pages of Las Vegas newspapers and leading the local evening news.)

“Virginia’s friend, Betty DiFiore, was at the Mallin house to drive Jessica and me to another home to spend the night,” Sandy recalls, “because Virginia and Alex had been fighting and she wanted us moved to a safer place. As Mrs. DiFiore was telling us to get our things together, Alex suddenly appeared in the doorway of Jessica’s bedroom, put a gun to Betty’s head and shot her. She fell right on me. I was covered with brains and blood.”

Egyed also murdered his wife in another room of the house and a friend named Jack Levy waiting outside in a car, before turning the gun on himself.

“That night ruined my life,” Sandy says. “I was so traumatized from that, and so confused, that I became kind of numb for a while. I couldn’t sleep alone. I curled up with my mom in her bed every night.”

Less than six months later, as Sandy was waiting for her mother to pick her up at school, she witnessed a man shoot his pregnant girlfriend less than 20 feet away from her. She didn’t know either the gunman or the victim, but it brought back visions of the first murder in living color. Then just 14, Shaw was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. A visit to a therapist didn’t do much to get her back on track.

“He just prescribed Valium to me,” she says. “Which numbed me even further.”

Just two years after the Egyed mass murder, Sandy met Cotton Kelly, whose real last name was Thiede, as she was playing in the teens’ arcade at Circus Circus. Kelly was persistent in pursuing her. At the time he said he was 24; she had not yet turned 15.

Eventually, Sandy enlisted Troy Kell, who had grown up in the same neighborhood, to help with this problem. She agreed to a date with Kelly, but told him they needed to pick up two friends along the way. Another teenager named Billy Merritt, whom she’d never met, came along that night.

Telling the three that she needed to relieve herself in the desert, Sandy walked about 50 yards from the car, which was parked at a remote spot on a moonless night. She had been instructed by Merritt to fake a sprained ankle so the three men would have an excuse to leave the car and come to her aid. The plan was that Troy was going to intimidate Cotton from bothering Sandy again. Instead, Kell shot him six times and left the body in its spot. The corpse was discovered nearly a week later, after a girl who had accompanied Fletcher on one of his “show and tells” called the police.

It would take a book to get into all the unseemly details of the prosecution of Sandy Shaw, but after she relived that night in a recent interview, her thoughts veered toward brighter days.

“I never got too depressed in prison,” Shaw says, “because I never lost hope that one day I would be released. I was denied parole on two different occasions for reasons that are hard to understand, but I just kept faith that I could be with my mom again, because her health has been really bad. Suicide never once entered my mind. I just had to get out so I could be with her while I still had her.”

Sandy spent her time in prison constructively, earning her high school diploma and three associate college degrees, and became proficient enough on computers to teach a class to other inmates. She also regularly lectured high-school students on how one bad decision can impact a life. She explained to them how she was a high school cheerleader with good grades, when one deadly night in 1986 changed everything.

Today, Sandy is looking for a job so she can begin building something resembling a normal life, and help out her mom, Connie, with medical bills.

“I haven’t had much luck, though,” she says. “Employers want to see a resume, and what am I supposed to show them?”

Nearly everyone involved in the crime and its grisly aftermath stands by Sandy’s version of events. And yet she served more prison time than many first-degree murderers who planned and carried out executions on their own.

If it can be seen that Sandy Shaw has more than paid back her debt to society, maybe it’s time that society, for once, gives her a break.

Jack Sheehan’s column appears every other week.

Discussion: 17 comments so far…

By brmerritt

3/17/08 at 4:22 p.m.

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You have upset many people today that knew James Cotton to be a nice young man that met a "woman" at a crap table,(gambling underage)and lured him to the desert to be robbed. The real story is more interesting than those of the murderers, he was set up by a bunch of punks. Sandy Shaw knows what really happend. There are witnesses.I do understand young people make mistakes,she has to live with it.
By XCop

3/17/08 at 7:26 p.m.

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I have investigated this case. So don't be fooled by the comment by "Brmerrit", trying to suggest it is Shaw co-defendent Billy Merritt, perhaps. It is not him, nor is it any brmerritt. It is most likely George Thiede, brother of James "Cotton" Thiede. That's probably why he called him "James Cotton" rather than explain that James' real name was Thiede, and not Kelly.

If anybody wonders why the Thiede family was using the name of "Kelly" they need to read the indictments of several of the Thiedes on drug running and money laundering charges in Las Vegas and Toronto. George is very likely in the country illegally. His brother James was being investigatged by the RCMP Drug Squad. He didn't deserve to die, but please don't give me the "nice young man" stuff. There was a shady reason he was going by "Kelly", and it's a proven fact that he was a regular trolling the teen arcades and the Strip for underage girls.
By XCop

3/17/08 at 7:33 p.m.

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MORE TO THIS: Sandy Shaw couldn't have gambled in a casino as an underage kid; if you look at her pictures at the time, she didn't look more than 12. Do you think our security in our casinos is or ever was so lax that a girl who looked 12 could walk up to a crap table and gamble? She'd be out of there in ten seconds. That story is preposterous.

The Thiede family and one very "cowboy" D.A. perpetuated that story to make it look like James was a victim of Sandy Shaw, rather than the other way around. Tina Wilson testified that Cotton Kelly "Thiede" came onto her and Sandy by posing as a Canadian tourist while they were playing arcade games in the Speedway, a teen arcade next to Circus Circus. That arcade is as close as Sandy Shaw ever got to a casino.

Billy Merritt, who this person seems to be suggesting he is, passed a lie detector test verifying her version of the events about the night of the murder, and that their purpose was to scare Cotton from bothering Sandy Robbery?? Troy Kell, the trigger man and the one guilty of murder, did take Thiede/Kelly's wallet as an afterthought while getting his car keys after he'd shot him. Shaw and Merritt had no hand in that that robbery.

Who protects young girls like her from predators? Our laws are sure much better now, but back then, a frightened girl who'd been traumatized like she had been didn't have anyone to turn to for help....other than, sadly in her case, a fell loose cannon like Troy Kell.
Let's put the blame where it needs to be--in Kell's cell up on death row in Utah.

Jack Sheehan is right. She deserves a break. I know what happened and if she'd had a decent attorney, she would never have been charged with murder. She wasn't doing anything that any parent wouldn't have stepped in and done to protect their young daughter. "Nice young man," my eye.
By tracey_gulli

3/27/08 at 3:34 p.m.

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Sandy your doing great. Keep up the good work.
By shainnc

4/2/08 at 12:22 p.m.

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I personally think Sandy deserves a break. She did her time and now deserves a chance at life. People are so quick to judge. Yes, a man lost his life and that is a tragedy, and of course this is not to be taken lightly. Look at reality - she was 15 years old - she was a teenage kid with the mentality of one, no matter how "grown-up" she thought she was back then. Every single one of us thought we knew everything when we were a teenager. Honestly, what do you think your mental state would have been like if you had witnessed murder at 13? People need to look at the whole picture. She did 21 years and had to grown up in prison. She deserves a chance at life and I wish her the best of luck.
By BWalsh

5/1/08 at 9:35 p.m.

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I'm glad Sandy is out and that she is so positive. But I was shocked how one-sided Jack Sheehan was in writing it. He must have a crush on Sandy Shaw.

She set forth the events that led to a person's murder. Even if he was a scumbag, drug-runner. whatever, he didn't deserve to be murdered. Troy Kell would have never shot Cotton six times if it wasn't for Sandy.

I do agree 21 years is too excessive for her role in the murder but the way this article was written is just mind-boggling. He should be her PR agent.
By lynne0524

5/1/08 at 9:43 p.m.

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I recently watched a movie about Troy Kell and saw Sandy Shaw. It got me to wondering about her and I did a internet search and found out about her involvement in the murder of Mr.Kelly. After reading many articles about the case it made me glad that she was able to be paroled. I am sorry for the family of Mr. Kelly but it makes you wonder why he would be with a fifteen year old girl at his age. I saw a picture of her at fifteen and she does not look old enough for someone to mistake her for being an adult.I hope she is able to make some of her dreams come true and do good with her life.
By XCop

5/18/08 at 11:59 a.m.

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Jack Sheehan's column certainly has grown long legs, but it's that kind of story. I want to say to B Walsh, you evidently know little about the law. How can you know what was in her mind or Troy Kell's. If someone were to get mad at one of my neighbor's over some offense the neighbor had done to me and stabbed him to death, would you say that that person would be alive if it were not for me? Kell was responsible for his own actions that night. That's how life works and how the law is supposed to work. You can also say that if the victim, whose name was really Thiede, not Kelly, had not been pursuing an underage girl, he would have not been there and Kell could not have shot him.
Troy Kell is responsible for that murder; Sandy Shaw was not. I hope that on Judgment Day, you get treated with more compassion then you are showing to Sandy Shaw. Go spend 21 years in prison for something you didn't do and let's see if your attitude is still the same. Don't forget that it was lies and likely perjured testimony that convicted that little girl in the first place.
By scottm

6/4/08 at 10:18 p.m.

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Its about time this poor girl was released! I got to know sandee through correspondence after i saw her in a documentary years ago, and i even sent a letter of petition pleading for her release at one of her failed parole hearings. GLAD YOU ARE OUT SANDEE!!!!!
By sally71

7/9/08 at 1:37 p.m.

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Sandy, im so glad your out!! dont let these people in this messed up world get to you girl!!
we all love you be strong !!
love your life Sally newell
By hedpe

8/4/08 at 1:49 p.m.

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bull crap she doesnt deserve to be out its her fault Troy Kell is in prison if he has to rot in there so does she!!
By Beameupscotty

8/31/08 at 4:38 p.m.

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In regards to "hedpe",
Let me ask you something? First of all, you have it wrong? IF it was not for Kelly/Theide, Kell would not be in prison...

You are so hells bells bent on Shaw suffering more than the 22 years she did for her part in the crime which by the way was basically poor judgment for a request of a friends help, what about Billy Merritt?

Talk about Bull Crap??? It was he who stole the gun from a neighbors house that Kell used, it was he who hid the gun afterwords at his own house, it was he who had FAR more to do with the murder itself than Shaw and he was only sentenced to 10 years was walking after only serving 6 years!! What about him? Why not crazy glue your bull crap to Merritt, Shaw's done her time X 2...
By bumpy

4/4/09 at 4:07 p.m.

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To all that think that this women is innocent should take a good look at what happened, She is responsible for the murder of a person and of a friend that I have known from grade 2.
To say that Cotton was trying to come on to her and what ever B.S. she wants you to believe is just that B.S.To look at what this girl looked like and what Cottons girlfriend looked like at that time believe me I can't see Cotton doing something like that to her.Do the Thiede family have a good name NO but to do what they did to Cotton was to much, if you think she is so sweet and innocent should have been at his service to see the look on his mothers face.
As far as I am concerned she was involved in taking a life of a young man so she should spend the rest of her life behind bars.
And to George, Cottons brother I hope you can put her back behind bars for the rest of her life.
REST IN PEACE my friend REST IN PEACE...
By mountainman

4/19/09 at 9:52 p.m.

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Hello all, I am seeking an interveiw with Sandy Shaw and/or her mother. If anyone can help, it would be appreciated. Thank you.
By earthangeal

5/6/09 at 4:22 p.m.

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I would like to offer some hope for Sandy, Most nice people will want you to have a happy life !! I feel you have suffered Enough !! I wish Sandy all the best and may your dreams come true ~~~~~~ You deserve nothing less ~~~~~~~
Bless you and your Mom
Love & Light
By nvexfelon

8/24/09 at 12:12 a.m.

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I am on the fence about this case. I have in three different instances done time with Sandy at SNWCF and happen to know all the "rumors" that go around the prison. What are true? I don't know. But, I do believe that there is a connection with the victim in ways that are not discussed on here. If you think about it... if he was a known drug runner etc. I wouldn't find it far fetched that the 3 went after him for just that. Knowing Sandy personally... I definitely believe that it was their motive.
As far as the time she's done for it... Maybe she's done her time for what has been told she did. But if you look at it in the way of the truth (which nobody really actually knows but her) I believe she did get off easy. And mind you this coming from someone who has done their share of time in prison. Look at it like this for example: I was facing a life sentence for just being a habitual criminal. Which charges include possession of a controlled substance (less than 1/8 of a gram of meth), under the influence of a controlled substance (meth), and conspiracy to sell a controlled substance (meth). In other words I got arrested at different times for being high, having a baggie with residue in it, and being there when someone else was doing a drug deal! Luckily my co defendant in the last case manned up and took the main charge or I was facing LIFE! I had to leave Nevada out of fear of loosing my life to some stupid three strikes law. And you all think she did to much time? I don't think so! There is a lot more to this story than you all know about! Trust me. She was no innocent little girl. She knew perfectly well what she was doing. This guy was her drug dealer and sold dope to her and her friends at the casino and she told her buddy across the street about it... the rest is history. If you can't put two and two together, I feel sorry for you.
As far as you go Sandy... I say F* the system and go ahead with your bad self. It's there own dumb a* fault for letting you out! Love your Life... Don't ever forget that. Good Luck to you.
By free322001

11/21/09 at 1:20 a.m.

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Just watched a doumentary on that thar TV box.

Tell me folks: what kind of man drives a 15 year old girl out into the desert at night?

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