CONVICTED AS A TEEN, FREED AFTER 36 YEARS

THE MEDIA LABELED HER THE ‘SHOW AND TELL’ KILLER. NOW PARDONED, SHE’S TELLING HER OWN STORY

- JOHNNY DODD,ROGER KISBY

The plan that night was supposed to be simple, 15-year-old Sandy Shaw convinced herself. She would lure 21-year-old James “Cotton” Kelly into the desert on the outskirts of Las Vegas, and then her childhood friend Troy Kell would rough him up in an attempt to force Kelly to stop his monthslong campaign of stalking and harassing her. But instead of beating Kelly, Troy, 18, shot him six times in the head and neck and robbed him with the help of a teenage boy. “After that first gunshot went off, I started running,” Shaw recalls. “I thought I was gonna be sick. I just kept saying, ‘This wasn’t supposed to happen. Why did you do this?’”