Life Without

In 1987, when Sandy heard the bark of the first pistol shot right next to her ear, she bolted and ran for her life. After ducking behind desert scrub brush in the dim glow of the moonlight, she spotted eighteen-year-old Troy Kell and his buddy Billy Merritt standing over the dead body of James Cotton Kelly. Though only fifteen, this was the fourth murder Shaw witnessed in two years.

Touted as the “Show & Tell Killer” by the media because a crooked prosecutor told the press and jury she took classmates to view the dead body, Sandy was immediately mutilated by the press. She was convicted and sentenced to two life terms without parole and became the youngest female ever incarcerated in an adult Nevada prison. Shaw endured twenty-one years in prison and fifteen more on “lifetime parole” for this wrongful conviction before being fully exonerated in June of 2022 by the Nevada Supreme Court. Yet, she lost her entire youth in the process—the best years of her life. She never went to Prom. Never got married. Never had kids. Her dreams were stripped away.

And she has never told her story. Now—being fully free—the time is right to tell it.

Life Without is a crisis-driven tale of violence and murder, tragedy, and injustice, and ultimately—triumph. This book is the almost unbelievable, yet true life story of a woman with extreme bad luck, a childhood ripped away, generations of dysfunction before and alongside her, who endured abuse of all kinds, and who still found her way to freedom and redemption.