'Lancaster County': A convicted killer's memoir - but much is missing

Love, Murder, and Corruption
in Lancaster County: My Story

By Lisa Michelle Lambert

Camino Books. 416 pp. $17.95

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Reviewed by Joseph A. Slobodzian

nolead ends Memoirs are, of course, subjective, and readers shouldn't expect history when someone gives her perspective on the events of her life.

Still, readers have the right to expect some introspection and information not found in a biography - not new questions that are never answered.

That's a problem with Lisa Michelle Lambert's Love, Murder, and Corruption in Lancaster County: My Story, and it starts early in her book about her conviction for the Dec. 19, 1991, murder of Laurie Show.

News articles described Show, 16, as Lambert's romantic rival for Lawrence Yunkin, then Lambert's abusive boyfriend. Lambert, Yunkin, and another woman, Tabitha Buck, were convicted in Show's slaying. Yunkin pleaded no contest to third-degree murder and was paroled in 2004 after serving 12 years of his 10-to-20-year sentence. Buck and Lambert each were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to mandatory life without parole.

Lambert describes an early childhood not untouched by tragedy - such as the deaths of two brothers in infancy - and how it traumatized her mother. But there also are fond memories of growing up in Amish country. Beyond confronting death at a young age, there doesn't appear to be any abuse in Lambert's childhood. Her parents are described as loving and consistently supportive.

Jump to Chapter Five: Lambert at 16, waiting for her father to pick her up from work. "I had returned home after a year as a 'runaway' and high school dropout," Lambert writes. Beginning and end of story. Considering what happened just three years later, it's an incident that screams for explanation. True, it's Lambert's story, but why raise this missing year if you're not going to tell us about it?

I was also puzzled by the "commentaries" from coauthor David Brown, a lawyer who provides legal and historical context regarding Lancaster County and Pennsylvania politics and the Lambert case's tortuous legal story. It's a role that's needed in this book, but Brown often undermines his expertise with pseudonyms, sarcasm, and clichés ("Not the sharpest tool in the shed") in describing judges and lawyers.

For readers unfamiliar with Lambert's story, this book is an introduction, even considering its bias. It's an astounding story. After her conviction and imprisonment, Lambert appealed to the federal court in Philadelphia, where a judge ruled that she was "actually innocent" of first-degree murder and that police and prosecutorial misconduct were so pervasive she should go free. Then Lambert got a new trial in Lancaster County, was convicted again, and was resentenced to life. This time, a federal judge affirmed the sentence, and she stayed in prison.

There is enough sex, violence, and depravity to make one question Lancaster County's bucolic reputation, and Lambert is unsparing in describing herself and her predilection for bouncing from one abusive, debasing relationship to another. In some ways, it's a textbook on the psychology of battered women.

Partisans on both sides of the case will find nothing to change their minds and much to anger them.

What's missing from Lambert's memoir is Lambert: Not what happened to her, but why. What put her on that path where she agreed to join Yunkin and Buck on a mission to prank Show by cutting off her hair and instead cut her throat?

Joseph A. Slobodzian is an Inquirer staff writer covering the criminal courts in Philadelphia. He wrote about Lambert's federal appeals.