This Week’s Wacky Wednesday: Killer Sue’s Victim’s Widow for Not Getting the Jail He Wanted
There are bold people. There are bad people. And then there are bold and bad people like Larry Shandola who still end up causing problems even after they are behind bars. What was it about Larry that makes him so bad? For a start, he’s a murderer. He was friends with a man named Robert Henry with whom he decided to start a business. It is not always a good idea to start a business with friends, and when this business failed in 1995, Larry did not react very calmly. In fact, he did one of the worst things you can imagine. He took a shotgun and shot to death his business partner and supposed friend.
This was a terrible and unexpected crime. Henry’s family was naturally distraught at losing him, but when Larry was sentenced to 31 years in prison in the state of Washington, they believed that they could finally start to heal. For a time, they could. In fact, things slowly started to get back to normal. They still missed Henry, of course, but life moves forward. It moved forward for 18 years before Larry started some new nonsense. He decided that he would sue Henry’s widow Paula and three others, asking for $100,000 from each of them.
Why Would He Sue?
Like any reasonable person, you are probably wondering just why this man would decide to sue. After all, it was he who committed murder. What could possibly be a reason for bringing a lawsuit now after all of those years had passed? It turns out that he wanted to transfer to a Canadian prison since he’s Canadian. When Paula discovered this, she submitted a letter to the court and asked that they deny Larry’s request to transfer.
In the lawsuit, Larry said that Paula, the widow of the man he gunned down with a shotgun, had invaded his privacy and caused him emotional distress since he wasn’t allowed to serve his time in Canada. He believed that even though he had shot a man to death that he should still be granted the ability to serve wherever he wished. When he found out that it might have been Paula who was against this and had caused the court to deny him the transfer, he was angry. He decided that instead of dealing with the disappointment and serving his time, he would instead sue. Again, he was suing the widow of the man he had murdered.
The judge, upon seeing the case, dismissed it, thankfully. However, in something of a twist, he did not only dismiss the case, but he ordered Larry to pay Paula and the three others $10,000 each. As you can imagine, Larry was not happy about this at all. After all, being in prison does not exactly provide someone with a very lucrative income. He appealed, and even though it seemed like he might have lost that case, the Washington State Court of Appeals said that Larry would not have to pay. After all, we wouldn’t want to inconvenience a murderer.
If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you know that there are countless cases similar to this in the United States where the criminals end up suing their victims or the families of their victims for one reason or another. Most of the time, it doesn’t end up in their favor, but that is certainly not always the case. Hopefully, Larry will serve out the rest of his term without doing anything else to bother Paula or others he hurt.