According to Women’s Health magazine, Shari was first introduced to Jeffrey in 1978 following her marriage to his father, Lionel. At the time, Jeff was about 18 years old. She and Lionel returned to the latter’s home in Ohio after being away for a time to find the boy living by himself (his mother Joyce had left town with the family’s youngest son, David, months earlier) and abusing alcohol frequently. “What I wanted to do, and what most people wanted to do, was mother him,” she shared years later. “He was just vulnerable. Even if I wasn’t his stepmother all his life, as a mother you sense those things.”
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Shari watched her stepson become more and more enraptured by his internal demons as time went by, though she never could have predicted the true nature of his deranged dispositions until it was already too late. She’s been unreservedly open about her experience as the stepmother of a serial killer, and today, Shari admittedly has found peace with her past and lives a quiet life alongside her husband in a small Ohio town (per The Cinemaholic).
