Joseph Carl Shaw was born on March 31, 1955, in Louisville, Kentucky, and raised in the suburban community of Jeffersontown. He was the son of Mary and Melvin Shaw and spent his childhood attending Catholic school. While at St. Edward’s Catholic Middle School, he was an altar boy and played on the football team, giving him the appearance of a disciplined and religious young man. Those early years suggested a stable upbringing, with regular church attendance and structured schooling.

After leaving St. Edward’s, Shaw moved on to Jeffersontown High School but dropped out before completing his education. Seeking structure and perhaps a sense of purpose, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and completed Military Police School in 1975. Shaw was then stationed at Fort Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina, where he met three individuals who would later play significant roles in his descent into violent crime—James Terry Roach, Ronald Eugene Mahaffey, and Robert Neil Williams.

The four men formed a tight-knit group. Outside of official duties, they spent long hours together, frequently indulging in drugs and alcohol. Shaw’s time at Fort Jackson, once filled with potential, devolved into a lifestyle of substance abuse and increasingly erratic behavior. Around this period, Shaw became involved in a romantic relationship, which ended abruptly on October 16, 1977. The breakup appeared to deeply affect him.

According to court records and testimony, this personal crisis triggered a chain of events that led Shaw and his group into a spree of violence fueled by rage, misogyny, and a desire for control.

The brutal crimes of Joseph Carl Shaw occurred during a short but horrifying spree in October 1977 in Richland County, South Carolina.

Following the abrupt end of his relationship on October 16, 1977, Shaw fell into a destructive cycle of drug use and drinking with his usual group such as Roach, Mahaffey, and Williams. Fueled by rage and intoxication, the group decided to seek out a woman to assault. In the early hours of October 17, 1977, they came across 21-year-old Betty Swank. Pretending to offer her a ride, they lured her into their car. Once inside, she noticed they had a firearm. She was then kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and fatally shot by Shaw with a .22 caliber pistol. Her body was later discovered in a nearby mobile home park.

Less than two weeks later, on October 29, 1977, Shaw, Roach, and Mahaffey again took drugs and alcohol before going out, intent on committing another crime. That afternoon, the trio spotted a car parked at a baseball field northeast of Columbia. Inside were 17-year-old Thomas Taylor and 14-year-old Carlotta Hartness. The group decided to rob them. Shaw approached the vehicle, and Roach pointed a rifle at Taylor, demanding money. After Taylor handed over his wallet, Shaw ordered Roach to shoot him. Taylor was killed instantly.

Hartness was then kidnapped and driven to a remote dirt road. All three men took turns raping her. She was then shot once in the head by Roach, and again by Shaw to ensure her death. In a gruesome and disturbing detail, Shaw later returned to the scene and mutilated Hartness’s body.

The trio’s rampage came to an end when law enforcement arrested Shaw, Roach, and Mahaffey on November 3, 1977. They were charged with multiple counts including murder, rape, kidnapping, armed robbery, and conspiracy. Prosecutors sought the death penalty for Shaw and Roach, while Mahaffey—only 16 at the time—was offered a plea deal in exchange for his testimony.

On December 12, 1977, Shaw pleaded guilty to all charges. Roach followed with guilty pleas to two counts of murder and other charges. Shaw received two death sentences for the murders of Taylor and Hartness, and a life sentence for the murder of Betty Swank. Roach also received the death penalty. Mahaffey was sentenced to life in prison. Williams, who participated in the Swank killing but not the later double murder, was also sentenced to life in a separate trial.

After spending nearly eight years on death row, Joseph Carl Shaw was executed by electrocution on January 11, 1985, at the Central Correctional Institution in Columbia, South Carolina. He was 29 years old. His final meal was pizza and tossed salad, and his final statement expressed remorse and gratitude to his family, legal team, and ministers.

His co-defendant, James Terry Roach, was executed the following year in 1986. Ronald Mahaffey, the youngest of the group, died in prison on February 13, 2003, at age 41.