Decades later, mystery swirls around the death of Jerry Lee Lewis' 5th wife, Shawn Lewis
Many people know about Myra Williams, the girl who married the rockabilly singer and her second cousin, Jerry Lee Lewis, when she was just 13 and later divorced. But fewer people remember Shawn Lewis, the effervescent, 25-year-old woman from Michigan who the musician also married and, within months, turned up dead.
What happened the night she died is a mystery that Lewis may have taken to his grave, forever remaining one of those curious cases that, among other things, dimmed the brightness of a rock star, but with facts that never seemed to square with what Lewis and officials said.
Officially, Shawn Lewis' death was deemed a methadone overdose, but questions have lingered for decades.
Read the obituary: Jerry Lee Lewis, rock 'n' roll pioneer and perpetual ball of fire, dies at 87
Jerry Lee Lewis — who was born in Ferriday, Louisiana, and died Friday at 87 at his home in DeSoto County, Mississippi, south of Memphis — was known as much for his sexy piano playing as his penchant for asking young women to say "I do." He wed seven times.
His high-energy performances and hits like "Great Balls of Fire" made him famous. His marriages made him infamous.
In Lewis' obituary, The New York Times called the gyrating country crooner a "rock 'n' roll original" who played what he called "devil's music" and lived up to his nickname, the Killer. It also noted that his marriage to Williams in 1958, his third wife, caused a scandal that nearly ended his musical career.
Not only was he still married to his second wife when they wed, but she was also young and a relative. They divorced in 1970.
Williams penned an autobiography that became a Hollywood movie, "Great Balls of Fire!," featuring Dennis Quaid as Lewis. But there was more: In 1982, his fourth wife, Jaren Pate, drowned in a swimming pool. And in 1983, Shawn Lewis, who worked as a cocktail waitress and was from Garden City, became his fifth wife.
Less than three months after saying her vows, she died, setting off another scandal for the singer.
Newswire service United Press International reported on Aug. 25, 1983, that the 25-year-old's body was found in a bed in Nesbit, Mississippi, by a maid, and, according to an autopsy, she had died from pulmonary edema, a buildup of fluid in the lungs.
"Authorities," the report said, "would not comment on reports she had taken an accidental overdose of the pills, but officials confirmed that sleeping pills and other legal drugs were found in the house." The wire report quoted the local sheriff who said, "at this time we have no evidence of foul play."
But it included a line that, after more reports, made the death sound suspicious. The report said: While Lewis was at home when the body was found, he left, went into seclusion, and refused "to talk to reporters as he was driven away in a black Cadillac."
A series of suspicions
A few days later, the Detroit Free Press, part of the Paste BN Network, published the headline, "A short path from nuptials to last rites." The report included interviews with Shawn Lewis' mother, Janice Kleinhans, and Lewis' sister, Shelley Stephens. The Sept. 4, 1983, article concluded the bride's marriage had been "a glamorous dream come true" and her death "a tangle of questions."
Kleinhans and Stephens nervously puffed cigarettes and outlined their suspicions:
If the death was a suicide, why, according to the police report, were there bruises and blood on the body? Why, if Lewis said he woke up to find his wife dead in their bed, did authorities say the body was in a guest bedroom bed that looked like it hadn't been slept in?
Why did Shawn Lewis, two days before her death, tell her mother she wanted to leave her husband?
And why would such a young, seemingly happy, woman take her life?
Kleinhans said she hired a private detective to find out, and a local police officer taped relatives' statements at the request of law enforcement in Mississippi, who was — at the time of the report — investigating what happened that night.
In addition, Stephens told the Free Press she had just visited her sister in Mississippi, and during the trip she witnessed violence. Jerry Lee Lewis — who seemed to be up all night, "looking all crazy" — went out to the pool, where she and her sister were, and called them whores and struck them.
Stephens also recalled Shawn Lewis later said she would leave her husband and he threatened her, saying: "You're my wife. I'll kill you before you leave." And then, the sister said, he "grabbed her and started dragging her down the hallway into their bedroom."
Stephens said she returned to Detroit.
What the family-friendly newspaper didn't mention, but was reported about six months later by the racier Rolling Stone magazine, was that the rocker wanted his wife's sister to join them in a threesome, which may have led the couple to fight.
What happened to Shawn Lewis?
Born in Ypsilanti, Michigan, Shawn Lewis was the second of five children.
When she was 3, her family moved to Garden City, Michigan. She was 5-foot-4, 107 pounds and outgoing with wavy, honey blond hair and a big smile. In junior high, she was elected to student council. She graduated from West High School in Garden City, and worked at db's club at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Dearborn, Michigan.
It wasn't just that Shawn Lewis's death didn't make sense, relatives told the Free Press back in 1983.
After her death, relatives described Jerry Lee Lewis's actions. And he didn't seem like a loving husband: They said he didn't call his wife's family to tell them what happened. In a phone call, he referred to her as "a bad girl." He didn't attend a family gathering to view the body. And after the funeral, he didn't say a word to them.
The Rolling Stone article, a long investigative piece, called Shawn Lewis' death "strange and mysterious," and went even further than the Free Press article, asking whether the Michigander had been murdered by the Killer, giving Jerry Lee Lewis' childhood nickname a new twist.
The Rolling Stone article described how Shawn Lewis met her future husband. At the club, it said, her nickname was Little Buzz, because she was "always buzzing around," sometimes even slightly buzzed. She had a boyfriend, a factory worker, but also liked music.
In 1981, Rolling Stone said, Jerry Lee Lewis performed for a week at the Dearborn Hyatt, then a new upscale hotel, and picked Shawn Lewis — then 23-year-old Shawn Stephens — out from among the girls. She got an invite to a party in the musician's suite and accepted it.
The older rocker gradually wooed her with his private jet and limos.
And after his wife died, he slipped on a $6,000 wedding ring, nearly $18,000 in today's dollars, on her finger.
Rolling Stone also detailed police reports and what seemed like an unusual coziness between the rocker and officials.
According to the magazine, the deputy sheriff wrote in a report that when he arrived at the home, "Mr. Lewis’ speech was heavily slurred," his "bathrobe contained apparent bloodstains and he had a cut on his wrist," and Lewis later commented, "we need to 'find out who killed — how she died,' so funeral arrangements can be made."
There also, according to the article, was "blood on Shawn Lewis, on her hand, on her hair, on clothes and a bra in another room, on a lamp, in a spot on the carpet."
Glass had been broken in the home in what likely had been a physical fight.
Moreover, the article said, the sheriff was ready to retire, Lewis was a big donor to the campaign of the chief deputy running for the position, the justice of the peace barely looked at the body and despite Lewis' documented history of violence against ex-wives, officials seemed to dismiss the theory of Shawn Lewis' death other than an accident or suicide.
A suspicious-looking situation
In 1985, a year after the Rolling Stone piece published, the Chicago Tribune interviewed Jerry Lee Lewis, By then, he had remarried again. His 22-year-old bride, Kerrie Lewis, was with him. She said, "This one's gonna work." Lewis responded, "I finally found the girl."
Then the journalist asked the singer about Rolling Stone's report.
Lewis replied that he "saw it," calling it "ridiculous" and a "bunch of garbage."
He added that he loved Shawn "very much" and she "was a good girl, a fine person. She just made a mistake. I think she was taking a handful of aspirins or something and she took some methadone pills that were prescribed for me two years ago that I didn't even fool with."
In the Tribune report, Lewis said his former wife "never intended once to kill herself," and that he couldn't imagine that she had taken any pills that could have killed her and she also wouldn't have intentionally done it. "She didn't die until 30 minutes before we woke up.''
The journalist pressed: "Before we woke up?"
''Before I woke up. Excuse me," he corrected himself. "Before I woke up — wishing that it could have been a we. I didn't know that she was dead. She was still warm and everything and I kept trying to wake her up. And then I got to thinking about it and I still wouldn't accept her being dead."
Lewis said: "She lived all through the night. I know a couple of times I checked Shawn through the night, to see if she was breathing, to see if she was all right. I didn`t wake her up or nothing. I just felt her heart beating and everything and it was perfect."
"I have nothing to hide," he added. "I know it's a very suspicious-looking situation. I can see to where it would be and I don't blame anybody for looking at it suspiciously, but believe me, Jerry Lee Lewis would never harm a hair on nobody's head, much less take someone's life. That, I could never do.'"
Years later, Kerrie and Jerry Lee Lewis sued each other for divorce, reaching a settlement in 2005.
Lewis married a seventh time in 2012.
The Associated Press, in its obituary called Lewis an "untamable rock 'n' roll pioneer whose outrageous talent, energy and ego collided" and said the singer sustained "a career otherwise upended by personal scandal." It barely mentioned Shawn Lewis.
But the report still hinted at the mystery in one word, noting simply she died "of an apparent drug overdose."