Inside Jerry Lee Lewis' Marriages

Publish date: 2024-05-07

Jerry Lee Lewis' fourth wife, Jaren Gunn Pate, died on June 8, 1982. Almost a year to the day later, on June 7, 1983, Lewis married Shawn Stephens.

Per Rolling Stone, J.W. Whitten, Lewis' road manager, steered the band to play in Dearborn, Michigan, in 1981. Lewis met Stephens there and invited her to a party in his room.

Stephens married Lewis, moved in, and the relationship took several downward turns, with reports from people close to the couple recalling incidents of domestic violence and Lewis growing obsessed with setting up a sexual encounter between him, his wife, and his wife's sister. Just 78 days after the wedding, Shawn Lewis was dead, according to the Village Voice. When she didn't wake up on the morning of August 24, 1983, Lewis' household staff investigated and found the former Shawn Stephens with heavy bruises on her arms and hip, and blood in her hair, on her hand, under her fingernails, and on her undergarments, the carpet, and the furniture. A first responder noted that there were fingernail-type claw marks on Lewis' hand. An autopsy was conducted, and her death was attributed to an overdose of methadone. The fifth Mrs. Lewis was 25 years old. According to the Evening Times, she was believed to be pregnant at the time of her death.

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