John Jefferson
Insets, top to bottom: Laurie Leigh Shaver and Michael Shaver (Lake County Sheriff’s Office). Background: The location where Michael Shaver’s remains were found (WKMG).
A Florida woman was convicted of shooting her husband in the back of the head, burying his body under a concrete slab under a firepit in the backyard, and posing as him on Facebook to fool his friends and relatives.
Laurie Leigh Shaver, 41, was found guilty of second-degree murder with a firearm in the death of her husband, Michael Shaver, 36, the Fifth Judicial Circuit State Attorney’s Office said in a news release on Friday.
“Elation, elation … We were very happy. This was a long time coming,” said Stacy Turner, Michael Shaver’s sister, local NBC affiliate WESH reported.
Fifth Judicial Circuit Assistant State Attorney Nicholas Camuccio said he was saddened that the case took so long, “but I’m just happy we were able to take the evidence, and they came back with the right decision to give this family closure,” the station reported.
Michael Shaver was killed sometime between Nov. 7 and Nov. 10, 2015, the first day he didn’t show up for work, authorities said.
The case didn’t come to light until February 2018, when Michael Shaver’s friend called the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, reporting that neither he nor his family had seen or heard from him since 2015, the agency said in a news release. The friend requested deputies go to his home in Clermont to check on him. Clermont is more than 25 miles west of Orlando.
At the home, Laurie Shaver told deputies she hadn’t seen her husband since 2015 and allowed deputies to look around the house, but then she stopped cooperating with deputies and asked for a lawyer, officials said.
On March 9, 2018, the partially clothed skeletal remains of Michael Shaver — who had suffered a gunshot to the back of the head — were found wrapped in a blue tarp under a firepit in the couple’s backyard after an investigator spotted an unusual depression in a cement slab.
“Six [feet] by eight [feet] and eight inches depressed,” Lake County Sheriff’s Office Corporal Cory Anderson testified, local Fox affiliate WOFL reported. “Had the shape of a body.”
Authorities said after the killing, Laurie Shaver went on Facebook posing as him, telling his boss he was quitting and moving to Georgia and others to “leave me alone,” Law&Crime reported.
“He kind of just stopped talking to me, said he wanted to be left alone,” one former co-worker testified, WESH reported.
Brian Shaver, Michael’s brother, testified there was no contact.
“My mother had gotten sick, was in the hospital,” he said, WESH reported. “We couldn’t get a hold of him to let him know about her sickness.”
Laurie Shaver also gradually got rid of her husband’s personal property, selling his tools and guns.
She got married to a man who helped pour the concrete slab, WESH reported. He testified he noticed nothing unusual then and said Laurie Shaver had told him she was divorced, “that he wanted nothing to do with the family, did not know where he was, and he was not around.”
In another twist, Laurie Shaver testified in her own defense that Michael Shaver attacked her after he found out she was pregnant, and showed up at the home angry.
And in a bombshell, Laurie Shaver’s teen daughter, who was 7 years old at the time of the murder, also testified, claiming she shot her father as he was attacking her mother.
“I grabbed her gun, and I went back out, and I went to the door. The door was already open, and he had my mom on the ground still. So I am to the ground still, kicking her … and I shot him,” the daughter testified through tears, local Fox affiliate WOFL reported.
Laurie Shaver is set to be sentenced on Nov. 25.
Law&Crime’s Matt Naham contributed to this report.
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