A wife who murdered her Disney World worker husband and buried him in the back garden pretended to be her former spouse for years after his death to keep investigators at bay.
Michael Shaver was 36 years old when he mysteriously vanished from his home in Florida, USA, in 2015, apparently leaving behind his distraught partner Laurie and their two children.
But despite disappearing completely from his local neighbourhood, Mr Shaver would still occasionally respond to concerned friends and family, but only by replying on text or social media with the words “leave me alone” or “don’t bother me”.
Meanwhile Mrs Shaver had begun sharing the couple’s home in Clermont, Lake County, with her new partner Travis Filmer, who she married in the back garden near to a newly-concreted fire pit area.
The Mirror reports years rolled by, but then in 2018 after a friend became suspicious about Mr Shaver’s whereabouts, they contacted the police who began an investigation into his disappearance.
Mrs Shaver had told various stories about her husband over the years, telling some that he had moved to Georgia, while others were told he was in New York and California.
She’d told her new partner’s mum that Mr Shaver was a pilot who travelled a lot and she told her supervisor at work that he was in jail because he hadn’t paid child support.
In February 2018, police discovered Mr Shaver had not used any bank cards or got another job. His driving license and passport had also both expired.
When officers went to his former house and spoke to Mrs Shaver, she said that she hadn’t seen her husband since 2015 and that he had left her, and she hadn’t seen him again.
Investigators went inside the house and initially, Mrs Shaver appeared to be helpful but as they walked around the property outside and requested that they could bring police cadaver-seeking dogs to the scene, she stopped co-operating and requested they return with a warrant.
Detectives immediately became suspicious and named Mrs Shaver as a person of interest in her husband’s disappearance.
Police dogs were brought in and alerted officers that there were human remains in the back garden, near the newly-concreted fire pit area.
Digging equipment arrived and articles of clothing and what appeared to be a human arm bone were found underneath a concrete slab in the backyard. As they dug further, skeletal remains were found buried 3ft from the surface. They were wrapped in a fitted sheet and a tarpaulin, secured with straps.
After testing, the human remains were identified as Michael and in September 2020, Mrs Shaver was arrested and charged with second degree murder.
It appeared that Michael had died as the result of a single bullet to the back of the head, fired by a handgun. His wife had a pink handgun in her bedside table that was the same calibre.
Police believed that Mr Shaver had been killed sometime between November 7 and November 10, 2015. And it was Mrs Shaver who had been sending the messages, pretending to be him, from his phone. The Facebook account messages that he’d supposedly sent, could be traced back to an IP address at the home.
In September 2024, Mrs Shaver’s trial began and she claimed her husband had been abusive during their marriage.
She denied shooting him but admitted that she had tried to cover up for her daughter, who was the one who had pulled the trigger. The daughter, now 15, testified in court saying that she’d pulled the trigger after finding her dad kicking her mum. She said her parents argued but during cross-examination, she struggled to explain details.
Witnesses were called and they said that the Shavers’ relationship wasn’t in a good place in 2015. They’d separated several times and had even dated other people.
The prosecution said that Mrs Shaver had killed her husband with a gunshot to the back of his head then had buried him in the back garden, under the fire pit. They said she had pretended to be him by sending messages and was now making her daughter take the blame.
The jury took just a few hours to find Shaver guilty of second-degree murder. In November 2024, Shaver, 41, was sentenced to life in prison. She showed no emotion while her husband’s family members cried with relief.