LAKE COUNTY, FLA. – Laurie Shaver, convicted of killing her husband and accused of burying him in the back yard, was sentenced to life in prison without parole Tuesday.
“She was quite possibly the most manipulative person charged with murder…” Assistant State Attorney Nick Camuccio told Circuit Judge Cary Rada, while asking for the maximum penalty for second-degree murder with a firearm.
Dressed in an orange jail jump suit, she smiled at someone in the courtroom when she was brought to the podium. She declined to speak on her behalf. Last week she wrote a 12-page letter to the State Attorney’s Office and the judge claiming she was innocent.
A jury found her guilty of murder in September but not accessory after the fact. Yet, prosecutors Camuccio and Rich Buxman presented a case that detailed her pretending to be Michael Shaver on Facebook, lying to his friends and family, taking out a loan in his name and claiming he abandoned his two children.
He disappeared in 2015. His body was discovered under a concrete slab near a burn pit in 2018 in a rural area outside of Clermont. A friend lit the investigative fuse when he asked sheriff’s deputies to do a well-being check.
Victim impact letters from friends and family were rife with statements accusing her of being remorseless, Camuccio said.
She testified that he was violent and abusive. Shortly before the trial, she claimed their 7-year-old daughter, Isabelle, shot Michael once to save her life, with a then-boyfriend of Laurie’s firing the fatal round. Isabelle, now 16, testified to that story during the trial.
“He was not a monster,” Shaver’s father, Douglas, said after the sentencing. Douglas and his wife are seeking custody of Isabelle and her 13-year-old brother. Isabelle criticized the family in a Facebook message, saying they weren’t around much. “He was a great father,” he said.
“She manipulated him to stay away from us,” Douglas said. “At the end, he was in contact with us,” he said. Michael was trying to get an attorney to dispute domestic violence charges.
Michael’s brother, Brian, told the judge that his brother took the fall for a particularly violent fight, in which she struck him in the head with a gun because he didn’t want the children to see their mother hauled off to jail.
Defense attorney Jeffrey Wiggs made several arguments seeking the minimum/mandatory sentence of 25 years.
He said there was no digital evidence linking her computer to the Facebook posts, that prosecutors talked about Laurie selling Michael’s guns and presenting a handgun into evidence that was similar in caliber to the one used in the murder – but not the actual weapon.