LAKE COUNTY, FLA. – laurie Shaver is guilty of murdering her husband, Michael, and burying him in the back yard, jurors decided Friday.
She was convicted of second-degree murder. Circuit Judge Cary Rada ordered a presentence investigation.
The six-member panel had barely retired to the jury room when they asked to again hear the recorded phone call of a sheriff’s deputy in 2018 telling her about things they discovered under a fire pit and concrete slab. She had virtually no reaction when he told her they found “skeletal remains” and a spent .38-caliber type bullet.
Her only question was whether she would have to sign any paperwork. When told she did not, she said: “Alright, thank you so much.”
She had no reaction because she knew her husband’s body was buried three-feet deep on the rural property near Clermont, prosecutors said. The last time the Disney mechanic was seen in public was on Nov. 7, 2015.
Assistant State Attorney Nick Camuccio in his closing arguments talked about the “totality of the evidence.”
She had the means, motive and opportunity to kill him, he said. She had at least one .38-caliber handgun, Camuccio said. The opportunity was a place to hide the body. The motive? “She wanted out to be with her boyfriend.”
Her boyfriend at the time was Jereme Townsend. They started dating in September 2015.
Laurie and her daughter, Isabelle, who was 7 at the time and 15 now, testified that sometime in May of 2016, Isabelle shot her father to protect her from Michael.
Isabelle said she was getting ready for school when she heard her parents arguing on the porch, then she saw her father kicking her while she was on the floor and holding his foot against her face.
Isabelle said Townsend, who happened to be at the house, grabbed the gun and fired a second, fatal shot.
Both testified that Townsend threatened to kill them if they told anyone what happened. Townsend testified that he did not shoot Michael.
Laurie said she then drove Isabelle and her younger brother to school. Isabelle said she told no one and pretended everything was normal.
That doesn’t make sense, Camuccio said. Why didn’t someone call 911, even if it was outside the presence of Townsend? Isabelle said her mother only took her to a counselor once, and that was recently. If she really had experienced such a traumatic event, that would make Laurie “a horrible mother,” he said.
Laurie testified that Townsend was gone by the time she got back home. She said Townsend promised to “take care of it,” and assumed he buried the body on family property in Citrus County.
But the body ended up in the back yard, the prosecutor pointed out, and she and another boyfriend, whom she would eventually marry, poured the concrete slab.
The prosecutors poked another hole in the story. The Townsend and Isabelle shooting story supposedly happened sometime in May of 2016, and Shaver had already been dead for six months. “She can remember when she kicked him out of the house but not the day he died?” Camuccio said.
During that six-month period, Laurie tried to sell his truck, his tools, and his guns. She sent Facebook and text messages pretending to be Mike to throw off suspicion. In the messages “Mike” supposedly claimed he was quitting his job to work on saving his marriage, Camuccio said. But how does giving up income, transportation and tools save your marriage?
A loan officer testified that Laurie took out a $2,500 loan in Michael’s name.
Most importantly, records showed that the fake Facebook messages were sent from the same IP computer address.
Included in those messages were some in Mike’s name to Townsend’s wife disclosing their partners’ affair. Laurie was trying to break up their marriage. One ploy to get the wife’s attention, was to send flowers. Phone records pointed to Laurie, an investigator said.
“Laurie Shaver is not on trial for lying or bank fraud,” her attorney, Jeffrey Wiggs told jurors.
He also claimed that testimony about Laurie sleeping around aimed to disparage her and “get an emotional response.”
He sharply criticized the state’s questioning of Isabelle. She was a victim, he said.
There was no DNA evidence, no fingerprints, and no forensic evidence linking the bullet found in Michael’s skull to any weapon owned by Laurie, he said.
Both Laurie and Isabelle gave emotional, credible-sounding testimony about Michael being physically abusive, and Wiggs provided pictures depicting her injuries. It was “very combative, a lot of tension,” Isabelle testified.
Camuccio pointed out that there were two injunctions for protection, but both were canceled.
A neighbor testified that Michael told her that he was the one that was injured. She took photographs of blood on his head where he said he had been struck by a handgun.
Wiggs also asked a rhetorical question. Laurie and her future husband, Travis Filmer, imprinted their initials on the wet cement of the slab.
“Who would put their initials on concrete over a body? No one in this world!”
Camuccio, however, pointed to Laurie, calling her spiteful and evil. “That’s who!”