Wife charged in killing of husband found buried in ’18
Laurie Leigh Shaver told family and friends that her husband, Michael, left her and their two children in 2015, driving off from their Clermont home in a black SUV and ending their contentious marriage.
For three years, Michael Shaver’s name would pop up occasionally on messages to phones or Facebook, including one in 2016 to his sister that said, “Everyone just needs to leave me alone just like they did my entire life.”
Those who knew Michael Shaver told authorities they didn’t believe he would disappear — he wouldn’t leave his kids, they said, or so casually quit his job by text message or tell his boss to keep his prized and expensive aircraft mechanic tools.
According to documents released Thursday, they were right. Shaver’s body was found in 2018 buried under a concrete slab at his home, where Lake County deputies said Laurie Shaver killed him and dug a grave in November 2015 and then pretended he was alive.
It took two years, but Shaver was arrested Thursday, charged with killing her husband.
A probable cause affidavit paints years of deception in which Laurie Shaver told friends a variety of stories — that her husband was stalking her, that he was paying child support and even that they got a divorce, allowing her to remarry.
Deputies say she assumed his identity, sending messages under Michael Shaver’s name and even mailing a postcard from Orlando — which arrived after his remains were found but
before they were identified — telling her that he loved their kids and would see them soon.
But during this time, according to the affidavit, Shaver also told a boyfriend, “It’s not that he’s missing, he’s no longer walking the Earth” and that there was a body on the property, according to the affidavit.
Shaver sold off many of her husband’s possessions,
drained his bank account and even made a fraudulent loan deposit in his name, according to the affidavit for her arrest.
The investigation started in February 2018 after one of Michael Shaver’s friends contacted authorities at the family’s urging and said he hadn’t heard from Shaver since the last part of 2015.
During a well-being check at the Shavers’ Sandy Pines Road home, deputies could not locate Michael Shaver. Laurie Shaver told them he left her in 2015 to
move to Georgia after she filed a domestic violence complaint against him, deputies said.
When deputies asked Laurie Shaver if they could use a dog that sniffs for cadavers to check around a concrete slab, she told them to leave their property, officials said. Deputies returned in March with a search warrant and found skeletal remains buried 3 feet under the slab, and the remains were matched through DNA to Michael Shaver, an probable cause
affidavit states.
Deputies believe Shaver was killed in November 2015, when he was 33 years old. They do not say how he was killed and parts of the affidavit are redacted.
Shaver, who was most recently living in Okahumpka, is being held in Lake County Jail on charges of seconddegree homicide (domestic violence) and accessory after the fact in second-degree homicide.