Michael Shaver.Photo: Courtesy Stacie Turner
In early 2018, deputies from the Lake County Sheriff’s Office showed up outside the Clermont, Fla., home of married high school sweethearts Michael and Laurie Shaver. The officers wanted to speak to the devoted dad, after his oldest friend called, saying he hadn’t seen Michael in person or gotten a call from him in over two years — and that Shaver was only communicating via text and Facebook messages.
Not even a month later, on March 9, 2018, deputies returned with a warrant, cadaver dogs, and ground-penetrating radar. By the end of the day, they would recover Michael’s body — finding it buried three feet beneath a concrete fire pit in the backyard, wrapped in a fitted sheet that was wrapped in a tarp and secured with ratchet straps.
“I’m still in shock,” Wilma Nicholas, the Shavers' next-door neighbor, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “There’s moments where I just can’t believe that the guy is really gone.”
An autopsy on Michael’s skeletal remains would reveal he had been shot once in the back of the head with a .38 caliber handgun “several months to several years” before being found in a shallow grave in his own backyard. An investigation into his killing ultimately led to Laurie’s arrest for second-degree murder and accessory to second-degree murder on Sept. 17, 2020.
Laurie Shaver — known today as Laurie Filmer, after remarrying in 2016 — has pleaded not guilty and has long insisted she had nothing to do with Michael’s murder.
“I would never cause any harm to the father of my children,” she explains in a March 2020 YouTube video, seeking donations for her impending defense. “And I know that there’s people out there that are trying to paint this picture of me, but that’s not me. I’m loving, I’m caring, I have a servitude heart. I don’t judge people, I accept all, and I always try to see the good in everybody.”
For more on the brutal murder of Michael Shaver and the case against Laurie Filmer,subscribe now to PEOPLEor pick up this week’s issue, on newsstands Friday.
The affidavit alleges that Laurie married Travis Filmer on Dec. 31, 2016, during a backyard ceremony that took place inches from where Michael’s corpse was buried — and the slab of concrete Laurie and Travis had marked with their initials.
“She’s an evil woman,” says Michele Rippy, 46, Michael’s friend and former co-worker, per the affidavit. “She was always very jealous, and she had attacked him more than once.”
Laurie Filmer, seen in police custody.Lake County Court
According to the affidavit, Michael was never reported missing, only because friends and relatives continued receiving messages from his Facebook account, which was also updated on occasion. But weeks after his death, authorities allege Laurie used Michael’s debit card for online purchases, and that checks sent to their home were endorsed and deposited into his account — which Laurie allegedly drained over a matter of weeks.
Laurie also started selling off Michael’s guns and giving away his expensive aeronautic tools, per the affidavit.
“My son’s a mechanic, and he’d asked Laurie to borrow some kind of tool, and she led him to the shed,” Nicholas, 57, says. “And he says, ‘Are you sure Mike doesn’t mind that I borrow this?’ And she goes, ‘Oh no, he’s not going to care again. He’s never going to be back.'”
Detectives would eventually learn that Michael had no active mobile phone accounts, and that his driver’s license, passport and pilot’s certification had all expired. His vehicle had been repossessed from his driveway in 2016, and his credit card bills all went unpaid.
Jeffrey Wiggs, Laurie’s attorney, tells PEOPLE he considers the state’s evidence against his client largely “circumstantial” and that any money that his client may have removed from any accounts were “marital funds.”
Wiggs says he believes his client is not only innocent of murder, but an abused woman, noting that Michael was arrested for simple domestic battery in 2014.
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The affidavit alleges Laurie struck Michael over the head with a gun — a .38 — but that police arrested him, believing that he had pulled out the weapon. The charge was later dropped.
“I would be surprised if she got convicted,” says Wiggs, adding that he has provided police with information about other potential suspects, only to be told they’ve been ruled out.
Wiggs contends a statement that Laurie’s new husband allegedly made to police (“He’s no longer walking the Earth,” she’s alleged to have told him, according to the affidavit) during their investigation was coerced.
“She’s got a good heart,” Wiggs says of his client. “She really is a good Christian woman. Really kind spirit.”
A start date for Laurie’s trial has not been scheduled yet.
source: people.com
