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Laurie Shaver Claims Seven-Year-Old Shot Her Husband Found Buried In Her Backyard
Laurie Shaver, a Florida woman accused of fatally shooting her husband and burying his corpse on her property, alleges that a seven-year-old child pulled the trigger.
Three years after she was arrested for allegedly shooting her husband dead in 2015 and installing a concrete fire pit over his buried body on her property, a Florida woman is claiming that a 7-year-old girl pulled the trigger.
Laurie Shaver of Clermont was charged with second-degree murder, domestic violence and accessory after the fact in connection to the disappearance of Disney World monorail technician Michael Shaver, 33. She has pleaded not guilty, and is out on $50,000 bail as she awaits trial in September.
Laurie, 40, has long maintained her innocence, saying in a March 2020 YouTube video seeking donations for her defense that she "would never cause any harm to the father of my children."
"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," she said in the video. "I don't judge people, I accept all, and I always try to see the good in everybody."
Instead, she says, two other people were involved in Michael's death. One of them is a minor child, now 14.
Michael was last seen alive on November 7, 2015. After that, friends, family and coworkers received hundreds of cryptic messages via text and social media. Detectives believe Laurie sent them to give the impression that he was still alive.
The couple, who were high school sweethearts, were known to argue regularly and often threatened each other with guns, according to the Daily Commercial, a Florida-based newspaper.
A friend asked police to check on Michael years later in February of 2018, saying that he would never leave Laurie and their two children, according to court records reviewed by People. During a subsequent welfare check, Laurie allegedly told investigators that Michael had "left" the family and took off "in a black SUV" to Georgia. She consented to a search of her home, but refused to let police search the property with a cadaver dog without a warrant.
Upon obtaining that warrant, police uncovered Michael's partially-clothed body buried about three feet under a concrete slab and a fire pit built on the property, wrapped in a fitted sheet and a tarp secured with straps. An autopsy revealed that he had been shot with a .38 caliber handgun in the back of the head "several months to several years" before his corpse was discovered.
Travis Filmer, who dated Laurie after Michael disappeared and fathered the youngest two of her four children, allegedly bought 42 bags of concrete mix in 2016 and helped his girlfriend install the fire pit, according to FOX 35. The new couple's initials were etched into the concrete above the grave, detectives said.
In interviews with police, Filmer said that Laurie initially told him she was "divorced," then admitted "something bad happened," and that there was a corpse buried on her property.
“It’s not that he’s missing,” Filmer recalled Laurie telling him of her husband, according to the probable cause statement obtained by Oxygen.com. “He’s no longer walking this Earth."
On May 8, Laurie's defense attorney Jeffrey Wiggs filed a motion imploring the Fifth Judicial Circuit Court, located in central Florida, to permit the psychological analysis of a minor child who he wrote "confessed to having committed the respective murder in this matter." The body had previously rejected a request to do so on May 4, according to WESH.
"The minor can relay how this crime was committed, when it was committed, and precisely how it was committed,” Wiggs wrote.
The Lake County prosecutor wrote in his opposition of the evaluation that there is "no credible evidence supporting the claims made concerning the involvement of the child," and noted that the minor "has not made statements to any law enforcement agency."
Wiggs wrote that the prosecutor is wrong, and "the State has sought to bury their heads on what is evidence which may truly seek out and ensure that justice is obtained."
It is unclear whether Laurie has a relationship with the child in question.
