The murder trial of Laurie Shaver is set to begin next month, and prosecutors are now attempting to block any mention that the defendant's daughter, then 7, may have killed her father by filing a motion in limine with the court.
Florida prosecutors are trying to block a murder suspect from testifying that her daughter committed the act for which she is accused in a new court filing.
Laurie Shaver is charged with murdering her husband Michael, a former Disney World worker who was missing for years before authorities discovered his body.
The case took a sudden turn however when Shaver's lawyer filed a motion in May of last year which said that a minor child "confessed to having committed the respective murder in this matter."
That minor child, who at the time of the filing was 14, met with her court-appointed attorney and "represented her desire to testify in this case," the defense said in its motion.
The minor child also expressed this desire even after being "apprised of the rights she would be waving, and the possibility [sic] penalties she would be facing," according to the motion.
A subsequent motion filed by prosecutors in the case revealed the identity of the minor child. "In numerous court hearings defense counsel has stated that the defendant’s daughter, who would have been approximately eight years old at the time of the crime, was the person who shot and killed the victim and that she did so in defense of her mother," reads the motion submitted by prosecutors.
A little over a year later and with just over a month before Shaver's trial is set to start, prosecutors are attempting to block the testimony of that child and or any person that may have been charged with allegedly killing Shaver’s husband according to a copy of a new motion in limine filed by the State's Attorney's Office and obtained by Inside Edition Digital.
"Defendant should not be permitted to argue either directly or indirectly that another person should also have been charged with these crimes or elicit testimony or advance argument regarding the delay in charging Laurie Shaver," prosecutors wrote in the motion.
The motion makes multiple mentions of the delay in charging Shaver in relation to the decision not to charge the other individual, though no specifics are offered or shared about why those two things are connected.
Prosecutors also argue: "In the instant case, there is no claim nor evidence that the decision to charge the Defendant and not to charge others with these crimes arose out of any impermissible motive, such as race, religion or gender discrimination. Without any evidence or a finding of such a motive, any argument by Defendant suggesting such a motive would be improper."
The motion goes on to say: "Such an argument would be used only to divert the jury’s attention away from the material issues and evidence presented to them and would only cause unfair confusion."
The judge has yet to rule on this motion but will need to do so soon with the trial set to start in September.
DEATH OF MICHAEL SHAVER
Michael Shaver disappeared on Nov. 15, 2015, according to a probable cause affidavit filed in Lake County, Florida.
The affidavit says that three days later, the monorail technician at Disney World messaged his employer and suddenly quit his job. At the same time, his wife, Laurie, told friends and family that Michael had abandoned her and their children to start a new life with a new woman.
Two years later, a friend of Michael alerted police to the situation, according to the affidavit, saying that no one had seen or heard from Michael since the day he went missing. That same friend also said that he believed Laurie may be impersonating her husband on Facebook and had built a giant concrete fire pit in the backyard shortly after Michael went missing.
On Feb.16, 2018, deputies with the Lake County Sheriff's Office say they arrived at the home of Michael and Laurie Shaver to perform a welfare check. Laurie welcomed the men in and cooperated with the search efforts according to the affidavit, until they inquired about checking the firepit with a cadaver dog.
Laurie instructed the deputies to leave her home, says the affidavit, and they stopped their search. Those deputies then returned on March 9 and found the body of Michael buried three feet below the fire pit.
The affidavit says he died as the result of a single bullet to the back of the head, fired from a .38 caliber gun.
The couple owned multiple firearms, according to the affidavit, and Laurie kept a pink .38 caliber handgun on her nightstand.
Laurie never once called her husband after Nov. 15, according to the affidavit, or ever sought child support payments. She also never filed for divorce and began selling off Michael's guns and tools, according to the affidavit.
The affidavit also notes that Laurie married again less than a year after her husband's death, and had once allegedly told her new husband of Michael: "It's not that he's missing, it's that he's no longer walking this Earth."
She also told her new husband about a body buried on the property, suggesting to him that something bad happened, according to the affidavit.
Laurie did keep up the illusion of Michael being alive, according to the affidavit, sending sporadic messages on social media and allegedly telling stories about encounters between the two to her friends.
She allegedly sent texts to the wife of a man she dated for a few months after Michael's disappearance pretending to be her missing husband, according to deputies, who interviewed the man. He informed deputies that he broke things off when Laurie allegedly showed him that she had gotten his nickname tattooed on her vagina, according to the affidavit.
The affidavit says that Laurie responded by sending screengrabs from their conversations to his wife while claiming to be Michael, telling the wife that the conversations between the couple were obtained after installing a spyware app on his wife's phone.
ARREST OF LAURIE SHAVER
On Sept. 17, 2020, deputies arrested Laurie Shaver and charged her with second-degree murder, domestic violence and accessory after the fact.
She entered a plea of not guilty to all three charges, posted $50,000 bail and returned home to her two children, according to court records.
Laurie had a tempestuous relationship with her husband, according to the affidavit, and court records show that in September 2014, a fight between the couple resulted in Michael being charged with battery. Those records also show that Michael agreed to a plea deal that allowed him to enter a 12-month pre-trial intervention program, which he completed in just six months.
Both Michael and Laurie provided conflicting stories about the incident, with each accusing the other of brandishing a gun that they had to wrestle away during the skirmish.
Michael went to live in an airplane hangar at work after that incident and even began dating a co-worker, according to the affidavit. That relationship soured after Laurie began reporting the couple's actions to the human resources department at Disney World, according to the affidavit.
In May 2015, Michael and the co-worker split, and he returned home to Laurie and their two children, according to the affidavit. Six months later, he was shot dead.
Lawyers for Shaver, her daughter, and the state did not respond to requests for comment.
