A new motion filed by prosecutors aims to prohibit a defense witness from testifying that the defendant's daughter also admitted to him that she shot her father to protect her mother, arguing that it is "inadmissible hearsay."
Prosecutors are moving forward with the murder trial of a Florida mother despite her daughter admitting that she shot her father.
Laurie Shaver is charged with murdering her husband, Michael, burying him in her backyard and then telling friends and family that he had left her and his children.
Soon after her arrest, however, Laurie's daughter said during her deposition that she killed her father when she was just 7 years old.
The exact details of that admission have remained a mystery until now.
A new filing by prosecutors that aims to limit who will be able to testify about this admission at trial provides the first account of what Laurie's daughter said during her deposition.
"During the deposition process in this instant case, [redacted] has provided testimony that she shot the victim, Michael Shaver, in the back of the head because Michael Shaver was attacking Defendant. [Redacted] indicated that the victim was battering Defendant and [redacted] retrieved a firearm and shot Michael Shaver to protect her mother," reads a motion in limine filed by prosecutors in the case last week.
It goes on to say that a man Laurie was seeing at the time then arrived at the home and instructed Laurie and her daughter to leave while he took care of the body, a claim which that man flatly denied during his deposition.
This new motion filed by prosecutors aims to prohibit a defense witness from testifying that the defendant's daughter also admitted to him that she shot her father, arguing that it is inadmissible because the comment was made "years after the shooting."
Prosecutors were already successful in blocking Laurie from presenting evidence of her husband's alleged abuse during the trial.
The judge ruled that the defense team could not share details from a previous incident involving Laurie and Michael after prosecutors argued that the details in the police report from that incident were "inadmissible hearsay."
The defense had argued in their motion that the details of this incident are a crucial part of their case, and the judge did then allow Laurie's lawyers to introduce a petition for a restraining order Laurie had filed in the past at trial. If introduced though, it must also include the petition Laurie filed a short time later to terminate that order.
Michael Shaver Murder
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 taking a look around that recently constructed 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, and never sought child support payments. She also never filed for divorce and began selling off Michael's guns and tools.
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 even texted the wife of a man she dated for a few months after Michael's disappearance, according to deputies, who interviewed that man. He informed deputies that he broke things off when Laurie allegedly showed him that she had gotten his nickname tattooed on her vagina.
The affidavit says that when Laurie got no response from the woman, she sent flowers to her office, along with a card that read: "Roses are red violets are blue my wife is a whore your husband is to. (sorry about this) Check your Facebook message, we need to talk, Mike!"
Once contacted by the woman, who believed she was communicating with Michael according to the affidavit, Laurie allegedly responded by sending screengrabs from her conversations with the woman's husband while claiming to be Michael. She allegedly told the woman that she obtained the conversations by installing a spyware app on Laurie's phone, according to the affidavit.
Prosecutors allege all this was done to get the woman to divorce her husband, thus allowing him to be with Laurie.
Laurie Shaver Arrest
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 with Michael, according to court records.
Laurie's attorney informed the judge early last year of "having received testimony from a minor child, who confessed to having committed the respective murder in this matter," according to a motion filed by the defense.
That minor child met with her own court-appointed attorney last year and "represented her desire to testify in this case," the defense said in a previous motion.
That motion said that the minor child had been "apprised of the rights she would be waving, and the possibility [sic] penalties she would be facing," according to the motion.
The defense sought to have the child evaluated by a professional to argue against any claims of witness tampering or fabrication during the trial, but both the initial motion and a motion for reconsideration were rejected by the court.
Prosecutors meanwhile continue to focus on Laurie as the person responsible for the death of her one-time high school sweetheart Michael.
Laurie allegedly 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 successfully 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.
That is the same incident that Laurie will be limited in discussing or presenting at trial after the judge sided with prosecutors in their aforementioned motion.
Michael went to live in an airplane hangar at work after this 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.
Now a jury will decide who is responsible.
