‘She had a gun:’ attempt to cast Shaver husband as violent abuser backfires in court

LAKE COUNTY, Fla. — An initial attempt to cast doubt on the case against Laurie Shaver appeared to fail on the first full day of witness testimony.

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Shaver is accused of killing her husband in 2015 and burying his body underneath a concrete fire pit, where he was discovered three years later.

Until the grisly dig by officers, prosecutors say Laurie Shaver pretended to be Michael Shaver in text messages to friends and family.

Michael’s family testified that they were all relatively distant with him. Most of their communications were infrequent and occurred through texts and Facebook messages even before his death.

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They said they noticed a shift in the tone of his messages around November 2015, and for some, an inability to reach him by phone even as his mother grew gravely ill.

Prosecutors spent almost as much time questioning Michael’s coworkers and friends, who said he simply stopped showing up for work and never came back to get the thousands of dollars’ worth of tools he left at Epcot.

Shaver’s defense attorney, who told jurors Laurie’s 7-year-old daughter and boyfriend killed Michael instead, asked one of them if he was ever present during a violent situation at their residence.

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The friend replied in the affirmative.

However, prosecutors asked him to describe what happened.

“I was helping him get some of his stuff so he could [move out],” Robert Mercado Jr. said. “I walked in, I noticed that she had a gun in her hand and she was waving it around.”

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Mercado then pushed back on the defense’s assertions labeling Michael as an abuser.

In the afternoon, medical examiners testified Michael was killed by a single bullet to the back of the head – an effort by prosecutors to bat away the expected testimony by the now-teenage daughter.

Prosecutors said they have one full day of witnesses remaining, plus a few additional hours, putting them on track to rest by noon.

The defense said it has four or five witnesses to call, lasting a full day.

Laurie Shaver still hasn’t decided if she will testify.

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