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00:00Now I want a new police fire or the ambulance service.
00:03Police.
00:04There was a domestic violence with you.
00:06Their relationship was volatile, even toxic.
00:11The card said, roses are red, violets are blue.
00:15My wife's cheating on me, your husband too.
00:18It seems like he wants revenge and she tells friends that he's been stalking her.
00:22I saw him read the message and I was like, is everything okay, dude?
00:27And he goes, no.
00:29He told me that something bad had happened on the property.
00:36Investigators are searching areas where cadaver dogs have indicated there might be human remains here.
00:41Everyone is uneasy about what they might find there.
00:44There were some sort of foreign objects buried under the dirt.
00:48I thought, we've got something going on here.
01:20This was one of the most mysterious cases we've covered recently here at People.
01:25Childhood sweethearts whose love went south.
01:27And when things got violent, even the cops weren't sure who was telling the truth.
01:37Tanya Winchester says she watched as Lake County detectives made a discovery while digging in her neighbor's backyard.
01:45I did see that law enforcement kind of circled around the site and took off their hats and it looked
01:51like they had said a prayer.
02:04Michael and Lori Shaver seem to be the epitome of the fairy tale couple and have been inseparable pretty much
02:10their entire lives.
02:12They were both born in the same small town of Lawrence in upstate New York and grew up across the
02:17street from one another.
02:20Lori was the youngest of five, and one of her brothers was special needs.
02:25She stuck up for her brother and took care of him at school to keep people from bullying him.
02:32It was a relatively close family structure, but the father was working full-time.
02:38I think it was financially a struggle for the family.
02:42Mike Shaver's parents divorce when he's young.
02:45He and his two siblings live with their mom full-time.
02:48Mike was close with his family.
02:50He was a hard worker and was a little bit of a clown.
02:55Mike, he was an amazing person.
02:58He was always smiling, and you never really saw a frown on his face.
03:04Mike and Lori started dating in eighth grade, so they were middle school sweethearts.
03:08A high school friend, she said that Mike was Lori's little pet.
03:13He loved Lori unconditionally, would do anything for her.
03:18Move heaven and earth.
03:20Michael has always been obsessed with aviation.
03:23He even dropped out of high school and went to flight school instead before working at a regional airline.
03:29The people that we spoke with say Lori was a sweet person who was easy to talk to and liked
03:34to have a good time.
03:37Lori was working as a claims adjuster for an insurance company.
03:41It was convenient for her to be at home, and they wanted to get married and start building a family.
03:49Lori and Michael married in 2004 when they were in their early 20s, and soon welcomed their daughter Isabel and
03:55son Aiden into their family.
03:57Lori as a mom was kind of like a mother hen.
04:01She really felt the need to protect the children.
04:04Those kids were the center of Lori's life.
04:08Michael Schaefer was very family-oriented.
04:11You know, every time we talked about his kids, you would see a glow in him.
04:15Michael and Lori wanted more space for their growing family, so they moved to Florida, where they could afford a
04:19large plot of land.
04:25By 2014, they're fixing up their five-acre dream property in the town of Claremont, a rural suburb 25 miles
04:33to the west of Orlando.
04:44Mike is a regional airline pilot, but that requires him to be away from home for long periods of time.
04:50That starts to wear down on Lori and the kids, and it impacts their marriage.
04:55Sometimes that would lead to some frustration between Mike and Lori.
04:58So he quit that job for his family and started working at Disney.
05:03He originally started out as a mechanic working on Spaceship Earth at Epcot.
05:08Mike absolutely loved it.
05:10He loved being able to bring his kids to the park and them knowing that their dad was a part
05:15of making magic for Walt Disney World.
05:21With Mike working at Disney, everyone is seemingly happy.
05:26But all of this would soon change.
05:33Now, one, do you need police fire or the ambulance service?
05:36Please.
05:37What's going on?
05:39Um, it was a domestic violence to steal.
05:41My hand is bleeding.
05:44Lori Shaver tells the dispatcher that they were doing a home improvement project,
05:48and they started getting into an argument, and it got heated.
05:56I grabbed my gun, because he has guns, and I hit him in the head with it, and I grabbed
05:59my kids in the mouth.
06:00He pulled out a gun on you?
06:02Oh, yeah.
06:02He grabbed my car keys and stuck them in his pocket.
06:06I fought him to get my keys out of his pocket, and then I grabbed my kids.
06:12She's in a Target parking lot at that point, very upset.
06:17EMS checks Lori out, and deputies do see some bruises on her arms and some lacerations on her hand, which
06:23corroborate her story.
06:25While they're doing that, the deputies respond to the home to make contact with Mike.
06:30He gives his side of the story, which is similar, but kind of opposite.
06:35He said Lori threw a vase against the wall.
06:38If she says I grabbed her arms, I probably did, to calm her down.
06:43Mike says it didn't work, and things escalated fast.
06:47Lori went into their bedroom and got her pistol, pointed it at her head, and said that she was going
06:53to kill herself.
06:55According to Mike, he wrestled that gun away from her, unloaded it, and then she got another gun and hit
07:01him in the head.
07:02With two very different stories, the police don't know who to believe.
07:06So they tell Mike and Lori that they'll have to arrest them both.
07:10But with both of them in jail, there would be no one to watch the kids.
07:14The deputies would have had to have called the Florida Department of Children and Families.
07:18Mike didn't want the kids to be without their mother.
07:21So he raised his hand and said, it was me, I did it.
07:26So Mike Shaver ends up getting arrested for domestic battery.
07:32Mike, he wasn't proud of it.
07:34He considered that as, like, a dark mark on his life.
07:39Mike is released on bail.
07:41But just how and why did these childhood sweethearts get to a place where Lori is calling 911 for domestic
07:48violence and Mike is being arrested?
07:55According to Michael's friends, it started a year earlier when Mike discovered that Lori was having an affair with her
08:00boss.
08:03Mike told Lori, I forgive you for what happened.
08:06I just want my family back.
08:08But later that year, it happens again with another man who catches Lori's eye.
08:15Lori meets a guy named James Ballou.
08:19Pretty quickly, James starts coming over to the house while Mike is working at Disney, which develops into an affair.
08:27Mike works the overnight shift at Disney World.
08:30This allows Lori plenty of time to indulge in her affair with James.
08:34But that changes when James' wife discovers what her husband has been up to.
08:41Mike Shaver got a message from James Ballou's wife one day exposing the affair between Lori and Mr. Ballou.
08:51James' wife and Lori.
08:52James' wife even showed Mike Shaver pictures of Mr. Ballou and Lori together.
08:58That was an eye-opening experience for Mike.
09:02The relationship is really starting to head towards a disaster.
09:08And shortly after that, Lori had mentioned to a friend that she thinks Mike would kill her.
09:19Investigators are searching areas where cadaver dogs have indicated there might be human remains here on this acreage where the
09:25shavers share.
09:36In March of 2018, a team of deputies and crime scene investigators from the Lake County Sheriff's Office
09:43swarm a five-acre property in the rural outskirts of Claremont, Florida.
09:48This warrant is hereby authorized to search for a clandestine grave by utilizing a specially trained cadaver dog.
09:54Help me.
09:55Ground penetrating radar and excavation of the premises.
10:06The dogs hit on a pile of dirt at the rear of the property.
10:09We're going to check around this mountain.
10:11Everywhere the dog indicated anything.
10:13We brought the ground penetrating radar in and learned that there were foreign objects buried under the dirt there.
10:21I thought we've got something going on here.
10:25We need another car.
10:35I had heard that Lori was seeing somebody.
10:39So I asked Mike, is everything okay at home?
10:41And he was like, no, not really.
10:43I found out some news.
10:45Mike had found out that Lori has had two affairs in the past year and a half.
10:50So there's animosity between them.
10:54The affair sets Mike off and he confronts Lori with Mount James, leading to the altercation on September 4th and
11:03his arrest for the battery.
11:07After Mike's arrested, he gets out on bail, but he's not allowed to go back home because of a court
11:12order.
11:13So in Florida, when somebody's arrested for domestic violence, whoever is charged with something has to leave.
11:20He's got limited options for places to stay, but Mike is a member of an air racing club called Precious
11:26Metal.
11:27So he ends up staying in an airplane hangar associated with his racing club.
11:32Lori still lives at home with the kids.
11:35At this time, Lori said she was very uncomfortable when Michael was around.
11:41During the months that Michael is not allowed to live with his family, he attempts to mend his relationship with
11:46Lori.
11:47But at the same time, he meets a woman named Kendall, who also works at Walt Disney World.
11:54In November 2014, Mike ends up asking out Kendall.
11:59He tells Kendall that he is married but separated, so she is aware of that.
12:03And they begin dating.
12:06Eventually, Lori finds out about the relationship.
12:08And even though she's having her own affair, she's livid that Mike would cheat on her and demands that they
12:13break up.
12:15When Lori found out, she told Mike that he wasn't going to be able to see the kids anymore if
12:20he continued to date other women.
12:23Lori found Kendall on Facebook and started messaging her, calling her a home wrecker.
12:28And in spring of 2015, Lori called HR at Disney and filed a complaint against Kendall.
12:36And at this point, Kendall kind of backed away from Mike and said, I can't deal with this.
12:45Towards the end of the spring in 2015, the charges against Mike for domestic battery were dropped.
12:52It's not uncommon.
12:53There's pretrial intervention, counseling that can be mandated.
12:57When the charges are dropped, Mike can move back into the house, which he does.
13:02Mike and Lori thought it was probably better for the kids to have both parents back in the house.
13:09But Mike and Lori's relationship hasn't really changed or improved.
13:13Some days they seem to get along great, and other days they're back to arguing.
13:18Mike tried not to talk about Lori as much as possible.
13:22And there were days where I could see that he had gotten into a fight with her because his demeanor
13:26would change.
13:28It almost looked like he was breaking down.
13:31I think Mike had thought about getting divorced several times.
13:36But he was more afraid that he was going to lose his kids in the divorce.
13:41I did hope, you know, nothing happens between the two of them.
13:53We spent several hours digging in that location that the dogs hit on.
14:00We're sifting, using sifters in the dirt and shovels and trowels and trying not to disturb anything.
14:05Can you hold a rule if it adapts to?
14:07Yeah.
14:08Our dig area got bigger.
14:11That's as deep as it's going to go.
14:14The bigger it got, we quickly realized that we needed to call in some heavy machinery to help us dig.
14:24With each foot that we dig down, the team is expecting to find a bone, article of clothing, some type
14:30of human remains.
14:33While we're digging in this area, in the back of the property,
14:39We've come across .38 caliber bullets.
14:43Hand up the jack dial.
14:53After Mike moves back home, although things aren't easy between Mike and Lori,
14:58for the next six months, the Shavers try to get along for the sake of seven-year-old Isabel and
15:03five-year-old Aiden.
15:04And on November 7th, they take the kids to a local tractor show with Mike's co-worker, Frank Merritt, and
15:10his family.
15:12According to Frank Merritt and his wife, there was definitely some tension between Mike and Lori that day.
15:19At the show, the Merritt's got separated from the Shavers, and then Mike texted him and said,
15:25Hey, the kids aren't feeling well, and have to leave early.
15:39When we came back to work from our weekend, and Frank and I were talking about the show,
15:43we noticed Mike was not there.
15:47Our boss, John, had walked up to Frank and goes, Hey, have you happened to hear from Mike?
15:52And Frank goes, No, not since the other day. Why?
15:55He goes, Well, Mike didn't call in.
15:59And I looked at Frank and looked at John, and we're like, That's not normal.
16:05So John was like, You know, I'm going to call him.
16:10Mike's boss at Disney tried to get a hold of him, didn't get any answer.
16:17Mike isn't at work the next day either, and now his co-workers are really getting worried.
16:22And once again, they text and call him.
16:26It was Frank that got a text message from Mike.
16:32And I was like, Is everything okay, dude?
16:36And he goes, No.
16:41Investigators have been looking for evidence, and now they believe they did find something just moments ago.
16:57On Wednesday, Frank got a text message from Mike saying, I'm going through some stuff right now.
17:04I quit. Keep my tools. Just leave me alone.
17:10And I was like, That's not like Mike at all.
17:17It's odd, but Frank said that he was just going to back off and give him his space
17:22so that he could work things out, and he would come back whenever he was ready to.
17:29And then on Thursday, which is the 12th, his boss got a text that said,
17:34Hey, I'm in Georgia. Just fire me or I'll quit. I'm not coming back anytime soon.
17:45Frank feels like this doesn't sound like the Mike that he knows.
17:48He decides to go over to the Shaver house and see what's going on for himself.
17:54Frank drives to the Shaver house and goes into the door.
18:01Lori answers.
18:03Frank asks, Where's Mike?
18:05Lori told Frank that they had gotten to a fight, and Mike left with a friend,
18:10and she thought that he went to Georgia, where his mom is.
18:15Frank and I were very, very worried that something was not right.
18:20That was not like Mike.
18:27Over the next few weeks, friends, co-workers, family are texting and calling and messaging Mike.
18:37Nobody's ever able to get him on the phone, but occasionally he will respond to text messages,
18:43which are usually short, abruptly end, saying things like, leave me alone.
18:48I don't have a family anymore.
18:50I tried messaging Mike a few times on Facebook.
18:53We're always here, dude, whenever you need us.
18:56I never got a response, but I know it was read,
18:59because if anybody knows social media,
19:01you can see when somebody's picture drops down below, and you know it's read.
19:05According to text messages, it seemed like Mike was done.
19:08Had just given up on his marriage, given up on his family, and who knew where?
19:20As the holidays pass, Lori accepts that Mike is gone and keeps living her life.
19:26And at the end of 2015, she meets fellow parent Jay Townsend in the pickup line at her children's school,
19:32and they begin to date.
19:34There's just one problem, that Jay is still married.
19:38Jay did tell Lori that he and his wife were separated, but that wasn't true.
19:44So the relationship between Jay and Lori abruptly ends when Jay's wife discovers the affair.
19:54Within a year, there's still no sign of Mike Shaver.
19:58But Lori meets another man named Travis Fillmore.
20:02Travis was a youth coordinator at his church he attends.
20:06Him and Lori hit it off pretty quickly, and within a few months, Travis had moved in to Lori's house.
20:12Lori and Travis decide to get married, but she's still legally married to Mike.
20:16Although the family has texted with him over the last year, no one has actually seen or spoken with him.
20:23So Lori and Travis decide to hold a commitment ceremony in their backyard.
20:28The Shaver children think that their dad, Mike, has left and isn't contacting them.
20:34Travis has become the father figure in their home.
20:37Lori and Travis work to make their house their home.
20:40They constructed a fire pit and put their initials in the fire pit, along with a heart.
20:47Then, out of nowhere, Jay Townsend's wife reaches out to Lori about a delivery she received.
20:56In April 2016, Jay's wife receives a flower delivery at work.
21:02But they're not from Jay.
21:04The card has a little cryptic message on it.
21:09The card said, roses are red, violets are blue, my wife's cheating on me, your husband too.
21:18And the end of the note reads, check your Facebook, we need to talk, Mike.
21:26The affair with Jay has been over for months, so Jay's wife finds it a little odd.
21:33Mike tells her that he has installed a spy app on Lori, his wife's phone, due to his suspicions of
21:39the affair.
21:40And that he has captured several text messages and photographs between Lori and Jay.
21:46It seems like Mike wants revenge for Lori's affairs, and she tells friends that he's been stalking her.
21:56Lori says that Mike keeps popping up.
21:59She'll see him driving beside her.
22:09Lori felt the need to protect the children and protect them from Michael.
22:22But after all this time, no one has seen Mike in person, except for Lori.
22:29Two and a half years after Mike was last seen, one of Mike's close childhood friends ends up calling the
22:35sheriff's office to find out what's going on.
22:39The sheriff's office responds at the Shaver residence to investigate.
22:44Lori answers, says, no, Mike's not here.
22:47The deputy asks if he can walk around.
22:49She's very cordial and friendly, and she says, yes, you can do that.
22:59The deputies look around the property, and all seems normal.
23:02But when they get to the fire pit, one of them notices something strange.
23:11The deputy then notices a darkened area, kind of like a depression in the concrete.
23:20Deputy asks her, have you ever buried any of your livestock here?
23:23She says, no.
23:26And he asks her, well, is your husband buried here?
23:31She says, that's ridiculous.
23:35At that point, her demeanor changes.
23:37She kicks him off her property.
23:39She doesn't want to talk about the fire pit at all.
23:43Knowing that no one's seen Mike in about two and a half years, except for Lori, the Lake County Sheriff's
23:49Office launches a missing persons investigation into Mike Shaver.
23:54So, with the knowledge that he had been texting his family, I thought, surely this guy's alive somewhere.
24:00Maybe Lori was just offended by the line of questioning, and that's why she told the deputies to leave, and
24:06we just need to find him.
24:09In order to find Mike, detectives start looking into his digital footprint.
24:14You typically can't just fall off the face of the earth.
24:16So, my first step was to start seeing where is he spending money, is he getting paid?
24:22Once we started getting his bank records back, we realized that most of the activity had stopped early November of
24:302015.
24:31That was odd.
24:35The tractor show was the beginning of November 2015.
24:38That was the last time that we know of anybody seeing Mike.
24:46We saw no record that he had worked anywhere, filed taxes, had a cell phone, used a credit card.
24:53His driver's license had expired, and he didn't renew it anywhere in the country.
24:57His FAA medical had expired, which means he wasn't a pilot anymore.
25:03What that told us was either Mike was completely living off the grid somewhere, or that he was dead.
25:19To find out where Mike is, alive or dead, I wanted to talk to Lori, but Lori's already told us
25:26that she won't talk to us.
25:28So, I went and talked to Travis.
25:30Lori is now husband, and Travis told me that Lori had told him something bad had happened on the property.
25:40Travis said, it's not that Mike is missing, it's that he's no longer walking the earth, and there's a body
25:47on the property.
25:50On March 9th of 2018, we executed a search warrant on the Shaver property.
26:00Using ground-penetrating radar and the cadaver dogs, the team discovered the bullet casings, but they still haven't found signs
26:09of a body.
26:10We don't commit to getting anything that just didn't have the body of evidence.
26:14We're going to check around the fire pit.
26:17We started thinking about this fire pit.
26:20We haven't even touched it.
26:23Yep, let's do the pit.
26:29As the sun started to go down, we started digging a little bit to get the heavy concrete out of
26:34the way.
26:38And probably about two, two and a half feet under the concrete pit, I hit something hard with the shovel.
26:51Immediately, I knew that we had found the remains of Mike Shaver.
27:01We do have breaking details here.
27:02We can tell you that they have found a arm bone in a fire pit behind the home here.
27:07Now, the Shaver shared.
27:11We returned the next day to the Shaver house.
27:14We were able to find almost a complete skeleton, wrapped in a tarp, secured with ratchet straps.
27:23The remains were dressed in socks, shorts, underwear, and a t-shirt.
27:29We saw what appeared to be a bullet hole in the skull.
27:42We don't have a confirmation yet that this is Michael Shaver, but what are the odds of another set of
27:48human remains being on Lori Shaver's property while Mike Shaver's missing?
27:55Obviously, we will be working with the medical examiner's office to get the identity confirmed.
28:01The Shaver family sees their son's house on TV, gets in their car, and drives down there.
28:06When I spoke with the Shaver family, Mr. Shaver was quiet, reserved.
28:14Trying to process everything was, of course, difficult for him.
28:18We still had to positively identify the body, so we obtained DNA from Mike Shaver's dad, and positively and quickly
28:28identified him through DNA.
28:31We were really hoping that we could find him and, you know, say, hey, you got to be in touch
28:35with your family better, but it was Michael Shaver.
28:44News came on, and it said, breaking news, body found in backyard, and all of a sudden, I see Mike's
28:51picture up on the screen, and I'm like, no.
28:58At that point, I just, I started to cry, and I looked at my wife and I said, that bitch
29:05murdered him.
29:10Mike's remains were autopsied, and it was discovered his cause of death was a single gunshot wound to the back
29:16of the head, and his manner of death was homicide.
29:19The projectile used to kill Mike was still in his skull when we found the body, and it was determined
29:24to be a .38 caliber class projectile.
29:27I called Lori and told her that we discovered human remains in her backyard.
29:37This is Lori.
29:38Hey, Lori, it's Jared Strickland with the Sheriff's Office.
29:40Hi.
29:41If you have a second, I would like to just run over this list and let you know the items
29:44that we can take.
29:45Okay, absolutely.
29:47A HP laptop, additional swabs, and human skeletal remains.
29:54Okay, thank you.
29:55Okay, bye-bye.
29:58So, after I told Lori that we found human skeletal remains in her backyard, she said, thank you, much like
30:05you would at a drive-thru or a grocery store when you check out.
30:09What was your reaction to that?
30:14I think that a normal person, their response is going to be a little bit more dramatic than the one
30:21that I received.
30:22I immediately thought to myself, this woman killed him.
30:28At this point, authorities believe all signs are pointing to Lori Shaver, but they're looking for more circumstantial evidence to
30:35build their case against her.
30:37Although having your husband's body buried on your property does make Lori look guilty, that doesn't 100% guarantee that
30:44she's the person who killed him or who put him there.
30:47According to the autopsy, we knew that Mike had been deceased for quite a while, but this didn't match up
30:54with Mike's social media and text at that time.
30:58So, one of the things we did was look back at times when his family thought they were texting him
31:03or he was posting on Facebook and try to find out who was actually behind that social media presence.
31:09We noticed that after November of 2015, when Mike would update his Facebook page or make a post, the IP
31:17address would come back to the same IP address that Lori, sometimes within a few minutes, would use to update
31:24her Facebook, which told us that these posts, they were being made at the same location.
31:31Knowing she's under suspicion for Mike's murder, Lori Shaver reaches out to her attorney, Jeffrey Wiggs.
31:39I wanted to ask you about the sheriff's office investigation.
31:42I have him.
31:43You have an attorney?
31:44I have an attorney, Steve.
31:46Early on, Lori Shaver relayed to me that she had not shot Michael Shaver.
31:54We met with the prosecutor and I said, well, there's some other actors in this.
32:00Lori's attorney gave us two names.
32:02One was J.A. Townsend and the other one was James Ballew.
32:05The men that Lori had affairs with in the past.
32:10And when we interviewed Jay and his wife, his wife told us the story about the flowers and the months
32:16worth of text messages between her and Mike, who we now know was most likely deceased when that took place.
32:23I found that flowers had been purchased using Lori Shaver's bank account.
32:30So that was a clue that Lori is the person that sent the flowers and not Mike.
32:37That was a pretty big slip up from Lori.
32:43In September of 2020, the prosecutor believes that they have enough circumstantial evidence for an arrest.
32:51Breaking at noon, the wife of a man whose remains were found buried in a backyard has been arrested two
32:56years after the discovery.
32:57The Lake County Sheriff's Office just arrested Lori Shaver on a warrant of second degree homicide.
33:02Lori, however, maintains her innocence.
33:05And while out on bail, she even posts a video to YouTube asking people to donate for her legal fees.
33:12I'm coming before you guys today just to let you know that we have our suspicions.
33:18But I don't know why I've been targeted, why I've been set up or charged with this heinous crime.
33:25I am not guilty.
33:28Lori told me, Michael was really very controlling.
33:32He battered and abused her for years.
33:35And it was an atmosphere of a lot of violence.
33:39100% it broke my heart to have Mike painted in that light.
33:42Because honestly, I don't think he had a bad bone in his body.
33:47Lori's out on bail for about four years.
33:49And it finally goes to trial in September 2024.
33:54As the trial begins, no one could have anticipated the surprise theory the defense puts forward of how Mike died.
34:02Lori and Mike's 16-year-old daughter, Isabel, who would have been seven years old at the time of Mike's
34:07death, is called to the stand.
34:10My name is Isabel Shaver.
34:12The story was that the seven-year-old heard Mike and Lori getting into an argument in the house.
34:20My mom and my father were fighting.
34:21And he pushed her onto the ground.
34:24He was saying that he was going to kill her at this time.
34:27I heard my mom screaming for help.
34:29So I went to my mom's room.
34:31I grabbed her gun.
34:36And I shot him.
34:48What happened after you shot him?
34:51Jeremy came, and he took the gun from me.
34:54And then he shot him again.
34:55And that's when he fell to the ground.
35:00Isabel is referring to Jay Townsend, whose full name is Jeremy Townsend.
35:04According to Isabel, Lori had met Jay a month before Mike disappeared.
35:09Seemingly out of nowhere, Jay appears to deal with the situation.
35:14Mike's still alive, so he grabs the gun from her and shoots him again.
35:19Tells Lori to take the kids to school.
35:21I'll take care of the body.
35:25But when they cross-examined her, you'll see that it doesn't make sense.
35:30You definitively said I shot him in the back of the head, correct?
35:33Correct.
35:33I don't know where the bullet went, but that's where I was aiming.
35:36That's where I'm pretty sure it hit.
35:37He was almost like seizing, correct?
35:39Yeah.
35:40So clearly you hit him.
35:41Yeah.
35:42But you're saying Mr. Townsend came over and took your mom's gun from you.
35:47The same one I had, yes.
35:48And shot him again.
35:50Yes.
35:50Where?
35:51In the head.
35:54There's just one problem.
35:56There was only one bullet hole in the back of a skull.
36:02It pissed a lot of us off that she would try to blame this on her daughter.
36:07What mother would let their daughter take the fall for their crime?
36:12This is totally different than what Isabel told investigators back in 2020.
36:16When Mike's remains were first found, she said that she has no idea what happened to her dad
36:21and that he just disappeared.
36:23I've never met Lori, but just from investigating this case, she seems to manipulate, even though
36:29she loves the most, to get what she wants.
36:33Lori wanted it to be essentially a self-defense claim, but she couldn't take responsibility and
36:38say, I shot Mike.
36:40Someone else had to shoot Mike.
36:41A seven-year-old can't dispose of a body.
36:44She couldn't take responsibility for that even.
36:47Her boyfriend had to swoop out of nowhere and dispose of the body.
36:51Later in the trial, Lori Shaver takes the stand in her own defense.
36:56The defense would call Lori Shaver.
36:59I had recommended that Lori not testify, but I think she wanted to get her word in.
37:06Lori's testimony lines up pretty closely with Isabel's.
37:10What's Isabel do?
37:12She had fired a gunshot.
37:16Okay.
37:16The next thing I recall is seeing Jay, Jeremy, and hearing the gunshot essentially at the
37:26same time.
37:28When Jeremy said, I'll take care of this, did you have any reason to believe that that
37:34body was on your property?
37:36No, never.
37:37And how big was your property?
37:40And out of all of that land, you just happened to choose the area where your dead husband's
37:48body was found to put that cement slab, that's right?
37:51Because they did not know his body was there.
37:53It went there because that area was already dug out.
37:56Quite a coincidence.
37:58The trial lasts about a week, and the jury comes back with a decision in less than a day.
38:08The state of Florida versus Lori Shaver.
38:11We, the jury, find as follows, as count one of the charge, the defendant is guilty of second
38:17degree murder.
38:25Michael's family, you could tell there was just a sense of relief.
38:29It had been nine years for them from the time they last saw him.
38:33Your thoughts as soon as that verdict came down?
38:35Elation.
38:39Elation.
38:40We were very happy.
38:41This was a long time coming.
38:42Finally, they got to see the end result and justice served.
38:45While this will not bring our beloved Michael back, our family can finally, after all these
38:51years, start to get closure.
38:54When I learned she was guilty of killing Mike, I dropped down to the ground on my knees and
39:00I cried.
39:01My friend finally got justice.
39:05But then I was like, crap, what about the kids?
39:08When you see the Shaver kids hearing that their mom is guilty of second degree murder and
39:14then going to prison for the rest of her life?
39:16I mean, there's no winners.
39:19After the trial, Michael Shaver's parents filed a petition to gain custody of those kids.
39:27But Lori's given Travis, her husband, power of attorney to take care of the children.
39:34I do feel this was an abusive relationship with Lori being the abuser.
39:39I think that what prevented him from coming forward was he wanted to keep his family together
39:44and he wanted to be a father to his kids.
39:48Ultimately, that abuse led to the extreme and Lori murdered Mike.
40:09Having Mike in your life was a blessing because the level of dedication that he showed to not
40:16only his kids and his friends is unparalleled.
40:21You will never find that in most people.
40:24He was always that man you could depend on every single time.
40:29Mike is definitely, truly missed.
40:31There's honestly not a day that goes by that I actually don't think about him.
40:35I think about him quite a lot.
40:36I think about him quite a lot.
41:18There's blood all over her face and all on the back of her head.
41:21There were so many bizarre elements to this case.
41:2425-year-old Mariah Wilson shot multiple times.
41:28Whoever did this, it was a very personal act.
41:32I want to hear from you.
41:34I think you know what happened.
41:35I'm veryители Milwaukee like‽
41:35long, toarse I had more «neboom-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to
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