Murder charge filed as search for bodies continues on western Missouri property

DREXEL, Mo. -- A rural Missouri man who told police he dismembered and burned the bodies of seven men in his bedroom fireplace was charged Sunday with one count of murder.

Michael Lee Shaver Jr., 33, was charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action related to a killing that occurred around the fall of 2001. Officials say Shaver told investigators he has killed seven people on the property, all of whom he met through narcotics transactions.

Authorities did not know when he would be arraigned.

Cass County Sheriff's Capt. Chuck Stocking said Shaver, who was arrested Friday after a failed carjacking, didn't rule out the possibility that Shaver might have been exaggerating about the killings.

"He can say that he killed 50, but we have to prove that he actually did," Stocking said.

Shaver and another man, Nathan Wasmer, 27, of Peculiar, were in a speeding vehicle Friday morning that went off the side of the road and wrecked, Stocking said. He said the two men tried to carjack a witness, but fled after they couldn't get into the woman's vehicle.

The witness told a 911 dispatcher that the two men were armed with guns. The men were tracked down to a residential area, where Wasmer surrendered after an hour-long standoff and Shaver was found about a half-hour later hiding in a nearby yard, officials said.

Stocking said Shaver told deputies as he was being placed into a patrol car that he had knowledge of human remains on the wooded rural Drexel property where he lives, and that he wanted to talk to someone about it.

"It was a spontaneous statement he made while he was being interviewed for the carjacking," said Stocking, who added that he was skeptical of the claims, at first.

"I didn't believe him," Stocking said. "I just flat didn't believe him."

While being interviewed later Friday, Shaver told investigators that he had shot and killed seven people at his residence during drug transactions so he could take money and drugs from the victims.

Shaver claimed that after he killed the men -- all between the ages of 20 and 40 and from the Kansas City area -- he dismembered the bodies, burned the parts in a fireplace in his bedroom, then used a hammer to crush large bones and skulls, authorities and the probable case statement said.

Shaver said he then spread the bone fragments around his back yard.

A search warrant was issued Friday evening, and the first bone fragments were found later that night on the 3- to 5-acre rural property northeast of Drexel in western Missouri, near the Kansas border.

Officers on Sunday were doing the tedious work of staking 4-foot grids around the property, where bone fragments from at least two people have been found.

The bone fragments that have been identified as human by a forensic anthropologist were only 1- to 1 1/2-inches in diameter. Members of the Missouri State Highway Patrol's crash investigation team were placing the grids around the property, which would help investigators eventually put evidence locations on a computer, Cass County Cpl. Kevin Tieman said.

"We're talking about bone fragments the size of gravel, and if we are looking for as many as six sets of human remains we want to log wherever the evidence is," Tieman said, adding that all the bones found so far had been on or near the surface.

"There are no areas where we are going to have to do heavy digging," Tieman said.

The deaths are believed to have occurred starting about five years ago, coinciding with when Shaver moved into the house. The most recent remains were only several months old, Tieman said.

Sheriff Dwight Diehl said it would be difficult to identify the victims.

"It's not uncommon for people in the drug trade to disappear for months or years," he said.

Neighbors described Shaver as a heavy drinking, loud, unfriendly man whom they had believed was involved in criminal activity.

Russ Feeback, a neighbor who drove past on an all-terrain vehicle as law enforcement searched the property, said the heavily tattooed Shaver was a "basic, prison-looking guy." He said people in the rural area noticed a lot of traffic at the house, and often heard Shaver yelling.

"It's just all the traffic," Feeback said. "Everyone likes it quiet and he's out here hollering and screaming. And every once in a while there would be a gunshot. I just tried to stay away from him."

Neighbors said the Shaver lived with his mother and her boyfriend or husband, and another man may have lived at the house. Shaver's mother, Shirley A. Bryson, 53, was released on bond Sunday on a charge of hindering prosecution, which stemmed from an incident at the house Thursday that involved Wasmer.

Tieman confirmed information from neighbors that the owner of the land was trying to evict the people because of a dispute over the home, but said that was not related to the deaths on the property.

Keith McMeins, who lives across the street from the suspect, described Shaver as "worthless."

"How can I start?" McMeins said. "I've had him over here before. He's stolen some of my stuff."

McMeins said Shaver was sometimes with women who were "too young and too good-looking for him," and he often heard screaming, expletive-laced fights between the man and his mother. Neighbors also complained that Shaver trespassed on their property to cut down trees for firewood.

Tieman said county officers had been to the property about a dozen times in the last five years.

Drexel is about 55 miles south of Kansas City.