#7 - Laurie Shaver In February of 2018, a man contacted the Lake
County Sheriff's Office in Florida about a friend of his named Michael Shaver, whom he hadn’t seen
in person for over 2 years. Deputies were sent to Shaver’s home, near Clermont, where they were met
by his wife, Laurie. She reportedly told them that the last time she’d seen her husband was roughly
3 years prior, when he’d left her and their kids. The officers requested to search the premises with
cadaver dogs, but Laurie refused and told them to come back with a warrant. Less than a month later,
deputies returned with the aforementioned document in hand. It granted them the authority to scour
the Shavers’ property with detection dogs and ground-penetrating radar devices. It didn’t take
long for law enforcement to find Michael’s body, which had been buried 3 feet beneath a concrete
fire pit in the backyard. A medical examiner subsequently conducted an autopsy on the remains
and it was determined that Michael had suffered a single gunshot wound to the back of the head
“several months to several years” prior to being found in the shallow grave outside his house.
Following an official investigation into the matter, Laurie was taken into police custody
in September of 2020. The woman, who’d taken the surname Filmer after remarrying in 2016,
insisted that she was in no way involved in her former husband’s death and pleaded not guilty
to a charge of second-degree murder. Many of the victim’s friends and family members had continued
to receive messages from Michael’s Facebook account, even after his death. Prosecutors put
forward the argument that it was actually Laurie who’d kept up the communications in an attempt to
cover up the murder. She’d also drained Michael’s bank accounts and sold off many of his possessions
in the weeks after she’d allegedly killed him. As of recent updates on the case, a start date for
Laurie’s trial hadn’t yet been scheduled. #6 - Frank Freshwaters
While speeding down an Akron roadway, on July the 3rd of 1957, Ohio man Frank Freshwaters fatally
struck a US Army veteran. He subsequently pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced
to a maximum of 20 years at the Ohio State Reformatory, a prison famous for being featured
as the titular facility in the acclaimed 1994 film The Shawshank Redemption. Freshwaters reportedly
exhibited good behavior at the reformatory and was quickly able to gain the trust of prison
officials. In order for him to serve the remainder of his sentence, he was transferred to the
Sandusky Honor Farm, a minimum-security facility in Perkins Township. In September of 1959,
however, Freshwaters escaped from the honor farm under circumstances that have never been disclosed
to the public. He spent the next 56 years as a fugitive from justice, but was on the verge
of being taken back into custody in 1975. The authorities in Kanawha County, West Virginia,
had found Freshwaters living under an assumed name and arrested him. However, the state’s
governor ultimately declined to extradite him back to Ohio, and he was released. Freshwaters remained
undetected for the next four decades until an investigation into his whereabouts was reopened
by a US Marshals cold case unit in northern Ohio. The authorities determined that Freshwaters had
been living somewhere near Melbourne, Florida, and they ultimately arrested him without incident
at his live-in trailer. It was discovered that the man had obtained a Social Security card under the
name William Harold Cox, which he’d used to seek work as a truck driver and a mobile librarian.
Following a brief stint at the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, Freshwaters was
released on parole in June of 2016. #5 - Jerry Hearn
In 2013, the authorities in Oklahoma City began investigating a man named Kenneth Watson, who,
for the better part of a decade, had been residing in a house in the 2300 block of Northeast 23rd
Street. Watson lived with his girlfriend and was reported to have publicly claimed to be a retired
police officer. One of his neighbors would later tell investigators that she’d always been somewhat
suspicious of the man given that he almost never left his house. On April the 1st of 2013,
FBI agents arrived at Watson’s home to arrest him. It subsequently emerged that the individual
known as Kenneth Watson was actually a 53-year-old fugitive named Jerry Hearn.
The man was wanted in Arizona in connection to several crimes committed in the summer of 2003.
Hearn’s spree reportedly included him robbing a bank, two restaurants, and a convenience store.
In early 2013, the FBI received a tip that Hearn had assumed the identity of Kenneth Watson,
a man who’d moved out of Oklahoma in 2003. Upon his arrest, Hearn was extradited back to Arizona,
where he faced charges of armed robbery and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
#4 - Joseph and Lara Selders 21-year-old Blase Wright Jr. was fatally shot
in the head during an attempted burglary at his apartment in Universal City, Texas, on February
the 2nd of 2007. An eyewitness claimed to have seen a man fleeing from the apartment following
the shooting. Before the bystander had a chance to positively identify him, however, he’d gotten into
a gold car and was driven away from the scene. The Universal City Police Department launched
an investigation into the murder, but it failed to generate any actionable leads for more than a
decade. Then, in July of 2020, after the case had gone cold for 13 years, investigators broke new
ground in their efforts of identifying a potential suspect. A Universal City detective had been
sifting through the case’s evidence files with a Texas Ranger. Together, they realized that a woman
depicted in a previously created composite sketch closely resembled an individual by the name of
Lara Selders, who’d been a person of interest in the case but was never interviewed by the police.
34-year-old Selders was subsequently brought in for questioning, at which point she allegedly
confessed to serving as the getaway driver for the burglary that had resulted in Wright’s death.
A second suspect, named as Joseph Selders, was arrested a short time later, after being
identified as the person who’d shot the victim. Lara maintained that she was unaware that Joseph
had killed Wright until she saw her composite sketch on the news a few days later. Nevertheless,
both she and the alleged shooter faced capital murder charges in the wake of their arrests.
#3 - Sarah Panitzke
Born to a wealthy family from Northeast England, Sarah Panitzke was eventually recruited by a
notorious gang of tax criminals that was led by Geoffrey Johnson. Panitzke worked alongside
a group of duplicitous companies that bought inexpensive, tax-free cell phones from overseas
countries. The devices were then illegally sold in the United Kingdom, for a considerable profit.
An investigation conducted by the HM Revenue and Customs department led to the gang’s 18 members
getting arrested and brought to trial at Kingston Crown Court on fraud charges. Panitzke received
an 8-year jail sentence herself. However, in May of 2013, she absconded from justice
prior to the conclusion of her trial. Pantizke remained on the run for the next several years,
leading to her being named as one of the UK’s most wanted fugitives, thus becoming the first woman
to have ever been placed on the list. In late February of 2022, Panitzke was located in the
small Spanish town of Santa Barbara. Government officials in Spain reported that local police
had tracked her down before, in 2015, prompting her to flee once again. In the wake of her second
flight from justice, she’d changed her physical appearance and cut off all communication with
family members. Investigators eventually received a tip that she’d been hiding out in Santa Barbara,
and she was ultimately taken into custody while walking her 2 dogs. As of the latest updates on
the matter, the National Crime Agency had already set extradition proceedings into motion in order
to bring Panitzke back to the UK. #2 - Nichole Rice
On June the 4th of 2007, Anita Knutson’s father went to her apartment in Minot, North Dakota,
after she hadn’t been answering phone calls or showing up to work for a couple of days. When he
arrived at his daughter’s residence, the man came upon her lifeless body lying face down on her bed.
He called the police who, in their examination of the scene, found a pocket knife coated with dried
blood. Knutson’s death was officially ruled a homicide by stab wounds that had caused her
to bleed out. Police records indicated that the victim had last been heard from in the early hours
of June the 3rd, when she’d sent a text message to her friend. From the onset of the investigation,
Minot detectives considered Knutson’s roommate, Nichole Rice, to be a person of interest. Although
she’d told investigators that she was out of town at the time the murder was committed,
Rice was one of only a few individuals that had keys to the apartment she shared with Knutson.
This aspect would’ve made it possible for her to get into the home without rousing suspicion. Law
enforcement officials also learned that there had been considerable tension between Rice and Knutson
in the weeks and months prior to the latter’s murder. The case went cold for a number of years
due to a lack of evidence, but Minot police continued to receive “numerous tips” that
suggested Rice might’ve been the killer. A man who’d dated her for several months reported that,
after getting “belligerently drunk” at a party, she’d admitted to fatally stabbing Knutson.
Investigators also found inconsistencies in Rice’s alibi for the night of the murder,
as she’d been seen at a bar during the time period in which she’d claimed to have been at
her family’s farm. After re-interviewing multiple people with knowledge pertinent to the case, Minot
police issued a warrant for 34-year-old Rice’s arrest in March of 2022, and she was charged
with one count of murder. Her preliminary hearing was scheduled to take place the following month.
#1 - Sheila Keen-Warren
On the morning of May the 26th of 1990, Florida woman Marlene Warren heard a knock on the front
door of her upscale Wellington home. Upon opening the door, Warren was met by an individual wearing
a clown costume, an orange wig, and white face paint. The unannounced visitor handed her some
flowers and foil balloons before abruptly pulling out a handgun and shooting her in
the face. The assailant then fled the scene in a vehicle, leaving Warren in critical condition in
her doorway. Investigators initially postulated that the attack, which resulted in Warren’s death
at the hospital several days later, might have been carried out by Sheila Keen, who was
identified as Warren’s love rival. As was gathered from interviews with friends and relatives,
Keen had been having an affair with the victim’s husband, giving her a clear potential motive for
wanting to eliminate her. Several years after Warren’s killing, Keen married the slain woman’s
husband and officially took the name Sheila Keen-Warren. Although the police long-suspected
that the latter might have been responsible for the murder, they didn’t have enough evidence
to arrest her for nearly three decades. The situation would experience a dramatic shift,
in 2017, when advanced DNA technology allowed forensic analysts to test a piece of hair that had
been found in the killer’s getaway vehicle. It was determined that the hair belonged to Keen-Warren,
who was arrested in Virginia, where she’d been living with her husband, Michael Warren. After
she was formally charged with the murder, her trial was scheduled to begin in June of 2022.
Thanks for watching! Would you rather be a wanted fugitive or live under the constant
threat of being drafted to the army? Let us know in the comments section below!