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Oklahoma Man Arrested for Murder After Wife's Body Found Wrapped in Carpet and Left in Ditch
Makayla Meave-Byers vanished and turned up dead five days later. Court records state that Frank Byers’ boots “had a blood like substance on them” that matched his wife’s DNA.
An Oklahoma man has been arrested in the death of his wife, who was found wrapped in a carpet and left dead in a ditch.
Frank Byers was arrested last week on charges of first-degree murder, unauthorized removal of a dead body and desecration of a corpse, Oklahoma City station KOCO-TV reported.
Byers had previously told police that his wife, Makayla Meave-Byers, 30, never returned from a date on September 15, saying the couple was in an open relationship. Now police believe he shot her in the head so he could establish a relationship with another woman, court documents obtained by the station revealed.
“It’s a little bit of a sigh of relief,” Meave-Byers’ mother Barbara Harper told Oklahoma station KFOR after Byers’ arrest. “To us, it feels like it’s been 10 years even though it’s just been a few weeks.”
What happened to Makayla Meave-Byers?
Byers reported his wife missing on September 16. On September 20, Meave-Byers’ body was found in a drainage ditch roughly 2,000 feet from her Pottawatomie County home. Her body was wrapped in a carpet at the time of the discovery. A medical examiner determined she had been shot twice in the head.
“It was definitely placed there by someone; it couldn’t just end up there on its own,” Undersheriff Travis Dinwiddie of the Pottawatomie County Sheriff’s Office told News 9.
What evidence did police allegedly find against Frank Byers?
Investigators executed a search warrant on Byers’ home and gathered evidence that led them to suspect him in his wife's murder. Court records obtained by KFOR stated that Byers’ work boots “had a blood like substance on them” that was tested and positively matched with his wife’s DNA. The documents also noted that investigators found a Walmart receipt listing purchases of bleach, a mop and ammonia, which had the same date as the day Meave-Byers was reported missing.
An arrest warrant obtained by News 9 also said Byers removed the SIM card from his wife’s phone and inserted it into a different phone, logged into her Facebook and fabricated an exchange of texts in regard to her alleged date with another man.
What has Frank Byers said of his wife’s disappearance and death?
Byers said in an interview with Fox 25 released on October 2 that he and Meave-Byers were in an open marriage, and claims she told him that it was none of his business where she goes or who she sees. "I just know she was on Facebook dating and some other apps for dating,” he said. Byers also claimed he was innocent of his wife’s murder, but said that the community was pointing fingers at him. "With everything going on and the public's opinion. It's hard, really hard,” he said. He continued: “I loved her deeply and it pains me that she’s not here.”
Meave-Byers' sister Andria Meave told Fox 25 that she doesn’t believe Byers’ story. She said Meave-Byers was living separately from her husband and was requesting a divorce.
Harper, Meave-Byers’ mother, told KFOR of Byers: “He was at all the family functions. We would have never... I would have never thought he would do something like this.”
Meave-Byers is described in her obituary as being “a vibrant soul" who "loved music and singing and always had a song on her heart.” She was a paraeducator at Macomb Public Schools and in addition to her husband, is survived by six children, her parents and two sisters, according to the obituary.
