Left: Margaret Shafe (Shawnee County Jail). Right: Greg Shafe (Bath-Naylor Funeral Home).
A 31-year-old Kansas woman is headed to prison for decades for murdering her U.S. Army soldier husband as he held their baby, while her 9-year-old daughter brushed her hair in a nearby bathroom.
Margaret E. Shafe on Friday was sentenced to 293 months — over 24 years — in prison for the February 2024 shooting death of her husband Greg Shafe on the Fort Riley military base, the U.S. Attorney”s Office for the District of Kansas said in a press release. A jury convicted her of second-degree murder on Valentine’s Day.
According to a sentencing memorandum, Margaret Shafe threatened to kill her husband just minutes before she followed through on the act on Feb. 19, 2024.
“I’m going to make him feel my f—ing pain, and he just laughs at me,” she said just after 7 p.m. on the night of the murder. “And you know I’m the one that gets the last laugh. And I’ve been trying – and I’ve been trying, and I want him dead!”
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About 20 minutes later, she grabbed her husband’s gun, walked up to the second-floor of their home and waited until he reached the landing. Once he did, she fired and hit him in the face as he held their 11-month-old. He fell into the bathroom where his 9-year-old stepdaughter was brushing her hair.
The 9-year-old screamed and hid in the shower before she grabbed her younger sister and called her father to tell him what just happened. He called 911. Neither child was physically injured.
Margaret Shafe grabbed the kids, hopped in the car while intoxicated and drove off base. Authorities arrested her a few hours later. She tried to paint her husband as a “porn addict and implied that he had a sexual interest in children,” prosecutors wrote.
While in jail, she bragged about killing her husband and even threw a “f— you” birthday party for him, making confetti out of paper scraps.
“The defendant showed a complete lack of remorse for her unjustifiable actions,” the memo said.
Prosecutors said the murder was the “culmination of years of physical and emotional abuse.” Margaret Shafe, while intoxicated, would often belittle and boss around her husband while threatening to leave with their child, according to the memo.
During the trial, the 9-year-old girl testified against her mother which helped prosecutors secure a conviction.
“Margaret Shafe deserves to go to prison. The evidence in this case showed she murdered her husband while the couple’s two young daughters were in the home,” U.S. Attorney Ryan A. Kriegshauser said in a statement. “The Court heard brave testimony from Ms. Shafe’s own daughter who witnessed her mother shoot her stepfather in a fury.”
