Bloodstains and shell casings were discovered at the home of the then-missing Oklahoma mother whose body was later found wrapped in a carpet in a ditch — as her husband has retained a lawyer while facing what a friend described as “pure hatred” from the community.
Mom-of-six Makayla Meave-Byers, 30, was reported missing on Sept. 16 by her husband, Frank Byers, who told authorities “she had gone on a date with someone she met on Facebook” as part of their open marriage, according to a newly revealed incident report cited by News9.
But her dad told authorities that the husband’s statements “weren’t adding up” — and that his daughter had “recently asked Byers for a divorce,” the document showed.
When deputies searched the then-missing woman’s home in Macomb — which was separate from where her husband lived nearby — they found broken glass, “blood spots on the floor” and “blood on the sheets of the bed.”
They also found two .22-caliber bullet casings, seemingly matching a .22 rifle that Byers said his wife kept in a cabinet next to his bed in the home, the report said.
The gun appeared to have been recently fired and had residue on the barrel and breach, according to officials.
Meave-Byers’ body was then found Wednesday last week in a nearly 4-foot-deep culvert by a creek running under a road a few miles from her house.
It was wrapped in waterlogged “old pieces of carpet,” Pottawatomie County Undersheriff Travis Dinwiddie told People magazine — stressing that foul play was “absolutely” suspected.
The husband, who had begged for help finding his wife, has since hired an attorney, who told News9 that the husband is cooperating with the investigation.
However, he was barred from attending a vigil for his wife at Lexington High School, where she had worked as a teacher’s aide, with some mourners even parked their trucks to block his view.
“He’s experienced pure hatred from the community,” one of Byers’ friends, Anne Gonzales, told News9.
“He loved her, and still loves her,” said Gonzales. “Everybody just wants justice, including Franky’s side of the family.”
Gonzales also dismissed the blood found at the dead woman’s home, saying: “I was told it was nothing more than a nose bleed.”
Byers previously begged for help finding his wife, writing in a Facebook post: “She means the world to me. She literally is the backbone of our family. I love her deeply. She’s a good woman a great mom.”
On Tuesday, he posted a link to Meave-Byers’ online obituary on his Facebook page.
In its appeals, Pottawatomie County Sheriff’s Office had said that Meave-Byers was last seen “voluntarily” getting into a Chevrolet pickup truck driven by a tall, balding man sporting a dark beard and sunglasses.
It has not updated those appeals, and no arrests have been announced in the case.