Left: Margaret Shafe (Shawnee County Jail). Right: Greg Shafe (Bath-Naylor Funeral Home).
A 31-year-old woman from Kansas has been sentenced to a lengthy prison term for killing her husband, a U.S. Army soldier, while he was holding their infant, as her 9-year-old daughter was in the bathroom brushing her hair nearby.
On Friday, Margaret E. Shafe received a sentence of 293 months, equating to more than 24 years in prison, for the shooting death of her husband, Greg Shafe, at the Fort Riley military base in February 2024, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Kansas. Earlier, a jury found her guilty of second-degree murder on Valentine’s Day. More information can be found in their press release.
A sentencing memorandum revealed that just moments before the crime on Feb. 19, 2024, Margaret Shafe threatened to kill her husband.
“I’m going to make him feel my f—ing pain, and he just laughs at me,” she exclaimed around 7 p.m. on the evening of the shooting. “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!”
Approximately 20 minutes after her threat, she seized her husband’s firearm, went to the second level of their home, and waited for him to appear. As he reached the landing, holding their 11-month-old child, she shot him in the face. He fell into the bathroom where her 9-year-old stepdaughter was present.
The young girl screamed, hid in the shower, and then after gathering her baby sister, contacted her father to report the ordeal. He promptly called 911. Fortunately, both children were unharmed physically.
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.”
