Boyfriend Charged With Woman's Murder As Kids Waited At Bus Stop

MOULTRIE, GA — The boyfriend of Shada Esther — who went missing while her three children waited for her at the school bus stop — has been arrested for her 2016 murder.

On Tuesday, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Moultrie Police Department, with help from the St. Tammany’s Parish Sheriff’s Office in Louisiana, arrested Michael Heads, 49, for the Aug. 23, 2016, murder of Esther. Heads was also charged with two counts of felony financial transaction card fraud. He was located in Slidell, Louisiana.

On Aug. 25, 2016, the Moultrie Police Department asked the GBI to help with a missing
person’s investigation after Esther was reported missing by family when she did not pick
up her children at a school bus stop. Investigators determined that Esther was last seen with her live-in boyfriend, Heads. Police say he left Moultrie and traveled to Atlanta within an hour of Esther’s last contact with anyone else.

Authorities interviewed Heads and his vehicle was processed for evidence in August 2016. He was not taken into custody at that time. Leads in the investigation continued to be followed. Heads later moved to Slidell, Louisiana.

In February 2017, the GBI Region 11 field office in Athens was asked by the Banks County Sheriff’s Office to process a scene where human remains were found in a wooded area in Banks County, Georgia. An anthropologist who reviewed the remains noted that they had similarities to Esther and earlier this month the remains were confirmed by DNA analysis to be those of Shada Esther.