SHAWNEE, OK — For Lt. Dakota Black, the search for Makayla Meave became one of the most painful cases of her career. Black, a trained tracker and detective with the Pottawatomie County Sheriff’s Office, said she will remember the murder for the rest of her life because of how cruel it was.
Meave, a teacher’s aide and aspiring educator from Macomb, Oklahoma, was reported missing in September 2023. What began as a missing-person call quickly turned into a homicide investigation, with deputies, family members and neighbors fanning out across rural Pottawatomie County to look for her. Black and her team ultimately built a circumstantial case that led to the arrest of Meave’s husband, Frank Byers, and later to a guilty plea.
A missing-person call that did not add up
The first signs came on a Saturday morning when Meave’s sister, Andria Meave, got an alarming call from Byers saying Makayla had not come home after a Friday night date with a bald man in a white truck. At first, Andria says she assumed her sister, who was in the middle of a divorce, may simply have stayed out longer than expected.
That changed when repeated calls went to voicemail and Makayla missed a family obligation at the restaurant. Byers also called 911 to report her missing. Deputies then went to the couple’s property, where Byers lived in a separate structure on the same 10-acre parcel. The first responding deputy, Dustin Richardson, later said the story felt off almost immediately.
Byers also told officers he and Makayla had an open marriage, but family members later said that did not match what they knew about the relationship. Investigators say that early gap between Byers’ account and the family’s version became important as the search intensified.
Deputies found shell casings and a recently fired gun
When Deputy Richardson returned to the property, he found signs that made the case more suspicious. He saw empty shell casings that appeared to be .22 caliber and learned that Makayla kept a gun in the home. Richardson said the firearm looked recently fired, so he called in the sheriff’s criminal investigation team.
Investigators also learned that Byers had smashed open the lock to Makayla’s place with a hammer after saying he did not have a key. That detail, along with the shell casings, pushed the inquiry beyond a routine missing-person report. Family and friends had already started searching the property and nearby woods, but deputies were now treating the situation as potentially criminal.
As the search expanded, the property was secured and the driveway blocked. Barbara Harper, Makayla’s mother, remembers begging God to let the family find her daughter. The scene was no longer about locating a missing woman alive; it was becoming a recovery effort.
Friends, family and hundreds of tips poured in
Black and then-Detective Marcus May issued a BOLO for a white male with a beard and bald head driving a white truck. In a small rural area where people know one another well, the tips came in fast. Every white pickup with tinted windows seemed to draw attention, though none of the reported sightings turned out to be Makayla’s husband.
The search widened across the county. Flyers went up, social media posts spread, and volunteers pushed through mud, cold rain and tick-infested woods looking for the 30-something mother and teacher’s aide. May said Makayla was beloved and that the community wanted every resource used to bring her home.
Black, who often works with a therapy dog named Haven, said the family’s grief was visible everywhere she turned. For her, the case had personal weight too, because she felt a connection to Makayla as someone who understood the danger of bad relationships.
Detectives say Byers’ story kept breaking down
Three days after Makayla was reported missing, Byers sat for an audio-only interview with Black. She tried to keep him talking, asking about the date he said Makayla had gone on, where she had met the man and whether he had seen him. Byers said he had been trying to defend himself because people were pointing fingers at him.
But detectives say his behavior kept raising alarms. He did not join any search parties, and Black and May said he appeared focused on what investigators knew rather than on finding his wife. They also later learned from interviews and social media activity that Byers had a pattern of cheating and using false stories to lure women into relationships.
That pattern mattered because family members said Makayla had moved out months earlier, then returned only to stay in a separate structure so she could remain close to the children she had helped raise. Her sister says Makayla had recorded a conversation in which she told Byers she was done with the marriage.
The body was found in a drainage pipe beneath a road
Five days after Makayla disappeared, a cousin and a friend searching near the home noticed a strong smell in a ditch off Hamilton Road. The friend followed it to a tin horn, a drainage pipe under the roadway, and saw a hand. That was the call Black had feared from the start.
Investigators found Makayla’s body wrapped in a carpet and hidden in the pipe. Black said the details of the scene were devastating, from the way the body had been covered to the personal items still visible on her. The discovery confirmed the family’s worst fears and deepened the focus on Byers.
Black said she wanted to arrest him immediately, but investigators kept building the case carefully. They believed Byers had shot Makayla in the head, moved her body after the killing and then staged a story around her disappearance.
Blood on boots and a guilty plea closed the case
The evidence kept stacking up over the following weeks. Detectives tracked down a Walmart receipt and camera image showing bleach, ammonia and a mop in Byers’ cart, items Black said suggested crime-scene cleanup. They also matched the carpet used to wrap Makayla to one a neighbor had once given the couple for their dogs.
Another major breakthrough came from Byers’ work boots. Thirty-eight days after Makayla was reported missing, lab results showed the substance on the boots was Makayla’s blood. Black said that was the moment investigators knew they had their man, and a SWAT-supported arrest followed shortly after.
Byers was charged with first-degree murder. Prosecutors sought the death penalty, but he later accepted a plea deal and agreed to life in prison without parole, 15 months after his arrest. Makayla’s mother called the deal a cop-out and said she believes Byers did not act alone, a suspicion shared by her sister, though detectives say they would pursue any evidence that supports that theory.
Local news that matters, from Dulaney Griffin.
