FRANK BYERS TOLD OFFICERS HE WASN'T HAPPY WHEN HIS WIFE WENT ON A DATE, BUT HE DIDN'T STOP HER. NOW HER. NOW HE’S CHARGED WITH MURDER
By EMILY PALMER
As Frank Byers watched through a window of his house in Macomb, Okla., his wife, Makayla Meave-Byers, stepped into an older-model white pickup truck in the driveway and drove off with an unidentified man—never to be seen again. At least that’s what Frank told authorities when he reported that Makayla—a 30-year-old teacher’s aide and devoted mother to her blended family’s six children—was missing on Sept. 16, 2023.
Frank, an environmental management technician, fought back tears two weeks later when he told a local TV reporter that his wife had left home on a date with another man. “When she told me she wanted an open marriage, I was upset, but I didn’t want to lose her, so I agreed,” he said. “[I’m in] pure hell. I am constantly worried about her, messaging her and texting her. Even today I called her.”
Immediately suspicious of Frank, whom Makayla had reportedly suspected of infidelity, Makayla’s extended family dismissed his story about an open marriage. “Makayla wanted no part of that. Never would,” says her sister Andria, 34. They searched alongside sheriff’s officers for the missing mom in the wooded areas surrounding the couple’s remote 10-acre property, and five days later a cousin made a chilling discovery: Makayla’s body, shot twice in the head and wrapped in carpet, had been stuffed into a narrow drainage culvert about 2,000 ft. from the Byerses’ home.
Inside the couple’s main house and a small shed outside, where Makayla had recently been staying, Pottawatomie County Sheriff’s Office investigators claimed to find a recently fired .22 rifle, .22 shell casings and stains identified through DNA as Makayla’s blood on Frank’s work boots. They also found text messages on Frank’s phone allegedly sent to a woman whom he had met at a gas station and with whom he hoped to pursue a relationship, according to an arrest affidavit. Frank, 32, was taken into custody last Oct. 24 on suspicion of first-degree murder in Makayla’s death, unauthorized removal of a dead body and desecration of a corpse. (Byers has pleaded not guilty and maintains his innocence.) “He treated Makayla like she was nothing,” says her mother, Barbara Harper, 55, “and discarded her like she was nothing.”
⬤⬤⬤
The thing that Makayla wanted most while growing up in rural Oklahoma was to have children. “When she was 20, she got pregnant and lost the baby, and that was hard for her,” says her mother. Makayla went on to adopt two teens from foster care before reconnecting with Frank, a high school classmate with four daughters from a previous relationship. They married in 2022. “With Frank, she had an already made family,” says stepfather Scott Harper, 55. Strains developed when Makayla suspected Frank of cheating, she told family members, and she moved out briefly in 2023. She then returned to raise the family’s young children—who are now with their biological mom; Makayla’s older kids, now adults, are living on their own—while she lived in the shed outside. “I’d just like to ask Frank, ‘Why couldn’t you just let her leave?’ says Scott. You’ve destroyed many lives with the choice that you made that day.”
COUNTERCLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM RIGHT: COURTESY CAITLYN SNOW; KOKH-TV OKLAHOMA CITY; KOCO-TV OKLAHOMA CITY; POTTAWATOMIE COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE(2)