Martinsburg man and his wife sentenced in Coast Guard desertion case

MARTINSBURG, W.Va. — A Martinsburg man who was convicted in the fabrication of his death to cover his desertion from the U.S. Coast Guard was sentenced last week in U.S. District Court to five years of probation, according to court records.

Larry C. Shelby, who pleaded guilty in August to one count of aiding and abetting a hoax causing the Coast Guard to render unnecessary aid, also was ordered by U.S. District Judge Gina M. Groh to pay $50,688 in restitution at his sentencing hearing in Martinsburg on Wednesday, court records said.

Shelby's wife, Karen Shelby, who pleaded guilty to one count of making a false statement, was sentenced by Groh to serve 10 months in prison, records said.

Following the prison sentence, she is to be placed on three years of supervised release. Karen Shelby also was ordered to pay $30,000 in restitution, records said.

The court recommended that the Bureau of Prisons incarcerate her at a federal prison close to St. Louis, Mo., records said.

The couple also were ordered to be held liable for paying the specified restitution in both cases to the Coast Guard and others.

Prosecutors claimed that Shelby conspired with his wife to fabricate his death by abandoning his vehicle, writing suicide notes, concealing his identity and isolating himself in a remote cabin in West Virginia. At the time, Shelby was a noncommissioned officer, federal prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said that Karen Shelby told authorities that her husband was missing and that she was unaware of his location or whether he was alive.

Those misrepresentations caused the Coast Guard to spend more than $100,000 in a search for Larry Shelby, prosecutors said.

In February 2014, Larry Shelby returned from the remote cabin to his Martinsburg residence until June 2014, U.S. Attorney William J. Ihlenfeld has said in a news release.

Prosecutors had claimed that Larry Shelby drove his vehicle to the Harpers Ferry, W.Va., area in Jefferson County on Nov. 29, 2013, and abandoned it near the Shenandoah River.

Prosecutors also had said that Karen Shelby told the Coast Guard on Dec. 1, 2013, that Shelby left West Virginia for St. Louis, and she did not know where he was.

On June 26, 2014, prosecutors said that Shelby falsely represented to a West Virginia State Police trooper that he was another person, and presented the man's driver's license during a traffic stop, which led to the couple's indictment, records said.

Mattew Umstead 

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