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Your host journalist and author Dan Zufanski. Good Evening, the best selling author of Undercover of the Night, recounts Laura Akerson's disappearance and murder in North Carolina, the discovery of her remains in Texas, and the aftermath. On July thirteenth, twenty eleven, Laura Jean Akerson of Kingston, North Carolina, went to pick up her two Toddler's sons. It would be
the last time she was seen alive. Two weeks later, detective searching for the missing mother made a gruesome discovery on the shores of Oyster Creek near Richmond, Texas, the dismembered body parts of a young woman whom they were
able to identify as lawyer Akerson. Laura's ex Grant Hayes, the father of her two sons, and his wife, Amanda, the mother of his newborn daughter, both pointed the finger at each other as the one guilty of murdering Laura, cutting upper body, and then transporting and disposing of the remains. This is the hauntingly true story of a devoted mother, a disturbed couple, and how these horrific events came to pass.
The book they were featuring this evening is Bitter Remains, a custody battle, a gruesome crime, and the mother who paid the ultimate price. With my special guest, journalist and author Diane Fanning. Welcome back to the program, and thank you very much for agreeing this interview. Diane Fanning.
Good evening, Dan, I hope you're doing well tonight.
I am doing very well. Thank you very much, Diane. For those out there, just for the record, Dan Fanning was our very very first guest, and here she is once again with another soon to be true crime classic. Thank you very much.
Dan.
Let's set up this a little bit by of course, you are a person that knows about all things Texan, So tell us a little bit where this area really is, this Oyster Creek, and before we talk about North Carolina, but where this is in Texas, and tell us a little bit about some of the two locations before we get into this macabre tale.
This is a location that is near Houston, Texas, and in between Houston and Katie, Texas. The Oyster Creek runs ultimately feeds into the Gulf of Mexico. But it's a little ways in where the body parts were dumped. Is very rural area and not many houses along the along the road. And Laura was living in Kinston, North Carolina.
Kinston is a small town about an hour and a half at a Raleigh, and it was where grand Hayes had been raised and Laura was in a relationship with Grant Hayes for quite some time, and that's how she ended up in the town of Kingston.
Now you talk about how the two met and and a little bit of the background of Grant when you get. We get originally into this story in the beginning of the book. So Grant is a musician, and you can tell us his race as well was important to the story. And tell us a little bit about the how they met, under what circumstances did they meet and the relationship developed, because very very quickly they within a year they were married.
So tell us a little bit about Grant Hayes and tell us about how they met before we talk about Laura.
Grant Hayes was a musician who performed at smaller venues for the most part, becoming a staple on the Raleigh music scene. And there were a lot of people who thought he was very talented. Few disputed that when he was performing he had a mountain of charisma going for him. He was an African American man from Kinston, North Carolina,
now living in Raleigh. He then was able to get work in the Virgin Islands and ultimately went there, but in Raleigh, he was performing one night and Laura came to see the show and hang out at the venue, and she went backstage and met him that evening and they just started seeing each other and discovered they had the same birthday in common. And Laura thought that was definitely a sign of fate, and that's how they ended
up getting together. She believed in his talent. She started managing some of his bookings, and she then moved in with him and they had a child named Grant Junior.
Now we could talk about right after they got married, say the honeymoon was over, and tell us like what you have in the book in terms of the kinds of requests now that they were married, that he asked of Laura as to talk to his fans, what are the kind of requests that you have written in the book.
He wanted her to talk about sexual things with his fans. He basically wanted her to make them want him, and it was kind of a strange thing. He wanted her to Laura in the female fans and to act very flirtatious and come honish with the males. And he even wanted her to engage in sex activity if it would further his career. And when she objected some of the things he asked for, he told her, well, you're a white woman with a black man. Everybody knows your trash.
Yeah. Yeah. He also at this time too, at this point even is suffering from delusions and in the form of he thinks he's a time traveler and that there's beings and that the world will end in December thirty first, twenty twelve. So, and he also has this idea that he would like to be a polygamist. And this is early on. This is why she's still pregnant. He floats this polygamist idea and you say too. Within seven months or so after the wedding, he's meeting another woman, either
pretending he's single or acting like you's single. Another woman named Kristen tell us a little bit about to also demonstrate some things about his personality. Laura's friend Heidi Shoemaker tell us what that relationship was like and what did Grant think of it.
Grant told her that Heidi was a bad influence on her and did not want her to have anything to do with Heidi. And I think a lot of it was Grant was a very controlling personality, and in typical controlling manner, he tried to cut her off from the rest of the world. He didn't want her to have friends outside of his friends. He didn't want her to have much to do with her brother, who was living in the area. He really wanted to have her under his control at all times, and he made things difficult
for her. And unfortunately Laura was lacking in the self confidence and of the past history of a functional family to be able to push this away and to understand it really had nothing to do with her. It was all about Grant, and she stuck with the relationship. I mean, she was about to have a child and she did not want that child to be from a broken home as she was.
Now. It gets to the point and other than delusions, there's also hard drug use like cocaine and possibly heroin or at least cocaine at this time, and frequent drug use, and then the parties and things that are associated with musicians and playing in clubs occasionally even to the point whether there's an intervention in two thousand and nine by Grant's family and he has some delusion about fifty kids
and all races and some kind of empire. So tell us a little bit more about the kinds of characteristics that she's experienced in this first year of marriage and having a child, and what was he like period.
He would do some very very strange things. He had this philosophy of life that he came up with that was this strange amalgam of elements of scientology, elements of Christianity, elements of alien beings taking over the government, and feeling that they were watching him and following him and trying
to keep tabs on him. And he felt that he was one of the special people and he had to accumulate wealth and build his empire because he was going to be one of the chosen ones to go to this special place when the world came to an end.
And it reflected in his relationship with Laura, because he felt that she should go along with whatever he said should be done and whatever he believed, and if she got on his nerves, he would do some of the most bizarre things, like one night he was shooting at her with the baby gun in front of a friend and she was trying to get him to stop, and the only way she could get him to stop was to get out of the room. But in order to do that she had to go past him. And yes,
she wasn't getting hit any place. I swore it would do serious harm, but it hurts.
And.
It was cruel, and he seemed to think it was all funny and no big deal. But how much of that was influenced by drugs and how much was just his defective personality. It's hard to tell.
Now you're chronicle in the book that Haidi and Laura's relationship is secret because Grant disproves of it. But it gets to the point where Heidi gets a concealed weapons permit because they are caught together and he warns them and tell us about this warning. How serious is this warning? So that she goes and gets a concealed weapons permit and then recommends that Laura gets one too. Tell us a little bit about this.
Well, they were getting together surreptitiously, and he just happened to come to the place that they had gone for dinner and they were out in the parking lot, and he chastised Laura and said, you know, you're not supposed to be seeing her, and you know, you people ought to listen to me because I know people who were snuff out your life so fast you won't know what happened.
And I mean he threatened to kill them as they didn't stop seeing each other, and he was pretty scary that evening, And that is what prompted high to you to go and get a concealed carry license, and she wanted Laura to get one too, but Laura just didn't like guns at all and didn't want them around, so she bought Laura knife. Yeah.
Now tell us the circumstances in which, again we talked about this guy's music career. Some people think he's quite talented, some people not so much. There's a lot of competition out there. He's not really paying the bills from this, but there seems to be some again, some interest in
this guy's a singer songwriter. So tell us about this gig that he or someone this phone call or this opportunity that comes from the Caribbean Islands from Saint John, from manor tell us a little bit about this and then what happens as a result.
Well, Krant at one point was making a decent living as a musician, but then he started spending so much money on drugs that you know, it ate it all up, and between that and his bar bills, there wasn't much less to bring out. And he got a call from a guy he had known a couple of years before who was now down working in the entertainment field in Saint John, and he was told that he could get as much work as he wanted down there. There were
plenty of employment opportunities for musicians. So Grant went down there, and at that time Laura had pretty much had it and she was planning to leave him. And then shortly after he left, right before she was going to leave and head north, she found out she was pregnant for the second time. And when she found that out, she felt she had to go and try to make the relationship with Grant work. So she went back down to
the Virgin Islands. That's where she discovered that he had met someone named Amanda Smith, who was someone who had a sufficient amount of money, and he convinced her that all this was all it was was Amanda was his truger mama, and she was going to help finance his career and help him get ahead, and he was only seeing her for the sake of his career and the betterment of his family.
Now she had when they met. You put in these the numbers, so we're talking about almost one hundred ninety thousand in cash she had for this inheritance. She had seventy seven thousand invaluable jewelry, so a quarter million dollars and in short order. So, so what happens with Amanda. She goes back to New York. He is in he's in the Islands. Laura discovers that there's this other woman and then and has to listen to his grand scheme. That listened. He's only doing it for the betterment of
his own family, just to get ahead. So you say, Laura goes back, tell us the other procession.
Laura went back to the United States because their new baby, Gentle was having a health problem and it was felt the best thing to do is to go back to the United States to get him the help he needed, because he thought that he was going to need some surgery and this was something he was born with. And so she returned to the United States, and she kept waiting for Grant to come back to but he didn't.
And then when Amanda, who he'd met in the Islands, moved back to Manhattan, a Grant followed her and sort of came knocking at her door after she bought him an airline ticket, and they were living together in her apartment, and Laura didn't really know what was going on. She knew that he was in New York and he kept saying it was just for the good of the family, and she wasn't really buying it anymore. But then he wanted to see their older son, little Grant, and have
him up in New York for a photo shoot. Said he was going to do some commercial work with him, and he'd only be gone for ten days. Well, Laura didn't want to let her son, her little son go. She was feeling very protective and was concerned about Grant's motives, and so she just put it off and tried to put him off, and finally she relented and let him go up there. Well, the ten days stretched for a
month into two months. Meanwhile, Grant's telling everyone up there that Laura is busy dealing with little gentle problems and she wants him to keep the little Grant longer. But that was blatantly untrue, and finally Laura ended up going to court on her own without an attorney and filing
to get her son back. As she did that, Grant called Child Protectives Services on her and made up some stuff that wasn't true, and then he came down eventually with Grant, and when he did, he went to court and got an ex party order, which means he's before a judge without the other party, and he asks for emergency custody the two boys. Now we already had Grant
in his possession. So when the judge granted the emergency custody, poor little gentleman who hardly knew his father, was pulled out of his mother's arms and taken away.
Incredible. Now there's a couple of people, other people that are important in here, especially a person named Chavon Mattha. And so tell us about the relationship that Laura has with this other woman, because there's a different world that she has where people know her a certain way. And then her life with Grant, And we have to talk about the relationship too. When you talk about she came back and was caring for her son who had gentle
who had the kidney problem. In that Grant's parents are very helpful and active in the raising of these children, and even at that time, aren't they.
Yes.
When she came back to the United States, she moved into a rental property that Grant's parents owned. In the exchange for her rent there, she cleaned up their daycare center each night. So it's because of that, of course, the children spent a lot of time around their grandparents and and and built up a close relationship with them at that time.
In this custody battle we're talking about that Amanda was the only person really bringing in any serious money. And she also had these you know, she was dedicated to Grant as well, and had some very traditional and traditional feelings, I mean or traditional ideas, and also some strong feelings for Grant, and was paying what was amounting to a pretty enormous legal bill for this custody battle, wasn't it.
Yes, she was covering a lot of that, and and before she's going through so much of her money, not just for the expenses of the custody battle. When Laura counter sued on the custody agreement, the court ordered a please psychological examination of both Grant and Laura. And that is quite an expensive thing. And she's paying for that. She's paying for Grant to go on trips to Hawaii
and other places to look for performance opportunities. She's financing his expeditions to New York to try to sell his the company made iPhones to Apple. He he did some that apparently it's a lot of interest in which were of rap singers, particularly ones who had been killed and it looked like he was on the verge of getting sort of dealers nose, but he had gone through whom and Walk suddenly broke jewelry Pong and pregnant with Grant's child.
At the same time, we have Laura, who is you know, had some very troubled times in her life, and she's on the upswing in her life. She is working with She's met a friend through I believe Heidi named Oakshanna who's an artist, and they have this little agreement going on that they're going to be able to work with each other and a man pardon made. Laura has some art of her own that she's finally coming into her
own and and and doing her art work on. Yes, so go ahead and tell us about the upswing in her life.
Yeah. She started business with chavonn mathis Uh. It was a very simple thing. They had two people they were selling to one they were selling restaurants on the idea of using the paper place mats with ads on them in their restaurant and they would get free place mats for that, and the other side was selling businesses ad space these placements, and so it was going really well. I mean starting out any business is a little difficult.
She had her graphic guards business on one hand and then this restaurant marketing business on the other and Chavon Mathis was her partner and they were working and building up a client tele list and having a success that was building every month, and things were going really well. On her first life. She had gotten a place of rown. She had worked a part time job until she got the business off off off the ground, and she was
taking care of things in her personal life. And here is a stronger person so that be the best mother she could be. She was very, very determined to be her good mother and to provide everything she could for her boys. She wanted them to have a better life than she ever had. And she was making great strides towards that. She had a mentor and she was getting advice there. She was involved in everything in her life was looking up in twenty eleven.
Now let's talk about what her real wish was in terms of the children. Just for the record, did she was her idea to get full custody? What was Grant's idea? What was her idea? And what was the dispute in terms of why were they going through this custody battle. What did she want? What did he want? Because it will be important to the rest of this story.
Yeah, he really wanted full custody. He actually wanted her to just go away. He didn't see why she was important in the boys lives just because she was their biological mother. Just he had another woman who could be their mother and say that should be good enough for
the boys. He did not acknowledge anything having to do with her importance and those and he and Manda to travel whenever they wanted, wanted to be free, to move to Ashville where he could sell songs he had written, and they thought that the children Shoupel would traveled with them. That wouldn't be right for them not to have those opportunities,
and Laura was just standing in the way of all this. Laura, on the other hand, felt that for any child, both parents are in play important roles in their lives, and she wanted to have an equitable and pleasant sharing of the raising of the children.
And of.
The more signs of that Grant showed, the harder it was for her to want to actually share custody with him. And the psychologist was doing the work on writing them up and things were not looking good for Grant to even share custody, although she pointed out some flaws in Laura, which Laura took on and was willing to work to make herself a better person. Grant, on the other hand,
was actually pretty furious. He wrote on his copy, he wrote all sorts of notes, and there a fanger and was that minute dial And he really just one of the kids all to himself, and his idea was my children. She was basically only the vessel that brought them flock, and he didn't see any reason why she had to be such a nuisance in his life. But when he was looking at that report that he got from the psychologist,
he was in deep trouble. That looked like very possible that Laura was going to get full custody of the boys.
Yeah, he wrote on this folder which they found later in the truck. It said notes bs and never.
He was.
He was saying that Laura was crazy, and you know he was he was the normal and stable one. But the psycho psychologist was looking at all this and saying, yeah, Laura had some emotional problems and that she needs work on. But she also Laura said, I really would like to have ongoing drug testing for both of us because Grant's got a bad history of a long history of drug abuse.
And she put that in there, and she's you know, when she testified in Forts, she said, well, it was because of Grant that I wanted.
That in there, and.
So it was.
It was a very.
Hostile situation. Nonetheless, in June, when Amanda was about to give birth to her child, Grant was really really nice to Laura and asked her if she would, you know, take the kids for a week or two so that Samanda was about to give first. And you know, Grant cook very very nice when he wanted something from you,
but no study were those kids with him. Than he was being nasty to her again and telling her she couldn't have her Wednesday night visits at all, even though the psychologists were saying that the boys were so little they needed to see each parent more with a greater frequency circation. Uh, he wouldn't let her have any midweek visits with the boys, and boy, the excuse he gave was that she was too emotional and saying goodbye to them, and she shouldn't have to kiss on her and hug
on him. She should just walk away.
What was the relationship between Amanda and Laura.
For the record, it was a strange thing because on the one hand, Laura felt her boys were a lot safer because Amanda was there watching over them when they
were with Grant. On the other hand, Amanda had been fed a one sided version of life by Grant, and she thought that Laura was psycho crazy and told her so, and so she always had this really negative view of what Laura was up to and what she wanted, and that she was crazy, and because she was believing what Grant told her, and so that was it would try to get along and and there would be a lot
of friction, you know. One Laura even wrote a thank you to Amanda for taking such good care of the boys, but Amanda would come back and tell her that the kids were sick all the time because you don't take care of them right. And yet Laura wasn't doing anything wrong. Yeah, she took them out and let them run in the little sprinkler fountains that they had in the park, which were there for children to run in, but Laura thought
that was wrong and that would give them colds. And whenever Laura thought there was some serious health concerned with the boys, Amanda again would say she was just crazy. So it was nothing Amanda, nothing Laura could do could shake Amanda the feelings that Laura is crazy, and so everything she said was under questioned.
The most puzzling character I think here obviously is Grant, but also it's very complex character that Amanda has this person that you inherits this money from some of that she was married to that had an unfortunate accident of a swimming accent where he's paralyzed and dies. She inherits this money not through any kind of gold digging or inning. She's had her bouts with celebrity herself and talent. She's
a little bit of an actress. She gets she takes some official training, but doesn't really get any big roles. So she's a talented person, good looking woman. But Amanda is listening to the kinds of delusions that Grant is saying quite often in the home, and some of the behavior that he has, which leans towards at least or is can characterize as violent, and yet at the same time she is more supportive of what Grant is saying
versus what Laura is saying. She really is on his side, or at least sucked into his charisma, or at least at least on his side, isn't she Yes?
And Amanda had an adult daughter from her first marriage, and her marriage to Grant was her third, and she her adult daughter. When she found out this strange life philosophy that Grant had about the aliens and this secret place to go to be for the specialble, she said something to her others. She said, you know, boy, is he serious about this? Is this a joke? And Amanda says, no, he's very serious, and it would make sense to you if you came to the place where he came from.
And that really really struck Shade the odd that her mother would be so accepting of this wacky theory of life that Grant had in this sense that everybody was out to get him because he was a black man.
Right now, let's go to just previous to the day in question, July thirteenth, twenty eleven, and let's talk about what Laura was doing and who was she corresponding with, because right away her behavior is when it isn't in character, people are alerted. So let's tell us just what was Laura doing on that day? What was she supposed to do and was there any what was the event that
was supposed to happen that day? And tell us who in Laura's circle was in contact with her that would notice anything was a miss.
Well, Laura was doing a lot of business calls that day. She was sort of heading from Kinston in the direction of Raleigh and make multiple stops along the way, and all along she was calling back to Chavonne and reporting on her success and she was having one after another after another, having a fabulous day business wise. She was supposed to meet Grant at kids place called Monkey Shows in order to visit with kids.
And.
Her appointments kept being longer than expected because they were all being successful. So she was winning behind schedule and she had to change the time, and Grant said, well, the boys, I'll need to take the boy's host. You can come here to my apartment and I'll pick them up. Now. Laura normally did not go there. She knew that it wasn't a good idea, and it is unclear why she
felt okay going there. Was it just because she wanted so much to see her boys, or it was a sort of promise made to her by Grant in order to get her to the house. Some people that know her well have said that the only way she would have gone there was if she thought she was going to come home with her boys. And no one really knows exactly what was in her mind when she went there. In all likelihoods, she had a little tape recorder that she taped all her conversations with Grant on it and
downloaded it to her computer. Everything what she had one that disappeared along with Laura, So we don't know what kind of things Grant could have said to her to get her to come to that apartment just was not anything anyone who knew her thought she would do.
Now right around soon after this the next day, is it Chavonne that goes to the police in the short order and reports her missing? Tell us who reports are missing and how the police proceed.
Well, Chavonne was just walking distance away from Laura's apartment. She walked up there, and it was a gated place so that she couldn't get inside, but she looked in and was able to see that Laura's car was gone, so she assumed Laura wasn't there, and she's sing her text message she sent her emails, she's telling her friend, I'm worried, get in touch with me, please right away.
And the fact that she wasn't into her cellphone was a huge concerned to Chavon because ron knew that Laura always killed that phone on, always answered it in case it was something about her little boys, and she knew she would never turn it off. So that was very troubling. And she waited for a couple of days of being unable to reach her, and finally on Sundays she got the police to go to the apartment and Laura was not there, and she filled out a missing person's report on that Sunday.
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Details, Oh North Caroline. Meanwhile, when Heidi finds out that Laura's missing, Heidi lives up in Raleigh, and so she goes computer and she makes gets a CD disc and a flux drive and fills it up with all the material from a special mailbox that she and Laura shared, and it was where Laura used it for a reposit. All the messages and the recordings and everything else that has anything to do with the kids and the custody fight. And she took that information first to Kinston and reported
that the last place Laura was was in Rallie. Then she also dropped from Raleigh. When the Hinton police found out that Rabigh was slocation, they breathed the Raleigh Police department, and it was the Raleigh police found Laura's call.
Now, just for the record as well from Heidi and from Chavon, her two closest friends. Did she tell them specifically that Grant was violent and was and she felt threatened or her life at risk at all by Grant?
She told him if anything, she told Heidi, if anything ever happened to her, Grant did it. If Chavonne, I knew there was a constanty battle, I knew there was bad blood between them, But she really didn't know a whole lot about Grant himself. She did know that Laura was devoted to her boys.
Right now, right away. In most as we know in these stories and fictional and otherwise, that there's only the people that are most up on the suspect scale, are people closest to the person in question. So let's sort of fast forward this a little bit in terms of what does Grant Hayes do, what's the first thing he does do officially? What does Amanda do? What does the family do? Tell us how they proceed In the next, say, forty eight hours.
There are many trips to Target and walmartt there's typical salt purchase. There are the purchase of coolers and garbage bags and gloves, and then there is a rental of a U haul vehicle. Uh, there is a piece of antique furniture that Amanda says, we need, we need to load up and take out to my sister. She said that it was because she thought the grant had sold everything else she had with value that that might be next. It was a fine piece of furniture. It was a
castle antique, so it was very valuable. And but what no one knew she was taking out there. In addition to that, we're coolers that were full of body parts.
Now the thing is they have what we talked about is they went shopping. So we know that from videotape that he went and got Duffel bags, he got goggles, plastic tarps, industrial trash bags, and the very very important reciprocated reciprocating saw and certain blades and Duffel bags. A little bit later and a little bit later as well, they get myriadic acid. So tell us what the police do find at the house or pardon me, maybe we'll
go backwards here. Sorry, let's talk about because very important Amanda's daughter, Shay and what she knows and what she is witnessed to.
She knew that Amanda and Grant or having to move out of their apartment before they were evicted. They said their plans were to move in with Grant's parents down in Kinston, and so she knew that was going on. And when her mother asked her to come take care of the boys, get them out of the house so that we can get some packing done, she did it.
She had aside from the fact that her mother took a piece of furniture actually she considered to be something that would one day be hers and turned it over
to her aunt. That kicked Shaye off a bit. Shaye also, when she found out she was going out to visit her aunt, wanted to go along, and her mother just told her she was selfish for wanting to do that, and so Shaye was not aware of what was happening in that home, but she was aware that there was a lot of chaos going on, and she was angry at her mother for not including her and in the trip out to see someone who was a very important
part of her life growing up. Then when the police came and told her that they were looking for her mother and did she have any idea where she was well, she told them that they went to Texas, and so the police decided they needed to go to Texas too, and they passed Grant and Amanda returning to North Carolina without knowing they were passing them while they were on their way out to Texas.
When police do finally get around to looking at the residents to form a residence of Amanda and Grant, what is the one thing that is tailtale and they notice immediately and is of interest.
The bathroom in the hallway smells of cleaning materials. It is thick and spin and immaculate as it was never used. There are no rugs are there's no shower curtains. There's nothing in there, hardly at all, and it's been completely
cleaned out. They asked Shay about that bathroom and she said, well, that's the one the little boys use, that's the one that's always full of their bath toys, and yet there was nothing in there, and it had all been moved to the other bathroom, and that didn't make a whole lot of sense, and she didn't understand it, and of course at that point in time, and the police couldn't know what to make of it.
It was also the bleach stain at the front door, which was of interest to the police as well.
Yes, it was a very large bleach stain on the carpet right by the front door, just before it turned to tile, and it was very large, and it was very unexpected in that spot because that's not a spot where you wouldn't normally think that you'd even have bleach. I mean, yeah, you might use it in the bathroom or the laundry room or the kitchen, but not by the front door. So that was very suspicious right away.
And Shay had said when she came in the house, it smelled like bleach, and that didn't make any sense to her because bleach always gave her and her mother such horrible headaches, so it didn't make sense that her mother was cleaning with her mother never cleaned with bleach. So with every piece of information the police got, it became more and more suspicious.
Now on their trip, they go to see Amanda's sister and so it's Karen Barry. And this is the most fascinating part of this story. It really is incredible some of the dialogue in this and again, of course, with my imagination, others will be reading and conjuring up the same images. So tell us about the meeting with her sister and the kinds of questions that they're asking. Again, innocent questions to some, but the kinds of questions they're
asking of the sister and her son. And I guess he has a couple sons, So tell us, look good, has a.
Couple of.
She has a couple of grown sons. And Amanda and Grant are asking them. I, since one of the boys has a business of removing faral hogs from people's property, ask them if hogs will eat human remains. And then they have a long conversation about that, and then they get to well, aren't there alligators in Oyster Creek? And won't alligators eat human remains? And the boys sort of thought, oh,
these are just city people that don't know anything. You know, Grant's just a city boy and he doesn't know about this. And Grant also asks them about going shark fishing, and and then they want to know about any deep holes on the property, and they ask about the septic tank, and they ask about the well and all sorts of strange things. And poor karens this is her little sister, or much younger sister, and she can't quite wrap her mind around what is going on and what might be happening.
I think she's had the red flags waved in her face, but she's just torn. I mean, this is her sister. Her sister couldn't be meaning what she was saying is what she's thinking. But she was getting increasingly uncomfortable with them being there. And then there was the fact that the boys were with them. Both of them mentioned that they had been told they can't take the boys out of the state, and here were the boys, and it was it was getting increasingly uncomfortable, and she basically just
was so relieved when they finally left. Soon after they left, the police show up, and that's when.
Sorry, go ahead, Well, the thing is, what we've skipped over a little bit, is what exactly Laura did a pardon me Amanda did say to her sister? What question was asked? And what did she tell her sister? Very very very important, So what was actually said to her sister and what was the circumstances?
Karen finally asked what the heck is going on? And Amanda said, I hurt Laura. I hurt her bad. Karen didn't really want to know anything more. And Amanda and Grant took the family's boat out onto Oyster Creek at night, late late at night, and then returned.
And.
Karen knew something really bad was happening, but she didn't really know what and she didn't want to believe what her common sense was telling her. And it wasn't till the police got there that she finally admitted to herself and to them that she thought Laura was probably there in the place they should look, the creek.
She also said to Laura, had a pardon me that Amanda had said to her, or pardon me that Karen had said to her? Are you just covering for Grant? And she nodded her head.
Yes, which is quite important she did. She did. But the question is was Amanda telling her sister she was covering for grant in order to tell her sister what she wanted to hear, or because it was the truth that was the big question.
Sure, now, like you say, police are there shortly after. This is not much of a trail here, if this is a master plan, she says, can I pray first? And then she tells them everything that she knows. She's just a very honest person, doesn't want to be burdened with this thing at all. So now, how do police proceed once they have this.
Information, Well, they put send divers into the creek, and they even have a man with a gun in a boat in case alligators approach. But it turned out the biggest problem that the divers had were with the lily pads that were covering a big portion of the surface of the creek across the street, and they had to keep pushing them aside all the time, and the water was deep and dark, so dark that they were literally doing like snow angel motions on the bottom of the
creek to try to find body parts. They were mostly hoping to find her foot and she had a tattoo on it and that would identify her quickly, but they never did find any of the to see they did find all leg parts, they did find body parts, and then ultimately they found Laura's head.
They also Karen had also grabbed a machete that Grant had and secured it, put it, wrapped it with a rag and put it in the garage and kept some other things that at least that the police had. Didn't know what their evidentiary value were, but they grabbed like over one hundred items. And yeah, of course they were looking at autopsy to confirm that these parts of a torso actually were Ackerman Akerson. So now, so how do Amanda and Grant? What do they do in the under
these circumstances? What happens?
They returned to Kingston and they were at Grand's parents' home when the police came and picked them up, and the police questioned them and charged them with Laura's murder as soon as they knew they had Laura's body. And then it got excessively weird because Grant claimed all he was doing was protecting his wife, because his wife had gotten into a fight with Laura and caused her to
fall and hit her head. And Amanda was saying she didn't even know that Laura was dead until she arrived in Texas that she didn't know Laura's body was sitting in her guest bathroom for a couple of weeks days while they were going about normal family life, so to speak. She was there alone. She never looked in that bathroom, she never checked anything out. She was oblivious, according to her.
But none of that seemed to hang together too. Well, that's a little too hard to believe that there could be a body in your bathroom and it was cut up into pieces and put into cohlers, and you had no idea that it was there.
They separate at first, they're jointly charged, and then of course he wants to put the blame on her, and so they're separated, and so he goes first, and his trial is first. Now tell us again, it's you know, I find fascinating about this is that there is some really good lowering going on here. When in the first trial with Grant, the address to the jury from the defense is quite good, it's quite convincing. And yet that you get the prosecutions addressed to the jury and it
is even better. But very very interesting because this really explains the first degree murder charge, the malice, premeditation planning and deliberation. And really this is the crux of this case, because it ends up being quite a circumstantial case, really despite all this physical evidence. So let's talk about what the defense for Grant Hayes is. What is their theory, What do they try to put across to the jury. Tell us a little bit about that.
They are trying to trying to convince the jury that yes, Grant was guilty both of the body, but he did it only to protect his wife, his family. He he had nothing to do with Laura's death. He was he was out of the room when the fire the fight started. Uh, he didn't know what was going on. He came in and Laura was on the floor. And the defense was adamant that this is just a man protecting his wife.
The prosecution, on the other hand, had not only the evidence of the emails and text messages that Laura had saved, but they also had Laura's journal about it, and they had the history between them and how badly that had gone. And they also had the report of the psychologist who said that Grant in all likelihoods.
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It had a personality disorder and he needed to be seeing a psychiatrist to address that issue and identify which personality disorder it was, whether it was antisocial or borderline or whatever. And that was very damning information that was presented by the psychologist. And to me, one of the things that was most chilling in that courtroom was when they played a song had written about Laura called Broomstick Rider, and it was a very hate filled song about threatening to kill.
Her, and.
It really showed where his heart was. And the whole time that song was playing and the jury was listening to that song, Grant was sitting there at the defense table just bebopping his head to the music. He was really enjoying listening to that hateful invective that were the lyrics of his songs.
Yes, yes, now what was really important too, and really part of his not so defendable defense is that supposedly this woman that was always fighting for custody for her children, that loved her children more than anything, went over to his home because she was going to sign a document. Now tell us about the details of this document, because again this is very very important in this case.
There was a document that was found in his apartment that was signed by Laura, and they did have handwriting specialists verify that it was Laura's handwriting where she agreed to give up custody of the boys in exchange for twenty five thousand dollars. It said that she would be able to see the boys at with the permission of Grant Hayes now number one. Grant. Demanda no longer had any money, so they didn't have twenty five thousand dollars.
The other thing is is that no one, no one that knew Laura, believed that she would take and give up custody for any sum of money, but she signed it. My theory on the case, which the prosecution tends to believe too, is that there was some coercion used that night. Was the nick they found on one of her neckbones because a knife was held to her throat possibly, and why did she seem to have received the fatal blow right there where that bleach stain was by the door.
I think that what happened was that Laura did what she had to do at that moment, couldn't resist the temptation before she left that apartment of reminding them that she had a tape recorder and she had everything that was said that night and everything that happened recorded on that tape. Interesting, and that's why she died right then and there.
Now we won't have time to go through the entire trial at all, but suffice to say that there was two separate trials, both pointing fingers at each other, trying to claim that they weren't the murderer. They were just a part of the disposal of this woman, with Amanda having of course, claiming to have much less of a role, and unbelievably really for a lot of it, where she didn't know this, and she didn't know that, she didn't look here, she didn't look that way, She had no idea,
so it seems quite implausible. Basically, his trial, again, we just talked about his demeanor where he's enjoying listening to his murderous lyrics in his tunes, which seemed to be eerily and that's why they were admitted into the trial that they had some relation to his character and his feelings for his wife Laura. So tell us about the outcome of the first trial, and then I guess importantly what happens with the Amanda's trial.
Grant was found guilty of first degree murder and he was given life without parole. He has since gone through the appeal process and lost. Amanda, on the other hand, the defense did manage to put some doubt and endure his minds about how much she was involved, and she was convicted of second degree murder and she will probably get out of prison after serving fourteen years.
Interesting. I think that the prosecution, though, was really I think there were dead said on having them both convicted a murder, and I think given the limitations that the case presented for them that they still did exceedingly well. But it seemed that the prosecution really was if they really had to focus on anyone, they really wanted to make sure that Grant Hayes really went down for this murder, didn't they?
Yes, they did, And I do think that they were probably equally complicit, and because of the way everything was carried out, and the fact that Amanda, while great was out shopping and things, was home alone and could have called the police and didn't. She was aware of what was going on, and she was an active participant in what was going on. So I think she got off easy, easier than she definitely deserved.
But at least.
She did have to pay a price. And Amanda will spend some of what could have been the best years of her life behind bars, and there is some justice for Laura Akerson.
Patsy Grant, pop pardon me. Patsy Hayes had some letters from Amanda. Again, you talked about the character of Amanda, and we talked about the plausibility of her story and her comp compliccency in this murder tell us because she appeared in Amanda's trial. Patsy Hayes had letters that Amanda had written to her that she could convey some of that letter to Grant in prison. So what was the contents of those letters?
She was sending messages of love through Patsy to Grant because two people sitting in jail cannot write to each other when they're co defendants, So to.
Speak, And.
So she was constantly talking about how much Grant now she would see him, making suggestions to him about meditating and things of that nature to keep his head on straight, and extremely supportive messages that if she hadn't known what he was up to every step of the way, it's hard to believe that she would have been that way. I mean, if she was totally innocent, surely she would have been outraged and what he had gotten her into. But there was no signs of that, none at all.
You don't really point the finger, but it's nice that you show and not tell. She asked the same questions as Grant does. She wants to know about the gaiters and the eating of the bodies, and so these are beyond the realm of questions you would ask under any kinds of circumstances, regardless, aren't they.
Yeah, And she's there for the little walk around the property, trying to find a place to dispose of the body, like the septic tank. And you know, how can you do something like that to your own sister? How can you wrap her up in something like this and put her in such a horrible, horrible position. And no one wants to get up on the witness stand and testify against her sister and say such horrible things about her.
But Karen had to do that because she knew it was the right thing, and she didn't want to be there. She didn't want to be in that courtroom. She didn't want any part of it. It would but Amanda did that to her and put her there and compromise things with her own daughter, Shay too. It's just unbelievable the callousness that a man to shed to everyone around her who cared about her at one time.
But we also have to remember the king of all manipulators, as this grant person who had a folder on his computer and calling Laura hole and diminishing her role even though she was the mother of these children. He made the choice to be with her. It just seemed that when he found someone else to use then these person, this person was trashed and he sucked all the money out of Amanda, and just in time to get her into a life in prison. So this person is really
and no loyalty towards, it seems, anybody. And yet at the same time, he's been charismatic enough to con every single one of these people and their loyalty is incredible if you really think about it.
Yes, And but the other side of this to remember is what Shae said. That's Amanda's daughter, Shay said. Everybody, he said, everybody points to Grant, that says he's the master manipulator. But what they're forgetting is that in Amanda, Grant met his match. She was every bit the manipulator that he was.
Wow, so he's finished with his appeal processes. How close did you come? Did you make any effort? What was their response? Was there any did you reach out to either one of these four any kind of interview? And what was the response?
Yeah?
Well, you know, when I was working on the book, Grant had an appeal coming up, so he certainly did not want to talk to me. And Amanda I got no response, no response. I didn't even get a call back from her attorney. So yeah, a lot of times you just can't get through those barriers.
Very interesting too, that the loyal friends Auksanna and Chevin, Chavn and Heidi were really prominent in these trials and helped as much as they could and offered as much as they could, and very good and reliable witnesses when they were called upon what they Yes, they were, and.
It has got to be such a horrible, horrible thing to to not only lose your friend, but to have to get up there in the courtroom, not once, but twice to relive all of this misery and grief again. You know, it's the loss is horrific enough, and you, once it happened, you hope to try to heal from it. But these women they couldn't. They couldn't do that. They didn't have time to do that. Things just kept moving and moving, and they had to be there to testify
a Grant's trial. They had to testify at Amanda's trial, and they really paid a price of friendship, and they stayed with their friend Laura to the bitter end for as long as it took.
Now, what about Patsy Hayes and her husband, what what was their position through this? Are they still loyal to their son? And you can also tell us where the two boys and of course the Lily who was the offspring of the child from their marriage. Grant and Amanda. Tell us where those children are and who's taking care of them?
The three children are all together with Grant Senior and Patsy Hayes. They are raising those three children, and you know their grandparents. This is a tough road to hoe for them. And on top of that, they lost their daycare center because once the news of this crime spread out, no one wanted to bring their children there anymore. It
didn't no longer felt like a safe place. So they lost but their livelihood, they lost their and now they're raising a whole nother family and it's like they're starting all over again.
Incredible. And do you know, is there any talk about what has happened with the boys and Patsy or anything? Is there any other stories in the follow up? I don't how big was this story in the media and was there sort of a diminished interest once the trial was finished? Tell us a little bit about how important or big a story this was in the media.
The story was huge, particularly regionally. There was a lot of coverage of it. There was also a lot of coverage up in Michigan, where Laurel was originally from, and out in Houston where the bodies were dropped. It was big news. But once the trials were completed, it sort of faded out of the limelight, as those things usually do, and the Shay who knew Grant, Little Grant and in Gentle very well and had taken care of them on
multiple occasions. She is living out west now, but she is the half sister of Lily, and she takes that extremely seriously as their responsibility, and she always makes it out for the joint summer birthday party. The three children have kind of close together birthdays and so they all have one big party for all three of them, and Shay is always there for that. She wants to continue to have a major role in little Lily's life, and
I think more power to her. Lily has lost both of her parents to incarceration and it is at least for now as orphaned as the two little boys are, so it's good that she has her half sister in the picture.
What's fascinating about your book, too, is that normally we have one trial and sometimes we have flea agreements, and well we have two full blown trials here, and the thing that normally doesn't happen is the defendant taking the stand, and with the case of Amanda, she does take the stand and makes for some very riveting and interesting reading because of course there's always something trotted out through the defense through your own lawyer and then a able bodied
prosecutor can really savage that flimsy or yes, yeah, the.
Prosecutor was amazing. I mean Amanda got up there with her sweet little girlish voice and was talking sweet and got a breathless and telling this story of her victimization by Grant, and the prosecutor got up there and she just was like a terrier. She wouldn't let go. And finally Amanda snapped and snapped at her and showed her true nature on that witness stand, and it was it was pretty amazing, cross examining and very revealing.
Absolutely, Yes, you've painted a very interesting portrait and very very vivid portrayal of these two characters, especially well and Laura as well, Laura and Grant, Amanda and this confluence of events and the daughter Shay and the friends that the loyal friends, and just two parallels to people on
the same trajectory, but people that were trying. Laura was desperately trying to rebuild their life and go in a completely different direction, and these children were just like a tug of war between this psychopath and his desires and Laura and came to a tragic and very very incredible story. I want to thank you very much, Diane for coming
on and talking about your latest bit of remains. For those might want to contact you or see your other work, do you have a website that you might direct them to, and you do Facebook as well.
Yes, I'm on Facebook, and I'm also I have a website which is Dianesanning dot com. And I've got sample chapters of my works on their all fourteen of my True crimes and ten of my novels, and they can take a sample of that there and read about each one of those books.
Yeah, that's fantastic, Dan, and thank you again for coming on and for always, like always, a great interview and as always, a fantastic book Bitter Remains. I want to thank you very much for coming on, and I know I'll be hearing from you again soon because you're very, very prolific authors, so I'm sure he got something into works right now as we speak.
I most certainly do, Dan. I wouldn't let you down.
Absolutely well, thank you, Dan, and hope to hear from you again soon. You have a great evening, and thank you, thank you
Dan, bye bye, good night,