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It is thought that he put the knife to her throat and told her she had to sign that document.
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career, research for my many audio and book projects has taken me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers, and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true
crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the unpublished details behind their stories. Author Diane Fanning is known for covering high profile cases like Casey Anthony and John Benet Ramsay, but not with this book. In the summer of twenty eleven, Laura Jean Ackerson left to pick up her two sons from her ex husband's home, and she was never seen alive again. Diane digs into this case,
which leads us from North Carolina down to Texas. Her book is called bitter remains, a custody battle, a gruesome crime, and the mother who paid the ultimate price. How did you run across Laura Jean Akerson's story because I'm used to seeing, you know, Michael Peterson, those kind of really bigger cases, Casey Anthony, and this is not a case I got a ton of publicity. I hadn't heard of it.
No, it hadn't gotten a lot of publicity. But I think the fact that I was living in Virginia again after being in Texas for so long, that I was just north of the story. So it stumbled across me, or I stumbled across it one of the two, and I was intrigued in a way. It's a love triangle and that's like an everyday thing, but this one involved an actress an artist as a musician. What a creative combo, and you usually don't expect creative people to interact and it ends up fatally.
You know, I think that there is a complicated story in that everybody's backgrounds and how they're intertwined. And you know, you also talked a little tunny bit before we get started on the contrast between like a Michael Peterson story and this story you know about the victim here and the socioeconomic background and why this kind of thing does get, you know, so much more attention if it's a Michael Peterson than what happened with Aura.
Well, when you have Michael Peterson, you had his wife that he killed, who was a pillar of the community, supporter of the arts. She had a high paying, high responsibility job. She was someone that garnered attention even before she died. When you look at Laura Akerson, she comes from much humbler beginnings. She was struggling to make it on her own, to set up her own business with design work and make a living to support herself and
her children. And that's a different stratosphere than what we were talking about with Michael Peterson.
So let's start from the beginning. We always want to start with the victim. Tell me about what you know from Laura. Where she grew up, What was she like.
Laura grew up in the Upper Midwest, and she was a very simple girl as far as her upbringing was concerned. There wasn't much complication. There wasn't a force, and that is what seemed to have set her loose, and she started experimenting with some bad behaviors, but she really wanted to get her act back together, so she moved south to live with her brother for a while, and she
was doing a whole lot better. And then one day she went to a club and saw this musician and his name was Grant Hayes, and she was just drawn to him and went to talk to him when he was done performing, and before you know it, they were dating. And there were so many things the music brought them together, but then the fact that they both had a birthday on the same day made it all seem like fate, and she just kind of fell for him real hard.
And he liked her in many ways because she looked up to him and to his talent, and Grant Hayes was someone who liked to be worshiped and she provided that role.
How old was she when she met Grants when he was this musician.
Laura was in her early twenties when she met Grant Hayes.
What were the impressions of Grant that people had around her? Well, she still in touch with her brother at that point. Did anybody from her family meet him.
Laura's brother did not like Grant. He just got a weird vibe from him, and he didn't think his sister should be seeing him. But what are you going to do? I mean, you might be the older brother, but your younger sister is not going to take love advice from you. And Grant apparently did not care for him at all. In fact, I don't really think that he wanted her to have anything to do with her brother. He really wanted to isolate her as much as he could so
that he could exert more control over her. She was feeling badly about the relationship and was all ready to leave and had made arrangements with a friend to leave him, But then she found out she was pregnant, and she said, how could I leave him when I've got another child on the way that's his. So she stuck with him, against her friend's better judgment, and then she had two little boys, and suddenly she was more dependent on Grant than she was before. And when he took off the
Virgin Island, she went with him. And that was just a bad move because he was out all hours of the night. He never helped with anything in the house. He brought very little money back to the family, and he had his friends coming into the house too. Three o'clock in the morning and playing music and shouting and carrying on and doing drugs and drinking, and that's just
not a good environment for little children. And Laura was getting really fed up with it, but she stayed stuck it out until her little boy got really sick and needed more expert medical care than she could get on the island.
Were there any calls to the police or reports to the police about yelling, screaming, domestic violence. Was there a report from anybody that he had been physical with her before this relationship ends.
I don't think there were any physical reports, but there were a lot of people that were aware of his physical abuse, and Laura, in a lot of ways felt trapped until she had the excuse of her son to get her out of that situation. And she had suspicions that he Grant was seeing Amanda, the actress who ran an art supplies store, but she didn't know, and he kept saying things like, listen, she's just got a lot of money. She believes in my talent. She wants to
help me succeed. But although a lot of that was true, there was something else going on between the two of them, and it was becoming rather serious.
What did you know before we start talking about Amanda again? What did you know about Grants before he ended up meeting Laura. Do we know anything about his background at all?
He was raised in a very religious household. He had been married once before to a ballerina and that didn't work out. But he didn't have any children before. And he also was seriously delusional. He had a philosophy that he could have one hundred children or more with dozens of women and be able to build an empire. It would rule the world as he knew it. You know, it was like it was pretty crazy kind of belief system.
And he didn't talk to a lot of people about it, but he did talk to some and he just he wanted to set up his own harem and his family of little kids and have them grow up, and as they grew up, they would stand beside him and give him power that he would go to another world and rule there. It was very bizarre.
Wow. And what was the closest you were able to get to Grant as far as a source. Did you end up talking to him?
I never talked to Grant. He was not interested in talking to me. His lawyers were not interested in facilitating it, and yeah, it was it's impossible to get there.
Well, okay, so they're in the Virgin Islands. One of her boys gets sick and she needs to return to North Carolina. He stays there. Is she relieved because she thinks, okay, well this is it. I mean, now I can kind of just be done with this. And or was she thinking this is going to have to keep going because I've got the sick kid, and I need something to sustain us. I need some kind of money. And she's dependent on him still.
She is still dependent on him, and there's probably nobody less suited to provide a structure to uphold the family than Grant Hayes. But his parents were there in North Carolina too, and they gave her a place to stay, and she cleaned their daycare center for them as part of her way to pay back the rent and board for her and the boys.
She still looped in with him then, I mean, obviously she's with her family, so there's not getting away from him even if they are separated, because she doesn't seem to have any options in North Carolina.
No, she doesn't. I mean, her brother was there, but you know what single mail wants to take in his sister and two little boys. Yeah, you know, it's a kind of an awkward thing. But his parents were there with open arms. I mean, she was the mother of their two grandchildren. They felt obligated to help her, and
they also seemed to really like her. And then things just spiraled out of control when Grant came back to the United States, but instead of coming back to North Carolina, he went to New York, where Amanda had moved back to,
and he moved into her apartment. She said that she did not know if he was coming to her when he came back to the States, and by now Laura knew that they were having a relationship, but she knew that it was serious, and he wanted to bring their oldest boy, who was about four, up to New York
for a commercial opportunity. Laura was hesitant, but she let him take the boy up there, and he was only supposed to be for ten days, but then he didn't bring him back and she kept asking for him to come back, and then the next thing she knows, she's getting photos online from Las Vegas, and its pictures of his wedding with Amanda, and she was in shock because she thought she was married until that moment. He told her to look at the document and she'd see it
never had been notarized. It wasn't official, and Laura was devastated. So I want to make sure I get the timeline straight. When he meets Amanda, he meets her in the Virgin Islands.
Is that right?
That is correct? Grant Meta Amanda in the Virgin Islands.
But Amanda was from where was she from? New York State?
Amanda had been around a lot. She had been most recently in New York State, but she'd also been out in California, where she had a part in the remake of The Stepford Wives. But acting wasn't working well for her, so she moved back to Texas. She met someone there she got married. He had a horrible accident. He jumped into a lake that was not as deep as he
thought and was severely injured. He was completely paralyzed from the neck down, and she was nursing him for a while, and when he died, then she decided that, you know, she wanted to go to New York. She had some money that she inherited from him, and she went to New York and ended up going to beauty school, and that's what she was doing until she took a vacation down to the Virgin Islands and absolutely fell in love with the place and moved down to Saint John.
Now I'm curious, what are the age differences between these three people. Is there a big age difference between the women and Grant or is everybody basically the same.
Laura is the youngest of the bunch, and then comes Grant, and then is Amanda. The age bread isn't that much, but Amanda was definitely an older woman to Grant.
Tell me about Amanda's personality based on what you know? You know? Is she gregarius? Is she outgoing? Or I'm wondering how he kind of gets to her too.
A Banda did not seem to have a whole lot of self confidence, but she put up a good shell, and she was one of those women that when things got tough, she falled and fell back on the oh poor helpless me act. She really got with Grant thinking she'd have somebody to take care of her, but it ended up she was taking care of Grant.
So Grant is not living with Laura at this time. Laura's in North Carolina, and Grant says that he wants the oldest son to come up to New York because he has a commercial opportunity. Is that modeling? What kind of commercial opportunity does a kid four or have?
You take a cute kid and you pop them in a commercial and people want your product. And that's what he wanted for his son, just to be a cute little face and get started on a career. That's what he envisioned for him. I probably thought even for through that one day little Grant might be able to support him. He was always looking for people to take care of him and to avoid work so he could do drugs and drink.
So he tells Laura, I'm gonna get our kid modeling gigs and bring them up to New York and it will be just for a little bit, and I'll send them back down. Did they have any kind of a custody agreement at this point or was it just between the two of them.
No, there was no custody agreement, but that once he married Amanda, that all started to change because now Amanda wanted her and Grant to be able to go where they wanted, but Grant didn't want to go anywhere. Without his boys. He wanted his boys with him, and all things got very ugly, and he ended up going to them and getting one of those judgments you can get when someone's life is in danger, so that he could
get immediate custody of this little boy too. So the share of stopped Laura when she's driving down the road with the little one and took him from her, screaming and crying. He was very traumatic for the child, and he was turned over to his biological father.
What is the reaction of his parents, who she's living with and working with, to all of this. She must be saying, I don't know what's happening with your son. I thought we were legally married. Now he's married to this other woman named Amanda, and he's taken off. Do you guys know what's going on?
And they didn't know very much either. Grant wasn't the best dis communicating, and when he communicated, he usually lied. They were pretty much in the dark too. They didn't know what was going on. But by this time Laura had gotten her own apartment, she had found someone to
work with her, She was starting her own business. She was doing a business where she sold advertising on those place mats you get in small diners in little towns, and so she was selling ads on that she was doing the designs herself, and things were starting to come together.
And she also realized that she had not really in a way grown up as she should have, and so she started She got with someone at church who was counseling her and helping her to realize what areas she needed to work on, and she was doing everything she could to be a better person. But in the meantime, now Grant had moved back to Raleigh, was living with Amanda, who was now pregnant with their child, and sharing custody with Laura, and he had primary custody and she was
just getting basically visitation rights. And she finally decided that she just had to do something. She had to take action. She had to take him to court and get this all looked at again, because she was not somebody who could not be trusted with her children, but she strongly believed that Grant could not be trusted with the children,
and she was gathering evidence. I mean, he would send her very hateful emails, he would make hateful comments on the phone, and she was recording it all and saving she took the emails and a friend of hers stored them on her computer so that there would always be a record of them, and she took her little record device anywhere when she was meeting up for the exchange of children. She was doing all the work she needed
to do to regain custody of her boys. Meanwhile, Amanda was thought that Laura was the worst person in the world and horrible mother and all of that only because that's what Grant told her, and she believed Grant.
What was his reason and why was the sheriff so convinced that the boys' lives were in danger? I mean, what could he have possibly say? What evidence was there? It seems like there was no evidence. And it also seems like in even you know, anywhere in the country, that it would be a lot to take away some kids from their mother, especially well.
He claimed that she did drugs and she was a sex worker.
But there's no proof of that, is there no?
But this was an emergency custody thing, and emergency is they will act fast and look for the proof later if they think a child's life is endangered. And he presented a good argument that the child children were not safe.
Okay, So how long did he have the oldest boy initially before he came back to North Carolina with Amanda, It.
Was about six months. And for a little boy, that is a long long time to be separated from mom. That's just horrible long time, and you know, you don't understand what's going on. And so the parent that's not responsible for the separation, it ends up shouldering some of the blame for abandonment when that's not what really happened. So it was very traumatic for little Grant, very traumatic.
Now, why did he and Amanda come back down to North Carolina? Why didn't they stay in New York? Was it to be closer to his parents?
They came down to North Carolina because they had to settle this custody thing. That's right, Laura was taking them to court. They absolutely did not want her to have any kind of custody. They wanted to be able to roll around the country with him doing music gigs wherever and whenever, and the children were essentially in the way. So he and Amanda came down, and there was also Shay who was Amanda's early twenties daughter, so she was there. She came down to try to help her with the children,
and that didn't work out too well. Grant just didn't want her in their apartment, even though there was room for her, But so she got an apartment down the hall so that she could be there for her mom. But I think, as we're starting to fall apart between the two of them, but she was also having a baby. So Laura, being the kind of person she was, readily agreed to take the boys and keep them full time
while Amanda was approaching delivery time. And she did that, but then the boys went back when that was over, and now there are three children in the house, two preschool boys and one infant girl, and the situation was getting more inflamed. Without Laura really realizing it, she thought they were on the way to a solution because the court ordered a psychological survey of both of their homes
and all of the people involved. They did special things with testing with the children, like they will put one of the children into a room with a bunch of toys and see how they acted alone, and then they would send in the mother and see how they interacted. And both of them they just ran to their mother and were so happy to see her. But then when the father came in, they might have said hi, but then they just went back to what they were doing, and that told you a lot about the connection the
children had. And there were also things that they went and saw their houses and the living conditions in them.
Then they sat down one on one, we'd got an in depth interview with Grant and also with Amanda and with Laura, and so the psychologists basically came to the conclusion that Laura still had a little growing up to do, which Laura knew and was working on, but thought that she was a good, loving mother, but that Amanda and Grant were showing all signs of wanting to wipe her out from those boys' lives completely, didn't want her to be around them ever at all, wanted them to forget
she existed. And on top of that, Grant was really very demeaning when he talked about her. They found out that all those things he was saying about her to get custody were lies. And the one that had the drug problems they did drug testing, he was the one with the problems, the psychological problems, the drug problems, everything, And a report came out and this was the explosive
moment that led to Laura's death. The report came out and it laid out the inadequacies of Grant as a father and his need to see to get psychiatric help, and his need to be monitored for drugs. And they knew Grant and Amanda that once they went back into the court, that report is what was going to put them out of the picture with the children. They would only get occasional visits. They would be tied to the area where Laura lived. Laura was real upbeat about it
because she saw it too. Yeah, And one of the things that were found in Grant's car was a copy of the report with all sorts of notes had been written or on it, attacking the psychologist and attacking Laura, and it was just invented on that document.
Did you get the impression that Amanda was a good step parent to the boys, and then she's got this newborn of course too.
I take what a Laura said. She trusted Amanda to take care of her children. She did not trust them with Grant, but she thought with Amanda there they would be okay. A problem with Amanda is she brought into all of Grant's lies and she really thought that Laura
was scum, and she treated her very rudely. For example, they'd have set up a time when she could talk to the boys on the phone, and you know how they are when their little guys, they just you know, they don't really talk too well on the phone and they get distracted easily. Well, she was sitting there next to the boys on the phone, doing everything she could to distract them away from their mother, and it just
was bad all around. And nothing that Amanda was doing, aside from the domestic chores of clean keeping them clothes clean, and keeping them fed and keeping them safe on a day to day basis, but the other thing she was doing was really detrimental to them. I mean, a divorce can be less than a traumatic event if the two
people getting divorced do not drag the children into the conflict. Yeah, of course, but they were always getting drugged in and they were always hearing negative comments about their mother, and that that was just it was just bad. And so Laura was very excited when she got a call from Grant asking her if she wanted to come over and see the boys in the middle of the week, because she never got to do that. It was just a
weekend thing. Was all she had, and she was very excited about being able to see them during the week, and she thought he was being nice to her because she'd taken the boys while Amanda was having her baby, and so she went over there all excited to get in there and see them. But when she came in, she didn't see the boys. Both the boys and the little baby girl were in a bedroom with a shut door,
watching a movie. They sat down at the dining table, all three of the adults, and they pulled out a document and told her she needed to sign it, and the document said that for twenty five thousand dollars she would give up custody the kids. Now, what was very ironic about that was the fact that Grant had already spent every penny of Amanda's inheritance from her past husband, and that she really had absolutely nothing left. Her daughter found her crying on the back the floor because everything
was gone. All her jewels had been sold. She had a lot of expensive jewelry. She's married to a very wealthy man, her second husband, but it was all gone, and they were worried about being able to pay the rent. They're on moving in with his parents because they couldn't afford it anymore. They're still saying they're going to pay her twenty five thousand dollars. Well, Laura brought along her tape recorder, and she had her tape recorder running through
this whole conversation. And finally, what I think, though we don't know with certainty, but Laura had a knife cut on her neck and it is thought that he put the knife to her throat. He or Amanda and told her she had to sign that document. So she signed it, confident that she had the evidence to have it thrown out in court. So she I think what happened was
she made the fatal mistake. She got up to leave the apartment, and there was a carpet which was later found covered with bleach stains, and that is probably the spot where Laura died, because she stopped there by the door and let them know that she had recorded the whole conversation. Oh my gosh, and they could not let her leave.
Well, let me pause real quick and say this, so you know, I teached her crime at University of Texas, and I talked to my students about this all the time. When they say I don't understand, like this would be a good example of probably one of them would say, why would she have done that? I mean I kind of gasped and thought that myself, because you don't think
the person's capable of that. Yeah, and people are capable of anything, you know, And I don't mean for people to be paranoid, but but don't underestimate, especially someone who's been physically abused of like that. Don't estimate what they're capable of. And it's just so sad that she could have maybe gotten out of that, you know.
And Laura was a naive person and she accepted things that end people at face value. Yeah, And I think that she might have not felt all that safe with Grant, but I think she felt safe with Amanda, And because Amanda was there, I think she didn't think anything bad was going to happen. Well, And so she died there and while kids are in the other room, they took her body and put it into the guest bathroom off
the living room. And that was the bathroom that the children usually used for their bath because they had tub in it, and said, yeah, they put her in the tug and they got all the toys out, they got the shower curtain out. Eventually they got everything they cleaned out that room because evidence and everything went down on the dumpster. And that night Grant went out to home depot and he bought plastic bags and a saw in
a blade, and plastic containers and cleaning supplies. And they cut up her body in that bathroom, in the same apartment where her two little boys were.
You couldn't at least send them to Shae's apartment, which is a couple of apartments down.
I mean that's they had Shaye take care of the boys while they were cleaning the evidence up. Did Shane know what was happening, had no idea. She took the boys out to a place they liked to go to, you know where it had all that kiddy stuff and trampolines and games and things, and so she took them there, and then you know, she wanted to bring them home. Her mother said, no, you can't bring them home yet.
And she ended up with them all day long, and two preschool's little boys can be take a lot of energy when they're charged up going places and going out for some meals and things, and Shay was tired. She wanted to bring them home, and finally she got to go ahead to bring them back, and then she found out that her mother had made plans to get rid of a piece of furniture. There's basically a family heirloom
kind of piece of furniture. Is a great big wardrobe, and Sae thought that Amanda had promised to give it to her one day, and now it was going to be taken out to Texas to Amanda's aunt so all. The only reason it was being done though, which she did not realize, was she needed something in the U all truck to block the sight of the plastic containers that contained Amanda's body parts. Then they packed up everybody and took off from North Carolina all the way to Texas. Now,
I lived in Texas for a while. I drove there from Virginia once. I drove back here from Texas once. And I'll tell you right now, that is a long drive, even without little children in the car, it is long. It is arduous. Man, that was a long drive.
It's a massive state, So it is a long drive, yes, and it's often on a pleasant drive, so yeah, I can and I can also understand the tension they must have felt just hoping they didn't get pulled over or something by a cop coming down, you know.
Yeah, And they if they traveled down Route ten, which would be logical to go since they were going just outside of Houston where ten would have been larger, and that goes through Louisiana, goes through a lot of swampy areas. And all I could think was, Okay, I'm carrying body parts. Why wouldn't I dump them in a Louisiana swamp that
has no connection with me? But no, they took them out to Amanda's aunt's house, and then they were asking all sorts of questions that really made people uncomfortable, like were they're alligators in the kree? What about those haveolinas? What they do they eat bodies? And they also want to check on this They had a backyard septic tank to know how deep that was, and all sorts of nutty stuff that normal people wouldn't ask. Then they asked to bar the boat and they took it out at night.
We're going fishing. Uh huh. They took those two big containers with them in the boat and they dumped Lauris body parts in that creek, hoping that the alligators would eat them. Why would you dump the body parts across the street from a house that you were connected.
To, because you're panicking and you need to know exactly how this is going to go, that nobody could find her. You know, you need to control your environment. And if they go wandering around Louisiana and run across the wrong people in the swamp, I mean, I understand, but I also can think you could run off the road and your car could sing or U hall could sink. I could see why they would say, we've got to be someplace where we actually know what the environment's like and
control it. But from a logical standpoint, yeah, it was pretty stupid.
Of course it was stupid. And and they before they dumped it in the creek, they tried to to pour different chemicals on her body to get her to dissolve it. And where they dumped them chemicals, Amanda was caught on one of the wildlife cameras dumping off the chemicals. And it was just anything they could do wrong they could
do they did. And yeah, there were reports of Laura being missing and the police had gone to her apartment and they couldn't find any sign of her, and they couldn't find her car, and everybody was all worried about where she was, and they started investigating and find out where she was going and then find out those people
are going from their apartment. So they called Grant on the phone and he said something about, oh, I didn't have a signal when you called a few other times, and I do now though, but I'm in the middle of nowhere. And the detective said, well, you know, I didn't know there was any nowhere around Raleigh, but he tried to keep up the fiction that that's where he
was near home. And ironically, the police officers were heading out to the aunt in Texas at the same time Grant, Laura and the children were coming back to North Carolina.
Do they have tracers on those U hauls? They must even fifteen years ago when this happened, because this is in twenty eleven.
You know, I do. I do not know how much that ate it, But what got him was the GPS on the phone, yeah, and that made the connection and next thing you know, they're going out there. Texas law enforcement gave them support, brought in divers, and it was an awful place to dive because you kept getting tangled up in the lily pads. Which has have such long routes, and on top of that, it was the data summer. The temperature were over one hundred degrees in this murky,
nasty order. I felt so sorry for those divers. They found most of her body parts, though it took a couple of days of working in that hot, hot sun. And when the cops arrived to talk to the aunt, she said to them, can I pray first? And she spent some time praying, and she said, well, I've already talked to my minister, and I think I need to tell you what I'm afraid of. I'm afraid they hurt Laura, and I think that maybe Amanda is covering up for Grant.
So they what extradite them back to North Carolina, because the murder happened in North Carolina, right.
They didn't have to extradite them because they were already driving back on their own. They were going to try to drive back and ptet like nothing happened. And Grant's story was, well, we went to the gas station, our sheets gas station where we were supposed to meet Laura. We went there with the two boys, and Laura never showed up. And they really did go there. They were called him on camera, going in and out of the sheets and yeah.
So the DA. Now it sounds like it would be easy with Grant first agree murder, right, this was planned. Now I have to assume that Amanda was a different story. How do you well? First of all, what did she say? Once this is finally all out and they can't deny it's what's their stories? Are they turning on each other at all?
Yes, she's blaming Grant, Grant's blaming her. It was unbelievable and Grant where they were tried separately, and at Grant's trial, they played this horrible song that he had written to Laura talking about how he was going to kill her. And while they're playing this song in the courtroom, him singing this song or recording, he's sitting there just bopping along to all this nasty, hate filled lyrics, as if it was just a good song. It was unbelievable.
Was he going for insanity? Do you think? Or is this just narcissism? You know, and he doesn't care.
This is a malignant narcissism, Yes it is. And probably I wouldn't be surprised if there was some psychosis involved, because he was whacked he really was. I mean there was one time that he had a b begun and he told Laura to go get something for him, and she came in with it and he starts shooting at the b begun. She went out and he had friends there watching him shooting here, shooting You're shooting here and it hurts, yeah, I mean you might survide it, but it hurts.
So he has charged with first degree murderer. How do they decide what Amanda's going to be charged with?
She's charged his first degree murder too.
Okay.
I talked to Shay a lot about her her mother's trial, and say said, she made me sick.
Oh.
She got up there and put on her sweet little voice act said, my mother's an actress and she's pretty good at what she does, and she just oh poored me. I am just pitiful, pathetic, and I was afraid of him and this, that and the other. And so she ended up only getting a twenty year sentence instead of life with oparole. I Grant did, and there were a
lot of people upset about that. But then Texas grabbed the ball and they said, well, you know, she disposed of a human body in an illegal manner and that's another twenty years there. So she got a second twenty year sentence in Texas and I think it was well deserved.
Did she plead with that or what? Or is that just she went on another Was there another trial or what happened?
Yes, it was another trial and she just she got nowhere with it and it wasn't as sympathetic as the first story was to her. Oh for me, and you know it's really her putting on an act like that really made me angry because there are women out there who have been seriously abused and misused and are in fear of their lives every minute of the day. And when someone gets up there and fakes that, it damages the credibility of those other women. And I it just angered me, yeah, very much.
How were they able to untangle though, whether she had been abused likew and I'm not saying as far as like anything that mitigates what she did, but I mean, what was there evidence that that Amanda was also abused? She must have been.
She was taken advantage of, okay, and she was controlled a little, but she was not abused like Laura was. There was not physical abuse in the same way, at least according to Shay and Shae, pretty well knew what was going on in a lot of ways in that family, and she was a witness.
Wow. So Amanda gets twenty and then Amanda gets another twenty in Texas. Does Amanda ever end up testifying against Grant? Does he go first?
He went first? I don't think she testified against him. I think she put all her eggs in her trial's basket. She hadn't been tried yet, since he was first. She didn't want to run the risk of tanking her own story.
So he's in North Carolina for life?
No, yeah, no, no parole.
And then where is she with these two sentences? You know you wrote this book.
She's in Texas now she's okay, So.
She's how long do you know how long she served in North Carolina?
I think it was eleven years.
So she got out for good behavior or whatever, good behavior and then they I mean, you know, it was probably pretty easy to forget over and good behavior for her since she was ready to go to the Texas prison, and that good behavior didn't get her a great deal.
How much longer do you think she has in Texas before she's released.
Texas is really cracked down on letting people out. I mean, she might serve as full sentence.
Did they prove that she participated as in actually did any of the stabbing or anything? Or do you think it was all grant and she did the cleanup?
Two? I think that at the minimum she was there encouraging him.
So you think that she was encouraging him and then helped with the dismember and the cleanup and organizing you haul and all that stuff, But you don't think she actually, well how many how aggressive were the injuries on Laura? I guess they didn't. They couldn't really tell at that point.
No, they couldn't. Partly because of the camp, partly because of being in water. You know, when she was her body was cut up, so sometimes with that that can conceal injuries. Yeah, if you cut where there's already an injury, you know. And Amanda, Yeah, there was enough of her hostility towards Laura that was in the evidence. And I don't know how much she actually took part in the killing.
I do think she took part into this membering because in a small bathroom like that, it almost calls for two people in order to cut the body up, which is kind of disgusting, but you know, that's what they did, and she helped dispose of the body parts. She rode all the way across the country with him, knowing they were in that truck. I mean they had to stop in places. Did she ever say, oh my gosh and take their kids to the bathroom and then tell somebody, oh my gosh, you got to help me. No, she
was not being held hostage. She could have gotten away with those kids, no doubt about it.
Who has Laura's boys? Now?
Do you know grantsmother?
Okay, who she liked?
Yeah, yeah, seems like that's not perfect justice, but I think it's the best the kids could hope for. The grandmother loved the children and hopefully it is giving them a good life.
Do you know af at the trial, they stood by him when this happened.
They didn't up to a certain point. They got some about what Laura was saying and they were outraged at the way she was portraying their son, So they can't she the mother came into the trial to testify against Amanda. Reading between the lines, it seems like it's possible that she thought if Grant had never met Amanda, this would have never happened. I don't particularly buy into that, but I can understand why a mother would want to.
Yeah, it sounds like it could be the other way around, like Amanda would have never participated in this.
Yes, yes, but you know, Amanda had her own self absorption issues, and she certainly wasn't the malignant narcissist that Grant was. But she also was not a particularly giving, loving person.
Yeah, And I like to be mindful and say there's equal you know, equal responsibility. In some cases, it's not always the men who control the women in this sort of relationship, as far as you know, two criminals working together. Sometimes it's the women who are manipulating the men. It doesn't sound like that's the case necessarily here.
But I think I think she was really pushing for eliminating Laura. However. She wanted to find that. I mean, she said things to psychiatrists about that that she just wanted them gone. She doesn't want her in her life anymore. And there's only one short way of doing that, and that's with Laura's dad.
Who has Amanda's daughter, who has custody.
Grant's parents have her.
Oh okay, got it?
Wow, they got all three of them. Shay, Amanda's daughter, was considering going for custody of the little girl, but then decided it was best not the separate her from her separator, from her half brothers.
Hmm okay. So ultimately Grant will never get out, we hope, unless something happens, and Amanda will be out, presumably sometime in the next ten to fifteen years. Will she be you know what age that would be. I mean, she'll be what in her forties or fifties or some fifties.
She'll be in her fifties, maybe.
Sixties, ability to live a long life, you know, reunite with her daughter and all of that stuff. So this has not been justice seen here. It doesn't sound like it's not perfect justice for sure. No it's not, and often it's not in the stories that we tell. But the thing again we come back to, you know, the reason why you were drawn into this story is the compelling part of the triangle and the backgrounds of these
different people. And you know that unfortunate thing that we talk about a lot, which is trusting somebody where you are just saying, because Amanda's here, he's not going to do anything, and that is really really Yeah. I mean, people do call me paranoid by like an abundance of caution in a lot of situations like that.
But you know, I looked at this story and it was fascinating at the trio, but I was also drawn in because of the children. The children are finally the last or usually the last victims. They had nothing to do with anything, and yet they will suffer for the rest of their lives. Their mother is murdered, their father's responsible for those two little boys. That has to be a horrible nightmare to carry around, no matter how gently
the news was given to them. And then you know the little baby girl, she was someone who would never know her father ever, no experience with him whatsoever. And the mother, well, how do you pair up with the mother, have a good relationship with a mother who you now took part in killing your half brother's mother. Very convoluted kind of psychology to deal with for little children.
Yeah, we could only hope that, you know, they're able through therapy and for the hopefully for the love of these grandchildren, these grandparents that they'll you know, be able to have long productive lives, whether or not they're involved with Amanda one of them's, you know, the little girl's involved with Amanda or not well.
And you might look at Grant's parents and say, look how they screwed up with Grant? Is this really a good idea? But then you can also look at grant sister. I mean, she's a police officer, she's a regular human being, and so it might not have been them. You know, it could be predominantly a genetic thing with Grant, and that was made worse by it's the drug abuse in the alcohol abuse.
If you love historical true crime stories, check out the audio versions of my books The Sinners, All Bow, The Ghost Club, All That Is Wicked, and American Sherlock, and Don't Forget There are twelve seasons of my historical true crime podcast, Tenfold More Wicked right here in this podcast feed, scroll back and give them a listen if you haven't already. This has been an exactly right production. Our senior producer is Alexis Mrosi. Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. This
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