Body in the Water Season 1 Episode 10

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Body in the Water (2025) Season 1 Episode 10 - Dumped in the Creek  # #RealityInsightHub   🎞 Please subscribe to our official channel to watch the full movie for free, as soon as possible. ❤️Reality Insight Hub❤️ 👉 Official Channel:  />👉 THANK YOU ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Transcript

00:00OYSTER COUNTRY

00:29Creek in Fort Bend County, Texas.

00:37Named after the abundance of oyster shells once found on its banks, the slow-moving water meanders through the area, eventually joining up with the intercoastal waterway network, lacing the United States, until it reaches the Gulf of Mexico.

00:59This particular area of Oyster Creek is really a lot more like a swamp.

01:05Very murky, dirty water, a lot of vegetation.

01:11And in the summertime, can be extremely muggy.

01:13In the height of summer, police and water dive teams searched the creek in the hope of finding a missing person.

01:29It's a hot, hot July day in Richmond.

01:40It was over 100 degrees in that area.

01:43Creeks and other smaller bodies of water that are present in hot or very warm environments tend to also maintain that warm to hot temperature.

02:04And that is because they do have a smaller volume of water, which requires less energy from the sun to warm up.

02:12These bodies of water can get very hot and sometimes considered like bath water.

02:18Additionally, this creek was not known to have any current, meaning the water was very stagnant.

02:24The lack of movement with the heat of the water is a perfect environment for a lot of bacteria to form, speeding up the decomposition rate.

02:34As well as the time pressure, police scouring the creek faced very real dangers.

02:42Crime scene officers in a boat out on a creek.

02:46Then you've got another who's in the boat with a rifle in case an alligator comes along.

02:51Some of the main concerns the divers would have to deal with would be alligators or even other animals that could cause harm to the divers.

03:01Even turtles can become a threat to divers as they could bite if they ever felt threatened.

03:07Furthermore, creeks tend to be very hot water, high bacteria.

03:12So on top of police divers having to figure out how they're going to navigate these waters, they also have to be aware of their own safety.

03:18Despite the difficult conditions, police expanded their search.

03:31We called for a search team and did what we could to have the flow of water through there closed off.

03:40They have control gates that they were able to close down for us to at least slow the water down.

03:46Police navigating the creek were from two states.

03:52The local state police from Texas.

03:56But also a team of detectives from Raleigh, North Carolina.

04:00Over 1,200 miles away.

04:02Raleigh is a very nice area.

04:22I think now there's probably close to half a million people that live in Raleigh.

04:26The houses that are in this area, the apartment complexes that are in this area are nice.

04:31It's not a high crime area.

04:39I had come into work.

04:41I remember, I vividly remember, like, I had my list of things that I wanted to do.

04:47That I had, that I wanted to get done that day.

04:49And so when I come in at 3 o'clock and you're talking to the other squad, like, what's going on today?

04:56And they're telling us about this missing person case out of Kinston.

05:01The missing person was 27-year-old Laura Ackerson, the mother of two young boys and a busy local businesswoman.

05:13Police in Raleigh were contacted by her business partner, who hadn't seen Laura for five days.

05:19A person might go missing for a couple of different reasons.

05:31One, they run away or decide to leave the life that they have now.

05:35They want to get a better life.

05:38They commit suicide or die by suicide, and so people don't know what's happened to them.

05:44They've been in some kind of accident, and people don't know where they are.

05:48Or foul play has occurred.

05:54A lot of people have routines and schedules and things that they do on a regular basis.

06:00And the same was true of Laura Ackerson.

06:02She had a schedule of things that she did.

06:08A friend of Laura's and her business partner as well, Siobhan Mathis, had not spoken to Laura for five days.

06:18That was very unusual, because Siobhan and Laura would talk about every day.

06:23They had shared that Laura Ackerson had been in a relationship with Grant Hayes,

06:29and they had two small children together.

06:35The couple had met four years earlier in 2007,

06:39and started dating around the time of Laura's birthday in April.

06:46Laura and Grant met at a bar.

06:49He was a musician.

06:50He was playing at this bar, and he was talking to her.

06:54They kind of hit it off.

06:55This is a relationship that developed very, very quickly.

07:00They shared the same birthday, April the 30th, which Laura, I think, saw as a sign that this was meant to be.

07:08Laura soon gave birth to their first child.

07:11But by the time she was due with their second, the relationship was under strain,

07:16with Grant pursuing his music career away from home.

07:19Grant Hayes moves to the Virgin Islands.

07:24In an effort to kind of promote or boost his music career, he meets Amanda.

07:30For whatever reason, these two get together and decide to have a relationship.

07:35Laura had just given birth to their second son.

07:37She still wants Grant to be involved with the boys, but she is seeing that the relationship is over.

07:46Once the couple separated, Grant went on to marry Amanda, and both set about pursuing their creative dreams.

07:54Amanda had a background in, you know, some B acting.

07:59She'd been to school for acting.

08:01She'd had some minor parts in The Sopranos and The Stepford Wives.

08:05Grant and Amanda had actually met in St. John.

08:10Grant had a little bit of a music career going down in St. John.

08:13I'm sure he wasn't making anything astronomical, but he had a kind of a gig going.

08:18But Amanda had actually inherited some money.

08:21Her husband before Grant had passed away in a boating accident of some kind.

08:26And so she had inherited money enough to kind of be able to live comfortably.

08:33Laura had moved on, too.

08:35Starting a business with her friend, Siobhan.

08:42Siobhan and Laura had this kind of brand new startup advertising business.

08:49A very smart business endeavor, I thought.

08:52She would create menus for restaurants and provide them at no cost to the restaurants,

08:59but on the menu themselves would have advertising space that other businesses would pay for to get advertising space on that menu.

09:06They were both working fairly hard, and so they would talk every day, multiple times a day.

09:15And the other thing was, she was a mother to everybody that we talked to all said the same thing, that her life centered around her kids.

09:26She shared custody with the father, who was Grant.

09:29She would pick up the kids on Friday, and then they would meet again on Sunday to drop off the kids.

09:38It would be unusual to have a midweek visit, but we know July 13, 2011, which was a Wednesday.

09:47She calls a friend of hers who lives in the Raleigh area, and basically the essence of the voicemail was,

09:53hey, I'm coming to Raleigh, I'm going to visit my boys, but I would like to meet up with you afterwards.

10:02I'll probably be leaving there at 7.

10:08The next thing we have is Laura disappears, drops off the map.

10:23In a murky creek in Texas, police teams and divers scour the water for missing mother of two, Laura Ackerson.

10:42Then, as the search widens, they make a shocking discovery.

10:48Not only has a body been recovered in Oyster Creek, but it's not just a body.

10:52We're talking about body parts.

10:55This was a big story.

10:57That first day, they were able to find part of a female torso and part of a leg.

11:06Investigators first located a torso.

11:09Both the divers and the investigators realized that they were looking for multiple body parts.

11:15This creates a whole new challenge for the dive team,

11:18especially when dealing with bodies of water that have a lot of debris.

11:24Creeks also tend to be in heavily wooded areas, resulting in a lot of vegetation,

11:30grassland, lily pads, and other forms of nature within the water.

11:34These were like monstrous lily pads, like that really were so thick on the water at this time

11:43that it was difficult to force them open just to go another foot.

11:49Lily pads have very complex stems and root systems that travel throughout the water into the bottom.

11:56This makes it very difficult for any person walking in that area to navigate through.

12:03Additionally, as you are trying to move those stems out of the way to search for any of your items of evidence,

12:09they do not stay in that spot.

12:11They will immediately come back to their natural position,

12:14making it hard to know what areas you've already searched and what areas have not been searched.

12:20Additionally, divers can easily become entangled in this, even with minimal equipment.

12:25Once dismemberment occurs, the body parts you have could be from one or several individuals,

12:42and we may not ever recover all of the parts of any one individual,

12:48and that certainly complicates things.

12:50If somebody is looking to dispose of a body,

12:54then dismemberment and then scattering the body parts in various locations

12:59would provide a unique challenge for law enforcement and other investigative agencies.

13:05I've got several cases in my career that kind of stand out to me.

13:09Usually ones involving a death of some kind.

13:12But this one stands out just because of the sort of gruesome nature of the dismemberment.

13:17Gruesome and sad.

13:20The father of Laura's two children, Grant, he lived in Raleigh.

13:36He was married to Amanda Hayes.

13:40He also had an infant daughter with Amanda that was born just about a month before this happened.

13:46Laura had traveled to Grant and Amanda to see her voice, and that was the last time she was seen.

13:56Police had spoken to Laura's ex-partner, looking for information on her whereabouts.

14:03Grant says, yeah, he didn't, she didn't show up.

14:05I don't know what's going on.

14:06The day Laura was reported missing, detectives began preliminary investigations.

14:19She had not been seen for five days.

14:22You want to do all those sorts of things to see if her credit card's been used,

14:27we're getting cell phone records, that sort of thing.

14:29And we actually were able to get some of that stuff back fairly quickly.

14:33We broadcast the description of Laura's car, and within just a few hours, roughly around 11 o'clock that night,

14:41our patrol guys had located that car.

14:43Based on the location of where they found that car, that's really what did it for us.

14:53As the crow flies straight line, it was about 400 yards away from Grant and Amanda's apartment complex.

15:01One of the other things that we did pretty quickly was we went ahead and worked on getting the phone records

15:08for Laura, for Grant, and for Amanda.

15:13As far as talking to Grant and Amanda, we didn't try to do that too quickly.

15:19We wanted to try to get a good idea before we tried to talk to them, you know, what's going on.

15:26So we were able to get their phone records and see that they were not in North Carolina.

15:31And at the time of that, when we initially got involved, they were actually in Texas.

15:38Police also started to build a picture of the relationship Laura had with her ex-partner.

15:44Grant.

15:46They were involved in a, it sounds like a pretty hotly contested child custody suit there in Raleigh.

15:55Being a mother to those two boys was her life.

16:01While she had had maybe some difficulties in the past, having sort of a stable home and a stable income,

16:07it was obvious to me that she had made a lot of attempts to try to get her life together,

16:12to get her finances together, to get a career going.

16:15And all of that was in pursuit of changing custody orders to get her boys.

16:20Things are moving forward.

16:22And she is planning to file for at least joint, if not full custody of her boys.

16:28And she's turned her life around.

16:31She's now independent.

16:32She's now making money.

16:34And her attorney is telling her, things are looking your way.

16:39And what police learned from Laura's business partner, Siobhan, and her friend, Heidi,

16:44gave them serious concerns.

16:48From Siobhan, we hear about this custody battle that's going on with Grant.

16:53But it was really Laura's friend, Heidi Schumacher, that was able to give us more information about this custody battle.

17:02We're just doing it really from a victimology standpoint, right?

17:06Trying to find out more about who Laura was and that sort of thing.

17:09But Heidi was dead set on, I think Grant had something to do with this.

17:15Her reasons were that Laura had kind of said, if anything ever happens to me, look at Grant.

17:22We're heading over to 4021 Bellum Park Trail.

17:37We knew from their phone records that it looked like they were in Texas, but we didn't know what was inside the apartment.

17:43I'm thinking about the first time that we went into this apartment, not really knowing what to expect when we opened the door.

17:54This is the apartment where Grant and Amanda lived, so right here on this side.

18:08When we first walked in, we get that strong odor of bleach, and we see the large bleach stain there on the carpet.

18:15Not just like, you know, I spilled a little bit of bleach, but a large bleach stain and the overwhelming odor of bleach.

18:23A home that was a little bit in disarray and not, you know, pristinely clean, but then having a hallway bathroom that I think a detective described you could eat off of any surface in there.

18:35It was so clean.

18:36And what also stuck out is this was a bathroom that traditionally was used by the boys as a bathroom, one that had a shower curtain, one that had mats on the floor.

18:45But now when we go in, no shower curtain, no mats, every surface clean.

18:50And then once, you know, we continue to search, the next thing that we see is this note that's up on the kitchen counter, which talks about in exchange for $25,000, Laura was going to drop the pending child custody litigation.

19:08I think that anybody who knew Laura would know that she would never agree to that.

19:13And if her signature was on that document, it was under duress that she signed that.

19:19It was another thing that I think that raised a huge red flag in terms of her disappearance.

19:29We're still kind of trying to figure out what's going on.

19:32And, you know, is this truly a missing person or is there more to it?

19:36Amanda had been married three previous times before Grant.

19:40And she had a daughter from, I believe, her first marriage.

19:44And that daughter's name was Shay.

19:48We have an interview with Shay.

19:50Because we know at this point that Grant and Amanda are in Texas.

19:55They're not easily going to be interviewed.

19:57And we didn't really feel like it was the right time to yet approach them to interview them.

20:02But we go to Shay.

20:03Shay doesn't know anything about this trip until at some point she calls her mother and her mom says,

20:13yeah, we're heading down to Texas to go see Aunt Karen.

20:17And Karen Barry is Amanda's sister.

20:26Shay's kind of taken by surprise with that comment.

20:30Because she didn't know anything about them going to Texas.

20:32And that was strange because Shay and Amanda were very close.

20:37They were, you know, they were mother and daughter.

20:39But they were, you know, almost more like sisters.

20:44For Shay not to know anything about this trip down to Texas,

20:47she thought that was a little odd, too.

20:51There was still no trace of Laura.

20:53So detectives from Raleigh flew from North Carolina to Texas.

21:00So now we have those two separate parts of the investigation going on

21:05because of the multiple states and different things going on.

21:09She's missing under suspicious circumstances.

21:13And there's some connection to Texas.

21:16And we felt like the best way to figure out what happened is to go there.

21:22Detectives from North Carolina are in Texas,

21:47investigating the disappearance of mother of three, Laura Ackerson.

21:51She was reported as failing to arrive at a meeting

21:55with her ex-husband, Grant, and his new wife, Amanda.

22:00The trail has led North Carolina police

22:03to the rural community of Oyster Creek, Texas,

22:08where the pair visited Amanda's sister, Karen,

22:13in the days after Laura's disappearance.

22:15It was an unannounced, wasn't a pre-planned trip at all,

22:21which was another concern to us as investigators.

22:26They had inferred to her that this trip was an impromptu trip

22:32to bring a family heirloom, a cabinet, to Karen Berry,

22:36which had not even been discussed before.

22:39Not anything that Karen had apparently expressed interest in having.

22:44But that was kind of the story of why they needed this U-Haul,

22:48was to bring this piece of unwanted furniture

22:50all the way from Raleigh to Richmond, Texas.

22:55Detectives told Karen

22:57they had grave concerns about Laura Ackerson.

23:01When they asked about her sister's and Grant Hayes' visit,

23:08she said, yes, I'll talk to you.

23:09Do you mind if we pray first?

23:13So that was kind of, okay,

23:16there's information that she has great concerns about

23:19that she's about to share, and she did.

23:21So when Grant and Amanda first got to Karen's home,

23:27they had conversations,

23:28and there was a lot of kind of weird questions

23:31that Grant and Amanda were asking them.

23:36Is there somewhere we could just dig a big hole?

23:38They asked if wild hogs would eat humans,

23:43because there was a hog pen on Karen's property.

23:47He asked her about sharks being across the street.

23:50Well, we're 90 miles from the coast.

23:52There's no freshwater creek sharks here, no.

23:56They had a faux well out front, a decorative well.

23:59They'd asked about that.

24:01And then they asked about our septic system.

24:04And then he asked about how prolific alligators were

24:07and what they could do.

24:08All right, the alligators are prevalent here,

24:12and they're across the street

24:14from the very home in that creek.

24:15Then, Amanda had made an alarming confession

24:21to her sister, Karen.

24:24Amanda said to her,

24:26I need to, you know, we need to talk.

24:27Can we step outside?

24:29Karen and Amanda step outside.

24:31Amanda says to her,

24:33I hurt Laura.

24:34I hurt her bad.

24:35Karen gave us a lot of information,

24:42but it took a little bit of time.

24:45Basically, what we're asking her to do

24:47is to rat on your sister.

24:52Karen was relieved,

24:55relieved that someone came and knocked on her door

24:58because she had been so worried about the situation.

25:01Grant and Amanda had taken this late-night boat trip

25:09and asked Karen,

25:11hey, can you watch the kids

25:12while we're, you know,

25:14go out on this late-night boat ride?

25:18As we're asking and saying,

25:20well, what do you think happened to Laura,

25:22and where do you think she is?

25:23And she essentially told them,

25:25well, you may want to check the creek over there.

25:27I contacted the dive team

25:30for the Houston Police Department,

25:32and they came out the following day.

25:40You got to think it's middle of summer in Texas,

25:45not the best conditions to search a creek

25:48in this legitimately alligator-infested creek.

25:54Working in blistering heat,

25:57a combination of dive teams and police in small boats

26:00pushed through the overgrown creek.

26:04Armed officers watched over them,

26:06ready to shoot any alligators who approached the divers.

26:10It wasn't just open water.

26:12It was vegetation across the creek.

26:16So you're kind of weeding through the vegetation and stuff.

26:19In an ideal scenario,

26:24the divers would have preferred to dive the creek

26:26using their hands to feel through the debris

26:29and find any pieces of evidence.

26:31That proved pretty much impossible in this case,

26:34which caused the divers to decide

26:36to walk through and search using other methods.

26:41In some cases, feet can be just as beneficial of a tool

26:44as hands when searching for evidence.

26:46There have been cases where the water

26:49has been very complex to search in

26:51and has required me to use sweep patterns with my feet

26:54rather than my hands to conduct a search.

26:57Anytime I felt something of interest with my feet,

27:00I would then submerge to pick up that item

27:02and see if it was of evidentiary value.

27:05When the divers change their tactics

27:07and start to search the lily beds,

27:09they soon find what they were looking for.

27:11There was a smell as you got closer and closer.

27:19Those are kind of the signs

27:21that probably getting ready to find something here.

27:25The first day, we recovered the remains of Laura,

27:29a portion of the remains,

27:30the upper torso and some lower extremities.

27:33It was confirmed that, unfortunately,

27:35this is a homicide investigation.

27:37The second day was instrumental

27:46in that we recovered the head.

27:48And that allowed the investigation

27:51to move forward a lot more rapidly.

27:55Ultimately, I believe it was about 60%

27:58of the total body that they were able to find.

28:02While many people think the challenge is over,

28:05as the police divers were able to recover remains,

28:08the challenge has, in fact, just transferred.

28:10At this point, the remains are very hard to read.

28:15The challenge now transfers

28:17from the divers to the pathologist,

28:19who has the responsibility of trying to determine

28:22a cause of death with very little evidence.

28:26If the skull is recovered,

28:28as was the case in Laura Ackerson's death,

28:30you can proceed with a dental identification.

28:35You can also get DNA from the teeth themselves,

28:37from the roots,

28:38or even from the skull bone itself.

28:41In this particular case,

28:43they did postmortem and anemortem dental comparisons

28:46based on the circumstantial evidence

28:49that this was for Laura Ackerson.

28:52They managed to get a dental identification

28:54of the skull.

29:01We did not recover all of the body parts in this case.

29:04We've got two legs, two portions of torso and head,

29:07but no hands or feet were ever discovered,

29:10and so it's quite possible that alligators

29:12did do some damage in this case.

29:16Next, detectives started to piece together

29:18how the suspects might have committed

29:20this shocking crime.

29:22They turned to the car and trailer

29:25that the suspects had driven to Texas

29:27and the items they brought with them.

29:32As we're going through these financials,

29:34we also see they had purchased some coolers.

29:38Grant cleaned out the coolers,

29:40but left the coolers there on Karen's property,

29:42so those were recovered by law enforcement.

29:44I mean, it was obvious they were, like, brand new.

29:46Some of them still had stickers on them.

29:48If you need coolers to make your cross-country trip,

29:50why would you not need your coolers

29:52to make your cross-country trip back home?

29:55We recovered the items that they used

29:57to clean the ice chest with

29:58that they concealed in a barn,

30:00recovered a machete that they had left there

30:04and concealed near where they had hidden these rags

30:08and this cleaner.

30:09I can't imagine taking a normal trip 1,500 miles

30:17with a three-year-old, a two-year-old,

30:19and a five- or six-week-old,

30:21but to do so knowing you have the body parts

30:26of their mother cut up and coolers on ice

30:29in a trailer that you're dragging behind you the whole way.

30:32Forensic teams had also gathered evidence

30:42from the suspect's apartment back in North Carolina.

30:46Obviously, once we get into the home of Grant and Amanda,

30:50the huge things that stick out there,

30:52the manual for the reciprocating saw, that's huge.

30:56It's just sitting out in the open,

30:57not something that is hidden.

30:59We were able to sift through the trash

31:03and we found a couple gloves, rubber gloves,

31:06that had blood on them, and we tested those gloves

31:09and that blood came back to Laura.

31:13They left a physical trail and a digital trail.

31:16We recovered the receipt that they used at a hotel

31:18that they stopped at along the way.

31:20They left it there at Karen's home,

31:22so we know where they stopped and stayed,

31:25including the video surveillance of them

31:28at all the locations that they went to.

31:33The surveillance video from Walmart,

31:36seeing Grant Hayes at 2 o'clock in the morning

31:39after the last time Laura is seen,

31:42walking up and down the aisles of Walmart,

31:45picking out a reciprocating saw,

31:47but he's walking around almost like

31:49he's trying to pick what flavor cereal he's going to buy.

31:53We had Amanda at an ATM withdrawing cash.

31:57Right after that, Grant is using cash to make purchases

32:00at a nearby Home Depot for muriatic acid.

32:05Then Amanda is seen later dumping that muriatic acid.

32:10Fortman County is not a small county,

32:12but at that time we had one camera set up in the entire county

32:17in a location that had been a problem

32:19for illegal dumping and littering.

32:22And where that one camera is set up near Oyster Creek

32:26is exactly where Amanda Hayes drives.

32:28She drives by herself and dumps this muriatic acid.

32:32When they found the skull,

32:35there was some tissue on it,

32:39but the skull looked different

32:42than the rest of the body parts

32:44in that it looked like it had been melted.

32:48The forensic odontologist was able to confirm

32:52a likely exposure to muriatic acid,

32:56or an acid,

32:57because of etching that had taken place

33:00on portions of the skull.

33:02Hydrochloric acid is extremely caustic to tissue

33:08and can be caustic enough to dissolve tissue

33:12if the tissue is exposed for a prolonged period of time.

33:16Certainly, it denatures any DNA

33:19that it would come in contact with.

33:21Eventually, one could completely deflesh a body

33:25and be left with skeletal elements

33:27due to immersion in hydrochloric acid

33:30or dousing the body with hydrochloric acid.

33:35There was sort of a dark stain inside that hog pen

33:39that was consistent with the acid.

33:41The dumped acid did have some missing.

33:44With such strong evidence,

33:53police arrested both Grant Hayes and his new wife, Amanda.

33:58Grant and Amanda were staying at Grant's parents' house,

34:02and we had some covert units that were kind of watching the house

34:08to make sure that Grant and Amanda were there.

34:11There were no issues as far as they tried to fight

34:14or they tried to run or anything like that.

34:17Pretty immediately, they both said,

34:18I'd like to talk to an attorney.

34:20I'm not going to say anything.

34:23I think when you have an offender

34:25who is incredibly calculated,

34:29not only in terms of planning a murder,

34:32particularly with somebody they once cared about,

34:34and then systematically goes about

34:36finding ways to destroy that person's body,

34:39this to me means that this perpetrator

34:41has such disdain for this person

34:44and truly is interested in just wiping this person

34:48from the face of the earth like Laura never existed.

34:52It certainly speaks to a lack of empathy,

34:56a lack of caring, a lack of, in some respects,

34:59emotions that most of us have.

35:03To dismember someone you don't know,

35:06it takes a different kind of person.

35:07To dismember someone that presumably you once loved

35:12and had a relationship with

35:13and who bore two children of yours

35:16is just hard to understand.

35:20Police in Texas have now confirmed

35:37that dismembered body parts found in an overgrown creek

35:41are those of missing mother, Laura Ackerson.

35:44Now they must gather evidence from this watery crime scene.

35:48In aquatic scenes, it's very important to collect

35:56not only the items of evidence,

35:57but the environment surrounding the evidence,

36:01such as the mud, soil, or water.

36:04These items can later be used

36:06to compare against other items of evidence

36:08to place someone at the scene.

36:10For example, if mud from the water was found

36:14on a suspect's shoes,

36:15they could compare the mud sample on the shoes

36:17to the mud sample on the water

36:19and place the two together.

36:22Using the information that has now been found in the case,

36:25it is clear that the water did not cause those remains

36:27to be skeletonized,

36:29but instead the presence of muriatic acid

36:31placed onto the body or exposed to the body

36:34prior to the body being placed in the water.

36:45Police and prosecutors started building the case

36:48against their two suspects,

36:50Grant Hayes, Laura's ex-partner,

36:52and his new wife, Amanda.

36:55Grant and Amanda Hayes both had dreams,

36:59they had goals,

37:01and those included things like

37:03being a successful musician,

37:06being a successful actress,

37:09you know, in Amanda's case,

37:11and, you know, those type of people

37:14that kind of live with their head in a cloud

37:17sort of thing.

37:19We certainly see early on

37:22that Grant appeared to have some beliefs.

37:26We see him as somebody who's a musician,

37:28who thinks he's above a menial job,

37:32who is very, very happy

37:34to let his significant other support him

37:37and carry all the weight.

37:41The police also uncovered a major factor

37:43in the ongoing child custody case.

37:48The turning point in this custody battle, though,

37:51is when the psychologist gave her report to the court,

37:55and she had some not-so-good things to say about Grant.

37:59In fact, I think she believed

38:01he had some kind of personality disorder.

38:04We can certainly say that this is somebody

38:07who was self-centered, who was violent,

38:10who was narcissistic in many respects,

38:13and we can certainly say that in many, many occasions,

38:17he acted psychopathically.

38:21Things were starting to turn in Laura's favor.

38:24On top of that, you've got Amanda and Grant

38:26basically running out of money

38:28to be able to continue this custody battle.

38:30And in just a matter of weeks

38:32after the date of the murder

38:33was supposed to be a final hearing,

38:36where it, you know, from all those involved

38:38seemed to think that Laura was probably

38:40going to be granted custody.

38:44Grant and Amanda wanted to go do something different,

38:47and I believe that Laura threw a monkey wrench

38:50into those plans for them.

38:52Everybody felt like this child custody arrangement

38:55was, at minimum, going to be a shared custody.

39:00That messed up the plans that they had,

39:04and because that tied them down to Raleigh.

39:10I think they lured her there.

39:13Grant and Amanda together physically did something

39:17to overcome Laura, some sort of struggle or fight

39:22that took place, either knock Laura unconscious

39:25or maybe strangulation that killed her there,

39:28and then you're presented with the problem of,

39:30now what do we do?

39:33Can you imagine?

39:34I mean, like, the physical act

39:36of using a reciprocating saw to cut off a limb,

39:41to cut off a hand, to cut a torso in half,

39:45to cut off a head.

39:47There's only one word that kind of comes to mind,

39:49and that is a monster.

39:55If Grant has ever loved Laura,

39:59which I wonder about, that had ceased long ago.

40:03And I think from the very beginning,

40:05it really was all about him.

40:08Everything was about him.

40:10The world revolved around him.

40:12And people would be plugged into his life

40:15to the extent that they served a purpose for him.

40:18And when they no longer did that,

40:20he was perfectly happy to remove that person from his life.

40:24Prosecutors now had to convince a jury

40:31that Grant and Amanda both had a part in murdering Laura.

40:36So, you know, there were two different trials,

40:39one for Grant and then one for Amanda later.

40:42Grant's trial was first, and, you know, again,

40:45there was so much evidence.

40:46It was a pretty long trial.

40:50In Grant's case, the nail in the coffin, if you will,

40:53was all the evidence and all the information

40:56surrounding the saw and the dismemberment.

41:01In the hands of a skilled forensic anthropologist,

41:04the tool marks that they identify on the skeletal remains

41:09can actually be tracked back to specific instruments.

41:14In Laura Ackerson's case,

41:16not only did the anthropologist track the tool marks

41:19to a specific tool that was used,

41:21but then further investigation found that the tool

41:26was purchased by her ex-husband.

41:31When you're able to show these side-by-side pictures

41:35and comparisons and the video from Walmart

41:38that shows Grant purchasing this exact type of saw

41:42and this exact type of blade, you know,

41:44right after Laura goes to their house and then disappears,

41:49that was pretty, pretty damning evidence.

41:53The other thing that kind of sticks out in my mind

41:56as far as his trial was,

41:58Grant had written a song,

42:00and it's about how Grant wants to kill his ex.

42:03So we played that song during the trial,

42:08and as the song is playing,

42:12you know, Grant's sitting at the defense table,

42:15and he starts kind of bobbing his head

42:18through the beat of the song.

42:21And for the jurors to sit and watch that

42:24and to see the person that he was,

42:28I believe that was really good evidence, too.

42:31Grant was convicted of first-degree murder,

42:35so here in North Carolina,

42:36that's kind of the highest charge that you can get,

42:39and for that, he got a life sentence in prison.

42:44A few months later,

42:46Amanda was convicted of second-degree murder,

42:49and for that, she got a sentence of 13 to 16 years.

42:53That was a little bit upsetting.

42:56But this wasn't the end of their bid

42:58to bring Amanda to justice.

43:02We packaged up all the information that we had learned

43:05and presented it to the district attorney's office.

43:08They were in agreement of pursuing charges

43:11for the disposal of Laura here,

43:14which is, you know, destruction of evidence

43:16with a human corpse, second-degree felony here.

43:20Amanda Hayes was brought before a court in Texas

43:23to stand a second trial.

43:25I was fully expecting a well-rehearsed actress.

43:37And I'd also seen her testimony

43:39in the North Carolina trial,

43:40and so I knew she was very well-rehearsed

43:43and poised in that trial.

43:46Amanda's defense was,

43:48I did all of this under duress.

43:49I did all of this under fear

43:50of some kind of injury or harm from Grant,

43:54and my issue always was,

43:56then why do I have you on game cam

43:57by yourself dumping some of the evidence?

44:01If you are so scared for your life

44:02of what this man may do to you

44:04if you don't help,

44:05you know, when you're at an ATM by yourself,

44:07if you are so scared about being involved in this

44:10and what Grant may do to you,

44:12ask to use a phone and call the police.

44:14Like, it just, none of it made sense

44:15that this was something

44:17that she was doing only under duress.

44:20What became important for the Texas case

44:23is that we're talking about

44:24two sets of gloves,

44:26two sets of goggles,

44:28two sets of masks.

44:29So if Amanda had nothing to do with this

44:31and didn't know what was happening at the time,

44:33why do we need two of everything?

44:37The jury agreed.

44:39Amanda Hayes was found guilty

44:41of destruction of evidence.

44:42In this case, the body of Laura Ackerson.

44:47Punishment ranged from two to 20 years in prison.

44:50And that's what she got, 20 years in prison.

44:53And it was a consecutive sentence.

44:57She had to complete her sentence in North Carolina.

45:02Once that was completed,

45:03she's transported here to Texas

45:05to sit in prison here.

45:10It's been several years since this trial.

45:13Just the gruesome nature of it,

45:15first and foremost,

45:16is one that is a case I'll never forget.

45:18And I think probably a big part of it for me, too,

45:21is those two boys.

45:24Being two and three

45:26and no longer having a mom.

45:29Having a father who's going to be locked up

45:31for the rest of his life.

45:33A stepmother who is going to be locked up

45:36for a long time.

45:37Being a mother myself,

45:40I didn't want them to have to face

45:42a situation of Amanda being out of prison

45:45until they were adults

45:46to be able to cope with the whole situation.

45:50I think we accomplished that

45:51with this sentence here in Texas.

45:53Being back here,

45:58you know, it reminds me of,

46:01just kind of takes you back

46:02to when this case happened.

46:04I never knew Laura,

46:08but I felt like I did know her.

46:10And to look back at the apartment

46:12and think,

46:13that's where she took her last breath.

46:16I can't drive over this way,

46:19you know,

46:20or come over this way

46:21or come by here,

46:22obviously,

46:23without thinking about that.

46:24I can't drive over this way.

46:54I can't drive over this way.

46:55So far we knew she knew

46:56that she was asked to

46:59kind of never in the world

47:02to be like outta here,

47:04because she got Quezzi miguel

47:05back one single day.

47:07But again,

47:08the employee had no idea

47:09of it doğruly

47:11that that was 마음속

47:15for herле,

47:16to be the only church

47:19who was next meeting

47:21in Suzada,

47:22or her quest

47:22thatbro από his family

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