The moment we walked into that apartment, the smell hit us—bleach, so strong it stung the back of the throat. There was a massive bleach stain on the carpet, not some small spill, but a large, unmistakable patch. The place was a little messy overall, but the hallway bathroom was spotless. A detective later said you could eat off any surface in there.
That bathroom belonged to the two little boys, and normally it had a shower curtain and mats on the floor. Now, nothing. Just clean, bare surfaces. We were there because of Laura Ackerson.
She was twenty-seven, a mother of two, and she’d been missing for five days. Her business partner and close friend, Shavon Mathis, had called us. They talked every day, sometimes multiple times a day. Silence for five days was impossible for someone like Laura.
She had a routine. She was building her life back up. She and Shavon had started an advertising business, designing menus for restaurants for free and selling ad space on them to other businesses. It was smart, promising.
And above all, Laura’s life revolved around her boys. She and her ex, Grant Hayes, shared custody. She’d pick them up on Fridays, drop them off on Sundays. On July 13th, 2011, a Wednesday, she left a voicemail for a friend.
She was coming to Raleigh to visit her boys, and she’d meet up with her friend afterward, probably leaving around seven. That was the last anyone heard from her. Grant and Amanda Hayes lived in an apartment complex in Raleigh. Grant was a musician, Amanda had some small acting credits from years ago.
They had an infant daughter together, born just a month before Laura vanished. Laura had gone over to their place to see her boys. That was the last time she was seen alive. We didn’t rush to talk to Grant and Amanda.
We got their phone records first. They weren’t in North Carolina. They were in Texas. And we found Laura’s car, parked about four hundred yards from their apartment complex, as the crow flies.
We got a warrant to search their apartment. Inside, besides the bleach and the too-clean bathroom, we found a note on the kitchen counter. It said that in exchange for twenty-five thousand dollars, Laura would drop her pending child custody litigation. Anyone who knew Laura knew she would never sign that.
If her signature was on it, it was done under duress. We knew there was a hotly contested custody battle. Laura had cleaned up her life, gotten her finances together, and her attorney was telling her things were looking good. A final hearing was scheduled just weeks away.
Everyone expected she’d get at least joint custody. And then there was what her friend Heidi kept telling us. Heidi was adamant. “I think Grant has something to do with this.
” Laura had told her, “If anything ever happens to me, look at Grant. ”
We knew Grant and Amanda were in Texas, staying with Amanda’s sister, Karen Berry. It was an unplanned trip, supposedly to bring a piece of unwanted furniture, a cabinet, all the way from Raleigh to Richmond, Texas. It made no sense.
They’d rented a U-Haul for it. We flew down to Texas. When we talked to Karen, she was nervous. She asked if we could pray first before she talked.
Then she told us everything. Grant and Amanda had asked a lot of strange questions. Was there somewhere they could dig a big hole? Would wild hogs eat humans?
They asked about a decorative well in the front yard, about the septic system, about sharks in the creek. And they asked how many alligators were around and what they could do to a body. Then Amanda pulled her sister aside and said, “I hurt Laura. I hurt her bad.
”
Karen was relieved when we showed up. She’d been terrified. They’d asked her to watch the kids while they took a late-night boat ride. She pointed us to the creek across the street.
Oyster Creek. A murky, stagnant, plant-choked swamp. In the middle of a Texas summer, it was over a hundred degrees out there. The water was like bathwater, and it was crawling with alligators.
We called in the dive team. The conditions were brutal. The divers had to wade and swim through thick lily pads with roots so tangled they’d spring right back into place after you pushed them aside. Armed officers stood on the banks and in boats, ready to shoot any alligator that got too close.
The divers changed tactics, using their feet to sweep through the mud and vegetation. The smell was the first sign. The first day, they found part of a female torso and part of a leg. The second day, they found the head.
It was enough to identify Laura Ackerson through dental records. All told, they recovered about sixty percent of her body. The hands and feet were never found. The alligators had done some damage.
But the skull looked strange. It looked like it had been melted. The tissue on it had been etched away. Forensic experts determined it had been exposed to muriatic acid.
Back at the apartment, we’d found more. A manual for a reciprocating saw, sitting out in the open. In the trash, rubber gloves with blood on them. The blood was Laura’s.
Surveillance video from Walmart showed Grant Hayes at two in the morning, right after Laura disappeared, calmly walking the aisles, picking out a reciprocating saw like he was choosing a box of cereal. Amanda was caught on camera at an ATM withdrawing cash. Then Grant used cash to buy muriatic acid at a Home Depot. And Amanda was filmed dumping that acid near Oyster Creek, at the exact spot where we found Laura’s remains.
Karen had told us about the coolers Grant and Amanda left behind, brand new, some still with stickers. And a machete they’d hidden in a barn, along with rags and cleaning supplies. We arrested them both at Grant’s parents’ house. They didn’t fight.
They both immediately asked for attorneys and refused to say anything. Grant went to trial first. The evidence was overwhelming. The tool marks on the bones matched a specific saw, and the video showed Grant buying that exact saw and blades.
We even played a song Grant had written, about wanting to kill his ex. As it played in the courtroom, Grant sat at the defense table, bobbing his head to the beat. The jury watched him do it. He was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Amanda was convicted of second-degree murder in North Carolina and got thirteen to sixteen years. But we weren’t done. We packaged everything we had and presented it to the district attorney in Texas. She was charged with destruction of evidence, tampering with a human corpse.
At her second trial, her defense was duress. She claimed she did everything because she was terrified of Grant. Her testimony was polished, well-rehearsed. But we had the evidence.
We had her on game camera, alone, dumping the acid. We had her at the ATM by herself, when she could have asked someone for help or called the police. And we found two of everything—two sets of gloves, two sets of goggles, two sets of masks. It wasn’t a crime committed by someone acting alone in fear.
The jury agreed. Amanda Hayes was found guilty of destruction of evidence. She was sentenced to twenty years in prison, to be served consecutively after her sentence in North Carolina. I think about those two boys a lot.
They were two and three years old. They lost their mother. Their father will be in prison for the rest of his life. Their stepmother will be locked up for a long time.
As a mother myself, I didn’t want them to have to face her being out while they were still kids. With this sentence here in Texas, we made sure that didn’t happen. I never knew Laura. But now, every time I drive past that apartment, I think about her.
That’s where she took her last breath. I can’t go by here without thinking about it.
