Bitter Remains

by Diane Fanning

  —

  THAT same day, Detective Mark Quagilarello thought about William B. Umstead State Park, nearly six thousand wooded acres filled with hiking and bridle trails, campgrounds and three man-made fishing lakes, nestled between the bustle of Raleigh, Durham, Cary and the Research Triangle Park. In the past, many have gone into that near wilderness and grown disoriented and gotten lost. The investigator sent a team of searchers to look for any sign of Laura Ackerson there.

  At the same time, Detective Amanda Salmon was busy talking to several of Laura’s friends, obtaining a video from Monkey Joe’s and interviewing the manager, Lauren Harris. She also initiated another search into Laura’s bank accounts for any activity since July 13.

  At four thirty that afternoon, Detectives Robert Latour and Dexter Gill set out on the eighteen-plus-hour drive to Katy, Texas. They traveled down 85 South through Atlanta and Montgomery. They paused at a rest stop in Alabama, where they caught two hours of sleep in the car. Then they were off again, taking Interstate 10 through Louisiana and then “drove forever in Texas” until they reached Katy at four forty-five P.M. on Saturday, July 23. They shoveled down dinner and fell into bed at a local hotel.

  —

  BACK in Raleigh, Grant was feeling the heat. When a friend wrote at 7:23 on the evening of July 23 to congratulate him on his new baby and say he was taken aback by the news about Laura, Grant was ready with a question. “Can you remember any details from stories she might have told you about her past? . . . Any little thing would help.”

  A few minutes later, he contacted a woman who had been helping with the distribution of promotional copies of the cell phone covers and asked her to send some cases to Lainie Panos. “This thing with Laura is very serious. They trashed our house and took our car. Pray for us and pray for her, too. . . . I may be up for the fight of my life and I’m really scared. Black guy. White girl. Custody fight. WTF? . . . It’s a nightmare.”

  A few minutes later, Grant wrote to another friend: “We don’t have our phones, our house has been trashed and they took our car last night. Pray that Laura shows up in good health.”

  Right after that, Grant sent a message to yet another acquaintance. “Y’all keep us in your prayers for real.” He went on to explain the situation as he had with the earlier friend and ended the message with: “It’s bad movie, man.”

  That guy apparently hadn’t heard the news and asked for the identity of the “they” who’d trashed the place and taken his stuff. Grant explained it was law enforcement looking for the mother of his boys. “They said ‘missing person’ but the warrants said ‘homicide.’”

  He then had an exchange with Lainie Panos about the cell phone covers he wanted to get into Apple Stores nationwide. After talking about that, he switched gears. “I don’t know if you’ve heard but Laura’s gone missing and the police took all my shit. . . . I’ve got three little babies and they took my car, too.” He authorized her to make business deals on his behalf and wrote: “My attention is on this very serious matter . . . until Laura shows up. . . . It’s not a joke and somebody is playing a very serious game with my life right now.”

  Lainie offered her support and the use of her Gmail account, and displayed a little bit of paranoia as she did so. “Brother, take care. I don’t know what’s up but get me word and I am here in any way. Peace, love, erase. Get to me. Somehow. Whatever you need.”

  The next morning, Grant was still distressed. He wrote to a female friend asking a lot of questions. “Did Laura ever say anything to you about running off? Leaving town or wanting a new life? . . . We really need to help the cops find her.”

  She suggested he contact some of Laura’s friends but couldn’t remember any of their names. “I keep thinking she is somewhere close watching this play out.” She added that Laura could have gotten a false ID and fled anywhere.

  Grant wrote about his distress about comments on websites and added, “She told all of her friends I was a monster. . . . I think Laura took off, too. This is a real mess.”

  The woman tried to reassure him. “The news report I saw said . . . that Laura was unstable and you were given full custody. I have never seen anything negative about you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  WHILE Grant Hayes was fretting about the current turn of events, the investigators from North Carolina contacted the Fort Bend County Sheriff’s Office in Texas and requested the assistance of a couple of deputies. They arranged to meet the deputies in the rural outskirts of Richmond at Beland Park and, together, they went to Karen Berry’s home on Skinner Lane.

  A three-plank wooden fence with pieces of the bottom board missing ran across the front of the house by the road. Detective Dexter Gill and one of the deputies approached the front door and knocked. The other two hung back just off the porch. Karen answered, appearing somber and worried. They introduced themselves and said they wanted to ask her some questions. She invited them in.

  Gill and Detective Robert Latour went inside. Gill said, “I know Grant and Amanda have recently made a trip to your residence and brought a U-Haul trailer with them. It was an unplanned visit that seems a little unusual. Grant has children by another lady by the name of Laura Ackerson who is currently missing in Raleigh. I just wanted to speak to you to see whether or not you have any knowledge of that and to find out how the trip went.”

  Karen, looking visibly distressed, said, “I’ll answer your questions. I’ll tell you everything I know. But can I pray first?”

  “Of course,” Gill said.

  Karen prayed aloud to the Lord to give her the strength to say what she needed to say. Latour and Gill started the interview with Karen together. In response to their question about who lived in the house, she told them that her two sons, Dalton and Shelton, were there. Her husband, Stanley, a truck driver, was away at the time. Her older son and two daughters no longer lived at home.

  After establishing that Amanda and her family had visited and gone, Gill asked, “Is Laura here?”

  Karen sobbed out loud. “I’m afraid she is. You need to look across the street.” After a pause, she added, “I can’t stand the thought of standing in court and facing my sister afterwards, but I have to do what’s right.” She revealed her concerns about Oyster Creek across the street from her house, and Gill went outside to speak to the Fort Bend County deputies who responded to the scene with them.

  They made a call for additional personnel. More deputies and detectives from the sheriff’s office as well as the dive team from the Richmond Fire Department were on the way.

  The Raleigh detectives walked over to look at the creek and then came back across the street to examine the property. Latour saw the dresser/wet bar that had been brought from Raleigh sitting on the front porch of Karen’s home. At the rear of the house, on a broken-down deck that didn’t appear safe to use, were old weathered wooden chairs and a cooler. They spotted another ice chest in the grass beside it. Lots of trash was scattered in overflowing bins around the backyard. It was a very rural area, so there was no garbage collection. Trash had to be burned, but the drought had called a halt to open fires. From one of the trash bins, they secured a khaki green suitcase as possible evidence.

  Behind the house was a garage in a state of disrepair, a defunct old general store that the family now used for storage and as a hog pen area. For use in his feral-hog hunting, Shelton had dogs in a pen on the opposite side of the property. Karen pointed out a spot in the hog area where the dirt looked different from the rest. Karen then directed them to the garage, where she had jammed Grant’s machete, with its two-foot-long blade and standard handle, down between the studs in the wall. She also pointed out that in that same spot they would find the rags that Grant used to clean out two coolers before they left. They also pulled out a bottle of advance enzyme treatment from the same location. Karen said she didn’t know where it had come from. Deputies secured those materials for forensic a
nalysis.

  After surveying the property, Latour asked Karen and her two sons to go to the sheriff’s office to give their statements. He then searched Shelton’s truck, an F-150 parked in front of the house. Finding nothing of evidentiary value in or on the Critter Catchers vehicle, Latour released it so that Shelton could use it for work.

  After checking on the items for processing, Latour left Gill in charge and went across the street to watch the divers at work, walking down the fifty-foot-long mowed path to the water.

  Gill checked out the septic tank to see if that needed to be searched as well. He found old lumber and other miscellaneous materials piled on the lid. It appeared as if they’d all been stacked up there for quite some time.

  —

  BEFORE beginning the search of Oyster Creek, the Richmond Fire Department contacted the Gulf Coast Water Authority. That agency ordered the closing of dams upstream to reduce the flow of water.

  Crime Scene Investigators Kim Oreskovich and Jack Clark arrived at the scene at three fifteen that afternoon, hauling a trailer to transport the Berrys’ johnboat to a secure location for forensic examination. The boat was wrapped in a tarp before being loaded onto the bed.

  Oreskovich and Clark were joined in the fire department’s flat-bottom recovery boat by an armed officer ready to fire on any alligator that menaced the team. When they hit the outer perimeter of the designated search area, they spotted two white objects floating up against a massive patch of lily pads.

  Oreskovich and Clark dipped a sheet under the water, slid it beneath the objects, and scooped them up. Holding the four corners of the sheet, they carefully lifted it out of the water and into the boat.

  They had recovered two portions of a human torso, without limbs, severed at the navel.

  Without attempting to judge possible relevance, they continued to gather up anything they could find in the vicinity of the remains: trash, plastic, containers, bottles and even fish eggs. By the time they had finished that task, the thick vegetation encompassing their boat prevented any further progress in the direction they had been going. They headed back the opposite way and, thirty yards from the first discovery, they found part of a leg.

  When they arrived at a point directly across from the Berry home, they pulled into shore and Oreskovich placed the wrapped body parts on another sheet spread on the ground. She took a series of photographs and examined the cut ends to determine the nature of the tool markings.

  She was walking up to the street when Detective Gill approached her and asked, “Could the cuts have been made with a machete?”

  They walked down to the evidence to see if the marks on the largest bone from the leg could have been made with that implement. Oreskovich then met with the death investigator for the Galveston County Medical Examiner’s Office, who ordered an autopsy and had the remains transported to his office.

  Oreskovich began processing evidence that same day. She found a single hair and a small piece of vegetation in one of the coolers. She applied the blood reagent BlueStar to the inside of the johnboat. It illuminated, indicating the possible presence of blood. Further testing would need to be conducted to determine if it was human and to rule out any reactions from detergents or other substances. She also got a glow on the exterior of the boat. Using a Sharpie, she drew an outline around it to make the exact spot obvious for lab analysis.

  She processed a hair found on wire fencing and another from the U-Haul. She catalogued the four pairs of women’s panties found in the seized piece of luggage. She swabbed, sprayed, dusted and collected any samples she could find—from the trailer to the johnboat to found items that might matter but could possibly have no relevance at all. After the collection was completed, she had 110 items, which she turned over to Detective Gill.

  Once it was too dark for the divers to work, Detective Latour joined Gill, who had returned to the Berrys’ backyard with Fort Bend County detectives. The Berry family couldn’t spend the night in the home because it was still part of the active investigation, so they were supervised as they retrieved personal possessions they needed. Before leaving the premises, Latour searched through those items before sending them on their way. Investigators left the residence at nine P.M., leaving a deputy positioned in front of the house all night long.

  —

  THE discovery of body parts in the depths of Oyster Creek in Texas pushed the Raleigh, North Carolina, investigation in a different direction—transforming it from a suspicious missing persons case to an obvious homicide of an individual strongly suspected to be Laura Ackerson. Detective Amanda Salmon obtained a search warrant to secure DNA from little Grant and Gentle to compare with what was found half a country away.

  Sergeant Brian Hall called Heidi Schumacher to get a description of the tattoo Laura had on her foot in case they found that appendage in the creek. He telephoned later that day to ask if Laura had recently had a car accident, because of minor damage found on the right rear side panel of her car. Heidi was not aware of any vehicular mishap.

  —

  ON Monday, July 25, 2011, Detective Latour spoke to the local justice of the peace, who bore the responsibility for releasing bodies after autopsy. Then he made the ninety-minute drive to the Galveston County Medical Examiner’s Office in Texas City. On the way, Latour called Dr. Deborah Radisch, the medical examiner back in North Carolina, to inform her that the case was now officially a homicide. He described the condition of the remains and asked for any special requests she wanted him to make of her counterpart in Texas. Latour wanted to be certain that he collected the correct bones and tissue for her analysis.

  Latour observed as Assistant Medical Examiner Dr. Nobby Mambo performed the autopsy on the two-piece torso. The upper portion had been cut near the neck and below the ribs as well as at both shoulders. The lower half was cut at the hip joints. Portions of cut bone and hair were transferred to the Fort Bend County Sheriff’s Office to remain secure until it was time to transport them back across the country.

  Meanwhile, the Houston Police Department dive team had returned to the scene to assist in the search. Latour arrived back at the creek just in time to see the divers recover a human head at 3:09 that afternoon.

  Karen Berry agreed to another interview, but this time she wanted to meet at her attorney’s office. After that, Latour also spoke with Karen’s daughter, Kandice Rowland.

  He started wondering about the possibility that Grant or Amanda had also disposed of potential evidence at a nearby Dumpster. He contacted the South Grand at Pecan Grove Apartments down the street from Karen’s house, off of Skinner Lane, but unfortunately, their trash containers were emptied often—every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. At the end of that long day, he and Detective Gill met with Fort Bend County detectives to review the status of the case.

  Detectives always need a strong argument to justify the expense of long distance travel, so Gill and Latour had high hopes of finding pivotal information when they’d set out on that long journey to Texas. The significance of their findings, however, far exceeded their expectations. They now knew what happened to Laura Ackerson’s body, had determined the two people who were definitely responsible and had gathered a massive amount of crucial physical evidence. There were still some details for law enforcement to nail down to wrap up the case, but now the burden of securing justice shifted to the medical examiner and the prosecutors.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  BACK in Raleigh on Monday, July 25, 2011, Agent Michael Galloway with the Raleigh/Wake City-County Bureau of Identification stepped into the case at the request of the Raleigh Police Department. He went to their secure garage, where they had towed in Grant’s Dodge Durango for processing. Galloway shot a 360-degree series of the exterior and moved to the interior. He applied volcanic powder with a brush and transferred found fingerprints to a card. That task was made more difficult because, although some of the surfaces were smooth, much of th
e interior was cloth, a difficult material for fingerprints to adhere and be lifted.

  He sprayed luminol inside, looking for blood. He got the telltale glow on the seat and floor mats on the driver’s side, and also on the right front door, the right seat belt latch, and the left second row and third row seats. Secondary confirmation tests using the three-part phenolphthalein process, however, had negative results. Detectives Zeke Morse and Thomas Oullette searched the vehicle when Galloway had completed his tasks. They seized the child custody review, which had been jammed down between the center console and the passenger’s bucket seat.

  Then, Galloway, Oullette and Morse went to SecurCare Self Storage on Glenwood Avenue, where Galloway took photographs of the unit rented by Grant and Amanda. At seven thirty that evening, the three detectives reported to the couple’s apartment, where Galloway shot photos and pulled the molding away from the bathtub and toilet to see if any blood had seeped behind it. He sprayed luminol and several areas fluoresced, but again, confirmatory tests were negative. (The problem with both luminol and BlueStar is that they not only react to the iron in blood, but to anything with iron or other metals in it like pennies, mayonnaise or bleach.) He sprayed in the east side bedroom and bath, the living room, the foyer area beside the front door and on a mop on the balcony. All were negative.

  That evening, John Williams called the police to report a spot that he thought could be a bloodstain on the covering under the couch he’d just bought from Grant Hayes. Detective Quagilarello went over to take a look and agreed that it looked suspicious. He brought in Agent Mike Galloway from the Raleigh/Wake City-County Bureau of Identification, who conducted a presumptive test on the spot, but the results were negative—it was not blood.

  John then pointed to the arm on one side that had more play in it than the other one did. He was concerned that it might have been damaged in an altercation.