Without evidence of planning, Durham claimed, a conviction for first degree murder was clearly not in the running. As for second degree murder, “You have to decide who killed her, why they killed her, what happened. And you may not have good answers to that question because the state has not proven beyond a reasonable doubt about anything that happened in that house.
“Now, the state has put on a case . . . to show you that this was a malicious killing, that they had such a horrible relationship—I think in their opening, they were kind of, you might remember them talking about hate—hate that leads to this stuff. But the best evidence in this case shows that they didn’t have a hate-filled relationship. They had arguments. They didn’t get along that great. They were an ex who fought about custody and kids and insurance. Hate-filled?”
Durham mocked the prosecution’s contention that Laura was afraid of Grant. He patted the rail of the witness box as he spoke of how, despite Laura’s diary being right there, “They didn’t have that witness read one word out of it because there’s nothing in it—nothing in it that showed it was a hateful, spiteful relationship.
“We had the witness read something out of it, remember that, about July fifth, the custody exchange, going to Grant’s house. And there were some statements in there about how Amanda called [Laura] psycho crazy, but there was nothing in her diary that [would] suggest a hate-filled relationship.
“Now they had problems, I’m not trying to tell you they got along all the time and never argued—they did argue a lot and some of it was petty and some of it was mean, nasty. But then the next day, they’d be sending pictures, saying thanks for the pictures . . . and trying to raise the kids.”
Furthermore, Dunham said, “The state relies on evidence of Heidi Schumacher and Chevon Mathes to present this picture of this supposedly, this hate-filled, fear-filled relationship. That testimony is not reliable because Laura sold her friends a bill of goods. And I don’t mean that in a nasty way—everyone wants their friends to be on their side. And she told them some things and explained the relationship in a way that wasn’t accurate.
“She may have told the she was afraid to go to Grant’s apartment. But it’s not true. She went there—over and over. Remember Sha testifying about watching a video of Gentle’s birthday? There’s Laura at Grant’s apartment. Laura’s own words say that she went there over and over again.”
Durham also dismissed Heidi’s testimony about Grant’s abusive and threatening behavior. “And then you heard about this wedding certificate where they supposedly went to the justice of the peace and said, ‘I do,’” Durham said, holding a hand in the air. “And somehow Grant didn’t fill out the paperwork, never signed it and the wedding wasn’t real? That just doesn’t make sense. Doesn’t make sense. If that happened, those records are easy to get, the state would have gone and got ’em. They would have gotten the record and shown it to you,” he said, waving an imaginary piece of paper in the air. “‘Here’s where Laura signed it and Grant didn’t.’ They never happened and that’s not even how it works. You go get a marriage certificate, you fill it out and then you go to the justice of the peace. If everything’s in order, that’s when they swear you in.
“What had happened is that . . . Laura told her friends that they were married. It just wasn’t true. . . . And they also said, Laura would never, ever, ever, ever give up custody of the kids. She would never do that. But she did that once before, she already signed an agreement decree giving Grant custody five days a week and her two days a week.
“And that agreement later signed in Grant’s house doesn’t say she gives up her parental rights, she doesn’t want to see her kids again. She said that Grant could have primary custody. She would do that. She did do that.”
Durham moved to the recording of “Broomstick Rider” and said it was a parody. “I mean, there’s jokes in there about sending goons to his parents’ house cause Laura was living with his parents at the time. What? ‘I’m going to send a hit man to my parents’ house’? It was a joke. And it’s not a funny joke now, in light of what’s happened,” Durham admitted, but added, “It wasn’t him writing a song saying, ‘This is what I’m going to do.’ He was blowing off some steam.
“All the reliable evidence in this case points straight to Amanda Hayes. They want to tell you Grant Hayes wanted to kill Laura Ackerson because he wanted custody of his kids. But she already signed an agreement giving him custody of those kids. At the house, that day, she already signed an agreement: you get custody of the kids, twenty-five thousand dollars.” He claimed that any motive Grant might have had no longer existed once Laura signed that document.
“And there was this Facebook chat about Grant telling somebody, ‘Maybe I’m just gonna give Laura the kids to make this go away.’” Durham tried to twist to something Grant wrote after Laura was already dead into an event that occurred before she died. “Instead it ended with Grant having custody and them having to pay twenty-five thousand dollars to Laura—twenty-five thousand dollars they didn’t have . . . and now Laura’s going to be a part of their lives forever.” Durham theorized that custody of the children was Grant’s only motive. With that motive gone, the only one with a motive was Amanda, who didn’t want Laura involved with the kids and did not want to go into further debt to pay her. He claimed Amanda did it and that is why they took Laura’s remains to Texas. He pointed to the state not calling Karen Berry and presenting Pablo Trinidad instead. “And, he, in exchange for helping the state out . . . instead of being in prison forever and ever and ever and ever, he’s going to be in prison for twenty-one years. . . . And he was in the same pod with Grant Hayes for five days. Five days. If Grant Hayes was telling people that he had done something like this in five days, don’t you think there’d been more than one person who came to court and said that?”
Durham shifted then to Amanda’s confession, calling it sufficient to raise reasonable doubt. “They went to Amanda’s family—Amanda’s kin—people Grant didn’t even know in Texas. Rural Texas. He wouldn’t have done that if it was his plan. It wasn’t his mistake—it was Amanda’s mistake, so they went to her family.
“Grant Hayes helped dispose of Laura Ackerson’s body. It was his wife [who’d killed Laura] and he wanted to protect her. And his motives were not all pure, he was concerned about protecting himself. That’s a terrible thing and it’s a serious crime,” Durham admitted, but “that isn’t what this case is about. This case isn’t about disposing of a body, as terrible as that is. Disposing of a body is a terrible thing but it is not murder. The state has not proven—has not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Grant’s guilty of murder. And that’s why we would ask you to check that third box, the not-guilty box.”
—
WHEN Will Durham finished, co-counsel Jeff Cutler rose to give the concluding remarks for the defense.
“I think one of the key challenges you have,” he told the jury, “is to take the emotion—the raw emotion—possibly the disgust, whatever you despise. There’s no reason not to be disgusted with what Grant Hayes participated in. There’s plenty of reason to be upset about what the state has proven in this case about how they worked together to cover up Laura’s death. . . . But the challenge you are going to have is to take those emotions, those feelings, and put them in the proper place as you said you would do in jury selection. Put those aside and be objective about the facts and the evidence.”
Cutler reiterated Durham’s scorn for Pablo Trinidad. “If you believe Pablo Trinidad, then you have to believe she was choked, she was strangled in some way. That’s what he says Grant told him happened—she was strangled. And again, whatever happened, your common sense will tell you, if they strangled her, why is there bleach spots on the carpet? . . . You don’t need bleach if you strangled somebody.”
Cutler said of Karen Berry that “she knew and she truly believed—that her sister had done something to Laura.” He remarked that “she te
stified about [how] on the morning when they were leaving, taking Amanda aside saying, ‘Now, look, I’m not going to bring this up again, I’m not gonna ask again, just tell me, are you covering for Grant?’ . . . And I would suggest to you that that nod was Amanda paying her sister what her sister wanted. . . . But that is not what happened. And the evidence from Karen Berry is that Amanda never said to her that Grant hurt Laura—that Grant—that we hurt Laura. It was: ‘I hurt Laura.’”
Cutler then belittled the state’s contention that Grant and Amanda had acted in concert. “If one kills her, then they both can be guilty of murder if they have a common purpose,” he said. “But, again, there is no evidence of that. They may ask you to make inferences, conjectures and that this was a terrible custody battle and that that makes sense. But . . . we put on some e-mails in our evidence. And if you remember, those e-mails are around in May, about the time of . . . the custody evaluation. And the state says, ‘Now Grant is mad—he didn’t get what he wanted and that’s his motive to kill.’
“But if you look at what they did, days after this custody evaluation . . . they were actually working together to get as most time with these kids with both parents. . . . That custody evaluation wasn’t an impetus for anything.”
Cutler said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I could probably stay here another hour but I’m not. I’m going to wrap it up. This is a sad case. This is a nasty case—very nasty things occurred. But I trust you will do your job. You will not let your emotions decide this case. You will not let your disgust over what happened in this case lead you to a verdict. You will look and you will hold the state to its burden of proof.
“‘Have they proven to me how Laura Ackerson died? Have they proven to me who killed her? . . . Am I truly convinced of what happened to Laura Ackerson in that apartment and how she died?’ And I would suggest to you, they have failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt these things. And I trust that you will return a verdict of not guilty.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
ASSISTANT District Attorney Becky Holt began the closing arguments for the state. “Let’s get this right from the get-go. I’m not going to stand up here and ask you to convict Grant Hayes of first degree murder because you feel sorry for Laura Ackerson,” she said. “The State of North Carolina asks [you] to find him guilty because that is the verdict that is called for by the law and the evidence in this case.
“Laura Ackerson, in July 2011, had every reason to be optimistic about where she was going, where her life was heading, and specifically about what was going to happen with the custody of those two children.”
Holt brought up Dr. Ginger Calloway’s report. “The judge will tell you how you can consider Dr. Calloway’s report. He’ll tell you, as it impacts on your decision making of the state of mind of Laura Ackerson or the defendant, or any motives that you can consider it for that purpose. Not for the truth of what necessarily was reported in that report, but what affect it had on Laura Ackerson, on her state of mind, on the defendant, on his state of mind.
“Now that report, it is in evidence. You recall where it was recovered from. It was in the Dodge Durango by the passenger seat, right there in the console. You recall that it had coffee stains on it. It had markings. ‘Never.’ ‘BS.’ Why is that important?” Holt asked rhetorically. Because “although Dr. Calloway’s report recommends fifty-fifty—a two-three-two plan—it’s really bad for the defendant. While Laura, according to Dr. Calloway and her report she provided, she needed to work on her being more assertive, she needed to work on her anxiety.” Regarding Grant Hayes, however, Calloway “recommended [he] needed to go see a psychiatrist . . . because of his ‘illogical, disturbed thinking that he exhibits. It is disturbing,’ she wrote in her report, ‘that his intense rage towards Laura may serve as an anchor for his disturbed thinking. It is obvious that they do not want Laura included in the children’s lives. The defendant believes he should have total control through legal and physical of the children with supervised visits only for Laura.’
“So what do you have? On one hand, you have Laura Ackerson, who over this year period has really worked to get herself into a good spot. She’s gotten a job, she’s moved out, has gotten a place to live, has set all these things in motion.
“The defendant over that period of time, over that year, I would suggest to you, found himself in a very different spot. He found himself in a situation where things were not going well, where things were not looking good for him to get custody of these boys.”
Leaving Dr. Calloway, Holt moved on to March of 2011. “It was about that time that the defendant makes a report to DSS [Division of Social Services] regarding child abuse, which was not substantiated . . . but it was around that time that Laura expresses to her attorney [John Sargeant], ‘What if something happens to me? I’m concerned.’
“[Grant Hayes] was losing control of the situation,” Holt said. “And as we move closer and closer to that August fifteenth hearing, where Laura, on one hand, is lining up the witnesses,” Grant knew “his options are limited.” The ADA mentioned that things were getting strained. “In June—you heard testimony and you saw digital evidence about a midweek exchange that took place at Monkey Joe’s . . . Laura said: ‘I’m not going to do that again—it was too hard.’ You heard Chevon say, ‘She called me and she was very upset.’ Grant wouldn’t let her say good-bye. It was a scene. It was at the Monkey Joe’s.
“And then, on June the twentieth, there’s a request by Laura to the defendant: ‘Can we do the midweek thing again?’ And the answer was: ‘No.’ . . . You don’t hear anything more about the midweek visits until July the twelfth—the evening of July the twelfth. And that’s instigated by the defendant. And what he says is: ‘Do you want to give the midweek visits a try—you wanna give it another try?’ . . . The defense would have you believe that would show they were getting along. That might make sense, if it were not for the events that followed.”
Holt said again, “This is a case in which the defendant was in a place where he was losing control.” She pointed out that Grant “had great aspirations that he would be this songwriter that would go to Nashville or travel the world with his children and move forward. He wanted Laura to just go away. . . . But what the defendant didn’t count on was that Laura was not going to give up on those children. And he knew that and it became more and more clear.”
She referenced the defense’s argument that the case was just about dismemberment and disposal, and that the jury “shouldn’t consider that in your deliberations on whether or not he is guilty of first degree murder. The judge is going to tell you, you can consider that: the defendant’s actions before, during, and after the killing. The judge is going to tell you, you can consider all of that. And what do those actions tell you?
“The defense will tell you that the fact that the defendant went to Wal-Mart a few hours after this killing and bought a saw, bought goggles, and bought plastic tarping, that you shouldn’t consider that. Well, you should consider that. They say it was a bad plan—a stupid plan—well, the law doesn’t say it has to be a good plan. The law doesn’t say that it has to be thought out in every respect. The defense says that [the Hayeses] didn’t think about how they were going to get her out of the apartment—it was a dumb plan.
“Well, the plan was to kill her. Whether or not they’d thought out exactly how, doesn’t mean there wasn’t a plan to kill Laura Ackerson. Listen carefully to the judge’s instructions when he talks to you about those things.
“The defense argued to you that it didn’t make any sense to go to Texas—that that wouldn’t have been the defendant’s idea. Would it have been his idea to take [her] to Kinston where his family lived, where he was getting ready to move to?
“It’s all about Grant Hayes. It’s all about it not coming back to him. It’s him, through his lawyers, who’s arguing that it’s Amanda Hayes acting alone—his wife acting alone—who killed Laura Ackerson—the
mother of his children—the woman to whom he’d been engaged in a custody battle for over a year—one he was getting ready to lose.”
Becky Holt moved on to what Grant told Pablo Trinidad, and how the defense’s skepticism was unwarranted. “He talks to members of the Greenville Police Department in January of 2012. That’s before Dr. Radisch’s reports come out, I mean it hadn’t even been published. And he told them about the choking. And Detective Faulk said what [Pablo] told [him] was consistent with what he told Greenville.
“What else does the defendant tell Pablo Trinidad? You remember when he first started testifying, he said, the defendant said, ‘I couldn’t have done it because her car was parked near the apartment and I had trouble with my hands from playing instruments for a long time.’ Then as he continued to talk, you learned that, what the defendant said was what his defense was going to be. ‘I’m going to say I didn’t do it because who would be stupid enough to leave her car right there near my apartment? I’m going to say I couldn’t choke her because of my hands, because of playing instruments, had gotten weak—I didn’t have the strength in my hands.’ The defendant was planning his defense even then, two days after he’d been arrested. And that’s what he told Pablo Trinidad.
“You decide the credibility of Pablo Trinidad. Weigh it with the other evidence in the case but consider those things when you decide. Consider his testimony with great care and caution, but when you do that, if you still believe his testimony in whole or in part, consider that with everything else when deciding this case.”
Holt moved on to Karen Berry. “The defense—well, just let me say this: You had the opportunity to observe her. This was a difficult situation as you can imagine. You had the opportunity to see her testify and try to tell you who said what. I would submit to you the defendant’s main defense here was Karen Berry. And what did she say? She said that, ultimately—and you remember how you remember it—that she and Amanda had a conversation in which Amanda said, ‘I hurt Laura and I hurt her bad.’ Mr. Zellinger asked her, ‘Don’t you recall when the detectives were out you told them that you couldn’t remember whether she said, “I hurt her” or “Laura’s dead”? And wouldn’t your memory be better then?’ ‘Yes, it would be.’ ‘Well, what did she say?’ ‘I don’t know, I don’t know which of those it was.’”
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