Bitter Remains

by Diane Fanning

  On re-direct, Gaskins gave Palmer the 2009 Dodge Durango manufacturer’s book and Palmer corrected the testimony he’d made on cross regarding highway mileage. Then he confirmed that what he’d seen in the movies was consistent with the description he’d read on the stand.

  When prosecutor Boz Zellinger was back in the fray again, he verified that the private investigator hadn’t verified the report about the Hayes’s rental properties. Then he acknowledged that the tax records for 2011 did not show that the property was owned by Grant’s parents or by Grant or Amanda.

  All in all, Palmer’s testimony did not appear to do much for the defense case. The next witness, however, was the one who had to win the day.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  THE moment every courtroom watcher hoped would come arrived on February 11, 2014. The defendant, Amanda Smith Hayes, stepped up to the stand to testify on her own behalf. She wore a pastel pink suit with a white blouse and spoke in a very soft, childlike voice. After asking her to identify herself, the first question from her attorney Johnny Gaskins was: “Did you kill Laura Ackerson?”

  “No, sir, I did not.”

  “Did you help Grant kill Laura Ackerson?”

  “I absolutely did not.”

  “Were you present when Grant killed Laura Ackerson?”

  “No, sir, I was not.”

  “Did you know Laura had died before you got to Texas?”

  “No, sir.”

  Gaskins then took her through her childhood, eliciting a comment about her relationship with her sister Karen Berry. “She and I have always been very, very close. She and my mother were not so close and so my mom kind of tried to prohibit me from seeing [Karen] a lot during my life growing up, which actually probably made us closer—just the defiance, you know,” she said with a soft laugh.

  “She definitely treated me just like her kids. You know, she has two daughters that are also in the same age range [who] I am very close to also; whenever I was growing up and she treated me—groundings and spankings—just like the rest of them.”

  Then Gaskins had her continue through her first three marriages and on to her stab at making it as an actress in Los Angeles. “It was awful. I hated it. I hated the industry. I didn’t like the people. It was so fake and phony and it really turned me off acting,” she said, also listing ageism and casting-couch issues amongst her problems with the field. “I didn’t want to be involved in the industry anymore.”

  Gaskins then guided Amanda through the beginning of her relationship with Grant Hayes to their arrival in North Carolina and the custody battle over little Grant and Gentle. Amanda said that when they moved down to North Carolina to get custody of the boys, she did not want to go. “I felt obligated because I married him and I took that commitment very seriously.”

  After the move south, she said, she tried to keep everything between her and Laura polite. “Grant would get upset with me for being too nice to her. He would tell me that, whenever I was nice to her, it would make it seem like he was the problem—that they weren’t able to get along. And so, he would really try to keep us from communicating.”

  Then Amanda launched into her version of the events of July 2011. She said that on July 12, Grant was supposed to be watching the boys while she was making dinner “but little Grant found Gentle in the hall bathroom. He had pooped in the potty chair and tried to empty it by himself and got poopy everywhere. And he had flushed a whole bunch of toilet paper in the toilet and stopped it up. It was overflowing.” Grant, she said, put all of the kids’ stuff in her bathroom and Amanda told him she was not going to clean up the hall bathroom.

  She said on July 13, when Laura tripped and bumped into her while she was holding Lily, Grant got hold of Laura and pulled her back and told her to chill out and she started fighting him. “She kicked that little wall by the love seat and when she did, they both went over the chair and went on the floor. I just went straight into the bedroom with Lily. I didn’t even stick around to see what happened. And when I got to the bedroom, little Grant was coming out the door. And he asked me what that noise was and I told him the chair fell over.”

  Amanda said that five minutes later, Grant came into the bedroom and told her that Laura was hurt and he needed to call for an ambulance, and he asked Amanda to take the boys out of the house so that they didn’t see anything. He said that he’d take Laura into the bathroom and that Amanda should hurry up and get dressed to go out. Amanda complied, and she said that when they returned, “Grant was sitting on the sofa and the house smelled [of cigarette] smoke. We don’t usually smoke in the house but I could tell he had. I sat next to him and asked him about what happened and he said everything was fine.” She added that he told her to be quiet because he didn’t want to talk about it in front of the kids.

  When she went to Target on the afternoon of July 14, Grant called and asked her if they had any bleach because the bathroom still smelled bad. When she said they didn’t, he asked her to pick some up and get a pair of gloves to clean the bathroom.

  After she came home, Grant left the house. When she got up to feed Lily on Friday, July 15, Grant asked, “Would you like to go see your sister? Since we’re getting ready to move, we’ve got a little money.” Amanda explained that Grant had sold his computer on Thursday.

  She said on Friday that Grant got rid of the rug under the dining room table because the boys had made it nasty from spilled drinks and dropped food. That day, Laura did not show up at the exchange in Wilson, so instead of traveling to Texas with just the baby, the boys were now going along. “Three car seats and our vehicle was plumb full.” Grant suggested getting a U-Haul and taking the piece of furniture in storage to Karen. “I was afraid it was going to get ruined in storage and I wanted to bring it in the house. And, honestly, I was afraid that he would try to get me to sell it. And it was the last thing of any value I had, so whenever he suggested it I jumped on it.”

  Grant then went out for the night and she did not see him again until Saturday afternoon, when they all went to the storage unit with the U-Haul trailer. Then, Amanda said, Grant dropped her and the kids off at the apartment and went off again and didn’t return until late that night. “We had actually gone to bed and he had come in and told us, ‘Let’s go.’”

  Amanda said that Grant did most the driving with the children sleeping the whole night through. Amanda took over for a bit. She got sleepy and couldn’t wake Grant, so she pulled off to get a hotel. “When I pulled up, he said, ‘What are you doing?’ And I said, ‘I’m going to get a hotel for a little while.’ And he said, ‘I’m just fine. I can drive.’ And I said, ‘Grant, I tried to wake you up and you didn’t respond at all. We have three kids and it’s better for us to just rest for a little while. You can take a shower or whatever.’” She said that Grant gave her cash and she got a room using her New York driver’s license.

  “On the way to Texas,” she said, “Grant told me he had a dream that he was in a forest and that he’d killed Laura and that if I didn’t help him get rid of her, I was going to be next. And I told him it’s probably from all the crazy TV he watches—he watches a lot of crime shows.”

  “On the trip from Raleigh to Texas,” Gaskins asked, “did you pass over numerous swamps and bridges and secluded places?”

  “Yes, sir, many, many, many places. The ocean, bridges, swamps, yes, sir.”

  “On the trip to Texas, were you aware that Laura’s body was in the back of the trailer?”

  “No, sir, I was not—not at all.”

  “How many places do you estimate that you passed where her body could have been disposed of had you known she was there?”

  “I don’t know but I know for sure in Louisiana there are lots and lots of swamplands. There are bridges and oceans—there’s a lot, a whole lot.”

  Amanda said that she arrived at her sister’s house at five A.M. on Monday, July 18, and they all took a n
ap. She said that she and Grant went to bed at the same time, but she was later awakened by a noise and saw car lights outside and Grant walking across the yard. She went outside to see what he was doing and found him emerging from the back of the trailer and he had a machete.

  “We walked over to my nephew Shelton’s truck and we sat down on the tailgate. And Grant lit a cigarette and . . . I told him that he should probably come in and probably try to sleep so he could get up tomorrow . . . and be around people instead of sleeping all day.

  “And he told me he was trying to figure some stuff out. And I asked him ‘What?’ And he, well, I’ll never forget it, he was smoking a cigarette and he was like really calm and he looked at me and said, ‘What would you say if I told you Laura is dead?’ And I was like, you know, ‘What?’ you know? Basically, he told me the night that Laura had come over to the house that she had died. And whenever I left, he just panicked and freaked out. And I started freaking out and I was asking him why he didn’t call the cops, why he didn’t call for help like he told me he was going to do. And he told me that he got scared—he was a black man with a dead white woman and no one was going to believe him that it was an accident and that he had taken her to Kinston and then he stopped himself and said that he shouldn’t be telling me any of that stuff.

  “And then he told me that the Kinston police had called. I assumed they’d found Laura’s body since he told me he took her to Kinston. And anyway, I was freaking out and he had the machete and he whacked me on the leg and told me to shut the eff up and that this was not the time for me to start challenging him. And he told me that I didn’t understand because I had said something about the cops finding her. And he said, you know, I didn’t understand.”

  She said that Grant told her she had to help him get rid of the body or none of them would make it back home and asked her to get Shelton to help. When she resisted, she claimed, Grant told her then Karen would have to be involved. “And I said, ‘I don’t trust my sister like that.’ And he told me, ‘Well, you better figure out how to make her trust, you know, to trust me.’

  “Then he told me that the best thing he could think of was that I needed to tell her that I was the one who pushed Laura so that she would help, ’cause she certainly wasn’t going to help him because he was a black guy and it was the first time she had ever met him and I better figure out how to make her help us.” She added that Grant threatened her that she would never see Sha again.

  “And it wasn’t long and Shelton pulled up. And he got out and I started asking Shelton all sorts of questions just about his job and the vicinity. And I asked about his work because I really don’t know anything about hogs and stuff like that. I just started asking him a bunch of questions and, anyway, Shelton, he’s kind of an airhead, he said he was going to go in and go to bed.

  “And so Grant told me we were all going to go in and go to bed together. And so we went in and Lily’s in our bed and Grant snuggled up to me and I remember being really scared and I was unsure of what to do. And so the next morning, whenever I woke up, Grant wasn’t in bed with me. And when I got up, Grant and my sister were in the kitchen together. And so I told my sister that I really needed to talk to her. And she said, ‘Okay.’ And I said, ‘It’s really important. I need to talk to you right now.’ And she said, ‘Okay,’ and asked if she could get some coffee and I said, ‘Yeah.’

  “And Grant’s just in the kitchen and so she and I both just get a cup of coffee and we go outside and Grant follows us and she and I go to where the swing is at and Grant just goes to the driveway, which is right there . . . you can see him and he can see us. And so, I was just really scared and I just—I didn’t know how to tell her. I just blurted it out and I just told her something really bad had happened and I needed her help and if she didn’t want to get involved I understood.

  “And I told her that Laura had come over to our house and that she and I had gotten into an argument and she had threatened to take Lily away from me and that I had shoved her and she fell. And that she was hurt really bad. I don’t really recall saying that she was dead just because I was afraid to say it and, somehow or another—you know Grant’s watching us and I could tell he wanted to come over—so I asked her if it was okay and he came over. Oh, and this is another thing. Whenever he and I were out there at night, he told me it was my fault that this had happened. If I had just let [Laura] hold the baby that none of this would have ever happened. So, I remembered when talking to my sister and I kept telling her it was my fault.

  “And I was crying and she kept telling me that I wouldn’t be in this position if it wasn’t for him and he wouldn’t be in it if it wasn’t for me—you know, we were in it together, at this point. And anyway . . . I was just trying to figure out how to get her to help us and she did ask if I wanted an attorney and I told her no.”

  Gaskins asked, “Did you tell your sister Karen what Grant told you to tell her?’

  “Yes, sir, I did.’

  “Did you push Laura?”

  “No sir,” Amanda said, shaking her head back and forth. “I never touched her.”

  “At some point later did Karen sit you down and talk to you about what you said?”

  “The next day—a lot of stuff had happened through that day. It was very stressful. It was very, very stressful.”

  “Well, what happened that day?”

  “Well, anyway, during this conversation with my sister and Grant—there, honestly, I don’t remember exactly who said what and where—but I know something was said about the well because there’s a well in the front yard. And we all got up and talked to the backyard and it was primarily my sister and Grant talking and I was just following. And I know that whenever, we go to the septic system back there and she had said she thought maybe at one point, that one of the kids might want to build a house so she didn’t know for sure if it would be a good idea but she said it was out there.”

  Amanda said that they then borrowed her sister’s car and went to the ATM for cash and to Home Depot for the muriatic acid. While there, Grant told her to call Sha to tell her to go to their apartment to meet a guy who wanted to buy the couch.

  Amanda said that, after they returned, she picked up Dalton’s phone and tried to dial 911 but couldn’t figure out how to press Send. “When Dalton got his phone back, he said, ‘Oh my god! You almost called 911.’ And I just kinda made it sound like an accident. And Grant told me if I tried that again, I would never see Sha again. So from that second on, I was just scared.”

  She said when they returned to her sister’s house, “Grant was outside a whole lot. He was on the phone the whole time. I didn’t know who he was talking to. And honestly, I heard so much stuff—Grant’s told me so many stories. He told me one time that Laura . . . left with little Grant whenever he was firstborn, and within an hour he had someone pick her up and brought her back and told her she wasn’t leaving and taking the baby. She could leave but she wasn’t taking the baby.” Amanda continued telling stories about Grant killing and assaulting others—the stories that Grant often told others to appear tough and ruthless. “And I know whenever he sold a lot of drugs, he hung out with a lot of bad people. He told me about these mafia guys that owned a restaurant that he used to hang out with a lot. . . . There were a bunch of stories about different people he knew. So not only was I afraid of him but I was really fearful for Sha because I wasn’t there to be able to protect her and I was scared. I was scared that he was going to have someone get her,” Amanda said as she burst into sobs on the stand.

  Amanda said she was trying to act normal when her niece Kandice visited on Tuesday night, “because I didn’t want anyone else to be involved. I was so scared that I’d brought this guy to my family. I wanted to get him away from my family. I was scared because of the kids.”

  While she was talking to Kandice, Grant said he needed Amanda and she joined him outside. Grant told her the acid wasn’t working and
to see if they could use the boat across the street. He also said he was thirsty. Amanda went back inside, retrieved two bottles of water and got the key to unlock the boat, a long-sleeved shirt and a pair of sweatpants from her sister.

  She said when she got out to the johnboat, there was black plastic over what was in it. She helped Grant push the boat into the water and sat down in the rear, facing out. They started paddling backward to turn around and they started taking on water. Amanda told the jury that she’d grabbed a coffee can and started bailing.

  At this point, Amanda hung her head and held tissues in front of her eyes as the sound of sobbing and sniffling filled the courtroom.

  She described feeling scared of the dark, the unfamiliar terrain and the unknown animals. She also claimed she wasn’t facing Grant as he did whatever he did, which “seemed like it took forever. We headed back and I was scared we couldn’t find where to go back to shore. As soon as we got to the dock, he told me to give him my clothes. I still had my shorts on underneath.”

  She said she handed him her borrowed shirt and pants and got his permission to go back to the kids. “As soon as I walked in, my sister had to leave,” Amanda said but noted that when Karen came back, Grant tossed all their stuff in a nearby apartment building’s Dumpster, “and he asked for my shoes and he threw them away too.”

  “Did you ever see Laura’s body?” Gaskins asked.

  “No, I didn’t,” Amanda said, shaking her head.

  “During any time, did you?”

  “No. The last time I saw her was when she fell. When I came back out, she was already in the bathroom. I never saw her ever. Whenever we got to the boat, it was all covered up. Honestly, I didn’t even know there was a middle seat until we saw the boat the other day,” Amanda stated.