IN the first month after his arrival in New York, Grant Hayes wrote a song about Laura Ackerson called “Broomstick Rider.” The lyrics were full of hate and threats of violence. He recorded it in the apartment in the presence of Amanda Smith and her daughter, Sha Elmer, who said she didn’t see the red flag flying. She simply believed it was Grant’s way of blowing off steam and getting the poisonous feelings out of his system.
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WHEN Grant asked to take little Grant back to New York with him in February to take part in a supposed photo shoot for a BabyGap commercial, Laura was reluctant to let her son, not even two years old, go with his father. Her friend Heidi Schumacher also strongly warned against it. “If you do, you’ll never get him back,” she said.
But Grant wore Laura down by insisting that their son would only spend three days with him up there and then he’d bring the boy back. Laura caved to Grant’s pressure yet again, and once she did, that time was stretched to ten days.
When little Grant arrived on February 18, Sha thought he would be visiting for two weeks. She believed that Laura asked Grant to keep the little boy longer than the original plan because she was having difficulty raising two boys on her own.
In mid-March, Grant suddenly stopped sending Laura child support money. She called her brother Jason and said, “Grant kidnapped little Grant. He’s in another state and I don’t have the money to travel there. And I don’t know what I can do legally.”
“I wish I had legal advice for you, but I don’t,” Jason said. “Make sure you stay in contact with Grant Junior as much as possible.”
Laura went to see Dr. Joanna Wolicki-Shannon at East Cove Psychiatric Services in Kinston. She wanted answers for Grant’s behavior and to see if she could get a name for his problem. After that appointment, Laura began describing Grant as a “sociopath.” At this point, Grant was still referring to Amanda as his “investor” and insisting that he was only sleeping with her to benefit their children and their family. Laura didn’t know if she should accept this behavior or not, but she felt she needed to learn the root of it first. She knew intuitively that going along with his plan was wrong, but she’d been so battered down by his belittling and by his dire predictions for the fate of their children that she just couldn’t walk away.
On March 29, 2010, Laura’s pro se (without an attorney) request for the return of little Grant was served on Grant. He sent her a plane ticket—one that Amanda had purchased—writing, “You can come up to New York, you can bring little Grant home, but you’d have to drop the lawsuit in Lenoir County.” When Laura refused to agree, he canceled her flight. She now had no doubts about Grant’s intentions.
Events proceeded at a reckless speed after that. Grant contacted attorney Brad Hill in North Carolina and told him Laura had used his checking account in Kinston to pay for a subscription to a website called Sugar Daddies where she was prostituting herself and that he had contacted the FBI. Although Laura later admitted to some immature sexual posting on the Internet, calling it “prostitution” was an over-the-top characterization. According to Amanda, Hill told Grant that the courts would view any of Laura’s alleged solicitation on the Internet just as harshly as they would his cohabitation with Amanda.
On April 1, Grant sent a message to fellow musician Nick Hagelin. “I’m marrying an actress from that movie Stepford Wives.” He invited him to come up to New York and take part in his weekly Sunday evening variety show at a Bleecker Street venue. Grant had high hopes for his future, writing, “All I need is someone to get signed and discovered there and my show blows up.”
Amanda said that Grant started planning an elaborate wedding, and she said, “Can’t we just get married? Does it have to be something crazy?”
Later that month, instead of bringing little Grant home to Laura as he’d promised, Grant took his almost-two-year-old son with him on a trip to Las Vegas, accompanied by Amanda, Sha and Paul Hutchins, a man he introduced as a former manager. Grant and Amanda were married in Vegas on April 10.
Grant had always treated Sha, then twenty, as if she were a dumb kid who didn’t know what was going on. His new stepdaughter, however, was more aware than he knew. She made that clear in Vegas. “Grant, if you ever mistreat my mom,” she told him, “I will deal with you.”
Laura was stunned when Grant sent her a photograph of his Las Vegas wedding along with a message that he and Laura had never really been married because he hadn’t signed the paperwork.
She rummaged around in her papers and finally found their certificate of marriage. Laura stared dumbfounded at the piece of paper. She called Heidi and said, “I can’t believe it. He never signed the marriage certificate. I can’t believe it.” Without his signature, the document was not legally binding. She never had been Grant’s wife. She had two sons with him but no tie that binds.
Laura’s sister, Jennifer Mae Cross, chatted online with her on April 29. She asked Laura how she was doing, adding, “G4 (little Grant) is beautiful.”
Laura answered the question, “Terrible but wonderful, too!” Then she responded to the compliment about her son, “Thank you. His dad and I just broke up and he got married right away and little G is in New York with them and we are in the middle of this ugly custody battle. . . . His lady is a movie star. Sigh . . . LOL.”
Jennifer sent her number to Laura so that they could continue the conversation on the telephone.
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AT the end of April 2010, Grant, Amanda and little Grant came down to Kinston, North Carolina, driving overnight so that little Grant could sleep through the trip. Grant wanted to celebrate his son’s second birthday at his parents’ house. He told his mother that she could invite Laura if she promised “not to make a scene.” Laura was thrilled to see her oldest son at the party but disappointed that she was not allowed any one-on-one time with him outside of the home.
Grant had filed an ex parte motion telling Judge Les Turner that Laura was an unfit mother. “Ex parte” refers to the fact that the other party—in this case, Laura—did not appear before the judge. Grant alleged that Laura purchased a Craigslist ad looking for someone to live with her at no cost. In arguing this point, Grant’s attorney inferred that Laura was willing to trade sex for housing. Grant also claimed that Laura was having trouble parenting the children and controlling the temper tantrums of the youngest child—which, he said, was why little Grant went to New York City with Grant. Without any opportunity to appear, object or fight for her boys, the court accepted him at his word at the time, awarding Grant full temporary emergency custody of the children.
Amanda did not tell her daughter, Sha, about Grant’s disparagement of Laura’s parenting abilities. Instead, she explained that the custody change had come about because of Gentle’s need for kidney surgery.
Amanda, Grant and little Grant returned to New York City for two weeks before leaving to move to North Carolina. Amanda paid cash for their Raleigh apartment deposit, furniture and a car.
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ON June 15, 2010, Laura was served the emergency ex parte custody motion. Worst of all, when she received the document, law enforcement immediately removed Gentle from her car and turned him over to Grant. Amanda later said that Gentle cried his heart out on the drive back to Raleigh.
Two days later, paperwork in hand, Laura met with attorney John Sargeant. When Laura finally got her day in court for a return hearing on June 25, Judge Beth Heath had to decide whether to keep the emergency order in effect or to put some other arrangement in place. Laura did not look very stable to the judge. She had no permanent place to live and didn’t have a job. Offsetting that was Laura’s allegation that Grant was a substance abuser.
The attorneys met with the judge in chambers and reached an agreement. The children would remain with Grant during the week but would be with Laura on the weekends. They would make the exchange at a public place in Wilson—about halfway between their two residences.
Grant had complained that Laura wanted to delay Gentle’s surgical procedure because she wanted a second opinion. Laura’s attorney, however, said that it was Grant who had pushed to get another doctor involved because he wanted to pursue a holistic cure that did not involve surgery. In the agreement, Gentle’s operation would go through as indicated by the original physician.
Gentle’s medical situation was one of the reasons that Laura was willing to go along with Grant having the boys during the week, since Gentle’s medical care provider was in Cary, much closer to Grant’s Raleigh apartment. The other reason Laura agreed was the nature of their employment. Laura was about to start a job that required her to work during the week and, as a musician, most of Grant’s work was on the weekends. Since she’d only seen her son little Grant once since February 14 and hadn’t seen Gentle for more than a week, Laura viewed the agreement as a blessing.
The judge also ordered a full psychological review of Grant, Laura and the boys because of the dueling charges about the issue of character and behavior. Additionally, Grant would be the one responsible for covering the upfront cost of the evaluation. The judge recommended a doctor named Ginger Calloway for this job.
A handwritten consent agreement put everything in place. Provisions were made for telephone communication allowing for reasonable contact when the boys were with the other party, no more than twice a day and fifteen minutes or less in duration between the hours of ten A.M. and eight P.M. Other conditions were that neither party would get a passport for the children or remove them from the state of North Carolina while the order was in effect. After it was typed and signed by the judge on June 29, a copy was officially filed.
Little Grant’s visitation with his mother began immediately. Laura and her friend Heidi Schumacher took him straight from the courthouse to Laura’s apartment. Gentle’s was delayed for a few weeks to give him time for surgery and recovery, but Laura was there at the hospital throughout the operation. She and Amanda had a positive interaction there. Amanda assured her, “Things will get better as time goes on.”
“You still don’t know Grant,” Laura said. As far as Laura could see, Grant hadn’t changed “a single step in his game” and was running the same plays on Amanda that he had run previously on her.
The meeting place established for the exchange of the children was the Sheetz gas station and convenience store near the intersection of Interstate 95 and US 264 in Wilson, about halfway between Raleigh and Kinston. Occasionally, Laura and Grant met up for the exchange at a Monkey Joe’s in Raleigh, a franchise for kids featuring inflatable slides, jumps and obstacle courses for the under-twelve set with a mini-monkey zone for safe toddler play. The general manager there was Lauren Harris, a longtime friend of Grant’s, who never made little Grant and Gentle pay the seven-dollar entry fee. According to Lauren, Grant brought the boys into Monkey Joe’s nearly every day she worked. He played along with his children as if he were a kid, too.
Laura filled her weekends with the boys with trips to the playground and to nature parks. They did arts and crafts projects together. One night of each visit was pizza night—together they’d build little pizzas and pop them in the oven.
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GRANT had a lot of complaints about the new court order arrangement. In a Facebook message to his friend Crystal Wiggins, he wrote: “I’m very happy, stressed from the whole custody arrangement and what it is doing to my boys. Their mom is a woman scorned and, well, making life for me as difficult as possible. My wife is going to New York to clean out our place [and] put it on the market.”
When Crystal responded with regret that things did not work out with his wife, Grant fired back: “My wife? I was never married to my kid’s mother. My wife now is awesome.” He continued grousing that the custody arrangement made it impossible for him to leave the state and his rent in New York had been paid up front for a year.