LAURA Ackerson wrote to her sister Jennifer again in September to update her on the situation, telling her that the horror story she’d told her on the phone had “improved by the thousands of percentages.”
Jennifer asked, “So are the boys with you most of the time?”
“Not yet,” Laura responded. She explained that the ex parte order wouldn’t be lifted until the psychological evaluation was complete and they appeared again in front of the judge. “Grant has been dragging his feet on it forever now.”
On the seventeenth, Laura and Jennifer had an online chat. Laura told her sister that “I am attracted to someone but I know that my ‘picker’ is still out of balance. I want to give myself some time to ‘get to know’ me. . . . When I was with Grant, everything was about him and I had zero of my own identity.”
Later in the conversation, she said, “Grant is a sociopath. Being with one changes your mind about relationships in a big way. . . . And he does everything with a smile. Passive Aggressive is an understatement.”
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THE next step in Dr. Ginger Calloway’s analysis was visits to the individual homes to observe and videotape the parent and children together as well as look for any problems regarding the safety or well-being of the children. In Laura’s apartment, nothing was amiss in the physical home environment. At Grant’s place, the only concern was a missing screen in the window of the boys’ bedroom. However, observing the interaction between parent and children, she noted dramatically different emotional settings.
Laura was very sweet with the kids and, as a result, the boys were very low-key most of the time. When little Grant made an aggressive move toward Gentle, Laura intervened and stopped it immediately. During that session, she provided them both with healthy snacks.
In Grant’s house, the boys’ play was more violent. They slammed toy cars into each other’s legs hard enough to leave bruises.
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ON October 8, 2010, a friend sent a short “Sup?” to Grant on Facebook. Grant was still fuming about the situation with the kids and Laura. “Two boys, nasty custody battle with Laura’s crazy ass . . . pregnant wife. . . . Just got back from LA recording with some heavy cats out there.”
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LEARNING that her mother was pregnant and feeling very ill in her first trimester, Sha moved down to live in Grant and Amanda’s apartment to help out. The new intensive view she got of Grant was disturbing. She learned about his bizarre beliefs concerning the aliens that were following him and running the government and his sense that he’d been chosen by them for both persecution and salvation. Sha had often mocked her mother’s “very Buddhist/earth-child belief system, believing in God more as a higher power of Karma,” but still she thought Grant’s odd religious/political philosophy would be considered peculiar even by Amanda’s standards. But when Sha asked her about it, she learned that her mother took it in stride. Amanda told her, “Looking at it from his perspective, I can see how it makes sense to him.” Sha knew her mother could be a bit out there, but that was still hard to believe.
A chain of seven e-mails between Laura and Amanda Hayes began on Sunday, October 24, after the two women had an unpleasant encounter when Laura dropped off the boys. Laura wrote, “I understand that you were upset today because I was fifteen minutes late. I am sorry for the inconvenience. . . . I would like to address the attitude you have toward me in front of my children, though I understand that Grant III has probably told you I am the worst person in the world. . . . Please understand something from my side of the fence. . . . I am the mother of two sweet boys who didn’t ask to be put through this mess. The LAST thing they need to see is the person they spend their week with upset at their mommy. If you could please contain yourself in front of them, it would be appreciated.”
Six days later, Amanda responded, “I’m not sure what you’re asking about at all. If there were ill feelings over the exchange last Sunday, they were not on this side of the family.”
Laura wrote back the next day. “Very strategic response. . . . I’m talking about the time you yelled over Grant IV’s head, ‘You started this!’ outside Grant III’s parent’s house, for instance. I’m talking about the obvious attitude you had toward me after I followed the court order and ‘made’ you guys follow it, too. I’m talking about the consistent, openly disrespectful attitude that you have toward me [and] that you show in front of Grant IV and Gentle. I know you care about them, so please understand. I am their mommy. . . . But if you have something you would like to express to me, I don’t mind a bit as long as they are out of earshot.”
On Friday, October 29, Laura met Grant, Amanda and the two boys at Sheetz. Laura asked, “Grant could you stay right here so Amanda and I can talk out of the kids’ view for a second?”
When the women had stepped away from the car, Laura asked, “Did you receive my e-mail?”
“You just made us late last weekend and we would have appreciated being told. Would you just let us know when you have plans to be late? We have never been late more than five minutes even because I am very, very, very anal about being late. I guarantee that I’ve been late. And the day that we were late—the rainy day—we were six minutes late. . . . I would just as soon we would never speak again.”
Afterward, Laura wrote in her journal: “I don’t know why she wants my kids so badly. She definitely does not seem to have their needs placed in front of her own.”
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ON November 1, 2010, Grant send a Facebook message to an old friend telling her how glad he was to have found her there since he’d been looking everywhere else for her without any luck. He told her about living for a year in the United States Virgin Islands, where his second child was born. He then asked what she’d been doing. She responded with a brief update on her life including her job change, and then she asked, “How’s Laura?”
Grant wrote: “Fuck Laura. We split up in the Virgin Islands, I’m surprised you remember her name, no one else did. Figured out she was just using me, Sugar Daddy Grant. She got two kids outta of me, but I love them both.” He followed that with a brief comment describing the custody sharing.
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ON November 3, Amanda made an attempt to smooth the waters with an invitation to Laura to join them for Thanksgiving dinner. “Maybe you can make a dish, a pie or the turkey if you’d like. You can cook here if you want to come up early. I think the boys would enjoy that. . . . They don’t have to know ‘this’ was happening.”
Laura responded the same day. “Thank you, but . . . until this is actually over, I can’t come to your home again. I would love to spend as much time as possible with the boys . . . but allowing Grant yet another opportunity to accuse me of ludicrous things would go against common sense.”
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GRANT delayed making any payment to the psychological evaluator for a month or two after the order. He made two separate payments of five thousand dollars to Dr. Calloway but balked at paying anything additional at that time.
As requested by the psychologist, however, Laura did all that was requested of her in a prompt fashion. She answered every question in her parental history report at great length, turning in a document more than eighty pages long. In her comments, she wrote that she was most concerned with little Grant’s aggressiveness toward her and Gentle, as well as his use of profanity and the fact that he called himself a “a bad boy.”
Grant, on the other hand, dragged his feet on his paperwork. When he did send some to Calloway, he expressed concerns about little Grant’s anger after phone calls with Laura.
“Both parents feel attached to Grant IV. Although Laura described specific ways in which she noted how the attachment developed, Grant’s description was in more general terms and he seemed confused as he described his own attachment to his own father.”
In response to the question of whether or not they contributed to the problems with the other parent, Laura wrote “yes” and explained. “The problem of lack of common values . . . became serious when I realized I was trapped. I’d gotten rid of everything I owned. Grant III now owned our car and Grant III and I had spent all of my savings and then some. After it was gone the ‘real Grant’ came out. He started openly snorting coke and telling me about kissing other women instead of being the doting Prince Charming he’d been previously.
“. . . Grant III thinks it’s okay to sleep with people to manipulate them into doing what he wants and encouraged that behavior in me. I didn’t think that was acceptable. . . . Grant has a larger than life perspective. He thinks he should have servants and that he should have the best of everything at all times. . . . I contributed how? I really didn’t believe he thought this behavior was okay. I was so shocked that I thought he wasn’t serious when he asked if I would consider being a ‘bottom bitch’ and help him pick up strippers to run through Vegas. I thought he was testing me.”
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ON Monday, November 15, Laura wrote to Amanda and Grant requesting to pick up the boys on Thursday evening at seven. Otherwise, if she stuck to the Friday exchange, she could only do it at six thirty in the morning because of an appointment with Dr. Ginger Calloway. They refused to cooperate.
That obstruction set off a chain of bitter messages from Grant declaring Amanda’s superiority in mothering and accusations from Laura that Grant was ridiculous and childish. Laura accused Grant of obstructing the process ordered by the court because he did not want to appear before the judge again and Grant blaming everyone but himself for any delays in compliance.
By the time December 2010 rolled around, Amanda’s once comfortable inheritance was nothing but a memory. One piece after another of Amanda’s jewelry was pawned—a diamond necklace, a Rolex watch, the engagement and wedding rings from her marriage to Nicky and more. Pawn tickets for ten thousand dollars, five thousand dollars, three thousand dollars piled up as her treasures dwindled and the money evaporated in Grant’s pocket. Grant even took a trip to New York supposedly to get the best possible price when he sold a green-and-yellow diamond that Nicky had brought back from Brazil for Amanda.
Beginning that month, their credit cards, one by one, were maxed out to cover expenses. Still, Grant did not alter his habits—he still spent three to four nonworking nights a week at bars. His pitiful earnings covered his bar tabs but not much more. Amanda was not in a position to work outside of the home to supplement their income—she had the full-time job of caring for Grant’s children five days a week with little or no help from her husband. Still she ran up expenditures, financing his projects and long trips to Los Angeles so he could pursue his pie-in-the-sky plans to start his own record label.
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CUSTODY cases are nearly always problematic and lengthy. On December 9, 2010, Laura’s attorney, John Sargeant, filed a motion alleging that Grant was in contempt of court for not cooperating with or paying in full for the evaluation. Sargeant asked the judge to return the children to Laura because of this behavior. After several court conferences, Grant’s attorney, Brad Hill, withdrew from the case at Christmastime, and Grant hired William “Ford” Coley to represent him instead.
Coley and Sargeant met before the judge, who ordered that Grant and Laura would split the remaining costs, approximately five thousand dollars. They were ordered to make payments in February and April. Laura paid the full twenty-five hundred dollars she owed immediately, but Grant did not.
The boys’ future remained an open question as the calendar flipped to 2011.