THE seventh day of trial began on Monday, September 9, 2013, with Officer Kevin Crocker from the Raleigh Police Department Fugitive Task Force. He detailed his surveillance of the elder Hayeses’ home, including the signs of increased nervousness by Grant Hayes III.
Crocker was followed by Timothy Suggs, a forensic chemist with the North Carolina State Board of Investigations, who had tested soil samples from the hog pen in Texas. He determined that some of the samples he received were strongly acidic and tested positive for the presence of chloride—a key component of muriatic acid. While he explained the scientific evidence, Grant was busy writing, not seeming to be paying much attention to the witness at all.
Detective Thomas Ouellette was up next and told the court that he had been part of the search team at the senior Hayeses’ home on the evening of July 25, 2011. On cross, defense attorney Jeff Cutler asked about the handwritten document found in a spiral notebook that awarded custody of the three children to Grant’s parents. Ouellette said that he photographed that note in place but didn’t seize it. The detective who did was Zeke Morse, the next person on the stand.
Detective Morse had also confiscated the family computer and two blue coolers, and he told the jury that he was the one who had collected as evidence the copy of the psychological review for child custody found in the Durango. He’d also reviewed Facebook accounts, and he read aloud many of the messages to and from Grant into the trial record.
The jurors got a break from the long run of official witnesses with the arrival of Mark Herbert, a sanitation truck driver whose responsibilities included picking up, emptying and returning the Dumpsters from Amanda and Grant’s apartment complex and delivering them to the East Wake Transfer Station. He described how he emptied the contents next to an eight-foot-wide open pit, where the trash was pushed directly into a tractor trailer parked below and delivered to its final resting place at the South Wake Landfill. The defense had no questions for this witness.
Then it was back to law enforcement, as Sergeant Brian Hall, who’d obtained and served the arrest warrants on Grant and Amanda Hayes, submitted a large number of exhibits.
Raleigh/Wake City-County Bureau of Identification Senior Agent Shannon Quick was the final witness for the day. She’d become involved in the investigation with the discovery of Laura’s car. She processed that and also was a participant in two different searches of Grant and Amanda’s apartment. She presented a myriad of evidence, including the bedding from the bedroom closet and the chunks of bleached-out carpet she had cut from the floor. She wrapped up her testimony the following morning.
Agent Jennifer Remy, a hair-and-fiber analyst from the North Carolina State Crime Laboratory, took her place on the witness stand on September 10, 2013. She had identified all hairs submitted into evidence as either animal or human. Then she determined whether or not they had a portion of root or a skin tag that would be suitable for nuclear DNA analysis.
Two additional technical witnesses testified next. First, SBI body-fluid analyst Agent McKenzie Dehaan discussed the samples she’d tested for the presumption of blood and the positives she’d sent for further analysis. Then Sharon Hinton, a forensic DNA analyst for the North Carolina State Crime Lab, talked about the results of her testing. Hinton told the jurors that the genetic evidence on the blue latex gloves found in the trash was predominantly from Laura Ackerson. Although she found DNA from other contributors present, the samples were too small to determine whose it was.
Computer forensic analyst Courtney Last of the Raleigh Police Department then took the stand to testify about the contents of a number of computers, including Karen Berry’s computer, which Grant had used to access his e-mail while he was in Texas. She read several e-mail exchanges over the last year of Laura’s life, including those with friends, as well as messages between Laura and both Amanda and Grant. Last said that Grant stored all the e-mails from Laura in one of two folders, one labeled “Ljhaze,” the other “letters from a ho.”
When it was the defense’s turn to ask questions, they requested Last read other e-mails into the record that they felt either reflected badly on Laura Ackerson or positively on Grant. On re-direct, the state had even more e-mails read into the record.
Barbara Patty, Laura’s church friend and mentor, took the stand next. The white-haired older woman told the jury that Laura had attended Grace Fellowship Church and had participated in house church, a small group of fifteen to twenty-five people who met for Bible study, praise and worship, prayer and fellowship. Beginning in the late summer of 2010, Laura also came to her home on Monday nights, when the two women had dinner and a one-on-one Bible study session.
Barbara told the jury that in July of 2011, Laura was thankful to finally have the psychological report and was planning on attending Lenoir Community College to continue her education with a goal of teaching high school science. This surprised some others who had never known that Laura’s interests went in that direction. Laura was very focused on the upcoming hearing in August in which Barbara had agreed to testify on her behalf.
Attorney John Sargeant, Laura’s child custody lawyer, was the final witness on the eighth day of Grant’s trial. He went through his history with Laura and the court proceedings from the time he became involved on June 17, 2010. He refuted the defense allegation that Laura and Amanda were the two at odds. To the contrary, Sargeant told the jurors that Laura was grateful that Amanda was there watching over her boys when they were with Grant. He finished his testimony the following morning by saying that there were no requests by either party for child support—both Grant and Laura were focused only on the custody issue itself.