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.’”
Holt spoke of the defense grasping at straws with that one bit of testimony and turned it back to Grant. “The defendant in this case was desperate—he was desperate to get rid of Laura—and to do it any way he could. He wanted to erase Laura from his life. He wanted to have a family without Laura in it,” she said, holding up a photograph of him, Amanda and the kids. “He didn’t want to have to deal with Laura Ackerson anymore. And when she came to his apartment, at his request, on July the thirteenth, he was going to make sure that Laura Ackerson never [again] saw the light of day. That was his plan the night before when he sent her an e-mail and whether he lured her over there initially with the promise of seeing her children, he lured her over there by saying, ‘Let’s end this custody thing.’ But he never intended to let Laura get custody of those children.
“For Grant Hayes, it was more about winning and being in charge. It was more about denying Laura to be a mother to those children. It was more about making sure that he wouldn’t have to deal with her ever again. And as the case started going bad for him, he knew the only way to do that was to kill her. Grant Hayes, either acting by himself or together with Amanda Hayes, killed Laura Ackerson,” Holt stated.
“Premeditation with deliberation on July the thirteenth, 2011. He then dismembered her body and drove her across the country and threw her in a river so that he could destroy what remained of Laura. He robbed her of her life. He robbed her of her dignity. And he tried to cover it up in every way he could.
“Don’t let Grant Hayes get away with this crime. Don’t let Grant Hayes not answer for what he did. Whether or not Grant Hayes began making that plan or formed that intent a week before, a year before; whether he formed that intent to kill Laura Ackerson when he wrote a song about killing her; whether he formed that intent and that plan when he sent her an e-mail the night before to tell her to come over—to come over and see the boys; whether he formed that intent when he had her in the apartment and got her to sign that note; whether he formed that intent when he stabbed her in the neck; whether he formed that intent when he wrapped his hands around her throat, cut off the blood flow to her head, cut off her air, for the four to six minutes it would have taken: Grant Hayes planned to kill Laura Ackerson. The judge will tell you that deliberation, the cool state of mind, the premeditation, over a period of time, however short before that takes place—listen carefully to Mr. Zellinger as he tells you about those things and to Judge Stephens’s instructions.”
Holt concluded by saying, “Tell Grant Hayes, by your verdict . . . that you know that that’s what he intended—that that is what he planned on July thirteenth, 2011. Tell Grant Hayes, by your verdict, that you’re not going to let him obliterate Laura Ackerson in this way.”
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ASSISTANT District Attorney Boz Zellinger took Becky Holt’s place in front of the jury to add the final arguments for the prosecution’s case. “Laura Ackerson loved her kids to death—she loved her kids to her own death. That is the only reason why she went over to that apartment that night. You all know after hearing the evidence in this case that Laura Ackerson was not going over to that apartment for any reason other than to get custody of her kids. Grant Hayes knew that. He tried to control her that night. Now, he’s trying to control you with his defense.”
Zellinger stated that this was “a terrible case—the awful truth that these courtroom walls have heard has been staggering. . . . What happened to Laura is something that shouldn’t happen to a human being—I mean, it’s something that shouldn’t happen to an animal. To be sliced apart and [have] acid poured on you and then left to rot in a Texas creek.
“It’s hard to get past the depravity of the situation. And the question—the reason that it’s relevant, the reason that everything that happens after the murder is so important, is because it tells you why and who committed this murder. Someone who takes someone’s severed head and pours acid on it—would that be the person who committed this murder or would it be someone else in this apartment? Would a person who wrote a song about killing someone—would that be a person who committed this murder or was it someone else in that apartment?”
Zellinger said, “Simply put: this is a guy who wrote a song about killing someone and then dismembered her body and then poured acid on it and left the body in a creek in Texas—the whole time lying about it to investigators and to people on Facebook and to his friends. If the defendant is lying on Facebook to his friends what does that say about this defense?”
Zellinger explained why “acting in concert” was an important element to this crime despite the defense’s mocking of it. Then he contested the other side’s claim that the custody dispute in this case was unpleasant but no worse than any other similar situations. “They were at each other’s throats. The defense wants you to believe that the defendant and Laura weren’t really fighting like this, that they really weren’t hating each other as much as they appeared to. And the best evidence of this malice—of this hate—between these two folks, that the defendant hated Laura Ackerson so much, is what happened after she was dead.” It was the malice, Zellinger said. “There is so much malice in this case. From that song alone you get a tremendous amount of malice. . . . Grant Hayes hated Laura Ackerson.
“There is so much hate in this case that not only did he kill her . . . this man bought a saw and cut her torso in half.”
Zellinger held up the reciprocating saw purchased by law enforcement for demonstration purposes. “You’ve seen the blades. This is a heavy object. This isn’t something that just happened. Yeah, he just disposed of the body and it ended up in Texas. This saw cut someone in half. And then he cut her head off. . . . With malice, there’s not much of a question. He had so much malice that he sawed the mother of his children’s legs off.
“The next is the proximate cause of death—the cause without which the victim’s death would not have occurred. Again, this is not much of an issue. Even the defendant’s counsel in closing seemed to concede that it comes down to two people who killed Laura. It could be Grant. It could be Amanda.
“Then the third element is this intent to kill. The judge is going to tell you that the state has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant intended to kill the victim. And the judge is going to tell you that ‘intent is a mental attitude seldom provable by direct evidence. It ordinarily must be proved by circumstances from which it can be inferred.’ . . . Circumstantial evidence is ‘proof of a chain or group of facts or circumstances that points to the guilt or innocence of the defendant,’” Zellinger said, reading from the jury instructions document. “We are asking you to use your common sense: whether a guy who wrote a song about murdering a woman was actually the person who murdered the woman. . . . You noticed that the defendant, in his e-mail box, puts all the correspondence from Laura Ackerson in an inbox labeled ‘letters from a ho.’ The defendant despised Laura Ackerson. Laura Ackerson prevented him from doing what he wanted to do with his life, which is moving with those kids and moving all over the country. And that’s why he made this concerted effort to eliminate Laura from his life and from any other person’s life,” Zellinger stated.
“The fourth element is the one that the crux of this case comes down to: premeditation and deliberation. The judge is going to tell you that premeditation is that the defendant formed the intent to kill before acting over a period of time, no matter how short. Remember that bleach spot is right by the door. And that’s interesting. Why is it right by the door? You know when Laura walks in the door; she’s not immediately murdered because her handwriting is on that document. . . . Why did we find that? Everything else in the apartment is gone. The carpet is bleached. The rugs are thrown out. . . . Gone is that shower curtain, those mats, the shower rod, and you heard the defendant went and bought a computer cord the next day, that’s Thursday. That’s interesting. Why did the defendant feel the need to go out and buy that laptop computer cord—the charger for that computer? Was it because it was used to choke someone? We don’t know.
“But everything is missing from that apartment. You saw the pictures of that apartment. You saw that knife block that interestingly was missing some knives. . . . In a case like this, you’re not finding the evidence of the murder; you’re finding evidence of the cleanup. So why is that note left there?” he asked, continuing, “You have to gotta have some questions about the note. . . . Here you’ve got your premeditation and deliberation. Here at some point this night, they are signing this. You don’t know if Laura is signing this at knifepoint. You don’t know what’s going on in that apartment. Really, only three people did know—two are charged with first degree murder and one’s dead.
“But why do we find this note? Why is it left in that apartment? The defendant obviously knew the police were coming at some point, because he got rid of everything else in that apartment. But we find it there. And why do we find it? Well, it’s designed to look like Laura took twenty-five thousand dollars and took off. . . . We find this note because the defendant wants the investigators to think Laura took off with this money. If that was the thought process going on in the defendant’s head, then with this note, he had the intent to kill Laura . . . and he acted in a cool state of mind.”
ADA Zellinger explained that condition of a cool state of mind does not require a total lack of emotion and that it can be inferred from the defendant’s actions, such as how Grant’s behavior appeared when he went to Wal-Mart at two-thirty in the morning. “Twenty-six minutes he was shopping. And you saw him standing there, arms crossed, looking at all the saws—premeditating and deliberating on how he was going to saw up Laura Ackerson’s body. . . . At no point in any of this evidence is Grant anything but completely calm and collected.”
Zellinger also challenged the defense’s use of the word “disposed.” “The defense said he disposed of the body. It sounds like you have a wrapper and you toss in the trash can. The defendant didn’t just dispose of the body; he engraved his hate for Laura Ackerson by cutting off her head. He cut off her arms. He cut her torso in half. He cut her legs off. He cut her at the knees. He then took those parts and put them in coolers—and at that point, these [aren’t] coolers, they’re coffins—those four items you saw in front of you. He then drives those items to Texas—halfway across the country. And then when he’s there, it’s not good enough to just throw it in that creek, he then also has to pour acid on it.
“That dismemberment, ladies and gentlemen, means more than just disposing of the body. It’s in an aggressive emotion—this extreme abhorrence toward the person he killed. He’s trying to disregard Laura as a person whatsoever. He couldn’t control her in life so now he’s going to control her death. He’s just driven by this power and control to carve up her body. . . . The defendant argues that how Laura died isn’t proven. . . . And Dr. Ross and Dr. Radisch through their medical examinations were able to discern as much as they could about the body. But of course, evidence of whether Laura was strangled or stabbed would be much easier if there were muscle or tissue attached to her neck. Remember, those C4 vertebrae, the ones that go down to C5, those were all found at the bottom of her head in very bad condition. I mean, you got to see the picture of Laura’s head when it was recovered by the Houston dive team member Brian Davis, it was in terrible condition. But you’ll also remember, it was in a different condition than the rest of her body. And the defendant says, ‘Well, there’s no evidence about acid, there’s no evidence on any of her body.’ That’s because the acid was poured on her head. There’s not going to be evidence of acid on her other body parts when Grant Hayes pours acid on her head and it doesn’t do whatever he was intending for it to do. But you do see acid on her teeth—on that tooth—and yes, it’s only one tooth, but you see acid etching. That’s circumstantial evidence.
“And you know there’s acid, the pH in that hog pen is very low, you heard about how acidic it was. You hear about the acid etching on her teeth and you know that Grant Hayes bought acid. That’s circumstantial evidence.”
Furthermore, Zellinger said, “Not only did he send e-mails to Laura to try to cover up what happened and then he goes and in a very deliberate manner, he stands out in front of that Sheetz for an hour, an hour and twenty minutes. And we tried to speed up that video as much as we could but he stands there, waiting, for the woman who’s dead in his bathtub. How more deliberate could Grant Hayes get in the aftermath of this murder?
“Then there’s this note that says Grant keeps custody and Laura just gets twenty-five thousand dollars. And that that note is left in that apartment after everything else is thrown out to shown that Laura Ackerson disappeared. And the question for you is: why is that note written? It is written so that so that it looks like Laura Ackerson disappeared. And Grant Hayes intended for Laura Ackerson to disappear when that note was signed before she was dead. And that gives you that premeditation and that gives you that deliberation and that leads to one inalienable conclusion”—Zellinger turned and pointed a finger at Grant Hayes—“that this man killed Laura Ackerson, the mother of his children. This defendant then cut up her body, that then, he did very deliberate things to cover up that it happened and that coverup continues today. And that can lead you to one conclusion that he is guilty, beyond reasonable doubt, and you should find him so.”
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AFTER Boz Zellinger’s closing, court adjourned for the week. The jury had time to ponder over the weekend, and began their deliberations on Monday morning, September 16, 2013.
It took them less than two hours to announce that they had a verdict.
Grant Hayes was escorted back into the courtroom. When he sat down between his two attorneys, Will Durham gave him a smile and an encouraging pat on the back. Grant rocked nervously as if moving to a beat inside his head.
The judge read the verdict: Grant Ruffin Hayes III, guilty of the first degree murder of Laura Ackerson.
A deputy moved closer to Grant and stood directly behind his chair. Will Durham’s smiling face turned somber.
Judge Stephens moved immediately on to the sentencing phase. “A jury decision in an hour and a half probably speaks louder than anything anyone can say about this case from the state’s perspective, from the family’s perspective.”
Will Durham made the customary bid to set aside the verdict. As expected, the judge denied the motion.
Stephens continued, “Grant Ruffin Hayes III, having been found guilty of the murder of Laura Ackerson, it is the judgment of this court that you be sentenced to the North Carolina Department of Corrections for the period of your natural life without benefit of parole.”
Grant was handcuffed and, after a few mumbled words to his lawyers, he was led out of the courtroom without displaying any emotional reaction at all to this life-altering event. His attorneys announced their intention to appeal. The judge denied bail. Phase one of the search for justice for Laura Ackerson was at an end.