Southern Fried True crime covers cases that are not suitable for young listeners, and
there may also be some explicit language used. Listener discretion is advised. Domestic
violence that ends in death is often called murder and slow motion. The danger
builds at a pace we think we can keep up with. I have this
under control, I can fix it. He will change, but he's the
one in control. Coercive control is the foundation for most forms of domestic abuse.
For Laura Akerson, it seems like her whole life was a blur,
a merry go round that was going way too fast. She came from generational
trauma and she walked away from it. She didn't have good role models or
a stable support system. She had to build one for herself. She moved
across the country and met her best friend, Heidi. Heidi was someone Laura
could count on, unlike the charismatic musician she soon fell for. Grant Hayes
was the CD cliche of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and
he was a classic narcissist. For him, control equals power. But when
Laura became pregnant, she thought she could build a family with Grant. Heidi
had always known Grant was a scumbag. She despised him, but she never
wavered in her support of Laura, and Laura needed her support, especially once
she decided to finally stand up to a man like Grant. Welcome to Episode
two thirteen, Erasing Laura Akerson, Part one. Laura Jean Akerson lived most
of her life as a small town girl. She was born on April thirtieth,
nineteen eighty four, to parents Roger and Brenda, in Hastings, Michigan.
Hastings, with about seven thousand residents, is a small town in a
rural county in southwest Michigan. There were seven kids in the Hastings blended family.
Roger was father to only four of the siblings, including Laura's half brother,
Jason, who was three years older than her. She attended schools in
Lake Odessa and Ionia, other small Michigan towns. Her family life was extremely
tumultuous. Brenda and Roger separated when Laura was still a toddler. They went
through a wrenching, traumatic divorce that divided the family, with loyalties to each
parent on different sides. In nineteen ninety, six, year old Laura and
her mother moved from Michigan to central Iowa. They lived in the tiny town
of Sully that had only around eight hundred residents. It has closer to nine
hundred these days. Though the town boasts three churches, you would need to
drive almost thirty minutes to the closest hospital. In two thousand and three,
nineteen year old Laura graduated from Lynnville Sully High School in Sully, Iowa.
She was a year behind because of her tumultuous home life, but graduating under
those circumstances is an achievement. So many young people get lost in the kind
of family turmoil Laura experienced. In two thousand and four, Laura followed her
brother Jason to North Carolina. It was in Youngsville, another tiny rural town
of almost twelve hundred residents at the time. She stayed with Jason for six
months, then moved to Raleigh for better job opportunities. She had all been
disappointed to live in another tiny town with nothing to do with almost four hundred
thousand residents at the time. Ralei is a big city, and Laura loved
it. She had never lived anywhere so exciting, with so much possibility and
so many opportunities. She quickly found an apartment and got a job at an
Applebee's restaurant. That's where she met her best friend, Heidi Schumacher. Heidi
told author Diane Fanning that Laura was a perfect fit for waiting tables. Of
course, it helped that she was such a pretty girl with long, dark
hair and a wide smile, but it was more than her looks. She
was also a sweet and cheerful girl, liked by both customers and coworkers alike.
Just a few months later, Laura and Heidi moved on to working at
a sports bar together, and Laura had started taking online classes at Kirkwood Community
College. She earned an Associates of Art degree in two thousand and five and
thought she wanted to get her real estate license. She even took a seventy
five hour course to prepare, but she had really liked her graphic design and
marketing courses at Kirkwood and decided to throw her passion into developing her graphic art
skills. The real estate skills, along with her creativity, were put to
good use at her next job at a furniture store in Raleigh, helping customers
with decorating ideas. While there, she remained close to Heidi and Heidie's family,
who were in wake Forest, which was in between Raleigh and Youngsville,
where her brother Jason still lived. Along with talking to her brother Jason all
the time, Laura also stayed in contact with her father and at least one
of her sisters. Though it was letters and phone calls. It was also
the beginning of Facebook, and Laura was reaching out to old friends and other
siblings. From what I can tell, she didn't have much contact with her
mother after she moved. She doesn't figure at all and the rest of this
case, but this young woman seemed determined to build her own support system in
North Carolina and also hang on to some of her family ties in the Midwest
as well. Family ties were important to her, and she was building a
different life for herself, nothing like the chaotic way she grew up. And
yet she was young and experienced unworldly. She had an underdeveloped sense of self
and so she was passive and often unsure of herself. She was without guile
and could be taken advantage of more easily than young women with more stable backgrounds.
However, although Laura was naive, she was also smart, creative,
and ambitious. She wasn't taking any other classes during this time, but she
never stopped studying on her own. She scoured the internet and used the library.
She was determined to open her own buisin business one day, and her
hard work was paying off until a man named Grant Hayes crashed into her life
like a meteor. I'm going to pause now for a short commercial break.
In March of two thousand and seven, twenty two year old Laura met a
twenty seven year old aspiring musician named Grant Hayes. His full name was Grant
Rouffan Hayes the Third, and in a coincidence, he and Laura shared the
same birthday. She had been born on April thirtieth of nineteen eighty four,
and he had been born five years before, on April thirtieth of nineteen seventy
nine. Grant's parents were Patsy and Grant Hayes Junior. Patsy Hayes owned and
ran her own daycare, and mister Hayes was a minister, and this family
had a thing for the name Grant as Grant the Third has a sister named
Grant Tina, who goes by Tina. Though the family was from Tennessee,
they now lived in Kinston, North Carolina, about an hour and a half
from Raleigh. In nineteen ninety seven, eighteen year old Grant graduated from Kinston
High School. It was around that same time that Grant first began recording music
on his website. He called himself an acoustic soul singer and he was pretty
average. He could carry a tune, but nothing special. He accumulated a
small following on MySpace, which was kind of like followers on Facebook, but
he was definitely small time. The songs that he posted on YouTube averaged about
one hundred to two hundred cliques, which I guess would have been pretty good
for a bar star in the early two thousands, and he did book gigs
at bars and other venues with some consistency. But he wanted to be a
famous musician. He wrote his own songs, and to be fair, many
people thought he had talent. He thought his career just hadn't taken off yet.
This is his Twitter bio acoustic singer, musician, songwriter, contemporary artist.
New releases earth Wind and Fire and Little Richard collaborations, Grant Hayes' art
and Grant Hayes Music. He was a pretty decent artist. Too. By
the time of today's case, he was doing portraits for money. When Grant
was eighteen years old, he married a ballet dancer named Emily. The marriage
didn't last a year. Grant was obstinate about getting a real job to help
pay the bills, a problem he never grew out of. Emily was in
college and supporting them by herself. She soon got sick of it. They
separated quickly, but weren't formally divorced until March two thousand and five. Then
two years later, Grant met Laura Ackerson. She met him while he was
playing a gig at the Blue Martini in Raleigh in early March two thousand and
seven. Laura and Heidi saw him one night, and Laura talked to him
between sets. Heidi had gone into the insurance business, moving to Charlotte,
but she stayed close to Laura. They talked all the time and had girls'
nights out as often as they could. On April thirtieth, two thousand and
seven, Heidi took Laura to an Italian restaurant for dinner. It was her
birthday, and Laura had exciting news. She had gotten married. Actually that
same day, Like I said, she and Grant shared a birthday, which
she thought was so special it was fate. He was just five years older
than her. According to the book Bitter Remains by Diane Fanning, there had
been no real wedding. They went to a Justice of the Peace in Raleigh
and just walked in and did it. But I'll come back to this more
later. Heidi was shocked and concerned. Grant was actually playing a gig at
the restaurant that evening. So Laura introduced Heidi to her new husband, and
although she recognized him from the Blue Martini and he was friendly enough, Heidie
took an immediate and intense dislike to him. The feeling would soon be mutual.
He was so full of himself, obnoxious, and, as she later
told author Diane Fanning, not good enough for Laura, not by a long
shot. Heidi wasn't wrong, She was smart to be worried for her kind,
loving and trusting friend. Laura had stars in her eyes when she saw
Grant. Remember she was from a small town, but Heidi wasn't. She
knew barstars and Ralei were a Diama dozen, and she didn't see anything special
in this arrogant jack off. He had glommed on to Laura too quickly,
and it was obvious to anyone but Laura. Just months into their marriage,
when Laura was in her second trimester with their first child, Grant was openly
cheating on her. He enjoyed calling the other women he was sleeping with while
Laura was in the room, and he was allergic to real jobs he refused.
He slept all day and partied all night. When he did have a
gig, his fee barely covered his bar tab. He brought all kinds of
people over to the house at any hour of the night he chose and expected
Laura to just suck it up, even after they had a baby in the
house. And not just friends or other musicians, but groupies and worse,
drug dealers and pimps. Grant had a significant drug problem. After his marriage
to Emily failed, he went through an intense depression and saw a psychiatrist.
He was prescribed inti depressants and lithium. Lithium is prescribed for bipolar disorder.
Like many people struggling with mood disorders, When he stayed on his meds and
didn't self medicate, Grant did all right, but he only did that for
a short time after his first marriage fell apart. Even got back into religion
for a quick minute, but that lasted as long as his sobriety. He
just never could stay away from drugs and alcohol, mostly weed and cocaine,
but also psychedelics or hallucinogens. He wrote a lot of his music while on
binges, and it became increasingly dark and the lyrics were disturbingly violent. Just
as a note, I know that addiction is a disease. I just also
know it's not an excuse for abuse. But Laura put up with all of
it. She worked and supported them, just like Emily before her, and
she got pregnant right away. It's also important to note that Laura very much
believed in Grant's talent and aspiring music career. She used her marketing skills to
promote him and regularly helped her book his gigs. So despite the cheating and
the drugs and alcohol, Laura stayed with Grant and her small support system tried
to be there for her. Jason got a job close to where they lived
and started visiting almost every day until it began to anger Grant. Jason later
testified about Grant and said he was pretty much ordering her that you don't need
him in your life and you don't need to be around him. He's a
bad influence. I'm all you need. The last time Jason stopped by their
house, he didn't get an answer when he knocked at the door, even
though he could hear them inside, arguing, He tried for ten minutes and
called her several times that day, worried. She didn't call him back until
the next day. He later testified, she let me know that I wasn't
allowed to come over there, and that if we were to see each other,
we'd have to do it in secret because Grant didn't like me. Jason
stopped coming around, but even his calls through Grant into a rage. He
stopped calling Laura and waited for her to call him, which she did whenever
she could. Jason stayed in his sister's life however he could, because he
could now see she needed him more than ever. The same thing happened with
Heidi. She and Grant hated each other, so she wasn't welcome at the
Hayes home either. Like Jason, she stayed in constant touch with Laura,
very worried for her friend, particularly after one horrible afternoon, she had been
on the phone with Laura and heard Grant screaming at her in the background.
He said Heidie was a bad influence and told her to hang up. Laura,
apologizing to Heidie and crying, hung up the phone. Heidie wasn't having
it, so she drove over to their place. She saw Grant leaving the
parking lot, and when Laura came him out the front door with a bloody
nose and one of her eyes swollen shut. Heidi begged her to go to
the hospital, but Laura refused. Laura was crying so hard, but kept
insisting everything was okay. She said he had never done this before and that
they would get through it. Heidi stayed with her friend for a while until
Laura calmed down. She saw her a couple days later, and it was
obvious that Laura had tried to cover up her bruises with makeup. Heidi felt
helpless, but she couldn't force Laura to do anything. I'm going to pause
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them we sent you. Grant and Laura's first child, a son named Grant
Ruffin Hayes, the fourth, was born on May second, two thousand and
eight, almost a year to the day of their marriage. After the baby
was born, Laura became so much more isolated. Jason didn't meet his nephew
until he was six months old. Heidi started meeting up with Laura wherever she
could, but Grant would often find them. One day, he pulled up
to a Starbucks where they were meeting and threatened to kill Laura and Heidi.
Heidi later testified he just went off and said, I have friends, I'm
powerful, my friends are powerful, and I can kill you. Don't fuck
with me after that. Heidi bought a gun and got a conceal and carry
permit and tried to talk Laura into getting a gun too, but Laura was
afraid of guns and refused, so Heidi bought her a pink handled knife that
Laura carried with her always. Laura had so much on her plate, taking
care of little Grant and working to support them, and she felt increasingly scared
of and disgusted by her husband. He wanted all kinds of sex that Laura
was uncomfortable with, and he wanted her to brag about their sex life and
his penis sas to his fans. He wanted an open marriage. The list
goes on and on. Laura would later tell a psychologist that Grant had quote
used sex as a tool to hunish and mold my behavior instead of a way
to show affection. He also had incredibly strange philosophical and religious ideas and frankly,
what sounds a lot like delusions of grandeur. His parents even staged what
they called an intervention with Laura about their own son, warning her about his
sick worldview. I won't even go into all that mess here, except that
they claim Grant thought he would repopulate the world one day by having fifty kids
with fifty different women. What was not at all fantastical or scientologist is that
Grant Junior, Laura's father in law, said his son would pimp her out
if he needed to. Then Laura thought back to all the women hanging around
Grant and his felon friends. They joked and called the women party Favors.
At least Laura thought it had been a joke. Now she felt sick.
Grant's parents also gave Laura Emily's phone number, grand sex wife. She simply
said, run, run as fast as you can. And with all this,
Laura finally seemed to come around. Grant's sister, Tina, took her
to file assault charges at the magistrate's office, and Laura looked into a shelter
and Charlotte for abused women, which would have been good for Laura since Heidi
lived in Charlotte, but she never followed through on anything. She didn't show
up to the hearing for the assault charge. She had been living with Heidie's
family in wake Forest, but she returned to Kinston and vowed to make her
marriage work. She is not the first woman in an abusive relationship to still
be in love with her abuser and want to make it work, and it
won't be the last time she was close to leaving Grant either. I understand
that it's hard to hear these details without being in full disbelief, but never
blame a victim of abuse. On average, it takes a victim seven times
to leave before it is for good, and this was only Laura's first try.
Around March of two thousand and nine, Grant was becoming restless and frustrated
about his lack of success in his music career. He had all kinds of
excuses for his problems, but eventually complained to a friend who was an agent
promoter type named Joseph Harden, who thought he should move to the US Virgin
Islands. Harden thought Grant's style of music was perfect for the Caribbean, and
soon the selfish Grant was in paradise with his wife and son, back homing
Kinston struggling now, he described his music as reggae folk. He settled on
the island of Saint John and within a month he had a girlfriend and had
informally changed his name to Grant Hayes spelled h a Ze. He never changed
it legally. Current and past court documents still referred to him as Grant Hayes
with a y. As usual, he pretty much bragged about the women he
was seeing to Laura on the phone. She once again screwed up her courage
to leave him and moved in with Heide's parents, as she could not afford
a place of her own yet. She was considering going to stay with her
dad in Michigan when she discovered she was pregnant again. She was already three
months along. She had probably conceived in February before Grant took off for the
Caribbean. So Laura once again decided to make her marriage work for the sake
of her small growing family. She took little Grant and followed her husband to
Saint John Island. Their second son, named Gentle Rain spelled r e I
g N, was born on Saint John, two months premature, on August
third, two thousand and nine. Nothing changed in the Hayes marriage. If
anything, Grant's drug use worsened and his career was just as much of a
joke. His friend Joseph Harden had come to find that it wasn't so much
that Grant wasn't talented, as it was that he was lazy. He wanted
to play his easy gigs and live off of a woman, but that wasn't
easy. With Laura having two babies under two years old to take care of,
how was she supposed to work. Harden also witnessed Grant threatening both Laura
and her children. Not only was Laura as miserable, if not more so
than when she had been back home in North Carolina, Gentle had medical issues
relating to being born premature that she preferred to take care of back home.
Most importantly, he needed surgery for a stint to be placed between his bladder
and kidney. Laura returned to Kinston and moved into a rental property owned by
Grant's parents. It was next door to Patsy's daycare, and she cleaned it
at night and exchanged for rent. But she would come to regret this agreement.
To make money, she started a freelance business called GoFish Graphic Designs.
She was finally using her skills creating logos and other designs for businesses. Meanwhile,
Grant had finally found a sugar mama, a wealthy widow seven years older
than him. That widow was thirty seven year old Amanda Perry Smith. She
was born in April nineteen seventy two in Texas. She had come to the
Virgin Islands after her third husband had died. I'm not here to marriage,
shame, Amanda. She had generational trauma related to her mother's divorces that was
somewhat similar to Laura's sad early life. She married at sixteen to get away
from her family and had her first daughter, Shay. Her second marriage didn't
work out, so she divorced, but then struck Gold on her third.
He was rich and fourteen years older than her, but she insisted it was
a love match. She was heartbroken when he was fatally injured in an accident
on a lake, but she did get a decent settlement from his estate after
a fight with his brother and grown children. Amanda had been vacationing on Saint
John when she decided to embrace island life forever and move there permanently. Her
teenage daughter, Shay, who had lived with her sister back in Texas,
agreed to come and live with her mom on Saint John and finish high school
there. Back in the States, Amanda had been a cosmatologist, a real
estate agent, and an actress. She had even nabbed a few small roles
in the OC the Sopranos and the Stepford Wives. In the Virgin Islands,
Amanda got into painting and opened an arts and crafts supply store with her daughter.
Laura was again painfully aware of this relationship. Grant played it off,
saying he was just using Amanda for the money, which he was, but
he had no intention of getting off this gravy train. In January of twenty
ten, he followed Amanda and Shay to New York City. Laura thought it
was for a record deal. She had no idea they were moving there together,
or rather that Grant was following his meal ticket. According to the book
Bitter Remains. In February, around Valentine's Day, Grant came home to Kinston
for a while and talked Laura into letting Little Grant come to New York,
supposedly to make a baby gap ad. Heidi begged her to not let him
do this. She was afraid he wouldn't return Little Grant when the time was
up. The days turned into weeks, and Laura's fears grew. She was
afraid to make legal moves because she wasn't sure how Grant would react. She
just kept pleading for them both to come home. Then in March, he
stopped paying child support. Heidi had been right, he had no plans to
give up Little Grant. At the end of March, Laura filed a pro
se request for Grant to return her son. This is a lawsuit filed without
an attorney. Grant promised to send her a plane ticket to pick up Little
Grant if she dropped the lawsuit. She did, and he promptly canceled the
ticket. Everything was a game to him, anything to dodge supporting his children
or having to go to court. All the while, he had been reassuring
Laura that he was just using Amanda for her money and their relationship wasn't serious.
He was playing Amanda just like he was playing Laura. Amanda had not
been planning on taking on a toddler to raise, but guess what she was
now not only paying for everything, she was also basically a full time step
mom to a toddler. The only thing she needed was a marriage certificate,
and in April twenty ten, she and Grant took his two year old son
to Vegas with them for a quickie marriage. Grant and Amanda's marriage came to
a huge shock to Laura. Laura obviously thought she was married to Grant.
After Grant cruelly sent her photos of his wedding, She said, she dug
through her papers and realized that he had never signed their wedding certificate. As
in Aside, this part is strange to me. It feels glossed over a
bit. In Diane Fanning's book, she simply wrote that they went to a
Justice of the peace. There were no other details about the wedding. Other
media sources just say Grant and Laura were never married. Court documents say they
were in a domestic relationship but never married. So what happened? In North
Carolina, you need a marriage license from the county Register of Deeds before the
ceremony. This is much like anywhere else, though there is not a waiting
period after the marriage. Ceremony must be conducted by a magistrate or recognized officiant,
and there must be two witnesses who signed the marriage license. The minister
or magistrate performing the ceremony must sign the marriage license and return it to the
Register of Deed's office within ten days of the ceremony. Once you've been married,
you will be able to obtain copies of your marriage certificate from the Register
of Deed's office or from North Carolina Vital Records. Sorry to bore you with
all that, but I wanted to get it straight. So Grant would have
signed the license, not the certificate. If the magistrate married them, they
would have filed the license right away. So her story just doesn't make sense.
And beyond that, there are simple questions, who were the two witnesses.
Did Laura have a wedding ring or a diamond that she was so thrilled
about, Not that you need a ring to be legally married, but still
none of this is mentioned in Bitter Remains or anywhere else that I found.
I know I'm harpy on this, but it just seems really strange to me.
I don't know how he could have tricked her If they indeed went to
a Justice of the peace aka a magistrate, and Heidi said she was so
excited that day they had married on April thirtieth, their birthdays. It was
symbolic and like fate to Laura, Heidi certainly believed they were married. I
guess it's possible the license was somehow never filed, But why would a magistrate
not file the license. Maybe Laura was ashamed to admit the truth. Maybe
Grant had made some sort of promise to her that day and told her she
should say that they were already married to her friends and family because he was
older than her and moving in with her so fast, Maybe he thought telling
everyone they were married would put her friends in family at ease, and being
in love and trusting him, Laura went on along with it, and as
time went on, she was too ashamed to admit the truth to anyone.
So when Grant did marry Amanda, Laura was shocked and hurt, but had
to somehow explain how he suddenly got married. So she came up with a
story that he had never signed the certificate, and she told Heidi he had
stopped paying child support, so she followed the pro se request. It's the
wording and then the legal action that sounds like she knew they were either divorced,
legally separated, or never married to begin with. Anyway, It's a
detail that really bugs me and a rabbit hole I spent way too long on.
I even stopped during this recording and watched a YouTube video on North Carolina
marriage licenses. Lord, I guess whatever the truth is, Grant is still
a piece of shit who relished in sending Laura the photos of his wedding to
Amanda. So there we are and a man. Enda certainly had fancy wedding
and engagement rings, even if she did have to pay for them herself.
Following their marriage, Grant and Amanda moved from New York to an apartment in
Raleigh, North Carolina. The newlyweds wanted to be closer to both of Grant's
sons. They had basically kidnapped little Grant, but Laura still had physical custody
of baby Gentle. So now the fight was on. I'm going to pause
now for a short commercial break. Grant fired the first shot in the custody
battle when he managed to get an emergency EXPARTAI hearing with a judge. This
is a legal request for temporary custody or changes in custody arrangements without providing prior
notice to the other parent or guardian. Ex Partey means that only one party
is involved in the initial hearing without the presence of the opposing party. It
is usually in cases where a parent is worried their child is being abused or
neglected. Grant convinced a judge to sign the temporary order because he said Laura
was an unfit mother who posted a Craigslist ad for a free roommate implying that
she was offering sex in exchange for housing. And he said she was having
trouble controlling little Grant, so that's why he had to come live with him
in New York. So he tricked her twice, and this is also why
he flew to Vegas for the Quaki marriage, because his attorney warned him the
judge would view his cohabitation with Amanda as harshly as any alleged Internet solicitation by
Laura. It's hard to believe this worked, but it did. Laura was
horrified when police officers served her the papers on June fifteenth, twenty ten.
They took baby Gentle out of her arms and turned him over to Grant.
He hadn't even had his surgery yet. Gentle would finally have his surgery a
few weeks later. Laura jumped into action and got her own hearing on June
twenty fifth, but she appeared unstable to a judge because she didn't have steady
work and she didn't have a permanent home. That part pisces me off.
I feel like Grant's parents must have refused to explain their arrangement with Laura,
because honestly, it's not like Grant or Amanda had jobs. They were just
blowing through her inheritance money and they were anything but stable. They had just
moved from Saint John to New York and back to Raleigh, and in the
middle of these moves running off to Vegas for their wedding, taking a two
year old little boy with them, And where the hell was Tina, who
had tried to get Laura to foul charges against her abusive brother. It's just
so shitty to me. I know, family stays with family, but Laura
was still the mother of their grandchildren, had once cared about her enough to
stage an intervention to get her away from their own son, and now this.
Meanwhile, Laura was trying to take care of a baby with health problems
and cleaning their daycare at night in return for living in one of their rentals.
She had apparently thought she was still married or at least still in a
relationship with Grant Hayes the third with a stable home that the Hayes family owned
up until less than two months before this new nightmare began. It's not like
she had much time to find a new place and get work, but she
had even started her own graphic design business while taking care of a baby by
herself. To me, on paper, she seemed to be trying a hell
of a lot harder than Grant. Grant and Laura had both made accusations to
the judge that were disturbing. Only Laura's were true, but she would have
to prove it to a court ordered psychologist. At the June twenty fifth hearing,
they came to a custody arrangement that Grant would have the kids during the
week and Laura would have them every weekend. She hated it, but unfortunately
had little choice. She was about to start a job that was Monday through
Friday. Grant's music gigs were mainly on the weekend. It made sense for
now, at least until she could talk to the psychologist. Since Grant had
pulled this bullshit exparte order, he had been the one to open the can
of worms, accusing his ex of being an unfit mother, So the judge
ordered Grant to pay for the psychologist and appointed a woman named doctor Ginger Callaway.
The first two payments were five thousand each. I'm sure Amanda signed those
checks pretty bitterly. She had wanted her man and got him, but she
had to pay for everything, including his custody fight. Maybe in a way
she didn't mind because she was certainly jealous of Laura. While on Saint John,
Grant's friends saw her as a hostile, jealous little groupie, the type
to pick fights with girls looking at her man. Her seemingly glamorous life with
Grant had quickly begun to tarnish, but Amanda would rather die than admit it.
They were blowing through her inheritance at an alarming rate. She had two
hundred and fifty thousand in cash and assets, but Grant lived like the money
would never run out, and he certainly never contributed to the cash flow.
Typical Grant never had a real job. His gigs when he had one,
never paid much. Meanwhile, Laura was thriving. She busted her butt to
prove to the court she was the stable parent. She had a job working
at a health food store. She had found an apartment and a bright airy
loft in a converted warehouse, space with a small room for the boys that
she had filled with toys and creative, cheerful decorations. Gentle still had a
crib and little Grant had a small race car bed. You can see their
small but happy space and sad crime scene photos. A detective commented on seeing
no evil that he could tell Laura's whole life revolved around her children. Almost
everything in her apartment was for the boys, small child tables with little chairs,
art stands, race cars, and stuffed toys. The apartment was small
but safe, with security cameras and two keys needed, and a garage with
a remote opener required so that she didn't have to park on the street.
Laura chose a warehouse loft with safety in mind, but also full of light
and warmth. Along with her full time job, she had her two up
and coming graphic design businesses. She still had go Fish, and she had
started a new advertising agency with her friend and business partner, Chevon Mastha.
This Laura was even taking classes again, this time at Pitt Community College,
working to improve their new business. She was meeting clients all the time,
signing new contracts. She and Chaven were so excited. Laura Akerson didn't just
want a job, she wanted a career. She wanted to be successful.
She was smart and creative, and she knew she could do it. Her
confidence and self esteem grew brighter every day. As far as her custody fight,
Heidi advised her to document everything. Laura got a diary or a day
planner to do that, and a tape recorder. She kept every voicemail,
email and text from Grant. She suspected he had hacked her email, so
she created another email address that she now used with Heidi and her lawyer.
Grant tried calling child Services on Laura for small bruises on little Grant and gentle
the normal kind active little boys get. No charges were filed, no case
was opened, and Grant's voluminous emails were another thing. Long, ranting,
hateful emails, and one he even brought up her painful childhood, saying you
got a raw deal when you were their age, and now you are trying
your damnedest to make sure your kids get one. It was cruel. After
this, Laura told him to stop emailing her unless it was specifically about their
schedule. Not that it stopped him. She just stopped responding, which for
a narcissist like Grant Hayes would be worse than arguing he needed her attention.
I'm going to pause now for a final commercial break. On a Saturday in
September twenty ten, Grant called Laura at around one o'clock, trying to pick
up the boys a day early. Not only was she not going to give
up her day, she looked out her window and saw him sitting in his
car outside her apartment. That made her uneasy. She refused, saying they
would meet the next day as scheduled, in the public spot that had been
agreed upon during the custody arrangement. It was a convenience store called Sheets in
the city of Wilson, which is kind of in between Kinston, where Laura
lived and Raleigh, where Grant and Amanda were. Each parent had to drive
an hour to Wilson, but if they drove straight to each other's homes,
it would be more like an hour and a half, so it seemed fair
and public was best, less chance of arguing or scenes. If you ask
me, this was Grant's stalking her. He just shows up at her house,
calls her and asks to come in and get his boys with no advance
warning. The guy that emailed and texted her all the time, it feels
like he was watching her apartment. A year passed while Laura suffered through this
abuse, missing her boys through the week while they were with Grant. Amanda
Sea sawed between picking the nastiest fights with her over everything to then being kind
enough to invite her to Thanksgiving so she could spend it with her boys.
Laura politely declined, saying she didn't want to risk violating the court order.
But despite all the venom from Amanda, Laura actually felt better that she was
in the home taking care of her boys. She might be a bit to
Laura, but as far as she could tell, she was good to her
boys. Laura even sent her a thank you note for being there for her
sons and making an effort to get along with her, not that she got
a response, but Amanda could be civil when she wanted to. Then something
would come up and both Amanda and Grant would be hateful and threatening. Again.
Laura may not have known it, but it was probably due to money
stresses. Custody battles are expensive, and like I said, Grant still lived
like a king on Amanda's money. The problem was the money was dwindling down
fast, and just like Laura, Amanda also became pregnant during that first year
with Grant, another stresser. Despite now being pregnant with Grant's child, she
was still jealous of Laura and as hateful as her husband. So Laura treaded
carefully. She was very formal, polite, and always positive in her communications,
while Grant and Amanda were mostly rude and childish. By that December,
Grant and Amanda were selling off Amanda's jewelry to make the bills, and still
Grant went to Hawaii, supposedly to find work early that spring. He didn't
come home until May, when Amanda thought she was going into labor. It
wound up being Braxton Hicks false labor, but now he stayed because the baby
was coming soon. In May twenty eleven, doctor Callaway was finished with her
evaluation, and it was a beast of a report. The big succinct takeaway
for me was that she only recommended some parent coaching for Laura, who we
have to remember was still young and in many ways naive. But for Grant,
she advised him to see a psychiatrist for mood disorders, which if you
remember would make sense as he had been diagnosed as bipolar years before and had
taken lithium. She also thought he lacked credibility with his accusations about Laura and
was manipulative, and she said he had polysubstance abuse problems and needed regular drug
testing. Doctor Calloway also felt that both Grant and Amanda wanted to quote obliterate
Laura from the children's lives. They both talked about moving out of state to
Nashville for Grant's career or back to the career Ribbian. They didn't see Laura's
rights as the boy's mother at all in their big plans. Doctor Calloway included
Grant's parents in this evaluation quote. It's critical that the court be informed regarding
the insensitivity of Grant and Amanda and the paternal grandparents regarding the children's deep need
from an unalterable bond with Laura. I was right about Patsy and Grant Junior
leaving Laura out in the cold. Now that Grant was with Amanda, they
didn't care about Laura's rights anymore. That whole family just wanted to erase Laura
from the picture entirely. But despite all the negative disturbing things in the report
about Grant. Doctor Callaway recommended the custody arrangement to be changed to a shared
fifty to fifty arrangement, a two three two schedule, like Laura gets the
kids for two days, then they go to Grant for three days, then
back to Laura for two, then the next week they would switch. Grant
would get them for two days at a time and then Laura three, which,
geez, talk about unstable. I don't get that lady's thinking. She
seemed to recognize not just the mental health issues of Grant Hayes, but his
drug abuse and his manipulative nature. She worried that he and his entire family
were trying to remove Laura from her children's lives, and yet she recommends fifty
to fifty. This is a literal quote about Grant and her report. It
is disturbing that his intense rage serves as an anchor for his disturbed thinking.
Seriously, Doc, what the fuck? Laura was disappointed by the recommendation,
but she had not lost hope. She was still elated about the psych evaluation.
She had a stable home and job. She had completed the required paperwork
immediately shown up on time and interacted lovingly with her sons. Her sons behaved
better in her care, and it showed in the evaluation. She felt pretty
sure that Grant knew he was about to lose, so did her attorney.
Her mood over the next few weeks was buoyant. Amanda wound up having a
c section on June ninth, twenty eleven. The couple had a baby girl.
Laura took the kids for the week that Amanda had the baby, because,
as Diane Fanning put it, Grant could be very reasonable and polite when
he wanted something, and he needed Laura to take the boys because Amanda was
due any day. Laura even brought the boys up to the hospital to meet
their new sister. She was able to work out her schedule with Chavon,
sharing her car so Chavonne could meet with clients while she had the boys,
and she offered to take the boys whenever she could during the week to give
Amanda breaks. She obviously wanted to see her sons, but she also always
tried to show kindness to Amanda, not that it really mattered. You would
think Amanda might have appreciated the time to herself and her new baby, but
her attitude towards Laura stayed the same. The fight wasn't over. Laura was
going to get full custody of her sons, and it seems like Grant and
Amanda could feel it too. She wouldn't stop until she had her boys.
Armed. With the psych evaluation, her new career, her home, and
of course, all of her meticulous record keeping. She was ready for her
next court date. Grant and Amanda were almost out of money, had no
serious jobs, and were about to be evicted. Unfortunately, Grant's parents didn't
have any rental properties open for him at the time. He and his family
would be moving home with Mama and Papa Hayes. Laura and Grant had a
hearing scheduled for all August fifteenth, and her lawyer felt like she had a
realistic chance at getting full custody despite Callaway's recommendation, which meant that Grant Hayes
had lost control. He was about to lose his home, and he was
out of money, he was about to lose custody of his sons, and
he had lost control of Laura, which made him a very dangerous man.
Southern Fried True Crime is hosted and produced by me Erica Kelly. Part two
of Erasing Laura Akerson is coming out in a couple of days. God Willin
and the Creek Don't Rise. Today's episode was researched and written by me and
Andrea Marshbank. As usual, any editorial comments and opinions are my own.
Southern Fred's original music is by Rob Harrison of Gamma Radio and the original graphic
art is by Colely Horner. Today's episode was edited and mixed by Brendan Schacksnyder,
Southern Gothic and Dereka Kelly. Thank you to Marsha for suggesting this case.
If you have any case suggestions, please go to my website, Southernfred
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