THE UNBELIEVABLE CASE OF LAURA ACKERSON | Wicked Winter

[Music] you are such a genuine Jim thank you for clicking on my video I'm Brooke McKenna but today's case is the unbelievable case of Laura Ackerson now this one is a brutal and baffling in every way and the twists and turns will make you think you understand what is happening but it will be completely surprising every time you hear new information and this is just one that I felt the need to share with you guys because this woman was one of the strongest women I have ever heard of and her story deserves to be told by the way I post content like this all the time it's my absolute passion to tell these stories and for December I am doing a wicked winter where I'm posting the most wicked cases I can find and I always try to be the most respectful that I can be I never mean any harm or disrespect by telling these cases I truly just want to tell the victims stories and so if that's something that interests you I would love if you would subscribe maybe thumbs up and leave a nice comment down below now let's get back to the story so it was 2011 in North Carolina and Laura Ackerson was a 27 year old mother and wife living in Kingston now she was very creative she had a natural eye for graphic design she even went to school for art at one point but she was more into raising her family in 2011 she had a husband who is 32 year old grant Hayes as well as two children with him that was three year old grant the fourth and two-year-old gentle rain now she absolutely loved her children and she was just a natural caregiver that would do absolutely anything for them she seemed to be a very trusting woman who believed in the universe and that everything happened for a reason she just seemed to have such a gentle pure soul about her and it was the most beautiful thing that I have ever read about or been able to hear about was who Laura was she was even going to online school so she could better her education so she could open a daycare where she could provide children with a better sort of education when they were super young she wanted to teach them classes she wanted to give them very healthy food she just wanted to make such an impact on all of these kids that she could possibly help now Laura and grant had met in 2007 when Grant was actually playing as a musician he often went around to different bars and restaurants and played his guitar and he was actually really good at it and he was such a charming guy and so after they met they went on a few dates and this was all kind of in secret nobody who knew Laura really knew that she was in this new relationship and then suddenly she actually told them she was married to grant and they had gotten married on April 30th which just happened to be both of their birthdays which Laura thought was a sign from the universe that they were meant to be together and they exchanged vows at the courthouse and they were officially married now their children were very well mannered and respectful even being young kid little grant was such a leader and his little brother gentle would follow him around everywhere just to know what his big brother was doing and they they loved to be around each other and Laura was so supportive of her kids of her husband of everybody she was ever around and grant loved that in fact Laura and grant would work together on grants kind of musical career that he wanted to start she would help him book gigs she would even talk to the fans about him to kind of give him more publicity and more press and kind of have a good name for him out there but 2010 Laura had been through quite a lot in her life which we will get to you a little bit later but this had made her quite the strong woman who kind of was coming and to herself as far as being able to stand up for what she believed in and for what she didn't accept and didn't allow herself to be treated like and her whole being she was just really maturing in this way in a way she had never before she still had that gentle soul about her though which was what made her so beautiful because not only was she strong she was also gentle and a lot of the times people cannot be both unfortunately but she was determined to handle anything she had to to give her kids he best life so even though she had kind of suspected a falter and loyalty of grant she truly didn't understand what was happening until she would get a letter in the mail this was in April of 2010 and she would get a picture of grant with another woman that would appear to be a wedding and on the back it had written on it Laura we've never been married because I never signed the paperwork now immediately Laura rushed to go get her marriage certificate because she believes she was married to grant this entire time and sure enough grant had never signed the papers meaning they were never legally married three almost four years they had been together and their life was all a lie at least that's how Laura felt I mean grant had gone to Las Vegas with this woman named Amanda Hayes who was seven years older than him and also a widow with a ton of money and the two had gotten married even though Laura thought that grant was her husband now Laura was extremely shocked at this point but that didn't stop her from moving out at the apartment she had been living in with Grant she immediately packed up her stuff took the kids and moved into a different apartment this apartment had a double security system not only did you need a key to get into the parking lot you needed a key to get into the apartment complex and of course the key to get up to her actual apartment so it was very secured and I think for the first time she was feeling like she was actually really doing something for herself and her kids she was doing what she had to and although she was in a state of disbelief this was something that she was still able to do and hold it together for those two boys but grant eventually came back to North Carolina and wanted to see the kids he was with Amanda he moved into an apartment with her and they demanded to see the boys and Laura was actually all for this she said that it was better and that the boys had their father and their mother even if they were separated she really saw how that could affect a little child's life she worked most weekdays and he didn't work so she figured that during the week the boys could stay with grant and during the weekends she could have the boys and that that would be an OK settlement that they could reach and they could they could do easily however grant started to say that he didn't want her to have any custody at all he didn't want her to ever see the boys and that not only was she unstable she was also abusive and this is when Laura completely denied this and said that grant was actually the one who had a drug addiction at this point grant got full custody besides on the weekends when Laura would have visits with her boys and his psychologist was actually brought in to assess the relationships with the mother and the father and their sons and to see who really was the more fit parent for when the court day would come which it would in 2011 and this psychologist would say from her findings when she would go in and just watch how the people held them how grant and Laura interacted with their boys she found that Laura was a very hands-on mother and that she was really okay with these litte custody she knew how it would affect the boys and she wanted the best for them regardless if it wasn't what she necessarily wanted however grant and Amanda were very set on Laura not being in the boys lives at all saying she was not fit to even have visits and really just dragging her name through the mud however it didn't appear that grande Amanda were exactly going to get what they wanted because the psychologist really did see how great of a parent Laura was and all of these claims by grant Amanda didn't really add up when people would actually go and watch Laura with the boys you could just tell that she just naturally had that ability to be such a wonderful mother she also appeared to be more level-headed and more stable as well because she had a steady job a steady income where gran Amanda did not and they had also just had a baby of their own named Lillian and neither of them were really working at this time either now custody battles are not quick and so during this entire time when it was going through the whole process grant and Amanda were having to see Laura and have these visits and make sure that they were giving the boys some time with Laura as well as having them in their home and they really began to get hostile with Laura and they didn't want her to come over they truly tried to make her visits less and less and when they would pick up the boys they were very rude and demanding telling the boys to like pulling them away telling them let's go and not letting them say goodbye to their mother while these boys were screaming and crying and not only is it hard enough to have parents who are separated and from going into one household to another but to be ripped away without being able to say a proper goodbye and a child's mind can be truly detrimental and grant was doing this to his own sons now because of this and how grant was showing that he was treating the boys even in front of Laura Laura is kind of motherly instincts kicked in and she wanted to see her sons more often she knew that as they were so little I mean three and two is so little that this was really gonna have an effect on their attachment towards their mother later on and so she contacted grant she said look I would really appreciate if we could kind of put out a little bit more time to say the goodbyes before you take the boys that way they're not crying when they leave and also I would love to get weekend a week day visits so like Wednesday is the middle of the week and at first this was something that was actually happening she would get them for a few hours and they would go to a place called monkey Joe's which from what I gathered is like a Chucky Cheese bouncy house trampoline park you know just one of those places where the kids rush in and are playing for hours and hours and you get them food and then they're exhausted and you go home and relax for a while that's kind of what it seemed to me but eventually grant started refusing these weekday visits and would no longer let Laura see them very often at all at this point Laura was stuck only having her boys on the weekend there wasn't much she could do about it so she just really was grateful for what she got and she would make sure that the boys had the best time she would take them out to do the most fun things she would spend the most time with them and that she possibly could to just kind of let them relax because not only was it stressful for Laura she knew it was stressful for her boys too I mean she would try to not show them that when she had them but on the days that she didn't have them she was really letting her friends and on how much of a toll this whole thing was having on her it had gotten so bad that Laura had actually told her friend Heidi that she had for several years if anything bad happens to me even if it's a car accident know that he did it he meaning grant Hayes now her friend Heidi was so shocked hearing this because she didn't realize how bad it really was and how terrified that Laura was of grant but upon hearing this and made it very clear that this was deeper than just a custody battle this was a fear deep inside Laura that something was going to happen something bad but would he really harm her the psychologist that had looked at both Laura and grant Amanda and their parenting skills had said that grant Amanda kind of an essence wanted to obliterate Laura from their lives from the boys lives which again just added to the thought that maybe Laura was right about being so afraid but then it seemed like things were starting to actually get better and it was July 13th it was a Wednesday and Grant had contacted Laura saying hey do you want to try these week day visits again and come and pick up the boys later and of course Laura was ecstatic she said yes as soon as I get down at work I will come right over and take the boys and she was so happy and that day she was actually working on a company she had just started named fork and spoons it was like an advertising agency that would have the the menus at restaurants where all the ads replaced they would be the ones selling and placing those ads and they it was her and her friend named Siobhan Mathis and they had met at a grocery store where Laura had once worked and they instantly hit it off now Laura was more into the graphic design part and Siobhan was more into at the marketing and so together they were just absolutely perfect dream business partners and they started up this company and it was going really well that day Laura had several different business meetings they all went extremely well she had told grant the last one will be at about 3:00 and hopefully I will be there soon after don't worry I am coming she was very adamant about the fact that she wanted to do this and at about 4 p.m. she would head that way she would call a friend saying that that's where she was going she would call Grant saying that she was on her way but after this no one would see Laura again Grant would send Laura an email that night saying basically asking if she was still going to come pick up the boys and she didn't answer this nor did she answer the phone calls from Siobhan Mathis who is waiting for her business partner to call her back and kind of fill her in on everything that happened that day she didn't call and then the next day she Vaughn actually emailed Laura saying I know you didn't answer my phone call you know something happen to your phone I wanted to see if I could reach you here please answer me back because of course siobhan knew what was happening with grant and in the back of her mind was a bit scared for Laura but again Laura didn't answer and grant emailed again saying you can take them through the week if you want because they wanted to go to see Amanda's sister in Texas so they were saying you can keep the boys through the weekend and through the week if that's what you want however we need to hear back from you we haven't heard anything and again Laura didn't answer and so by Saturday the whole Hayes family grant Amanda and the boys and their daughter Lillian all headed to Texas to see Amanda's sister because nobody had heard from Laura Laura's friend Heidi whom she had told that you know if anything happens to me it's Grant's fault was immediately scared for Laura and went on Laura's computer where she had stored so much information you see she had been collecting all of the emails that she would have back and forth with Grant and she'd been keeping them in a separate folder in case something were to happen and also the court date with a custody battle just to have kind of that trail of information for the court and so Heidi went in and downloaded all of those emails and immediately took them to the police station and said my friend's missing she's in a court custody battle and this is all the information she has kept I think something is wrong and at the same time Siobhan Mathis was also calling her apartment complex to ask the manager to go into her apartment and check on her and the manager said she's not here and at this point Siobhan said that I need you to collect all of the notebooks that you can find and bring them to me and so Siobhan took these notebooks winched the to the police station as well and gave them the notebooks because these notebooks had a record of everything that had been happening between Grant and Laura she had actually written down not only their interactions but everything she did with a boys everything she fed to them just anything possible to make sure that she was she was doing the right thing she she wanted everybody to know she was taking this custody battle very seriously she wanted her boys and she didn't want anything to interfere with that now every single day Elora would write in this notebook she would collect these emails yet these had stopped the day prior to her going missing and hadn't been written in since because of all of this information having two people come forward the investigators did take this missing-persons report seriously which is incredible however they immediately headed to Laura's apartment they found of course she wasn't there but also she hadn't been there in a while because her plants were actually dying they hadn't been watered in quite some time they then began to search for Laura's car which was also missing it was a 2006 white Ford Focus and on July 20th they would actually find it at an apartment complex that was kind of it was parked in a parking spot but it looked as though it had been rushed it had been somebody had just flung in there and gotten out the tires were turned all the way to the left and they took it in for testing of course for fingerprints and at the same time and they were also finding out what this apartment complex was or what connection it had to Laura and they found this was actually the apartment complex that she had lived in with Grant before she moved out when she got that letter saying she was never married to him now the car came back showing no fingerprints whatsoever like none at all like it had been wiped down and also in her apartment no fingerprint no fingerprints had been found there either so they were left with nothing the only thing they did know was that this apartment where the car had been left was only 400 yards away from Grant and Amanda's new place now there's surveillance footage at Laura's apartment where she was living at the time she disappeared showed her leaving her apartment at about 8:00 a.m. the morning she disappeared and she was wearing a sleeveless top capri pants and carrying a duffel bag as well as purse she was headed out for her normal workday but that would be the only time her apartment complex would catch her that day she never returned now Laura's phone records showed that the last person she called was grant on July 13th at about 4:00 p.m. when she would have been headed over there and also the GPS tracker on her phone last pinged in the direction of Grant's home as though she was headed there but after that nobody knew where she was and she had never picked the boys up they headed to Grant and Amanda's apartment with a search warrant and the minute that they got there they were basically ambushed by a smell of bleach it was so strong and that's when they noticed a huge bleach stain on the rug in the living room and of course this was very alarming but then they started looking closer and looking further into the home and they found that the bathroom one of these bathrooms had nothing edge I mean there was no there was no rug there was no shower curtain there was no shower rod there was no toilet covers well that seat cover there was literally nothing in there it was so bare like it had been cleared out they also found on the table a note that was written or said to be written on July 13th it was in what looked to be Laura and grants handwriting and it was basically Laura agreeing to give up full custody of her kids to grant for $25,000 now everybody who knew Laura and knew this was not something she would have ever done as she was fighting so hard for custody of her kids and to see them and she wouldn't as much as she wanted grant in their lives she would have still fought for both of them to have the rights it was then found surveillance footage a local Walmart had caught grant at 2:00 in the morning after Laura had disappeared a saw and blades and even asking an employee if they had bigger blades he would also buy goggles and a black tarps and then a few days later he would be seen again and buying a duffel bag three red and three black he would then go back to this Walmart and he would buy coolers and ice and he would return three of those duffel bags and there's these were all very suspicious but nobody could really say that that made him guilty or a part of this case or not this whole time his investigation was happening grand Amanda were still in Texas with Amanda's sister and so eventually they would come back and the investigators of course wanted to talk to them and gran had said that the last time he had saw her was on July 13th that Wednesday she'd come over for a midweek visit and she had dropped the boys back off at about 9:00 p.m. and at this point grant wanted to talk to her a little bit more about the custody so Amanda took the kids into the other room and they sat down and talked for a while about the boys and the whole battle that they were going through but she left about an hour later he also said that when Laura first got there Amanda kept all of the kids in the other room so they couldn't see her at first which I thought was a very strange addition to the story and this was so that grant could talk to Laura about this agreement that she signed supposedly that said she would get them full custody for $25,000 but grant said she left at 10:00 p.m. and then he tried to email her on Friday July 15th saying that she could keep the boys through the weekend and through the week since they were going to be in Texas but she never responded so he went ahead and went to the gas station where they would normally meet to exchange the kids and she never showed up so he left her some angry voicemails and he went ahead and went home now investigators traveled all the way to Katy Texas which was where a Manda's sister Karen lived and where Amanda grant had gone to stay for a while and they got there and they began to ask Karen you know do you know what happened do you know where Laura is is Laura here and Karen said she was afraid that Laura was and she took a minute to pray before telling investigators everything saying that grant Amanda just came randomly that they had always talked about visiting but they didn't have any plans to do so at this exact time they just called her said that they were coming and then when they got there Amanda was kind of talking about that Laura was hurt bad and then they were both asking the different family members if there was vacant holes if there was wells if alligators were in the area if they ate humans if there was pigs in the area there was a vacant lots just all of these very strange questions now Grant had told everyone that he just was new to this area and wanted to learn more about it that's what all the questions were about but Karen suspected something different and so she gave them a number to an attorney saying if something happened you can get help please call and get help she also found a machete and she knew it wasn't her so she kind of hid it in the garage because she figured something was wrong and this is what she would show investigators now Karen had said that they had brought a lot of furniture and coolers and she thought it was strange but they also asked to borrow her boat to go out on a nearby Easter Creek and they did this taking the acid they had just bought the muriatic acid and they went out on this boat and so of course investigators went to Oyster Creek to search and what they found was more disturbing than what they could have ever expected they found Laura but it was just part of her it was her torso cut in half with her head and her waist cut off she had been dismembered they also found her leg as well as her head and her cause of death could not be determined but it was thought that strangulation could have been part of it Amanda and grant were immediately arrested from Gran's parents home where they were staying back in North Carolina and prior to this grant was actually emailing his friends saying that this whole thing with Laura was quite a mess and that it was a lot bigger than he expected and saying I need a damn good attorney if Laura don't show up soon and telling all of his friends that he didn't know where she was that she was missing and she was causing all of this drama once again now investigators got in contact with the trash collectors from Amanda and grants apartment complex and they actually found in these bags and missing items from the bathroom well a lot of them and there was goggles at face masks bleach stains towels gloves women's pants floor mats cleaning supplies and a vacuum but the gloves would be what would help most in this case because they actually had Laura's DNA on them now grant pleaded not guilty to Laura's murder in 2013 saying that he was actually just the one that helped dispose of her body and then Amanda was actually the one who accidentally killed her and he just was covering up the murder to protect his wife however Amanda on the flip side said that actually she was the one that was helping grant cover up his accidental murder and that she was just another victim of grant now it was said once in Richmond the couple first attempted to use muriatic acid to destroy ackerson's body when that didn't work they took a boat onto Oyster Creek and dumped Laura's body parts into the water with hopes that alligators eat her remains grants defense said that basically Laura had come over that evening had agreed to give up custody for $25,000 and after that grant had gone in and to get the kids and Amanda and Laura were out by themselves and Amanda had baby Lilian with her and he said that he came out and she was on the floor already deceased by this point and Amanda had told him that she had been holding Lilian when Laura asked to hold her and Amanda just got up and ignored her and at this point Laura kind of came after her and she fought back in a way that she could still holding the baby and this caused an accidental death of Laura and this was the story that grant saw her already deceased thought about calling the police but thought that they wouldn't believe it was accidental and so he didn't and so he only thought that he could help his wife by covering up the murder and dismembering her and disposing of the body Amanda's daughter Shea who was in her 20s at this point would actually testify against her own mother and this was after Laura's friend Siobhan Mathis would go on the stand and would testify saying how terrified Laura was of grant and that she had said that grant was to blame if she had died now Shea would come forward with information that would actually shock investigators with how much she was willing to say about what happened the day Laura disappeared or the day after now if she was not seeming to be on her mother's side or on grants side she just was telling the truth that's what she wanted to do and she said the day after Laura disappeared at about 10:00 a.m. her mother Amanda called her and asked her if she would take the kids for the day out to play and Shay was kind of if he bought the whole thing she didn't really want to but Amanda basically said I need you now so che rushed over she was about 20 years old at this point living on her own and so she rushed over to her mother's house she went in she picked at the boys took them to monkey Joe's for quite a while and was actually going to take them home because the boys were tired but eventually she called Amanda and Amanda said no we need you to keep them out for a few more hours and so she did now Amanda and grant were allegedly trying to find a moving truck during this time because they were gonna move back in with grants parents as I've told you and so they were really trying to get the process started and that's why they had Shay take the boys or that's what they told her and so Shane dedup going back to the home and around 5:00 p.m. and at this point a man just said can you go get your vacuum for me ours broke and we need a vacuum so Shay had to go all the way back to her house get her vacuum and she actually picked up dinner for them as well and brought it back to the house and she said she really didn't want to do all this but she felt obligated to so she did she said a few days later she would be asked by them again if she would go into their home and help sell a piece they had sold on Craigslist she was just gonna be there to basically like mediate hand the furniture piece over and that would be it but she went over to their house and noticed the extremely strong smell of bleach now according to the Accord junkie podcast Laura's brother and Jason would actually testify as well because he was a closest family member that Laura had he lived in the area at the time and he would say that Grant had really been trying to put up a wall between him and his sister and that one day he actually tried to go over to their house when they were living together and tried to just see his sister and he could hear screaming from the inside of Grant saying that Jason was a bad influence and Laura never answered the door and she actually called him the next day to say basically sorry don't come over anymore we're gonna have to find another place to meet now allegedly after this Laura was actually thinking about moving and with Jason to just kind of get away from grant for a while this never actually happened though and three weeks prior to her murder while this whole thing was happening while she was telling her friend she was so afraid for her life she had actually called Jason just to say she was proud of him he had just opened a new business and she just wanted to give him some love and he said this was strange not that she was being kind she was always kind but just the fact that that's the only reason she called there was no small talk there's no talk about the boys about anything else she just was spewing love to Jason and it almost seemed like a goodbye message a something that you'd want to say to get off your chest before you were no longer gonna see someone again now an inmate that was living in with Grant in prison at the time also came forward testifying as saying the grant had told him that she was so sick and tired of the back-and-forth with the custody battle with the boys and so he actually lured Laura over to his house where he would strangle her and then dismember her and then dispose of her in Texas and another extremely disturbing part of this case that happened during the trial was that they played a song written by Grant Hayes himself he was a musician and he had written a song after Laura's murder that was called broomstick writer and it was about a baby mama of his two kids and one of the lyrics even said I put a price tag on your head you must have told your attorney I've got intentions on killing you and as grant listened to this in the courtroom he was smiling he was nodding along he was like tapping his foot to the music he was joyful at this point Amanda's sister Karen also testified saying that she believes she knew a motive for why grant and Amanda would have wanted to kill Laura and that was that Amanda had told her that Laura had said that not only was she going to get custody of the boy she was actually also going to try to take custody of Lillian now this is the first time anyone had ever heard this but Karen said this could possibly be motive for why they did what they did but after two hours of deliberation and grant was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison now this leads us to Amanda's trial where she also pled not guilty to the actual murderer saying she was just a victim of grants and to what he had done and she only helped with the disposal of the body because she had been forced to and Amanda also said that grant had forced her to tell her own sister that she had actually been the one that killed Laura when it wasn't her but unlike grant Amanda would actually testify in court and these can actually be found on youtube I will link them down below she said at the night of the murder she was taking care of the kids while grant Amanda talked about this settlement she didn't really know what was happening or what this paper really had on it until she got closer that's when she saw the the sum of $25,000 that Grant was offering Laura and she got really mad because they didn't have any money that's why they were moving back in with grants parents and that she was just really really hurt by this that grant didn't go through her to tell her all of this but at this point Laura would actually ask if she could hold it Lillian that Amanda was currently holding an Amanda because she was angry didn't answer so Laura got up she said that she tripped on a rug and kind of came coming at Amanda because of the fact that she tripped and at this point grant kind of grabbed on to Laura kind of they had tripped over a few things and it was more of an accidental death by grant know Amanda said at this point she had run back to the bedroom with Lillian to be with a boy so she didn't really see what all it happened but grant had came in to tell her that Laura had been hurt he was going to call an ambulance but she needed to get the kids out of the house now at this point Amanda did as she was told she said she took the boys to a gas station to get Slurpees and then she got back to the home and Laura's car was still in the driveway so she decided that you know she had just been taking my ambulance and that is when one of the boys had asked to have food so she took them to chick-fil-a to play for a while and to eat and then when she got back grant was in the house and she had asked him what happened to Laura and Grant said that she was fine that she just hit her head Amanda said the next morning she woke up and Grant was not beside her he was gone and she was trying to figure everything out which is why she called Shay to go ahead and take the boys so she could handle everything and then she actually had seen that Grant had emailed Laura and knew that she had never answered and she decided that they would just go ahead and take the boys with them to Texas and once they were in Texas this is where a man decided grant finally told her that Laura was dead and that she needed to help dispose of the body she helped him by the acid and went on the boat with him and said that she didn't actually see him disposing of Laura's body because she it was it was dark she was facing the other way and she said the only reason she helped grant was because he had threatened her as well as baby Lilian now like I said this entire testimony is extremely hard to listen to because if you've ever been around somebody who is an extremely good liar possibly even a compulsive liar you can see the similarities in Amanda and what she does during this testimony now she has on this very slow childlike voice that you can just tell is put on like first show and it's very she was very meticulous about her answers but she would also go on and on and on when it was just an answer that needed to be a simple yes or no and you could tell she was just trying to paint herself in the best light with all these answers instead of just letting the answers and the facts prove that she either was guilty or not guilty she just had to almost be in control of how the answers were being perceived now the tears and her testimony it only came out when she was talking about disposing of Laura's body and it was very strange because you could only hear her shaky voice at some points now she could easily contain it during the times where she was telling bits of information it was like it was sucked up like the tears were just gone she could say it with a straight voice and then the shakiness would come back again and it almost sounded very fake to me it sounded like there was not a continuous shakiness there was no emotion to it at all it was very forced in my opinion not only certain parts had like that exaggerated emotion where she was crying and then it was followed by a quick shutoff and an even tone a voice while she was explaining something just it was very strange and up and down and with each new question her previous statement was kind of changed it was like her story would just go wherever the questions were going but it never actually matched up to what she was originally saying again I'm not an expert but I have had a lot of experience dealing with compulsive liars and the oddities that I found in her testimony kind of made me feel as though this is something that could have been occurring at the time although I will leave the videos down below if you would like to listen to them and get your own feel for what you think was occurring during that time but either way amanda was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to 13 to 16 years in prison now grants parents actually got full custody of all three of the children and we're raising them together and eventually Amanda actually divorced grant from prison and grant actually tried to escape the very prison he was in as well but many have trouble deciding who was really guilty in this case was it grant was Amandla or was it both were they working it together now we're gonna go back a little bit because prior to all of this happening in 2010 when Laura and grant were just Laura and grant they were together he started experiencing and expressing a very strange behavior and he would begin to take drugs and he would have these thoughts he would drink a lot he would have these very strange ideals he would often talk about creatures from other planets following him everywhere he went because he was a time traveler as well as the fact that the world was going to end in 2012 and this wasn't just because you know that was something that was common or he was just you know trying to be silly he truly believed this he would say that all of the rich people would be down in the bunkers that would keep them safe so he needed to make enough money to get on one of these alien ships that would keep them all safe as well and he was also still being a musician at this time trying to make money by doing that and Laura was his manager and he began to asked her ask her to do very strange things like talk to his fans about their sex life this is also when grant would become abusive and at first it wasn't to Laura in fact one of the first times he or the first times we know that he did something was to a band mate he would have been late to practice and this bandmate was give him grief about that and he pulled a knife on him and Grant was also talking about having blackouts at this time during his behavior and just his outburst that he really didn't remember afterwards he was also isolating Laura from her friends and family which we talked a little bit about before but I mean it was severe she had to meet all of her friends and family at other places outside of the home and one time grant actually caught her with a friend and threatened both of them saying that he was powerful and he would kill both of them at this point grant was literally cheating in front of Laura as well and he said he didn't care because he had asked her to have a bully relationship with him and she had said no so he was going to do it anyway but after this the kind of manipulation and the mental abuse turned into physical abuse and during a time when Laura was pregnant with her first son she was actually on the phone to her friend Heidi when Grant would abused her because she wouldn't hang up the phone and unfortunately at this time Laura wouldn't go get help she wouldn't go to the hospital she ended up with a bloody nose and a black eye but like often in these situations she didn't want anybody to know about it grants grants own family was trying to get her out of the relationship telling her that he was just going to try to pimp her out that he wanted to have kids with a lot of different individuals like just all of these awful things that were saying about their own family member and telling her to get out of the relationship they even told her to call grants ex-wife and get advice and grants ex-wife basically told her to run now fortunately when the marriage photos of grant Amanda came Laura took that as an opportunity to get out and that is exactly what she did Laura at this point was really really working on herself she could see that light at the end of the tunnel after that abuse that she had went through for so long and she began to go to counseling she was also joining groups for partners of sociopaths and trying to learn what exactly they did who they were and how to escape them and how to get her children out of that situation as well because he was their father or he is their father but that meant she was beginning to see through his mask and he did not like that he began to tell people that she was this horrible human being and that she was crazy and he was also telling his friends to watch out who you have kids with because this could be them this situation he was in could be them because it was so horrible on his part Grant had also began to email Laura in July of 2011 saying that he was angry with her that she was always causing long this drama and creating so much it was making it hard for everybody and she was very very adamant about not letting him manipulate her or talk to her like that anymore and she had said that she records all of their conversations for a reason so he couldn't get away with lies like that and she even said go ahead build your story you just give me the ability to prove you're a liar Thanks keep playing your chess game grant thank God the courts are involved and they see people like you every day now I also found an interview that had happened after all these trials when Grant was in prison I mean he still is but it was an interview that I think really showed his personality a little bit more and kind of the switch that somebody like him can have while talking to somebody and this interviewer really started out asking simple questions really kind of siding with Grant making it feel like he wasn't being attacked but listened to and he was really talkative and kind of open and honest at first and when the interviewer began to push a little bit more saying that Grant didn't seem like he was remorseful at all and then he was smiling during the trial why was he doing that and just questioning him and pushing him more about that you could just see how his friendly behavior kind of turned more angry and she didn't necessarily believe that he was innocent and that he was the sweet guy he was trying to show her that he was and that she had seen right through him and after this happened grant would not stop talking about it once he was questioned as to why he was doing all of that he couldn't break that I don't know he just he all he wanted to make sure that she she knew she hadn't won if that makes sense he she was trying to ask him different questions and he just kept saying no no no I want I want to talk about this some more I have some more to say because he knew he had been caught in that that lie you can say and so you could just tell he was he was flustered he wanted her to go back to when she believed him and he wasn't getting that and that infuriated him he was focusing on why he was smiling why he was dancing why it seemed like he didn't care and why all of that wasn't real that he really cared and the entire time I could hear the manipulation through the fact that no words of emotion were actually expressed he was saying actions that were happening and saying kind of as though he wanted to have those emotions and knew that that's what she wanted from him but he couldn't express it because he didn't know how and this is something we see a lot and the fact that these kind of individuals can really learn kind of this speak of a therapist how they talk and what they want to hear and they can continue to talk like that and make people believe them when in fact if you really listen they're only repeating what they've heard not what they feel which is a big difference I've said this before but these are when the individuals have learned this behavior through life in order to better manipulate later on and it's something that they can be extremely good at if you don't know the signs and don't know what to look for for when someone is manipulating you I also found that Grant was quite detached from the whole situation I mean he was calling his youngest son gentle her son as in Laura's son like not wanting you to attach gentle to himself but he was also calling his oldest son grant his son but like not talking about the fact that it was also Laura's son as well he was just kind of had this skewed perception of of who these boys belong to and who would actually birth them he also had a very dominant behavior towards the interviewer the entire time I mean he corrected her he talked over her and this was especially bad when he was caught in his lie now Laura herself began to call grant a sociopath before her death and many believe that this is true many also believe that grant could be a narcissist and my experience these two can go hand-in-hand but I want to tell you a little bit about narcissistic personality disorder in order for you to kind of come up with your own opinion on whether you think that he had that and then we'll go into being a sociopath as well now narcissists normally have a sense of self-importance as though they are better than everybody else they also had dreams of unlimited power they want to be the most powerful and the room in the country ever they just they demand that amount of authority now they also lack empathy for others they don't ever think of anybody else when they're doing something it's all about them they also believe they are extremely special in some way and they take advantage of others because they will do anything to get where they think they deserve to be now they also have an inability to handle criticism and will often show that's kind of irritability or anger when they are criticized but a sociopath now they cannot keep constant work they repeatedly lie about everything they can even if you think that's a stupid thing to lie about it's just how their brain works unfortunately there also are horrible planners they don't plan anything and they are irritable and aggressive and they are irresponsible they lack remorse as well and they even justify the harm that they have done because they don't see any wrong in it so they will say oh well you know I killed this person because they were doing this even if it's just something small and minut like they cut me in line that's why I killed them and they don't have that correlation of that is not okay at all and they also cannot be faithful for more than one year which I thought was a very strange kind of symptom or trait that sociopaths have and in both a sociopath and a narcissist they can both be extremely charming to the point where they fool you until you are at a place where you rely on them and then that's what causes you to stay with them even though they are controlling and they are abusive and they are horrible people to be around you almost feel this need for them even though even if you weren't a needy person to begin with they can make you that way without you even realizing but on one hand a narcissist isn't always manipulative because they do care more what people think about them and that is because of their own pride and their own need to be admired and so they will kind of fault her with being a super manipulative but sociopaths are very different in that way and that is because they wear a mask everywhere they go they don't care what people think about them because they don't even know who they are it's almost like they are just like chameleons that just switch faces for different people and they don't have a certain one so if you if you don't like one they'll just put on another and it's something that they're good at and they have no pride they don't care if you like them or not and that's what makes them scary they know just how to trick you they know how to do it well they don't care what you think about them and once they are done with you once you are no longer a piece on their chessboard they completely throw you out you're done they want nothing else to do with you they are users of people and their emotions because sociopaths don't have any I truly do believe that grant could be either or could be both I see a ton a ton of behaviors just in this case and I'm sure there were even more red flags just in his everyday life and I'm no professional by any means but I'd love to hear your opinions on that as well and what you believe grant was actually found to be writing a script for Laura's press conference before her body was even found and he was writing down what emotions he would use what he would say like emotional words to kind of course the public into feeling bad for him and pleading for Laura to come home and I just feel like Laura knew exactly what kind of person she was dealing with by the end and she tried to tell people multiple times I mean someone who writes down every single detail of an interaction with someone shows that that person fears the other I mean it doesn't matter you can say that that was because she was going to court but she was so meticulous about it not only were the emails in a separate folder she was writing down every single information that she piece of information that she could about him and their interactions and this truly it just tells me that she knew who she was dealing with I mean the fact that she even told him that she had seemed through his lies and that email says so incredibly much and I think that documentation of this kind could very easily mean that Laura knew or feared that she wouldn't be alive to tell the truth and so these written words were her next her next hope that somebody would listen that he was guilty I mean she spoke up so often to her friends she was in support groups asking for help she was trying to get help in trying to get her boys away from this man and she wasn't just lying down and letting him do whatever he wanted her she was trying to overcome this and unfortunately that's not what happened because no one gave her that help which I'm sure it was extremely hard for Laura she went from being abused and wanting to hide his behavior from the world because she was dealing with it to wanting to expose him to everybody and trying to make them notice what was happening and she was begging the world to see this man as who he really was when they did it was too late for her thankfully they are both in jail Amanda and grant but this poor woman who had overcome so much and had so much strength in her mind and in her heart she has such a horrible brutal ending over what not that murder and killing is ever okay not that death is ever an easy thing to experience but also deal with for the living but it just shows a different kind of evil that they could dismember her body that that to me is just the ultimate you have to be extremely extremely messed up to be able to do that and the fact that they were then asking to feed her to the pigs or the alligators can't even imagine how her kids are going to deal with that knowledge when they get older but I am I'm grateful that they're out of reach of their father honestly but I do want to say that this whole case kind of talks about domestic abuse and violence and even if it's mental abuse that is still that is still something you shouldn't have to go through so if any of you are going through it I will leave a hotline it down below and please know that there are people out there that understand what you're going through that believe you and that will help you this is not something that should make you afraid of getting help this is something that is detrimental that you asked how to help over and over you asked for help even if it takes a while because you deserve that and I don't want this to happen to you I don't want you to ever have to endure any sort of pain I don't want you to have to be a warrior and strong and go through so much because yes it makes you strong and yes lore with a wonderful woman who was truly a warrior but please don't feel like you have to be one every single day don't feel like you have to go through that like you deserve it or like you can't get better because you can and I want you to and I need you to so if anything do it for me even if you don't feel strong you have to do it for yourself or your kids or anyone else I just wanted to add that in here because I truly do think sometimes we can't see the signs when we're in the situation but if anything about this case stood out to you as being something you're going through please get out please even if it doesn't seem that bad it is that bad and you need to run you need to make sure that it doesn't escalate and you don't deserve to put up with that so yes don't ever forget to speak up your voice is powerful enough and I love you to absolute pieces okay bye [Music]

Channel: Brooke Makenna

Views: 251,055

Rating: 4.9098411 out of 5

Keywords: the unbelievable case, Laura Ackerson, Laura Ackerson case, Laura Ackerson documentary, wicked winter, solved, laura ackerson trial, laura ackerson podcast, true crime podcast, what happened to, where is, Danelle Hallan, Danelle Hallan Laura Ackerson, a bitter end, true crime brewery, amanda hayes trial, grant hayes trial, solved murders, solved mysteries, true crime, crime documentaries, true crime stories, crime, podcast, asmr

Id: 9uga4yH_aNY

Length: 60min 4sec (3604 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 12 2019