Serving time for murder in NC, woman found guilty for link to Texas body dump
A woman serving a second-degree murder sentence in North Carolina saw an additional 20 years tacked on to her time behind bars Wednesday after a conviction in Texas.
A Wake County jury found Amanda Hayes guilty in 2014 for her role in the death of her husband's ex-girlfriend, Laura Ackerson, whose dismembered remains were found in a Texas creek.
Her North Carolina sentence runs through Sept. 2025.
Jurors in Texas found Hayes guilty Tuesday of tampering with physical evidence, a link to Ackerson's dismemberment, and they gave her the maximum sentence for that charge.
Investigators in Fort Bend County, Texas, found pieces of Ackerson's body over a period of several weeks in Oyster Creek. Authorities say Hayes and her husband, Grant Hayes, killed Ackerson in North Carolina, then cut her up and transported her body in pieces in coolers to the Richmond, Texas, home of Amanda Hayes' sister.
The Fort Bend District Attorney's Office said the Hayeses "took a boat onto Oyster Creek and dumped Laura’s body parts into the water with hopes that alligators would eat her remains."
Amanda Hayes will serve her time in Texas after her North Carolina sentence is complete.
After the couple was charged with murdering Ackerson, they pointed the finger at each other in separate trials. Prosecutors said the Hayeses wanted to "erase" Ackerson, the mother of Grant Hayes' two young sons.
Amanda Hayes' defense was that she was manipulated by her husband, and that he killed Ackerson, cut up her body, put it in coolers and carried it in a U-Haul trailer without his wife knowing.
She testified that she found out Ackerson had died while at her sister's home in Richmond, Texas, where Grant Hayes coerced her into both admitting to the crime and helping him find a place to dump the remains.
She only helped, she said, out of fear of what he might do to her, his 2- and 3-year-old boys and her 1-month-old and 22-year-old daughters.
Given the condition of her body when it was found, the North Carolina chief medical examiner was unable to determine a specific cause of death. An autopsy showed a sharp puncture wound to the fourth cervical vertebra as well as crushed thyroid cartilage consistent with some type of blunt force trauma to the neck.
