But prosecutors in the first trial said the then 41-year-old former actress was a willing participant in the 27-year-old’s July 13, 2011, death and cover-up.
The state said Amanda and her husband Grant Hayes, who was in a bitter custody dispute over the sons aged two and three, with the victim, killed her in a premeditated murder plot.

The state told jurors that the evidence in the case, suggested that Amanda Hayes’ story about what happened was  “so ridiculous” that it made “zero sense.”
“What you have in this case is two people, together, who participated in this murder. At no point in this trial have we minimized Grant’s role in this,” Wake County Assistant District Attorney Boz Zellinger said during closing arguments Monday. “Grant was incredibly involved in this, but they did this together.”
The couple had gone to great lengths to hide the killing by wrapping the victim’s body in a rug, carrying it from their home in the middle of the night and cutting it up someplace else, before carrying the dismembered parts in coolers, hidden in a U-Haul trailer, across the country.
Amanda, during the murder trial claimed she had no knowledge of the murder and dismemberment. She testified that it was July 18, 2011, the day the couple got to Texas – on what she believed was just a visit to see her sister – that she learned Ackerson had died.

On July 13, 2011, Amanda and Grant dismembered Ackerson’s body in their apartment, packed it in coolers and drove with it to the Richmond, Texas home of Amanda’s sister.
Protesting his client’s innocence, “He’s concealed everything he’s done from Amanda,” Gaskins said.
“She arrives in Texas, happy, content to see her sister without any hint whatsoever that Grant has killed Laura.”
For the concealment trial, a soft-spoken Amanda Hayes, tearful at times, also testified that she helped in the cover-up only because she was under duress and scared of what her husband might to do if she didn’t.