Laura Jean Ackerson was 27 years old at the time of her disappearance. She was living in Kinston, North Carolina, and was last seen alive in Raleigh, North Carolina, on July 13, 2011. She was reported missing by her coworkers when she failed to show up for work. She had dropped her children off to their father's house the day she went missing, and never picked them back up on the scheduled date. Their father, Grant Hayes, was in a custody dispute with Laura, and had since married another woman, Amanda. As it turns out, this miserable couple killed Laura, and did a whole host of disgusting things to her before dumping her body. I won't go into much detail about that, because I do not want to ruin the book for those unfamiliar with the case. Remains were recovered in Richmond, Texas, and were later determined to be Laura's.

This case was featured on the show Deadly Women (Beauty and the Beastly on ID Channel). As far as I can discover, Grant Hayes parents have custody of the children, and I think that is shameful. I have mixed feelings about the family members of people do crimes, because they should not be punished in a lot of cases, but they obviously failed to raise a son with any moral compass what so ever and thus should not be raising those kids. They should have went to someone in their murdered mothers family. Hopefully, the kids are well taken care of and are living the best life that they can, but the whole situation gives me the ick. Grant was given life without parole. Amanda filed `for divorce and was tried separately, but she was found guilty of murder and tampering with evidence. She is serving 13-16.5 years for the murder and 20 for tampering with evidence, to run consecutively. At the time of reviewing this book, both are still alive and incarcerated, breathing air they do not deserve to. Also, if you look up her mugshots, she looks entirely too smug and if I could go through this screen and punch that look off of her face, I would. Same goes for him. Vile human beings.

As far as the book itself went, it was decent. There were plenty of details about the case in the book, and it was clear that the author did proper research about the case before writing. The case was presented in a way that was not boring, which I appreciate. Sometimes, you get true crime books that are very dry, but this was not one. I was very interested in what was going to happen next in the case, and since I had not heard much about it beyond seeing this in the news headlines, I learned a lot. I believe that I have read a couple of other books by this author, and I think they were equally as well done. If you are interested in this book, it is currently available on Audible Plus.