Amber Marie Hayes
Amber Marie Hayes
7-1/2 months old
Case # 8802703
603 Clay St.
Muscatine, Iowa
Muscatine County
June 9, 1988
Amber Marie Hayes, 7-1/2 months old, was reported missing by her mother, Mary Hayes, at 1:30 a.m. on Thursday, June 9, 1988. Four days later, parts of the infant’s dismembered body, her pink diaper bag and a blanket were discovered in a remote area near Lake Odessa by two boys riding all-terrain vehicles.
The lake area, just south of Muscatine, is located about one-half mile west of the Mississippi River.
Mary Hayes, 24, had gone out that night with a friend for the first time since Amber’s birth, and reported the baby missing after returning home and discovering her daughter gone. Hayes had left the baby at home with her boyfriend, Les Brockert, 28 — who was not Amber’s father but lived with Hayes at her residence — while she and her friend went to Terri’s Hideaway and Chet’s, two former Muscatine taverns. Brockert had watched the child before, and Hayes had known him most of her life.
When Mary returned home a little after 1 a.m., Brockert grabbed his car keys from her and slammed out of the house. When she went to check on Amber and discovered her missing from her crib, she instinctively knew something was wrong and contacted police.
Though he knew authorities were looking for him, Brockert avoided them for several hours. Once they found him, he told police he’d been up for four days from using cocaine. He said a “cocaine-induced headache” had kept him from looking up when someone came in and took the child but that he didn’t know who the person was because he’d kept his head covered with a pillow. Brockert was subsequently jailed as a material witness in the case.
According to interview notes taken during the investigation, a special agent with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation said Brockert gave five different stories regarding Amber’s disappearance.
Hayes and the baby’s father, Terry Hayes, along with other relatives, made weekend appeals on local television stations for Amber’s safe return. Searchers dug through the city’s 1,200 garbage bins and in the county landfill, and also searched nearby wooded areas and ditches in hopes of finding the child. The baby’s grandmother, Barbara Flake, said [dealing with the situation] was pretty hard for the family.
Amber Hayes' birth announcement
On June 12, 1988, four days after she disappeared, Amber’s remains were discovered near Lake Odessa and investigators changed the infant’s classification from a kidnapping to a homicide.
Hayes said that when police arrested Brockert there were gloves and a shovel in his car and sand on the vehicle’s passenger side. (Muscatine Journal, Feb. 12, 2010)
Stephen Petersen — Muscatine County Attorney at the time — said he’d considered murder charges but ultimately charged Brockert with first-degree kidnapping. Due to intense media coverage, the kidnapping trial — the first ever televised in Iowa — was transferred to Maquoketa.
Muscatine attorney John Wunder — who defended Brockert during the trial — argued that Brockert “was in jail” when Amber was killed, and though a doctor who testified for the defense said the remains found in the dry creek bed would have been placed there about 12 to 72 hours before they were discovered, he admitted he wasn’t an expert in studying fly larvae, a forensic entomology method used to determine the length of time since death.
According to court testimony, Tony Ramsdell of Muscatine was with Brockert at the home shortly before Amber disappeared, and Wunder said he subpoenaed Ramsdell for questioning. Ramsdell, however, never showed up and the defense attorney said police didn’t enforce the subpoena.
In October 1988 the jury acquitted Brockert of the kidnapping charge.
In February 2010, Mary Hayes told the Muscatine Journal she felt someone may have helped Brockert get rid of Amber’s body and that she believes both Brockert and Ramsdell know the truth about what really happened that night.
Hayes’ surviving daughter, Barb — just 8 years old at the time — was spending the night with her father and found out about her sister’s disappearance by watching the news. She told the Journal that after Amber’s remains were discovered, classmates at school chased her around with baby doll heads saying they were her sister. Barb [Campbell] went on to become a registered nurse and now has a child of her own.
In the years following Amber’s murder, Les Brockert — now a convicted felon — tried to blow up his girlfriend’s car in a 1994 arson case and has been arrested numerous times in both Louisa and Muscatine counties. He has claimed to be insane and believed to currently reside in the Columbus Junction area.
Mary and Barb continue to hold out hope that DNA or forensic testing will one day bring the case to a close and justice for Amber.
Sources:
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I just read this for the first time. I am so sorry for what happened.