Preparation for the February trial of Valerie Hayes and co-conspirator Gary Reburn, her then-boyfriend, continued in Charlottesville federal court on Wednesday.
Hayes is the alleged mastermind of a 2018 four-party kidnapping and murder conspiracy that included taking five Old Order Mennonite children from two Rockingham County homes, then executing their respective parents to eliminate witnesses.
Wednesday’s hearing involved two major twists.
Hayes is accused of telling Reburn that three of the five children who had been kidnapped and she wanted back were hers, and that Reburn was their biological father.
But defense attorney Christopher Leibig told the court that Hayes had informed his client that he was the father of all five children, and that Hayes had shown him five birth certificates to back her claim, which was new information.
The prosecution says that in 2014, Hayes became close friends with Frank and Jennifer Amnott, a Florida couple that have both entered plea agreements regarding their roles in the alleged conspiracy.
The Amnotts’ attempts to have children had all ended in miscarriage. The couple was also having difficulty adopting a child. Hayes is accused of telling the couple that she was a federal agent who went on dangerous, covert operations that at times gave her access to children who were victims of abuse and neglect. In 2018, she allegedly asked the couple to join her plot to take away the five children, one of whom the Amnotts would be able to adopt.
The second complicated plot twist was “Madeline Davidson,” a false identity allegedly created by Hayes that was not entered into evidence until earlier this month. The character appeared in documents submitted by both the prosecution and Reburn’s attorney.
In what the prosecution calls Hayes’ “past lies and ruses,” Hayes faked her own death in 2014. When Jennifer Amnott learned of it, she attended Hayes’ funeral. While there, Hayes allegedly introduced herself to Amnott as Valerie’s “body double.”
According to the defense, the false character appeared again in 2018, the year that Hayes and Reburn, along with co-conspirator Frank Amnott, allegedly forced their way into the home of the first family, which included two of the five children, on Aug. 29. The father was dragged into the basement, but the mother was able to escape to the cornfield across the road, where she called 911 with the couple’s wireless phone.
The deputy that arrived first was met by Reburn and Hayes, who told the deputy that she was a neighbor who had seen an armed man enter the house. By that time, the mother had also come to the yard. Convinced that Hayes and Reburn knew the mother, the deputy directed them to drop her off at a small, one-pump gas station within sight of the house. Fearing the deputy would be shot, the mother entered the car.
It was then that the deputy entered the home and found the children safe and Frank Amnott holding the father at gunpoint in the basement. Amnott was arrested at the scene and later entered a guilty plea with federal prosecutors.
It was after dropping off the mother that Hayes and Reburn drove off and began their successful getaway to Scotland along with Jennifer Amnott, who was in Hayes’ Maryland home watching her friend’s three daughters during the alleged human heist. The girls also went on the trip.
Hayes, Reburn and Jennifer Amnott were arrested in Scotland four months later. Their seven-year fight to avoid extradition ended last October.
According to Reburn’s attorney, Richard Leibig, it was after their arrival in Scotland that Hayes asked Reburn to promise that he would say she had been in Europe at the time of the failed kidnapping, and that he was living with Madeline Davidson in Virginia. She further asked him to claim that it was Madeline who later flew to Europe with Reburn and Hayes’ daughters.
Hayes also asked Reburn to claim that their mutual children (who Reburn still believed existed) were the children of Reburn and Madeline, her double.
According to Leibig, only after reviewing discovery more than eight years later and absorbing the reality of the situation over several months did his client realize that he had been duped, that he did not have children with Hayes, and that she had never been a secret government operative. Leibig went on to say that when given a chance to speak with the FBI, Hayes told agents that Reburn was guilty of traveling to Virginia to kidnap children and that she was not.
Based on Hayes’ false claims, Leibig has moved that Reburn have a separate trial. Judge Elizabeth Dillon said that she would take the motion under advisement.
Judge Dillon also chided Leibig for turning in two responses past the deadline. Leibig apologized, but the judge reminded him he could always ask for an extension.
Hayes, Reburn and the Amnotts all face mandatory life sentences.
Three of the prime witnesses will be Hayes’ daughters, who were taken into foster care upon their mother’s arrest. The three are now adults and have no wish to return to the U.S.
The trial begins on Feb. 1 and is scheduled to last all month.
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