In the late hours of July 29, 2018, a young Old Order Mennonite couple were getting ready for bed. The government says that’s when a long, drawn-out plan to kidnap five Old Order children from two respective families and execute their parents came to end.
Alleged ringleader Valerie Hayes and two of her three co-conspirators came close but failed to get the couple’s 8-month-old and 2-year-old into their getaway vehicle before killing their parents and going to the second home, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
ICYMI
- Mennonite kidnapping, murder conspiracy case continues in federal court
- Update: Plea agreement, new information in Valerie Hayes abduction case
- Old Order Mennonite families from the Valley have begun an exodus to Esmont
“Although the facts of this case read like the script of a bad horror movie, the defendants’ murderous plot was real and it posed a grave risk to their intended victims,” U.S. Attorney Thomas Cullen said in a 2019 news release.
The cast of characters includes Valerie Hayes and married couple Frank and Jennifer Frank Amnott, and Hayes’ boyfriend, Gary Blake Reburn, who didn’t make his entrance until the day before the failed attempt.
At the heart of the plot were Hayes and the Amnotts, who met through a mutual friend in 2014. The Florida couple wanted to have children, but Jennifer’s pregnancies all ended in miscarriage.
The government says that for several years, Hayes had told “people in her orbit” that she was a secret agent who went on dangerous missions through which she could arrange the adoption of abused or neglected children.
Hayes and the Amnotts become close. The Amnotts had spent most of their lives in their home state of Florida, with a brief period in Texas. Hayes lived with the two on different occasions within both states, with the Amnotts occasionally visiting Hayes in her Maryland home where she lived with her boyfriend, Gary Blake Reburn.
Between their introduction and the failed kidnapping and murder plot four years later, Hayes told the couple that she had located a child for them to adopt twice.
In or about the fall of 2016, she said she had secured the first child. During the Christmas season, the couple took to social media to announce that a child would be entering their lives in the coming year.
In February, the couple were told that instead of obtaining the baby from a third party that Hayes herself was carrying the child. In March, the couple learned by way of a text from a supposed “colleague” that Hayes had been attacked, suffering multiple stab wounds in the belly that killed the baby.
Then, in July 2017, Hayes allegedly told the Amnotts that she had secured another baby-to-be but that child also failed to arrive.
It was after that alleged ruse that Hayes is accused of telling the couple that three of her own children – Ronan, Zippy and Leona—had been captured and were in the possession of two Old Order Mennonite families in Dayton, and she needed to take them back. Hayes said two other children had to be taken, as well, one of which they could adopt. The couple agreed to join her mission. Both have entered guilty pleas and will testify during the February trial.
Days before the failed attempt, the Amnotts headed for Hayes’ Kensington, Maryland home, where Jennifer would watch Hayes’ three biological daughters while her husband, Frank, and went to Dayton. Frank Amnott has told investigators that there were four or five child safety seats in a silver Mercedes “van.”
The government says that on July 27, a Friday, the two spent the day surveilling the homes that Hayes had chosen. The first, where the effort came to a halt, was located a stone’s throw from a county road intersection within sight of a key location. The second was located several miles away.
The plan was to wait for the fathers to milk their cows the following morning. At the first house, they would wait until the father had gone into the milking parlor, after which they would go inside the house, where one would restrain the mother while the other secured the couple’s children. One of them would then take the mother to the nearby woods and execute her with a shot to the head. The two would then go into the barn or wait for the father to return to the house and execute him, as well.
Frank Amnott told investigators that both he and Hayes were armed as they waited outside the house as planned. But then what appeared to be a “helping hand” showed up to help the father with the milking. With the plan at a dead end, Hayes decided it was time to go home and ask her boyfriend to be “an extra set of hands and eyes.” Reburn agreed.
Along the two-hour return, Hayes changed into a cape dress and a covering to appear as an Old Order Mennonite. Documents don’t say where or when Hayes obtained her disguise, but the reason was no mystery: Hayes wanted to appear as a member of the community, which she felt may work to their advantage.
When Sunday morning again included two men milking the cows, the group came up with plan B: make off with the children while the couple was getting ready for bed.
Throughout all of this, Jennifer Amnott stayed in touch with the group through texts. But, as seen through the eyes of the Amnotts and Reburn, they weren’t alone.
The government says beginning the morning of Sunday, July 29, Hayes was surreptitiously using texts from two purported security personnel. She had long spoken of associates who served to protect her safety. “Bjorn” oversaw the fake two-man operation, which included surveillance both on the ground and in the air by way of drones. That to leave her co-conspirators assured that all was clear.
Having gained confidence, Frank Amnott and Reburn joined Hayes in an alleged search of the first house while the family was at church. While inside, they observed the layout of the house and the size of the children’s clothing, among other things.
Approaching dark, the group asked the bogus “intel” operatives for guidance. Convinced that the time was right, the three were ready to strike.
According to court documents, Hayes and Frank Amnott dropped Reburn off by the house to wait until the light went off. The two then approached the house in their vehicle and turned off the headlights. After getting out of the vehicle, they met Reburn at the front of the house.
While they were en route, the father turned on the lights and opened the door. When he saw that they were armed, he tried to close it but outnumbered three to one, he wasn’t able.
Frank Amnott and Reburn took the father to the basement, where he was laid on the ground face down with his wrists zip-tied behind his back, and asked where his wife was. The father said he didn’t know at which time Amnott held the father at gunpoint and Reburn headed upstairs, where he heard Hayes calling out for the mother, whose name she had learned when the three were inside the house earlier.
By that time, it was too late. Having seen the three break in, the mother grabbed the couple’s cordless phone and ran into the cornfield across the road, where she called police.
When a deputy that was close by arrived, he saw the mother standing in front of the house with Hayes and Reburn. The mother stood frozen and said nothing, fearing Hayes and Reburn would shoot the deputy if she spoke. Believing them to be neighbors or bystanders, the deputy directed them to drop the mother off for her safety at the one-pump convenience store a stone’s throw away.
The deputy then went into the house, where he found the children safe upstairs. His search ended when he found Frank Amnott in the basement with his gun pointed at the father. Amnott then put down the gun, put up his hands and was arrested without incident.
It was during the deputy’s search that Hayes and Amnott dropped off the mother and the corner store and left for Hayes and Reburns’ home, where they met Frank Amnott’s wife, Jennifer, who had learned by text that her husband had been left behind.
When Hayes’ oldest daughter told the three that she had seen Frank Amnott’s arrest on the news, they immediately sprang into action and left for Scotland, where they were arrested four months later.
After a 7-year battle to avoid extradition, the European Court of Human Rights refused to hear their case. The three were then sent back to the U.S., where they were arraigned in Charlottesville federal court, with all three taken to the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. Hayes and Jennifer Amnot were arraigned last Oct. 28, with Reburn arraigned the following day.
A series of hearings have been held since their arraignment one year ago. The next will be held on Tuesday.
The case’s twists and turns leave many questions to be answered during the February trial, which is expected to last all month. One thing that is missing from its 158 documents is the fact that Valerie Hayes herself was a member of the Mennonite church during her teens.
Then Valerie Perfect, she was 14 when her family joined a conservative Mennonite congregation in the area where the failed kidnapping and murder conspiracy took place. The church was not Old Order, but living and worshipping in the heart of Old Order country gave her an understanding of both its landscape and the lifestyle of Old Order Mennonites.
The government has not described the couple that was targeted as Old Order Mennonites. Instead, the case is referred to as the “Mennonite kidnapping.” Should the case and expected trial make national headlines, it could be frustrating for the thousands of Mennonites who live in greater Harrisonburg, a Mennonite mecca filled with scores of Mennonite churches that are predominately mainstream.
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