Police: Boy's mother knows more

Police haven't labeled her a suspect, but they think she knows more about the disappearance of her son than she has told them.

By CHRISTINA HEADRICK

© St. Petersburg Times, published September 28, 2000

CLEARWATER -- Two days after her sandy-haired son vanished, Leah Hackett stood before a mob of television cameras and pleaded for the search to go on.

"Please don't stop looking for Zach, and help bring Zach home," Hackett, 29, said. Then she disappeared into her apartment, where she has mostly remained since.

Previous Times coverage

But Wednesday, for the first time, police said they don't think Hackett has told them everything she knows about the disappearance of 8-year-old Zachary Bernhardt.

"From the beginning, the officers had any number of concerns about the circumstances of his disappearance," Clearwater police spokesman Wayne Shelor said. "Investigators don't believe they have the whole story from Zach's mother."

Zachary Bernhardt has been missing since Sept. 11.

But Shelor said police have not labeled her a suspect and have no evidence a crime was committed. They've also uncovered no evidence that Zachary was the victim of an accident, or that he ran away, he said.

Hackett initially told officers she left Zachary alone in her unlocked apartment at 4 a.m. Sept. 11, when she went for a walk. Fifteen minutes later, she told police, she returned to find Zachary gone.

Hackett has declined repeated requests for interviews. In a brief phone call Tuesday, she told the Times: "I know nothing at this point that the police do not know."

Shelor's words, together with Hackett's silence, raise the question: Who is this mother who says she left her son alone before dawn, her apartment unlocked, a few blocks from the hustle of U.S. 19?

More than 100 pages of court records and police reports, and interviews with more than a dozen acquaintances and relatives, paint contrasting pictures.

In ways, Hackett emerges as a sympathetic figure, a loving single mom who proudly displays Zachary's drawings, paper-plate flowers and painted ceramics.

"She has always been a great mom with Zach," said Denise Simpkins, one of Hackett's four older sisters who described Hackett's parenting as "textbook."

Other reports say Hackett enjoys cruising the bar scene at Ybor City, has gone through a series of jobs, sometimes doesn't pay her rent and has bent the truth before, perhaps hoping to gain sympathy.

Some neighbors doubt she was home until her 4 a.m. walk. One told the Times she saw Hackett's car pull into the complex around 3 a.m. Sept. 11. Another said that Hackett's black Dodge hatchback was gone about 3:45 a.m.

Family members twice in the past four years have reported Hackett missing. After one such episode, Hackett agreed to let her other child, a 6-year-old daughter, go live with her father in Michigan, court records show.

Are such events in Hackett's life relevant to the search for her son? As part of a many-pronged investigation, police have returned to places Hackett lived and frequented, searching for clues.

A son, a daughter, a missing mother

Zachary Bernhardt's birth announcement, published in the Tampa Tribune after his birth Dec. 18, 1991, listed no father.

Hackett, then 20, spent her pregnancy living in Lakeland with boyfriend Jason Paul Hibbard. But after Zachary's birth, a paternity test proved Hibbard wasn't the father, and she moved out.

Neither police nor Hackett's family will say who Zachary's real father is -- or if he knows he has a son.

"That's all her private life," said Hackett's mother, Carole Bernhardt, a school bus driver for Hillsborough County.

Without a father involved, Hackett gave her son her mother's married name, Bernhardt. "As far as Zachary was concerned, I more or less was his dad," said Bernhardt, 59.

Hackett gave birth to her second child in 1994. Neither family members nor public records reveal where Zachary was.

Hackett by then had moved to Chelsea, Mich., a quaint village near Ann Arbor. Her new boyfriend, Robert Jaques III, 20, was an engineering student at the University of Michigan. She lived with Jaques' parents in Chelsea during the pregnancy, records state.

After Lieren Veronica Jaques was born, Jaques sued Hackett for custody, court records show. A judge permitted Hackett to return with her daughter to Florida, which she did in 1996.

Jaques came to visit his little girl on a Saturday in June of that year. Hackett met him on a stretch of I-75 in Hillsborough County to drop off Lieren, almost 2, and Zach, then 4, according to a police report. She wanted him to watch both kids. She was going out that night.

Jaques paged Hackett repeatedly but didn't hear from her, the report says. He and Hackett's older sister, Billie-Jo Jimenez, called the Hillsborough Sheriff's Office the next night to report her missing.

Hackett showed up Monday, the report says. But Jaques took his little girl back to Michigan, where a judge decided she should live with him.

'If she has a kid, why is she going out all the time?'

After returning to Florida in 1996, Hackett went to Ybor City and met Matt Geddis, a 22-year-old St. Petersburg man who was in the Coast Guard. She moved into his apartment in Mallard Pointe on Fourth Street, Geddis said.

Zachary was living with Hackett's sister in Plant City, Geddis said.

Jimenez, the sister, said she couldn't remember when Zachary stayed with her. She said the whole family helped raise the child: "We all cared for Zachary, all of us, from my mother to the youngest. Whatever we needed to do, we did."

Hackett broke up with Geddis in November 1996, a police report says. A few days later, Geddis found Hackett visiting at another man's home. Later, at his apartment, Geddis yelled at her to move out and shoved her. She called 911.

Geddis pleaded no contest to misdemeanor domestic battery and he got a year's probation.

"She drove me crazy," said Geddis last week. "What gets me is that if she has a kid, why is she going out all the time?"

Hackett continued living at the apartment. Jimenez, Hackett's sister, filed another missing person's report in May 1997, after being unable to find her there

Jimenez told police she was worried because Hackett had "threatened suicide" in the past and "likes to drink," the report states. Jimenez also told police Hackett hadn't been to work in two weeks. She had called saying her mother died, the report says. But Hackett's mother was fine.

Hackett got in touch with her sister a few days later, the report says.

Hackett and Zachary eventually moved to the run-down Lucerne Apartments in downtown St. Petersburg.

One of the complex's owners, Richard Martinez Jr., made Hackett the apartment manager in June 1998, court records state. In return, he paid her rent and utility bills. She had no income, court records say.

But three months later, Martinez took her job away. During a dispute, Hackett complained in court, Martinez ripped off her shirt while trying to wrest the complex's keys away from her.

A judge ordered Martinez, who didn't respond to interview requests, to avoid contact with Hackett.

Hackett and her son then moved in with a friend at Wind Tree Village in High Point. Zachary was withdrawn from Lakewood Elementary and enrolled in first grade at Frontier Elementary in Largo.

Zachary's teacher at Frontier, LaRue Pierson, remembered the little boy as quiet and well-mannered. He empathized with other students, asking what he could do if they were having a bad day, she said. Pierson had one conference with Hackett.

"She just seemed to be a very caring mom," Pierson said. "He seemed to really love his mom."

Pierson also said Hackett told her "she was dying of cancer." So, Pierson said, she was surprised to see Hackett on television.

Simpkins, Hackett's sister, said she knows nothing about Hackett having cancer: "I've never heard anything like that."

Meanwhile, in November 1998, Hackett's new roommate tried to throw her out, claiming Hackett owed her money, a sheriff's report states.

The roommate moved out, and Hackett asked the landlord to rent the unit.

"I felt sorry for her," An Ngoc Nguyen said. "She has no husband. She has a kid. Her son goes to the YMCA down the street. She says that's good for him. She says she has cancer, woman cancer."

Nguyen allowed Hackett to stay. But she wouldn't open the door when he came for the rent, he said. By April 1999, Nguyen evicted Hackett, who owed him $1,020.

In 1999, Hackett moved into Savannah Trace in northeast Clearwater. Zachary attended nearby Eisenhower Elementary School, where the principal remembered Hackett as an engaged parent who helped plan a carnival.

Hackett befriended neighbor Deanna Williams, a nursing student with a daughter close to Zachary's age. Hackett sometimes took care of Williams' daughter.

"I think that Leah was very strict," Williams said. "Zachary was not allowed, like some kids, to have tantrums or get angry. She didn't put up with that."

But the two women grew apart when Williams tired of taking phone messages for Hackett, who didn't have a phone. In July she decided not to let Hackett babysit her daughter anymore.

On Sept. 6 -- five days before Zachary disappeared -- Hackett was notified she would be evicted for not paying rent, court records show. That night, Geddis, her ex-boyfriend, said he saw her at the Green Iguana Bar & Grill in Ybor City. Restaurant personnel also said Hackett was there, and that police have visited to review surveillance videos.

Williams said she last saw Zachary a few days later.

It was Sunday, a day before the boy disappeared. The boy was outside. There was no sign of Hackett.

Zachary asked if he could go with her to a barbecue, Williams said. Williams told him she was sorry, he couldn't.

After returning, as Williams was saying good night to her boyfriend at 3:45 a.m. Sept. 11, she noticed that Hackett's car was not parked beside the complex, Williams said. Another neighbor, Susan Dalton, said she went out for a smoke and noticed Hackett's Dodge pulling up to the complex around 3 a.m.

About 5:15 a.m., Williams said, Hackett called her and asked if her son was at Williams' home. Hackett said she had gone for a swim and returned to find Zack missing, Williams said.

"I was like, "You can't go for a swim because the pool was closed at 10 o'clock,' " Williams said.

Hackett's family has repeatedly declined to talk about the specific circumstances of Zachary's disappearance. They just want to get him back.

"We're not focusing on the what happened or why it happened, we're trying to focus on the where," said Simpkins, Hackett's sister. "Where is Zach?"

When they speak of Zachary, Hackett's family members often choke on their words. They remember a child who liked to take care of potted flowers, draw pictures and zoom down pool slides.

They are praying, said Carole Bernhardt, Zachary's grandmother, that God will return an innocent boy.

- Times news researcher Cathy Wos and staff writer Leon Tucker contributed to this report.

Where to call

If you have information about Zachary Bernhardt's disappearance, call Clearwater police at 562-4422.

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright