A Missouri woman recently learned that her church-going mother and father are murderers.
Erica Hayes, 41, was raised by her parents, Gerald and Alice Uden, with her four siblings in a Missouri farming town. Hayes' upbringing was ideal and peaceful, the New York Daily News reported Wednesday. But Hayes always felt that her mother was keeping a secret from her.
Hayes suspicions were right. Alice Uden, 74, was arrested in September 2013 and charged with killing her ex-husband in Wyoming over 30 years ago, People magazine reported.
On top of that, Alice Uden's husband and Hayes' stepfather, Gerald Uden, was charged with the murder of his ex-wife and her two boys. Gerald, 71, confessed to the murders and was sentenced to life in prison in November, according to People.
"He finally admitted it," Hayes told People, "I sat there and thought, 'Son of a b----.' "
Hayes had no idea that in 1980, Gerald, who raised her since she was 4-years-old, shot his ex-wife Virginia Uden, and her two sons, 10-year-old Reagan and Richard, 12, the Daily News reported.
Gerald told the court during the trial that his ex kept demanding he pay child support and prevented him from seeing his sons.
Hayes' stepfather decided to kill Virginia, who had become "intolerable." Gerald murdered her sons too.
"I know that if I killed one, I was going to kill all of them," Uden said, People reported. "I have no excuse," he told the court. The three bodies have not yet been found, but Gerald reportedly dumped them in a lake.
Gerald said his actions were also motivated because his ex-wife tried to interfere with his marriage to Hayes' mother.
Alice, who married Gerald in 1976, will be tried for the shooting death of her ex-husband, Ronald Holtz sometime in 1974 or 1975, People reported. Hayes told People that her mother said she killed her husband because he was abusive towards her. Alice allegedly dumped the body in a mine shaft.
Though Hayes might have gotten closure now that her parents were apprehended, the same cannot be said for Virginia's mother, Claire Martin. Martin, 92, died in April 2013, before Gerald was arrested, People reported.
"When it all came to light recently, I felt it's a little too little, too late," Georgene Orth, 91, Martin's only known surviving relative, told People.
