Death Trap

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Текст книги "Death Trap"

Автор книги: M. William Phelps

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Praise for I’LL BE WATCHING YOU

“This tale skillfully balances a victim’s story against that of an arrogant killer as it reveals a deviant mind intent on topping the world’s most dangerous criminals. Phelps has an unrelenting sense for detail that affirms his place, book by book, as one of our most engaging crime journalists.”

–Dr. Katherine Ramsland, author of The Human Predator

Praise for MURDER IN THE HEARTLAND

“Drawing on interviews with law officers and relatives, Murder in the Heartland will interest anyone who has followed the Stin-nett case. The author has done significant research and—demonstrating how modern forensics and the Internet played critical, even unexpected roles in the investigation—his facile writing pulls the reader along.”

–St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Phelps uses a unique combination of investigative skills and narrative insight to give readers an exclusive, insider’s look into the events surrounding this incredible, high-profile American tragedy. . . . He has written a compassionate, riveting true crime masterpiece.”

–Anne Bremner, op-ed columnist and legal analyst on Court TV, MSNBC, Nancy Grace, FOX News Channel, The O’Reilly Factor, CNN, Good Morning America, and The Early Show

“When unimaginable horror strikes, it is certain to cause monstrous sufferings, regardless of its locale. In Murder in the Heartland, M. William Phelps expertly reminds us that when the darkest form of evil invades the quiet and safe outposts of rural America, the tragedy is greatly magnified. Get ready for some sleepless nights.”

–Carlton Stowers, Edgar Award–winning author of Careless Whispers, Scream at the Sky, and To the Last Breath

“This is the most disturbing and moving look at murder in rural America since Capote’s In Cold Blood.”

–Gregg Olsen, New York Times bestselling author of Abandoned Prayers, Mockingbird, and If Loving You Is Wrong

“A crisp, no-nonsense account . . . masterful.”

–Bucks County Courier Times

“An unflinching investigation . . . Phelps explores this tragedy with courage, insight, and compassion.”

–Lima News (Lima, OH)

Praise for IF LOOKS COULD KILL

“Phelps has written a compelling and gripping book . . . Readers will thoroughly enjoy this.”

–Vincent Bugliosi

Praise for SLEEP IN HEAVENLY PEACE

“An exceptional book by an exceptional true crime writer. In Sleep in Heavenly Peace, M. William Phelps exposes long-hidden secrets and reveals disquieting truths. Page by page, Phelps skillfully probes the disturbed mind of a mother guilty of the ultimate betrayal.”

–Kathryn Casey, author of She Wanted It All and A Warrant to Kill

Praise for EVERY MOVE YOU MAKE

“An insightful and fast-paced examination of the inner workings of a good cop and his bad informant culminating in an unforgettable truth-is-stranger-than-fiction climax.”

–Michael M. Baden, M.D., author of Unnatural Death

“M. William Phelps is the rising star of the nonfiction crime genre, and his true tales of murderers and mayhem are scary-as-hell thrill rides into the dark heart of the inhuman condition.”

–Douglas Clegg, author of The Lady of Serpents

Praise for LETHAL GUARDIAN

“An intense roller-coaster of a crime story. Phelps’ book Lethal Guardian is at once complex, with a plethora of twists and turns worthy of any great detective mystery, and yet so well-laid out, so crisply written with such detail to character and place that it reads more like a novel than your standard non-fiction crime book.”

–New York Times bestselling author Steve Jackson

Praise for PERFECT POISON

“Perfect Poison is a horrific tale of nurse Kristen Gilbert’s insatiable desire to kill the most helpless of victims—her own patients. A stunner from beginning to end, Phelps renders the story expertly, with flawless research and an explosive narrative. Phelps unravels the devastating case against nurse Kristen Gilbert and shockingly reveals that unimaginable evil sometimes comes in pretty packages.”

–Gregg Olsen, New York Times bestselling author of Abandoned Prayers, Mockingbird, and If Loving You Is Wrong

“M. William Phelps’s Perfect Poison is true crime at its best—compelling, gripping, an edge-of-the-seat thriller. All the way through, Phelps packs wallops of delight with his skillful ability to narrate a suspenseful story and his encyclopedic knowledge of police procedures. Perfect Poison is the perfect antidote for a dreary night!”

–Harvey Rachlin, author of The Making of a Detective and The Making of a Cop

Other books by M. William Phelps

PERFECT POISON

LETHAL GUARDIAN

EVERY MOVE YOU MAKE

SLEEP IN HEAVENLY PEACE

MURDER IN THE HEARTLAND

BECAUSE YOU LOVED ME

IF LOOKS COULD KILL

I’LL BE WATCHING YOU

DEADLY SECRETS

CRUEL DEATH

FAILURES OF THE PRESIDENTS

NATHAN HALE:

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF

AMERICA’S FIRST SPY

THE DEVIL’S ROOMING HOUSE:

THE TRUE STORY OF AMERICA’S DEADLIEST

FEMALE SERIAL KILLER

DEATH TRAP

M. WILLIAM PHELPS

PINNACLE BOOKS

Kensington Publishing Corp.

http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

Praise

Other books by M. William Phelps

Title Page

Dedication

AUTHOR’S NOTE

PROLOGUE

PART I – A GRUESOME DISCOVERY

PART II – RED BOOTS AND WATER

PART III – THE NARROW GATE

PART IV – GONE FOR GOOD

PART V – THE BRINK OF ETERNITY

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Kill for Me

Notes

For Dianne Manion,

Friend, neighbor, first reader

AUTHOR’S NOTE

For this project I reviewed thousands of pages of trial testimony, police reports, court records/filings, motions, trial evidence, divorce decrees, letters, cards, e-mails and various other documents, in addition to conducting over seventy-five hours of interviews. To protect some of my sources, I have changed several names. They are clearly marked in the text. I also changed the names of Jessica McCord’s children, although I never spoke to them. Jeff and Jessica McCord, in addition to all the key players involved in this true-crime saga, had his or her chance to speak with me. Some chose not to. I commend all those who told their stories and added that additional layer of truth I seek when writing these books.

—M. William Phelps

October 2009

PROLOGUE

Friday evening, February 15, 2002. There was a slight breeze blowing in from the north, under partly cloudy skies. It was sixty-one degrees.

Warm. Mild. Pleasant.

Not bad for the South in the middle of winter.

Pam Walker worked for a division of BlueCross BlueShield in Birmingham, Alabama. Like clockwork, Pam returned home from a tiring day at 5:45 P.M. Her dog had been cooped up in the house all day. So Pam had a habit of pulling into the reserved parking space in front of her condo and immediately taking the pooch out for a walk.

The condo complex on Warringwood Drive in Hoover was in a quiet section of town, not yet affected by the overly congested, economically stimulated boom taking place in this popular suburb of Birmingham. The condo complex consisted of about twenty units connected in a line, like row houses.

As usual, Pam took the dog out back. There was a ditch there that dropped down into an area with a wall of trees lining the back of the condo units. It was the best place for the dog to take care of business.

Enjoying the warm winter air, Pam forced the pooch along the tree line to the opposite end of the condo complex, away from her unit. Across from where Pam stood, that thickly settled wooded area behind the condo units blocked what was a housing development—directly west—on the opposite side of the tree line. On a clear day, you could almost see through the trees, past a little ravine, into the corresponding neighborhood: a nice, cozy suburban denizen of middle-class homes. Sort of a white-picket-fence community.

Husbands. Wives. Children. Grandmothers and grandfathers.

Pam stood at the border of the wooded area. Her pooch went about its business. By now, it was, Pam remembered later, about fifteen minutes into her walk—or somewhere close to six o’clock.

Just then, as the dog finished, a loud noise startled Pam Walker. The sound was something out of the ordinary: two cracks in a successive pattern.

Pop. Pop.

“Directly across from where I was standing,” Pam later said in court.

Firecrackers? Pam thought.

But the Fourth of July was months away.

Kids. Playing around. Maybe a car backfired.

Who knew?

There was a ravine in front of Pam. The sounds had definitely come from just beyond the wooded area, where all those seemingly perfect lives inside model-train-set houses were located on the opposite side of the trees.

After thinking about it, Pam hustled her pooch back inside and forgot about the strange noises—that is, until weeks later, when the cops came knocking, asking people in the neighborhood if they had heard anything close to “gunshots” back near the middle of February.

In every life, joy flashes gay and radiant across the sorrows of . . . which the web of our life is woven.

—Gogol, Dead Souls

PART I

A GRUESOME DISCOVERY

Joan and Philip Bates raised three delightful boys. They were as close as parents could be to their children. A solid family unit, the Bateses were one of those wholesome, old-fashioned Southern Christian families who believed strong ties, loyalty, respect, support and admiration for others were what mattered more than anything else in life. Married nearly forty years, Joan and Philip lived in and around Birmingham, Alabama, until 1991, when Philip took a job in Georgia, and moved the tribe to Atlanta. Philip was an engineer, able to get his degree, he was proud to admit, because Joan had worked her fingers to the bone and taken care of the family financially while he finished school. No doubt about it, the Bates marriage was a partnership.

Fifty-fifty.

In 1992, after twenty-nine years with BellSouth, Philip retired, relocated the family to Marietta, just outside Atlanta, where he went to work for an engineering firm, the Parsons Corporation. By 2000, the kids were grown and out of the house. Now it was time for Joan and Philip to settle into their “golden” years and enjoy the fruits of a life lived under the auspices of hard work and moral decency. There were grandkids and daughters-in-law these days. Family get-togethers and holidays.

Although the children were out of the nest, the three boys stayed in touch regularly with mom and dad. The Bateses lived in a modest home. Enjoyed life as the gift they felt it to be. Philip was like that: a dad who made his boys and wife a priority, not a responsibility that needed to be met. Philip did things from his heart, not some parenting playbook on the best-seller list. And the boys had picked up on this characteristic and had taken after their dad.

“Whatever we did,” one of the kids said later, “Mom and Dad were there supporting us. Beautiful people.”

On Friday night, February 15, 2002, as the ten o’clock hour came to pass, Joan Bates was stressed and worried. She paced in the living room for some time, wondering what was keeping her middle child, Alan, who should have arrived in Marietta from downtown Birmingham hours ago. The day before, Alan flew from his home in Frederick, Maryland, into Alabama so he could give a deposition that Friday in a child custody matter he was pursuing. Alan had gotten remarried four years after he divorced his first wife, a marriage that had produced two wonderful girls. Joan and Philip had two extraordinary grandchildren, who made their hearts shudder every time they thought of them. Alan and his first wife, Jessica McCord, had been at odds over the children—more Jessica’s doing than anything Alan had instigated. Jessica, who had custody of the kids, had kept the girls from Alan for the past several years, making his legal visitations a living hell. Alan had put up with it for years, only because he didn’t want to hurt the children, but he had recently decided it was time to take Jessica to court and fight for custody. The trial was slated to begin in a few weeks, on March 5, 2002. Alan was in Birmingham that Friday, February 15, to give his version of the events (deposition), same as Jessica. His plan was to pick the girls up after the deposition and drive them back to Marietta to spend the weekend with the Bates family.

Quite shockingly, Jessica had okayed the weekend visit.

Looking out the window, wondering where Alan could possibly be, Joan considered that maybe Jessica had changed her mind—it wouldn’t be the first time—and reneged on an earlier agreement to allow Alan to take the kids for the weekend. Jessica often did that: told Alan he could have the kids and then disappeared, nowhere to be found.

At best, Marietta was a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Birmingham. Standing, then sitting, then standing again, Joan did the math: Deposition ends at five, pick up the kids by six, get on the road and into Marietta by—the latest—nine-thirty.

Alan had always called and said he was on his way.

Not tonight.

Philip and Joan expected them around nine, nine-thirty. Joan had dinner waiting, same as she always had.

Where in the heck were they?

Alan was never late. And he never forgot to call. The Bates were alarmed because they knew Alan generally would stop for fast food with the kids along the way and would call from that point on the road to give everyone an approximate time of arrival.

Not one phone call all night, however—and this alone, Joan and Philip believed, was reason enough to be anxious.

To worry.

“We didn’t get the phone call,” Philip said later. “So suspicions were such that we began to think that something was wrong, especially when they weren’t there by ten-thirty.”

Philip put his arm around Joan, consoling her the best he could. “It’s okay. He’ll be here. Probably ran into traffic.”

Joan looked at her husband. “Something’s wrong.” She felt it. That pang in the gut only a mother knew had been tugging at her: Alan had run into some sort of problem.

“I’ll try calling him again.”

Philip dialed Alan’s cell phone.

No answer.

He tried Terra, Alan’s wife. She had gone with Alan.

Again, nothing.

It wasn’t that the phone rang and rang, like it had earlier that night when Philip tried calling both the same numbers. Now, hours after Philip first called, the line immediately rolled over to a computerized phone company message: “This phone is not in use at this time.”

Things were skewed. Bad energy abounded inside the Bates home. Nothing was as it should be.

All they could do, however, was wait.

“I’ll call Jessica,” Philip said, patting Joan gingerly on the back again. He didn’t like calling his ex-daughter-in-law’s house. She was remarried to a Pelham, Alabama, cop. They lived in Hoover, a Birmingham suburb. They were crass people, Philip felt. Bitter and complex. Even arrogant at times. Definitely selfish. It was never an easy, friendly call. All Philip wanted to know was if Alan and Terra had shown up to pick the girls up, as scheduled, and, if so, what time had they left.

Simple questions requiring simple answers.

Philip dialed the number while staring out the window. He was obviously hoping the lights on Alan’s rental car would bounce over the curb at the end of the driveway and, like two beams, hit him in the face as he waited for someone to pick up the line at the McCord home.

No answer.

Another dead end.

By 10:45 P.M., now certain something had happened to their son, his second wife and the children, Philip and Joan Bates decided it was time to call law enforcement. Philip had no idea how far he’d get, or if the cops would be any help. But he couldn’t stand around and do nothing. So he called the Pelham Police Department (PPD) to see if Jeff McCord, Jessica’s husband, had clocked in. Jeff worked second shift. Friday was his night to be on. He should still be reachable by radio or phone. Maybe he knew something.

“No, he’s not here.”

In fact, Philip was told, Jeff had taken the night off.

Philip could not go to sleep without trying to find his son, grandkids and daughter-in-law. He called the Hoover Police Department (HPD). He wanted to know if there had been any reported trouble over at Jessica and Jeff McCord’s Myrtlewood Drive home. Maybe a family squabble. Alan was scheduled to pick up the kids there, Philip knew, somewhere between 6:00 and 6:30 P.M. It would be unlike Alan to engage Jessica in any sort of confrontation. But perhaps Jessica had pushed Alan over his limit. Or maybe Alan and Jeff had words.

Philip needed information.

Anything.

“Officer,” Philip said, “do you have any report of a domestic disturbance at [the McCord’s Myrtlewood Drive home] in Hoover?”

It was after midnight. Joan was dismayed by the course of events. If Alan had stopped and gotten a hotel or run into trouble along the road, Joan and Philip knew he would have called. He was a responsible son. Not calling would eat at Alan. Especially this late into the night. He knew his parents would be waiting and wondering, not sleeping. He would never put them through such a nerve-wracking ordeal.

As she thought about it, tossing and turning, trying to find any amount of sleep she could, there was nothing to convince Joan otherwise: Alan was in big trouble.

The Hoover PD told Philip they didn’t have a report of anything taking place at the McCords’ address, but they would send an officer over to the house to “check things out.” Look around. See what was up.

Philip took a deep breath. Something was going to be done.

The case became known to the HPD from that point on as a routine “overdue motorist call.” It happened a lot. People didn’t show up where they were supposed to. Worried family members called in. The cops conducted a quick drive-by or knocked on the door. Generally, there was a simple explanation behind the missed calls—something that made sense later. A flat tire. A forgotten check-in phone call. A cell phone battery that had gone dead. Someone got food poisoning. A twisted ankle. The emergency room. Forgot to call, Ma, sorry.

There was a thousand and one reasons why people didn’t—or couldn’t—call. It would all make sense in a few hours. Perhaps Alan was stranded somewhere with no cell reception. No pay phone.

Things happened.

“We’ll let you know what we find,” the officer told Philip.

Hoover, Alabama, Police Department patrolman Scott McDonald was dispatched to Jeff and Jessica McCord’s Myrtlewood Drive address. He had been told to check things out. Maybe Alan and Terra had broken down and were staying at the McCords’ for the night while their car was being repaired.

Overdue motorist . . .

All cops know that these types of calls—nine times out of ten—turn into nothing: a misunderstanding, miscommunication. It was late. Alan and Terra were probably at a hotel somewhere in town. Sleeping.

Myrtlewood Drive is located in a residential area close to Baston Lake and Interstate 65. It’s a quiet neighborhood, full of white picket fences and tarred driveways with the standard 2.2 cars, boat, lawn mowing on Saturdays, cookouts on Sundays, neighborhood dog walkers, and an overall feel that this small section of Hoover represented a broad brushstroke of what middle-class America should look like.

Little pink houses.

By the time Patrolman McDonald took a right onto Myrtlewood Drive and looked for the address, it was dark, desolate, and rather lonely in the neighborhood. Most families were asleep. A lone dog, which the cop could not see, barked at the night moon. But other than that, and a line of porch lights on for safety, the neighborhood was quiet.

Nothing much happening.

After pulling up in front of the McCords’ house, the officer grabbed his flashlight—the house looked deserted—and walked up to the front porch.

Strangely, the window panels on the door were “covered up,” McDonald later said, “with towels or sheets from the inside.”

Huh.

It gave the windows a peculiar look. Like someone was trying to block the view of the inside of the house from anyone looking in. Or maybe there was work going on inside the house, spray painting or something.

That was it. Home repairs. The Home Depot and Lowe’s had sent the suburban handyman into a frenzy of remodeling. Everyone was into changing this and painting that and falling farther into debt.

McDonald shined his light toward the windows to his right and left.

Same thing: the windowpanes were covered with towels and sheets.

Back on the porch, McDonald found a note of some sort—a handmade sign, Magic Marker written on a piece of cardboard: WE’RE HAVING SOME PROBLEMS WITH OUR FRONT DOOR. PLEASE COME AROUND TO THE BACK DOOR.

Now it made sense. In all likelihood, the family was having some work done to the inside of the house.

McDonald checked his watch: 12:21 A.M. Everything was magnified at this time of the night. Spookier and more mysterious. There was probably a nice, cozy family inside the home, all of whom were sleeping. Nothing more than a routine call.

Overdue motorist . . .

The officer rang the doorbell in front before heading out to the back. It was worth a try before walking away.

With no answer, he knocked hard on the door a few times.

Nothing.

Staring more closely into the house, his view obstructed because of the paper towels and sheets, McDonald saw the faint shimmering of a few lights left on. Was someone working in there now?

Of course not.

The officer found his way to the driveway and noticed that there were no vehicles parked in the yard.

He walked toward the garage. It was connected to the house. One of those you could walk from the garage directly into the house. He was hoping to look in through the twelve-by-twelve-inch square windowpanes on the garage door to see if there were any vehicles inside.

Once again, he couldn’t see. The windows were covered with the same material: paper towels and sheets.

What in the world . . .

Beside the garage was a fence blocking the officer’s view of the back door.

McDonald looked for the gate, he said in court later, not being able to see inside the fenced-in section, when he heard footsteps seemingly coming at him.

Fast and furious. Leaves cracking. Branches breaking.

Then came the barking. Ferocious and mean-spirited.

A dog. It was caged up inside the area. McDonald knew better. He wasn’t going inside and having a showdown with some Cujo-like home protector. No one had answered the front door. What were the chances of someone answering the back?

So McDonald walked to his car and called dispatch. “Back in service,” he said. “No contact with anyone at this residence.”

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