Текст книги "Death Trap"

Автор книги: M. William Phelps

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

28

In Georgia, members of the Bates and Klugh families were not far from where the reclusive novelist Flannery O’ Connor—a woman who seemed to set in bronze a long-lasting image of what a true “Southerner” represented—once stated that the “things we see, hear, smell and touch affect us long before we believe anything at all.” The Bates and Klughs waited and wondered. Part of each of them leaned on that strong sense of family still so ingrained in the Deep South. The hardest element of it all was accepting that Alan and Terra would never again grace the dinner table at a family function. There would be no more phone calls just to catch up and say hello. No more of those million-dollar smiles Alan could flash to make you feel great. No more sharing of the good things in life. No more laughs or memories in motion. Terra and Alan were there one day, gone the next, as if they had vanished.

The other horrifying aspect of having to deal with a tragedy of such immense scope was that, of all the people in the world, the reality that Alan’s ex-wife could have had something to do with his death was simultaneously sobering and appalling. In Philip and Joan Bates’s wildest dreams, they could not have fathomed life to have taken such a terrible, personal turn. That inherent parental need to protect your child was there in every second of life. It was a challenge Philip and Joan took as the price of perfect love. And they had weathered the storm well—that is, up until this moment.

“Our parents had always put our needs before their own,” Kevin Bates later explained. “They worked hard together to provide us each with everything we ever needed, and many (but not all) of the things we wanted. When we relocated to Atlanta in 1991, they chose our home for the best public-school system in the area for my benefit, despite the fact that this left Dad with up to an hour commute one way to work each day. Though us kids were all . . . out of the house, they remained very active and interested in our lives and looked for any opportunity to support our endeavors. They regularly traveled to see any show Alan worked on, whenever it would come within driving distance of Atlanta. And, of course, they looked for any opportunity to enjoy and spoil their grandchildren.”

That flawless continuity of life was dramatically disrupted—all at once. Severed without warning. Both families asked themselves two questions as the hours passed: What now? How do we deal with such an aggravated, abrupt end to two wonderful lives ?

By late Monday night, February 18, well into Tuesday morning, several facts were apparent to the families: (1) After some soul-searching, no one could discern any other known human being on the face of the earth who could have—or would have—wanted Alan and Terra dead, and (2) Jessica McCord expressed motive and had opportunity, two of the most important factors driving this type of crime.

As the families interacted while waiting for bits of news to trickle in, it was hard to push away the theory that Jessica had killed both of these beautiful people.

Roger Brown called Philip Bates early that week to explain “as much as I could at the time,” Brown later told me, concluding the call with an apology for not being able to be more forthcoming with information.

“This is what we have, Mr. Bates. I’ll call you as soon as I can give you anything more.”

Philip, that engineering mind of his calculating things out its own way, understood there was a major investigation going on. Philip and the others would get the facts as they became available. The last thing anyone wanted to do was taint a future court case by pressuring Roger Brown to cough up particulars about his case.

“I understand,” said Philip. It pained him. Sure. But he also knew how fragile and fluid the situation was and would be until an arrest was made.

Hanging up the telephone, Philip walked out of the kitchen and told Kevin, Robert and Joan, “We’ve got the right man working on this.” Philip was impressed by Brown’s matter-of-fact way of dealing with such a delicate state of affairs. Brown spoke in truths. Plain. Clear. Concise. Philip respected that. Brown didn’t care to speculate. He rarely said anything, in fact, that he or his investigators did not know for certain.

Brown made a promise to keep Philip in the loop. And Philip appreciated it, knowing that when a Southern man—especially a lawman—gave his hand to shake on and his word, he damn well meant it.

The families had not yet come out and said to one another that Jessica did this. “But,” Kevin commented later, “we knew the chances of it being a random act of violence kept diminishing. . . . Jessica was the only enemy Alan had in the world, and she was, after all, the last person he was meant to go see before he and Terra vanished.”

Among them all was the sinking, sick feeling—like some sort of virus they couldn’t see, touch or get rid of—that Jessica resorted to murder to solve her problems. And then the confusing questions: Why would she do such a thing? How in the world could she do such a thing?

From where the Bateses stood, the scenario was clear and plausible. Alan and Terra were supposed to pick up the kids somewhere near 6:00 or 6:30 P.M. Jessica said they never showed up. She called Alan and left a message on his cell phone. Alan and Terra were found in the trunk of their rental car along the I-20, past Atlanta—heading in the opposite direction of his parents’ home, near three-thirty that next morning.

When you stepped back and thought about it, what else could have happened?

As the days passed, Kevin and Robert Bates, along with members of Terra’s family, converged at the Bates home, waiting for calls to come in. As they did this, the focus was put on the children. Number one, where were they? Two, had anyone told them what had happened to Alan and Terra?

Neighbors and friends sent food and flowers, cards and condolences, to the Bates home. The days became a foggy haze of puzzlement and melancholy. Some sort of dreamlike reality. It was as if they were all living someone else’s life, just going through the motions of the day. You do things and later wonder how they got done. You don’t recall conversations. Driving places. Eating or cooking meals. The body and mind seem to work together in unison, while the soul weeps.

Making funeral arrangements kept everyone busy for a few days. It was agreed that Alan and Terra would be cremated and memorialized together.

“As they would have wanted,” said one family member.

“Everyone realized,” Kevin added, “that no matter who killed Alan and Terra, they were gone, regardless. We were focused on what we needed to do. What we could do. How do we honor them? We don’t even have their bodies yet.”

The idea that closure was going to come sooner rather than later was not a certainty anyone could take comfort in just yet. They all knew, understood and accepted that Alan and Terra were dead. Yet, officially, they were still waiting for “positive confirmation” that those two terribly burned bodies in the trunk of that rental car were actually Alan and Terra. Death’s limbo. You know in your heart, but you still cannot stop holding out hope. Dental records were one thing. DNA another. Until then, that hidden optimism—a single strand of subtle brightness—hangs out there in the open, and you don’t want to turn your back on it.

With the media stirring in Birmingham, waiting on the HPD’s next move, reporting on the case, play by play, the families decided the best place to have the memorial service was Georgia.

The Birmingham News put one of its more esteemed, prized reporters, Carol Robinson, on the case. Carol had over a decade-and-a-half ’s worth of experience working the Birmingham crime beat. Most Hoover cops knew Carol. Appreciated her work. Valued her tenacity for printing the truth. “That is rare,” one cop told me, “in newspaper reporting around here.” If nothing else, investigators from the HPD knew that Carol would cover the story with a deference to the families and set her sights on facts. Carol had a reputation for not focusing on sensationalism but instead keeping her eye on what made the story important in the fabric of the local, social landscape. She was a reporter’s reporter.

Carol was home, sick, on Monday. A source close to the HPD called her. “Stand by, something big is coming your way.”

She was interested, obviously, and the tip had a quick-recovery effect on the illness she was battling.

The attractive blond reporter, a native Southerner, was born and raised in Dixie. Carol and her family moved to Avon, Connecticut, for four years—from five to nine years old—but they had lived in the “Yellowhammer State” ever since. A graduate of Vestavia Hills High School in Birmingham, Carol went to Auburn University and started working for Alabama’s largest newspaper, the Birmingham News, three months out of college, in 1986. It was her first and only full-time newspaper job. Heading into the McCord case, some sixteen years later, Carol was now the senior reporter, leading the newspaper’s crime coverage. She had an understanding of covering high-profile murder cases: the slayings of three Birmingham police officers, the Birmingham abortion clinic bombing and the subsequent five-year hunt for fugitive Eric Robert Rudolph, as well as the reopening of the case of the 1963 Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing.

Getting out of bed and heading into work, Carol realized she had not even heard that two bodies with Birmingham ties had been found in Georgia. Still, she dragged herself into the office and wrote what would be the first of several stories the Birmingham News devoted to the case: KILLINGS FOLLOW CUSTODY FIGHT: PELHAM OFFICER, WIFE SOUGHT FOR QUESTIONING.

“As you can tell,” Carol later told me, “it was made clear quickly that the McCords were suspects. . . . [The case] was a talker, but not, say, to the level of Natalee Holloway. That is, because there was not time for it to build as a mystery. . . . There was not much made about Jeff being a police officer because he was not much of a police officer, in that he was not some big, bad cop with a list of awards or disciplinary actions against him. He was just vanilla. Jessica became a popular villain as time wore on because she was trashy, crazy—and nobody could understand what she had that would attract so many men. . . .”

Carol’s first story detailed the case up to the point of which it had been reported publicly, focusing on bare facts. It was enough to get the ball rolling so Carol could call on her sources and dig in.

“Had we been in Birmingham,” Kevin commented, referring to the families, “we would have been right in the middle of the fire.”

There was a lot brewing around town as Jessica and Jeff planned their next move. Part of the speculation was that Jessica fled—took off somewhere and could not be found. Investigators knew she and Jeff had driven to Florida to avoid the media and, presumably, the police, as well as to drop the children off at her sister’s house. It was not uncommon for Jessica to head to Florida to visit her sister and, one former family member noted, “run away from her problems.”

Jessica was an expert at avoiding accountability.

Word soon spread, however, that Jeff and Jessica had dropped the children off in Florida and had turned around and headed back to Alabama. One comfort to the Bateses in knowing this was that the kids were going to be spared all that was blowing up back home. The kids surely didn’t need pressure of any sort. No good could come out of them seeing their dad’s picture on the local nightly news, or their mother’s name in the newspapers. The impact of the deaths alone was going to be hard enough. To think that their mother was being viewed as a suspect would be devastating.

Philip Bates called Jessica’s sister’s house in Florida numerous times. He wanted to speak with the kids. Then ask her to make sure they were sent to Atlanta in time for the memorial services. The funeral was planned for Saturday, three days away.

“I’ll pay for their flights and your hotel room,” Philip announced into Jessica’s sister’s voice mail that week during one of his many messages, “if you can bring the children here for the service.”

The Bates brothers said Philip never got a call back.

Word was that Jessica’s sister had some sort of problem in her house and it had to be fumigated. So she and the kids stayed at a neighbor’s. She wasn’t getting any of her messages. It was strange, bearing in mind all that had happened. Why wouldn’t she check her voice mail during such a critical period of time? But investigators from the HPD backed up this fact.

By Wednesday, February 20, the kids had no idea their father and stepmother were dead. No one had told them. Instead, the news was given to them about an hour before the Birmingham police arrived in Florida to pick the kids up and transport them back to Alabama. Once they arrived in Alabama later that night, the children were scheduled to meet with grief counselors. After that, they would stay with an aunt and uncle.

“Jessica’s sister told them [that Alan and Terra had been killed], right before we arrived,” one investigator claimed. “Which we didn’t want done. They still had to ride with us back to Alabama. We wanted them to at least have that ride back without having to think about it. But that was not the case.”

29

One of the first things Jessica did during the spring of 1997, soon after giving birth to Brad Tabor’s child, was summon him to court for child support. She was able to convince a judge to issue an order in the amount of a whopping $800 a month—nearly double what Alan was paying for two kids.

It was a paycheck. Between that and the money Alan was sending her, Jessica had the potential to collect almost $1,200 a month.

“She did whatever she had to do to get a free ride,” an old friend said. “Everybody who knows Jessica will tell you this.”

Everyone did.

Brad couldn’t pay, so he was not involved in the child’s life in any manner whatsoever. Sara (pseudonym) was born and Jessica took her home and Brad was not allowed to see the baby. At one point Jessica had Brad arrested for not paying child support. He was tossed in jail. Brad, in the meantime, proved to the court that he couldn’t afford such a high amount. So the judge reduced the monthly debt to $463.

And guess what? Brad was able to swing it.

Before the second order was issued, Brad had no legal rights to his child. Jessica had made sure she controlled that end of things. Brad, however, was able to renegotiate the child visitation portion of the order and, heading into late 1998, convinced the court to back him up.

Still, the court’s ruling meant little to Jessica. On top of that, Brad admitted later, he was afraid to go see his child.

“Personal-safety issues,” he admitted in court. “After conferring with my family and my attorney, it was advised that it wasn’t a good idea for me to be alone with her (Jessica).”

What was it that sparked this sudden fear?

Brad’s attorney found out Jessica had put Alan in the hospital. Jessica showed up at Alan’s apartment to drop off the kids one day and instigated an argument with him. Before she left, she hit and scratched him, then pushed him down the stairs.

“His face was bloodied,” a friend of Alan’s later said.

“She messed him up good.”

One of Alan’s friends was there, as was Alan’s mother, Joan. They were terrified. Jessica was wild and crazy that day. There was this look in her eyes: hate.

Jessica ran outside after the attack, but for some reason she didn’t leave.

The cops came. Jessica was all scratched up herself. “See what he did to me!” she told the cops.

The police figured out that Jessica had actually rubbed her body against a brick wall outside to create the appearance of cuts so she could blame Alan.

In addition to a battered face with deep nail scratches, Alan broke his arm during the fall.

This time he wasn’t going to mess around; he filed charges.

When Brad heard about the incident, he didn’t want to find out what else Jessica was capable of. Nonetheless, Brad tried to maintain a relationship with his daughter. But no matter what he did, no matter how many times he called, Jessica found a way to sabotage it.

Brad was talking with Jessica on the phone one night. According to him, he could hear Sara in the background, “Let me speak to Daddy, Mommy. . . .”

Jessica became enraged. She absolutely despised the idea that the child wanted to even know her father.

“You hush, Sara!” Jessica snapped, according to Brad’s version of the call. “He doesn’t want to speak to you.”

“Come on, let me talk to her.”

“Never!”

By the beginning of 1999, Jessica was working for the Birmingham Police Department as a clerical secretary. The job, however, wouldn’t last long, as Jessica lived up to her reputation as being lazy and disobedient. Not long after she attacked Alan, the BPD fired Jessica, citing her continued absence from work on top of, one letter noted: the attack on Alan. A termination message sent by the chief explained what happened, pointing out, You went to the home of your ex-husband and you admitted you hurt him. . . .

With no income coming in, save for the child support she collected from both men, Jessica needed more money. Near February 1, 1999, Jessica sent Alan a bill purportedly from SHR Incorporated, a contracting firm. On top of the bill, Jessica noted that she would soon be sending Alan all of the bills for the house and for dance lessons. It was Alan’s responsibility to pay half of the Montevallo house repair costs and all of the dance bills for the girls. The list Jessica sent was long. According to the invoice, both hot– and cold-water pipes had burst inside the house, insulation underneath the kitchen had been destroyed, several “emergency calls” to plumbers ensued, and there were outdoor water pipes leaking. The place was falling apart. The total to fix everything, the invoice claimed, was $1,700. Alan needed to send his half immediately, Jessica warned.

Frank Head, Alan’s lawyer, did some investigating. No one trusted Jessica. She was shady and a known liar.

Sure enough, Frank Head could find no such listing for a company named SHR. So he dashed off a letter to Jessica, explaining the problems with the bill. He said that after reviewing the statement from SHR she had sent to Alan, he could find no address or telephone number on the invoice. In addition, the invoice failed to provide the dates the work was completed. Head encouraged Jessica to provide original invoices so they could confirm the work with SHR themselves.

Frank Head never heard from Jessica about the bills again.

Alan was enjoying what could be considered a somewhat normal life. He had a decent job. He had met and fallen in love with Terra. He was working with Frank Head to get Jessica on the right track with visitations. His life was heading upward.

A direction—he came to find out—that infuriated Jessica even more.

Part of it was, whatever Alan had, Jessica wanted. It was a sport to her in some respects. She was all about keeping up with the Joneses. For example, Alan bought a brand-new Acura. Jessica went out and bought the same model, same year, same color, even though she couldn’t afford it. The only difference in the two cars was that Alan’s was a two-door; hers was a four-door, most likely because she couldn’t find a two-door model.

“That was a big issue with her,” said Naomi. “She had to have the exact same car, right down to the color.”

Naomi had trouble keeping track of Jessica and the children. Jessica would drop the kids off at Naomi’s, who loved to watch them. Naomi and her husband were McKenna and Sam’s godparents, so it was like having their own children in the house. With Alan’s life thriving, Naomi could hear the resentment and festering hatred building up in Jessica’s voice whenever she got herself going on about Alan. Naomi and Jessica talked one day and Jessica blurted out, “Alan missed another visitation.”

What? Come on, Jess, Naomi thought. She knew it was a lie. Alan loved those kids. If he could help it, he never missed seeing them. Especially since Jessica was so volatile and unpredictable when it came to allowing visitations.

There came a day when Jessica showed up at Naomi’s house out of the blue. Unexpected, uninvited, there she was. It was dinnertime. Middle of the week. Naomi looked out the window and saw Jessica pulling in the driveway. No call. No warning. It was the first of what would be many unexpected visits, or pop-ins, by a woman hiding her kids from their natural father.

Jessica and the kids stayed for hours. Naomi and her husband fed them (they certainly didn’t mind). They sat around after dinner. It seemed they were just staring at each other. Twiddling their thumbs.

Naomi finally asked, “What’s up, Jess?”

“Nothing particular.”

It was eight or nine o’clock at night before Jessica left.

Naomi thought about it later. These surprise visits were so strange—even for Jessica. Naomi would come to find out that Jessica was hiding out with the kids. Keeping them from Alan. He had a scheduled visitation, and Jessica didn’t want to be home when he showed up.

For Alan, by June 1999, it got to the point where he was forced to ask Frank Head to file a grievance against Jessica. The motion outlined the nature of Jessica’s disregard for the Final Judgment of Divorce. She wasn’t following the court’s ruling. She was playing games again. Same as she had for most of her adult life, Jessica was making up rules as she went along.

But Alan wasn’t going to stand for it anymore. It was time to let the courts decide what to do with the woman and her stubborn ideas regarding visitation. Alan had tried. He gave Jessica chance after chance to conform. He put up with her screaming and threats and even violence.

But no more.

Now it was going to be up to a judge.

Jessica met Jeff while working for the Birmingham PD. She called him by his middle name of Kelley. Jeff was sort of an oafish guy. Quiet. Subdued. Easily manageable for Jessica. It was not hard for her to tell immediately that it was going to be effortless to manipulate Jeff any which way she wanted.

Not long after meeting Jeff, Jessica called Naomi, who hadn’t seen Jessica for quite a while because of work and a conflicting, busy schedule.

“How are you? How are the kids?” Naomi asked, excited. It was good to hear from Jessica. She wondered why the pop-in visits had suddenly stopped.

“Good.” Then Jessica went into how she had met this new guy, Kelley. How great he was. They were considering moving to Birmingham and buying a house together, but they didn’t have enough money. She was still living in the house Alan had left her in Montevallo.

“Really?” Naomi said, shocked by this statement. Here’s this new guy in Jessica’s life. Out of nowhere. It was apparently serious. And now they were talking about buying a house together.

Jessica had that schoolgirl-lust quality to her voice. “He’s great,” she explained. “How’s this—we had sex in the living room . . . all over the house.”

Naomi was horrified. “The kids, Jess? What about the kids?”

“They were asleep. Don’t worry.” Jessica laughed. That sarcastic I-know-something-you-don’t-know tone that meant she was holding something back.

Part of Jessica’s excitement was that Jeff McCord was a cop. This gave her a sense of protection, an overpowering feeling that she could play her games with Alan and turn around and say, See, I have a cop to back me up! Alan’s the bad guy. Not me. The other part of it became that Jeff was naïve and could be talked into things. Her own little puppet. Jessica plied the guy with the best sex of his life and he took the bait.

Part of this new relationship spoke to Alan getting serious with Terra. Jessica needed to settle down so, in the eyes of the court, she could appear to have a stable environment in which to raise her children. Jessica had to play up the façade that she was a good mother. That she had a peaceful, family-foundational household. That she could provide for them. With Alan involving the courts now, she knew that social workers would be poking around. She would need to put on a show.

But there was also something else working in the background—a developing storm—something Jeff Kelley McCord could provide to Jessica that, she believed, all the others couldn’t.