Текст книги "Death Trap"

Автор книги: M. William Phelps

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Текущая страница: 25 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

70

Terra’s father, Tom Klugh, didn’t need to know any more about life than he had learned over the past several years. He had lost his only child to a cruel murder. He was divorced. Then, with all of the trials and lawsuit hearings behind him, Tom Klugh got a call from his doctor.

Prostate cancer.

A rough road didn’t even begin to describe those past few years for Tom.

But then others had it worse, Tom knew deep down. There were other people in the world suffering a hell of a lot more than he was. He didn’t want people feeling sorry for him. He just wanted to go away for some quiet time and begin to rebuild and recover.

That story of Terra tossing her red boots into the stream back in the early 1970s when Tom and his wife and Terra lived in Cullowhee, North Carolina, kept coming back up for Tom as he went over his life up to this point. Tom had always felt strongly that Terra’s life had been spared by God on that day. She was allowed to live by her Maker because there was more for her to do. In dying with Alan by the hand of evil, Tom still felt Terra’s mission in this life had been fulfilled.

“I had heard from some people who saw Terra and Alan that day of the deposition,” Tom recalled, referring to the hours before Alan and Terra were murdered, “when they were leaving a local restaurant, that they never seemed happier. They were walking away from this restaurant across from the Alabama Theatre. . . . I got the feeling that they, well, that they knew they were leaving. I know it sounds a little hokey, but they were really, really happy at that time.”

The question that bothered Tom was Why?

After Terra and Alan’s memorial service, Tom took a portion of Terra’s ashes, a small bit from the vase, and placed it in a vial. He didn’t know what he was going to do with the vial when he took it, but he felt confident that the purpose would come to him someday down the road.

Now, many months after the trials and convictions, with all the madness of the murders behind him, after thinking things through, it was perfectly clear to Tom what he needed to do with that vial of Terra’s ashes.

He called his brother. “I need you to come with me.”

“Where?”

“Cullowhee.”

They took off and made the trip into the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was a pilgrimage, Tom recalled, more than a simple road trip two brothers had embarked on. They headed back to the place where, “by all rights,” Tom said, Terra should have been killed nearly twenty-nine years prior—that is, had God wanted to take her home on that day she wandered down by the river. It only seemed fitting to Tom that some of his daughter’s ashes be spread over—or returned to—that small creek she had almost fallen into and drowned in so many years before.

An ode to her memory?

Perhaps.

A way to honor her memory?

Maybe.

For Tom, it was more like paying God back—giving Him the respect He deserved. Maybe thanking Him for giving Tom those additional decades with his daughter.

Tom and his brother couldn’t really get down to the creek edge because it had grown in so thickly with brush and trees. But there was a small bridge they could stand on. It extended over the water rushing fast underneath.

“There . . . let’s go,” Tom said.

He opened the vial and said something to himself.

Paused.

Then, standing in the middle of the bridge, he spread the ashes over the water.

Some of the solid, heavier pieces of ash fell into the creek and made small splashes. However, the remainder, which had turned into a large cloud of dust as it headed down toward the water, was “picked up,” Tom recalled, “by a gust of wind and carried into the air,” as if there were somebody waiting to scoop it up into her hands.

“I get chilly bumps on my skin just thinking about it,” Tom remembered.

Looking at this display of what Tom could see only as an angel picking Terra up and carrying her off, he thought of what Terra might have said, had she been there in the flesh standing next to him on that bridge.

In the flesh, of course, because it was so obvious Terra’s spirit was there with Tom and his brother that day.

Okay, Dad, you’re here, I’ve done this. . . . Life is good.

The circle of his daughter’s life, from where Tom Klugh stood, was complete. She and Alan, Tom was now certain, could rest in peace together.

EPILOGUE

Jeff McCord seemed to express a bit of repentance for his crimes. Yet, in writing to me, Jeff’s words of remorse sounded more self-serving than sorrowful. In fact, I sensed a narcissistic tone in Jeff’s syntax, and thought this was probably one of the reasons why he and Jessica had gotten along so well and meshed together so effortlessly when it came time to commit murder. That is, when you come down to it, Jeff McCord—no matter what he says now—never once voiced any opposition to Jessica’s plan. We could even say that, in many ways, Jeff fueled Jessica’s desire to kill.

There is NO acceptable reason for my doing what I did to put myself where I am, Jeff wrote to me in February 2009. [There is an] . . . agony on those who have suffered and continue to do so as a result of my actions. What I did was WRONG! I very much regret my actions and the problems arising from them.

I’m unclear if Jeff is sorry for killing two people, or for getting caught.

I readily admit, he continued, that I allowed myself to be unduly influenced by Jessica. Also, I allowed myself to be convinced that my viable options were limited to the one I chose. I allowed myself to become isolated. None of that in any way excuses my reprehensible course of action.

Jeff never addressed Terra or Alan by name.

Seeing that he was at least responsible enough to answer my requests for interviews and communicate with me, I asked Jeff why he would not want to sit down and tell me his complete story. Get it all out there. You know, his version of the marriage from the inside. Truly explain to my readers how Jessica had managed to manipulate him into shooting two human beings eight times while they sat in his house.

Jeff had taken an oath to protect and to serve. His job was to help people. Save people. Prevent crime. He had expressed a longing, at one time, to help children. How had the tables turned on him in such a violent manner? Where did everything go wrong?

Jeff’s attitude baffled me. I told him he had nothing to lose at this point. His appeal was denied. He was not getting out of prison for, at the least, twenty-five years.

Many convicted murderers hold on to the thinnest thread of hope—thinking that someday some hotshot, enthusiastic young lawyer will take their case and spring them on a technicality or a glitch in the trial, thus rescuing them from the miserable life of prison. With that in mind, I thought Jeff would see things differently because he had been a cop. He knows the law. He understands how the system works. Opening up, giving me the answers to those hard questions, could only help Jeff.

But he refused, and sent me this, instead:

I obviously should have gone about things far differently than I did. I exercised poor judgment and made a plethora of poor and bad decisions. I also readily concede that I could have and should have taken steps to prevent things or to prevent the situation I was in to deteriorate to the point it did. With all of that said . . . I still made the choices I made.

Then, in what can be construed as a bizarre choice of words, Jeff added:

Again, I do not regret my actions and am sorry for the adversive [sic] impact they had and continue to have on the Bates, the Klughs, my former step-daughters, my children, my family, Jessica’s family, the few friends I have at this point, as well as the other people involved with or connected to my case in some way. What I did is most likely inexplicable and inexcusable at least where most people are concerned.

“Most people”? “Most likely”? The guy did not regret his actions? What was Jeff McCord saying to us here?

Jeff McCord is a strange human being. Jeff was a lot smarter on paper than his behavior would lead you to believe. Something, somewhere, went wrong for Jeff. What, exactly, only Jeff McCord knows.

Jessica is another story. We can see that some of her behaviors were hardwired into her fragile psyche as a child. It might seem to an outside observer that Jessica McCord was a sociopath. She fits rather perfectly into about 90 percent of the “sociopathic” profile Dr. Robert Hare and Dr. Hervey Cleckley designed many years ago. Cleckley outlined sixteen behaviors on a checklist of sociopathic behavior, including unreliability, insincerity, suicidal threats and a host of other behaviors and attitudes that seemed to fit Jessica McCord quite closely.

I wrote to Jessica repeatedly. I called and e-mailed her mother, Dian Bailey, repeatedly. I never heard from either one of them. I did hear a lot of talk that went on behind the scenes—excuses on Jessica’s part regarding why she couldn’t talk to me. I guess, in the end, I wondered if Jessica had agreed to interviews, what I could possibly learn or believe. What would she have to say to me? Maybe one of the reasons why she did not want to talk to me is because she understands I cannot be manipulated—that I would be able to see through her lies.

Still, as I was completing this book, I heard from a former cellmate of Jessica’s. She expressed a desire on Jessica’s part to answer some of my questions: I am an acquaintance of Jessica . . . [and she] has asked me to contact you. . . . She is currently in segregation. . . .

(It seemed whenever I spoke to a source inside the prison, Jessica was “in seg.” Or in the psych ward. Or complaining about the treatment she was receiving by guards. The universe is a strange, unforgiving, mysterious place, whereby some are inclined to believe that what you give, you get back. It would seem that a majority—not all—of the turmoil and trauma Jessica had caused others in her life on the outside is coming back to her ten-fold now that she is locked up.)

In response to the e-mail I received from Jessica’s former cellmate, I sent the following:

Thanks for writing. Please tell Mrs. McCord that I have given her and her mother several opportunities to talk about her case. Time is running out. If she wants to contact me, she should write me a letter and explain all she can in that letter—but she needs to do it quick. I have read her testimony and I find one hole in it after the next. I have interviewed scores of people (former friends, neighbors, former and present inmates, and many, many others) and there’s not a lot of her story that checks out.

In her letter, she should tell me about Jeff, the type of person he was, and why he would kill two people he didn’t know. What purpose did Jeff have? She should tell me about her childhood. The abuse she suffered at the hands of George Callis. She should talk about why she kept the kids from seeing Alan when the court ordered the visitations (I have hundreds and hundreds of pages of documents from several different courts). I don’t want to hear lies. I want truth.

But she needs to do this quickly.

I was told for the next three weeks that Jessica was “in the process” of writing to me. That she was eager to talk. That she wanted to tell “her side” of this story. “Get the truth out.” That she had “things” to say about Alan, about Terra, about what “really” happened.

As of this writing, I have not heard from her.

Her behavior here fits flawlessly into the austere, “poor me” image Jessica McCord likes to project of herself. She wants the people around her to think of her in one light, but she behaves in an entirely different manner. She is incapable, at this point, of explaining herself. Unless she comes clean and begins to accept that she has been convicted of double murder, Jessica McCord is only fooling herself.

I’m told from prison sources that Jessica is on Lithium and all sorts of other antidepressant and antianxiety medications. I’m told she is constantly in the medical ward of the prison. That she routinely complains about prison life (what a shocker!), the conditions in which she lives and the treatment she receives behind bars.

Once again, everyone around Jessica McCord seems to be against her.

I was told by a few sources that after I “had called Jessica’s two churches (for interviews) . . . as a result, one church will not replace her Bible that was illegally taken from her when she got sent to seg.”

So, therefore, I am the one responsible for Jessica not being allowed to read the Word of God.

Go figure.

From prison Jessica has told people that an agreement she signed with the court prohibits her from speaking about her case. That, incredibly, other agreements having to do with the lawsuit the Bateses filed—which she claims to have been “forced to sign”—will not allow her to talk to anyone until Alan’s girls are adults. She even went so far as to say that if she talks to me, she could have her “canteen account” seized under the agreement.

This is all ludicrous, of course. None of it is true. This is Jessica, once again, lying to support her claim that jailhouse rules force her to be silent about her case.

Ridiculous.

I was also told that a family member is sneaking one of her children into the visiting section of the prison when a court order spells out clearly that the child is not to be near the prison.

Jessica McCord is playing by her own rules once again.

And yet, throughout it all, she has never once expressed an iota of sorrow for the deaths she is responsible for. Nor has she ever shown a bit of compassion for those who have lost so much in being forced to say an early good-bye to Alan and Terra. This behavior Jessica is showing us behind bars falls right in line with the character of the narcissist: her world is her stage, the people around her the players in a drama she continues to broadcast to those who want to participate still.

As my narrative spelled out, I wrote to George Callis, Jessica’s biological father. He is in prison serving a life sentence for murder. George wrote back—boy, did he ever! A manifesto, to be exact, that is truly unreadable. George is a self-described “born-again” Christian. Every thought, every word, every sentence, every page of what he wrote to me, speaks of some sort of “vision” from the Holy Spirit. He’d begin with the first-person pronoun “I” and then break off into quotes from the Bible. God bless, George; he has found meaning in the Holy Scriptures and feels the Holy Spirit is actively involved in every aspect of his life. He feels forgiven, obviously, for the nightmare he has caused. None of it, though, was helpful in understanding how his daughter might have turned out to be a murderer—ahem, like him.

In closing, I’d like to say that in all of the books I’ve written, in addition to the cases I have researched and studied over the past ten years, I have never seen such a disregard for authority. All murder is, inherently, evil and senseless. We know that. All murderers are, in every respect, coldhearted and immoral. We understand that, too. But when you have two people murdered by a woman who had claimed to love one of them once, and by a man who had been trained to preserve, protect and save lives, there is an additional layer of cruelty, insensitivity and selfishness involved. That is, besides inviting into the conversation the absolute disregard for relative morality.

Remember, Jessica McCord claims to be a Christian. She says she loves her children. Yet, when the facts are reviewed, we can see that Jessica McCord showed that love and dedication to Christ by killing her children’s father and stepmother.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First and foremost, I need to thank someone who has been a major part of my career, pushing it forward behind the scenes, talking me up to booksellers and truly promoting the idea that the work I do is worthy of an audience. Doug Mendini, the sales manager at Kensington Publishing Corporation, has worked doggedly promoting me as an author and a journalist, screaming from the sidelines that my books are much more than your average quickie true-crime pulp paperback. Doug is a generous human being with his time and truly believes in the books he works so hard to get out to the buying public.

Court reporters Ann Rushing and Kelly Alexander were helpful. Birmingham News reporter Carol Robinson made a few things much easier for me. Carol is one of those rare, honest-to-goodness, old-school reporters writing stories simply because she loves the work. I also appreciate the documents Carol sent me and her insight into the daily nuances of Jessica’s trial.

The Bates family and Tom Klugh were tremendous. I am grateful for their courage and also the trust they put in me to share those memories of Alan and Terra, along with those anecdotes that added so much to the narrative.

Jupiter Entertainment producer Donna Dudek was instrumental in helping me gather documents, photos and other research. Donna is one of the most competent and thorough researchers/television producers I have ever met. I cannot thank Donna enough for all the help she has given me throughout the years.

Captain Greg Rector, of the Hoover PD, was especially helpful in setting up interviews and bridging the gap between myself and some of the investigators involved in this case. I owe Hoover PD chief Nic Derzis a special consideration for allowing his fine officers to chat with me about the case. Laura Brignac was extremely helpful. Additionally, I want to thank GBI investigator Kimberly Williams, prosecutor Roger Brown and GBI special agent Tom Davis Jr. Of course, every investigator on this case was helpful, even if I didn’t interview him or her. This was one of those investigations that turned out to be a true team effort in every sense of the word. It took several law enforcement agencies to put together a case—in record time—against Jessica and Jeff McCord. That takes professionalism, tenacity, experience. These are fine men and women. They all deserve my respect and admiration.

I’ve thanked the usual suspects in my previous books. You all know who you are. Without you, I could not do this.

April, Mathew, Jordon, Regina.

I cannot write a book without thanking my readers, who continue to come back book after book. The letters and e-mails I receive are very important to me. I treasure each one of them. Every comment—good, bad or indifferent—is taken into account as I approach each book. I am extremely grateful for every reader. I do this year after year because you keep asking me to do so. I have the best fans in the business!

Enjoy this exclusive preview of M. William Phelps’s next exciting true-crime release!

Kill for Me

A deadly obsession . . . a savage shooting

M. William Phelps

Coming in September 2010 from Pinnacle . . .

Turn the page for a preview of

Kill for Me . . .

1

The killer sat inside the car, eyes trained on the parking lot entrance.

“She’s here,” the killer said into the phone, focused on the car as it entered the lot. It was approaching two o’clock in the afternoon of July 5, 2003. The target had pulled into her regular parking space at the Rocky Point, Tampa, Florida, Green Iguana Bar & Grill, got out, locked her car. Then she walked into the building to clock in for her bartending shift.

Rocky Point is a small island west of Tampa International Airport. It is a busy part of the Tampa Bay region, lots of ritzy hotels and high-end restaurants. There are pristine beaches, featuring hard and tanned bodies, and people mingling about, quite oblivious to what is going on around them. When you think of the atmosphere and ambiance here in Rocky Point, picture the colors that Jimmy Buffett’s songs bring to mind: velvety blue water, yellow sun, white sand, puffy cotton clouds, lime-green drinks with salt around the rims, tiny umbrellas pointed skyward.

“Go get ready,” he said.

The killer hung up the phone, hopped into the backseat. Put on a pair of baggy pants. A large sweatshirt. Baseball cap. Copious amounts of black makeup—“I want you to look like a black guy,” he had told the assassin—and a fake beard that wouldn’t stick in the excessive heat of the day.

“The beard won’t stay on,” the killer said after calling him back.

“Forget it, then. But walk around the premises to see if anybody notices you.”

The killer thought this to be an odd request. But then, over the course of the past several months since they had met, he had made numerous demands that didn’t make much sense. Here, in the parking lot of the Green Iguana, no one knew the killer to begin with. Walk around with a disguise on? Wouldn’t that, in and of itself, draw unneeded attention to the situation ? They had gone through this scenario many times. Heck, they’d even tried to kill this woman once already. Why chance botching the thing again with some sort of crazy strut around the parking lot?

He had, however, trained—some would later say “brainwashed”—his killer well.

“Okay,” the killer said to the request, then got out of the car and took a short walk around the parking lot. It seemed that nobody was interested in a nervous-looking person wearing what was an over-the-top Halloween costume in the middle of summer.

Back inside the car, the killer sat back. Adjusted the seat to get comfortable.

Now it was just a matter of playing the waiting game until the target emerged from the bar.

“Run up to her and shoot,” the caller had said, explaining how he wanted the murder to go down.

Kill her in the parking lot in broad daylight?

As soon as she came out of the building after her shift, he had explained in more detail, the killer was to approach the woman—and, without thinking about it, without hesitation, without a worry that people would see, unload a magazine of bullets into her body. They had been through this part of the murder numerous times. Rehearsed the scenario. Talked about it until they were both blue in the face. That previous attempt the killer had botched—the shotgun had gone off too soon. The plan was abandoned, the evidence destroyed.

Today there would be no mistakes. The killer had a semiautomatic .22-millimeter Ruger pistol. A child could fire it.

Even though he had taught his killer how to shoot the weapon, he was still worried:

You walk up. You fire. You don’t stop until the magazine is empty and the weapon is clicking.

“You look into her eyes!”

In theory, he made taking a life sound so easy.

Sitting, sketching out the plan, looking at the building, where the exits from the bar were located, the killer knew damn well that it was going to be impossible to murder the target inside the parking lot—that is, if getting away was part of the plan.

As the afternoon turned to dusk, the sun casting a brilliant red, yellow and orange glow over Old Tampa Bay, the killer waited patiently, nodding in and out.

Then, as the sun disappeared over the cityscape, the killer came up with an even better plan. Thinking about it, darkness closing in around the car, the killer then fell asleep.

As the target approached her car, unaware that someone had been in the parking lot for the past eight hours, the killer awoke.

But it was too late now to kill her in the Green Iguana parking lot. The target was already in her car, headlights on, stereo blasting, pulling out onto the main road.

All of this went on as the killer realized what was happening, and became unnerved, staring at the target as she left the scene.

“Shit.”

The killer tore out of the parking space quickly and got on the road far enough behind the target, so as not to be suspicious.

Pulling up right behind the target as she approached the bridge over Old Tampa Bay, the killer made another call. Police would learn later it was the twentieth call of the day the killer had made to the Svengali at home calling the shots.

“It will be over in a few minutes,” the killer said, staring at the back of the target’s BMW. “I’ll call you when it’s done.”

As he pulled up closer to the target, their cars just feet apart, no one could have imagined what happened next.

A burned Pontiac Grand Am was discovered in the woods of Rutledge, Georgia, at 3:30 A.M. on February 16, 2002.

(Photo courtesy of the Hoover Police Department)

A different angle of the same vehicle.

(Photo courtesy of the Hoover Police Department)

Inside the trunk were two severely burned bodies.

(Photo courtesy of the Hoover Police Department)

A paper towel, charred on one end, was found near the torched Grand Am. It would turn into a key piece of evidence.

(Photo courtesy of the Hoover Police Department)

A spent projectile taken from inside the trunk of the burned vehicle was one clue that lead to solving the case.

(Photo courtesy of the Hoover Police Department)

Another angle of the same projectile, identified on February 17, 2002, as a .44 caliber bullet.

(Photo courtesy of the Hoover Police Department)

The battery taken from inside the watch of one of the victims, which ultimately stopped the trajectory of the .44 caliber bullet.

(Photo courtesy of the Hoover Police Department)

A couch, stripped of its leather backing, taken from the home of an Alabama couple suspected of being connected to the crime scene in Georgia.

(Photo courtesy of the Hoover Police Department)

Jessica Inez Callis in eighth grade in Hoover, Alabama.

(Photo courtesy of Gresham Middle School yearbook)

Heading into high school, Jessica was an honors student who claimed to have taken between “500 and 600” hits of LSD during her high school days.

Alan Bates was a popular student with a passion for the theater when he met Jessica.

(Photo courtesy of Shades Valley High School yearbook)

Still in high school, finishing his senior year, Alan Bates married Jessica after discovering she was pregnant. (Jessica had dropped out.)

Months after getting married and welcoming their first child in 1990, Jessica and Alan appeared to be a happy young couple enjoying the senior prom.

Hoover Police Department investigators look at a piece of floor tile inside Jessica’s home, searching for any sign that a double homicide had occurred.

(Photo courtesy of the Hoover Police Department)

Investigators later talked about how messy Jessica’s house was when they went in to conduct the first of two search and seizure warrants in 2002.

(Photo courtesy of the Hoover Police Department)

A break in the case came during a second search on February 18, 2002, when investigators discovered this single spent projectile on the floor inside the garage of a home owned by Jessica and her new husband, Jeff McCord, a police officer.

(Photo courtesy of the Hoover Police Department)

Moments after the bullet was uncovered, investigators found this piece of balled up wallpaper inside a garbage bag.

(Photo courtesy of the Hoover Police Department)

This coffee table, taken from Jeff and Jessica McCord’s home, was later found to contain blood evidence.

(Photo courtesy of the Hoover Police Department)

After investigators moved the couch and focused their search in the messy den of the McCord home, the pieces of a double homicide fell into place.

(Photo courtesy of the Hoover Police Department)

Investigators were at first perplexed that the wallpaper seams in the McCord home did not match.

(Photo courtesy of the Hoover Police Department)

When both spent projectiles—the bullet found in the trunk of Alan Bates’burned rental car and the one found inside the McCord garage—were put side by side, a clear match was made.

(Photo courtesy of the Hoover Police Department)

An only child, Terra Klugh hammed it up for this Norman Rockwell-like photo.

(Photo courtesy of Tom Klugh)

Many friends recalled the warmth and comfort of Terra’s smile.

(Photo courtesy of the D.W. Daniel High School yearbook)

As a young woman, Terra fell deeply for recently divorced father of two Alan Bates after meeting him at the Alabama Theatre in Birmingham.

(Photo courtesy of Tom Klugh)

Alan Bates and his father Philip were quite the pair as Indian Guides during a campout.

(Photo courtesy of Kevin Bates)

Together, Alan and Terra Bates enjoyed all that life had to offer.

(Photo courtesy of Kevin Bates)

Alan loved nothing more than taking photos of his second wife, Terra, whenever they went on hiking trips.

(Photo courtesy of Kevin Bates)

Terra enjoyed capturing this moment of her husband doing what he enjoyed.

(Photo courtesy of Kevin Bates)

After Alan’s first wife, Jessica, destroyed Alan and Terra’s initial wedding plans, there was nothing she could do to stop the wedding a year later.

(Photo courtesy of Kevin Bates)

As a youngster, Jeff McCord loved football.

(Photo courtesy of Bobby Kelley)

Jeff graduated from the University of Montevallo and wanted to help wayward children.

(Photo courtesy of Bobby Kelley)

Family and friends were proud of Jeff, who had never been in any trouble, expecting “big things” from him post-graduation.

(Photo courtesy of Bobby Kelley)

Jessica’s look transformed through the years. Here she is after being arrested on double murder charges in February 2002.

(Photo courtesy of the Hoover Police Department)

Friends say Jeff McCord was a passive, reserved puppet, who was easily manipulated by Jessica. A police officer at the time of his arrest, Jeff was also charged with double murder.

(Photo courtesy of the Hoover Police Department)