Death Trap (10 page)

Joan encouraged Philip to talk to his son. Ask him what was going on.

But Alan said nothing. He was fine. He could work it out on his own.

The Bateses respected their son. What else could they do? Trust was an important family value in the Bates household. Alan would speak up when he felt comfortable. No need to push the boy.

“Something was upsetting him,” Kevin Bates recalled, “and [my parents] kept trying to talk to him about it. But didn’t get far.”

On the other end of all this, Alan was likely feeling pressure from Jessica. There was no way she was going to abort this child, she had told several of her friends. Alan was going to have to stand up, be a man and take responsibility.

Alan needed his own time to process what it was that was consuming any serenity and confidence the kid had built up during his preceding years. Alan was a senior, heading into the year he had looked forward to since he was a freshman. It wasn’t nerves about graduation and college and beginning life as an adult. Although that all probably added to Alan’s sudden change. But there was more. Kevin, Philip and Joan were sure of it. Alan hadn’t even put in his nomination for class president. He was backing off his music. All of this was so unlike him.

Alan made a decision to tell everyone. But he wasn’t going to sit down and explain to his mother and father what had happened. So he wrote “a nice long letter” and left it for them on his dad’s desk.

Picking it up and reading, Philip knew he had raised a responsible son. A boy who cared about others. Could he argue with that? Could he be angry at the boy for wanting to do the right thing?

Despite the uphill battle and obstacles Philip knew Alan now faced, he was proud his boy had decided to handle it like a man.

“It was a very apologetic letter,” Kevin Bates later commented. “Alan was saying sorry for bringing this on, sorry for making this mistake, that he was raised better than this, but he was also taking full responsibility. ‘We’ll make things work,’ I think was one of the quotes Alan wrote to my dad.”

Joan wasn’t sold on Jessica as the mother of her grandchild. There was something about Jessica that Joan didn’t like. She was upset with herself that she wasn’t able to help Alan before things got to this point. But what could she do now? She had to support her son.

Alan’s letter outlined the fact that he had—at least according to Jessica—impregnated her some weeks before and didn’t know how to disclose it to the family. He thought a letter was the best way to address the situation. Part of what Alan wrote, however, was that he understood the values his mother and father had always instilled in him as he grew up. He was entirely prepared to take “full responsibility” for the pregnancy—abortion, of course, not ever being an option—by marrying Jessica. If he was going to become a father (a March 1990 due date was on the calendar), Alan Bates was going to provide for his child and the child’s mother.

Make things right.

This didn’t mean Alan was going to give up on his dreams of working on Broadway, behind the scenes as a technical director and stage person. Or that he was planning on giving up on his love of music or quitting high school to drive a forklift at some warehouse or work behind the counter of a convenience store and buy a mobile home. Those weren’t bad things, but he had other priorities in life set in front of himself. Instead, this news meant there would be a bump in the road. Certainly. Times would be tough. Absolutely. But college was still part of Alan’s future. Alan could see it. Feel it. He was not giving up on himself. In fact, maybe now more than ever, seeing that he was going to become a father and a husband, Alan Bates needed to turn his dreams into reality.

Jessica called Naomi to share the latest. Naomi stopped by Jessica’s mother’s house for a visit shortly after the call. Jessica was lonely. She was at home all day, with nobody around, her stomach growing. Alan still in school and working.

“You’re keeping this one?” Naomi wondered. Jessica was showing by this point. It was strange to Naomi. Not that life was a choice, or abortion an option, but Naomi was confused by her friend’s behavior: how had Jessica come to the decision? (“For whatever reason,” Naomi said later, “Jessica decided it was okay to keep this one. . . . ”)

Still, why not the other babies? Why had she chosen to keep this particular child and not any of the other babies she had aborted?

Jessica explained that she and Alan were getting married, but it wasn’t the flowery picture Alan was telling his family—at least from Jessica’s point of view.

“The only reason I’m marrying him,” Jessica told Naomi that afternoon, “is because Alan’s grandfather has agreed to pay for me to have the baby at Brookwood.” There were hospitals in town that those less fortunate, without insurance, checked into for treatment and births. Brookwood was a private hospital.

“Only if we’re married, though,” Jessica said, “he’ll pay for it.”

16

Investigators knew Jessica’s stepfather, Albert Bailey, left Jeff and Jessica’s Myrtlewood Drive house with a couch that Saturday, February 16, 2002. Then, for some odd reason, the man drove around town with it. Given the circumstances, knowing what the investigating law enforcement agencies now knew about the crime, it seemed peculiar that Albert would do such a thing. The timing was suspect. The pathologist said there was a good chance Alan and Terra were sitting down (or leaning against something) when they were shot. Could they have been sitting on the couch that Albert Bailey was tooling around town with?

The Bureau and the HPD were waiting for a judge to sign off on a search warrant to get into the McCord home. They wanted to see what it was Jessica had been so vocal about, and determined to keep from them. The fact of the matter was—at least from the side of the fence where law enforcement stood—that if Jessica did not have anything to hide, and Alan and Terra, as she herself had been so adamantly certain of, had never been inside her home, why wouldn’t she willingly allow law enforcement to have a look?

After being stopped the previous day, the HPD followed Albert Bailey again. During that second tail, they witnessed him drive behind Uncle Bob’s Self-Storage on Citation Drive for a second time, then take off back home. Albert was questioned later on that day and asked about the couch. After some prodding, Albert fessed up and told the Bureau where he had dumped it.

Asked why he did this, Albert said, “Jessica told me to.”

Williams and Vance found the couch near Citation Drive, next to a large Dumpster. The couch was “turned up on its back . . . sitting next to” that Dumpster, Williams said later, “against a fence . . . upside down so the back would have been toward the fence.”

The backing of the couch—what you would rest up against when you sat down—had been torn off. Actually, investigators observed, it was “cut out.” It was a fairly new couch. Moreover, it was one of those sofa beds. But the mattress, along with the cushions, was also missing.

The timing of all this was incredibly suspect to investigators.

Williams and Vance looked through the Dumpster, hoping to find the remains of the couch or the cushions.

Nothing.

The two investigators went into a nearby building and spoke to several people who were there that previous afternoon when Bailey had dumped it. But they all said the same thing: “We never saw the couch with any cushions.”

Williams ordered the couch to be picked up and brought in. Forensics needed to go over it. There were a few stains (dark spots) on one of the armrests. With a quick spray of luminol, it was determined those stains were, in fact, blood. The money was on whether it was Alan’s, Terra’s or a mixture of both their blood.

That afternoon, Williams heard the warrant had finally come through. HPD investigators had armed themselves and were headed over to the McCord house on Myrtlewood. The thought and speculation driving the search was that it wasn’t going to be a pretty scene. Jeff McCord was a cop. That meant he had weapons. The McCords seemed like hostile, uncomfortable and tactless people. What were they going to do if they felt threatened?

 

 

Near one o’clock, on the afternoon of February 17, 2002, Jessica and Jeff walked out the front door of their Myrtlewood Drive home. The look on their faces before they spotted the police made it seem as though it were any other day. Jessica carried her youngest child in her arms. Jeff held the door for her.

No sooner had they stepped onto the front steps did she and Jeff hear some sort of a commotion going on around them.

A ruckus.

Several police officers, Jessica explained later, came hurrying around the corner, guns drawn, pointed at her and Jeff. They were “yelling” and “screaming,” Jessica claimed. “Hands above your head . . . right now.”

The focus was on Jeff, who had his “duty belt” with him. Jeff packed a service revolver.

“Put the belt down,” one cop yelled. It was not hard to tell that the cop meant what he said.

Jeff was startled by this.

“Back up toward us, with your back facing us, and hand the officer your weapon, sir.”

The tension was high and tight. Jessica stood, not knowing what to do or how to react. She was troubled by such a show of might. The HPD wanted to make an impression, make it clear who was in charge. But Jessica wasn’t getting it.

What was happening? Were they there to arrest Jessica and Jeff? What was going on? Jessica had no idea.

Or did she?

The McCords’ dog barked erratically, crazily. Jumped around. Ran up to the fence in the back of the house. He wasn’t on a leash.

“Chain up the dog, ma’am,” one cop said with concern.

Jessica tied up the pooch. “And that helped, too,” she recalled, “because the dog was flipping out over all the people with guns and the voices and everything.”

“Mr. and Mrs. McCord,” said an officer, “we have a warrant to search your home.”

Jeff and Jessica looked at each other. Jessica could not tell how many cops were present for the search, but, by her humble estimation a year later, she said, “It seemed like a ton. I remember when I looked up as we walked out . . . and, you know, all of these people standing there with guns pointed at us.”

The HPD was concerned that Jeff McCord would draw on them; they knew he not only carried a weapon, but he had additional weapons inside his house. When you’re dealing with guns and police and warrants, you don’t take chances. Those days of brotherly blue were behind them. Jeff and Jessica were suspects in a double murder. They were considered armed and dangerous. If they had murdered two people already, what would stop them from going down in a hail of gunfire?

Sergeant Tom McDanal ran the show. He handed Jeff and Jessica the paperwork, saying, “You need to get those children out of here. They should not be here.”

Jessica took out her cell phone. “I’m calling my father.”

After a few moments, she hung up the phone.

“I’ll have to give them a ride over to my mother’s house,” Jessica said.

Wrong answer.

“You cannot leave, ma’am,” McDanal made clear.

So Jessica called Albert Bailey back and told him to pick up the kids at Myrtlewood.

Someone suggested Jessica, Jeff and the kids wait in the front yard. An officer would keep them company. Anyway, the HPD had work to do.

One of the children asked her mother what was happening. Why were the police going inside their home?

Jessica didn’t answer. She stared straight ahead as a line of officers filed into the one place she had refused to allow them access.

Detective Laura Brignac stood out front with Jessica and the kids. “Do you mind if I talk to your children?” Brignac asked.

“No!” Jessica snapped. “No way . . . I don’t want you talking to them.”

Brignac pulled Jessica to the side, away from the children and Jeff. “Look, I’m not going to tell them anything about what’s going on with their father. . . . I just need to establish a timeline.” The seasoned detective paused. Then: “I’m going to interview the children, Mrs. McCord. Either right here and now. At your parents’ house. Or at the police station.”

The choice was Jessica’s.

After a moment Jessica looked at the detective. Thought about it. “Well, my dad is going to take them and you can talk to them over there.”

Albert Bailey showed up. Jessica and Jeff went into their Myrtlewood Drive home so they could watch the search. Brignac said she’d follow Albert and the kids and interview them at Jessica’s mother’s house.

Driving over, Brignac considered a few things: Kids, she knew, can be the most truthful of any witness. They lay out facts without thinking about them. Without even knowing it. This was going to be interesting.

As Brignac sat down with the kids out of Albert and Dian Bailey’s earshot, she quickly built a rapport, chitchatting with them first about kid stuff. It was clear almost immediately to Brignac that Sam (pseudonym), who was almost twelve years old, and McKenna (pseudonym), closing in on ten years, could potentially break the case—without even realizing it.

“Y’all notice anything different about your house when you went back there yesterday?” Brignac asked both children. She knew the kids had been out of the home for almost an entire day, but they went back that afternoon. They had gone from day care on late Friday afternoon to their grandmother’s house and hadn’t left there until that Sunday morning. Brignac was already suspicious of Jessica’s story of how Alan had never shown up at the house. The detective interviewed the day care provider earlier that same day and the woman confirmed that she, in fact, had dropped the kids off at Dian Bailey’s, somewhere near 4:00
P.M
. on Friday, not Jessica or Jeff.

So Brignac knew Jessica and Jeff had lied already.

The day care story was in total conflict with Jeff and Jessica’s version of the same situation. Barring that, by Brignac’s determination, this one discrepancy indicated to her that Jessica was not expecting Alan to show up at her house to begin with.

One of the children spoke up after Brignac asked if anything was different inside the house. “Yes,” the child said, “the carpet was gone . . . in the den . . . there was a new floor . . . and the sofa was gone. . . .”

The other child chimed in, “Yeah, yeah, and . . . my momma had been talking about getting rid of that sofa, anyway. The den had been rearranged, too.”

Brignac was floored by this revelation. She continued the interview, knowing exactly what she needed to do when she was finished.

 

 

D. C. Scively was one of the HPD’s working technicians, there at the McCord home to “supervise the other technicians.” Scively was also responsible for maintaining the integrity of the evidence collected. You know, making sure it arrived inside an evidence bag without a problem. Then onto the lab and wherever else, as it should. That whole chain-of-custody thing.

Throughout his time at the McCord house, Scively documented both on paper and with photographs the mess the HPD had run into as they approached the inside of the McCord house.

The place was simply disgusting. Housekeeping was definitely not a domestic skill Jessica could be crowned queen of; it seemed wherever you looked there was a stack of this, a pile of that: clutters of videos, DVDs, magazines, and even pure old-fashioned garbage. But more important to the search team, they confirmed that someone had been working in the home.

After the children left for Jessica’s mother’s, Jessica and Jeff walked into the house and began “observing different areas . . . ,” Jessica later explained in court, “while it was being searched.”

To Jessica, it seemed as though the cops were there to mainly ransack her home and invade her personal space.

“Oh, they moved things,” she said agitatedly, “emptied drawers, made a big mess even worse.”

HPD detective Peyton Zanzour was one of the investigators leading the team during the search. With nearly twenty-five years on the job, Detective Zanzour had surely seen and directed his share of search warrants. On this day Zanzour worked in the capacity of an investigator for the Crimes Against Persons Division (CAPERS).

Here, a group of cops was searching a fellow police officer’s house. It happened. Didn’t mean the guy was guilty. In fact, Jeff McCord likely knew better. Since that interview with Bureau agent Kimberly Williams at the Pelham PD, Jeff hadn’t said much of anything, one way or another.

But then maybe Jeff was covering up for his guilty wife?

Several things stood out immediately to Detective Zanzour. For one, the fact that the house was “in total disarray.” Cops couldn’t walk through the place without stepping on something. One area was loaded with empty floor tile boxes. The carpet in the living room had recently been ripped up. With such a mess, it was almost impossible, without moving things around or dismantling parts of the house, to conduct the type of search the HPD needed to do. There was a lot of ground to cover, like the inside of walls, the basement, boxes, underneath carpets, and the garage.

Later, Jessica spoke of her reasons for maintaining such a messy house: “I have my days. We had been sick for—you know, we had been fighting the flu, back and forth, and, plus, I was pregnant. I had just gotten pregnant, and I was having morning sickness. And I hate to say it. I can’t do dishes when I’m throwing up. I mean, it’s just not in me to do that. And my husband does not help with the house. We’ve got four kids in the house, [one] a little baby. You know, I’m throwing up every other day. Lots of clothes. Bedding. And, yes, I’m not a good housekeeper. I admit it. I would rather be playing with my children than to have a pristine house and no time for them.”

Zanzour decided to take it slow and easy. Maybe just walk around for now and see what stood out. Look in drawers. Under beds. Closets. The attic.

They uncovered “some ammo” in a room downstairs. In the master bedroom upstairs, they hit a cache of additional ammunition and weapons: a Smith & Wesson pistol with a holster, two Smith & Wesson magazines, a box of shotgun shells. In the attic was a .38 Smith & Wesson pistol, a rifle and four magazines loaded with ammo.

Jeff McCord was ready for a war.

In one photo, taken inside the kitchen area, Scively photographed a roll of paper towels in the garbage. It seemed like it might be important.

Zanzour and Tom McDanal gathered everyone outside at one point, several hours later. It was near 5:30
P.M
. Time to stop the search. It was difficult to find anything in such a jumble of garbage and clutter. On top of that, the search warrant they had did not cover tearing things up and looking in walls. Furthermore, out of all of the weaponry and ammunition they uncovered, there was no .44 caliber.