Death Trap (12 page)

19

Alan graduated from Shades Valley in June 1990. He enrolled in fall classes at the University of Montevallo, thirty-five miles south of Birmingham. Montevallo is spread out now across a 160-acre main campus, bordered by rolling hills, golf course green lawns, groves and colorful flower beds. It is a beautiful spread of land. Montevallo’s academics and scholars are respected throughout the state. More than that, during Alan’s time Montevallo offered excellent fine arts and theater programs for him to think about building on an already wide foundation of study in the technical side of the stage.

Being away from Birmingham and Alan’s family was going to suit Jessica’s growing needs quite well.

“She didn’t like anybody who was close to Alan,” a former friend said. “She felt threatened by
anyone
in his family, any of his close friends, and she basically wanted to pull him away from his whole life.”

And here was that chance.

Jessica dropped out of school, with the intention of going back and getting her GED. As Alan got to know her better, he began to think that Jessica was either the most unfortunate person on God’s earth, or she was making up stories about a tortured childhood that never was. One friend later said Jessica could spin the best yarn you ever heard, and she had a knack for making whatever story she told sound unequivocally true. “But come to find out,” that same friend added, “she was nothing more than a pathological liar.”

With a wife and child, Alan needed a home. Philip Bates purchased a “fixer-upper” for Jessica, Alan and Sam. It was a one-hundred-year-old ranch-style house that needed lots of TLC. But it was located just outside Montevallo. Regardless of the condition, it was enough room for the three of them. Cozy. Homey. The perfect starter home. Alan was determined to get a college degree. Find a good-paying job. Raise his family. When he wasn’t going to class or studying, Alan was kept busy with odd jobs: landscaping, construction, anything else he could earn some quick cash from. He was still playing in a gospel quartet that paid, and it seemed the music became one of Alan’s true outlets for his growing artistic expression. Jessica, though, was insecure about the band and rode Alan constantly about groupies and screaming girls vying for his attention.

Jessica’s friend Naomi had Fridays off. Naomi often made the hour drive to Montevallo to visit with Jessica and the new baby. It was great to pop in and see how everyone was doing. Maybe help out. Bring a gift. Some food. Spread the love.

“I got a sense,” Naomi recalled, “that they were, of course, struggling. Young couple. Recently married. New parents. Alan’s in college. Working. In the band. It was
hard.
”

For Jessica, the focus quickly turned to a notion that Alan was out and about, meeting women at school and at his band gigs, bedding them down. She accused him of sleeping with any female he crossed paths with. The jealousy and insecurity consumed her. Ran their lives. Then it turned into chronic paranoia.

“He’s seeing someone at the college,” Jessica explained to Naomi during one Friday visit. Jessica said she was certain of it.

“Jessica, where’s your proof?” Naomi asked. “Unless you have concrete evidence of you watching him go out with someone else, catching him in the act, you
have
to trust him.”

What was a marriage without trust? Naomi stressed. If Jessica couldn’t trust Alan to leave the house, how could she ever expect the relationship to grow?

Jessica changed the subject. Ignored the advice. Instead, she carried on about how she believed Alan was cheating. Naomi knew Alan took his wedding vows seriously. There was no way he would do anything to hurt Jessica. It just wasn’t the person Alan was. If he wanted somebody else, Alan was the type to sit Jessica down and tell her it was over. Then go out and fornicate. But not while he was still married.

Nothing relieved Jessica’s suspicions. She even showed up on campus one day with the baby, while Alan was in the middle of a production. As everyone working on the play with him turned, she yelled and screamed. Made an ass of herself. It was a scene. In front of everyone she accused Alan of doing all sorts of outlandish, sexual things with some of the women he studied and worked with at the campus theater. It embarrassed Alan a great deal. He didn’t know what to do.

Finally he pulled Jessica aside, did his best to calm her down, then sent her back home.

Still, in many respects, during this same period, Naomi considered Jessica to be a “very good mother.” “Homemaker” was probably a better way to put it. Jessica cooked. Cleaned. Made meals stretch for days. She even went so far as to get cloth diapers so she could wash them and save money.

“She was very protective. A good mother. She tried to do everything she could. But at the same time, she was very insecure.”

By 1992, Alan was cruising on autopilot through college, following his dream of working in the theater, now that much closer to living it. Jessica made the transformation to stay-at-home mom complete. She gained weight, watched soap operas and let herself go.

“They [were] a very young family,” Robert Bates said of his brother and sister-in-law, “starting off under very trying circumstances. They were struggling. They were trying to figure things out.”

On November 16, 1992, Jessica gave birth to her and Alan’s second child, McKenna, and that’s when things started to spiral out of control, members of Alan’s family suggested. After a calm period Jessica’s insecurities and abnormalities resurfaced on a new level—and Alan and his family were convinced now that maybe Jessica wasn’t exaggerating when she told those stories of growing up in a chaotic, abusive household. Perhaps the environment in which she came from had affected her psychologically and turned her into the thing she so much hated.

What’s more, one source noted, by this point in Jessica’s life, she’d had no fewer than five abortions, using the procedure as a means of contraception. It got to the point, Jessica told one friend, where “there [was] no doctor in Birmingham that will touch me because I’ve had so many abortions.”

According to a Forensic (Psychology) Evaluation Report conducted on Jessica in 2003, she claimed to have seen a mental-health professional when she was between the ages of nine and fifteen.
She saw someone,
the report indicated,
because her father was abusive. . . .

Shortly before meeting Alan, Jessica admitted in that same report, she
saw a couple of licensed professional counselors because of domestic violence.
She was never hospitalized. Nor had Jessica been through any alcohol or drug treatment programs. This, despite admitting to having
used LSD between 500 and 600 times in her past with no history
of flashbacks.

“I agree with that,” said a high-school friend. “She definitely used a lot of drugs later on in high school.”

In addition, Jessica told the three doctors during her psychological exam, that she had a 50 percent hearing loss “bilaterally” since her teenage years, but she had never used a hearing aid of any type. She also reported having a history of “mitral valve prolapse,” with occasional irregular heartbeats—in addition to hypoglycemia.

Jessica sat quite lucid during her evaluation, demonstrating normal eye contact, the report noted. She showed no “unusual mannerisms,” and did not exhibit any odd gestures or facial expressions. In fact, doctors observed, Jessica appeared quite normal, with the exception of her tendency to—you guessed it—lie.

“Have you ever had any suicidal ideation . . . ?” one of the doctors asked Jessica at some point during the evaluation.

Jessica thought about it. “Not as an adult,” she said, then broke off into a story from her childhood, adding, “but between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, I did.”

“How so? Could you explain further, please?”

Jessica smiled. “I almost overdosed on Benadryl.” Then, a while later, “And [drove] a car off the road.”

The doctors weren’t buying it.

In the same psychological report, one wrote:
She never required any medical attention and these should only be considered as gestures and judgment, if indeed they ever occurred.

It was as if Jessica made up conditions, ailments and problems as she went along—illnesses that seemed to suit her needs at the time. According to the evaluation, the three doctors agreed that Jessica
came across as quite manipulative and self-ser ving. . . . She seems to be somewhat immature in her personal development and judgment but she had at least average intelligence.

“She is the absolute queen of manipulation,” an old high-school friend said.

 

 

There was no stopping Alan. Everybody around him knew the marriage to Jessica was wrong. Maybe even doomed. But friends and family could do nothing but support his decision and admire the guy for taking on the responsibility of being a father to his children.

One woman was hurt by the end of her friendship with Alan. All because Jessica would not allow them to speak to or see each other. It was a bit easier for this particular friend because she had moved away to another state to attend college. So the temptation to want to see and hang out with Alan wasn’t always there.

And then Alan called one day. It was a total surprise. “Listen, I . . . I . . . Jessica said it’s okay that we talk. And I really want you to see the kids.”

Alan’s friend was both appalled and excited. She didn’t know what to say. She was back home on a break from school. Of course, she wanted to see Alan’s kids. She and Alan were like cousins, brother and sister. She wanted to enjoy and share every bit of happiness Alan had in his life.

“But,” Alan said, “Jessica wants to bring them over to see you. She wants to talk to you.”

Jessica showed up at the woman’s parents’ house. They sat on the couch together. Jessica had failed to bring Alan. This first conversation was going to be just woman-to-woman.

“Here, hold the baby,” Jessica said with that fake smile she had all but mastered by this point.

Alan’s close childhood friend didn’t know what to make of this.

“Basically, Jessica sat there and told me that she was going to ‘allow’ us to be friends again.”

Jessica had once taken anything Alan’s friend had ever given him—cards, stuffed animals, photographs, gifts, mementoes of their childhood together—and discarded it all in the trash because she wanted to wipe her out of Alan’s life.

 

 

By the time Alan and Jessica were raising two kids, Alan worked full-time, while still managing a jam-packed schedule of classes. With that, Jessica milked her role as the stay-at-home mom, using the excuse of being young and strapped for money and home all the time as a means to drain Alan of any energy or serenity the man had left over.

Kevin Bates liked to spend time with his older brother and nieces whenever he could. He loved the children, of course, and was often driven to Montevallo on the weekends by his parents or Alan to help his brother work on the house. One weekend Alan made plans with Kevin to do several repairs to the front porch, which was in a state of rot and ruin. The two of them could knock it out on a Saturday and Sunday. Alan had a day off that weekend. He had been working himself ragged with school and a construction job. Just to hang out with his little brother and do some work on the house would be great.

Hammers. Nails. Laughs.

Man stuff.

But Jessica decided she needed to “sleep in” on Saturday. When Kevin showed up, Jessica went right at him and asked if he would watch the kids for her while Alan worked on the porch by himself.

“I’m not well,” Jessica said, playing it up.

“Sure,” Kevin agreed reluctantly. It was disappointing. He had so much looked forward to hanging out with Alan.

Jessica, Kevin explained, was well aware of that.

“Sorry about her,” Alan said to Kevin, who sat in the living room, keeping the children busy, while Alan worked out front. “I’m really sorry. I’ve been trying to get her to get out of bed. But I’m not having much luck.”

It was a recurring problem, expanding by the day. Jessica was getting lazier and more withdrawn, not wanting to do anything.

“It’s okay,” Kevin said. He understood.

“All she does is sleep, or want to sleep.”

Kevin took care of the kids most of that day while Jessica slept.

“Whenever she could,” Kevin recalled years later, “Jessica took advantage of a situation. She saw an opportunity that day and took it.”

Alan never played into the drama of his wife’s supposed “ailments.” He internalized a lot of what bothered him about Jessica, realizing that bad-mouthing his wife or complaining about her behavior was not going to do anybody any good. It certainly wasn’t going to help her or solve the problem. Part of Alan believed that it was a postpregnancy phase of depression Jessica was going to snap out of at any time. She would wake up one day and be an adult and a loving wife who wanted to participate in the marriage and raise the kids on a level compatible to Alan’s busy lifestyle. Alan believed in her. She would want, someday, to work together with him to raise their family.

Inside the theater department of the university, there was a cot and an area where, at times, Alan slept. As much as he wanted to comfort his young wife, he just couldn’t take her some nights. It got to a point where the idea of going home was too much to handle. He and Jessica, as the year 1993 came to an end, were having more problems. She was not getting better. Or so it seemed. Alan didn’t know what to do. Was Jessica playing this game for attention? Was she truly ill? Did she need psychiatric help? He was willing to get her the help she needed, but enough was enough.

Something had to be done.

 

 

By the time Jessica sat and talked to three psychologists in 2003, she’d given birth to five kids: two with Alan (one of whom she’d later say wasn’t his), one with a guy she met after Alan, and two with Jeff Kelley McCord. Not that having children is a crime, but Jessica seemed to blame the way her life had turned out on her own childhood, and then on the men she dated and later married. It was always somebody else’s fault. She claimed her marriage to Alan began to suffer problems when Alan “wanted her to sleep with his friends.”