Death Trap (22 page)

Of course, there was one minor detail she forgot to mention to Alan in all of this. Jessica was going to have Jeff’s baby. One friend said it was right after Jessica convinced Jeff to get that money from his mother that she became pregnant again. Before this, Jessica had an abortion for Jeff, perhaps even two.

Alan got the kids into the car. No argument on Jessica’s part. Alan and Terra were married on June 24, 2000, with both of Alan’s children there by his side. It was a beautiful ceremony, replete with the affection that had been missing from Alan’s life with Jessica all those years. Alan had found and married the love of his life. They were the ideal couple, mimicking the plastic model atop the wedding cake.

You can see the radiance in the photographs of their wedding. Terra was pictured talking to guests, Alan in back of her, smiling, as if he had just met the love of his life. He’d probably heard those stories she was telling ten times already, but he still hung on every word. The look in his eyes was magical, respectful, dignified. He loved this woman with every ounce of his soul. Terra had brought such permanence, such unconditional love, into Alan’s life. She was the blessing he had been searching for all along. They would rise together in their chosen careers, spend the summers and holidays with Alan’s kids, maybe start a family of their own. This wedding, with all of its past difficulties, was behind them. They could begin their lives anew.

And it appeared that even Jessica was now going to accept it.

36

As soon as Jessica and Jeff moved into the house on Myrtlewood Drive in Hoover, Jessica began to create a new plan to keep Alan away from the kids. And Jeff went along, doing whatever he was told.

The only reason there were no problems for Alan during the summer of 2000 was because Alan had kept the kids at his home in Maryland. He and Terra set aside a room for the children. Decorated it. Spent the summer rebuilding relationships Jessica had spent years destroying. It didn’t take the kids long to realize Alan loved them, no matter what Jessica had said or drilled into their heads. It was clear in Alan’s words, gestures and pure show of affection that his love was genuine, and had been all along.

Alan and Terra dropped the kids off in Birmingham at the end of the summer. Then returned to their lives in Maryland. Alan lost touch with his girls the next day. It was easier for Jessica now that Alan lived nine hundred miles northeast. He couldn’t drop by unexpectedly and say he wanted to see the girls. Now, same as she had before, Jessica refused to allow the children to speak with their father on the telephone. More than that, Alan had no idea where, exactly, did Jessica and Jeff lived in Hoover.

Here we go again. . . .

All Jessica had to do was conform with the court’s order and she would have saved herself from serving ten days in jail—the sentence she had been given was six months suspended. This was, however, providing she proved to the court she made an effort to live up to her obligations. October 2000 was just around the corner, a time when Jessica and her new lawyer would have to prove she was living under the provisions of the court’s ruling.

Frank Head let the court know she wasn’t. He also made it clear that Jessica never provided written documentation—a note from her doctor—regarding her “inability to appear for trial” that past April 4, 2000

(her excuse a day later was that she was ill) .

Alan and Head showed up in court on October 16, 2000. Jessica’s new lawyer was there. But once again, Jessica chose to skip it.

“Your client, is she here?” the judge asked Jessica’s lawyer.

“I have not had recent contact with my client, Your Honor, this after diligent efforts.”

The judge ordered both sides to get on with the hearing.

By the end of the session, the judge ruled that Jessica had “failed to comply with the Order of the Court entered [in April that year], by failing or refusing to allow [Alan] to speak with his children at least one evening each week on the telephone for up to fifteen minutes of uninterrupted conversation. . . .”

In addition, she hadn’t paid Alan’s attorney’s fees, which she was responsible for.

With that, the judge ordered the contempt charge against Jessica be put into action. Someone needed to find Jessica McCord. She owed the judge ten days in jail.

When she heard, Jessica became infuriated. She called a friend a few days later to vent. She described the “gall” Alan had to demand that she be put in jail. This was all Alan’s fault. He did it. He could have stopped it, but he chose to make her suffer.

“I’m going to get him,” Jessica told that friend. She repeated a prior threat: “I’m going to set him up for domestic abuse.”

Jessica’s plan was to provoke Alan into hitting her; then she would run to the police and press charges.

The judge signed off on a writ of arrest and sent deputies to find Jessica and put her in jail.

But then something happened.

“To the best of my recollection,” Jessica’s mother, Dian Bailey, later said in court, “it was somewhere right in November 2000” when Jeff left Jessica. They split up. “And they might try reconciliation a day or two [later],” Dian added.

Jessica and the kids stayed at Dian’s. According to Dian, Alan wasn’t the poster child for fathers he had claimed to be in court. “Alan was not consistent in his visitation,” Dian told the court, “whether that it be the first or the third, or it might be two hours on a Saturday if he can’t make it, or it might be that he would take them out for dinner. . . .”

Further, Dian claimed, Alan had skipped visitations. He’d call and say he would be there, but he would never show up.

After a time Jessica moved back into the house on Myrtlewood Drive, reconciling with Jeff. She wasn’t pregnant any longer, she said. Either she had lost the child, lied about being pregnant to begin with, or had another abortion.

During this period Jeff and Jessica didn’t claim an address. Jessica told Alan she and Jeff were buying a house, but Alan didn’t know where. The kids, moreover, weren’t enrolled in school. It appeared that Jessica, Jeff and the kids had disappeared.

Alan and Terra were horrified by the prospect that Jessica and her new husband—a man Alan didn’t know very much about—might have packed up and taken off with Alan’s kids. Jessica was now hiding the children from him, more than just denouncing his advances to see and speak with them. But it wasn’t only Alan she was running from. Jessica owed the court ten days in jail.

 

 

By the end of November, Frank Head filed additional court actions against Jessica regarding her desire not to allow Alan to see the kids during the Thanksgiving holiday, or on McKenna’s birthday. Alan was beside himself. Jessica was like a broken record. The same behavior all over again. She refused to follow the court’s ruling, even if it meant jail time.

Frank Head asked the court to issue a subpoena to the custodian of records for the Hoover City School System so he could find out where the children’s educational records popped up. The idea was that Jessica would have enrolled the children in school somewhere. There had to be a record. It was Alan’s belief they were attending Green Valley Elementary, on Old Columbiana Road, about a mile from Jessica’s mother’s house. Alan knew the kids were being dropped off there at different times.

When the Hoover City School System failed to return a hit on the kids’ whereabouts, Frank Head went to the custodian of records for Southminster Day School in Vestavia Hills. Alan heard that maybe the kids were enrolled there. Of course, he called the Pelham PD, but they couldn’t give him any information.

By this point Jessica was served several Violation of Previous Orders. All with no response from her. In a December 21, 2000, letter (which he had no idea where to send), Frank Head announced that Alan wanted to see the kids on Christmas, per order of the court.

Christmas came and went, as did the New Year celebration.

Alan never saw or spoke to his kids.

The issue now became, not if Alan Bates would ever see his children again, but where, exactly, was Jessica hiding them.

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By the end of January 2001, Alan still could not find Jessica or the kids. It consumed him. He was torn over not being able to maintain any type of ongoing relationship with his girls. He feared the worst—that Jessica had taken off, out of the state or the country. Alan and Terra had taken the kids into their Maryland home that previous summer, but after dropping them off a few weeks before school started in August, they had not heard from them since.

Five months. Not a peep.

The stress began to wear on Alan. All that time he had spent with the kids over the previous summer, building up their confidence, was now, undoubtedly, being deprogrammed out of them by Jessica and her twisted lies.

“Look,” Kevin Bates said, “she never really had a job, so she never had any money, and when the kids wanted to have things and she couldn’t buy them, after having used the child support that Alan gave her every month, she started to tell the kids, ‘Oh, your dad is not paying me child support, so we have to eat rice every night.’”

Had it all started again? Jessica telling the children Alan was a deadbeat dad who didn’t want to see them? Alan could only imagine what she might be saying now that she owed jail time to the court.

Jessica knew the more time the kids spent with Alan, the better the chances were that they’d realize he wasn’t some sort of one-eyed hideous monster she’d made him out to be. Sooner or later, as the kids grew, they were going to figure out that she had been the liar all along—that is,
if
they continued to see Alan.

On February 8, 2001, the court postponed the Bates/McCord trial until May 15. There had been over a year of postponements by this point. The date gave Alan no repose. He was certain Jessica planned not to show up. How could the woman be jailed, held in contempt or follow the court’s ruling—if she had been on the run?

When Alan understood that any hope of a civil (or legal) arrangement was dashed by Jessica’s inability to live up to her obligations, it “threw him for a loop,” family members said. “At this point,” Kevin Bates added, “my brother began to see and realize how much damage her behavior was doing to the children—all for her own gain.”

To see his kids being used and abused tore the man apart. He needed to end it—to do something. Alan wanted to reach out to the kids and explain what was going on.

“Alan doesn’t get to the point to where he wants to file for custody until very, very late in the game,” Robert Bates added. “The court action he took was, simply, to enforce the visitation rights he had in place already.”

Jessica knew how to work the system. Alan had believed the system was going to protect him. She was sentenced to jail and she was dodging the court and the sheriff. What else could Alan do?

He was powerless.

In all of this, Terra became Alan’s anchor, his best friend. The woman he could turn to and vent his frustrations. She never judged. She stood behind him, and encouraged Alan to do whatever was necessary to see that his children were taken care of. Despite how much money it cost. How long it took. Or where they had to travel to get the job done.

Why?
Alan wondered.
Why is Jessica being so difficult?

Kevin and Robert could see it on Alan’s face every time they saw him.

Why?

Jessica was only hurting the kids. It didn’t matter who was right, who was wrong. That simple rule whereby whatever divorced parents did affected the children was so true. However Jessica and Alan acted in front of the kids would reflect how the kids turned out as adults. Look at Jessica. Her life was a case study, in and of itself. According to what she had said, her father used her and her siblings as pawns after her parents divorced—and here she was doing the same damn thing.

Jessica later reflected on this period of her life, saying, “I don’t recall ever boasting and laughing about denying Alan anything. . . . I wasn’t angry at Alan that he was going to see the kids. I thought that would have been nice. . . .” In regard to picking up the children, or telling them Alan was on the way, Jessica said, “You know . . . you have to keep in mind that a lot of times he didn’t come. So I don’t know that the children put a lot of stock in me saying, ‘You’re going with your dad for the weekend, or you’re leaving with them at such and such time. ’” Jessica said there were times when “we were sitting by the door waiting . . . and many times he was not [there]. And, frequently, he wouldn’t call, either. So I think it was kind of old hat for the kids for him not to come.”

Lies.
That is how Alan’s family and friends summed up this statement Jessica made in court. There was documentation and anecdotal evidence proving Alan did everything in his power to see and speak to his children. It was Jessica who outright refused to allow him to do either.

Jessica knew Alan’s lawyer was not going to let up. The more she pushed, the harder and more forceful Frank Head was going to pull. So Jessica called out to Jeff one night. It was before the new school year started. They were home, according to Jeff. She needed something done.

Jeff ran over. “What is it?”

By this time Jessica knew she was going to have to do some jail time at some point. There was no way to avoid it. That said, the court still had to serve her papers or, by Jessica’s view, find her before it could uphold the order.

“Take the mailbox down,” Jessica told Jeff.

“What?” Jeff didn’t understand. Did she want him to repair it? Was it broken? What the hell was she talking about now?

“Take it down! They cannot serve me if they don’t know where we live.”

Jessica was “tired” of the letters from Frank Head’s office, anyway, she told Jeff. This custody matter and all the paperwork was getting out of hand.

Out of sight, out of mind.

“Okay,” Jeff said.

“If the deputies come around here,” Jessica concluded, “and they’re looking for me, or somebody comes to try and serve papers, you tell them you don’t know where I am. You got that?”

Jeff thought about it. “Yes.”