Death Trap (23 page)

38

Naomi got a call on June 26, 2001, a day after Jessica had turned thirty. It was not a happy occasion. “Can you believe he forgot my birthday?” an impatient, agitated Jessica announced.

Naomi had not been over to the Myrtlewood Drive house since Jessica and Jeff had moved in. Naomi worked two jobs. She had a husband and kids to take care of. She was busy tending to her own life. Jessica was high maintenance. She never reached out to say hello, or stopped over to just hang out. There was always a dilemma or a problem when Jessica came knocking. For Naomi, phone calls would have to do right now. She was far too busy to deal with Jessica’s instability.

Not too long after this, Jessica said she was pregnant with Jeff’s child. She was going to have another baby. Later that summer, while Jessica was “seven or eight months” into the pregnancy, Jessica called Naomi.

It was late at night. The call was unexpected. “I need to stop by and drop a box off,” Jessica stated.

“A box?”

“Yes. We’re on our way to California and you’re on my way.”

“No problem, come on over.”

Jessica, the kids and Jeff walked into Naomi’s house that night. Jeff sat on the couch, Naomi said, “stone-faced. He had this look to him.” He didn’t talk. Barely moved. No emotion. Flat.

Jessica put the box in the basement. Came back up the stairs and said they were leaving. Naomi knew she was definitely pregnant this time because Jessica looked it.

Off they went.

A few days later, Jessica sent Naomi a postcard letting her know they had arrived in California without a problem.

You know, I’m awfully worried about you,
Naomi thought, staring at Jessica’s postcard.

“She should not have been on the road at that point in her pregnancy,” Naomi recalled later.

 

 

Jessica’s new attorney managed to convince Frank Head they needed another postponement for the trial.

Frank said okay. Still, he needed to get Jeff McCord into his office for a court-ordered deposition, which Jeff, playing the same game as his wife, had been putting off. As of late, Frank Head had not heard from Jeff or Jessica.

Meanwhile, it was the middle of the summer and Alan didn’t have his kids. Furthermore, Alan still didn’t know which school the kids were attending. Or if Jessica, who had said she was planning on homeschooling them, had acquired her certificate and was teaching them herself.

Maybe it was time, Alan considered, to just sue for full custody? He had talked it over with Terra. His family. Nothing else seemed to be working.

The trial date was postponed again, this time to July 31, 2001.

Alan’s blood boiled. He couldn’t even get a day in court anymore. Jessica came up with every excuse imaginable, and the court was allowing it.

Because of privacy issues, the trail of red tape to get information from the school system—even though Alan was the father of the girls—turned out to be as long as this postdivorce fight. There was no end to how much the system wasn’t working for Alan. Sooner or later, he knew, the authorities would catch up with Jessica, arrest her and cart her off to jail. But what about right now? What about the welfare of the children today? Who was watching them? He had not seen or heard from them in almost a full year.

July came and the court postponed the trial
again,
this time to September 19, 2001. This mess of Jessica’s contempt charge had gone on now, well over a year. Alan began to wonder if he would ever see Jessica in a court of law.

 

 

On September 28, 2001, Jessica gave birth to Brian (pseudonym), a healthy baby boy. Her and Jeff’s first child together. With Jessica in the hospital, postdeliv-ery, Naomi paid her a visit. She wanted to see the new baby. Of course, Naomi had no idea what was going on behind the scenes. She didn’t know Jessica and Jeff were basically hiding out. Nor did she have any clue that deputies were looking for her friend. What she did know, however, was only what Jessica had told her—that she was “in and out of court” and there were more court dates coming.

In reality—Jessica hadn’t been to court in years.

When Naomi arrived at the hospital, Brian was in the nursery getting several of his shots. Jessica was in bed. She looked beaten and bitter. Not even a visit by her friend had brought a smile. At one time Jessica was a beautiful woman. Long, flowing hair. Clear skin. Great shape. Inspiring attitude. Now she was a thirty-year-old mother of four, countless abortions behind her, fighting a battle with her ex-husband that she could never win in the long run. No career. No schooling to fall back on. Married to a cop she had apparently hooked up with out of necessity.

A train wreck.

“The baby’s not here,” Jessica told Naomi.

“It’s okay,” Naomi said. She understood. No problem. Another time. How ’bout the two of them just sit and chat. Like old times.

Jeff was there. As usual, he sat and said nothing. The man just stared and looked at Jessica whenever she barked an order.

Naomi was sitting when Jessica picked up the phone and berated a nurse for no apparent reason. “Get my child in here right now!” Jessica screamed. She wanted the baby in the room so she could show him off to her visitor.
“Now.”

Naomi was embarrassed. “Look, I have all afternoon, Jessica. I can wait. Don’t worry about it.”

Jessica didn’t care. “Bring the baby in here right now!” she kept yelling into the phone.

Jeff never moved. Never said a word. Just another day in the life of Jessica McCord. Flip the page of a magazine and do what she says. Life was so much easier that way.

 

 

Georgetown Place is what they call the grounds surrounding three-acre Batson Lake, which is located in Hoover on eight acres of unspoiled landscape. There’s playground equipment and plenty of things for the kids to do on the lake grounds. There’s a gazebo at the end of a dock, out on the water. In winter months the place is all but deserted. Jessica and Jeff lived down the street from the lake and passed by a certain area of the park whenever they left their house. In fact, their Myrtlewood Drive home was on the same street as the park entrance.

After Jeff nestled the kids into their car seats and left his house on the morning of November 21, 2001, turning right at the north side of the lake, heading toward Dundale Road, he noticed a car get up behind him, he later said.

Odd, this time of the morning,
Jeff thought.
Especially here.

It was obvious the car had been waiting for him to leave.

According to Jeff, the man driving that car was Alan. Fed up with Jessica’s refusal to allow him to see his children, Alan had decided it was time to do something about it himself, Jeff said.

“I was not aware of any reason for him to be there,” Jeff said later. “We had not received [anything], no phone calls, no certified mail, nothing in the mail, no messages regarding this [visit]. . . .”

How in the world could they?

Anyway, Alan stayed on Jeff’s tail, following him closely behind. They traveled into downtown Hoover via the interstate. Then into Green Valley, where Jeff picked up his pace and led Alan into a subdivision before heading into Pelham—where, of course, Jeff had plenty of friends.

Jeff said he was scared. Jessica had primed him with a version of Alan replete with “rage,” he said, “anger, domestic violence, whatever.” Whether it was true was beside the point. Jeff was under the impression, he later claimed, that it was. “I’m just taking her word for it.”

And now here’s Alan, following him like some madman.

As Jeff got closer to the Pelham PD, Alan backed off, he said, realizing that Jeff was not going to stop. Confronting the guy in the parking lot of the police department where he worked was probably not the best idea.

Jeff claimed he dropped the kids off at the sitter’s after Alan took off. Then he went to work. Grabbed an officer, one of his coworkers, and asked him to fill out a report. He certainly wasn’t going to be harassed by Jessica’s crazy ex-husband.

39

In between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Alan’s lawyer bombarded the court with motions. He also filed several subpoena requests for school records. The court still could not find Jessica or the children. She was either keeping them out of school, homeschooling them, or they had moved far away. The fact alone that Frank Head had done all this work—not to mention that Alan lived nine hundred miles away—was a good indication that Jeff was either lying about Alan following him that day, or—in a paranoid state Jessica had induced—he had convinced himself that a stranger was Alan.

Frank Head filed a motion for a December 11, 2001, hearing date to hash out what was turning into a legal quagmire. The woman was breaking so many different laws. Where was the accountability, and what was the court doing to find her? Thus far, it appeared that the court hadn’t done much to serve an arrest warrant.

In turn, the Eighteenth Judicial Circuit Court of Shelby County rubber-stamped two Failure to Abide by Previous Order of the Court orders by Alan and issued another series of arrest warrants.

It did no good.

As it turned out, Jessica had been hanging around Brad Tabor’s place during this period of time. Unbeknownst to Brad, she and Jeff and the kids were hiding out. Brad even babysat the kids from time to time. But when Jessica didn’t show up on time to drop off the girls, Brad called her. One such day he asked what was going on.

True to her nature, Jessica found a way to blame Alan: “Kelley has the girls,” Jessica said breathlessly, “in the car . . . and they’re . . . Alan had been following them. He’s not bringing them home because he doesn’t want Alan to know where we live.” She made the implication that Alan was a raging lunatic, looking to cause violence.

A day later, Brad called Jessica to ask what was going on. Why all the fuss about Alan knowing where she lived?

“I’m concerned Alan is going to win custody,” Jessica said. She sounded dismayed.

“Really?”

“It’s the homeschooling. That’s what’s going to win it for him.” Jessica was never licensed to homeschool the kids. In addition to everything else, she had lied about that, too.

Brad didn’t know what to say. Jessica mentioned jail. Brad had no idea things had spiraled so out of control.

“I can’t lose the girls, Brad, and the child support. I
need
that money.”

 

 

Jessica liked to say she and her children had a “close relationship.” She could always talk to them, she insisted, about anything. And yet what she claimed to have talked to them about at times bordered on the psychotic and bizarre, considering how young they were.

“And when they were growing up,” Jessica admitted, “you know, all along the years, they would ask me things, have questions after watching a TV show about maybe drug usage or premarital sex, which, I mean, I had premarital sex and was not married when I had them. (Not true.) We would have separate conversations about each of these things and about just different types of values that we found to be important.” Jessica instilled in her kids, she claimed, not to “have preconceived notions about other people, because you’re not that person. You haven’t lived their life. You don’t know! How road rage is just crazy, because you’re driving down a road and you don’t know why this person cut you off in a car. You don’t know.”

She went on to explain why we receive tax refunds “and that you don’t have to take that money,” she told them, “if you don’t want to. . . . That’s a choice you make as a member of society. You have to pay your taxes, but you don’t have to take extra back.”

Did it make sense to share this with ten- and eight-year-old children?

Jessica thought so.

She also described how geometry works and her idea behind Einstein’s theory of relativity. “A lot of what we learn is perception . . . and that was what I taught my children. I would want them to continue to understand that things are fluid, things change, and simply because one person says that’s an absolute, it may not be. . . .”

Jessica was later diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD). According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH),
[BPD] is a serious mental illness characterized by pervasive instability in moods, interpersonal relationships, self-image, and behavior. This instability often disrupts family and work life, long-term planning, and the individual’s sense of self-identity. Originally thought to be at the “borderline” of psychosis, people with BPD suffer from a disorder of emotion regulation.
¹

This description would serve to illustrate Jessica’s behavior inside the next three months, almost as if it were written specifically for her. One of the worst fears a person suffering from BPD can face is the thought that their most sacred possession in life will be taken away.

This, many doctors agree, can cause a person with BPD to spin entirely out of control.

 

 

On December 18, 2001, Jeff and Jessica were at their Myrtlewood Drive home with the kids. Jessica knew she was in violation of the law. She’d been keeping the kids away from Alan for well over a year. He had not even spoken to them.

While the McCords were inside, there was some movement outside the house.

Jeff looked out the window. He knew what it was. So did Jessica.

The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office (JCSO), along with an officer from the Hoover PD, was in front of the McCord home. From the bathroom window upstairs, behind the blinds, Jeff watched the two vehicles pull up.

Pulling away from the blinds, Jeff heard the car doors slam.

“Can I help you guys?” Jeff asked, meeting them outside in the driveway moments later.

Jessica was upstairs in the master bedroom. According to her, she had just woken up. It was early morning. “We were all still in bed,” she recalled, “in pajamas and everything, watching Martha Stewart on TV.”

Law enforcement had an arrest warrant. Jessica was being charged with contempt. She was going to jail for not allowing Alan to see his kids—the judge had
warned
her repeatedly.

“I could hear them,” Jessica said, “discussing that there was some sort of an order relating to the children and an order for my arrest.”

“Some sort of an order,” as if she had no idea why they were there.

In fact, Jessica later claimed she had no idea an arrest warrant had been issued for her. She insisted that no one had told her about it.

“Yeah, can I see your documentation?” Jeff asked. The kids were upstairs with their mom, listening. They “became very upset. Very, very upset,” Jessica said.

The girls cried, she claimed. Jessica tried calming them. She said she explained what was going on. “Preparing them,” she called it. Again, this was after first saying she had no idea why the cops were at her house.

Jeff looked over the paperwork downstairs. It all seemed legit.

Why was he stalling?

“Does this order amount to a search warrant?” Jeff asked. He knew the law.

No answer.

“Well,
does
it?” he asked again.

If it didn’t, he said, law enforcement was not allowed into the house to search for Jessica. They would have to wait outside.

Instead, Jeff claimed, the sheriffs walked past him toward the door, one of them asking, “Is she here?”

Jeff opened the door. “Come right in.”

“Where is she?”

Jeff looked at the paperwork again.

“We’re separated,” he said, walking in behind them. He was trying to say that he and Jessica had split up. “She’s not here.”

Downstairs, undeterred, one of the sheriffs asked Jeff, “Where is she?”

By this point Jessica had told the children that the cops were there to take her away. “Well,” one of them said (if you believe Jessica), “just say you’re Auntie.”

“No, baby,” Jessica said, “that’s not really going to fly. They are police. That won’t work.”

“Oh yes, it will, Mommy. Yes, it will.”

The kids hugged her.

Downstairs, Jeff looked away after he was asked for a third time if Jessica was home. Then, “I have no idea where she or the girls are, sorry.”

There was movement in the house. One of the deputies heard this and headed up the stairs.

He found Jessica in the master bedroom with the kids.

“Are you Jessica Bates McCord?”

“Auntie . . . Auntie . . . Auntie,” the kids chanted, according to Jessica.

“That’s my aunt,” one of the girls said.

“I’m Belinda (pseudonym), Jessica’s sister,” Jessica said (according to several reports of this incident).

The sheriff was suspicious. It was the way Jessica had answered.

“Why are you here?” the sheriff asked. “Where is Jessica?”

“Um, Jessica left a couple of months ago and we haven’t seen her.”

“Well, why are you here with the kids? Aren’t these Jessica’s kids?” The sheriff then asked the children their names, knowing they were Jessica’s kids. They had a court order, which had the names of the girls. They were supposed to pick them up, too.

Jessica thought about the question. “Well, Jessica ran off because she caught me in bed with Kelley.”

Interesting excuse to give when hiding your identity.

One of the sheriffs called a supervisor to see if someone could dig up a photograph of Jessica and send it over. They also wanted fingerprints so they could verify she wasn’t lying.

As they discussed this, Jessica “admitted” who she was to the sheriffs.

After a bit of small talk, Jessica was handcuffed and taken outside. The story she told upstairs, the sheriff later said, “didn’t jibe with us.”

Inside the sheriff’s car, preparing to leave for Shelby County Jail, Jessica broke down. She started bawling. Hyperventilating. She was scared, she claimed.

After crying for a spell, she got angry. Then she snapped out of it and said, “This isn’t fair. Somebody’s going to pay for this!”