Death Trap (28 page)

PART V

THE BRINK OF ETERNITY

53

Jessica and Jeff McCord were tight-lipped and unified after capital charges for felony murder were filed on February 22, 2002. Neither was ready to throw the other under a bus, just yet. Jessica wouldn’t talk at all. Jeff babbled in circles. Now it was up to prosecutor Roger Brown to make sure all the evidence the Hoover PD had collected, while working in tandem with the Bureau, would serve to convince a jury that the McCords were guilty as charged.

The Edgewood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham was buzzing with talk after Jessica’s arrest. Many relatives from her mother’s side were members of the church. The pastor, Sid Burgess, focused much of his Sunday, February 24, sermon on “fellow parish member” Jessica Inez Callis Bates McCord.

The title of the sermon spoke to the church’s reaction to the charges against its member: “Still ‘Open-Hearted, ’ Still ‘Open-Minded.’”

There was going to be no judging going on inside the walls of Edgewood. Jessica was going to be given the benefit of the doubt.

“Right here, right now,” Burgess preached from the pulpit that morning, “this congregation has been rocked on its very foundation. . . .”

Burgess then explained how murder charges had been brought “against one of our own.” He called Jessica a “third-generation member.” He spoke of the “headlines” in the newspapers and the “highlights” on television. He mentioned how Jessica’s family had been pillars inside the Edgewood church community for “almost sixty years.” He asked parishioners, after listing all the health problems Jessica’s family had endured throughout the years, to be there, as the church itself would be, for Jessica, Dian and Inez, Jessica’s grandmother. The “embarrassment, the pain and agony, now the anguish of a daughter and granddaughter charged with a capital offense, we, their brothers and sisters,” he shouted, pumping his fist, “must also share.”

The pastor next poeticized how Jesus had taken up His cross. Then asked those who believed in Him to stand by His side, follow and do the same for Inez, Dian and Jessica.

Unity.

Jessica’s church family was a devoted group of Christians—no doubt about it. Pastor Burgess spoke of how, during the week leading up to that Sunday’s service, he thought perhaps he could “duck” out of talking about the case “up here in the pulpit.” But after seeing the effect the news had on church members during the week, crying for Jessica’s “innocent children,” coming together and “openly weeping” for Dian, Inez and Jessica, there was no way he could deny his flock his shoulder. So he decided to take the difficult path and confront the issue head-on.

“How can a pastor not at least try to address such heartfelt pain?”

“Open-Minded, Open-Hearted” was this church’s slogan. Local television cameras showed file shots of the building during the nightly news—and there was that recognizable bumper sticker from the church with that so-familiar slogan plastered on the back of Jessica’s vehicle as it was towed away by the police.

By the end of his impassioned and compassionate sermon, Burgess said that while the “larger community” was prepared to “give up on Jessica McCord,” God was not. Even if she was to be ultimately found guilty, he explained, “we know God has a history of redeeming murderers.”

Ending the sermon, he compared Jessica to Saul on the road to Damascus, and recalled how Jesus was able to convince this onetime Christian basher and nonbeliever to drop everything and follow Him.

54

The first the public heard regarding details of the crimes came during a probable cause hearing, on Thursday, April 4, 2002. There was one witness on hand to lay out the state’s case against Jeff and Jessica McCord—Detective Sergeant Tom McDanal.

During the hearing McDanal called Albert Bailey a “suspect” who had not been charged yet. The theory was that Albert had helped Jessica and Jeff cover up their crimes by willfully and willingly dumping evidence.

The murders were a family affair, apparently.

Jessica’s court-appointed attorneys argued vehemently against the treatment their client had received since charges were filed. They even hinted at the notion that one possible defense might be police misconduct, citing the notion that the Hoover PD did not have probable cause to search the McCord home. They also suggested that “Jeff McCord’s position as a police officer influenced Hoover investigators.”

“Someone made the McCords a suspect even before there was a body found,” one of Jessica’s defense attorneys said. Then, at one point, Tom McDanal was asked, “Was there acrimony between your department and his department? Did the Hoover Police Department have any problems with a police officer from another department living in your jurisdiction?”

“No,” McDanal said in his terse, matter-of-fact demeanor. It was preposterous to think that police officers would go after another cop like that, especially with two people dead and an investigatory clock ticking. Moreover, the bodies of Terra and Alan Bates had been recovered almost first thing that morning.

The attorney asked about other suspects—why, for example, had the Hoover PD failed to explore other leads?

“It was pretty obvious we were on the right track,” McDanal said.

Judge R. O. Hughes ultimately agreed with the prosecution ; there was sufficient evidence to send the case to a grand jury.

After that, the notion of Jessica’s health came up. After all, she was pregnant again. She had not been lying about that little detail. By now, she was starting to show. Neither she nor Jeff had a history of violent crime convictions (save for that little attack on Alan that had caused him a broken arm). Her attorneys wanted to see them both out on bond. It was only fair.

“She is at a great risk of losing the baby,” her lawyer explained.

Roger Brown argued against this, making his point quite clearly, if not candidly. “This is a potential death penalty case. [These were] vicious, brutal killings. These are dangerous people and they need to stay in jail.”

The judge considered both arguments.

“Bond denied.”

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It did not take long for Jessica to cause problems from behind bars. In an almost relentless manner, she sent Judge R. O. Hughes letters. Long, tedious, accusatory and—well, in the end—pathetic diatribes describing the conditions of her imprisonment and the fact that her court-appointed attorneys were acting
extremely unethical,
she wrote. Jessica demanded that her legal team be replaced:
I cannot work with them.
She accused them of asking her to
commit perjury [and] injure another client of theirs.

As they headed toward the end of 2002, it appeared that Jessica and Jeff were going to be tried together the following year, 2003. The Hoover PD was still working on Jeff. Roger Brown’s crack investigative team was trying to break the fallen cop, hoping he might cut a deal. Then the focus could be put exclusively on Jessica.

Jessica was not going to back down. She was in this for the long haul. She told anyone who would listen that she was innocent. She was going to prove it when she had her day in court.

Pregnant, Jessica was scheduled to give birth in the neighborhood of mid-to-late September. She and Jeff’s case was transferred to Judge Virginia Vinson’s Tenth Judicial Circuit Court in downtown Birmingham. Vinson, a stunning middle-aged woman with short brown hair and a charming smile, was fairly new to the chamber. She had been a Criminal Division judge since January 2001. A graduate from Samford University and the Birmingham School of Law, Vinson had nineteen years in private practice behind her as half of Wilkinson & Vinson before taking on the thankless job of criminal court judge. If there was one thing about Judge Vinson everyone could agree on, it was her tenacity to run a tight ship, and not to allow cases to fall on the conveyor belt of postponement. She kept her attorneys on schedule and focused on moving their cases forward. In learning that Jessica was in the final trimester of her fifth pregnancy, Vinson issued an order to keep the double-murder suspect’s court appearances to a minimum until after she had the baby. There was no need to put any additional stress—other than what she was going through already—on the accused murderer and mother-to-be.

After getting word of the judge’s decision from family members, Jessica became irate. She was appalled that her case was being held up. The idea that she could not argue for bond in Vinson’s courtroom before having the baby brought tears to her eyes, she said in letters. It wasn’t fair. She needed to be home with her husband, preparing for the birth. The prosecution had not proven a thing! What about being considered innocent before being proven guilty?

On the night of September 25, 2002, five days past her due date, Jessica wrote the judge a long letter, describing her feelings. It turned into what was a ten-page, single-spaced missive, replete with accusations and speculations, random thoughts and a complete firsthand account of Jessica’s opinion of prison life.

Jessica wrote that she’d had her hopes set high that she was going to make bond, now that a criminal judge was behind the gavel. Maybe a criminal judge, if no one else, would see how she and Jeff needed to be together, not only to give birth to the child, but to begin to build a credible defense.
Obviously,
Jessica wrote,
waiting means that my husband and I will be separated for the birth. . . .
She said she wouldn’t have any support if that were the case. It appeared that Detective Laura Brignac’s wish—that Jessica would give birth alone, and the child would be quickly taken from her arms—was about to come true. And it was clear that Jessica was scared to death of that happening. She wrote how she was
terrified to give birth alone.

After she had the child, Jessica wrote to Judge Vinson, within forty-eight hours,
I will be forced to leave my newborn.
There would be no bonding or breast-feeding. She talked about how she’d had a history of postpartum problems and medical difficulties:
I have nearly bled to death. . . .
She begged for bond,
Please
give it to us now.

As the letter continued, Jessica spoke of how the last seven months had been hell on her and Jeff
because of the accusation.
She wrote she
deserved a chance.
But she realized that in the real world you were guilty before you were able to prove innocence. She called herself a
decent
human being.
Then she promised she would, when given the opportunity in a court of law, prove her innocence as well as her husband’s. Still, with all that said, if the court took away the moment of birth between a husband and his wife, such a special time, it was something—a memory—she and Jeff could never recover.

Lost forever.

For another half a page, Jessica ranted about how the system was designed in favor of the prosecution. As much as she understood the reasons behind it, she was only asking for a chance to spend that mother-child connection time before trial with her newborn. She had been on bed rest, in isolation, in the medical block of the jail since August 18. She wrote she had been
assaulted, threatened, harassed.
None of the deputies inside the jail, she wrote, would help her. Instead of making out a complaint, she wrote, they laughed in her face, saying,
“Get over it.”

There was never any evidence presented to support these accusations. On top of that, this would become a common battle cr y of Jessica’s: that the prison system, correctional officers and anybody else working for the legal system were out to get her; that conditions inside the prison were unbearable; and that the prison monitored everything Jessica did, said and wrote.

Indeed, prison life was no vacation from life.

On another page Jessica gave an evaluation of the psych ward she had been once placed in. It was full of—you guessed it—mental patients. She wrote how many of them
urinate and defecate everywhere except in the toilet.
When the women menstruate, she added,
blood is everywhere.
They brought one woman into the ward who had complained of having ants and maggots in her cell bed. She was placed next to Jessica:
She was bitten by the ants, yet nobody did anything. . . .

Hell on earth.

Nobody had explained to Jessica, obviously, that less was more—because for the next five pages of the letter, all she did was accuse doctors and guards, inmates and the justice system as a whole, of being out to punish her. She made claims of doctors watching her bleed and not helping, of cellmates preventing her from buzzing the nurse, of guards not allowing her to take showers or to use the bathroom. She had no TV, no radio, no contact with the outside world. The emotional stress was crippling. Yet, there was one thing that hurt more than anything else, she revealed: Albert Bailey, her stepfather, had died back on June 25 (Jessica’s thirty-first birthday) from a reported heart attack, and
I was denied a family grieving visit . . . my grandfather passed away [last] April and I couldn’t go to his funeral.
She hadn’t seen her kids in months. She wasn’t being allowed to write to Jeff. She was fed poorly. Many of the food servers in the jail were
HIV positive and have hepatitis,
she lamented. Inmates were required to wash their undergarments in the sinks and toilets inside their cells if they wanted them cleaned. She quoted an article from
American Baby
magazine describing how breast-fed babies were more unlikely to get ear infections. Then she broke off into a rant about the scores of diseases she and her newborn could get inside the prison. She promised the judge she’d meet any conditions asked of her by the court if the judge let her out on bond. Psych exams, she wrote,
to demonstrate my mental state and lack of hostility.
She said she’d check in daily with the powers that be. She wasn’t running. She just wanted to be with her newborn, husband and children.

I am a good person. . . . I am innocent,
she wrote, but not before begging one last time for
a chance.

The judge took everything Jessica said seriously. Thought about it. Then she kept the court’s order and denied Jessica McCord bond.

 

 

Jessica had her baby. Not long after the delivery, the infant was taken from her and placed with family members. Jessica was now the jailed mother of five. Christmas, 2002, came, and New Year’s Eve chimed in with a bang as word came down that Jeff McCord was getting a separate trial. Inside Jeff’s camp the discussion centered on the possibility of him taking a deal to avoid any chance of facing a jury that held his life in its hands. Jeff’s trial was scheduled for April, but Jessica would face a judge and jury first.

As Jeff contemplated his future, Jessica got busy doing the only thing she really knew how to do at this point: scribing more missives to Judge Vinson. This, mind you, as it was announced that Jessica’s trial was set to begin as early as February 12, 2003—almost a year to the day that she had allegedly masterminded and, with Jeff, carried out a plot to murder Alan and Terra.

This recent letter was shorter than those preceding it. Once again Jessica wanted Judge Vinson to know that she was not happy with her counsel. She demanded that the court appoint her new attorneys. She said her lawyers were not devoting enough time to preparing her case.

I find this to be intolerable,
she wrote. She wanted an
immediate hearing to rectify the problem.
She said she had written every week since she was indicted late the previous year, and she was certain that the jail personnel was tampering with her mail.

The same old story. A broken freakin’ record.

By the end of the one-page letter, however, Jessica made a grave mistake—that is, if she was ever hoping to reach the judge on a personal level.

She blamed her legal woes on Judge Vinson. Jessica claimed that by the judge’s denial of her bond, Vinson had forced her to compromise her defense. Jessica wrote that the
prosecution [was taking any] action [necessary], legal or illegal, to manipulate [her] conviction.
A fair trial, in Jessica’s humble opinion, was now going to be impossible.

The court sent Jessica a form to fill out requesting new counsel. It was An Explanation of Your Complaint. It made the inmate state his or her case in writing, certifying that the words on the page were correct—and that he or she would be willing to sign a statement under oath. Jessica had her formal complaint notarized on January 8, 2003. Attached to it was a five-page explanation by Jessica of all the problems she’d allegedly had while incarcerated. It was a toned-down version of her previous diatribes to the judge.

A day later, Jessica sent a second letter “to whom it may concern,” this time trying to verify receipt of the complaint. Again she talked about her mail being tampered with and—in not so many words—how the entire prison system was out to get her. She also mentioned the idea that she wanted to file multiple complaints.

The loss of control Jessica had in her life—being confined to jail and unable to find out what was going on or to call people and tell them off and to manipulate those in her life—was eating her up inside. You can sense it in the pages of her letters. The desperation. The lack of ability to let go. The impossibility to manage her own impulse to reach out and attack people. Jessica McCord could not shut up, do her time and wait for her chance to speak in court. She had to get her hands wet. As she had done with Alan all those years, she believed she could influence the court system enough to play by her rules. She obviously thought that by writing the letters, filing complaints, making erroneous accusations against anyone not on her side, she would one day see freedom—that someone would listen and understand and fight for her cause. She wrote letters to a judge of the court, asking question after question, expecting, somehow, that in the simple act of asking, the allegations alone would free her. There was never one bit of remorse, accountability or sorrow for the deaths of Alan and Terra, regardless if she was responsible or not. She never once mentioned the fact that her children were now without a father. The letters focused entirely on her own needs. Symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder bled from every stroke of her pen. Jessica failed to recognize or understand—or maybe thought she was beyond reproach to face double-murder charges—that two people had been viciously mowed down with a hail of bullets, and the evidence—all of it—pointed to her and her husband.