Death Trap (30 page)

59

During a break for lunch on Thursday, Brown indicated that he was likely going to wrap up his case by day’s end. He was confident in the few witnesses he and Hodge had left. If you’re Roger Brown, you want to end a trial for double murder on a high note. As a prosecutor, you want the jury to have all the information it needs without clogging up the case with unnecessary odds and ends. “Thank God,” Brown told me later, “this type of crime is so rare. It’s so nonsensical. Ludicrous. One of the stupidest things I have ever seen in my career. All over a child custody battle. Jessica McCord didn’t give a
flip
about her kids. She used them to torture Alan Bates.”

The trial had gone as Brown had anticipated. “Look,” he added, “I know people expect it to sound like some mystic stuff, but trial preparation and following through is not. After you do it five hundred times, you don’t really think about what you do. It’s kind of instinctual. The Hoover PD and the GBI did a great, terrific job.”

As day two moved into late afternoon, Roger Brown and Laura Hodge had Hoover PD detectives Peyton Zanzour and Rod Glover carry what
Birmingham News
reporter Carol Robinson, inside the courtroom covering every nuance of the case, called “the star in the courtroom.” But it was not one of Brown and Hodge’s witnesses. Instead, the detectives placed that black leather sofa in front of the jury. The one Albert Bailey had transported around town a day after the murders, only to drop it off in back of a warehouse building next to a Dumpster. The prosecution had the sofa brought into the room to show the jury how it had been stripped of its backing.

This was the couch, Brown insisted, that Alan and Terra sat on as they were shot to death. The backing had been taken off, obviously, because it had bullet holes and blood. Looking at the couch, one could easily figure there would be no other reason to strip it like it had been, other than to hide something. Why would you strip a couch halfway and then discard it? That wasn’t rational behavior.

To explain the sofa, among other details of the case that had been uncovered, Brown called GBI agent Kimberly Williams.

Williams pointed out from the stand that yes, the couch tested positive for blood. But no, it was not Alan’s or Terra’s DNA profile. Still, what the lab had found instead of blood was perhaps much more telling: a certain common household chemical.

 

 

On cross-examination John Wiley tried to poke holes in the fact that Jessica and Jeff gave Agent Williams and Investigator Sheron Vance different times for dropping the kids off at Jessica’s mother’s house on the night of the murders. But he got nowhere. Then he started in on the couch and how Williams had drawn conclusions—speculations—about it.

In response to Williams not answering the way Wiley had perhaps wanted, Brown asked Williams on redirect, “Mr. Wiley asked you about this [sofa] being luminoled and revealing the presence of blood. What else did that luminol reveal? Did it reveal the presence of bleach?”

“Yes, sir,” Williams answered.

“Where it had been wiped?”

“What appeared to be that, yes.”

Brown played a smart game. Trial lawyers liked to ask questions that they knew the answers to, not those they didn’t. John Wiley, it seemed, pulled things out of midair to try and trip up the witnesses. In Wiley’s defense, however, one would have to assume that his biggest problem in defending Jessica was that he had a pathological liar for a client.

 

 

Brown and Hodge next brought in their expert on ballistics, Ed Moran. Moran explained the details surrounding what was a compelling photograph of two bullets—one found in the trunk of Alan’s rental car, and the other found inside of the McCords’ garage—side by side. As one looked at the photo, it was not hard to tell with a naked, untrained eye that they had identical tool markings. And that, Moran explained, meant those projectiles had been fired from the same gun barrel. Now, how could a bullet fired from a weapon in the McCord home, and a bullet fired from the same barrel found underneath Alan’s body, have been fired by anybody else besides Jessica and Jeff McCord? Save for a setup, there was no other explanation.

After Moran left the stand, Brown recalled Hoover detective Peyton Zanzour, who answered one question to clear the record.

“Mr. Zanzour, I apologize,” Brown said, “I neglected to ask earlier. This location of Myrtlewood Drive, the house of the defendant and her husband, Jeff McCord, is that located in the Birmingham Division of Jefferson County, Alabama?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s all. Thank you.”

“I don’t have any questions,” John Wiley said.

“You can step down,” Judge Vinson told Zanzour.

 

 

Brown stood. Whispered something to Hodge. Then: “May it please the court,” he said, “the state rests.”

“All right. Ladies and gentlemen,” Vinson said, “this has timed out very well for our afternoon break. And always at this point in a trial, there are things I have to take up with the attorneys. So we’ll let you have your afternoon break.”

Wiley made an immediate motion for verdict of acquittal. It was based on, he said, “The state’s failure to make out a prima facie case of capital murder, just for the insufficiency of the evidence and, in particular, for the state’s failure to prove during its case that the two bodies are these of Alan and Terra Bates.”

The reach—it was worth a shot.

“I’ll overrule your motion,” the judge said politely.

Court adjourned at 3:45
P.M
.

60

On Valentine’s Day, a Friday, both sides were back in the packed courtroom by 9:00
A.M
. Roger Brown and Laura Hodge knew from speaking to Judge Vinson and John Wiley in chambers the previous afternoon that this day was going to be one of the more memorable of the trial. The gallery was a bit stirred, waiting and wondering if Jessica was going to take the stand, or would she roll the dice and keep her mouth shut. Those who knew Jessica were certain that she would demand to have the last word. There was not a situation in her life where Jessica had not given her two cents, and then some. If nothing else, she was relentless when it came to letting people know how she felt and what she thought.

After the morning gavel the judge took care of a few preliminary matters. Then John Wiley stood and, with a sense of reluctance in his voice, said, “The defense calls Jessica McCord.”

She stood. Walked to the stand like a peacock. Everyone watched. Here was the star of the show, raising her right hand, preparing to tell her side of this terrible tragedy.

There was a certain smugness to Jessica she couldn’t hide. It was in the way she carried herself. How she smiled out of the corner of her mouth. The way she looked at people and seemingly said,
How dare y’all not believe me.

All Jessica had said since her arrest was that she needed her day in court to explain her innocence. Then everyone would see that she’d had nothing to do with killing Alan and his lovely wife. Well, here was that chance.

Wiley walked Jessica through her family life.

The children.

Home.

Marriages.

She seemed nervous, Wiley pointed out. Though Jessica hardly showed it once she found her groove.

“I’m sorry,” she said after Wiley told her to relax.

As Jessica talked about meeting and marrying Alan, she expressed a version of the marriage that few had heard. She claimed she and Alan were “incompatible” on every level, especially in the bedroom, at church and at the political polls—seemingly three deal breakers in the fine print of a romance contract.

Then the attack on Alan’s fathering skills began. Jessica talked about how bad a father Alan was for not wanting to see his children or maintain any sort of regular visitation schedule with them. She gave the impression that after the divorce Alan was more interested in his work than his kids.

This raised eyebrows. But not in the way, perhaps, that Jessica might have wanted.

As she got comfortable, it was clear that Jessica McCord was not going to give brief, succinct answers to the questions her lawyer asked. Rather, she launched into tedious criticisms of Alan, his attorney and the way Alan had handled the custody matter from day one.

Bash the dead guy.

It got to a point where—taking into consideration all of the evidence the state had presented already—one had to wonder if Jessica was talking about the same person. The same life. Or even the same trial. For example, Jessica accused Frank Head of “not seeing” her in court on several of those occasions he had claimed she failed to show up for a custody hearing.

Many wondered if she was actually being serious when she said this. It was either that, or Frank Head must have been wearing a blindfold.

She even went so far as to blame Alan for the continued court postponements, saying he was always away on tour with the theater group.

To anyone who knew the history, Jessica’s answers were pathetic and so transparent that it was hard not to laugh out loud in open court.

“When did you first learn,” Wiley asked, “that the judge had held you in contempt of court and issued a warrant for your arrest?”

Jessica repeated the question.

“Yes,” Wiley affirmed.

“I did not learn that until I was arrested.”

So Jessica was theoretically asking everyone to believe that for over one year she’d had no idea an arrest warrant had been issued in her name. For twelve months she did not realize she was being held in contempt of court. Would a jury believe this, or resent the idea that Jessica felt she could get away with such an outright lie? After all, this same statement was coming from a woman whose husband was a cop at the time!

Several questions later, Wiley asked Jessica about the arrest. How she remembered that day. “And you heard testimony,” he concluded his question, “that you pretended to be your sister?”

For the record the witnesses included sheriffs, cops and attorneys.

Still, according to Jessica, they had it all wrong. “I heard that,” she said, “yes.”

“And you don’t—that’s not exactly what happened, is it?”

Jessica said no.

Wiley asked her to explain.

“Yeah, the day that they came, it was very early in the morning that day. We were all still in bed, you know, in pajamas and everything, watching Martha Stewart on TV.” One big, happy American family, in other words. Enjoying themselves as they woke up. Some were surprised Jessica had not tossed in a story about breakfast in bed to put a nice bow on it all. “And my husband heard some knocking and went around. I was using the restroom. And I could hear them discussing that there was some sort of an order relating to the children and an order for my arrest.” When she told the sheriff she was her sister, Jessica asked the jury to believe, it was more or less in a mocking fashion. She was joking. She claimed she told the children what was about to happen—that she was going to jail—and they became emotional, crying and bawling, begging her to say she was their auntie. So, to humor the kids and save them from the immediate impact of their mom being taken away in handcuffs, Jessica said she told the sheriff she was her sister. But that the sheriffs knew she was joking around.

No one bothered to point out that Jessica had just got done saying she had no idea there was an arrest warrant issued on her behalf—therefore, how could she possibly tell the children there was an order for her arrest if she didn’t know it yet?

It was all just a misunderstanding, Wiley suggested with his questioning. A way to divert the children’s attention for a moment so the impact of the arrest wouldn’t be so bad on them.

“As a matter of fact,” Jessica told the jury with a straight face, “I’m an extremely sarcastic person, and I tend to use it at inappropriate times.”

“Did it ever occur to you that you could pass yourself off as your sister with these police officers?”

“Good Lord, no,” Jessica said, a slight smile, her phony Southern belle demeanor sounding forced. “They’re experienced police officers. If somebody could pull something like that on them, they need to go back to the academy.”

As Brown and Hodge looked on, shaking their heads in disgust, the jury gave indications in their movements that they had seen through Jessica’s narcissistic, self-indulgent lies. She had made no mention of the fact that the sheriff who had arrested her had called into the department for fingerprints and a photograph, and they waited for ten to fifteen minutes in the house before Jessica finally admitted she
wasn’t
her sister.

Wiley asked Jessica to explain the previous day’s testimony from a woman Jessica had spent some time in jail with during that ten-day stint during Christmas, 2001.

“Did you ever have a conversation . . . about how you could kill your [ex-]husband and get away with it?”

“No,” Jessica said. She sounded flippant. It was as if this, too, was another misunderstanding. The woman had taken what was a joke and turned it around on her. “The longest conversation I had with [that witness] was about when the Pelham PD arrested her and how angry she was about it.” The insinuation was that since Jeff McCord was a Pelham police officer, the witness was getting back at Jessica any way she could. “Everybody down there (in the jail) knew that my husband was a Pelham police officer. Several of the girls had been arrested by Pelham, and I had a picture of my husband there. They all knew who he was.”

Over and over, Jessica bashed Alan whenever the chance arose. At one point she talked about how Alan would come to town but not visit with the children. “[B]ecause he was too busy.” She never mentioned that Alan could not find her or the kids—that she had hid out from him. Jessica said Alan had lied during the deposition, claiming that he had been denied visitation. The fact was, she said, she had never denied him anything.

Clearly, Jessica had an answer for every situation that went against her, and even some that didn’t. The reason for the bullet found in the garage was simple, Jessica explained. Jeff had misfired his gun in the house. After a complete search, however, neither she nor Jeff could find the bullet. She claimed all that talk about her saying she wanted Alan killed was a misinterpretation of the facts. Didn’t matter that three witnesses—none of whom knew each other—had testified that Jessica had said Alan would pay for what he was doing and needed to be killed. What she had actually said, Jessica tried convincing the jury, was that Jeff was a police officer, and most people had the impression that cops are “very, very aggressive” people, “when, in fact, police officers tend to be very controlled and will not just, you know, walk up on you and they’re going to draw their gun and things like that. It’s not the Wild West and people think like that.”

Her answers did not always match the questions.

For a time she played herself off as the caring ex-wife, never once saying anything bad about Alan. She certainly never “boasted and laughed about denying” him what was rightfully his. Witnesses had testified the previous day that Jessica ridiculed and taunted Alan as they left the deposition that Friday afternoon, telling him he would never see the kids again.

“I wasn’t angry at Alan that he was going to see the kids” that weekend of his death, she said. “I thought it would have been
nice
if his parents had come to town to visit with everyone here. . . .”

“And the children,” Wiley asked, “were aware that he was going to take [them that weekend of his death]?”

“You know,” Jessica said, “I told them. You have to keep in mind that a lot of [the] time, he didn’t come.”

“What do you mean?”

“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. You’re leaving with them at such and such a time.’”

“You mean there were times after the divorce when his visitation time would come and he wouldn’t appear to collect the kids?” Wiley sounded shocked by this. Alan had been portrayed during the state’s portion of the case as a loving father who was being denied visitation.

“Right,” Jessica said without missing a beat. “Again, you know, first and third [weekends] for the longest period of time until April 2000, he had first and third [weekends]. And first and thirds, six o’clock, we’re sitting by the door, waiting, you know.”

“And he’s not there?”

“Many times, he was not. And frequently he wouldn’t call, either. So, you know, I think it was just kind of old hat for the kids [to expect] him to
not
come.”

Many sat and considered how easy it was for Jessica to sit in that chair and lie. How commonplace it was for her to attack a dead man. The documentation, she must have forgotten, would tell a different story. There was page after page of affidavits, signed by Alan, resolved by judges, describing the polar opposite to what she was now trying to pimp. Yet the most laughable part of her testimony, said one source in the courtroom, was that as Jessica sat and told her tales with a straight face, she was “probably believing half of the lies herself.” She was so vain that she actually believed the jury was going to buy it all.

For a woman facing the death penalty, that could be a fatal oversight.

Jessica agreed that Alan was scheduled to pick the children up that night at her house on Myrtlewood Drive. That fact was never in dispute.

Wiley asked Jessica what she did after leaving David Dorn’s office on deposition day, February 15, 2002.

“I drove back toward Hoover,” she said. “I went to Chick-fil-A and got something to eat, and I kind of tooled around the subdivision eating it in the car so I didn’t have to share. And then I went home.” She got home around “four-thirtyish.”

According to her version, from that point on, she and Jeff collected the children (from day care and a friend’s house), then got them ready for Alan at her mom’s. As she and Jeff went about doing that, they considered going out that night for a belated Valentine’s Day celebration. It was near six o’clock when she realized that they were all at her mother’s, and Alan was on his way over to her house.

“So what, if anything, did you do then?”

“Well, let’s see . . . I kept getting ready.”

“What was your plan? I mean, the arrangement was for Alan to pick up the kids at Myrtlewood. Yet the kids were all at your mom’s?”

Roger Brown and Laura Hodge were whispering things to each other. Brown was writing viciously on a notepad in front of him.

“Right.”

“What was your plan about that?”

“Well, I had their bags packed there. I just, you know, put some clothes into a backpack of theirs. And in the event that he went to Mom’s home, Mom said she was going to put some stuff together, too, just so, you know, there was no conflict if he came there first. The kids were all playing, you know, and stuff. So it’s possible, if he had driven by, he would have seen them there and stopped there first. But my plan had been,
‘Here’s the bag, go get the kids, see you later, see you Sunday.’
”

“You know” seemed to be one of those phrases Jessica leaned on as she figured things out in her mind while in the middle of speaking.

“So, did Alan ever come by your house?”

“Not when I was there, he didn’t.”

“How long did you stay at your house?”

It was 6:30, she said, perhaps 6:40
P.M
.

“And then what did you do?”