Death Trap (33 page)

64

It didn’t take long. By 4:45
P.M
., Saturday, February 15, 2003, after just two-and-a-half hours of deliberations, the jury foreman indicated that a unanimous decision had been reached.

Jessica sat still as a leaf. No emotion whatsoever.

When polled, each member of the jury stood and answered “guilty.”

After a bit of movement amid the whispers in the courtroom, Judge Virginia Vinson explained that everyone was going to be returning on Monday morning, at which time the defense would argue for life; the state for death.

Before any of that, however, the jury would hear testimony as part of the death penalty phase. Then they could deliberate once again and make a recommendation to the judge for life or death. Would Jessica be executed for her crimes, or be sent to prison for the remainder of her natural life? Either way, the outcome was not something Jessica was going to accept without a fight.

Wiley asked the judge if Jessica could have a moment with her family before being taken to jail.

The judge did not hesitate.

“No.”

Perhaps she wasn’t in the mood to be granting a double murderer any conveniences.

Dian Bailey was on the verge of breaking down when Jessica, being escorted out of the courtroom by two guards, mouthed, “It’s okay.” Life or death was her future, but . . . it’s okay?

Members of the Bates and Klugh families cried. There was no jubilation or pending celebration in learning that what you had known all along—but had held out the slightest bit of hope was not true—was now a fact.

Jessica McCord had murdered Alan and Terra.

If anything, it was time to commemorate two lives lost and think about how the family members were going to address the one person responsible for those deaths.

 

 

Two days later, on the morning of February 17, 2003, Jessica was marshaled back into the courtroom. This time, however, she did not wear a slick blue suit coat, white shirt and black shoes with flashy buckles. She was now dressed in an Alabama Corrections Department jumper.

Dian Bailey took the stand first. Jessica’s mother told stories of Jessica being beaten as a child by her natural father, George Callis. Much of the animosity between Callis and Dian postdivorce, Dian suggested, was centered around visitation rights. The implication was that none of what Jessica had done could be considered her fault alone, simply because it had happened to her as a child. She had been hardwired.

In many ways, this was true. Yet, on the other side of the argument, how many kids out in the world had undergone the same abusive treatment and
did not
grow up to be double murderers?

 

 

Jessica testified next. She talked about her children. How much they needed her. Especially her four-month-old. She didn’t allow the young children to visit her in prison. Not because jail was not the right place for a child to see his or her mother, or the environment was not conducive to rearing children, but, Jessica said, because “there’s germs and stuff in jail.”

Jessica talked about high school and her grades. She said she had gone to a “school for the gifted.” It was, in some ways, sad to hear that a woman with so much promise as a high-school student had gotten pregnant, dropped out and then led a life of constant struggling. Jessica wanted it all, but in her mind a wonderful husband, a house and child weren’t enough. And when Alan decided to leave the marriage, well, she couldn’t take it.

She snapped.

Jessica’s tone was more subdued, now that she had been convicted. At times she drifted off into stories of sitting, talking to her children, explaining life to them.

When Roger Brown cross-examined Jessica, he focused on her and Alan’s first child—the pregnancy that led to their marriage.

“You told Kelly McCloskey (the court reporter during the deposition) . . . ‘I don’t know why he even wants [Samantha]. She’s not his.’ Is that what you said?”

“I didn’t say that to her exactly, no. And as I just stated, he is her father on her birth certificate.”

“But he’s not her father biologically?”

“No, he’s not. Not to my knowledge, he’s not.”

“So you became pregnant by someone else?”

“I became pregnant and, unfortunately, the time is in question, yes.”

“So you lied to Alan about him—”

But Jessica wouldn’t allow Brown to finish. “No.”

“—him impregnating you?”

“Absolutely not! Never. Alan was at [college] when that happened, and his entire family knows it.”

The bottom line here was that the Bates marriage was based on a lie; Alan had married Jessica out of responsibility to a child that wasn’t his.

 

 

Philip Bates, who had learned recently that he had prostate cancer, sat on the stand next. Brown questioned him about the children and their “monstrously different” attitudes whenever they came from Dian Bailey’s house. It took about two days, Philip figured, after Jessica had them, before the Bates family could get the children back into “a routine.”

Brown asked Philip if he ever asked Alan about Samantha being his child.

“On two occasions,” Philip said, “I specifically remember asking him, was he sure it was his child, and he just shrugged it off. ‘Oh, Dad, sure it is.’”

Jessica was still lying. Here she was facing her mortality, and yet still not ready to be remorseful or come to grips with the fact that she could be sentenced to death.

 

 

Both sides gave closing arguments, each, of course, standing on his side of the death penalty.

The judge told the jury what it needed to do.

The jurors returned ninety minutes later.

Life without parole was the recommendation. The vote, however, had said something about Jessica Bates McCord: seven for life, five for death. There were five human beings on that jury who believed Jessica should die for her crimes.

The judge wasn’t prepared to render her sentence just yet, though. She needed to study the evidence and read through the testimony given that day. She had to make a conscious decision based on the jury’s advice.

Word was that Jeff McCord, understanding that one jury had seen through Jessica’s lies already, wasn’t willing to roll the dice any longer. He was now itching to cut a deal.

The more compelling news, however, had little to do with Jeff or Jessica directly. Behind closed doors Roger Brown and Laura Hodge were preparing cases against two people connected to the McCords in relation to Alan’s and Terra’s murders—both of whom were about to be indicted.

65

It wasn’t necessarily closure the families wanted. Just truth. The Bateses needed to know what happened. They felt Jeff McCord could give that to them. Roger Brown waited until after Jessica’s trial, because he didn’t want one case to meddle or cause problems with the other. But Jessica had been found guilty, the jury recommending life. It was time to go to Jeff and see if he wanted to talk.

Now or never.

The state offered Jeff two consecutive life terms in trade for the truth. All of it. Step-by-step, what happened? When? Where? How?

Jeff thought about it. Jessica’s jury had spoken loud and clear. Why would a second jury believe him?

Jeff called his attorneys.

“I’ll take it.”

66

Hoover PD detective sergeant Tom McDanal asked everyone in the room if they were ready.

Head nods and “okays” followed.

“Testing, one, two, three, four . . . five,” McDanal said aloud, adjusting the tape recorder.

It was 9:20
A.M
., on April 15, 2003.

From there, Roger Brown took over. They sat inside the jury room adjacent to Judge Virginia Vinson’s courtroom. Laura Hodge sat next to Brown; McDanal there at the table next to them; Hoover PD detective Laura Brignac next to McDanal; Jeff McCord’s attorney, Mike Shores, sat next to his client.

There was a numbing sense of irony present in the room that no one needed to acknowledge. It was just there. Like the hum of the air ducts. Jeff had been in this same position in years past—but on the opposite side of the microphone. Now Jeff was the perp. His story being put on tape. How the tables had turned! And over what? A woman? Jeff McCord felt he was facing charges of double murder because his wife, a woman he had loved—maybe too much—and obeyed—without question—had asked him to help her get rid of a problem.

That turned into two “problems,” essentially.

“Mr. McCord,” Roger Brown said, “uh . . . I’m going to go over the things we went over a little earlier, and that we discussed with your attorney yesterday.”

Jeff nodded. Looked away.

“Um . . . in return for the reduction of charges that we made,” Brown continued, “you have agreed to fully disclose to us everything you know regarding the circumstances of the deaths of Alan and Terra Bates, leading up to it and following it.”

Brown then explained how he would administer “an oath,” and everyone expected Jeff McCord to be truthful. It was that, or the deal was off.

“We may wish to administer a polygraph at a later time to satisfy ourselves of the veracity of what you have to say. Do you understand all that?”

“Yes.”

Jeff McCord was ordered to raise his right hand.

They talked formalities first: address, age, former job as a police officer. And then the day—February 15, 2002, a little over a year ago now—which Brown referred to as “the occurrence.”

The life and death of two fine people could be refined into two meaningless words of such little value. It wasn’t Brown’s word, but a professional way to address the murders on tape.

“The occurrence.”

Jeff talked about how his day-to-day life was with Jessica, her three kids and the kid they had together. Things seemed all right at first. He loved the woman.

A large truck drove by the window outside as Jeff spoke. Roger Brown waited for the noise to subside, then got back to the interview.

The former Pelham police officer was passive. Quite taken aback by the process of talking about what led up to the murders, and what actually had happened that day. Brown asked Jeff if he knew Alan Bates at the time Jeff and Jessica got married.

“I knew who Mr. Bates
was,
” Jeff said. “No, I hadn’t—I don’t even think I had met him once at the time.”

Jeff married Jessica, and yet he had not met her ex-husband, who had been, according to what Jessica had told Jeff, a violent nuisance in her life. Someone to fear. It was clear from Jeff’s responses that Jessica had married him out of spite, wanting to one-up Alan and his then-future marriage to Terra.

Jeff said he met Alan for the first time in August 2000.

“Next to the interstate in Montevallo.”

Alan picked up the girls. Terra wasn’t with him. Brown moved on to what had become a pivotal point in the postdivorce relationship between Alan and Jessica: the fact that Jessica withdrew the children from the school system and began homeschooling them. Not because she wanted the children to have a better education, but for the sole purpose of hiding them from Alan.

After Brown asked the question, making reference to the fact that Jessica was hiding the family so Alan couldn’t find them, Jeff took a deep breath. Sighed. Shook his head. It was one of those
oh yeah
moments, as if he’d forgotten how devious his wife had become. Because he lived in the situation day in and day out, Jeff speculated, it was harder for him to see what was happening in front of his eyes.

It was just easier to go along with Jessica than to fight her.

Jeff could understand how wrong that all was now. He had gone along with Jessica on all these matters because she was his wife and he believed that’s what husbands were supposed to do.

Obedience.

As Jeff explained it, near the time Jessica proclaimed to be homeschooling the kids, somebody from the Hoover central school office, or Green Valley Elementary, he could not recall which, called the house.

“Yes?” Jessica said. “What is it?”

“Due to some sort of bureaucratic snafu, the records weren’t in order. The girls cannot continue to be students at the school and have to be removed.”

Apparently, the house the McCords lived in on Myrtlewood Drive in Hoover was not on file, Jeff said. It appeared the kids were going to the wrong school. So the school had them removed—which played right into Jessica’s desire to hide them from Alan.

From there, she simply decided not to enroll them in another school.

During this same time period, Jeff explained, he never witnessed any animosity between Alan and Jessica regarding the kids or visitations. This was an important point for Roger Brown. The problems leading up to the murders began, by Jeff McCord’s account, during the fall of 2000, a year and a half before he and Jessica murdered Alan and Terra.

After Jeff gave a detailed account of the murders, placing himself behind the murder weapon, Brown asked him to go through how he and Jessica disposed of the bodies. It was clear to Brown that Jeff was following Jessica’s lead during the entire ordeal. She directed. Jeff listened. Whenever she panicked or lost her head, it was Jeff who took over. The Hoover PD had been close in putting together the murder and cleanup afterward—90 percent of the department’s theory proved accurate, as far as Jeff’s explanation of that day and night went.

Jeff said that as they were on the way to the dump that Saturday morning to get rid of some of the evidence, his chief phoned.

“I get a call. . . . I get a
call
from . . . work.” He was told either to phone the GBI himself or have his attorney do it. “We get back to the house, I call this number I’m given . . . and as it turns out . . . I spoke with [someone from the GBI], identified myself, and he told me he had no clue why I would need to call him.”

Brown confirmed with Jeff that Jessica’s high-school friend in Montevallo—the house where they had stayed on the night before they were arrested—a guy who was now facing perjury charges for lying during his grand jury testimony—did know where the storage facility was that Jessica had placed some of the evidence in. According to another source that police had interviewed, a cellmate of Jessica’s said that Jessica and Jeff rented a storage facility. Inside the small unit Jessica had apparently put plastic bags containing “bloody stuff,” along with furniture and the luggage Terra and Alan had with them. Jessica was said to have arranged for her high-school friend Michael Upton and her stepfather to “clean out the storage unit” in exchange for $500 cash to split.

Upton turned around and, according to prosecutors, lied during his grand jury testimony when asked about this same incident.

He, along with another person closely tied to the case, were about to be indicted, Brown told Jeff.

Jeff laughed at that.

As the interview drew to a close, Jeff seemed more relaxed and even in a good mood. Not once during the interview did Jeff McCord express any sorrow for the victims—nor any remorse whatsoever for killing them. He came across cold and calculating, as if he were the one walking away with a win. There were times, as chilling as it sounded, when Jeff laughed out loud. The man had shot at point-blank range two people he had no connection to, two people he did not know the slightest about, and he laughed when telling portions of that story.

Regardless of what family and former friends would later say, that behavior alone said a lot about who Jeff McCord was.