Death Trap (7 page)

11

The Baileys’ modest-sized ranch house in Hoover stood on a corner lot, almost hugging an adjacent road. Toward the backyard there were several lots from a major industrial area of the city, completely congested with traffic and people. The neighborhood was middle-class. Modern, normal families locked in the bliss of enjoying their little slice of the American pie.

When GBI investigator Kimberly Williams and MCSO investigator Sheron Vance arrived, HPD sergeant Tom McDanal led the way to the front door. McDanal indicated he would knock. It was better this way. A local cop. As it was, the two dead bodies (DBs) in the trunk of Alan’s rental were quickly (and clearly) looking to be the Hoover PD’s case. The GBI and MCSO, Williams and Vance knew, were going to be supporting Hoover, but Hoover was about to take control of this investigation.

Dian Bailey answered the door; then she walked outside, closing it behind her, as if not wanting to disturb someone on the other side of the door.

“We’re looking for Jessica McCord, ma’am,” McDanal said. Williams and Vance stood in back of him.

“I’ll get her.” Dian walked back inside. It was clear she didn’t want to be followed.

Jessica walked out the front door and toward the driveway. Dian followed her daughter. The three investigators behind them.

“Can we go inside and talk, ma’am?” Williams asked cordially. The Southern thing to do was to invite people into your home, not keep them outside during the winter. What was she so concerned about? Why the driveway?

Jessica snapped: “No!” She looked tired, pale. Her eyes were sunken. Her brown hair was knotty and unkempt. She wore glasses. She came across “extremely defensive,” Williams said. They knew Jessica had probably been up all night. So she had every reason to be tired and, well, bitchy. The kids were inside the house. Perhaps she didn’t want them to hear what was going to be said.

That would be logical.

Dian looked edgy, nervous. “You stay here,” Jessica told her mother. “Don’t go back inside.” They stood in the driveway, yards away from the front porch. Dian was in back of her bossy daughter.

Dian had her arms folded in front of her chest. She was there, Williams guessed, for support. As they all stood together, there was this feeling that both knew, or had been expecting, the GBI and HPD would show up.

“What do you want?” Jessica asked sharply. She looked at Vance, then at Williams, bypassing McDanal.

Williams stepped forward, introduced herself and Vance. Then: “Can we ask you a few questions about Alan and Terra Bates?”

“She was short with us,” Williams recalled. “Which we took as odd, simply because we’re coming to ask about overdue people, specifically the father of her children.”

Jessica snapped, “Why?” She didn’t seem to understand what the investigators meant. Was there a problem? Two children walked out the door. They stood near their mother, looking curiously up at the investigators.

“They’re considered missing, ma’am . . . and we want to collect some information to help us in our investigation.” Williams didn’t feel right talking about this in front of the kids. Didn’t Jessica care what the children heard?

“Oh,” Jessica said. She seemed stressed by this revelation.

“Would you like to go somewhere else to talk?” Williams asked. She and Vance figured with the kids wandering around, they didn’t want to burden anybody or make the kids or Jessica feel uncomfortable.

“No,” Jessica said quickly. “This is fine.”

“We were wondering about Alan and Terra—” Williams started to say.

Jessica interrupted. “They never showed up!” She sounded bitter and frustrated by the idea that it appeared Alan blew the kids off—and had never even called or given her an explanation why.

Williams asked Jessica where she was the previous night. She didn’t phrase it with an accusatory tone. It was more of a casual question.

Jessica explained: dinner, movies, that walk with her husband. As she spoke, Williams thought how identical her story was to what Jeff had said earlier. But then, well, there came a point when Jessica made a mistake, or had a lapse in memory.

“We even came back here, near midnight, to pick up the kids,” Jessica said, “but ended up letting them sleep over because they were already in bed sleeping when we arrived.”

Jeff never mentioned this fact. He didn’t say anything about stopping by Jessica’s mother’s house. It seemed to be an important part of the night. A pivotal point on which every moment after was able to happen. If they had the kids all night, they certainly could not have been out on the town until the wee hours of the morning. But Jeff had never said anything about this.

Williams and Vance put up their radar.

Vance watched Dian as Jessica explained how she and Jeff stopped by the house. Dian didn’t see the investigator looking at her. Dian rolled her eyes when Jessica mentioned that she and Jeff came to the house near midnight. She had this
I can’t believe she just said that
look about her, the investigator explained later. Dian actually cringed at what her daughter had just told three investigators.

Williams saw a door. “Did you take the children over here?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Near five-thirty,” Jessica said. “Alan was supposed to pick them up over at my mother’s house.”

“Did Alan ever make it into your house at all?”

“No! Alan is not
allowed
in my home. He has
never
been in my home. He’s been there on one occasion to pick up the kids, only because I was directed to allow him by the court and my attorney.” Jessica was firm on this point. She seemed to suggest that this was why they dropped the kids off at her mother’s house—because Alan was not allowed at her house.

These answers struck Williams and Vance. Jeff McCord had said something entirely different. One hour and fifteen minutes different, to be exact. And the location of the pickup: Jeff was certain Alan was supposed to pick the kids up at the McCord home. How could they not know (or confuse) these two simple facts?

“Although they were close,” Williams explained later, referring to how Jeff and Jessica responded to the same questions, “it shouldn’t be difficult to remember where the kids were, what time, and all that.” It had not even been twenty-four hours since the events had taken place. Why were two adults having such a hard time recalling detailed, straightforward facts that—on the surface—seemed so unimportant?

As part of their investigation, all Williams and Vance looked to do at this stage was lock people down to stories. Step back and take a look at any inconsistencies, if there were any, and see where each witness statement led. After all, Albert Bailey had been over at the Myrtlewood Drive home doing some remodeling. From there he was followed while driving around town with a couch taken from the McCord house. What was Albert’s involvement in all this? What role did that couch play? Perhaps they needed to talk to Albert again? From the tone Jessica used, it was not hard to tell she was just about finished talking.

“Would it be okay if we searched your house on Myrtlewood Drive?” Williams asked, looking directly at Jessica.

“Absolutely not!” Jessica snapped.

With that sharp, direct answer, Williams explained why it was important to search the home. Exclusion was key. They needed to rule out people and scenarios so they could find out what had happened. Move on. Every little step would lead to finding what had happened to the father of her children.

“Look, this is what we’ve found.” Williams decided to explain the scene back in Morgan County, Georgia, to Jessica. See what type of reaction she would give them.

“We think that it’s Alan and Terra. But we’re not sure yet.”

“What do you mean?” Jessica asked. She was calmer now. Curious.

“Well,” Williams said, “they cannot be identified.” At that, Jessica lost it. Her body dropped dramatically to the ground and she started bawling. She was hysterical—overly so, it appeared to Williams and Vance, who looked at each other as Jessica went into a crying fit. It was not a stretch to think that Jessica McCord could use a few acting lessons if this was the best performance she had in her.

Williams helped Jessica up off the ground. Then she made it clear that Jessica was the proverbial ex-wife in this unfolding drama. Having been given that status alone made her a suspect. They were checking things off their list. Simple 101 police work. They did it in every investigation. Procedure. 1-2-3. The basics. By searching the house, the Bureau could eliminate Jessica from its list of suspects and continue investigating. She would be helping them out immensely.

“Absolutely not,” Jessica said again in a harsher tone after collecting herself and standing up. “You’re not going in my house to search it.”

Was she protecting her husband? Perhaps she believed that Jeff had been involved on his own and wanted to talk to him, get the story, before helping the cops?

“We just want to eliminate you as a suspect, Mrs. McCord. We need your cooperation. Your consent to search the house.”

“The police are
not
going into my house.” Jessica was very firm. No damn way any police officer was going to step into her home and poke around.

“Okay,” Williams said.

Then, as the conversation seemed to reach an impasse, out of the blue, Jessica made a suggestion, which was rather odd.

“You should be going to Montevallo to search a house there.”

“Montevallo?”

“I’d be happy to take you there,” Jessica offered. “You know, show you the way.”

So they all drove to Alan and Jessica’s old house in Montevallo.

They found nothing, of course. It was a wasted trip in that sense. Leaving, Williams and Vance talked about the interview with Jessica back in Hoover, and how things had progressed from there.

“Did you see Mom when Jessica said she dropped the kids off at her house at midnight the previous night?” Vance pointed out.

“No, I was fixed on Jessica and her reactions. Why?”

Vance smiled. “Oh . . . well, there’s no such thing happening that they went over there at midnight.”

“Huh?”

“She was totally—you could tell by the look on her face,” Vance said, describing Dian’s demeanor, “rolling her eyes, like feeling, ‘I can’t believe you just said that.’”

Vance—and now Williams—were convinced Dian Bailey had things to hide.

When they had arrived in Montevallo, Williams asked Jessica, “Can you please clarify for us why you would allow us to search a place that Alan had been before, but not your house?”

This was something law enforcement couldn’t understand. It actually made no sense.

“Because Alan has never been in my house. Sorry we don’t see eye to eye on this.”

This comment gave Williams a chill.

What a strange way to view things. What was Jessica so concerned about? Why wouldn’t she jump at the opportunity to help find out what was going on with the murder of her children’s father? What if her husband had killed them without her knowledge? There were so many variables possible. Jessica wasn’t fazed, apparently, by any one of these—the least of which included finding out what had happened.

This, and that little one-act play of anguish she put on in the driveway, was an indication that the Bureau and the HPD were not done with Jessica McCord just yet.

12

In Marietta, members of the Bates family huddled together with friends and neighbors, holding vigil, waiting—and hoping—on the information as it came in piecemeal from the Bureau. As they talked things through, more questions than answers arose. And when they did, all fingers pointed at one person: Jessica McCord. She’d had something to do with Alan’s disappearance, members of the Bates family felt strongly.

“Look,” Kevin said, Robert nodding in agreement, “we knew where Alan and Terra had been, we had even made contact with Alan’s attorney by that point, and we knew that the last place they were supposed to go was to Jessica’s house—and no one had heard from them since.”

Speculation. Doubt. Confusion. Empty spaces. Sure, you filled in the voids best you could, looking for any way to avoid the inevitable. But the end result seemed to be the same, no matter how you added things up. The mind colors in the blank spaces, creating its own finale. Yet, the available established facts of the case tell a story. If you played devil’s advocate, the obvious questions would be: If not Jessica, who else? Was she involved? If so, had Jessica worked alone? Had she, prompting Jeff, sought out any additional help? Truth be told, the Bateses had not spoken to Alan the previous night. Robert’s wife spoke to Terra earlier that afternoon. Terra said the deposition was going well, adding, “We’re picking up the kids at Jessica’s around six o’clock.”

Terra’s father, Tom Klugh, said he tried to call Terra that evening, after six, but he did not get an answer.

That was the dead space. The invisible moment.

And so between 3:30 and 6:00
P.M
., family members figured, an answer resided. Inside that missing time. What happened took place during that window. If Jessica and Jeff could account for their whereabouts, how could they be involved?

Questions without answers. For a grieving family aware of the volatile history between Alan and Jessica, it was frustrating, upsetting and debilitating.

Terra’s parents drove into Marietta. The Bates home became ground zero—an epicenter of mourning and uncertainty.

Things moved fast. Philip was able to get his brother in Birmingham—Uncle Randy, the kids called him—to pick up Alan’s dental records. Then everyone turned their attention toward the children: where were they?

Philip called family members and friends. He needed to find the girls. Speak to them. Hear their familiar voices. Know they were okay. If Jessica and Jeff were involved, had the kids seen anything? Were they with Alan and Terra? Did they know what had happened?

 

 

On Saturday night, two additional Bureau agents rolled into Birmingham to assist Williams and Vance. They were there to help conduct interviews and build a case for a search warrant. It was clear that Alan and Terra left Birmingham somewhere near 4:30
P.M
., which the Bureau confirmed by a videotape of them walking out of a local hot dog joint near Jessica’s attorney’s office. The restaurant just happened to be across the street from the Alabama Theater. Alan and Terra and every one of their friends from the theater knew the owner. It was a staple in town, a favorite place for friends to get together.

Then word came from the crime scene in Georgia that the bullet recovered inside the trunk of the rental was a .44 caliber. The battery in Alan’s wristwatch—now a key factor in the case—stopped the bullet as it passed through Alan’s wrist. He could have been holding up his hands, trying to defend himself, at the time he was shot.

Finding that bullet was a major break.

Great news for the Bureau and HPD. Now all they needed to do was find a matching weapon to the bullet, or some other piece of evidence tying that bullet to a suspect—a glass slipper, essentially.

 

 

Late Saturday night, February 16, HPD detective Laura Brignac was at a local Hoover bowling alley, enjoying a night out with her sister and a friend. It wasn’t Brignac’s weekend to be “on call.” Detectives in her unit shared the responsibility. Brignac was off that weekend, out having some good old-fashioned fun.

She should have known better. Near midnight Brignac’s cell phone rang. It was her husband.

“Tom’s trying to get hold of y’all. He wants you to call him.”

Brignac’s husband was referring to her boss, HPD detective sergeant Tom McDanal, who was running the Hoover end of the Bates case. The HPD still wasn’t sure whose case it was going to end up being. If the Bateses were murdered at that Georgia crime scene where their bodies were uncovered, it was the Bureau’s. That detail had not been uncovered, as of yet.

Brignac called McDanal. Soft-spoken and cordial, she asked, “Yeah, Tom, what’s going on?”

“Can y’all be at the office at eight tomorrow morning?”

A Sunday? Brignac hadn’t heard anything about a case big enough to drag her into the office on a Sunday. She had no idea what the HPD had been involved with over the past twenty-four hours. But the HPD could certainly use her, seeing that Brignac had years of experience dealing with abused children and juveniles. Ultimately the McCord children would need to be questioned—and Laura Brignac was, unquestionably, the best cop for that job.

“What’a y’all got, Tom?”

“I would rather not get into that now,” McDanal said. “Just be there at eight. I’ll explain everything.”