Death Trap (18 page)

29

One of the first things Jessica did during the spring of 1997, soon after giving birth to Brad Tabor’s child, was summon him to court for child support. She was able to convince a judge to issue an order in the amount of a whopping $800 a month—nearly double what Alan was paying for two kids.

It was a paycheck. Between that and the money Alan was sending her, Jessica had the potential to collect almost $1,200 a month.

“She did whatever she had to do to get a free ride,” an old friend said. “Everybody who knows Jessica will tell you this.”

Everyone did.

Brad couldn’t pay, so he was not involved in the child’s life in any manner whatsoever. Sara (pseudonym) was born and Jessica took her home and Brad was not allowed to see the baby. At one point Jessica had Brad arrested for not paying child support. He was tossed in jail. Brad, in the meantime, proved to the court that he couldn’t afford such a high amount. So the judge reduced the monthly debt to $463.

And guess what? Brad was able to swing it.

Before the second order was issued, Brad had no legal rights to his child. Jessica had made sure she controlled that end of things. Brad, however, was able to renegotiate the child visitation portion of the order and, heading into late 1998, convinced the court to back him up.

Still, the court’s ruling meant little to Jessica. On top of that, Brad admitted later, he was afraid to go see his child.

“Personal-safety issues,” he admitted in court. “After conferring with my family and my attorney, it was advised that it wasn’t a good idea for me to be alone with her (Jessica).”

What was it that sparked this sudden fear?

Brad’s attorney found out Jessica had put Alan in the hospital. Jessica showed up at Alan’s apartment to drop off the kids one day and instigated an argument with him. Before she left, she hit and scratched him, then pushed him down the stairs.

“His face was bloodied,” a friend of Alan’s later said.

“She messed him up good.”

One of Alan’s friends was there, as was Alan’s mother, Joan. They were terrified. Jessica was wild and crazy that day. There was this look in her eyes: hate.

Jessica ran outside after the attack, but for some reason she didn’t leave.

The cops came. Jessica was all scratched up herself. “See what he did to me!” she told the cops.

The police figured out that Jessica had actually rubbed her body against a brick wall outside to create the appearance of cuts so she could blame Alan.

In addition to a battered face with deep nail scratches, Alan broke his arm during the fall.

This time he wasn’t going to mess around; he filed charges.

When Brad heard about the incident, he didn’t want to find out what else Jessica was capable of. Nonetheless, Brad tried to maintain a relationship with his daughter. But no matter what he did, no matter how many times he called, Jessica found a way to sabotage it.

Brad was talking with Jessica on the phone one night. According to him, he could hear Sara in the background, “Let me speak to Daddy, Mommy. . . .”

Jessica became enraged. She absolutely despised the idea that the child wanted to even know her father.

“You hush, Sara!” Jessica snapped, according to Brad’s version of the call. “He doesn’t want to speak to you.”

“Come on, let me talk to her.”

“Never!”

 

 

By the beginning of 1999, Jessica was working for the Birmingham Police Department as a clerical secretary. The job, however, wouldn’t last long, as Jessica lived up to her reputation as being lazy and disobedient. Not long after she attacked Alan, the BPD fired Jessica, citing her continued absence from work on top of, one letter noted:
the attack on Alan.
A termination message sent by the chief explained what happened, pointing out,
You went to the home of your ex-husband and you admitted you hurt him. . . .

With no income coming in, save for the child support she collected from both men, Jessica needed more money. Near February 1, 1999, Jessica sent Alan a bill purportedly from SHR Incorporated, a contracting firm. On top of the bill, Jessica noted that she would soon be sending Alan all of the bills for the house and for dance lessons. It was Alan’s responsibility to pay half of the Montevallo house repair costs and all of the dance bills for the girls. The list Jessica sent was long. According to the invoice, both hot- and cold-water pipes had burst inside the house, insulation underneath the kitchen had been destroyed, several “emergency calls” to plumbers ensued, and there were outdoor water pipes leaking. The place was falling apart. The total to fix everything, the invoice claimed, was $1,700. Alan needed to send his half immediately, Jessica warned.

Frank Head, Alan’s lawyer, did some investigating. No one trusted Jessica. She was shady and a known liar.

Sure enough, Frank Head could find no such listing for a company named SHR. So he dashed off a letter to Jessica, explaining the problems with the bill. He said that after reviewing the statement from SHR she had sent to Alan, he could find no address or telephone number on the invoice. In addition, the invoice failed to provide the dates the work was completed. Head encouraged Jessica to provide
original
invoices so they could confirm the work with SHR themselves.

Frank Head never heard from Jessica about the bills again.

 

 

Alan was enjoying what could be considered a somewhat normal life. He had a decent job. He had met and fallen in love with Terra. He was working with Frank Head to get Jessica on the right track with visitations. His life was heading upward.

A direction—he came to find out—that infuriated Jessica even more.

Part of it was, whatever Alan had, Jessica wanted. It was a sport to her in some respects. She was all about keeping up with the Joneses. For example, Alan bought a brand-new Acura. Jessica went out and bought the same model, same year, same color, even though she couldn’t afford it. The only difference in the two cars was that Alan’s was a two-door; hers was a four-door, most likely because she couldn’t find a two-door model.

“That was a big issue with her,” said Naomi. “She had to have the
exact
same car, right down to the color.”

Naomi had trouble keeping track of Jessica and the children. Jessica would drop the kids off at Naomi’s, who loved to watch them. Naomi and her husband were McKenna and Sam’s godparents, so it was like having their own children in the house. With Alan’s life thriving, Naomi could hear the resentment and festering hatred building up in Jessica’s voice whenever she got herself going on about Alan. Naomi and Jessica talked one day and Jessica blurted out, “Alan missed another visitation.”

What? Come on, Jess,
Naomi thought. She knew it was a lie. Alan loved those kids. If he could help it, he never missed seeing them. Especially since Jessica was so volatile and unpredictable when it came to allowing visitations.

There came a day when Jessica showed up at Naomi’s house out of the blue. Unexpected, uninvited, there she was. It was dinnertime. Middle of the week. Naomi looked out the window and saw Jessica pulling in the driveway. No call. No warning. It was the first of what would be many unexpected visits, or pop-ins, by a woman hiding her kids from their natural father.

Jessica and the kids stayed for hours. Naomi and her husband fed them (they certainly didn’t mind). They sat around after dinner. It seemed they were just staring at each other. Twiddling their thumbs.

Naomi finally asked, “What’s up, Jess?”

“Nothing particular.”

It was eight or nine o’clock at night before Jessica left.

Naomi thought about it later. These surprise visits were so strange—even for Jessica. Naomi would come to find out that Jessica was hiding out with the kids. Keeping them from Alan. He had a scheduled visitation, and Jessica didn’t want to be home when he showed up.

For Alan, by June 1999, it got to the point where he was forced to ask Frank Head to file a grievance against Jessica. The motion outlined the nature of Jessica’s disregard for the Final Judgment of Divorce. She wasn’t following the court’s ruling. She was playing games again. Same as she had for most of her adult life, Jessica was making up rules as she went along.

But Alan wasn’t going to stand for it anymore. It was time to let the courts decide what to do with the woman and her stubborn ideas regarding visitation. Alan had tried. He gave Jessica chance after chance to conform. He put up with her screaming and threats and even violence.

But no more.

Now it was going to be up to a judge.

 

 

Jessica met Jeff while working for the Birmingham PD. She called him by his middle name of Kelley. Jeff was sort of an oafish guy. Quiet. Subdued. Easily manageable for Jessica. It was not hard for her to tell immediately that it was going to be effortless to manipulate Jeff any which way she wanted.

Not long after meeting Jeff, Jessica called Naomi, who hadn’t seen Jessica for quite a while because of work and a conflicting, busy schedule.

“How are you? How are the kids?” Naomi asked, excited. It was good to hear from Jessica. She wondered why the pop-in visits had suddenly stopped.

“Good.” Then Jessica went into how she had met this new guy, Kelley. How great he was. They were considering moving to Birmingham and buying a house together, but they didn’t have enough money. She was still living in the house Alan had left her in Montevallo.

“Really?” Naomi said, shocked by this statement. Here’s this new guy in Jessica’s life. Out of nowhere. It was apparently serious. And now they were talking about buying a house together.

Jessica had that schoolgirl-lust quality to her voice. “He’s great,” she explained. “How’s this—we had sex in the living room . . . all over the house.”

Naomi was horrified. “The kids, Jess? What about the kids?”

“They were asleep. Don’t worry.” Jessica laughed. That sarcastic I-know-something-you-don’t-know tone that meant she was holding something back.

Part of Jessica’s excitement was that Jeff McCord was a cop. This gave her a sense of protection, an overpowering feeling that she could play her games with Alan and turn around and say,
See, I have a cop to back me up! Alan’s the bad guy. Not me.
The other part of it became that Jeff was naïve and could be talked into things. Her own little puppet. Jessica plied the guy with the best sex of his life and he took the bait.

Part of this new relationship spoke to Alan getting serious with Terra. Jessica needed to settle down so, in the eyes of the court, she could appear to have a stable environment in which to raise her children. Jessica had to play up the façade that she was a good mother. That she had a peaceful, family-foundational household. That she could provide for them. With Alan involving the courts now, she knew that social workers would be poking around. She would need to put on a show.

But there was also something else working in the background—a developing storm—something Jeff Kelley McCord could provide to Jessica that, she believed, all the others couldn’t.

30

According to Jeff McCord’s version, on Monday morning, February 18, 2002, he and Jessica took off to Opelika, Alabama, a town about 140 miles, or a 135-minute drive, from Hoover. Born in Tallahassee, Florida, before living in Cairo, Georgia, for a brief spell, Jeff moved to Opelika with his mom after his parents split up (and later divorced). Jeff had graduated from Opelika High School.

As police searched his home back in Hoover that day, Jeff and Jessica cruised the streets of Opelika. At the center of their conversation was what Jeff was going to do about his job: call in sick or show up? His house was in the process of a second search by the HPD. Cops talked, Jeff knew. The Hoover PD had a full report on Jeff, his entire life and career as a police officer. More than that, Jeff heard that his Pelham PD patrol commander was looking for him and wanted to talk before his shift started later that afternoon. Hearing this, Jeff knew darn well what was going on.

At 10:00
A.M
. Jeff called work.

“Hold on,” dispatch told him. The call was rerouted to the chief’s office. Jeff had a feeling dispatch had been waiting for his call.

“McCord,” the chief said, “you need to be in my office today at four. Bring in your badge and ID. You’re going on administrative leave for the time being.”

Jeff hung up. Dropped his shoulders. He realized how serious the situation had become. When he met Jessica, she had seemed so boisterous and fun and bossy—which he liked. A woman in charge. She knew what she wanted. That was all well and good when dealing with laundry and food shopping and picking colors of drapes and styles of tile and wallpaper. Maybe even when it came to parenting. Jeff didn’t mind standing aside to let Jessica take the wheel. In many ways, Jeff later said, Jessica was the first “real” relationship he was involved in. He had dated a beautiful woman for two-and-a-half years during college, and for a short time afterward. But that woman, Jeff later told me, was rather “normal,” as compared to the relationship he later got mixed up in with Jessica.

“At the same time,” Jeff added, “if [a] ‘real’ [relationship] means the other person is divorced, has three kids and [a] trainload of baggage, then I guess it may well depend on one’s definition and one’s perspective. I readily concede that cluelessness and ineptitude on my part may well have made things worse or at least different than they were and/or turned out to be. Also,” Jeff cleared up, “Jessica was not the first woman with whom I had had sexual relations.”

Some claimed she had been.

Jessica and Jeff headed back to Hoover from Opelika on Monday. Jeff stopped by the house after dropping Jessica off (one would guess at her mother’s) to pick up his uniforms and badges. Then he took off for Pelham.

A Hoover police officer got behind Jeff as he left the Myrtlewood Drive house and followed him as other officers joined the motorcade. Jeff drove a U-Haul truck he and Jessica had rented (for no apparent reason he could later give—“We just needed it”).

“We weren’t hiding the fact by then that we were following Jeff McCord,” one law enforcement source told me.

Near Route 31 and Lorna Road, the HPD hit their lights.

“Anyway,” Jeff recalled, “I get pulled over by half of Hoover’s evening shift.” It was funny to him that the HPD had no fewer than six officers tailing him.

Tom McDanal and Peyton Zanzour were part of that team.

“License and reg,” one of the patrol officers asked Jeff after he rolled down his window and asked what was going on.

Jeff nodded. Did what he was told. What else could he do? He knew what was going on.

“Give us a minute.”

Some time later, Jeff got his license back. “Where y’all headin’?”

“Pelham,” Jeff said.

They let him go.

Jeff walked into the Pelham PD about ten minutes later and went directly to the chief’s office.

The chief had a written notification of Jeff’s administrative leave on his desk, waiting for Jeff’s signature.

Jeff paused. Reluctant, he took the pen and signed.

“You need to contact me, [the captain or the lieutenant] at some point during the day, until you’re told otherwise, McCord. You understand?”

Jeff nodded his head. He knew the routine. He was being babysat. Watched. Told what to do and when to do it. Guilty before innocent. Jeff was well aware how things worked once law enforcement got a whiff. Although he was upset and somewhat angry for not being granted the benefit of the doubt, he could not deny the fact that there was a double-murder investigation going on that was mainly focused on his wife. If he hadn’t been part of the actual murder, he was connected to it by marriage. Either way, he couldn’t do his job as a police officer.

From there, Jeff drove back to the house, watched the HPD finish that second search and then voluntarily went down to the HPD to answer questions. He was then picked up by Jessica. They drove to Florida to drop the kids off at her sister’s house.

While in Florida, Jeff called the chief’s office as part of that daily ball-and-chain order he had signed.

“You need to be in my office at nine tomorrow morning,” the chief told Jeff that Tuesday.

“What is it? Disciplinary matter or what?
What’s
going on? Something come up?” Jeff wanted details. Thought he deserved them. He hadn’t been charged with a crime. Neither had Jessica. Now the Pelham PD was pulling his strings, making demands. He didn’t have to do anything he didn’t want to do.

“Look, McCord, you just need to be here.”

Jeff thought about it. He didn’t like the tone. He was upset that the chief was so steely and not giving him an opportunity to explain. Nor was the chief forthcoming with any information. In addition, it was clear there was going to be a disciplinary hearing on the day Jeff returned.

“Screw it,” Jeff said. “Fire me if you want.”

The following afternoon, a Wednesday, the Pelham PD fired Jeff McCord. This occurred as the HPD made it public that Jeff and Jessica McCord were its chief suspects in the murders of Alan and Terra Bates.

When Jeff heard he had been canned, he and Jessica drove into downtown Birmingham. HPD investigators tailing the couple watched as they parked near a professional building. The media was there waiting.
Birmingham News
journalist Carol Robinson was among them. Word was that Jeff and Jessica were going to hire David Cromwell Johnson.

“[Johnson] was the highest-profile defense lawyer in town at the time, and we all camped outside his office that day, waiting to get a glimpse of Jessica and Jeff for the first time,” Carol told me.

Carol wanted a comment from Jessica to fill in a story she was working on. Carol didn’t know quite what to expect.

As Jessica started for the building, Carol got up next to her and announced, “I’m from the
Birmingham News,
Mrs. McCord. My name’s Carol Robinson. Can I get a statement from you?”

Jessica took one look at the reporter. Stopped. Snubbed her nose. Then sneered, “You’re a liar!”

Carol had no idea that she was so popular in the McCord household.

“It was the only time she ever spoke to me.”

Heading into Cromwell’s office, Jeff and Jessica were apparently getting themselves lawyered up and ready to do battle with Roger Brown and the Hoover PD.