Death Trap (20 page)

33

A few months after Alan and Terra postponed the wedding, things got worse, just as Alan had predicted. Alan and Jessica were in the midst of an impassioned court battle. Jessica hired a lawyer, Lindsey Allison. On September 13, 1999, a short time before their first scheduled trial date, Frank Head sent Lindsey a letter. He wanted to confirm that the case had been postponed to December 9. The more important reason for the letter, however, detailed how Philip and Joan Bates were now going to be picking the children up for scheduled visitations on the third weekend of October and November. Frank Head pointed out that Jessica needed to be made aware that Alan was going to start calling the kids on Sunday evenings at six o’clock, and Jessica was to make sure they were available for “approximately fifteen minutes of uninterrupted conversation.”

Simple stuff that lots of broken families did.

Jessica failed to hold up her end of the agreement. Alan and Terra couldn’t believe it. Jessica was openly thumbing her nose at the court. When Alan said something about it, Jessica came up with the idea that if Alan wanted to speak to the children, he would have to buy them a cell phone and pay the cost of service. Otherwise, forget it.

Frank Head sent Lindsey Allison a second letter saying the request by Jessica for Alan to purchase the children a cell phone was unreasonable—Jessica needed to let him talk to his kids. Period.

Jessica said: No cell phone, no contact.

The day before Philip and Joan were scheduled to pick up the kids for that first weekend visitation, Lindsey Allison contacted Frank Head by fax. It was October 12. The fax came in under the heading of
Very Urgent
:
Ms. Bates has just informed me that her grandmother in Salt Lake City, Utah, has died.

Jessica claimed she, the children and her parents were traveling to Salt Lake that afternoon and would not return until Sunday. The visitation was off. She hoped Alan would understand. She was going to offer another weekend in its place in order to keep in good standing with the court. The death was unexpected, right? What could she do? Philip and Joan needed to pick a date and get back to Lindsey Allison with it.

Alan said no biggie. It was a bad time. A death in the family. For once, it seemed Jessica had a rational explanation for missing a visitation.

Frank Head wasn’t buying it. After a bit of checking, he found out Jessica had, in fact, played them. It was a lie. Her grandmother was alive and well.

The scheduled December court date came . . . and then . . . another postponement and additional excuse on Jessica’s part about being ill and in the hospital. In the interim Frank Head drafted another missive to Jessica. It spelled out what was going on and what Alan was preparing to do next. Throughout the fall of 1999—Thanksgiving and Christmas, McKenna’s birthday and various other weekends in between—Jessica found a way not to allow Alan to see the children, even once. On top of that, phone calls between the father and his girls were kept to a minimum. Alan talked to them once or twice for a few minutes each time.

Alan called his mother in tears, letting it all out. Jessica was turning his own children against him. He was defenseless. Not even the court seemed to want to hold up visitation orders. She had found a way around the system. What could he do?

In his latest letter Frank Head stipulated that Alan was going to give Jessica one more opportunity to fall in line with the court’s ruling and live up to her end of the divorce decree. It was that, or “Alan will have no alternative but to file a contempt petition.” Alan wanted “makeup” visitation for the time he had missed. Head encouraged Jessica to “contact him immediately” to set up a new visitation schedule—and this time, well, she had better
stick
to it.

Frank Head waited.

Jessica or her lawyer never replied.

It was time to file contempt charges, Head suggested to Alan.

Alan had thought about it, and he didn’t want to do it. But maybe he needed to take things to the next level. Maybe a good kick in the behind by the court would snap Jessica into order. He agreed to the filing.

Jessica was busy herself. She and Jeff applied for a marriage license. Jessica soon found out that Jeff had some money his mother controlled, and she convinced Jeff to push his mother into giving them the money so they could get married and buy their own house in Hoover.

Jeff balked at first, then he started working on his mother.

“It had been a long time since Jeff had any type of contact with his family,” a McCord family friend later said. “He just pops in town and visits his grandmother and drops by to see [his mother]. The strange part of this is that Jeff would have never done what follows . . . unless he was harassed to do so. We found out it was to ask his mother for money for a down payment on a house. . . . Bottom line, she gave him money, but it was not the generous amount she had planned.”

Jeff’s mother, as well as his family and friends, recognized he was being manipulated. “Because after they got the check,” that same family friend recalled, “the not responding to calls began [all over] again.”

34

The HPD had a solid tip from an inside source: Jeff and Jessica McCord were in Alabaster. So officers staked out the house. On February 21, 2002, as the hazy sun rose over the eastern side of Alabaster’s Old Highway 31, the HPD was in position to make the arrests.

Most of the team parked outside the home. One of the investigators called Jessica on her cell phone, explaining that it was best she and Jeff calmly walked outside with their hands raised above their heads. If they did, there would be no problems.

The arrest could go easy, or Jeff and Jessica could make it difficult. Either way, by the end of the morning, Jeff and Jessica McCord were going to be behind bars. There was no one else Jessica could call. No one else she could manipulate. No way she was going to talk her way out of this.

The HPD knew enough about Jessica to assume that few things in her life were ever done without some sort of fuss, problem or, in this case, maybe much worse. The thought was, if she had talked Jeff, an armed and potentially dangerous former cop, into helping her murder her ex-husband and his wife, how hard would it be for her to convince that same man he should run out of the house, guns blazing? Jeff was a fallen police officer. Now he was accused of double murder. He had weapons.

As agreed by phone, Jessica walked out of the house first. Tom McDanal was waiting for her.

“I’m pregnant,” Jessica said upon seeing the detective. Apparently, she was hoping the announcement would convince the HPD to show her some sympathy.

Should anyone believe her? The HPD had caught Jessica in so many lies by this point, how could she be trusted?

“At that point,” one investigator told me, “we couldn’t believe
anything
she said.”

The plan was for Detective Laura Brignac to escort Jessica to the county jail. A warrant officer would drive them. Brignac could sit in the front seat, Jessica in the back, so the detective could keep an eye on her suspect and maybe open up a dialogue.

There was going to be media at the jail when they arrived, Brignac explained to the warrant officer.

“Be prepared.”

Brignac read Jessica her rights as Jeff was escorted away from the scene without incident. Then Jessica was handcuffed and searched.

“Watch your head,” Brignac warned, helping Jessica into the backseat of the cruiser.

Brignac went around and sat down in the front passenger seat.

Jessica and Jeff were formally charged with capital murder. Their lives had just taken a solemn turn. It was a crime punishable by the death penalty. If there was something Jessica wanted to say—or needed to confess—now would be a good time to do it. After the two of them were split up, chances were that one or both would want to make a deal at one time or another. Husbands and wives often turned on each other. After a bit of pressure, faced with the reality of life in prison or death by lethal injection, matrimonial loyalties faded like memories of romantic sunset walks on the beach. If that was the case here, Brignac and the other detectives knew, this was going to be some day. Since Brignac was a female, maybe Jessica would feel more comfortable.

“Do you want to talk to me?” Brignac asked. They hadn’t left the scene yet. Jessica was in the backseat of the cruiser. Shifting around. Twisting and turning. Trying to get her handcuffs in a position that didn’t strain too much or bite into her wrists.

“This is uncomfortable. My wrists hurt.”

“You want to talk?”

“Not without an attorney,” Jessica said.

Brignac could sense a defensive, rebellious attitude in her voice, as if Jessica was saying,
You’ve got nothing!

“Okay,” Brignac said, nodding to the warrant officer.

It was time to move.

Brignac sat down. Jessica mumbled something to herself. Then: “These cuffs are too tight, come on.”

“Hold up,” Brignac told the officer. “Don’t leave yet.”

The detective got out. Walked around. Loosened up the cuffs a little.

“Better?”

“Could you adjust my bra and blouse?” Jessica asked. Apparently, her bra was digging into her skin. Her blouse was hung up on the cuffs.

Brignac fixed the garments.

“This is so uncomfortable,” Jessica pleaded.

“Too bad,” Brignac said while slamming the door shut.

The media end of the case was of great concern to Brignac and members of the HPD. Jessica’s kids were just now learning to accept their that dad and Terra were dead. Did they need to now see their mom being brought into the jail in handcuffs on television, sneering and snapping at reporters, turning away from the camera, doing the perp walk?

As they worked their way down the interstate toward the county jail, Brignac unhitched her seat belt and spun around. She wanted to address Jessica, face-to-face. One more shot, the detective figured. Never can tell when a suspect will crack. Most are immediately defiant, a normal human reaction. But after they have some time to think about jail, what they’ve done and what is ahead, many change their minds. That’s when a good, experienced cop can step up the pressure and get what she needs.

“Have you told your kids about the service coming up for their dad and stepmother this weekend?” Brignac asked. Kids were a surefire way to get a suspect to think about the future.

Jessica moved around in her seat. Smiled out of the corner of her mouth. “My kids are none of your business, Detective.”

“Oh, okay, then, Mrs. McCord. I take it that they are not going to be attending their dad’s service?” There was sarcasm in Brignac’s otherwise calm and soothing Southern drawl. She wanted Jessica to understand that by her determination to try and control this situation, she was going to hurt the children more than they had been already.

“Look, my children are none of your damn business!” Jessica said again. More authoritative and direct. “I’ll be out’a there in
no
time, Detective—and I’ll take care of my kids.”

This was a far cry from the same woman a week prior. That same person on the telephone with Joan Bates. Jessica herself later claimed that talking to Joan during those moments when Alan and Terra were considered missing was uncompromising and nerve-wracking. She told Joan:
“Please let me know . . . what’s going on when you find out. I would need to tell the kids something.”

Jessica had plenty of opportunity to talk to her children about what was going on. By this point she hadn’t said a word. Now she was concerned about them?

Brignac knew better. She was speaking to a woman who had admitted stopping at a fast-food restaurant on her way home and eating all of the food inside the family van by herself, down the street from her house, so she “didn’t have to share” with the kids. Jessica McCord was a selfish, uncaring, conniving, manipulative accused murderer. She was focused on her own needs. Not what her children deserved or needed.

“In some ways,” one source close to the case told me,

“I’m surprised [Jessica] didn’t kill the girls, too, so she could punish everyone. She liked feeling as if she had some sort of control over
everything.
”

Steel bars and concrete walls were no match for this woman. Nothing was going to stop Jessica from wielding her manipulative ways over her kids. Her reputation preceded itself.

While she had been in jail during Christmas, 2001, for contempt, and the kids were with Alan and Terra, Jessica called Alan one night. The kids were acting normally up until that moment, getting along well with Alan and Terra. They were all doing their best to rebuild relationships and become a family unit. For the kids it was a far different experience from living back in Hoover with Jessica.

“That was until [the kids] had their phone calls with Jessica,” one source later explained, “and then Terra and Alan would have to spend the next few days getting them back out of whatever sort of spell Jessica put them under.”

As they drove, Brignac took a call from her colleague Tom McDanal, who was already at the jail. “Get ready, there is a lot of media here waiting on you.”

Brignac thought about it. By now, the detective had been awake for almost two straight days, working various angles of the case in order to secure the arrest warrants. She was as sleep deprived as the rest of the team—and beginning to feel it.

“Thanks, Tom.”

Jessica complained again from the backseat. Her cuffs were too tight. “I’m pregnant,” she said. “I’m going to have a baby.” She hoped the comment would convince Brignac to cut her some slack.

Hanging up with McDanal, Brignac unbuckled her seat belt and turned around to face Jessica again. The comments—“I’ll be out’a there in
no
time,” coupled with the constant crying about being pregnant and uncomfortable—grated on the detective’s fragile nerves, eating up any energy Brignac had left. Her short fuse had burned out. She was tired. Fed up with Jessica’s attitude. The way Jessica spoke to a police officer, showing no respect for the law. Another human being, for that matter. Who did this woman think she was, sitting back there, handcuffed, on her way to face charges for double murder that could result in her death? Who in the heck, Brignac considered, was this woman to sass back at her?

“Look,” Brignac said, entirely fed up, “I have some news for you. You’re not getting out of jail! And I hope to hell that you
are
pregnant. Because you’re going to give birth in jail, and they’re going to snatch that baby from you—and you’ll
never
see it again.”

Brignac turned around. Sat down with a thud without waiting for a response. “It was a horrible thing to say,” Brignac recalled later. “But I was very tired.”

The warrant officer looked at Brignac, an incredulous crinkle in his brow.

Jessica fumed. “We’ll see about that, Detective.”

“She was mad as a wet dog. Still real cocky,” Brignac remembered.

Pulling into the jail parking lot, the warrant officer was “nervous,” Brignac explained. “Here was this media [circus] waiting on us all.”

He parked by the back entrance, where prisoners are escorted into the building. Brignac, one hand on the door handle to get out of the car, looked over at the warrant officer and said, “You ready?”

They exited the vehicle. Brignac walked to the back to help Jessica, who was trying to hide her face from photographers as best she could.

As the warrant officer got out, he somehow tripped the car alarm.

Brignac laughed.

Then, as he went to go turn it off with his key ring, he hit the trunk button, instead, popping it open.

Brignac couldn’t take it: she broke down. “He was flustered,” the detective recalled.

Jessica and Jeff were processed and placed in lockup.

That control over everyone else’s life that Jessica had so much centered her days and nights on was now in the hands of the state of Alabama.