Death Trap (21 page)

PART III

THE NARROW GATE

35

Jessica is a fan of Hollywood. She loves superhero movies, those big blockbuster types with the hundred-million-dollar budgets and young stars flying around in flashy spandex suits, stomping their way through computerized scenery. Something about the good versus evil archetype encompassing those films spoke to Jessica’s egotistical pride—and her aggressive, violent nature. An old friend of Jessica’s later spoke of what she called a “clichéd” albatross of “good and evil” that hung around Jessica’s neck. How it was there from the beginning, when Alan first met her in the late 1980s. The idea of Alan being raised in such a wholesome, good-hearted family, and turning out to be a peaceful, productive human being, represented the “good” in a world of “evil” that Jessica, in many ways, seemed to almost thrive in.

“When we were kids, I could not help but feel a negative energy around Jessica whenever she was near,” that friend explained. The description sounded hackneyed, the friend added. “I know it does.” But with Jessica came a “dark shadow” hovering over her—a metaphoric cloud, representative of the malice and impiety present in most everything she did. And as Alan and Jessica’s marriage crumbled and the divorce and custody battle turned vicious, this malevolent nature in Jessica’s heart rose to the surface.

That “good versus evil” dynamic, always there between them, now took center stage. “I recall clearly Jessica once telling Alan,” that friend concluded, “‘You marry her (Terra) and you’ll never see your kids again.’” This was from the same woman who had, back in high school, laid eyes on Alan before they hooked up and said, “I’ll get him no matter what . . . and trap him if I have to.”

To Jessica, strength could always overcome weakness. Ultimately the tough survived. Not the virtuous or lawful. But the most powerful. In Jessica’s world you didn’t need good on your side to win. You needed to outthink your opponent. To be smarter and more cunning. This self-righteous, win-at-any-cost attitude Jessica harbored—fighting Alan over the kids because the thrill of the fight and winning fed her ego—was going, with any luck, to push Jessica toward a victory she so desperately needed. Not getting the kids. No. She could never be comfortable with that. This was about something else now.

Destroying Alan.

Yes. Watching Alan crash and burn.

In early 2000, Alan filed an “amendment to [his] petition” for custody, stating that a new job would send him all over the country, traveling with a theater group. He wanted to see the kids during the week, as well as on the weekends he was back in town.

A new trial date in the custody matter was set for April 4, 2000. This was when Jessica and Alan could work out what had become a plethora of accusations against each other: from not paying bills to not being able to see the kids. Jessica turned what appeared to be a straightforward, amicable divorce five years prior into a mess costing both of them more money than they had. Why couldn’t she allow the man to see his kids? It seemed so simple.

Jessica announced she was pregnant. It was Jeff’s baby. She called Naomi to tell her the news. She was upset about something Jeff’s mother had said. Mrs. McCord was against the idea of Jessica and Jeff getting married.

“She wants me to abort the child,” Jessica claimed. “She doesn’t want me to marry Kelley.”

More lies.

Naomi was stunned. Jessica’s life was running at hyper speed all the time. There was always some dilemma, some problem to overcome. Alan was this. Alan was that. He never wanted to see his kids. Now Jeff’s mother was coming down on her, trying to ruin her life with Jeff. It was always something, someone.

“Can’t you talk to her, Jess?” Naomi said, referring to Jeff’s mom.

“I won’t let that woman tell me what to do!”

Jessica was not ready to have another baby, apparently—because Jeff drove her to Mississippi, according to several sources, where she got another abortion.

 

 

Alan Bates and Frank Head arrived at Shelby County Circuit Court on April 4, 2000. They were there to begin the process of hashing out the details of the divorce decree and visitation. Hopefully, the court could get Jessica in line with her legal obligations. That’s all Alan wanted.

The 9:00
A.M
. hour came and passed.

Then ten.

Eleven.

Noon.

Jessica was nowhere to be found.

This madness needed to end, Alan and Frank agreed. Alan and Terra had moved to Maryland after Alan had been offered a job in the theater that would put him in one place, as opposed to traveling the country. As stage manager of the Alabama Theatre, just about every touring company that came through Birmingham noticed Alan’s skills behind the scenes and offered him a job on the road. Alan was flattered and would have accepted any of the jobs—if he didn’t have kids. But his first priority was to his two girls. He wasn’t about to leave them.

Jessica had been keeping the kids away from Alan so much by this point that months had gone by without Alan speaking to them. It got to the point where he started saying to his brothers, “Well, why am I here? If I cannot see them, I might as well take one of these offers to see if I can at least develop my career, so I can benefit the children in that way.”

Alan did accept a proffered position and traveled with the stage company for one year. Terra met up with him from time to time in certain cities. On the weekends he was supposed to have the children, Alan flew or drove home. But then he stopped that, too, knowing Jessica wasn’t going to allow the visits. Then Alan was offered a job in Maryland to manage a company in charge of sending out the touring companies. It was permanent, stable. Terra wanted to continue her studies in Baltimore, so the arrangement worked out for the both of them.

Alan wanted to rectify the situation with Jessica. According to the divorce’s final judgment, paragraph four, Alan was entitled to have the kids
eight weeks of summer vacation . . . with at least 30 days advance notice . . . each spring break or school spring holidays from Saturday to Saturday; every Thanksgiving holiday . . . [and] any occasion . . . [that he was] in the Jefferson or Shelby County area. . . .

Jessica had not complied with any of the court’s original orders. The divorce decree was a piece of paper to her. Nothing more. No one, Jessica made it clear to Alan on more than one occasion, was going to make her do anything.

Alan and Frank Head sat in court, patiently waiting for Jessica to show up on April 4, 2000. Jessica’s attorney (one of about eight she would have over the course of the custody fight), Lindsey Allison, sat alone, waiting for her client. The court put the case on hold for the morning. Then the bench decided to proceed without Jessica as the noon hour approached.

“I hereby make a motion for continuance,” Lindsey Allison offered, doing her best to get Jessica out of a mess she’d created by not showing up.

The judge denied the motion and told the lawyers to get on with it.

After some time Lindsey said she “wanted to make a motion to withdraw as attorney of record in this case.”

The judge granted it. Jessica was now without an attorney. After that, the judge made several rulings in Alan’s favor. This wasn’t the first time the court had heard from Alan’s attorney on the matter of Jessica not allowing his client to see his children. The judge, one could gather from reading the record, was fed up with Jessica not following the rule of law. Alan provided written confirmation and documentation to prove he was not being allowed to see the children. There were police reports detailing Jessica’s arrest the previous fall for assaulting Alan by pushing him down the stairs and breaking his arm.

None of the evidence was contested.

Alan testified. He brought in witnesses to back up his claims.

The plaintiff being ready in this cause,
the ruling stated,
and presenting testimony and evidence in support of the Petition . . . the Court finds the defendant in contempt for numerous instances of failure to comply with the visitation provisions in the Final Judgment of Divorce, and the Court also finds that the visitation provisions should be modified due to the plaintiff’s living arrangements in another state. . . .

Finally justice.

But there was more.

“The defendant,” the judge ordered, though Jessica was not present, “is herewith found in contempt, and is ordered to serve ten days in jail for two of several instances wherein the court finds she willfully violated the visitation provisions of the Final Judgment of Divorce. . . .”

Jessica was going to comply with the law or face a penalty.

“The jail time is suspended,” the judge continued, “for a period of six months, and this cause is set for a compliance hearing on October 10, 2000, nine
A.M
., to determine whether the defendant complied with the order herein.”

It was a major victory for Alan. It was time for Jessica to live up to her end of the visitations. It had been five years of ridiculous conduct on her part. It needed to end. Right now. Ten days, Alan’s attorney knew, could turn into ten months for Jessica if she continued to play games.

Alan and Terra were satisfied. The court heard Alan’s plea and acted. All he needed was for his former wife to live up to her obligations. If she didn’t, she was going to jail. If she did, great. The judge would suspend the time. Maybe jail—or the threat of it—would scare Jessica into submission? Perhaps she would now understand that the court was no longer taking the passive route.

Several weeks after that no-show court date, Alan wrote Jessica a letter. He and Terra had plans, though he wasn’t about to share them with Jessica yet. Instead, he wanted to make her aware, per the court’s order, that he was giving her thirty days’ notice before taking the girls that summer. He slated June 19 through August 13 as the time frame for which he wanted the girls. He wrote he expected and
appreciated
Jessica’s
attention and cooperation with this matter.

Jessica, surprisingly, complied.

This is great,
Alan thought. He and Terra were scheduled to be married on June 24, 2000, a year after that original date had been bungled. If he got the girls on June 19, they’d make the wedding. There seemed to be nothing to keep them away.

Alan contacted Jessica by phone on June 19. She promised the kids were going to be at her mother’s house. The plan was for Alan’s mother to drive from Atlanta to Birmingham to pick up the kids. She would keep them for a few days. When Alan returned from a business trip, he could pick them up in Atlanta. Alan would never have to see Jessica.

For whatever reason, Kevin and Robert Bates said later, “Alan showed up to pick up the kids.” Probably because he hadn’t seen them in so long. He didn’t want to waste one minute. He had gotten out of the business trip a few days early.

After the wedding at the Alabama Theatre on June 24, the plan was for Alan and Terra to honeymoon for a few days while the girls spent some time with their grandparents. Then Alan and Terra could take them back to Maryland for the summer.

Maybe Jessica had finally seen the light. Perhaps she decided it wasn’t worth destroying the kids’ lives for her own self-centered benefit.

Jessica affirmed that she was not going to be a nuisance anymore. The kids had suffered enough. When Alan called to say he was picking up the kids, and not his mother, Jessica explained that she had something to tell him. Something important. Something he’d probably be surprised by. But she wanted to do it in person.

Could be just about anything, knowing that woman.

Alan walked into Jessica’s home in Montevallo, a house, incidentally, he had handed over to her as part of the divorce, no questions asked, so his kids could have a stable life and environment to grow up in. There was someone else there, Alan noticed. A barrel-chested man, maybe five foot nine, two hundred pounds. Stocky. Rough around the edges. He had beady blue eyes, very distinctive and unique in color. His hair was cropped short. Buzz cut. He was thirty years old. (Jessica was about to turn twenty-nine on June 25.)

Alan stuck out his hand.

The guy looked like a cop.

“This is Jeff,” she said. “My husband.”

“Husband?”

Jeff was a Pelham police officer, Jessica explained with a smirk. They had gotten married the previous Saturday, she explained with a beaming glow about her. Her mother knew. A few others. But besides that, Jessica said, she hadn’t told many people. Jeff was “shy,” she seemed to point out to Alan for no reason. She called him a “loner.” Said he didn’t like a lot of fuss. “[Jeff] would be very difficult to provoke in any way,” Jessica said later. “He avoids confrontations.”

As far as Jeff being a police officer, Jessica addressed that in court in a bit more detail, saying, “Police officers, if they are even involved in an assault of any kind, they lose their jobs. They are trained to use other methods than drawing their gun whenever they can. And, you know, I don’t know if it’s from television or media or what, but people seem to have this impression that, you know, 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 that way.”

Jeff Kelley McCord seemed like an all right guy, Alan considered. What divorced father of two girls wouldn’t want a police officer—a protector by nature—in the same house with his kids if he wasn’t there? This might turn out okay, after all, Alan felt. Maybe this was the reason why Jessica had suddenly turned into a cooperative ex-spouse. She was happy, for once in her life.

Still, it would have been nice beforehand to know that the kids were going to have a stepfather, Alan thought after leaving the house. But that was Jessica—she had to one-up Alan. Now the court would see who was married first, he knew. Jessica also said she and Jeff had purchased a house—but she didn’t say where. It was a nice home in a middle-class neighborhood by a lake outside Birmingham. They were moving there soon.