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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.”