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As soon as Jessica and Jeff moved into the house on Myrtlewood Drive in Hoover, Jessica began to create a new plan to keep Alan away from the kids. And Jeff went along, doing whatever he was told.

The only reason there were no problems for Alan during the summer of 2000 was because Alan had kept the kids at his home in Maryland. He and Terra set aside a room for the children. Decorated it. Spent the summer rebuilding relationships Jessica had spent years destroying. It didn’t take the kids long to realize Alan loved them, no matter what Jessica had said or drilled into their heads. It was clear in Alan’s words, gestures and pure show of affection that his love was genuine, and had been all along.

Alan and Terra dropped the kids off in Birmingham at the end of the summer. Then returned to their lives in Maryland. Alan lost touch with his girls the next day. It was easier for Jessica now that Alan lived nine hundred miles northeast. He couldn’t drop by unexpectedly and say he wanted to see the girls. Now, same as she had before, Jessica refused to allow the children to speak with their father on the telephone. More than that, Alan had no idea where, exactly, did Jessica and Jeff lived in Hoover.

Here we go again. . . .

All Jessica had to do was conform with the court’s order and she would have saved herself from serving ten days in jail—the sentence she had been given was six months suspended. This was, however, providing she proved to the court she made an effort to live up to her obligations. October 2000 was just around the corner, a time when Jessica and her new lawyer would have to prove she was living under the provisions of the court’s ruling.

Frank Head let the court know she wasn’t. He also made it clear that Jessica never provided written documentation—a note from her doctor—regarding her “inability to appear for trial” that past April 4, 2000

(her excuse a day later was that she was ill) .

Alan and Head showed up in court on October 16, 2000. Jessica’s new lawyer was there. But once again, Jessica chose to skip it.

“Your client, is she here?” the judge asked Jessica’s lawyer.

“I have not had recent contact with my client, Your Honor, this after diligent efforts.”

The judge ordered both sides to get on with the hearing.

By the end of the session, the judge ruled that Jessica had “failed to comply with the Order of the Court entered [in April that year], by failing or refusing to allow [Alan] to speak with his children at least one evening each week on the telephone for up to fifteen minutes of uninterrupted conversation. . . .”

In addition, she hadn’t paid Alan’s attorney’s fees, which she was responsible for.

With that, the judge ordered the contempt charge against Jessica be put into action. Someone needed to find Jessica McCord. She owed the judge ten days in jail.

When she heard, Jessica became infuriated. She called a friend a few days later to vent. She described the “gall” Alan had to demand that she be put in jail. This was all Alan’s fault. He did it. He could have stopped it, but he chose to make her suffer.

“I’m going to get him,” Jessica told that friend. She repeated a prior threat: “I’m going to set him up for domestic abuse.”

Jessica’s plan was to provoke Alan into hitting her; then she would run to the police and press charges.

The judge signed off on a writ of arrest and sent deputies to find Jessica and put her in jail.

But then something happened.

“To the best of my recollection,” Jessica’s mother, Dian Bailey, later said in court, “it was somewhere right in November 2000” when Jeff left Jessica. They split up. “And they might try reconciliation a day or two [later],” Dian added.

Jessica and the kids stayed at Dian’s. According to Dian, Alan wasn’t the poster child for fathers he had claimed to be in court. “Alan was not consistent in his visitation,” Dian told the court, “whether that it be the first or the third, or it might be two hours on a Saturday if he can’t make it, or it might be that he would take them out for dinner. . . .”

Further, Dian claimed, Alan had skipped visitations. He’d call and say he would be there, but he would never show up.

After a time Jessica moved back into the house on Myrtlewood Drive, reconciling with Jeff. She wasn’t pregnant any longer, she said. Either she had lost the child, lied about being pregnant to begin with, or had another abortion.

During this period Jeff and Jessica didn’t claim an address. Jessica told Alan she and Jeff were buying a house, but Alan didn’t know where. The kids, moreover, weren’t enrolled in school. It appeared that Jessica, Jeff and the kids had disappeared.

Alan and Terra were horrified by the prospect that Jessica and her new husband—a man Alan didn’t know very much about—might have packed up and taken off with Alan’s kids. Jessica was now hiding the children from him, more than just denouncing his advances to see and speak with them. But it wasn’t only Alan she was running from. Jessica owed the court ten days in jail.

 

 

By the end of November, Frank Head filed additional court actions against Jessica regarding her desire not to allow Alan to see the kids during the Thanksgiving holiday, or on McKenna’s birthday. Alan was beside himself. Jessica was like a broken record. The same behavior all over again. She refused to follow the court’s ruling, even if it meant jail time.

Frank Head asked the court to issue a subpoena to the custodian of records for the Hoover City School System so he could find out where the children’s educational records popped up. The idea was that Jessica would have enrolled the children in school somewhere. There had to be a record. It was Alan’s belief they were attending Green Valley Elementary, on Old Columbiana Road, about a mile from Jessica’s mother’s house. Alan knew the kids were being dropped off there at different times.

When the Hoover City School System failed to return a hit on the kids’ whereabouts, Frank Head went to the custodian of records for Southminster Day School in Vestavia Hills. Alan heard that maybe the kids were enrolled there. Of course, he called the Pelham PD, but they couldn’t give him any information.

By this point Jessica was served several Violation of Previous Orders. All with no response from her. In a December 21, 2000, letter (which he had no idea where to send), Frank Head announced that Alan wanted to see the kids on Christmas, per order of the court.

Christmas came and went, as did the New Year celebration.

Alan never saw or spoke to his kids.

The issue now became, not if Alan Bates would ever see his children again, but where, exactly, was Jessica hiding them.