39
In between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Alan’s lawyer bombarded the court with motions. He also filed several subpoena requests for school records. The court still could not find Jessica or the children. She was either keeping them out of school, homeschooling them, or they had moved far away. The fact alone that Frank Head had done all this work—not to mention that Alan lived nine hundred miles away—was a good indication that Jeff was either lying about Alan following him that day, or—in a paranoid state Jessica had induced—he had convinced himself that a stranger was Alan.
Frank Head filed a motion for a December 11, 2001, hearing date to hash out what was turning into a legal quagmire. The woman was breaking so many different laws. Where was the accountability, and what was the court doing to find her? Thus far, it appeared that the court hadn’t done much to serve an arrest warrant.
In turn, the Eighteenth Judicial Circuit Court of Shelby County rubber-stamped two Failure to Abide by Previous Order of the Court orders by Alan and issued another series of arrest warrants.
It did no good.
As it turned out, Jessica had been hanging around Brad Tabor’s place during this period of time. Unbeknownst to Brad, she and Jeff and the kids were hiding out. Brad even babysat the kids from time to time. But when Jessica didn’t show up on time to drop off the girls, Brad called her. One such day he asked what was going on.
True to her nature, Jessica found a way to blame Alan: “Kelley has the girls,” Jessica said breathlessly, “in the car . . . and they’re . . . Alan had been following them. He’s not bringing them home because he doesn’t want Alan to know where we live.” She made the implication that Alan was a raging lunatic, looking to cause violence.
A day later, Brad called Jessica to ask what was going on. Why all the fuss about Alan knowing where she lived?
“I’m concerned Alan is going to win custody,” Jessica said. She sounded dismayed.
“Really?”
“It’s the homeschooling. That’s what’s going to win it for him.” Jessica was never licensed to homeschool the kids. In addition to everything else, she had lied about that, too.
Brad didn’t know what to say. Jessica mentioned jail. Brad had no idea things had spiraled so out of control.
“I can’t lose the girls, Brad, and the child support. I need that money.”
Jessica liked to say she and her children had a “close relationship.” She could always talk to them, she insisted, about anything. And yet what she claimed to have talked to them about at times bordered on the psychotic and bizarre, considering how young they were.
“And when they were growing up,” Jessica admitted, “you know, all along the years, they would ask me things, have questions after watching a TV show about maybe drug usage or premarital sex, which, I mean, I had premarital sex and was not married when I had them. (Not true.) We would have separate conversations about each of these things and about just different types of values that we found to be important.” Jessica instilled in her kids, she claimed, not to “have preconceived notions about other people, because you’re not that person. You haven’t lived their life. You don’t know! How road rage is just crazy, because you’re driving down a road and you don’t know why this person cut you off in a car. You don’t know.”
She went on to explain why we receive tax refunds “and that you don’t have to take that money,” she told them, “if you don’t want to. . . . That’s a choice you make as a member of society. You have to pay your taxes, but you don’t have to take extra back.”
Did it make sense to share this with ten- and eight-year-old children?
Jessica thought so.
She also described how geometry works and her idea behind Einstein’s theory of relativity. “A lot of what we learn is perception . . . and that was what I taught my children. I would want them to continue to understand that things are fluid, things change, and simply because one person says that’s an absolute, it may not be. . . .”
Jessica was later diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD). According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH),
[BPD] is a serious mental illness characterized by pervasive instability in moods, interpersonal relationships, self-image, and behavior. This instability often disrupts family and work life, long-term planning, and the individual’s sense of self-identity. Originally thought to be at the “borderline” of psychosis, people with BPD suffer from a disorder of emotion regulation.This description would serve to illustrate Jessica’s behavior inside the next three months, almost as if it were written specifically for her. One of the worst fears a person suffering from BPD can face is the thought that their most sacred possession in life will be taken away.
This, many doctors agree, can cause a person with BPD to spin entirely out of control.
On December 18, 2001, Jeff and Jessica were at their Myrtlewood Drive home with the kids. Jessica knew she was in violation of the law. She’d been keeping the kids away from Alan for well over a year. He had not even spoken to them.
While the McCords were inside, there was some movement outside the house.
Jeff looked out the window. He knew what it was. So did Jessica.
The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office (JCSO), along with an officer from the Hoover PD, was in front of the McCord home. From the bathroom window upstairs, behind the blinds, Jeff watched the two vehicles pull up.
Pulling away from the blinds, Jeff heard the car doors slam.
“Can I help you guys?” Jeff asked, meeting them outside in the driveway moments later.
Jessica was upstairs in the master bedroom. According to her, she had just woken up. It was early morning. “We were all still in bed,” she recalled, “in pajamas and everything, watching Martha Stewart on TV.”
Law enforcement had an arrest warrant. Jessica was being charged with contempt. She was going to jail for not allowing Alan to see his kids—the judge had warned her repeatedly.
“I could hear them,” Jessica said, “discussing that there was some sort of an order relating to the children and an order for my arrest.”
“Some sort of an order,” as if she had no idea why they were there.
In fact, Jessica later claimed she had no idea an arrest warrant had been issued for her. She insisted that no one had told her about it.
“Yeah, can I see your documentation?” Jeff asked. The kids were upstairs with their mom, listening. They “became very upset. Very, very upset,” Jessica said.
The girls cried, she claimed. Jessica tried calming them. She said she explained what was going on. “Preparing them,” she called it. Again, this was after first saying she had no idea why the cops were at her house.
Jeff looked over the paperwork downstairs. It all seemed legit.
Why was he stalling?
“Does this order amount to a search warrant?” Jeff asked. He knew the law.
No answer.
“Well, does it?” he asked again.
If it didn’t, he said, law enforcement was not allowed into the house to search for Jessica. They would have to wait outside.
Instead, Jeff claimed, the sheriffs walked past him toward the door, one of them asking, “Is she here?”
Jeff opened the door. “Come right in.”
“Where is she?”
Jeff looked at the paperwork again.
“We’re separated,” he said, walking in behind them. He was trying to say that he and Jessica had split up. “She’s not here.”
Downstairs, undeterred, one of the sheriffs asked Jeff, “Where is she?”
By this point Jessica had told the children that the cops were there to take her away. “Well,” one of them said (if you believe Jessica), “just say you’re Auntie.”
“No, baby,” Jessica said, “that’s not really going to fly. They are police. That won’t work.”
“Oh yes, it will, Mommy. Yes, it will.”
The kids hugged her.
Downstairs, Jeff looked away after he was asked for a third time if Jessica was home. Then, “I have no idea where she or the girls are, sorry.”
There was movement in the house. One of the deputies heard this and headed up the stairs.
He found Jessica in the master bedroom with the kids.
“Are you Jessica Bates McCord?”
“Auntie . . . Auntie . . . Auntie,” the kids chanted, according to Jessica.
“That’s my aunt,” one of the girls said.
“I’m Belinda (pseudonym), Jessica’s sister,” Jessica said (according to several reports of this incident).
The sheriff was suspicious. It was the way Jessica had answered.
“Why are you here?” the sheriff asked. “Where is Jessica?”
“Um, Jessica left a couple of months ago and we haven’t seen her.”
“Well, why are you here with the kids? Aren’t these Jessica’s kids?” The sheriff then asked the children their names, knowing they were Jessica’s kids. They had a court order, which had the names of the girls. They were supposed to pick them up, too.
Jessica thought about the question. “Well, Jessica ran off because she caught me in bed with Kelley.”
Interesting excuse to give when hiding your identity.
One of the sheriffs called a supervisor to see if someone could dig up a photograph of Jessica and send it over. They also wanted fingerprints so they could verify she wasn’t lying.
As they discussed this, Jessica “admitted” who she was to the sheriffs.
After a bit of small talk, Jessica was handcuffed and taken outside. The story she told upstairs, the sheriff later said, “didn’t jibe with us.”
Inside the sheriff’s car, preparing to leave for Shelby County Jail, Jessica broke down. She started bawling. Hyperventilating. She was scared, she claimed.
After crying for a spell, she got angry. Then she snapped out of it and said, “This isn’t fair. Somebody’s going to pay for this!”