True Crime Campfire - Ambush: The Murders of Alan and Terra Bates

Episode Date: October 11, 2024

There’s an old saying: Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy? The answer, for most of us, is obvious. We want to be happy. And sometimes, that means compromising. Not getting exactly what we want. Not winning. But for some people, the only thing that can make them happy is conquest. They’ll always choose being right—always choose winning, no matter what the stakes. Even if it leaves a smoking wreckage behind them. Join us for a true story of smoldering rage and revenge--and one of the worst "bad bitches" we've covered so far.Free shipping and 365-day returns from Quince: https://quince.com/happycamperSources:Death Trap by M. William PhelpsMurderpedia, Jessica McCord (various articles): https://murderpedia.org/female.M/m/mccord-jessica.htm#google_vignetteFollow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. There's an old saying, do you want to be right or do you want to be happy? The answer for most of us is obvious. We want to. want to be happy. And sometimes that means compromising. Not getting exactly what we want, not winning. But for some people, the only thing that can make them happy is conquest. They'll always choose

being right. Always choose winning, no matter what the stakes, even if it leaves a smoking wreckage behind them. This is ambush, the murders of Alan and Tara Bates. So, campers, for this one, we're starting out in the tiny little town of Rutledge, Georgia, February 16, 2002. It was late at night, and a group of friends were on their way to a chicken show. Yeah, apparently that's a thing. Your guess is as good as mine. They loaded their chickens into the car and were driving down Old Mill Road. This was a dark, wooded road, and suddenly, as they rounded a curve, one of the friends spotted something strange through the trees. An orange glow. Fire.

They all knew people who had farms in this area, and they were worried. What if that was somebody's barn or even their house? They rushed to call 911. When the fire department showed up at the scene, they discovered the source of the fire. right away. It was a car, totally engulfed in flames. They got to work extinguishing the fire, then stood back to survey the scene. The car was totally destroyed, obviously, to the point where the paint had bubbled off in the heat. The interior was just annihilated. And the trees around the car were charred, too. When police arrived, the fire chief walked up to one of the

deputies. There wasn't anybody in the car, he said, but I think they must have left some deer meat or something in the trunk. The deputy sniffed. Yeah, it definitely smelled like it. And if you looked into the car's interior where the backseat cushions had burned away, you could see into the trunk. There was something big in there, a big charred slab of meat. Except when they got the trunk open, it quickly became clear what they were really looking at. It wasn't a deer carcass. It was two human bodies, burned beyond recognition, folded together, and shoved into the trunk. The deputy could see their arms and legs. It looked like a man and a woman, or possibly a man and a child.

And just like that, the investigators realized this wasn't the remnants of some ambitious idiots attempted an insurance scam. It was much worse. They had a double murder on their hands. Through identification of the burned-out car, it didn't take long to match the two bodies to a pair of missing persons reported to police right across the border in Alabama just the day before. Alan Bates and his wife Tara. They'd been due to pick up Alan's two daughters at his ex-wife's house on February 15th for a visit, but the kids were still with

their mom and nobody had heard from Alan or Tara. Both their families were in a panic. They knew something was badly wrong. Neither one of them would ever be out of touch like this and ignore everybody's frantic voicemails. Everybody had a bad feeling. See, Alan and Tara had been in a contentious custody battle with Alan's ex-wife, Jessica. In fact, they'd had an important deposition that February 15th. It all painted a pretty grim picture for detectives. They'd need dental records to be sure, but when Alan Bates' brother got the call about the car,

he didn't need confirmation. He knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that his brother and sister-in-law, Two of the best people he'd ever known were dead. And it wasn't much of a mystery to him who'd killed them. But we're going to put a pin in that for now and go back to the beginning of this story. In 1989, right at the end of his junior year of high school in Irondale, Alabama, Alan Bates met Jessica Callis. In terms of the high school ecosystem, Jessica was pretty much Alan's polar opposite.

They were both smart, but while Alan was a popular. kid with legions of friends and lots of extracurricular interests, Jessica was a goth girl who had trouble relating to the other kids. Even among the other weird kids, Jessica was weird, and not in a fun way, like I was. Okay, I was weird and delightful. One of her former classmates told author M. William Phelps that Jessica just kind of radiated bad vibes. She always wanted to be the center of attention, and she could be aggressive and hostile when she didn't get what she wanted. But she could also be fun, kind of a bad girl, which might have been what Alan liked about her. He'd grown up pretty sheltered, and he'd always been a good kid. When those teenage

hormones get to churn in, a lot of kids get tired of being good all the time. It can be real tempting to dip a toe into the wilder side. There was definitely a lot of sexual chemistry between Alan and Jessica, but a lot of Alan's friends were confused about the relationship. They just seemed like opposites, and Jessica was hard to get along with. Yeah, she was seethingly jealous of Alan's time and attention. She hated his female friends with an undisguised passion, the kind where she'd shoot lasers out of her eyes if she saw you talking to him. One friend remembered her going up to Alan one day and saying,

Right in front of her, don't you ever talk to her again. Oh, damn. The her in question was one of Alan's oldest, best friends, a girl who was like a sister to him. Alan still talked to his friend, but he had to sneak around to do it. You can't expect a high school kid to know how toxic that is, but yikes. And then there's this. A few weeks into their relationship, weeks, weeks, weeks, weeks, Alan told Jessica, he and his family were going on summer vacation to the Gulf Coast. they'd be down there for a week or so

and he'd see her when he got back. A few days later, Alan went out onto the balcony of his family's beachfront condo to check out the morning sun and saw somebody waving to him from a towel on the sand. No. It was Jessica.

Oh. She'd driven all the way down to the coast to see him, despite not knowing the exact address of his family's condo. Oh, my God. And because he was very young and very naive, instead of turning around and fleeing and never speaking to this bunny-boiling lunatic again, Alan was flattered.

She was obviously really into him, and it made an impression. Which, when you're a teenager, that's really all that matters. It's like, oh, they're into me. I probably would have had the exact same reaction at that age. Yeah, commitment scared me, so somebody would be like, you looked really pretty today. I'm like, why are you watching me? Their relationship soon started to flame out, though, as teenage relationships tend to do. Alan liked her a lot, but he wanted to focus on his senior year of high school, and Jessica's

abrasiveness and tendency to try and run his life were getting old. This is where it probably would have ended if Jessica hadn't gotten pregnant, just six weeks in. Like anybody would be in that situation, Alan was freaked out, but he was a good guy, more mature than most kids that age, and he was determined to do the right thing by Jessica and the baby to be. After some soul-searching, he came to a decision. I'll take care of you and the baby, he promised. He broke the news to his parents soon after, and before long, the Bateses were letting Jessica move in with them. Jessica was thrilled to be there. She talked a lot about her home life, which she said was abusive and tumultuous. Her dad beat her mom. In fact, years later in 1993,

he would go to prison for beating his second wife to death. Jeez. I think she saw Alan's close-knit happy family as an escape from the chaos at her own house, which is understandable. Sure. Some of her friends were convinced she'd gotten pregnant on purpose in a bid to hold on to Alan. Normally, I'd say, that sounds like misogynistic horseshit, but with Jessica, I could see it. She developed a pattern of using pregnancy and sometimes lying about pregnancy. pregnancy as a manipulative tool.

She'd do it over and over again in the coming year. So in this case, it makes a bit of sense. She told her best friend, I'm only marrying him because his grandfather promised to pay for me to have a baby at a nice private hospital, which I have questions about because does she think she'd be living at the hospital? Like, you're in the hospital for like two days, usually. Yeah. And then you're out.

Some of Alan's family members, his brothers especially, had their doubts about Jessica. They suspected she lied a lot. She definitely came from a dysfunctional family. There's no doubt about that. But some of the stories she told about her childhood were too wild to be believed. Either Jessica had had the worst childhood of anybody in human history, or she tended to embellish. And that was putting it mildly. They had a quickie wedding.

Alan finished high school while Jessica dropped out and focused on getting ready for the baby. She was born in the spring of 1990, a perfect little girl. Alan was determined to go to college and finish his education so he could support his new family. And in the fall of 1990, he started at the University of Montevallo, working odd jobs while going to school full-time. Ellen was a theater kid. He wasn't an actor. He wanted to be backstage, working on sound and sets and all the other behind-the-scenes stuff that's so crucial to the success of a show. He had a real passion for it and dreams of working on Broadway someday.

He hit the ground running at Montevallo. As eager as Jessica had been to join Alan's family, she worked hard to alienate him from them and from everybody else in his orbit. She was threatened by any relationship he had with anybody, even his parents. She didn't mind when Alan's folks bought them a house, but she didn't really like him spending any time with them. You know, she just wanted, like, money, but not to have to see them at all. And when it came to other women, her jealousy was on

a whole other level. If Alan so much has said hi to a girl, Jessica assumed he must be sleeping with her. If the man smiled at the girl selling tickets at the movies, Jessica got suspicious. She freaked out on him constantly, accusing him of cheating. One time, she burst into a rehearsal at the campus theater, baby in tow to scream a bunch of unhinged jealous nonsense. at him, in front of everybody. He must have been mortified, but he just put his arm around Jessica and walked her outside to talk her down. There was nothing to any of this.

Alan was not the type to cheat. In the fall of 92, Jessica and Alan had their second child, another little girl. And it didn't take long for her to ratchet up the bonkers behavior. She started coming down with mysterious ailments, especially when she wanted Alan to pay attention to her instead of something he had. had going on with work or school. It got so bad that one of her doctors actually wrote in her chart that she came off as manipulative and self-serving. Dang, I suspect it has to get bad before your doctor will roast you in your chart like that, you know? If Alan had plans to

spend time with one of his brothers or friends, Jessica would almost always come down with some kind of illness so he had to stay home. These ephemeral little ailments came and went as it suited her, and that was by no means her only method of manipulation. She absolutely forbid him from having any female friends. He'd been friends with one woman for years and years, and after telling him he was no longer allowed to talk to her, Jessica gathered up every picture with the woman in it, every birthday card she'd ever sent Alan, anything she could find, and tossed it in the trash. You know, like you do. So well-adjusted and healthy. By 1994, Alan and Jessica were fighting constantly.

Their sex life had fizzled. They were fighting about basic stuff like religion and politics. They didn't even like the same TV shows, for God's sake. Pretty common for a couple who got together in high school, I suspect. And Jessica was always complaining, accusing, pulling some manipulative trick or other. Ellen was trying like hell to make it work, but she was impossible to reason with. she already had one foot out the door she'd started telling her friends

that Alan was abusive to her and the kids making up one horror story after another he hit her he screamed at her and the girls he tried to get her to sleep with his friends which that one's a nice touch isn't it he's a brute and a purve it was all total bullshit designed to make Jessica look like a victim

which again we've said this a million times but it bears repeating 99.9% of the time if somebody says they're being abused they are but when it's not true it's somebody like Jessica and you know our show focuses on bad people so it comes up every now and again she was laying the groundwork for the divorce and custody battle to come i'm sure priming the pump in advance so she could trot in a bunch of friends who would corroborate her lies and they were lies ridiculous lies Ellen was the most mild-mannered dude on earth, patient and kind, always the peacemaker.

He'd never laid a hand on her in anger. He didn't yell or scream. That was Jessica's M.O. Jessica decided she wanted to go back to school, so Alan rearranged his schedule so she could take classes. She signed up for a history class and quickly made a new friend, a dude friend. And around Valentine's Day of 1994, she ended up. announced to Alan that she had to take a weekend trip to D.C. It was for a class project, she said, I have to do research for a paper. She didn't want Alan to come with her. No, no, no, no.

I'll go by myself. It'll be good for us to have a little break from each other. Now, I know this is going to shock you. So brace yourself. She didn't go by herself. She went with the dude from history class. And Alan figured it out pretty quickly because he has, you know, a brain and she's the worst liar on the planet, apparently. When he confronted her over the phone, she screamed at him. How dare he accuse her? Jessica got so unhinged on that call that Alan was afraid she'd physically attack him when she got home from D.C. He took the kids to his brother's house, and it was a good thing he did, because lo and behold, when Jessica got home, Alan told her he was done. He wanted to try to save their

marriage, but her cheating on him was the last straw. Jessica did not take it well. She went into the kitchen, grabbed a butcher knife, and ran full throttle at Alan, shrieking like a banshee. Alan ran like hell and just managed to slam the door in her face. He heard the knife

stab into the door behind him. That was it for the marriage. Well, yeah, I freaking hope so. Just imagine, this bitch just running at you full tilt, screaming bloody murder with a knife in her hand. It's like a horror movie. Like, who does this?

The kind of people who end up on our show. That's who. Alan spent the night with family, and when he got back to the house a couple of days later to pack up some of his stuff, he walked into the aftermath of a rage tornado. Jessica had smashed, trashed, or slashed almost everything he owned and torn up every picture of him in the house.

Remind anybody of Dante? Sotorius? Remember her? How she trashed that poor dude's apartment after he dumped her, killed his goldfish? Yeah. Bonkers behavior. Alan moved out so Jessica and the kids could stay in the house, and right away, Jessica got busy trying to alienate the kids from their dad. Alan was paying child support from day one, more than the court said he had to, in fact. Jessica would blow through the money, then rant to the kids that their dad wasn't giving her enough to take care of them. Yeah. She'd keep the kids away from him and then tell them their daddy didn't want to come see them. Oh.

It didn't matter to her that this hurt the little girl's feelings. What mattered to Jessica was winning the parental popularity contest. Oh, man. She trashed Alan to her friends so often that they started to feel uncomfortable around her. It was all she wanted to talk about. And the ones who knew Alan felt like none of it matched the guy they knew. She made him sound like a monster. Their divorce was finalized right at the start of 1995, and at first, Alan didn't fight for custody

of the kids. He was fine to let her have primary custody. He felt like they should be with their mom. But almost immediately, Alan started regretting that decision. Jessica was violating their divorce agreement on visitation, left and right. She did everything she could to keep him away from his daughters. If he called to talk to the girls, she'd tell him they weren't home or couldn't talk right then. He'd leave messages for them, and Jessica would delete them. Sometimes when she knew there was no visitation scheduled, she'd get the girls dressed, have them pack their little overnight bags, sit them on the front steps to wait for an hour, and then shrug and say, well, I guess daddy's not coming. See, he doesn't care about you.

Anybody else fantasizing about putting this bitch through a wood chipper? Because, yeah, me too. The wild thing to me about this is it's not like she even wanted time with the kids. Jessica hit the dating scene right away and before long she developed a habit of dumping the girls on her mom Diane and just disappearing for days, weeks, months with a boyfriend. Months sometimes, two months at a time. So it's not like she was what you'd call a dedicated mom, but God forbid the kids go to their dad. That would happen over Jessica's dead body. During these times when the kids were with their grandma, Alan would never know where they were. He'd go months without talking to his daughters.

And when he did speak to them, he could tell Jessica had been filling their heads with toxic nonsense about him. It drove him nuts. He kept paying child support, but Jessica seemed to be using most of the money for herself. For about a year after the divorce, Alan's life was a constant, depressing, uphill battle to try and see his kids. lots of angry and threatening voicemails from Jessica. It was a bleak time. But then, toward the end of the year, things started looking up. Alan was working at the beautiful historic Alabama theater

when an art historian named Tara Clue joined the team as an architectural project historian helping with the restoration of the building. Tara was awesome. She was smart. She'd studied in London before taking the job in Alabama. She was passionate about her work. She was pretty, she was easygoing, and consider it. Pretty much, Tara was Jessica's photo negative.

And she and Alan hit it off immediately. Friendship sped into romance, and before long, they were getting serious. Alan's only reservation about the relationship was that he knew it would get right up under Jessica's skin and probably make her act even more cartoonishly evil than usual. On the rare occasions, when Alan was able to wrangle a visit with the girls, they got along great with Tara,

and Tara adored them too. But as soon as the kids got back to Jessica, contact would be cut off again. And Alan knew she was filling their heads with all her, You dead didn't care about you, bullshit. One time, Alan and Jessica's older daughter was participating in a dance recital for her ballet class. They held the recital at the Alabama theater

where Alan worked, and he volunteered to work the tech for the show. When the little girl saw her dad backstage, she ran up to her teacher and said, would you say hi to my daddy for me? The teacher was confused. Like, well, why can't you just run over and tell him hi yourself? Oh, my mom says I'm not allowed to talk to my daddy, she said. Cartoonishly evil.

The teacher was horrified, but not really surprised. Jessica had told her never to let Alan pick up the girls from dance class no matter what. She claimed it was a court order. It wasn't, but the teacher had no way of knowing that. that. It wasn't about what was best for the kids anymore if it ever had been. It was about winning, crushing Allen into dust. And if the kids got trampled along the way, Jessica couldn't give a shit. This was war. Yeah, we watch a ton of court hearings on YouTube, and I'm always astounded by how many parents are out there willing to screw over their ex at the expense of their

kids. Like, you made the choice to procreate with this person that you hate so deeply. Your kid didn't ask for any of this shit. Your kid didn't ask to exist. And like, it gets to the point where you can see the judge is just done with our bullshit. They're like, if you can't get along, I will make you get along. It just, it makes me fucking crazy. I hate it. Yeah. As soon as she realized Alan and Tara were together, Jessica became obsessed with finding a new partner too. And her first attempt was a guy who owned a comic book and game store. Apparently, Jessica was into Magic. The Gathering which just absolutely cracks me up. This guy sold the cards at his shop,

and at some point something came up in conversation that gave Jessica the impression that Game Shop Guy was about to come into a whole bunch of money. And suddenly, this dude, who was not Jessica's usual type, became super attractive to her for some reason. She moved in on him like a heat-seeking missile. Game Shop guy thought he'd hit the lottery at first. At some point, he mentioned a day.

Jessica that he didn't want to have kids, so Jessica didn't bother telling him she had two of them. She kept this unimportant little factoid from him until six weeks after she'd moved in with him. Moved in with him? Yeah. Where was she hiding the fucking kids? Oh. At her moms. Yeah, of course. I know. I know that was, yeah. I'm just like, I'm just baffled. This is, this is baffling behavior. Yeah. She also lied to him about how long she'd been divorced. She made it sound like it was years and years ago, not like within the past year. This wasn't unusual. Jessica lied to everybody. She'd say anything she needed to to get what she wanted. When she got pregnant, Game Shop Guy, GSG for those in the know, wasn't thrilled. He'd already told her he

didn't want to have kids, and he was still pretty salty that she lied to him about having some of her own. Jessica ended up moving in with her mom to have the baby and went after Game Shop Guy for child support. After the little girl was born, the guy had a change of heart and realized he did want to be part of her life. He filed her visitation through the court system and got it. But Jessica wasn't having it. She made it clear that she wanted him to keep sending money and stay away. If he called to talk to the little girl on the phone, Jessica would refuse to put her on. Baby daddy thought about fighting for custody, but then his attorney told him something that changed his mind and made him keep his head on a swivel.

Jessica had been arrested for attacking her other baby daddy, her ex-husband Alan, and putting him in the hospital. One afternoon, she'd gone over to Allen's place to drop the girls off for a rare visit. She started an argument, and then she went feral on him, hitting and clawing, and then she pushed him down the stairs. Alan broke his arm, and his face was covered in bruises and bloody scratches. Jesus. Two people witnessed the whole thing and called the cops, and Alan decided to press charges. Jessica had started working as a secretary for the Birmingham PD, and the incident got her fired. Jessica, of course, blamed Alan, and to punish him for her sudden lack of income, she forged an invoice from a contractor, claiming she'd had a bunch of emergency repairs done to the house.

Alan was supposed to pay for home repairs per the divorce agreement, but his attorney took one look at the invoice and smelled a rat. Looked into it, and yep, fake. She was just trying to squeeze more money out of Allen. Good Lord. Like this woman, her full-time job was like ruining lives and like playing shell games with her children. Like that's a full-time job is like making sure her kids aren't where they're supposed to be. She put a great deal of effort into it. She had put the same amount of effort into building an actual life.

She could have been very happy. Yeah. It's crazy. The better Alan did in his life, the more pissed off Jessica got. She violated court order after court order, hiding the kids at friends' houses during schedule visits, then claiming Allen didn't show up. See, Jessica's the type of person who thinks she can create her own reality. If she doesn't like a court order, she's not going to follow it. She's just going to ignore it and pretend it never happened and do everything she can to dodge responsibility.

But of course, there's always an expiration date on that kind of thing. Eventually, you're going to have to pay the piper. This had been going on for years now, and Alan was sick to death of it. He had his attorney file a grievance with the court, letting them know about every instance where she defied visitation orders. But Jessica felt like she had an ace up her sleeve. See, by this point, she'd hooked her next victim. I mean, love interest. His name was Jeff Kelly McCord.

He was big and protective and easily manipulated. And best of all, for her purposes, he was a cop. Ooh, baby. Now she'd have the whole Birmingham PD on her side in her custody fight with Alan. Or at least that's what she thought. She threw all her energy

into making Jeff fall for her, and apparently it wasn't that hard. According to crime writer M. William Phelps, Jeff wasn't very experienced with the ladies. During an interview for Phelps' book Death Trap, Jeff piped up out of nowhere, Jessica was not the first woman with whom I'd had sexual relations. Yeah.

Okay. See, I feel like if that were true, you just wouldn't feel the need to bring it up at all, so I'm going to go out on a limb and say, I don't believe you. Also, you lose credibility points for calling it sexual relations. Now, despite being a big bad police officer, Jeff was cool to let Jessica boss him around like he was her employee, Jessica's favorite kind of person. She found this out early on when she was able to easily her. harass him and to squeeze in a bunch of money out of his elderly mother. They used it for the down payment on a house. Jeff's willingness to do as he was told was great for Jessica. See, she knew Alan and Tara were getting married, and that meant they'd be able to show the family court that they had a stable home. Jessica needed to look stable too. She needed a new husband. Unsurprisingly, Jessica told Jeff all kinds of wild lies about Alan. He'd broken her wrist. He'd tried to pimp her out to his friends, and he was always screaming at her and the kids. If he didn't know him, you'd think he was a monster, and Jeff swallowed it hook,

hook, line, and sinker. So he was more than willing to go along with Jessica in her underhanded quest to keep the kids away from Alan. He didn't really have a choice anyway if he wanted to stay with her. Everybody in Jessica's life knew that. You either gave into her, or you were going to go to war. Alan was the first person to ever push back on that. By the spring of 2000, Alan was beyond fed up with Jessica's tactics. She'd played nice for a little while, obeying a court order to let the girls spend the summer with Alan and Tara. But when summer was over, she went right back to her old playbook of keeping the kids away. She told a friend that if Alan kept pushing, she was going to get him for domestic violence,

like set him up and hurt herself and claim that he did it. What followed the summer visit was a year of frustration for Alan. and his attorney, trying desperately to figure out where Jessica and the kids were. She refused to disclose an address, saying she didn't have a permanent address at the time. Oh, I'm between places. I'll let you know once we get settled. Alan and Tara were afraid Jessica and her new cop husband might take the girls and leave the state. He realized he didn't have a choice anymore. He had to file for custody of the kids. Jessica missed multiple court hearings. Even her attorney didn't know where she was.

through her lawyer though Jessica claimed she was homeschooling the kids she had the qualifications to do it she'd had training this of course was complete bullshit she wasn't homeschooling them she was just keeping them out of school so their dad couldn't find them through school records

Jessica had lied about this to her own lawyer by the way making her risk her own reputation and career by repeating it to a judge her version of homeschooling apparently was to have heart to hearts with the kids about such topics as Einstein's theory of relativity, whether we should take our tax refund money or let the government keep it. For some reason, she seemed to think of accepting your tax refund as a bad thing to do. It's your money. I know. It's so weird. Road rage, for some reason, and premarital

sex. She told them she'd had them out of wedlock, which wasn't true. It's like, why bring this up? It's so weird. And finally, all this stuff came to a head. Family court is notoriously slow, but eventually, if you're defying order after order, lying to the court, lying to your own lawyer, and actively alienating your kids from the other parent, you are going to have to face some kind of consequences. The judge held Jessica in contempt of court and issued a warrant for her arrest. She was going to spend 10 days in jail, and hopefully that would knock some sense into her dumbass and she'd start letting the kids see their dad. That's all he wanted, was just to see his kids sometimes. Jessica and Jeff did their best to hide her from the court so she couldn't be served with the arrest warrant. She even made him take down their mailbox so you couldn't see their house number from the street.

She was freaking out about the prospect of jail and about the possibility that Alan might actually get custody of the kids. She told a friend, I can't let Alan get custody. I need the child support money. Oh, wow, charming. Yeah, you can see where her priorities were. I should mention by this point, she'd also had a kid with Jeff. Oh, great. But, you know, you can't hide forever. Eventually, the sheriff's department figured out where Jessica and Jeff were, and they pulled up with the warrant.

Jessica could have had some dignity here. She could have hugged her kids, explained the situation, and surrendered herself like a grown-up. Instead, Big Protector Jeff stalled the officers downstairs while Jessica hid upstairs with the kids. But of course, the police heard the kids moving around up there and went upstairs to get Jessica. As soon as the officer walked into the room, the little girl started saying, Auntie, Auntie, this is our aunt. And Jessica backed them up. Oh, yeah, I'm Jessica's sister.

She's not here right now. Yeah, specifically she told them, Jessica left because she caught me in bed with Jeff. Said this right in front of the kids, by the way, which is just real classy. And it shows how much she'd warped the kids by this point to have them calling her auntie in front of the cops. She's so disgusting. Shockingly, this clever little ruse didn't work, and Jessica got hauled in to serve her 10-day sentence. She scream cried the whole way to jail and swore she'd make somebody pay for this terrible injustice. Professional victim extraordinaire.

As you can imagine, Jessica spent her time in. jail feeling sorry for herself and making raging phone calls to Jeff and her mother, demanding they do something to get her the hell out of there. As if there was anything they could do? Like, what do you want them to do? Like, come bust you out of there with like

Seafor and like the get away car? Like, what? It's like, you have to serve your 10 days. You know, of, okay, I was going to say of all of the criminals we've covered, she's a lot like the Joker, but that's Dyes and Hosson That's not even a competition.

We've had a few jokers, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But she could definitely be a Harley Quinn type. Yeah. God. She would be because of her feminine wiles. She was outraged to be in there with common criminals.

I'm sure she was a delight for her guards and fellow inmates. Yeah. Jessica's 10-day sentence happened to fall right at Christmas time, but Alan told the court he was fine with letting her spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at home with the kids. Of course, Jessica told everybody He made sure I was in jail on Christmas And I just want to point out That if she hadn't dodged

Dodged the warrant so much She probably wouldn't have been in jail For Christmas They would have gotten her in and out before Christmas She got those two days And then she went back like Yeah, no, but I mean like if she had If she had just accepted it and turned herself in

It would have been like earlier than that She would even have to be let out This entire case Literally all the man wanted was to sometimes hang out with his kids like keep that in mind that is all he wanted he didn't initially want custody he just wanted some visitation time and that was absolutely unacceptable to her it's just amazing to me i think we i think we all know somebody in our lives that like no matter what they do they are always in a predicament and it's always a predicament of their own own causing like they

did it. Like they make, they're doing the choose your own adventure book and always make the wrong choice. Yeah, I've actually known somebody a lot like Jessica, like creepily a lot. Like when I was reading this book, I was like, oh my God, this is my friend's ex. Yeah. When she got out, Jessica was livid. How dare they hold her accountable for her shitty parenting. It was all Alan's fault, and she was going to make him pay. She kept saying that. He's going to pay. She also kept saying,

I'll do anything to keep those kids, Jeff. Yeah, I know, Jeff would say. Jessica would shoot him a look that would stun an elephant. I mean, anything. Oh, my God. If Jessica wasn't already plotting to murder Allen, something happened soon after the jail thing that sealed the deal.

The judge troubled by the fact that Jessica had lied about getting trained to homeschool the girls, scheduled an evidentiary hearing to determine custody. And he made it pretty clear that he was leaning towards giving Alan custody. He'd had enough of Jessica's bullshit. He scheduled the hearing for February 28th. And as soon as Jessica found out, she was in a panic. He's going to get custody. I just know it. It started out as a comment thrown out here and there. We should just kill him. That's the only way to fix the situation. as people tend to do in these situations Jeff just ignored it at first

just angry talk but Jessica didn't let up she kept hammering at Jeff about what a violent abusive monster Alan was if he got those girls they'd be in horrible danger every day of their lives you know he put me in the hospital twice she told him she was the one who put Ellen in the hospital

but Jeff didn't know that and finally with a deposition scheduled for Alan and Jessica in a few days and plans for Alan to pick up the girls for a weekend visit afterward, Jessica sat Jeff down and laid out a plan. It'll be easy, she said. We can just get him out on the highway and run him off the road. Tonight, she suggested, let's do it tonight.

Jeff didn't like that plan. It was too uncertain and other people might get hurt too, including them. Come to me with a better plan, he said, and we'll do it. And that was it. That's all it took to convince this often. officer of the law to go through with a murder. Ellen was coming to pick up the girls on February 15th after the all-important deposition. They'd kill him then.

Jessica was unusually cheerful on the day of that deposition. Her attorney noticed it, and she made a really odd comment to one of the court reporters. My husband's a cop, she said. It wouldn't take much for him to shoot somebody. The court reporter didn't know what the hell to say to this, so she just went on with what she was doing. Jessica was in a fine mood that day, even though she'd realized there was a potential wrinkle in the plan.

Tara had shown up to the deposition, too. They hadn't expected that. But it didn't flummox them long. If she came with Alan to pick up the kids later, they'd just have to kill her too. Shrug, no big deal. They finished up the deposition, and Jessica flounced out the door.

She seemed to feel like a heavy weight had been lifted off her shoulder. which was weird because she did not come off well in that depot at all. Alan was supposed to come get the girls at six, but they weren't going to be there. Jessica and Jeff dropped them off at their grandmas for the evening, then went back to the house to wait. Jeff was armed with a 44-caliber beretta he'd bought years ago from another cop. When Alan and Tara rolled up to Jessica's house,

they were a little startled to see her standing in the driveway, smiling from ear to ear. Hey, she said, you can park in the driveway. Come on. Alan did as she requested, and he and Tara stepped out of the car. Come in for a few minutes, Jessica said. She was being weirdly friendly. There was something kind of unsettling about it. But Alan and Tara followed her around to the back door and into the den.

It was an awkward moment. Jeff was there. The house was quiet. So, Alan said, are the girls ready? Sit down for a minute, Jessica said. the girls have been practicing a little play for you. They want to show you before you go. Jessica knew he'd fall for it if she made it about the kids.

And a play, what better ruse than that? Ellen was a theater lover to the core, and he loved it when his daughters put on little skits for him. Alan and Tara perched on the couch. Okay, Ellen said. Jessica ran upstairs to help the girls get ready, she said. Jeff stayed in the den with Alan and Tara They all sat for a few awkward moments

Just kind of staring at each other Then Jessica came bounding back down the stairs The girls would be down in a few minutes she said Jeff had been sitting on the little brick step in front of the fireplace Now he stood up and moved in front of the couch where Alan and Tara were sitting He shot Tara first before she could even register what was happening Later, he said, I'm not sure if I double-tapped her. Alan jumped up, shocked and horrified and yelling at Jeff.

Jeff shot him three times, quick and clinical. Alan fell. Then Jeff turned and put two more rounds into Tara, just to make sure she was dead. Jessica sat on the staircase and watched the whole thing, watched all her problems disappear in a wisp of gunsmoke. She must have felt like a kid on Chris this morning. It was an ambush. They lured them in and executed them. Before the sound of the last gunshot had even died down,

Jeff was kneeling down beside Alan and Tara's bodies, checking their pulses to be sure they were dead. The carpet and couch were soaked in blood, and there was spatter all over the wall. Go get the car, Jeff said to Jessica. While she was driving Alan's car around to the back of the house, Jeff carefully picked up six shell casings. He'd counted six shots.

They wrapped the bodies and sheets and old curtains and carried them out to the trunk of Alan's car. Jessica made a quick call to Alan's cell and left an annoyed sounding voicemail. Where are you, Alan? I'm waiting here with the kids. I suspect Jessica married Jeff McCord with murder in the back of her mind from day one. But for a cop, this guy is dumb about murder. And Jessica's dumber. We'd be here all day if I listed every boneheaded move they made in the commission of these murders, so I've put together a little greatest hits list for you to give you a rough idea at the level of dip shittery we're dealing with here.

The plan was to go buy movie tickets. Their alibi was going to be the Lord of the Rings movie and find somewhere to torch the car. Sounds pretty simple, but these two found plenty of ways to fuck it up. Jessica kept messing with Tara's cell phone, trying to figure out how to listen to a voicemail that came in after the murders. Then she started to freak out, thinking she might have somehow recorded something suspicious in the process. So she insisted Jeff drive her to the cell phone kiosk at the mall, where she asked the clerk for help figuring out how to listen to and delete Tara's voicemails.

Wow. Wow. Whoa. She asked her mom to keep the kids for the whole night, saying, Alan and Tara didn't show, so she and Jeff wanted to have a date night. The kids had already been there with their grandma all day, but Jessica forgot that she'd already called and left a message on Alan's phone, saying the kids were there with her. Nope, I didn't go look good later. No.

And remember how we said Jeff carefully picked up all six shell casings back at the house? Yeah, he'd actually fired eight shots. The cops would really enjoy finding those last two casings later on. After buying their movie tickets and stopping off for sandwiches at subway, Jeff and Jessica went hunting for a place to burn the car. Jessica wanted to go across the border to Georgia, and it didn't take them long to find a good place where the car wouldn't be visible from the road.

It took them forever to get the car to catch fire. Finally, after dousing it in a whole container of lighter fluid and throwing lit paper towels through the window, there was a woof. Jessica and Jeff walked away with the flames behind them. like action movie heroes, feeling like they'd committed the perfect crime. Jessica turned to Jeff and said, You've done something great for me and the kids, you know.

Jeff must have felt like Superman. Back to our dipsittery list, Great Value Bonnie and Clyde made a quick trip to Home Depot on the way home. There might have been just a little more blood than they'd expected and they knew they didn't have long to clean up the crime scene. Jessica was freaking out about the mess. Jeff had to talk her out of burning the whole house down, which would have been something else. But they had to do something.

Soon, Alan and Tara's families would be looking for them. The police would have questions. What followed was the worst extreme home makeover ever. They papered over the blood on the walls, ripped up the bloody carpet, missed a ton of blood evidence that the CSIs would soon find and collect. As soon as Jessica's best friend heard about the murders on the news, she knew instantly that Jessica had killed Alan and Tara, like instantly. She called the police, and good for her for doing it.

Like everybody else was, she told them about the vitriol Jessica had been spewing about Allen for years. I mean, they were hearing this from everybody. This case wasn't going to be much of a who-done-it. Very quickly, the investigators knew it would be about finding enough proof to charge them. That also wasn't hard. They got a search warrant for the house and discovered a gold mine of evidence underneath that slapdash crime scene cleanup. Before the month was out,

they were put in the habeas gravis on both Jeff and Jessica. They tried to get Jeff to roll over on his wife, but Mr. Big Protector refused. Everybody had always turned their backs on Jessica. Jeff said later, he wasn't going to do it too. Can we have a collective eye roll? Yeah, that felt good. Jessica, who discovered she was pregnant with Jeff's baby after her arrest,

was a nightmare in jail. Like accused suitcase killer Sarah Boone, for those of y'all who've been following that story, she wrote letter after letter after letter to the judge, alternately outraged and self-pitying, demanding to be let out to have her baby. One of the things she complained about was that there was a girl in there with HIV,

and she was going to catch it because we have to share it, like, just ignorant horseshit. Anyway, that particularly annoyed me. Yeah, it's stupid. So the judge said, no, you're staying put. And Jessica went to trial early in 2003. Most of the evidence was circumstantial. The long history of conflict between Jessica and Allen, her history of violence.

The fact that when she was in jail for those 10 days for contempt, she'd read a murder mystery book and told fellow inmates it was given her lots of ideas about how she might do away with Allen and get away with it. Always a smart move, right? Make sure you tell as many people as possible before. You execute your murder plot. Her and Jeff's non-aliby and the fact that the kids had spent the night with their grandma. Jessica's mom later lied about this on the stand, by the way, and ended up convicted of perjury. The fact that Jessica made calls from her cell phone all the way from the house to where they torched the car in Georgia. But there was some solid physical evidence, too.

The shell casings Jeff had forgotten about on the floor. A bullet found in the house that matched the one lodged in a house. Allen's wrist. Tara's blood on the coffee table. To Jessica's jury, the picture was clear. And on February 15, 2003, one year to the day after the murders, they convicted her of capital murder. She could have faced the death penalty, but the judge opted for life without parole instead,

which I think is a much better sentence for Ms. Jessica, who had such a meltdown during those ten days in jail. She wouldn't get to raise the children she'd clawed so hard to hold. hold on to. Wouldn't get to raise the one she'd had in prison either. To avoid the death penalty, Jeff took a plea deal in the spring of 2003. He was sentenced to two life terms with a chance of parole, and in return, he had to tell the world exactly what happened. He had to admit to the murders. He agreed. Jeff and Jessica divorced after the murders, which I don't know about you, but that's pretty much killed my belief in true love, so sorry about that.

Jessica, who's never lacked for audacity, goes by Jessica Bates now, her victim's last name. They've both been denied parole in recent years, and hopefully that'll continue. Jessica's mom, Diane, served a year in prison for perjuring herself during her daughter's trial and seven years of probation. Almost everyone who loved Jessica ended up punished for doing so. It's just, this is just, it's so fucking pointless. Now neither of you get the kids. This is so senseless. It just, it hurts my heart.

And it hurts my heart for those girls who barely got to see their dad before he was ripped away from them. It just, it just hurts. That's horrible. And I'm going to leave you with one last little story, which I think says a lot about Jessica's character. On the day she was transported to prison after her conviction, she ended up on the same transport bus as Jeff. Now, y'all know what it's like for former cops in prison, right? tends to be not great. Jessica stepped onto the bus, saw Jeff sitting in the back,

grinned, made sure all eyes were on her and said, Hey, everybody, that's my husband. He's a cop. Jeff spent most of his time in protective custody sense. And Jessica? She's still manipulating the people unfortunate enough to care about her. In between complaining about mystery ailments and raging about the inconveniences of life in prison, Jessica managed to talk one of her

family members into sneaking one of her kids in to visit her, something that was strictly forbidden by the court. So, as always, Jessica does what Jessica wants, and anybody who gets in the way ends up in ashes. So that was a wild one, right campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week, but for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Franklin, T. O'Neill, John, Lara, Brea, French Fall, and American Vall, or maybe French Val and American Val, I love it, and Emily.

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