By now, it was somewhere near 2:00 A.M. The road Jessica had turned onto in Rutledge was secluded. Dark as motor oil.

Perfect.

Jeff didn’t like it so much. He took the lead, drove around and in front of Jessica. He wanted to find a place farther into the forest, away from people and homes. “I went down a couple of side roads,” he recalled. “Somehow we turned onto . . . where the car was left.”

Hawkins Academy Road.

“Initially we tried to leave it, or thought about leaving it, across the road from where it was finally left . . . but it would have been very noticeable. . . .”

They got out of their vehicles. Stood together. Looked around.

Jeff “doused” the car with gasoline. Then he opened the trunk and poured some of the gas over the two people he had murdered.

After that, he flicked the lighter, took several steps back.

As he described what happened next, Jeff used the word “kerflooey.”

Nothing happened.

Inside the McCord family van, Jessica had several paper towels she had used to wipe the rental vehicle down. She grabbed a few sheets. Ran over to the car. Lit one of the paper towels and gave it to Jeff.

He tossed it inside an open window.

Kerflooey!

Still, nothing happened. It wasn’t like a Hollywood movie. No big mushroom cloud of smoke below an atomic flame. None. Jeff actually “singed his fingertips a couple of times” while trying to get the car to ignite.

Laughing while later describing this part of the night (yes, laughing . . .), Jeff McCord said he had trouble “trying to get everything lit.”

Jessica became frustrated. She stomped about. “Come on . . . come on, Kelley!”

Jeff threw up his hands. “You do it, then.”

Jessica grabbed the paper towel.

She must have tossed it in the right place, because as soon as Jessica flipped the lit paper towel into the car—poof—a loud suction sound preceded what was that immense fireball explosion they had been expecting all along.

“’Course that could have had something to do with the air and the fumes by that time,” Jeff surmised later.

The car was now ablaze. Engulfed in bright flames. The heat was incredible. It pushed Jeff and his wife backward.

They ran for the van. Jessica got behind the wheel and took off out of there as fast as she could.

“It’s done,” she said happily, driving away. “You’ve done something great for the girls, you know that, Kelley.”

Jeff felt proud, he later said.

Yes, proud.

Jessica had managed to make the guy feel good about murder.

“You’ve done something great for me, too,” she added.

“At that time,” Jeff recalled later, “I was taking song and verse, her version on how badly Alan had treated her and how bad he was to the kids. And had actually seen . . . some of that verified by them. ‘Them’ meaning the girls. . . .”

Jeff never explained what, exactly, he was referring to here.

As they drove away, flames to their backs, black smoke, melting plastic, burning flesh—and child custody matters—were all behind them. As they sped away from the scene like two Hollywood killers, Jeff said he had one last thought.

What is done is done. . . . Nothing I can do to reverse it now.

51

By 3:00 A.M., February 16, 2002, according to Jeff McCord’s version of the murders, he and his wife were on their way back to Hoover, desperate to begin cleaning up what was the initial crime scene back at home.

On their way through Atlanta, Jeff and Jessica stopped at a convenience store. Jeff got out of the car and put the gas can on the sidewalk.

Jessica walked over and wiped it down.

Then Jeff tossed the lighters out the window. They landed in a ravine on the opposite side of the sidewalk.

The first place Jeff and Jessica drove to when they got back in town was Home Depot. They were first in line, standing by the entrance before the place was open.

Ten minutes after they were allowed in, all they bought was a razor blade of some sort—“that looked a lot like a pizza cutter,” Jeff explained—to cut carpeting and some heavy black plastic.

Entering their Myrtlewood Drive house, Jessica took a look around. Things appeared different now that they weren’t scrambling to get two bodies out of the house. She looked at the sofa: bullet holes through the backrest; blood was on the leather. The carpet was also saturated with blood. The place was a mess. It would take forever to get rid of all the evidence, put in new carpeting, patch holes in the walls, toss the couch.

What were they going to do?

Jessica walked around. Jeff knew that look. He was familiar with it. Her wheels were spinning.

“Let’s just burn everything,” Jessica blurted out.

Another fire?

They could, Jessica suggested, light the side of the house on fire where the murders had been committed. Burn that evidence up, too. It had worked back in Georgia; at least she believed it did.

“No way,” Jeff said. Not a good idea. “Let’s just see if we can think of a different way to do this.”

52

Early Saturday morning, Naomi, her husband and the kids got up and decided to take off. A trip out of town. Spend the day together. They didn’t get many chances to have family time, but when they did, Naomi and her husband made the best of it.

Getting home later that evening, somewhere near six o’clock, Naomi plopped down on the couch. She was exhausted. As the kids got settled, Naomi surfed through the vast variety of cable channels on television, not paying too much attention.

When she hit the local news, she left it on.

“Two bodies found inside the trunk of a burned-up car in Georgia. . . .”

Naomi didn’t think anything of the report and went to bed.

The next day Naomi turned on the news again. There was that same story. This time, though, the newscaster announced the names of the victims.

“Alan and Terra Bates.”

“She did it!” Naomi screamed.

“What are you talking about?” her husband asked, walking into the room.

Naomi pointed to the television.

Her husband realized what was going on. He knew she was talking about Jessica.

“Jessica killed them,” Naomi verified as her husband stood there, astonished by this news.

Naomi went into the kitchen and called the Hoover PD.

“Sorry, ma’am, all of our officers are out”—they were at the McCord home, in fact, serving that first search warrant—“at this time. You’ll have to call back tomorrow morning.”

Naomi spent an hour calling around, trying to get ahold of Alan’s parents. She had no idea where they lived. Finally she called Cecil Whitmire, Alan’s old boss from the Alabama Theatre.

“They live in Atlanta,” Whitmire said.

“Thanks.”

Naomi talked it over with her husband the next morning and decided she needed to call the police and explain everything she knew. The time for loyalty was gone. In Naomi’s mind Jessica was a double murderer.

Detective Laura Brignac called Naomi later that morning. “Look, we’re in the middle of an investigation,” the detective said, “I cannot really talk to you right now about this.”

Naomi said she had information to share. “I want to meet with you.”

“I cannot meet with you right now, sorry,” Brignac said.

“Okay . . . but can I at least tell you why I have called you?”

Brignac thought about it. “Sure.”

Naomi went through as much as she could as quickly as she could get it out.

Silence.

Then, “I’ll be at your house in an hour,” Brignac said.

PART V

THE BRINK OF ETERNITY

53

Jessica and Jeff McCord were tight-lipped and unified after capital charges for felony murder were filed on February 22, 2002. Neither was ready to throw the other under a bus, just yet. Jessica wouldn’t talk at all. Jeff babbled in circles. Now it was up to prosecutor Roger Brown to make sure all the evidence the Hoover PD had collected, while working in tandem with the Bureau, would serve to convince a jury that the McCords were guilty as charged.