It was a woman. She was small. Very petite. Moreover, it was easy to tell—and this would become an important factor as the case progressed—that the victim closest to the backseat of the car had been placed in the trunk first.

Were they dead before being placed inside the trunk? Chances were the victims had been murdered by some other means—the fire had not killed them—at a second location. Which meant there were likely two crime scenes involved.

In front of the female victim, closest to the back end of the vehicle, Crosby photographed and studied the second victim’s feet and legs. Both were somewhat visible if you stood over the trunk and looked directly down. This victim was a man. They could tell by the size of his left arm, which had been burned entirely away from his fingertips, up to about his elbow. His bone, near the bicep area, was visible.

Crosby took scores of photos. Flashes of light—pop, pop, pop—paparazzi-like, one after the other. Crosby studied how the bodies were placed and how they might have been put inside the trunk.

“His legs,” Crosby noted, talking about the second victim, “come up and then bend back around the thigh area . . . the right side of the body.”

Crosby noticed that both of the victims’ arms and legs were discernible if you looked closely. The same was true with regard to other parts of their bodies. The back of the male’s calves were, in the same way as the female’s, bent flush against the back side of his thighs. These people were definitely, Crosby was now certain, crunched up together and then placed into the trunk—another indication that they were killed beforehand at a second location.

As Crosby searched the trunk, another GBI technician combing the scene noticed something. There was a comforter underneath the bodies that hadn’t been completely consumed by the fire.

They definitely needed that.

Hairs. Fibers. DNA.

Slowly, with the help of several additional investigators, including Susan Simmons, the deputy coroner of Morgan County, Crosby removed the body of the male and carefully placed him in a waiting body bag.

On the male victim’s left hand was a wedding band. Crosby photographed it before the body was zipped away in the bag. As he did this, Crosby noticed what appeared to be a bullet wound on the man’s wrist.

Interesting.

The male victim had possibly held up his hands to block an oncoming bullet, perhaps instinctively protecting himself. Maybe there was a bullet fragment somewhere?

Looking at the female victim next, Crosby noticed what he called “defects in the body,” eventually finding out that they were also “bullet holes.” The female victim had a wound in her lower back.

The comforter was now clearly visible.

When both bodies were placed in body bags, they were taken to the GBI Crime Lab for further study and autopsy.

Not too far away from the vehicle, one of the many crime scene specialists who had shown up at the scene found something else. It was a sheet of paper towel with the imprint pattern of a little boy and little girl. The corner of the paper towel was burned, but a majority of it was still intact.

A GBI agent bagged it.

Upon further investigation, GBI investigators found what looked to be an engagement ring inside the trunk, but the diamond was gone. It was underneath where the female victim’s body was placed. There were all sorts of debris in the trunk. Then two duffel bags were located: one contained partially burned clothes; the other—on a quick glance—was full of what looked to be court documents.

The theory was that the murderers had probably hoped these duffel bags would be incinerated with the rest of the evidence.

No such luck.

There was a particular reason these two people were murdered. That was clear from the evidence at this early stage. Any cop worth his yearly salary knew that finding that reason would lead to a suspect.

Connect the dots. Despite what Law & Order and CSI portrayed on television, some investigators still viewed police work in that same simple, gumshoe manner. One piece of evidence leads to the next.

Baby steps.

As Crosby finished his work at the scene, investigators from the GBI and the Morgan County Sheriff’s Office walked the scene looking for additional trace. At one point Crosby located and photographed a .44 Magnum Remington shell casing someone uncovered about ten to fifteen feet from the rear of the vehicle.

It was an odd find. A .44 would have blown the male victim’s wrist off, not put a hole in it. Two weapons? Two different guns used in the same crime?

Another anomaly.

When he finished, Crosby was whisked up in the air by helicopter. This gave him the opportunity to take scores of aerial photographs before heading back to the GBI Crime Lab.

As investigators continued searching the scene, someone found a spent projectile that was mushroomed over on the top inside the trunk.

An important piece of the puzzle.

Not long after that, someone located a cigarette butt, a Marlboro Light.

Things were coming together rather expeditiously.

6

GBI investigator Kimberly Williams was at the Hawkins Academy Road crime scene in Georgia most of the morning. She arrived, along with several other investigators from the Morgan County Sheriff’s Office and her GBI colleague Todd Crosby, near 6:30 A.M.

By late morning it was confirmed that the car was indeed the same red Pontiac Grand Am that Alan Bates had rented at the Avis airport terminal in Birmingham. Of course, this was not good news for Philip, Joan, Kevin and Robert Bates, who were now huddled together in Marietta, waiting for any sign of hope that Alan and Terra might be alive and well—that this entire episode was nothing more than a great misunderstanding.

GBI investigator Williams was familiar with the location in Rutledge where the bodies were recovered. She lived north of Milledgeville, about twenty minutes away. As she walked the scene, the wind picked up steadily, blowing the investigator’s blond hair wildly around. With the wind came the cold, at least by Georgia standards. Williams was assigned as case agent; she was now in charge of the Bureau’s side of the investigation from this point forward. By now, the seasoned investigator was aware that Alan and Terra Bates were supposed to have picked up Alan’s kids outside Birmingham in Hoover and driven to his parents’ house in Marietta. It was a good bet, considering the makeup and description of the bodies found in the trunk, that somewhere between Birmingham and Rutledge, Alan and Terra Bates had met with the violent hand of evil.

Williams had been with the GBI since 1995. A cop with her experience didn’t need DNA and dental records to override her gut instinct. When all the cards were turned over, the only hand Williams could see was that the bodies in the trunk were Alan and his wife. Williams had been around her share of murder scenes, family arguments turned deadly, husbands and wives shooting each other for no apparent reason. Murder was not common, but it had a certain pulse to it that spoke through victims and the way they were found.

“I definitely would not say that I have seen everything,” Williams said later, “but I have been exposed to a great deal by working narcotics and field cases.”

The answer to what was now a mystery, Williams knew after realizing where the car had driven from, was in Birmingham. Or at least that was probably the best place to start. The other concern was the children who were supposed to be with Alan and Terra. Where were they?

Thank God—in some strange way—that there were only two bodies in that trunk—and both were adults.

“Once we identified who the car most likely contained, obviously the victims could not be identified formally,” Williams said, “and once we talked to the Bates family and found out Terra and Alan Bates were overdue . . . we focused on where they were last seen.”