“It was a misunderstanding,” Poff argued. “This is all a tale of sound and fury signifying nothing.”

The star witness of the day, after Roger Brown and detective Laura Brignac testified, was one of Jessica’s former cellmates. She told police that Michael Upton knew of the “bloody stuff” in the storage unit.

The next day, August 6, Jeff McCord sat and, for the first time publicly, described how he and Jessica had murdered Alan and Terra Bates, and then went about an elaborate plan to try and cover up the crimes.

Listening to Jeff’s graphic, detailed descriptions of the murders, Michael Upton sat with a stoic flush of sadness written across his face. At times tears streamed down his cheeks. Upton later said that none of it seemed real until Jeff McCord illustrated the murders so vividly on the witness stand. Upton said that up until that moment, he still held “on to some hope that they (Jeff and Jessica) were still innocent.”

Upton took the stand himself and told the jury he had no idea Jessica had rented a storage facility. He also said he “suffered from memory loss” due to a car accident he was in years before. Because of the injuries he had sustained, Upton testified, he “easily [became] confused under stress, which may have led to a misunderstanding during grand jury proceedings.”

Shocking the courtroom, Upton then said that his wife, pregnant with his child, dropped dead of a heart attack just two months ago.

Closing arguments were heard later that afternoon; then the jury was asked to deliberate the case. Perjury, a Class C felony, was good for ten years in the state pen if a judge felt inclined to give such a stiff sentence.

The next morning, after three hours of discussions, the jury found Michael Upton guilty of perjury (the judge dropped an additional charge of obstruction).

Michael Upton was devastated, his attorney said after the trial.

A little over a month later, Upton was sentenced to “spend a year in a work-release program,” followed by five years of supervised probation. This meant Michael Upton would spend his nights in jail, but be allowed to leave during the day and work outside the prison.

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Dian Bailey’s alleged crime, although similar to Michael Upton’s, might have had far greater implications on Jessica McCord’s case, prosecutor Teresa McClendon explained to a jury on the morning of October 27, 2003. The fact that Dian lied during Jessica’s trial could have influenced jurors to acquit her daughter, essentially allowing a murderer to escape justice.

That made this particular crime of perjury inexcusable, McClendon suggested.

The prosecutor told jurors how Jeff and Jessica carried out this vicious, premeditated double homicide with callousness and hatred. She spoke of how they lured Terra and Alan into the house. How they made them feel comfortable, using the children as bait. But then Jeff shot them four times each without warning.

These were evil people. Anyone who helped them should be viewed the same.

And so here comes the mother of one of the accused, who had walked into a courtroom some months ago and stomped all over the law. Above anyone else, Dian Bailey should have known better—she had worked for the court system herself for nearly two decades.

In his opening argument Bill Dawson downplayed his client’s responsibility, talking about Dian’s emotional state at the time, telling jurors she was “working full-time, caring for a father with Alzheimer’s and a mother with pneumonia”—all while taking care of her daughter’s four children.

The woman was burned-out. She didn’t know up from down, when she had seen her daughter and when she hadn’t.

“She told what she thought was the truth,” Dawson said.

Jeff came in and told his tale of murder once again, stunning another jury with his words. However, nowhere in Jeff’s version of the events did he testify to stopping at Dian’s house at or near midnight, which was what Dian had told jurors during Jessica’s trial.

There was no way to confuse this detail—because it never happened.

Dawson attacked Jeff’s credibility, implying that he was now on the state’s payroll—so to speak—and part of the prosecution’s team, fulfilling his duty as part of a deal he had signed to escape the death penalty.

Jeff could be back on the street, inside thirty years, Dawson said.

Sheron Vance, the Morgan County Sheriff’s Office lieutenant who had gone with Bureau agent Kimberly Williams to Dian’s house that Saturday morning, said Dian was “visibly surprised” when Jessica told police she had stopped by her mother’s house the previous night, near midnight.

An unplanned lie. Just tossed out there.

“I was looking,” said Vance, “right at Dian. She had just been standing there, staring into space the entire time.” But when Jessica mentioned to Williams that she had seen her mother the night before, Dian “rolled her eyes and took a step back. . . .”

Fifty-eight-year-old Dian Bailey decided against taking the witness stand.

That out of the way, closing arguments were next.

The jury took thirty minutes to convict Dian, completing a hat trick of guilty verdicts for the prosecution. Dian didn’t respond to the verdict. She sat, no emotion, dumbfounded and confused.

On December 9, 2003, Jefferson County Circuit Court judge Mike McCormick gave Dian Bailey an eight-year sentence. The courtroom was silent while McCormick spoke. Filled with whispers afterward.

Eight years. Ouch!

Jessica’s mother would spend one year in a Shelby County work-release program—same as Michael Upton—and an additional seven years on probation, with no actual jail time.

Before he was finished, McCormick asked Dian if she had anything to say for herself.

Like her daughter, Dian said no.

“Apparently,” McCormick concluded, “out of some misguided loyalty, you chose to lie. This is a very serious matter.”

Finally, during the summer of 2004, after the Klugh and Bates families filed a $150 million wrongful-death suit against Jeff and Jessica McCord, both families won an additional judgment that allowed them to collect any money Jeff McCord might make from a book or movie deal throughout his lifetime.

Then they went after Jessica for the same.

Neither Jeff nor Jessica would ever profit from their crimes.

“This sort of settlement is, first and foremost, to prevent the criminals from profiting from their crime,” Kevin Bates told me in closing. “Should any money ever come of selling Alan and Terra’s story, we just wanted to ensure that every penny went to Alan’s girls—who have truly lost the most from Jeff and Jessica’s horrific and selfish actions.”

70

Terra’s father, Tom Klugh, didn’t need to know any more about life than he had learned over the past several years. He had lost his only child to a cruel murder. He was divorced. Then, with all of the trials and lawsuit hearings behind him, Tom Klugh got a call from his doctor.

Prostate cancer.

A rough road didn’t even begin to describe those past few years for Tom.

But then others had it worse, Tom knew deep down. There were other people in the world suffering a hell of a lot more than he was. He didn’t want people feeling sorry for him. He just wanted to go away for some quiet time and begin to rebuild and recover.