That story of Terra tossing her red boots into the stream back in the early 1970s when Tom and his wife and Terra lived in Cullowhee, North Carolina, kept coming back up for Tom as he went over his life up to this point. Tom had always felt strongly that Terra’s life had been spared by God on that day. She was allowed to live by her Maker because there was more for her to do. In dying with Alan by the hand of evil, Tom still felt Terra’s mission in this life had been fulfilled.

“I had heard from some people who saw Terra and Alan that day of the deposition,” Tom recalled, referring to the hours before Alan and Terra were murdered, “when they were leaving a local restaurant, that they never seemed happier. They were walking away from this restaurant across from the Alabama Theatre. . . . I got the feeling that they, well, that they knew they were leaving. I know it sounds a little hokey, but they were really, really happy at that time.”

The question that bothered Tom was Why?

After Terra and Alan’s memorial service, Tom took a portion of Terra’s ashes, a small bit from the vase, and placed it in a vial. He didn’t know what he was going to do with the vial when he took it, but he felt confident that the purpose would come to him someday down the road.

Now, many months after the trials and convictions, with all the madness of the murders behind him, after thinking things through, it was perfectly clear to Tom what he needed to do with that vial of Terra’s ashes.

He called his brother. “I need you to come with me.”

“Where?”

“Cullowhee.”

They took off and made the trip into the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was a pilgrimage, Tom recalled, more than a simple road trip two brothers had embarked on. They headed back to the place where, “by all rights,” Tom said, Terra should have been killed nearly twenty-nine years prior—that is, had God wanted to take her home on that day she wandered down by the river. It only seemed fitting to Tom that some of his daughter’s ashes be spread over—or returned to—that small creek she had almost fallen into and drowned in so many years before.

An ode to her memory?

Perhaps.

A way to honor her memory?

Maybe.

For Tom, it was more like paying God back—giving Him the respect He deserved. Maybe thanking Him for giving Tom those additional decades with his daughter.

Tom and his brother couldn’t really get down to the creek edge because it had grown in so thickly with brush and trees. But there was a small bridge they could stand on. It extended over the water rushing fast underneath.

“There . . . let’s go,” Tom said.

He opened the vial and said something to himself.

Paused.

Then, standing in the middle of the bridge, he spread the ashes over the water.

Some of the solid, heavier pieces of ash fell into the creek and made small splashes. However, the remainder, which had turned into a large cloud of dust as it headed down toward the water, was “picked up,” Tom recalled, “by a gust of wind and carried into the air,” as if there were somebody waiting to scoop it up into her hands.

“I get chilly bumps on my skin just thinking about it,” Tom remembered.

Looking at this display of what Tom could see only as an angel picking Terra up and carrying her off, he thought of what Terra might have said, had she been there in the flesh standing next to him on that bridge.

In the flesh, of course, because it was so obvious Terra’s spirit was there with Tom and his brother that day.

Okay, Dad, you’re here, I’ve done this. . . . Life is good.

The circle of his daughter’s life, from where Tom Klugh stood, was complete. She and Alan, Tom was now certain, could rest in peace together.

EPILOGUE

Jeff McCord seemed to express a bit of repentance for his crimes. Yet, in writing to me, Jeff’s words of remorse sounded more self-serving than sorrowful. In fact, I sensed a narcissistic tone in Jeff’s syntax, and thought this was probably one of the reasons why he and Jessica had gotten along so well and meshed together so effortlessly when it came time to commit murder. That is, when you come down to it, Jeff McCord—no matter what he says now—never once voiced any opposition to Jessica’s plan. We could even say that, in many ways, Jeff fueled Jessica’s desire to kill.

There is NO acceptable reason for my doing what I did to put myself where I am, Jeff wrote to me in February 2009. [There is an] . . . agony on those who have suffered and continue to do so as a result of my actions. What I did was WRONG! I very much regret my actions and the problems arising from them.

I’m unclear if Jeff is sorry for killing two people, or for getting caught.

I readily admit, he continued, that I allowed myself to be unduly influenced by Jessica. Also, I allowed myself to be convinced that my viable options were limited to the one I chose. I allowed myself to become isolated. None of that in any way excuses my reprehensible course of action.

Jeff never addressed Terra or Alan by name.

Seeing that he was at least responsible enough to answer my requests for interviews and communicate with me, I asked Jeff why he would not want to sit down and tell me his complete story. Get it all out there. You know, his version of the marriage from the inside. Truly explain to my readers how Jessica had managed to manipulate him into shooting two human beings eight times while they sat in his house.

Jeff had taken an oath to protect and to serve. His job was to help people. Save people. Prevent crime. He had expressed a longing, at one time, to help children. How had the tables turned on him in such a violent manner? Where did everything go wrong?

Jeff’s attitude baffled me. I told him he had nothing to lose at this point. His appeal was denied. He was not getting out of prison for, at the least, twenty-five years.

Many convicted murderers hold on to the thinnest thread of hope—thinking that someday some hotshot, enthusiastic young lawyer will take their case and spring them on a technicality or a glitch in the trial, thus rescuing them from the miserable life of prison. With that in mind, I thought Jeff would see things differently because he had been a cop. He knows the law. He understands how the system works. Opening up, giving me the answers to those hard questions, could only help Jeff.

But he refused, and sent me this, instead:

I obviously should have gone about things far differently than I did. I exercised poor judgment and made a plethora of poor and bad decisions. I also readily concede that I could have and should have taken steps to prevent things or to prevent the situation I was in to deteriorate to the point it did. With all of that said . . . I still made the choices I made.

Then, in what can be construed as a bizarre choice of words, Jeff added:

Again, I do not regret my actions and am sorry for the adversive [sic] impact they had and continue to have on the Bates, the Klughs, my former step-daughters, my children, my family, Jessica’s family, the few friends I have at this point, as well as the other people involved with or connected to my case in some way. What I did is most likely inexplicable and inexcusable at least where most people are concerned.

“Most people”? “Most likely”? The guy did not regret his actions? What was Jeff McCord saying to us here?

Jeff McCord is a strange human being. Jeff was a lot smarter on paper than his behavior would lead you to believe. Something, somewhere, went wrong for Jeff. What, exactly, only Jeff McCord knows.