She explained her theory to Tom McDanal.

“We’ve released the house,” McDanal said disappointedly.

Darn it.

Brignac’s shoulders dropped. She knew that in order to go back into the McCord home once it was officially released, even with this new information from the children, the HPD needed a second search warrant. And getting a second warrant on a location you had just finished searching was going to take some time.

Which was exactly what Jeff and Jessica McCord wanted to hear.

19

Alan graduated from Shades Valley in June 1990. He enrolled in fall classes at the University of Montevallo, thirty-five miles south of Birmingham. Montevallo is spread out now across a 160-acre main campus, bordered by rolling hills, golf course green lawns, groves and colorful flower beds. It is a beautiful spread of land. Montevallo’s academics and scholars are respected throughout the state. More than that, during Alan’s time Montevallo offered excellent fine arts and theater programs for him to think about building on an already wide foundation of study in the technical side of the stage.

Being away from Birmingham and Alan’s family was going to suit Jessica’s growing needs quite well.

“She didn’t like anybody who was close to Alan,” a former friend said. “She felt threatened by anyone in his family, any of his close friends, and she basically wanted to pull him away from his whole life.”

And here was that chance.

Jessica dropped out of school, with the intention of going back and getting her GED. As Alan got to know her better, he began to think that Jessica was either the most unfortunate person on God’s earth, or she was making up stories about a tortured childhood that never was. One friend later said Jessica could spin the best yarn you ever heard, and she had a knack for making whatever story she told sound unequivocally true. “But come to find out,” that same friend added, “she was nothing more than a pathological liar.”

With a wife and child, Alan needed a home. Philip Bates purchased a “fixer-upper” for Jessica, Alan and Sam. It was a one-hundred-year-old ranch-style house that needed lots of TLC. But it was located just outside Montevallo. Regardless of the condition, it was enough room for the three of them. Cozy. Homey. The perfect starter home. Alan was determined to get a college degree. Find a good-paying job. Raise his family. When he wasn’t going to class or studying, Alan was kept busy with odd jobs: landscaping, construction, anything else he could earn some quick cash from. He was still playing in a gospel quartet that paid, and it seemed the music became one of Alan’s true outlets for his growing artistic expression. Jessica, though, was insecure about the band and rode Alan constantly about groupies and screaming girls vying for his attention.

Jessica’s friend Naomi had Fridays off. Naomi often made the hour drive to Montevallo to visit with Jessica and the new baby. It was great to pop in and see how everyone was doing. Maybe help out. Bring a gift. Some food. Spread the love.

“I got a sense,” Naomi recalled, “that they were, of course, struggling. Young couple. Recently married. New parents. Alan’s in college. Working. In the band. It was hard.”

For Jessica, the focus quickly turned to a notion that Alan was out and about, meeting women at school and at his band gigs, bedding them down. She accused him of sleeping with any female he crossed paths with. The jealousy and insecurity consumed her. Ran their lives. Then it turned into chronic paranoia.

“He’s seeing someone at the college,” Jessica explained to Naomi during one Friday visit. Jessica said she was certain of it.

“Jessica, where’s your proof?” Naomi asked. “Unless you have concrete evidence of you watching him go out with someone else, catching him in the act, you have to trust him.”

What was a marriage without trust? Naomi stressed. If Jessica couldn’t trust Alan to leave the house, how could she ever expect the relationship to grow?

Jessica changed the subject. Ignored the advice. Instead, she carried on about how she believed Alan was cheating. Naomi knew Alan took his wedding vows seriously. There was no way he would do anything to hurt Jessica. It just wasn’t the person Alan was. If he wanted somebody else, Alan was the type to sit Jessica down and tell her it was over. Then go out and fornicate. But not while he was still married.

Nothing relieved Jessica’s suspicions. She even showed up on campus one day with the baby, while Alan was in the middle of a production. As everyone working on the play with him turned, she yelled and screamed. Made an ass of herself. It was a scene. In front of everyone she accused Alan of doing all sorts of outlandish, sexual things with some of the women he studied and worked with at the campus theater. It embarrassed Alan a great deal. He didn’t know what to do.

Finally he pulled Jessica aside, did his best to calm her down, then sent her back home.

Still, in many respects, during this same period, Naomi considered Jessica to be a “very good mother.” “Homemaker” was probably a better way to put it. Jessica cooked. Cleaned. Made meals stretch for days. She even went so far as to get cloth diapers so she could wash them and save money.

“She was very protective. A good mother. She tried to do everything she could. But at the same time, she was very insecure.”

By 1992, Alan was cruising on autopilot through college, following his dream of working in the theater, now that much closer to living it. Jessica made the transformation to stay-at-home mom complete. She gained weight, watched soap operas and let herself go.

“They [were] a very young family,” Robert Bates said of his brother and sister-in-law, “starting off under very trying circumstances. They were struggling. They were trying to figure things out.”

On November 16, 1992, Jessica gave birth to her and Alan’s second child, McKenna, and that’s when things started to spiral out of control, members of Alan’s family suggested. After a calm period Jessica’s insecurities and abnormalities resurfaced on a new level—and Alan and his family were convinced now that maybe Jessica wasn’t exaggerating when she told those stories of growing up in a chaotic, abusive household. Perhaps the environment in which she came from had affected her psychologically and turned her into the thing she so much hated.

What’s more, one source noted, by this point in Jessica’s life, she’d had no fewer than five abortions, using the procedure as a means of contraception. It got to the point, Jessica told one friend, where “there [was] no doctor in Birmingham that will touch me because I’ve had so many abortions.”

According to a Forensic (Psychology) Evaluation Report conducted on Jessica in 2003, she claimed to have seen a mental-health professional when she was between the ages of nine and fifteen. She saw someone, the report indicated, because her father was abusive. . . .

Shortly before meeting Alan, Jessica admitted in that same report, she saw a couple of licensed professional counselors because of domestic violence. She was never hospitalized. Nor had Jessica been through any alcohol or drug treatment programs. This, despite admitting to having used LSD between 500 and 600 times in her past with no history of flashbacks.

“I agree with that,” said a high-school friend. “She definitely used a lot of drugs later on in high school.”

In addition, Jessica told the three doctors during her psychological exam, that she had a 50 percent hearing loss “bilaterally” since her teenage years, but she had never used a hearing aid of any type. She also reported having a history of “mitral valve prolapse,” with occasional irregular heartbeats—in addition to hypoglycemia.