#511 - A Deadly Love - Rutledge, Georgia
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This week in Rutledge, Georgia, a burning car in a rural area with two bodies stuffed inside is the start of a twisted tale that began very innocently and somehow ended up with murders that are as cold-blooded as they come. Welcome to Small Town Murder. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder. Yeah!

Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petrigallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wissman. Thank you folks so much for joining us today on another wild, crazy adventure we like to call Small Town Murder. We do. And they always end up the same way with death. Yeah, they're always small towns and always murder. And there's always murder, and we will definitely do that today. We have a really twisted, weird, crazy-

Right. As usual, I say that like that's a new. Normally it's not. But this this week, it's just weird. No, it's always weird. This week is no exception. Before the show, definitely head over to shut up and give me murder dot com. Tickets for live shows. There you go. September 20th, Minneapolis State Theater. Get in there. Big, beautiful theater. And if you sell it out, you will beat Chicago and be our biggest show.

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It's a comedy show. It is. It is. The stories, unfortunately, are extra super real. That's the thing. There's nothing made up for comic effect or, you know, it would be really funny if they said this. None of that stuff. We tell stories with better research than Dateline, but way more funny. That's how we get into our...

deal here so what we don't do though is we don't make fun of the victims or the victims families why james because we're assholes but but we're not scumbags that's how that works so if you'd like to join that party it's going on and it's a rager so hang out with us if you think that true crime and comedy should never ever go together maybe we're not for you maybe we are though we might be you don't know you don't know so give it a shot no complaining later though

There it is. That said, I think it's time to sit back, everybody. Here we go. I don't care where you are. I want you to take a deep breath, arms to the sky, and let's all shout. Shut up and give me murder. Let's do this, Jimmy. Okay. I got too excited. I got a heady on that one. That's all right, though. That's okay. We're jazzing it. Don't worry about it. Let's run it. Let's go on a trip here. We're going to Georgia. And this is a story that goes between Georgia and Alabama as well, so.

Oh, we'll dance on the border, huh? No, no, no. Neither are on the border in either place. That's the thing, too. Oh, just shuffle back and forth. They're going back mid-state to mid-state. It's very strange. We're going to Rutledge, Georgia. R-U-T-L-E-D-G-E. Rutledge. Who's that named for? Well, we'll find out. Don't worry. What do you think? There's no history of this? Come on, now. I got stuff. That's obviously a person. Clearly. I was a guy with a farm. We'll talk about it. It's in central Georgia. This is outside of Atlanta.

But not like a suburb. It's kind of like there's the suburbs of Atlanta and then there is some woods and then this out there in the middle of nowhere type of deal. So it's about 50 minutes outside Atlanta, to give you an idea, which means to drive to the middle of Atlanta, it should take you about seven, eight hours if you've ever been in Atlanta traffic. Right.

somewhere around there in that ballpark about three hours and 40 minutes to Savannah, Georgia and about an hour to our last Georgia episode, Milledgeville, which was evil came to play. That was a really creepy one. I remember that. It's a good one. Go back and check that out. This is in Morgan County area code seven Oh six. And their motto that I've seen in a couple of their things is this is pretty funny. This is what you'd give to, uh,

like a child in a tough situation. Quote, small but special.

Sometimes it happens. It happens, man. History of this town. Make your own jokes there. There's so many jokes to be made. Rutledge had its start in the 1840s when the railroad was extended here. That's when things happened here. It wasn't incorporated until 1871. It was originally placed on the map during the mid-1800s when the railroad laid tracks right through a guy's farmland. Hezekiah Rutledge. Oh, no.

Which sounds like an 1800s farmer more than anyone else I've ever heard. Hezekiah Rutledge? That's what you'd make up. He wasn't paying attention. They built it right through his land. He went on a vacation for a few days. He came back, went out to till the field. What the fuck? What the fuck is going on?

Why is there 7,000 Chinese people on my property nailing in fucking steaks and shit? What's going on? Or was it already done, he didn't see it, and he ran his plow across it and killed two horses? Didn't notice he was just doing some work. All of a sudden, he heard choo-choo. He was like, what the fuck?

What the fuck is going on? Going right through my yard. Hey, what's her name? Sally. That's his wife's name, right? Sally. They're all Sally. Hezekiah and Sally. Sally, get out. There's a fucking train in the yard. You're not going to believe this. You're not going to believe this shit. Hezekiah's got a filthy mouth, by the way. I can tell. That's why. He's so pissed off. Anybody would be cursing if you laid railroad tracks across your farm. Walk and stubbed your toe on the tracks. What the fuck?

Where did this come from? So as a concession, they said, well, we'll just name the area after you.

Gee, thanks. They called it Rutledge's Place, and soon it became just Rutledge there. It was basically a farm and a railroad stop. That's all there was here. And then other people started coming in. A banking company was chartered here after that and all that sort of thing. Now, I guess after the Great Depression, Rutledge became the site of two civilian conservation corps camps.

created as part of a public works program by Roosevelt, and that was to create Hard Labor Creek Park, which sounds fun as shit. That sounds good. Who wants to go throw the Frisbee around? Hard Labor Creek Park. We're going, yeah, that's going to be great. No, bring the baseball glove, too. It's going to be a day. Let's go on over to Hard Labor Creek Park. Hard Labor Creek.

Let's go to a hard labor creek and drive some railroad spikes. Jesus Christ. That is the worst fucking name for a recreation area I've ever heard. Hard labor creek. Let's go make out at Cancer Point. You want to? Me and you in the car. We'll finger each other.

Holy shit. Hangman's Noose Water Park. It's still part of the Georgia State Park system. Unbelievable. So reviews of this town. There's only one from this actual town, and there's one from the town that's close to it that this is kind of a suburb of. Here is five stars. The only Rutledge review. I've lived in this city for about half my life. It's not a city, by the way, Rutledge at all.

And it's amazing. I love the parks and homes. They're there. T-H-E-R-E. Gorgeous. Right. And I recommend you live here and get or rent a house. And then there is, let's see, 5, 10, 15. Looks like 21 exclamation points, I believe. Jesus Christ. I'm a quick. Get or rent a house. Get out. Hard labor Creek Park.

He loves the parks. He likes that one specifically. And then they say, I love here. And the E's, there are six E's on the end of here. So they love it here. They love here. And then these are from Madison, which is very close by. And the quote unquote larger area, which is also still pretty small, but not as small as Rutledge. Five stars. Madison is a safe same town.

Safe sane. You mean sane? Probably sane. The people are nice and the look of the town is even nicer. Our school is extremely well. Our school is extremely well. I love. They heard once upon a time not to use the word good. Always use well in place. Look at that there. I got to show how smart I am. Superman does good. You do well. Yeah.

I love when they compliment the school and sound like a moron doing it. That's like saying how proud they are of a school. That's my favorite thing about town reviews. Yeah. And this school made you say the school as well. It says our school is an extremely well comma one. The word one comma. And we are a safe town.

I don't know what they're talking about at all. I'm worried about any students that come from that school. That's a problem. And then the other one is one star for Madison. Small town with a small town tone. Is that it?

I don't like a small town town. Apparently they don't because they only gave it one star. Oh, yeah. Because the rest of it sounds okay. Lots of history. Not much to do for young adults or teens, which is every small town. Very southern culture. Well, yeah, you're in rural Georgia. What do you want? Beautiful. Beautiful. That's like going to Brooklyn and going, all these fucking New Yorkers around here. That accent, the fucking pizza. I can't take it. It's all a goddamn pizza. Why'd you move here? Yeah.

It's just pizza everywhere. It's fucking guineas. Beautiful landscape. Great school district. Little to no crime. One star.

So they must hate whatever the tone of the town is because the rest of it sounds fine. People in Rutledge, 1,105 is the population. What a city. Very small. And it's drivable to Atlanta, so that's still tiny as balls. Wow. A few more females and males, but not many. It's closer to even than the average is. Median age here is 34.

Lower than the national average. The five to nine year olds shitload of them for some reason. Not sure why, but there's a ton of five to nine year olds. Yeah. Uh, family it's, but it's normal 50, 50 married. So that's the average here. Uh, less people are single with children here too. So it's,

Move out here with their little nuclear family type of deal, it seems like, here. And let's see. Their unemployment rate is 3.3%, which you have a huge city right there. You should be able to find a job, which is very, very low. Median household income here, $58,750 a year, which is lower. It's usually about $69,000. Cost of living, though, $100,000 is average.

Here it is, $100,000. Right on. Right on. And the median home cost is $346,800. That's high, right? It's a little under the national average at the moment.

A little bit. Fuck, man. $95 is the average. That's so expensive. So if we've convinced you, damn it, this is the only place for you, you want to figure out whatever the tone is, you want to go to Hard Labor Creek Park and have a great time with the family, we have for you the Rutledge, Georgia Real Estate Report. ♪

The average two bedroom rental here goes for fourteen hundred fifty dollars, which is above the national average by a good chunk to a couple hundred dollars. First house, three bedroom, two bath, twelve hundred forty eight square foot shit shack. It's that's a decent size house and everything. His house is a piece of shit. It is falling apart. Looks like the back of the house is probably going to fall in soon.

Perfect. Inside, it's a fucking wreck. There's like ugly blue carpet in some rooms and like, it looks like somebody did it poorly in 1975 and then never touched it since then.

Since then. Let it rot. This is like an all-seasons patio. It is. That's what it seems like. It's a piece of shit. $199,500 for that piece of shit. Unbelievable. Wow. I hope the studs are good because that's about all you're going to keep from it. None. None. None. Just $200,000 for nothing. Yeah. A little yard. That's it. Robbery. Next up, four-bedroom, three-bath, 5,000-square-foot.

That's so amazing to me. That's a big house. Every time. That's so many great rooms. So much. 2.58 acres, too, so you got a little bit of land. It's fucking beautiful. It's built in 1903. Wow. So when they built a 5,000-square-foot house in 1903, it was something. It was beautiful. It's got columns in the front. It's gorgeous. It's absolutely gorgeous. Inside, it's hard to tell what it's like inside. I guess it's nice, but it's covered in so much decoration that

It looks like, the way Allison put it, it looks like a New Jersey Italian housewife decorated this fucking place. But southern style. Like Carmela Soprano's Alter Ego in the south. That just went batshit. It's a lot everywhere. And that house is $850,000.

Which is not bad for a huge house on almost three acres in this country. That's if you have 850 to spend. If you have 850 to spend. Yeah, that's good. Jesus Christ. There's houses in Phoenix. Pieces of shit that are that much money. You're not getting that for it. Yeah. So here's a five bedroom, six bath T-Ball for each and every B-Hall baby. 4,321 square feet. So again, big house, but the house isn't really what you're concerned about. It's 230.74 acres. Yeah.

That's a lot of acres. That's like a whole town to yourself. You'll see nobody ever. No, you could put up a general store in a main street. No one is ever there. It's great. That's fucking perfect. That's awesome. It's inside. The house is done. You can tell in the last, like,

Eight years or so, they had it done top to bottom. Everything is gray. Shit piles of money. Everything is gray. It's just gray, gray, gray, neutral. Kitchen has like the big... Exposed beams? It's not the exposed beams. The metal tubing through it. Like the vents. Oh, really? Yeah. Which looks kind of cool. Because it looks kind of old school. Oh, do you mean like the...

AC duct work? Everything, yeah. All that kind of shit you can see. But then the kitchen itself is like this gray HGTV nightmare. So it's kind of weird, though. $4,590,000. Okay.

230 acres. I mean, that's why neither of us have 230 acres. We're not willing to. Boy, would I love that. Yeah, I mean, sure. It'd be great. Damn it. Except the first month when the payment is due for that. Oh, there's that. And then at the end of the year when the taxes are due. Yeah, yeah, that's bad, too. All that shit, that's going to sting. Things to do here, not a whole lot to do.

as you might imagine in a town of 1,100 people. But they do have the Rutledge Country Fair, not County Fair, the Rutledge Country Fair. Right. And it says celebrate the start of summer at their biggest event of the year. This is it right here. This is it. 41st annual held at City Park. At least it's not at Hard Labor Creek. That's better than that. This free event guarantees fun for the whole family. Guarantees it. Or you're fucking no money back. Yeah.

How do you guarantee fun? That's the weird free guarantee shit. I was like a nebulous concept to just guarantee, you know, that's like guaranteeing, you know, any of any emotion. You can't guarantee an emotion. You know what their guarantee should be is if you show up, you'll be there. We'll be here. We'll be open that we guarantee.

Enjoy live music, a fun parade, exciting games for the kids, delicious treats from local food vendors, and unique handmade goods from local artisans. In other words, shit.

What could be a fun parade? Tables of homemade bracelets is what they just may have said. If that parade isn't float after float of topless women, this is no fun. And you'd run out of topless women. There's 1,100 people in the stands. Throwing out gift cards for free blowjobs. That's the only way. Free blowjobs at the place where we hang out topless all the time. They're just handing out blowjob tickets. What the hell's going on out there?

That's a fun parade. Spend the day in small but special Rutledge. That's in quotes there. Enjoying the park, exploring the shops, and relaxing to the sounds of Morgan County's finest voices.

Who the fuck are they?

Because that's the concert's the only thing that's going on. So that's got to be a big act. So it's going to be better. Is it Morgan County's finest? It's Morgan County's finest voices right here. The Alabama Troubadours they had one week celebrating. It's not Alabama. It's the Troubadours. The Alabama Troubadours celebrating the music of John Prine, who I've never heard of. Oh, really? Oh, John Prine's terrific. Oh, really? Yeah, no. You said that like I should have heard. I swear to God, John Prine's terrific. Oh, I'm sure he is. But you said that like...

James, you don't know John Prine? No, I don't. But I don't think he has an extensive catalog that you could... Fill a whole night with, apparently. I don't know that that's true. Well, the next week, Diane Durrett and Junebug will be there.

Whose music do they play? It just says singer-songwriter. I don't know which is which, but Diane or Junebug. The Justin Kennedy Band, which plays classic to new country. Everything is country. Doug Deluxe and the Rodeo Clowns.

Doug Deluxe. Doug Deluxe and the Rodeo Clowns. I hope they're dressed like Rodeo Clowns, by the way. I'm trying to process and absorb the words Doug and Deluxe together. Doug Deluxe. It's pretty dope. That's a pretty good name. It sounds like a rapper, Doug Deluxe, doesn't it?

Or just a big, fat country man. Yeah, one of the two. Traditional Western swing they play. We have Reckless Abandon, who plays classic rock. Wyatt Espalin, who's a fiddler. We got him. July 19th, Brian Ashley Jones. That's one person, not Brian and Ashley Jones. Brian Ashley Jones. And Melanie Jean, they're an Americana duo.

Oh, you got a dude with all three of his names and then a girl. And then a girl. Brian Ashley Jones and Melanie Jean. Yeah. That's not her last name. You know her name's Melanie Jean? That's her first name. That's her first name, Melanie Jean. You just fucking know it. The Mistletoes will be playing on July 26th, which makes all the sense in the world. All right. They'll be doing Christmas in July. Okay.

Rockabilly slash Big Band Christmas. Those are not the same things, Rockabilly and Big Band. No. They acted like those are always merging, Rockabilly and Big Band. Completely different forms of music. It's wild. Campbell Harrison will be there, who's a singer and songwriter. Then August 9th, Blue Velvet Atlanta.

I don't know. I guess we just hang in for all of John Prine's catalog. I feel like let's start out on June 7th and sit there and really see what John Prine has to offer. I would say if you're going to be a cover band though, does everybody who likes country music know who John Prine is? Is he

Is he old? If you love, yeah, I think he just died too. But if you know him, you fucking, you have to really love country music. You got to know who like little Jimmy Dickens is, like shit like that. So basically, probably not the best idea to be a cover band of that guy. Yeah.

Well, you know what? He probably wrote a shitload of songs that are crazy famous that nobody even knows that he wrote. It's probably like that. You only see that in music, though. There's so many people we found out that fucking Nas wrote all of Will Smith's shit. And you're like, what the fuck is happening?

And Eminem wrote shit piles of Dr. Dre's music. Well, that you expect. You knew that when you heard his rhythms. You knew they were teaming up. Like, okay, Dr. Dre's been a rapper for 15 years and he's changed the way he writes his bars, whole rhyming. No, he didn't change his whole cadence.

But yeah, you're right. There are a lot of rappers that wrote for other people. And fuck, we found out Busta Rhymes wrote a bunch of Bel Biv DeVoe songs. That's what I mean, yeah. It's that stuff. You don't know. John Prine probably did that for a lot of very famous songs, and I probably just don't know. I know he, I can't think of one off the top of my head. But he's a great singer-songwriter. Fuck shit. I was thinking to Oz one day, he's writing, sneaking Uzi on the island in my army jacket lining. Okay? And then the next day, he's like, welcome to Miami. Yeah.

parents just don't understand no that was before yeah yeah nas was like fucking 14 when that shit came out yeah nas is writing like wild wild west yeah that's what he wrote that in miami was the big one oh did he really he wrote miami he wrote that he wrote all like the getting jiggy with it he wrote all that shit god damn it nas you son of a bitch yeah

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, wait. I got to get back to my stuff. My rhyming is a vitamin held without a capsule. I got to get back to Will Smith now. Hold on. Fucking confusing. Holy shit. Stick looks sick up in that box. Yeah. Jesus. What the fuck? Crime rate in this town. Yeah. What we're interested in here. Property crime is high. It's high. Hell yeah. 1100 people. What are they? What's going on?

It's 25% high. Like, it's high. That's a lot more. You better get some national artists in here to calm these motherfuckers down. Chill them out. They are restless. Dig up John Prine and stick them up there. That's what they want, apparently. Violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and, of course, assault. The Mount Rushmore of crime is, I'd like to, in the words of Lisa...

Mona Lisa Vito. Dead on balls average is what it is. Dead on balls. Exactly. I mean, exactly average to the percent. Just like housing. Fascinating. Yeah, it's wild. So that said, let's talk about some murder here because, oh boy, is this a fucking twisted one. Let's get into it. This, a lot of stuff here comes from a book called Death Trap written by M. William Phillips.

Oh, I wonder what the M stands for. Just go by William Phil or Phelps, not Phillips Phelps. I'm sorry. Oh, and William Phelps makes a huge dent. You said, oh, like that changes everything. No, it does. It changes everything because it's probably Michael. And he's like, well, now I can't do that. Yeah, my can't be Michael Phelps. That's probably what it is, honestly.

So let's go back to February 16th. We're going back in time, but this is 2002. So cell phones now, yes, but cameras are just getting on them. And there's no internet on that phone. No internet at all on that phone. You got T-Zones from T-Mobile, and it sucks. It's not good. I don't even know if that was on phones yet by 2002. It may not. That seems like 2004 or 2005.

You know what I mean? Like you couldn't even check your fucking email on a phone back then. No, no, no, no, no, no. It was a phone. Were BlackBerrys in 2002? Not yet. Not yet. No? This is still LG flip phone shit back then. Those razors? Not even. Razors didn't come out until like 2006. You might be right. Jesus Christ. Yeah, this is back in the day here. So 3.30 a.m., okay? February the 16th, 2002. Rutledge, Georgia.

And Rutledge, by the way, from this book, I'll give you a quote. The town is located approximately halfway between Atlanta and Augusta. They call it a blip on a GPS screen. It's a forgotten place, essentially there to serve its people. Rutledge and Madison are quiet and nondescript wooded areas off Interstate 20 that interlopers might assume are nothing more than lost vast wilderness. Like,

You wouldn't even know there's a fucking town there if you didn't know there's a town there. That's what it is. I've seen all the pictures, too. It's exactly what it looks like. Out here, good old folks live quietly. They bother no one. Their focus is on working the same land their forefathers have had for generations past.

Yeah, but your crime rate is so high. Yeah, what else are they doing there? They're bothering somebody. Someone's bothering somebody. So this is 3.30 a.m. Four friends are driving down Old Mill Road in Rutledge. They are driving in a Toyota minivan.

You're thinking, man, they must be finishing up a wild night, right? 3.30 in the morning, driving home from maybe Atlanta. They were out partying or something. No, no. They're on their way out at 3.30 in the morning. They're going to party now. No, no. Well, you could call it partying in a different kind of way. They're going to a chicken show.

Quote, unquote, chicken show, which I said, what is that? You like is that like you're sexually into chickens or what? But no, I got to assume that's how you buy them. Right. You got to go to the chicken show. It's not only them in the minivan. The rest of the minivan is filled with cages full of chickens that they're bringing to the show. About to go show the chicken about to show off their prize chickens.

So they're out in the middle of nowhere, and this is pitch black out here. It's the middle of the woods in the middle of nowhere. There's no real big town. The town might have two streetlights in it. That's it. It's a small area if you're lucky. I don't mean traffic lights. I mean streetlights. That's what I was saying. To illuminate the streets. Yeah. So there's no light from this, no glow. Towns from far away, you can see a glow. There's not a lot of glow here. So that's...

There are all these guys, it's 3.30 in the morning, and they just woke up and packed chickens into a minivan. So they're all a little, you know, getting their shit together here. One of them notices...

bright light in the distance. Not in the sky like an alien, but above the trees with a red and orange glow to it. They're like, whoa, what's that about? It has to be a fire or something. So one of them said, look over there, and everybody looked. And one of the guys said, hey, I know the person who owns that land.

Which, that's how rural this is. You just look out at a vast land and you're like, I know the person who owns a bunch of that. Like, oh, okay. That 12 acres is my friend. Let's go see him. Just that big swath of land. So they turn around. He says, turn around, turn around, go back there. Because he said he was worried that the woods were on fire and his friend, it might burn. And who knows if it could go to his house and burn his house down or some shit. It's the middle of the night. The guy probably doesn't know his woods are on fire. Yeah.

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Hey, everybody. Just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you a little bit more about one of our favorites, Quince. Oh, quince.com. Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com. That's right. And it's busy seasons. We're all going around. We're going everywhere in the summer. We're traveling. Your wardrobe's getting beat up a little bit. Let's be realistic here. We're not going to do, neither Jimmy or myself, we're not going to do total wardrobe overhauls here. This isn't like some sort of reality show. But you get...

A few things here to replace some stuff, and that's what we're doing. Replacing some worn-out stuff with some high-quality essentials at a very affordable price from Quince. And that's what we've done. And they have all the seasonal must-haves. We got some cool stuff. Jimmy, those linen pants. Oh, they're so comfortable. They are? Oh, boy.

You went for the outer. I got some undershirts, which I like because you need a comfortable undershirt. And these are really comfortable and soft. And I got some sunglasses. You can do it too. Upgrade your wardrobe with pieces made to last with Quince. Go to quince.com slash smalltownmurder for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. That's

Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash smalltownmurder to get free shipping and 365 day returns. quince.com slash smalltownmurder. Now back to the show. So they pull in and they're pulling onto Hawkins Academy Road and they could see dark smoke and flames up there. They're like, holy shit, this is not a...

like two bushes on fire. This is a fucking fire. This thing's already out of control. Oh, yeah. They pull up. There's trees that are already burned to nothing next to this. And what they see is in the middle of all this, the epicenter of these flames appear to be a car fully engulfed in flames. Shit. Like that's where the woods didn't catch the car on fire. The car has caught the woods on fire, obviously. So they get out of the van and...

And they said as soon as they opened the door of the van, they felt the heat. It was such a hot fire. They didn't feel it like push them back. And holy shit, they had to step back away from the fire. One of them was called, you know, immediately called the sheriff. Probably knew him. You know, hey, Bill, your land's on fire. So wake up. They call a and they got Deputy Sheriff John Eugene Williams on.

John Williams. It couldn't be a more common name than that. No kidding. He takes the call and they said there's a car on fire in the woods near Hawkins Academy Road. They said, get the fire department out here. The woods are burning out of control. This is going to get, you know, we're not going to be able to stop this. Get out here. So they do. The deputy explained out in this area, he said, there's nothing out here. He said, quote, it's.

It's rural. And they said there's a car on fire out here at Hawkins Academy Road. And he was like, wow, that's way out there. He figured it was kids. He was like, he's fucking pain in the ass. Kids, you know, went out in the woods to fuck around and drink and do whatever they do out there. You know, because Hard Labor Creek is probably closed. So you got to.

Not a lot of places to go. There's a curfew on that some. Oh, yeah. You know, that's hardcore. Yeah. Lights out, they call it, actually. It's not even curfew. They said it was, you know, Friday night going into Saturday morning. So if that makes sense, there'd be kids out. Probably a bunch of kids went out, got shit-faced, and then...

You know, somebody had an old rusty car. They decided they'll take it out in the woods and torch it. You know what I mean? Because people do that. They shoot it all up. Target practice. Yeah. That's normal to pay in the car payment. Shit like that. Yeah. Yeah. But they figure it's probably just some kids took a junker off their property and put it out there or something. So he said, you know, get the fire department out there, though. And they didn't want the forest to be like an uncontrollable fire.

So, you know, he said, OK, the deputy gets his jacket on, heads out there. And the I guess it's located on Athens Highway, the sheriff's department, about 20 minutes from the fire scene.

So nothing's close either. No, 20 minutes away is old. That's a distance. That's a real distance. So, yeah, I guess it's Interstate 20 goes on there. There's Route 11 also. And you could see, like, how somebody might have got there. They were thinking about, you know, how they drove out there. And they could kind of see from town they might drive this way or that way. They said this road, the deputy said, there's very few houses on it. It's fairly isolated.

And it is. It's way out there. And it's about 3.50 a.m. when he arrived, and the fire department was already there, and they already got most of the fire out.

Great. He got there. Yeah, the trees look like they're out and they're just kind of still putting shit on the fire. Wood goes out easier than like plastic. Plastic burns hot and long. And steel or wires or shit like that. Yeah. Car seats. Oh, my God. Forget it. Yeah, with that foam shit. That foam shit burns inside of it. Oh, my God. You can't get that to be put out? Fuck no. So, yeah, the fire's under control and the trees were burned all around it. The car was...

giving off a horrible smell of burned plastic and everything else. So, yeah, he gets out of the car. The deputy says to the fire guy, anybody in that vehicle? Yeah. Anything, anybody? And they said it was hard to tell, but they could tell they look like a Pontiac from the

You know, burnt up. It was so hot that it melted the license plate off the car. Yeah, but in a fire, everything looks like a Pontiac. Everything looks like a Pontiac. Useless. They find out, a piece of shit, a defunct piece of shit. They find out it's a 2001 red Pontiac Grand Am. That's what it was originally. They suck, but they don't suck that bad.

It was white now. It wasn't red because all the paint had bubbled off of it and burned off of it. So that's what they figured out. It was parked nose first toward what looked like a gate to let cows or horses onto the – into a big area of a pasture and more woods. So it's – I guess everything around it is charred, charred, charred. It looks like somebody dropped napalm on this fucking place. Like it's – everything in this circle is just blackened to nothing. Yeah.

So it's wild here. They said the trees look really weird because they were like skeletons. They were so burnt out. You see those husks of trees? Yeah. Scary looking. So as the deputy here walks toward the scene, he could see that, you know, obviously a pile of melted car. And he said, Jesus Christ, obviously that's burned so much. He's like, this is not.

This isn't an accident. A car didn't catch on fire. Wasn't an engine fire or like Anthony Soprano, AJ fucking was on some leaves and it caught fire under the cars. None of that bullshit. His catalytic converter lit up his Xterra. It's a good way to get rid of an Xterra though.

Those are, they're popular again. People love it. I know. I see them all around and shit. Yeah. They're very popular. Probably good for that. So they said that a car fire normally will just burn itself out unless it's, there's some serious accelerant involved. And so they, the entire inside and outside of the vehicle were completely destroyed, blackened, charred to nothing and still smoldering. The seats are completely gone, burned to nothing, burned to ash. And just, it's just a frame basically. Yeah.

So they get everything under control and, you know, everything here. And he asked again, have you seen, is there anybody in the car? Was there anybody, anything in the car? Did somebody come here and kill themselves or something? Who knows? So they don't know. They said that you have no idea. He said he's seen movies. Somebody might have driven a car out here and put a body in it. But they said, no, ain't nobody. The guy said, no, ain't nobody in there. And he said, good. That's, I don't have to deal with that shit.

But they do say, he said, but it looks like somebody just slaughtered some beef or had some deer meat or something in the trunk, the fire guy says. What kind of? Okay, that's a bizarre answer. Yeah, and who puts a deer in the trunk of a Grand Am? That's a strange way to transport wildlife. Yeah, if you hit something and just threw it in the trunk, whatever, but slaughtered it in the trunk? What is that? I guess maybe you slaughter it ahead of time you're bringing it to somewhere. I don't know.

I don't fucking know what they're trying to say. So the cop says, all right, well, let's take a look at that. And he thought maybe it was, you know, poachers possibly, something like that, because it wasn't seasoned or something. Someone trying to, he said maybe someone trying to steal from this guy who owns all these. Because there's a cow gate. So maybe a cow. Did they try to steal a cow? Then he's like, who the hell would bring a Pontiac Grand Am to steal a fucking cow? Never doing that. Well, put it in the trunk. Like, that's not a good idea.

So he's like, that's what he said. I've seen people do dumber shit than that. So maybe, who knows? It might be someone who's not from around here. He doesn't know you can't put a cow in a trunk. You don't realize how big a cow is until you walk up on one. Maybe somebody is like, let's steal a cow. Yeah, look at them. They don't look like. Why not? I bet I could do it. Then you get near it and you're like, oh, this thing's so big. It's so, how the fuck? Jesus, you're the size of the car. Fuck.

500 feet away. Looked like he fit in the trunk. I'll just ride you home, I guess. Never mind. We'll leave the car, come back for it later. I think he's heavier than the car. Fuck. Oh, yeah. Jesus Christ. Cows are so fucking big. They're terrifying. Are they a ton? I don't know if they're that much. 1,500 pounds? They look like maybe 800 pounds.

I bet they're bigger than that. A horse is 800 pounds. Is it? Wow. A big horse? What kind of horse are we talking about? Like a Clydesdale? A good-sized horse? No, that's bigger. That's going to be 1,200 pounds for sure. Absolutely. Yeah. Wow. These animals are terrifying. I'll bet horses go from 6 to 1,200. I'll bet that's about right. Probably about 6 to 1,200 in that range.

What do you want, like a 750? I bet a cow's about the same. A cow, cows have so much mass, though. If a cow wasn't so calm, we'd be so scared of them. Think about that. Oh, we'd be so fucked, too. If those were vicious, oh my God. Like if they bit and charged, and you'd be like, oh my God. If every cow behaved like a rodeo bull, we'd all be fucked. We'd be fucked. We'd be in so much trouble. We wouldn't be eating much beef, I'll tell you that much. Shit would be really expensive. We'd all drive much bigger cars, just in case. Never know.

So as he goes toward the fire, he can smell flesh burning at that point. Oh, no. You know, something. Cooked meat is what he said. It was very gamey, though. It didn't smell like beef. But mixed with gasoline and chemicals and accelerant. Electric fires. And electrical wires. Who the hell knows? Seats and plastic. Who the fuck knows? But still, it didn't smell good. So he goes over to the trunk, and they said the plastic light housings on the end of the

car, you know, the taillights are melted completely away, gone. The trunk was propped open with a tool. It's a, you know, fireman's crowbar there. The license plate had fallen off, but it was on the ground. They figured out actually whose it was because it fell with the numbers down. Oh, very nice. So it was able to keep some shape there on the ground. Yeah.

So the sheriff goes in for a look here. The backseat of the car burned to ash, spring coils popping up, obviously. So there he could, from the inside, he could see into the trunk of the car a little bit easier. And he said it was something bulky and large and all burnt up inside the trunk. And there looked to be a blanket or comforter of some type underneath the

Have none of these motherfuckers seen Dateline? They've never seen... No, they never have. It's 2002 also, so they were... They didn't have quite the experience yet. The news hadn't reached them that sometimes cars get lit on fire with perhaps a body. Perhaps... Well, that's what he thought at first because he literally said he'd seen The Sopranos and he thought maybe... Oh, is that right? That's what he said. He thought maybe somebody... That was like his first thought, but he was like, no, I'm in Rutledge. This isn't fucking... This isn't New Jersey. This isn't Long Branch. This is Rutledge. So...

He said he could see that. He could look in and give him a closer look. And he said he could see it. And he said he yelled to the fire chief, these are human beings, not an animal. Plural. Oh, my God. Plural.

So they sat there for a minute like, holy shit, this is insanity. They thought it was one large thing and it's two. He said once you stood there for a while, you could see the outline of two dead people, dead and charred people. What was left of the arm of one person, they said.

He said he couldn't tell if it was a male and a female or a man and a child. He couldn't tell. Couldn't tell. He said, I know I knew one was male, but I couldn't tell if the other was a female or a child. It was much smaller. So that's what he says. Now, these bodies in the car, they said there's a good chance that this was done to try to cover up some murders.

And they said, you know, the mob did this type of thing. And in the bookie, they go on to say that, yes, the mob does it, but they're usually a little cleaner about it than this. Yeah, this is – it's fascinating that they do that to like – because how hot must it get to get rid of a body, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. How hot must it be to get rid of a car and bodies? That's what – yes. Right.

All you're doing is bringing attention to this. Yeah. When the mob stuffs somebody in the trunk of a car, they generally don't set it on fire because that draws attention to that. Right. And they put someone in the trunk of a car. That's so they're not found for a few days for a while, which gives them no time of when they were killed or disappeared. So nobody needs to have a solid alibi. And then they'll eventually be found, which is what they want. So everybody knows that that guy fucked up and got killed and stuffed in a trunk. Yeah.

And he got killed in a mob way. So maybe guys that are connected, we don't fuck with them. There could have been anybody. When they want to disappear someone, they chop them up and throw them somewhere. They don't do this. This is lighting a literal flare. There's bodies over here. Hey, look. Yes. Remember the bodybuilder guy we had for crime and sports that his girlfriend set the girl on fire out in the middle of Vegas desert? It was like you could see that for 1,200 miles around you.

That's ridiculous. There's no light out there. The only light is that car on fire. Bright light you can see from the strip, for Christ's sake. So they said that, yeah, this is obviously...

Fucking horrible here. So they get a forensic team in there and going through everything and they get a guy in and he's looking for anything. DNA. Yeah. Can't really probably find fingerprints on the vehicle since every surface is burned to nothing and melted away. So he looks back and he as he's looking in, the guy says her legs are.

meaning he said this is a woman, he thought, were bent back around back behind her. Oh, my God. He said it was a woman, a very small woman, very petite. And he said it was...

No, no, well, no. It was actually the fire that did that. They said it would... Oh, Jesus. They said that the victim closest to the back seat of the car had been placed in the trunk first, is what they figured, because they would be placed in from the outside. Then the guy said his legs, talking about the male, come up and then bend back around the thigh area, the right side of the body. He said...

He noticed that both of the victims' arms and legs were discernible if you looked closely. You could see, make it out. He said the same was true with regard to other parts of their bodies. The back of the male's calves were the same way as the female's, bent flush against the backside of his thighs. So like you put your legs under you to sit on something, but sideways. They said they were definitely crunched up together, then placed in the trunk.

basically there they said um yeah that's how it went and they said that's how he thinks that they were killed somewhere else and brought here because if they were if they were killed like they wouldn't be in the trunk in those positions unless they were stuffed into those positions to make they had to be dead already right yes yeah so they think okay that's what we're we're working with now which is a very helpful thing where was you know where this took place yeah

Yeah. So they comb the scene and the trunk and everything like that. They find the comforter underneath the bodies that hadn't been completely consumed by the fire because they were on top of them. Sure, sure. Yeah, that'll stop the fire. That helps. You might get some trace evidence off of that, a fiber, a hair, DNA, something. So with the help of a bunch of other investigators, they remove the body of the male and place him in a body bag. On the male victim's left hand was a wedding band.

So that's something. As they zip the guy up, he also notices what appears to be a hole in the man's wrist that looks like it's probably a bullet wound.

It's a big hole that goes all the way through his flesh and burned away around it. The male victim, they said maybe it held his hands up to block a bullet or something like that. That's possible. So maybe there's a bullet fragment somewhere around the car. Looking at the female victim, he notices what he called defects in the body, meaning not that she had a big fat ass or something, meaning that they're not insulting her looks, saying that there's...

In the dead body. Eventually finding out that they were also bullet holes that they found. She had a wound in her lower back. So with the comforter they have, they take that out. They have the bodies and body bags. They said that they found a sheet of paper towel near the car. A sheet of paper towel with the imprint pattern of a little boy and a little girl. That's whatever the...

you know, is printed on the paper towel. Oh, gotcha. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The decoration. The corner of the paper towel was burned, but a majority of it was still intact. So that's something. They take that. They also found what looked to be an engagement ring inside the trunk, but the diamond was gone, like a woman's engagement ring with a diamond. But it was gone. It was underneath where the female's body was placed. There's all sorts of debris in the trunk. Then they found two duffel bags.

As well. Yeah. One with partially burned clothes. The other looked like, looked to be, have a bunch of court documents in it.

So they said maybe that the murderers had hoped these duffel bags would be incinerated with the rest of the evidence. Maybe that was part of why they were there. Then they say, OK, the this crime scene is too constricted. We have it. We're too. We got to spread out because it got it was windy that day. And he's like, it's super windy. And if we're finding paper towels and stuff like that.

Other evidence like that. We're going to have some other shit off in the woods. Could be blown around the woods. So they took down the crime scene tape and made a much bigger circle here. And so they said they needed to expand everything. He ordered, the crime scene guy ordered approximately 200 yards on either side of the vehicle to be roped off, which is a long fucking way.

200 yards? Two football fields. 500 feet in each direction? 600. It's a lot. So from side to side total, it would be 400 yards. Right. Because it's 200 on each side of the car. So that's a lot, man. So they said they were going to rope all that off. That would be the new crime scene. They said that's that. So...

They said they were going to do a grid-like search of the ground for anything. And they said anything. Cigarette butts, gum, footprints, a Lee Presson nail that fell off, a piece of paper, an earring. You find it, we'll fucking grab it. TJ Maxx receipt, I don't give a shit. We don't give a shit what you got. Yeah. Whatever jumped out. So they said that, you know, maybe somebody was sloppy. They seemed to think that fire would get rid of everything. Maybe it didn't quite get rid of everything. So they said, you know, even if they tried to...

Clean it up. Maybe they left some shit. Murderers aren't great at murder all the time. That's the thing. Yeah, a lot of times things don't go as planned. They don't go as planned. Even if they planned this, something may have fucked up. And sometimes they're too dumb to plan it correctly. That's the other problem that happens here. So they say that they have the...

some things, like I said, paper towels and things like that, the wind is getting worse and worse and worse here. And the guy said, you only really get, you don't get a lot of shots at a crime scene. Once you say, okay, it's good, that's it. It's contaminated because everyone's going to trample it. You get one try. That's it. You get one try. And homicide detectives in a lot of books I've read, they'll say there's these cases where they're like, fuck, they're so mad they...

They just did it. They said, oh, yeah, all right, it's fine, and turned it over to everybody and said, I should have done this and I should have done that, and you can't remake it. It's just the way it is, and it's all contaminated now.

So this guy finishes up his work, the forensics guy, and he's walking around looking for more stuff. He finishes his work at the car. At one point, he locates and photographs a .44 caliber Magnum Remington shell casing. Nice work. About 10 to 15 feet from the rear of the vehicle. Okay, so where it exited the gun or the weapon. They said it was very odd, though, because a .44 would have blown the male victim's wrist off, not put a hole in it.

is what he says. So it would have blown bone apart and shit. So that's a little bit strange. So they said maybe two weapons, two different guns. We don't know here. So they're just trying to put things together. They continue to search. They found a spent bullet, an actual projectile that was mushroomed over on the top inside the trunk. So it like hit something and mushroomed over. Then they found a cigarette butt, a Marlboro light.

That boy. So we got the Marlboro Lights. Yeah, so they got looking for a .44 caliber Marlboro Light smoking son of a bitch. They're looking for Jimmy Wissman in 2002. Yeah, except with very fancily stenciled paper towels. Yeah.

You wouldn't have bought those. Yeah. So it turns out Rutledge in the last 10 years, somehow this has happened a lot here. And they're like, well, are we like a dumping ground for fucking murder now? Really? Yeah. They said that it's very, very strange. They said there was an elderly woman abducted and beaten with a tree branch. What? Just left there, beaten to death with a tree branch. She was dead. Yeah. They just took her out there, beat her to death with a tree branch.

What kind of monster does that? I don't know. Who the fuck sets two people in a car on fire? That's crazy. All this is crazy. Two teenage runaways...

Boys who kidnapped a paper girl, kidnapped a young girl delivering newspapers and left her mutilated body off the interstate in this area. Dead to mutilated. Oh, my God. Taken apart. They were seeing what was inside of her. Basically, it was horrible places. Frightening. It's terrible and terrible and terrifying. And then three teens who tortured and eventually killed a runaway girl as well in this area.

I hate this place. So, yeah. So, but they said, and this is a quote from the book, dead bodies popping up every now and then was no reason for alarm. Locals knew, huh? I'm alarmed. The old lady with the tree branch alarms me. Then we're finding dead teenagers all over the place. I'm very alarmed. You,

You people are insane. Yeah. You're okay with this. But they said it's basically, it's not like it's, you know, nothing they're doing wrong. It's just happens to be between two major cities, between Atlanta and Augusta. We happen to be so safe that even murderers feel safe to bring their victims here. They know that no one's going to see it. So let's talk about some people here. All right. And we'll eventually find out who the hell we're looking at. Okay. Let's talk about Alan Jeffrey Bates.

B-A-T-E-S. And Jeffrey is G-E-O-F-F-R-E, which I'm like, F-F-R-E? I've never seen that before. Well, that's how you spell the giraffe from Toys R Us, too. Oh, is it? I guess that would make sense. He's born in 1972, though. Did that giraffe exist? No.

You know, I'm not sure. I don't know when Toys R Us became a thing. I don't know. I don't think so. He's born January 22nd, 1972 to Philip and Joan Bates. And they have three boys in their family.

And everybody's super close and everybody's happy. And they are the book calls them one of those wholesome, old fashioned Southern Christian families who believed strong ties, loyalty, respect, support and admiration for others were what mattered more than anything else in life. That's what somebody said about their family. Someone said that about their family in a book.

Wow. Can you imagine your family being described by that post, you know, with some time, with some like hindsight, 20 years of look back on it? No, definitely not. Those are all good words. Those are nice. They were animals. They never fucking, that would be more accurate for me.

Alan Bates grew up. He's the middle child, by the way, of the three boys and his brother, Robert. They both attended Shades Valley High School here off of Route 31 near. This is in Alabama, by the way, near the Birmingham Botanical Gardens. And Alan is like every parent's dream as a high school kid. Just every parent's fucking wet dream. He's awesome.

Great in school, popular, seems to be well-adjusted. He's voted class president freshman, sophomore, junior year. He got a three-peat on president. He's doing such a good job. Throw it at him again.

He's getting, I imagine he had term limits there. Senior year. He couldn't get it. We'll talk about senior year. That's senior year is a whole different thing, but really three years running, which is absolutely crazy. Uh, he is also an honor student and you know, all that kind of shit. He's also one of those really polite to adult kids, ma'am and sir. And you know, can I help you mow the lawn and shit like that? He's a,

Eddie Haskell-ish? Yeah. My friend's parents called me Haskell. Yeah, of course they did. What are you up to, Eddie? I'm like, calm down. Mr. K, don't call me that. You're Eddie Haskell on this show. Are you kidding me? The things you sometimes say that you're real upset and care about, I'm like, motherfucker, if we weren't on this show, you'd be laughing your ass off, right? Don't give me that shit. Don't try to be nice for people. This is how I keep people from hating me.

Just be yourself. It's much more fun. Yeah, I just didn't want my friends' parents to know that I was going to corrupt their kid. Like they weren't just as scummy. That's what you're right now.

They knew I was showing them bad shit. No, I was the same way, too. I was polite. I think if you're half intelligent, you go, well, don't be obvious here. Don't let them know. Yeah. Trying to hide what I'm doing here a little bit. Jesus Christ. Don't let them know we're drunk. Yeah. Seriously, look cool. Okay. Mrs. K, how are you? You smell like vodka. Oh, shit. Are my eyes both open the same amount? Okay, good. Let's give it a shot. Okay.

Oh, man. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. It's a good way to tell. One eye is 10% more closed. You're like, what the fuck have you been doing?

So, but Alan, I mean, like, every, he's the, back then especially, and not even back then, it's 2000 or 1989 or something. But this is like, this is the guy you want your daughter to marry, all the parents down there. He's a church guy. He's all. Good kid. Good kid here. He's an active member in the church as well. Alan played drums in.

In a few different bands, including gospel and Christian bands. That's what he was playing mainly here. His father, Philip, said Alan picked up an interest along the way in technical theater and was responsible for his senior class having a stage production at Shades Valley, which they hadn't had in years. But he was, well, what the hell? What's the drama department then? They have a...

He joined it. Okay, that's weird. But he was interested in the lights and the sound and the set design and the behind-the-scenes thing that make a theater production go. He wasn't interested in the drama, but he loved that. Yeah, Jesus Christ Superstar.

Yeah, well, back then they were like, no, he likes technical things, though. He likes manly things. He likes electricity and lights. One of them actor gays. Yeah, he ain't one of them actor queers I see all the time. Ain't none of that. None of that. No, no. I heard in Shakespeare they got two boys playing Romeo and Juliet. Not my boy. Ever seen Tombstone? Them people get off the stage. Boy, that feller. Not my son.

So you love that. One friend, Marley, knew Alan and the Bates boys all forever, said that they would sit and eat in the auditorium because he liked being close to the stage. So they'd eat their lunches in the auditorium. She said, Alan and I were raised like brother and sister. He loved the theater. Even then in high school, he just felt so at home there.

He may have been playing the gospel stuff because that's probably the best way to get yourself on stage every week. Yeah. Well, I mean, how many famous singers, especially R&B singers from the South? Yeah, they started in the church. They all started in the church, every one of them. I mean, that's just how you, the first places you sang in public back then. I think Questlove did that with the drums. I think that's true. It's probably possible. I wouldn't be surprised. A lot of people. So he meets a girl, okay? This is between junior and senior year.

This is a young girl named Jessica Callis, C-A-L-L-I-S. And, yeah, not like she's callous. She sounds rough. She's rough, this one. She's not rough at all. She's a girl from Hoover, which is right around here. It's right outside Birmingham. And she's the total opposite of Alan. They're a rom-com couple.

Oh, he's he's buttoned up and worried about stuff. And she's viewed everybody called her goth. And this was in the 80s. Really? So she's basically Winona Ryder and Beetlejuice is what she is. Big Duran Duran fan. Exactly. You know what I mean? Dresses in a little bit of black. Looking for a way to simplify your family's back to school journey? Have lunch with Packet. Packet freezable lunch boxes and bags are designed with EcoFreeze technology.

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They said, though, even in the groups known to be like the goth groups, she wasn't even really accepted in that one. She's just kind of weird, apparently. But somehow they get along and complement each other perfectly, which is very strange because they have nothing in common, but they really like each other, which is cool. So Jessica is the oldest of three children. I mean, that's it, too. They're both come from three kids, similar households. Hers was a broken home, though, not quite as good.

She doesn't have the family life that he has by any means. That's so tough. No, no, definitely not. She would go to church a lot too. She's a church girl, but different church. It's a different church here. It's a little bit more loose of a church. The Bateses go to a very like...

fire and brimstone you know women do this and men do that and you know she's going to like non-denominational she's going to christmas the presbyterian church so it's a little looser than like baptist or you know barbecue and fellowship and some pie yeah that's it just tell everybody how great jesus is hey jesus is a good guy this is a hell of a pie you made here i'll tell you something

So that's kind of what it is. And yeah, that's there. Apparently, Jessica said her dad, George, was a real asshole. She told everybody she used to he would beat the hell out of her and, you know, bruise her up and all that kind of thing. And she said, though, a week wouldn't go by without her parents getting into some sort of bruising.

brutal you know huge drunken argument where once somebody hits somebody else and her mother would be crying and her dad would take off shit face to go get drunker wow so yeah that's that's kind of how her family life is yeah so you can get the goth thing a little bit out of that you know what i mean yeah yeah you got some depression and some uh living in the on the fringe because you feel like uh

you don't have it as good as everybody else. It's true. Yeah. You also might, uh, wear sleeves to cover things like bruises. Right. And then, you know, you end up, well, might as well wear a black. So I look, you know, don't come near me type of shit. Yeah. Oops. Who knows? We're an undershirt under a long sleeve undershirt under the t-shirt kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like that goes to do some nineties grunge shit. So, uh, her mother, Diane was a church treasurer at one time. So they were very,

interested in church. They end up getting a divorce, Diane and George, luckily for Jessica here. And the second husband was apparently much more chilled out than the trunky McDad pants over there, the first guy. So he was an act. His name is Albert Bailey. He was an active elder on the council of the church.

Okay. So he's hot shit. Oh, real involved. Yeah. He knew Jesus personally. Yeah. It was there that I guess when this all happened, she was baptized here and all of that kind of thing, I guess, like re-baptized here. She, I guess their religion was different. This is what's crazy. They're both Christians. They both go to church on Sunday, but Alan and Jessica's religions are completely different, even though they're the same religion. Yeah.

I know they're not exactly the same. I don't know every detail of it, but we both love Jesus. Who cares? You know what I mean? But instead, Jessica had told somebody that Alan was brought up in the Church of Christ, which is not my church. I mean, it's Christian, but, you know, the basic tenets are different than mine. Yeah. Church of Christ is very strict.

It's very strict. She said that hers was more of like just a liberal church as far as the rules go. She said in the whole theory, different views on how girls should be treated, especially within the confines of the church. I disagreed vehemently with Alan's family on their church. So that's what she had told people back then. But regardless, they become a couple.

sure pre-senior year and six days a week we spend together yeah and she's cute she's like she's the type she has like kind of the like in the book even it's described as like pudgy cheeks you know she's ah yeah but she's a teenager yeah yeah yeah cute chick so yeah um you know she's not like oh my god falling over hot but she's cute and he likes her so um he's into it and he just something about her he said she's got a flair you know what i mean so um

Anyway, Marley, the friend of his that they lunch together, said that Jessica did not like her at all. Didn't want her hanging out with Alan. Yeah. She said, Jessica hated my guts. Just not into him. Okay. Yeah.

As soon as she transferred to the school, Jessica, she transfers here for her senior year. To his school. To his school. And she made sure that it was, I mean. Marley stays the fuck away. Everybody. Everybody. Really? She, like, demanded attention, Jessica. She was one of those people. And her friend said she latched on to Alan pretty quick and pretty hard and pretty heavy. She loved the fact that Alan was a band guy.

She liked that he was in a band. She's into that. So play that gospel music, baby. Funky gospel music white boy. White boy. So as they became closer, Jessica pulled Alan aside one day, according to Marley, and said, you have to stop hanging out with Marley. Never speak to her again. Even though they've known each other since they were babies and they've never had any romantic relationships, she thinks one is going to just pop out of nowhere here. There's also...

this is still a new relationship and we're in our teenage years and we're giving each other ultimatums already? That's so fucking weird. It's bizarre. If you've known someone since kindergarten and you haven't hooked up yet and you're in your senior year, it's literally never going to happen. You're a brother and sister. It's not that vibe. This is harder than a friend zone. This is way deeper than a friend zone. Remember in Orlando, we did the live show. Remember the lady, the girl who I know who came in and said hi to us and stuff? Known her since kindergarten and it's like,

I would fuck you before I would fuck her. I've just known her. You know what I mean? She's like, I do appreciate that. Like a sister. Well, yeah, yeah. There's at least one woman on this planet that James would fuck me before. Yeah. Well, it's not, nothing wrong with her. It's just, no. Yeah. You know, somebody since you're five, you're like, yeah, you know, you give her a noogie first before you, yeah. Like you're, you're not,

We're just not like that. That's weird. I get comedian friends. Same thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. I would gladly go down on you before going down on her. Well, with comics, it's just because I know how damaged they are. So it would have nothing to do with any of that. I just know to stay the fuck away because I understand. She's like, we relate on so many different levels of like personal, like it's a, it's a,

It's so bizarre. It's not even... There's no sexual tensions there at all. It's just, oh my God, you're such a sister. And she did the same thing. Some people are like that. So...

That's how Marley is like, man, this is really weird, though, that she doesn't want said it was never anything in that way. It's just why can't I hang out with them? And then Marley said, I got really I got a really bad read of her. I mean, everybody that knew her got a really bad read of Jessica. You could just tell that she carried she carried with her a negative energy.

Yeah, Jess, let's just be friends. Isn't it more fun to have a bonfire with three people than two people? Well, I mean, yeah, maybe she'll have a boyfriend and they can hang out or whatever. Like they can be couples chilling or whatever the fuck it is. I don't know. She said that Jessica had this dark aura about her, though, that just you felt like she didn't want people around. And they said that she was aggressive and different and different and aggressive in her.

Like outside of Birmingham, Alabama, too. We don't know what that would be in terms of, you know, other places and how aggressive that would be or anything like that. But one thing Jessica will put out, that's one thing she'll do. Really? Not all the girls down there will. And she definitely will. One former high school classmate said, quote, she was fun.

Which you know exactly what that means. She said, you know, and I'm sure that was appealing to Alan. Yeah. A 17 year old with a girl who'll suck his dick. Yeah, that's really appealing. It's fucking awesome.

So went out back the barn and she took my zipper down. She's great. This is my best boy. I love it. So before any of that school stuff happened, when they were just this is before she transfers into the school. This is before the end of the summer. The Bates family took vacations on the Gulf Coast all the time and they'd stay on the beach at a condo they rented from a friend. That's what they do.

Yeah, it sounds gross. Yeah. Oh, good. I get to use my friend's shitter. Excellent. On the Gulf Shore. On the Gulf Shore. Yikes. So during the summer before his final year here, you know, weeks after they had met, Alan told her that he wouldn't be around for a while because him and his family were going on vacation. They go down to the coast every year. They spend a couple of weeks. So I'll see you when I get back.

He said he likes it. So vacation is perfect. They gears them up for the upcoming school year. Absolutely. Told her not to worry. It'll be, we'll be just like we were now. We're just like we are now. And I get back. It's all cool. I'm going to the Gulf. Yeah. See you later. Hang out with a Bama college students. I'll be back. Don't sweat it.

Oh, no, they won't fuck me. I'm 17. I'm just going to stare at them and tug in my friend's bathroom. I'm going to make some memories, we're going to call it. Yeah.

So he wanted to continue, and he told her that he let her know where they were going. Yeah, we go here. Didn't give her the exact address or anything. That'd be weird, but he just said, we're going to this beach. So they said goodbye. That was that. So one morning, Alan and his brother wake up, and they go out, and they stand on the balcony at the condo, and they're looking at the beach. No. And no one else is awake. It's early, early. It's just after sunrise. No one in the house is awake, and no one's at the beach that early. Right.

He sees a couple people at the beach, though, and he said, what the fuck? He's looking. He's staring at two people sitting out on the beach out in front of the condo, and he's like, that's really weird. And he looked. He said, it can't be. It can't be. No. He said to his brother, he goes, that's Jessica.

Oh, boy. And it was. Her and her friend came down there. Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Don't show up for my vacation. What are you doing? So Alan said, no way. You got to be kidding me. He said, what the fuck? He said, why is she here? It's a 260 mile trip. It's not down the street. Oh, my God. It's like in Phoenix. If you went to San Diego and someone just showed up. Yeah, it's a four hour ride. It's a fucking drive. Yeah.

It's almost four hours of driving, they said. So Jessica and her friend, when they got there, they didn't know where they were staying. They just knew the beach they were staying at. She was just going to plant her ass in the sand and wait? They found they got there. They just drove up and down the coastline in the town she knew they were going to until she found their van.

She knew what the Bates family van looked like, and she literally drove up and down the fucking shoreline until she found the van in a parking lot. There are positives about that, I'm sure. Wow. But I can't find them. Yeah, that she'd be a great homicide detective or something, but not...

This is not a girlfriend. This is crazy. No, that's so dangerous. I'd be like, what the fuck is happening? Yeah, unless you're a, wow, that's really good detective work, I guess, if that's what you're looking for. I guess I'll never go missing. No. And it was parked with shitloads of other cars in a big lot. They had to go through each lot car by car to see this shit. She sifted each car. Like panning for gold. Yeah.

So after they found the vehicle, they went out to the beach because they said this is the parking lot for those condos. So they must be in there. So they went to the beach, slept on the beach and said that I'm sure Alan and his family are in one of the condos and they'll end up at the beach eventually today. So I'll just wait till he comes down and runs into me at the beach.

He'll be throwing a football out here later. I'll be intercepting his Frisbee later. That's perfect. She never told him. I mean, she never told him. At this point, they said they weren't even really officially dating. They were just kind of seeing each other. Yeah. You know what I mean? And she wasn't invited. But he fucked her, though. That's the thing. He thought that was casual. Yeah.

And she said, this isn't going to be a casual affair, my friend. I'll be seeing you down at the shore. I'll be seeing you down at the shore, sir. Make sure you're not touching any other walls. Yeah. So Alan and his brother went down there and, you know, Alan said hi and she said hi. And Alan said, why don't you guys come to lunch with us? And his brother said about Alan, he was a teenager and he was flattered.

Because when you're 17, you don't know that's dangerous. That's the thing. When you're 17, you're like, that's how good my dick is. She loves it.

She drove four hours for this dick, man. She probably followed it like Bugs Bunny would follow the scent of a pie on a windowsill. Like she just knew where my dick was. That's how good it is. You don't know as you're a teenager. And you don't think of this little girl's dangerous to you. You're like, it's just weird. She stopped at a Flying J on the way and was like, he's been here. Yeah, yeah. They gassed up here. I can smell it. I can smell it.

This direction. She's like a tracker. Yeah, she's like Siri with like a horny Siri. That's how he looks at it. So I guess Kevin said they didn't stay with us or anything like that. She just came down for that day. They drove back that night. She spent the day with them and then went, okay, and left. I'm going back home. Just so you know, I'll find you. I will find you. I know where you are.

He said he was like all like, yeah, that's right. Yeah, this shit can't get enough of me. Like he was all like, yeah, you know, that's what happens, man. You know, they dip their waters in Bates Lake and that's what dip your toe in the waters and you got to come back for more. That's what happens. You know, and she thought, yeah, this is good shit. So, yeah.

He thought it was, you know, he thought of it as like it was a special thing. You know what I mean? Yeah. Kevin said it was shocking to him more than anything that she could just that she had this freedom as a teenager to just do whatever she wanted. That was even more like her parents just let her take off. That's pretty cool. Staying at the beach that night, be home tomorrow. Like, that's crazy. Now, a lot. Her friends said that a lot of times people saw her intentions and they misunderstood her.

They would misunderstand her. And well, they said the reason is, is because she had a habit of putting others before herself. So they said where friends were concerned. This is a friend of hers. Jessica was very selective and only associated herself with those who were good role models.

Which is a very, it doesn't sound like her personality, but that's what her friends are saying. So they said that she had a lot of independence with her home life and she was more mature than the average kid. And a lot of that's her home life, you know what I mean? So she said that a classmate of hers said that her honesty was sometimes misconstrued as arrogance or rudeness.

Okay. Okay. That's, yeah. Plain spoken, basically. She'll tell you what she feels, and she doesn't mean it in a rude way. She's being honest. So she came across, they said that's just the way she spoke and kind of came across as crass and maybe a little snotty, even though she wasn't trying to be.

So they said that a lot of times people just said, well, her family, she's got it tough, you know, and her dad left. She's been through some shit. She's been through some shit. So they said once you got to know her, though, there was no mistaking the fact that she was just a different type of person than a lot of the people around there. She's just rad. Sorry. It just sounds cool. It sounds like to me. She's like Fox and like, you know.

Has like cool fox and has like cool band t-shirts and shit. Like if you're 17, you want to hang out with this chick. You don't want to hang out with, you know, the rest of them. So a former friend said that she at the time said that she hadn't talked to her in a while, but called Jessica that summer. And Jessica said, I met a friend. I met a guy. He's really something. I just, I really like him. And, you know, it's just great. She said he's something. And she laughed and, and,

And her friend said, what is it? What's so funny about meeting a guy? Like, why are you laughing? And she said, well, quote, we're sneaking around and messing around in my car. And she thought it was kind of like, you know, she was like he giggling that they were having sex all the time in her car. Yeah. Yeah. She thought she thought she liked him. And she, you know, she was basically saying like, yeah, you know, he keeps coming back, wants to have more sex over and over again. So I think he likes me. Isn't that crazy? Isn't that weird? Yeah.

And she had no trouble with this. Apparently, when she met him, she was seeing somebody else and having sex with another boy. And a lot of her friends said that, yeah, she got around when it came to that. If she met a guy and liked him, she had sex with him. And that was it. So she said that. But Alan, she seemed to want a relationship. So she dumped the other guy and was focused on Alan. Wow.

So when they get back from beach vacation, school starts and, you know, they're hanging out together. And he wants to get in. This is a senior year. So he's got to buckle down for college and all that. So one friend said they were on the verge of breaking up. They weren't really dating at the time. OK, so because he was focused on shit. Alan didn't run for senior class president.

Didn't even run. Didn't run. He might have just said, you know what? Three years is a good run, and I'd like to...

It's up to you guys now. Yeah, I'm going to magnanimously hand the reins over to someone else. Bow out and bring some new blood and fresh ideas into this campaign. People have been running against me for three straight campaigns, and I feel like maybe there's ideas out there. I'm dominating, and I feel bad about it. I feel bad. Let's give somebody else a chance. It'll look good on their college transcript. You know what I mean? Yeah. So he meets Jessica. After this, he's still hanging out with Jessica and...

You know, it's about six weeks after they meet, though, here. That's when, okay, they met. They have the summer. He goes down to the beach. They fuck around there. They're banging in a car. School starts. He doesn't run for president. This is six weeks after they met. So time has gone by real fast. One day in school, Alan takes Marley aside, his friend Marley, who he's not supposed to be talking to. He's not supposed to be saying this, yeah. And says, Jess is pregnant.

Oh, yeah. Forgot about that part of it. Oh, dear God. We're not being safe. No, fuck. No, no. So, oh, boy. Yeah. And Marley said she wasn't really shocked about it. She said, I was surprised, but not shocked.

Well, I'm not surprised by it. I'll tell you that. No, we know how sex works and how babies are made. I know how babies are made. I got two of those. I had a health class in like seventh grade that told us all about this shit. At this age, though, this is... Look, man, I did it too. It's not...

You don't realize how fucking easy it is to make a child when you're 17. It's so easy. No, you figure, well, I'm a fuck up at everything. My jizz can't be that good. That can't work. I barely do my day job well enough to get paid and not get fired. How am I going to make a child? I can't make it. Come on. It's so easy. It happens. And Alan was good at everything. He should have known that it was. Yeah. Even his sperm would be good at things. So he called Marley up.

And Marley said Alan was such a good person. He was always going to do what needed to be done. He said Alan had made a decision about the whole thing. Alan told Marley...

That, look, I know I'm not supposed to talk to you, but this is ridiculous. I'm going to talk to you. You know, he said, but maybe now we should not talk for a while, me and you, he said to his friend. For at least, you know, 18 years and nine months. Yeah, somewhere around there. Well, actually seven months. We didn't know she was, she missed her period. She's this far? I think she's like two months pregnant. She's got to be.

Yeah, Marley said, I felt really, really bad I hadn't sat down with him and truly told him how I felt about Jessica and the whole thing. So I said something about her that got back to him, and it hurt him, and I feel really bad about that. So he was like, look, I heard you were talking shit, and it's made it worse, and she heard you were talking shit. But she hated me to begin with because she didn't trust the relationship I had with Alan. So she's like, it doesn't matter if I said anything or not. She still hated me, but now this was an excuse that she made. Like, now she's talking shit about me. Yeah, now it's an outage.

And this Marley said that we were just all young. It's stupid. We were all 17 years old. It's fucking ridiculous. And now there's a baby coming into this and all this shit. So the Bates family agrees, though, that we're going to have this baby and we're going to work this out. Wow.

So Jessica said she was going to do it. And she said she didn't care what anybody thought about it. She's going to have her baby. And Alan agreed and his family agreed and everybody agreed. So there's that. Oh, my. Kevin Bates, the brother, said she set her sights on Alan the moment after she met him and wanted to have him. And that was it.

Also, he could have put a condom on, you know what I mean? Yeah, dude. We can't blame somebody for being a receptacle at this point. You know what I'm saying? There's enough blame and jizz to go around here when it comes to teenage pregnancy. Everybody's horny. It's fine. No one's whatever. So Alan, after this, becomes more withdrawn from his family.

And he was always like he'd go to his mother and father with everything, any kind of even problems with a girl. He'd go to them. And, you know, that's how he was. And now like a failure, though, to him. Well, yeah, he was on this road and now he's literally making wedding plans at this point. And, you know, that kind of thing. So he always felt comfortable going to these people. And now he doesn't. So they felt space between them. Alan is distracted at school. You know, the fact that.

He's not going to have a baby is a lot when you're going to fucking math class. So, yeah, the mom tried to get the dad, Philip, to talk to Alan and find out what was going on. He said he was fine. I'm, you know, I'm fine, mom. He pulled the institutionalized. I'm fine. And I'll work it out on my own. Just get me a Pepsi. He's like, it's all good.

He went full suicidal tendencies with this shit. And but obviously he's feeling pressure from Jessica. Now, when he tells his family about the baby, he said he told his friends he couldn't sit down and tell them about it. He thought that would be a little too hard to do. So he wrote a long letter and left it on his dad's desk for him.

Explaining everything. Do you think that's better, Al? Hey, there you go. Kevin, his brother, said it was a very apologetic letter. Alan was saying, sorry for bringing this on. Sorry for making this mistake. And that he knew he was raised better than this, but he was also taking full responsibility, saying, we'll make things work, is one of the quotes he said he remembered from it. Mom wasn't sold on this because she didn't like Jessica. Joe?

Joan, his mother. Didn't like Jessica. No. She said something about her she didn't like and she didn't know if she wanted to have a grandchild and have this chick. Perhaps it's the part where she's fucking your son. Maybe that's what it is.

It's probably just the dark lipstick she doesn't like. You know what I mean? I don't know. But she said she couldn't help Alan at this point and she didn't know what to do so she just supported her son. That's all she could do. He said that Alan's letter said that, you know, I guess Jessica was impregnated some weeks before and didn't know how to

He didn't know how to tell the family. He thought a letter was the best way to address it. He said he understood the values his mother and father had always instilled in him, but he was entirely prepared to take full responsibility for the pregnancy. And the baby's due in March of 1990, by the way. Golly. He said, I'm going to provide for the child and the child's mother. And that's what it's going to, I'm going to be a guy here. So,

Al. I'm going to be a man. Al knocked her up on the beach at Gulf Shores. I guarantee it. Or in her car there. Yeah. Anything. Absolutely. Or one of the other times they were fucking in the car. Who knows? So March. Deep down inside, I feel like that's the one. Deep down inside is exactly where that happened. All of this. In July at some point. In July. Yeah. It's exactly where the baby was made. Yeah. So March 20th, 1990, they have a baby girl.

And it was the first time that, by the way, they get married before that, January 26, 1990. Seven months preggo. Oh, yeah. She waddles down the aisle. She's born. Baby's born two months later. And this was the first time that the families had got together since the wedding. They don't really like each other very much. And they got along, but they're a little...

You know. Your son did this to my daughter. Well, your daughter did this to my son. It's kind of, yeah, they're both kind of eyeballing each other. Like, our kids have ruined each other's lives, essentially. You've raised a piece of shit. Me? Yeah. What about you? They're blaming people. Meanwhile, there's a cute baby and shit. They're like, look at it. Look what happened. So...

Albert, her stepfather, explained that he's a handyman and a local contractor. And, you know, Jessica said if it was a deck to be built, he could build it. If it was a water heater needed to be replaced, he could do it. He's a very handy guy. And Albert said, look, if Alan needs work, because I know that, you know,

It's hard to find a job when you're this age. I could throw him some hours here and there and, you know, help him out on the side. He's got side, always got side work with me. I could always use somebody. So that was nice. He needs operating. Hell yeah. Yeah, that was nice. Um, you know, it's okay. So he embraced the whole thing, Alan. He wanted to be a father and wanted to be a husband and all of that. They, they live with his parents though. So that's, you know, I can't afford to do all that. So they decide to move though by April, 1990. So the next month of having a baby, um,

The brand new baby. All right. Yep. And they're moving into, they're moving to Hoover, which is where she's from because they're moving into Jessica and her, his step, her stepmother, Albert's house. Okay. Jessica's mother and stepfather, stepfather. Yeah. Um, I guess because they're moving and they're leaving them the house to like pay for selling them the house or whatever. Um, it's convenient though because the mom can help out with the baby and all that kind of shit. Um,

Uh, they live, they live with the parents for a month. And then there was a big fight between Jessica and her mother and they were back at the Bates's house. End up back there. Now we wait until they move out. Yeah. And she said at one point they said Jessica was acting different when they got back. She pulled Joan Bates aside one day after they moved back in and said, listen, you are not to answer the phone. If my mother calls, you cannot invite my mother over to this house. I will say when she can see her granddaughter. So, uh,

You don't make any plans with my mom. She's out. Yeah, in your own house. Out. So I guess it was a little bit volatile there and, you know, that kind of thing. So Alan graduates from high school in June of 1990. Wow. A married man. A married father. Yeah.

Married father. He enrolls in fall classes at the University of Montevallo, which is 35 miles south of Birmingham, Alabama. And that's good for her, too. And they said that Jessica liked this because her friends or his friends said she didn't like anyone who was close to Alan. 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. Yeah. So...

They needed a home at this point, so his dad, Alan's dad, Phillips, bought a fixer-upper house for them, Jessica and Alan. Yeah, good, nice parents. It's a 100-year-old ranch-style house that needed lots of work. He bought it, but Alan makes the payments on it. That's how it works. So he'll kind of get it, and that's how it goes. Alan, though, is determined to get a college degree and get a decent job and be able to raise his family right.

You have to. He's going to class. He's studying. He's doing landscaping, construction, handyman stuff on the sides. He's just anything he can. He's also still playing in a gospel quartet here. How do you have time? I don't know, but they make money. They get paid for gigs. Oh, okay. So he does it, and he likes it. Jessica did not like this, though, at all. No? She would yell at him all the time about all the groupies and all the girls that were screaming for his attention. Oh, okay.

All the groupies at the gospel quartet. All the groupies screaming amen and hallelujah. Amen, yeah. That's what they're screaming. And she's like, that's probably just for Alan. They mean Alan, not amen. I'm saying hallelujah. Hallelujah. I know what they're up to. And I guess that, you know, when he's out, he's going to school. He's doing gigs. There's girls in all these places. And she's sitting at home with a newborn baby feeling insecure about herself, which is fine.

Really, you know, understandable. Sure, yeah. It's understandable. She accused him anytime he talked to any female of any stripe or sort, she accused him of sleeping with her every time. Oh, for God's sake. Yes, very jealous. And like we said, there's also postpartum shit involved in this. Yeah.

A 17 year old girl sitting at home alone with a baby while her husband's out playing gigs. And, you know, it's not I guess she feels very useful. Yeah. Yes. So Joan and Philip, his parents, Alan's parents, they move in 1991. Philip takes a job in Georgia and moves to Atlanta.

So he's an engineer, and he said that their family – mom had worked while he went to school to be an engineer. And then he took over and said that he likes to – he pays all the bills and does everything because his wife took care of him when he was going through school. Beautiful. Yeah. So in 1992, he retires.

and relocates the family to Marietta, Georgia, outside of Atlanta, where he goes to work for an engineering firm. He'd worked for Bell South for 29 years. A telephone company. Yeah, he goes to work for an engineering firm, and by 2000, all three of the kids are grown and out of the house and all that. So that's what happens to them over the next few years. Empty nesters. Later on. So by 1992, Alan's trying to find his way. He's going through college. He really wants to work in the theater.

Really? Yes. He's also not happy with Jessica. He is upset that Jessica has, as he put it to somebody, let herself go.

So in the last year and a half, she's basically just sits on the couch, watches soap operas and gets fatter is what he said. You know what I mean? Perhaps she's a stay at home mom. There might be a little bit of depression in there as she stays home alone and all that. You certainly contribute to this, Alan. Yeah, you got to you got to understand that. So November also weight gain comes from this November 16th, 1992. They have another baby.

Yeah, dude, she's not fat. She's pregnant again. She's fucking pregnant. Stop having sex with her for five minutes and maybe at least bag it up or take it out. You know, come on, man. Jesus Christ. Get a pill, something, do something. So after all of this here, now it's she's even more has more anxiety after this baby as well and all of that. So for the next two years, basically, Alan is miserable and he wants to get away from Jessica, but he has two daughters and he wants to try to make it work.

So he, his one friend said he loved his girls more than he hated his marriage. So he wanted to stay. Okay. Um, and, but he was never, never like happy with Jessica at all. Then by 1994, Alan finds out Jessica was having an affair. Oh,

Jessica. So now he's like, okay, now I'm out. Now I got an excuse that no one can look at me and say I'm a bad guy. Right. You know, I'm done with this shit. And that's it. That lends to the old thou doth protest. You know what I mean? Yes. She's screaming about you're untrustworthy. Yeah.

No, bitch. No, she's the one. And maybe she's doing that trying to gain some. I don't know what you know what the I'm sure there's a psychological thing, but you can't be doing that and expect the result to be a lot. So a lot of times when there are people are accusing, it's because they it's a lot. Yeah, it happens often. So Jessica here would alienate. Apparently he left and now she would alienate him from the kids. That's her goal as well.

So, yeah, she's mad. She said that he deserted her and deserted the kids and he was the one who left and all that kind of thing. She doesn't say because I cheated on him. Right. But she's very upset. She's also says that, you know, he's a bad father and her goal is to make him look like a bad father in the eyes of the kids here. Yeah.

Their divorce is finalized January of 1995. And he said, you can take the house we live in, the Montevallo house, until the kids are adults and I'll pay for it.

I'll pay the fucking mortgage, basically. So not bad. So they give... And she can have the kids. Alan gave the complete blessing for her to be the main caregiver of the kids and all that kind of thing. And Alan had no trouble relinquishing that. He thought, in his mind, kids belong with their mother, especially if the mother wants to have them, and that he's also got a lot of shit going on. And he thought that she was at least a good mother. Maybe she might be a pain in the ass as a wife, but she's a good mother. So she...

She was a little bit different, though, here. Some things started to happen at one point there after they're broken up. She she would get very upset with him and try to keep the kids from him. Routinely, this was allowing him visitation when she said so, even if they had plans. She's go, well, now I changed my mind. After a month of being divorced, he was already going crazy because he would call. She wouldn't answer. He'd leave a message. No one would call back.

When he finally got to see or talk to the kids, he'd ask the kids if their mother or grandmother had given them his messages. I called 100 times and they'd say, no, we didn't know you called at all. Jessica would take things as far as sending the kids to sit on the front porch with their bags. Yeah. Telling them that dad's on his way.

knowing that they had no plans for him to pick them up that day. And then she would fucked up. She would have them sit out there for hours and wait. And then she would go, well, I guess he doesn't care. See, he's not coming. He doesn't care about you. That's why he's not coming. He was supposed to show up and he gets what happens. That's sick, dude. That's some sick shit. Yeah. And that's her friend said that she did that. Like that's, that was like her. Ha ha. That'll show him type of deal.

Somewhere in here in the next couple of years, she has another baby from an unknown man. We don't know who the fuck impregnated her, but somebody knocked her up and she has a baby. So now she's got three kids. Now the house, she left the house and moved into a new house without notifying Alan at all that she moved where the kids were moved. You can't do that. And he had to pay the mortgage. Then he didn't even know she was gone, but he still had to pay the mortgage until the house was sold. And so he was like, what the fuck? You got to tell me that.

Finally, he meets a new woman here in the mid-90s. Okay. In 1995, he meets Tara, T-E-R-A, Klug, K-L-U-G-H. Could be Clough, but I'm going with Klug, I think. She's born in 1971, Tara. So they're, you know, similar age.

She's a nice, pretty, smart girl. Very mature, very calm. Very the opposite of Jessica. Yeah. Yeah. Sure thing is what she is. That's exactly right. So she, you know, they worked, I guess she was working, he was working at the Alabama Theater and she started working there as well. And that's how they met. In something he's interested in. Couple of theater nerds. Yeah. Yeah. Little kiss under the stage. Under the bleachers there. Yeah.

She's the granddaughter of a former Alabama state representative, Ed Simpson of Clemson, I guess. So, or no, that's South Carolina. That was there. Okay. So huge fan, huge fan.

she's very career minded, just like him. And, um, Alan was in charge of everything technical that happened on the stage at Alabama theater. That's, that's what the technical director said. Um, you know, he was responsible for all that kind of shit. Um,

And this guy who ran the place said that Allen was, he thought the world of Allen, thought he was a great guy. Tara goes to the Alabama Theater as part of a restoration team to put together, put together by the Department of the Interior because for all theaters to fix them up. So the team traveled from D.C. to Birmingham to document the theater for the Library of Congress, the before and after. Wow.

It's a pretty cool job. She was living near Washington, D.C., working for the government and, you know, in one of its historic American buildings and structures programs. Awesome.

Tara had grown up in Clemson, South Carolina. She studied to pursue her art degree. She even went to London to study art for a while. Studying abroad. Completely different than Jessica is kind of a smaller town girl who never left, got pregnant senior year of high school and stayed. And this girl is like worldly, into art, knows theater. Fuck small town. Worldly.

Worldly. Yeah, she's been to fucking England. Her minor was in mathematics, so theater and math. And she's smart. Yeah, she's very smart. She went to Hollis University in Roanoke, Virginia. She spent four years as an architectural historian for the Historic American Building Survey and then became a project historian for the Alabama Theater. Very cool. One of her goals was to begin work on her master's degree in...

of arts in historic preservation, which she was into. Uh, that was her main passion was historic reservation or preservation. So she wasn't really interested in a relationship. She was interested in her career and she is very private and that kind of thing. And she's not, doesn't really go out with a lot of guys. But as soon as she met Alan, her friend said that she just fell in love with him immediately. What does Alan do? Good for him. Alan is a swinging dick, man. He's doing real well here.

Sounds like a wedding toast.

It really does. That's fucking absolutely does. So they were friends at first and then they became, gotten a romantic relationship here and they started talking to each other and he would listen to her and she would share things that she didn't share with other people. And, um, then at one point when she was supposed to be leaving, cause the project was over. Right. Right. She said, you know, I really see potential here with you. I'm quitting my job. She,

She quit. She's quitting her job and her career in Washington, D.C. and all this shit to be with him here in Alabama. Wow. That's how much she likes him. That's a lot of like, boy. That's something. So she didn't want to do that. So she, as they moved on to other parts of the South, Tara would

was going to have to leave and she didn't want to do it. So this is his brother, Alan's brother, Kevin said, she's a beautiful, strong spirit who just made my brother shine. She's the perfect combination or companion for him. Sorry. It made us realize we were looking at an adult relationship for Alan and there couldn't be a better situation for him. Yeah.

So one night she still got Jessica and the kids that he's battling with here. So it's not like all is peachy. One night in 1998, Jessica is supposed to drop the kids off at Alan's apartment. So she does. She shows up with the kids there, instigates an argument with him. Before she left, she hit him, scratched him and shoved him down the stairs. He fell down the stairs of his apartment. So she went to jail.

Well, no. Jesus. A friend of Alan's said his face was bloodied. She messed him up good. One of Alan's friends happened to be there here. And so was Alan's mother. Joan was there as well. So there was witnesses here and they were like, they both said she was crazy. They said she had this crazy look in her eyes and she just looked so fucking enraged and hateful. After the attack, she didn't leave. She just stood there.

By the time the cops got there, she had scratched herself all up in the face, they said, because she had no marks on her before. And then they all went inside and then the cops came and she scratched her. She must have done it to herself, they said. Wow. And she said as soon as the cop got out of the car, she started saying, look what he did to me. Look what he did to me. Oh, my God. Yeah. So and this is there's two witnesses. We don't we're not going on. You know, he said she said there's witnesses that saw this.

So the police figured out they ended up finding blood against a brick wall. They found out that she had scrubbed her body up against a brick wall to create the appearance of cuts. Wow.

They found skin and fucking fresh skin and blood on a wall that she scraped herself up on. There's a piece of her tattoo. Wow. Alan, by the way, in addition to being scratched up and battered, he broke his arm in the fall as well. Good Christ. So this is pretty fucked up. He files charges. Good. At this point. Now, by the way, she's working as a dispatcher for the Birmingham Police Department at this time period. Uh-oh. Yeah. Where she meets a guy. Uh-huh.

She meets a guy named Jeff Kelly McCord. Jeff McCord. What's this asshole do? He is a cop with the police department. Of course he is. Yep. Stop, you dirtbag. Stop trying to fuck the dispatch girl. Always trying to fuck the dispatcher. She called him Kelly after his middle name for some reason, but Jeff is what everybody else calls him. He's a quiet guy, kind of oafish, people say.

A bit of a bit of kind of a big dummy. But she liked him because he was easily manageable because he's dumb. She can kind of guard a guide him around. So, yeah, she liked him. She liked that he was a cop that gave her a sense of protection. And also that she found out that Jeff was pretty naive and she could talk or talk him into some shit here. So his friend said basically she fucked his brains out and he was putty in her hands.

That was that. Yeah. Jessica can throw a good one at him and he's like, I like her. Doesn't care. Whatever you want on me. That's okay. So Alan and also Alan is getting serious with Tara at this point. Everybody's getting serious. And Jessica said that she thought she needed to settle down. So in the eyes of the court,

If he's taken her to court for custody of the kids, she could appear to have a stable environment. So if she gets married, that'll help is what she looks at it. And 96, 98, like there's nothing more in the court's eyes. Somebody that's married to law enforcement, you look like an angel. Oh, look, it's a police officer. Yeah, nuclear family like a motherfucker.

So, and she knew at this point, social workers would probably be poking around and seeing what she had going on. He tossed your ex down the stairs. They got questions. They got a couple of questions they want to know about. We get support from Dove. Hey, y'all. It's your girl, Kiki Palmer, host of the Wondery Podcast. Baby, this is Kiki Palmer.

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Was it a crime of passion? If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling. This was clearly an intentional act. And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia. Or a corrupt police cover-up. If you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a cover-up to prevent one of their own from going down. Everyone had an opinion.

And after the 10-week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision. To end in a mistrial, it's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is. Law and Crime presents the most in-depth analysis to date of the sensational case in Karen. You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. So June 2000, Alan and Tara get married.

Great. That's nice, right? That's pretty. They have a June wedding and everything. Beautiful. That's beautiful. Later that same month, another June wedding takes place. Jessica marries Jeff.

Not to be outshined. Not to be outshined. Nope. I will steal your thunder like a motherfucker. You're cohabitating and married? Guess who else is? Wow. They also just had a kid together, Jeff and Jessica. That's right. That's another reason. Wait. She has four now. She has four kids now. Four. Two with Alan, one with Unsub, as we'll call him. Unknown Subjects. And then...

One with Jeff so far. And the Detective Dum Dum. Detective fucking dipshit over here, yeah. Deluxe Dave and his Detective Dipshits. Unsub and Detective Dum Dum. Deluxe Dave and Detective Dum Dum is a band I want to watch.

Oh, man. So, yeah, the weird thing is the McCords now, Jessica and Jeff, pull their mailbox out of the ground of their new home and their mail is not delivered there. So it's weird. So they have no their mailing address is a P.O. box and nothing can come to their house. It's very strange. So Jessica now and Alan, their battle for the kids is growing and getting more heated here.

Jessica makes excuses to shorten Alan's visitation time and places, you know, says you can't do this, you can't do that while you're with the

girls and all that kind of shit. Limitations limit. And Alan at first tried to, you know, go with it and get along. Yeah. Maybe if I just go along for a while, she'll loosen up and she'll punch herself out basically. No, she won't. Exactly. Um, and also for the sake of the family court, then he could finally, and he could say, look, she said this. I tried to go along with it. I tried to go along with shit. She doesn't want to get along with me. So Jessica then gets some, um,

She gets a lesson in court orders here. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Apparently she didn't think court orders were a big deal. Is that right? Yeah. Because she's refusing Alan parenting time, which he has court orders allowed to have. Yeah. So she would basically the way she would do it is he would come to pick them up and no one would be at the house. She just wouldn't be home. So he'd sit in the driveway for an hour. No one would come. And then he'd leave because what are you going to do?

Then other times he would come to pick them up and find other people living in the house saying those people move. They don't live here anymore. And he doesn't have the fucking address of where they're supposed to be. So then he can't see them that day. Imagine that. Oh, let's imagine that. Yeah. Who the fuck? Hey, who are these kids? Those aren't my kids. What's going on?

John Candy and summer rental. Popping into the wrong house. Hey. So then Alan again takes it before a judge and says, hey, I got a court order. The judge lectures Jessica and says, do not interfere with his custody time or you're going to be held in contempt. That's the way it works.

So this happened repeatedly. He goes to the judge. The judge says, I've told you five times. Why do you keep doing this again and again? Finally, he's he's shelled out all this money for lawyers and all this type of shit. He's sick of the whole thing. Jeff and Tara moved to Maryland, Maryland now. Really? Yes. They moved to Maryland and he'll come back work in D.C. Yeah. And he'll come get the kids and pick them up with a plane and do all that kind of shit. So.

They end up moving. And Jessica, he keeps coming back for hearings, though, for custody stuff. He wants his kids. He wants to take the kids to Maryland if at all possible. Jessica just stops going to the hearings. She just stops showing up for them. Isn't that illegal? I don't know. He's told her 10 times. She didn't listen. No consequences. So she just says, fuck it. I'll just not show up. What are they going to do? Yeah.

Jessica at this point gets fired from the Birmingham Police Department in 2000, by the way. Following a physical attack on Jeff.

What? At work? At work. Oh, man. Not good. Fired by police chief Mike Coppedge for being absent without leave and a physical attack on Alan Bates. That was not even on her. I thought it was on Jeff. It's on Alan. It's on Alan, that thing down the stairs. And in the termination letter, it said you went to the home of your ex-husband and you admitted you hurt him to keep him from hurting you.

So they said, you can't do that. So November 2000, Alan's going to court asking that his wife be held in contempt for denying him visits with his children. Right. So less than a week later, though, the summons for Jessica was returned to the court as undeliverable because she had moved and no one knew where she was. Oh, my God.

So the judge then reschedules hearings several times in the next year as they try to find out where she is and serve her with the papers. He's not seeing his kids this whole time. Oh, my God. As a father, I am. It's horrified. Yeah, he's horrified. And he keeps going back there and he's spending all this money on lawyers and all this shit. Nothing's helping. So October 2000, the judge found her, her found Jessica in contempt of court. Mm hmm.

And ordered that she be jailed for 10 days for not showing up for hearings, even though she had received a summons for this last one. Yeah. Then they can't find her again to make her actually do it.

Yeah. Well, finally. Yeah. In December of this is October 2000. Finally, in December of 2001, she's arrested. So over a year later, she's arrested on a contempt of court charge in order to serve. You, ma'am, may fuck off 10 days in jail. Yeah. So he was like, Jesus Christ, this is fucking crazy just to see my kids. You know what I mean?

repeated orders from a judge i thought that's also she even refused that uh man uh mandated weekly telephone calls with him nothing what is happening so he decided he's filing for full custody at this point now she serves her sentence around christmas she's let out on the 24th to do christmas eve and christmas day with her family and then taken back into jail on the 26th that's fun

Now, she, by the way, she knows the court's not going to do shit. She can't allow him to take the girls because she needs the child support, by the way. So she needs to have custody of the kids. Yeah. They have a bunch of debt, and she's unemployed now, and it's not working out. Now, while she's in jail serving her 10 days, she spent that 10 days productively. She spent it reading, which is productive. That's good. She read a murder mystery. Oh, okay.

Soldier of fortune. And began forming a plan in her mind after reading a murder mystery. And this would be a plan where she would never lose custody of her kids. So Bates, Allen's asking the court to give temporary custody of his daughters. The custody fight comes back in January in court again. And the judge ordered that the two girls could not be homeschooled while the case was pending.

That was a part of it was they had to stay in the school, whatever. So he ordered both parents to provide their phone, their phone, phone, home phones and cell phones and addresses to each other at all times. Court ordered. They each have to know where each other is because you have to be able to get a hold of the kids. So the order stemmed from the girls being transferred to different schools to keep their father from finding them. She would pull them out of school and put them in a different school if he knew where the school they were going to.

It's fucking ridiculous. So February 15th, 2002. Sounds familiar, that date? Yeah. That was a date where they were going in to do depositions for a trial that was to take place on March 5th to figure out custody of these kids. Day after Valentine's Day. Yeah. No love lost. No love lost here.

So Alan and Tara flew into Birmingham International Airport. They rented a car. The couple was, you know, they wanted to get there because they were going to get there and pick up the kids. Their whole thing was they were going to Hoover, pick up the kids from Jessica and her husband here and Jeff. And then they were going to meet Alan's parents in Atlanta and hang out with them.

So that's what that was. So Alan was in Birmingham that Friday. He gave his versions of the events at the deposition. Jessica did the same thing. And the plan was to pick the kids up at 6 p.m. at their home, at the McCord house here. So that's what they're going to do. And they were shocked that Jessica said this was okay. They were blown away that this was approved. Finally, she's just, yeah. She's letting me take the kids for a whole weekend to my parents' house in another state away from her house.

It just was crazy. So it's so far-fetched to be a normal person at this point. Yeah, it's so just strange. Yeah, they're shocked. So the deposition ends about 3.30, and Alan and Tara go to a restaurant in downtown Birmingham and eat some food. And they're just trying to kill time until 6 o'clock, basically, until that happens. Now, 10 p.m. comes around.

And at 10 p.m., Joan Bates, Alan's mother, starts worrying that she hasn't heard from Alan yet. He was supposed to pick the kids up at 6. He always calls when he's on the way from a long trip like this. And I never got a call from him. And if he picked the kids up at 6, it's now 10. He should be here by now. Right.

So they're starting to get a little bit worried about this here. They looking out the window, looking for headlights, doing all that kind of shit. They thought maybe Jessica changed her mind and he's staying over there trying to fight with Jessica and get the kids. Or maybe Alan could have had the kids and then, you know, took off to get away from Jessica or something. We don't know. They said Marietta, where he was, was about a two and a half drive hour drive from Birmingham, Florida.

So they're like, he definitely should have been here now. They said even if the deposition ended super late at 5, which it ended at 3.30, we know, pick the kids up by 6, get on the road and into Marietta by at the latest 9.30 if you stop. They said sometimes they stop for fast food maybe or something. Kids have to piss every five minutes. Who knows? Yeah, you get on the road at 6 p.m., somebody's got to eat dinner. Yeah, well, Philip and Joan, the parents had, they were expecting them around 9, and Joan had dinner waiting on the table and everything, and they didn't show up.

Alan was never late. He never forgot to call. He's Mr. Studious. You know what I mean? So they're alarmed here by now. They get no phone call and they're like, okay, this is getting ridiculous. So Philip calls Alan. No response. He tries calling Tara. No response. Yeah.

He's like, what the fuck? So it just, and it wasn't even that it rang and rang like earlier in the night. Now it just, it says this phone is not in use at this time. Remember that old message that someone had their phone off that would say this phone is not in use or the user is out of our service area or whatever the fuck it would say. Yeah. So Phillip said, I'll call Jessica.

Okay. Yeah, he didn't like calling her, but, you know, he said, you got to do it. He said that he didn't like the husband either. He didn't like Jeff. He said they were crass people. They were shitty people. But he's crass, crass people. So 1045, or they call them, and she says, no, we don't know anything about it. He never showed up. She answers, though. They end up, or no, she doesn't answer the first time. Sorry. So 1045, they decided it's time to call law enforcement. Yep.

So he said he didn't know if the cops would be any help, but he couldn't stand to stand there and do nothing, the dad said. So he called the Pelham Police Department to see if Jeff McCord had clocked in because that's her husband. That's where he works. Detective Dum-Dum in? Detective Dum-Dum? No. They said he works second shift, so he should be there. And Friday nights, he's working. Yeah. So he should be reachable by phone or radio, and maybe he knew something. They said, no, he's not here. He took the night off.

So like, let's know help. So he called the Hoover Police Department and wanted to know if there had been any reported trouble over at Jeff and Jessica McCord's house and gave him the address. Did you get any calls to this house? They said maybe it was a family squabble. No calls, no nothing. So he said, fuck. So the Hoover PD told him that they didn't have any report. They said we'd send an officer over there to check things out if you want.

And he said, please do. Yeah. Yeah. And they said this was they called it an overdue motorist call. And it happened. They said it happens all the time. We'll go check on him. Like, yeah, they never showed up to a welfare check. Welfare check. So they show up. Scott McDonald, this officer, is dispatched to the house here on Myrtlewood Drive. And he's been told to check things out. They said that maybe Alan and Tara had broken down or maybe they were staying at the records for the night while the car was being repaired, which would be very weird.

They pull up in front of the house. Guy grabs a flashlight. He said the house looked deserted. Walks up to the front porch and there was the windows. They had the panels, you know, little squares, windows on your front door were covered up. It looked like with towels or sheets from the inside. Yeah.

So he said, that's weird. He said it gave the windows a real weird look like someone was trying to block the view of the inside of the house from anyone looking in. Or maybe there was work going on, paint or something, whatever. It didn't look like they live like this. This looked like a temporary thing. It's set up. Yeah. So he shined the light back and forth to the windows on the side. Same things. Everything's covered. So it might be painting or something. So.

Back on the porch, he sees a handmade sign written in magic marker that says, we're having some problems with our front door. Please come around to the back door. So he rang the doorbell a little bit more in the front and then goes around the back door. And he said, fuck it. So he knocks hard on the door. No answer. Nothing. Stares into the house. Doesn't see anything. No movement.

Yeah. Doesn't see, here's nothing. So he goes into the driveway, notices there's no vehicles in the yard or anything like that. Walks towards the garage to see, you know, maybe there's a car in there. He looks in and those are covered up by towels. Oh, all this, all the glass in the garage is covered. Yeah. It's all covered up too. So then three 30 AM. Yeah. A red grand dam is found in Rutledge, Georgia by the four friends going to the chicken show, which we know all about here. Um,

February 16th, so two and a half hours after that car is found, Philip Bates, Alan's dad, said, I had done all I knew how to do, and I went to bed for a few hours in the night, like at 2 o'clock in the morning. He said in the morning he made coffee, and he said he saw the clock, said 6 o'clock in the morning. He still hadn't heard from Alan. Oh, God.

Not a word from anyone. So he called his sons and Tara's phones again and got no nothing. You know, it went said that, you know, not available. So he said, shit, something's going on here. So he said he had to file a missing persons report. So he does. He calls the cops and he thinks about calling the cops. He said he knew the first answer they would have was.

What was you know, what were they driving? What were they doing? He said he had no idea. He just said he knows knew they were going toward over here because they rented a car. So he said he called around. He starts looking around. He starts calling every rental place at the Birmingham airport to see if they would tell him if he rented a car.

He started with Avis because it's A. A, yeah. It's the top of the phone book. It's the top of this, yep. He said, I told them who I was and what I was trying to do and my concern. The agent was helpful and wanted to help. Philip asked, have you rented a car to my son, Alan Bates? And if so, could you give me the color, make, and model, maybe a description of it so I could file a missing persons report? And he said that he was getting his shtick down because he knew he was going to have to say this to five different rental car companies. Yeah.

The guy said, hold on a minute, and then said, I need to get my supervisor. I guess we can release that info. I don't know if we can. Yes. He was like, what the fuck? So the manager came on the line. Philip told him everything. And the manager made a suggestion and said, sir, I was told to give this number out to anyone calling here regarding that rental.

What? And so he said, okay. He took the number down and he called it and it was the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Oh my God. What the fuck is going on here? And he said, that's when I knew that was it.

He said that's when he fucking knew it. So the police here, they're doing the same thing he's doing, basically. They just did it faster. They tracked down. How about that? They had the VIN, so they called it in, and it was registered, or it was to Avis, so they called Avis, and they knew that way. And GBI's like,

if anybody calls about this car, let us know. We're going to try and track down kin of these two people. It's exactly what it is. Oh, they don't even have IDs on these people. They don't even have IDs. That's why they're wondering. Maybe they can put it together with somebody looking for it. Maybe they can do that. So that's what they're wondering. Now, when they got a hold of the rental car company, that's when they found out that that car was rented to Allen. So now they're worried that it's Allen in the back there. But they also haven't talked to Jeff or Jessica, so maybe it's them. They have no fucking idea. Yeah.

So anyway, they said once we identified the car, this is the cop talking, Williams, who got there first. Once we identified who the car was most likely contained, obviously the victims could not be identified formally. And once we talked to the Bates family and found out that Tara and Alan Bates were overdue, we focused on where they were last seen. And everything goes to Birmingham. Now they're going to go there. Autopsies. Okay. Outside of the bodies here.

He conducted an external examination, took photographs, X-rays where they'd been shot and all that kind of thing. They wrote in the report that Allen's body exhibited extensive charring from head to toe and has a pugilistic attitude with the right arm flexed at the elbow. He's going to throw a punch, I guess that would be.

And left hand at the wrist. They say pugilistic attitude, or as it's more frequently called, pugilistic posture, is a common occurrence found in victims of fatal fire. The body, as it heats up, is exhausted of most of its fluids. It loses fluids, mainly water, causing a restriction in the muscle tissue. And the hands go up. Yeah, to tighten up, which curls the tips of the fingers, the tips of the toes, ankles, elbows, and any other place in the body where there's a movable joint.

Some say the body, when it's presented this way, takes on a boxer's position, reasoning being behind that the hands and wrists and elbows are flexed and curled. Crazy. Yeah. They said also it's mistaken sometimes as a pre-death attempt to shield oneself from an attacker. They'll see that and think that they're covering up when they're not. It's just how their hands went. So they noticed that Allen's right forearm was burned away approximately five inches distal to the elbow. Burned away. Yeah.

The lower extremities are contracted at the knees and ankles with almost complete disarticulation at the knee and ankle joints. So completely gone.

To look at a body that's been burned like this, they said, you know, is not easy. They said there's the charring of soft tissue, the doctor said, about Alan's body. Also, it's most severe on the anterior portion of the face and right side of the head. Any exposed section of his face that wasn't on the laying down. Anything that's not laying down, yep. So, Tara's extremities, her arm was partially burned. The other was totally, completely burned away. Oh.

Her arm burned off. Her skin is completely burned away with some charred muscles and soft tissues. The doctor opened both bodies and removed the organs, and he would find wounds and use probes to figure out the trajectory of possible projectiles. And they said that there's...

wounds in her back, bullet wounds here, they said were in Tara's back that were consistent with an exit as opposed to entrance wounds. So it came from the front, out the back. They said there's a second bullet wound a little bit closer to the armpit area, directly underneath the position in the body where the arm connects to the shoulder socket.

They said Tara was shot. It looked like as she lifted up her arm, probably as she tried to defend herself. Shield it. Yep. Shield there. They said a third wound the doctor found was located in Tara's chest and a fourth in the flank or near the belly area of the side of the hip for bullet holes they find in her.

From the evidence available and all of this type of thing, trajectory patterns and everything, they said it appeared to the doctor that Tara was shot four times, each hitting a different area of her body as she tried to protect herself and fell to the ground.

They said her killer approached with a weapon, began firing and didn't stop till she was dead. That's what it looked like here. In the end, they said, obviously, both are a homicide. Both of them have multiple gunshot wounds of the torso and upper extremity. And that's that. They were they said it was close range more than likely. And they obviously put their arms up to defend themselves. And.

And they said that one or two of the bullets would have been fatal in and of themselves without immediate medical attention, and they each had four wounds in them. So...

Seems like a lot. So they head to Birmingham. They go to Pelham, Alabama here, obviously. And they're looking for, well, a second agent goes off to Marietta to interview the Bateses. So they're trying to find him here. They want to talk to Jeff. That way they can track down Jessica and find out if and when she saw or heard from Alan the night before.

So they said the one police officer said primarily we selected an interview with Jeff McCord first because we knew where he was supposed to be, which was at work.

So.

So, yeah, they said they wanted to figure this out. They get this. They also want to talk to – they also talked to a friend who the Bateses visited that day after the deposition. They had time to kill.

So they questioned a friend of theirs said we were just sitting and chewing the fat. And he was saying that they were talking about the court hearing regarding the custody of his children. Uh, and Tara complained about the car they had. Um, she said they weren't happy with the size of the car. Either they hate it. They hate it. It was a small, the granddads are small. Yeah. Yeah. So they can't find Jeff and Jessica. They, they finally find them apparently, um, at home, uh,

And they say, oh, yeah, we've been out all night. That's why. And we'll have an exact description of where they went, where they said they were. But they said we went to the movies. We went out to dinner. We had a romantic night. It was after Valentine's Day. Went to the movies, went to dinner, went to a strip club. Oh. Oh, yeah. Then went on a long drive and then spent the wee hours of the morning up until sunrise at like a makeout point waiting for the sun to come up. Very romantic. Wow.

She's 19 again. Just fucking crazy. She said it was one of her old hangout spots from her teen years. Yeah. Sucked a lot of dicks up there. They had to push aside sophomores and get fingers out of them to fucking get there. Then they said they stopped at Home Depot there. They were first in line at the door when they were open. They were just waiting at the door to pick up some supplies so Jessica's stepfather could work on their house that day. Okay.

So they said both of them were tired. They said they put their keys down on the kitchen table, scrolled through the caller ID and said, oh man, Phillip and Joan keep calling. What the fuck's going on? So, and she said that it must be Alan, she thought, because Alan, she said, hadn't shown up at the house to pick up the kids. So maybe that was him calling to give his excuse of why he wasn't coming. So she called up the household. So she called up Phillip and Joan here, the parents of Alan, and said, hello, this

And she could hear voices in the background. She didn't know it was the Georgia Bureau of Investigation talking to them. But so they're talking and they began they were there to get all the information down. She said, is Alan there? Can I speak to him? And Philip said, I wish I could let you, but I don't know where he is. And she said, what do you mean? And he said, I can't find him.

And Jessica said, oh, oh, my gosh. She said, oh, that's startling. She thought it was so Alan was super responsible. He's the do-gooder. He never let it. What the hell's going on here? Philip said, I'm on the other end with someone important, Jessica. I'll have Joan call you back. You're not important, by the way, is what that says. Yeah, I got the important people on the phone. Yeah, not here. Alan and Tara are Joan calls back and says Alan and Tara are both missing.

They haven't come to Georgia as planned. Where are the children? I hope they didn't disappear with the children. And Jessica says, they're at my mom's house. And so Joan says, well, they haven't shown up and they're not here. And Jessica says, well, they're not here either. And so Jessica thought that Joan had a bit of an accusatory tone and felt like Joan was kind of condemning her a little bit, coming down on her. Yeah. She's like, what the... She's like, why'd you even call me if you're just going to fucking yell at me here? So...

Yeah, she said. Then Jessica said that Joan said, you've harmed them. They're missing. Where are they? She was crying. So Jessica said, no, I don't know what you're talking about. She said, please let me know, Joan, what's going on when you find out. I would need to tell the kids something. Because they're expecting to be picked up. Yeah, she's expecting them never to be found or at least alive. Yeah. So as she spoke, she could hear Philip in the background giving advice

Jessica's address to somebody. Oh, so she stops what she's saying and asked Joan. Why is he giving out my address? What's going on? Why is he giving out my mom's address? Tell me, Joan. And Joan wouldn't answer. She said, please, Joan, let me know when you do what's going on. So the police talk to Jeff at work.

And he didn't seem too concerned about it. He told the officers that, you know, that Alan and his wife never showed up to pick the girls. He said that they just continued, him and his wife, continued with their belated Valentine's Day plans after dropping the kids off with...

With the mom, he even produced two ticket stubs to a showing of Lord of the Rings. They went and saw a movie for sure. He's got stubs. All right. And that movie's like, what, 16, 17 hours long? It's so long. So that would have covered the whole night, I think. It's real long. We just laughed. Yeah, they just laughed.

So when police spoke with Jessica at her mother's house, she gave the same story, saying that she had called Alan's cell phone once, left a message saying, where the fuck are you? He never returned the call. So I went on with my night, tired of his shit. Jeff, by the way, is called in by the chief of police to have like a disciplinary chat about what's going on here, and he refuses to answer any questions, so they fire him. Oh, okay.

Done. That day. Fucking out. You can't plead the fifth to your boss, pal. No. Yeah. No. Not at all. Because they have a thing. I don't know if it's in every state, but I know like in Maryland they have a thing where the cops administratively have to tell. Have to answer. But none of that is allowed to be used in court against them. That's administratively. It puts our department under a microscope and makes us lose our credibility. And unfortunately, that's the only thing we've got.

That's it. So he is shit-canned from the department. So you have two unemployed people.

Next day, February 17th, the cops get a search warrant to search the McCord home. And no one was home, so they forced their way in. Yeah. And they said that it seemed as if someone had attempted to quickly remodel the family room. Really? Very quickly. They observed new floor tiles, new wallpaper covering the walls. But they said it clearly had been done in a rush. It wasn't...

It was not aligned at all. Somebody just slapped it up as quick as possible. And they said when they removed the wallpaper, it was an obvious bullet hole in the drywall underneath it. So like, well, that'll do it. Then they discovered a small amount of blood on the coffee table. It's a glass coffee table, which glass will hold blood real well. It's not like wood where it'll soak into it, you know? So they said that, okay, they...

That a bullet and blood found in the home, that'll link them to something. The same gun they said that shot Bates also fired a bullet that was found in McCord's garage. Like a pair of bullets. It stayed in the house. Apparently fired from the den area through the sheetrock and went into the garage. Wow.

So they took one down, put another one up.

They also discovered here they get. So with this information, they get search warrants and warrants for arrest for Jeff and Jessica. So they said they tracked them down to a friend's home. And it was later learned that they couldn't find them for a couple of days because they went out of state. They went to Florida for a while and then came back. Wow.

Yeah. So they said they went quietly when the police arrested them. They arrest them on two counts of first degree murder. When they arrest them, they find out something, too, and they process them and everything. Jessica's pregnant again. Oh, my God. This woman. Number five. Jesus Christ. If anyone doesn't need five kids, it's her. That's her. Yeah. So the Bates is here. Alan and Tara, their memorial for them. Yeah.

is in Maryland where they had been living and they worked for a theater production company together. They had a joint memorial service, which is sad as fuck. They had the memorial service in Georgia. The father said they did everything together, so it's appropriate we do this together. That's so sad. I mean, we probably shouldn't have to, but...

Now, they said they're unwilling to talk about any plea deals with Jessica at all. They said they're not interested in that at all. But Jeff, if he's willing to fucking spill the beans, maybe. Jeff, though, said that he knew he was going to prison and didn't want to be labeled as a snitch in prison. You're already a cop. What's the difference? Yeah, they hate you anyway, bud.

Well, you're you're in PC there either way. Yeah. You're in the cops and the snitches in the same wing. So it's what's the fucking difference? Who cares? People want to stab you more in jail. Yeah. And if you are convicted of what this is, a cop that did that shit, you're going to you're going to be in a lot of trouble in there. You're fucked. Yeah. Snitch. Snitch.

So Jessica has her baby in jail. Yeah. Nice. So that was a nice shower. Oh, yeah. Her attorney argued that she should be released from jail to await trial with her newborn baby. Two counts of second degree murder.

Four gunshots each and set the car on fire. She's got more kids than murder charges, so let her out. That's fine. Yeah. So she says, come on, let her out. Why not here? So he assured the judge that she would show up for trial. She'll be here. You can trust her. She's not going anywhere. The judge said the children are an anchor for her to stay. What greater incentive to keep a woman close by than to put her brand new baby near her? Oh, my.

She's got a baby there. Yeah, it's perfect. So that's, by the way, insane. Alan and Jessica's kids are in the custody of Bates' parents now during the trial. Thank fuck. So her lawyer also pointed out that the McCords returned to Birmingham from Florida days after the murder, knowing they were going to be arrested. And he said they didn't go to Argentina. They just went to Florida. And he said also that Jessica...

poses no danger and this is fucking amazing quote she has no criminal record he said she's innocent of the murder against her husband but even if she weren't there's no indication that she's a threat to the general public he actually said quote that person that she's mad at is dead now she has no motive to kill anyone else oh okay well then fucking go out

Well, we're sorry. What about the unsub? Yeah, what about that? We're sorry. Jesus Christ. Our bad. The prosecutor argued that she's a flight risk because she's shown a total disregard for the legal system her whole life here. She broke the law when she ignored court orders about visitation. She was twice found in contempt of court, spent time in jail for that. He said she's continued to thumb her nose at the law through this entire situation.

She's been irresponsible and unaccountable her entire fucking life.

Well, her lawyer said, listen, just put a release her on bond and put her under a put an ankle bracelet on her and send her to her house. That way she's not going anywhere. How about no. The prosecutor said she murdered not only her ex-husband, but his new wife. She put their bodies in a rental car, took it to a field in rural Georgia and set it on fire. Need I say more? It's a bad judge says. Judge says, no, no, you don't need to say more. You're not going anywhere.

So at her trial, Jessica's trial, Brandy Lynn Burnett testifies. She was in the Shelby County Jail with Jessica in December 2001 when she was there on her contempt charge. And she talked nonstop, Jessica did, about her custody battle with Alan while she's in jail. That's why she's in there. She said that while she was in there, this woman testified, quote, she said she was going to get them back even if she had to kill them.

That's it. So, yep. Another witness, Kathy Turner, a longtime friend of Jessica and Alan, said that Jessica called her days before the murders and was upset that Alan would have the children that weekend. Turner said that Jessica told her she was going to, quote, set him up when he came to pick up the girls and make it look like he had attacked her. She tells other people. Imagine. Imagine.

The thought to even do that's fucking crazy. And then to carry it out is crazy. But to tell your friend, I'm going to set him up and make it look like he beat me up so he gets arrested. That's fucking crazy. Unbelievable strategy. It's crazy to just admit that to another human being and not expect them to never want to talk to you again because you're a dirtbag. That's some balls, man. I guess she is pretty honest. The defense attorney asked why. Well, why didn't you call Alan Bates and warn him? Yeah.

And the guy in this this witness, Kathy Turner, said that she thought it was just idle threats. She thought she was just talking shit.

So do you ever talk to someone who's recently divorced or in any kind of custody battle? It's all kinds of shit. Think about it. I've been with you this whole time while you got a divorce and all that kind of shit. If I wrote down everything terrible you've said and said it out loud in a court of law, it would sound awful. Jesus, this guy. He's a monster. How's she still alive? It sounds like you wanted to gut her years ago. Is she in the courtroom? Let's hope so. Otherwise, she's buried in the desert.

Then they talk about physical evidence. Now, I guess Jeff's stepfather discarded the sofa where they had been shot on, apparently. And we'll find out exactly what happened here because don't worry. Prosecutors said that the McCord's black sofa, they brought it into court and showed that they took care to clean up after the shootings. An agent with the GBI said that chemical tests turned up bleach and

And the prosecutor said where it appeared to have been wiped clean. And she said, yes, who Hoover police detective Sergeant Peyton Zarzor. That's some kind of name said the investigators found a piece of wadded up wallpaper in a brown grocery sack when they opened up the piece of paper. That's when they found the bullet hole that matched the hole in the den wall. That section of the wall had been covered with newer wallpaper of the same design, but in a messier way.

This guy also said that some of the tiles on the den floor had obviously recently been replaced. Wow. Replacing tiles as had the carpet on the den stairs. He said it was new. They said that they tried to find their old carpet. They said they searched through 26,000 tons of trash at the Shelby County landfill but never found the old carpet.

That's fucking wild. A firearm specialist with the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences said that the markings on the bullets recovered from Bates and the single bullet recovered from the home were ballistically matched. And they said these marks can be likened to a human fingerprint. It's the same fucking gun. Jessica's going to testify. Really? Oh, yeah. She's got some shit to say.

She takes the stand and says she's the real victim in all this. Is that right? That's right. It's all me. She said that my ex-husband was trying to take my girls away from me, making me a victim. She cried saying how Alan was not the nice guy that he portrayed himself to be every minute of his life since he was three. That every other person who has seen him, he said, no, she's the only one who saw his dark side. Oh.

That's it. Just her. She told jurors that she and her husband that night went to two movies. We'll talk about which ones. One is Lord of the Rings. A strip club. Watched a romantic sunrise. You know, fucked each other in a car. Then shopped at Home Depot. And we couldn't have been killing anybody because that's what we were doing. It's impossible. She's on the stand for four hours here. She said she was very composed.

Super composed and everything's fine. She said that when her husband didn't show, she and her ex-husband, her and her new husband, left the kids at her mother's and went to the Carmike Theaters on Lorna Road.

They arrived just before 7 p.m. to see Lord of the Rings. After that movie was over, they went, let's sneak into another. They were playing teenager that night. We're going to finger each other in the woods. We're going to fucking, you know. Snuck into another movie? Snuck into a second. They snuck into the late showing of Black Hawk Down. Jesus Christ. A couple of real uplifters there. Yeah.

Can you imagine? Half a movie. Plus, Black Hawk Down is over two hours, too. That's a fucking long movie. Yeah, that's a long one. You're talking about like five and a half hours a movie, man. And it's fucked up, too. It's mad fucked up. You're seeing that after Lord of the Rings? Yeah.

She said that she left the theater to get Pepto-Bismol. She went to a pharmacy. She turned her stomach. She had to watch all those fucking soldiers die. Yeah, she had to watch people get exploded. She went to a pharmacy about two miles away and called her mother from a pay phone there to check on the children. After the movies, they went to check on the children and decided to leave them at the parents' house because they were sleeping already. Why interrupt them? Yeah.

That's when they went to Southside there, and then Jeff McCord talked his wife into going to the Playlate Club, which is a downtown strip joint. Talked her into it, because I would never do that. And she even said, this is great, quote, I had never been to one, and I wouldn't recommend it. He thought it would be amusing to see my reaction.

Okay. She's never been? She's acting like she's so prude now. Right. She said it was not my cup of tea, and seeing my husband obviously enjoying it was also not my cup of tea. You've got five children. You understand. They're lucky she didn't stab a dancer, though, at this point, as crazy as fucking she is. If you're dick hard right now, I'll kill that bitch. Get over here, Peppermint. You're going down. Right.

She said that then they went to a water tower in Pelham to watch the sunrise, which is where kids go to get blowjobs. Did they stay at the bottom or did they go all the way to the top? I think they stayed at the bottom. Yeah, yeah. She said, we sat there and we drove there and sat and talked and watched the sun come up. When we were dating, we never spent all night out or anything like that.

So this was like their night to be young again. By then it was just before 6 a.m. And he said that she said Jeff persuaded her or she persuaded Jeff to go to Home Depot since they were already out and needed supplies to remodel their downstairs den. They looked at carpet, she said, but couldn't agree on one. So they purchased only a carpet knife in anticipation of agreeing on a carpet later that day.

Just buy the knife, fuck it. Just buy the knife, fuck it. Once home, she said she saw the number of Alan's parents on the caller ID and she called them and was told they were missing. She said she was very upset about it.

Yeah. Which she said her and her husband, you know, what could they do? They just continued remodeling their house. I mean, what are they going to stop for the day? So they worked on the house and took a trip to Jefferson County to dump to the Jefferson County dump to throw away old toys, a broken car seat and a carpet from their den. So they had searched twenty six thousand tons of the wrong fucking dump.

Oh, damn it. She went to Jefferson County. They went to Shelby, I believe, was it? County, they said. Something like that. So that is very fucking interesting there. So she said, yeah, we just dumped out our old shit and that's all we were doing. You know, nothing crazy. She said that the defense attorney then asked her, this is her own lawyer, did you kill Aladin Terabaits?

And she said, no, I didn't, which is good. She used a contraction. That's a good thing, but no one believes her anyway. Um, so,

Then the prosecutor, though, and she because that was all, you know, her lawyer questioning her. And then the prosecutor came on and her story doesn't quite hold up as well. It fell apart a little. Yeah. They asked her about a call she made to Alan Bates's cell phone at 645 p.m. She testified earlier that she didn't that he often didn't show up when he was supposed to and said, I learned a long time ago, calling him up and griping about it isn't going to do any good. So on the voice message, which was played in court.

She said, where the hell are you? We're waiting. We've got plans for a movie tonight. OK. And the prosecutor said that the fact of the matter was their lifeless, dead, bullet riddled bodies were down on the couch in your den when you made this call to set up some sort of alibi. Isn't that true? Oh, my God. And she said, no, of course not. And they asked her, well, why? Why they kept. Why'd you keep your movie stubs?

Yeah, why would you keep those? He also said that, why'd you drive two miles in the middle of a movie to get medicine when it was available at the pharmacy within 100 yards of the theater that was open then? Right there. Why would you drive two miles? Sheesh, do you know what her answer was? This is the worst answer. I like the other store better. I don't shop at that shopping center. You're in a movie. Get your fucking Pepto and go back in, you weirdo. I don't shop there.

Also, she they then the prosecutor said, in reality, you concocted the acid story after you learned the police had phone records of you calling your mother from that pay phone. And she said that she didn't didn't see. That's not true. They said, well, when you went to the strip club, did you see anybody like a uniform security people working there like a bouncer, but like a security outfit working there? And she said, no, not at all. No, I didn't see anybody. Yeah.

So then they get the bouncer out there who works at the strip club. This is Shelby. He's Shelby County Sheriff's deputy, Kevin Wilson. Oh,

Oh, he does this off duty in uniform. Off duty on titty is what that is. And he works the front door security. So he checks every single fucking idea of everybody that comes in there. They see you see him and he sees you and law enforcement. He recognizes law enforcement. He'd know if a cop was in there. Well, not only that, he knows Jeff McCord.

Yeah. From police work and from the fucking hundred other times that Jeff's been to the strip club. So he would definitely know if Jeff was here. This guy said, nobody gets in the club without me seeing them. And they said, were they there that night? And he said, I know Jeff wasn't there because I know him. So that's Jeff knows he wasn't there to Jeff knows he fucking wasn't there as well.

So the prosecutor said in closing, she's got to have control. She's like a willful child who is going to have her way. She thinks that what Jessica wants is the only standard. What Jessica says is the only truth. What everyone else says or wants is completely irrelevant to her. And the defense says, no, it's not. That's their closing. That's not true. Are not.

February 15th, 2003 is the verdict. And exactly. Right there on the day. To the day is the verdict. That happens so often. It's almost like it's on purpose. It's wild. But it's never on purpose. Yeah. Verdict comes in. Guilty of two counts of first degree murder. Uh-oh.

Sentencing comes around. Death penalties on the table here. Yeah, it's two people in a car. This is savage. It's fucking horrible. Yeah. So during the sentencing phase, Jessica said she's sorry or she never said she's sorry. She instead proclaimed her innocence still. Oh, you can't do that, babe. Her testimony focused on her children. And I would never do this because I love my children, my children, my children, my children.

Now, before the jury goes in, they decide what they want to do. They come back. They give it to the judge, and the judge says, is there anything you'd like to say? And she says, nope, I'm good. Okay. Okay.

You, ma'am, may fuck off life in prison without parole. Oh, it's over for you. Banged her hard. And that was a 7-5 vote, by the way. Oh, not even unanimous. Five was for the death penalty. Oh, shit. Those are the only two sentences for that crime are life without or death penalty. And so she almost got the death penalty. She's fucking lucky.

So as she's leaving court, a reporter asked if she would like to comment on anything that's happened. And she said, quote, words, not hardly. And leaves. Strangest. Is that the weirdest thing to say? Not hardly for rural trash. She's got some real right for crusty language. She does. For a crass broad, as they call it.

So the reaction, the attorney, her defense attorney, says that he didn't think that the prosecutors proved their case at all. Besides the blood and the bullets and the fucking everything else. The other 12 people in the room, they believed it. They believed it. Yeah. This lawyer said, we're heartsick for Jessica and her family, but certainly we respect the jury's verdict and we've got to live with it. So we'll just pull ourselves together and get ready for Monday's sentencing hearing. This was before, obviously, that. Shit.

He also said that, quote, I didn't think it was expected, but we hoped for it and she's pleased. She was very relieved as anybody would be. She didn't get the death penalty. He said she's concerned about her children. She maintains her innocence and has maintained her innocence. She looks forward to her appeal. Then he goes on to say the death penalty is wrong in any case. And in this case, it's no exception. So we're very pleased and relieved that she is delivered unharmed.

of that possibility of being killed. She gets her turn. She gets to turn her attention now to her appeal, and hopefully one day she'll have a new trial and a more favorable outcome.

No, I don't think it's happening. Also, if this was a man that did this to his ex-wife and her husband, he would be drug down the street. Oh, yeah, yeah. And deservedly so. Absolutely. And we'd be thrilled about it. You can't say she doesn't deserve it, man. Now, what about Jeff here? That's the issue. What's going to happen? Jeff, they're trying to work. They tried to work a deal out with Jeff.

The prosecutor said, I think there's going to because in this trial coming up, they said, is this going to be the same layout? Do you have the same evidence? And he said, I think there's going to be some factual differences, but the physical evidence is what it is. And that's what we used in Jessica's trial. They'll probably use the same evidence in Jeff's trial.

So neither side discussed the possibility of a plea. The prosecutor said he hasn't heard from Jeff's lawyers concerning such a plea and doesn't even think that the state would entertain it anyway. He said there would be at least have to be some discussion between us and the D.A.'s office with whether of us offering them or them offering. And there's been no discussions.

Now, one of their friends, actually two of their friends, get sentenced for perjury in the last trial. Who lied? Yeah.

Yeah. Apparently a friend of theirs will spend a year in a work release program for lying to a grand jury during the investigation. Trying to give him a fucking alibi or some shit. Yeah. Michael Upton of Montevelo here will be given. He got 10 years in prison, but split the sentence to work release, followed by five years of supervised probation.

So five years of work release and five years of probation. Five years of work release. Five years of sleeping in jail and working during the day, which is just kill me now. Can I just do, I don't know. No joy then? Three years? Yeah.

The prosecutor had asked this guy to serve, asked that he serve at least several years in prison. But his attorney said it was a little stronger than we expected. We were hoping for straight probation. Five fucking years of work. Five years. He lied to grand jurors when he denied knowing about the existence of a public storage facility where Jessica McCord may have hidden bloody evidence connected to the killings.

The prosecutor said that he testified in two grand jury sessions and repeatedly changed his story as to whether or not he knew about the storage unit. So, yeah, that's that. Jessica's mother, Diane, will also stand trial for perjury on the charges that she lied to give her daughter and son-in-law an alibi during the night of the killings because she did.

She said, oh, yeah, they stopped by here. They were hanging out. It's all fine. So finally, Jeff pleads guilty and spills his fucking guts and tells exactly what fucking happened blow by blow. Yeah.

So they said that that was the direction. This is the lawyer. The prosecutor said that was the direction Alan and Tara were going to be headed. It was supposed to look like a carjacking and a murder. That was the plan. Really? Because they were headed that way anyway toward Marietta. So the plan was look like they got carjacked, but like like it's fucking Deadwood in 1877. Highwaymen took them over.

Carjacked them. But then they decided they didn't want to take the car and they stuff them in the trunk of their car and burn them, which so they pulled. So they did what to them for what? To rob them. They said that Jeff drove the rental car following his wife to the I-20 exit in Morgan County where they searched for a place to jump to dump the bodies.

They chose an area near an underdeveloped tract of hunting land, basically. And the prosecutor said they just tried to find an isolated spot. Yeah, they're just trying to get out of the eye shop. And this one, where it is, like you go through town and come out, this is where you end up. Yeah.

Now investigators looked into the landowner of the property who lived just south of Birmingham and has ties to Jeff McCord. What? But they said it turned out just to be a coincidence. He dumped the bodies on land that he didn't know a guy that he knows fucking owns. How crazy is that? Wow. And those guys in the chicken show and Jeff know the same fucking guy.

You know, guys, you are two degrees from the chicken show, man. That's wild shit. Yeah. Two degrees away from a chicken show explanation. He said, we investigated that angle thoroughly and there was no connection. Wow. He said the sheriff's investigators pulled up one piece of circumstantial evidence that was used at trial against Jessica, the scrap of paper towel that had blown across the road. The pattern of towel matched the paper towels found in the kitchen of the McCord home as well. Wow.

They said they believe paper towel was used to light the car on fire. Probably, yeah. Also the bullet, all of that stuff. And they said that this was, the prosecutor said, this was not a spur-of-the-moment thing. It had been planned for several weeks. What they did was Jessica...

talked to Alan and said, hey, come on in. Oh, God damn it. They showed up and she said, yeah, yeah, no, come in. She said, wait one second. The kids are getting, they want to do something for you. The kids are doing a show thing they have for you. They've been practicing for you. What? So you wait outside for a second. They said, okay. They said, okay, come in and sit on the couch. So then Jessica went down the hallway and said, I'm going to go tell the kids that it's time now and they're going to come out and do their performance for you. Told Jeff, bring the gun in.

She went down to the thing, said they're sitting on the couch. Jeff came out and fired four fucking shots into each of them. Oh, boy. Based on the pattern, it looks like, and he said he shot Alan first, which would make sense because he's the bigger threat. Shot Alan first. That's why she was in a ball basically covered up because there was gunshots coming at the person at the couch next to her. And gunshots in a living room are fucking loud. And a .44, forget it. So she curled up in a ball. Yeah.

And he blasted her too. And then he said they took them. They took them out in the trunk. They put their car, the bodies in the trunk of their car, followed them over there and looked for a spot. And they said it just looked like a place where nobody would see a fire. So messy and lazy. So fucking messy, so lazy. And then they said they had to replace tiles and carpets and all this shit because there's blood everywhere. Yeah.

So a lawsuit happens. Oh, by the way, he's sentenced to you, sir, may fuck off life in prison with parole. Okay. With parole because he gave up how it happened. So the parents, all four of the parents, Tara's parents and Alan's parents, all bring a $150 million wrongful death lawsuit against Jessica and Jeff. Really? Really.

Yeah, they have no money, but this is for a specific purpose. It's meant to keep the McCords from profiting from their crimes. They said it's to make sure that if there's ever any income from a book or a movie that the money will be preserved for the children in the estate rather than going to the wrongdoers. So any dime they make goes to them. Anything made outside of sweeping, they make 12 cents a day or some shit, whatever that is.

So, yeah, that's how that goes. The girls, their girls, the Bates girls live with the parents, with Philip and Joan. They stay with them. That's fucking wild. So she's accused. They basically said and Jeff confirmed that she came home from jail after reading that book with just a hot poker up her ass to kill these motherfuckers. What a crazy fucking way to do it, too.

Wow. And 2004, Jeff agrees and settles with the family and agrees to forfeit any profits from everything that happens to him because he has no choice. 2017...

The Alabama Board of Pardons and Parole refuses a parole for Jeff here. He's 47 at this point. He's only 47 years old. That was in 2017. He was 47. He's only 50-something today. Early 50s. Then in 2022, he was eligible again, but I can't find anything on it. So they might have pushed it back another year, or he might have just quietly been –

But I didn't see, holy shit, murdering asshole is out of prison. Yeah, there's no way he's out. No way he's out. So that is Rutledge, Georgia, and really Hoover, Alabama, too, if you want to get technical about it. But the fact that it happened in Georgia and it was like kind of a fire and all that shit and they were supposed to be in Georgia, made it Georgia. Two actual scumbags, man.

Two terrible fucking people. It's amazing how terrible people find each other sometimes. That they're just like, wow, you're a scumbag too. So am I. I'm an awful person. Scumbag cop. Shit. And definitely not taking sides on the marital disputes because, you know what? Relationships, we don't know what the fuck happened between the two of them. We have no fucking idea. So I don't care about that at all. That's not a matter of that. But you can't kill people. That's the problem. So there you go. If you enjoy this show at all, including this episode or any other episode. Sure.

definitely tell the world about it. Number one, social media. Number two, tell your fucking friends. Just tell your friends, hey, great show to listen to.

Also, you can certainly give us a review on whatever app you're listening on, which helps a lot, too. Give us five stars. Say something nice about the show. It doesn't matter what you say. Say what your favorite flavor of jelly is. I like strawberry, personally. There you go. Raspberry is pretty good with some butter on the toast first. Not bad. Butter? No. You don't do it? No, that's some hillbilly shit. That's why you die when you're 58. That's why. Because you put butter on everything. Can't do that. I love it.

So do that. Definitely give us a review. Follow us on social media. Very easy to do that. We are at Small Town Murder on Instagram, at Small Town Pod on Facebook, at Murder Small on Twitter. Oh, yeah. So get in there for sure. Definitely, definitely you want Patreon. Mm-hmm.

For sure. You also want to go to shutupandgivememurder.com because that's where tickets are for live shows. September 20th, Minneapolis State Theater. Get your asses in there. Get your tickets right now for that. Become our biggest show ever and make us just beam with pride for Minneapolis because we'll love you sons of bitches. So thank you. I'm loving that.

No, we will. We will. We'll consider it. Sell the bastard out. Sell the bastard out. We might move there. So do that. Hang out with us. Shut up and give me a murder dot com. Definitely get Patreon. Patreon dot com slash crime in sports is where you get all the bonus materials. By the way, listen to crime and sports if you haven't.

The ones we're just putting up have zero sports. We just did a two-parter on a guy named Ted Turner. That's easy to remember. He pitched one and a third innings in the majors. That's his entire baseball career. It's just all about crazy, old-timey crimes. So check that out. It's a good introduction to the show. That's fascinating, John.

Fascinating shit. Yeah. So check that out. Also, listen to your stupid opinions if you haven't. It's fucking hilarious. We promise you. We promise from the bottom of our souls. We wouldn't even say to listen to it if we didn't think it was funny. We would hide in it from shame. It's hilarious. Patreon.com slash crime and sports, though. Anybody $5 a month or above, you're going to get a whole back catalog of wonder. There's whole hundreds of episodes you've never heard before. No.

new ones every other week. We do one crime and sports and one small town murder, and we just give you all of it for $5 or a bottle cup of coffee. We say, take all of this shit, fuck coffee. Yeah.

So this week what we have for Crime and Sports, we're going to talk about the two most penalized games in hockey history. We're basically going to do a super cut of two games worth of constant fighting. And it's hilarious to watch these toothless Canadians beat the shit out of each other for an hour. It's going to be so much fun. Then for Small Town Murder, we're going to do one we've been looking forward to, Internet Salad, we call it. It's so much fun.

It's our pre-show and our post-show, and we're going to record it for you and listen. So this is us talking about tons of shit. Our lives, personal shit, current affairs, making jokes. I'm smoking weed. Shit's a little more off color. It's fun.

really funny and we always laugh we go god i wish people could hear this this would be a very fun show so now you can hear it check it out there patreon.com slash crime and sports oh and there's more yeah you get a shout out at the end of the show which is right fucking now jimmy hit me with the names of the most wonderful goddamn people who keep us in business and keep the lights on i need to hear them right fucking now

This week's executive producers are Kimmy Wolfe, Lauren Kell, and her murder cats, Michael, Hannah, and Lacey. I don't know if those are actual cats or- Murder cats. Does she name her cats people names? Is that what she's doing? Maybe. A lot of people do, yeah. Michael, Hannah, and Lacey. Yeah. Yeah. I think maybe it's possible. My dogs are Benny, Frankie, and Oscar. That's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It happens. My dog is named after a wonderful black linebacker. I love him to death. Yes. He's a good dog.

He's good. Jerry Mann, Randy Hall, and his wife. She gave no name, evidently. Just tell Randy Hall that I love him. And she said my husband. So I'm assuming. Your wife loves you. It could be your husband, Randy. Your spouse loves you.

Emily Schalke. And he said his dick is rock hard. Get home. Jay Chichors. Cichors? It's C-I-C-H-O-R-Z. Chichors? Chichirones. Chichoronic. I don't know. Thank you, Jay. You're amazing. Other producers this week are Matt Villanueva. Happy birthday. Janice Hill. Kevin Wicken. Patrick McCracken. Leonard Capriolova. What the fuck? Capriolova. All right.

Leonard, you're terrific, too. You look like you just were looking at the moon and it melted in front of your eyes. It just exploded. That's what it looked like. You're like, oh, no. What the fuck? Well, that's no good. I don't understand, and I'm horrified. Both things at once. Hannah Stone, Kathy Fountain, Jane M., Erica Tyler, Cheer Up Bitch, Natalie Garnett. That's not, I wasn't saying that to Erica. Somebody just wrote that.

And I have to say that, so thank you. Natalie Garnett, I said that. Jordan Myers, win 79, win like the

Fucking hotel in Vegas. Nicole Benson. Ben with no last name. Erica Munden. Dennis Brent. Ryan Lumpkin. Brooke Skinner. Tony Cook. Greg Richardson. Jennifer Backey. Hallie. Haley. Haley. Hallie. Hallie Martin. Kay Meesey. Van Blarkham. I don't know. All right. Linda Loveless's throat. Well, all right. Yeah.

Melissa Barnett. Melinda with no last name. Judy with no last name. Kelly Jones. Valerie Oldford. Sandra Hegemony. Mel D. James Nixon. Chuga Chugachu. Mary Koo. Kayla Weatherby. Also T. T. And also T. Jen Corican. Tyler Ewing. Nicole with no last name. Sarah Jerome. Brian.

Bradley Keene, Lindsay Carpenter, B with no last name, just the letter B. Paige Melton, John Thomas, Kathy with no last name, Zach Alvis, Lisa Davies, Jack with no last name, Jeff Fortescue, like barbecue, but Fortes. Nicole Chapman, Shelby Coleman, Ian Lynch, Gerloff Decorte, Corey... Cool name. Gerloff, what? Sounds awesome. Gerloff Decorte. Sounds like he runs like a...

Like a small country we didn't know exists, you know what I mean? Sounds like a brand of great shoes. Got the Merloffs. Outside of Montenegro or some shit, like some weird...

Ah, Jesus. Corey Oroshiba. Toby Kowal. Cowell, maybe? Andrea Colban? Colban. Simona Martinez. Nikki Miller. Christy Meeker. Oh, M-Eeker? Meeker? Oh, it's Meeker. I just held shift too long, and I got the E capitalized also. That's what happened. Yeah.

Me-acre. Amanda Lunig. Eddie DeLeon. Brian. Brianne Bean. Tyler Middleton. Estella. Estella? Estella Santos. Estella. David Harvey. Spiral of Vertigo. Seda Bushroy. Noelle Busby. The Geppetto. Jamon? Jamon. Jamon, right? Jamonji? Jamonji.

J-A-M-O-N, not you. Oh, J'mon. That's what Michael Jackson used to say all the time. J'mon.

He's named after Michael Jackson's throwaway words. This show brought to you by Michael Jackson's moan. His brother, you know it. He's got a brother named that. Thomas with no last name. Jacob with no last name. Danielle Thompson. Kathleen Kelly hair. Joey girl 38. Car car. Carly, shut up, bitch. I think it's cheer up, bitch. A little more aggressive, but fun.

Shut up, bitch. That's what therapists would say. Doctors would give you cheer up, bitch. Therapists would say, shut up, bitch. Desiree Grothis, Sarah Smith, Taylor C., Sean Hackett, Brianna Bird,

Kena Kinn, Nancy Olsen Hernandez, Cindy would know last name. Mickles would know last name. Kelsey Belkis, Josh Sugg, Caitlin would know last name. Alan Sweeting, Seth Schaefer, Gap7. Oh, boy. Pru, Pierce Pru. What a great name. That's a British one, right? Chris Salas. Yeah, the lady from the Bake Off. Yeah, she's wonderful. God, I love her. She's great.

Doesn't like shit. No. She hates everything, but she tells you that she hates it in the sweetest way. A, Lebrasseur, Daniel Grima, Anna with no last name, Phil McCracken, obviously. That's a real person. Scottish therapist.

Mouse with no last name. Tammy Henderson. Carson Shuck. Clint with no last name. Courtney McGee. John Binsfield. Emily Fielding. McIntyre with no last name. Thomas with no last name. Those are both actual last names. Christian Marlette. Thomas McDonald. Greg Hoskins. Ashley Johnson. Lauren Donahue. Nick Holt. Carly Simon. Probably not. Yeah, I'm sure it is.

We're vain too, sweetheart. Sing about us. We got it. You could write a new song, just the absolute opposite. You're so humble. That's us. I don't give a shit what you say. We could use the pub. Just say whatever you want. You can call me a piece of shit, Carly. I don't care. You're a piece of shit. I think I found corn in them. I'd be like, great, good.

Corn and peanuts and black olives. Taziana with no last name. Eli Cook. Dietrich Forcht.

Torched. Anwar would know last name. Maybe Anwar. Grunter, Newcastle, Australia. Lucid Comatose. That doesn't make any sense. Joe Busfield. Brian Cunningham. Evie or Evie. Langley. Mark Mathis. And then Matea would know last name. Michael Gonzalez. Michael Rowe. Wow, two Mikes in a row. Look at that. Eddie Romero. Dre would know last name. Marie would know last name. We'll never forget about you.

Brandon Walton, Sam Richardson, Jay Rizzle, four. Elm Chanted, Jordan Gentry, Hannah Cox, Jerry with no last name, Jackie Tag, Lily Sankey, Elaine Johnson, Pepeche.

Oh boy. I just, I just put that word gave you a gas. So you had like a bubble come up. I just pushed Elaine's name right out of my chest. Hannah Swan, Jordan stare, Andrea Smith, Katie Brock, Jane Dan's, uh, Kristen B term SD. Uh,

All right. Christine Curie, Lucas Oden, Oden maybe, Jamie Hodge, Sharon Fane, Richard Lance, Aaron Dixon, Ben Clark, Frederick Goodrich, Dustin A. Keensy with no last name, Thomas R. Ryan Mendoza, Jade Lupinski, Austin with no last name, Kalt Straka, Kate Straka? Kate, that's an I. Steve Huganin, David Bowerd, Adam Wright, Jeremy Fregosi? Yeah, Fregosi.

That's a gross one. Caitlin Finnegan, C.S. Shelley, Judge Malley, Stacey Flock, Stacey Spaulding, two Stacey's in a row? Alexandra Schmitz, Chad Hickey, Allison Casper, Sidney's period, or Sidney's period. I don't know what to do. Sidney's period. Brought to you by Sidney's period, the letter A and the number four.

Christina with no last name, Hannah Wiles, Ashley Hawking, Victoria Yvesaker, Shelby Chavez, Matt and Megan Spangler, and all of our patrons. You guys are fucking incredible. Thank you, everybody, so much for everything that you do for us. Honestly, we hope you enjoy the show. We hope you enjoy everything you put out. You want to follow us on social media, super easy to do that. Just get on Shut Up and Give Me Murder, Dr.

There is links to everything there. So keep coming back and seeing us. Tell all your friends. And until next week, everybody, it's been our pleasure. Bye.

I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like stuttering super bad. I'm like, stop f***ing around. She's like...

I can't. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast. It's like doubling and tripling, and it's all these girls. With a diagnosis the state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back. Well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, well, yeah.

No, it's hysteria. It's all in your head. It's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since The Witches of Salem? Or is it something else entirely? Something's wrong here. Something's not right. Leroy was the new dateline and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios, Hysterical.

Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.