Death Trap (37 page)

Jessica Inez Callis in eighth grade in Hoover, Alabama.

Heading into high school, Jessica was an honors student who claimed to have taken between “500 and 600” hits of LSD during her high school days.

Alan Bates was a popular student with a passion for the theater when he met Jessica.

Still in high school, finishing his senior year, Alan Bates married Jessica after discovering she was pregnant. (Jessica had dropped out.)

Months after getting married and welcoming their first child in 1990, Jessica and Alan appeared to be a happy young couple enjoying the senior prom.

Hoover Police Department investigators look at a piece of floor tile inside Jessica’s home, searching for any sign that a double homicide had occurred.

Investigators later talked about how messy Jessica’s house was when they went in to conduct the first of two search and seizure warrants in 2002.

A break in the case came during a second search on February 18, 2002, when investigators discovered this single spent projectile on the floor inside the garage of a home owned by Jessica and her new husband, Jeff McCord, a police officer.

Moments after the bullet was uncovered, investigators found this piece of balled up wallpaper inside a garbage bag.

This coffee table, taken from Jeff and Jessica McCord’s home, was later found to contain blood evidence.

After investigators moved the couch and focused their search in the messy den of the McCord home, the pieces of a double homicide fell into place.

Investigators were at first perplexed that the wallpaper seams in the McCord home did not match.