Baby Be Mine Read online

  Blood continued to flow from the gaping lateral slice in Bobbie Jo’s body. It pooled on the floor. The soles of Bobbie Jo’s feet fought to maintain their purchase on the slick, red boards. Clots formed at the site of the wound and dropped with a splat on the smeared blood on the floor.

  Lisa secured the rope and tightened it around Bobbie Jo’s neck again. Bobbie Jo reached behind with both hands. She grabbed and yanked Lisa’s hair as hard as she could. She pulled strands out by the roots. That was not enough to stop Lisa Montgomery.

  Lisa squeezed tighter—her strength and determination fueled by a sociopathic desperation. When Bobbie Jo’s body went limp once again, Lisa still held on. This time, she would be sure Bobbie Jo was dead. She throttled her victim for a full five minutes, then eased the dead weight to the floor—she did not want to harm the baby. Bobbie Jo lay dead; in her hands, she clenched clumps of dirty blonde hair.

  Lisa kneeled down again at Bobbie Jo’s side to continue her grisly work. She finished cutting through the layers of the skin. She sliced again, this time through the layer of fat cells. Then a third laceration parted the layer of muscle. When the cut was long enough and deep enough, Lisa saw the prize she sought—Bobbie Jo’s uterus. She sliced the womb open with a care that indicated knowledge or experience.

  Lisa reached into Bobbie Jo’s bloody, desecrated body and pulled out a wriggling baby girl. She sliced the umbilical cord in two. She tied off the end of the cord connected to the child. Wrapping the baby in a blanket, she held her tight in her arms, breathing deeply—inhaling the scent of the child she now claimed as her own. It was as if a demented magic spell had taken hold of her. As is typical of infant abductors, the moment that little body was next to hers, a fantastical delusion seized her. It said: This is my baby. I saved my baby from that woman. If I had not taken her, she surely would have died.

  Lisa grabbed the knife and raced to her car. She drove out of Skidmore heading straight to Maryville. She took the highway and continued south down to St. Joseph. Around Kansas City. Across the Missouri-Kansas state line. Westward to Topeka. She pulled into Long John Silver’s and parked in their lot.

  Somewhere between Skidmore and the fast food restaurant, she cleaned up herself and her baby. The violent assault on Bobbie Jo left smears of blood on her clothing and her arms. She looked normal now. A mother and her infant. Haggard but happy after a successful birth. She called her husband, Kevin, and told him the good news.

  19

  Lisa Montgomery was raised at a time when women made great strides in government, corporations and every other walk in life. Despite these advances, Lisa remained mired in the antiquated notion that a woman’s value was based solely on her ability to reproduce and nurture.

  This pathetic self-image led Lisa to a crisis point, where she made the decision to cross a line that was beyond normal contemplation. She transitioned from an emotionally disturbed woman to a heartless murderer with frightening ease.

  The path she followed to become a killer began while she was still in her teens. Her frenzied procreation with her first husband—four babies in less than four years—was a shadowy premonition of what was to come. She was a bright young woman who sensed the stress fractures in her relationship from the start. In response, she stayed pregnant because she thought it was the only way to stay married.

  After the fourth child, however, her husband, Carl, did not want any more mouths to feed. He insisted on a tubal ligation. Without that procedure, Lisa might have become a one-woman population explosion.

  When Carl left Lisa and moved to Arkansas, Lisa had no sense of identity—she needed a man for that. She fought for her relationship in the only way she knew: another pregnancy. Carl fell for her ruse the first time. He remarried Lisa—but, of course, she did not produce a child.

  When Lisa’s idyllic illusion of a good marriage started to crumble again, she announced yet another pregnancy. This time, Carl didn’t fall for it. But he did stay with her and even agreed to move the family out of state when Lisa’s embarrassment over the faked conception became more than she could bear.

  In New Mexico with a husband immune to the pregnancy ploy, Lisa was deprived of the only weapon she thought she had to maintain the relationship. When the marriage ended, that failure reinforced Lisa’s conviction that she was worthless without her ability to bear a child for her man.

  She moved to Kansas, met Kevin Montgomery, and in no time was plotting to marry him. She thought that if Kevin believed she were pregnant, he’d follow her to the altar. She was surprised when, instead, he gave her the money for an abortion. Still, she didn’t give up on her dream of matrimony. She played on Kevin’s sympathy by creating a new pregnancy in her teenage years—one where her family deceived her and stole her baby away.

  After that heart-breaking tale, Kevin was hooked—one more faked pregnancy and Lisa was Mrs. Kevin Montgomery. After exchanging vows, she claimed that pregnancy, too, ended in miscarriage. When the marriage to Kevin showed signs of distress, she played the game once again.

  It seemed mind-boggling that Lisa was able to fool so many people so much of the time. She pulled it off because she had more in her arsenal than a canny gift for falsehood. She also had physical symptoms like the hardened abdomen she displayed to her sister.

  Bobbie Jo with a sleeping rat terrier pup. Photo courtesy Pat Kennedy.

  Bobbie Jo at her first Christmas. Photo courtesy Becky Harper.

  Becky Potter proudly poses with her six-month-old daughter, Bobbie Jo. Photo courtesy Becky Harper.

  Summer 1983—Bobbie Jo in wading pool with friends Jody and Jaimie. Photo courtesy Becky Harper.

  Bobbie Join April 2001. Photo courtesy Becky Harper

  Bobbie Jo practicing barrel-racing. Photo courtesy Becky Harper.

  Lisa Montgomery’s mug shot. Photo courtesy Nodaway County Sheriff’s Department.

  The Melvern, Kansas, water tower from the center of town. Photo by Diane Fanning.

  Kevin and Lisa Montgomery’s home. Photo by Diane Fanning.

  The Whistle Stop Café, where Lisa and Kevin showed off their new baby. Photo by Diane Fanning.

  Skidmore Public Library. Photo by Diane Fanning.

  Newton’s Corner in Skidmore. Photo by Diane Fanning.

  Bobbie Jo & Jeb’s home on Elm Street. Photo by Diane Fanning.

  White House award ceremony in the Oval Office: (l to r) Corporal Jeffrey Owen. Missouri State Highway Patrol: Sergeant David Merrill. Missouri State Highway patrol: Sheriff Ben Espey. Nodaway County Sheriff’s Department; President George W. Bush: Special Agent Kurt Lipanovich. FBI; Investigator Randy Strong. Maryville Department of Public Safety. Photo courtesy Ben Espey.

  Items seized from Lisa Montgomery’s car including the knife used to perform the cesarean section and a photo of a litter of newborn rat terrier pups. Photo courtesy Nodaway County Sheriff’s Department.

  Lisa’s dirty red Toyota. Photo courtesy Nodaway County Sheriff’s Department.

  Bobbie Jo’s headstone. Photo by Diane Fanning.

  There were two possible reasons for Lisa’s physical symptoms. One was pseudocyesis, a form of psychosis causing a woman to seek attention by faking or lying about a pregnancy. Many of these women learned how to swallow air to bloat their abdomens.

  Another possibility was that Lisa was in the midst of a disassociative episode where she genuinely believed she was pregnant. Women in this condition experienced a myriad of pregnancy symptoms including a distended belly, enlarged breasts and the absence of menses. When forced to face the truth, these women often spiraled down into a deep depression.

  Dr. Jack Gorman, chief of psychiatry at the Mt. Sinai Medical Center and professor of neuroscience at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine told a New York Times reporter, “In these cases, a woman might have a delusion that ‘That’s my baby in that woman, she’s stolen it, and if I don’t rescue it, she’s going to kill it,’ and the motivation is just so overwhelming that you just lose contact with reality. It’
s hard for people who’ve never had this experience to understand, but the voices and hallucinations and demands become overwhelming.”

  At the same time as she played at pregnancy, she also worked to achieve custody of Teddy’s son. When that plot fell apart, she tried to extort money from her ex-husband to buy a baby. From her point of view, he pressured her into a tubal ligation and now he would pay. Carl, however, did not have the money she needed even if he’d been willing to give it to her.

  Lisa, though, was still determined to get what she wanted. She met a woman online who was pregnant with twins. Now Lisa claimed to be pregnant with twins. She tried to build a relationship with her by sharing pregnancy experiences and sending a handmade gift.

  When that woman lost her twins, Lisa purported to have lost one of hers. She set her sights on another woman—Bobbie Jo Stinnett. Bobbie Jo was expecting a single child. Now, Lisa ostensibly carried one baby, too.

  20

  Somehow, Lisa Montgomery thought she could get away with her charade. She was content in her deceptive fantasy—but law enforcement was not.

  The investigation gathered strength with every passing moment. Local, state and federal officials worked in unison to shatter the illusions of a woman whose identity was still unknown.

  While computer forensic specialists tracked down Darlene Fischer, the FBI sent agents to question the third person in the online discussion, Jason Dawson of Rat Time Kennels in Kansas City, Missouri. He told them, “I don’t think that Darlene Fischer had anything to do with this—she just wanted to look at puppies.”

  In the coming hours, those words reverberated in Jason’s head. He was sickened by the truth and felt more stupid and foolish than he ever had in his life. This betrayal of his trust destroyed any belief he had in the decency of his fellow man, and marked him for life.

  With the secrets of Bobbie Jo’s computer revealed, law enforcement rolled into Kansas south of Topeka. They stopped at the white farmhouse. The home looked so innocent—so all-American. The original dwelling featured a deep porch running across the length of the front. It was topped by a graceful gabled roof. Attached to one side was a plain, two-story addition built with practicality—not aesthetics—in mind.

  Investigators closed in on this modest home with a torrent of questions. Lisa denied any wrongdoing at first. But the questions did not cease. They pounded down with greater intensity until the dam burst and Lisa spewed out the awful truth.

  At 2:30, the Amber Alert was lifted. At that same time, the telephone rang at the Siktar home. Special Agent Kurt Lipanovich said, “Dyanne, you are a hero.”

  “Did you find the baby?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “Yes, she’s fine. But there’s so much going on here, I can’t talk right now.”

  A little after 3, Sheriff Espey stepped outside to face a battery of forty or fifty microphones and news cameras. He knew this case was important to him, to his county and to the people of Skidmore, but he was amazed at the national spotlight—Larry King even called him at home.

  He approached the bank of microphones and a hush spread through the gathered media horde. “We’re going to be really brief. Is everybody ready? This conference won’t last long. We’ve been into this investigation for twenty-three and a half hours and we have some really good breaking news. They have located a baby girl. We’re waiting testing—medical testing—to see if it’s going to be our child that’s missing. We feel really good about it. I think with the highway patrol and the FBI here, there was a lot of manpower put into this, a lot of hard investigative work. Right now, there are investigators doing questioning.”

  Excitement and elation rippled through the crowd. To Espey, it seemed the reporters were reacting to more than a development in a great story. The media before him appeared overjoyed at the news on a more personal level.

  “What we can tell you is—this baby crossed state lines into Kansas. We’re not going to give you any locations on that, because we really don’t want press charging that angle,” Espey continued. “There’s still investigation that needs to be done on this.”

  In response to a question about the baby, Espey said, “The child appears to be healthy and in good shape. The child is at a hospital right now, being checked out by a pediatrician and we have no indications that the child was hurt in any way. And the child is probably going to be okay. That’s the information we are getting.”

  A voice shouted out, “You’re not ready to confirm anything?”

  “We’re not going to confirm this one hundred percent. But, it’s about as good as it can get.”

  Isabel Phelon spent the morning in Lyndon getting her hair done. When she drove past the home she rented to Lisa and Kevin in Melvern, she didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. That afternoon, she went down to the well to check on the water pump. From there she had a clear view of the Montgomery home. Cars marked with law enforcement logos as well as unmarked—but official-looking—vehicles crowded in the yard and out on the street. Her first thought was: I wonder if Lisa lost her baby?

  She hopped in her car, and traveled past the house at regular speed, but didn’t see anyone she knew in the yard, and couldn’t figure out what was happening. She turned around a little ways up the street and drove past the Montgomery home again—this time she crawled down the road.

  Her slow speed caught the attention of officers, who approached her car. “What’s going on?” she asked them. “I am the landlord.”

  “This is a crime scene,” they told her before asking her to move on. They were clearly not in the mood to talk in more detail, so Isabel drove home with more questions in her mind than she had when she left the house a few moments before.

  At 3:30, the five-pound, eleven-ounce infant entered the Stormont-Vail Regional Health Care Center emergency room in Topeka. Personnel transferred her at once to the neonatal intensive care unit. Doctors reported that she was responding normally for a baby born one month premature.

  Blood was drawn for DNA testing. They all believed this was the baby of Bobbie Jo Stinnett, but they wanted proof.

  After a couple of hours of questioning, Lisa Montgomery was arrested and taken to the Wynadotte County Jail in Kansas City, Kansas. A stunned Kevin Montgomery was not charged with a crime. He was brought in, however, for intensive interrogation.

  Authorities performed a search of Lisa Montgomery. They photographed the cuts on her hands. They scraped underneath her fingernails. Tests of that material showed that it was a genetic commingling of the DNA of Bobbie Jo Stinnett and Lisa Montgomery.

  With the residents removed from their home on South Adams Road, a search of the house and vehicles began in earnest. Hundreds of documents, papers, receipts and other items were seized. In the end, most of these articles proved to have no evidentiary value, but investigators exercised abundant caution to ensure that nothing was overlooked.

  Amid the pile of irrelevant material, the forensic technicians found a treasure trove of items of significant forensic importance. From the trunk of Lisa’s car, they removed a rope—covered with blood and hair. Genetic testing revealed the DNA of Bobbie Jo Stinnett. A kitchen knife that Lisa identified as the one she used to cut open her victim held more evidence. They tested the blood on the blade of the knife. It was a mixture of the DNA of Bobbie Jo and Victoria Jo. On the handle, analysis revealed a blend of the genetic material of three individuals: the baby, the mother and Lisa Montgomery.

  At 4 P.M., Lisa’s mother Judy received a phone call from her niece in Texas. “Is it true Lisa has a baby?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Judy said.

  “Is it a girl?”

  “Yes,” Judy said and then listened with dread as her niece shared what she knew about the tragic story of Bobbie Jo Stinnett and her baby girl.

  21

  Judy Shaughnessy was hungry for more details. She wanted information that would erase her suspicions about her daughter Lisa and ease her heart. S
he didn’t want to run into town to pick up a newspaper. She’d be sure to run into someone she knew and that was the last thing she wanted right now. She also wanted news that was fresher than that morning’s headlines. She didn’t have cable TV and she didn’t use a computer.

  She called her daughter Jerri and shared her fears. “Would you get online and find everything you can find about the murder in Skidmore and read it to me?”

  Jerri had no problem locating articles: the Internet—like the media—was drowning in coverage. Jerri opened one story after another and read them on the phone to her mother. With each word, Judy’s horror escalated. The more she heard, the more the possibility that Lisa was responsible for Bobbie Jo’s death grew. By the time Jerri finished reading, it was an undeniable probability. Judy had known miserable times over the years, but today was shaping into the worst day of her life.

  Jerri and her sister Patty dropped everything and rushed to be by their mother’s side at her farm in Lyndon. Outside, nothing ruffled the feathers of the geese or the chickens. Placid cows chewed their cud. The pigs snuffled about and the goats grazed. All were oblivious to the turmoil brewing inside the home. The family sat in front of Judy’s television. Their collective dread sucked the air out of the room and the hope out of their hearts as they watched the news reports of Lisa’s arrest. They could doubt the reality of Lisa’s culpability no longer.

  They had known Lisa was deceptive and manipulative. They thought she was capable of doing or saying almost anything to get what she wanted. But this? This was too much. They never once imagined she was willing to kill for what she wanted. They never suspected she would go this far.