Baby Be Mine Page 8

  Waiting for that day in court, Lisa’s due date grew near. She discarded her maternity clothing and claimed she had a miscarriage. In the next hearing, Lisa mournfully explained to the judge that she lost the baby at six months and donated the unborn child’s body to science. She believed her loss and sacrifice would force the court’s hand. The judge, however, was not moved by her pregnancy at the first hearing and was not moved by sympathy for her loss in this one. The court awarded custody of Justin Kleiner to his grandmother Judy.

  Lisa did find sympathy at the First Church of God. The congregation wrapped around her in fellowship. They prayed for her as she grieved over her miscarriage. They shed tears on her behalf.

  Soon after her failure to get the child, Lisa gave birth to her plan to buy a baby. She heard a rumor that her ex-husband’s new wife, Vanessa, was coming into an inheritance from her father. She contacted Carl and Vanessa demanding $45,000 in cash.

  When they denied her request, she badgered them again and again. On one occasion, she even threatened to “destroy” Vanessa. Vanessa later told the London Mail: “We were really concerned about what was going to happen because we couldn’t afford to give her the money even if we’d wanted to. I was convinced she was going to do something dreadful, and I thought Carl and I were in danger.”

  Later in 2004, Patty ran into her sister at the Whistle Stop Cafe in Lyndon. Lisa lifted up her shirt, grabbed Patty’s hand and placed it on her distended belly. “Feel it. Feel it,” she said.

  Patty was confused. She knew Lisa couldn’t be pregnant, but all the same, she knew that her abdomen was as hard as if she were.

  Despite the physical evidence, Lisa’s family knew she was lying again. Kevin and his family, on the other hand, believed every word. In December, Lisa’s sister Patty decided to intervene and set the record straight. She went to Lisa’s home. She brushed past her sister and confronted Kevin. “Your wife cannot be pregnant because she had a tubal ligation in 1990.”

  Lisa ordered Patty to leave her home and never come back.

  A week later, Judy and Jerri visited Kevin’s parents, Roger and Joy Montgomery. Judy explained Lisa’s long history of falsehoods and said, “Lisa is fooling you again.”

  Although warned, the Montgomery family did not put any credibility in the allegations made by Lisa’s family. Lisa had been busy since her marriage poisoning the minds of her husband’s family against her own. The Montgomerys did not understand why Lisa’s mother and sisters wanted to hurt her, but they took Lisa’s word that they did.

  Judy told Lisa, “You cannot keep lying to this man. He doesn’t deserve it.”

  Lisa plotted her revenge. First, she attempted to get a restraining order prohibiting her mother and sister from seeing her children. When that didn’t work, she filed a court order to stop them from telling people that she faked pregnancies.

  Judy was concerned enough about Lisa’s mental stability that she consulted attorneys about getting Lisa into a psychiatric institution. She felt it was the only option that would prevent her daughter from spiralling out of control. She was told by her lawyer, though, that unless Lisa harmed herself or someone else, there were no legal grounds for an involuntary commitment.

  In the midst of all of this family turmoil, Lisa went to a dog show with her daughter Kayla. It was a cold and rainy venue. It was the first face-to-face meeting between Lisa and Bobbie Jo Stinnett, a small-town girl from Skidmore, Missouri. But it would not be the last.

  14

  The town of Skidmore was founded when Marteny Skidmore moved from Virginia to Missouri and purchased 700 acres of land in the Nodaway River Valley. By 1880, it had a population of 400. On December 29, 1886, the first town newspaper—the Skidmore Advance—rolled off the presses. The motto on its masthead read: “To publish a paper and make money.”

  Skidmore was small, but it was proud and determined to etch out its own distinct identity. There was no better way to draw attention in the rural countryside of northwest Missouri than with a yearly event that attracted visitors from miles around.

  The annual Punkin Show—a tradition that lasted more than a century—began on October 17, 1899. The first year, it was a one-day show. In time it expanded to a four-day event. Produce, handiwork, crafts and baked goods were judged. Special entertainment—from biplane rides to dances—livened up life in the small town.

  The town initiated a second annual event in 1988 to commemorate veterans—Freedom Fest. This event drew visitors from thirty states. Every year, it featured food and craft vendors and a live bald eagle named Moose provided by Operation Wildlife out of Linwood, Kansas. The organizers tried to bring back crowd favorites and find new unique entertainment each year.

  Large-scale living history exhibitions including re-enactments of military drills were a big draw for the children in attendance. A Civil War-era baseball game brought a new dimension to the all-American sport. Special speakers included Adrian Cronauer, author of Good Morning, Vietnam, John Burnam, a dog handler in the Vietnam War and Dorinda Nicholson, who as a child witnessed the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

  To raise money to cover the basic expenses, the organizers auctioned homemade pies. In 2005, a new fundraising event was added before the event—flamingoing. People associated with the event snuck into the yards of neighbors to plant a flock of plastic flamingoes. To have the pink birds removed, homeowners made a $5 contribution to Freedom Fest. For another five bucks, that person could designate the next home to be invaded by the flock.

  Demand was greater than anticipated. The waiting list was long—filled with people who wanted the flock to visit their own homes, and others who wanted them to land in a friend’s yard. Organizers had to invest in a second flock to meet demand and get the flock to every yard on the list before the celebration began. Patriotic sentiment, homemade pies and family fun—nothing was more symbolic of the heartland of America than that. Co-organizer Cheryl Huston said, “If you didn’t love America when you got here, you will when you leave.”

  Skidmore, situated at the junction of Missouri Highway 113 and Route DD, was surrounded by endless acres of rolling farmland. Dusty gravel roads wended past large white farmhouses, weathered barns and fields of soybeans.

  In the year of Bobbie Jo’s birth, the population of her home town was 437. Since then, Skidmore had wasted away. By 2004, only 320 folks called it home.

  At the heart of town—the intersection known as Newton’s corner—Skidmore sagged with weariness. A sense of ennui went beyond the occupied buildings with their flaky paint and sagging gutters—past the vacant structures whose blinded, grime-caked windows were desperate for a swipe of ammonia water—and deep into the pores of the community.

  In some ways, the downsizing of this small town was similar to what was happening all across rural Missouri. In Skidmore, though, it seemed more extreme and more mind-numbing. One quarter of the population was gone, the doors to its only elementary school closed in 2001 and many of its businesses shuttered for good. The annual Skidmore Punkin Show was cancelled for the first time in 2004 due to lack of interest. The worn water tower bearing the town’s name loomed over Skidmore like a prescient tombstone.

  Still, Skidmore—and all of northwest Missouri—was a safe place to raise a family with rock-solid Midwestern values grounded in a sense of community and belonging that was as natural to the residents as the dirt beneath their feet. The rate of crime in the county was low. In the year 2000, only 317 crimes were reported, and two-thirds of those were for larceny charges. Only one was murder. Only one was rape.

  Somehow, though, many of the crimes in Nodaway County seemed to have a peculiarity about them that made them stand out from the bare statistics. In 1930, 20-year-old Velma Colter was a teacher at the Garrett School, a little white country schoolhouse with only a handful of students. On December 16, she was raped and beaten to death at her place of work.

  Before Christmas, authorities arrested a black ex-convict named Raymond Gunn. He confessed to the murder
after he was behind bars. A group of men planned to remove Gunn from official custody and administer their idea of swift justice. Sheriff Havre English heard about the plot and moved Gunn down to jail in St. Joseph for his safety before trial.

  The prisoner was returned to the Nodaway County Jail in time to attend his January 12 arraignment. When Sheriff English attempted to transport Gunn from the prison to the courthouse, he was overwhelmed by a large angry mob—estimates placed the number of people at somewhere between 800 to 3,000. They marched the handcuffed Gunn away from the authorities and out of town—down three miles of road to the place where Velma had died.

  Their thirst for vengeance intensified with each step they took, and their number grew with every passing minute. People from surrounding Missouri towns and even some from across the state line in Iowa gathered at the Garrett School.

  Gunn begged for his life all along the route of his forced death march. Instead of soothing the crowd or bringing it to its senses, his appeals to their mercy and humanity inflamed their passions even more. By the time the front of the mob escorting Gunn arrived at the schoolhouse, lines of incoming participants stretched out in lines a mile long in all four directions.

  A group of men formed a tight circle around Gunn, taunting and battering him as others raced inside the school in search of a ladder. When it was found, they propped it up on the side of the school building.

  Men dragged Gunn up the rungs to the rooftop. Angry hands ripped off shingles to expose the rafters beneath. Chains wrapped around the beams and around the terrified Raymond Gunn.

  On the ground, frenzied men siphoned gasoline from the cars at the scene. A chain of men passed the containers of lethal liquid from hand to hand across the schoolyard and up the ladder. On the roof, other men splashed the flammable liquid on the loose shingles, on the exposed beams and on the body of the black man accused—but not convicted—of raping and murdering a white woman.

  Gunn pulled his body into as tight a ball as the chains would allow. The match was lit. The flames soared. Smoke swirled into the country sky. One witness said that Gunn had passed out before the pyre was lit. Another said Gunn waved to the crowd before he died. But no one was deaf to his wails of agony. And everyone inhaled the reek of gasoline fumes and the stench of burning flesh.

  After ten minutes of burning, the roof collapsed. The remains of Raymond Gunn fell down into the school and landed on top of a desk in the classroom below.

  In Maryville, sixty National Guardsmen stood at the ready awaiting orders to leave the armory. Those orders never came.

  Thousands of participants and spectators made their way home. They would claim that they were never there. Velma’s students were transferred to other classrooms in the area. The Garrett School was never rebuilt. It became a site in a new high-tech treasure hunting—adventure geocaching. Participants used GPS coordinates posted on the Internet to locate a cross-country network of sites. In 2004, items placed in this cache included a 1930 S dime left in memory of Velma Colter.

  Lethal violence shattered the serenity of the farmland again. To all appearances, 37-year-old Bill Taylor and his 38-year-old wife, Debbie, were a typical couple struggling to earn a living from their land. They had two children, Doug and Lori.

  In the spring of 1994, Debbie visited counselors at Catholic Charities seven times. She spent her time in those sessions wrestling with personal demons, but never once indicated that she had any marital problems. Nonetheless, Bill was certain that the relationship was all she discussed.

  He managed to convince himself that his marriage was in serious trouble by the time summer rolled around. His fear gave significance to Debbie’s smallest actions. He worried when he observed Debbie standing next to the high school janitor that she stood too close. He worried about the underlying meaning behind Debbie’s purchase of the first two-piece bathing suit she had ever owned. His paranoia created a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  Anxiety brought out an edgy, argumentative side to Bill. He raged at petty slights. He hurled accusations. When words failed to release his anger, he lashed out with a shove, a slap or a punch.

  Although he was tearing apart the very marriage he wanted to preserve, Bill grabbed at opportunities to make things better. He told a friend he was working to win a contest. If he could sell enough bushels of seed corn, he would win the prize of a cruise for two. Bill said he desperately wanted to give his hard-working wife the vacation she deserved but he could not afford to give.

  The farmer counted on winning that sail into the sunset to save his failing marriage. When he didn’t, Bill pushed Debbie even more. On November 9, he and Debbie had a heated discussion about the possibility of separation. Bill fell asleep that night determined to find a way to avoid divorce at any cost.

  He woke in the morning with a plan. Out in the barnyard, he killed one of the cats. He placed its carcass in front of the doorway to the shed housing his combine. He called Debbie over and pointed to the animal as he climbed up into the combine. While Debbie examined the dead body, Bill put the monstrous piece of farm machinery into gear. The massive weight rolled over his wife, crushing the life out of her body. The impact threw Bill from the machine, causing serious injuries to him as well.

  The Taylors’ son Doug called the Nodaway Sheriff’s Department and reported a combine accident. Bill was rushed to the hospital at the Heartland Regional Medical Center in St. Joseph. Debbie was transported to the morgue.

  At autopsy, Dr. Michael Berkland determined that Debbie died from severe internal bleeding and crushing trauma. He also noted that some of the cuts on Debbie’s face predated her lethal encounter with the farm equipment. Dr. Berkland’s finding raised the specter of past domestic violence.

  Sheriff Ben Espey visited Bill in the hospital on Sunday, November 13. He didn’t want to go—not for the reason he was there. Espey grew up with Bill and his brother Wayne and considered both men his friends. But duty called and the sheriff set his personal feelings aside.

  He read the Miranda Rights out loud to Bill, taking great care not to skip a word or forget any important phrase. When the sheriff finished reading, Bill nodded his head. Espey handed his friend a waiver form. Bill signed it—tossing aside his right to have an attorney present at his questioning.

  Espey placed a tape recorder on a table between himself and Bill and said, “I’m gonna record this and it’s gonna go to the prosecutor.” He pressed the red RECORD button and began his interrogation. Before long Bill confessed that it wasn’t an accident—he knew what he was doing when he ran over his wife.

  The next day, the Nodaway County prosecutor charged Bill with second-degree murder in the death of Debbie Taylor. Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon amended the charge in December, raising the bar to first degree. At trial, Bill Taylor was found guilty and sentenced to life behind bars without a chance of parole.

  Two acts of violence drew attention to another small town in Nodaway County—Conception, Missouri, originally named Conception Junction. The town of 202 was situated less than twenty miles southeast of Maryville—about thirty miles from Skidmore.

  In 1972, Benny Kemper was 15 years old. He didn’t have any friends, but he did have a serious crush on Honnie Merrigan. Honnie’s brother Billy was in Benny’s class. He teased Benny about his infatuation with his sister and belittled his fellow classmate with the typical insensitivity of an adolescent.

  On the night of October 10, Benny grabbed a flashlight, a seven-inch knife and a .22-caliber bolt-action rifle from his home. Tonight, he decided he would kill Billy Merrigan.

  He crossed an open field near his home and walked a quarter of a mile to Billy’s house. When he arrived, no one was home. He crouched down in the darkness to wait for the family’s return. Alone with his thoughts, the mind of Benny Kemper turned darker than the night that surrounded him. He reached the conclusion that if he wanted to get away with the murder of Billy, he would have to kill Billy’s parents, too.

  The Merrigan car pulled i
nto the driveway at 10:40 P.M. Once the family was inside, Benny sliced the phone line and slipped into the basement. He ducked into the shadow of the stairway and listened to the family prepare for bed. The hollow sounds of footsteps on floorboards stopped. The voices above his head stilled. He gave them a little more time to fall asleep. Then, he crept up the steps.

  Tension jumped in his stomach. His breath escaped with a stuttering sigh. He made his way to the first-floor bedroom of Billy’s parents, Marion and Kathleen Merrigan.

  He held the flashlight next to the barrel of his weapon and raised them both. He flipped the switch on the light illuminating Marion’s face. He pulled the trigger and shot straight into that face—hitting Marion square in the nose. Pulling the trigger that first time was hard, “but after the first one, it was easy,” Benny said.

  After killing Marion, he swung his rifle to the right and aimed it at a terrified Kathleen. She could feel the warmth of her husband’s spattered blood on her skin. Every other inch of her body felt the chill of fear. Benny shot her twice in the head.

  Adrenaline coursed through Benny’s body. He wanted to race up the stairs to the second floor, issuing a primal scream as he ascended. He tamped down the urge and took the steps one at a time with uncommon stealth.

  Benny eased open the door to Billy’s room. Billy was awake, sitting up in his bed. Before Billy’s mind could comprehend the image before his eyes, it was over. Benny shot him three times.

  Awakened by the gunfire, Honnie stumbled out of bed and raced down the hall to her brother’s room. Benny turned the rifle on her and herded her back to her own room. She begged for her life.

  “I won’t kill you,” he said, “if you take off your clothes.”