MISSION, Kan. (AP) – A judge has granted a stay in what would be the US government’s first execution of a female prisoner in nearly seven decades – a Kansas woman who murdered an expectant mother in Missouri, cut the baby off her womb and the newborn died as her own.
Judge Patrick Hanlon granted the stay late Monday, citing the need to determine Montgomery’s mental competence, the Topeka Capital-Journal reported.. Lisa Montgomery was executed on Tuesday at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana, just eight days before President-elect Joe Biden, an opponent of the federal death penalty, took office.
Montgomery drove about 170 miles from her farm in Melvern, Kansas, to the town of Skidmore in northwestern Missouri under the guise of adopting a rat terrier puppy from Bobbie Jo Stinnett, a 23-year-old dog breeder. She strangled Stinnett with a rope before performing a gross caesarean section and fled with the baby.
She was arrested the next day after showing the premature child, Victoria Jo, who is now 16 years old and has not spoken publicly about the tragedy.
“As we walked over the threshold, our Amber Alert was scrolling across the TV at that moment,” recalled Randy Strong, who was part of the main business group in northwestern Missouri at the time.
He looked to the right and saw Montgomery holding the newborn and was overwhelmed with relief when she handed her over to the police. The previous hours had been a blur photographing Stinnett’s body and spending a sleepless night looking for clues – uncertain whether the baby was dead or alive and no idea what she looked like.
But then tips came about Montgomery, who had a history of fake pregnancies and suddenly had a baby. Strong, now the sheriff of Nodaway County, where the murder took place, jumped into an unmarked car with another officer. On the way, he discovered that the email address [email protected] used to bring about the deadly encounter with Stinnett had been sent over a dial-up connection at Montgomery’s house.
“I absolutely knew I was walking into the killer’s house,” Strong recalled, saying that rat terriers ran around his feet as he approached her house. Like Stinnett, Montgomery has also raised rat terriers.
Bobbie Jo Stinnett’s mother, Becky Harper, sobbed when she told a Missouri coordinator that she found her daughter in a pool of blood, her womb cut open, and the child she was carrying was missing.
“It’s like she exploded or something,” Harper told the coordinator on December 16, 2004, during the desperate but futile attempt to get help for her daughter.
Prosecutors said her motive was that Stinnett’s ex-husband knew she had undergone a tubal ligation that rendered her infertile and planned to reveal that she lied about her pregnancy in an attempt to gain custody of two of their four children. Needing a baby for a fast-approaching court date, Montgomery turned her attention to Stinnett, whom she’d met at dog shows.
However, Montgomery’s lawyers have argued that sexual abuse during Montgomery’s childhood led to mental illness. Attorney Kelley Henry spoke out in favor of Monday’s decision, saying in a statement to the Capital-Journal that “Mrs. Montgomery has brain damage and a serious mental illness that has been made worse by the lifelong sexual torture she endured at the hands of caregivers. “
Her stepfather denied the sexual abuse in a videotaped testimony and said he had poor memory when faced with a transcript of divorce proceedings admitting physical assault. Her mother stated that she never complained to the police for threatening her and her children.
But the jurors who heard the case, some wept over the gruesome testimony, ignored the defense by condemning her for kidnapping and killing her.
Prosecutors alleged that Stinnett regained consciousness and tried to defend herself while Montgomery used a kitchen knife to cut the girl from her womb. Later that day, Montgomery called her husband to pick her up in a Long John Silver’s parking lot in Topeka, Kansas, telling him she had delivered the baby earlier in the day at a nearby birth center.
She eventually confessed, and the rope and bloody knife that killed Stinnett were found in her car. A search on her computer showed that she was using it to investigate caesarean sections and order a birth kit.
Stinnett’s husband, Zeb, told jurors that his world “came to an end” when he learned that his wife was dead. He said he did not return to the couple’s home for months in Skidmore, a small farming community that previously rose to prominence after the 1981 murder of city groomer Ken Rex McElroy in front of a mob who refused to implicate the killer or killers. That crime was chronicled in a book, “In Broad Daylight,” as well as a TV movie, the movie “Without Mercy” and the miniseries “No One Saw a Thing.”
Recently, on Victoria Jo’s birthday, he messaged Strong, the sheriff, via Facebook Messenger thanking him.
“I just cried,” Strong recalled. “He will be constantly reminded of this, whether in his nightmares or when someone calls and wants to interview him. The family does not want to be interviewed. They want to be left alone. The Skidmore community has a troubling past and history behind it. They didn’t want this. They didn’t deserve this. “
Montgomery was originally going to be put to death on December 8. But the execution was temporarily blocked after her lawyers contracted the coronavirus while visiting her in prison.
The resumption of federal executions after a 17-year hiatus began on July 14. Anti-death penalty groups said President Donald Trump is pushing for pre-election executions in November in a cynical attempt to destroy a reputation as a leader of law and order.
US officials have portrayed that the executions brought long-delayed justice for victims and their families.