A Life for a Life

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
True Crime Brewery contains disturbing content related to real life crimes.
Medical information is opinion based on facts of a crime
and should not be interpreted as medical advice or treatment.
Listener discretion is advised.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Welcome to True Crime Brewery.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
I'm Jill and I'm Dick.

Speaker 4 (00:31):
So.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
On December sixteenth, two thousand and four, Becky Harper made
a call to nine one pint one. It was just
after checking in on her twenty three year old daughter,
Bobby Joe. So Bobby Joe, who was eight months pregnant,
was lying on the floor in her home and something
was horribly wrong. Paramedics raced to the scene, where they
found Bobby Joe dead with devastating injuries to her abdomen.

(00:55):
So Bobby Joe had been brutally killed and her unborn
baby was missing. In today's episode, A Life for a Life,
we'll discuss this case, as well as a couple of
similar cases and the phenomenon of fetal abductions. Investigators found
no signs of forced entry into Bobby Joe's home, which
suggested that she may have known her killer. An amber

(01:18):
alert was put out for the baby, as detectives canvass
the neighborhood. They did find one witness who reported seeing
an unfamiliar car parked out front. Investigators would learn that
Bobby Joe's murder was premeditated and the motive was the
abduction of Bobby Joe's baby. So efforts to find the
baby and solve this murder would lead investigators to a

(01:39):
very twisted plot and a predator who many people wouldn't
have expected.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
So today's beer is the sixth glass quadruple Ale, brewed
by Boulevard Brewing Company in Kansas City. This is a
quad It's a ten point two percent alcohol by volume.
These are pretty hefty beers, very filling to the dark
amber color, thick, sticky tan head, has a nice aroma,
kind of dark fruit bread molasses. Tastes like a little

(02:07):
bit like raisin bread molasses, a little spice, late, very
full bodied, and alcohol's hidden pretty well. So be careful
with this one.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Okay, Well, take it easy. Why don't you open it
up for us? Okay, okay, Dicky. So this happened right
before Christmas in two thousand and four, which makes it
even sadder in my opinion.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
Well, time of year when you're not supposed to have
stuff like this happen right, Well.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
Yeah, it just seems to make it more poignant. I mean,
anything sad at the holidays, it just seems.

Speaker 3 (02:45):
Worse, does so. It nine days before Christmas, as he
said two thousand and four, and the young mother to be,
Bobby Joe, was at the most awkward stage of her pregnancy.
Easily set off balance. She had to hold on to
a piece of furniture or against the wall whenever she
bent down to pick something up. The neighbor Chris Law,
had planned to walk over and check in on Bobby

(03:06):
Joe that afternoon. He wanted to ask her about her
recent prenatal test results and see if she needed anything.
But he hesitated when he started to go over because
he saw a dirty, pinkish red car parked in front
of her house, kind of pointing the wrong way. She
already had company, so he decided he would catch up
with his young neighbor later. He got into his car
to run a few errands.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yeah, and he would regret that, of course. But once
Chris had left the neighborhood, no one was watching Bobby
Joe's house anymore. She was alone with her visitor, so
the rat terriers that she loved and that she bred
for a small prophet were put in their room, and
when Bobby Joe's front door swung open, there was no
one around to see the peculiar woman with dirty blonde

(03:48):
hair walk across the front porch and to that unfamiliar vehicle.
No one was around to question her about the blanketed
bundle that she was holding in her arms either. No
one heard the cry of a new born infant as
the woman drove the car away, and she made a
U turn at the dead end to head for somewhere
that was totally unknown. So a brief time later, Becky

(04:10):
Harper turned onto the street and she turned around at
the dead end and pulled in front of her daughter,
Bobby Joe's home. So it was three thirty in the afternoon,
but her first hint that something was wrong was that
the front door was ajar, So just a hint of
Wherey crossed her mind. You know that feeling you get when.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
Mm yeah, a little tingle.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
Yeah, something just isn't quite right here, And of course
it's worse when it's someone who's that pregnant. You worry
right right, yeah. And it was December and northwest Missouri,
so it was quite cold. Even the sunny days could
be bitterly cold. So Becky pushed the door all the
way open and called out her daughter's name, but she
got no response. And this was strange. It was a

(04:52):
very tiny house. So had Bobby Joe fallen or hurt herself?
Had she gone into early labor? Was she too sick
to end answer? Becky hesitated as she stepped inside, but
she didn't see anything alarming. The living room was neat,
it was orderly as usual. She moved to the dining
room and then the kitchen, and everything seemed to be
in its place, even this late in her pregnancy. Bobby

(05:15):
Joe really kept her modest home tidy and inviting. So
Becky called out to her daughter again, and she heard
some barks from Bobby Joe's dogs past the kitchen. The
dogs were confined in the small bedroom that Bobby Joe
kept for them, so barks and whimpers were coming from
the kennels, And as she reached the doorway to that room,
a horrific sight struck her and just stopped her deadener trucks.

(05:39):
There was blood, so much blood, more blood than she
had ever seen except maybe in a horror film. Red
smears and clots covered the floorboards. It was like red,
thick mud everywhere. Then she saw the really horrible part,
her daughter, Bobby Joe on the floor. But she told herself, well,
all that blood must have come from the do or something.

(06:01):
Bobby Joe would be heartbroken that something happened to her dogs,
but she would be okay. But within seconds, Becky had
no choice but to actually know that it was her
daughter on the floor in a huge puddle of blood.
Splatches of blood covered Bobby Joe's face, Streaks marked her arms.
Her belly, which had been round and full from pregnancy,

(06:22):
was splayed open. Some of her internal organs protruded and
hung onto the floor. So the scene just wouldn't add
up in Becky's mind. It made no sense, and she
was just struggling to take in what the hell had
happened here. So once she called nine to one one,
she really wasn't able to think through and she just said,
my daughter's intestines exploded, because that's what it looked like

(06:44):
to her. She didn't know how else to describe what
she was seeing.

Speaker 3 (06:47):
I think that's a pretty good description.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah, actually, I guess it is.

Speaker 3 (06:51):
Her daughter had been eviscerated.

Speaker 2 (06:53):
Yeah, just horrible, horrible, can't imagine. No, So the operator
asked her if she was still brief. Becky kneeled in
the blood beside Bobby Joe and struggled just to keep
it together. She followed instructions as the nine one one
operator talked her step by step through CPR. So she
tilted beck Bobby Joe's head and pinched her nose, covering

(07:14):
her daughter's mouth with her own and giving breaths. Then
she sat up and put her hands on Bobby Joe's
chest to do compressions. So she did this over and
over as she was instructed, just trying to ignore how
futile her efforts seemed. So she cried, but she didn't stop.
County Sheriff Ben Espy was the first responder on that scene,

(07:35):
and Becky turned to him and begged him for his help,
please save her daughter. He saw no signs of life
in the body of the young woman on the floor,
but he worked on resuscitating her with Becky while the
distressed dogs whimpered and barked. Becky had no idea that
she was walking into a nightmare. As she drove to
the white bungalow with flaking paint that Bobby Joe and

(07:57):
her husband, zeb Stinnett called home. They were such as
a cute couple, friendly but quiet, and just full of
dreams for their future family. So the couple were only
in their early twenties and their marriage was less than
two years old. Their first child was due on January nineteenth,
so in about a month, they'd saved every penny they
could to build a nest egg to make it possible

(08:19):
to own their own home. They really wanted a life
for their baby that would exceed the expectations that they'd
had for their own lives. So this was truly a tragedy.

Speaker 3 (08:29):
I can't imagine what chaos was going on that house.
This dead body on the floor, her mother really bad shape,
the policeman trying to see if he can do anything.
And then you got these little rat terriers yapping around
going nuts.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
I'm sure, yes, I'm sure they were. I mean they
can sense when something's wrong. Oh yeah, yes.

Speaker 3 (08:48):
So on the east end of Elm Street, neighbor Carla
Wetzel heard the sirens. She could not see where the
vehicle stopped, but it was just passed the time schooled out,
and she worried that a school bus had been in
an accident. Across the street from the Stennet's home. Another
family stopped what they were doing as the ambulance pulled
into the street, So five minutes after Sheriff Espy's arrival,

(09:09):
the paramedics jumped out of the ambulance and into the house,
where they relieved Becky and the sheriff. Emergency medical workers
checked for vital signs and found no signs of life. Still,
they attempted to revive Bobby Joe, continuing CPR, failing to
get a response because it was way too late. The
sheriff told the paramedics that Bobby Joe was eight months pregnant.

(09:29):
Then he listened in disbelief as one of the EMTs
pointed to the cut umbilical cord and said, this lady's
been murdered because someone came to take the baby out
of her body.

Speaker 2 (09:39):
Well that was shocking, Yeah, and Becky couldn't even imagine
that someone would kill her daughter and steal her baby.
She'd really never heard of such a thing.

Speaker 3 (09:47):
Well, fortunately it's not that common, right, So.

Speaker 2 (09:50):
All the worries she had for her daughter and her
daughter's health and the baby. This was something that would
never have occurred to her.

Speaker 3 (09:57):
I doubt that it would occur to anybody.

Speaker 2 (09:59):
Yeah. True. In the kitchen, a devastated Becky Harper made
her way to the sink and turned on the water.
She stuck her bloody hands under the faucet and tried
to wash away the blood. Bobby Joe was pronounced dead
at Saint Francis Hospital and Health Services. So the woman
who had killed Bobby Joe drove past farmhouses and barns

(10:20):
across miles of countryside before she reached Saint Joseph, Missouri.
She took inter State twenty ninth south. She crossed the
Missouri River and got into Kansas. Then she turned west
on Interstate seven towards Topeka. In the seat beside her,
Bobby Joe's baby cried and slept. This wasn't the puppy
that she had told Bobby Joe she'd come there for.

(10:42):
As she made the two and a half hour drive
from Skidmore, Missouri to Topeka, Kansas, what was she thinking?
It's hard to imagine. Was she trying to convince herself
that this really was her baby? Did she convince herself
of the story that she would later tell her mother
that she found the baby on the floor, picked her up,
and ran away from violence that had been committed by

(11:04):
an unknown perpetrator. She would have time to plot and
plan her actions and to help herself get away with
this murder and keep the baby. But we have no
way of knowing how deluded she was. Still we know
that she was manipulative enough to hide her actions and
to lie to everyone. It was five point fifteen when
she called her husband from the parking lot of along

(11:26):
John Silvers. She told him that she'd gone to Tupeka
to do some shopping that day, but she'd gone into
labor while running errants. She said she'd rushed to the
Birth and Women's Center, where their healthy daughter was born.
Her husband believed his wife when she told him she
was pregnant, and he believed her now when she told
him she had the baby. He thought he was the

(11:47):
father of a newborn baby girl. In his first marriage,
she'd had three boys, so this baby was his first daughter,
and he was really thrilled. He called two of his
wife's older children, a ninth grader and a senior in
high school, and he told them the good news from
their mother, So all three of them jumped into his
pickup and drove north. The woman sat in her car

(12:07):
with the baby, awaiting the family's arrival at the Long
John Silvers. Then she picked up her cell phone and
she called the minister at the church where she and
her husband had been married. This was another planned step
in her big lie. So for her, the more people
who thought she had given birth, the more she would
believe it herself. She told the minister about the labor

(12:27):
that had taken her by surprise, and that as soon
as her husband got to Topeka, she and the baby
would be coming home. She also promised that she would
bring her new baby daughter by to see him very soon.
So this was planned out, and she's trying to cover
her tracks as quickly as she can. But it's hard
to know. Was she trying to convince herself It kind

(12:48):
of seems that way.

Speaker 3 (12:49):
Yeah. I think she's going to just go to the
endpoint and say, well, I've got my baby, and I'm
not going to dwell on how I got the baby.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
I mean, it's hard to be inside her mind because
of course this was a disturbed person.

Speaker 3 (13:01):
Quite a bit. Yeah, we'll hear more about that way.

Speaker 2 (13:03):
You hear a lot about that.

Speaker 3 (13:05):
So her husband pulled into the parking lot. He's all
smiles and tearful. He's just really overwhelmed that he's got
a little girl. He and the teens hopped out of
the truck. He rushed over to his wife and helped
her and the baby get into the cab of his pickup.
The two older kids got into their mother's car, and
the high school senior drove it, following her father's pickup
down State Route thirty one to their home in Milvern, Kansas.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
So I just can't go on with the story without
saying something about the naivete of the husband. Any comments
from you, well yeah, I mean, we don't know the
background yet, but just the fact that she would be
waiting in a car, well, why she in a hospital?

Speaker 3 (13:46):
I got to figure that this guy is relatively unsophisticated
and not real knowledgeable about things. If you think about it,
you deliver a baby at thirty six weeks, you're probably
not going to go home than hours of birth.

Speaker 2 (14:01):
I think giving birth to a baby at any stage
of your pregnancy, you're going to be in the hospital
at least for a day, at least long enough for
your husband to pick you up pretty much.

Speaker 3 (14:11):
Yeah, yeah, but that's he doesn't think about that. And
how has he lived with this lady for eight months
of pregnancy and not be skeptical? I know, how do
you put that over?

Speaker 2 (14:23):
How did he believe that first?

Speaker 3 (14:25):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (14:26):
And he isn't like this young guy with no life experience.
He's had three children with his previous wife.

Speaker 3 (14:32):
He had.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
Yeah. So back at home, the high school senior used
her cell phone to take some photos of her mother
and the baby, who she really believed was her half sister.
Then the husband used a camcorder to record the homecoming
on videotape. When that initial excitement kind of died down,
the woman prepared to make shift bed for the baby

(14:53):
and settled her in for the night. She then sat
down at her computer and she emailed the youngest of
her three daughters, who now lived with a family friend
in Alabama. So none of her other children lived with her,
So to the email announcing the birth, she attached a
photo of the new baby, who she named Abigail.

Speaker 3 (15:13):
Before the first hour of the investigation was complete, investigators
had confirmed that Zeb's Stinnett was not responsible for his
wife's death. He had not left his job at Kawasaki
Motors in Maryville that afternoon that he was briefly a
suspect probably didn't even cross Zeb's mind. His wife was
dead and his baby was missing. When Skidmore's speculation was

(15:35):
running wild, people prayed that the newborn baby survived and
would be found. Cheryl Houston, Becky Harper's close friend from
high school, left her job at Walmart at the end
of her shift and one of the door greaders stopped
her to tell her about the horrible news. When she
drove past Dolm Street, official vehicles flashing lights in a
yellow crime scene tape marked Bobby Joe's house. She never

(15:58):
knew a mother and daughter with a clothes relationship than
the one between Becky and Bobby Joe, and she just
felt terrible for Becky.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
Yeah, the words spread to the local media and they
came to the crime scene. An hour and a half
into the investigation, the sheriff contacted the state headquarters of
the Amber Alert System in Jefferson City, so they asked
for hair color, eye color, skin complexion size, and weight
of the abduction victim, but SB had no answers for that,

(16:27):
so officials insisted there was nothing they can do. An
AMBER alert had to meet specific criteria and this case
didn't meet the standards. But with some work in contacting
the right people, they would eventually get the AMBER alert out.
At the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children outside
of Washington, d C, news of this abduction reached the

(16:48):
desk of Kathy Naherney, and she pulled information from similar
cases and gathered contact information for the investigators who'd handled.
The most recent cesarean abduction in Oklahoma that had happened
one year earlier. So they wanted investigators to know the
profile of this kind of an offender and to realize

(17:10):
that they were not looking for a typical criminal. They
wanted them to be able to use the knowledge of
experienced law enforcement agencies and not to waste time following
up on leads that were unproductive because we don't even
know if the baby's alive or in good help. So
the sheriff went to the hospital and talked to the
medical staff, who assured him that the baby was probably

(17:31):
still alive.

Speaker 3 (17:32):
I don't know if they're just trying to placate the
sheriff for what. Yeah, that's a very Peugh assumption to make.

Speaker 2 (17:39):
Yeah, I guess, though, would she take the baby if
the baby.

Speaker 3 (17:41):
Died, she might not even know she's going to get
the baby out and get away quickly.

Speaker 2 (17:45):
Well, I guess. But they did tell them that if
the infant was premature, she may have suffered traumas during
the assault, and that would include a possible lack of oxygen.
So they knew they needed the help of the public
to get this baby home. Every moment that passed gave
the murderer abductor time to get further and further from
the crime scene, far enough to hide the baby's in

(18:06):
identity and separate the infant from its family for possibly
its whole life. So Missouri State Highway Patrol vehicles from
that region gathered in the area around Skidmore, and those officers,
the sheriff and his deputies put together an extensive search
for a newborn. So they looked in every dumpster on roadsides,

(18:27):
checking out any trash that would be large enough for
a newborn. At every bridge, they examined the creek beds
and water for anything that could have been a baby
thrown over the side. Horrific as that sounds. They also
kept an eye on the passing traffic for any vehicle
matching the description of the car that had been seen
by one neighbor in front of the sten At home.

(19:10):
So the police went door to door, canvassing a four
block radius of the stint At home. At the house,
neither the jams nor the lock showed any signs of
forced entry. In the living room, not one single thing
looked out of place. There was a computer that would
be taken and examined for any information that might show
some communications from or to the killer. The kitchen was

(19:32):
where the first signs of violence could be seen, and
someone had attempted to clean up in the blood spattered sink.
Off to the left of the dining room was a
bedroom where evidence of a struggle was all over the floor.
Knowing that the person who died there was a young,
pregnant woman was really shocking and just hard to even comprehend.
Prime scene experts came to recover prints, take all straight

(19:55):
fibers at any microscopic evidence that they could find. The
blood on the floor was examined, photographed, and analyzed. Samples
were taken to determine if all of it was the
victim's blood or if maybe it included blood from the
killer or from the baby. Since no one with ownership
of the computer, which would just be Bobby Joe or
zeb were considered suspects, law enforcement could move forward without

(20:19):
any legal complications and they could retrieve any data to
help solve this case. So they're right on it right away.

Speaker 3 (20:26):
They did very well, very quick work. Now, at first
it appeared to be just a normal household personal computer
with little Internet activity, but when they looked at the
chat room use a clue came from the casual back
and forth conversations. There is mention of a woman north
of Fairfax, Missouri who was supposed to meet that day
with Bobby Joe.

Speaker 2 (20:46):
And this was kind of their first lead. Yes, it
was if she was supposed to meet with her that day,
could be something, maybe not, but definitely could be something.

Speaker 3 (20:55):
Well, yeah, I mean it's the day that the murder occurred. Yes, So,
an Internet conversation between Happy Havenfarms at hotmail dot com
ex Gringo at hotmail dot com and Fisher four Kids
at hotmail dot com popped up the Happy Haven Farms
address belonged to Bobby Joe Stinnett. The Fisher for Kids
address belonged to a woman identified as Darlene Fisher. Fisher

(21:19):
talked about her four kids, her need to get out
of the chatroom and into the kitchen to mix up
her for her children. She chatted about her plans to
drop by the Stennet house the next day to see
Bobby Joe's puppies, as she said is December sixteenth, the
day of the murder. At first, she just seemed to
be a woman who'd planned to come to Bobby Joe's
home on the same day as she has murdered, and

(21:39):
may have seen something relevant during her visit, or she
may have seen the perpetrator without knowing it, or she
was a perpetrator.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
Yeah, of course. So Sheriff s b and every available
highway patrol officer in the area headed to Fairfax. But
no matter how hard they searched, they could find no
record of Darlene Fisher in the area, no phone number,
no address, really, no indication that she'd ever lived anywhere
near that town. But they persevered, and they asked all around.

(22:09):
Still the name did not sound familiar to anyone they
spoke with, not to law enforcement or to the public.
So they moved out from the town's center until almost midnight,
when they thought they may have caught a break. Highway
patrol noticed a car going at a high speed in
Atchison County, just twenty two miles from Skidmore, and it
matched the description of the vehicle seen in front of

(22:30):
the Stinnet House earlier that afternoon, So they drove through
the night at dangerous speeds. The police were afraid that
their target would lose control of the car and wreck it.
But when at last law enforcement succeeded in stopping the driver,
there was no baby. It was just a reckless driver.
So discouraged and you know, disappointed, they ticketed him and

(22:51):
went back to their search. At twelve thirty a m.
On December seventeenth, the Amber Alert did go out from
coast to coast. The statement asked people to look out
for and report and he abandoned or discarded bloody clothing
or towels. It also warned that the infant could have
health issues and would have a freshly cut umbilical cord.

(23:14):
So the release of this information nationwide would really have
people searching everywhere.

Speaker 3 (23:19):
Out in the mobile command post on Elm Street and Skidmore,
the computer expert finished his preliminary review of the Stenet's
computer without finding any additional information to help in the
search for Darling Fisher. He needed an IP address before
he could learn more about it. Around two a m.
He packed up a computer and his equipment and took
it all to his office at Saint Joseph's Police Department.

(23:40):
Detectives were convinced that Darling Fisher was a fake name
because they'd been searching for hours. Nobody knew of Darley
and Fisher. It was up to the computer forensic specialist
to find the true identity of Darley and Fisher. Sheriff
Espy was happy about the news coverage reports provided on
the Amber alert for Bobby Joe's baby. He certainly did

(24:01):
not want the media to get in the way of
the crime scene, but he did want to keep them
as an ally. But with a murder this fresh and
a child still missing, it was hard to know what
information needed to be withheld to solve the crime and
what needed to be released to find the baby.

Speaker 2 (24:15):
Yeah, there was one lead about two men, a woman,
and a black market baby selling ring, which led the
sheriff to announce that they were looking for these three
persons of interest. They also told the media that they
wanted to find a nineteen eighties or nineteen nineties red
two door hatchback, quite possibly a Honda. They called a
news conference late Friday morning, that's the next morning, and

(24:37):
now that they thought they had a more promising lead,
the sheriff stepped up to the microphone and explained that
an autopsy was now under way in Jackson County. He said,
more than likely our victim was strangled and probably deceased
when the baby was removed from her womb. The mother
was eight months pregnant, so we're looking at a one
month premature baby that was removed with the umbilical cord cut.

(25:00):
He said that the evidence shows that the baby was
probably wrapped up and taken out of the home. They
were looking for a red car that had been sitting
in the driveway from at least two thirty to three,
which was the time of the crime. So in response
to their questions, he told them that neither the investigators
nor the family knew of any possible suspects. Once they

(25:20):
were able to get the IP address for Darlene Fisher,
an FBI agent contacted Senior Security specialist Melissa Irwin at
quest Communications, and she confirmed that her company hosted that address.
So this was a huge break, very big break, YEP.
Performing a reverse domain name search, she was able to
point to a Topeka, Kansas server. Now the investigators had

(25:43):
a specific geographic area for the search. They determined that
the user access to server through a dial up connection.
Remember those I remember?

Speaker 3 (25:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:53):
The telephone number making that call on the afternoon of
December fifteenth originated from three two four one nine South
Adams Road in Melvern, Kansas. So the investigators centered in
on Topeka and they raced thirty miles southwest to Melvern.
So the investigators who were centered in Topeka raced thirty
miles southwest to Malvern, which is a tiny town with

(26:16):
a population of just four hundred people, but it's still
a little bit bigger than skidmore So, six FBI agents
and Kansas Lawnforcement officials gathered around the farmhouse of Kevin
and Lisa Montgomery, so when they arrived no one was
at home. Putting together Chris Law's description of the car
he'd seen at the stin at home with information from

(26:37):
the Kansas Vehicle registration database, they would know the Montgomerys
were on their way home as soon as they spotted
a dirty red Toyota Corolla. On the morning of December seventeenth,
Kevin and Lisa Montgomery were kind of going about their business.
They bundled up the baby, got in the car, and
drove off. It was about nine thirty in the morning
when Kevin, Lisa, and the baby that they named Abigail

(27:00):
entered the whistle Stop Cafe for breakfast. The whistle Stop
was in the middle of a block long strip of
buildings in downtown Melvern. In downtown yeah like the two streets.

Speaker 3 (27:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:11):
Inside the cafe was very small and cozy, and of course,
in a town that small, everybody knew each other. All
of the tables were flanked by black metal chairs with
maroon vinyl seats, so it kind of had that vintage
cafe look. Kevin and Lisa rarely ate at this cafe,
but Kevin's parents were well known among the regulars, So

(27:31):
after the couple sat down at a small, single table
and Lisa set the baby carrier on the floor by
her feet, they ordered breakfast. This new baby drew a
lot of attention. Everyone wanted to see her. One of
the customers actually carried the baby from table to table,
showing her off to the dozen or so people who
were there. Well, Kevin and Lisa ate, So that just

(27:52):
seems kind of crazy. I don't think i'd take a
baby out one day after they're born, especially walk them
around and show them off. Lisa just didn't seem like
protective of the baby.

Speaker 3 (28:03):
You might wonder why, but the owner of the whistle
stop said, Lisa, you don't bring a new mood out
in public. Yeah, it's only a day old, Lisa sibby. Yeah,
you don't bring a baby out one day old.

Speaker 5 (28:14):
Now.

Speaker 2 (28:15):
Infection?

Speaker 3 (28:16):
What infection? Mostly?

Speaker 2 (28:17):
Yeah, they really have to build up their immunity, that's right. Yeah.
So the owner also said, we didn't even know you
were pregnant. Most people didn't. So Lisa turned her attention
back to her breakfast, and despite the harsh words that
she got from Kathy, she couldn't help noticing that Kathy
enjoyed the baby. Kathy smiled down at the pretty little

(28:38):
infant who was wearing a pink hat. There wasn't amber
alert that Kathy heard on the news that morning, but
this didn't even cross her mind at the time. Kevin's boss,
Darryl Schultz, was there, too. He hadn't turned on the
TV yet that day and didn't know that the authorities
had issued an alert. But for some reason, the presence
of that baby did concern him. It's probably because he

(28:58):
knew Lisa the baby herself was one of the cutest
he'd ever seen, but the timing of her arrival really
made him feel uncomfortable. So he was at the cafe
and he walked over to the couple and he said,
where in the world did you get this baby? But
Lisa explained her story. Yeah, she explained her story of
the baby's birth. You know that she was out in

(29:20):
Topeka shopping. And Daryl said, well, you didn't even look
that close to delivery when I saw you a week ago,
so he's not holding back. But Kevin said, well, the
baby was small, and added that Lisa had never shown
much during any of her pregnancies. So Daryl asked Kevin
about the birth experience, and Kevin told him, well, I
wasn't even there. I didn't know about the baby till

(29:42):
I got home and Lisa called me from Topeka. So
red flags are flying, aren't they? Yeah, because anyone with
common sense just thinks this is strange and if you
knew Lisa, I knew some of her history, you'd be
suspicious quite yeah, but I guess she had Kevin just
really fooled. Even though Darrell knew something was just not
right with that answer, still, he complimented the couple on

(30:05):
the baby and didn't say anything else. After they ate,
the couple went up the street about two blocks down
and around the corner to the parsonage of the First
Church of God. That's where Kevin, Lisa, and Kevin's parents
regularly worshiped, so they wanted Reverend Mike Wheatley and his
wife to see the baby. When the Wheatles opened the door,
Kevin was smiling and Lisa did look really tired, like

(30:28):
someone who might have given birth the day before. But
they did notice she was quieter than usual, and they
were taken aback because for months they had not believed
that Lisa really was pregnant. They had suspected that she
was only claiming to be pregnant to get attention, but
now they saw there was proof of her pregnancy. It
did seem odd, though, that the Montgomerys were bringing the

(30:48):
baby around to visit so soon. Lisa told them that
she and Kevin selected Abigail as the name because they
wanted a biblical name for their child, and Abigail was
a reference to one of King David's wives in the
Old Testament. So the wheat leaves listened politely. But they
did notice a little scratch on the baby's cheek, as
if she gouged herself with her tiny finger. Now, which okay,

(31:10):
fair enough, babies do, that can happen, yep. But they
also saw a small bruise on the back of her hand.

Speaker 3 (31:16):
Yeah, that probably shouldn't be there.

Speaker 2 (31:17):
Yeah. Well, neither of these little injuries seemed really, you know,
too strange to raise flags. But they couldn't understand why
the infant's head was not misshapen, because Lisa said it
was a vaginal birth just one day before, and this
baby had a perfectly round head.

Speaker 3 (31:32):
Well, most vaginable births have some degree of molding of
the skull, but not all of them.

Speaker 2 (31:38):
No, but usually yeah.

Speaker 3 (31:39):
Usually you cou'd say, I had a thirty six week
infant who weighed what she weighed five pounds.

Speaker 2 (31:44):
Something over five pounds. Yeah, yeah, so.

Speaker 3 (31:47):
She could, and the mother's given birth before, so there
might not be much of any molding.

Speaker 2 (31:52):
Yeah, And I don't think the molding was that big
of a deal. I think it's just all these little
things adding up.

Speaker 3 (31:57):
Yeah, if you look at them collectively.

Speaker 2 (31:59):
Yes, Because Lisa she was strange and which she get
more interested.

Speaker 3 (32:03):
Very strange.

Speaker 2 (32:04):
Yeah, the whole birth process that she explained didn't make
any sense. No, even if she did have her water
break when she was shopping, she would have gone to
have the baby at a birthing center, which she said
she did. But why wouldn't she have her husband come
and get her there. Why would she be at the
Long John Silvers.

Speaker 3 (32:22):
Well, I can't answer that.

Speaker 2 (32:23):
Yeah, so that was really weird. So after visiting the minister,
Kevin and Lisa drove down to Lynden, Kansas, and they
stopped by the county courthouse. So their first stop was
the County Appraiser's office, and that's where Lisa's weekend co
worker at Casey's General Store would work on the weekdays,
and Lisa wanted to show off her baby to her,

(32:44):
but her friend wasn't there. All the staff of that
office had gone out for a celebratory Christmas meal together,
so it was like their office Christmas party. So the
only person behind the counter was an employee of the
county Clerk's office who Lisa didn't really know very well.
So Kevin, Lisa, and baby Abigail went down one door
to the county Clerk's office, where one door down from

(33:05):
the county Clerk's office, and they smiled as the staff
there ood or odd over the baby. Lisa again shared
her story of the baby's birth, her surprise winter water broke,
and the experience she had of driving herself while in
labor to the birthing center. So it's just kind of
weird that she's going around showing the baby off to everyone. Sure,
is it's weird if it actually was her baby, but

(33:28):
it's also weird as someone who abducted this baby and
committed a murder.

Speaker 3 (33:32):
Yeah, and she already has people figuring she was faking
a pregnancy or they had doubts. Absolutely, So why are
you drawing attention to yourself?

Speaker 2 (33:40):
Well, that's what I thought when I first read about it,
And then I thought, well, it seems like she had
this idea that the more people who accept her story,
the truer her story is. You know how, if a
lie gets enough acknowledgment, then someone who's a pathological liar
like that can convince themselves of the lie, right, So
I think it was something like that going on.

Speaker 3 (34:00):
So the next step for the couple was to Lisa's
ex husband, Carl Bowman and his new wife Vanessa. They
went to their house and pretty much defiantly, Lisa showed
the baby to the father of her other four children.
Carl did not know what to say. Vanessa pulled Kevin
aside and said, is this really your baby? Are you
sure Lisa did by it somewhere or steal it from someone.

(34:23):
Kevin looked at Vanessa as she was nuts. He told
Lisa it was time to leave.

Speaker 2 (34:28):
Well, you would if you bring your baby to visit
someone and they say that, you'd say, are you insane?

Speaker 3 (34:33):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (34:33):
Why would you say that? I mean, it is insulting
at the very least, it crazy that someone would say
that to you about your child.

Speaker 3 (34:41):
Yeah, well, you know, bitter divorce, the new wife doesn't
like the former wife.

Speaker 2 (34:46):
Well yeah, and there's good reason, yes there is. So
Lisa and Kevin then headed back to their home in Malvern.
Although Lisa's mother, Judy, lived on a farm in the
outskirt outskirts of Lindon, they did not take the baby
there for a visit, so big issues with her mom.
Unaware of Lisa's new baby and unaware of the Amber alert,

(35:07):
Judy was very surprised when she got a call from
one of her friends who worked at the courthouse. The
woman congratulated her on being a grandmother again and being
well aware of her daughter's history. Judy said, yeah, right,
she either stole it or she bought it. So wow,
a lot going on behind the scenes here, right.

Speaker 3 (35:27):
It looks like anybody who knew Lisa when she was
younger knew what the difficulties were, yeah, or suspected.

Speaker 2 (35:34):
Well, yeah, it's just everybody's got this weird perception of her.

Speaker 3 (35:38):
Yeah, well, why don't you go over Lisa's history?

Speaker 2 (35:40):
Okay, yeah, because it's it's fascinating. So it is shocking
that her mother's first comment about the baby was that
she had stolen it. But like I said, her childhood
had been a real horror show. So Lisa had been
sexually and physically abused by her stepfather for years, and
her mother and father divorce when she was sixteen, and

(36:02):
apparently her mother blamed Lisa for the divorce. Her mother
would deny it, but Lisa and Judy had a very
tumultuous relationship then. And we'll get more into her childhood
when we talk about the trial. So Lisa married Carl Bowman,
who was her stepbrother, when she was eighteen years old.
So there's something.

Speaker 3 (36:20):
Weird number one. Number two, she had her first child
five months.

Speaker 2 (36:24):
Later, so she'd gotten pregnant by her stepbrother and they'd
probably been told they have to get married. Yeah, but
she would have three more children over the next three years.

Speaker 3 (36:33):
So she was pregnant most of the time over three years. Yeap.

Speaker 2 (36:36):
And I think when you're in a situation like that,
I think self esteem or self worth can just be
based on producing babies, which is very sad. But in
nineteen ninety she had a tubal ligation. She would claim
that Karl and her mother forced her to have the surgery.
In the years following this surgery, Lisa would claim to
be pregnant four more times. In nineteen ninety four, while

(36:59):
separated from Carl, she had an affair and she claimed
to be pregnant from that. Then she and Karl got
back together and she just kind of dropped it, didn't
talk about being pregnant anymore. So I don't know if
that's something she used to get back with him. I'm
not certain about all the details of that, But as
soon as she's back with Carl, she's just not pregnant anymore. Yeah,

(37:19):
But they divorced in nineteen ninety eight. In the year
two thousand, before Lisa and Kevin were married, she told
him that she was pregnant and she planned to have
an abortion. So Kevin gave her forty dollars and she
never mentioned that pregnancy again. So did Kevin think you
could have an abortion for forty dollars, I don't know.
He's a simple man.

Speaker 3 (37:39):
I think they probably cost more than forty dollars, so
think so. Yes, even in two thousand.

Speaker 2 (37:44):
Absolutely, In two thousand and two, Lisa told her friends
and family that she was pregnant again, and although she
said she was getting prenatal care, she wouldn't allow Kevin
to come to any of her appointments. Remember, she'd had
a tuble, been sterilized.

Speaker 3 (37:59):
Pretty much difficult getting pregnant.

Speaker 2 (38:01):
Yes, When the dudate came and went, Lisa told Kevin
that the baby had died and that she donated the
body to science. And again Kevin had let that slide.
He didn't ask for any proof of that. He didn't
think it was weird that he hadn't been involved. It's
very weird. But that didn't stop her because then in
two thousand and four, Lisa claimed to be pregnant again

(38:23):
and she was due in December, and this is what
led to the tragedy of Bobby Joe's Stinet being murdered.

Speaker 3 (38:29):
Now, throughout two thousand and four, Lisa was in a
custody dispute with Carl. He knew that she was unable
to become pregnant and that she was claiming to be pregnant.
He and his wife sent emails to Lisa telling her
that they would expose her lie and use it against
her in a custody hearing. She told them that she
would prove them wrong.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
Oh that sounds very ominous rhetic words. Huh yeah, yeah.
So Lisa Montgomery met Bobby Joe Stinnett at a dog
show in April of two thousand and four. Both of
them were involved in the breeding of rat terriers were
familiar with one another online from message boards on the terriers.
Bobby Joe had a website with pictures of her and
her dogs, promoting happy Haven's farm, Happy Haven Farms, which

(39:11):
was her dog breeding business that she ran in her
home in Skidmore. After Bobby Joe became pregnant in the
spring of two thousand and four, she shared the news
with her online friends, and this included Lisa Montgomery. It
was around the time of Bobby Joe's pregnancy announcement when
Lisa began to tell her friends and family that she
was pregnant. She began to wear maternity clothes and began

(39:35):
acting like she was pregnant. Her husband, Kevin apparently didn't
know about the tubul ligation, so he believed her. Some
people who knew her believed her, but many did not.
Using the alias Darlene Fisher, Lisa contacted Bobby Joe on
December fifteenth by instant message. Bobby Joe had a litter
of puppies for sale, and Lisa said she was interested

(39:56):
in buying one, so they agreed to meet the next day.
Lisa still lived in Melbourne, Kansas, but she told Bobby
Joe that she lived in a town closer to Skidmore.
That night, Bobby Joe told her husband zeb and her
mother Becky, that a woman from Fairfax was going to
stop by to see the puppies.

Speaker 3 (40:35):
December sixteenth, Lisa drove out to Skidmore, arriving at Bobby
Joe's house around twelve thirty PM, so they spent a
fair amount of time together. Lisa had a sharp kitchen
knife as well as a white cord in her coat pocket.
They brought the puppies outside and played with them. Then
at two thirty Bobby Joe got a phone call from
her mother and told her that you would give her

(40:57):
a ride home from work At three point thirty.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
Sometime after that phone call ended, Lisa attacked Bobby Joe,
strangling her until she was unconscious. Then she cut into
her abdomen and the pain caused Bobby Joe to regain
consciousness and struggle with Lisa. Lisa ended up strangling Bobby
Joe a second time, killing her. Then she cut out
the fetus, cut the umbilical cord, and left with the baby.

(41:22):
Becky Harper had called her daughter shortly after three point
thirty PM, and when no one answered, she'd walk the
two blocks over to Bobby Joe's house. That's when she
discovered her daughter had been killed and her grandchild was missing.

Speaker 3 (41:36):
You know how difficult it is to do a sea section.

Speaker 2 (41:40):
I've seen lots of them without training. Yeah, but if
you don't have to worry about the mother makes it
easier if.

Speaker 3 (41:47):
You well, yes and no, I guess well she looked
at a YouTube.

Speaker 2 (41:52):
Yeah, she watched some YouTube videos.

Speaker 3 (41:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:54):
I'm just saying that if you don't care if the
mother's okay, and you don't have to worry about stitching
them back up.

Speaker 3 (42:00):
Oh yeah, forget about that.

Speaker 2 (42:02):
A lot more rudimentised the thing with the baby.

Speaker 3 (42:05):
And it's not like there's a lot of room in
that uterus, so you start cutting into it. You gotta
be careful, yes, that you don't do something to the
baby exactly. Yeah. And then when you cut the cord,
if you just leave that hang and it still will
bleed a little.

Speaker 2 (42:19):
Bit, Well, she'd had children, so she probably knew from
that and the video that you have to close it
off somehow.

Speaker 3 (42:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:26):
Not sure if she tied it or pinched.

Speaker 3 (42:28):
It, a little tire or something on it. Yeah, but
of course, and then you got to make sure you
do it at the right time. If you'd get a
pre term baby, they'll die.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
Yeah, or get sick. Well, I don't think that Lisa
Montgomery was thinking all this through Dicky.

Speaker 3 (42:43):
No, I know she wasn't no.

Speaker 2 (42:46):
So a little bit about Bobby Joe. She was Becky's
first child. She was born when Becky was in her
early twenties. She was born in nineteen eighty one, and
she had a cleft palate and then she had surgery
to correct it when she was two years old. But
she also had severe ear infections as a child and
had a speech impediment, but over time she was able
to overcome it.

Speaker 3 (43:07):
Both ear infections and a speech impediment will be seen
commonly with Cleff Paletts. Well you got an opening in
the palette and you got kind of a direct route
into the middle ear.

Speaker 2 (43:17):
But Bobby Joe was still a small child when her
father left the family and he moved to Texas. Then
the divorce of her parents was finalized in nineteen eighty five.
By the time Bobby Joe was a teenager, her mom
had remarried and she had a half brother who was
born when she was thirteen. Bobby Joe was a very
shy child for most of her life. In the fifth

(43:37):
and sixth grades, she was made fun of a lot
because of her speech delay, but she went through a
really dramatic change when she entered high school in Graham, Missouri.
She joined the four h club, She became a cheerleader,
She worked on the school newspaper and yearbook, and she
excelled as an honor student. She loved riding horses, and

(43:57):
her special love for animals was really a great asset
for her when she did barrel racing. Then romance entered
Bobby Joe's life when she was very young. She and
Zeb grew up in the same neighborhood and they knew
each other from when they were kids. In high school,
their friendship grew into a serious relationship and they became inseparable.

(44:18):
So Zeb graduated and got a job at the Kawasaki plant,
which was really the big employer in that town.

Speaker 3 (44:23):
I can't imagine.

Speaker 2 (44:24):
Yeah, Bobby Joe graduated in the spring of two thousand
and In April two thousand and one, Bobby Joe got
a job at Earl Made Feet and Supply. So for
most of the year it was a part time position,
but she worked full time hours during the busy seasons,
and she was an excellent employee whose supervisor would say
that she was dependable and flexible, and she was just

(44:46):
one of those people who was always willing to fill
in when another employee was out sick. So you know
how some young people can be just kind of flippant
about a job like that, but she took it quite seriously.
She enjoyed gardening and she made an effort to learn
all about the store's products. But more than the gardening,
she loved the animals, and that passion drew her into

(45:07):
the pet department, so the owner, Chuck, gave her the
responsibility of ordering the fish and the small animals for
the store. She was quiet, but very upbeat, but she
was more of a caretaker than a salesperson. She often
talked to Chuck and her co workers about wanting to
breed rat terriers. She just loved them, and soon she
started Happy Haven Farms. She was very particular about who

(45:30):
adopted her puppies too. Each prospective owner had to fill
out an application with details about the number and the
ages of the people in the household. So in no time,
Bobby Joe earned the respect of many people in the
rat terrier community, which I read that in a book.
I didn't know there was a rat terrier community, but
I guess that's what you call it. I guess there's

(45:50):
a community for anything, any.

Speaker 3 (45:52):
Hobby, German shepherd community.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
Wilting community, speaking community.

Speaker 3 (45:58):
I'm collecting community.

Speaker 2 (45:59):
Different breeds of cats. I mean, yeah, there's a community
for everything.

Speaker 3 (46:02):
But you didn't think that a rat terrier deserved a community.

Speaker 2 (46:05):
Well that sounds very specific, is all. So in April
two thousand and three, Bobby Joe resigned from her job
at Earle May to accept a higher paying position at
the Kawasaki plant where Zeb worked.

Speaker 3 (46:18):
Yeah, so they worked together kind of or worked in
the same.

Speaker 2 (46:21):
Business, right, it was more money. Then she married Zeb
in April of two thousand and three. So the newlyweds
rented a small bungalow on Elm Street, and all the
money that Bobby Joe made from her rat terrier business
was money that was put away because the couple was
working to someday buy their own home. And Bobby Joe
became a regular at dog shows. She was a rat

(46:42):
terrier breed inspector and a licensed judge for the National
Kennel Club, which you know, it's a small thing, but
she's a very young person. It's an accomplishment.

Speaker 3 (46:52):
Oh, I think that's amazing.

Speaker 2 (46:53):
Yeah. Sometimes when she traveled to exhibitions, she shared a
hotel room with a woman named Tracy Ramirez, a breeder
she met online. Other times, zeb went with her to
the shows. He wasn't at all involved in the business,
but he did encourage his wife's passion. So it was
April third, two thousand and four, a couple of weeks
before a dog show in Abilene, Kansas, when Lisa Montgomery

(47:17):
wrote to Bobby Joe's stinnant and told her that she
would be at the show on April seventeenth, with at
least two of her puppies. Bobby Joe responded that she
would be at the show. At the show, Bobby Joe
was pregnant, and Lisa Montgomery, wearing maternity clothes, told everyone
that she was having twins. She was not to be outdone.
You're having one baby, I'm having two. In the months

(47:40):
after that show, Lisa and Bobby Joe's state in contact online,
and they chatted mostly about puppies. They compared notes about
the progress of their pregnancies, though, too, and shared dreams
about their baby's futures. Another woman in the rat Terrier
chat group announced in April that she was pregnant with twins,
and Lisa contacted her via instant messager and wrote, I've

(48:02):
got you beat, and she added that her twins were
due to arrive first on December twelfth. A few days later,
Lisa contacted that woman again and she told her she
was knitting a blanket for the bait for the woman's babies.
The mother to be thought it was a little odd
but nice that someone that she knew only online would
go to that much trouble for her. But you have

(48:22):
to wonder when she said she was knitting a blanket
for the woman's babies, was she planning on stealing those babies?

Speaker 3 (48:29):
He might have had that in mind because.

Speaker 2 (48:30):
She said she was having twins.

Speaker 3 (48:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:32):
Yeah, but in June, the woman miscarried her twins when
the fetuses were just fourteen weeks old, and oddly enough,
Lisa just cut her off and stopped chatting with her
after that.

Speaker 3 (48:43):
Yeah, So that makes you think that she was looking
at this woman bearing twins as a prospective baby donor.

Speaker 2 (48:49):
Yeah or victim both.

Speaker 3 (48:51):
Right? Right? So that spring, Bobby Joe fell in love
with Phonsie, a puppy she saw online. He was a
white and blue fun male born on February twenty ninth,
two thousand and four, in Austin, Texas. Bobby Joe contacted
the kennel owner to discuss the possibility of joint ownership
of Phonsie, and they made arrangements to meet at the
dog show in Norman, Oklahoma. Rat Terriers were a passion

(49:13):
for her. In two thousand and four was a big
year for Bobby Joe's business. One of her dogs had
a litter and those puppies were in high demand. She
hardly had time to announce it online before she had
a waiting list for five of the pups.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
Yeah, she was just so happy with the success of
her rat terrier breeding.

Speaker 3 (49:29):
Oh yeah, you probably didn't expect it would ever be
that good financially.

Speaker 2 (49:33):
But her excitement over that really didn't compare to her
excitement over the baby she had on the way that
she was just delirious with joy over that. Her due
date was January nineteenth, and she and zeb decided on
Zebediah if the baby was a boy, and Victoria Joe
if it was a girl. As soon as Bobby Joe
knew that her baby would be a girl, she went

(49:53):
down to the Walmart and registered. Her list included newborn onesies,
pink and yellow blankets, and a diaper bag. Her Eye
on Charity planned to take Victoria Joe with her to
dog shows right away. She wanted her to grow up
comfortable with all the dogs and the shows and one
day be part of her business. Oh yeah, so she
had big plans for the future. But in early October,

(50:16):
Lisa Montgomery posted at an online rat terrier site. She said,
I lost one of the twins. It's so terrible, but
they were able to save one twin, so that makes
me think she'd moved on from the woman who was
carrying twins to Bobby Joe. On another site, she complained
about her child support from Carl Bowman and complained that

(50:37):
her attorney also represented Kevin's ex wife. Kevin was in
court nearly every year for the child support he paid
to be increased. Later that month, Kevin told Reverend Wheatley
that he'd felt the baby kick inside of his wife's body.
Wheatley was still skeptical. The rat terrier enthusiasts were excited
when the very pregnant Bobby Joe showed up at a

(50:59):
dog show in mid November that same month, Bobby Joe's
friends got together to throw a baby shower for the
young mother to be, And this was also the month
that Lisa Montgomery purchased a home birthkit, so it was
the type of thing that midwives sometimes used to do
home deliveries.

Speaker 3 (51:16):
I didn't know there was a home birth kit.

Speaker 2 (51:18):
Yeah, I didn't really either, but it makes sense you'd
need supplies, Yeah, you would. On the internet, Lisa visited
map quest and downloaded directions from her house to Melvern
to the home of Bobby Joe Stinnett in skid from
her house in Melvern to the home of Bobby Joe
Stinnett in Skidmore. Then she set at her desk for

(51:39):
a long time on November seventeen, watching an online video
of a doctor performing a cesarean section. Lisa quit her
job at Wendy's on Interstate Highway thirty five before that Thanksgiving.
She told her employer that she needed to cut back
on her workload because her baby was due in December. Then,
on December tenth, Lisa wrote on the rat Terrier about

(52:00):
her difficulty in getting good photos of her dogs. She
added that her due date was December sixteenth. That same
day in Osage County District Court, Lisa's first husband, Carl,
filed for custody of two of the four children born
during his marriage to Lisa. The oldest child, Desiree, would
be eighteen years old and could decide on her own.

(52:21):
The youngest, fourteen year old Kayla, wanted to stay in
Georgia with the family who had her, but the two
middle children, c J and Chelsea, fifteen and sixteen, asked
to live with their dad. They both said they had
difficulties with their mother and that should not surprise any
of us.

Speaker 3 (52:39):
No, it doesn't.

Speaker 2 (52:41):
As part of his case, Carl planned to question Lisa's
mental state by saying that she faked pregnancies. So this
was known, Lisa would either have to admit that she
was not pregnant or Karl could prove it and that
would improve his chances of getting custody. That same night
was parents and Seniors night at the high school basketball

(53:02):
game in Melvern. Although Lisa warm maternity clothes, the people
who saw her that night thought it was really hard
to believe that she was due. In Less than a
week after that game, Lisa went online and posted a
message next to her internet name. She wrote baby any day,
maybe today.

Speaker 3 (53:19):
Then on December fifteenth, Jason Dussin logged onto MSN Messenger
from her home computer. Lisa Montgomery joined him online. Jason
had no clue about the real identity of the person
he was chatting with. He thought he was talking to
Darlene Fisher, a woman who wanted to get a rat
terrier puppy for her children for Christmas. She told him
that she couldn't take the puppy home right away because

(53:41):
she's going on vacation. She wanted to put a deposit
down though, before she left town. Now, Jason thought deaf
Darlene was a nice person. He was a parent too,
and wanted to help her in her puppy search, so
he asked her where she lived. She told him she
was in Fairfax, Missouri. Jason knew that that town was
just a half hour st from Skidmore, and he thought

(54:01):
of Bobby Joe's Stanett. He knew Bobby Joe had puppies
for sale, so he gave Bobby Joe's email address to Darlene,
thinking he was doing Bobby Joe a favor.

Speaker 2 (54:10):
Yeah, and that would kind of haunt him later. Well,
I mean, he was not at fault at all. But
you know how you can feel guilty if you're any
part of something so horrible, Yeah, even if it wasn't
your plan and you had no idea. So at four
twenty two pm, Lisa Montgomery, under the name Darlene Fisher,
sent a note via instant Messenger to Bobby Joe. For

(54:30):
twenty minutes, Bobby Joe and Darlene chatted back and forth,
and they made plans to meet at Bobby Joe's house
the next day. Early in the afternoon of December sixteenth,
dian Hensley of Bedford, Iowa, was shopping at the Walmart
in Maryville with her mother and her six month old baby.
Her baby started to cry while she was browsing through
some CDs in the music department, and that's when Lisa

(54:52):
Montgomery approached her with a big smile. What a beautiful baby,
she said, and Deanne thanked her for the compliment, then
turned back to her child, but Lisa continued to hover nearby.
Then she offered to hold the woman's baby for her
while she shot. And this just really creeped out Dianne.
She got a bad feeling.

Speaker 3 (55:10):
Oh, no kidding, should anybody would?

Speaker 2 (55:12):
Yeah, she held her baby tighter, and she looked at
the stranger who wanted to hold her child, and behind
Lisa's smile, she sensed some danger. She told herself that
her suspicions were probably just her maternal instinct and she
was being paranoid, but still she knew she didn't want
that woman near her baby, so she smiled politely, nodded goodbye,

(55:33):
and walked away from Lisa. And she moved kind of quickly,
more than she would have normally, trying to put as
much distance as possible between her baby and that stranger.
Then she really breathed a sigh of relief when Lisa
was out of sight. After that, Lisa walked around to
the baby department to look around. The Walmart security cameras
followed her and they captured everything she did that day.

(55:54):
In the store, Lisa selected some baby clothing, paid for them,
and left. She turned left out of the parking lot,
and at the last light before leaving Maryville, she turned
onto the road to Skidmore. Lisa drove down Elm Street
to the home of zeb and Bobby Joe, and Bobby
Joe was home waiting. She was expecting Darlene Fisher to

(56:14):
come and look at puppies. And she was pretty excited
about the visit because she loved to show off her puppies.

Speaker 3 (56:20):
Oh yeah, she loves animals, she loves dogs. She wants
everybody to share in her passion.

Speaker 4 (56:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:25):
I don't know if I could raise them and give
them away. I would never breed anyway, But just the
idea of having puppies and then have to give them
to someone that would be hard.

Speaker 3 (56:34):
It would be so.

Speaker 2 (56:36):
There was no physical evidence that Lisa Montgomery used any
force to enter the home. There were no forensic indications
that anything happened in the bedroom that housed the litter
of rat terriers. Bobby Joe was comfortable enough with her
visitor to turn her back on her, so Lisa took
that moment to throw a rope around Bobby Joe's neck.
Bobby Joe resisted, moving Lisa backward. She clawed at the

(56:59):
road around her throat, and Lisa held her in a
death grip until Bobby Joe's thrashing body went limp, so
Bobby Joe slid unconscious to the floor. Lisa took the
knife and knelt on the floor by Bobby Joe. Then
she sunk the knife into the top of Bobby Joe's belly.
Bobby Joe wasn't dead yet, though, she twitched and the
pain of the incision revived her and she cried out.

(57:22):
So this was a horrible way to die. Bobby jo
knocked away the knife and staggered to her feet, and
the struggle left cuts over both of her hands. She
was able to grab Lisa's hair and she pulled some
strands out by the roots, but it still wasn't enough
to stop Lisa. Lisa squeezed the rope tighter around Bobby
Joe's neck, and when Bobby Jo's body went limp again,

(57:42):
Lisa still held on to make sure Bobby Joe was dead.
So Bobby Joe was laying there dead, and in her
hands she held some clumps of Lisa's hair. Then Lisa
kneeled again and finished cutting. When the cut was long
enough and deep enough, she saw Bobby Joe's uterus, and
when she cut it open, she did it carefully, like
she'd learned on the video. She then reached into Bobby

(58:04):
Joe's body and pulled out the live baby. Girl.

Speaker 3 (58:07):
That's one other thing I forgot to say too. Yeah,
she just killed the mother, So she's got to get
that newborn out of the uterus pretty fast. Yep, like
within a minute. I know, otherwise babies not getting a oxygen.

Speaker 2 (58:21):
I understand that.

Speaker 3 (58:22):
Yeah, the mother's dead, so you're in her a little
bit of a time constraint here.

Speaker 2 (58:26):
Well. Yeah, and it really is a miracle that that
baby was breathing, because you think that baby may have
at least needed some resuscitation.

Speaker 3 (58:34):
Yeah. Yeah, I wonder if there's articles on this, how
many times it's unsuccessful. You end up cutting a dead
baby out of a dead mother.

Speaker 4 (58:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:43):
I've never really heard stories about that happening, but I
would think it would happen. Yeah, of course, it's a
rare crime. Anyway, it is, thankfully so Lisa cut the
umbilical cord and she tied off the end of the cord.
Then she wrapped the baby in a blanket, held her
tighten her arms, and took her out. She did grab
the knife before rushing to her car, and she drove

(59:04):
out of Skidmore, heading to Maryville. She took the highway
and continued across the Missouri Kansas state line to Topeka.
Then she pulled into the Long John Silvers and that's
when she called her husband, Kevin and told him the
good news. So the day after, when Lisa and Kevin

(59:41):
ran errands and ate breakfast and showed off their new baby,
investigators were closing in from that IP address of the
false identity Darlene Fisher. They arrived at the modest farmhouse
and waited for Lisa and Kevin to return, which they did.

Speaker 3 (59:57):
They did, and the man who climbed out of the
dirty red car had short brown hair, a mustache, and
a darker goateeeth flecked with gray. The woman had shoulder length,
dirty blonde hair, heavy eyebrows, prominent cheekbones, and a receding chin.
She wore oversized glasses and certainly looked skinnier than you'd
expect for her new mother. Man Kevin went around to

(01:00:18):
the passenger side of the car and opened the door,
helping Lisa out of the car. She walked with him
into the house, holding a swaddled baby close to her chest.
So both of them seemed unaware of the law enforcement
presence around their home.

Speaker 2 (01:00:31):
Oh yeah, they would be, because the police were being
careful not to.

Speaker 3 (01:00:34):
They didn't want anything to happen to the infant. Sure,
so as soon as they went inside, one investigator went
to the door. Kevin I answered and invited them all in.
So whatever he was thinking, he was baffled by the
police in his home. Lisa held the newborn baby in
her arms, and next to her, the notice of the
Amber alert for Bobby Joe's baby was scrolling across the
bottom of the TV screen. That's how appropriate, I know.

Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
Right, It's like something you'd see in a film. But Lisa,
of course, was asked right away about her baby, and
they said, is that your baby? And she said, yes,
you want to see it. She stretched out her arms
and she handed the baby to the officer, which I
think a real mother wouldn't do that, right, and your baby.

Speaker 3 (01:01:14):
Over like that, you're one day old baby.

Speaker 2 (01:01:17):
Yeah, she's a little too cooperative. So on Lisa's empty hands,
though he could see a series of small fresh cuts
on many of her fingers. When questioned, Kevin told him
about the call from Lisa in Topeka the afternoon before
and his drive to pick her and the baby up
and bring them home. Lisa explained her shopping trip to
Topeka that had been interrupted when her water broke, and

(01:01:39):
she told the officer about the delivery of her baby
the day before and told them it had been at
the Birth and Women's Center. So while the couple was
talking to Officer Strong and FBI Special Agent Michael Miller,
other members of law enforcement were checking out Lisa's story.
They quickly learned that no babies were born at the
birthing center on December sixteenth. Since the authorities already had warrants,

(01:02:02):
they were able to walk out of the house with
the baby girl. Sheriff s b received a text then
saying I have the baby in my hands, and boy
was he relieved.

Speaker 3 (01:02:11):
I'll bet so. The infinite was rushed to Stormont Vale
Regional Health Center and Topeka for evaluation and DNA testing.
Lisa and Kevin continued to be questioned in their home.
Lisa said expressionless as she advised of her constitutional rights.
Then she was confronted with the information the police had
learned about no births at the center of the day before,

(01:02:33):
and at first Lisa maintained her original story and Kevin
insisted that this is all a big mistake.

Speaker 2 (01:02:39):
Yeah, but under the persistent questioning, Lisa did finally give up.
Her face fell and her shoulders slumped, and she confessed
to strangling Bobby Joe and removing the fetus with a knife.
She admitted that Abigail was Bobby Joe's baby, not hers,
and only one person in the room was surprised, and
that was Kevin. It just sickened him and confused him.

(01:03:00):
The poor guy. This was not the Lisa he thought
he'd married. Most people who knew Lisa found Kevin's ignorance
understandable because they also had believed Lisa when she'd insisted
on many things, and they believed her when she insisted
that Kevin had known nothing about this. Lisa had been
lying to people all of her life, and she'd been
successful at it many times. I think part of it

(01:03:22):
is she had been caught before, So what did she
really have to lose?

Speaker 3 (01:03:27):
Right, it will be all in.

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
Yeah. So it was three point thirty, you know, a
little over twenty four hours after the murder, when the
five pound eleven ounce baby girl entered the storm Mount
Vale Regional Health Care Center emergency room into Peka. Personnel
transferred her to the neonatal Intensive care unit, and doctors
said that she was responding normally for a baby who
was born one month premature. Blood was drawn for DNA testing.

(01:03:52):
They all believed, of course, that it was Bobby Joe's baby,
but they needed to prove it.

Speaker 3 (01:03:56):
After a couple hours of questioning, Lisa Montgomery was arrested
and taking the jail in Kansas City, Kansas. Kevin Montgomery
was not charged with a crime. He was brought in
for intensive interrogation. Authorities or authorities photographed the cuts on
Lisa's hands. They scraped beneath her finger nails. Tests of
that material showed that it was a genetic mix of

(01:04:17):
the DNA of Bobby Joe's Stennet and Lisa Montgomery. And
after the Montgomerys were removed from their home, a search
of the house and vehicles began. In the hundreds of documents, papers, receipts,
and other items seized, the forensic technicians found many items
of forensic importance. From the trunk of Lisa's car, there
removed a cord that was covered with blood and hair.

(01:04:38):
Genetic testing would find the DNA of Bobby Joe's stinet.
A knife that Lisa identified as the one she used
to cut open her victim held more evidence. Testing on
the blade of the knife showed us a mixture of
DNA of Bobby Joe and the baby, and on the
handle analysis revealed a blend of the genetic material three individuals,
the baby, the mother, and Lisa Montgomery.

Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
So none of that was surprising, no. It was about
four PM when Lisa's mother, Judy, received a phone call
from her niece in Texas, who said, is it true
Lisa has a baby? Yes, Judy said, Is it a girl? Yes,
Judy said, And then she listened as her niece shared
what she knew about this tragic story of Bobby Joe
and the baby girl. The news spread through Malvern very quickly,

(01:05:23):
very small town. Whether they knew Lisa or not, it
was shocking. Interest in the story became nationwide. Many had
never heard of this type of crime, but after the
homicide of Lacy Peterson, the public did understand the vulnerability
of a pregnant woman to violence committed by a spouse
or a boyfriend, and now they knew that a stranger
was an additional threat. Although rare, kidnapping by sea, section

(01:05:46):
was common enough to have been studied by forensic specialists,
so between nineteen eighty three and the year two thousand,
there were one hundred and ninety nine reported cases of
infant abduction, and thirty of those involved acts of violence.
Six of these violent kidnappings involved cesarean section, according to
an article published in the Journal of Forensic Science. So

(01:06:09):
pretty rare for someone to steal a baby before it's born.

Speaker 3 (01:06:12):
Yeah, so that from nineteen so seventeen years eighty three
to two thousand. So between nineteen eighty three and two thousand,
there were one hundred ninety nine cases of infinite abduction.
Now thirty of those involved violence, and six of those
violent kidnappings involved sea sections. So this is a pretty
tiny piece of the pie.

Speaker 2 (01:06:32):
Well, and it should be.

Speaker 3 (01:06:33):
Well, just the thought of trying to do a sea
section on somebody who's either dead or restrained or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:06:40):
About four in violence, and it's just a horrible thing
to do. So I have a couple examples. You want
to hear them, I do, Okay. So nineteen eighty seven,
nineteen year old Darcy Pearce lied to her husband and
she convinced him that she was pregnant. Then she hid
surgical instruments and medical books in her home. When her
husband left for work one day, she told him she

(01:07:01):
was going to the hospital where she was scheduled to
be induced for labor. Then she drove over to the
Kirkland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and she
parked outside of the prenatal clinic there. But Darcy was
not planning to enter the clinic. She didn't have an
appointment with a doctor. What she was doing is she
was lying in wait, looking for the right pregnant woman

(01:07:22):
to walk out of the building. And she didn't have
to wait too long. Her victim was young, just twenty
four years old. She was obviously close to term, eight
months pregnant. Her name was Cindy Ray. Darcy forced her
into her car at gunpoint, and she used her left
hand to steer, with her right hand aiming the gun
straight at the stomach of the terrified woman. Marcy's plan

(01:07:44):
was to take Cindy back to her house that she
shared with her husband. At her own house, she had
the equipment in the books she needed to perform acy section.
But Darcy was forced to change her plan. She couldn't
go home because when she approached her house, she saw
that her husband's car was in the driveway. Whoops, yeah,
he wasn't supposed to be home, but he was, so

(01:08:05):
Darcy just drove past her house, and she drove out
to an isolated area of the desert in the East Mountains.
There she strangled Cindy until she lost consciousness. She dragged
her limp body out of the car, and without the
surgical instruments that she'd planned to use, she really had
to improvise, so this one is a real horror show.

(01:08:26):
The only sharp objects she could find were her car
and house keys that were hanging from a ring, and
that was what she used. She had to push down
really hard to get the keys to cut through the skin,
and even harder to sever the muscles. This was difficult
and brutal. I can't even imagine it was possible. So
Darcy did manage to cut Cyindy open enough to remove

(01:08:48):
a live baby girl, and this is another case where
it's amazing the baby was still alive. Darcy abandoned Cindy's
bloody body on the side of the road, pretty much
just like it was trash. And she had the baby
she wanted, That's all she cared about. But she needed
to get her hands on a birth certificate so she
could prove that this was her child. Darcy drove to
a car dealership where a friend worked and told her

(01:09:10):
that she had just had the baby, and this friend
took her to a local hospital, where Darcy told her
husband earlier that day that she was scheduled for a
labor induction. But the physician took one and look at
her and was very skeptical of her story, and she
allowed him to do a gynecological exam. I think the
doctor and everyone there was pretty insistent that she'd do that.

(01:09:31):
Once she entered with the baby, she wasn't going to leave. Yeah,
something just didn't look right, and when the doctor did
his exam, his suspicions were confirmed. There was no physical
evidence that Darcy had given birth, so he called the
police and she was taken into custody. At trial, the
defense argued that in addition to borderline personality disorder and

(01:09:51):
narcissistic personality disorder, Darcy suffered from atypical dissociative disorder and
that made her incapable of controlling her actions, so she
was legally insane at the time she committed the crime.
But the prosecution's expert, doctor Philip Resnik, agreed with the
defense on the first two disorders, but argued on the third,

(01:10:12):
rather than suffering from disassociation. He said she had antisocial
personality disorder and that diagnosis was not consistent with an
insanity defense. But what the jury did is they just
kind of split the difference. They found her guilty but
mentally ill. So their decision sent Darcy to prison, where
she would stay for at least thirty years, and then

(01:10:35):
after thirty years she'd be reassessed and maybe given a
change in status. I think we talked about this case
before years ago, when we did a special episode on
fetal abductions a long time ago.

Speaker 3 (01:10:48):
It kind of rings a bell.

Speaker 2 (01:10:49):
I remember the key, which is horrifying.

Speaker 3 (01:10:52):
And I remembered Albuquerque.

Speaker 2 (01:10:54):
I just think the key, that sounds impossible to even do.
And then if she spent all that, it would take
a long long time. If she'd already killed the woman
and then it took her that much time to cut her,
you think that baby would be dead, Yeah, you would. Yeah. Okay,
So one more story, and this one is really crazy
and I don't think I've ever heard of this one before.
This was in Brownsville, a Texas town on the border

(01:11:17):
with Mexico, and this was an abduction that occurred in
nineteen ninety two. And it was strange enough to be
written up in the news of the Weird column in
newspapers across the country. Rosa Batello met Laura Lugo, a
twenty seven year old pregnant woman, at a social gathering
in town. Rosa then introduced Laura to her sister, Paulina,
who lived in the nearby town of McAllen. Paulina claimed

(01:11:40):
that she too was pregnant, and the two sisters started
a friendship with Laura. So Laura was eight and a
half months pregnant. She was living from one welfare check
to the other when the sisters made her an offer
that was just too good to be true. She needed
a prenatal checkup, they told her. Because she wasn't getting
prenatal care. They said, it'll be our gift to you.
We'll pay for it, and they took Laura to an

(01:12:01):
appointment at the Brownsville office of Paulina's obstetrician, and this
was doctor Bierstatt. After he did an examine of Laura,
the doctor spoke with the two sisters. Then he asked
them all to meet him in his office across the
border in Mexico. Laura was pretty confused, by this, and
she was reluctant to go, but somehow Rosa and Paulina

(01:12:22):
made light of the doctor's instructions and promised they'd all
go shopping afterward. It would be fun, and they lured
her across the border. In his Mexican examination room, doctor
Bierstatt gave Laura an injection that caused her to lose consciousness,
and while she was under he performed a c section
and gave the baby over to Rosa and Paulina. You

(01:12:43):
believe this, Yeah, it is incredible. When Laura woke up,
the nurses told her that her baby was gone, and
the Betella's sisters were gone too. Laura would battle for
two years to try and get custody of her child,
and it was a difficult fight, since Paulina threw bribery
or whatever was able to obtain a birth certificate showing
that the baby boy was her biological child and that

(01:13:05):
his father was a Mexican drug lord. Laura maintained that
she had given birth to that baby until the courts
decided they would resolve the issue by ordering DNA testing,
so that came back. So that was still in process
when the Betella's sisters changed their story. They claimed that
the baby was not the biological child of Paulina, but

(01:13:25):
it was rightfully her baby just the same. They said
that Laura approached them because she wanted to get an abortion,
but instead of giving her the money for the procedure,
they convinced Laura to allow them to pay the medical
expenses of carrying the child until birth if she would
just give the baby to them after he was born.
So they said, Laura agreed to that, and she agreed

(01:13:47):
to let Paulina have the baby. But in nineteen ninety four,
DNA testing did prove conclusively that the two year old
was Laura's biological child, and the court finally awarded custody
to her. And you would hope that's the end and
the two sisters go to prison.

Speaker 3 (01:14:02):
But it's not.

Speaker 2 (01:14:03):
It's not. The punishment that was actually given to the
sisters was very light. Prior to trial, Paulina spent sixty
two days in a Mexican jail awaiting extradition to the US.
Aside from that, neither of them had any imprisonment. They
both received a sentence of three years probation. Laura had
this wonderful reunion with her baby. But it only lasted

(01:14:25):
for eleven weeks. Then she disappeared on December twenty first,
nineteen ninety four. Her charred skeleton was found riddled with
bullets six months later. In October nineteen ninety seven, an
informant told police that a woman named Janet Ramirez was
with Laura Lugo when she died, and when Janet was
arrested on theft charges in April of nineteen ninety eight,

(01:14:48):
police questioned her about the death of Laura Lugo and
she confessed to being involved in the murder. Janet was
the mistress of Randall Leadbetter, a US Border Patrol agent
in Arizona, and she saw Laura as her romantic rival
for his affections. So Janet Ramirez pled guilty to murder
and got a twenty year sentence. She testified at the

(01:15:11):
trial of the former officer the Border Patrol, and the
jury did not find Janet's testimony credible, so the officer
was acquitted. But this poor woman, she's pregnant on her own,
living off state assistance. Yeah, she meets these two women
who she finally thinks she has friends that want to
help her. They take the baby. She goes through all

(01:15:31):
that to get her baby back, and then she gets murdered.

Speaker 3 (01:15:34):
Two years she works to get a baby back yep,
and has her back for eleven weeks.

Speaker 5 (01:15:38):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:15:39):
Oh, yeah, it's really horrific. I think that's the craziest
story I've ever heard.

Speaker 3 (01:15:43):
It is. That's one of those things you say, it's
too weird to be true. Yep. So, Zeb Stinnett saw
his newborn daughter for the first time on that Friday
evening at the hospital. He gave her the name he
and Bobby Joe had agreed upon, Victoria Joe Stinnett. Medical
personnel check the health of the baby in the knee
and atal intensive care unit. Zeb took his baby girl

(01:16:05):
home on Monday, December twentieth, but he didn't return to
Skidmore and his home on Elm Street. He moved in
with his mother in the nearby town of Maitland. Zeb
took a twelve week paternity leave to adjust to his
new role as single father and the grief for his wife.

Speaker 2 (01:16:20):
Yeah. For two days straight, the FBI questioned Kevin. They
tried to break down his story and catch him in
a contradiction, but finally they were convinced that Kevin really
was as clueless as he claimed to be.

Speaker 3 (01:16:31):
Do not see how that happens?

Speaker 2 (01:16:33):
I know, but you're a doctor, so you have knowledge.
But I would think anybody would know enough to question it, well,
especially if you're sleeping with her.

Speaker 3 (01:16:41):
And yeah, good, maybe they's separate bedrooms.

Speaker 2 (01:16:43):
But still, but he thought that he had felt the
baby move. So I guess it's just a matter you
can convince people of anything. So Lisa was charged with
kidnapping resulting in death, and the indictment alleged that she
wilfully kidnapped, abducted, and carried away Victoria jo for the
purpose of claiming the infant as her own. She had
also taken Victoria Joe across the state lines, and her actions,

(01:17:07):
of course, had resulted in the death of Bobby Joe.
Aggravating factors included that Lisa had killed Bobby Joe in
an especially heinous, cruel, and depraved manner. So the government
filed an intent to seek the death penalty in this case,
but Lisa's defense argued against the death penalty. They said
that they were going to use the insanity defense, and

(01:17:29):
then she underwent many mental health evaluations. It did come
out that Lisa Montgomery had a very nightmarish childhood that
led to her committing crimes, and family members and authorities
did know of her suffering as a child but didn't
do anything to help her. So, first of all, Lisa
had been born to a family with a history of
mental illness, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression. Lisa's father

(01:17:53):
left the family when she was very young, and her
family moved about once a year. Lisa's mother, Judy, abused
her in very extreme and sadistic ways, and this is
according to interviews with nearly four hundred and fifty family members, neighbors, lawyers,
social workers, and teachers. So Lisa as a baby was
forced to sit in a high chair for hours. If

(01:18:14):
she didn't finish her food, her mouth would be covered
with duct tape so frequently that she learned never to cry,
and according to her mother, her first words were, please,
don't spank me. It hurts. So it's hard to believe
that anyone treats a child this way, but Lisa's mother
just seemed to have no conscience or anything about it.
Her older half sister said that their mother hit them

(01:18:36):
with brooms and belts. She forced the sister Diane to
eat raw onions until she cried, and once stripped her
naked and put her out of the house in freezing temperatures,
telling her never to come back. She made nightly trips
to a bar, leaving the girls with so called babysitters
who sometimes raped Diane. At the age of eight, Lisa
lost her only protector when Diane was removed from the

(01:18:59):
home and placed in foster care. And she was fortunate
enough to end up with a loving family.

Speaker 3 (01:19:05):
Where wasn't Lisa placed in foster care?

Speaker 2 (01:19:07):
That's the question here. Diane reported that she vomited all
the way to the foster home, knowing the fate of
her then four year old sister Lisa. Lisa's stepfather, Jack Kleiner,
was an alcoholic, and he began to assault her sexually
when she was about thirteen. He actually built a shed
like room next to the family's trailer in Tulsa, Oklahoma,

(01:19:28):
and kept Lisa there. Then he would bring friends over
to rape her, often for hours, sometimes three men at once.
So as if that wasn't enough, Lisa's mother began to
prostitute her to make money to pay bills. And this
isn't something Lisa made up. There are many witnesses who
were aware of this. So by the age of twenty three,

(01:19:48):
Lisa had four young children and it's no surprise that
she abused and neglected them. She suffered from episodes of
mania and psychosis, and according to her defenders, Lisa likely
suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome. By the time she was
arrested for her crime, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder,
temporal lobe epilepsy, complex, post traumatic stress disorder, dissociative disorder, psychosis,

(01:20:14):
and traumatic brain injury. So scans of her brain showed
damage and abnormal patterns in the areas responsible for regulating
social and emotional behavior and memory, and those can all
be affected by trauma. So her adverse childhood experiences had
a score of nine out of ten, and her global
functioning score showed severe impairment in daily activities. But maybe

(01:20:38):
the most shocking information here is that there were all
these people who knew of her abuse and did nothing
to help her. Her sister was sent to foster care
due to abuse or neglect, but Lisa got no help
in the child welfare system. Lisa's life should have been
investigated as well. Her sister said she was afraid to
tell the foster parents. She didn't want them to know

(01:20:58):
about her history of being read because she felt guilty
about it, and she would regret the decision not to
tell them for the rest of her life.

Speaker 3 (01:21:06):
Oh, she's probably also afraid of being taken out of
this foster home.

Speaker 2 (01:21:10):
Well, of course, she's.

Speaker 3 (01:21:10):
Doing very well.

Speaker 2 (01:21:12):
Yeah, she was lucky to have made it there. As
a student in elementary school, Lisa was placed in special
needs classes, and an administrator thought this academic deterioration of
hers might be due to deep emotional trauma, but the
school took no action to uncover or report any cause.
As a teenager, Lisa told her cousin, a deputy sheriff

(01:21:34):
in Kansas, about being raped by Kleiner and his friends,
and he told investigators that he knew she was telling
the truth and he regrets taking no action, but really
gave no explanation for why he didn't take any action.
So you would think Lisa's life might have got better
when she divorced Jack Kleiner, but that's not true. She
forced Lisa to testify about the rapes during the divorce proceedings,

(01:21:58):
and her mother sat unmoved Lisa's testimony. There was a
social worker who found Lisa's claims believable and turned over
the file to the Tulsa County DA's office, but no
action was taken there either. So the government's expert, doctor Deetz,
testified that there are two different phenomena that have been
called pseudosysis or false pregnancy. The first is when a

(01:22:22):
woman believes she is pregnant but is not mentally ill
and has no other delusions. Her belief usually ends when
she's confronted with evidence that she's not pregnant. The second
does involve mental illness, usually schizophrenia, and the delusion of pregnancy.
The delusion is firmly held as a conviction, and these
patients continue to believe that they are pregnant even after

(01:22:43):
being confronted with proof that they're not so. His opinion
was that Lisa did not have pseudosysis at the time
of her offense, and that's because she did not have
a sincere belief that she was pregnant. So, when asked
what evidence indicated that she did not really belie believe
she was pregnant, he said that she was aware that
she'd had a tubal ligation despite telling others that she'd

(01:23:06):
had at reversed and with previous pregnancies she'd gotten prenatal
care and brought her husband to the appointments, But with
her alleged pregnancy, she didn't seek out any prenatal care
and didn't take a pregnancy test, So, in other words,
she told people she was pregnant while knowing that she wasn't.
So his conclusion was that, with reasonable medical certainty, Lisa

(01:23:27):
did not suffer from any mental disease or defect that
affected her ability to appreciate the nature and the quality
of wrongfulness of her acts, which is kind of hard
to believe because if you're raised in that environment, how
do you really know right from wrong? Normally it's her
parents who.

Speaker 3 (01:23:45):
Teach you that that's a seriously messed up person. Yeah, So,
the jury found her guilty of kidnapping resulting in death,
and the case moved on to the penalty stage. Over
two days, the jury heard from her friends, family, cowork
and psychologists the mitigating factors that were presented for a
sentence of life in prison, where her capacity to appreciate

(01:24:07):
that what she did was wrong was impaired. She committed
the crime under severe mental and emotional disturbance, and she
had been a nurturing mother to her children. Various witnesses
had testified that she was a good mother.

Speaker 2 (01:24:19):
Well, the jury came back with a death penalty verdict,
and they unanimously found that the government had proved beyond
a reasonable doubt all of their aggravating factors. So Lisa
Montgomery was eventually executed by lethal injection on January thirteenth
of twenty twenty one, so not that long ago. When
asked if she had any last words, she simply said no.

(01:24:41):
So she was the first female federal prisoner executed in
sixty seven years. She was the first woman executed in
the United States since Kelly Gissendanner in twenty fifteen, and
the first person executed in the United States in twenty
twenty one. It's funny to think, but in her final
days she kept up calendar and it was marked with

(01:25:02):
Joe Biden's inauguration date because Biden had promised to enact
a moratorium on capital punishment at the federal level, and
he did go through with it. He did enact the
moratorium on July verse twenty twenty one, but it was
too late for Lisa In twenty twenty three, one of
her attorneys admitted that her legal team had briefly considered
taking her off the medications she was on to stabilize

(01:25:25):
her mental health, and the intent was for her to
go absolutely psychotic, and this would be in her team's
effort to postpone her execution by proving mental fragility exacerbated
by sexual abuse from childhood. But the attorney said, ultimately,
we just couldn't do that to her. So it's all
round a sad case. It is you can't help but

(01:25:46):
have sympathy for Lisa's childhood, and you can kind of
look at and think she was created. This monster she
became was created by these people who raised her or
failed to raise her.

Speaker 3 (01:25:58):
Yeah, I wouldn't say they raised her.

Speaker 2 (01:25:59):
No, So the baby, Victoria Joe grew up and seemed
to be healthy and happy, their dad and a stepmom.
So there was a decent outcome for the baby.

Speaker 3 (01:26:09):
Anyway, Well she got a return quickly.

Speaker 2 (01:26:11):
Yes, So we're going to be moving on. If you

(01:26:37):
don't have anything else to say on this, I don't. Okay,
we're going to address some of the feedback, but first,
do any of you have a need for more true
crime brewery in your life and no patience for ads.
This is a problem that is easily solved. Just go
to tigrabber dot com slash subscribe and sign up. Subscribing
gives you all episodes, old and new without ads. It

(01:26:57):
gives you bonus episodes, and of course those are ad
free too. You can get all the same benefits too
if you go to patreon dot com slash ti grabber.

Speaker 4 (01:27:13):
It's time for listener feedback.

Speaker 2 (01:27:28):
So what have we got for voicemail?

Speaker 3 (01:27:30):
We have a voicemail from Nate, one of our longtime listeners.
Haven't heard from him lately. It's always good to hear
how he's doing, and he has some cases he wants
us to consider.

Speaker 5 (01:27:41):
Hi, Dick angel An, I was wondering how you guys
are doing. I know it's hot all year round in
New Mexico, but we just started somewhere up here in Massachusetts.
I think we had our first ninety degree day today. Anyway,
I actually had a couple of case suggestions for you.
I don't know if you guys cover international acts of terrorism,

(01:28:03):
but Korean Airlines Flight eight five eight in nineteen eighty
seven was bombed at the orders of Kim Jong Il
to try to scare countries away from the nineteen to
eighty eight Olympics. It failed spectacularly. I mean they did
bomb the airline, It was lost with everyone on board,
but it failed spectacularly in the aim of scaring people

(01:28:24):
away from the Olympics. The surviving North Korean agent one
of them took their own life, and the other a
lady Kim huan Hui. She ended up being sentenced to death,
but was pardoned by the South Korean government and lives
free in South Korea to this day. I just thought
it's an interesting case. There's a book on the case
called Tears of My Soul. Another one is the nineteen

(01:28:47):
ninety nine Russian apartment bombings, which is one of the
things that led to Vladimir put being in power. There's
a lot of evidence to suggest that the Russian secret service,
the FSB, which is the successor to the case AGB,
actually planted the bombs as a false flag operation to
raise Putin's popularity and public profile prior to Yeltsin picking

(01:29:11):
him as a successor. The other terrorist attack is there
is evidence that the attack on Salomon Rushdi was actually
organized by Iran and by Hesbola, And I was wondering
if you maybe wanted to talk about Salmon Rushdi in
the multiple threats against his life over the years over
the Satanic Versus book that he had to live in

(01:29:32):
hiding for years, and then you know, is it three
years ago someone almost killed him, very close to killing him. Anyway,
I was just wondering if you wanted to consider those
two cover. I hope you guys are doing well. I
hope the heat's not too bad, and it was great
seeing you guys on TV and hopefully you know you're
on TV more often. Anyway, I hope you guys have
a good summer and anyway, cheers.

Speaker 2 (01:29:54):
Well, thank you, Nate. I'm going to say these cases
are a little out of our wheelhouse, but as far
as me being curious, I'd love to read more about them. Sure,
and never say never, right.

Speaker 3 (01:30:05):
Never say never. But I'm with Jill. You've got all
these innocent people that are killed by the request of
a dictator.

Speaker 2 (01:30:11):
Well, I would just say it's a little above my
head as far as this is like serious political stuff,
right and more of a domestic crime.

Speaker 3 (01:30:18):
That's a good way of praying there, But it is.

Speaker 2 (01:30:20):
Interesting and we always appreciate your input. Nate, for sure.
I think we'll definitely be talking about Karen Reid in
a while, because Nate knows a lot about that.

Speaker 3 (01:30:28):
Yeah, he lives up there. Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:30:30):
Okay. As far as being on TV, I don't know.
We enjoyed it, but I don't know if it's something
i'd want to do again.

Speaker 3 (01:30:36):
Well, let's just say nobody's beating down our door to
get a signed up.

Speaker 2 (01:30:40):
That's true too. That's true too. But it was a
lot of fun. It was absolutely okay. Next, we have
an email from James Ellison. He wants an episode on
Noah press Grove. So in September of twenty twenty three,
he was halfway through a four day birthday party when
he went missing. After trying to bed the birthday girl,
Noah went for a walk. Few hours later. His body

(01:31:01):
was found by the side of the road about a
mile away from the party, naked and wearing two mismatched shoes.
He had extensive head and upper body injuries and died
from internal bleeding. To this date, Noah's death remains unsolved. Now,
that sounds pretty fascinating and maybe simple and domestic enough
for my brain.

Speaker 3 (01:31:20):
I think we'd be able to do that. It's just
a lot of story. Yeah, I mean my thinking as
I was reading through a couple of things I found
on Noah was it. He probably got involved in a
hit and run accident. He was pretty drunk at this
party and after being turned down by the birthday girl,
he walked away, maybe to clear his head or something.

(01:31:41):
He was found about a mile away. So I thought
that initially, but then some other things that sound weird.

Speaker 2 (01:31:47):
Yeah, it's a real mystery, so let's look into it
and see some more about it. We ought to check
that out absolutely, So thank you so much, James. Two guys.
That's unusual. Usually our following is mostly women, so crushing to.

Speaker 3 (01:32:02):
Get I have a couple of letters from women.

Speaker 2 (01:32:04):
So here's an email from Virginia. Teresa love listening to
your podcast. I was looking for three murders in your
collection but could not find them and would like to
hear you discuss both of them. These are Todd Mullis,
the corn Rake killer, Matthew Moore a stage suicide murder,
and Alec Murda murda murders. Of course, everyone knows the

(01:32:24):
murdaw murders and that is something that we're planning to do.
There's just so much to it. I have to find
the time to research it so I know what I'm
talking about.

Speaker 3 (01:32:33):
I wasn't going to even include him in this story because,
like you said, it's a very well known, pretty recent one.
We are planning on doing that, but the others were interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:32:43):
So what's this Todd Mullis. I've heard of that he
killed his wife with a corn rake, So she had
an affair and was considering divorce. He's appealed the decision,
and this is ringing bells, So I'm going to look
into that. I think I did read about that.

Speaker 3 (01:32:56):
People supposedly, hey, you had an alibi in the sun
his teenage son and was helping him work that. They
actually all three of them and the mother was going
to do something, and it went a period of time.
The father and son working together, didn't hear anything from mom,
so they looked around and found her lying face down
with a corn rake in her back.

Speaker 2 (01:33:15):
In her back, so were they trying to Was he
trying to claim that was an accident.

Speaker 3 (01:33:19):
Yeah, that she had fallen backwards.

Speaker 2 (01:33:21):
I don't think you could do it with enough force
to kill yourself unless it was like in your upper
neck ers. Well it was a pretty your back's pretty
strong lot of muscle.

Speaker 3 (01:33:29):
Yeah, this corn rake is pretty long times sharp.

Speaker 2 (01:33:32):
Well, maybe I'm not thinking of what a corn rake is.
Is that the thing that the guy holds in American
American Gothic? Yes, it's like a big rake hey holds.
When you said corn rake, I was thinking more of
like the rake we use, No, a leaf rak, a
leaf ri No, the leaf rakes are the big loose ones.
I'm talking about the metal one that you used to
move the rocks around.

Speaker 3 (01:33:52):
Yeah, it's like like a hoe, not a hoe.

Speaker 2 (01:33:55):
Well, a hoe doesn't have prong.

Speaker 3 (01:33:57):
It's got several prongs.

Speaker 2 (01:33:58):
Yeah. Anyway, I didn't know a cornrake has very long tongs,
like a fork almost.

Speaker 3 (01:34:03):
One of the things that was interesting is that corn
rak has four times okay, and the dead lady had
six wounds in her body.

Speaker 2 (01:34:11):
So maybe boom and then pulled it out and then
boom again.

Speaker 3 (01:34:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:34:15):
Yeah, Well they decided it was a murderer. So yeah,
it was only twenty nineteen. Maybe I can find the
trial if he he must have gone to trial, if
he says he's not guilty.

Speaker 3 (01:34:25):
Yeah, he was found guilty.

Speaker 2 (01:34:26):
Well, let's look for the trial. That could be interesting.
And then Matthew Moore, I'd never heard of this one.
He was charged with murdering his wife, Emily Noble in
May of twenty twenty. He said her death was a
suicide and he was acquitted.

Speaker 3 (01:34:38):
Well, she had hung herself and had a history that
was a prior attempt brother someone and her family had
killed themselves by hanging, so there was a history there,
and I think at least initially her death was felt
to be a suicide, but then there's some broken.

Speaker 2 (01:34:54):
Bones, some suspicious things, suspicious things.

Speaker 3 (01:34:57):
So he was charged but it was found to be
not guilt.

Speaker 2 (01:35:00):
One more email from Mary Ellen Schmidt. I just watched
the latest episode of twenty twenty on ABC Hulu about
the murder of Kristen bart Alderson. You both had a
lot of good information on the case to share. One
question that wasn't addressed on the program was what happened
to the other son, Mitchell. He wasn't involved in the
search or investigation and never mentioned since the beginning. Would

(01:35:22):
love to hear if you have any information. Well, thank you, Mary.
Allan One thing is whenever I watch these shows. I
think they're lacking in information, but I think that's how
they're entertaining, because I get really down in the details.
Sometimes I get a little too deep in the details.
I know when we filmed it, they've kind of had
to keep me digging in too much. They didn't him

(01:35:42):
all night, right.

Speaker 3 (01:35:43):
They want to shorter answers, shorter responses than you were
wanting to give.

Speaker 2 (01:35:48):
Well, and I understand that because they're trying to make
an entertaining two hour show with like, however many commercials
they have nowadays at least a half an hour.

Speaker 3 (01:35:56):
It seems like, well, it is interesting because there wasn't
anything written about surviving sign.

Speaker 2 (01:36:01):
Not really, you mean talked about talked about not really.
There were other things though that I said, why didn't
they mention that, like the wholepool thing.

Speaker 3 (01:36:08):
But he was in college, he was pursuing a degree
in it, and then he had an he was engaged.

Speaker 2 (01:36:15):
Yeah, in the trial, they kind of just presented him
as the functional son that was doing adulting and that
Chandler was not.

Speaker 3 (01:36:23):
Yeah, but there wasn't really anything spoke about Mitchell.

Speaker 2 (01:36:26):
After the fact, not really, And I guess he didn't
want to do any interviews, because I'm sure they would
have interviewed him if he wanted to be involved. Yeah,
they really only had the one cousin as a family spokesperson,
and then some neighbors and things. So Mitchell graduated from college,
He did get a job in the IT field. He
did marry his fiance, but sadly they divorced four months

(01:36:49):
or so later, very brief marriage, which is weird because
they were together a long time and then they got
married and it didn't last. I'm always just confused when
that happens. People will be in a long term relation
and then they'll get married and then it won't last at.

Speaker 3 (01:37:02):
All, So it's not real long term.

Speaker 2 (01:37:04):
No, But how can you be together that long and
then you get married and all of a sudden it's over.

Speaker 3 (01:37:09):
Well, Mitchell has some trauma.

Speaker 2 (01:37:11):
Well yeah, I'm not saying anything against him, and it's understandable.
He lost his whole family in like one of the
worst ways you possibly could sure did, so yeah, I
wouldn't hold anything against him. Yeah, that's a young man
who's really suffered, and I don't believe he's in communication
with Chandler. Last I heard. Chandler's never admitted to anything
or shown any remorse.

Speaker 3 (01:37:33):
He did move from Wisconsin, Mitchell did, Oh where'd he
moved to? Chicago or Chicago area? A lot more anonymity
in Chicago than in Wisconsin where he used to live.

Speaker 2 (01:37:43):
Yeah, that makes sense. That's a big change though, from
living in the suburbs of Wisconsin to living in Chicago.

Speaker 3 (01:37:49):
Very definitely.

Speaker 2 (01:37:50):
Yeah. Well, I hope he's successful and things go well
for him. It makes me sad that he got divorced.

Speaker 3 (01:37:56):
But somebody wrote that he enjoyed cooking.

Speaker 2 (01:37:58):
Okay, so you enjoy cooking. Yeah, well, I hope that
Mitchell finds happiness. He deserves it, for sure. Nobody should
have to go through something like that.

Speaker 3 (01:38:07):
Had a lot of trauma, a.

Speaker 2 (01:38:08):
Lot of trauma. Seems like he had a great childhood
with two parents who loved him from what we can tell.
So it's just really sad that he lost them. Yeah, okay, Well,
I think we're going to wrap it up. We've hit
that two hour mark. Things to do, dogs defeat all
that jazz, So we will talk to everybody soon. You
bet all right, see you next time at the quiet end.

Speaker 3 (01:38:29):
Come mind, dad?

Speaker 2 (01:38:30):
Oh wait, there was one more thing I wanted to say, waitte,
I'm out so on Patreon, I got a message from
Jane S and I feel like an idiot because she
clarified the whole jail prison thing. Remember you said, oh,
they're like the same, and I said, well, I think
when you're in jail you're not convicted yet when you're
in prison, you're convicted, which is kind of true. But

(01:38:51):
Jane said, technically, jail is where people convicted of misdemeanors
are incarcerated, and prison is where people convicted of felonies
are incarcerated. I guess you're in jail if you're a
waiting trial, or if you've just been convicted of a misdemeanor.
She said somewhat circular. The thing that distinguishes misdemeanors from
felonies is that misdemeanor punishments comprize incarceration of a year

(01:39:13):
or less, and felonies are subject to an incarceration of
more than a year. So I just wanted to thank
Jane and say, duh, we're so stupid. We should have
knowne that. Well, I think at some point I did
know it, So I don't know. Sometimes you just get
talking and you're an idiot. It happens to the best
of us, I guess, and the worst of us anyway,
We'll see you next time. Thanks Jane at the quiet.

Speaker 4 (01:39:33):
End, Thank you guys, Bye bye. Put cotutly into you to.

Speaker 3 (01:40:09):
Do any everything.

Speaker 4 (01:40:12):
El

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