Baby Be Mine (19 page)

Effie was transferred to a hospital in Tulsa. An examination there made it clear that Effie had not given birth to the child. Because of that, she was taken into custody as a material witness in the disappearance of Carolyn Simpson.

On the day after Christmas, a hunter stumbled across Carolyn's mutilated body. Effie faced two charges of murder and a charge of kidnapping. She was eligible for the death penalty.

In November 2004, Effie Goodson was found mentally incompetent to stand trial.

All these stories had much in common with the tragedy that befell Bobbie Jo Stinnett. Each perpetrator was driven by a deadly desperation for a child. All were consumed by a narcissism so entrenched that the real mother was no more than a womb—a tool for the perpetrator to satisfy her desire.

Each used subterfuge to get close to her victim. Some of them were driven by a more warped impulse than the one held by a typical baby kidnapper. They planned every detail. They did not just want another woman's baby. They desired to possess a baby who never looked into the face of any other woman—one whose sole maternal imprint was their own.

As inexplicable as it sounds, every one of these women thought that everyone else would believe that the baby belonged to her alone.

In Kansas, Lisa Montgomery listened carefully when the news of Effie Goodson's crime broke in the neighboring state of Oklahoma in December 2003. It was a timely story for Lisa. There were cracks in the foundation of her marriage. She could feel it in the soles of her feet. Her relationship with Kevin was in danger.

She believed that she needed a baby to keep her man. She was incapable of pregnancy and thought that was so unfair. In her mind, she needed a baby more than anyone. She refused to allow her inability to conceive to stand in the way. She wanted to keep Kevin—she would keep Kevin—at any cost.

She analyzed Effie's every action. She used her observation of Effie's errors as a template of what not to do as she planned and carried out the commission of the same crime.

She thought it was so simple. She believed all she had to do was avoid Effie's pitfalls. She would not steal a baby too
immature to survive without medical attention. She would not select a victim who lived near her own home. She would do everything right, she thought. She felt she would get away with the perfect crime.

¹
Journal of Forensic Sciences
, July 2002, Vol. 47, No. 4. “Newborn Kidnapping by Cesarean Section“: Ann W. Burgess, R.N., D.N.S.; Timothy Baker, Ph.D.; Cathy Nahimy; John B. Rabun, Jr.,ACSW.

O
n the crisp Friday evening of December 17, 2004, Sheriff Espey approached the microphones again. “What we're going to do tonight—this might be the last chance that law enforcement is going to be able to talk to the press. The reason is, when the attorney general's office—the U.S. Attorneys—get involved in the case, it actually becomes a turnover to the court system, and they'll get control of that. We've done our job up to this point.

“I want to thank you people for being there for us and helping us with the Amber Alerts. And for having the patience you have had and not tormenting me and coming in and demanding that I speak to you.

“The first forty-eight hours is very, very crucial in the Amber Alert. This case went twenty-three hours before we located this little girl. And at this point, we're going to cancel the Amber Alert—we're that confident that we have the girl that was taken from Skidmore.

“I also want to thank the people who helped me on this. The department couldn't have done it alone. The Major Case Squad, comprised of law enforcement all over northwest Missouri, the Buchanan County CSI—these people were very well trained and they were very good. They helped us out at the crime scene over in Skidmore.

“The FBI—there were seven or eight FBI agents that came in and tremendously helped us because of some of the computer stuff that was a little out of our control. They knew about that and were ready to dig right in and get that going. Public Safety Officer Randy Strong—he started from hour one and stayed with us through this whole thing. Most everybody here has been up continuously and we've run leads all night long and we've continued to run leads today.

“When this Amber Alert came out—that's the greatest thing that ever happened to law enforcement and to our children. We took an anonymous tip that came from several states away from here that gave us some information that led us to Kansas and this location. And we may have not ever gotten that; we may not ever recover the little baby if the Amber Alert system was not put in place.

“It's hard for me to accept this. Nobody here could ever perceive this taking place—to have a fetus taken out of someone's womb and then doing an Amber Alert to try to find the child.

“It's inconceivable. I'm overwhelmed with the fact that we're going to be able to get this baby back.”

Sergeant Sheldon Lyon, spokesman for the Missouri State Highway Patrol, stepped up to the mike after the sheriff ceded his place. “This is a great day for law enforcement in northwest Missouri,” he said.

The case was now in the hands of United States Attorney Todd Graves of the Western Missouri District of the federal court system. Graves was a Northwest Missouri local. He grew up on a farm in Tarkio in Atchison County.

After completing his undergraduate work at the University of Missouri at Columbia, Graves earned a law degree
and a master's degree in public administration from the University of Virginia in 1991.

His legal experience included service as an assistant attorney general for the state of Missouri, followed by a short stint in private practice before he was elected in 1994 as prosecutor for Platte County—whose boundaries encompassed a portion of Kansas City, Missouri. In this capacity he was the youngest full-time prosecuting attorney in the state. He was re-elected four years later.

On July 30, 2001, President George W. Bush nominated Graves as the top federal law enforcement official for the Western Missouri District. He was confirmed by the Senate in October. In this position he was responsible for a district covering more than 40,000 square miles with an approximate population of 2.4 million. He oversaw the functions of three offices with a full-time staff of fifty-five attorneys and sixty other employees.

Although high-profile criminal prosecutions drew the most attention, the bulk of the office's work involved civil matters—defending the federal government against legal claims made by individuals and groups and serving as collection agents for debts owed to the government.

Graves lived with his wife and four children north of Kansas City on a 270-acre homestead. The farm had been passed down through generations of his family since 1867.

Zeb Stinnett saw his infant daughter for the first time on Friday evening. He gave her the name he and Bobbie Jo agreed upon—Victoria Jo Stinnett. The meaning of Victoria—winner or conqueror—made it a prophetic choice for this survivor.

Medical personnel checked and double-checked the health of the baby in the neonatal intensive care unit. DNA tests confirmed her parentage. Zeb returned home to northwest Missouri with his baby girl on Monday, December 20.

Zeb did not, however, return to Skidmore and the cozy bungalow on Elm Street. He could not bear to live in the
house where his young wife died. He moved in with his mother in the nearby town of Maitland in Holt County. There, Victoria Jo slept in a crib once used by her 10-year-old uncle, Tyler Harper.

Zeb took a twelve-week paternity leave to adjust to his new role as single father and to grieve for the loss of his wife. He found homes for some of Bobbie Jo's rat terriers, but he kept her two favorites, Belle and Tipsy.

In Melvern, Lisa's coworker at Casey's General Store was stunned by the news of what had happened. She felt betrayed—after talking with Lisa for hours about her pregnancy, she believed it was real. Now she knew it wasn't, and to make matters worse, she heard about Lisa's contention that this pregnancy started as a pair of twins, and other false claims.

She was surprised that she'd fallen for Lisa's lies. She knew the family and was well aware that truth was not their-constant companion. If Lisa seemed to be telling the truth, the coworker said, maybe that was because she had also convinced herself. Lisa, she said, had thought that Kevin wanted—and needed—another baby. After that, it was easy for Lisa to delude herself into believing that she would deliver one to him.

For two days straight, the FBI questioned Kevin Montgomery. They tried every method they knew to break down his story, trip him up or catch him in a compromising contradiction. Finally, they were convinced. Kevin really was as clueless as he claimed.

While Kevin sat in the hot seat, crime-scene investigators hunted for clues in Lisa's red Toyota. They found a three-inch serrated paring knife they suspected was used to perform the amateur caesarean. They also seized a black ski mask with red-and-white trim, a pair of work gloves, latex exam gloves, a dirty dish towel, a bottle of surgical prep solution and a photograph of a squirming litter of newborn rat terrier puppies.

*    *    *

Hardened crime-scene investigators returned to their headquarters in St. Joseph—their professional shells shattered in the wake of this horrendous, intimate homicide. On the scene they suppressed their emotions, but back at the station their reactions tumbled out. They talked about the case for hours—easing the stress of an investigation that hit too close to home.

The media plunged into the history of caesarean abductions. Many were shocked at the number of cases that went unnoticed in the years before. They also struggled with the linguistics of the story. Should they describe the unborn child taken from Bobbie Jo Stinnett 25 a fetus or a baby? And at what point did the transformation take place? And how?

Amber Alerts were for children, yet editors were insisting on the use of the word “fetus” to describe the subject of the Amber Alert. The Associated Press managed to wrap the whole process up in one linguistically confusing sentence:

Montgomery, 36, confessed to strangling Bobbie Jo Stinnett of
Skidmore, Missouri, on Thursday, cutting the fetus out of her
body and taking the baby back to Kansas
.

Pro-life spokespersons and columnists made the most of the confusion. They scolded the media—whom they suspected of pro-choice sympathies—for wanting to have it both ways. Either the fetus was nothing more than a clump of cells to be destroyed at the whim of a woman, or the fetus was a baby—a human life with value and meaning. They also used the opportunity to chastise organizations who opposed legislation granting protection to
“in utero
children” by allowing assault and homicide charges to be levied in their name.

Pro-choice advocates pointed out the importance of choice—Bobbie Jo's choice—to have a baby. Feminists proclaimed that Lisa Montgomery's actions demonstrated the
pervasive pathology of a society where a woman was only valued for her role as a breeder.

While some nitpicked over life-and-death matters, others used the crime as fodder for sarcastic humor, usually aimed at Kevin Montgomery.
The Pitch
—a Kansas City weekly alternative newspaper—devoted its first “Kansas City Strip” column after the crime to “providing tips to help rural Kansas men figure out whether their wives are really pregnant.”

The writer, Tony Ortega, expressed mock sympathy for Kevin's cluelessness. He wrote that they understood how Kevin “had no freakin' idea that something was terribly wrong about his wife Lisa's ‘pregnancy,' while the whole time she was not really expecting but rather plotting how to pay an allegedly murderous, baby-takin' visit to Bobbie Jo Stinnett.

“After all, there's a lot on the mind of the average rural Kansas man.

“Winterizing his car. Wondering why the Chiefs sucked this year. Playing the Lotto.”

He also ridiculed Lisa's choice of the Long John Silver's parking lot to meet her husband with the baby: “even the most distracted Kansan would know that such an occasion calls for a meeting in the parking lot of a Red Lobster, at the very least.”

What this essay ignored and what many people did not understand was that Kevin was not alone in his ignorance. Many men—from highly educated engineers to backwoods farmers—have accepted the claim as an article of faith when their wives informed them that they were expecting children.

The history of infant abductions was riddled with men who were intelligent, but naive about pregnancy and the mysteries surrounding birth. At the same time, these men were manipulated by women who could read them very well—each one a woman who knew her man would react in the manner he did and stay by her side.

Another reason their pregnancy ruses were effective and easily maintained over months was that the relationship was already dead. When interviewed after abductions, the men expressed no affection, no love, no physical passion for their spouses. It was all duty—their responsibility to stay with the woman until the baby came.

If she did not want to be touched or seen naked during her supposed pregnancy, that was fine with him. He had no more sexual desire for his partner and, therefore, couldn't careless.

It had always been easy to love a baby, and the wife used that to her advantage. She involved her husband in her nesting activities—buying clothing and diapers, decorating the nursery, reading passages aloud to him from baby books. She urged him to touch her belly and feel the baby move. He was averse to physical contact with this woman, so he touched quickly and then retreated, accepting her word that he felt the growing life inside her. Each step bound him closer to a child whom he thought was his own.

Before Reverend Wheatley knew that a young woman's death in Missouri would leave a trail of blood that went through his church, he prepared his Sunday sermon. The title of his message, “A Baby Changed Everything,” would prove to be eerily prophetic. The message, however, had nothing to do with the tragedy that unfolded over the next couple of days; it was about the birth of Jesus in a stable in Bethlehem. He did not alter his speech to include the nightmare that crept into their community that weekend. It was the last Sunday before Christmas and he wanted the service to be a time of worship and praise to the Lord for his gift of his only son. Even in the face of the horrible news, Reverend Wheatley wanted to maintain the integrity of that special day. He wanted his parishioners to remember—now more than ever—the real reason for the season.