Murder in the Heartland (12 page)

O
n the day following Bobbie Jo’s murder, the search for Victoria Jo continued throughout the morning and into early afternoon. In the span of just two minutes, Sheriff Ben Espey pointed out later, the case took a remarkable turn because of two important telephone calls. One of the calls came from Dyanne Siktar in North Carolina.

Throughout her life, Dyanne had been a bit of a whistleblower. As a young woman, she worked for a large food corporation in Florida. One day, she noticed what she called “shady business” going on at the New York City division of the company in charge of shipping products overseas. “The invoices,” recalled Dyanne, “were being typed up under an assumed company name with the same typewriter that the people who worked for [my company] on the same pier used to type up their expense report vouchers.”

Dyanne believed the company being billed for services was fictitious: the brainchild and cash cow of someone in the company she worked for. The typewriter made certain letters and numbers almost identically for both companies, which had given it away.

Dyanne called authorities and reported what she had observed. “They sent the auditor up there,” Dyanne said, “and he got rear-ended on his way to the pier.” It was like a scene from a Hollywood movie,
Silkwood, Norma Rae
.

In the end, “a couple of heads rolled.” It was apparent the company had ties to the mob and was skimming money off the books. Dyanne stated, “I didn’t think about it—I just called someone and believed I was doing the right thing.”

When Dyanne realized she had potential information that might help find Bobbie Jo’s child and killer, she called information and asked for the number of an FBI office in Missouri.

“Which office would you like, ma’am?” the dispatcher asked.

Dyanne said, “I don’t care…. I don’t care.”

Time now seemed crucial. As minutes went by, Dyanne became more anxious.

“Any office will do, ma’am.
Please,
” she said during a long pause in the conversation.

The number Dyanne was given turned out to be the FBI’s Resident Agency Office in St. Joseph, Missouri. (“Just a lucky break!”) Special Agent (SA) Kurt Lipanovich took the call. (Another lucky break.) Lipanovich had been working the case all night long. Ben Espey later praised Lipanovich for his efforts. “Kurt was terrific. A professional all the way.”

An agent for fifteen years, Lipanovich handled jobs including “investigating violations of federal criminal law in the seventeen northwest counties of Missouri,” which included Skidmore, in Nodaway County.

When Dyanne Siktar got Lipanovich on the phone, she said, “I think I know who was in contact with the victim of that murder case in Skidmore.”

Although the Amber Alert had generated scores of tips, nothing had really panned out for Espey and the FBI. They had the name Darlene Fischer an hour or so into the investigation, after one of Espey’s men had pulled it from Bobbie Jo’s computer, but they had no idea how—or even if—the name was connected to the case, or where Darlene Fischer lived.

Dyanne Siktar was now connecting the two.

Lipanovich was floored by what he was hearing. Here was a “tipster,” which this case desperately needed, possibly handing over the murderer.

“The agent, Kurt Lipanovich,” recalled Dyanne, “got really excited when I told him what I knew.”

“I’ll call you right back,” said Lipanovich after Dyanne explained how she had logged on to the Ratter Chatter Web site and made the connection between Darlene Fischer and Bobbie Jo.

Moments later, Lipanovich called Dyanne back and asked if she had any more information about the Web site, specifically an IP (Internet protocol) address. With it, the FBI could find out whose computer the e-mails and instant messages written to Bobbie Jo had been generated from.

“I have to go,” Lipanovich said after Dyanne gave him as much information as she could, “but I will call you back when I can.”

Meanwhile, in Maryville, Ben Espey was hunkered down in the war room of the Nodaway County Sheriff’s Department, going through every lead coming in, assigning different officers their jobs. With his wrinkled shirt and five o’clock shadow now grown out, Espey was feeling the effects of not having slept in some time. Yet, the adrenaline rush of maybe finding Victoria Jo was pumping energy into him. Surprisingly, he felt wide-awake.

At nearly the same time Dyanne Siktar called the FBI, a woman in Georgia (thought to be Auntie Mary) called in a second tip after seeing the Amber Alert and adding it to what she already knew about Lisa Montgomery’s newborn. “She said she knew a woman named Lisa Montgomery, who lived in Melvern, Kansas, had been showing off a ‘newborn’ child earlier that morning, but suspected the she was never pregnant.”

With Dyanne Siktar and the woman in Georgia calling in tips within minutes of each other, the only problem became putting the two tips together: one had been phoned into the FBI, the other into the Amber Alert hotline.

Ben Espey never stopped communicating with Zeb Stinnett. Throughout the night, he had given Zeb as many details as he could regarding how the investigation was unfolding, without giving him false hope or “insider” information he didn’t need to know. Now, with these two new leads, Espey was more confident he was going to be able to fulfill a promise he’d already made of getting Victoria Jo back to Zeb.

Espey had set Bobbie Jo’s family up with a press spokesperson he knew could field questions and keep media away from the family. Dan Madden, a “super guy,” Espey noted, recently had been appointed director of communications for the Conception Abbey Development Office, in Conception, Missouri, seventeen miles from Maryville on Route 136. The Conception Abbey was many things to the community of West Missouri. According to its statement, the Conception Abbey was there to “praise God and become more Christ-like through a common life as given in the Rule of St. Benedict.”

There was a bit of history between Espey and the Conception Abbey. Back on June 10, 2002, a gunman—a former postal worker—entered the abbey and went on an “eight-minute rampage,” wounding Father Kenneth and Father Norbert and murdering Father Philip Schuster and Brother Damian Larson before taking his own life. Espey, along with one MSHP trooper and two of his deputies, were the first officers to respond to the scene. Their actions helped save Father Norbert’s and Father Kenneth’s lives.

On December 17, Dan Madden showed up at Espey’s office and offered himself to the Stinnett situation, saying he had seen the news and decided to make himself available to help in any way he could. Espey knew Madden could be an asset to the Stinnett family and Becky Harper, who were being hounded by the media.

After introducing Madden to Zeb and Becky Harper, Espey walked over to Zeb. He didn’t know what to say. Leads were coming in. The investigation had taken a promising turn. But who knew what would come of it all? The last thing Espey wanted to do was make a promise he couldn’t keep. But still, he felt something. Espey couldn’t explain it. He just knew Victoria Jo was okay and they were going to find her soon.

Turning, looking at Zeb, he introduced Dan Madden and then said, “I won’t sleep until I find your baby, Zeb.”

L
ocated in the center of town, across the street from the park, the Whistle Stop Café, with its Native American storefront design of red-and-white-brick diamond shapes over a canopy of asphalt shingles, served up ham and eggs, steaks, coffee, beer, meat loaf and potatoes. With a soda machine standing guard out front the Whistle Stop had always been one of those hometown diners many residents in Melvern made a routine part of their day.

Kathy Sage owned the Whistle Stop and worked hard to serve home-cooked meals to the tough men who worked with their hands (and there were plenty of these rugged men in Melvern), “sunup to sundown.” Because the café had a television set on most of the day and night, patrons had seen reports of the murder in Skidmore and the abduction of Bobbie Jo’s child.

Inside the Whistle Stop, men sat at booths and on stools, wearing farmer jeans and John Deere caps, killing time and swapping stories. To owner Kathy Sage and those who hung around the Whistle Stop on that Friday, exactly one week before Christmas, it was just another mundane day in the heartland. Talk centered on the murder in Skidmore, but also on politics, religion, the economy, and sports, just as it did in thousands of communities throughout the Midwest. Crop prices were down, inflation rising through the roof. Heating oil was going to be more expensive as the winter progressed.

The Whistle Stop door creaked as Lisa and Kevin walked into the diner. Victoria Jo was sitting comfortably in a portable car seat Lisa was toting her around in, not making much noise.

A few customers turned and looked as Kevin and Lisa entered. “Hey,” someone said, with a nod and two-finger salute.

Sitting down at a booth, Kevin and Lisa reportedly ordered eggs, bacon, and hash browns, while the baby sat in her seat on the floor nearby. A few customers walked over to the table and marveled at the child.
How cute…. She’s beautiful…. How old?

Lisa smiled. “Pick her up if you like. Go ahead.”

While Lisa and Kevin ate, a patron took the baby around the restaurant and showed her to some of the other customers.

As the child was passed around the restaurant, Kathy Sage walked over to Lisa and Kevin’s table and asked Lisa how old the baby was. She thought the infant looked awfully young to be out and about.

“Yeah, she’s only a day old,” Lisa said. She seemed excited.

“We didn’t know you were expecting, Lisa,” said one woman.

“Most people didn’t,” said Lisa.

Listening to this made Sage, who recalled the story later to reporters, “irate.” She was disturbed because Lisa and Kevin had shown up with the child to begin with. “You don’t bring a newborn out in public.”

The child was, by Lisa’s own account, a day old, and she and Kevin were passing her around the restaurant like some sort of family photograph, while filling their faces as if it were just any other ordinary day.

“You hear about this stuff happening in Los Angeles or New York City,” Kathy Sage stated after she learned the truth. “But not here. Not home.”

W
ith Dyanne Siktar’s tip, Ben Espey and the FBI now had a tangible piece of the puzzle they could work with. Dyanne had provided SA Lipanovich with the IP address from Darlene Fischer’s computer. Essentially, the FBI had a computer fingerprint, which could lead them to the home address where the electronic messages between Darlene and Bobbie Jo had originated. Having it was not only a break in the investigation, but a possible lifesaver for Victoria Jo.

FBI SA Mickey Roberts, who had arrived in Maryville and begun working the case with Espey, was running down leads he had obtained from field agents in Missouri and Kansas before Dyanne Siktar came forward with her tip. Since Dyanne had called into the FBI, several other Ratter Chatter members had also phoned in information. Hearing the same thing from several different sources, the FBI knew, meant the information carried a considerable amount of weight. For Mickey Roberts, though, all he had at this point was what Ben Espey had given him, along with what those FBI field agents were reporting: a woman who was eight months pregnant with a female “fetus” had been “strangled in her home, her abdomen…cut open and the fetus removed. The victim…found with blond hair clenched in her hands; the victim does not have blond hair.”

After SA Lipanovich became involved, he was briefed by Ben Espey about the case. According to an affidavit prepared later by the FBI, Espey told Lipanovich everything his office knew as it came in. Dave Merrill, a MSHP trooper, had processed the crime scene and found the computer in which Bobbie Jo “had been active on the Internet in connection with her dog-breeding business.”

This was an important find now because Dyanne had come forward with information that Bobbie Jo was, right up until those final hours before her death, communicating online with someone by the name of Darlene Fischer. Everything, it seemed, was beginning to fall together. This was how cases got solved. Dyanne’s phone call, on top of the Amber Alert tip supposedly called in by Auntie Mary, had opened up an entire new vein of the investigation.

But where did Lisa Montgomery fit into it all? As the morning of December 17 turned into afternoon, she was still a part of the puzzle law enforcement hadn’t put together.

The new tips provided hope, a shot in the arm that these tired lawmen needed to keep them focused. Most everyone involved in the case had been awake now well over twenty-four hours. Where was the child? Time was an issue now more than ever. If the child was still alive, was she being fed properly? Cared for? Had she been injured during her violent delivery? What would happen when they finally located the child and her abductor? Would there be some sort of showdown?

T
hroughout the early-morning hours of December 17, several law enforcement agencies worked in unison to find Darlene Fischer. Based on Darlene’s final e-mail to Bobbie Jo (and Bobbie Jo’s response), law enforcement agents were convinced she was the last person to have seen Bobbie Jo alive. Becky Harper had even told Ben Espey not long after he arrived at the crime scene “someone named Darlene Fischer” had made plans with Bobbie Jo to look at a few puppies. Even if Darlene Fischer wasn’t responsible for the crime, there was a good chance she could help the investigation move in the right direction.

But where was she?

After the MSHP’s Dave Merrill processed the crime scene in Skidmore, it was handed over to the evidence response team from the St. Joseph (Missouri) Police Department for further study. Detective Curt Howard, a forensic computer examiner, spent some time with Bobbie Jo’s computer and found several interesting items that, coupled with the information Dyanne Siktar had recently given to SA Lipanovich, began telling a story of Bobbie Jo’s final moments.

Among the things Detective Howard found were message board chats from several people who had been communicating with Bobbie Jo. One Hotmail user, Jason Dawson, a fellow rat terrier breeder from the same Ratter Chatter site, had spoken to Bobbie Jo online through her Happy Haven Farms Internet account.

It was an important discovery, but the identity of the actual person behind Fischer4kids at Hotmail was still unknown. What was obvious, though, according to the information Howard uncovered, was that Darlene Fischer had been interested in looking at a few of Bobbie Jo’s dogs, which confirmed Becky Harper’s lead. Darlene claimed she lived in Fairfax, Missouri, and it was established she had, at some point, asked Bobbie Jo for directions to her house in Skidmore, which Bobbie Jo provided.

For thirty-three-year-old Jeff Owen, a forensic examiner with the Kansas City Regional Computer Forensic Laboratory (RCFL) and an MSHP trooper, at present assigned to the Division of Drug and Crime Control (Criminal Investigations Division), the Christmas season wasn’t about eggnog, tinsel, and parties. Jeff had been going through a rough time of late. He and his wife of many years were in the process of a divorce and Jeff was missing his kids, ages one and three, something bad. To make matters worse, Jeff’s stepsister, with whom he had grown up, had been murdered a few years back during the Christmas holiday season. One of the only highlights of Jeff’s day lately was waking up and going to work, where he could lose himself and focus on helping people.

“It was comforting for me to have a simple, small role in helping solve this horrible, heinous crime,” recalled Jeff. “It was tremendously gratifying to me as a person and cop.”

MSHP colleague Dave Merrill had called Jeff the previous night and briefed him about Bobbie Jo’s computer (“They had really hit a brick wall…”)—but Jeff had his kids; he couldn’t just drop everything, as he had been accustomed to doing while married, and run right in. (“I’m a single father. What could I do?”)

But first thing the following morning, he drove to the lab, preparing to lose himself in Bobbie Jo’s computer and see what he could find.

After Jeff checked in, he spoke to Detective Howard, who explained the chats Bobbie Jo had with Darlene Fischer and Bobbie Jo’s online activity.

“We have her computer here,” said Howard.

“Thanks. I’ll be up as soon as I can to get it,” said Jeff.

When he returned, Jeff sat in the lab and started going through Bobbie Jo’s computer. Almost immediately, he realized Darlene Fischer didn’t live in Fairfax, Missouri, as she had told Bobbie Jo and, for the most part, law enforcement still believed. The IP address she had been using, Jeff could tell by looking through the cached files Bobbie Jo unknowingly left behind, had originated in Kansas somewhere.

“We believed,” remembered Jeff, “as a group, Fairfax was not accurate…. We assumed it was a pseudonym and fake address, but at that point, had no idea where it was from.”

At his disposal, Jeff had specialized software allowing him to peer inside Bobbie Jo’s computer for deleted files, and files Bobbie Jo didn’t even realize she had on her hard drive, without damaging the computer or overwriting files.

Figuring Darlene Fischer was likely a ruse, Jeff dug further and found out Bobbie Jo had been online for much of the day she was murdered—shopping on eBay, browsing for Christmas presents on other sites, looking at items for the baby and the house—but there was a break in her activity shortly before Becky Harper dialed 911.

“She was extremely active,” said Owen to a colleague, looking through Bobbie Jo’s history online. “But there’s a period here where she disappears from the computer and never returns.”

“That’s probably where our suspect entered the scene.”

As the morning progressed, another important element of Jeff’s work included “imaging” each file he viewed. If a suspect was caught and the case went to trial, the prosecution would need evidence. In a sense, Jeff was investigating the case in real time, but also preserving evidence as he went along, copying the files he was looking at.

At some point that afternoon, SA Kurt Lipanovich called. Kurt and Jeff had known each other for years and worked on several big cases together. A large man at about six feet two inches, two hundred pounds, Lipanovich was in excellent physical shape, more muscle than flab. Being a member of the FBI’s SWAT team, Lipanovich had a larger-than-life presence about him; he looked like a tough cop. Yet, he had no trouble sharing his rather “dry sense of humor” with fellow agents and lawmen, and then, quite quickly, falling into seriousness when the situation called for it.

“Jeff, we got this tip from some woman in North Carolina,” said Lipanovich over the phone.

“What is it?”

“Some sort of message board: Annie’s Rat Terrier Rest Area.”

“Great.”

“Can you check it out?”

“Of course.”

“When you go through her browser history,” Lipanovich added, “see if Darlene Fischer visited that site, too.”

“Got it.”

Within an hour after Jeff found those pages where Bobbie Jo and Darlene were logged on to Annie’s Rat Terrier Rest Area and communicating with each other, he had all of their online discussions staring him in the face.

Even better: on every post, at the bottom of the screen, was the IP address of each user.

As soon as he had the IP address Bobbie Jo had been communicating with, Jeff ran a check under the Patriot Act on public available databases and—lo and behold—came up with a server, as well as the company maintaining it.

“I have that information, Kurt,” said Jeff after calling Lipanovich back. There was enthusiasm in his voice. It was the first major breakthrough in the case. They were onto something big; both could sense the momentum.

Even so, the computer forensic work was still somewhat of a side show to the traditional gumshoe investigation Ben Espey and his crew were doggedly pursuing. The St. Joseph PD had recovered the e-mail addresses from the chats between Bobbie Jo and Darlene Fischer the previous night, but the follow up with Microsoft, according to Jeff, had not been done to secure IP information. So, in effect, “the digital evidence was known,” but the additional steps needed to find out who Darlene Fischer was had not yet been done.

Known as the Heart of America Regional Computer Forensic Laboratory in Kansas City (HARCFL), the lab Jeff Owen worked out of “accepts requests for computer forensics services from any law enforcement [agency]” within its service area, which comprises counties encompassing the entire state of Kansas and two-thirds of Western Missouri. The HARCFL also takes on cases from local police departments and the FBI. The goal of the RCFL (which has labs all across America) is to be a “one-stop, full-service forensics laboratory devoted entirely to the examination of digital evidence in support of criminal investigations.”

It’s a simple concept. The lab, a “one-stop shop” devoted to computer forensic work, can get a lot more done in a day than other agencies involved in different aspects of a case. Much of the RCFL’s time is dedicated, “but not limited, to terrorism, child pornography, crimes of violence, theft or destruction of intellectual property, Internet crimes, and fraud.”

One of HARCFL’s most recent accomplishments was the work the lab did in a serial killer case of high notoriety, which went unsolved for decades: the arrest of Dennis Rader, who admitted to being the BTK killer. Five computer forensic examiners from HARCFL traveled to Wichita, Kansas, where they “assisted the Computer Unit of the Wichita, Kansas, Police Department by imaging numerous computers using the most advanced forensics equipment available.” As a result, they were able to obtain digital evidence that, “when analyzed, was instrumental in the investigation and ongoing prosecution” of Rader.

These men and women spend hours doing tedious computer work. But for RCFL examiners like Jeff Owen, their work is a vocation that can solve an otherwise impenetrable case.

“It’s very rewarding,” said Jeff. “What’s great is, everyone here works for a different agency, but we work whatever case needs [to be] done. It is one of the rare examples of true cooperation in law enforcement.”

A father of three and dedicated husband, James Domres had been involved in computer forensics for the New York State Attorney General since before the Internet became a staple in millions of American households. Domres, a member of the Western New York RCFL Executive Board since its inception, had been an asset in cases ranging from prosecuting members of al-Qaeda to an undercover operation exposing date rape drug sales over the Internet. His accomplishments have resulted in over one hundred arrests, capped off by an international investigation of forged identities, which led to the arrest of a man who had counterfeited hundreds of driver’s licenses, including one with a photograph of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a major al-Qaeda operative and suspected national terrorist.

In the field of law enforcement computer work, James Domres, Jeff Owen, and their colleagues all over the world are considered masters of their craft. It takes tremendous discipline to solve a crime by sitting in an office searching through the bowels of a box of plastic, wires, and circuit boards. But most agents love it.

It would be safe to say James Domres is one of a handful of individuals in the United States who know more about the underlining operational procedures of the RCFL than most.

The RCFL, Domres said, had been one of the best tools to come around in decades, aiding in several different types of investigations. He noted that computer crimes weren’t necessarily the only ones the RCFL could help local and federal law enforcement agencies with. Blackberries, iPods, and cell phones also leave strands of digital “DNA” evidence everywhere they go.

“You see, before RCFL came about,” said Domres, “you had investigators doing both: forensics and computer investigations. We saw the need, to have labs where people did nothing but computer forensics—something that could support local agencies.”

For Bobbie Jo Stinnett’s newborn child, possibly still alive, and her husband, who had lost a wife but still hoped he would be united with his daughter, the work Jeff Owen was doing was perhaps the most important job anyone had been given in the investigation thus far. It was up to the RCFL now to find out who Darlene Fischer was—and the residential address from which she had logged on to her computer.

Jeff Owen traced Darlene Fischer’s IP address back to Qwest Communications. He phoned SA Lipanovich with the news. “I got it for you, Kurt.”

“You do? What is it?”

With the phone cradled between his shoulder and ear, Jeff read the IP address straight from the Internet message board, which he had logged on to “live” on one computer at his workstation. He swung around in his chair and checked it with the IP on Bobbie Jo’s computer, which he had sitting on another desk. “It’s a company out of Virginia, Qwest Communications.”

“That’s great!”

“Here, let me give you their number. This is what you need to tell them….” Jeff explained what Lipanovich needed to say once he got Qwest on the phone.

“Great work, Jeff!” Lipanovich roared.

“Kurt, you must understand,” said Jeff before they hung up, “what we have is the cyber equivalent to a return address on a letter from the
suspect
. The Internet service provider should be able to pinpoint exactly what address it went to—where the suspect lives.”