Murder in the Heartland (13 page)

S
pecial Agent Lipanovich called Qwest and spoke to Melissa Erwin, a senior security specialist.

“Yes,” Erwin explained to Lipanovich, “that IP address is assigned to us. Let me see what I can do to find out where it originates.”

Qwest, an Internet Service Provider (ISP), had nothing to do with Darlene Fischer, other than providing her, like millions of other computer users, with access to an Internet server.

“Thanks,” said Lipanovich. “Make it quick, though. We’re fighting against time here.”

Soon, Erwin called Lipanovich back. As luck would have it, he had Jeff Owen on another line. “Jeff, hold on, that’s Qwest calling back.”

Erwin said she needed more information.

Lipanovich asked Jeff, “Can you verify exactly when Stinnett and Darlene Fischer chatted?”

“Yup, hold on.” Jeff gave Lipanovich the actual times.

“We’re going to get an actual physical address, Jeff,” said Lipanovich.

“I told you.”

“Based on the usage of that IP address,” Erwin said a minute later, “on December 15, 2004, I was able to determine through a reverse domain name system search that the server being used was located in Topeka, Kansas.”

Topeka made sense. It was in the region where Bobbie Jo had been murdered. “There’s more,” added Erwin. “By reviewing our Internet connection logs, I was able to determine that the IP address used on December 15, 2004, between those times we discussed, was assigned to ‘kelimont at Earthlink dot net.’”

Furthermore, it was a dial-up connection, as opposed to a cable modem, making it easy to trace.

“Go on,” said Lipanovich. Everything was at last coming together.

Erwin said, “I even did a reverse Internet search for the phone number and found that the number is being billed to a guy by the name of Kevin Montgomery. He lives on Adams Road in Melvern, Kansas.”

And there it was:
Kevin Montgomery. Melvern, Kansas.

While Jeff Owen continued to gather evidence on Bobbie Jo’s computer, SA Lipanovich had a solid lead from Qwest Communications: a name and address of a male who was apparently the last person to communicate with Bobbie Jo online.

Within a few hours after receiving the lead, Lipanovich found out Kevin Montgomery had three kids of his own. He had been married to thirty-six-year-old Lisa Montgomery for four years. Recently they had been celebrating because Lisa was in the last trimester of her pregnancy, and she and Kevin were preparing for the arrival of a new baby. That Kelimont e-mail address had been set up by Lisa, using an acronym: “Ke” stood for Kevin; “li” for Lisa; whereas “mont” referred to their last name, Montgomery.

Lipanovich now had a name and, even better, an address in Melvern, Kansas.

S
itting at his desk, Sheriff Ben Espey was preparing to brief the press when he heard about the latest break.

SA Kurt Lipanovich had been working closely with Espey throughout the morning and into the afternoon. Espey liked Lipanovich, respected his work ethic and resolve to find the child. Now, with a team of federal agents heading to Melvern to find out if Kevin Montgomery had anything to do with the case, it seemed the situation was out of Lipanovich’s and Espey’s hands.

Espey had a gut feeling going into the early afternoon they would locate the child in Melvern. The tipster from Georgia, who had called in Lisa Montgomery’s name, had solidified the connection, at least for him. Coupled with what he had heard from the FBI, Espey knew where the child was—there was no doubt about it.

“The baby was in Melvern, Kansas,” Espey said later. “As soon as I realized that, I sent my own men there to get her, whether the FBI would welcome them or not. It was about the child for me. My men were going to Melvern with one purpose: finding Victoria Jo. And the FBI wasn’t going to do anything to stop them from doing their jobs.”

The race was on.

F
BI agents converged on Melvern and set up a surveillance around Lisa and Kevin Montgomery’s home during the afternoon of December 17.

As it happened, two additional agents headed to the west end of town on an entirely separate mission.

With fewer than one hundred students enrolled during any given year, Melvern’s Marais des Cygnes Valley (High) School would be considered a foreign educational environment to most kids from larger cities and towns across America. In contrast to the overflowing classrooms more common elsewhere, ten students per classroom might be considered a lot in towns like Melvern and Skidmore.

“School was very personal,” commented one former Marais des Cygnes Valley student. “If something happened on one end of the hall, it would be at the other end of the hall within five minutes. Everyone knew
everything
about everyone. And there was a
lot
of one-on-one time between teachers and students. Come to think of it, the teachers probably even knew our middle names.”

Lisa’s children loved the intimacy of growing up in small-town America. Having an education system in place considered by many to be first-rate, and extremely personal, was an added bonus.

During the latter part of the morning, Ryan, Alicia, and Rebecca were going about the daily routine at Marais des Cygnes Valley as if it were just another school day. The only difference in their lives was that they had a new baby sister at home waiting for them when they got out of class.

Two FBI agents showed up at Kevin Montgomery’s parents’ house across town to discuss the best possible way to pull the kids out of class without making a scene. The FBI explained to Mr. and Mrs. Montgomery that they needed to question the children about Lisa and Kevin.

“It involves a kidnapping.”

Undoubtedly shocked by this, Kevin’s mother agreed to pick the kids up at school and bring them back to the house.

“Great,” said one agent, “just don’t tell them what’s going on.”

Burrowed in the brush behind the barn in back of the farmhouse and around the cornfields corralling the land near Lisa and Kevin’s house, several FBI agents were looking for any sign of a red car or newborn baby.

As of early afternoon, no one seemed to be home.

From his office in Maryville, Espey heard the FBI was planning on staking out the house for twenty-four hours, in order to watch Lisa and Kevin’s movements. The FBI wasn’t sure if they were dealing with a “drug house,” or if Kevin and Lisa were operating some sort of black-market baby factory, Espey explained.

When Espey confirmed how the FBI was handling the situation, he called in Randy Strong and Don Fritz, two investigators—“the best in the state”—with Missouri’s Initial Response Team. Randy Strong worked for Maryville Public Safety as one of its chief investigators. A man with an intense dedication to law enforcement, Strong understood that Espey’s main concern was for the child.

“Get in a car and get to Melvern as fast as you can,” Espey told Strong and Fritz. He was frustrated over the FBI’s desire not to move in right away and get the child to a hospital.

“Sure, Sheriff,” said Strong. “We’re on our way.”

“Just get into that house and get that baby. Drive through anybody that gets in your way.”

Based on a piece of “solid” information Espey had uncovered himself, he believed the FBI was planning not to let any of his men go near the Melvern house, where they suspected Lisa and Kevin and the baby were going to show up anytime.

Espey was firm in his conviction. “Drive onto that property. Knock on the front door. Walk in. And get that child.”

At twelve by twelve feet, Espey’s office inside the Nodaway County Sheriff’s Department was as cramped as a jail cell. Espey didn’t use a computer. He had a few awards and commendations tacked to the cinder block concrete walls around him, but spent as little time as possible inside the confining room. His job, he maintained, was out in the field. He usually showed up at the office by 8:00 and was on the road by 9:00
A.M
. He had no use for sitting behind a desk, pushing a pencil, staring at police reports and rap sheets. His heart was in working the streets. The FBI wasn’t going to walk into Espey’s county and take control at the last minute. He had made promises to Bobbie Jo’s family and told Zeb he’d bring his child back home. Regardless of the fallout later on, no one was going to stop him from attempting to make good on those promises.

Would Strong and Fritz make it to Melvern in time? Espey had overheard an agent working out of his office tell another field agent that they were taking over the investigation now that they had solid information as to the whereabouts of the person responsible for sending the last e-mail to Bobbie Jo.

“We’re not going to rush this deal,” Espey heard the agent say over the radio. “We’re going to do the stakeout. And we’re going to sit on it for a day or two.”

This comment, specifically, upset Espey, who had been told repeatedly by doctors he had to get the child to a hospital as soon as possible after locating her.

“I represent the community in northern Missouri,” said Espey. “That’s why it was so upsetting to me.”

Espey faced one other major problem: the Kansas FBI regional office called to tell him he didn’t have jurisdiction in Melvern, Kansas.

“That’s right, I don’t,” Espey told himself. “But it’s my case.”

He hung up the phone.

Espey radioed Randy Strong and Don Fritz as they headed down Highway 71 toward Kansas, reaffirming his position: “You drive through whatever barricade you have to in order to get that child back. Don’t worry about the FBI. I’ll handle them.”

A
quick background check told the FBI neither Kevin nor Lisa had any prior arrests or convictions. Both were clean, as far as the law was concerned. Maybe there wouldn’t be any resistance. Perhaps it would all go smoothly.

Still, why would a married couple with seven kids of their own between them murder a young expecting mother and cut her child from her womb? If, in fact, Kevin and Lisa were responsible, something was wrong with the entire scenario. As much as all the evidence seemed to point to them, there was a missing link. How did Kevin Montgomery fit into the picture? Had he helped Lisa? A few tips Ben Espey received the previous night made him consider the child might have been taken for resale on the black market. Detectives were still working on one of those leads. Were more people involved? Had Lisa and Kevin gone off to sell the child?

The Melvern house Kevin and Lisa called home was a two-story white farmhouse set back from a gravel road about fifty yards. Surrounded by hundreds of acres of farmland, a muddy driveway led up to the door the family used on the side of the house. Another door faced the road, but nobody entered through it. Down the street, the closest neighbor was a good half-mile away. Lisa’s goats were out back. Her dogs were barking.

The setting seemed perfect from the FBI’s standpoint. It was rural. Very few civilians were around. The G-men found plenty of places for agents to hide with no chance of Kevin or Lisa spotting any of them.

The house had five bedrooms, one master bathroom, a living room, and a dining room and kitchen, where everyone congregated during the evening. In the large cellar downstairs, Lisa kept the canned goods she demanded the kids jar up every fall. From the outside, it looked like a house filled with good wholesome family farm living. But the atmosphere inside on most nights, at least according to one of the children, wasn’t as relaxed as it might have appeared.

“When my mom was home, she was normally on the computer. She was kind of quiet, but when she was mad, she would yell and make everyone’s day miserable. Sometimes, though, she was in a really good mood. Like when we were canning, or doing something with the garden, or the animals, or stuff like that. But when she got mad, I always tried to avoid her (which was hard sometimes). She would threaten to leave Kevin, or she would get all mad at us for one thing or another (like if we were supposed to be cleaning and we didn’t, or we ate dinner an hour ago and the dishes still weren’t done). I remember sometimes it would be like nine or ten o’clock at night when we finished eating dinner, and we would have to stay up to do the dishes no matter how tired we were.”

Now there were scores of FBI agents camped out around the house, with binoculars and high-tech gadgets, waiting for Lisa and Kevin to arrive—and two rather committed investigators from Ben Espey’s county racing toward town, preparing to drive through the FBI’s surveillance and find out for themselves if Lisa and Kevin had Bobbie Jo’s child.

K
evin Montgomery’s mother walked into the office of Marais des Cygnes Valley (High) School and explained to the principal that Lisa’s three children had to be taken out of class.

“It’s an emergency. We need to get them home right away.”

All three kids were summoned to the office. They had no idea what was going on.

“You need to get your stuff,” Kevin’s mother said, “and come home with me now. Something’s happened. Hurry.”

Rebecca had driven her own car to school. She told Mrs. Montgomery she’d drive her brother and sister to their grandparents’ house and meet her there.

Back at the house ten minutes later, the FBI separated the children and began asking questions.

“When we got home,” one of the children said, “at first we thought [the FBI] were lawyers.”

Must have been the way they were dressed.

Throughout the entire time the children were questioned, the reason why never came up. The kids were forced to wonder what was going on as the FBI shot one question after another at them, yet failed to explain the reason why they were probing into what had been, up until that point, a rather ordinary life in the middle of nowhere.

“You can’t tell anybody about this,” said one agent to Rebecca. Largely, the questioning was framed around what Kevin had been doing over the past twenty-four hours. Why wasn’t the man at work? Why had he taken the day off? Where was he now? Then, “Tell me about the baby. Did the child have any scratches on her? Do you have any pictures of her?”

“I don’t know,” answered Rebecca, overwhelmed by being put on the spot.

“Did your mom and Kevin have any problems?”

“Normal marital things, I guess. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

The FBI wasn’t being pushy, the kids later agreed. (“They were very nice. They weren’t mean or anything. They just wanted answers.”)

After Rebecca was questioned, Ryan was pulled into the same room and Rebecca was asked to leave.

“Are your mom and Kevin happy?” asked one of the agents.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“How was the atmosphere at the house most of the time?”

“Fine.”

“What was your mom like the past few weeks?”

Ryan was “clueless,” he said, as to what was going on. Where Rebecca began questioning things in her mind, Ryan still didn’t have any idea what to think. He had spent last night with his new baby sister. He was happy for Mom and Kevin. What was the problem?

“Everything was okay last night?” pressed an agent.

“Okay, let’s…,” Ryan said, and then hesitated. He had a question of his own he needed to ask. “Is this about my mom and Kevin splitting up?”

The agents looked at each other. They had to feel sorry for the kid. Here he was thinking the FBI had pulled him out of school to tell him his mother and stepfather were separating.

“Listen,” one of the agents said, “your mom is one of two suspects in a kidnapping case we’re working on.”

Ryan was stunned. His heart raced. (“I was one of the first to see the baby, and I thought it was ours.”)

Both Ryan and Rebecca agreed that talking bad about Kevin just wouldn’t be right. Kevin had his hang-ups, but he “wasn’t a bad person.” He was quiet and reserved, sure, but he never raised his voice or hand to Lisa or the kids. And he supported them, unlike Lisa, in nearly everything they did. (“Kevin was at every single one of the games I cheered for,” recalled Rebecca. “My mom never came.”)

“He was,” Kayla Boman added at a later date, “a really nice guy, and a great stepfather.” In no way, she added, was he mean. And, while he “occasionally drank a beer,” he was “definitely
not
a drinker.”

Kayla said the one thing about Kevin all the kids stood behind was that, “he loved my mom with all his heart…and would do—and still will—anything for us. He loves us almost as much as he loves his three boys.”

Most of the reservations the children, especially Kayla, had were centered around Lisa, particularly her frequent statements to people around town that she was pregnant. During the past few weeks, however, Lisa’s claims of being pregnant started falling apart. Although she had moved to Georgia weeks ago, Kayla still kept tabs on things back home. Like any kid her age, she made instant messaging and e-mail part of her daily life. Lisa wasn’t calling her or writing, so Kayla kept up to date with everyone by phone and the Internet.

“Did I have questions?” Kayla asked herself later. “Yes. Did I doubt at times that my mom was pregnant? Yes!”

“It all seemed a little weird to me, but I guess it was ’cause I had a ‘bad feeling,’ which normally I do when something bad happens, or something is wrong…like a gut feeling, I guess you could say.”

From the FBI’s perspective, it was beginning to look more like Kevin was involved on some level. How could he
not
be? His phone line had been used to communicate with Bobbie Jo. The feds even had an e-mail in their possession fully explaining how “Darlene Fischer” had made plans to meet with Bobbie Jo. Anyone, at this point, could be Darlene Fischer: Kevin, Lisa, even one of the kids.

When the two agents finished questioning the kids, they left the Montgomery house without mentioning a word of their next move. If the kids were confused before they were questioned, now they had no idea what was going on. Like most kids, they weren’t newshounds; they had no idea that a young woman had been murdered in Skidmore and a massive search was under way for a child someone had cut from her womb. Why so many questions about the previous day? Mom had given birth yesterday.

What could the simple birth of a child have to do with anything of a criminal nature?