Murder in the Heartland (16 page)

K
ayla Boman was throwing dirty clothes into a laundry basket when Mary walked into the room and approached her. Mary moved slowly, her head bowed. It was obvious she had been struggling with something upsetting.

“Hi, Auntie,” Kayla said, turning, looking at her.

Mary didn’t say anything at first. Just then, Julie, also showing signs of being distraught, walked up from behind.

“Auntie?”

“We need to talk, Kayla,” Mary said.

Realizing something was wrong, Kayla stepped closer and stared at Mary. She could see Mary’s eyes were swollen and bloodshot. Clearly, she had been crying.

“Hold on, hold on,” Kayla said, perhaps nervously ignoring what was to come because she knew in some way it was going to be bad news, “let me just get this load of laundry into the washer and get it started.”

Kayla immediately considered something had happened to her little sister. The karma in the room was heavy; she could sense negative energy. In those photographs Rebecca had sent her earlier that morning, the baby didn’t look right, Kayla had thought all day long. Although she had spent a better part of her day bragging to fellow students and showing off the photographs, the more she thought about the situation and studied them, the more she understood something was wrong. She was sure Mary was coming to tell her the baby had died.

“The baby?” Kayla asked.

“No.”

Kayla put her laundry basket down and sat on the floor. Julie came over and sat next to her. Mary sat on the bed. The pain on their faces was immeasurable, Kayla remembered.

“Kayla,” Mary said in nearly a whisper. She was holding a Kleenex, crumbling it in her hands, stopping every so often to stare at it. “I have to tell you something. I’m not going to sugarcoat it or anything.” Mary felt Kayla was old enough and smart enough to accept the truth. It was better she heard it from someone she loved rather than the newspapers or on television, which were running wild with the story.

Kayla dropped her head. She didn’t know what was coming, she admitted later, but had a feeling it was something “very bad.”

Oh, my gosh, there’s something wrong with Abigail. No. No. No
.

“Your little sister,” Mary said, her voice slow, comforting, cracking, “
isn’t
your sister.” (“Talk about confused,” Kayla recalled. “The whole time my mother was ‘pregnant,’ I had my doubts, and I always talked to Auntie M about it.”)

Mary had most of the afternoon to figure out how to break the news, but hesitated for a moment before continuing, “Bobbie Jo’s dead, Kayla.”

“What?” Kayla said. She began crying.
Bobbie Jo’s dead? Bobbie Jo
can’t
be dead.

“Your mom murdered her and cut Bobbie Jo open and took her baby.”

Julie crept up closer to Kayla and put her arm around her shoulder; Kayla fell into her chest and sobbed. Bobbie Jo was Kayla’s friend. Kayla had gotten close to Bobbie Jo since they met back in Abilene in April, at the same dog show where Lisa had first met her.

Kayla got up off the floor and walked next door. She didn’t want to believe it. She turned on the television and saw the news story featuring Lisa’s mug shot and talking about the charges pending against her.

That’s my
mother?
My
mother
did this?

“Turn off the television,” Mary said. “You don’t need to see that.”

Jumping off the couch, Kayla walked back to Julie’s, logged on to the computer, and started deleting all of her e-mails. Reporters had already located her e-mail address and were sending questions.

Soon after, she retreated to her room at Mary’s. After closing the door behind her, she sat on the floor with her back to her bed and thought about everything.

Bobbie Jo’s dead? Bobbie Jo?
She still couldn’t believe it.

Mary’s son, Robert, knocked on the door.

“Come in.”

“Hey…,” Kayla said, looking up at him, then back down at the floor.

“Hey. You want to go to Adventure Land? I’ll take you.”

It seemed odd to Kayla. Robert had never wanted to take her anywhere before.

Kayla jumped up. “You know, at least it’s better than being here with nothing to do but think. Yeah, sure. Let’s go.”

W
hen Judy Shaughnessy heard the news, she called Kevin’s parents’ house in Melvern to see if she could help out in any way and also check on the welfare of her grandchildren. She was concerned about how the kids were reacting to Lisa’s arrest.

She got no answer. The kids and the Montgomery family were there, but the phone would not stop ringing as reporters, friends, and family kept calling.

Judy tried again and left another message.

Thirty minutes went by.

Nothing.

What is going on? Does anybody care about my concern for the children?

“When I found out about Lisa,” Judy recalled, “I called the Montgomery house. They did not return my call. They didn’t even contact Carl. My heart goes out to the Stinnett family, and I still grieve for them, as I also grieve for my daughter. I love Lisa, but, unfortunately, our relationship was over some time ago.”

Any hope of a relationship between Judy and Lisa was severely damaged in late 2003. Lisa’s nephew had been taken by the Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services (SRS) in Kansas. A custody fight had been ongoing between Judy and the state of Kansas. Lisa’s half sisters were also involved. The child’s mother and Judy’s son had signed over parental rights to Judy and her new husband, Danny. Her son had been arrested on a drug offense and was headed to prison. He wanted the child taken care of in his absence. Who better to do that than the child’s grandmother?

Near the end of the custody battle, Lisa got involved. At first, no one could understand why she stuck her nose into it. But the answers would surface as Lisa began to get caught, once again, in several lies.

Judy wanted to give her grandchild a “normal” life in a family environment, she said. Judy and Danny owned forty acres in Lyndon, where they had been living a
Green Acres
lifestyle of farming for the past four years. Both had been married before and believed they finally had found the right partner.

“Danny and I bought this farm,” Judy said, “to be in the country and live in peace and harmony, have visits from the kids and grandchildren. But we never thought we would have to do the things we have done.”

They raised pigs, sheep, milk goats, cows, geese, chickens, turkeys, dogs, and cats. “We also have bees…. We do our own butchering. We have a big strawberry patch, and I usually have a big garden and I do a lot of canning.”

A yearning, recalled Judy, to “live like our ancestors” drew her and Danny to their lifestyle. Lisa tried to project the same image of “living off the land,” but those who knew her claimed she was more interested in making people
think
that was how she lived rather than actually doing it.

Because of the problems Judy and Lisa had between them as mother and daughter, Judy hadn’t seen her grandchildren on Lisa’s side much. But she felt she could raise her son’s child and maybe break a cycle of dysfunction, which had been so much a part of their lives for years. Yet, as Judy prepared to do battle with the state over her son’s child, Lisa stepped in.

Judy had been taking care of the child while her son and his girlfriend stayed on her farm. Things were fine. But in Judy’s opinion, it was after Lisa got her brother “all worked up” one night that he took the child and his girlfriend and ran off to Oklahoma without warning.

According to Judy, Lisa had been going over to the house while Judy and Danny weren’t home and telling her brother “things.”

When Judy heard her son had left town, she took off for Oklahoma to search for him. As she put it, Judy knew “the baby didn’t have a chance in that drug life of [his].”

After going to some of the usual places her son hung out, Judy couldn’t find him. So, she instead turned her son and his girlfriend in to the state—who did find them.

About six months later, her son, his girlfriend, and their child returned to Kansas and ended up staying with one of Lisa’s sisters. Judy claimed that one night Lisa stopped by and again interfered in the situation. So, “he got mad and took off again with his girlfriend and the baby.” They were on foot this time, walking down the street toward the house where Lisa lived with Kevin.

Soon after, the state stepped in and took the child into custody. Lisa was so wrapped up with having the child stay at her house, Judy said, she had gone out and purchased a playpen, crib, and other infant essentials. Carl and two of Lisa’s children later backed this up.

“It was like the war was on now because I upset her apple cart,” Judy said.

Judy didn’t give up her fight, however, over the custody of her grandson. By this time, the state had placed the child in foster care after Judy’s son was sentenced and sent to prison. As Judy saw it, the child didn’t belong in foster care. Why allow the child to get attached to a foster family—or the other way around—when he had a home with members of his own family?

Eventually the dispute was put before a family court judge. Lisa became involved again and favored, shockingly, the foster family. If she couldn’t get the child herself, it seemed she felt, Judy wasn’t going to get him, either. Essentially, Lisa was going against her mother, brother, and sisters, walking into court and claiming the child was better off in foster care.

During one of the court hearings, Lisa was questioned under oath about all the times she had claimed to be pregnant. If Lisa wanted to sit on the stand, Judy felt, and try to stop her from getting custody of her grandchild, she should have to undergo a personal analysis of her own. Whatever she had done in the past would now become part of the record.

“During that hearing,” Judy recalled, “Lisa said she had a baby and she gave [the infant] to science in Manhattan, Kansas. I can’t remember which pregnancy she was talking about, but she also said she was pregnant with twins and one had died earlier.”

Lisa had committed perjury.

“Lisa actually wanted Judy’s grandson,” Carl Boman agreed. He remembered the situation vividly because he, too, had found himself in the middle of it all. “A lot of nastiness between them all came out. Lisa had her eye on that baby—and not for reasons of wanting him in a safe environment or out of foster care.

“She wanted that child as her own.”

When Lisa lied on the stand in court, her false testimony not only gave Judy grounds for proving how unstable she was, but it allowed Carl the opportunity to use the same ammunition in his forthcoming custody fight with Lisa, which was set for mid-January 2005. It was one more piece of evidence to prove Lisa had lied routinely throughout the years about being pregnant. By Judy’s count, at least five times between 2000 and 2004.

“I tried to tell them and tell them,” Judy said, meaning Kevin and his parents and people in Melvern, “but nobody listened.”

Several of Lisa’s family members claimed that around the same time she became involved in her nephew’s custody fight, Lisa also developed an obsession over wanting to give Kevin a female child.

“I really think Lisa wanted a child to make Kevin happy, preferably a girl,” Judy said. “So if it makes sense, I think she wanted
my
grandchild just to make me mad and cause problems—but she also wanted a girl for Kevin.”

Kevin had three sons from a previous marriage. He and his then-wife had a stillborn daughter years ago.

“Kevin always wanted a daughter,” someone in the family said. “His only daughter died.”

Lisa knew how much the loss had wounded Kevin’s soul. Part of her position was that she wanted to lessen his pain by granting him another child, preferably a daughter.

Carl Boman described a claim made by Lisa that she was “impregnated by her stepfather” years ago, and had wanted to keep the child. Lisa didn’t believe in abortion, Carl added, even under such inherently immoral circumstances.

But again, it went back to the question: was Lisa actually pregnant?

“No,” Judy insisted, “Lisa did not get pregnant by her stepfather. I took her to the doctor to make sure.”

By the time the custody fight was over and Judy was awarded custody of her grandson, “All of Lisa’s lies were catching up with her,” Judy concluded. Speaking of Lisa’s mind-set and her admission of killing Bobbie Jo and kidnapping her child, Judy said, “I think the desperation got to her.”

She believed Lisa needed a newborn so she could prove to everyone she wasn’t a liar, which was why she paraded the child around town: to shove it in the faces of those who had questioned her.

“Even if she only had one day to show this child off and bask in that glory of being redeemed,” Carl Boman commented, “I believe, in some way, it was all well worth it for Lisa. She was right and everyone else was wrong, if only for a few hours.”

T
he baby is fine,” U.S. attorney Todd Graves said the first time he addressed the media. “The baby is doing great.”

A clean-cut man of thirty-nine years, with a shock of tar-black hair he kept parted on one side, Todd Graves was raised on a family farm near Tarkio, Missouri. Married for the past fourteen years, Graves had fathered four children and later moved with his wife, Tracy, to a family farm of 270 acres north of Kansas City. The land had been in the Graves family for over one hundred years.

In 1988, Graves received his undergraduate degree in agricultural economics, with a minor in political science, from the University of Missouri-Columbia. He was graduated summa cum laude. Three years later, he received a law degree and a master’s in public administration from the University of Virginia.

Graves’s path toward the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Western District of Missouri, where he would eventually end up, was a textbook academic ride built on a foundation of hard work. Becoming a U.S. attorney is an appointed position, made by the president of the United States. If Graves wanted the job, the top dog himself would have to put him there. His work ethic and moral fiber certainly proved he was deserving.

From 1992 to 1994, Graves worked as the Platte County prosecuting attorney, one of the youngest ever to fill the position. Before that, he had a private practice. In 1991, he took on a job as an assistant attorney general for the state of Missouri. Through that, he served as a staff assistant on the Governor’s Commission on Crime. Anyone who knew Todd Graves had no doubt that any criminals to come through West Missouri and break federal law would be met with the stiff arm of “Lady Justice.” In 2002, Graves met U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft in Kansas City while Ashcroft was on a three-city junket through the state he grew up in. During the tour, Attorney General Ashcroft talked about cyber crime and terrorism. At a Kansas City news conference, Graves said the “heartland had witnessed an explosion” of Internet-driven child exploitation and pornography in recent years, and he was going to do everything in his power to try and stop it.

“I believe the Kansas City region will become the model in fighting the growing wave of crime against children,” Graves said, standing proudly. He was preparing the city for its recent inception of the RCFL, which later would become a major part of the investigation into the Bobbie Jo Stinnett murder case.

“Our children will be safer because of these efforts.”

The recovery of Victoria Jo two years after Graves made that speech certainly validated his promise; but there was more to Todd Graves than going after the latest criminal element. On top of his core belief of going after child predators, Graves was often applauded for his stern stance on prosecuting any type of corruption inside the system he valued and worked so hard to keep clean. He wasn’t one to pass up a chance to go after anyone, including colleagues who broke the law. It hadn’t mattered to Graves what job you held inside the government, where you were born, or who your daddy was. If you decided to break federal laws in his jurisdiction, consider yourself his enemy.

In late 2000, President George Bush noticed the work Todd Graves was doing in Missouri and nominated him for the state’s top federal law enforcement job in the Western District. That was on July 30, 2001. Then, six days after the United States experienced its worst act of terrorism on domestic soil, as the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Virginia smoldered, and more than three thousand people were considered missing and presumed dead, Graves held up his right hand and took the oath of office. He was confirmed approximately one month later, in October 2001.

With a staff of 119 in downtown Kansas City, where Graves’s office overlooks East Ninth Street in the Charles Evans Whittaker Courthouse building, the office Graves manages oversees more than half of Missouri’s 114 counties. Among them is Nodaway County, where Lisa Montgomery had admitted strangling Bobbie Jo Stinnett and snatching her fetus from her womb. Because Lisa allegedly had taken the baby over a state line into Kansas, she had committed a violation of the federal law, thus making the case, which was already building against her, Todd Graves’s job to prosecute. The actual charge Lisa would face was severe: kidnapping resulting in death, a crime punishable by the death penalty or a mandatory life sentence and a $250,000 fine.

If she was found guilty, Lisa Montgomery’s life would be over. Her children would never see her again as a free woman. Contact among them would be through a three-inch-thick section of Plexiglas, their voices resonating over an intercom phone monitored by prison officials.

On the night Victoria Jo was found, the press hounded Graves’s office. Ben Espey fielded hundreds of calls from all over the world. Espey continued working the microphones, trying to relate any detail he could without damaging the case being built against Lisa. In the end, Espey had done his job and fulfilled a promise he had made to Zeb. As Espey saw it, the legal case was out of his hands. The feds could have their way and take all the glory for all he cared. The baby was back home.

“That was all I ever wanted.”

After commenting on the status of Victoria Jo, Todd Graves had little to add.

Espey, who was going on two days without as much as a catnap, made himself available all evening. He announced the baby’s name for the first time in public and told the press she had been united with Zeb at Stormont-Vail Regional Health Center in Topeka.

Announcing the name of the hospital sent a herd of press racing to the parking lot of Stormont, hoping to get that first exclusive interview with anyone close to the Stinnett family, or better, a photograph of the baby the entire world was eager to see.

Lisa, meanwhile, continued to spin one lie after another. Espey and Graves shared with reporters some of what she had been telling investigators while in custody.

“She had a miscarriage at some point this year,” Espey said, “and lost a twin.” He didn’t mention where the information had come from, but it wasn’t difficult to ascertain Lisa was starting to talk. Nor did Espey know she was lying.

Espey took it one step further when he told one reporter that Lisa “was six months along when the child was lost.”

Reporters, curious to learn anything they could about Lisa and her state of mind, asked Espey about a possible motive.

“I think she was probably going to take it because she had lost one through a miscarriage….” Additionally, Espey said that “the attacker worked deftly and probably had some medical knowledge.”

Many of the reporters wanted details regarding Victoria Jo’s health. Lisa was no doctor, and she had not taken the child to see one. Considering the violent delivery, how was the child faring?

“We have no indications that the child was hurt in any way,” Espey confirmed. “The child’s probably going to be okay.”

Smiling, Espey took off his sheriff’s cap and wiped his brow, taking a long breath. What a day and night it had been.

One reporter asked about the details of the crime.

“More than likely, our victim has been strangled…. Evidence would show the baby was probably wrapped up and taken home.”

Some of the evidence included bloody sheets and blankets found inside the trunk of Lisa’s car, one insider noted later, along with “other items” leading authorities to believe Lisa had worked alone.

Espey wanted to stress that without the Amber Alert, the child would not have been found.

“We may have not ever recovered this little baby if the Amber Alert system was not put into place,” he said. “I’m overwhelmed.”

As reporters continued to launch questions, the exhausted sheriff kept speaking from his heart.

“The FBI, there were seven or eight FBI agents that came in, tremendously helped us. Because some of the computer stuff was a little bit out of our control, they knew about it, and they were able to dig right into that and get things going. And Randy Strong, he started from hour one and stayed with us through the whole thing. Most everybody here’s been up continuous. And we’ve run leads all night long. And we continued to run leads. When this Amber Alert came out, that’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened to law enforcement and to
our
children. We took an anonymous tip that came from several states away from here”—the Dyanne Siktar IP address of Darlene Fischer and Auntie Mary’s phone call—“[that gave] us some information that led us to Kansas…and we may have not ever got that. We may have not ever recovered this little baby—if the Amber Alert system was
not
put into play.”

After stepping back from the assortment of microphones in front of him, collecting himself, Espey added one final thought: “And so with that, we’re happy. We’re
very
happy.”

Sergeant Sheldon Lyons, a spokesman for the MSHP, thanked everyone who had helped work on the case. “This is a great day for law enforcement in Northwest Missouri,” Sergeant Lyons said.

To Ben Espey’s chagrin, FBI SA Jeff Lanza, who had stood in the background as Espey laid out the details, took a step forward. “Just also want to say thank you to the sheriff’s department,” said Lanza, “for the fine work they did, and the Missouri Highway Patrol, of course.”

Rick Thorton, a colleague of Lanza’s, stepped forward next. Building on what Lanza, Espey, and the MSHP had said already, Thorn echoed their sentiments and reiterated the belief that the investigation was a “collaborative effort.

“This is how it’s supposed to work. Where we all come together. We bring our own unique strengths to the investigative arena, and at the end of the day, in this case, it was a good outcome for us, the best outcome we could hope for.”

Reporters had a barrage of questions, beginning with, “If not for the Amber Alert, would this baby have been possibly in danger?”

“The baby was certainly in danger throughout…,” Lanza said.

“Father and baby are together right now?”

“That’s my understanding,” someone said.

“Is it a man and woman in custody?” one reporter shouted from the back.

“We’re not going to comment on anything of that nature at this point now,” Lanza said.

“But no arrests so far?”

“That’s correct. Thank you very much.”