Murder in the Heartland (21 page)

W
ith the exception of Kayla Boman, Lisa and Carl’s children awoke on Sunday morning at Mr. and Mrs. Montgomery’s house in Melvern. It was time to sit down and pray in the quiet solitude of the Lord’s house.

Pastor Mike Wheatley’s job in Melvern was to help his congregation understand how the Lord worked during such trying times. His task would be doubly tough this morning; as the community was facing another loss: a respected local man in his midforties had dropped dead on Friday. “The whole town was hurting over that, too,” one of the kids said.

Wheatley wanted the service on Sunday morning to be about “worship,” because Christmas was so near, as opposed to “grieving.”

“I did the best I could to make it that way,” Wheatley said later on television.

Wheatley had written the sermon for Sunday worship “before details of [Bobbie Jo’s] death surfaced,” he said. Quite prophetically, he had titled his sermon: “A Baby Changed Everything,” referring to Baby Jesus, of course.

Now, though, the title seemed to be a fitting foundation for the events of the past four days.

Kevin Montgomery showed up at Wheatley’s church with Alicia, Ryan, Rebecca, and his parents. Tears were flowing before the family even sat down and bowed their heads in prayer. Kayla was still in Georgia and had no intention of returning. “Did I want to go home?” she asked herself that morning. “No!” Then, almost in the same breath, “Yes, in a way, I wanted to be around my family. But I did
not
want to go back to Kansas. I didn’t want to be around any of that. I just had this feeling that I shouldn’t go back, and trust me, I was asked more times than I can count.”

Carl and Lisa’s other three children sat in Wheatley’s First Church of God listening to the organ welcome members. Pastor Wheatley announced he was going to read a statement Kevin had prepared. Kevin would have read it himself, but he was too distressed.

“As everyone here knows well,” Wheatley read aloud from a piece of paper in front of him on the podium, “this hasn’t been a very good week at all.”

As Wheatley articulated Kevin’s words, Lisa’s oldest, Rebecca, broke down in quiet sobs. She was sitting with friends near Kevin and Alicia. Both Rebecca and Alicia had worked early shifts that morning. The past four days had been a blur. Mom in jail. Bobbie Jo dead. Their baby sister gone. (“What would you do,” Rebecca asked later, “if you were told all this stuff? And then your
dad
comes and says he’s taking your brothers and sisters away to go live with him. I’d never see my mom again.”)

“Our deepest sympathies,” Wheatley continued, “also go out to the family of Bobbie Jo Stinnett.”

A hush fell on the church. Many sat without moving or speaking. Some nodded in agreement with Kevin’s words; others shook their heads in disbelief. What more could be said? How many tears would lessen the pain?

“This is going to be a long and difficult road for everyone to walk down,” Wheatley continued, still speaking for Kevin, “but if we look, and hold out our hands, God is there to lead the way. Please keep Lisa, the kids, and I in your prayers.”

As members bowed their heads together in prayer, the choir began a resonating version of “The First Noel.” It was a fitting piece of music. Said to be first published in the mid-1850s, the holiday classic carried a new message of comfort in Melvern that morning:

When the congregation reached the song’s second verse, Alicia, sitting next to Kevin, started crying. It was all too much.

“Staying at home would have been worse,” one church member said later of the children and Kevin. “This is where they get their strength.”

After the service, friends surrounded Rebecca, shielding her like bodyguards of a starlet at a film premiere. Flashbulbs popped. Microphones and microcassette recorders were thrust in people’s faces.
Over here! Turn, please
.
Can we get a comment?
Reporters had been hanging around outside the church, asking questions, looking for anyone with the surname Montgomery. “Do you know where the Montgomerys are? Where they live? Were Lisa Montgomery’s children in church today?”

Sneaking by, Rebecca laughed to herself.
They don’t know who I am
. She made it to her car, and locked the doors, her friends still by her side, without having to answer a single question.

B
y early Sunday evening, the status of Victoria Jo became the topic of conversation for many in the regions affected by the crimes for which Lisa Montgomery had been arrested. No definitive word had come out of the hospital since early morning. By and large, the media had respected Zeb Stinnett’s request to keep its distance.

At about six o’clock, Carol Wheeler, the acting spokeswoman at Stormont-Vail Regional Health Center, said, “She is considered a preemie. But neonatal specialists said she is responding as you would expect any child of her gestial age would.”

Through Wheeler, Zeb wanted the public to know Victoria Jo was doing “fine” and would be released “soon.” No other additional information regarding her condition was made available. The family wanted privacy.

Zeb hadn’t left the hospital since Victoria Jo had been found—and wouldn’t, he said, until she was released.

M
onday morning began as a flawless Midwestern winter’s day in Melvern. The sun rose in a burst of fiery reds and yellows and, by 10:00
A.M
., had burned off an early-morning fog. With the sun shining, people headed off to work, carrying on business as usual.

Along Main Street, shop owners and store clerks opened their doors. Diners, beauty parlors, and coffee shops would soon fill as reports of Lisa’s first day in court trickled out through television sets sitting on oak entertainment centers and tag-sale TV stands, as it would in the dark corners of bars and restaurants. Households in the countryside would tune in, too. What would happen to Melvern’s most infamous citizen?

The satellite trucks were still parked up and down Main Street. There they sat, broadcasting stories all across the world. Reporters were still scouring the town looking for filler stories, while waiting to learn what Lisa’s first court appearance would divulge. The majority of the townspeople made it known they cared not only for Victoria Jo, Lisa’s children, and Kevin Montgomery, but for the Stinnett family and the town of Skidmore, too.

Signs were taped to business front doors in downtown Melvern and nearby Lyndon, the county seat. “The Melvern Community Is Collecting Funds for the Bobbie Jo Stinnett Family, Skidmore, Missouri.” The Lyndon State Bank, with branches spread across the region, posted similar notices. Understandably, Zeb wouldn’t be going back to work for some time. He’d be raising a child on his own. Any contribution—a dime, nickel, dollar—would end up in good hands.

The local school district made counselors available for students and teachers to help them cope with their feelings. Many schools had the next two weeks off in observance of the Christmas holiday, but the school board felt students would somehow view the recent events as a reflection on themselves and the town as a whole. The people of Melvern took pride in their community. “So when tragedy strikes any of its members, the others also are hit hard. The same is true when a community member does something wrong,” Ted Vannocker, the superintendent and principal of Marais des Cygnes Valley (High) School, told reporters.

For Kayla Boman, school had always been a release. Not that she enjoyed it all that much, or was glad she had to go. But still, she liked the social atmosphere of being around kids her age. This was probably a day Kayla needed to be in school more than any other—but it wouldn’t happen. The holidays were here, school was closed.

Most parents felt that routine was best for kids during times of tragedy. To continue to do the same things as you might on any other
normal
day meant you had some sort of control over your life. Kayla wanted it back, but Lisa had stripped her of any sense of a normal life.

Some kids could be cruel. The story unraveling in Missouri certainly had worked its way into Georgia. If a kid put two and two together and figured out Kayla was Lisa’s daughter, name-calling and family-bashing were sure to begin. Internet bloggers were publishing the kids’ names on message boards. Any computer-savvy teen could log on and figure it all out.

Home at Aunt Mary’s house was a good place for Kayla during those first few days after Lisa was arrested. “At least at Mary’s house, I was busy, so I didn’t think about ‘it’ a lot,” Kayla asserted.

On Monday, Kayla went to the hospital with Mary to visit Mary’s mom, who’d had a brain aneurism a few days earlier. It was a helpful trip in more ways than one. Anywhere but Melvern, Kayla said. To be able to be there for Mary was a gift. It took her out of her own situation, if only for a day. At home, there would have been more reasons to think about everything.

Kayla said she tried talking to her sister Alicia, but Alicia had a completely different opinion about a lot of things, so it was just easier to talk to people who understood her. Ryan wasn’t going to be any help, Kayla decided, because, “I don’t talk about my mom too much to him. He was pretty sensitive about it, and I didn’t want to stir up any emotions. He’s a really good person to talk to when I just need to get something off my chest.”

Ryan was only ten months older than Kayla, so the two of them had always been in the same grade. “Because of that, we have always been really close.”

Carl and Kayla both agreed Ryan had a temper problem when he was younger—“when he would get mad, he would want to hit something”—but as he grew, he learned to manage it. One could speculate the chaotic life Lisa and Carl led as their two marriages imploded around the kids was partly responsible for the issues Ryan struggled with early on. The family had moved a lot, and Lisa and Carl were at odds much of the time during those years.

Rebecca had always been closer to her mom than the other children. “Mom was always the outdoorsy type of person, hiking and camping,” she recalled. “She liked her animals; we had lots of animals. She just never took care of them. That was our job. She liked to read—a lot. Once Mom got into a book, you just didn’t talk to her. You couldn’t get her attention.”

Taking care of her siblings was, Rebecca said, her “job” because she was the oldest. “Whenever they needed something,
I
took care of them.”

“Although Rebecca is the bossiest of the four of us,” remarked Kayla, “she is the most outgoing. She was in Future Farmers of America for four years, an officer for three, a cheerleader for two years, and I believe the school mascot for a year. She played basketball for two or three years, and was actively involved in journalism, writing articles for the school newspaper right up until her final year.”

When their mom wasn’t around, Rebecca would watch the other kids.

Kayla recalled, “At the time, it was just me, her, and Mom, who worked two jobs, so she wasn’t home much. I was seven-and-a-half. In my opinion, Rebecca had to grow up way too fast. I guess you would kind of have to when you’re just a kid (eleven years old) and you’re put in charge of another kid.”

Carl claimed his oldest daughter bore the brunt of Lisa’s manipulation, especially where his duties as a father were concerned.

What hurt Rebecca more than anything was how “we would wait all day and night because Dad said he would be there, and he would never show up. He says it’s Mom’s fault, but he…he faked having cancer one time. He said he had cancer, so Mom drove us all the way down to Oklahoma to see him.”

Carl said he was diagnosed with a form of stomach cancer, which, luckily, never materialized.

“I didn’t see them as much as I wanted to,” recalled Carl. “I lived one hundred fifty miles away and wasn’t allowed to take them home. It was Lisa’s rule. I was diagnosed with cancer when I first started having stomach problems: one doctor said I had it, one said I didn’t. I lost a lot of weight, and I told Rebecca that there was a ‘possibility’ I had it, and what the doctor said. Lisa made a big issue of it and even went to Social Security to see how much money she would get if I died. I was tested three years ago and didn’t have cancer.”

Still, Rebecca maintained, Carl rarely called, especially after he met Vanessa and remarried. “He used to call us all the time. But then when he met Vanessa, it stopped.
We
were the ones who were calling him.”

“Vanessa and Lisa did
not
get along,” explained Carl. “Lisa made it very difficult for me to see the kids, and Vanessa didn’t apologize or try to work with Lisa, and me and the kids are the ones who suffered for it. I never didn’t call the kids. Lisa made it difficult for me sometimes. It was hard for me to call all the time, but I always called once a week.”

If Carl called, Lisa would say he didn’t, after not allowing the call to go through to the children. If he wanted to drive over to get the kids for the weekend, Lisa would say no. It was all a carefully framed plan of Lisa’s, Carl insisted, to make him look bad in front of his children. What’s more, Lisa and Kevin had dial-up Internet service, which, considering the amount of time Lisa spent online, made it nearly impossible for Carl to get through. If he showed up unannounced, “She wouldn’t allow me to take them…out of the yard.”

L
ocated in downtown Kansas City, the Charles Evans Whittaker Courthouse building looks more like a high-rise, five-star hotel on the Las Vegas strip than a $90-million federal building. At nearly three hundred feet tall, the six-hundred-thousand-square-foot, ten-story granite structure houses some five hundred government employees. Named after the only Kansas City resident to be appointed to the Supreme Court, the tubular-shaped spiral of this massive structure, from a bird’s-eye view, looks like the letter
C
.

Sixteen courtrooms occupy the building on different floors, where court of appeals, district court, magistrate court, and bankruptcy judges all carry out their trial work. Each courtroom is outfitted with the latest audio-visual technology, which, coupled with the high ceilings and “wedge”-shaped contour of the courtrooms, allows multidefendant trials the working space they often require.

By Monday afternoon, the granite, limestone, and glass corridors inside the rotunda lobby of the courthouse building, where terrazzo floors reflect an assortment of twenty-five-foot-tall sculptures, mattered little to Lisa Montgomery. She would never see any of it. Shuttled into the building via a U.S. Marshal transport, Lisa was whisked by elevator up to the eighth floor and put in a holding cell, where she sat and waited for her first formal arraignment on charges of kidnapping resulting in death.

As Lisa was brought into court—and out in public for the first time since her arrest three days ago—Stormont-Vail Regional Health Center released five-pound eleven-ounce Victoria Jo in good health to her father. Zeb had been given an extended paternity leave from his job at Kawasaki Motors. From the hospital, he drove Victoria Jo to his mother-in-law’s house in Skidmore, where he was planning to stay with the baby for a while. Victoria Jo would sleep in the same crib Tyler Harper, Bobbie Jo’s little brother, had slept during the early years of his life.

While Zeb Stinnett and Becky Harper made the infant comfortable in her new surroundings, Lisa, wearing an orange prison jumpsuit and her signature oversized glasses, which somewhat shadowed the puffy bags underneath her eyes, was escorted into the courtroom, doing the “paper-slipper shuffle,” a term inmates sometimes use in place of the more common “perp walk.” With her long brown hair (laced with delicate streaks of blond) hiding her face, Lisa looked down the entire time and seldom made eye contact with anyone. Kevin, fidgeting in a front-row pew, watched his wife as she was led to a mahogany table in front of U.S. magistrate judge David J. Waxse.

And there she stood, head bowed, handcuffs and leg chains clanking every time she moved even the slightest bit, waiting for the judge to begin.

“If convicted, Mrs. Montgomery,” Judge Waxse said at one point, after announcing the charges against Lisa, “you could spend the rest of your life in prison or face the death penalty.”

Earlier that morning, U.S. deputy attorney Matt Whitworth filed a motion asking the judge to keep Lisa in custody.

“This case involves an act of extreme violence, which resulted in the death of Bobbie Jo Stinnett and the kidnapping of the victim’s baby girl, Victoria Jo Stinnett. Further, [the] defendant is now charged with the offense of kidnapping resulting in death, which carries a maximum sentence of life without parole or death.”

Whitworth argued that because the government viewed Lisa as a danger to the community, not to mention a flight risk, she needed to be kept behind bars.

“The government respectfully requests that this Honorable Court set a detention hearing to demonstrate that no condition or combination of conditions will reasonably assure the defendant’s appearance as required by the court and the safety of other persons and the community, and thereafter detain the defendant without bail pending trial of this matter.”

The judge agreed, and set a bond hearing for December30.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office also announced it was bringing in Nodaway County prosecutor David Baird as a special assistant U.S. attorney. Lisa allegedly had committed her crimes in Baird’s district. Baird knew the territory and scope of the township. He would be instrumental in investigation and case preparation. But, perhaps most important, Baird would be the go-to man when it came time to pick a jury. Baird knew the people of Missouri. He could add insight and ingenuity to every element of the prosecution.

Baird was an experienced trial lawyer who knew the law well. He was working for the office during the Ken Rex McElroy fiasco in Skidmore, back in 1981, and had a reputation for pressing forward in the face of difficulty in even the most ordinary cases where the law had been breached or broken. Baird was a fighter for the people’s rights, often pursuing cases of child porn and rape. He fought hard, right up until the end of any case, high-profile or not. In the coming months, he would be invaluable in the U.S. Attorney Office’s case against Lisa.

Todd Graves and David Baird had worked together several times, helping each other where they could, but were also unified in participating in a new drug task force in the Western District. The Northwest Missouri Interagency Team Response Operation (NITRO) had created solid relationships among law enforcement agencies in the district so they could fight together against a growing drug problem.

“I am pleased to be a part of…the NITRO endeavor,” Baird said after NITRO was formed in 2002. “During my tenure as Nodaway County prosecuting attorney, my office has been actively involved in the vigorous prosecution of those associated with drug activity…. My office will be actively involved in the NITRO effort and provide it full support.”

On the day of Lisa’s first court appearance, she was represented by public defenders Charles Dedmon and Ron Wurtz. Shortly before Lisa’s arraignment ended, Dedmon and Wurtz asked the judge to issue a gag order. Every time a new piece of information, no matter how small, was released, the entire history of the case sprang back into the forefront of the media. Some involved were starting to talk. Dedmon and Wurtz wanted a fair shot. They had refused to answer any questions from the media themselves; yet Todd Graves, Ben Espey, and several others, it seemed, were appearing with Larry King and Anderson Cooper on major news shows.

Judge Waxse declined the gag order. “But I remind [everyone involved] to limit their comments to the media.”

Assistant U.S. attorney Terra Morehead, who was representing the government, said, “We know what the rules are as it applies to dissemination of information.”

Lisa’s children were thunderstruck by the image of their mom doing the perp walk on television. They couldn’t believe what they were seeing.

“I know it was hard on everyone,” said Kayla. “I watched some of the news, but Auntie M didn’t want me to watch too much of it, because then I would dwell on it. Instead, she had me talk to her about how I felt…and to a psychiatrist (I think that is what he was…but he was a friend of hers). It helped, I guess.”

As word of Lisa’s first day in court spread, members of the Ratter Chatter message board discussed Lisa’s alleged crimes. A rumor had started on one of the message boards saying Lisa supposedly had practiced the procedure she allegedly conducted on Bobbie Jo on some of her expecting rat terriers.

“How the rumors about my mom ‘practicing’ on our champion bitch got started are beyond me,” Kayla said in her mom’s defense. “That one really makes me laugh, though—because only one of our dogs was shown at dog shows, and I showed
him
…. None of our dogs died while having puppies, or were ever missing.”