Murder in the Heartland (29 page)

C
arl Boman admitted later he wasn’t a man who could control his temper well. At times, he would “cuss and raise his voice” to Lisa. Things changed for Carl as he grew older and learned how to deal with situations in a more mature way, but early in the marriage, he sometimes was overcome by anger.

“What are you doing?” raged Carl the day he became convinced Lisa had cheated on him while he was in San Diego looking for a place to relocate the family.

Lisa started crying. “I didn’t do it, Carl. I didn’t.” She was good at denying the obvious, Carl insisted.

“Well, I don’t believe you,” said Carl. “We’re done, Lisa. It’s over.”

After the conversation, Carl packed his belongings in a van, took Alicia and Rebecca, and drove to San Diego without Lisa and Ryan.

As the spring of 1990 moved along, Lisa had a terrible time making it on her own in Oklahoma. When she realized she couldn’t take care of one-year-old Ryan while working enough hours to pay the bills, she moved into her aunt’s house in south Texas. She was six months pregnant with her fourth child.

Throughout this time, Lisa and Carl never stopped talking. She still loved him—and, in many ways, he loved her.

By June, Carl wanted Lisa to move to San Diego at once. Yet, he was not ready to have her move into the apartment he had found. At such an early stage, he couldn’t face Lisa and act as if nothing had happened between them.

“My father and Judy still had a place down the block from me,” recalled Carl. “They were divorced, but nobody knew it…and were still living together, moving things back to Oklahoma when they could so Judy could relocate at some point.”

Lisa moved in with her mother and Richard.

“Well,” Carl said, “having Lisa move in with her mother was a mistake. Let’s just say it didn’t work out.”

Lisa started telling Carl that Judy was trying behind their backs to get custody of the children. Carl confronted Judy about it—along with the way she was treating Lisa—and ended up having “a major blowout.”

“I called her every name in the book. We fought hard that day.”

Judy later denied this, saying, “Lisa left Carl and came to Richard and me. We took her in because of the kids. She was pregnant with Kayla. I took her to the Welfare Department, and she got on welfare, but only stayed on it maybe a month or less, and then moved right back with Carl.”

It was clear Judy and Carl saw this part of Lisa’s life through different eyes. Up until that point, Carl and Judy had always gotten along fairly decently. It wasn’t that they played cards together every Saturday night, took long walks with the kids in the park, or sat across form each other at Sunday dinner. But they did appreciate each other’s space and knew where the line was.

Carl was slowly integrating Lisa back into the fold of the family by “allowing” her to watch Alicia and Rebecca while he worked long hours at his new job as a Wells Fargo security guard. So, to the kids, Lisa was always around. The recent blowout with Judy, however, convinced Carl he needed to have Lisa back in his home.

Within a month of living together, Lisa gave birth to Kayla, who was born several months premature, on August 18, 1990. During this time, several family crises occurred: Rebecca, only four years old, was in a car accident while riding with her aunt’s boyfriend. She had to be airlifted to the hospital. After she recovered from a broken jaw and dozens of bumps and bruises, she was accidentally hit with a softball. The problems, although quite traumatic, seemed to draw Lisa and Carl closer. The children deserved a mother
and
father. “And Lisa deserved a second chance.” She was young. Confused. Perhaps even withdrawn, depressed. Judy was, in Carl’s opinion, filling her head with all sorts of stories. In Lisa’s mind, Carl maintained, he had let her down and abandoned her when he took off for San Diego looking for a place to relocate.

“I couldn’t just turn my back on her,” said Carl, defending why he took Lisa back. “She deserved more from me. I had, in many ways, acted on the ideas and thoughts Judy had poisoned my mind with. I couldn’t live my life based on what Judy was telling me.”

T
he state of Missouri acquired its nickname, the “Show Me” state, official literature proclaims, because of the skepticism residents demonstrate. Some citizens throughout the 69,674-square-mile area of the state have labeled themselves “tough-minded demanders of proof,” one document contends. Missourians insist on confirming truth; they want evidence; they want to see facts for themselves before they believe.

By May 2005, Zeb Stinnett released several statements clearly outlining Victoria Jo’s health status. If anyone had a doubt about the child’s well-being, it was clear from the few photographs Zeb released with his statements she was a happy, healthy baby, who now weighed in at a surprising fifteen pounds eleven ounces.

In just over five months she had gained almost ten pounds.

“She has three great loves right now,” Zeb told reporters. “Eating, sleeping, smiling.”

A reserved man who believed in keeping family matters private, Zeb spoke out because, mainly, he wanted to thank everyone, from reporters to law enforcement to hospital personnel, for their “contribution to Victoria Jo’s safe recovery.” It was obvious Zeb was grateful for what he had, as opposed to being angry over what he didn’t. It didn’t mean Zeb was ready to forgive and forget. But his focus, at least then, was on raising his daughter and providing her with the home she deserved. He had gone back to work at Kawasaki Motors, while Becky Harper and his mother helped with babysitting duties.

Since Bobbie Jo’s death some five months ago, Zeb said, he had received e-mails, letters, phone calls, and cards from people all over the world offering their blessings and support. “I want everyone to know that my silence in the press is not meant to be misinterpreted as a sign of ingratitude. We are humbled and awed by the kindness that has flooded our lives. There is no way to thank each person who had reached out to us. But I hope you all know that you have given us a priceless gift.”

L
isa Montgomery emerged in the spring of 2005 with a complete new outlook on life. In a letter to Carl Boman, dated May 26, it was clear from the opening line that Lisa had found Jesus Christ and was now living under God’s word. In the past, she had never expressed a deep-seated belief in God’s word, but Carl and the children were about to meet a woman who had been “saved.” Faced with the confinement of four walls, barbed-wire, and steel toilets, Lisa turned to God and opened her heart to the Lord. She was running her life now under the guidance of the Bible—and, as the family was about to learn, she was as obsessed with it as she had been with having another baby.

Although Lisa’s words contradicted the behavior she had displayed throughout the past few years, it was clear she was preparing herself for the road ahead. Yet, Lisa was apparently willing to be saved—only if it was on her terms. Besides the doilies and paintings she was working on in prison and sending her children, she was still not ready to be accountable for what she was accused of, or even admit having Bobbie Jo’s baby in her arms when authorities found her.

Opening the letter, Lisa said she “prayed very hard” for “guidance” on how to “approach” the state of affairs Carl had created.

That statement in itself, Carl thought, was incredible:
I had created this situation? Typical Lisa…here she was trying to turn everything around so as to make herself look good.
“She had done it her entire life. The difference now was, I knew what she was doing. Living with her, raising our children, it was hard to see.”

Next, Lisa said she opened her Bible to Matthew 18:19, quoting the passage: “If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over.” There was only one slight discrepancy in the passage; it was Matthew 18:15.

“From the letters she has written to me,” Kayla remarked later, “Mom seems like she has found God, but I sometimes wonder. I don’t know why, but I just worry about her sometimes. She hasn’t really ever been religious, although when we lived in New Mexico, when I was in kindergarten, we used to walk a mile (or something like that) every Sunday to go to church. No, she never quoted from the Bible—she does now, though—around the house; and no, she didn’t pressure us into going to church…. I think religion
is
her ‘crutch’…during her darkest hours. I think so much time alone, and the thought that she might get the death penalty, has made her realize she needs God in her life.”

“In my opinion,” Judy said later, “Lisa did not express hardly anything of the Lord—until she was, like, behind the bars. I know she went to church in Melvern some, but I think it was because of Kevin’s parents, Kevin, and the kids. If she had her way, she wouldn’t have gone at all…that is my opinion.”

Further on in the letter, Lisa spoke of the problems she had with Vanessa and the trepidation she had over addressing them. But Jesus had “directed” her to confront Carl “straight” up. It seemed Lisa was under the impression Vanessa was intercepting her letters to the children and “e-mailing them to England.” What purpose Vanessa would have to do such a bizarre thing was never broached. Yet, Lisa demanded it “stop at once.”

Then again, she maintained, if she had been misguided in any way, she wanted to “apologize” for spouting off about it.

After that, she reacted to what she had heard was Vanessa’s “cursing” Alicia and striking her. She wanted to encourage Vanessa, “as the Christian adult role model” in the household, to read James 1:19–20, wherein, Lisa quoted correctly, “…Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires.”

Concrete walls and the possibility of a death sentence did not dampen the ongoing feud between Vanessa and Lisa. Lisa wanted Carl to make it clear to Vanessa there was no way she could ever replace her as the children’s mother, “and…attempting to do so” would only “alienate” the kids from her more. She wanted Vanessa to listen to the children and “read God’s word” for guidance on how to communicate with them better.

What is this?
Carl wondered while reading.

Lisa’s newfound piety didn’t sit right with Carl. She was sitting in prison facing murder and kidnapping charges. There were larger issues to worry about at the present time. Was the woman out of her mind?

Because of the tension between Alicia and Vanessa, Lisa urged Carl later in the letter to think about allowing Alicia “to be emancipated” on her seventeenth birthday, which was about two months away. She demanded Carl treat Alicia as an adult and give her the opportunity to move out of the house. At the same time, Lisa said she would “not agree” to allow “any of the kids” to move in with Judy.

From there, she went on to advise Carl on the various ways he could “rebuild” his relationship with the kids, especially Alicia.

“Our God is a God,” she wrote, “of love….”

Hate wasn’t part of God’s makeup, she said.

“This is absolutely incredible,” Carl said, reading on, staring at Lisa’s neatly handwritten words.

Lisa continued praising God’s word, explaining that she was going to educate the children to “know God” as she herself had come to “know Him.”

She wrote that she felt “persecuted not only by people who do not know me, but my own family,” adding that she now lived under God’s way, not by “man’s word.”

After telling Carl that Kevin and his parents were entitled to visits by the children, Lisa encouraged Carl to work with her to “provide a United Christian parenthood” for them.

“She’s got to be on drugs. I can’t believe this,” Carl responded.

At the end, in what could be construed as a viable threat, she instructed Carl to talk to Vanessa and ask her to refrain from using “physical violence” on one of God’s children (Alicia), because “she would not want God’s anger directed at her the same way.”

Nowhere in the letter had Lisa addressed her own behavior, the savage crime she was being accused of, or if and why she had broken one of God’s most sacred commandments.

F
or an elected Republican sheriff living in the heartland of America, meeting the president of the United States might be a dream come true. To shake the hand of the man in charge would have to be a crowning moment in any law enforcement official’s career. But for Ben Espey, saving Victoria Jo Stinnett’s life was enough.

When Espey got word that President Bush wouldn’t be in Washington, DC, on the day he and his colleagues would be in the nation’s capital to accept an award for their work in the Stinnett case, Espey was disappointed, but not at all upset. He didn’t need congratulations and congressional pats on the back. In early May, when he got word he was going to receive an award, along with Jeff Owen, Dave Merrill (both with the MSHP), Investigator Randy Strong, and FBI SA Kurt Lipanovich, for his work in the Bobbie Jo Stinnett case, he simply nodded his head, shrugged, and said, “Okay. Great.”

Espey’s life already felt full. “I raise horses, mules; we do some horseback riding,” Espey recalled. “I got a motorcycle the wife and I like to ride.” Sharon Espey is the sheriff’s wife of thirty-one years. With a smile, Espey explained that when he isn’t working, he and Sharon spend every moment they can together. (“I used to fish and hunt, but mainly it’s horseback and motorcycle riding with my wife now.”)

Espey grew up in Maryville and never left. The middle son of five boys, he was the captain of the high-school football team who managed to get A’s and B’s throughout his education and has never been in any trouble (“zero alcohol and zero drugs”). Life has been good to him, he feels.

“Everybody needs to be equal,” he asserted, speaking of the sheriff’s office he runs. “That’s what I have always implemented in the environment we all work in around here.”

The reason why Espey had been so successful as sheriff, he said modestly after being pressed about the issue, “is that I know the land and the people. I know what they expect, because I am one of them.”

The Department of Justice, along with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, honored Espey and those who helped in the Bobbie Jo Stinnett murder investigation with its Officer of the Year Award. In recognition of their work, the men were invited to Washington by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to receive the honor.
America’s Most Wanted
host John Walsh was there, along with members of Congress and state representatives.

Todd Graves announced the award to the press. “These local, state and federal law enforcement officers exemplify teamwork among all levels of law enforcement,” Graves said. “Their quick action and resourcefulness transformed what could have been an even worse tragedy into the return of a healthy child to her family. I know they have the profound gratitude of that family, and they have our respect for a job well done and an honor well deserved.”

Espey and his crew were among twenty-five honorees from across the nation who had been recognized. Alberto Gonzales, quite proudly, said, “A missing child is every parent’s worst nightmare. Every day, the courageous men and women of law enforcement work tirelessly to recover missing and exploited children across our nation. We are grateful for their dedication, and today we recognize their valiant efforts to apprehend would-be predators and keep our communities safe.”

Todd Graves explained during the ceremony how the “recovery of Victoria…underscored the value of the Amber Alert program.”

Back home in Maryville a few days later, Espey was in his office when he received a surprising call.

“George Bush found out about the award and that you guys were out there, but he didn’t have time to meet with you then.”

“I know,” Espey said.

“He wants you to go back out there this week so he can honor all you guys himself personally in the Oval Office.”

Espey was speechless.

Whereas Espey and his peers had taken their wives and children to Washington, DC, the first time, this next trip was solely for law enforcement personnel. Each set of officers (“I think there were thirty-two…five or six groups…”) would fly back East and meet with the president separately.

“What an honor.”

There were five officers in Espey’s group. They walked into the Oval Office together. President Bush was standing in front of his desk waiting for them.

“Hi, how you doin’?” Bush said, shaking each officer’s hand. They stood in a half-circle around him at first, and then Bush gathered the men around and talked about the history of the Oval Office, what it stood for in democracy, and some of the decisions made in the room.

“It was just great,” Espey said later. “This guy was just super. Outgoing. Very down-to-earth. He took the time to tell us what happened there.”

What struck Espey later was how natural it felt for a county sheriff from one of the more rural regions of the country to stand with his colleagues in the Oval Office, just “shooting the breeze” with the president. “And there were people in Washington who had never even seen the guy.”

Being escorted around town for the most part by Secret Service, Espey had several conversations with them.

“You must be pretty important to be honored like that,” one Secret Service agent had told Espey earlier that day.

“I guess.”

“I’ve worked here in Washington for years now and never even met the guy, or been in the Oval Office.”

Espey smiled. “Oh, yeah. How ’bout that.”