Baby Be Mine

by Diane Fanning

  Rogers pled guilty to the interstate transportation and receipt of visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct. He admitted in court that he paid a Houston supplier $55 for a magazine and photographs of child pornography. He received a 4-month jail sentence and 3 years of probation. Those in the know at the church overlooked this transgression because Rogers convinced them that he was innocent and others set him up for a fall.

  With his new arrest on child pornography charges, the full truth of his previous criminal record was revealed. The parishioners in his Presbyterian church were appalled and chagrined.

  On November 12,2003, a subdued Rogers—in an orange jumpsuit and Velcro sneakers—pled guilty to ten of the eleven counts in the indictment issued by the grand jury. In a plea agreement, he offered four statements of fact. He admitted there were images of child pornography on the two computers removed from his home. He agreed that images and video of the same had been on the two computers and compact disk removed from his office. He said that he’d sent four emails with an attached photograph of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct. Finally, he admitted that he sent three emails with an attached photo of male genitalia on a dinner plate and another picture of an adult male after his penis and testicles were removed.

  “Is your mind clear?” U.S. District Magistrate Judge Scott Wright asked Rogers.

  “I have a bit of a headache this morning, but yes, sir,” Rogers replied.

  When the judge pressed him for an admission of guilt, Rogers equivocated. “I believe I would probably be found guilty.” Then, he added, “I want to get this behind me.”

  That last comment made Branson’s mother, Rebecca Perry, more outraged than she’d ever been in her life. The man who probably stole her son’s life was looking to his own future. In her mind, he did not deserve a future at all.

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  Two days after Rogers’ court appearance, Sergeant David Merrill of the Missouri Highway Patrol sought and received authorization for another search. This time the specific purpose was to seek any evidence of human remains or biological material.

  In the affidavit, Merrill presented his assessment of the nature of Rogers’ perversions.

  In the investigation of Jack Rogers, the offender’s collection reflects not only his specific sexual interests with regard to desired age and gender characteristics (underage or youthful males), but also with regard to particular sadomasochistic sexual practices (among them impalement, castration and cannibalism.) Individuals who have a demonstrated willingness to turn their fantasies into reality by acting on them may be more likely, having overcome the internal and external inhibitors such as guilt and fear, to continue acting on those desires and possibly to escalate. Investigation has confirmed that Jack Rogers indulged in at least one of his sexual interests, specifically, he caused pain and suffering by performing surgical castration on an individual. Jack Rogers also claims to have consumed the male genitalia removed during surgery. It must be noted that of the small number of cases reviewed by the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit involving cannibalism, it has rarely been seen without an associated psychiatric history, which frequently does not rise to the legal definition of insanity.

  Jack Rogers has identified himself as a sexual sadist during online conversations and described an event in which he claims to have abducted and tortured a young adult male hitchhiker. Since Jack Rogers has already acted on other sadomasochistic fantasies, it increases the risk that this abduction scenario actually occurred. An individual who is sexually aroused by adolescent males and also sexually aroused by the pain and suffering of others, may victimize young-looking adults or actual child victims with whom he can satisfy some or all of his sexual desires.

  Additionally, he noted that when an individual persisted in criminal activity when they have reason to believe the conduct had come to the attention of law enforcement—as Rogers did—they were particularly dangerous.

  This is desire-driven behavior characterized by a persistent pattern of behavior involving a willingness to commit significant time, money and energy in furtherance of the specific sexual preferences, often resulting in multiple offenses.

  On November 17, Sergeant Merrill returned to Nichols Street with Officer Pat Horn and his dog, Sabra, and Officer William Albright and his dog, Cinder. The dogs sniffed the four flower beds in the backyard and the paving stones on the patio. They did not alert at those areas, but when they approached the Crown Royal Silver Eagle travel camper, Sabra made digging motions indicating the presence of human biological materials. Cinder alerted at the same location. From the trailer, they seized couch cushions, a backpack, two plastic tubs and tent items and took them to the highway patrol lab in Jefferson City for processing and analysis.

  The officers got busy digging. First, they tackled the four flower beds. Each seventy-two-square-foot bed was above ground and held in place by wooden timbers stacked two feet high. Then they removed the paving stones on the patio and dug beneath them. They tore the backyard apart, but to their great disappointment, they found no incriminating evidence buried in there. Investigators still did not have the proof they needed to charge Rogers with the murder of Branson Perry.

  On April 28, 2004, Rogers returned to court for sentencing. The prosecution put six witnesses on the stand to support their position that an extreme sentence was warranted on Roger’s child pornography charges.

  One of those witnesses was nursing student Madison Abercrombie. After online contact, Michael—now Madison—Abercrombie and his wife met Jack Wayne Rogers and an unidentified male in at the Travelodge motel in Columbia, Missouri, for gender reassignment surgery—the surgical removal of the penis and scrotum.

  “I didn’t know his motivation when I went into it. I was under a lot of emotional stress and it seemed like there was no alternative,” Madison told the court.

  Rogers promised that the procedure would be over in four hours or less. When that time had passed, Rogers was nowhere near done. Complications caused excessive bleeding and Rogers struggled to get the bleeding to stop. Madison survived but the botched operation left her in need of additional surgeries to complete her transformation from male to female. Madison identified herself as the subject of the before and after photographs seized in the search of Rogers’ business.

  The unnamed assistant of Rogers admitted to participation in similar operations performed on three other men—handing surgical tools to Rogers and taking photographs. He said that Rogers had a standard agreement with all of his “patients.” The body parts removed became Rogers’ personal property to use as he pleased. Sometimes that meant Rogers would eat them.

  The surgical assistant also told authorities that Rogers admitted that one man he operated on died during the procedure. Rogers, he said, kept that man’s teeth, and thrown them out the car window as he drove down the road. He did this as a routine part of disposing of a body and obscuring the victim’s identity. He added that Rogers often picked up hitchhikers and other transient people and that he was always ready for sexual opportunities—including torture—at any time.

  At the conclusion of testimony, the judge said, “Okay. Well, if you want to come forward here by the lectern and I’ve heard the evidence here,” he said, referring to the testimony about surgical castration and cannibalism the state provided in support of their motion of upward departure from the federal sentencing guidelines. “And I’m going to depart upward. And based on the number of images, the extreme nature of the conduct, I can’t imagine any more extreme conduct. And, of course, then it was a serious injury that—it’s a wonder she didn’t die from it. Just a wonder. So, it’ll be the judgment of the Court on Counts One through Seven, it’ll be the judgment of the Court that the defendant be sentenced to the Bureau of Prisons for a term of thirty years.”

  Rogers’ attorney claimed the sentence was excessive, going far beyond federal sentencing guidelines of 57 to 61 months in prison. She vowed to appeal this violation of Rogers’ right to due p
rocess.

  Meanwhile law enforcement kept digging. They hunted for the evidence they needed to convict Rogers of the crimes they suspected he committed—cannibalism, practicing medicine without a license and the torture and murder of Branson Perry. To their surprise, they discovered there were no federal or state statutes prohibiting cannibalism.

  September 2004 was a month of reckoning for Rogers. He received word that the appeal of his child pornography sentence was denied. He also faced a trial on charges of first-degree assault and practicing medicine without a license for the procedure he performed on Madison Abercrombie.

  He entered the Boone County courtroom in a zebra-style prison uniform with handcuffs on his wrists and shackles on his ankles. He pled guilty, on the advice of his attorney. He received a sentence of 17 years for the assault and 7 years for the illegal surgery. Both sentences, however, were to be served concurrently with his current 30-year sentence for child pornography.

  Law enforcement authorities were gratified that he was behind bars, but still they struggled to build a case against Rogers for murder in the disappearance and presumed death of Branson Perry. They hoped to file charges one day, but feared that the case would never be officially closed.

  Of course, the evil heart of Jack Rogers was not touched by the pleas of Branson Perry’s family. Not moved by the glares Branson’s mother cast in his direction while in the courtroom, he would not divulge any further information about Branson. He would not reveal where he had left the body of a confused young man who should have had a lifetime to find himself.

  In 2006, investigators continued to actively pursue the evidence they needed to charge. Rogers for the murder of Branson Perry—and of any other possible homicide victims as well. The results of the forensic analysis of the items seized from Rogers’ home, office and vehicles was a closely guarded secret. One day, authorities believed they would have the proof they needed to make a guilty verdict a foregone conclusion.

  * * *

  On March 10, 2004, Branson’s father, 49-year-old Bob Perry, who suffered from dark bouts of depression all of his life, had a fatal heart attack. He died without knowing the whereabouts of his oldest son. To Jo Ann Stinnett, Bob Perry was one more victim of the force of evil known as Jack Wayne Rogers.

  Now the Stinnett clan faced a third nightmare—the lives of three young people in one generation snuffed out in four short years. First Wendy, then Branson and now Bobbie Jo—the wounds cut deep, the pain would not end. The town of Skidmore clutched one more nightmare to its bosom and turned its back on the world.

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  In Skidmore, Jo Ann Stinnett said she might have to let a recent family tradition die. She made scrapbooks about every family member who died of an illness, an accident or a murder. She made one for Wendy Gillenwater. She made one for Branson Perry.

  But with all of her accumulated grief and pain, she did not know if she could bring herself to start one for Bobbie Jo Stinnett. “They say time heals, and it does,” she said, “but time does not make you forget.”

  In Lyndon, Kansas, in the aftermath of Lisa’s arrest, her ex-husband, Carl Boman, told WDAF-TV that Lisa was so wrapped up in her pregnancy story that she needed to come up with a baby to save face. “I believe it drove her, this fact that she didn’t want to be proven wrong in this situation. People were looking at her like something wasn’t quite right.”

  * * *

  In Deming, New Mexico, the people who knew Lisa and Carl Boman scratched their heads. Lisa had not ever seemed to be a violent person. On top of that, she made no secret of her tubal ligation. She told friends that she regretted having the procedure because it meant she could not have any more children, but she did not obsess over having another child.

  In Melvern, Kansas, the dazed citizenry struggled to make sense of it all. The twinkling lights and cheerful Christmas decorations put up weeks before seemed to mock their sorrow. The joy of the season died an early death and lay buried beneath their gloom and horror. They performed the rituals of Christmas with wooden determination, for the sake of the children. But their hearts were heavy and the days were dark.

  The reason for their community becoming a household name filled them all with torment. Led by Darrell Schultze, the Community Pride group that worked year-round to improve the town met informally to tackle the problem. Roger and Joy Montgomery were active members in the loose-knit organization, but they were not in attendance at this gathering.

  The group of concerned citizens wanted to rebuild their image—to let the world know that Melvern was a town full of good people. Lisa Montgomery was only a solitary aberration, not a common denominator.

  Although none of them knew Bobbie Jo Stinnett, they ached for her family’s loss. They wanted to do something positive—to assuage their unmerited feelings of guilt and to reach out a helping hand to a family in another rural community whom they envisioned as kindred spirits.

  They set up a fund for Bobbie Jo’s family and hung signs up and down Melvern’s main streets and in the nearby county seat of Lyndon. The Lyndon State Bank accepted donations at its branches in both of those towns. They raised a little over $2,000 in a month and transferred that money up to a bank in Maitland, Missouri, and into an account in Zeb’s name.

  Then they turned their fundraising concerns to finding money to meet the needs of the children Lisa had left behind. They were sickened by the burden placed on their young shoulders by the thoughtless and despicable actions of their mother. It some ways what these kids had to face in their current circumstances was more difficult and more challenging than if they’d been forced to deal with the death of their mother.

  Whistle Stop Café owner Kathy Sage rued the day she ever spoke to the media. Immediately after the arrest of Lisa Montgomery, she was quoted saying: “You read about this stuff. It blows you away when it’s here. This stuff is supposed to be in New York City or Los Angeles.”

  Kathy—along with the whole town of Melvern—was shocked at the massive news coverage the statement received. Melvern rarely made statewide news. Now their every word streaked across the nation and around the world.

  Kathy hunkered down as attacks and ridicule for her sound bite rained on her head. Nobody made allowances for the shock of the moment or the inexperience Kathy had with the media. To the world at large, she had spoken, and now she was fair game. Scorn thundered in from journalists in New York and Los Angeles. Worst of all though were the bloggers on the Internet.

  One man wrote:

  This stuff is supposed to be in New York City or Los Angeles, But strangely happen mostly in the Red States. Just ask Andrea Yates about that. Oh, and most of these pregnant women murders occurred in Red States, too. So, tell me, Ms. Sage, why is it supposed to be happening in NYC or LA?

  I wasn’t going to say anything about this case being an example of Red State pathology, but how insulting can you get, Ms. Sage? This is your crazy neighbor lady, you need to take responsibility in your community for her, don’t blame NYC or LA for her, she wouldn’t fit in or be welcome here either. We have [our] own problems and we are just as appalled by your mama-killin’-baby-stealin’ crazy as a loon Lisa Montgomery as you are. Possibly more so because, you know what? In a big city somebody might have spotted crazy Lisa and sent in Social Services before she subdued Bobbie Jo Stinnett and sliced her baby out of her still living body. Contrary to popular belief in the Red States, big city people look out for each other. That seems not to have been the case in Skidmore, Missouri or Melvern, Kansas.

  A woman in New York added more fuel to the fire:

  Ms. Sage, let me assure you, as a New Yorker, as a non-Christian, as a member of a population routinely accused of treating People Not Like Us with contempt: this stuff is not supposed to be in New York City or Los Angeles. I assure you, if one of my neighbors came into the Italian deli where I buy my cheese and polenta on a nearly daily basis, with a baby to whom she had just given birth, and we found out three days later that she had murdered a pregnant w
oman and stolen her child from her body, we would not just be horrified, we would be shocked. We would be in pain for the man who has just lost his wife, the mother of his child; and we would be sickened by the deception practiced on us by a killer. And yes, I’ll say it again, we would be shocked, because this stuff, as you put it, is not supposed to be anywhere. Not New York, not Los Angeles. Not Melvern, Kansas or Skidmore, Missouri. Not London, not Paris, not rural China, not Central Africa, not in a packed tenement neighborhood or an isolated farm belt town. This is an abomination no matter where it happened, and your suggestion that it is less so in my backyard than yours is contemptible. And I’m sorry, but your shock, while understandable, does not get you off the hook.

  Another blogger lashed out with an attack that encompassed everyone in the Midwest and the South.

  Perhaps, like Kathy Sage, Red-Staters are just full of themselves—and full of something else, too.

  The old adage that tragedy brings us all together struck a hollow note. This spirit of brotherhood had been seen many times and in many ways in the past, but at the time of Bobbie Jo’s death, the nation was divided and its people divisive. Even a tremendous personal tragedy like this one did not bring out the best in everyone. In the America of 2005, it was easier to find people content to point fingers and scold than it was to find those willing to hold hands and sing “Kum Ba Yah.”

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  Law enforcement worked to solidify the case against Lisa Montgomery. They encountered a roadblock when they attempted the forensic analysis of the computer found in the Montgomery home—it was an Apple iMac and their software was created for computers using the Windows operating system.

  They knew that important evidence indicating premeditation could be hidden on that hard drive. The case now took a detour to New Zealand.