Two groups of investigators were honored for work performed in 2004. The Modesto, California, law enforcement officials who worked on the Laci Peterson investigation and the three forensic computer professionals who aided in the recovery of Victoria Jo Stinnett—Corporal Jeff Owen of the Missouri Highway Patrol, Mark Johnson of the United States Attorney’s Office and Curtis Howard of the St. Joseph Police Department. Each received the recognition and a $2,500 cash award. The northwest Missouri team donated their gift to the Special Olympics of Missouri.
In October 2005, Judy Clarke, an attorney and national death penalty opponent filed paperwork in federal court requesting that she be added to the defense team despite the fact that the attorney general had not yet approved the pursuit of a death sentence—a decision that was supposed to be delivered to the court in mid-September.
Clarke had never cringed from the defense of the criminals that America loved to loathe. Through plea agreements and courtroom rhetoric, she spared a number of them from Death Row. That number included Susan Smith, the South Carolina mother convicted of drowning her two young sons in her car; the bomber of Olympic Park and an abortion clinic, Eric Rudolph; and Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. Clarke, a federal public defender in California, was once described by a colleague as a “one-woman dream team.”
The court accepted her petition, creating a defense team for Lisa Montgomery consisting of three attorneys and three mitigation specialists. On the prosecution side, the government had four lawyers led by U.S. Attorney Todd Graves.
In the midst of Lisa Montgomery’s legal waltz, another pregnant woman danced with death at the hands of yet another desperate female attacker. Valerie Oskin was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, grew up in Texas and moved to Pennsylvania when she graduated from high school.
She moved from run-down apartments to seedy trailer park neighborhoods. She suffered through serial abusive relationships. She eked out a living on the low pay of one nurses’ aide job after another. Her son Brandon was born in August 1998.
In February 2005, a pregnant Valerie rented a white-and-blue mobile home in a weary trailer park near Ford City, Pennsylvania. Her next-door neighbors were Peggy Jo Conner, her three children, and Thomas “Cowboy” Wilks from Texas. Peggy Jo introduced him as her husband.
Peggy Jo, too, had a hardscrabble life. She was a high school drop-out who married at the age of 18 in August 1985. Her spouse was John Harvey, the 22-year-old building manager in the apartment complex where she lived with her mother.
In 1990, the couple had a daughter, Amanda. Soon after her birth, they separated, but did not divorce. Peggy Jo met James Conner in a bar and he fathered her second child, Jason, born nineteen months after Amanda. In 1993, Peggy Jo and James had a daughter, Kaylie.
Peggy Jo finally got a divorce from John Harvey in 1995. She married James Conner in 1997 but left him when she met Cowboy Wilks in May 2004. Cowboy moved in with her and her three children that summer.
In 2005, Peggy Jo was bragging about her pregnancy and walking with a waddle—one hand resting on her stomach, the other pressing into her lower back. She presented a sonogram to Cowboy and told him that it was their baby. In reality, what she gave him was a 1993 image of her third child Kaylie. But Cowboy believed it was his child and hung the sonogram up on the wall of their trailer for everyone to see.
Cowboy’s passion for Peggy Jo was waning, but he loved babies—he played with a friend’s infant son every chance he had. Now, he believed he had a baby on the way. He got busy building a room onto their mobile home for the baby’s nursery. Peggy Jo haunted yard sales, picking up an assortment of baby clothing, supplies and furniture, including a bassinet, a crib and a baby swing.
Meanwhile, next-door neighbor Valerie Oskin, who really was pregnant, was denying the reality of her condition to everyone who asked. By summer of 2005, her pregnancy was too obvious to avoid. She accepted the reality and made arrangements to give the child up for adoption. She did not feel she would be able to raise a second child.
Valerie and Peggy Jo spent a lot of time talking about their pregnancies, waddling between each other’s trailers and becoming fast friends. On Tuesday, October 11, Peggy Jo dropped in on Valerie again.
Valerie had no reason to suspect that it was anything but a typical neighborly visit She had no reason to fear turning tier back on Peggy Jo. But when she did, Peggy Jo slammed a baseball bat into the back of her head.
Peggy Jo led a dazed Valerie and her 7-year-old son Brandon from the trailer out to her blue Dodge Dynasty. Landlord Betty Theverin saw the trio and expressed her concern about the condition of the bloodied Valerie.
“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it,” Peggy Jo said.
“You need to get her to a hospital,” Betty urged.
“That’s where we’re going.”
Instead, Peggy Jo drove to a family member’s home and dropped Brandon off while an unconscious Valerie lay in the backseat of the Dodge. Peggy Jo drove fifteen miles out to a lonely, wooded area off Route 1037. She pulled to the side of the road and dragged Valerie out and laid her on the ground.
Seventeen-year-old Adam Silvis was out riding on his ATV in that same secluded area. He approached Peggy Jo’s blue Dynasty. He spotted a bundle of something beside it and thought, at first, that the driver was dumping trash. As he got closer, Peggy Jo ran out in front of the vehicle and said, “Everything’s fine here.”
“Okay,” Adam said.
“I’m just looking for a place to hunt,” she said.
Adam was trouble—something did not seem right. He masked his concern and said, “I’m just going back to check my hunting stand.”
Once the sound of the ATV faded into the distance, Peggy Jo took a razor knife and started an incision in Valerie’s belly. Adam, though, was worried and turned around after a short distance and returned to where the car was parked.
This time, Adam recognized the bundle beside the road as a body covered in blood—blood on her head, blood on her stomach. Peggy Jo knelt on the ground right next to the body—Adam knew there could not be an innocent explanation for that. As he sped off toward home, Peggy Jo waved and smiled.
She returned to her unholy mission when the sound of his engine dimmed again. Carefully, she followed the line of Valerie’s old caesarean scar like a template. She stopped when the incision was seven inches long.
The return of Adam and his father interrupted her again. Adam’s dad was shocked—his son had not exaggerated or imagined things. Adam’s unbelievable story was very real. He called the police. Spooked by their visit, Peggy Jo fled the scene.
When authorities arrived, bloodied towels and blankets littered the ground around Valerie. She appeared close to death. They radioed for a helicopter and Valerie was airlifted to Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh. After an emergency caesarean, mother and baby were moved into the hospital’s trauma care unit.
Police arrested Peggy Jo Conner. In her Dodge Dynasty, they recovered a pair of scissors, a bulb syringe, a razor knife, shoelaces and a hemostat. Peggy Jo faced charges of attempted homicide, aggravated assault and aggravated assault of an unborn child. The prosecutors sought the same level of sentencing as they would for first-degree murder.
Investigators questioned Cowboy Wilks. He wore a wedding band and said he was Peggy Jo’s husband. When pressed, he admitted that they were not legally wed, but “in my heart, we’re married,” he said.
He insisted that Peggy Jo was pregnant—telling officers he’d seen the sonogram and felt the baby kick. He denied the possibility that Peggy Jo could have attacked Valerie. In fact, he was angry that the accusation was ever made.
When the media asked him about Peggy Jo’s assault of Valerie, he said, “No, that’s totally a lie. I’ll tell everybody right now, that’s a lie.” He went on to talk about the close friendship between the two women—how Peggy Jo shared her experiences with childbirth with their neighbor—and said that Peggy Jo was a loving mother of three children.
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p; “They won’t let me talk to her. They won’t let me see her. Once I talk to her, I’ll know what’s going on.” He insisted again that it was impossible that Peggy Jo committed this crime.
Once Thomas was permitted to see Peggy Jo, he went to see her every day that visitation was allowed at the Armstrong County Jail. He made sure to park his van within the view of Peggy Jo’s second-floor cell so that she could see him coming and going. He still proclaimed his undying love.
Adam Silvis had trouble sleeping for weeks after he stumbled on the scene. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the bloody visions he wanted to forget. Valerie’s 7-year-old son Brandon dealt with his emotional scars by sleeping through the better part of every day.
On December 14, 2005, Peggy Jo Conner appeared before Judge Joseph A. Nickleach and pled not guilty on all charges.
Valerie’s baby—born one month premature—was doing well despite all the obstacles. Valerie Oskin’s healing was slow but steady. Her physical recovery was expected—her emotional recovery uncertain.
34
In the early afternoon of November 16, U.S. Attorney Todd Graves submitted the Notice of Intent to Seek the Death Penalty to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri proclaiming that “. . . the government believes a sentence of death is justified, and the government will seek a sentence of death.” His grounds in his filing detailed the heinous nature of the crime and included the allegation that “Lisa M. Montgomery committed the offense after substantial planning and premeditation to cause the death of a person” and that “Bobbie Jo Stinnett, the murder victim, was particularly vulnerable due to her infirmity, that is, at the time of her death Bobbie Jo Stinnett was eight months pregnant.” Also enclosed was a letter from Attorney General Alberto Gonzales giving his approval dated the week before the filing. No plea agreement to spare Montgomery from possible execution could be reached without the approval of the attorney general.
On the same day, Graves also announced another death penalty decision. Missouri resident John Phillip Street would also face the possibility of the ultimate punishment. Street was charged with the 1998 death of Doug Wells of Independence, Missouri. Prosecutors claimed Street had killed Wells to prevent him from cooperating with federal agents investigating a mechamphetamine ring.
In his press release, Graves pointed out that there are thirty-six prisoners currently under sentence of death in the federal system, including four from the Western District of Missouri. He said, “As these numbers indicate, we intend to prosecute federal defendants to the full extent of the law, and will not shy away from seeking the ultimate penalty for the ultimate crime. Our decision to seek the death penalty in each of these cases is made with careful deliberation so that justice is served.”
Todd Graves’ brother, U.S. Representative Sam Graves, had not just talked about fixing the Amber Alert communications network, he had taken action. On the same day he was swom in to serve his third term—January 4, 2005—he filed the “Tory Jo’s Loophole” bill in the House of Representatives. Although the legislation misspelled Tori Jo’s name, the identity of the baby who inspired the document was not in question.
The addition would amend the current PROTECT act by ordering that the national coordinator in consultation with state and local law enforcement agencies to establish minimum standards with the flexibility needed to enable an Amber Alert to be issued without hesitation in the event of another newborn abduction. According to the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children, three out of four of the children who die after being abducted, lose their lives within the first three hours. It was vital to bridge that barrier of time in order to save lives.
On January 24, Senators James Talent of Missouri and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin filed an identical bill in the Senate. Despite the rapid response of these legislators—despite the life-and-death nature of their document—the bill had not passed either house by the one-year anniversary of Bobbie Jo’s death and Victoria Jo’s abduction. In fact, it had not even reached the floor. It still languished in the judicial committees of both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Congress had plenty of time in 2005 to play political games and point fingers of blame. They had plenty of time to diddle and fret about gay marriage, pork projects and building walls on our borders to separate our country from another—resurrecting the unwelcome ghost of the Berlin Wall in the land of the free.
The congressmen seemed to have lots of time on their hands, but they could not find the time to address more urgent concerns of the American public. They could not locate the necessary funding to help low-income families pay for heating costs in a year when the price of heating oil and natural gas skyrocketed. Nor could they find the time to deal with the pending health care crisis as the number of uninsured Americans escalated.
And they could not find the time to talk about and take action on the Tory Jo’s Loophole bill—a bill that could save the lives of babies across the nation. Tori Jo survived the eight-hour delay in the commencement of the Amber Alert. Although the profile of infant abductors indicated that they would not intentionally harm their victim, there was no guarantee that the next baby taken in a caesarean abduction would be as fortunate as Tori Jo.
Lisa’s youngest child, Kayla, spent 2005 rebuilding her life. At Dewey High School in October she was named one of two Sophomore Students of the Month. The faculty made the selection based on the criteria that the recipient was an all-round good student with great attitudes toward the school community and who demonstrated respect for others. Winning this award put Kayla in the running for Student of the Year honors.
Taking a positive legacy from her mother, Kayla made plans to raise her own rat terriers. She owned one spayed female that could not be bred but co-owned a male that could. She was saving money as fast as possible to purchase the dogs she needed to get a breeding business off the ground.
After the Stinnett murder, dog lovers across the country re-examined their lifetime habits. A woman named Heather wrote in an online chat room:
You know, not only was this a tragedy for the mother and her entire family and community, but it was a real wake-up call for me and Neil. I’ve driven into the boondocks to pick up dogs from total strangers, or “shelters” that are nothing but a few cyclone fence enclosures and a metal shed. Neil has always thought I was taking too many risks, and I vehemently disagreed. I always felt like I couldn’t stop living my life because some nut-job might want to do me harm someday.
But this story really shook me. Partly because it was so heinous, and partly because something similar to this could happen to me or any number of people I know at any time. We’ve decided to start looking again for a second dog, and he has my promise that I won’t go alone, and I will always leave directions and contact information for people I’m meeting even if I know them.
In the rat terrier communities, Bobbie Jo’s death led to sorrow, paranoia and conflict. Jason Dawson would no longer allow anyone to come to his home to look at puppies unless he was there. He would not take a risk with his wife or children.
Pat Kennedy no longer handed out maps to her home-based kennel. She would not let people drop by on their own timetable. She made rigid appointments and guarded her address with care. It was more than just Bobbie Jo’s death that drove her vigilance. She read a story about a rat terrier litter stolen from another breeder’s yard—every puppy gone except for one who had burrowed under a blanket and gone unseen by the puppy thief. Pat put padlocks on her gates and dreamed of a safer world.
Dyanne Siktar remarked in a chat room that none of them should post personal information like the news of a pregnancy online. That earned her a lot of grief. She was slammed by one emailer after another. Yet, law enforcement endorsed the truth of her statement. Sheriff Espey said, “Everyone we interviewed said what a good person Bobbie Jo was. Her only mistake was to put a photo of herself pregnant on the Internet.”
35
Rumors swirled around Nodaway Count
y in the summer of 2005 that Zeb Stinnett was about to remarry. A member of the Stinnett clan confirmed that his live-in babysitter Terri was his new fiancée. Hand in hand with that story was another: Zeb and his family were putting up blockades to limit Becky Harper’s time with Bobbie Jo’s baby.
“It’s Zeb this and Zeb that,” one woman said, “but nothing is ever said about Becky. Sure, Zeb lost his wife of two years, but Bobbie Jo’s mother lost her only daughter and her only grandchild was stolen. What about her? What about Becky’s pain? Why do they make it so hard for her to see her granddaughter?”
In late July, Becky filed a petition in Holt County Court requesting more visitation with her grandchild. Zeb responded to the court in August saying that he’d restricted contact with the baby because of Becky’s “bizarre” behavior. He claimed she broke into his home and stole a number of items.
Becky admitted to entering his home—but it was not a break-in, she had a key. She also acknowledged taking articles from the home, but all she removed were items belonging to Bobbie Jo that were given to he by her maternal grandmother. Becky did not want Terri—or anyone Zeb married—laying claim to them. “I want my granddaughter to have this stuff,” she said. She just wanted to keep these special items secure for Tori Jo until she was older.
Another bone of contention between Zeb and Becky concerned what information Tori Jo should know about her mother’s death. In his petition, Zeb insisted that Becky should never talk to Tori Jo about “any events concerning the death and demise of her natural mother.” Becky said that learning a distorted version of the truth from mocking classmates would be a cruel, cold way for any child to learn about her mother’s fate.
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