Baby Be Mine
Page 22
Many states have changed their death certificates. They added a place to indicate whether or not the woman was pregnant when she died. This alteration makes tracking pregnancy-related murders and medical deaths an easier and more accurate task.
Most of the pregnant women whose cause of death is homicide are victims of domestic abuse at the hands of an intimate male partner. Typically, these acts of violence are motivated by a desire to control the woman and to eliminate an unwelcome burden or change in lifestyle for the men.
The need to control is the common thread running between the murders of pregnant women by a male partner and the same crime committed by a woman. The female killers, though, usually do not know their victim very well. A woman like this targets her victim at random in a narcissistic urge to satisfy her own needs without any regard for anyone who stands in her way.
“Female killers who murder pregnant women to steal their babies are not despairing over failed attempts at pregnancy or a recent miscarriage,” said criminal profiler Pat Brown. “In fact, they may have lied to family and friends about being pregnant or about losing a child through miscarriage or misfortune.
“They are psychopaths who love the power and attention associated with motherhood, but they don’t love the child that true motherhood brings. This kind of woman will only desire a child in order to manipulate others and to bring attention to herself. Should that child stop serving her purposes, she may abandon the child or even kill it. The very act of slaughtering a pregnant woman for her baby negates any possibility that the perpetrator has the capacity to love and care for other human beings. This kind of woman is—to put it simply, without any fancy psychological label—nothing but a cold-blooded killer.”
Is there any way a pregnant woman can protect herself from this kind of random attack?2 There are more than 4.2 million births in this country every year. In 2005, there were only four infant abductions—not one of them a successful abduction by cesarean section. Statistically, the risk factor for any woman is nonexistent. But statistics do not tell the whole story.
It is a crime that evokes extreme emotion. It devastates the extended family of the victim and carries with it a heavy negative impact on the whole community where the crime occurred.
Its impact casts an even broader net generating a high level of national attention that sends ripples of fear across the nation. This wide-flung focus puts intense pressure on investigators who, in all likelihood, have no experience with this type of predator.
Law enforcement is familiar with criminals whose motivation is money, sex or revenge. Those motives, however, have nothing to do with the crime of infant abduction. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the abductor is “desperate to bask in the rapture of baby love—to feel adored and needed.” The typical perpetrator “truly believes she is about to give birth and she fully expects everyone to accept the reality she has attempted to create.”
“Infant abductors want what they want when they want it. They don’t care about who they step on to get there,” said Cathy Nahirny at the Center. “If you are standing in their way, they will run you over without a blink of an eye and leave you to die on the pavement while they pursue their all-consuming goal.”
Investigators are used to suspects with long rap sheets. But in the case of these abductions, the kidnapper usually does not have a criminal record at all. If she does have any record, it is for minor, nonviolent crimes like shoplifting or check kiting.
“Infant abductions are usually carried out by women who are not criminally sophisticated,” according to a September 1995 FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin. “However, the women demonstrate an ability to plan the abduction, convincingly play a role . . . and resort to deadly force if necessary. Most of these women are living a lie—before, during and after the abduction, many have faked a pregnancy, which eventually forces them into a corner. They feel they have no choice but to produce a child by any means necessary. Indeed, infant abductions are the desperate acts of desperate women. As one infant abductor put it, I began getting really desperate trying to figure out what I was gonna do—how I was gonna find someone to give me their baby—now.’ ”
It has been said that Bobbie Jo’s mistake was to put a picture of herself in an obvious state of pregnancy on the Internet. But is pregnancy something a woman needs to hide? That shrouding of personal information is not far from the days when even married women were confined to home—banished from public—when they were “in the family way”—as if pregnancy were a source of shame.
Bobbie Jo Stinnett was excited about the upcoming birth of her baby. Her pregnancy was a life-altering, life-affirming period in her life. Even for a quiet, reserved person like Bobbie Jo, the anticipation was too exquisite not to share. She should have been able to do so without risk. Today, she should be reveling in the joys and struggling with the challenges of motherhood.
Instead, Bobbie Jo never saw her daughter, Victoria Jo. And Victoria Jo never felt her mother’s arms wrap around her or felt the warmth of the intense love that powered her mother’s smile.
All because Lisa Montgomery wanted a child and she would not allow anyone to stop her in her quest—not even the life of a lovely small-town woman who was known for her kindness and empathy. The town Montgomery chose for her act of violence was Skidmore—a place already ravaged by a tragic and violent past. A town many say is cursed by the day that its citizens took the law into their own hands and murdered the town bully in cold blood in broad daylight in the busiest intersection for miles.
In my travels through northwest Missouri, I traversed mile after mile of bucolic countryside. I entered many little towns and exchanged a fortune in smiles. But in Skidmore the peace and friendliness—as ordinary in small-town America as fast talk in a big city—sunk into a quagmire of distrust and suspicion.
The moment my foot stretched out of my car, I fell the walls rise and shut me out. A bulky man blocked my entry into a convenience store at Newton’s corner. A sour, tired blonde shooed me out of a bar and restaurant nearby. I felt the searing stare of hostile eyes on my back as I stood before the brick memorial erected in Bobbie Jo’s memory. When I knocked on doors—with one remarkable, hospitable exception—I was ignored. Although I knew someone was at home, I waited on silent doorsteps in front of doors that did not open. The houses themselves seemed to be holding their collective breath until I left town.
The citizens of many small towns are wary of strangers. But in Skidmore, it went beyond wariness into a simmering paranoia. The folks in Skidmore often express anger and resentment that reporters always bring up Ken McElroy whenever they report anything in Skidmore. Cheryl Huston rebuked the Maryville Daily Forum for resurrecting that story, but conveniently forgetting to recall Maryville’s own claim to shame—the death of Raymond Gunn. “There is more to Skidmore than Ken McElroy,” she said.
The residents who lived in the town all their lives don’t want to understand the fascination the rest of the world has for the Ken McElroy story. They are numb to the undercurrents that churn up uneasiness in their own neighborhoods.
As I visited their town, though, I felt the vengeful ghost of Ken McElroy walking the weary streets of Skidmore. I heard him laugh at the isolation and fears of the townspeople—delighted with the thought that he was the root cause of their alienation from the world. And I knew that Ken McElroy had won.
2 If you are expecting a child, visit the website of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, www.missingkids.com and download a copy of What Parents Need to Know, a list of safety tips for expectant parents, or call 1-800-THE LOST (1-800-843-5678) for free prevention tips or to report any information related to any missing child.
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