Murder in the Heartland

by M. William Phelps

  “Well,” she said to Nancy, “I’m going shopping in Topeka.”

  Minutes later, she took off.

  While driving, she phoned home. Rebecca, up and about now, getting ready for school, answered.

  “I’m on my way into town to go shopping. Any idea yet what I might get Kayla?”

  “No, Mom. Sorry.”

  “Okay, we’ll talk later.”

  “Right, Mom.”

  “I’ll call you this afternoon.”

  “You okay?”

  “I’m fine. My water is going to break. I can feel it.”

  4

  Hours after Darlene Fischer left Casey’s General Store in Lyndon, a few people spotted her in a Maryville, Missouri, Wal-Mart, about fourteen miles east of Skidmore, almost two hundred miles north of her home in Kansas. Those hours between the time she left Casey’s and ended up in Maryville were unaccounted for. No one seemed to know what she did or where she went.

  Back in Kansas, at home, she and her husband had turned a small upstairs room into a nursery for the approaching baby. The walls were painted a soft vanilla white; she pasted stickers from the Disney animated film The Lion King over the fresh paint: light purple elephants with yellow ears, yellow Simba lion cubs, green butterflies, green and purple dragonflies. It was cute. Comfortable. The perfect soft setting for a newborn. On one side of the room against the wall was an oak-railed crib with blankets and sheets matching the stickers. A nightlight sat on a table in the corner of the room next to a changing station packed with fresh T-shirts, blankets, sheets, and a brand-new bag of Pampers. A baby carrier was usually kept inside the crib, ready and waiting (in fact, she had it with her that afternoon in Maryville; it was sitting in the car beside her). Considering the neutral colors she chose, one might be inclined to think she didn’t know if a girl or boy was forthcoming. She wanted a girl. There was no doubt about it. Having a daughter had become another obsession of hers lately. The only hint the nursery provided that a girl was imminent was a Minnie Mouse diaper holder hanging off one corner of the changing station. Other than that, the colors she chose would work for a girl or a boy.

  Still, she had been showing off an ultrasound photograph of someone else’s fetus she had downloaded from the Internet to her husband and kids, claiming it was an image of her “baby girl.”

  By 3:00 P.M., the chill of morning had yielded to a comfortable fifty-degree afternoon. Driving west from Maryville, making her way past the massive Kawasaki Motors plant outside downtown, and after possibly getting something to eat nearby, Darlene Fischer continued south on Highway 71 before taking a hard right onto the “A” road leading into Skidmore.

  Just outside downtown Skidmore, about fifteen minutes later, she would have taken a right onto the 113, which became Elm Street in the center of town and West Elm, her ultimate destination, beyond that, past the town’s one service station.

  Sitting on the front seat beside her were directions to the house she’d printed off the Internet. As far back as November 17, 2004, Darlene had downloaded the directions and “mapped out” a route to this house. She had lived all over the Midwest and in New Mexico, San Diego, and Arkansas for a time, but found herself today driving into a town she had not been to before.

  Following Elm Street down to the west end, Darlene heard the tires of her red Toyota Corolla crunch and pop against the gravel as she entered Bobbie Jo Stinnett’s driveway, near the corner of Orchard and West Elm.

  There it was on the right porch post column, exactly where Bobbie Jo had said it would be: the number 410.

  Bobbie Jo’s home, like most in town, was small, just as Darlene had heard. It was a charming little place, though, with two large elm trees centered in front of the porch by the road, their branches weeping downward, brushing the ground.

  Darlene had told Bobbie Jo she lived in Fairfax, Missouri, about twenty miles west of Skidmore.

  Not true.

  She also said she was interested in a few rat-terrier puppies one of Bobbie Jo’s breeder studs had sired recently.

  Like a lot of the pieces of Darlene’s chaotic life, inquiring about the puppies was also a lie. The woman calling herself Darlene had her own terriers back home. She didn’t need to travel over one hundred miles to buy one. In fact, she lived in Melvern, Kansas, 187 miles south of Skidmore, a three-hour drive. She was in Skidmore for the one thing Bobbie Jo Stinnett had that she couldn’t have: a baby.

  Bobbie Jo was a local rat-terrier breeder. Married, just twenty-three years old, she was in the last trimester of her first pregnancy, her due date about a month away. Looking at her, it was easy to see a woman beaming with the delight only a first-time mother can emit: a glow, incidentally, Darlene Fischer didn’t have. The townsfolk of Skidmore adored Bobbie Jo. With her ebullient smile, large brown eyes, wavy brunette-auburn hair, blemish-free skin as soft as silk, she personified the all-American girl.

  “She was such a sweet person,” recalled a friend. “She was so very smart. She would always give me advice when I needed it, and we would always talk about her pups…. She really knew her rat terriers.”

  That same friend, a teenager, spoke of Bobbie Jo as though she were her big sister; someone to whom she could turn for advice. “She was such a beautiful person, on the inside and out. My mentor, really.”

  It was around 3:15 P.M. when the woman who called herself Darlene Fischer pulled onto Bobbie Jo’s street and parked in her driveway. The sun was burning warm and bright, illuminating a glorious holiday season. Christmas cards were in the mail. Invitations to New Year’s Eve parties already out. Nativity scenes, cut from plywood and painted by hand, were propped up on front lawns. In Skidmore, people were, indeed, prepared to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and the Christmas holiday.

  Greeting visitors, a welcome sign stood above a carved miniature birdhouse, a red cardinal and yellow finch buzzing around a black-eyed Susan, to the right side of Bobbie Jo’s front door. This modest dwelling, set in a peaceful, middle-American suburb, was just like the dozen or so others around it.

  As Bobbie Jo saw it, the afternoon meeting with Darlene had been brought on by chance. She and Darlene had made plans the previous day, after a mutual friend in the rat-terrier-breeding business had introduced them some time ago. From Bobbie Jo’s point of view, the meeting was supposed to be just a routine, friendly business transaction.

  Darlene was a woman of thirty-six years, sporting large-framed glasses with thin lenses that magnified her sunken dark green eyes. She was of average size and shape. She had natural reddish blond streaks throughout her brown hair, which hung down and nearly touched her small breasts. In most respects, Darlene looked no different from thousands of other women marching through their lives in the Midwest.

  Mrs. Nobody.

  To those who knew her more intimately, though, she seemed depressed, vacant, especially angry, the last few years. Just the other day, quite unexpectedly, she had expressed interest in buying one of Bobbie Jo’s prized terrier pups. The two women had communicated via an online chat room, Annie’s Rat Terrier Rest Area, where they seemed to share a common interest in the feisty canines. Maybe a new pup—or the baby she was telling everyone she was expecting—would cheer Darlene up, make her feel better about herself and her life.

  The previous day, Darlene had e-mailed Bobbie Jo at 4:22 P.M. She logged on to Bobbie Jo’s Happy Haven Farms Web site and, retrieving Bobbie Jo’s e-mail address, wrote, “I was recommended to you by [a mutual friend]….”

  And so it began: a seemingly harmless electronic business proposition.

  Using the e-mail address Fischer4kids at Hotmail, in that same brief note, Darlene said she had been “unable to reach” Bobbie Jo. She sounded somewhat panicky and impatient, perhaps worried the meeting the following day wouldn’t take place as planned.

  “Please get in touch with me soon,” continued Darlene, “as we are considering the purchase of one of your puppies and would like to ask you a few questions.”

  Th
ree hours later, Bobbie Jo responded. Under the subject line “Done and Done!” she wrote, “Darlene, I’ve e-mailed you with the directions so we can meet.” To solidify her desire to get together, Bobbie Jo expressed her “hope” the e-mail would reach Darlene in time. “Great chatting with you on messenger,” said Bobbie Jo, after explaining how much she was looking forward to “chatting with you tomorrow a.m.,” before thanking their mutual friend for introducing them. “Talk to you soon, Darlene!” Bobbie Jo ended the e-mail. “Have a great evening.”

  Word of mouth: most great businesses, especially in a rural region like Skidmore, were built on the recommendations of others. Bobbie Jo counted on it. Save for paying a major Internet search engine to list her as a top search result, the only way to reach people interested in her pups was to keep customers happy, get word out through the Internet, and make contacts at the dog shows she attended.

  Bobbie Jo hadn’t been married two years yet. Eight months pregnant, she was happily going about her storybook life in Middle America. Happy Haven Farms had been Bobbie Jo’s design. Zeb, her husband, worked full-time at a manufacturing plant in Maryville. He had helped his new bride out with the breeding business, but, for the most part, he allowed Bobbie Jo to maintain it herself. In just a few words, some of what Bobbie Jo had written on the home page of her Web site seemed to reflect not only her and Zeb’s attitude toward breeding, but the way they viewed and valued life in general.

  “Our puppies are placed in only the very best homes with the family that fits them best. Let us help you find your next pet, rat terrier or otherwise.”

  Bobbie Jo was meeting with Darlene to see if she met her stringent criteria for ownership. Bobbie Jo wasn’t about to sell one of her pups to someone who couldn’t be responsible enough to love and care for it. Bobbie Jo and Zeb were good people, concerned about the animals they had made a large part of their lives together.

  “They were the type of people,” said one former friend, “you could see growing old together…in their rocking chairs, watching their grandchildren play in the front yard. They minded their own business and didn’t start any trouble.”

  Sitting in Bobbie Jo’s driveway on Thursday afternoon, the woman who called herself Darlene Fischer turned off the ignition of her Corolla and looked up at Bobbie Jo’s front door. Besides a paring knife from home, law enforcement later claimed she also had a home birthing kit, a bundle of rope she purchased that afternoon, and several blankets.

  Grabbing her keys, Darlene opened her car door and walked toward Bobbie Jo’s front porch. Looking in both directions as she made her way up the one step, pushing the nub of her glass frames back up the bridge of her nose, Darlene Fischer didn’t see anyone around.

  She and Bobbie Jo would be alone.

  5

  Brenda Standford* was at her Lyndon, Kansas, home on the previous night, December 15, getting her children ready for bed, when Darlene Fischer—although Brenda knew her by another name—had phoned with some rather remarkable news. According to the time frame Brenda later gave, the phone call was made shortly after Darlene had been in touch with Bobbie Jo Stinnett online and made plans to meet with her the following day in Skidmore.

  At one time, Brenda saw Darlene Fischer nearly every day. They were coworkers, even close friends.

  Already preparing for bed, Brenda was startled by the phone call, she remembered, because “it was so darn late.”

  “Hi, Brenda,” said Darlene. She sounded cheerful, upbeat.

  “Darlene? That you?” Brenda was a busy woman: kids, husband, two jobs. “Why you calling me so late?”

  “I had the baby,” said Darlene in excitement. “Everyone’s doing fine.”

  After a brief pause: “Wow,” replied Brenda, “you’re home from the hospital already?”

  Brenda was under the impression Darlene had given birth earlier that morning, but she could tell she was calling her from home. It seemed strange the hospital would allow Darlene to leave so soon after giving birth.

  “Yeah. You know, they ship you out of there so quick nowadays,” said Darlene.

  Brenda was surprised. She knew insurance companies pushed new mothers out of hospital beds, if they were healthy, as soon as they could. But in under twenty-four hours?

  “You and the baby are fine?” asked Brenda.

  “Oh, yes. It went smooth.”

  “So what’d you have?”

  “A girl. Can you believe it?”

  “Just what you wanted.”

  “Yeah.”

  Over the past few months, Brenda had spoken to Darlene almost daily about the baby. She believed, “without a doubt in [her] mind,” Darlene was pregnant. She would wear maternity clothes, or baggy shirts and sweaters, and talk about how excited she and her husband were about having the child.

  “She would tell me that her ankles were swollen,” recalled Brenda. “How she was having terrible bouts of morning sickness. ‘My stomach is getting so hard,’ she’d say. And it was…I felt it,” added Brenda, before changing the subject slightly: “Up until the day everything happened, I believed her, because I watched her stomach grow. It was getting bigger, harder. She had me all the way.”

  6

  Bobbie Jo Stinnett was under the impression she and Darlene Fischer had just met. But Darlene had met Bobbie Jo back in April 2004 at a dog show in Abilene, Kansas. Since that day, they had spoken online a number of times. Yet, she hadn’t introduced herself as Darlene Fischer—instead, she went by her real name.

  Lisa Montgomery.

  The use of two names seemed to fit into what some later claimed was a “split personality” Lisa Montgomery had developed during the six months before she showed up at Bobbie Jo’s house in Skidmore. “Lisa lied so much,” recalled one family member, “she believed her own lies. This is why I feel she has a split personality: her other ‘self’—or ‘others’—took over at some point.”

  After the dog show in Abilene, Bobbie Jo had become friends with Lisa’s youngest daughter, Kayla. Bobbie Jo and Kayla corresponded online through e-mail and instant messaging quite frequently. Kayla admired Bobbie Jo. Even loved her, she said.

  “The last time I talked to Bobbie Jo,” recalled Kayla, “…she was ecstatic about having her baby. She had a name picked out for quite some time…. She was telling me how [the baby] would sleep in their room (as they had a small house) until they could find a bigger house. I know Bobbie Jo would have been one awesome mother to that sweet little baby.”

  So why was Lisa Montgomery disguising herself as Darlene Fischer? Why hide behind a false identity? Wouldn’t Bobbie Jo recognize Darlene as Lisa as soon as she answered the door? Wouldn’t it put Lisa in an awkward position?

  It was indeed an odd circumstance that Lisa Montgomery put herself in: one more piece of the puzzle that wouldn’t make sense later when people learned of the unfathomable horror that was about to take place inside Bobbie Jo’s little farmhouse.

  The corn and soybean fields stretch along Highway 113 far beyond where any of Skidmore’s 342 residents can see. In some areas, the vast flatness of the land runs adjacent to roadways made of gravel, cement, and blacktop, while rolling hills disappear into the horizon. Skidmore is a picturesque parcel of untarnished landscape, tucked in the corner of a state most locals feel blessed to call home.

  “Skidmore ain’t dun changed in, I dunno, a hundred years,” said one local. “Same ol’ town here’a.”

  The town is full of kind and generous people. Among the tumbleweeds, farmhouses, clapboard ranches, windmills, and one water tower, crime generally involves the theft of a John Deere tractor or a few kids popping out streetlights after lifting their daddy’s shotgun. When the lights go out and the moon settles over the rolling meadows bordering the town, beyond the subtle hum of a chorus of crickets, the only sound coming from town might be the echo of a dog’s lonesome bark or the drunken laughter of a local sippin’ whiskey, swinging on a porch hammock, having a grand ol’ time all by himself.

 
In the enormity of the Midwest, Skidmore is a flyover town many don’t know exists. People in town like it that way, and they respect the privacy the region offers. The beauty of the landscape is a constant reminder that every part of life—ashes to ashes, dust to dust—is rooted in the rich black soil that breeds it. Traditions thrive in Skidmore: in the one Christian church, the one café, the pinewood rocking chairs on just about every porch, and the souls of the men and women who work the land. One would think here, in this serene hush of a community, violence and murder would be unthought-of, if not for television crime shows piped into homes via satellite dishes.

  But that has not been the case.

  7

  As Lisa Montgomery, posing as Darlene Fischer, made her way up to the Stinnetts’ front door, Bobby Jo was inside the house talking on the phone to her mother, forty-four-year-old Becky Harper, who lived nearby and worked at the Sumy Oil Company, two blocks east of where Bobbie Jo lived.

  “Can you pick me up from work?” asked Harper. Becky had a son, too, ten-year-old Tyler, Bobbie Jo’s little brother.

  “I’m expecting someone to come and look at a few dogs,” responded Bobbie Jo.

  “My truck is getting some work done. I need a ride to the garage.”

  There was a brief silence. Then, as Becky Harper was about to say something, Bobbie Jo must have been either startled by the slam of Lisa’s car door or heard the creak of the porch steps as Lisa approached. Because next, Bobbie Jo said, “Oh, they’re here, Mother. I’ve gotta go.”

  After a few more words between mother and daughter, Bobbie Jo ended the conversation.

  It would be the last time Becky Harper ever spoke to her daughter.

  Bobbie Jo Stinnett graduated from Nodaway-Holt Jr.-Senior High School. Located in nearby Graham, one of Skidmore’s neighboring towns, the building itself was no larger than an elementary-sized school in most cities. In any given year, no more than 150 students are enrolled in the school.