Murder in the Heartland

by M. William Phelps

  What struck Pastor Wheatley later on when he thought about it was the “little mark on her cheek.” Wheatley noted how it “looked like she might have gouged herself….” She also had a little “bruise on her hand,” he added, “but other than that, she was absolutely beautiful…. It was hard to believe she was even a newborn.”

  35

  Sheriff Ben Espey has a ruggedness born out of his broad shoulders, sun-soaked skin and meaty forearms, Midwestern accent and solid form, that is impossible to dismiss. He walks upright, with good posture, quiet and composed. As a lawman in a small town, Espey wears his holster and gun as if he were born with them. When he speaks, Espey pauses and then gives straightforward, to-the-point answers, which indicate how seriously he thinks about what he wants to say before uttering a single word. People say they feel safe around him.

  While Lisa, Kevin, and the child made their way through Melvern, Amber Alert tips flooded the lines of MSHP’s communications center, just as Espey had hoped and predicted.

  Exactly what he needed.

  Some citizens find it within themselves to make a 911 call, while others let it go. By early morning, Espey knew the crime had affected people in the region in the worst way, and public outcry would work to his advantage. Because of this, people stepped up and responded on a large scale.

  After cops in Atchison County reported how they’d lost sight of a red vehicle the previous night, Espey received a tip regarding a woman in a nearby state who had arrived home with a newborn baby “that was not from a hospital.”

  Seemed promising. But as FBI agents, who were immediately dispatched to the home to investigate, found out, it proved fruitless, like a lot of anonymous tips.

  Then word came in about “a baby sold [recently] on the black market” somewhere in the region where Victoria was kidnapped. Yet, any glimmer of hope diminished after authorities tracked down the basis of the tip. “I think that lead,” Espey told reporters, “is possibly going to go up in smoke. The third party has misled us. We’re not going to pursue that as hard as we are two or three of the other tips.”

  Law enforcement faced a new dilemma: was someone misleading police, calling in fake tips to throw off the scent? Espey didn’t think so. Human error and enthusiasm, he felt, were leading to all the false leads and tips.

  “I think people,” he said, “get too eager when the Amber Alert goes out, and make a phone call, and make themselves very convinced that ‘I overheard a person say this, and this is probably what happened.’”

  In the basement of the Nodaway County Sheriff’s Department, where Espey and his team were stationed, analyzing all the leads, and placing them on a blackboard, which ran the length of the wall, became a tedious task. Yet, each call, he said, was taken “very seriously.

  “We charted each one,” said Espey, “and each was assigned a different investigator.”

  By now, Espey had about eighteen investigators working the case.

  “Everything completely snowballed,” after the Amber Alert went out, he said. “We chased every single lead. Every lead was written down and checked. It was well organized.”

  Little did Espey or anyone in law enforcement know then of a quiet woman, wearing dark-rimmed glasses, living in a North Carolina suburb nearly one thousand miles from Skidmore, who would change the entire nature of the investigation, and, in one phone call, help break the case.

  36

  On any other day, the Stinnett home was just another whitewashed house in a quiet town, on a quiet street, somewhere in Middle America. But over the past eighteen hours, this shoe box of wood and windows had turned into a revolving door of FBI agents, detectives, sheriffs, CSI technicians, and deputies. Neighbors in the immediate area were shell-shocked by the news of what had gone on inside Bobbie Jo’s house. Had this horror really happened in their usually hushed and isolated community?

  “Bobbie Jo bought some baby clothes from me in September,” one neighbor told reporters that morning, “when I had a garage sale.” The entire block had “witnessed evil,” the same neighbor added, before wondering if she, or anyone else in town, would ever “feel safe again.”

  Many were at home when the murder occurred, going about their daily routines of folding laundry, cleaning the house, maybe working on a car in the driveway, or chopping firewood. It seemed surreal to think that something out of the most chilling horror novel had taken place in such a remote area—worse yet, at Christmastime, with the glow of holiday lights illuminating the skyline.

  As one reporter put it during a live broadcast from across the street from Bobbie Jo’s house, “People are puzzled. They’re lost. They’re confused.

  “All sorts of emotions.”

  For some, the tragedy was more than they could put into words. The Devil had found Skidmore and wreaked havoc. The town would go on, certainly, but people stood shell-shocked Friday morning wondering when Bobbie Jo’s killer would face justice and her child would be returned.

  As sirens filled the air the previous afternoon, people in the neighborhood had assumed Bobbie Jo had gone into labor. Everyone in town knew Bobbie Jo was expecting a child. When you live among so few, news travels as fast as the prairie wind during tornado season. But now, amid the plastic yellow police tape closing off the Stinnett home and crime lab vans dotted along West Elm and Orchard, cops roaming through the streets asking uncomfortable questions, Skidmore’s world had collapsed. Townspeople stood bewildered and breathless, holding rakes and shovels, gripping their children’s hands. Some were crying, others shook their heads and hugged one another, wishing life could be the way it used to be before “it” happened, seriously wondering if things could ever be the same again.

  Would Skidmore be able to redeem itself by returning Victoria Jo to Zeb? Could Victoria Jo be alive and well? Would she be returned home to give the entire town some sort of salvation from evil? Would God conquer?

  As the morning dawned and the Amber Alert became topic number one in town, many held out hope someone would come forward. It hadn’t been twenty-four hours since the crime, but a night had passed. “That child,” said one man who had lived near Skidmore his entire life, “could be in Arizona, Nevada, or California by now. Who knows where she is?”

  37

  On the morning of December 17, Dyanne Siktar had been living in rural North Carolina for the past sixteen years. At fifty-three, having grown up in Michigan and, later, Florida, Dyanne was comfortable with the slow pace of life in the “small mountain town” of approximately thirty-six hundred in Macon County, North Carolina, she now called home. “Life here,” said Dyanne, “is very relaxed. I live in an area where you never grow tired of the natural beauty. It is definitely not ‘life in the fast lane,’ which makes it very pleasant.”

  Part of her day was devoted to breeding rat terriers, a hobby she had turned into a growing business over the past fifteen years. With the rise of the Internet, Dyanne started selling the dogs online to buyers all over the world. During the past ten years, as the Internet grew into a planet of its own, she routinely visited an Internet message board, Annie’s Rat Terrier Rest Area, a Web page, specifically, Ratter Chatter, where members met and talked about different aspects of breeding, selling, and caring for the playful pets. Bobbie Jo had made frequent posts on the site—as had Lisa Montgomery, both as herself and as Darlene Fischer—where everyone knew her as the lovable pregnant breeder from Missouri.

  “Bobbie Jo was so pleasant and kind,” said Dyanne.

  Over the past few months, the message board, from Dyanne’s point of view, had turned into more of a gossip site than anything productive in terms of rat terrier breeding and selling. Because of that, she said, she backed away from logging on and participating. The tone of the board, Dyanne felt, resembled that of a junior-high hallway in between classes, with people ruminating about life’s little challenges and the attitudes of others, instead of supporting the business of rat terrier breeding and selling.

  “Whispers, behind-the-back rumor
s, and cliques.” For Dyanne, it just wasn’t worth it anymore.

  On the morning of December 17, Dyanne decided to log on to Ratter Chatter to see what was happening. She had no idea of Bobbie Jo’s death. She was bored, she said, and felt like wasting some time chatting online before she had to go into town and run a few errands.

  Part of Dyanne’s makeup as a human being included “noticing things,” she said. “I was always observant in a detailed way.”

  The first thing she noticed when she logged on to the site was that everyone was talking about Bobbie Jo’s murder. All the Internet news sites were running wall-to-wall coverage, posting updates. It was impossible to log on to an Internet news group and not read something about Bobbie Jo’s murder.

  On the Ratter Chatter board that morning, all the usual complaining about mundane issues seemed to take a backseat as members shared their feelings about losing Bobbie Jo—“a friend”—in such a violent manner. Some had even turned into would-be cyber sleuths and had begun piecing together the final moments of her life.

  Darlene Fischer, of course, became the focus right away; but almost everyone thought Darlene was a real person. Then another theory emerged as Ratter Chatter members began linking Lisa Montgomery to Bobbie Jo. Messages started to focus on the fact that Lisa had been discussing with Bobbie Jo over the past few months how she, like Bobbie Jo, was pregnant and expecting a baby around the same time.

  Lisa had frequented several different message boards. Back on October 24, she posted a message, “Time is getting closer to baby time,” and twenty-four hours later, “I haven’t a single name in mind.” In early December, she posted a note explaining how hard it had been for her to take photographs of her terriers and download them onto the board because “I cannot get down on the floor…”

  Why?

  “…Due to being pregnant….”

  On Ratter Chatter Friday morning, when everyone was beginning to understand the connection between Bobbie Jo and Darlene Fischer, one blogger, after going back and rereading postings from the days and weeks prior, wrote, “Darlene Fischer was supposed to meet her [Bobbie Jo] on Thursday.”

  Was this the last time anyone had heard from Bobbie Jo?

  Later, another member would bring a sense of reality to what had happened: “We just saw a murder plan in front of us….”

  Lisa, posing as Darlene Fischer, had even sent an instant message to one board member, explaining that she was due to have her baby the same day as Bobbie Jo.

  “Now I’m just sick…,” the woman posted some time later, after learning the details of the crime.

  As Dyanne Siktar sat at her computer and realized there might be a connection between Bobbie Jo’s death and Darlene Fischer, instead of posting her feelings on the board, she acted. “I recognized her name immediately,” Dyanne recalled, meaning Darlene Fischer. “When I did, my heart started racing.”

  Dyanne scrolled down the message board list to see if Bobbie Jo had posted any messages on the day she was murdered.

  As far as Dyanne could tell, she hadn’t.

  Next, Dyanne learned Bobbie Jo had posted a message back on Wednesday, December 15, the night before she was killed. In that message Bobbie Jo had given directions to her house in Skidmore to Darlene Fischer so Darlene could supposedly look at a few of Bobbie Jo’s pups.

  Staring at the post again, Dyanne found it odd that Darlene’s e-mail address was Fischer4kids. It bothered her. Fischer4kids? In view of the details of the crime, the e-mail address seemed creepy.

  “Fischer4kids,” Dyanne kept repeating to herself. Something in the e-mail address struck her as “weird,” she recalled. “And I didn’t think about anything else at that moment except calling the FBI.”

  38

  Pastor Mike Wheatley and his wife weren’t the only people in Melvern to get a glimpse of the child Lisa and Kevin Montgomery were calling Abigail, on the morning of December 17. After Lisa and Kevin left Pastor Wheatley’s, they drove to the Osage County Courthouse in nearby Lyndon, just outside Melvern. Authorities now believe that Lisa was on a mission to prove that she hadn’t been lying about being pregnant, and this carefully staged visit to a friend of her mother’s was designed specifically for that reason.

  In Lisa’s mind, some insisted later, presenting the child at the courthouse was a way for her to stuff her successful pregnancy in the faces of Judy Shaughnessy and her ex-husband, Carl Boman. They believed that Lisa knew all she had to do was bring the child into the courthouse, display it in front of a few people, and word would get back to Judy and Carl that she’d had the baby.

  Apart from Lisa’s kids and Kevin, no one in the family believed Lisa when she said she was pregnant. This trip to the courthouse, Carl Boman said, was Lisa’s way of showing them she hadn’t been lying. After all, here was the child. Who could question her now?

  At about noon, Judy took a ride into downtown Lyndon with one of her daughters, Lisa’s half sister, to run a few errands. Judy happened to run into her lawyer in the parking lot of the bank. “Congratulations, Judy,” he said.

  Judy had no idea what he was talking about.

  “On being a grandma. Come on, Judy. You don’t know?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Lisa had a baby and was at the courthouse earlier this morning.”

  Judy paused; then she said, “She either stole it or bought it.” She shook her head and walked away.

  “I knew she couldn’t have kids and she had lied so much…,” Judy recalled. To her there was just no way the story held any truth. It had to have a reasonable explanation. Lisa certainly hadn’t given birth to the child herself.

  After they left the bank, Judy and her daughter drove to the courthouse so Judy could pay her taxes. “Again,” Judy said, “another person told me Lisa had a baby girl.”

  Shortly after Judy got home, she e-mailed her ex-son-in-law, Carl Boman, and told him what had happened earlier.

  “Just wondering,” she asked Carl, “if she bought it….”

  Judy was beyond puzzled. She knew there had to be a rational explanation. Not once did she think Lisa had committed a criminal act; but still, what was going on? She had obviously gotten the child from somewhere.

  At the end of her e-mail, Judy made an astute observation: “She’ll make us out to be liars one way or another, Carl.”

  Shocked by the e-mail, Carl wrote back immediately. “Don’t let this news bother you at all. We all know that she was not pregnant…and Kevin knew that, and so do the kids.” Carl was baffled by the e-mail and could only draw one conclusion. “Listen, Judy, maybe she adopted the kid? Who knows?” Then came a bit of prophesy on Carl’s part: “It might not even be her child, anyway, Judy. She is a liar, and we all know that, so it doesn’t matter what she says or does…. We don’t care if she’s had a baby of her own, or has bought one from some place. What she does is only a sham and she is false. People will believe what they want to. Don’t worry about her. Don’t esteem what she says…. What she does can only hurt you if you let her bother you. She doesn’t worry us at all anymore as we know the truth….”

  Carl had always viewed himself as a “Sunday Christian.” God was a major part of his life, but he hadn’t made church an everyday affair. Some (including Lisa) later called Carl a “fake Christian,” but Carl was quick to admit he never claimed to be devout. If that was what people thought of him, who cared? He knew what he believed in his heart and how he presented himself in public.

  Still, on that morning, God’s word seemed to be infused in a lot of Carl’s thoughts about the stresses Lisa had brought into his life recently.

  Carl ended the e-mail to Judy with: “We know God, who is the Truth. Let Lisa go and wait for the reaping to start as we all reap what we sow in the end. We love you guys and look forward to seeing you over the holiday season…. Truth will always win out in the end.”

  Neither Carl nor Judy had any idea just how close they were to the truth. If there were two people who
knew Lisa’s history better than most, it was Judy and Carl. They knew she had lied about being pregnant and had tubal ligation surgery in 1990. There was no way the child could be hers—no matter what she was telling people.

  Judy wrote back to Carl later that night and observed that Lisa’s life, and her many claims of being pregnant, “just continues one thing after another.” She then questioned her own feelings for Lisa, saying she really didn’t feel “anything” anymore, which made her consider how “heartless” she was for, basically, deserting her own daughter. “All mothers,” she continued, “should love their children….” Yet, there was too much baggage between them. It had all built up over the past few years. No one, Judy said later, could reach Lisa anymore. She was in her own world, as if something in her had just snapped.

  “I love my daughter and always have, still to this day,” recalled Judy. “A mother’s love is always there, no matter what. You might not like what your children do or the things they say, but the emotion of your heart tells of the love. I also can hate the things they do and I know that everyone makes mistakes…. Unlike a lot of people, I have had to endure a lot of things in my life with my children. We’ve survived. My love for Lisa will remain in my heart and will always have a place.”

  From Lyndon, Lisa and Kevin drove to the Whistle Stop Café, on Southwest Main Street, in downtown Melvern. Lisa and Kevin knew many of the people who hung around the café, either personally or by common acquaintance. The Whistle Stop wasn’t a place Lisa frequented, but people recognized her. It was pushing noon now. The Whistle Stop seemed like the perfect place to have a bit of lunch and, naturally, show off the newborn, before heading home to give the child a well-deserved nap after another attempt at breast-feeding.