Murder in the Heartland

by M. William Phelps

  As pieces of the story surfaced, people waited and wondered. Perhaps no one waited with more anticipation than Zeb Stinnett, who would have the opportunity inside the next hour to see his daughter for the first time.

  It was comforting to most to think the one man who had lost and suffered the most would be able to carry on his slain wife’s legacy. By her own admission, Lisa Montgomery had, in effect, taken half of Zeb’s life from him. But that bond between parent and child, which Lisa herself seemingly craved so badly, was a part of the Stinnett family she could never separate.

  II

  A SORT OF HOMECOMING

  50

  “See, now do you believe me? Now do you want to go live with your dad?” Lisa asked. It was well into the evening on the night she had presented her new baby to the family. Lisa picked up Abigail and handed her to Ryan, who had been asking lately about going to live with his father, Carl Boman. “He’s the liar, Ryan. Not me!” Lisa continued, apparently relishing having given birth, thus proving Carl wrong.

  Carl Boman believes that everything Lisa did up to the point when she was arrested had been planned around her having a child that never actually existed. Kevin, Lisa’s un-suspecting husband, bought the entire scenario from day one: nine months of feigned morning sickness and nausea, no doctor visits, shopping for baby clothes, crib, nursery, and a made-up due date, December 13. Not that Kevin had been fooled because of what many later presumed was an overwhelming naïveté on his part. Lisa had done a good job of deceiving him. All those supposed “prenatal care” appointments; Lisa worked hard at getting out of them.

  “I’m going to be sick, Kevin, turn around,” she said one day. They were driving toward one of her medical appointments. Kevin stopped the car and brought her back home. Once inside, Boman says, she picked up the phone and made a bogus phone call to a fake doctor’s office and canceled the appointment. Another time, he believes, she started an argument halfway there and again demanded Kevin turn the truck around and return home. When they arrived, she told him to get out. “I’ll drive myself,” she said, and took off.

  Pastor Mike Wheatley knew the Montgomery family well. He had counseled Lisa. The last time they spoke was in October. Wheatley was concerned about Lisa, he said in press reports later. Not about her state of mind. But because, according to her, she was pregnant, had lost one of her twins, and was scheduled to give birth to the other child somewhere around December 13. She was worried about the second twin—if she would make it.

  “I wasn’t aware of anything [unusual],” Wheatley said. “As far as I knew, everything was just perfectly normal.”

  Despite what many of Lisa’s siblings, her mother, and Carl Boman were telling him, Kevin and many Melvernians were under the impression Lisa had been pregnant with twins and had lost one. But it wasn’t the first time Lisa had claimed to be pregnant. There had been at least four other instances where she had made the claim but had never produced a child.

  “I had gone to doctor’s appointments with Lisa when she was pregnant with our children,” Carl Boman recalled. “I saw sonograms, medical charts…. I was in the birthing room when Lisa had each child. I paid the doctor’s bills!” Carl had a fairly decent relationship with Kevin, but at times argued with him over how the children were being treated. One day, he asked Kevin about Lisa’s supposed pregnancy. Carl had heard for the past four years about Lisa’s being pregnant and was taken aback by the notion of her seemingly fooling Kevin so easily. There was one time when Lisa told Carl she was pregnant, “but the baby was absorbed into her uterus…. I ‘lost it, Carl.’” But Carl never bought into any of it.

  Was there a man alive who could be deceived so effortlessly? Carl often wondered about Kevin. Apparently, Lisa had found him.

  “How could you not do any of that?” Carl asked, referring to Kevin not going with Lisa to any medical appointments. “How could you believe her when everyone else is telling you different?”

  Carl said Kevin just stared at him with the gaze of a man who perhaps knew something was wrong but didn’t want to admit or confront it. Or maybe he just couldn’t see it for himself. Carl wasn’t the only one telling Kevin about Lisa’s lies. Lisa’s mother, Judy Shaughnessy, and her sisters, Tonya* and Farina*, had been telling Kevin for years that Lisa was lying about being pregnant and that it had become an obsession with her to give birth again.

  Judy and her new husband, Danny Shaughnessy, took a ride into town one afternoon to discuss the situation with Judy’s lawyer.

  “Can we have her committed?” Judy asked.

  “What’s going on?”

  “She’s lying all the time about being pregnant,” Judy explained. “I think she believes herself.” They were tired of listening to Lisa and her stories, Judy continued. Things were escalating, bordering on getting out of hand. “I’m worried she might do something.”

  “You can’t commit Lisa, unfortunately, until she hurts herself or somebody else,” Judy recalled her lawyer advising.

  When Carl asked Kevin about all the missed prenatal appointments, reminding him how many people were saying Lisa was lying, Kevin said, “Well, Lisa told me. And I believe her.”

  Carl shook his head and walked away.

  Many claimed Lisa had no trouble convincing Kevin of anything she wanted. While they were dating, she had told him she was pregnant and needed an abortion (a procedure she always had professed to regard with absolute disgust, both on moral and religious grounds).

  “From what I understood,” a family member said, “Kevin gave her the money for the abortion.” The story was unearthed in a letter Lisa had written to Kevin while he was courting her. Early in the relationship, it appeared she was already spinning her lies and manipulation. “The letter was about her having another child and she thought it was dead, but found out it was alive—and also said something about her having twins. I think she was misleading Kevin to believe she had twins when she had the supposed abortion.”

  “This is what Lisa did: she manipulated people,” said Carl Boman, who was married to Lisa twice over a thirteen-year period. Carl met Lisa when she was sixteen. She was his stepsister then. “My kids would tell me what was going on with Lisa and Kevin because they were there; they lived in the house.”

  At about six feet, in remarkably good shape, Carl Boman had a deep voice that suggested a career in radio, a low baritone, like an opera singer. At times, he fumbled with his words, digging deep to find the right phrases to explain his view of things.

  For years, Carl had been telling the children Lisa wasn’t pregnant. Still, they believed she was, simply because Lisa kept drilling it into them. The fact that they lived with Lisa gave her more time to control the situation. Well aware Carl had been steering them in the opposite direction, Lisa made it a point to work hard at convincing the children Carl was “the bad guy,” he said, for denying her the right to be pregnant and share that excitement with the kids. By handing Ryan the child and saying, “Now do you want to go live with your dad?” Lisa was, Carl insisted, insinuating, I’m no liar. Your dad is the one who lies. Here’s my baby, here’s my proof.

  51

  The sinking feeling Kayla Boman had regarding the new baby was washed away by one simple conversation she had with her sister Rebecca and Mom before she left for school. The photographs of the baby that Rebecca had e-mailed helped. Now Kayla was in school, photographs in hand, bragging to fellow students about how beautiful the child was. “I’m finally a big sister,” she said to more than one classmate.

  Kayla liked living in Georgia with Auntie Mary. She and her mother had been moving away from each other emotionally at the time she left Kansas. If you ask Kayla, she’d say her mother rarely paid much attention to her or her siblings; everything Lisa did, at least during the final year Kayla was in Kansas, revolved around her own selfish needs.

  Lisa “loved the children,” but the “newness” of them being babies always wore off, Carl said, by the end of the first year. Her interest in them con
tinued to diminish in their formative years and teens.

  “This is why,” Kayla added, “I think it’s crazy now that my mom wanted another child so badly—especially after having four of us she pretty much ignored.”

  Nonetheless, as she went about her day on Friday in school, Kayla couldn’t have been happier for her mother.

  “Can you believe it—she’s my sister.”

  The photographs proved it. Mom had finally given birth.

  Lisa Montgomery and Carl Boman’s children had always been well-behaved, closely controlled kids. Despite the emotional ride Carl and Lisa put the children on during their years of marriage and divorce, the children, for the most part, had managed to deal with their lives in a healthy way, staying focused on the future.

  Rebecca, the oldest, was admired by the others. According to Carl Boman, not only had Rebecca cultivated a more mature relationship with her mom, but the other children always turned to her for advice, even comfort. Certain characteristics of the children’s personalities were framed around the way Lisa raised them. For instance, no matter whom they were speaking to, the children talked in rushed sentences, lacking any structure or continuity, as if they were jockeying for position with an invisible opponent. At times, Lisa would ignore the children to the point where they had to tussle with one another for attention. When Lisa decided to turn from her computer screen (or lift her head up from whatever book she was reading) and focus on what the children were saying, they struggled to keep her attention by speaking quickly. This, Boman said, was Lisa: selfish, unsupportive, nefarious, and abusive. Two of the children said when they were younger, she would whip them with a long stick.

  For Kayla Boman, moving to Georgia was like being rescued from a sinking ship; only she didn’t realize it until later on, when she was able to look at the situation and put it all together. Certain parts of her mom’s personality became clear to Kayla after she stepped back from the family and had time to look at the way she had been treated for the past ten years. Not that Carl Boman was the father of the year; but his shortcomings had been in the form of abandonment. What Carl didn’t do was the problem, not what he did. Kayla now realized the life she’d had with her mom, although she loved her, was not the kind of life a child deserved.

  52

  Kayla was kicking stones and staring at her watch. Waiting. Wondering. Where is he? Why is he so late?

  She stood outside the front door of her school, unsure of why her ride home was late. The woman Kayla lived with in Georgia had a son, seventeen years old then. Robert* attended the same high school. Generally, Robert would meet Kayla out front and drive her home. But not today. For some reason, he was running awfully late.

  Where is he?

  Kayla didn’t know it, but Robert had taken the day off.

  Auntie Mary’s next-door neighbor Julie Harrison* routinely left for work at three or four in the morning and wanted someone to be in the house when her daughter woke up at 5:30 A.M. Kayla would stay over at times, wake the child up, and make sure she got ready for school in time. It soon dawned on Kayla while she stood outside waiting for Robert that Julie was likely home and could possibly pick her up.

  “Robert didn’t show up today…. I need a ride home,” Kayla said when she got Julie on the phone.

  “Sure, honey. I’ll be right there.”

  As Kayla sat on the curb waiting, Auntie Mary was back at home deciding how to tell Kayla what had happened. Thus far, Kayla had no idea what was going on back in Melvern; that her mom had been arrested for killing a young woman and stealing her baby. Within the next hour, Kayla’s life was going to be flipped on its side. The authorities’ allegations would be doubly disturbing to her because her mom had not only supposedly committed murder—but Bobbie Jo Stinnett was someone Kayla had looked up to and valued as a friend.

  “By the way,” Julie said as she and Kayla headed home, “my computer isn’t working right today for some reason. I have to get it fixed.” Julie knew Kayla liked to stop by the house and use the computer before she went home to Mary’s.

  “Okay,” Kayla said.

  By December, Kayla had gotten used to life in Georgia. She liked living amid different surroundings and began to see the life she left behind from a different perspective. First and foremost, she understood, even at fourteen years old, how much her mother had lied to her throughout the years, neglected her, and failed to parent her in a way she needed. Not that Kayla didn’t miss her mother and siblings, she did. But living in Georgia had cleared her mind. She was focused now on training and showing rat terriers.

  When they arrived at Julie’s, Kayla noticed her dogs were already outside next door at Auntie Mary’s. One less chore she had to do.

  She walked into Julie’s with the thought of doing some laundry. Kayla kept clothes at both Julie’s and Mary’s. She had a room at Julie’s, too.

  While sorting her dirty clothes—“jeans, whites, lights, darks,” it was like a song she sang to herself to pass the time while separating the items—Kayla heard the front door open. Julie had gone into another room by then and was busy doing household chores herself.

  It was Auntie Mary. Kayla poked her head around the corner and watched Mary walk into the house. That’s odd, she thought, Auntie’s still wearing her nightgown. Her face was reddish, flushed, as if she had been running.

  53

  Ben Espey sat at his desk and looked over his notes. A pool of reporters outside the sheriff’s department braved the cold temperatures, waiting for Espey to emerge with an update. It was Espey’s job, he knew, to keep the media at bay as much as he could. As news spread about the arrest of Lisa Montgomery, it was impossible for Espey to think he could ignore the mass gathering.

  By early evening, word of Lisa’s arrest had hit the international wires and airwaves. WOMB-SNATCH KILLER, one headline in an Australian newspaper read. WOMB-THEFT BABY HOME, echoed a South African headline. From Japan to Russia to England, and all across the United States, the arrest of Lisa Montgomery and what she had reportedly done to Bobbie Jo Stinnett struck a nerve with people. Here was a young, twenty-three-year-old victim brutally murdered in Small Town, USA, pregnant, newly married, her baby ripped from her womb as if part of some satanic ritual. For some, the girl next door and the American Dream were destroyed in one night.

  As gruesome as the story appeared to be, it was news, nonetheless. It meant ratings. During what was normally a slow news period, most Americans would celebrate Christmas exchanging some sort of opinion about the most merciless murder the Midwest had seen in years. The only cause for celebration was that Victoria Jo had been found alive and would be returned to her father and Bobbie Jo’s family.

  Espey walked slowly from the basement room he had turned into investigation ground zero and opened the door. He had tears in his eyes before he uttered a word.

  “We’re confident we have the little girl that was taken from Skidmore,” Espey told reporters while standing in the back parking lot of the sheriff’s department. “We have canceled the Amber Alert.” Later, Espey recalled the moment he emerged from the basement and addressed the press for the first time since finding Victoria Jo: “It was one of the happiest moments of my life, just to say that we had found that baby alive. I could hardly get the words out of my mouth.”

  FBI SA Rick Thorton then took a step toward the microphones, further spreading the joy that anyone who had been involved in the investigation surely felt. Unfortunately, most child abductions didn’t turn out this way. It was time to spread the good news.

  “The father of the child will be reunited [sic] with the baby,” Thorton said. It was obvious he, too, was holding back emotion.

  In handling any story that tugs at the heartstrings, reporters generally have the professionalism to stay objective. Such discipline is part of their credo. But this story, in all of its horror, seemed to expose a vein of emotion many reporters couldn’t keep buried. Many news agencies focused on the prospect of a happy ending. Having Victoria J
o in the arms of her father was, in spite of Bobbie Jo’s death, a small victory.

  As word spread, residents of Melvern, especially those who knew Kevin and Lisa, began to look at the last twenty-four hours in an entirely different light. Suddenly, everything Lisa and Kevin had done seemed suspect.

  54

  As soon as he heard about Lisa’s arrest, Darrel Schultz called Pastor Mike Wheatley. It was about ten minutes before the evening news came on. Darrel was Kevin’s boss and a member of the First Church of God in Melvern.

  “Do you know anything about this?” Schultz asked. “Were you in the middle of it all?”

  “Of course not, Darrel,” the pastor explained.

  Lisa’s arrest had caused people in Melvern to look for explanations. How could she fool us like that? Was Kevin in on her plan, too?

  “Actually, what makes this whole thing so difficult,” Wheatley told reporters, “is that she had everybody pretty snowed. I mean, as far as we knew, everything was just absolutely normal about Lisa. She was just doing her working and going home, and back and forth. There wasn’t any sign at all of any difference in her.”

  Wheatley pointed out that the people of Melvern, beyond Kevin and the kids, didn’t see Lisa every day. No one could really know a person without living with her; and even then, who really knew the person they slept next to every night?

  “I mean, the last time I saw her,” added Wheatley, “was in October when she came by the house and appeared to be pregnant. So, that was the only time I’d seen her since, before the day she came by with the baby.”