Murder in the Heartland

by M. William Phelps

  Hamon stood at the head of Bobbie Jo’s coffin and led the large group in prayer before everyone took a turn paying final respects.

  “There are not enough words to tell you what good people they were,” one neighbor of Bobbie Jo and Zeb’s said, describing the town’s feelings for Bobbie Jo and Zeb. “Everyone is one hundred percent behind them. Everybody knew how good they were.”

  While the wind whistled, throwing his robe and cotton-white hair all over, Hamon told the crowd near the end of a fifteen-minute service, “We have assembled, not for an ending, but a beginning. Bobbie Jo is in a safer place now. It is not a time for anger,” he reminded everyone, “but a time of healing.”

  With Bobbie Jo’s funeral behind them, the people of Skidmore could now mourn in private. Not many had slept over the past five days. A part of everyone in town had been murdered. The funeral had brought their feelings to full expression.

  In the coming days, as people came out of their shells and began to talk about things, an unsettling tone of grief could be heard in the discussions at PTA meetings and football games, service stations, and diners. For some, the desire for understanding had turned into a burning disgust, as questions about Lisa Montgomery and her past emerged. It was time for justice to run its course, some proclaimed. It had been almost a week since Bobbie Jo was murdered. What was going to happen to her alleged killer? What reparation could Victoria Jo look for when Zeb sat her down one day and told her what had happened to her mother, not to mention the circumstances surrounding her birth?

  Like everyone else, the child would want answers.

  On the Internet, some were again repeating rumors of how Lisa had practiced the procedure she allegedly used on Bobbie Jo on one of her pregnant rat terriers. Someone else claimed Lisa had tried to buy a baby not long ago. Another woman, still frightened over what could have happened to her, said Lisa had approached her when she was eight months pregnant, asking questions about her due date. The woman claimed Lisa had set her sights on her baby before she found Bobbie Jo.

  Pastor Mike Wheatley fueled further speculation when he appeared on television after Bobbie Jo was buried and said Lisa “wanted to have their own child desperately” because “that way she would be attached at the hip with Kevin. There was desperation there.”

  Beyond the conjecture, many were clamoring for facts. Who was this woman who had supposedly committed one of the most gruesome crimes in Midwestern history? What events in her past had led her down the road to Skidmore? Where did she come from? Lisa had never spoken with a heartland accent or dialect—was she from the region? Where was she born?

  Who was Lisa Montgomery?

  III

  MOTHERHOOD

  78

  Edgar Mathers* was in Korea when his wife went into labor. When the army failed to grant him an extension on his leave, Edgar made sure his mother and father were at the hospital in support of his wife. By February 27, 1968, the day she went in, Edgar had been gone a month already. Sure, she missed him. But that was their life: Edgar was a dedicated military man, he seemingly had spent more time in Asia and Europe than he had in America with her.

  “Has her water broke yet?” the doctor asked, while jotting something down on her chart.

  She heard one of the nurses say, “No.”

  “We’ll have to break it then. Get things ready.”

  They gave her a shot in the back, epidural anesthesia, and she didn’t remember much pain after that.

  A few hours later, Judy sat up best she could in bed.

  “It’s a girl,” someone told her.

  She smiled. “A girl. How nice.”

  Two years earlier, when she was nineteen, Judy had a beautiful baby boy, with blue eyes and no hair, but he died at birth. She felt like God had punished her for being unmarried. But she and Edgar were married, and her baby had lived this time.

  She was fatigued, of course, groggy and sweaty from all the pushing and breathing. The drugs were still in her blood; she couldn’t feel any sensation in the bottom of her body. They had taken Lisa Marie out of the room to wash her up and find a comfortable place for her in the nursery. (“Yes, I did name her after Elvis’s daughter,” who was born on February 1 that same year, Judy said, “but not because I liked Elvis; I thought the name was pretty.”)

  “We’ll bring her to you,” one of the nurses said, “when you’re in your own room in a few minutes.” She still hadn’t held Lisa Marie yet.

  Before Judy knew it, there she was, seven-pound, four-ounce Lisa Marie, sitting on Judy’s belly wrapped up in a blanket. Lisa looked up at her mother while twisting her pudgy little fingers in her mouth. Judy lifted Lisa’s head cap and marveled at her shiny cone-shaped head and the few strands of blond hair.

  “She’s something.”

  “Ain’t she, though?”

  Fort Lewis, Washington, a town of military families living in prefab houses, cookie-cuttered over fifteen square miles of land, was different from where she had grown in Manhattan, Kansas. There, she lived in a two-story farmhouse surrounded by acres of the flattest land one could ever imagine. They had no running water (“We carried water in buckets from the well to the house.”), and, forgoing hopscotch and board games and marbles and jacks, she and her five sisters and one brother spent most of their free time working the land. They picked gooseberries and grapes so their mom could can them for winter. (“Mom also fixed grape pudding; it was good.”) Dad hunted rabbit, squirrel, and quail. They had chickens, cows, and pigs. (“Mom made the butter out of the cream. We had milk. She made homemade bread and fried chicken on Sundays.”)

  Save for help from her mother-and father-in-law, Judy was alone in Fort Lewis with two kids. Edgar had brought a child from his first marriage into his new life with Judy. He had received a letter shortly before Lisa Marie was born informing him he had another child in some port he had forgotten he was ever stationed in. The state of Washington wanted him to sign papers so a family could adopt the child, and he gladly did.

  At home with the children, Judy was struggling to pay the bills. It seemed Edgar didn’t want to be bothered anymore. Pretty soon he stopped sending money. He never said why. Judy’s car was repossessed. The lights were shut off. She had little food for the kids. Lisa spent her first twelve weeks sleeping in the top drawer of Judy’s dresser because Judy couldn’t afford a crib.

  “But I’ll make it,” Judy told a friend. “I’ll survive.”

  If Edgar wasn’t going to help, she’d go to her family.

  “Daddy,” Judy said over the phone one afternoon, “can you send me some money?” Judy’s parents still lived in Kansas. She was thinking about moving back there, bidding the Northwest farewell. Then a letter showed up from Edgar, along with $200.

  Maybe he does care?

  After she opened the letter, however, her mind was made up. Whatever Edgar said had Judy in tears. She gave the letter to Edgar’s mother, who was there helping out with the kids: “Read that!”

  “I’m so sorry, Judy.”

  During the summer of 1968, Judy, Lisa, and Edgar’s daughter took the train from Fort Lewis to Manhattan. “I’m going home,” Judy told a friend before she left. “He can find me if he wants me.”

  Judy’s father was waiting at the train depot. Carrying her bags, he said, “It’s good to have you home, honey.” She knew he meant it.

  After spending some time in Manhattan, Judy moved to Rossville. She had a job of sorts waiting there: watching her sister and brother-in-law’s children. While the kids were napping one afternoon, Judy sat down and wrote Edgar a letter: “I want a divorce. I’m done with this.” There was more. But that’s all Edgar would see, anyway: divorce. Why carry on if he wouldn’t read it?

  Some weeks later, Edgar showed up. “We tried to work it out,” she recalled.

  Over the next few years, Judy would follow Edgar back to Washington, but a shadow seemed to follow the relationship. She claimed later Edgar was “trying to kill” her and he tried committing su
icide. Her word against his: Edgar was never charged with a crime; nor was there any record of his having tried to take his own life.

  After giving birth to another child, Judy headed back to Kansas. Edgar followed months later after another tour overseas. They lived together, and things seemed to be going “okay.” They had two children now, plus one of Edgar’s. They needed to at least “give it a try.”

  A friend was watching the kids one night. As usual, Edgar was out and about. Judy decided to attend a local party. She’d heard things, but wanted to see for herself. She needed a night out, anyhow. As soon as she walked in, she saw Edgar in the arms of another woman, and that was it—the marriage was over.

  The next few days with Edgar were unremarkable. There was no need to discuss the situation any further. (“What’s done is done.”) And then a friend asked Judy for a ride to Texas. Judy decided the time away would do her some good. She left the children at home with her parents. They were always good about watching the kids, helping out.

  Back a few days later, Judy called her mother. “I’m coming over to get the kids, Mom. I’m back.”

  “Edgar took them, Judy. They’re gone.”

  At the time, Lisa was three years old. Days later, Judy found the kids and filed for divorce soon after. When it went through, Edgar showed up with some gifts—and they never saw him again.

  In 1972, Judy was shopping for a car. She went to a local salvage yard because she heard she could get a good deal. After talking to the owner and buying a car, he made a move.

  He was an attractive man, well-built, solid, rough around the edges. Just the kind she liked. With his patchouli-oiled, slicked-back hair, he caught her eye. He was much older than Judy, who was twenty-five, but they started dating, anyway. Later, a former relative would describe him this way: “He is an angry little man; he will be drunk when you talk to him; he will curse you and lie and deny.”

  “I’m in love with you, Howard,” Judy said to him one night. Of course, she had no idea Howard had a wife and kids at home waiting for him every night he left her arms.

  Howard left his wife and kids a while later, and he and Judy moved to Tulsa. Judy got pregnant. She had three kids already. Howard was drinking. He drank a lot, she said. He would stop. Then start again. It was as if the man who drank was someone else.

  The only bright spot out of it all was the children, especially Lisa. Soon after she turned four, Lisa was already reading and writing, picking up skills with the natural ease of an artist to paints. As she entered grade school, Lisa excelled. The violin and French horn came easy. Years later, she fancied the mellophone, making first chair in the marching band. She acted in class plays, joined the pep club, and became active in the student council. Anything she put her mind to seemed effortless.

  One night, while Howard was drunk, Judy said he hit her and knocked her front teeth out. She was pregnant again. It was awful. She was “living in hell.”

  But it got worse.

  By 1981, after trying to mend things by moving to California and Texas, Judy and Howard ended up in Sperry, Oklahoma, on a piece of land outside town. For a while, life seemed manageable. But Howard, Judy insisted, was dealing in stolen property: cars, car stereos, guns. He was never arrested, but she called the local police chief on him a few times.

  “I won’t be part of this, Howard. No way. We have a family.”

  Still, Judy maintained, he continued to drink and carry on with the same behavior.

  February 24, 1984, was the day, Judy later swore, she made the decision to leave for good. It was three days before Lisa’s sixteenth birthday. The small mobile home they were living in made cramped quarters for the five kids and two adults, even though it had additions on each side. In the middle of the night, Judy was awakened by the sound of what she thought were jars in the kitchen clanking around. It seemed strange.

  “What the heck is that?” she asked Howard. She thought he was lying next to her in bed. “Howard? You there?”

  Howard was gone.

  Judy got up quietly, walking toward the noise. It was coming from Lisa’s room, not the kitchen. Approaching the door, she heard some stirring going on inside. (“I opened the door and…saw him naked on top of Lisa. He just looked at me and got up.”)

  Judy was horrified. “Lisa?” she said, walking toward her as Howard left the room.

  “Yes…Mom.” Lisa was crying. She had a terrible look on her face, as if she’d been caught doing something wrong.

  Judy sat on Lisa’s bed. “Go back to bed, honey. It’ll be okay.”

  Howard went back to sleep as if nothing had happened. Judy went into the room where Howard kept his guns and found a pistol.

  “You…,” she said, pointing it at Howard’s head.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I couldn’t pull the trigger. I tried again, and on the third time, I felt the trigger starting to go, and I heard a voice inside my head…Don’t be a fool,” Judy recounted.

  Judy simply turned around and put the gun down.

  The next day, Judy explained, she learned for “the first time,” Howard had been going into Lisa’s room for years. She called the doctor. Some would later question why Judy phoned the doctor first, instead of the police, and also why she allowed Howard to stay. Judy answered that by saying she “feared for her life.”

  Didn’t she know her daughter was being sexually abused for all those years? They lived in a trailer. (“I would even say,” one family member commented, “that Judy blamed it on Lisa…telling her it was all her fault. She knew what was going on. That trailer was the size of a large shed. Judy could see Lisa’s bedroom from hers. Lisa told me Judy said it was her fault, and that Lisa encouraged it.”)

  When Judy got the doctor on the phone, he said, “Bring her in.”

  Lisa told her mother the next morning her period was late. While examining her, the doctor said, “If you’re pregnant, you can’t have your mother’s husband’s child.”

  Luckily, she wasn’t. When Judy got home with the kids from the doctor’s office, she “looked Howard in the eye” and told him to “get out.”

  “If you tell anyone,” Judy recalled Howard threatening, “I will kill you and the kids.”

  Howard eventually moved out and got an apartment in Tulsa. But he wouldn’t leave Judy alone, nor was he helping with money for the kids. Alone now with five kids, living in a trailer, Judy went on welfare.

  Judy felt she needed protection, so she reached out to the local police chief, Richard Boman—a man she would end up marrying. Howard, she said, had burned everything she owned one afternoon. She believed he was getting ready to kill her and the kids. The situation was escalating.

  “I had sent Lisa to counseling. But not once did I ever blame her for anything. I guess in my mind I thought Howard was a grown man and knew better. His drinking became worse over the years. He did try to tell me he didn’t remember any of it. I never believed him. He was as sick as a sick man can be for hurting my daughter like that and destroying our family.”

  After Richard Boman convinced Howard he had better stay away from Judy and the kids, Howard disappeared. Judy had a conversation not long after with a friend. She said it changed her life.

  “Look in the mirror and see what you see. When you see me, tell me.”

  “What does that mean? Makes no sense,” Judy wondered.

  “When you figure it out, let me know.”

  For three years, Judy wrestled with it. Then one day it hit her. (“Howard had always told me how ugly I was and no man would have me with the kids. He would call me names. I had no self-esteem. I did look into the mirror and realized how wrong he was and I was as good as the next person. When I realized all this, I felt the hate for that man was gone. I felt sorry for him.”)

  Years later, Howard gave an interview to the Kansas City Star, in which he explained that although Judy had made the sexual abuse claim in her divorce filing, he “never molested Lisa in any way, shape, or form.” He ma
intained Judy “concocted” the story to win a favorable divorce. Howard was never convicted of child molestation or sexual abuse, but was reportedly arrested and jailed for failing to pay child support. Furthermore, one of Lisa’s half sisters said Lisa claimed Howard never touched her in that way. But Lisa did tell others—Carl Boman and her children—she had been sexually abused.

  79

  In Carl Boman’s opinion, the twenty years he had spent with Lisa Montgomery hadn’t always been chaotic. Deep down, Carl was a forgiving person. He gave people second—sometimes third—chances. His father and mother had taught him right: allow people the space they need to make mistakes. Good people don’t hold grudges. To the contrary, the way to help someone was to open up your heart.

  During his early years in Oklahoma, he was a successful high-school athlete and well-rounded student. After graduation, Carl became “defiant” and angry, letting his hair grow out into a ’70s Afro the size and shape of a space helmet. A loner, he started drinking and ended up “confused” about where he wanted to take his life.

  It was November 1984 when Carl met Lisa for the first time. She was a fragile sixteen-year-old who spent much of her time lost in the fictional worlds of Stephen King. Lisa loved all his books: Carrie, Salem’s Lot, The Shining. She read so much, Judy later said, the house could burn down and “Lisa wouldn’t even smell the smoke because she was so engrossed in books.”

  At twenty-three, Carl had been out of the navy for a few years (some said dishonorable discharge; he claimed “other than honorable,” whatever that meant) when he set out from his home in Bartlesville to Carthage, Missouri, for a Thanksgiving family reunion of sorts. His grandfather had passed away, and he hadn’t seen his grandmother for some time. Carl’s father, Richard, was seeing a new woman; she was going to be there, along with her children.

  At the time Richard Boman began a relationship with Judy, he was the chief of police in Sperry. Richard had been divorced from Lucy, Carl’s mom, for over twenty years by then. In 1966, Richard was in the U.S. Navy, stationed in Boston. Lucy took off one day with Carl and his sister. The kids did not see their dad for almost fifteen years.