Murder in the Heartland

by M. William Phelps

  Lisa continued praising God’s word, explaining that she was going to educate the children to “know God” as she herself had come to “know Him.”

  She wrote that she felt “persecuted not only by people who do not know me, but my own family,” adding that she now lived under God’s way, not by “man’s word.”

  After telling Carl that Kevin and his parents were entitled to visits by the children, Lisa encouraged Carl to work with her to “provide a United Christian parenthood” for them.

  “She’s got to be on drugs. I can’t believe this,” Carl responded.

  At the end, in what could be construed as a viable threat, she instructed Carl to talk to Vanessa and ask her to refrain from using “physical violence” on one of God’s children (Alicia), because “she would not want God’s anger directed at her the same way.”

  Nowhere in the letter had Lisa addressed her own behavior, the savage crime she was being accused of, or if and why she had broken one of God’s most sacred commandments.

  102

  For an elected Republican sheriff living in the heartland of America, meeting the president of the United States might be a dream come true. To shake the hand of the man in charge would have to be a crowning moment in any law enforcement official’s career. But for Ben Espey, saving Victoria Jo Stinnett’s life was enough.

  When Espey got word that President Bush wouldn’t be in Washington, DC, on the day he and his colleagues would be in the nation’s capital to accept an award for their work in the Stinnett case, Espey was disappointed, but not at all upset. He didn’t need congratulations and congressional pats on the back. In early May, when he got word he was going to receive an award, along with Jeff Owen, Dave Merrill (both with the MSHP), Investigator Randy Strong, and FBI SA Kurt Lipanovich, for his work in the Bobbie Jo Stinnett case, he simply nodded his head, shrugged, and said, “Okay. Great.”

  Espey’s life already felt full. “I raise horses, mules; we do some horseback riding,” Espey recalled. “I got a motorcycle the wife and I like to ride.” Sharon Espey is the sheriff’s wife of thirty-one years. With a smile, Espey explained that when he isn’t working, he and Sharon spend every moment they can together. (“I used to fish and hunt, but mainly it’s horseback and motorcycle riding with my wife now.”)

  Espey grew up in Maryville and never left. The middle son of five boys, he was the captain of the high-school football team who managed to get A’s and B’s throughout his education and has never been in any trouble (“zero alcohol and zero drugs”). Life has been good to him, he feels.

  “Everybody needs to be equal,” he asserted, speaking of the sheriff’s office he runs. “That’s what I have always implemented in the environment we all work in around here.”

  The reason why Espey had been so successful as sheriff, he said modestly after being pressed about the issue, “is that I know the land and the people. I know what they expect, because I am one of them.”

  The Department of Justice, along with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, honored Espey and those who helped in the Bobbie Jo Stinnett murder investigation with its Officer of the Year Award. In recognition of their work, the men were invited to Washington by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to receive the honor. America’s Most Wanted host John Walsh was there, along with members of Congress and state representatives.

  Todd Graves announced the award to the press. “These local, state and federal law enforcement officers exemplify teamwork among all levels of law enforcement,” Graves said. “Their quick action and resourcefulness transformed what could have been an even worse tragedy into the return of a healthy child to her family. I know they have the profound gratitude of that family, and they have our respect for a job well done and an honor well deserved.”

  Espey and his crew were among twenty-five honorees from across the nation who had been recognized. Alberto Gonzales, quite proudly, said, “A missing child is every parent’s worst nightmare. Every day, the courageous men and women of law enforcement work tirelessly to recover missing and exploited children across our nation. We are grateful for their dedication, and today we recognize their valiant efforts to apprehend would-be predators and keep our communities safe.”

  Todd Graves explained during the ceremony how the “recovery of Victoria…underscored the value of the Amber Alert program.”

  Back home in Maryville a few days later, Espey was in his office when he received a surprising call.

  “George Bush found out about the award and that you guys were out there, but he didn’t have time to meet with you then.”

  “I know,” Espey said.

  “He wants you to go back out there this week so he can honor all you guys himself personally in the Oval Office.”

  Espey was speechless.

  Whereas Espey and his peers had taken their wives and children to Washington, DC, the first time, this next trip was solely for law enforcement personnel. Each set of officers (“I think there were thirty-two…five or six groups…”) would fly back East and meet with the president separately.

  “What an honor.”

  There were five officers in Espey’s group. They walked into the Oval Office together. President Bush was standing in front of his desk waiting for them.

  “Hi, how you doin’?” Bush said, shaking each officer’s hand. They stood in a half-circle around him at first, and then Bush gathered the men around and talked about the history of the Oval Office, what it stood for in democracy, and some of the decisions made in the room.

  “It was just great,” Espey said later. “This guy was just super. Outgoing. Very down-to-earth. He took the time to tell us what happened there.”

  What struck Espey later was how natural it felt for a county sheriff from one of the more rural regions of the country to stand with his colleagues in the Oval Office, just “shooting the breeze” with the president. “And there were people in Washington who had never even seen the guy.”

  Being escorted around town for the most part by Secret Service, Espey had several conversations with them.

  “You must be pretty important to be honored like that,” one Secret Service agent had told Espey earlier that day.

  “I guess.”

  “I’ve worked here in Washington for years now and never even met the guy, or been in the Oval Office.”

  Espey smiled. “Oh, yeah. How ’bout that.”

  103

  San Diego didn’t turn out to be a place for charming moonlit walks along the La Jolla Cove shoreline or romantic hikes up in Mission Trails for Carl and Lisa after they moved back in together during the summer of 1990. The problems they had seemed to be churning inside them like a virus, just waiting to ruin everything again.

  When Lisa had given birth to Kayla in August, they had set aside their problems, at least for the time being. But part of the relationship had been severed. Things would never be the same. If anything, the situation was worse. Carl just hadn’t realized it yet.

  “What was important to Lisa,” said Carl, “was never important to anybody else.” Lisa lived in her own fantasy, which she constantly tried to transform into some sort of reality. “She believed she could manipulate anyone, and still does,” Carl said.

  Carl Boman has blamed himself frequently for the problems he had with Lisa throughout their lives. As they got settled in San Diego, Carl said, “I guess I was working too much. She started “having affairs,” he later told the press, “with one of our neighbors.”

  A friend of Lisa and Carl’s had driven out to San Diego with them; he had been staying at the apartment for a time. After Carl found out the guy was bisexual, he “kicked him out” the guy subsequently got his own place right around the corner.

  “This guy, our friend, knew Lisa was seeing another man, but he didn’t want to tell me.”

  The proof Carl needed—and he always demanded some sort of confirming evidence, besides someone else’s word—came in the form of a phone call one day. Lisa was on the pho
ne with her lover when the evicted friend, who was there gathering some things he left behind, picked up the other phone and handed it to him.

  “Here,” he said, “you don’t believe me…see for yourself.”

  Carl listened.

  “Next time,” Lisa’s lover was telling her, “we need to get us a hotel room. I don’t like it on the floor.” It appeared they were meeting in an abandoned apartment for which the guy had a key. “I think we left the gas on the last time we were there.”

  As the conversation between Lisa and her lover continued, Carl slammed the phone down so Lisa could tell he had been listening. On his way out the door, he walked around the corner of the room as Lisa was heading into another section of the apartment. He nearly bumped into her.

  “Oh,” Lisa said as Carl headed for the door in a huff, “you’re leaving already? Have a good night at work, sweetie. I’ll see you when you get home.”

  Carl shook his head. “I was hurt,” he remembered. “It was a good thing, looking back now, that I didn’t start fighting with her then.”

  While starting his car outside the apartment, Carl nearly broke down.

  Here we go again.

  104

  By the beginning of summer 2005, the government had filed its suggestions regarding a schedule and trial order. It detailed the trial scheduling conference the lawyers had taken part in back on February 9, when they sat down to discuss certain issues that would come up along the way leading to trial. Among the discovery items, several things came to light, some of which were already public, others that were not.

  Lisa’s defense, said the government’s suggestions, “does not anticipate a competency motion,” but the defendant “may rely on a defense of insanity or diminished mental responsibility,” and the defendant “does not anticipate an alibi defense,” but that she is “relying on the defense of general denial.”

  In other words, “I didn’t do it.”

  The government was obligated under the order to file its “Notice of Intention to Seek the Death Penalty” on or before September 16, 2005.

  The legal case against Lisa Montgomery, at this point, had come down to paperwork and motion filings. The bottom line was, Lisa was scheduled to be tried for kidnapping resulting in death, beginning on April 24, 2006, and the government was going to seek the death penalty.

  105

  As Carl Boman would later tell the press, on the night he learned his wife had been “having affairs” on him once again, he allowed his feelings to fester inside while he stood watch on his regular midnight to 8:00 A.M. guard shift. He was angry, sure; but he was hurt more than anything. Deep down, he wanted it to work out with Lisa. He still loved her.

  With his second job starting at nine o’clock, later that morning, Carl knew he could lose himself in work and try to fight off any thoughts of running home and confronting Lisa.

  Is there any way I can ever trust her again?

  A few days passed and Carl decided he needed to confront Lisa before he left for work one night. “What the hell, Lisa? Again?”

  “What? No, Carl. What are you talking about? You have it all wrong.”

  By now, Carl knew Lisa’s MO: first deny, then cry.

  “Come on, Lisa. This is getting old.”

  “No, Carl, I swear.”

  “Stop that! Just stop it, damn it.”

  Then came the tears.

  “It was…an accident, Carl. I swear it was,” Lisa cried. Then she curled up into a ball on the couch. “Please…you’re working so much. I was lonely. I needed someone.”

  The one thing Lisa wouldn’t have to worry about anymore was the chance of an unwanted pregnancy. In August, after Lisa went into labor with Kayla several months prematurely, doctors gave her “all sorts of drugs,” hoping to delay the birth. But after they realized there wasn’t much they could do to slow it, they gave Lisa dose after dose of steroids to try to help Kayla develop her lungs and organs. As a result of the complications surrounding Kayla’s birth, Lisa’s insides swelled up, mainly her uterus. Because of that, when she had her tubal ligation surgery, doctors couldn’t simply “tie” her tubes, as was done in as a popular form of birth control back then; instead, they had to burn them apart. Thus, there would never be a chance for Lisa to have her tubes reconnected.

  That was why, Carl said, when she started making claims of being pregnant years later, he knew there was no way it could be true.

  “We had always talked about this throughout our marriage. We were only supposed to have three kids and then Lisa would have her tubes tied off and we would go on with life, happy campers. Kayla came along—and believe me, we were both, Lisa and I, happy to have her; it wasn’t about not wanting her or anything like that—but we weren’t going to have a whole house full of kids. We talked it through many times.”

  After Lisa married Kevin, she never complained to Carl about having had her tubes tied. “She never came to me and said, ‘You bastard, you made me tie my tubes, and now I want another child.’ It was just never part of the discussion while she was faking all those pregnancies.”

  In January 1991, Carl approached Lisa. He had done a lot of thinking about the marriage. “Listen, this is not working. I cannot do this anymore. The trust is gone.”

  “Carl, come on,” Lisa pleaded, “please try. If not for me, for the children.”

  Carl thought about it. “Well…I’ll tell you what, Lisa…”

  106

  Back in January, Kayla Boman’s sister Rebecca drove down to Georgia to visit with Kayla. It was time, everyone agreed, for Kayla to return home. She’d been gone since August 2004. Mom was in prison facing trial. Bobbie Jo was dead. Although reporters were still calling the house every once in a while, it was nothing like it had been.

  “Do you want to come back home with me?” Rebecca asked as she and Kayla sat and talked about what had happened.

  As she had said on the phone several times previously, Kayla repeated, “No, I’m staying here for a while longer.”

  Georgia offered Kayla what she felt she couldn’t get anywhere else: serenity. Back home, she would face reminders everywhere. Staying at Auntie Mary’s, she could go about life in surroundings that were still a bit foreign to her. Kids in school didn’t bug her to answer questions. She wasn’t put on the spot and asked to explain things. Some of her close friends knew what happened, but they didn’t push the issue.

  So, Rebecca, disappointed, left without her.

  Two months later, in March, Kayla was talking on the phone with her brother, Ryan, one night. (“He sounded depressed,” Kayla remembered, “and something in his voice just told me that it was time I go home. At first, I was just going to go home for my two weeks of spring break, but then I decided to stay.”)

  In less than one year’s time, Kayla had gone from living in a household with her mom to living with a friend of the family, to staying with her dad and his wife, whom Kayla had never lived with before. (“I didn’t like my stepmother, so for the first few days we ‘clashed,’ so to speak, but then finally, at my dad’s request, I apologized to her, and we learned how to get along. It was a lot different being with them, but I was glad to be back around family. Going back to school, I was sorta nervous. I hadn’t seen most of the kids in my class for about ten months…. I didn’t want to switch schools again, and I definitely didn’t want to have to try and make new friends. I just wanted some sort of normalcy in my life.”)

  A normal life was something Lisa Montgomery had stolen from her children, regardless of whether she was innocent or guilty. For the most part, Kayla hadn’t been in contact with Lisa since her arrest. “She killed my friend and took her baby.”

  In late May, Lisa sent Kayla a card and letter. Kayla’s fifteenth birthday was approaching in August. Lisa wanted to give her a bit of advice along with a birthday wish. The heading of it read: GOD HAS A MASTER PLAN, AND ALL OF US PLAY A SPECIAL ROLE IN IT. Then, in the body, “Today we celebrate the part where you come in! Happy Birthday!�
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  Lisa quoted Jesus Christ next, “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me….” Underneath, she made a box out of X’s and hearts. Inside the box, she said she was “so glad” Kayla had been a “part of God’s plan.” She was grateful for “Him”…“allowing me to have you.”

  A one-page, single-spaced letter accompanied the card. After talking about one of their rat terriers, Lisa said if she got a chance to “come home,” she was thinking about showing dogs again. She wanted a “toy fox terrier,” she wrote. It had to be a small dog, because she was planning on getting a “small apartment.” She wanted a cat, too. And perhaps even a “toy poodle” she could dress up with “bows” and “paint” its “nails.”

  “She’s living in some fantasy world,” Kayla said aloud while reading. “I cannot believe this.”

  Later in the same letter, Lisa spoke of her discontentment at the notion Kayla might be dating, which she vehemently denounced. Sixteen years old was the age Lisa agreed her daughters could begin dating. If Kayla didn’t abide by this rule, she would be “in defiance of me and God’s laws.”

  “Let me see that,” Carl asked when Kayla told him about the letter.

  “Here, Daddy, look.”

  Carl shook his head. “You’d think, by reading this, Lisa had been arrested on a DWI charge.”

  At the end of the letter, Lisa took a jab at her mother. First, she told Kayla she had “unconditional love” for her and the rest of the kids. Nothing would ever change that. She didn’t have to “like” what Kayla did—if, in fact, she was dating—“…but I will still love you.” Then she said she would never “turn” her back on Kayla in the same way, she felt, Judy had on her. “I had enough” of her “‘conditional’ love,” Lisa concluded.