As Strongand other investigators were about to pull into the driveway of Montgomery's house, he said, he learned via a phone callthat the last email Stinnett received had come from that home. She began prostituting Lisa to older men when Lisa was in her early teens. Since they began, the federal government has executed seven people. Her daughter remembered her acting like a young child in public, twirling and skipping with her arms swinging with abandon. And theyre taking me away from her.. Ms. When children grow up in a chronic state of fear and terror, their brains adapt to survive, explained Katherine Porterfield, a clinical psychologist at the Bellevue/New York University Program for Survivors of Torture, who has evaluated Montgomery in prison. "It was pretty awful.". "I'm asking him to have compassion on her as a person that has been failed over and over and over again. For Montgomery, her lawyers argue, it began before she was born. That could change in Terre Haute. But it wasn't Montgomery that Stinnett was expecting, it was a woman who went by the name of Darlene Fischer. He threatened to expose the imagined pregnancy and use it against her in the custody battle. Patterson and Shaughnessy divorced in 1971, and Shaughnessy took custody of the girls. She has always accepted responsibility. If her execution goes forward, she will be the first federal female inmate to be executed in almost 70 years. At least five of the 12 jurors and three alternate jurorswiped away tears. Judy Shaughnessy, Montgomery's mother, testified Friday she found then-husband Jack Kleiner having sex with Montgomery in 1984, when Montgomery would have been about 16. "If I had, would they have taken Lisa out of the home also?" They believe that at the time of the crime, Montgomery was psychotic and out of touch with reality. He married Judy Shaughnessy, who would become Montgomery's mother, in 1967 in Miami, Okla. Patterson was the second of six husbands Shaughnessy would have during her life, which ended in 2013. Henrysaid she was surprised to see Montgomery scheduled for execution so soon, considering 30 other inmates on federal death row were sentencedbefore her. "Maybe she could have been saved, too. Mattingly said her heart sank when she realized Montgomery wasn't coming with her. . Stitched together, they form a tapestry of family dysfunction, abuse, neglect, professional negligence, substance abuse and untreated mental illness. Her mouth was covered with duct tape so frequently that she learned not to cry. Lisa Montgomery had little if any chance in life. Montgomery contacted Stinnett, 23, after meeting her at a dog show earlier that year at Abilene, in north-central Kansas, where they posed with others in a photo. The murder 16 years ago is never far from the minds of the town's residents. As a teenager, Montgomery confided in her cousin, a deputy sheriff, that she was being raped by Kleiner and other men orally, vaginally and anally. It would be 34 years before the half-sisters would see each other again. Montgomery is "evil personified," he said. Patterson was transferred after Montgomerys birth to Fort Riley inKansas, where their family lived when another daughter was born in 1970. Just the details: What you need to know about Montgomery and her victim, Bobbie Jo Stinnett. Kleiner built a makeshift shed on the side of the trailer for Montgomery, where he began molesting, and then raping, her. At 18, she married her stepbrother, who also beat and raped her. In 1986, when Montgomery was 18, she married her stepbrother, Carl Boman. Montgomery's lawyers want her sentence commuted to a life sentence, which would allow her to remain under psychiatric care in prison for the rest of her days. Babcock noted that while at least a dozen other women across the U.S. have committed a similar crime in the past 20 years killing a pregnant woman to kidnap her baby Montgomery was the only one sentenced to death. Facebook gives people the. But it was not a pet that she was to retrieve that day. She has exhausted all legal options except a last-ditch appeal for clemency from President Donald Trump, which was filed Christmas Eve. As her big sister, Diane feels immense guilt about leaving Montgomery behind in that broken home, so many years ago. A federal judge in November postponed Montgomery's execution from Dec. 8 until Jan. 12 to give her attorneys more time to file her clemency petition, after concluding that their COVID-19 symptoms limited their ability to file thepetition. A longtime death penalty opponent, Wurtz said he considers it "idiotic" that Montgomery is to be executed. "Come on, baby. Montgomery suffers from severe mental illness. People confuse punishment with culpability, she went on. For the rest of her life.. The case was ruled a homicide and remains unsolved. Montgomery's second husband Kevin Montgomery, who lives near Melvern and remains married to her voiced support for her bid for clemency in a statement releasedthrough his wife's attorneys. That could change in Terre Haute. Montgomery was already vulnerable to serious mental illness, she added. Violent acts against pregnant women and their fetuses fall into that category. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. In closing arguments, assistant U.S. Attorney Matt Whitworth asked the jury to think about Stinnett's daughter, Victoria Jo Stinnett. I was thinking, shes still back there. "And Lisa deserves to pay.". Join Facebook to connect with Judy Shaughnessy and others you may know. They recommended a sentence of death. Shaughnessy's nephew, David Kidwell, testified that she believed Montgomery "had brought [the abuse] on herself, that she enticed him". "Judy was manipulative and - I hate to use this word, but - evil. Stinnett lived with her husband, Zeb, in Skidmore, Mo., a town near the state's northwest corner with fewerthan 300 people today. When Lisa Montgomery murdered pregnant Bobbie Jo Stinnett and ripped her unborn baby from her womb, the whole world reeled in horror. Ramachandran said women who sufferchildhood sexual abuse and whose minds revolve around babies and pregnancy are predisposed to suffering pseudocyesis, a condition in which they show physical symptoms of pregnancy, including enlargement of the breasts and stomach, morning sickness and cravings for certain foods. She got into multiple car accidents, struggled to keep a job, moved around constantly, drank heavily, engaged in sex work and neglected her children. In the end, it was in prisonwhere she spent years on death row after committing a horrific crimethat she began to recover from a lifetime of nightmarish abuse. The next morning, Lisa and Kevin Montgomery showed off a newborn girl dressed in a pink bonnet as they ate breakfast at the Whistle Stop Cafe in downtown Melvern. Patterson made a mistake by abandoning them to "that crazy lady," he said at Montgomery's sentencing hearing in 2007. Skidmore has suffered lasting effects as a result of Stinnett's murder, said Strong, the investigator who helped prodMontgomery to confess. She has been let down over and over and over again by people in authority, people who were supposed to be caretakers for her, Mattingly said. She said Montgomery's crimes have affected the way Melvern is perceived in the same manner anti-gay picketing by Westboro Baptist Church has influenced perceptions about Topeka. Her mother also began trafficking her, allowing handymen like electricians and plumbers to sexually abuse Montgomery in exchange for work on the house. Judy Shaughnessy and her boyfriend physical, psychological and sexual abuse Lisa. "The Lisa I knew was a good person who cared about the other women in the pod and was quiet and generous and kind," Dorr said. Montgomery then said she had given birth at home with help from two female friends and, later, that she had given birth alone. Kleiner told a reporter in 2005 that Shaughnessy's allegation was made up to support her divorce case and he was never found guilty of anything. She told Lisa she had to "earn her keep." Judy later. But what happened at the modest clapboard house where Stinnett lived with her husband still haunts some of those involved in the investigation. You know, like, that doesn't happen to Bobbie," Morrow says. Montgomery's father, John Patterson, a 25-year-old in the military, was also an alcoholic. They gave me unconditional love, they taught me my self-worth, she said. Let it be done: Bobbie Jo Stinnetts hometown waits as killers execution date nears. "They put her on suicide watch to keep her from killing herself, so that they can execute her," she said. Friends and family began noticing Montgomery's tendency to slip into "a world of her own". Henry says this was an early sign of her mental illnesses, which include bipolar disorder, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, dissociative disorder and traumatic brain injury. She was born in 1968, the child of two troubled alcoholics. When Lisa was a small child, Judy allowed men to rape her for money, including allowing her to be gang raped on multiple occasions. Defense attorney Fred Duchardt told jurors that sexual abuse during her childhood had caused Montgomeryto become mentally ill and killed her soul. She said it was over and over, one man right after the other, and went on for hours, her cousin said in a sworn statement. He was in her. She strangled Stinnett to death and cut the baby from her stomach. That is exactly what Lisa Montgomery developed into, which is a person who had profound disconnection from her body, from her mind, from her experience, Porterfield said. The judge in the case scolded Shaughnessy for not reporting the abuse - but did not report the abuse himself. In the other cases, she said, prosecutors opted not to seek the death penalty or juries did not impose it because it was obvious the women were suffering from profound mental illnesses. Theyre saying that a sentence of life without the possibility of parole is more than sufficient punishment for someone who has endured what she did.. Im not a psychiatrist, so I cant go any further than that.. A newspaper article quoted him as saying he had been convinced his wife was pregnant and had given birth. At the same time, she blames it for the fate of her younger half-sister, Lisa Montgomery. But Lisa was broken. When I was eight and Lisa was four, social services came and rescued me from Judy, leaving Lisa and our other sister behind. Moving often was the norm to Montgomery; by the time she was a teenager, she had moved approximately 16 times. She was sick. Montgomery told Stinnett that she was also expecting, and the pair shared pregnancy stories. Those records say questions were raised about her ability to function as an effective parent afterher house was found to be "filthy," her children were seen running naked in her yard and one of her daughters, then 2years old,ingested a bottle of Tylenol in 1993. He said she stood out to the extentthere appeared to be something wrong" with her. If that disconnection is brought about with enough frequency and intensity, it can become more of a steady state of being, she added. A former paramedic who had watched the births of all three of his children, Strong also considered the baby's head to be unusually round. In addition to Strong and Fritz, those investigators were FBI Special Agents Mike Miller and Scott Gentine and Topeka police officer Tom Glor. But the psychological abuse targeted at her was even more damaging. She lives near Kansas City, Mo. "That sent a chill up my spine," Strong said. Montgomery's mother, Judy Shaughnessy, who was 20 at the time of her birth in 1968, drank heavily while pregnant with her daughter. Stinnett bled to death. When I was around eight years old, and Lisa was about four, one of Judy's male friends began coming into our room at night and regularly raping me, with Lisa in the next bedclose enough we could reach for each other and touch fingers. Many there believe the final moments of Bobbie Jo Stinnett were so horrific, the death sentence is warranted. Lisa Montgomery, who endured years of sexual and physical abuse, murdered an expectant mother and took the baby. Residents there tend to think her execution would bring an appropriate end to a painful chapter in their city's history, he said. Because of Stinnett's easy-going reputation, Morrow remembers instantly dismissing the initial reports of her murder. Judy Shaughnessy and her boyfriend physical, psychological . Part of HuffPost Crime. A few years after Mattingly was removed from the home, when Montgomery was in kindergarten, her mother remarried a man named Jack Kleiner. She liked to take her finger and poke it hard into her chest, over and over in the same spot. - Sandra Babcock, faculty director of the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide, Montgomery, who confessed, was later sentenced to death for the , The Trump administration announced it was. Jack also raped Lisa for years. Bobbie Jo Stinnetts hometown waits as killers execution date nears. Her terror was well-founded, said Montgomery's attorneys, Kelley Henry and Amy Harwell. "God, no, please," she said. There are things children need to grow into healthy adults, among them love, praise and stability. Mental health experts who examined her believe that her history of childhood trauma exacerbated a genetic predisposition to mental illness that ran in her family. Read about our approach to external linking. Investigators quickly realised that "Darlene Fischer" did not exist, and tracked Montgomery down the next day using her emails and computer IP address. One was the presence of substantial planning and premeditation. They were also physically violent. He was pumping her, Shaughnessy testified. She learned Oct. 16 that she had been scheduled to die by lethal injection on Dec. 8. Strong said he and Fritz questioned Montgomery using a"good cop/bad cop" approach. "I'm sick of hearing about Lisa Montgomery and what she went through. She missed the funeral because of it. Every time she has a birthday, it will also be the anniversary of the slaughter of her mother, Whitworth said. 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