You know, like, that doesn't happen to Bobbie," Morrow says. Though capital case defendants tend to be confused and stunned, those emotions were heightened with Montgomery, who had trouble responding to questions, Wurtz said. Two days before the crime, her former husband (and stepbrother) sought custody of two of her children. Lisa Montgomery and Bobbie Jo Stinnett got to know each other online through a shared love of dogs. But the psychological abuse targeted at her was even more damaging. It was clear that she was traumatized, that she was somewhere else, he said. Lisa Montgomery be di 11th prisoner to receive di lethal injection since July when President Donald Trump, resume federal executions. Montgomery, who confessed, was later sentenced to death for the especially heinous murder as decided by a jury who heard her trial. Stinnett's husband was at work, andStinnett was on the phone with her mother, Becky Harper, when Montgomery's dirty red Toyota pulled upon the afternoon of Dec. 16. The crime itself shows that Lisa had lost all touch with reality. They recommended a sentence of death. Judy Shaughnessy and her boyfriend physical, psychological . Court records say Kleiner drank heavily, beat his wife and children, and made his daughters take off their clothes before he spanked them. At the same time, she blames it for the fate of her younger half-sister, Lisa Montgomery. The tiny farming town of Skidmore sits in the far northwest corner of Missouri. 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. Montgomery, her sister said, was repeatedly failed: by the deputy sheriff who was told of her abuse; by the judge who was aware she was being molested; by her trial. ", Strong said he arranged for that message to be shared with the four others, "because we were all a part of that.". The counselor noted that her mother appeared to have a lack of empathy for Montgomery, who was left with the distinct impression that the sexual abuse was her fault. Mrs. Montgomery's lawyers argue that because of a combination of years of horrific abuse, and a raft of psychological issues, she should never have been given the death penalty. She faulted Montgomerys defense team at the time of the initial trial for failing to connect the dots between Montgomerys childhood trauma and her later behavior. Maybe you should focus your efforts on the fact that Lisa's mother, Judy Shaughnessy, was granted custody of a grandson the year prior to Lisa's crime. Who was the last woman executed by the US government? A generation ago, it was the kind of place where you could "get your hair cut, see a show, buy rabbit feed and eat dinner" - but those days are long gone. 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. Montgomery's mother, Judy Shaughnessy, who was 20 at the time of her birth in 1968, drank heavily while pregnant with her daughter. I didn't know what to do or how to talk to my sister about it.". Diane Mattingly has been speaking publicly for the first time in the hope it can make a difference. "Judy was manipulative and - I hate to use this word, but - evil. 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.. As a result of her sexual torture, Lisa began to dissociate. . During divorce proceedings, Shaughnessy admitted to the court that she had walked in on her husband raping Montgomery. I was put in foster care with a wonderful family. Both became infected with COVID-19, believing it to be transmitted duringthe prison visit. He was in her. By multiple accounts, Kleiner was an erratic, violent man who beat the kids and his wife regularly. They introduced her as their daughter, Abigail, and made multiple other stops. Lisa Montgomery has been charged in the December 16 death of Bobbie Jo Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant at the time. She told Lisa she had to "earn her keep." Judy later. "She got joy out of it.". President Donald Trump can "break the chain of evil" experienced by Montgomery and other members of her family by granting clemency and commuting her sentence to life imprisonment, Mattingly said. Montgomery claimed to live in northwest Missouri. She went home with a newborn, one she acquired by murdering the babys pregnant mother. In the cases where women are sentenced to death, prosecutors often use gender stereotypes against the defendants, she said, characterizing them as transgressive or not normal in some way. A lifetime of sexual torture causes her to lose touch with reality. My sister, Lisa Montgomery, is broken. Montgomery and Carl Boman divorced, remarried and divorced again in 1998. Montgomery's alcoholic mother, Judy Shaughnessy, knew about the assaults but blamed Montgomery for bringing them upon herself. Mattingly, 57, recalled the day her half-sister was brought home in a pink bundle after being born Feb. 27, 1968, in Pierce County, Washington. Montgomerys case is not about whether she is responsible for the crime; she is. Lawyer Kelley Henry says one of the things that disturbs her most is that adults in positions of authority were told about what was going on but did nothing. They hold a collection and try to do something nice for Stinnett's mother. They would beat and slap her if she was doing it wrong. When they were done, they urinated on her like she was trash.. All the while, Lisa's mother was being paid to let strange men rape Lisa. "She was really the first one to have a decent marriage, you know, and I guess looking at Bobbie Jo was like, what your dreams were when you were younger.". In asking for mercy, her family members and attorneys say the untreated trauma she experienced as a child exacerbated her brain damage and hergenetic disposition to severe mental illness, leading her to kill Stinnett during a psychotic episode a dissociative state similar to sleepwalking. When Montgomery was in her mid-teens,she was sexually assaulted by Kleiner and three or four of his friends, according to court records. Judy Shaughnessy, drank during pregnancy. Mattingly was 8 years old and Montgomery was 4 when Mattingly was removed in 1972 from Shaughnessy's mobile home at Ogden, a community of about 1,960 people in Riley County. 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. Lisa Montgomery is no different. The following day, the police arrested Montgomery at her home. The baby, who was uninjured, was returned to her father. At 18, Judy pressured Lisa to marry her stepbrother. Patterson made a mistake by abandoning them to "that crazy lady," he said at Montgomery's sentencing hearing in 2007. Montgomery told investigators she was surprised at how nicely they had treated her, considering what she had done. Dr Katherine Porterfield, a clinical psychologist who evaluated Montgomery and spent about 18 hours with her, says that psychosis does not always look the way people expect it to. Mattingly said she shielded her half-sister from random baby-sitters, often older men, whom their mother left with them during her near-nightly outings to a local bar. Since they began, the federal government has executed seven people. Prosecutors shared records showing Montgomery had visited a website featuring a video of a live C-section birth, described as lasting from first cut to last stitch, and had made a practice run by driving the roughly 350 miles from Melvern to Skidmore and back the day before the killing. Montgomery has pleaded not guilty to kidnapping resulting in death. Montgomery was psychotic at the time of the crime, Harwell said. They also discovered that Shaughnessy prostituted. She was born into a family rife with mental illness, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression. In December 2004, Montgomery drove 281.5 km (175 miles) from her home in Kansas to Skidmore, where she had an appointment to look at some puppies owned by Stinnett. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. There were always different men around the house. If that disconnection is brought about with enough frequency and intensity, it can become more of a steady state of being, she added. 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. As a teenager, Montgomery confided in a cousin, telling him the men would tie her up, beat her and even urinate on her afterwards. Read about our approach to external linking. A few years after Mattingly was removed from the home, when Montgomery was in kindergarten, her mother remarried a man named Jack Kleiner. Stinnett wasn't breathing and was cold. Montgomery's family moved from place to place during her adult years, continuing the pattern she hadknown as a child. She liked to take her finger and poke it hard into her chest, over and over in the same spot. And it's never about what my friend went through," she adds. But Lisa was broken. The infant found later that day to weigh 5 pounds, 11 ounces was "very still" and didn't cry, which concerned Strong. Meanwhile, her mother in 1985 had married Richard Boman, whose son Montgomery's stepbrother, Carl Boman got Montgomery pregnant. As Fritz patted Montgomery on the back of her hand, Strong said he noticed dried blood and tissue embedded beneath her fingernails. 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. Lisa's and my father was also mentally ill. Lisa then took the baby home and cared for her as though she was her own. 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. Montgomery smelled like a sour ashtray and body sweat" as Don Fritz and Randy Strong interrogated her on Dec. 17, 2004, Strong recalled. Patterson and Shaughnessy divorced in 1971, and Shaughnessy took custody of the girls. She is permitted Sudoku puzzles and coloring pages andone book at a time. After their biological father left the home, Mattingly says they were left alone with Shaughnessy's boyfriends, at least one of whom started raping Mattingly. When Lisa Montgomery murdered pregnant Bobbie Jo Stinnett and ripped her unborn baby from her womb, the whole world reeled in horror. According to Gallup, while support for the death penalty in the US is at its lowest level in more than 50 years, 55% of Americans still believe it is an appropriate punishment for murder. "It was violent and like a scene out of a horror movie," he said. Stitched together, they form a tapestry of family dysfunction, abuse, neglect, professional negligence, substance abuse and untreated mental illness. The mom, Judy Shaughnessy, was so cruel she once beat the family dog to death in front of her kids, the petition states. Other friends of Kleiner, including a plumber and an electrician, raped her in that shed, Montgomery says, as a way of collecting payment for work done around the house. "I would say, 'President Trump, I want you to look at the life that Lisa had led, I want to look at all the people that have failed her, I want you to look at the rape, the torture, the mental abuse, the physical abuse that this woman had endured,'" she says. Im not a psychiatrist, so I cant go any further than that.. Court records describe her as a quiet loner who spent a lot of time reading books. Montgomery, 39, is accused of killing Bobbie Joe Stinnett, 23, and cutting the baby from her womb on Dec. 16, 2004, at Stinnett's home in Skidmore. Montgomery eventually divorced her first husband and married Kevin Montgomery. Montgomery also talked about the abuseshe had endured from her stepfather, Jack Kleiner, and the first of her two husbands, Carl Boman, Dorr said. She did not see her again until Montgomerys trial 34 years later. "This was the act of a monster," he said. The baby girl survived, andMontgomery took her home and briefly passed her off as her own until investigators arrested her the next day. Henrysaid she was surprised to see Montgomery scheduled for execution so soon, considering 30 other inmates on federal death row were sentencedbefore her. In December 2004, Boman filed a court action seeking custody of two of their children who still lived with Montgomery while arguing that the pregnancy Montgomery was fakingillustrated she was an unfit mother, according to newspaper accounts. On the ride home, she clamped the umbilical cord and cleaned the baby girl with wipes. Diane Mattingly is the sister of Lisa Montgomery, who is scheduled for execution by the federal government on December 8, 2020. 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. Mattingly has enjoyed a "blessed life," she said. Shaughnessy has since died. I didn't know what to do or how to talk to my sister about it.". "If I did speak up, maybe Zella and Floyd would have gone back for Lisa," she wrote. Residents there tend to think her execution would bring an appropriate end to a painful chapter in their city's history, he said. 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.. "Bobbie deserves to be here today. And nowhere is that support more palpably felt in this case than in Skidmore. Kleiner, the son of Shaughnessy and Jack Kleiner, was meeting witha parole officerat the time of the killing, Strong said. 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. When Montgomery was 15, Shaughnessy and Kleiner separated. "Come on, baby. A herd of rat terriers greeted them. So my letters are important.. After five hours of deliberation, the jury found Montgomery guilty. Another case with Missouri ties. Henry said Montgomery seemed out of touch with reality when Henry and Harwell, who work in Tennessee, traveled by plane to visit her in October and early November at Fort Worth. Her children even came up with a nickname to pull her out of her trances when she was unresponsive: They called her Martha instead of mom to get her attention. She was often spaced out, appearing disconnected from reality. One of the lead investigators in the case, Randy Strong, wants Montgomery executed. She liked going down to the Nodaway River to swim, and playing Nintendo games at slumber parties. Friends and family began noticing Montgomery's tendency to slip into "a world of her own". 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. It turns out that it only takes a few people to save a child's life: being loved by my foster parents saved mine. Ive always said that I am bruised, but not broken, Mattingly said, her voice choked with tears. According to her lawyers and witnesses, Montgomery suffered years of childhood abuse so severe it was akin to torture. In addition to her brain damage, Lisa developed multiple mental disorders, including bipolar disorder, temporal lobe epilepsy, dissociative disorder, and Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. According to an interview with her father, Montgomery's mother Judy Shaughnessy drank heavily throughout her pregnancy, and their daughter was born with foetal alcohol syndrome. Around this time, she repeatedly claimed to be pregnant again, although she had undergone sterilisation after her fourth baby was born. Sheriff Strong insists that the crime was meticulously planned and that the woman he arrested continued to lie until backed into a corner. The baby was returned to her father, after being recovered from Montgomery. Join Facebook to connect with Judy Shaughnessy and others you may know. "If I had, would they have taken Lisa out of the home also?" Mattingly and Montgomery lived together until Mattingly was eight and her half-sister was four. Dorr's marriage was failing when she fell in love with John Manard, a convicted murderer 21 years her junior. I felt sick watching the video. He was pumping her, Shaughnessy testified. If Mattinglycould speak directly to Trump, she said, she would tell him: "Please dont take my sister. "Being loved unconditionally helped me heal, find a caring husband and raise two children who have hearts of gold," Mattingly wrote. This is the stuff of nightmares.". It was a terrifying household, she says, where physical, psychological and sexual abuse at the hands of Judy Shaughnessy, Montgomery's mother, and her boyfriends was routine. For Diane Mattingly, there is one moment from her childhood for which she feels both enormous gratitude and guilt. For months, Montgomery had told her husband she was pregnant, even though she couldnt have any more children she had undergone a sterilization procedure before they met. "Oh, they're here, I've got to go," she said. In the haze of her mental illness, she went to the home of a pregnant woman, killed her, and removed the baby. They were also physically violent. I never molested her in any way, shape or form, said Kleiner, who died in 2009. The father was a teacher. Montgomery and Stinnett participated inthe "Ratter Chatter" online message board for rat terrier dog enthusiasts. Her story quickly fell apart and she confessed to the killing. One theory her lawyers put forward regarding the chain of events that led to the murder, is that Montgomery feared her ex-husband would expose her lies about being pregnant and use it against her as he sought custody of their children. Henry said there is no question that Montgomery has severe mental illness, noting that federal authorities have administered her antipsychotic medications since her arrest in 2004. Although the alumni have scattered somewhat, in recent years, the Nodaway-Holt R-VII High School graduating class of 2000 - which had only 22 members - has a tradition to mark the anniversary of the death of their classmate Bobbie Jo Stinnett. For one thing, the wider world won't let them forget. Left: "Melvern Pride" is the focus of this sign standing at the city limits of Melvern, the community in east-central Kansas where Lisa Montgomery lived. She pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. "She always wanted to be a mom," says Baumli. "I felt sick watching the video. Carl Boman wasn't the father of one of the girls, according to court records, which say Montgomery was sterilized after the last birth in 1990. But my hope is President Trump will stop Lisa's execution and commute her sentence to life in prison. It is extremely rare for women to be sentenced to death, said Sandra Babcock, faculty director of the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide and an expert on women and the death penalty. She lives near Kansas City, Mo. Every year. Shaughnessy drank excessively during her pregnancy, causing brain damage to Montgomery, according to court records. According to sworn statements from her family, her mental health declined rapidly after that. Judy later married a man named Jack who punched, kicked and choked his children, including Lisa. Strong said he and Fritz questioned Montgomery using a"good cop/bad cop" approach. These days, she requires a regimen of psychotropic drugs to function. Judy Shaughnessy and her boyfriend physical, psychological and sexual abuse Lisa. In what Mattingly described as the most lucky thing to ever happen to her, she was placed with a loving foster family who showered her with affection. 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