Murder In The Heartland Part 28

"Lisa was at the house all the time. Lisa and Vanessa fought. It was not a good atmosphere for the kids, or our relationship. Vanessa didn't understand what Lisa was like at that time, but she soon learned. It was my decision to leave and not tell the kids. It was wrong, I know. It has been thrown in my face. I just couldn't face them with this disappointment: I moved up there just to move out again. But to me it was an unbearable situation with Vanessa and Lisa. I took the coward's way out, and it has haunted me and hurt the kids and my relationship, especially with Rebecca.

"And believe me, Lisa played it for all it was worth."

Rebecca was quick to say later, "I love my dad to death.... I love all of my family." But part of her, still, feels torn between a mother in prison, awaiting trial for murder and kidnapping, and a dad who, she said, hasn't been there for her. She started college in the fall of 2005. No one helped her. She bought all her own books, paid for tuition, and worked two jobs in order to keep up with a mountain of bills. Even her high-school graduation was marred by disappointment when she had to pay for her own cap and gown.

"It's really hard," she said. "I live here in Kansas, and they [my dad and sisters and brother] live in Oklahoma. They never call me. I have to call them. They never come see me. I go see them. It takes two, you know. I tell them: 'You guys have to make the effort, too.'"

111.

After Lisa split up with her boyfriend, she was left with a house full of kids and no one to take care of her.

Lisa went back to what she knew-and started working on Carl. Thus, in early 1995, despite everything they had been through, Carl was faced with the notion of taking Lisa back. "I decided to hear her out."

One might wonder why Carl Boman kept reuniting with a woman he knew was eventually going to let him down. How could he allow Lisa back into his life after she routinely disappointed him? Did he expect her to change?

"Why would a woman being abused by her husband keep going back?" asked Carl later, comparing his motives to those of a battered spouse. "My family included Lisa at that time. She had nowhere to go. We didn't jump right back into it in an instant as if nothing happened. We talked about how we could start fresh and see if there was any way to work it out. We didn't sleep in the same room. I worked ten-hour days, six days a week while Lisa took care of the kids. We grew back together naturally.... You have to realize my desire to keep my family together. I grew up without my dad. We connected later, but he was gone for a major part of my life. I always longed for my own family. I love my children as much as any father. I guess I had one last try in me."

In the end, Carl said, "I did it for the kids."

Throughout the early 1990s, several large food corporations had built up a presence in Springdale, Arkansas. When Lisa and Carl moved back in together, most were advertising in Tulsa and Bartlesville newspapers, looking for workers. Carl had just gotten laid off from a job he enjoyed at a local food warehouse. Although he and Lisa were now officially divorced, they were talking regularly and trying to work out their differences.

"At the time, there wasn't a lot of work in the area where we lived in Oklahoma. The oil business busted. In Springdale, they were begging for people to come to town and work."

Carl knew Lisa couldn't make it on her own. He also figured new surroundings might help them make a fresh start-Lisa would be taken out of a familiar environment and placed in a setting where she didn't know anyone.

"Who would take care of Lisa the way she was, with her personality and everything?" Carl asked later, defending the choices he made. "Lisa made bad choices and had nowhere to go: I needed the kids as much as she did."

They were talking one day.

"I'm going to Springdale, Arkansas," mentioned Carl, "and I'm taking the four kids with me, and there is nothing you are going to do about it." He admitted later there was no way, legally speaking, he could get away with it, but what did he have to lose?

"I'll go with you then," Lisa said without hesitating. "I'll babysit the kids while you work. I'll watch the kids, Carl. It'll work." There was never any discussion at this point of the two of them actually getting back together romantically. "There won't be any child support for you to pay," Lisa added as Carl sat and thought about it.

"Okay, Lisa, let's try it."

After arriving in Arkansas, Carl made sure he and Lisa had separate bedrooms.

Known in some respects as the "Heart of Northwest Arkansas," Springdale is a conservative town insofar as religion is concerned. Faith is strong in Springdale, which lies in the middle of the Bible Belt.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints-the Mormon Church-had a strong presence in the area. A knock on the door one afternoon opened the way for two Mormon missionaries looking to recruit the new family in town.

"Come on in," Carl said.

Both women sat down and explained to Carl and Lisa that joining the church was the only option they had left.

"You two should be together for the sake of the children," said one of the women. "Your relationship," she went on, "is all wrong under the eyes of G.o.d. You're living in sin."

"You are their parents," the other woman added, while Lisa and Carl listened attentively. "You owe them that much."

112.

In 1992, author Jim Carrier published a book t.i.tled Hush, Little Baby. The book detailed the story of Darci Kayleen Pierce, a young, attractive wife from New Mexico, who, on the afternoon of July 23, 1987, showed up at an Albuquerque hospital emergency room "covered in fresh blood."

In Darci's arms was a newborn baby, also covered in blood. "I've just given birth to this child in my car," Darci told hospital officials as the baby wailed.

Doctors rushed Darci and her newborn to an examining room, but Darci "refused all routine medical treatment."

As doctors and nurses became suspicious of the story Darci told, someone in admissions called authorities.

After the police questioned Darci Pierce for a few hours, she admitted the baby wasn't hers. Eventually she said she had kidnapped twenty-three-year-old Cindy Lynn Ray outside a prenatal clinic and driven her to a "remote rural area" in the desert east of Albuquerque. After strangling Cindy Ray unconscious, Darci claimed she "used a car key to perform a crude Cesarean section on her, stole her baby...[and] left her to bleed to death."

The child lived.

Cindy Ray didn't.

Twenty-year-old Darci Pierce was tried nine months later for murder, convicted on all counts, and sentenced to thirty years in prison.

Darci's s.e.xual promiscuity as a young child and teenager, set in motion by s.e.xual abuse by a cousin the same age (six years old), became a pivotal defense position during her trial. Darci claimed she was insane at the time of the crime. Some said a "tortured dream of motherhood" while growing up later compelled Darci to commit her crime. She had been pregnant in her late teens, but had lost the child. Every nine months after that miscarriage, Darci Pierce claimed she was going to have a baby. She had put pillows underneath her blouse as a child and paraded around the house as though she were pregnant. As a young teenager, she slept with men four and five times a week. Everything she did throughout her life seemed to be structured around an obsession to have a baby.

The Journal of Forensic Sciences published a study in 2002 t.i.tled "Newborn kidnapping by Cesarean section," auth.o.r.ed by A.W. Burgess, Nahirny C. Baker, and J.B. Rabun. "The female abductors, in essence, become a mother by proxy, by acting out a fantasy of them delivering a baby," the report stated.

A common thread among these women is that they all seem to be "delusional" in some fashion. In many of the cases studied, the women often "show off" the kidnapped child within the first few hours after abducting it, displaying it to the world as "their baby."

Experts claim a mentally unstable mix of "delusion and pride" generally aids law enforcement in its quest to catch the women soon after they commit the crime.

In many ways, Darci Pierce's story ran parallel to Lisa Montgomery's. Could Lisa somehow have taken Darci's story and used it as a road map?

A former acquaintance of Lisa's related that Lisa had become totally absorbed with Jim Carrier's book. One night while Lisa and her friend were watching a forensic television show-an episode about a woman who had faked a pregnancy-Lisa brought up Hush, Little Baby and said she had read it.

"Lisa told me about that book. You know what I'm saying? I don't know if she was reading it at the time, or she just wanted to tell me about it. She went into detail and told me about this book. She's read it."

Because Lisa, Carl, and the kids had lived in New Mexico once, and Darci Pierce committed her crime in the same state, Lisa felt some sort of "connection" to the story. Moreover, the acquaintance felt Lisa understood the book, cover to cover.

113.

The Mormon church was like nothing Carl Boman had ever seen in his life. Although he spoke highly of the people he met in the church, its rules began to wear on him as he and Lisa were integrated into its core belief system.

The one aspect of their lives the church would not tolerate was Carl and Lisa's living together in the same household without being married.

"I liked the people," Carl said. "I'd never go back to the church. I know it was a mistake."

It started with church members coming into the home and hijacking Carl and Lisa's coffeepot. They weren't allowed caffeine, even tea. At the time, Carl and Lisa smoked. The church said they couldn't. Then it was the money: 10 percent of everything Carl made had to go to the church. If he missed a day of work and didn't get paid for the day, he would have to make up the difference to the church by the end of the month.

During the initiation process, church members took Carl and Lisa to meetings, where they talked comfortingly about family values. Food was served. It was like having an extended family to fall back on. Lisa and Carl enjoyed it. They felt they were doing the right thing for the kids, for themselves.

After they joined, however, Carl began to question things.

"G.o.d has a G.o.d," church members told Carl one day. Furthermore, "G.o.d has a G.o.d, who has a G.o.d, who also has a G.o.d." They talked about "different places in Heaven," as if Heaven were some sort of ladder you had to climb in order to reach your final resting place, and on every rung a different G.o.d was there to lead you.

Carl and Lisa had always followed the Christian way of thinking, even though they hadn't dedicated their lives to Christ. One G.o.d. Jesus Christ. It was easy to grasp.

Now disciples of the church were stopping by the house to "check in" on them.

"I smell coffee," one disciple-or "Mormon police," as Carl called them later-said. "Are you two drinking coffee?"

"You don't smell coffee," Carl said. He was appalled.

The man then went into the kitchen and looked around. ("I was offended by that.") Lisa was addicted to Pepsi. Even though the church preached abstinence, no way was she going to give it up. And cigarettes: Lisa liked to smoke, but they told her she couldn't anymore.

When they moved to Arkansas, Carl and Lisa felt they could rediscover the love they had shared when they were young. And when they agreed to become Mormons, it was a turning point in their relationship; they had finally agreed on something. Regardless of what happened afterward, Carl said, it was a "meeting point between us that ultimately brought us back together."

Thus, in June, they remarried.

"We were baptized Mormons one day and the next day married-boom!" Carl recalled, snapping his fingers. "Just like that."

The church had helped them form a new bond, which brought them closer together than they had been in years. They felt they owed it to themselves to give the Mormon way of life a try.

"I remember living in Arkansas as being one of the happiest times of my life," Rebecca said later. She enjoyed being around the Mormon community. "We were happy as a family."

Carl and Lisa, however, weren't.

By the end of 1995, they moved back to Bartlesville.

114.

Standing behind a Department of Justice plaque inscribed with a large bra.s.s eagle taking flight, and with a United States flag to his right, U.S. attorney Todd Graves held a press conference on Wednesday, November 16, 2005. Wearing his signature dark blue suit, aqua tie, and white shirt, he formally announced the government's intention of seeking the death penalty against Lisa Montgomery.

A reporter asked him how he felt about everything.

"My name is on the doc.u.ment," he said, "and I wouldn't sign anything I wasn't comfortable with."

Regarding the filing itself, and why it took so long, he said, "It's a very organized, methodical process that we go through."

Most had known for at least six months that Graves was planning on going forward with the death penalty, so the press conference wasn't all that surprising. But the television crews on hand, as one reporter said later, were pushing Graves to "throw some red meat out there" for everyone to chew on. Graves didn't do it. "It was fine for me," that same reporter noted, "but television wanted an angry Todd Graves, and they didn't get it."

The waiting and wondering were over. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had given his consent in the form of a letter for Graves and his office to go ahead and seek the ultimate justice. Judy Clarke was named in the notice of intent, for the first time formally, as one of Lisa's public defenders, with Susan Hunt and David Owen rounding out the team. If they planned on cutting a deal before the government made its final decision, the time to do so had come and gone.

Lisa was thirty-seven years old on the day she heard the United States government was prosecuting her to the fullest extent of the law. It had been eleven months to the day that Bobbie Jo Stinnett's mother had found her daughter murdered. Todd Graves was sending a message that the crime his office was alleging Lisa had committed deserved the strongest punishment the law appropriated.

In the months since Lisa's arrest, she had gone from being a desolate, desperate woman to a seemingly fragile-minded one, who was still not ready to come to terms with the criminal allegations made against her. Lisa had told some in her family she was going to be set free when the facts of the case emerged. She even mentioned to one family member that Darci Pierce had been let out of prison recently (not true), giving her reason to think maybe the same would happen in her case-that after serving some time, she would be set free.

Her story kept changing. One day it appeared she was coming to grips with her predicament; the next day, she denied having stepped foot in Bobbie Jo's house. When she heard a book was being written about the case, and certain members of her family had been talking to the author about her, she stopped receiving visitors for a time and went into a self-imposed seclusion.

To add to her problems, for the first time since she was indicted back in January, the death penalty was a reality. It wasn't talk from the U.S. Attorney's Office anymore, or speculation on television. It was written in black and white on the "Notice of Intent to Seek the Death Penalty" court filing.

In a press release accompanying the notice, Todd Graves voiced his determination in prosecuting the case.

"We filed notice with the court today," Graves said in the press release, "of intent to seek the death penalty against Lisa Montgomery.... In [this] case, [a] federal indictment alleges that murder was committed under circ.u.mstances that justify the death penalty." Thirty-six prisoners are "currently under sentence of death in the federal system," Graves noted, "including four from the Western District of Missouri. As the numbers indicate, we intend to prosecute [Lisa Montgomery] to the full extent of the law, and will not shy away from seeking the ultimate penalty for the ultimate crime. Our decision to seek the death penalty...is made with careful deliberation so that justice is served."

Several "aggravating factors" became the government's basis for seeking such a severe penalty. Number one was that Lisa "intentionally killed Bobbie Jo..." that she "intentionally inflicted serious bodily injury which resulted in the death..." and she "intentionally partic.i.p.ated in an act, contemplating that the life of Bobbie Jo...would be taken and that lethal force would be used...."

The filing claimed Lisa had a "reckless disregard for human life," taking into account the brutality and ruthlessness of the crime.

More in touch with the nature of what went on inside Bobbie Jo's house that afternoon, the filing explained how Lisa "killed the victim in an especially heinous, cruel, and depraved manner in that the killing involved torture and serious physical abuse to Bobbie Jo...that is, [Lisa] strangled Bobbie Jo...with a rope and then used a kitchen knife to cut her infant daughter...from the womb."

When Carl Boman heard the news, it saddened him greatly.

"Phil, the investigator working for Lisa's team, called and informed me," Carl said. "After they officially announced they were seeking the death penalty against Lisa, I thought, there is a side of Lisa no one knows but me-a side no one has ever seen. When we first got together, we spent many hours talking. For years, we would spend hours talking in private. That was the real Lisa. She couldn't talk to her mom. There was no relationship there. She had no father. She never had to pretend with me. There were no secrets."

Carl and the children had, of course, realized the government was likely to seek the death penalty, but it didn't seem real until it was actually on paper. He had since separated from Vanessa, but was rebuilding his relationship with Rebecca. He knew he would play a role ultimately in the defense's case. The government, by late November, hadn't contacted him regarding testifying. He had been in touch with Lisa's lawyers all along the way. He knew the ins and outs of her defense as it was explained to him. But it was always changing, like Lisa. One day it was "insanity." The next, she was going to claim that because of her upbringing, because she had been abused by her stepfather and, in Carl's words, "neglected" by her mother, she was going to blame it on Judy.

"I was the only one she trusted and could confide in," Carl said later in defense of Lisa. "When she talked with Kevin, it was full of lies and deceit. She could still confide in me after she was with Kevin, but only if it was me and her, never if Kevin was in the house, or Vanessa was around. When you asked about why I could still be with Lisa after she messed around on me so many times, it is because I knew the real Lisa. I still love the Lisa I first met. She is long gone now. Lies and deceit and manipulations took their toll. She was responsible for the constant friction in her family. She wanted so badly to be normal and accepted. But she couldn't get that from them."

No one in Lisa's family wanted to see her put to death-even Carl, who had said once it might be the best thing for the children, instead of having to watch her waste away in prison. As time pa.s.sed, it became harder and harder for the family to imagine one day Lisa would be strapped to a gurney and injected with a final solution. After all, her relatives claimed, she truly is sick.