Murder In The Heartland Part 6

22.

Police in Topeka had the description Espey sent out via teletype and were combing the region for a "red, dirty car with an H on the hood."

Lisa Montgomery worked her way through busy downtown Topeka, weaving in and out of traffic. By this point, anyone with a television set or radio knew what had happened in Skidmore. A woman with a newborn, a baby possibly bloodied and hurt, likely purplish in color, would stand out. Yet beyond escaping capture, Lisa soon had to face her husband and explain how she'd given birth to their child without letting him know she'd even gone into labor. Certainly he'd have questions.

While driving through a seedy section of town, filled with dingy bars, Laundromats, and check-cashing stores, Lisa drove past the Birth and Women's Center on SW Sixth Avenue and slowed her car. She saw the Birth and Women's Center sign written in white paint on the blue tarp overhanging the doorway. Directly across the street was a Long John Silver's fast-food restaurant.

Although Sixth Avenue was a busy thoroughfare, with people departing work and heading home, Long John Silver's appeared empty.

She could pull into the parking lot and, using her cell phone, call home.

23.

As Ben Espey continued to push the MSHP to issue an Amber Alert, he was learning more about Bobbie Jo's murder. The ligature marks on her throat, doctors indicated, proved "she had been strangled from behind." Also, many of the postmortem tests conducted on Bobbie Jo's body pointed toward Espey's earlier a.s.sumption of her being "...dead at the house."

These corroborations were significant for several reasons. The fact that the Stinnett home had shown no signs of forced entry seemed to indicate that, although Bobbie Jo might not have known her killer, she trusted her enough to turn her back to her. In addition, it appeared that whoever had extracted the child knew what she was doing. The Cesarean section-if what was done could be called that-had to be carried out quickly, or the child could suffer permanent damage. With the results from the hospital, Espey knew for certain the baby, not Bobbie Jo, was the target of the attack.

Ben Espey hoped for helpful information from one other piece of evidence taken from the crime scene by St. Joseph PD CSI technicians: Bobbie Jo's computer. It was being examined as Espey continued to run the investigation from the bas.e.m.e.nt of his office.

Today, more than any other time in law enforcement history, electronics-cell phones, iPods, laptops and personal computers-are among the first pieces of evidence collected at crime scenes. Most electrical devices contain information that can lead to arrests, and-as Ben Espey was about to learn-the Bobbie Jo Stinnett murder case would be no exception.

With two children of his own, two grandchildren, cousins, and kids around him his entire life, Sheriff Ben Espey was fighting exhaustion, fatigue, fear of not finding the baby in time, and concerns about what might have happened to the child. But, as the evening hours wore on, the bureaucracy involved in issuing the Amber Alert ate at him most.

Finding Bobbie Jo's child was more than just a job for Espey. He was a family man. He raised horses and cattle, farmed hundreds of acres. But the most pleasurable part of his life, he explained, was just being around his family, which included a new grandchild. His wife worked up the street from his office. On most days, they ate lunch together; took long walks, hand in hand, on his property; and rode horseback. ("The best friend I ever had," he recalled.) Espey felt lucky. Grateful. He had what Zeb Stinnett would never have. Yet he could give back to Zeb the one thing that might help the man get through the toughest days of his life ahead.

His infant daughter.

Each time he explained to the higher-ups why issuing the Amber Alert was probably one of the only chances they had of finding her alive, his pleas were met with a resounding no. Although many agreed with Espey's stance, no one, it seemed, wanted to stick his or her neck out to make it happen. There just wasn't enough information to send out the alert, Espey was told again and again. An Amber Alert could not be issued for a "fetus."

24.

Kevin Montgomery arrived home from work at 5:15 P.M. He had already arranged to take off the following day, a Friday. "Kevin had taken that day off from work so he could go to the hospital with Lisa," a family member later confirmed. "Lisa had told him she was going to have her baby on that Thursday or Friday, so he put in for the day off." Kevin was becoming a bit unnerved by the entire situation. Too many times Lisa had taken him with her en route to a doctor's appointment, only to come up with an excuse along the way and send him back home. Every prenatal appointment Kevin and Lisa had planned on going to together failed to happen. Lisa would always instigate a fight so she could blow off the appointment at Kevin's expense. Kevin wasn't going to let that happen on Friday, he had said earlier in the week. He had gotten the day off and told Lisa there was no way she could stop him from going with her.

Kevin had short brown hair dusted with a tinge of gray, a thick goatee he kept well-groomed, and brown eyes. Kevin had been a self-proclaimed electrician his entire adult life, one source claimed. He and Lisa were married during the spring of 2000, about a year and a half after Lisa divorced Carl Boman for a second time. Kevin, too, had been divorced, and, like Lisa, had brought children from his first marriage into the new union. "Kevin was the type of guy whose mother, right up until the time he left high school," said someone who knew Lisa and Kevin for years, "still laid all his clothes out every morning."

The house Kevin and Lisa lived in on South Adams Road in Melvern, Kansas, was a modest farmhouse, big in structure and s.p.a.ce, like many a Midwestern prairie home. Kevin and Lisa, many said, were attracted to the 1800s-era lifestyle made famous by the novels of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Mike Wheatley, Kevin and Lisa's pastor, said Kevin's parents had been members of the church for over thirty years. So Kevin had strong, firmly planted roots in the Christian community of Melvern. With fewer than 450 people in the town, everyone knew Kevin, and no one had a bad word to say about him.

When Kevin got home on the evening of December 16, he wasn't shocked to find Lisa was still out. Although she didn't leave the house much, she had explained to him the previous night that she was getting up early that day to go shopping in Topeka for baby clothes and a Christmas present for Kayla. Kevin thought the trip out of the house would do her some good.

Around 5:30 P.M., Lisa called. She was in the parking lot, she said, of the Long John Silver's restaurant in downtown Topeka. It just so happened the restaurant was across the street from the Birth and Women's Center on SW Sixth Avenue.

"My water broke and I went into labor and had the baby," Lisa said.

"What?"

"I delivered the baby. I'm on my way home right now."

"Where are you?"

"Long John Silver's in Topeka."

"I'm coming to get you," Kevin said.

"No, I'll drive home. I'm okay."

"No," Kevin said. "Me and the kids will come and get you. Don't go anywhere."

Lisa's fifteen-year-old son, Ryan*, was home at the time with Kevin. Soon after Lisa called, Rebecca walked through the door.

"d.a.m.n it," Kevin said to the kids after hanging up.

"He was a bit mad," Ryan recalled, "that Mom had the baby."

Grabbing the two children, Kevin hopped into his pickup truck and hit the road en route to meet Lisa and his daughter in Topeka.

It was time to celebrate. After all the talk of Lisa's being pregnant and having one miscarriage after another, year after year, it seemed she had finally given birth to a child.

25.

Heading northbound on U.S. 75 from Melvern, Topeka was a forty-minute drive. The plan was for Rebecca and Ryan to drive Lisa's Toyota back to Melvern, while Lisa, Kevin, and the baby followed in Kevin's pickup. Kevin was excited. He was a father again. After so many complications and failed attempts at having a child over the past four years, here it was: time to hand out the cigars.

It's a girl!

When Kevin, Rebecca, and Ryan pulled into the parking lot of Long John Silver's, Lisa was sitting in her car, a baby in her arms.

"When we got up there, Mom was in the car with the baby," Ryan said later. "We had the truck. If I felt anything, it was happiness, but it wasn't very strong. Kevin was happy. Very happy."

Lisa got out and stepped toward Kevin's truck. "Get her things," Kevin said to one of the kids as he took Lisa by the arm. "You okay?" he asked her.

She moaned and put her hands around her stomach. "I'll be all right."

"Aren't you supposed to still be in the hospital?" Rebecca asked. Rebecca had taken parenting cla.s.ses in school. She knew about the birthing process and the recovery time involved.

Lisa continued holding herself, acting as if she were in serious pain.

"Why aren't you still in bed, Mother?" Rebecca continued. Rebecca, like her younger sister Kayla, spoke fast: her words ran all together and came out quickly. Whether she was talking to her mother or anyone else, she was hard to follow at times. "My theory," she said later, "is that, because Mom was always reading a book or on the computer, growing up we had very little time to talk to her. You had to talk fast to get out what you wanted to say to her."

"They made me drink a bunch of apple juice," Lisa said as Kevin helped her get comfortable in the truck. "They made me go to the bathroom before I could leave."

When the truth was later known, it must have been doubly devastating for Kevin to accept. Years ago, Kevin and his first wife had lost a child, a girl, at birth. Some claimed Kevin had never recovered from the loss and that Lisa wanted to give him a girl to help ease his pain.

Ryan and Rebecca, however, were bewildered, to say the least. Could it be possible? Maybe their mom hadn't been lying about being pregnant, after all. The kids believed Lisa, but they always had misgivings. "My son had serious doubts," Carl Boman said later. "You have to believe Kevin had to have doubts himself."

One day, it seemed, Lisa was parading around Melvern, her stomach as flat as a fitness instructor's, telling everyone she was in her last trimester; and the next, she was sitting in her car at the Long John Silver's in downtown Topeka holding an infant she claimed she had just delivered.

Kevin and Lisa's two children pulled out of downtown Topeka on the evening of December 16, with Lisa and her new baby. According to Lisa's story, she had given birth to the child only hours ago. If that story were true, authorities later wondered, why was she in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant waiting for a ride home? Why wasn't she at the hospital, which was just blocks away from Long John Silver's? Or, better yet, at the Birth and Women's Center, about fifty feet from the parking lot where Kevin and the kids met Lisa, the place where, she claimed, she'd given birth?

26.

Although Lisa's second oldest daughter, Alicia*, hadn't been there when Kevin and Lisa arrived home with Rebecca, Ryan, and the baby, one of the kids called her at work and shared the good news with her. Alicia wanted to rush home "to see the baby," but had to wait until the end of her shift. "She was all excited," a family member recalled. "Really looking forward to holding the baby and sharing in her mother's happiness."

When they got settled at home, Lisa dressed the child in a cute little white T-shirt with pink lettering: I'M THE LITTLE SISTER.

"It was very busy that night because Kevin was so proud and he wanted to tell his family," Ryan said later.

So while Lisa marveled at the child, with Rebecca and Ryan by her side, pa.s.sing her around, playing with her, holding her, showing her the nursery she had spent weeks converting from an old bedroom, Kevin called family members with the good news: It's a girl.

Lisa then called her aunt. While she was br.i.m.m.i.n.g on the phone with excitement, describing the child's features ("How cute is she? Beautiful little girl, huh?"), Kevin's aunts, uncles, mother, and father showed up to share in the celebration.

Later on, Ryan called Kayla in Georgia. Like Kayla, Ryan was puzzled over the events of the past few hours.

"Kayla, how many people are in our family?" Ryan asked. His tone was stoic, as if he knew the answer, but wanted someone else to clarify it for him.

"I don't know," Kayla said. She was even more mystified now than she had been throughout her mother's last failed pregnancy. "What are you talking about?"

"Well...we have a new addition, you know."

"What?"

After that brief conversation, Kayla questioned Alicia, who had just gotten home from work. Kayla believed Alicia would know more about the child than anyone else.

"What time was the baby born?" Kayla asked.

"I don't know."

"How much did she weigh?"

"Not sure."

"How long is she?"

Alicia didn't know. In fact, when Kayla asked the same set of questions later that night and the next day, Ryan and Rebecca didn't have any of the answers.

"Where was she born?"

"I have no idea."

"That, in and of itself," recalled Kayla, "gave me a bad feeling. I told Auntie M I thought it was weird that they couldn't answer any of my questions."

Lisa remained calm throughout the evening. When she complained about pains in her stomach from the delivery, family members gathered around and comforted her. Kevin was seriously concerned about his wife and the pain she was experiencing and did everything he could to comfort her.

"You okay, Lisa?"

"I'm fine," Lisa said. "I'm okay. Don't worry about me."

For the infant's first night, Lisa put her to sleep downstairs. "It was warmer than it was upstairs." The baby cried only once, Rebecca recalled; otherwise, mom and baby slept soundly through the entire night.

27.

With everything else going on, Nodaway County sheriff Ben Espey was now contending with a public relations person from the FBI poking his nose into an investigation Espey believed he had well under control. The PR man's insistence on taking over and running the investigation turned Espey inside out.

Espey wasn't some hayseed local sheriff who could be pushed around; he was a consummate professional, soft-spoken and generally tranquil-the type of person who never showed his frustration or anger in a public setting. He acted on his instincts and moved forward despite opposition, doing, Espey noted, exactly what he thought Victoria Jo needed at the time.