Murder In The Heartland Part 8

There had been some talk about a name, but it was official now. "We're calling her Abigail Marie." It was a name Lisa had handpicked, she started telling everyone, from the Bible.

Lisa was never an ultrareligious woman, the sort that quoted verses and lived by the law of the church. According to many, her pretense of faith was just another falsehood she wanted people to believe, a part of the dream she was chasing.

"Lisa envied her cousin, who lived in Arizona*," someone who knew her for most of her life said later, "and was trying-during that last year, 2004, when everything happened-to emulate her life."

Lisa's cousin was a devout Christian and lived every part of what she preached. She was a real Christian, not someone who pushed the Bible on others, knocked on doors, and preached "the Word" to strangers. But, as one of her relatives later put it, "[She] is perhaps over the top religiously, but she's a really good person. People respect her. She doesn't push her religion in your face; instead, she lives it."

She was also a woman who had eight kids and, as it turned out, was expecting her ninth.

"[Lisa's cousin] was pregnant in December," that same relative added, "and due to have her baby in January."

Moreover, Lisa's cousin planned on naming her child Abigail (which she eventually did), and Lisa was well aware of it. As Lisa would later claim to several different people she spoke to while parading Bobbie Jo's baby around town that morning, she had chosen the name Abigail for "religious reasons," quoting the Bible as her source for the name. But like a lot of things in Lisa's life, it was another way for her to manipulate further the people in her life.

33.

After the kids left for school, Kevin drove Lisa and the baby up the road to Pastor Mike Wheatley's parsonage across the street from the church. According to Wheatley, they arrived around 9:00 A.M.

From afar, the First Church of G.o.d looks like any other ranch-style home in the Maple Street neighborhood just west of downtown. Wheatley had known Lisa, Kevin, and Lisa's kids ever since Lisa and Kevin were married in 2000. Lisa and Kevin, according to one family member, weren't necessarily Christians in the sense they went to church every Sunday morning and read Bible pa.s.sages before bed each night. In fact, "I wouldn't even consider them 'Sunday Christians.' It was Lisa's children who went to church every Sunday, not Lisa and Kevin."

Kevin's parents, who also lived in town, were dedicated members of the church and had been for decades. The Montgomery name, some insisted, was a staple in Melvern. Lisa had always seemed to carry herself in a different manner around town, as if she were constantly trying to live up to an image she believed the Montgomery family had of her.

"Lisa was quiet," Wheatley said later on television, while claiming to be the Montgomery family spokesperson. "I can tell you she was pretty much a person that would like to talk about herself a lot, and her children. If you wanted to talk about Lisa, she was mighty happy. But she was also a person who cared a lot about her children. And my wife and I decided she could have qualified as a pioneer woman, because she was quite capable of not having all the amenities that we have today and still surviving and teaching her kids how to do that. She was just a homebody. She went to work, she went home, took care of her kids. She was kind of quiet most of the time."

When Lisa, Kevin, and the baby showed up that morning, Wheatley was pleasantly surprised, he later said, to see she'd had the child. Of course, he knew she'd given birth, according to one law enforcement official, because Lisa had called him the previous day and told him about it.

"Her husband," Wheatley added, "was obviously a very happy new father. He was just proud to be a dad.... [He]was absolutely grinning from ear to ear. He wasn't going to come out of the clouds for a very long time. He was a very proud papa."

Wheatley held the child for about fifteen minutes and then handed her to his wife, who spent the next forty-five minutes with the child. "I held the little baby," he said. "At the time, we thought her name was Abigail...."

One could say Kathy Wheatley, the pastor's wife, and Lisa were friends. People in town had seen them together on occasion. They picked strawberries during the season and seemed to get along well. Others said, however, because the Montgomery name carried a certain social standing in the town, Lisa had an obligation to act a certain way while out in the community. Roaming around town with the pastor's wife was just one way for her to accomplish that task.

"She acted different when she was around those people," said one former acquaintance-"you know, the 'better than thou' people."

While the pastor and his wife played with the child, Lisa, at times stoic and pa.s.sive, stood up at one point and talked in detail about the delivery and how her water had broken while she was "shopping in Topeka."

To those who were about to meet and hold Bobbie Jo's baby, life seemed to be coming together for Lisa and Kevin. Lisa had confided in Pastor Wheatley on several occasions about her desire to have a baby, as she had to others in town. She had told him about her supposed miscarriage a while back, and Wheatley, like any compa.s.sionate human being, had expressed sympathy for the loss. But none of that mattered now as Lisa and Kevin sat in the Wheatleys' home displaying a joy they had been looking forward to for so long. It didn't make any difference anymore that Lisa had lost so many children. It was time to rejoice and celebrate; their gift from G.o.d had finally arrived. Here she was bouncing on the pastor's lap, her mother and father looking on proudly with the delight only new parents could feel.

Darrel Schultz was another member of the First Church of G.o.d, who also happened to be Kevin's boss. The first time he heard about Lisa's latest pregnancy was back on December 10, just a week ago, when he ran into Lisa and Kevin at the local high-school basketball game. It was parent-senior night. Most in town had attended. In the Midwest, supporting high-school sports is as much a part of life as throwing bush apples at houses when you're a kid or raising cattle and goats.

Schultz viewed Lisa as a "pleasant person," he said later while sitting next to Wheatley on television. "When she talked about things-she.... They, well, they (the Montgomerys) raised goats. And she talked about how they could take the wool from them and weave different things. And the kids learned to do that. They learned how to spin yarn and stuff."

Like most in town, Schultz saw this as good, wholesome family living, which allowed the family unit to become closer. Lisa and Kevin were just one more blended family making a go, a second chance at happiness.

When Darrel Schultz ran into Lisa back on December 10 during that basketball game, he hadn't noticed she was about to have a baby. A week later, when he saw her again and she had the child with her, like a lot of people, he began asking himself questions: What's this? Where did this baby come from?

"And that's why," he stated later, "of course, seeing her [at the basketball game]...and then seeing her a week later with a baby, why, we were just sort of shocked and astonished. I had no idea she was that close to delivery."

34.

Ben Espey had a hard time finding much sympathy for the town of Melvern and the feelings many displayed later about being duped by Lisa Montgomery. In fact, Espey was disgusted with certain people involved in the case and what they later said.

"You ask Wheatley," suggested Espey, "how the heck he held that child and didn't realize there was an Amber Alert out for a newborn?"

To Wheatley's credit, at the time Lisa was at his home with Kevin and the child, he claimed he and his wife had not yet heard about the murder of Bobbie Jo Stinnett. It was a breaking news story on television and radio, but Wheatley was not one to make viewing cable-television news programs part of his daily routine. He had a church to run, people in town to counsel. The day's news events generally caught up to him, not the other way around. Beyond weather reports and the local news, he wasn't interested in the day's events outside his small world in Melvern, one could a.s.sume. When Lisa showed up with the child, he had no idea every law enforcement agency within a two-hundred-mile radius was on the lookout for a woman, man, or both, traveling with a newborn.

"Even when they were there that morning," recalled Wheatley, "I wasn't aware of any of this. As far as I knew, everything was just perfectly normal."

Questions did arise, however, between Wheatley and his wife after Lisa and Kevin left the house. Wheatley, for example, thought, Why does she have a newborn baby out, showing it off so soon?

Moreover, the child's appearance became an issue. Wheatley noticed it had "very long fingers," which he said neither Kevin nor Lisa had, and there were numerous bruises all over her face, both large and small, plus several visible scratches. A photograph from the previous night showed a beat-up child who had obviously gone through a turbulent delivery. Her fingers were, indeed, long and white, but also bony and bluish in color, as if she'd had problems with circulation.

"The term for bluish white extremities is acrocyanosis," a prenatal care specialist explained later. "This is very common in the newborn because of the folded fetal position of the infant in the uterus. The bending of the arms and legs constricts the arteries and limits blood supply to the hands and feet. This usually resolves [itself] in a couple of days."

Acrocyanosis would not be a major concern; however, that same expert commented, "lack of oxygen to the brain" could be. If Victoria Jo lost enough oxygen during the time it took to kill Bobbie Jo, brain damage in the child could occur later and show up in the form of cerebral palsy and/or learning disabilities, problems that may not be recognized for one to two years after birth.

"The major question is, how long did it take to get the infant out of the womb? It's hard to tell if an infant is truly affected until months later, when certain milestones are-or are not-met."

Above Victoria Jo's left eye, almost running along the path of her eyebrow, was an unmistakable one-inch-long wound, not too deep or wide, but consistent with a scratch left behind by the blade of a knife or an adult fingernail. Underneath that same eye was a more p.r.o.nounced wound, a bit longer, yet similar in shape and scope. There was also a rather large bruise in the crack of the baby's cleft chin, and another on the right side of her face.

Taking a closer look, it would have been easy to tell the child did not resemble Kevin or Lisa in the slightest. Babies are babies, some might say. But Victoria Jo had a pudgy face and large nostrils, neither of which Kevin or Lisa could claim. All of Lisa's babies with Carl Boman had weighed fewer than five pounds. After eight months of gestation, Victoria Jo weighed in at eight pounds. Kevin himself had said "[Lisa] had little babies." Additionally, Victoria Jo's lips were plump and larger than a normal newborn's. Both Kevin and Lisa had thin lips.

These were features that generally showed up on babies during the first days after birth-features aunts and uncles visiting new mothers marveled at: "He's got your eyes...your nose...looks just like you did as a baby."

If anyone who saw the child that day had put a photograph of Bobbie Jo or Zeb up against Victoria Jo, the resemblance would have been unmistakable.

As the day moved forward, and Lisa and Kevin left Pastor Wheatley's, questions would emerge as they began showing up at other places around town. Why would this woman, who had supposedly just given birth to a baby the previous day, bring a newborn out in public so soon? Medically speaking, why didn't the child have a cone-shaped head, like most natural-birth newborns? Entering the birth ca.n.a.l, newborns develop a pointed skull as they pa.s.s through the mother's v.a.g.i.n.a and into the world. Called "molding," the condition generally resolves itself in a period of days and a healthy, normally shaped skull forms. Other signs of natural childbirth include a condition called "caput," which refers to a swelling on the top of the skull caused by fluid buildup during the birthing process. Caput, too, resolves itself within a few days after childbirth. One more common sign is cephalhematoma. Because of the "friction of the infant's head against the mother's pelvic bones," noted one pediatrician, "sometimes there is a blood collection on the outer surface of the skull." Generally, this condition is confined to one side of the child's head and can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks to clear up.

But here was little Abigail Montgomery, with a perfectly round, perfectly formed skull. Sure, Lisa could have had a Cesarean section, but wouldn't she be all st.i.tched up and nursing those wounds-and still be in the hospital?

Instead, Lisa was asking people to believe that, not even twenty-four hours after she delivered a child, she had been allowed to leave the clinic, take the baby home, and display her in public.

To say the least, her behavior was bizarre-yet no one, at this point, had made the correlation between an Amber Alert issued out of Maryville and a woman in Melvern who had claimed to be pregnant five times, but had lost each child, and was now showing off a newborn who looked nothing like her or her husband.

What struck Pastor Wheatley later on when he thought about it was the "little mark on her cheek." Wheatley noted how it "looked like she might have gouged herself...." She also had a little "bruise on her hand," he added, "but other than that, she was absolutely beautiful.... It was hard to believe she was even a newborn."

35.

Sheriff Ben Espey has a ruggedness born out of his broad shoulders, sun-soaked skin and meaty forearms, Midwestern accent and solid form, that is impossible to dismiss. He walks upright, with good posture, quiet and composed. As a lawman in a small town, Espey wears his holster and gun as if he were born with them. When he speaks, Espey pauses and then gives straightforward, to-the-point answers, which indicate how seriously he thinks about what he wants to say before uttering a single word. People say they feel safe around him.

While Lisa, Kevin, and the child made their way through Melvern, Amber Alert tips flooded the lines of MSHP's communications center, just as Espey had hoped and predicted.

Exactly what he needed.

Some citizens find it within themselves to make a 911 call, while others let it go. By early morning, Espey knew the crime had affected people in the region in the worst way, and public outcry would work to his advantage. Because of this, people stepped up and responded on a large scale.

After cops in Atchison County reported how they'd lost sight of a red vehicle the previous night, Espey received a tip regarding a woman in a nearby state who had arrived home with a newborn baby "that was not from a hospital."

Seemed promising. But as FBI agents, who were immediately dispatched to the home to investigate, found out, it proved fruitless, like a lot of anonymous tips.

Then word came in about "a baby sold [recently] on the black market" somewhere in the region where Victoria was kidnapped. Yet, any glimmer of hope diminished after authorities tracked down the basis of the tip. "I think that lead," Espey told reporters, "is possibly going to go up in smoke. The third party has misled us. We're not going to pursue that as hard as we are two or three of the other tips."

Law enforcement faced a new dilemma: was someone misleading police, calling in fake tips to throw off the scent? Espey didn't think so. Human error and enthusiasm, he felt, were leading to all the false leads and tips.

"I think people," he said, "get too eager when the Amber Alert goes out, and make a phone call, and make themselves very convinced that 'I overheard a person say this, and this is probably what happened.'"

In the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Nodaway County Sheriff's Department, where Espey and his team were stationed, a.n.a.lyzing all the leads, and placing them on a blackboard, which ran the length of the wall, became a tedious task. Yet, each call, he said, was taken "very seriously.

"We charted each one," said Espey, "and each was a.s.signed a different investigator."

By now, Espey had about eighteen investigators working the case.

"Everything completely s...o...b..lled," after the Amber Alert went out, he said. "We chased every single lead. Every lead was written down and checked. It was well organized."

Little did Espey or anyone in law enforcement know then of a quiet woman, wearing dark-rimmed gla.s.ses, living in a North Carolina suburb nearly one thousand miles from Skidmore, who would change the entire nature of the investigation, and, in one phone call, help break the case.

36.

On any other day, the Stinnett home was just another whitewashed house in a quiet town, on a quiet street, somewhere in Middle America. But over the past eighteen hours, this shoe box of wood and windows had turned into a revolving door of FBI agents, detectives, sheriffs, CSI technicians, and deputies. Neighbors in the immediate area were sh.e.l.l-shocked by the news of what had gone on inside Bobbie Jo's house. Had this horror really happened in their usually hushed and isolated community?

"Bobbie Jo bought some baby clothes from me in September," one neighbor told reporters that morning, "when I had a garage sale." The entire block had "witnessed evil," the same neighbor added, before wondering if she, or anyone else in town, would ever "feel safe again."

Many were at home when the murder occurred, going about their daily routines of folding laundry, cleaning the house, maybe working on a car in the driveway, or chopping firewood. It seemed surreal to think that something out of the most chilling horror novel had taken place in such a remote area-worse yet, at Christmastime, with the glow of holiday lights illuminating the skyline.

As one reporter put it during a live broadcast from across the street from Bobbie Jo's house, "People are puzzled. They're lost. They're confused.

"All sorts of emotions."

For some, the tragedy was more than they could put into words. The Devil had found Skidmore and wreaked havoc. The town would go on, certainly, but people stood sh.e.l.l-shocked Friday morning wondering when Bobbie Jo's killer would face justice and her child would be returned.

As sirens filled the air the previous afternoon, people in the neighborhood had a.s.sumed Bobbie Jo had gone into labor. Everyone in town knew Bobbie Jo was expecting a child. When you live among so few, news travels as fast as the prairie wind during tornado season. But now, amid the plastic yellow police tape closing off the Stinnett home and crime lab vans dotted along West Elm and Orchard, cops roaming through the streets asking uncomfortable questions, Skidmore's world had collapsed. Townspeople stood bewildered and breathless, holding rakes and shovels, gripping their children's hands. Some were crying, others shook their heads and hugged one another, wishing life could be the way it used to be before "it" happened, seriously wondering if things could ever be the same again.

Would Skidmore be able to redeem itself by returning Victoria Jo to Zeb? Could Victoria Jo be alive and well? Would she be returned home to give the entire town some sort of salvation from evil? Would G.o.d conquer?

As the morning dawned and the Amber Alert became topic number one in town, many held out hope someone would come forward. It hadn't been twenty-four hours since the crime, but a night had pa.s.sed. "That child," said one man who had lived near Skidmore his entire life, "could be in Arizona, Nevada, or California by now. Who knows where she is?"

37.

On the morning of December 17, Dyanne Siktar had been living in rural North Carolina for the past sixteen years. At fifty-three, having grown up in Michigan and, later, Florida, Dyanne was comfortable with the slow pace of life in the "small mountain town" of approximately thirty-six hundred in Macon County, North Carolina, she now called home. "Life here," said Dyanne, "is very relaxed. I live in an area where you never grow tired of the natural beauty. It is definitely not 'life in the fast lane,' which makes it very pleasant."

Part of her day was devoted to breeding rat terriers, a hobby she had turned into a growing business over the past fifteen years. With the rise of the Internet, Dyanne started selling the dogs online to buyers all over the world. During the past ten years, as the Internet grew into a planet of its own, she routinely visited an Internet message board, Annie's Rat Terrier Rest Area, a Web page, specifically, Ratter Chatter, where members met and talked about different aspects of breeding, selling, and caring for the playful pets. Bobbie Jo had made frequent posts on the site-as had Lisa Montgomery, both as herself and as Darlene Fischer-where everyone knew her as the lovable pregnant breeder from Missouri.

"Bobbie Jo was so pleasant and kind," said Dyanne.

Over the past few months, the message board, from Dyanne's point of view, had turned into more of a gossip site than anything productive in terms of rat terrier breeding and selling. Because of that, she said, she backed away from logging on and partic.i.p.ating. The tone of the board, Dyanne felt, resembled that of a junior-high hallway in between cla.s.ses, with people ruminating about life's little challenges and the att.i.tudes of others, instead of supporting the business of rat terrier breeding and selling.

"Whispers, behind-the-back rumors, and cliques." For Dyanne, it just wasn't worth it anymore.

On the morning of December 17, Dyanne decided to log on to Ratter Chatter to see what was happening. She had no idea of Bobbie Jo's death. She was bored, she said, and felt like wasting some time chatting online before she had to go into town and run a few errands.

Part of Dyanne's makeup as a human being included "noticing things," she said. "I was always observant in a detailed way."

The first thing she noticed when she logged on to the site was that everyone was talking about Bobbie Jo's murder. All the Internet news sites were running wall-to-wall coverage, posting updates. It was impossible to log on to an Internet news group and not read something about Bobbie Jo's murder.

On the Ratter Chatter board that morning, all the usual complaining about mundane issues seemed to take a backseat as members shared their feelings about losing Bobbie Jo-"a friend"-in such a violent manner. Some had even turned into would-be cyber sleuths and had begun piecing together the final moments of her life.

Darlene Fischer, of course, became the focus right away; but almost everyone thought Darlene was a real person. Then another theory emerged as Ratter Chatter members began linking Lisa Montgomery to Bobbie Jo. Messages started to focus on the fact that Lisa had been discussing with Bobbie Jo over the past few months how she, like Bobbie Jo, was pregnant and expecting a baby around the same time.

Lisa had frequented several different message boards. Back on October 24, she posted a message, "Time is getting closer to baby time," and twenty-four hours later, "I haven't a single name in mind." In early December, she posted a note explaining how hard it had been for her to take photographs of her terriers and download them onto the board because "I cannot get down on the floor..."