Baby Be Mine (14 page)

Bobbie Jo explained to her mother that she couldn't leave
the house just yet—she was expecting someone to look at the dogs. As the two women chatted, Bobbie Jo heard a knock on her door. She looked out the front window and saw a red Toyota parked in front of her house.

“Oh, they're here,” she said to her mother. “I've got to go.”

W
hen Bobbie Jo answered her front door, Lisa Montgomery stood on her front porch. Did Bobbie Jo recognize the woman she'd met at dog shows? Or did she just think “Darlene Fischer” looked familiar?

Whatever questions raced through Bobbie Jo's mind, either they did not create any anxiety, or Lisa—the smooth-talking, experienced liar—allayed her fears with ease. If recognized as Lisa Montgomery, Lisa could have claimed that she was just in the neighborhood and wanted to see Bobbie Jo's litter of pups. Otherwise, it was as the oddly familiar Darlene Fischer that Lisa entered the Stinnett home.

There was no physical evidence to indicate that Lisa Montgomery used any force to obtain entry. There were no forensic indications that anything untoward happened in any of the rooms the two women passed to reach the converted bedroom that housed the litter of rat terriers.

In that room, where the puppies squirmed and yipped in celebration of new life, Bobbie Jo Stinnett was comfortable enough with her visitor to turn her back on her. Lisa seized that opportunity. She threw a rope around Bobbie Jo's neck and jerked it tight.

Bobbie Jo experienced a moment of mental numbness from the shock of the ugly surprise. Her biological imperative for survival, however, reacted instantly. She bucked in defiance, driving Lisa backward. Bobbie Jo's feet kicked at her attacker—some thrusts hitting their mark, others connecting with nothing but empty air. Bobbie Jo struggled to catch a breath. She clawed at the rope around her throat.

Lisa's jaw tightened in determination. Her hands shook as she pulled on the rope with all of her strength. She held her death grip until Bobbie Jo's thrashing body quieted. She did not let up until Bobbie Jo slumped over, supported only by the binding around her neck. Then, Lisa eased her hold on the rope and Bobbie Jo slid unconscious to the floor.

Lisa rushed into the kitchen. She flexed the cramps out of her hands as she ran. She grabbed a three-inch paring knife. She knelt on the floor by Bobbie Jo. She knew every second counted. There was no time to spare—the baby's life was at stake.

She sunk the knife in at the top of Bobbie Jo's distended belly. She sliced downward with care and patience. She saw the blood sketch a bright red line in the trail of the knife. She saw it pool and slide down Bobbie Jo's sides.

Bobbie Jo was not dead yet. She twitched. The pain of the incision revived her. She cried out. She sat up and threw off her attacker. She knocked away the knife. She staggered to her feet and lunged for the knife, but Lisa held on to it. The struggle, though, left cuts all over both of her hands.

Lisa grabbed the rope and tried to get it around Bobbie Jo's throat. Bobbie Jo tried to escape from her tormentor. She fought for her life—and for the life of the baby she loved sight unseen.

Blood continued to flow from the gaping lateral slice in Bobbie Jo's body. It pooled on the floor. The soles of Bobbie Jo's feet fought to maintain their purchase on the slick, red boards. Clots formed at the site of the wound and dropped with a splat on the smeared blood on the floor.

Lisa secured the rope and tightened it around Bobbie Jo's neck again. Bobbie Jo reached behind with both hands. She grabbed and yanked Lisa's hair as hard as she could. She pulled strands out by the roots. That was not enough to stop Lisa Montgomery.

Lisa squeezed tighter—her strength and determination fueled by a sociopathic desperation. When Bobbie Jo's body went limp once again, Lisa still held on. This time, she would be sure Bobbie Jo was dead. She throttled her victim for a full five minutes, then eased the dead weight to the floor—she did not want to harm the baby. Bobbie Jo lay dead; in her hands, she clenched clumps of dirty blonde hair.

Lisa kneeled down again at Bobbie Jo's side to continue her grisly work. She finished cutting through the layers of the skin. She sliced again, this time through the layer of fat cells. Then a third laceration parted the layer of muscle. When the cut was long enough and deep enough, Lisa saw the prize she sought—Bobbie Jo's uterus. She sliced the womb open with a care that indicated knowledge or experience.

Lisa reached into Bobbie Jo's bloody, desecrated body and pulled out a wriggling baby girl. She sliced the umbilical cord in two. She tied off the end of the cord connected to the child. Wrapping the baby in a blanket, she held her tight in her arms, breathing deeply—inhaling the scent of the child she now claimed as her own. It was as if a demented magic spell had taken hold of her. As is typical of infant abductors, the moment that little body was next to hers, a fantastical delusion seized her. It said: This is my baby. I saved my baby from that woman. If I had not taken her, she surely would have died.

Lisa grabbed the knife and raced to her car. She drove out of Skidmore heading straight to Maryville. She took the highway and continued south down to St. Joseph. Around Kansas
City. Across the Missouri-Kansas state line. Westward to Topeka. She pulled into Long John Silver's and parked in their lot.

Somewhere between Skidmore and the fast food restaurant, she cleaned up herself and her baby. The violent assault on Bobbie Jo left smears of blood on her clothing and her arms. She looked normal now. A mother and her infant. Haggard but happy after a successful birth. She called her husband, Kevin, and told him the good news.

L
isa Montgomery was raised at a time when women made great strides in government, corporations and every other walk in life. Despite these advances, Lisa remained mired in the antiquated notion that a woman's value was based solely on her ability to reproduce and nurture.

This pathetic self-image led Lisa to a crisis point, where she made the decision to cross a line that was beyond normal contemplation. She transitioned from an emotionally disturbed woman to a heartless murderer with frightening ease.

The path she followed to become a killer began while she was still in her teens. Her frenzied procreation with her first husband—four babies in less than four years—was a shadowy premonition of what was to come. She was a bright young woman who sensed the stress fractures in her relationship from the start. In response, she stayed pregnant because she thought it was the only way to stay married.

After the fourth child, however, her husband, Carl, did not want any more mouths to feed. He insisted on a tubal ligation. Without that procedure, Lisa might have become a one-woman population explosion.

When Carl left Lisa and moved to Arkansas, Lisa had no sense of identity—she needed a man for that. She fought for her relationship in the only way she knew: another pregnancy. Carl fell for her ruse the first time. He remarried Lisa—but, of course, she did not produce a child.

When Lisa's idyllic illusion of a good marriage started to crumble again, she announced yet another pregnancy. This time, Carl didn't fall for it. But he did stay with her and even agreed to move the family out of state when Lisa's embarrassment over the faked conception became more than she could bear.

In New Mexico with a husband immune to the pregnancy ploy, Lisa was deprived of the only weapon she thought she had to maintain the relationship. When the marriage ended, that failure reinforced Lisa's conviction that she was worthless without her ability to bear a child for her man.

She moved to Kansas, met Kevin Montgomery, and in no time was plotting to marry him. She thought that if Kevin believed she were pregnant, he'd follow her to the altar. She was surprised when, instead, he gave her the money for an abortion. Still, she didn't give up on her dream of matrimony. She played on Kevin's sympathy by creating a new pregnancy in her teenage years—one where her family deceived her and stole her baby away.

After that heart-breaking tale, Kevin was hooked—one more faked pregnancy and Lisa was Mrs. Kevin Montgomery. After exchanging vows, she claimed that pregnancy, too, ended in miscarriage. When the marriage to Kevin showed signs of distress, she played the game once again.

It seemed mind-boggling that Lisa was able to fool so many people so much of the time. She pulled it off because she had more in her arsenal than a canny gift for falsehood. She also had physical symptoms like the hardened abdomen she displayed to her sister.

Bobbie Jo with a sleeping rat terrier pup.
Photo courtesy Pat Kennedy
.

Bobbie Jo at her first Christmas.
Photo courtesy Becky Harper
.

Becky Potter proudly poses with her six-month-old daughter, Bobbie Jo.
Photo courtesy Becky Harper
.

Summer 1983—Bobbie Jo in wading pool with friends Jody and Jaimie.
Photo courtesy Becky Harper
.

Bobbie Join April 2001.
Photo courtesy Becky Harper