Baby Be Mine (15 page)

Bobbie Jo practicing barrel-racing.
Photo courtesy Becky Harper
.

Lisa Montgomery's mug shot.
Photo courtesy Nodaway County Sheriff's Department
.

The Melvern, Kansas, water tower from the center of town.
Photo by Diane Fanning
.

Kevin and Lisa Montgomery's home.
Photo by Diane Fanning
.

The Whistle Stop Café, where Lisa and Kevin showed off their new baby.
Photo by Diane Fanning
.

Skidmore Public Library.
Photo by Diane Fanning
.

Newton's Corner in Skidmore.
Photo by Diane Fanning
.

Bobbie Jo & Jeb's home on Elm Street.
Photo by Diane Fanning
.

White House award ceremony in the Oval Office:
(l to r)
Corporal Jeffrey Owen. Missouri State Highway Patrol: Sergeant David Merrill. Missouri State Highway patrol: Sheriff Ben Espey. Nodaway County Sheriff's Department; President George W. Bush: Special Agent Kurt Lipanovich. FBI; Investigator Randy Strong. Maryville Department of Public Safety.
Photo courtesy Ben Espey
.

Items seized from Lisa Montgomery's car including the knife used to perform the cesarean section and a photo of a litter of newborn rat terrier pups.
Photo courtesy Nodaway County Sheriff's Department
.

Lisa's dirty red Toyota.
Photo courtesy Nodaway County Sheriff's Department
.

Bobbie Jo's headstone.
Photo by Diane Fanning
.

There were two possible reasons for Lisa's physical symptoms. One was pseudocyesis, a form of psychosis causing a woman to seek attention by faking or lying about a pregnancy. Many of these women learned how to swallow air to bloat their abdomens.

Another possibility was that Lisa was in the midst of a disassociative episode where she genuinely believed she was pregnant. Women in this condition experienced a myriad of pregnancy symptoms including a distended belly, enlarged breasts and the absence of menses. When forced to face the truth, these women often spiraled down into a deep depression.

Dr. Jack Gorman, chief of psychiatry at the Mt. Sinai Medical Center and professor of neuroscience at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine told a
New York Times
reporter, “In these cases, a woman might have a delusion that ‘That's my baby in that woman, she's stolen it, and if I don't rescue it, she's going to kill it,' and the motivation is just so overwhelming that you just lose contact with reality. It's hard for people who've never had this experience to understand, but the voices and hallucinations and demands become overwhelming.”