Murder In The Heartland Part 1

MURDER IN THE HEARTLAND.

M. WILLIAM PHELPS.

A NOTE TO READERS.

Murder in the Heartland was written during an ongoing murder investigation. An arrest has been made, a confession of the crime made public, but the investigation is still active as we go to press. The book does not attempt to solve any portion of the crime or taint the investigation and/or prosecution of the accused. Any allegations made by parties in the book against the accused are brought forth under their own opinions, thoughts, and judgments. The author does not, in any way, make conclusions about the case but aims to unravel this complicated true story and offer some sort of understanding (and insight) about the events herein.

PREFACE.

My own introduction to murder came years ago when a family member was slain by a drug-crazed serial killer who preyed on helpless, vulnerable women in the Hartford, Connecticut, region. She was my oldest brother's wife, five months pregnant when her a.s.sailant reportedly put a pillowcase over her head and strangled her with a telephone cord. He was a large man, a professional-football-player type. An average-sized woman herself, she had no chance.

Although I wasn't writing about true crime then, I didn't realize how significant her murder would be to my work later on in life. Her death showed me that painful events such as murder carry over into everyday life in subtle ways, and hover, like guilt, over many of the things we do. Through the years, I've often sat and thought about this as I interviewed victims of murder: relatives, loved ones, friends, spouses, community members close to a case.

Soon after I finished investigating the Bobbie Jo Stinnett murder case, however, I realized the exclusive information I had uncovered while researching the book you are about to read had tested everything I thought I knew about life, loss, community, and dealing with unexpected tragedy.

As I was finis.h.i.+ng my last book in December 2004, the Bobbie Jo Stinnett murder became front-page news. For about a week during the Christmas holiday, I couldn't turn on the television or open a newspaper without hearing something about the case. Everyone wanted to know what had driven a woman to cut another woman's child from her womb, killing the mother of the child. It became one of the most high-profile crime stories of the year.

I followed the case, made a few calls, interviewed some of the people involved, and began gathering anything I could find related to the case, with the thought I might one day pursue it as a book. I often juggle about ten to twelve cases before I decide on a book subject. I write dozens of letters to the people involved, send them, and see what happens. Who calls or writes back. A litmus test, to see how many people will talk on record.

The first letter I wrote pertaining to the Stinnett case was addressed to Carl Boman, the alleged perpetrator's ex-husband. I figured, if I could get Mr. Boman to come forward, I would have a powerful story to tell. He knew the accused perpetrator better than anyone; he could tell me things about her no one else could, and, more importantly, he could help me understand the psychology behind her possible motives, which fascinated me more than anything else.

I wrote Mr. Boman a letter, printed it out, placed it in an envelope, and put it in the out-box I have on my desk-but, for whatever reason, never sent it. Wait, something told me.

One afternoon a few months later, I was working at my desk when a little dialogue box on the bottom corner of my computer screen alerted me an e-mail had just arrived.

Then the name of the sender appeared in the box: Carl Boman.

"I want you to write this story," he wrote. "I need to get the truth out. There's way too much speculation and rumor out in public right now."

I was pleasantly shocked, to say the least, that Carl Boman had reached out to me. Still a bit skeptical, however, during our first telephone conversation, I said, "Let's talk about this. Tell me a little bit about what you know."

"Well, I have known her," Mr. Boman said first, referring to the alleged perpetrator, "for twenty years, and fathered four of her children. I've been right in the middle of everything for two decades. My life-my kids' lives-have been torn apart by all of this. Two of my children held Bobbie Jo's baby on the night she was murdered."

"Why me, though?" I asked.

"You seem very thorough. Like you can tell this story and put aside the rumor and speculation."

"I can't pay you," I said. "I never pay sources."

"I don't want money. I only want the truth."

Thus began my quest. Through Carl Boman and my own garrulous way of reaching out to people, I've been introduced to scores of sources for this book. Mr. Boman's children, all of whom have spoken to me in one form or another, are incredibly tough kids. They have been through a lot and lost more than most might a.s.sume; they are victims, too. Not that Bobbie Jo Stinnett and her immediate family haven't lost the most. But I've learned in the years of writing true-crime books, along with a tragedy of similar scope in my own family, the pain involved in the aftermath of murder-that is, if it is to be weighed on a scale of emotion-is equal, no matter which side you're on.

People suffer.

No pain is greater than any other.

Fundamentally, this is a story of loss, life, and being able to move forward in the face of an immeasurable tragedy. The accused killer's children still love their mother. But more than that, as Mr. Boman said to me once, "This is a tragic death that should have never happened-and that's one of the main reasons why I want to get this story out. The whole story. Everything that led up to this senseless murder needs to be told as a cautionary tale so people understand how mentally ill people who don't get professional help are potential time bombs. In this country, we need to take the issue of mental health more seriously."

While writing this book, I was amazed by the candor and honesty of some, while appalled by the lies of others. Especially flattering was that Sheriff Ben Espey, the law enforcement hero of this book, opened up and told me his story.

In the end, I found a story of two towns, two mothers, several children, one "miracle" child, an ex-husband left to clean up twenty years of family dysfunction, a sheriff determined to find a missing child, and a telling look into the heart of America.

I've written a number of true-crime books now and have seen and described the most depraved people in society. I thought I had become hardened by all the murder in my professional life, and nothing could break me. But this story turned me inside out. To understand why this crime happened is one thing; yet to sit and digest this material for as long as I did made me realize that people truly are capable of just about anything, especially when driven by desperation.

This, then, is not your typical, straightforward true-crime account: body, investigation, background of victim and perpetrator, trial, verdict, sentence. Some of those elements will appear, certainly. But this story encompa.s.ses two families, many victims, and two towns coming to terms with a senseless, incredibly hideous murder. Here, I give you the entire story as it played out from day one-but also, most important, the all-inclusive backstory of the alleged perpetrator, which explains why she did what she did and how she, her immediate family, and the two towns are coping with the aftermath today.

-M. WILLIAM PHELPS.

Vernon, CT.

PROLOGUE.

Desperation.

On December 13, 2004, Lisa Montgomery e-mailed her ex-husband, Carl Boman, about picking up their children. Carl and Lisa had been divorced (a second time) for five years. They lived hundreds of miles apart, in different states. Weekend visitations had become a tangled mess of changed times and dates, failed promises, and heated arguments-all brought on, Carl insisted, by his ex-wife.

"You can pick the kids up at 7am on Christmas morning," wrote Lisa.

She wanted the children home by eight o'clock on Christmas night, she then demanded. On top of that, Lisa didn't want her mother, Judy Shaughnessy, to see the children. She was adamant: "They are not to go out to [her] house."

Carl Boman had never intended to stop by his ex-mother-in-law's. The stipulation was, he said, just one more way for Lisa to wield some sort of control over the situation, as she, reluctantly, handed the kids over to him.

Throughout the e-mail, Lisa ranted and raved about the children's wants and needs, what Carl could and could not do. Looking at the e-mail later that night, it occurred to Carl that Lisa was doing the same thing she had done for the past ten years: manipulating and controlling the situation. In his opinion, all she had ever done was "spread hate and lies," said Carl, "and cause problems by making up stories." About him. Her current husband. The kids. Her mothers. Sisters.

Even herself.

Lately, she had been fabricating a story about her being pregnant. She had been telling people she was carrying twins, but had lost one child the previous month. The second child, she claimed, was healthy and due on December 13. To prove it, she had an ultrasound photograph and a nursery set up in her house. She'd gone to doctor appointments. Bought the child clothing and toys.

What Lisa didn't know then, however, was two days before receiving her e-mail, Carl had filed for permanent custody of the children. Lisa would be summoned into court on January 15, 2005, where her lies-"every single one of them"-would then be exposed. There had been four other instances in recent years when Lisa claimed to be pregnant, yet she had not produced a child. There was always an excuse, followed by another set of lies. Carl had known her for twenty years. They'd had four children together. There was no way she could be pregnant; medically speaking, it was impossible. Carl was there the day she'd had her tubal ligation surgery. They'd talked about it beforehand, and both had agreed it was the best thing for the family.

"She was actually relieved after the procedure," he said. "We didn't want any more children."

In court, Carl was going to prove Lisa was a fraud. He was planning on providing evidence of how she had perjured herself recently during a custody hearing over her nephew. During the hearing, Lisa said she'd given birth to a baby in her doctor's office, but it was stillborn. Because it had died, she told the court, she donated it to science.

The story was a total invention. Carl was going to produce an affidavit detailing the truth. In turn, he was sure the court would award him permanent custody of their children. Lisa's new husband, mother, sisters, the children, not to mention the town where she lived, would soon know she had been lying about being pregnant all along. Those five pregnancies-including the current tale of losing one of her twins-existed only in her mind.

"There was no way out of it for Lisa," said Carl. "She was being backed into a corner."

"I think she was in desperation," added Lisa's mother, Judy, "to get a baby one way or another-she ran out of options."

What n.o.body knew, as Carl sat there absorbing Lisa's latest e-mail tirade, shaking his head in disgust, was that she was making plans of her own.

When Lisa found out a day later Carl had filed an injunction seeking permanent custody of two of their four children, she had one of the kids call him.

"Mom wants to know what you have planned, Dad," his son asked while she sat by the phone, staring at him.

"How are you, son?" Carl asked. His children mattered more than anything to Carl at that point. His son had just turned fifteen.

With Lisa by his side, Carl's son continued speaking for her. "She says she's considering allowing me to live with you but wants to know if you're taking me out of school." Then, after a moment of whispering in the background, "She's very upset, you know, that you filed those papers with the court."

"Put her on the phone."

"You have no chance of getting the kids," said Lisa as soon as she put the receiver to her mouth. "I'm going to prove you are the liar, Carl."

...impulses may be from below, not from above...

but if I am the Devil's child.

I will live then from the Devil.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson.

I.

THE RUSE.

1.

It was five days before the winter solstice. December 16, 2004, started off a bit abnormal-although, upon waking up to what was a magnificent sunrise, few would have guessed. The wind was blowing in across the Nebraska plains from the west at a steady pace of twelve miles per hour, which, by itself, was not so unusual. Yet the temperature capped out at around fifty degrees by midday, making it feel like a chilly evening in late September, or maybe a pleasant early-October morning: brusque, cool, effervescent.

In town, many of the women took advantage of the un-seasonable weather. Wearing red-and-white ap.r.o.ns, some felt inspired to take out muddy throw rugs and floormats, hang them from clotheslines, and beat the dirt out of them with brooms. Others opened windows and aired things out a bit-the cool, fresh air casting a sparkle on everything it touched. Some men, unimpressed by such a scant spike in the mercury, donned customary black-and-red plaid flannel s.h.i.+rts, coveralls, leather gloves, and winter caps with earflaps. They were seen making repairs to property-line fences and timber corral posts, while others stood sipping coffee and "shootin' the breeze" near the center of town, framed by the cottonwoods, oaks, and maples, leafless and brittle, that stood in perfect rows along the gullies of Highway 113.

Before that Thursday afternoon, the town of Skidmore was but a black dot on the map of America's heartland. To say it was a small farming parish would understate how rural the countryside actually was. Skidmore, according to the green-and-white "city limit" sign on the edge of town, is home to a mere 342-"give'r take a few," noted one native-nestled in the northwestern corner of Missouri, a state named after a Siouan Native American tribe, which, translated, means "canoe."

To an outsider, the town resembles an eighteenth-century landscape painting hanging on a velvet saloon wall somewhere farther west, dusty and ignored, a bucolic setting, innocent of technology, infrastructure, big-city bureaucrats, and mundane problems.

But to townsfolk, Skidmore is Eden, a comfortable, intimate place to live and die. "Everybody knows everybody" is a reliable cliche there, evident in the way people greet each other with a nod and wave. In Missouri, where the state license plates proclaim "Show Me State," red, white, and blue are more than simply colors; and rolls of hay, coiled up like ma.s.sive cinnamon buns as tall as street signs, dot the thousands of acres of gently sloping farmland.

In many ways, time has stood still in Skidmore. An old railroad line that carried cattle and grain a century ago marks a decomposing path through the countryside, subtly reminding folks that nothing ever truly goes away. All over town are remnants of another day and age: memories verifying how life, regardless of how it is elsewhere, moves at a slower pace, and how people still take the time to stop and shake hands, pat one another on the shoulder, ask about the kids, quote a pa.s.sage from the Bible, or maybe just share a bottle of "pop" while sitting on a porch swing.

In their hearts, any one of them will gladly admit, with a snap of their suspenders, Skidmorians care about the place where they live and the people who make up their community. They don't bother anyone, and, in return, expect the same treatment from others.

"People there, well, it's a different sorta place," said one outsider. To which an acquaintance added, "If you don't belong in Skidmore, ya betta jus stay the h.e.l.l outta there."

2.

Nearly two hundred miles south, in eastern-central Kansas, the day hadn't started out so warm and inviting. When she awoke, a cold snap lingered in the house.

Getting dressed, she put on one of her oversized bulky sweaters, a pair of baggy blue jeans, sneakers, and gla.s.ses. She pulled her hair back in a ponytail. Her heavy winter coat was downstairs on a kitchen chair. She could grab it on the way out.

As usual, she sat by herself at the dining table, forgoing coffee for what many later agreed was an "addiction to Pepsi." Then, staring out the window, she lit a Marlboro, because she knew her husband had left for work already. Like a lot of things in her life, she'd been hiding her affair with nicotine from him.

Her two daughters and son slept upstairs. She had told her husband the night before she was "getting up early to go shopping" in Topeka, but the kids had no idea she was awake. It was close to five in the morning. If she wasn't working one of her three part-time jobs, there wasn't a chance she'd be up so early.

After stubbing out her cigarette, she walked upstairs into her oldest daughter's room and sat on the edge of the bed, as she did on most mornings. She and Rebecca* were close, like best friends. They talked about things she wouldn't consider sharing with her other children, and unquestionably not her husband.

"What are you doing today, Mom?" asked Rebecca. She was muzzy and worn-out, having just awakened. Seventeen-year-old Rebecca and her mother had gone shopping for baby clothes several times over the past few months. Her mother was "excited" about being pregnant and wanted to share the experience with her oldest. "You'll have children of your own one day," she told Rebecca more than once as they browsed through racks of clothes, baby rattles, and toys.

Sitting quietly, she brushed Rebecca's hair away from her eyes with her right hand and stared at her for a brief time. In almost a whisper, "I'm going shopping in Topeka," she responded.

Everyone in the family was under the impression her due date had pa.s.sed the previous Monday, December 13, and she was going to have the child any day now.

"Shopping might get things going," she continued when Rebecca didn't respond. "I need to pick up something for Kayla, anyway."

Kayla was the baby of the family. She didn't live at the house anymore. She was staying with a friend in Georgia.

At fourteen years old, Kayla was pretty much the free thinker of the four kids. She wasn't a submissive conformist, like so many children her own age, ready to accept anything anybody told her. Nor was she one of those kids that fell into, say, the "Goth" movement at school because it was the latest fad. Kayla thought about things thoroughly and made her own decisions. Her independent way of thinking had landed Kayla in Georgia, hundreds of miles away from her mother, stepfather, and siblings.

On August 25, 2004, exactly one week after her birthday, she bid farewell to everyone. First she went to Texas to stay with a fellow rat-terrier breeder for a couple days so she could attend a dog show there before traveling on.

Kayla referred to the woman she moved in with in Georgia as "Auntie," she said, out of "Southern respect," but Mary Timmeny, "Auntie M," as Kayla and others referred to her, was a friend of the family, and had introduced Kayla to her pa.s.sion: raising, breeding, and showing rat terriers. Mary had invited Kayla to spend a few weeks with her in Georgia during the summer of 2004 so she could teach her how to train her dogs and ready them for the dog show circuit. Kayla's father, Carl Boman, was amazed his ex-wife had agreed to it. As Carl viewed the situation, Mary was a stranger, someone Kayla's mother had met only a few times. Carl was beside himself with anger that his ex-wife had allowed Kayla to spend part of her summer with someone so far away.

Kayla's mother had custody, though. Carl couldn't do much about it, even if he wanted.