Murder In The Heartland Part 11

FBI agents converged on Melvern and set up a surveillance around Lisa and Kevin Montgomery's home during the afternoon of December 17.

As it happened, two additional agents headed to the west end of town on an entirely separate mission.

With fewer than one hundred students enrolled during any given year, Melvern's Marais des Cygnes Valley (High) School would be considered a foreign educational environment to most kids from larger cities and towns across America. In contrast to the overflowing cla.s.srooms more common elsewhere, ten students per cla.s.sroom might be considered a lot in towns like Melvern and Skidmore.

"School was very personal," commented one former Marais des Cygnes Valley student. "If something happened on one end of the hall, it would be at the other end of the hall within five minutes. Everyone knew everything about everyone. And there was a lot of one-on-one time between teachers and students. Come to think of it, the teachers probably even knew our middle names."

Lisa's children loved the intimacy of growing up in small-town America. Having an education system in place considered by many to be first-rate, and extremely personal, was an added bonus.

During the latter part of the morning, Ryan, Alicia, and Rebecca were going about the daily routine at Marais des Cygnes Valley as if it were just another school day. The only difference in their lives was that they had a new baby sister at home waiting for them when they got out of cla.s.s.

Two FBI agents showed up at Kevin Montgomery's parents' house across town to discuss the best possible way to pull the kids out of cla.s.s without making a scene. The FBI explained to Mr. and Mrs. Montgomery that they needed to question the children about Lisa and Kevin.

"It involves a kidnapping."

Undoubtedly shocked by this, Kevin's mother agreed to pick the kids up at school and bring them back to the house.

"Great," said one agent, "just don't tell them what's going on."

Burrowed in the brush behind the barn in back of the farmhouse and around the cornfields corralling the land near Lisa and Kevin's house, several FBI agents were looking for any sign of a red car or newborn baby.

As of early afternoon, no one seemed to be home.

From his office in Maryville, Espey heard the FBI was planning on staking out the house for twenty-four hours, in order to watch Lisa and Kevin's movements. The FBI wasn't sure if they were dealing with a "drug house," or if Kevin and Lisa were operating some sort of black-market baby factory, Espey explained.

When Espey confirmed how the FBI was handling the situation, he called in Randy Strong and Don Fritz, two investigators-"the best in the state"-with Missouri's Initial Response Team. Randy Strong worked for Maryville Public Safety as one of its chief investigators. A man with an intense dedication to law enforcement, Strong understood that Espey's main concern was for the child.

"Get in a car and get to Melvern as fast as you can," Espey told Strong and Fritz. He was frustrated over the FBI's desire not to move in right away and get the child to a hospital.

"Sure, Sheriff," said Strong. "We're on our way."

"Just get into that house and get that baby. Drive through anybody that gets in your way."

Based on a piece of "solid" information Espey had uncovered himself, he believed the FBI was planning not to let any of his men go near the Melvern house, where they suspected Lisa and Kevin and the baby were going to show up anytime.

Espey was firm in his conviction. "Drive onto that property. Knock on the front door. Walk in. And get that child."

At twelve by twelve feet, Espey's office inside the Nodaway County Sheriff's Department was as cramped as a jail cell. Espey didn't use a computer. He had a few awards and commendations tacked to the cinder block concrete walls around him, but spent as little time as possible inside the confining room. His job, he maintained, was out in the field. He usually showed up at the office by 8:00 and was on the road by 9:00 A.M. He had no use for sitting behind a desk, pus.h.i.+ng a pencil, staring at police reports and rap sheets. His heart was in working the streets. The FBI wasn't going to walk into Espey's county and take control at the last minute. He had made promises to Bobbie Jo's family and told Zeb he'd bring his child back home. Regardless of the fallout later on, no one was going to stop him from attempting to make good on those promises.

Would Strong and Fritz make it to Melvern in time? Espey had overheard an agent working out of his office tell another field agent that they were taking over the investigation now that they had solid information as to the whereabouts of the person responsible for sending the last e-mail to Bobbie Jo.

"We're not going to rush this deal," Espey heard the agent say over the radio. "We're going to do the stakeout. And we're going to sit on it for a day or two."

This comment, specifically, upset Espey, who had been told repeatedly by doctors he had to get the child to a hospital as soon as possible after locating her.

"I represent the community in northern Missouri," said Espey. "That's why it was so upsetting to me."

Espey faced one other major problem: the Kansas FBI regional office called to tell him he didn't have jurisdiction in Melvern, Kansas.

"That's right, I don't," Espey told himself. "But it's my case."

He hung up the phone.

Espey radioed Randy Strong and Don Fritz as they headed down Highway 71 toward Kansas, reaffirming his position: "You drive through whatever barricade you have to in order to get that child back. Don't worry about the FBI. I'll handle them."

46.

A quick background check told the FBI neither Kevin nor Lisa had any prior arrests or convictions. Both were clean, as far as the law was concerned. Maybe there wouldn't be any resistance. Perhaps it would all go smoothly.

Still, why would a married couple with seven kids of their own between them murder a young expecting mother and cut her child from her womb? If, in fact, Kevin and Lisa were responsible, something was wrong with the entire scenario. As much as all the evidence seemed to point to them, there was a missing link. How did Kevin Montgomery fit into the picture? Had he helped Lisa? A few tips Ben Espey received the previous night made him consider the child might have been taken for resale on the black market. Detectives were still working on one of those leads. Were more people involved? Had Lisa and Kevin gone off to sell the child?

The Melvern house Kevin and Lisa called home was a two-story white farmhouse set back from a gravel road about fifty yards. Surrounded by hundreds of acres of farmland, a muddy driveway led up to the door the family used on the side of the house. Another door faced the road, but n.o.body entered through it. Down the street, the closest neighbor was a good half-mile away. Lisa's goats were out back. Her dogs were barking.

The setting seemed perfect from the FBI's standpoint. It was rural. Very few civilians were around. The G-men found plenty of places for agents to hide with no chance of Kevin or Lisa spotting any of them.

The house had five bedrooms, one master bathroom, a living room, and a dining room and kitchen, where everyone congregated during the evening. In the large cellar downstairs, Lisa kept the canned goods she demanded the kids jar up every fall. From the outside, it looked like a house filled with good wholesome family farm living. But the atmosphere inside on most nights, at least according to one of the children, wasn't as relaxed as it might have appeared.

"When my mom was home, she was normally on the computer. She was kind of quiet, but when she was mad, she would yell and make everyone's day miserable. Sometimes, though, she was in a really good mood. Like when we were canning, or doing something with the garden, or the animals, or stuff like that. But when she got mad, I always tried to avoid her (which was hard sometimes). She would threaten to leave Kevin, or she would get all mad at us for one thing or another (like if we were supposed to be cleaning and we didn't, or we ate dinner an hour ago and the dishes still weren't done). I remember sometimes it would be like nine or ten o'clock at night when we finished eating dinner, and we would have to stay up to do the dishes no matter how tired we were."

Now there were scores of FBI agents camped out around the house, with binoculars and high-tech gadgets, waiting for Lisa and Kevin to arrive-and two rather committed investigators from Ben Espey's county racing toward town, preparing to drive through the FBI's surveillance and find out for themselves if Lisa and Kevin had Bobbie Jo's child.

47.

Kevin Montgomery's mother walked into the office of Marais des Cygnes Valley (High) School and explained to the princ.i.p.al that Lisa's three children had to be taken out of cla.s.s.

"It's an emergency. We need to get them home right away."

All three kids were summoned to the office. They had no idea what was going on.

"You need to get your stuff," Kevin's mother said, "and come home with me now. Something's happened. Hurry."

Rebecca had driven her own car to school. She told Mrs. Montgomery she'd drive her brother and sister to their grandparents' house and meet her there.

Back at the house ten minutes later, the FBI separated the children and began asking questions.

"When we got home," one of the children said, "at first we thought [the FBI] were lawyers."

Must have been the way they were dressed.

Throughout the entire time the children were questioned, the reason why never came up. The kids were forced to wonder what was going on as the FBI shot one question after another at them, yet failed to explain the reason why they were probing into what had been, up until that point, a rather ordinary life in the middle of nowhere.

"You can't tell anybody about this," said one agent to Rebecca. Largely, the questioning was framed around what Kevin had been doing over the past twenty-four hours. Why wasn't the man at work? Why had he taken the day off? Where was he now? Then, "Tell me about the baby. Did the child have any scratches on her? Do you have any pictures of her?"

"I don't know," answered Rebecca, overwhelmed by being put on the spot.

"Did your mom and Kevin have any problems?"

"Normal marital things, I guess. I don't know. I don't know."

The FBI wasn't being pushy, the kids later agreed. ("They were very nice. They weren't mean or anything. They just wanted answers.") After Rebecca was questioned, Ryan was pulled into the same room and Rebecca was asked to leave.

"Are your mom and Kevin happy?" asked one of the agents.

"Yeah, I guess."

"How was the atmosphere at the house most of the time?"

"Fine."

"What was your mom like the past few weeks?"

Ryan was "clueless," he said, as to what was going on. Where Rebecca began questioning things in her mind, Ryan still didn't have any idea what to think. He had spent last night with his new baby sister. He was happy for Mom and Kevin. What was the problem?

"Everything was okay last night?" pressed an agent.

"Okay, let's...," Ryan said, and then hesitated. He had a question of his own he needed to ask. "Is this about my mom and Kevin splitting up?"

The agents looked at each other. They had to feel sorry for the kid. Here he was thinking the FBI had pulled him out of school to tell him his mother and stepfather were separating.

"Listen," one of the agents said, "your mom is one of two suspects in a kidnapping case we're working on."

Ryan was stunned. His heart raced. ("I was one of the first to see the baby, and I thought it was ours.") Both Ryan and Rebecca agreed that talking bad about Kevin just wouldn't be right. Kevin had his hang-ups, but he "wasn't a bad person." He was quiet and reserved, sure, but he never raised his voice or hand to Lisa or the kids. And he supported them, unlike Lisa, in nearly everything they did. ("Kevin was at every single one of the games I cheered for," recalled Rebecca. "My mom never came.") "He was," Kayla Boman added at a later date, "a really nice guy, and a great stepfather." In no way, she added, was he mean. And, while he "occasionally drank a beer," he was "definitely not a drinker."

Kayla said the one thing about Kevin all the kids stood behind was that, "he loved my mom with all his heart...and would do-and still will-anything for us. He loves us almost as much as he loves his three boys."

Most of the reservations the children, especially Kayla, had were centered around Lisa, particularly her frequent statements to people around town that she was pregnant. During the past few weeks, however, Lisa's claims of being pregnant started falling apart. Although she had moved to Georgia weeks ago, Kayla still kept tabs on things back home. Like any kid her age, she made instant messaging and e-mail part of her daily life. Lisa wasn't calling her or writing, so Kayla kept up to date with everyone by phone and the Internet.

"Did I have questions?" Kayla asked herself later. "Yes. Did I doubt at times that my mom was pregnant? Yes!"

"It all seemed a little weird to me, but I guess it was 'cause I had a 'bad feeling,' which normally I do when something bad happens, or something is wrong...like a gut feeling, I guess you could say."

From the FBI's perspective, it was beginning to look more like Kevin was involved on some level. How could he not be? His phone line had been used to communicate with Bobbie Jo. The feds even had an e-mail in their possession fully explaining how "Darlene Fischer" had made plans to meet with Bobbie Jo. Anyone, at this point, could be Darlene Fischer: Kevin, Lisa, even one of the kids.

When the two agents finished questioning the kids, they left the Montgomery house without mentioning a word of their next move. If the kids were confused before they were questioned, now they had no idea what was going on. Like most kids, they weren't newshounds; they had no idea that a young woman had been murdered in Skidmore and a ma.s.sive search was under way for a child someone had cut from her womb. Why so many questions about the previous day? Mom had given birth yesterday.

What could the simple birth of a child have to do with anything of a criminal nature?

48.

During Friday afternoon, December 17, while the kids were at the Montgomery house talking with the FBI, SA Mike Miller, watching from a foxhole somewhere around Kevin and Lisa's Adams Road house, spotted a "dirty red Toyota Corolla, bearing a Kansas license plate...pull up in front of the residence."

It was the infamous "red car" every law enforcement agency in the Midwest had been looking for, only there was no H on the hood, contrary to what a witness had told Ben Espey the previous day.

After Lisa and Kevin got out of the car, Lisa walked around to the back of the vehicle and took the child out of her car seat.

The FBI agents didn't move. They watched as Lisa and Kevin took their time entering the house through the side porch door, where an old refrigerator and was.h.i.+ng machine sat rusting on top of rain-soaked, rotting pine planks.

Within minutes, Lisa and Kevin were inside the house with the child.

Soon after, Randy Strong and Don Fritz arrived on the scene, pulled into the driveway, and parked in back of Kevin's pickup. They met no opposition from the FBI agents, who were still in position around the property, likely wondering what was going on.

Fritz called Espey from his cell phone: "We're here, Ben. As soon as we know something, we'll call you back. We're shutting down our cell phones now."

"Good luck...let me know as soon as you do."

"All right. Here we go."

Meanwhile, Espey heard a rumor that the press had figured out what was unfolding in Melvern. A few helicopters were hovering over Lisa and Kevin's house, filming and circling it.

When he confirmed the report, Espey's concern for the child grew.

"Someone had already killed the mother of the child-we knew that," said Espey. "What if they came out of the house and saw the helicopters? There was a real good chance, I believed, they could dispose of the baby."

Randy Strong jumped out of the car first and walked up to the door. Composed and collected, he knocked.

Kevin answered. "Yeah?"

"I'm a special investigator from Missouri," said Strong. "My partner is with me. Can we come in?"

"Sure," Kevin answered, opening the door. He seemed a bit frazzled but completely forthcoming and cooperative.

As Fritz and Strong walked in, they spied Lisa sitting in the living room holding the baby; she was watching television. Oddly enough, the Amber Alert, Strong noticed, was scrolling across the bottom of the television screen as he walked up to Lisa and asked her to hand the child to him.

"Why? What's going on?" Lisa wanted to know.