Murder In The Heartland Part 5

At some point during her trip, she pulled over on the side of the road, washed the baby, sealed her belly b.u.t.ton with a pair of "clips" a hospital might use for the same purpose, and threw the bloodied towels and blankets into the trunk, where they sat next to the rope she allegedly used to strangle Bobbie Jo and the serrated paring knife she used to cut her open, law enforcement said.

Lisa admitted later that here, along the side of the road, she started to put her elaborate story of giving birth to the child into effect.

After cleaning up the child, she called Mike Wheatley, pastor of the First Church of G.o.d in downtown Melvern, Kansas, where Lisa's children had been going to church for the past four years.

"I just gave birth," she told Pastor Wheatley. She seemed excited.

"Congratulations, Lisa," answered Wheatley.

Lisa pulled out from the side of the road, Bobbie Jo's baby next to her in a carry-on car seat, and headed for Kansas.

17.

While family members of Bobbie Jo Stinnett were contacted on the evening of December 16, doctors at St. Francis Hospital in Maryville p.r.o.nounced the twenty-three-year-old wife and mother dead. The trauma had been too much. Her pet.i.te body couldn't take the punishment authorities claim Lisa Montgomery had unleashed in the act of violent fury that was, by now, being reported around the world.

Satellite trucks were pulling into Skidmore as Bobbie Jo lay on a gurney somewhere in St. Francis Hospital. All the major networks were sending reporters to the region: MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, even the British Broadcasting Company (BBC). Every major metropolitan newspaper across the country posted the story on their Web sites. The Christmas season was generally a slow news period. The murder of Bobbie Jo Stinnett was going to be a huge story. By nightfall, the world would hear of the horror in Skidmore. By the following morning, reporters would be swarming the area, looking to uncover anything they could about what had happened inside the small house at West Elm Street.

As word spread throughout town, Skidmore residents locked their doors and watched their backs, noting that until Bobbie Jo's killer was caught, things would never be the same. Most were obviously appalled such a crime could take place in their tight-knit, close community. And to think it happened right in the middle of the day.

"Things like that just don't happen 'roun he'a," said one local.

Reverend Harold Hamon, who had married Zeb and Bobbie Jo about twenty months earlier, said he was likely "addressing Christmas cards" when the murder occurred. He remembered the time of day because a member of his congregation had called about the commotion going on up the road from his parish.

"Reverend," asked the worried neighbor, "I heard an ambulance down by the church. Was anyone near the church hurt?"

Hamon could see Bobbie Jo's house from the church rectory as he looked out the window. "Hold on," he said, staring down the street. "There's police cars down there. Don't know what's going on, though."

"It's almost unbelievable," Hamon recalled, "that right under your nose something terrible can be happening."

After talking it over with doctors, Sheriff Ben Espey was convinced there was a strong possibility Bobbie Jo's child was still alive. He had no doubt in his mind what he had to do next.

"That's the minute," Espey said, "I started pus.h.i.+ng to get the Amber Alert issued." And that was where the problems and infighting among different law enforcement agencies began.

The base of the investigation had been moved from Skidmore to downtown Maryville. The Nodaway County Sheriff's Department on North Vine Street, just below the center of town, was a small station compared to bigger-city police departments. But Espey felt comfortable in the building. It was a second home to him. On the wall of its large bas.e.m.e.nt was a long blackboard he could fill up with leads and ideas. By this means, he could sketch out the entire case and keep track of it, step by step.

Espey returned to the department and began a push to get the Amber Alert issued. Find the baby, find the killer. It seemed that simple. His emphasis was on finding the child first. After clearing Zeb Stinnett and informing him that his wife had been killed and his child kidnapped, Espey promised Zeb he would get his child back.

Getting an Amber Alert issued for an unborn child would be an unprecedented move, and Espey would run into harsh opposition in the coming hours regarding his desire to get it done, because an Amber Alert had never been issued for, as some were calling Bobbie Jo's child, "a fetus."

A major factor that made Ben Espey an a.s.set to his community was his determination to get a job done when the powers to be, bound by bureaucracy, stood in his way. If Espey believed an Amber Alert was warranted, he was going get it-and no one was going to tell him he couldn't.

18.

In the state of Missouri, Amber Alerts are issued by the Missouri State Highway Patrol when a child is said to be in danger. The MSHP relies on "detailed physical descriptions...such as the color, license plate, and type of vehicle to watch for," MSHP patrol spokesman Captain Chris Ricks told reporters. The reason the detail has to be as exact as possible is, Ricks added, "you're flooding your system with calls that don't mean anything."

If any vehicle even remotely matching the description became suspect, law enforcement had to chase down hundreds of leads that might never amount to anything. As of September 25, 2005, 377 children had been involved in 316 published Amber Alerts, issued in forty-two different states. It is a system that produces results when put into effect immediately.

How was the program initiated? In January 1996, nine-year-old Amber Hagerman was riding her bicycle in a remote Arlington, Texas, neighborhood when a neighbor heard her scream. It was a terrifying cry for help, not as if Amber had fallen off her bicycle or was being chased by the neighborhood bully. There was no doubt she was scared and yelling for help.

When the neighbor ran toward Amber's voice, she saw a man pull the helpless child off her bike and toss her into his pickup truck.

Within seconds, the child was gone.

The neighbor ran back to her house and called 911 immediately. She provided a detailed description of the man who had abducted Amber, along with the vehicle he was driving.

It was enough to get law enforcement started, especially since the call had come in promptly after the abduction.

Police in Arlington, working with the FBI, canva.s.sed the neighborhood and interviewed several other neighbors while a ma.s.sive search got underway for the vehicle Amber had been abducted in and for the suspect, who had supposedly grabbed her.

Sadly, though, four days later, Amber's body was located in a ditch about five miles from her home. Her throat had been slashed.

Several concerned citizens, feeling angry and sick over Amber's death, thinking more could have been done to save her life, contacted a Dallas, Texas, radio station and changed the way law enforcement officials deal with child abductions today. One of the callers suggested local radio stations "repeat news bulletins about abducted children just like they do for severe weather warnings."

An early warning system was subsequently initiated by the DallasFort Worth a.s.sociation of Radio Managers, who teamed with local law enforcement agencies in northern Texas, developing an innovative system to help locate abducted children, or at least get word out of the abduction as fast as possible.

It was a brilliant idea, and general managers from several radio stations throughout the Dallas area signed up. Everyone agreed it was a public service that could save lives potentially, simply because time is an abducted child's worst enemy after being kidnapped.

Thus, by July 1997, about eighteen months after Amber's death, the Texas Amber Plan went into operation. Other states adopted the program in short order.

19.

According to the Amber Alert Portal, a Web site dedicated to providing information about the Amber Alert plan, "once law enforcement has been notified about an abducted child, they must first determine if the case meets the Amber Alert Plan's criteria for activating an Amber Alert." Each law enforcement agency, "whether local, state, or regional, establishes its own Amber Alert Plan criteria."

Espey didn't have time for bureaucracy. He needed the alert issued right now, no questions asked.

"Let's find this child and fight about it later."

The first problem Espey faced came in the form of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which suggests three criteria be met before an Amber Alert is activated: "Law enforcement confirms a child has been abducted; law enforcement believes the circ.u.mstances surrounding the abduction indicate that the child is in danger of serious bodily harm or death" and, most important to the dilemma facing Ben Espey, "there is enough descriptive information about the child, abductor, and/or suspect's vehicle to believe an immediate broadcast alert will help."

In the Stinnett case, not much was known about Bobbie Jo's a.s.sailant. Espey was told no right away. An Amber Alert wouldn't work in this situation. Sorry. But it's not going to happen.

Espey didn't have time to deal with red tape. The sun had gone down. The child could be anywhere and Bobbie Jo's murderer was long gone. All he wanted was a chance.

"We can't issue an Amber Alert for a fetus," he was told over and over.

Meanwhile, Espey learned of a second major obstacle: could the child have survived such a traumatic delivery by the hand of an untrained perpetrator, who had murdered her mother in the process? Doctors had said the child still might be alive, but looking at the crime scene, it seemed almost impossible. Espey had touched Bobbie Jo's cold body. He saw all the blood.

Prenatal care expert Elizabeth A. Chmura, who has worked in emergency room prenatal care for twenty years (but wasn't involved in the Stinnett case), later said, "With pregnant women who suffer an insult-such as strangulation-it is difficult to know exactly how long an infant in the womb can survive. But we know that, in some cases, it can be thirty minutes if the mom has some signs of life, which, from the evidence left behind, Bobbie Jo clearly did."

In general, if a pregnant woman dies before giving birth, the infant has approximately four minutes before hypoxia, "a pathological condition in which the body as a whole, or region of the body, is deprived of adequate oxygen supply," sets in, at which time death will likely occur for the child. Hypoxia is sometimes a.s.sociated with high alt.i.tudes. If, say, an airplane's windows are blown out during flight at high elevations, pa.s.sengers can die because there is not a sufficient amount of oxygen in the plane's cabin to sustain life.

As far as Ben Espey was concerned, as long as doctors were saying the child had even a "chance" of surviving the attack, he was going to do everything in his power to try to find her. Still, as time went by and the child wasn't evaluated by a doctor, her chances of survival dropped significantly. A newborn baby outside the womb, born prematurely under such unsanitary and violent conditions, was at risk of many things. Prenatal care expert Chmura noted, "Hypothermia (temperature dropping), blood and/or volume loss leading to anemia, respiratory distress, and, of course, infection" were chief among them.

These issues could cause big trouble for a newborn who was not maintained under sterile medical conditions in a hospital environment immediately after birth.

"Bobbie Jo's infant," Chmura explained, "was born about one month early, which makes for a great survival rate, since the lungs are fully developed toward this trimester. If she was kept warm and dry and stimulated to cry in order to get the fluid out of her lungs so she can, essentially, take that 'first breath,' and was given immediate nutrition, then she would be safe."

In addition, the umbilical cord, the end which would ultimately become the child's navel, needed to be clamped at the time of birth, or more trouble could arise.

n.o.body in law enforcement knew for sure if Bobbie Jo's a.s.sailant had taken any of those precautions. They were a.s.suming that whoever had taken the child was in a state of panic. Under those circ.u.mstances, anything could happen.

If the child was healthy and had survived the delivery without any lacerations or serious injuries, authorities believed Bobbie Jo's attacker had chosen to take the child at the perfect time, a factor that was likely a big part of the reason Bobbie was chosen as a victim in the first place.

"A lot of young pregnant women go into labor at thirty-seven to thirty-eight weeks," Chruma added. "Maybe Lisa Montgomery had a feeling she needed to wait until thirty-six weeks' gestation for a healthy baby, but not too long after, or Bobbie Jo would have gone to the hospital already. A little planning on her part, perhaps?"

After all the evidence was collected, there would be little doubt in the government's opinion that Lisa had planned on taking Bobbie Jo's child for at least one month prior to Bobbie Jo's murder. The very nature of the crime required premeditation and planning. How could Bobbie Jo's attacker know, for example, Zeb would be at work? And, how could she know no one else would be at Bobbie Jo's home when she arrived?

Ben Espey considered that whoever had gone to such great lengths to murder Bobbie Jo and cut her child from her womb had probably done a bit of research about how to keep the child alive. At least that's what he hoped as he faced a full night of searching.

20.

Bobbie Jo Stinnett's killer had a thirty-minute jump on law enforcement, enough time to get away without anyone noticing. Driving to Melvern, Kansas, where she lived, couldn't have been a trip Lisa Montgomery had plotted out in advance. With a three-and-a-half-hour car ride ahead of her on a good day, without any traffic or car problems, she had to maintain the health of a baby, who had been born prematurely out of a hospital, as she drove.

By the time Ben Espey sent word out regarding what had happened, Lisa was not heading into Melvern, however. She was on her way to Topeka, Kansas, where, authorities say, she would put the second part of her plan in to effect.

Still a long trip, at two-and-a-half hours, Topeka was a town Lisa had chosen as part of her after-the-kidnapping plan because she would have to, at some point, explain to her husband, Kevin, that she'd given birth to their child. She couldn't just show up at home with her. He would wonder: Why didn't you call from the hospital?

She had to prepare a story explaining the birth. Kevin and two of her own children would play roles in the scenario she planned.

21.

Beyond trying to cut through the red tape of getting an Amber Alert issued, Sheriff Ben Espey had several other problems as the critical hours after the murder ticked away. Most important, he had to rally several different law enforcement agencies and undertake the daunting task of knocking on doors in Skidmore, with the hope of gathering as much information as he could about the last minutes of Bobbie Jo's life.

While Espey was in the investigation room in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Nodaway County Sheriff's Department, filling his blackboard with information, a lead came in that seemed, at least on the surface, extremely promising. The first twenty-four to forty-eight hours of any investigation are vital to solving the case. With an infant born prematurely-and under the most inhumane circ.u.mstances imaginable-time becomes your biggest opponent. Espey hoped someone in the neighborhood had seen something, anything. The murderer was, likely, covered with blood-maybe the baby, too. There was also an indication the murderer had blond hair. Crime-scene technicians had uncovered several strands of blond hair from both of Bobbie Jo's hands.

Then a call came into the sheriff's department regarding a resident at a nearby nursing home who supposedly had been involved in selling black-market babies for $6,000 each. Espey sent two deputies to fetch the man. When they got him back to the department, however, they realized immediately that getting anything out of him was going to be almost impossible, or at least a long, tedious process that would eat up crucial hours they didn't have to spare.

"The guy was a deaf mute. I had to sit," explained Espey, "and write out all of my questions to him. We spent all night trying to get things out of him."

While that was happening, Espey had to brief the media, who were clamoring for a story. He stepped out from the bas.e.m.e.nt of the department and held a short press conference in the back parking lot of the station.

"Someone was wanting a baby awful bad," Espey said. "The victim was killed no more than an hour before she was found. She may have struggled with her killer.... Blondhair was found in her hands."

Reporters shot questions at Espey in rapid-fire succession. He could give out only certain information. The investigation was ongoing. A killer was at large. A baby was missing. Compromising the investigation at such an early stage by giving out the wrong information was something Espey didn't want to do. "There were no visible signs of forced entry into the home," added Espey when pressed.

Reaffirming that the investigation was multip.r.o.nged, Espey commended the many different law enforcement agencies helping out, "all over northwestern Missouri," including the St. Joseph Police Department (PD) nearby, which had sent in a CSI team. "They are very well-trained...and very good."

Espey made it clear Bobbie Jo's husband, Zeb, was no longer considered a suspect, because he had an alibi: he was working at Kawasaki Motors when the murder occurred and had several witnesses to confirm his whereabouts.

Eight FBI agents were sent to the region and became part of the task force. A murder committed in the course of a kidnapping was a federal crime, especially with a suspect possibly crossing state lines.

As Espey saw it, the FBI's presence early on was a G.o.dsend-specifically two agents who arrived hours after the murder.

Outside the department, on the street, Espey was still briefing reporters. "The doctors who examined Bobbie Jo gave us information indicating we probably would have a live child if we could find her...."

As twilight turned the Missouri sky as black as the ocean floor, police in Atchison County, Missouri, radioed in a report of sighting a "red car." They were in pursuit of it.

Could it be?

But as cops tailed the car, they couldn't get a good bead on the driver. As they approached the car to get a closer look, the driver turned off the headlights and, racing along the back roads of northwestern Missouri, took a turn into the woods alongside the main road. Within minutes, it vanished.

A glimmer of hope for Bobbie Jo's family was gone as quickly as it came in. It would be the beginning of a long night of highs and lows for Ben Espey, as varying reports flooded the system.

"That red car in Atchison County," said Espey, "that wasn't our car. I knew it right away." He could feel it, he said.

Espey had his own hunch about the case he was about to follow through on-a gut feeling that, in the end, would help solve the case.