Baby Be Mine

by Diane Fanning

  Bo’s daughter, Cheryl Huston, still worked at the family store, but no longer lived at home. She had a family of her own now, but she was frightened by the incident and scared of Ken McElroy. “I woke up terrified. I spent all day terrified. I went to bed terrified.”

  She carried a shotgun with her everywhere she went. One day, she forgot to carry it out of the house and to the truck. When she climbed in, her 2-year-old daughter said, “Mommy, where’s your gun?”

  With that simple question, Cheryl realized embracing her fear was no way to live—and no way to raise her children. She never carried her shotgun with her again. Still, she took precautions. While most mothers posted their children’s birthday party announcement in the paper, Cheryl did not. She did not want to alert Ken McElroy, who knew her children were the grandchildren of Bo Bowenkamp.

  Although Bo was old and bedridden, McElroy continued his campaign of harassment. He threatened the Bowenkamps, the minister who visited Bo in the hospital and anyone who expressed any sympathy for their fate. He even pulled a shotgun on the part-time town marshal who was planning to testify for the prosecution, telling him he would kill anyone who put him behind bars. The marshal reported this incident, but when the county authorities did not back him up and revoke McElroy’s bail, the marshal turned in his badge to the mayor.

  McElroy’s shooting of Bo was a pretty open-and-shut case. However, since McFadin’s legal maneuverings earned a change of venue, neither the judge nor the jury who heard the case was aware of McElroy’s past. The jury gave him a short 2-year sentence. The judge released McElroy on bond for twenty-five days while his attorney filed an appeal. He was due back in court on July 10.

  A few days later, McElroy took center stage in Skidmore’s D&G Tavern. He flaunted an assault rifle with a bayonet as he demonstrated how he’d finish off the job on Bowencamp. He bragged he’d put a bullet in Bowencamp’s head and then carve him up with the blade. Prosecutor Baird tried to get McElroy’s bail revoked after this incident, but the judge thought July 10 was soon enough to put McElroy back behind bars.

  The townfolk awoke to the day of McElroy’s hearing with plans to travel to court to encourage his immediate incarceration. Then they got the word that the legal proceedings were postponed until July 20 because McElroy’s attorney had a scheduling conflict.

  About sixty distraught citizens gathered in the American Legion hall to meet with Nodaway County Sheriff Danny Estes. They discussed forming a neighborhood watch, but the suggestion generated little enthusiasm. They wanted a more proactive approach.

  While Estes drove away from the meeting with the frustrated Skidmore citizens and headed back to his office in Maryville, trouble was brewing. McElroy got word of the town gathering. He drove to Main Street and parked his new Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck in plain sight. He sauntered into the D&G Tavern to gloat to his neighbors.

  The disgruntled crowd of men heard the word that McElroy was at the D&G. They all moved down the street and gathered outside. About thirty men in the crowd went inside. Some ordered a soda or a beer—others just stood and stared at the man who tormented their days.

  McElroy ordered a six-pack to go. He sauntered out of the bar with his wife Trena by his side. Most of the men who’d been inside the bar followed them out and joined the others still waiting outside on Main Street at Newton’s corner. As they watched, Trena climbed into the passenger seat. McElroy hefted his weight up behind the wheel.

  McElroy smiled—pleased with the fear, anxiety and anger he saw on the faces of his neighbors. He basked in the glow of their hatred. He didn’t want to back up and drive off right away, he was enjoying the drama too much not to perpetuate it a bit longer.

  He put a Camel to his lips. He pulled out a lighter. Held it up with a flourish. His thumb flicked the striking wheel. The flame flared. The first shot rang out. Two shots came from the left. Four exploded in the rear.

  Men hit the ground. Others fled the scene. Eyes met then slid away. A blood-spattered Trena leaped out of the truck screaming. One man in the crowd grabbed her and rushed her out of the line of fire. Then silence hit the streets of Skidmore. And an unspoken oath was sworn. Eyes met and held. Heads nodded.

  Estes—still en route to Maryville—got a call over his radio. He raced back to Skidmore. When he arrived, the crowd had dispersed, weapons were concealed and McElroy was dead.

  Despite the presence of dozens of witnesses, no one saw anything. The only people who called in on the tip hotline were media. Despite the work of a task force of twenty-three officers from six law enforcement agencies, and testimony from Trena and others present at the shooting, the grand jury adjourned without issuing an indictment against anyone. They ruled that McElroy “died from bullets fired by a person or persons unknown.”

  The vigilante incident drew media attention from across the globe. Editorials by newspapers at home and abroad expressed outrage at the community’s act of violence and their willingness to remain silent. The citizens of Skidmore, however, were sanguine about the event. As Postmaster Jim Hartman told reporters, the killers should get a medal. He compared them to the inventors of penicillin—“Nobody tried to hang them for finding a way to kill a germ.”

  The only regret any of the townspeople expressed was about the damage to McElroy’s shiny new Silverado.

  Now, decades later, one of their own was an innocent victim. She lived just three blocks away from the place where McElroy died. And Skidmore—still shaking from the tremors of a bully’s death more than twenty years ago—was outraged, terrified and determined to secure justice in the death of Bobbie Jo.

  7

  Out in the mobile command center post on Elm Street in Skidmore, Detective Curtis Howard finished his preliminary review of the Stinnetts’ computer without finding any additional information to aid in the search for Darlene Fischer. He needed an IP address before he could uncover more. That task was difficult if not impossible to accomplish in the middle of the-night.

  Around 2 A.M., he packed up the computer and his equipment and took it all to his office at St. Joseph’s Police Department. He no longer had the time to do the imaging. In just a few hours, he had a training session scheduled. The computer work could not wait. Someone had to pick up where he left off and move the forensics examination of the PC forward. He called on the highway patrol’s computer wizard Corporal Jeff Owens.

  When Owens arrived in St. Joseph, Howard briefed him on what steps he had taken and the questions his preliminary search raised. Owens transported the computer an hour down the road to his base of operations, the multi-agency Heart of America Regional Computer Forensic Laboratory in Kansas City, Missouri.

  This facility—designed to coordinate and enhance the forensic computer capabilities of law enforcement in the region—was based on a model developed in San Diego. That model was first copied by the Dallas field office of the FBI in 2000. Eight agencies in north Texas participated and benefited from that center.

  After passing the Patriot Act of 2001, Congress took a look at those two offices and charged the FBI with opening more facilities across the country. In 2003 two more labs were in operation—the one where Owens worked and another in Chicago, Illinois.

  Corporal Owens linked Bobbie Jo’s computer to his own. His computer was equipped with a program that would not permit the erasure of any of the data. It also had software that enabled real-time viewing of all the data in the computer he examined.

  At 5 A.M., Sheriff Espey abandoned his search in Fairfax and headed back to Nodaway County. He was convinced that Darlene Fischer existed only on the Internet. It was up to the computer forensics specialists to solve the mystery of her true identity.

  Espey was grateful for the news coverage reporters provided on the Amber Alert for Bobbie Jo’s baby. He did not want the media getting in the way at the crime scene on Elm Street. But he did want them as an ally.

  He knew the local press was ravenous for any information and that the gathering storm cloud of national
media would be unstoppable. With a murder this fresh and a child still missing, it was hard to distinguish what information needed to be withheld to solve the crime and what needed to be released to find the baby.

  By the time Espey got back to Nodaway County, media crawled all over Skidmore like ants on a sugar pile—and more were arriving with every passing hour. He set up an area next to the jail for the reporters and cameramen, and promised regular press conferences. The journalists took the bait and headed out of Skidmore to the county seat of Maryville.

  It was all a surreal experience for Espey. A little more than a year earlier, Espey was battered and reeling after election night. He very nearly watched his career dissolve before his eyes. Nearly ten thousand votes were cast in the November 2 election of 2004. Espey won by a mere fourteen votes. Now he stood in the national spotlight clutching the desperate hope that everything he did would validate the faith of the voters who reelected him to office.

  As truth and rumor swirled through the area, it was easy pickings for the media. Everybody knew everybody—and everyone had something to say. The desire to help find the baby overcame the natural reticence in Skidmore to speak about one of their own to anyone from outside of the community.

  As reporters picked up each fresh scent, they lobbed ceaseless questions at Sheriff Ben Espey every time he stepped outside. Initially, he told them, “We’re going to work this case as a homicide right now. We’re not going to tell you that it is. We’re not going to tell you that it isn’t.”

  A lead regarding two men, a woman and a black-market baby-selling ring led Espey to announce that they were looking for these three persons of interest. At the same time, he informed the media that they wanted to locate a 1980s or 1990s red two-door hatchback—possibly a Honda.

  Whoever committed this act knew what to do, he told them, and “most likely had some medical knowledge.” He said that everything they now knew indicated that “Somebody was wanting a baby awful bad.”

  Law enforcement had checked up on every documented deviant in the county by the time Espey called a major news conference late Friday morning. Now that the authorities explored a more promising lead, the sheriff was more forthcoming.

  He stepped to the microphone in a fresh, smooth khaki uniform that belied his sleepless night on the job. Atop his head sat a Nodaway County Sheriff’s Department baseball cap. The brim shaded the exhaustion and anxiety in his eyes. His tall, square-shouldered, stoic image spoke of a man a whole county could trust. He appeared in control of himself, in control of the situation and even in control of fate itself. That image concealed an internal swamp of rising desperation and doubt.

  He explained that an autopsy was now under way in Jackson County. “More than likely, our victim was strangled and probably deceased when the baby was removed from her womb. The mother was eight months pregnant, so we’re looking at a one-month-premature baby that was removed with the umbilical cord cut.

  “And for now it looks like to us that the evidence shows that the baby was probably wrapped up and taken out of the home. That puts us to looking for a red car that had been sitting in the driveway from two-thirty to three, which we’re going to rule was the time when all this took place.”

  In response to their questions, he told them that neither the investigators nor the family knew of any suspects. “This was a nice lady—everybody said this was a nice lady. She didn’t have any enemies. They just couldn’t understand how anyone could do this.”

  A reporter asked, “Is this baby-selling—is that still a theory?”

  “That is still a theory.”

  The reporter continued. “This is something I’ve never heard of—black-market sale of children. I mean, you’ve been doing this a long time .. .”

  “I’ve never heard of it,” Espey said. He added that one child abduction specialist never heard of one working in the United States, either, but the FBI now had six agents searching on the Internet and calling states to find out if one had developed in recent months. “That lead,” he added, “is possibly going up in smoke. The third party has misled us.”

  And, as in every other crime whose inexplicable horror stirs up primitive fears, a reporter raised the question of a Satanic ritual. “Not here,” Espey insisted. “I’ve been in law enforcement here for twenty years and we have not dealt with any cults in Nodaway County.”

  “Sir, where does the investigation go from here?” another reporter shouted out.

  Espey sighed. He opened and shut his mouth, struggling to find the right answer.

  “Forward,” an unidentified voice rang out.

  Espey grinned in appreciation. “Forward,” he said. The crowd chuckled in response. “It follows whatever leads we get.”

  It seemed to Espey that every time investigators got a new lead, the press was just a step or two behind them. He hoped his cooperation and openness would ensure that they worked with law enforcement, not against them.

  Half a continent away, in Franklin, North Carolina, rat terrier breeder Dyanne Siktar sat down at her computer. As usual, her first stop was Annie’s Rat Terrier Rest Area. Her attention riveted on an unusual post. “Don’t know if anyone knows this rat terrier breeder but Bobbie Jo Stinnett was murdered.”

  Dyanne jumped from that website to CNN.com and read the full story. A connection clicked in her mind. She bounced back to the rat terrier boards. She found what she sought—a December 15 exchange between Darlene Fischer and Bobbie Jo Stinnett.

  It began with a post from Darlene to Bobbie Jo:

  I was recommended to you by Jason Dawson and have been unable to reach you by either phone or email. Please get in touch with me soon as we are considering the purchase of one of your puppies . . .

  Bobbie Jo responded right away and the two spent twenty minutes in back-and-forth instant messaging. Bobbie Jo wrapped up their Internet conversation:

  Darlene,

  I’ve emailed you with the directions so we can meet. I do so hope that the email reaches you. Great chatting with you on messenger. And do look forward to chatting with you tomorrow a.m.

  Thanks Jason, and talk to you soon Darlene!

  Have a great evening

  Bobbie

  Dyanne picked up the phone and called information for the number of the FBI in Missouri. She was connected to Special Agent Kurt Lipanovich. She gave him the URL for the rat terrier board and, most important, the IP address of the message sent by Darlene Fischer to Bobbie Jo.

  Lipanovich’s phone rang again as soon as he hung up with Dyanne. It was Jeff Owens, who had just uncovered an IP address—the same one Lipanovich just received.

  The agent contacted Senior Security Specialist Melissa Erwin at Qwest Communications, who confirmed that her company hosted that address. Performing a reverse domain name system search, she pinpointed a Topeka, Kansas, server. Now the investigators had a limited geographic area for their search. They hit the road and gathered their forces in Kansas.

  Erwin continued her digging. She determined that the user accessed a server through a dial-up connection. The telephone number making that call late on the afternoon of December 15 originated from 32419 South Adams Road in Melvern, Kansas.

  The investigators centered in Topeka raced thirty miles southwest to Melvern, a tiny town with a population of 400—just barely bigger than Skidmore. Six FBI agents and Kansas law enforcement officials gathered around the rural farmhouse of Kevin and Lisa Montgomery. When they arrived, no one was at home. Combining Chris Law’s description of the car he’d seen at the Stinnett home with information from the Kansas vehicle registration database, they would know the Montgomerys were on their way home the second they spotted a dirty red Toyota Corolla.

  The FBI was willing to assume responsibility for the case now—in fact, they insisted on it. The investigation had moved out of the jurisdiction of both the Missouri Highway Patrol and the Nodaway County Sheriff’s Office. This power play raised the age-old specter of conflict between federal and local authorities. T
o Sheriff Espey, this was his case. The victims were his responsibility. He was not dropping the reins and walking away.

  Espey sent the most effective interrogator he knew to the scene—Detective Randy Strong of Maryville Public Safety. Espey’s orders were clear: “You don’t stop for anybody. You just go in the house and don’t let anyone get in your way.”

  With Detective Don Fritz riding shotgun, Strong raced at 125 miles per hour from Maryville to Melvern. He made the trip in a record one hour and twenty minutes. Throughout the drive, he kept his cell phone line open in constant communication with Espey. He maintained that connection as they waited with other law enforcement officials for the arrival of the residents of the farmhouse.

  8

  The morning of December 17, Kevin and Lisa bundled up the baby, hopped in the car and headed up South Adams Road. Red-tailed hawks soared overhead or perched with seeming disinterest on fence posts—their large white chests glistening in the sun of a new day.

  Most of the trees alongside the road were dormant and bare. The monotony was broken by the occasional evergreen and the odd dusty gold orbs hanging from the branches and lying at the feet of the black walnut trees.

  A frugal farm wife like Lisa Montgomery would see bounty in that wild crop. Lovers of the black walnut gathered up the fruit this time of year and spread them across their basement floors to dry. When the outer shells darkened and turned brittle, they’d carry them out to the driveway and run them over a few times to dislodge the inner shell from its covering. Anyone who attempted to remove the outer surface by hand would have fingers marked for weeks with a deep brown stain that no amount of Lava soap scrubbing could wear away.

  The uncovered shells would not yield to a nutcracker. It took a hammer to shatter that surrounding casing and retrieve the nutmeat. After all that work, the occasional dud walnut—its contents shriveled and inedible—was a major disappointment. Many would wonder why anyone would bother going to all that trouble. But those who did knew the rewards—the satisfaction of living off the earth coupled with the pleasure of eating a walnut with ten times the flavor of a store-bought English walnut. That joy in harvesting bounty from the land was a bedrock value of agricultural communities across the Midwest.