Murder in the Heartland

by M. William Phelps

  Approximately thirty prisoners were on death row the day Lisa was arrested. Would she be number thirty-one?

  As Lisa sat in prison, Todd Graves started laying the groundwork for the government’s case.

  “There are numerous statutes,” Graves said, reflecting on how the government was faring in its decision to pursue the death penalty against Lisa. “We have to have a very specific statute. We have specific jurisdiction, not general jurisdiction. And so there are a number of crimes, but it has to fit within one of those categories.”

  Speaking a day after her arrest, Graves was specific in the way he viewed what Lisa had reportedly admitted. “I’m not sure any act of violence that results in a death would be considered a normal act.”

  Graves had grown up in Northwest Missouri and lived there most of his life. He knew a lot of the people in the region where Bobbie Jo was murdered. It was, in every meaningful sense, an indescribable crime, unspeakable. Those images people now had as the affidavit was made public were horrifying. The one person people were talking about most was Becky Harper, Bobbie Jo’s mother, who had found her daughter and believed her “stomach had exploded.” The words Harper used were, by themselves, appalling. To think a mother would come upon her daughter bleeding to death on the floor of her home and her only grandchild missing—it was inconceivable.

  “Well,” Graves said after being asked how he personally felt, “it’s certainly among the most heartrending, and it is a very unusual case.”

  Graves had been a state prosecutor before being appointed U.S. attorney.

  “And there—believe it or not—there are other unusual cases [I have seen]. But this one definitely kicks you in the gut…. This is the heart of America. We are at the geographic and population center of the country. And to have something happen here that gets this kind of attention certainly is something that we don’t look forward to.”

  Representative Sam Graves, who had helped in Ben Espey’s fight to get the Amber Alert issued the night Victoria Jo went missing, released a statement on Saturday detailing his plan to introduce legislation that would make it a bit easier to get future Amber Alerts issued for abductions. It wouldn’t matter if the child was a newborn, infant, or fetus; this case proved any abduction warranted an Amber Alert, even if issued with a vague description of the child.

  Representative Graves was proud to be able to submit legislation in honor of Victoria Jo, who had become a symbol of hope to the entire Skidmore community, if not all of western Missouri. Lisa Montgomery, on the other hand, at least in the eyes of the judicial system from here on out, would be known simply as Case Number 04-00210-01-JTM.

  One more number on a court docket.

  67

  As the town of Skidmore rallied around Zeb, his family, and Becky Harper, comforting them, Pastor Mike Wheatley and the First Church of God became the self-appointed foundation of support for the Montgomery family.

  Wheatley told reporters he was “stunned,” like the rest of the community, by the events of the past few days. He was “pulling together to…surround the Montgomery family with love.” He then added, “I’ve known evil people in my life and you can feel it standing six feet away from them—and Lisa was not that kind of person. It was a horrendous act, but that doesn’t make her a bad person.”

  A few days after Lisa’s arrest, Wheatley used harsher words, saying, “If she actually did this crime—it’s still alleged—if she doesn’t repent of it, yes, she’s going to hell.”

  Carl Boman arrived in Melvern at about 10:00 A.M. and went to the Montgomerys’ house. The media were camped at the end of the driveway, waiting for a statement from Kevin.

  As Carl and his brother drove past the satellite trucks and local-news vans, kicking up mud behind them, Carl couldn’t help but think how far he had come in his life with the woman who was now the center of all this attention.

  “When I first met Lisa,” he said, “she was a lost teenager. We’d talk for hours about the future, about kids, and normal things two people talk about. Who in their wildest dreams would have thought some day all this interest would be centered on Lisa and such a horrible event, not to mention a young, beautiful woman would be murdered and Lisa responsible?”

  Looking at everyone gathered around the end of the driveway, Carl felt overwhelmed.

  “My kids, the people I love most in the world—here was their mother being held for this act. She was a woman I had loved at one time and, at the same time, had also lived in hell with.”

  Although the day was sunny and rather warm for that time of the year, a “heartbroken” Carl felt the “sad and gloomy” sense that the town had taken on. It was as if a pall had been cast over everything, some melancholy blanket of despair.

  Having learned in the U.S. Navy the hard way that showing emotion was a sign of weakness, Carl collected himself before he and his brother stepped out of the truck and walked up to the Montgomerys’ porch.

  Carl knocked on the door. Kevin, disheveled and obviously distraught, answered. Without even thinking about it, the two men, having been foes for a period, hugged as if they were long-lost friends reuniting at an airport.

  Rebecca, Alicia, and Ryan were sitting on the living-room floor in shock, Carl remembered, and halfheartedly acknowledged him when he entered the house. Their behavior was odd, he thought, but understandable. They had been sucker punched.

  They all sat together in the living room.

  “Nice out there today,” mentioned Kevin.

  “It’s warm,” said Carl. “Sunny too.”

  “Not usually this warm, huh,” added Kevin.

  “No. It’s weird.”

  “How ’bout those Sooners?” They had just put a beating on Colorado and were preparing to take what was an undefeated season to USC. Kevin, however, was more or less just trying to make idle chitchat to pass the time.

  “Yeah,” said Carl.

  Alicia was sitting next to Carl. He had his arm around her. She was quiet while he and Kevin continued talking about the house, the landscaping the Montgomerys had recently done, and more football.

  Then, “Why, Dad?” Alicia blurted out.

  That one comment changed everything.

  Kevin dropped his head and shook it back and forth, fighting tears. “She didn’t have to have a baby to keep me,” he said. “We could have been happy without a child.”

  Carl decided to explain he was taking the kids back home to Oklahoma the following morning. The Montgomerys wanted the children to stay until Christmas, so they could say their good-byes to school friends and enjoy whatever pleasure the holiday was to bring.

  Carl ultimately agreed.

  “The Montgomerys’ house,” Carl said later, “was so depressing. I understood why, but it was all I could stand at the time.”

  When community members showed up with food, Carl felt like an outsider. “I was definitely out of my element.”

  Among those who arrived was Pastor Mike Wheatley. As if at a funeral, Wheatley and fellow parishioners handed out sandwiches while trying to console everyone. Later that night and the following few days, Wheatley would show up on television speaking on behalf of Kevin, Lisa, and Carl’s children.

  “No one really asked him,” said Carl, “but he just kind of took the reins and started calling himself the family spokesperson.”

  That creepy sense of numbness Carl felt as he and his brother pulled into town was there again when they left. People appeared traumatized, walking around in some sort of daze.

  “I will never understand,” said one man in Melvern later. “There are kids in this world nobody wants. Do I hate her? If it happened anywhere else in the country, I’d hate her. But she’s from here. I just feel nothing.”

  Kevin came out of the house Saturday afternoon and released a formal statement to the reporters and television crews. He stood at the end of the driveway with cameras and tape recorders pointed at him. It was clear Kevin had been crying. His eyes were puffy. He looked tired. Worn. He
was wearing a baseball cap he kept fidgeting with as he tried to find the right words.

  “This has to be as hard, or harder, on them (the Stinnett family) as it is on me,” Kevin said through tears a few days later. The sincerity in his voice was evident. What he had to say was, indeed, coming from his heart. “I sure hope they get as much support from their church and community as I have, because we’re all going to need it.”

  Then, he added, “My heart ain’t broke just for me and Lisa and her kids. It’s them, too. That was a precious baby,” he paused, sniffling. “I know. I know.”

  68

  Judy Shaughnessy was at home late Saturday night when the crime her daughter was being accused of settled on her like a death in the family. She felt a sensation of dread. Lisa was being called everything from a sociopath to one of the most vicious killers in American history, sending Internet bloggers into a vengeance-based frenzy, causing Judy to go out of her mind with mixed emotions. She loved Lisa, of course, but she also viewed her as someone who needed professional help.

  With the media calling the house for comments and hovering around the end of the driveway, Judy’s husband, Danny, drove down to the hardware store in Lyndon and picked up several orange-and-black No Trespassing signs. (“This oughta keep ’em away.”)

  Danny liked chopping firewood in the forest by himself, hauling it back home, and stacking it. He took pleasure in the simple monotony of everyday tasks. All this attention was overwhelming, an invasion. Before marrying Judy, Danny had been with the same woman for twenty-three years. He’d fathered four children. He did time in ’Nam.

  “Danny is strong-natured,” Judy said of her fifth husband, “and can only take so much; then he nips it in the bud.”

  When he returned from the hardware store, six-foot, 215-pound Danny Shaughnessy stopped at the edge of the driveway, took a ball-peen hammer out of the back of his pickup, and tacked one of the No Trespassing signs to an old cottonwood standing guard over the property, facing the street. The others would be posted around the property in back.

  “We did make a statement later to the Kansas City Star. But all others, ‘no comment’ they got the message!” she said.

  Judy had traveled around the country and done things most in Melvern and Skidmore had only read about or seen on television. Now she felt her experience could help the family through it all. Yet no one was turning to her for guidance. She felt isolated, as if no one wanted to talk to her.

  “The days following Lisa’s arrest were hard for me,” explained Judy. “I couldn’t answer the phone. I didn’t want to go anywhere. I stayed here on the farm. I couldn’t eat. Sleep. All I did was drink coffee, smoke, and cry.”

  She’d called the Montgomerys to find out about the kids, but nobody was responding. She left messages.

  “I felt that I was their grandmother and the Montgomerys were only step-grandparents. They didn’t even have the decency to call me to tell me that the kids were okay or not okay. Not one call from the people in Melvern, not even Kevin. I was very hurt.”

  Judy was never one to choose her words carefully. Some viewed her manner as abrasive, even cold; but Judy was speaking her truth, as she saw it. She felt she deserved better treatment from those involved.

  “At the time,” she added, “the kids did believe their mother was pregnant, and I do think they had a hard time believing their mother did this. I had a hard time believing it myself. Lisa was capable of a lot of things, but I never thought she would do something like this. But I had to face reality—and it still haunts me.”

  Judy was also grieving for Bobbie Jo Stinnett and her family, along with the baby. “How could Lisa do this, having four children of her own? Taking a mother away from her baby…. Look what she lost.”

  On the day Lisa was arrested, Judy and Danny had taken Judy’s grandson Justin to the Wal-Mart in Topeka to get holiday portraits done. “Right there, Justin, don’t move. Smile now, son. Smile.” After that mini fiasco, which they thoroughly enjoyed, Judy and Danny drove Justin over to his former foster-family’s house. They were having a Christmas party. “I respected them. They needed to see him, too.” Then they stopped and had a bite to eat before heading back home.

  While Judy and Danny were out with Justin celebrating life, Lisa was reportedly in Skidmore, doing God only knows what. Judy couldn’t comprehend how separated she was from the person Lisa had become. It was as if just when Judy thought things couldn’t get any worse, something else happened. One kid in prison on a drug charge; another on her way on a possible murder rap. Was there an answer somewhere?

  It had been a beautiful day, what with Judy and Justin and Danny just “hanging out” like a family. The sun was bright and powerful. There was a certain It’s a Wonderful Life spirit in every handshake and “hello,” tip of the hat and wave. People were happy and full of that joy only the holidays can bring.

  But then everything changed—or, as Judy put it, “the nightmare began.”

  69

  Early Sunday morning, December 19, as Lisa Montgomery sat in an eight-by-ten-foot holding cell in Wyandotte County Detention Center in downtown Kansas City, Sunday services were concluded in Melvern and Skidmore. This morning would be a day of turning to God for answers.

  Why had it happened?

  In Skidmore, churchgoers sipped coffee, read the morning newspaper, and laid out their Sunday best. Today’s prayer, hymns, and Scripture readings would be especially poignant. The supple words of the Bible, so rich in piety and grace, would carry a heavy burden this morning.

  The Reverend Harold Hamon had relocated to Skidmore with his wife, Mary Lou, a little over four years ago. At seventy-seven, about five feet, five inches, 133 pounds, Hamon might have seemed to be a frail old man with sagging shoulders and paper-white hair. But Hamon, his congregation confidently knew, was a hulking giant in heart and mind. Hamon was no stranger to giving sermons under ominous circumstances. When he was twenty years old, just out of the navy, the first funeral he presided over was for a victim of suicide. The second, not too long after, was for a stillborn baby. Hamon knew suffering, but more important, he knew how to describe it to the people who looked to him for answers.

  Since Bobbie Jo’s death, Hamon had been asked by just about every major media outlet to appear on television. They wanted him to talk about the life Bobbie Jo would never have and how Skidmore had been affected by the crime. But Hamon thought it ill-advised to speak of such a beloved community member, who hadn’t been buried yet, taking into consideration how Bobbie Jo’s family must have been hurting. So he declined.

  Hamon’s refusal didn’t stop the blitz of telephone calls his office had received since the murder—some of which, he pointed out later, were uplifting and consoling: well wishes sent by fellow ministers and pastors throughout the Midwest, offering their support.

  “I told them,” Hamon described later to a reporter, “to pray. America is a great nation. There’s good people here.”

  Amen.

  Harold Hamon’s unwavering faith in God would carry him through the next few days. As members of his congregation flocked to the church at ten o’clock Sunday morning, seeking solace and reassurance that life could go on in the face of evil, he sensed a collective conviction in town, which couldn’t be dispirited in any way. This was significant. For it was a time when many might be asking themselves, if God truly existed, why would He allow a family to experience such an incurable pain? Bobbie Jo was so young. So well-liked and well-deserving. Ahead of her, she had a life many could only dream about. Who could make any sense out of it all?

  “These tragedies come not just here,” Hamon explained, commenting on how he handled Sunday service and preparations for Bobbie Jo’s funeral, “but all over the place, the world. And God loves the world.”

  Over the past twenty-four hours, Hamon had turned to the one source he knew could offer him the answers the town, as well as his own spirit, so eagerly sought. The Bible was where Hamon believed he could find a similar exp
erience and share it with his people. In the words of the Apostles, Hamon would help Skidmore understand that, even during a time of unspeakable tragedy, the Lord was working. Many would have a hard time accepting God’s plan; but Hamon was sure, after reading several verses and relating them to Bobbie Jo’s death, he could find a way to put it all into meaning and prayer.

  The Skidmore Christian Church sat on a small hill just outside downtown. One hundred yards away stood the house Bobbie Jo and Zeb used to call home. Now it was a sad reminder to all who passed by of what had taken place inside.

  An unassuming building, no doubt converted from an old house, the Skidmore Christian Church was where many people of Skidmore gathered every Sunday to understand God and all He had to offer. The tannish brown stucco gave the dwelling a gingerbread look, and in winter months, with snow and ice capping the steepled rooftop, covering the shingles like frosting, it looked edible. A flag with baby blue and white, and a red cross where stars should be, hung outside the front door and flapped in the slight breeze. Like the white banner Welcome sign hanging below the north peak, the weathered white trim around the windows spoke to one of the church’s core beliefs: the soul is what matters most, not what’s on the outside—the heart, the body, the mind.

  Hamon had a gift, some explained, for calming people. He could take a situation and make people understand its lesson. As the organ pumped the groan of a tugboat and people proceeded into the small church at a pace of bereavement, here would be Hamon’s test.

  This was the same church where Bobbie Jo and Zeb had been married, not even two years ago. (“Oh, they were such a lovely couple,” said one man in town. “The pride and joy of this little town.”) Many of the same people filing in now were there, celebrating the love Zeb and Bobbie Jo shared. After the ceremony, Bobbie Jo had given Hamon a card, thanking him for officiating. Hamon had kept the card. A note stapled to the back of the card was on his mind today: Bobbie Jo thanked Hamon for preaching the service at “my wedding,” she wrote, but had crossed out “my” and replaced it with “our.” She signed the card “Zeb and Bobbie Jo.” Hamon knew, “being a man,” he told a reporter, who “wrote that.” It was Bobbie Jo, of course, speaking for her and Zeb as a team, a couple—that is, a married couple. She was proud to be able to thank the reverend on behalf of both her and her new husband.