On my Website, www.crimerant.com, a true crime blog I run with fellow true crime author Gregg Olsen, I wrote an article about my experience with a particular book signing attendee. Years ago, it was difficult for readers to reach out to authors. One had to write to the author’s publisher with the hope the letter would be forwarded. The Internet has changed that. For better or worse, the Web allows nearly unfettered access to authors. But more than that: our books are subject to global debate and criticism by anyone with a mouse, keyboard and connection to cyberspace. Unfortunately, anonymous, blind criticism can get out of hand quickly. Some people who hide behind the comfort of a computer screen will write nonsense, knowing they will suffer no consequences.
In Kansas City, I was confronted at a book signing by a person I believe to be “Nodaway Girl,” a disgruntled reader who had posted a highly critical (and, I must say, unfair) review of my book on Amazon.com.
Generally, when confronted during an event, I listen to what the person has to say and try to avoid a showdown. I believe everyone deserves to be heard. When Nodaway Girl (who wouldn’t admit who she was) approached, she asked, “Did you visit Skidmore at all during your research?”
“Of course I was in Skidmore,” I answered. “And yes, all of those observations about the town in my book are from my own reporting.”
On Amazon, Nodaway Girl had written that my book was a “patronizing and condescending view of America’s heartland….” The women I witnessed (and wrote about in the opening pages of the book) wearing “red and white aprons,” beating their rugs with brooms, had upset Nodaway Girl. She had grown up near Skidmore, she said, and hadn’t “…seen a woman wearing an apron since [her] great-grandmother died in 1974.”
I was indeed in Skidmore, Graham, Maitlin, and Maryville, and spoke to several women about the day Bobbie Jo Stinnett was murdered. Some of them were, in fact, wearing aprons and cleaning rugs as I approached.
Nodaway Girl had taken a jab at my research skills, saying that “equally disturbing” were the number “of mistakes [she] found…just about Nodaway County, Skidmore, and Maryville.” But she failed to point any of them out, or offer any advice as to how I could fix whatever errors I had made.
At the book signing, Nodaway Girl admitted the “mistakes” she “found” were minimal. If you aren’t from the region, she said, you’d never know they were there.
Of course, I always make every effort to avoid making errors. But every author will make one from time to time. I feel sick when someone writes to tell me that I have missed something. I have to live by my words. I do my best to correct all mistakes in future printings. Most people understand this.
Nodaway Girl’s Amazon review stated she was “related to Bobbie Jo Stinnett distantly,” and, like others, wondered why I had written the book before Lisa Montgomery’s trial.
I am not the first author to write a book before a trial. Far from it—just think, for example, of the many books published about the JonBenet Ramsey, O.J. Simpson, and Scott Peterson cases before they went to trial (and the Ramsey case, sadly, may never go to trial). Such books are common in the true-crime field. The reasons why I wrote this book before the trial are outlined clearly in its preface and epilogue.
Nodaway Girl claimed that “most of [my] information” was provided by Carl Boman. “How can an ex-husband be a reliable source?” she asked.
I developed dozens of sources for my book. Carl Boman was just one of them. Everyone had the opportunity to speak. As I have said at all of my events, most of my book is exclusive—and most of it is about how the Boman family (including Lisa’s four children) dealt with this tragedy, which is a unique perspective for a true crime book.
At my Kansas City book signing, I went through the book section by section as Nodaway Girl sat and listened. At the end of my lecture, I had a Q&A session. Nodaway Girl asked several questions. By the end of the afternoon, she agreed the review was written out of anger and haste.
After the Q&A concluded, she asked me to sign her book and even shook my hand. I was happy to accept her hard-won support at last.
Since the publication of this book in June 2006, U.S. attorney Todd Graves has stepped down, replaced by U.S. attorney Bradley J. Schlozman (although I’m told First Assistant U.S. Attorney Matt Whitworth will head the team prosecuting Lisa Montgomery). Thirty-five-year-old Schlozman was appointed to serve as the United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri under an Attorney General appointment on March 23, 2006. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office Web site, “Prior to assuming his current post, Mr. Schlozman served as the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division at the United States Department of Justice. In this capacity, Mr. Schlozman supervised all activities of the Civil Rights Division, which is comprised of over 700 employees, including 356 attorneys. The Civil Rights Division is responsible for enforcing federal civil rights statutes, including those statutes that prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, sex, disability, religion, and national origin in education, employment, credit, housing, public accommodations and facilities, voting, and certain federally funded and conducted programs….”
As of this writing, the U.S. Attorney’s Office reportedly anticipates a one-month-long trial. “There is so much overwhelming evidence against Lisa Montgomery, that this is as open and shut as a murder case could be,” one source involved in the prosecution told me. Sources also claim that Judy Clarke is no longer part of Lisa’s defense team.
Lisa Montgomery’s trial was scheduled to begin on October 24, 2006, but was postponed for no stated reason. A new trial date has been set for April 30, 2007. Because this update is being written months before that date, it will not include the outcome of the trial. If you wish to know the details of the verdict and sentence, do a simple Internet search for Lisa Montgomery and you should find all the information you need. In the Internet age, readers expect books to deliver a more meaningful account of current events than the simple facts that are reported daily in the news, and that is the kind of book I always strive to write.
What does the changing of the guard at the U.S. attorney’s office mean for Lisa Montgomery? Several things, perhaps. For one, Todd Graves was strongly against any type of “deal” for Lisa Montgomery. In contrast, I’ve been told, the new U.S. attorney, although he has never said so, might entertain a “sit down” and discuss a deal. But that deal, I was told by a source close to the prosecution, would have to involve a plea of guilty on Lisa’s part and a trial for sentencing.
Lisa Montgomery claims there’s no way she will admit guilt and cut a deal with the United States government.
“She still has not acknowledged she is guilty of any crime,” a source who speaks to Lisa quite often told me. “It seems as if she is ‘away’ for a while. She is really angry at Kayla [Boman] and wonders why she doesn’t contact her and blames [Carl Boman] for that. She bragged recently about completing a Spanish course. She talks about her prison life as if it is temporary and she is on vacation. She talks about her mother in a negative way, calling her a liar. [Rebecca] hasn’t seen her mother in three months…Kayla and Ryan haven’t seen her in six months.”
As for Victoria Jo, I’m told she is a happy, healthy baby girl, now two and a half years old. In downtown Skidmore, a small red-brick memorial stands near downtown. Its inscription reads: “In memory of Bobbie Jo Stinnett…loving wife, mother, daughter & sister.” It is a moving tribute to a young woman who lost her life fighting for her child, a small dedication to a woman whose fatal mistake was simply to trust someone she thought was a fellow expecting mother.
If you would like to receive updates about this story and my other books, or find out other news about my career, I encourage you to log on to my MySpace Web page (http://www.myspace.com/mwilliamphelps) and add me as your “friend.” I routinely send out bulletins regarding the cases I cover in my books. My next one, Because You Loved Me, due out during the fall of 2007, is the true account of two teen lovers who
met on MySpace and the subsequent murder of one of their mothers. I am grateful to all my readers and thank every one of you for giving my books a chance. Your opinions mean the world to me.
M. William Phelps
Vernon, CT
December, 2006
Some names have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals connected to this story.
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* Italics on first use of proper names and locations represents pseudonym or author’s replacement.
* Italics on first use of proper names and locations represents pseudonym or author’s replacement.
* Italics on first use of proper names and locations represents pseudonym or author’s replacement.
* Italics on first use of proper names and locations represents pseudonym or author’s replacement.
* Italics on first use of proper names and locations represents pseudonym or author’s replacement.
* Italics on first use of proper names and locations represents pseudonym or author’s replacement.
* Italics on first use of proper names and locations represents pseudonym or author’s replacement.
* Italics on first use of proper names and locations represents pseudonym or author’s replacement.
* Italics on first use of proper names and locations represents pseudonym or author’s replacement.
* Italics on first use of proper names and locations represents pseudonym or author’s replacement.
* Italics on first use of proper names and locations represents pseudonym or author’s replacement.
* Italics on first use of proper names and locations represents pseudonym or author’s replacement.
Murder in the Heartland Page 34
