The Tragic Death of Bobbie Jo Stinnett

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The Heartbreaking Death of Bobbie Jo Stinnett

It's only been a little over a week on this 22nd day of December in this year of our Lord, 2004 that Bobbie Jo Stinnett was strangled in her own home, her baby of eight months gestation ripped from her womb.

While the victim was a most ordinary American from the red state of Missouri, her murderer, Lisa Montgomery, has to perhaps be one of the strangest, and most dangerous, of people. Lisa Montgomery has been arrested and confessed to the murder of Bobbie Jo Stinnett. More amazing, the baby girl torn from her mother's womb, Victoria Stinnett, is alive and well.

Is Lisa Montgomery crazy?

Because for sure this most unusual crime, replete with twists, turns, curves and bends involving dog shows, internet chat boards, strange cousins, dead dogs, and fake pregnancies, will be the true crime trial of the decade.

Because if Lisa Montgomery is not crazy then she certainly behaved as if she were.

Although the women did, intriguingly, concoct a complicated crime that required crafty duplicity and endless lies.

It still is not known clearly how many children Lisa Montgomery has. Indeed there is even suspicion cast about her four, three or two children and the possibility that THEIR births are also suspect.

I have the accounts of Lisa Montgomery and assert the following:

Lisa Montgomery is currently married to Kevin Montgomery and lives in a ramshackle house in Malvern, Kansas. Both Lisa and Kevin have been married before. It has been stated that Lisa has four children but some personal witness accounts allege she has only two.

Lisa had been married to a Carl Boman. It's still unclear about their children but some accounts state that her eldest child is daughter Desiree, then daughter Chelsea, then son Carl, then youngest daughter Kayla. The three eldest are a year apart and currently attend high school. Lisa claimed in many of her internet posts that her children were all born a year apart. All of Lisa's children have a surname of Boman.

It's also unclear just where these children live. Kayla appears to live with Lisa in that she was actively involved in running her mother's rat terrier kennel.

Lisa and Kevin Montgomery have no children together. Various accounts state that Kevin Montgomery has three children from a prior marriage but beyond that little is known about his children.

Below is an actual post made by Lisa regarding her children.

As for socialization-I had 4 kids a year apart, they learned
co-operation, manners, and are closer than they were before.
As they are all in high school now, and we had plans when they all
graduate, our next ones will be homeschooled the first couple of years.

Lisa

The journey of Lisa Montgomery for the past two years is a twisted and strange one. It would seem that for those two years Lisa has been actively plotting and scheming a way to get a newborn baby. Though I must caution that this is my conclusion only at this point in time. There are, however, various strange clues culled from the rat terrier newsgroup. At this time, many of the Lisa Montgomery postings and the associated web or chat group have been removed from the Internet, presumably by legal authorities.

The Internet being, of course, the Internet, just as soon as the news of this case hit the national radar various and sundry computer gurus managed to download web sites, pictures and quotes from the many places posted to by Lisa Montgomery. I even saved a few juicy tidbits on mine own hard drive. Maybe my electronic cache will be valuable one day for young Kaitlyn Mae.

Below is a picture downloaded from some Internet sleuth who got to it before the site was closed down. Bobbie Jo Stinnett is front, all the way to the right. Lisa Montgomery is in the back all the way to the left. Lisa's daughter, Kayla, is next to Lisa.

Bobbie Jo Stinnett is in the front, far right. Lisa Montgomery is in back row, far left. 


The basic story, or how Lisa got to meet Bobbie Jo, is fairly straightforward.

Both Lisa and Bobbie Jo belonged to a rat terrier aficionados group. This is evident by the pic above, taken at a rat terrier prize event. I am told there are more pics of Bobbie Jo and Lisa together but they have been removed from the Internet. Point being, the two were familiar with each other.

Bobbie Jo would post often to the rat terrier chat group about her expected baby, its sex, her plans for a layette. At the same time, Lisa was posting about her own pregnancy, which, of course, did not exist.

At one point Lisa even, oddly, posted that one of her expected babies died but that the other one was still alive and doing fine. Just how one of those babies died in utero is not clear but not being clear is a benchmark for Lisa Montgomery.

Bobbie Jo has a close friend in the rat terrier chat group, a Jason Dawson. Mr. Dawson was a customer from Lisa's kennel she ran with her first husband, Carl Boman. Jason Dawson was the member of the rat terrier chat group who introduced a “Darlene Fischer” to Bobbie Jo Stinnett.

The connection of Darlene Fischer to Jason Dawson is unclear at this point. Which is to say is not clear if Jason knew a Darlene Fischer but it is known that Dawson introduced Lisa Montgomery to Bobbie Stinnett. It’s not known if Jason Dawson knew a Darlene Fischer but he did feel comfortable enough to introduce this Lisa Montgomery persona to Bobbie Jo Stinnett. This knowing Bobbie Jo would invite Darlene Fischer to her home based on Jason’s recommendation. Also, I must emphasize that the bit about Jason Dawson and Lisa Montgomery’s first kennel ran with her husband is the result of a little Internet sleuthing rather than any published reports. This weird connection was culled from a listing of a sire from the Boman kennels bred to a dam owned by Jason Dawson.

I would also mention that there is much speculation about possible other identities claimed by Lisa Montgomery on various other chat boards. Speculation has it that some posts on religious and other chat groups had much of the same information Lisa Montgomery used in posts under her own name. There’s even posts by a Darlene Fischer peppered about the Internet but further Internet research shows Darlene Fischer is deceased. All of which could be naught but bits and pieces and idle speculation with no connection at all.

Finally there’s beginning to form a trend of strange dog occurrences in Lisa Montgomery’s life. At least one of her champion bitches suddenly disappeared from the rat terrier scene. The explanation was that the bitch died while giving birth to what is called in breeder circles as an “oops” pregnancy, a birth caused by a mating between a champion dog and another not of champion stock, perhaps not even the same breed.

Lisa Montgomery showed up at Bobbie Jo Stinnett’s house on Thursday, Dec. 16, at 12:30 pm. If yon reader has managed to follow the tortured connections above it would be understood that Bobbie Jo knew who Lisa Montgomery was the minute she opened the door. And it was not “Darlene Fischer”, a complete stranger recommended to Stinnett by her friend Jason, but Lisa Montgomery, a woman she already knew via the rat terrier chat group.

A neighbor reports seeing Lisa’s car parked in front of the Stinnett’s house for two hours. So Lisa Montgomery was in the Stinnett house doing God knows what but from the very beginning Bobbie Jo Stinnett knew that she had been fooled into believing someone completely different was coming to visit her. Bobbie Jo had to know trouble was at the door step as soon as she opened her door.

There are many more interesting intrigues to this tale, including a cousin of Lisa Montgomery who claims that Lisa paid her a sudden and unexpected visit when she, Wendy, was eight months pregnant. There’s also the pathetic behavior of Lisa Montgomery the day after her baby’s “birth”:

From the Malvern Daily News Gazette:

She dolled up the tiny girl in a Winnie-the-Pooh outfit and even picked a name for the horribly kidnapped child, Abigail.

"She said that she wanted a name from the Bible," the Rev. Mike Wheatly of the First Church of God in Melvern, Kan., said yesterday.

But it was all a charade, exposed when FBI agents raided Montgomery's century-old farmhouse in eastern Kansas and charged her with the most gruesome of crimes. Montgomery is due in federal court tomorrow.

According to authorities, the 36-year-old suspect was so desperate to have another child she hatched a macabre plan.

On Thursday, posing as a customer interested in buying a rat terrier dog, she drove to see fellow breeder Bobbie Jo Stinnett, 23, in Skidmore, Mo. She strangled Stinnett - who was eight months pregnant - extracted her fetus and fled, authorities allege. She drove to Topeka, called her husband to tell him she'd gone into labor and asked him to pick up her and the baby.

That afternoon, Montgomery called Wheatly and announced, "I just gave birth." At 9 the next morning, she and Kevin Montgomery showed up at his door with the baby. The pastor was unsettled. The tiny girl had scratches and a bruise, and, unlike the Montgomerys, very long fingers. "It just didn't look like either one of them," he said.

Lisa Montgomery was quiet, but her husband seemed ecstatic. "He had an ear-to-ear grin," Wheatly said. "He was just a proud dad."

It’s a complicated tale but I’d argue many of the details are far more significant that may currently appear. The significance being that by a careful knitting of the details, one can safely conclude that this was not some sudden murder driven by an insane mind. Lisa Montgomery had carefully plotted for several years to steal a baby and yes, her plan was to rip her from a gestating mother’s womb.

Consider her devious methodologies. Lisa Montgomery was known to Bobbie Jo Stinnett. There was no way she could pretend to be a customer looking for a rat terrier as Lisa had her own kennel and showed her own dogs. She had to create a persona, which would be Darlene Fischer, and she had to convince someone close to Bobbie Jo Stinnett to trust her enough to recommend her to Bobbie Jo. Although Lisa’s connection to Bobbie Jo’s friend Jason is not part of any official reports as of yet, let’s speculate that perhaps this “Darlene Fischer” person introduced herself to Jason Dawson as a friend of Lisa Montgomery, formerly Lisa Boman, co-owner of Boman Kennels, home to the sire of Jason’s dam. The pseudo Darlene would know enough about the Bomans and their kennels to convince Jason that she was but an honest would-be dog owner looking for a new and wonderful dog.

Also notice the parallel pregnancies of Lisa and Bobbie Jo. Lisa posted that one of her expected “twins” had died. Perhaps Lisa originally asserted her upcoming twin birth in the event her surrogate mother, Bobbie Jo Stinnett, would also be found to be carrying twins. When Bobbie Jo verified, via chat room posting, that she carried one baby girl, Lisa conveniently announced the loss of one her “twins” before it was even born. The parallel pregnancies were also obviously no coincidence. Lisa Montgomery was covering the eventuality that she would show up one day with a newborn about the same age as Bobbie Jo’s.

Lisa Montgomery faked several other pregnancies according to reports, once claiming a miscarriage, another time a stillborn. These may well have been other parallel pregnancies Lisa was having with other potential victims. The opportunities to strangle the expectant mothers might not have presented themselves thus Lisa’s pregnancies too had to end. There was one occasion when Lisa showed up at her cousin Wendy’s home when she was eight months pregnant. This did occur during one of Lisa’s parallel and faked pregnancies. It’s possible that this pregnant cousin was a possible victim of Lisa’s that could not be carried out to the awful fruition of Bobbie Jo Stinnett.

There’s also the strange death of at least one, possibly more, of Lisa Montgomery’s bitches. The one bitch’s death was asserted by Lisa herself to have died in childbirth as a result of a Caesarian for an “oops” canine pregnancy. As of now there’s only one dog known to have died in childbirth but there’s speculation about other dogs she’s owned that died in the same manner.

Consider Kevin Montgomery’s complete joy at the birth of “Abigail”, the name Lisa gave to Bobbie Jo’s baby. Consider that Kevin Montgomery allegedly has three other children who live with their mother but so far they’ve not been found. Consider that all of Lisa Montgomery’s faked pregnancies happened while she was married to Kevin Montgomery.

Lisa Montgomery wanted to give her husband a child of his own. For whatever reason, she could not get pregnant. So she spent a few years and created a smoke screen of Internet activities, stalking and paralleling pregnancies along with other women of her computer acquaintance that she knew were pregnant.

She carefully practiced removal of the unborn from the mother’s uterus on one, perhaps more, dogs. Lisa knew that strangling the mother than quickly removing the baby via Caesarian was the safest way to extract a living baby.

Lisa created a believable persona to arrange a meeting with Bobbie Jo Stinnett. She used her former acquaintance with Jason Dawson to achieve that end.

Lisa Montgomery is NOT insane. Her behavior over the past three years is a carefully crafted and executed campaign, her plan all along was to extract a newborn baby from a strangled mother’s womb.

Insane people are not aware of whether they do right or wrong. Lisa knew her crime was wrong, thus her fakery and false personas.

Remember this when the trial finally hits the airwaves.

Because Lisa Montgomery’s attorneys are going to plead the woman as insane.

She is not.

For those of you who might be interested in further updates on this case, punctuated by excellent sleuthing by true crime buffs, check out the Usenet Newsgroup "Alt.True-Crime"