Baby Be Mine (20 page)

On December 19, with a numb mind and aching heart,
Kevin Montgomery attended the First Church of God in Melvern with his parents and three of his stepchildren: Desiree, Chelsea and C.J. He handed a written statement to Reverend Wheatley.

In the pulpit, Wheatley read Kevin's statement to the congregation:

As everyone here knows, this hasn't been a very good week. This is going to be a long and difficult road for these families to walk down, but if we look and hold out our hands, God is there to lead the way. Please keep Lisa, the kids, and I in your prayers. Our sympathy also goes out to the family of Bobbie Jo Stinnett
.

Except for this missive from Kevin, Reverend Wheatley avoided any mention of the tragedy in their midst. But when a congregant rose and took his place at the front of the church to deliver the meditation for communion, it was obvious that he was inspired by recent events. The passage he read was all about forgiveness.

As the choir sang “The First Noel,” Desiree buckled over and shook as she sobbed. Moisture gathered in Chelsea's eyes, but she refused to allow the tears to fall. Parishioners gathered around the Montgomery clan after the service. They offered enveloping hugs and whispered words of encouragement in their ears.

Skidmore Christian Church was an emotional quake zone that day, too. The congregants spent the service alternating between tears of sorrow and of joy. They grieved for Bobbie Jo and rejoiced for Tori Jo. They lifted prayers to the heavens for them both.

The same day that Victoria Jo returned to her home state, Lisa Montgomery made her first appearance before a judge in federal court for the Kansas District. The moment Lisa had crossed the Missouri state line into Kansas with the baby, her offense became a federal crime. Kidnapping was
the primary charge—the murder of Bobbie Jo was committed in the commission of that crime. For that reason, she faced charges in federal court for the Kansas district. She looked drained and pasty in her blue jumpsuit and oversized glasses.

Two public defenders, Charles Dedmon and Ron Wurtz, represented her. They told Magistrate Judge David Waxse that their client would oppose moving the case to federal court in Missouri. Since the crime originated in one of the sixty-six counties covered by the Western District Court's jurisdiction, the prosecutors needed to try the case there.

The defense team demanded a preliminary hearing and an identity hearing in Kansas District Court first. They also asked for a gag order. The judge denied that last request with a reminder to attorneys on both sides that it would be prudent to limit their comments to the media.

Judge Waxse read Lisa her rights and the list of charges against her. He informed her that she could be sentenced to death or to life in prison, and could be fined as much as $250,000.

Except for one brief glance at Kevin, Lisa hung her head low and kept her eyes focused on the federal complaint lying on the desk in front of her. Even knowing what she had done, it had to be shocking and mind-numbing to a woman who had no criminal record to read the heading on the document before her.
“United States of America, Plaintiff
v.
Lisa M. Montgomery, a/k/a Darlene Fischer a/k/a Fischer4kids, Defendant.”
The odds in that contest must have seemed daunting—she had to feel as if she stood alone against the whole world. And she had to know that out of all the documents created to date, the most damning passage was the penultimate paragraph of the eight-page FBI affidavit:

After being advised of her constitutional rights and having waived those rights, Lisa Montgomery thereafter confessed to having strangled Stinnett and removed the
fetus. Lisa Montgomery further admitted the baby she had was Stinnett's baby and that she had lied to her husband about giving birth to a child.

The judge approved Lisa's move from Wyandotte County Jail in Kansas City, Kansas, to the federal detention facility in Leavenworth. She was due back in court in three days—on Thursday, December 23.

Outside of the courthouse, a bewildered and distraught Kevin Montgomery spoke to the media: “I had no idea. My heart ain't just broke for me and Lisa and her kids. It's them, too,” he said referring to the Stinnett family a state away. “My family has suffered a tragedy, but I am not the only family. This has to be as hard or harder on them as it is on me. I sure hope they get as much support from their church and community as I have, because we are all going to need it. That was a precious baby. I know.”

F
amily and friends helped Zeb make arrangements for a funeral service on Tuesday, December 21 at 2
P.M.
at the Price Funeral Home in Maryville. The night before, TV satellite trucks converged on the funeral chapel, picking out prime positions to park their vehicles overnight. They wanted to be as close to the action as possible, even though the media was banned from entering the funeral home or driving into the cemetery.

At midday, the mourners began to arrive—hundreds of them—dressed in Kawasaki jackets, brown work clothes, cowboy hats and jeans, and in more typical funeral dress clothes.

By 1:45 that afternoon, all the folding chairs the funeral home possessed were in use. Even though reporters and news photographers were kept away, there was an overflow crowd that filled two rooms, spilled into the entry, down the stairway and out into the biting wind and 20-degree temperatures.
The solemn crowd shifted places every few minutes to allow everyone a turn near the sanctuary.

Surrounded by a bounty of blooms, the rosy bronze casket was adorned by a simple garland of lilies. Bobbie Jo rested on a bed of creamy satin, in a purple dress with a tiny angel pin fastened to the wrist of her right sleeve. Her angelic face—no longer filled with the cheerful animation it once possessed—radiated a peace and serenity unmarked by the pain she had endured at the hands of her attacker.

The logistics of accommodating 400 mourners caused a delay in the commencement of the service. The overflow crowd was silent—a silence so still it pierced your ears. The heavy quiet was punctuated by subdued sobs and sniffles. The service opened at 2:15 with a selection of organ hymns.

Bobbie Jo's baby was not in attendance at her mother's funeral, but everyone there had seen the photograph of the peaceful infant sound asleep—her pink cheeks aglow, her baby lips drawn up like a Christmas bow.

Reverend Hamon approached the pulpit and read the Twenty-third Psalm. He said, “This is one of those times in life when you would like to have the right words, but I don't know what to say. This is one of those times when you can't figure it out at all, and words fail. I've been a preacher for fifty years, and I've seen some terrible things. But this has got to be the apex.”

He then turned everyone's attention to the happiest day of Zeb and Bobbie Jo's life—their wedding day. He pulled out the note Bobbie Jo wrote thanking him for officiating at that service and read it out loud.

He quoted from Isaiah 55:8–9: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Then he added, “God did everything he did because he loves us. Bobbie Jo gave her life for her baby because she loves her.”

He recalled a friend of his who hung on to scaffolding
suspended nine feet above the ground, clinging with all his might with just his fingertips. There was nothing he could do but ask for God's help before his fingers lost their grip and he plummeted to the ground. “And there comes times in life when we have to externally seek help. This is one of those times, because now, this family has been dropped off of a 900-foot cliff.”

He asked that everyone say a prayer for Zeb Stinnett and his baby girl. “There won't be a day or a night that they don't miss Bobbie Jo. The only explanation I can think of is that God has a special place for her.”

The mourners sobbed and clutched a program containing the words to the song “Merry Christmas from Heaven.” After thirty minutes, the service was over.

The attendees, with red-rimmed eyes and grief-numbed minds, drifted out of the sanctuary and to their cars. As one woman left the chapel, she snapped at a cameraman, “You just can't get enough, can you?” Just days earlier, the media was being praised for the instrumental role they played in the safe recovery of Bobbie Jo's baby. Now that they were no longer needed, they were treated with scorn.

Most of the people who attended the service joined the funeral procession. A train of cars and pickup trucks more than a mile long followed the hearse on its fourteen-mile journey up State Route 113 to Newton's Corner in Skidmore.

Turning left, they traveled through acres of farmland and across the one-lane, steel-truss bridge that forded the icy Nodaway River. They climbed a steep incline to Hillcrest Cemetery, a small five-acre swath of land cut out of the surrounding fertile fields. The oldest marker, dated 1865, stood at the site of the grave of Sonia Walker, a 4-year-old girl. Passing the stone of that young child reminded many of their gratitude that today they were burying Bobbie Jo alone—not with her baby by her side.

High on the hilltop, the steady wind was even more ruthless. It reddened cheeks, froze teardrops and chapped lips.
The air was so crisp, it hurt to breathe. Mourners gathered under two blue canopy tents at Bobbie Jo's final resting place. Around them stood haphazard rows of tombstones—more souls rested there than now lived in Skidmore.

Zeb stood by his wife's casket and read the Twenty-third Psalm as he choked down his sorrow. In ten minutes, this portion of the service was over. Many stopped before they left to shake Sheriff Espey's hand and thank him for finding Victoria Jo.

After the service, family and friends crowded into the Newton Community Hall where the fire department prepared and served supper. The emotions of those in attendance swung from sadness to fury and back again.

One of the mourners, Jo Ann Stinnett, staggered under an oppressive mantle of pain. She received a call from her stepson, Zeb's father, Danny Stinnett, on December 16. He had told her Bobbie Jo was dead and the baby was missing.

None of it seemed real to Jo Ann until the funeral—the fourth for a family member she'd attended that year. In March 2004, her son died, and she'd also lost two of her siblings to cancer.

The horror of Bobbie Jo's brutal death flashed before her eyes and dragged her down an ugly road to her traumatic recent past. It was not the first time violent death drove this family to its knees. It was the third time in just four years. The déjà vu Jo Ann felt was debilitating.

B
abe and Jo Ann Stinnett's granddaughter Wendy was born on January 19, 1975, to Randy and Sandra Gillenwater in Fairfax, Missouri. By October 2000, Wendy's life in Skidmore was in shambles.

For the past six years, she lived with her boyfriend, Gregory Dragoo. Half of Dragoo's life was consumed by untreated substance abuse. His problem with addiction began when the parents of a friend in Denver, Colorado, introduced him to drugs. When Wendy moved in with him in 1994, she, too, consumed large quantities of illegal substances. The expense of their drug habit mired them in abject poverty. The ensuing depression and hopelessness of their lifestyle, accompanied by the drug abuse, intensified the negative characteristics of Dragoo's personality.

He was a violent, abusive and controlling man. He isolated Wendy from family and friends. He kept her secluded in their home. Often, he took her clothing or shoes with him
when he went out to ensure that she would not leave the house.

For months he beat her, covering her body with bruises. Wendy told no one of her horrible plight—not even her mother. She just took more drugs to help her forget.

On October 16, 2000, Dragoo's violence went over the top. He pounded on Wendy until she fell to the floor. She did not fight back during this assault, but in a fit of defiance she spat in his face.

He kicked her supine body with his bare feet, slamming them into her so hard that he bruised the tops of his own feet in the process. He fractured six ribs on her right side, eight ribs on the left, lacerated and collapsed one lung, lacerated her liver and caused additional internal trauma and bleeding.

As she gasped for breath, he poured dishwashing liquid down her throat. He picked her up, carried her out the door and dumped her lifeless body in the backyard where he continued to pummel her.

A neighbor heard a noise and went outside to investigate. He saw Dragoo standing over a woman stretched on the ground at his feet. The neighbor returned to his home and pounded 9-1-1 into his cordless phone. Gregory Dragoo settled on the front steps of his home at 406 E. Elm Street and waited for the arrival of law enforcement.

An ambulance pulled up in front of the house at 1:45 that afternoon. Paramedics rushed to Wendy's side and began their assessment. Her pupils were fixed and dilated. She had no pulse or respiration. Her face and neck were swollen. Hemorrhage bloomed red on her neck and scalp. She had two black eyes and bruises all over her face, chest, abdomen and arms. Her skin was cold to the touch. The emergency medical technicians believed she was clinically dead when they arrived at the scene. Nonetheless, they provided forced respiration and CPR to Wendy as they transported her to the St. Francis Hospital in Maryville.

She was unable to breathe on her own, and medical personnel pronounced her dead at 5:13
P.M.
Her death was the result of blunt force chest and abdominal trauma.

Police slapped cuffs on Dragoo and took him into custody. He said that he was enraged at Wendy and totally out of control. He admitted to hitting her, kicking her and throwing her into a wall. He said that Wendy never struck back. When he'd carried her outside, he said, he believed that she was dead.

A few blocks away, Jo Ann Stinnett answered a knock on her door. Jo Ann had noticed the commotion and asked, “Do you know where the ambulance is going?”