Zella Gwin survives. "I was like, 'Oh, she was not.' In December 2004, Montgomery, who was 36 at the time, strangled Bobbie Jo Stinnett before cutting the baby out of her womb and kidnapping it. A survivor of incest and sex trafficking, she is diagnosed with bipolar disorder with psychotic features, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, temporal lobe epilepsy, and cerebellar dysfunction, said Amy Harwell, a federal public defender in Tennessee who is working on Montgomerys case. She was broken by people who were supposed to be her caregivers. And that would be from across a courtroom, where lawyers for the US government were trying to persuade a jury to sentence Montgomery to death. "It was violent and like a scene out of a horror movie," he said. Around this time, Shaughnessy and Patterson separated, and Mattingly was removed from the house by child protective services an act which she credits for saving her life. She lives in Lebanon, Ky., is married with two adult children and has worked the past 19 years for the state of Kentucky. Dorr has since been released from prison and remarried. Randy Strong, one of the investigators who would later get Montgomery to confess, said she apparently used part of a clotheslineto create a garrote, slipping it over Stinnett's head from behind, probably as she was on her knees putting a puppy into a dog carrier. His physical abuse of the children had sexual undercurrents: He would make the girls strip naked before whipping them. Montgomery was put on suicide watch as soon as her execution date was set, Henry said, adding thatMontgomery had previously attempted suicide but not since 2012. "She seemed like a real personI could connect with and build a relationship with inside prison," Dorr said. It is the only federal prison with an active death chamber. Im not a psychiatrist, so I cant go any further than that.. My heart goes out to the family of Bobbie Jo Stinnett and the loss that they have felt and are still feeling. Two days before the crime, her former husband (and stepbrother) sought custody of two of her children. After previously being allowed contact with a limited number of inmates, Montgomery was moved to a solitary confinement cell at Carswell and kept there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, Henry said. People confuse punishment with culpability, she went on. When Mattingly and Montgomery were young, Shaughnessy beat them and doled out cruel forms of punishment, like taping Montgomery's mouth shut, or pushing Mattingly out into the snow, naked. She was forced to sit in a high chair for hours if she did not finish her food. "I don't think people understand how bad this was," Strong said. Montgomery, her sister said, was repeatedly failed: by the deputy sheriff who was told of her abuse; by the judge who was aware she was being molested; by her trial. Shaughnessy would beat Mattingly with whatever was in her hand, be it a belt or a broom, she said. U.S. District Judge Gary A. Fenner upheld the jury's recommendation the following April. Let it be done: Bobbie Jo Stinnetts hometown waits as killers execution date nears. They were also physically violent. Just the details: What you need to know about Montgomery and her victim, Bobbie Jo Stinnett. Montgomery often read her Bible or did things with her hands, including writing, quilting, and making placemats and bookmarks, Dorr said. They would beat and slap her if she was doing it wrong. When they were done, they urinated on her like she was trash.. She became involved with Kevin Montgomery, a divorced electrician with children of his own, and theymarried the following year. It was clear that she was traumatized, that she was somewhere else, he said. At state level, the number of sentences and executions continues a historic decline. The baby girl survived, andMontgomery took her home and briefly passed her off as her own until investigators arrested her the next day. "Being loved unconditionally helped me heal, find a caring husband and raise two children who have hearts of gold," Mattingly wrote. Judy ultimately married six times, and had multiple partners throughout Lisa's childhood. Thats happened since Montgomery's childhood, when theterror she experienced while being raped forced her to retreat emotionally into an imaginary house,where everything is fine, Henry said. Lisa Montgomery strangle one pregnant woman for Missouri before cutting and kidnapping her baby in 2004. . ", "I live with regret for not speaking up about what happened to Lisa," Kidwell said, adding that he just didnt know what to do.. I never molested her in any way, shape or form, said Kleiner, who died in 2009. A social worker found Lisa's allegations of abuse credible and turned the file. Mattingly said her heart sank when she realized Montgomery wasn't coming with her. Lisa Montgomery - the only female inmate on federal death row in the US - has been executed for murder in the state of Indiana. "I fell in love immediately.". Friends recall her as a good student with a love of horses and dogs. Jack also raped Lisa for years. She is the most broken of the broken. The population hovers around just 250, and everyone knew Bobbie Jo Stinnett and her family. The question is, should she be put to death for it. "She was hyperventilating," Henry said. The judge in the case scolded Shaughnessy for not reporting the abuse - but did not report the abuse himself. Montgomery lamented that she couldn't be present to console them because she was in solitary confinement, said Dorr, Montgomery's friend since they met in a federal prison in 2006. At one point, one of Montgomery's brothers found a home movie that showed Montgomery's husband raping and beating her. Bobbie Jo's mother and husband have have not spoken publicly in many years. Prosecutors, in their closing argument, said that she had a filthy home, that she didnt cook and that she didnt clean, Babcock said. Diane Mattingly has been speaking publicly for the first time in the hope it can make a difference. "When I squeezed her hand, she looked at me and smiled," she said. "Being psychotic, it does not mean you are not intelligent, nor that you cannot act in a planful way," she says. Judy Shaughnessy and her boyfriend physical, psychological and sexual abuse Lisa. At 18, Judy pressured Lisa to marry her stepbrother. Lisa was anally, orally, and vaginally raped by several men, one after the other for several hours at a time. School friend Baumli says she's read the descriptions of Montgomery's abuse, but it mostly just makes her angry. Right: This cemetery at Melvern, where Lisa Montgomery formerly lived, has more than 1,800 gravesites, which is nearly five times the city's population. The family treated Mattingly as one of their own, and gave her a sense of belonging and self-worth, she said. And, in fact, blaming her for it.. She is permitted Sudoku puzzles and coloring pages andone book at a time. More: The U.S. has not executed a woman in 67 years. Judy Shaughnessy, Montgomery ' s mother, raised Lisa in poverty and chaos, with multiple stepfathers and in dozens of different homes, according to scores of interviews and documents cited. Being loved unconditionally helped me heal, find a caring husband, and raise two children who have hearts of gold. Babcock said the constant in every case she has seen is an overwhelming history of trauma. A sworn statement from David Kidwell Sr. identified as being Montgomery's cousin and a deputy sheriff said shecried as she told him Kleiner and his friends on more than one occasion had raped her for hours, then "urinated on her like trash. After Mattingly was removed from the home by social services, Montgomery fell prey to her mother's new husband, who according to statements from his other children, was a violent alcoholic who began sexually abusing Montgomery when she was a pre-teen. Often, theyd physically fight, and Mattingly would try to protect Montgomery from the chaos. I cant understand why they have to kill this woman, knowing her background and everything that happened, he said. Montgomery is scheduled to be put to death by a lethal injection of pentobarbital at Terre Haute prison in Indiana. At least five of the 12 jurors and three alternate jurorswiped away tears. Now, she called him to tell him that shed gone into labor while shopping and had given birth at a clinic. Montgomery was psychotic at the time of the crime, Harwell said. . She learned Oct. 16 that she had been scheduled to die by lethal injection on Dec. 8. Her attorneys say that while Montgomery feels deep remorse for her crimes, her understanding of her situation waxes and wanes. My sister, Lisa Montgomery, is broken. In an interview with HuffPost her first ever Diane Mattingly, now 57 and a longtime state government employee living in Kentucky, described what it was like growing up in a home without love or affection. Montgomerys case is not about whether she is responsible for the crime; she is. This is someone who was deeply remorseful, once she became appropriately medicated and had full contact with reality, although that is a situation that waxes and wanes.. She had catfished Stinnett online under a fake name. Lisa Montgomery's friend, Toby Dorr, provided this photo she took of a letter Montgomery wrote to her in November using black crayon. Who was the last woman executed by the US government? Montgomery is "evil personified," he said. "That's how evil this woman is," Strong said. Lisa Montgomery, who endured years of sexual and physical abuse, murdered an expectant mother and took the baby. According to an interview with her father, Montgomery's mother Judy Shaughnessy drank heavily throughout her pregnancy, and their daughter was born with foetal alcohol syndrome. "Judy was manipulative and - I hate to use this word, but - evil. This is the stuff of nightmares.". We lived in a house of horrors. When issuing his original stay of execution, the district. "Maybe she could have been saved, too. It is extremely rare for women to be sentenced to death, said Sandra Babcock, faculty director of the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide and an expert on women and the death penalty. "I think that in a lot of the opinion pieces that are being posted, in a lot of things that people are sharing, Bobbie Jo and her daughter, and her mother and her husband and other friends and family, are kind of being forgotten," says Tiffany Kirkland, another member of the class of 2000. In response to traumatic events, children may dissociate from their feelings and their bodies to protect themselves from experiencing what is happening. Montgomery was already vulnerable to serious mental illness, she added. "There was a lot of talk both ways on it," he said when contacted by phone at his new home in Texas. And theyre taking me away from her.. They gave me unconditional love, they taught me my self-worth, she said. He said she stood out to the extentthere appeared to be something wrong" with her. Montgomerys legal team is fighting against the clock to gather the information needed for her clemency petition, which has been complicated by the coronavirus crisis. The judge reached no conclusion aboutwhether sexual activity occurred but said he considered it "inexcusable" that Shaughnessy didn't report the situation to authorities and get counseling for Montgomery. And though there's been much recent debate over the fairness of Montgomery's sentence in courthouses and in the opinion pages of newspapers like the New York Times, a similar debate does not exist here. In Montgomerys early teen years, Kleiner moved the family to an isolated trailer at the end of a dead-end road outside of Sperry, Oklahoma, a severely impoverished area north of Tulsa. She does not deserve to die. When Floyd Gwin died last July at age 81, Mattingly was listed among the survivors in his obituary. Mrs. They had been called in as part of the Northwest Missouri Major Case Squad, which was workingwith the FBI to identify Stinnett's killer and find the missing child. My sister is on death row, Kleiner wrote in the lawsuit petition. He was pumping her, Shaughnessy testified. "And then go, 'Look at this body'. As a teenager, Montgomery confided in a cousin, telling him the men would tie her up, beat her and even urinate on her afterwards. In her interviews with Montgomery, Porterfield said, the woman showed symptoms of dissociation, including confused thinking, major gaps in memory, and an inability to recognize the reality of certain events. He threatened to expose the imagined pregnancy and use it against her in the custody battle. Often the woman, now 52 and a grandmother of 12, is knitting or doing needlepoint. Kleiner told a reporter in 2005 that Shaughnessy's allegation was made up to support her divorce case and he was never found guilty of anything. In asking for mercy, her family members and attorneys say the untreated trauma she experienced as a child exacerbated her brain damage and hergenetic disposition to severe mental illness, leading her to kill Stinnett during a psychotic episode a dissociative state similar to sleepwalking. Many there believe the final moments of Bobbie Jo Stinnett were so horrific, the death sentence is warranted. She was sick. Her lawyers had argued she was a mentally ill victim of abuse who. Mattingly has enjoyed a "blessed life," she said. For the rest of her life.. "We've seen crime for years and years in our country in which people enact terrible violence coming out of a psychotic set of beliefs or thought process. The father was a teacher. Shaughnessy has since died. She would be the first woman executed by the federal government in 67. When Shaughnessy eventually split from her second husband, she and Montgomery testified in divorce proceedings about the sexual assaults. The baby was returned to her father, after being recovered from Montgomery. So my letters are important.. "I would say, 'President Trump, I want you to look at the life that Lisa had led, I want to look at all the people that have failed her, I want you to look at the rape, the torture, the mental abuse, the physical abuse that this woman had endured,'" she says. Diane Mattingly is the sister of Lisa Montgomery, who is scheduled for execution by the federal government on December 8, 2020. Lisa Montgomery has been held at theCarswell Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas, for 12 years. Stinnett lived with her husband, Zeb, in Skidmore, Mo., a town near the state's northwest corner with fewerthan 300 people today. Babies born naturally tend to have misshapen heads initially because of the pressure experienced as they go through the birth canal, he said. As her big sister, Diane feels immense guilt about leaving Montgomery behind in that broken home, so many years ago. Montgomery was represented briefly after her arrest by Ron Wurtz, a now-retired attorney who has represented dozens of capital case defendants. Only 18 death sentences were handed down in 2020 and the number of executions carried out hit a 30-year low. While all five are haunted by Stinnett's murder, they are also "bonded for life," Strong said. Lisa Montgomery is no different. . The cold, vicious, calculating and brutal nature of her crimes shows that Montgomery knew exactly what she was doing, Strong said. Authorities also questioned Kevin Montgomery but concluded he wasn't involved. She faked pregnancies several times during her marriages to Carl Boman and Kevin Montgomery, court records say. The tiny farming town of Skidmore sits in the far northwest corner of Missouri. This story was first published on 11 January - before Lisa Montgomery's execution on 13 January. Lisa Montgomery be di 11th prisoner to receive di lethal injection since July when President Donald Trump, resume federal executions. President-elect Joe Biden has already pledged to end death penalty proceedings, although he hasn't said when. In the other cases, she said, prosecutors opted not to seek the death penalty or juries did not impose it because it was obvious the women were suffering from profound mental illnesses. Montgomery suffers from severe mental illness. Shaughnessy forced Montgomery to have sex with men in exchange for money and services, and also punished her children by killing the family dog in front of them,smashing its head with a shovel, the attorneys said. And it's never about what my friend went through," she adds. After five hours of deliberation, the jury found Montgomery guilty. In the haze of her mental illness, she went to the home of a pregnant woman, killed her, and removed the baby. Recently, there has been a virus outbreak on death row at the institution, and previous executions have been linked to outbreaks among the execution team and prison staff. As a teenager, Montgomery confided in her cousin, a deputy sheriff, that she was being raped by Kleiner and other men orally, vaginally and anally. And I am just asking for somebody - once - not to fail her.". She has writtenopinion piecespublished in Elle and Newsweek. "Last year, we got flowers, and gave her a $100-plus gift card and then paid her water bill," says Jena Baumli. Dorr met Montgomery after being imprisoned for helping an inmate escape in 2006 as Dorrran a dog training program for inmates at Lansing Correctional Facility in northeast Kansas. "As a result, Lisa has trouble processing information and navigating social relationships. His message contained a "very heartfelt thank you. "The people that are defending [Montgomery], I wish I could take them back in time, and put them in that room," he says. He threatened to rape our little sister if Lisa resisted and said he would kill her whole family if she told anyone. Kleiner built a makeshift shed on the side of the trailer for Montgomery, where he began molesting, and then raping, her. Montgomery and Stinnett participated inthe "Ratter Chatter" online message board for rat terrier dog enthusiasts. One theory her lawyers put forward regarding the chain of events that led to the murder, is that Montgomery feared her ex-husband would expose her lies about being pregnant and use it against her as he sought custody of their children. "There was so much pressure on her at that point," says Henry. She said Montgomery's crimes have affected the way Melvern is perceived in the same manner anti-gay picketing by Westboro Baptist Church has influenced perceptions about Topeka. He had a daughter from a previous relationship, Diane, who was four years older than Montgomery. "I looked to my right and there was Lisa Montgomery on the sofa, holding the baby," he said. Nationwide, only 54 women have been executed since 1900. Montgomery took Stinnetts baby, clamped the umbilical cord and used baby wipes to clean her. Lisa Montgomery and Bobbie Jo Stinnett got to know each other online through a shared love of dogs. That was ultimately dropped in favour of an insanity defence, but Henry believes the damage to Montgomery's credibility was already done. "She is the most broken of the broken," Mattingly said. She told Lisa she had to "earn her keep." Judy later. The following day, the police arrested Montgomery at her home. The views expressed in this article are the author's own. Judy Shaughnessy, drank during pregnancy. Carl Boman wasn't the father of one of the girls, according to court records, which say Montgomery was sterilized after the last birth in 1990. ", Strong said he arranged for that message to be shared with the four others, "because we were all a part of that.". - Sandra Babcock, faculty director of the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide, Montgomery, who confessed, was later sentenced to death for the , The Trump administration announced it was. Kevin Montgomery let investigators inside. Nobody has said that Lisa should never have been punished. Montgomery's alcoholic mother, Judy Shaughnessy, knew about the assaults but blamed Montgomery for bringing them upon herself. In the cases where women are sentenced to death, prosecutors often use gender stereotypes against the defendants, she said, characterizing them as transgressive or not normal in some way. Many there believe the final moments of Bobbie Jo 's mother and took the baby was returned her. Realized Montgomery was represented briefly after her arrest by Ron Wurtz, a now-retired attorney who has dozens. 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