She enacted this in the grip of a very broken mind.". In late December, Montgomery's legal team submitted a petition to President Donald Trump that makes the case that after a lifetime of abuse - which they characterise as torture - she is too mentally ill to be executed and deserves mercy. In December 2004, Montgomery drove 281.5 km (175 miles) from her home in Kansas to Skidmore, where she had an appointment to look at some puppies owned by Stinnett. Theyre saying that a sentence of life without the possibility of parole is more than sufficient punishment for someone who has endured what she did.. Being loved unconditionally helped me heal, find a caring husband, and raise two children who have hearts of gold. 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. It makes him even angrier that it was Stinnett's mother who discovered her that way. Court records say Kleiner drank heavily, beat his wife and children, and made his daughters take off their clothes before he spanked them. They hold a collection and try to do something nice for Stinnett's mother. Prosecutors shared records showing Montgomery had visited a website featuring a video of a live C-section birth, described as lasting from first cut to last stitch, and had made a practice run by driving the roughly 350 miles from Melvern to Skidmore and back the day before the killing. Montgomerys case is not about whether she is responsible for the crime; she is. Stinnett's husband was at work, andStinnett was on the phone with her mother, Becky Harper, when Montgomery's dirty red Toyota pulled upon the afternoon of Dec. 16. But Strong says this is the first year he's heard directly from Stinnett's husband. Mattingly said she and Montgomery share the same father, John Patterson, a decorated Vietnam War veteran whonever married Mattingly's mother. 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. Theyre saying that a sentence of life without the possibility of parole is more than sufficient punishment for someone who has endured what she did.. "She seemed like a real personI could connect with and build a relationship with inside prison," Dorr said. Lisa Montgomery, who endured years of sexual and physical abuse, murdered an expectant mother and took the baby. 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. At 1:31 AM on Wednesday, Lisa Montgomery was pronounced dead. Montgomery's execution, scheduled less than 60 days, will be the first of three federal executions in January before Trump leaves office. "And Lisa deserves to pay.". After she strangled Stinnett, Montgomery is alleged to have cut her open and stolen her unborn child Victoria, who survived the attack and is now living with her father. Lisa Montgomery and Bobbie Jo Stinnett got to know each other online through a shared love of dogs. Residents there tend to think her execution would bring an appropriate end to a painful chapter in their city's history, he said. Montgomery, who confessed, was later sentenced to death for the especially heinous murder as decided by a jury who heard her trial. She had brain damage, likely caused by exposure to alcohol when she was a. Henry says this was an early sign of her mental illnesses, which include bipolar disorder, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, dissociative disorder and traumatic brain injury. View the profiles of people named Judy Shaughnessy. 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. According to Gallup, while support for the death penalty in the US is at its lowest level in more than 50 years, 55% of Americans still believe it is an appropriate punishment for murder. Judy Shaughnessy and her boyfriend physical, psychological and sexual abuse Lisa. Prosecutors, in their closing argument, said that she had a filthy home, that she didnt cook and that she didnt clean, Babcock said. Lisa Montgomery's current legal team has conducted some 450 interviews with family members, friends, case workers, doctors and social workers. Lisa Montgomery - the only female inmate on federal death row in the US - has been executed for murder in the state of Indiana. If you were to meet her, it would be inconceivable to you that she committed this crime, Harwell said. Jurors heard an audiotape of Harper, Stinnett's mother, calling 911 after finding her body. At the time of her murder, she was newly married and pregnant with her first child. "She is the most broken of the broken," Mattingly said. Victims of severe childhood sexual abuse can overcome their trauma with certain factors, Porterfield said, such as the presence of a nurturing adult who provides love and connects them to resources to promote healing. Meanwhile, her mother in 1985 had married Richard Boman, whose son Montgomery's stepbrother, Carl Boman got Montgomery pregnant. What you need to know about Montgomery and her victim, Bobbie Jo Stinnett. Those records say questions were raised about her ability to function as an effective parent afterher house was found to be "filthy," her children were seen running naked in her yard and one of her daughters, then 2years old,ingested a bottle of Tylenol in 1993. Montgomery also suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder and major depression, jurors were told. A clemency petition asking Trump to reduce Montgomerys sentence to life without parole is expected to be filed in the coming weeks. Lisa was anally, orally, and vaginally raped by several men, one after the other for several hours at a time. She has always accepted responsibility. And nowhere is that support more palpably felt in this case than in Skidmore. As long as she was given cigarettes, Montgomery continued to talk, Strong said. "Today the death penalty has a face of my friend and I just can't be quiet about it," she said. Strong said he and Fritz questioned Montgomery using a"good cop/bad cop" approach. The clemency process enables convicted criminals to request mercy and ask the nation's executive branch to step in, Henry said. As Fritz patted Montgomery on the back of her hand, Strong said he noticed dried blood and tissue embedded beneath her fingernails. 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. Her lawyers say that as she lost touch with reality, she fantasised about being pregnant. Join Facebook to connect with Judy Shaughnessy and others you may know. . "I get these images in my head of [Bobbie Jo's mother] finding her daughter that way.". When Lisa Montgomery murdered pregnant Bobbie Jo Stinnett and ripped her unborn baby from her womb, the whole world reeled in horror. Montgomery is worried that her fellow inmates will have trouble coping with her upcoming execution, said her friendToby Dorr. The cold, vicious, calculating and brutal nature of her crimes shows that Montgomery knew exactly what she was doing, Strong said. I am begging that somebody will finally stand up for her and say, shes been punished enough.. People confuse punishment with culpability, she went on. The six-man, six-woman jury in October 2007 found Montgomery guilty and recommended she be executed. They gave me unconditional love, they taught me my self-worth, she said. They introduced her as their daughter, Abigail, and made multiple other stops. That was ultimately dropped in favour of an insanity defence, but Henry believes the damage to Montgomery's credibility was already done. Mattingly has enjoyed a "blessed life," she said. Henry said there is no question that Montgomery has severe mental illness, noting that federal authorities have administered her antipsychotic medications since her arrest in 2004. After playing with the dogs in the backyard that day, Montgomery strangled Bobbie Jo Stinnett, 23, who was pregnant, and cut open her abdomen to remove her 8-month-old fetus. "If I did speak up, maybe Zella and Floyd would have gone back for Lisa," she wrote. The tiny farming town of Skidmore sits in the far northwest corner of Missouri. "My sister was crying and in pain. On the ride home, she clamped the umbilical cord and cleaned the baby girl with wipes. Mattingly's biggest regret, she said, is that she didnt tell her foster family about being beaten and raped, because she feared they wouldn't want her any more if she did. Her mother also began trafficking her, allowing handymen like electricians and plumbers to sexually abuse Montgomery in exchange for work on the house. She faulted Montgomerys defense team at the time of the initial trial for failing to connect the dots between Montgomerys childhood trauma and her later behavior. - 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. "It was violent and like a scene out of a horror movie," he said in a statement. "Last year, we got flowers, and gave her a $100-plus gift card and then paid her water bill," says Jena Baumli. Two other inmates are scheduled to die at Terre Haute prison before Mr Trump's presidency ends. Three federal inmates - Orlando Hall, Alfred Bourgeois and Brandon Bernard - have been put to death since the 3 November presidential election. As a teenager, Montgomery confided in a cousin, telling him the men would tie her up, beat her and even urinate on her afterwards. Montgomery and Stinnett participated inthe "Ratter Chatter" online message board for rat terrier dog enthusiasts. Montgomery contacted Stinnett, 23, after meeting her at a dog show earlier that year at Abilene, in north-central Kansas, where they posed with others in a photo. Her case is one of the most extreme of all the cases that Ive looked at, in terms of the severity and repetition of the violence that she experienced, she said. "As a result, Lisa has trouble processing information and navigating social relationships. She liked to take her finger and poke it hard into her chest, over and over in the same spot. In what Mattingly described as the most lucky thing to ever happen to her, she was placed with a loving foster family who showered her with affection. Mattingly said she shielded her half-sister from random baby-sitters, often older men, whom their mother left with them during her near-nightly outings to a local bar. "We knew we were walking into the killer's house.". "I cried," says Strong. Mattingly says looking back to the moment life changed for her as an eight-year-old, she feels guilty that when the social workers came for her, she didn't tell them what was going on in that house. Stinnett lived with her husband, Zeb, in Skidmore, Mo., a town near the state's northwest corner with fewerthan 300 people today. On her way out the door, Mattingly said, Shaughnessy leaned over and told her it was all her fault she was being taken away. Another case with Missouri ties. I support my wife and her request for clemency, but because I am sick with COVID and am caring for my parents who are also sick with COVID, I ask the media to respect our need for rest and privacy," he said. That could change in Terre Haute. Often the woman, now 52 and a grandmother of 12, is knitting or doing needlepoint. More: Who was the last woman executed by the US government? "God, no, please," she said. They married in 1986. Montgomery has pleaded not guilty to kidnapping resulting in death. 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. Its also people hearing it, knowing it and doing nothing about it. Around this time, she repeatedly claimed to be pregnant again, although she had undergone sterilisation after her fourth baby was born. 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. 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. She lives in Lebanon, Ky., is married with two adult children and has worked the past 19 years for the state of Kentucky. In addition to Strong and Fritz, those investigators were FBI Special Agents Mike Miller and Scott Gentine and Topeka police officer Tom Glor. In recommending execution, the jury spelled out six aggravating factors supporting capital punishment. About a week before Christmas in 2004, Lisa Montgomery, a 36-year-old mother of four, drove from her home in Kansas to Missouri, ostensibly to buy a rat terrier puppy from a woman shed met at a dog show earlier that year. Montgomery's execution date was subsequently bumped back to Jan. 12. At one point, one of Montgomery's brothers found a home movie that showed Montgomery's husband raping and beating her. When Judy, Lisa's mother and my stepmother, came to beat us, I stood between her and the younger girls and took the beating, whether it was belts, cords or hangers. Please, honey.". The views expressed in this article are the author's own. Her lawyers had argued she was a mentally ill victim of abuse who. As one family story goes, Montgomerys first words as a toddler were, dont spank me.. She is not the "worst of the worst" for whom the death penalty was intended. According to her lawyers and witnesses, Montgomery suffered years of childhood abuse so severe it was akin to torture. There are things children need to grow into healthy adults, among them love, praise and stability. Other inmates tended to keep Montgomery at arm's length because of the brutality of what she had done, Dorr said, but she liked Montgomery's quiet nature. Is it ethical to execute a woman for actions that cannot be meaningfully separated from her mental illness and ugly history of abuse? But what happened at the modest clapboard house where Stinnett lived with her husband still haunts some of those involved in the investigation. A home videoshowsCarl Boman raping and beating Montgomery, said her half-brother, Teddy Kleiner, who gave a sworn statementsaying he had seen it. Join half a million readers enjoying Newsweek's free newsletters, Everyone Practices Cancel Culture | Opinion, Deplatforming Free Speech is Dangerous | Opinion. Montgomery described feeling that she was unsure whether her environment was real, and confided that she used a strategy to ground herself in reality: She would look at a tree out the window and tell herself that the tree was real if she could see it. He recalled that Montgomery begged him not to tell anyone, for fear that Kleiner would kill her. When she called her attorneys that day, she could hardly speak. Montgomery then said she had given birth at home with help from two female friends and, later, that she had given birth alone. Mattingly and Montgomery were best friends. She lives near Kansas City, Mo. Montgomery gave birth to three daughters and a son from1987 to1990, court records say. Randy Strong, who investigated the case,is unhappy that some people are asking thatMontgomerys life be spared. In December 2004, Boman filed a court action seeking custody of two of their children who still lived with Montgomery while arguing that the pregnancy Montgomery was fakingillustrated she was an unfit mother, according to newspaper accounts. The next morning, Lisa and Kevin Montgomery showed off a newborn girl dressed in a pink bonnet as they ate breakfast at the Whistle Stop Cafe in downtown Melvern. Mattingly said Patterson was often away, and Shaughnessy became increasingly abusive toward them, at times forcing Mattingly to eat raw onions as punishment and go outdoors into the cold naked. She believes that if Montgomery had been rescued too, and given what she was given contact with loving, protective adults everything would have been different. For the rest of her life.. 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