Mattingly and Montgomery lived together until Mattingly was eight and her half-sister was four. Judy Shaughnessy, drank during pregnancy. "I felt sick watching the video. He thanked the sheriff for recovering his daughter and allowing him to be the parent that his wife couldn't be. He threatened to rape our little sister if Lisa resisted and said he would kill her whole family if she told anyone. Violent acts against pregnant women and their fetuses fall into that category. 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. Mattingly, Montgomerys sister, is planning on visiting her next week. My sister, Lisa Montgomery, is broken. But it wasn't Montgomery that Stinnett was expecting, it was a woman who went by the name of Darlene Fischer. A federal judge in November postponed Montgomery's execution from Dec. 8 until Jan. 12 to give her attorneys more time to file her clemency petition, after concluding that their COVID-19 symptoms limited their ability to file thepetition. It is the only federal prison with an active death chamber. "I looked to my right and there was Lisa Montgomery on the sofa, holding the baby," he said. "As a result, Lisa has trouble processing information and navigating social relationships. "One sister got taken out and got put into a loving home and was nurtured and had time to heal," says Mattingly. She would tell me I had to leave and I couldnt take anything with me because she bought everything, she recalled. She didnt have nobody there to protect her once I was out of the home.. She is the only woman on federal death row. Montgomery has pleaded not guilty to kidnapping resulting in death. While a six-week time period to prepare for clemency might always be unreasonable, it is particularly arduous given the pandemic.. The murder 16 years ago is never far from the minds of the town's residents. Friends and family began noticing Montgomery's tendency to slip into "a world of her own". Henry said Montgomery was expected to be transferred by Jan. 10 to the penitentiary at TerreHaute, Ind., her designated place of execution. The only woman on federal death row, Montgomery is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Dec. 8 at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. Around this time, she repeatedly claimed to be pregnant again, although she had undergone sterilisation after her fourth baby was born. "Judy was manipulative and - I hate to use this word, but - evil. "But one of the things that the president can do is say - to women who have been trafficked, and who have been sexually abused - 'Your abuse matters'.". It is hard to know if Montgomery understands that she is close to being executed; her mental state does not allow for much lucidity. 2023 BuzzFeed, Inc. All rights reserved. As long as she was given cigarettes, Montgomery continued to talk, Strong said. Henry said Montgomery seemed out of touch with reality when Henry and Harwell, who work in Tennessee, traveled by plane to visit her in October and early November at Fort Worth. Shaughnessy beat her children with belts, cords and hangers, put them in cold showers and put duct tape over Montgomery's mouth to silence her, the attorneys said. Lisa Montgomery is no different. "The Lisa I knew was a good person who cared about the other women in the pod and was quiet and generous and kind," Dorr said. He threatened to expose the imagined pregnancy and use it against her in the custody battle. Two other inmates are scheduled to die at Terre Haute prison before Mr Trump's presidency ends. "I'm sick of hearing about Lisa Montgomery and what she went through. 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. At 18, she married her stepbrother, who also beat and raped her. Every year. President Donald Trump can "break the chain of evil" experienced by Montgomery and other members of her family by granting clemency and commuting her sentence to life imprisonment, Mattingly said. Prosecutors, in their closing argument, said that she had a filthy home, that she didnt cook and that she didnt clean, Babcock said. At least five of the 12 jurors and three alternate jurorswiped away tears. 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. Residents of Melvern, where Montgomery lived, have beendivided about whether she shouldpay for her crimes with her life, said Joe Warner, who was mayor of Melvern at the time of the murder. Lisa Montgomery has been held at theCarswell Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas, for 12 years. Nodaway County Sheriff Randy Strong says that the scene that he and his four colleagues found that day was so bloody, they are still traumatised by it. Strong was a police detective in Maryville, Mo., 14 miles northeast of Skidmore, and Fritz was a detective at Cameron, also in northwest Missouri. She lives near Kansas City, Mo. She learned Oct. 16 that she had been scheduled to die by lethal injection on Dec. 8. But Fischer was a name that Montgomery had been using when she separately began messaging Stinnett from a different email address inquiring about buying one of her puppies. 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. Mrs. As Strong crossed the threshold, hesaw a TV set airing an Amber Alert about the abduction of Stinnett's baby. 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. While all five are haunted by Stinnett's murder, they are also "bonded for life," Strong said. At the time, Lisa had told her new husband that she was pregnant, which her former husband knew wasn't possible because of the forced sterilization. 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. To help keep her mind occupied, Henry said, Montgomery was initially given one crayon and one piece of paper, but nothing else. Shaughnessy in 1974 married her third husband, Jack Kleiner, a divorced father of five. Montgomery suffered from pseudocyesis, the false belief she was pregnant, jurors heard from Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, director of the Center of Brain and Cognition at the University of California in San Diego. Skidmore has suffered lasting effects as a result of Stinnett's murder, said Strong, the investigator who helped prodMontgomery to confess. She became involved with Kevin Montgomery, a divorced electrician with children of his own, and theymarried the following year. 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. Montgomery's lawyers argue that because of a combination of years of horrific abuse, and a raft of psychological issues, she should never have been given the death penalty. Recibi una inyeccin letal en una prisin de Terre Haute,. He stressed that the juryheard testimony about her mental illness and her history of being abused, yet still unanimously recommended her execution. DNA testing later showed they were Stinnett's. U.S. District Judge Gary A. Fenner upheld the jury's recommendation the following April. She moved in 1999 to Melvern, a town about 40 miles south of Topeka with 375 people today. Now, she called him to tell him that shed gone into labor while shopping and had given birth at a clinic. Although the alumni have scattered somewhat, in recent years, the Nodaway-Holt R-VII High School graduating class of 2000 - which had only 22 members - has a tradition to mark the anniversary of the death of their classmate Bobbie Jo Stinnett. 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. Montgomery, who confessed, was later sentenced to death for the especially heinous murder as decided by a jury who heard her trial. And then there is the life that Montgomery and her siblings inhabited, one of domestic violence, dysfunction, humiliation, fear and pain. Bobbie's family deserves her," says Meagan Morrow, a high school classmate of Stinnett's. Other times, her behavior could be erratic and inappropriate. The counselor noted that her mother appeared to have a lack of empathy for Montgomery, who was left with the distinct impression that the sexual abuse was her fault. Who was the last woman executed by the US government? 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. "I fell in love immediately.". Montgomery's older half-sister, Diane Mattingly, told reporters last week that Shaughnessy repeatedly beat Montgomery and Mattingly. It makes him even angrier that it was Stinnett's mother who discovered her that way. For Montgomery, her lawyers argue, it began before she was born. Montgomery has exhausted all attempts to appeal her conviction and death sentence although her attorneys are exploring possible litigation. Mental health experts who examined her believe that her history of childhood trauma exacerbated a genetic predisposition to mental illness that ran in her family. Montgomery told Stinnett that she was also expecting, and the pair shared pregnancy stories. She had catfished Stinnett online under a fake name. Montgomery's cousin told her legal team that he lived with "regret for not speaking up about what happened to Lisa". 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. Sheriff Strong insists that the crime was meticulously planned and that the woman he arrested continued to lie until backed into a corner. Every time she has a birthday, it will also be the anniversary of the slaughter of her mother, Whitworth said. The father was a teacher. 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. A former paramedic who had watched the births of all three of his children, Strong also considered the baby's head to be unusually round. They slept in twin beds in a small bedroomand fell asleep most nights holding hands, Mattingly said. 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. When Lisa was a small child, Judy allowed men to rape her for money, including allowing her to be gang raped on multiple occasions. "Being psychotic, it does not mean you are not intelligent, nor that you cannot act in a planful way," she says. Court records describe her as a quiet loner who spent a lot of time reading books. She did not see her again until Montgomerys trial 34 years later. Montgomery often read her Bible or did things with her hands, including writing, quilting, and making placemats and bookmarks, Dorr said. Stinnett came to, grabbing at Montgomery's knife and pulling out somehair before Montgomery strangledher to death. Is it ethical to execute a woman for actions that cannot be meaningfully separated from her mental illness and ugly history of abuse? Lisa Montgomery, who endured years of sexual and physical abuse, murdered an expectant mother and took the baby. She was born in 1968, the child of two troubled alcoholics. Montgomery is worried that her fellow inmates will have trouble coping with her upcoming execution, said her friendToby Dorr. One of the lead investigators in the case, Randy Strong, wants Montgomery executed. Around age 8, she said, a man began raping her in the bedroom she shared with Montgomery, then 4, who lay in bed right next to her. But what happened at the modest clapboard house where Stinnett lived with her husband still haunts some of those involved in the investigation. ", "I live with regret for not speaking up about what happened to Lisa," Kidwell said, adding that he just didnt know what to do.. "It was violent and like a scene out of a horror movie," he said. Because of Stinnett's easy-going reputation, Morrow remembers instantly dismissing the initial reports of her murder. Lisa Montgomery be di 11th prisoner to receive di lethal injection since July when President Donald Trump, resume federal executions. "When I squeezed her hand, she looked at me and smiled," she said. In 1986, when Montgomery was 18, she married her stepbrother, Carl Boman. And I am just asking for somebody - once - not to fail her.". She enjoyed torturing the people around her," says Mattingly. "There was a lot of talk both ways on it," he said when contacted by phone at his new home in Texas. A home videoshowsCarl Boman raping and beating Montgomery, said her half-brother, Teddy Kleiner, who gave a sworn statementsaying he had seen it. "I cried," says Strong. 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. More: Who was the last woman executed by the US government? Its also people hearing it, knowing it and doing nothing about it. Judy ultimately married six times, and had multiple partners throughout Lisa's childhood. As a teenager, Montgomery confided in a cousin, telling him the men would tie her up, beat her and even urinate on her afterwards. Mattingly, 57, recalled the day her half-sister was brought home in a pink bundle after being born Feb. 27, 1968, in Pierce County, Washington. It was clear that she was traumatized, that she was somewhere else, he said. Patterson and Shaughnessy divorced in 1971, and Shaughnessy took custody of the girls. Montgomery's lawyers want her sentence commuted to a life sentence, which would allow her to remain under psychiatric care in prison for the rest of her days. The nature and circumstances of Montgomerys crime show she had lost touch with reality, says her half-sister, Diane Mattingly. Shaughnessy was cruel and violent to both girls, according to a sworn statement from Patterson, who reported feeling ashamed that he did not step in to stop the abuse. 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. "She seemed like a real personI could connect with and build a relationship with inside prison," Dorr said. The family moved from place to place dozens of times, but it was in a trailer in Sperry, Oklahoma, where her lawyers say the abuse turned into something more akin to torture. Mattingly was 8 years old and Montgomery was 4 when Mattingly was removed in 1972 from Shaughnessy's mobile home at Ogden, a community of about 1,960 people in Riley County. 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