Montgomery then said she had given birth at home with help from two female friends and, later, that she had given birth alone. She is the only woman on federal death row. Ramachandran said Montgomery told him she didn't remember killing Stinnett or cutting the baby out of her body. They married in 1986. Mattingly said she saw terror in her half-sister's bright green eyes. 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. But blind outrage over the brutality of the crime leaves little room for curiosity about why Montgomery committed the act, and whether she deserves the most severe penalty that exists in the criminal justice system. She has always accepted responsibility. Kleiner and Shaughnessy divorced in 1985, with Shaughnessy contending she once walked in on Kleiner and Montgomery having sex. In 1986, when Montgomery was 18, she married her stepbrother, Carl Boman. 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, 52, the only woman on federal death row,is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection Jan. 12 in the U.S. Penitentiary at TerreHaute, Ind. President-elect Joe Biden has already pledged to end death penalty proceedings, although he hasn't said when. Shaughnessy also beat the girls with brooms and belts,Mattingly said. "When I squeezed her hand, she looked at me and smiled," she said. She went home with a newborn, one she acquired by murdering the babys pregnant mother. . At 18, Judy pressured Lisa to marry her stepbrother. 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. 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. If that disconnection is brought about with enough frequency and intensity, it can become more of a steady state of being, she added. But what happened at the modest clapboard house where Stinnett lived with her husband still haunts some of those involved in the investigation. "The whole community over there's traumatised by this.". Her daughter remembered her acting like a young child in public, twirling and skipping with her arms swinging with abandon. According to interviews with her half-siblings and others who spent time with the family, Montgomery's stepfather built a shed onto the trailer where he, and eventually his friends, raped and beat her. Multiple medical experts have given statements agreeing with that diagnosis. Court records describe her as a quiet loner who spent a lot of time reading books. She would be the first woman executed by the federal government in 67. The infant found later that day to weigh 5 pounds, 11 ounces was "very still" and didn't cry, which concerned Strong. He was in her. "There's so many people that failed her throughout her whole life. Judy Shaughnessy and her boyfriend physical, psychological . "This was the act of a monster," he 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. It would be 34 years before the half-sisters would see each other again. Judy Shaughnessy had already raised two convicted felons at the time. Recibi una inyeccin letal en una prisin de Terre Haute,. The clemency process enables convicted criminals to request mercy and ask the nation's executive branch to step in, Henry said. He continued the cycle of abuse, rapes and beatings, which he sadistically videotaped. Weddle said she moved to Melvern when she retired nine years ago because she wanted peace and quiet after more than 30 years as a Topeka police officer. She is not the "worst of the worst" for whom the death penalty was intended. "She was completely detached from reality.". In Trumps final days in office, Lisa Montgomery a mentally ill victim of sex trafficking is set to be the first woman the U.S. executes in 70 years. Im not a psychiatrist, so I cant go any further than that.. "Judy was manipulative and - I hate to use this word, but - evil. According to her lawyers and witnesses, Montgomery suffered years of childhood abuse so severe it was akin to torture. Zella Gwin survives. Shaughnessy in 1974 married her third husband, Jack Kleiner, a divorced father of five. She pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. 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. Shaughnessy has since died. She had bought supplies, including a home birth kit, and searched online for how to perform a caesarean section. He married Judy Shaughnessy, who would become Montgomery's mother, in 1967 in Miami, Okla. Patterson was the second of six husbands Shaughnessy would have during her life, which ended in 2013. Warnersaid the killinghad left Melvern residents stunned.. Tommy Kleiner and Montgomery have stayed in touch. "I felt sick watching the video. Only around 2% of inmates on death row are women. 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. If her execution goes forward, she will be the first federal female inmate to be executed in almost 70 years. Lisa Montgomery's current legal team has conducted some 450 interviews with family members, friends, case workers, doctors and social workers. She does not deserve to die. Please, honey.". Is it ethical to execute a woman for actions that cannot be meaningfully separated from her mental illness and ugly history of abuse? 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. Montgomery clearly should spend the rest of her life in prison, but she is not among the "worst of the worst" for whom the death penalty is intended, Mattingly told The Topeka Capital-Journal. More: Why the fate of the only woman on federal death row hinges on these Tennessee attorneys and their health, "Lisas trauma was so severe that it compromised her neurological functioning and development," they said in a written statement. 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. And then at the end, she was broken.". Why the fate of the only woman on federal death row hinges on these Tennessee attorneys and their health, Lisa Montgomery's execution, delayed by attorneys' COVID-19 cases, rescheduled for Jan. 12, Only woman on federal death row asks President Trump to be a 'hero,' commute her sentence, Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. "If I had, would they have taken Lisa out of the home also?" By multiple accounts, Kleiner was an erratic, violent man who beat the kids and his wife regularly. Lisa told me that when these men raped her, she would go away in her mind and try not to be present, the brother said in a court declaration. The views expressed in this article are the author's own. Her lawyers had argued she was a mentally ill victim of abuse who deserved mercy. Montgomery's execution date was subsequently bumped back to Jan. 12. At least five of the 12 jurors and three alternate jurorswiped away tears. 2023 BuzzFeed, Inc. All rights reserved. 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. Montgomery's mother, Judy Shaughnessy, drank while Montgomery was in utero, leaving her with brain damage, court documents say. He also noted that after she confessed to killing Stinnett, she changed her story to contend the murder was committed by her half-brotherTommy Kleiner. Montgomery was already vulnerable to serious mental illness, she added. She liked to take her finger and poke it hard into her chest, over and over in the same spot. Often the woman, now 52 and a grandmother of 12, is knitting or doing needlepoint. Violent acts against pregnant women and their fetuses fall into that category. Since they began, the federal government has executed seven people. At the time of her murder, she was newly married and pregnant with her first child. Her death is scheduled a little over a month before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, who has pledged to end the federal death penalty. Lisa Montgomery, a federal prisoner, is now slated to be executed on Jan. 12. "They made this a priority at the risk of the health and lives of corrections officials, of the prisoners on death row, and the communities that all of those Bureau of Prisons officials who flew in from across the country were returning to," says Ngozi Ndulue, senior director of research and special projects at the Death Penalty Information Center. "It was pretty awful.". "The whole story is tragic," says Kelley Henry, one of Montgomery's federal defence lawyers. Lisa Montgomery and Bobbie Jo Stinnett got to know each other online through a shared love of dogs. When she was 18, Montgomery married her stepbrother. They recommended a sentence of death. Henry stressed that no one faces a death sentence linked to the 16 other U.S. cases from 1987 to2015 in which a woman has attacked a pregnant woman and her unborn child in an effort to take the childand ended up killing one or both. A lifelong opponent of the death penalty, Dorr said she wants the world to know about Lisa Montgomery the person. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. 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. Stitched together, they form a tapestry of family dysfunction, abuse, neglect, professional negligence, substance abuse and untreated mental illness. I thought they knew what was going on, she said. My sister, Lisa Montgomery, is broken. But Lisa was broken. "This was a very coordinated and determined plan to ensure that as many people could be executed on federal death row as possible before the end of this administration term.". 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. And theyre taking me away from her.. But none of those other victims responded by killing a woman and cutting her baby out of her stomach, hesaid. The couple had four children in five years, but the relationship was not the escape from violence that Montgomery might have hoped it would be. More: The U.S. has not executed a woman in 67 years. When issuing his original stay of execution, the district. They were also physically violent. A longtime death penalty opponent, Wurtz said he considers it "idiotic" that Montgomery is to be executed. 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. He stressed that the juryheard testimony about her mental illness and her history of being abused, yet still unanimously recommended her execution. As the oldest, I was the protector of Lisa and our baby sister. On the trip home, she stopped in Topeka and called her husband to say she had gone into labor while Christmas shopping and had given birth at a Topeka birthing center. Nobody has said that Lisa should never have been punished. A clemency petition asking Trump to reduce Montgomerys sentence to life without parole is expected to be filed in the coming weeks. I'm bruised, but I'm not broken. Her children even came up with a nickname to pull her out of her trances when she was unresponsive: They called her Martha instead of mom to get her attention. She enacted this in the grip of a very broken mind.". If Mattinglycould speak directly to Trump, she said, she would tell him: "Please dont take my sister. She said it was over and over, one man right after the other, and went on for hours, her cousin said in a sworn statement. "Last year, we got flowers, and gave her a $100-plus gift card and then paid her water bill," says Jena Baumli. They believe that at the time of the crime, Montgomery was psychotic and out of touch with reality. The following day, the police arrested Montgomery at her home. 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. My heart goes out to the family of Bobbie Jo Stinnett and the loss that they have felt and are still feeling. She is the most broken of the broken. A generation ago, it was the kind of place where you could "get your hair cut, see a show, buy rabbit feed and eat dinner" - but those days are long gone. The couple returned to their home near Melvern, which was being watched by investigators working to identify the woman who had told Stinnett she was Darlene Fischer. Lisa was anally, orally, and vaginally raped by several men, one after the other for several hours at a time. For one thing, the wider world won't let them forget. "I'm asking him to have compassion on her as a person that has been failed over and over and over again. When Shaughnessy eventually split from her second husband, she and Montgomery testified in divorce proceedings about the sexual assaults. They hold a collection and try to do something nice for Stinnett's mother. But it wasn't Montgomery that Stinnett was expecting, it was a woman who went by the name of Darlene Fischer. So my letters are important.. Lisa Montgomery has been charged in the December 16 death of Bobbie Jo Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant at the time. Let it be done: Bobbie Jo Stinnetts hometown waits as killers execution date nears. Two other inmates are scheduled to die at Terre Haute prison before Mr Trump's presidency ends. 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. "I have seen a lot of horrible things happen to women and children in my more than 40 years in law enforcement," Strongsaid. 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. Lisa Montgomery, la nica mujer en el corredor de la muerte federal de Estados Unidos, fue ejecutada este mircoles por asesinato. During divorce proceedings, Shaughnessy admitted to the court that she had walked in on her husband raping Montgomery. Lawyer Kelley Henry says one of the things that disturbs her most is that adults in positions of authority were told about what was going on but did nothing. After five hours of deliberation, the jury found Montgomery guilty. She married her stepbrother at 18 and gave birth to four children in less than five years, before having a sterilization procedure. Its not just the childhood maltreatment and psychological abuse and neglect, or the incredible sexual abuse by her stepfather, or the sex trafficking, Porterfield said. He had a daughter from a previous relationship, Diane, who was four years older than Montgomery. 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. Montgomery's mother, Judy Shaughnessy, told The . Montgomery often read her Bible or did things with her hands, including writing, quilting, and making placemats and bookmarks, Dorr said. As Fritz patted Montgomery on the back of her hand, Strong said he noticed dried blood and tissue embedded beneath her fingernails. Lisa Montgomery and her half-sister Diane Mattingly as children, Judy Shaughnessy, Lisa Montgomery's mother, Bobbie Jo Stinnett's home lies empty today, Protest against federal executions of death row inmates - outside the US Justice Department, Washington DC, December 2020. In the haze of her mental illness, she went to the home of a pregnant woman, killed her, and removed the baby. Lisa's mother, Judy Shaughnessy, abused her "in extreme and sadistic ways," according to interviews with nearly 450 family members, neighbors, lawyers, social workers, and teachers. 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. Dr Katherine Porterfield, a clinical psychologist who evaluated Montgomery and spent about 18 hours with her, says that psychosis does not always look the way people expect it to. 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. Nationwide, only 54 women have been executed since 1900. We cant travel to talk to witnesses or to prepare experts at this point, Harwell, Montgomerys lawyer, said. My sister is on death row, Kleiner wrote in the lawsuit petition. Left: "Melvern Pride" is the focus of this sign standing at the city limits of Melvern, the community in east-central Kansas where Lisa Montgomery lived. At state level, the number of sentences and executions continues a historic decline. "There was a lot of talk both ways on it," he said when contacted by phone at his new home in Texas. 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. Ramachandran said women who sufferchildhood sexual abuse and whose minds revolve around babies and pregnancy are predisposed to suffering pseudocyesis, a condition in which they show physical symptoms of pregnancy, including enlargement of the breasts and stomach, morning sickness and cravings for certain foods. And then there is the life that Montgomery and her siblings inhabited, one of domestic violence, dysfunction, humiliation, fear and pain. Montgomery's father, John Patterson, a 25-year-old in the military, was also an alcoholic. He was being held in the Shawnee County Jail in 2018 when he filed a federal lawsuit contending the county was violating his constitutional rights by preventing him from sending letters to Montgomery. He thanked the sheriff for recovering his daughter and allowing him to be the parent that his wife couldn't be. "That sent a chill up my spine," Strong said. Kleiner, the son of Shaughnessy and Jack Kleiner, was meeting witha parole officerat the time of the killing, Strong said. U.S. District Judge Gary A. Fenner upheld the jury's recommendation the following April. 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. Shaughnessy would beat Mattingly with whatever was in her hand, be it a belt or a broom, she said. 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. Strong said he and Fritz questioned Montgomery using a"good cop/bad cop" approach. Jack also raped Lisa for years. Family members have claimed that Shaughnessy blamed Montgomery for the abuse and the divorce. She told Lisa she had to "earn her keep.". As one family story goes, Montgomerys first words as a toddler were, dont spank me.. She was sick. Multiple medical experts have given statements agreeing with that diagnosis. Judy later married a man named Jack who punched, kicked and choked his children, including Lisa. 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. "While my path to healing was very hard, the difference between Lisa and me is that no one ever intervened to rescue Lisa from a lifetime of abuse.". 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