Murders & Miracles - Skidmore, Missouri

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This week, in Skidmore, Missouri, a scene of true horror is found when a woman is found attacked so terribly that people say it looks like she exploded.

But that just starts the race against time to recover one very important piece of the puzzle.

Welcome to Small Town Murder.

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder.

Yay!

Oh, yay, indeed, Jimmy.

Yay, indeed.

My name is James Petra Gallo.

I'm here with my co-host.

I'm Jimmy Wisman.

Thank you so much for joining us this this week on another absolute, this is a wild episode we have for you.

It is crazy.

It's like one of those real-time heart pumpers.

It's insane.

We'll get into it.

Oh my goodness.

Before we do that, head over to shutupandgivemeurder.com.

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And that's seven years ago.

And in the last seven years, there's been just boatloads of player scandals with them gambling.

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You know what I mean?

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That said, I think it's time for the disclaimer here.

This is a comedy show, number one.

We are comedians, so we're going to make jokes.

That's the thing.

And you might go, well, why are you making jokes during a murder show?

Wow.

Because there's a lot of things that are weird in a murder show, and there's a lot of things you don't make fun of.

For instance, we never make fun of the victims or the victims' families.

Why, James?

Because we're assholes.

What?

But we're not scumbags.

And you'd have that.

We'd have to be to do that.

You know what I mean?

No, there's plenty to make fun of.

When someone decides, I think I'm going to murder this person and here's how I'll get away with it.

And then they do dumb things, that's funny.

You know, we want to make fun of that person.

A murderer deserves mockery.

When some small town police force bumbles something so badly that a murderer gets to kill three three other people, we're going to make fun of those people because we have no other recourse as comedians.

But, you know, that's how we do it, though.

So, that said, I think it's if you think that true crime and comedy should never go together, maybe we're not for you, but maybe we are.

Either way, no complaining later.

I think it's time, everybody, to sit back.

What do you say here?

Yeah, let's all clear the lungs and let's all shout.

Shut up

and give me murder.

Let's do this, everybody.

Here we go.

Let's go on a trip, shall we?

We are going to Skidmore, Missouri.

Now, that's going to sound familiar to you, I'm sure.

Skidmore, because we did a bonus episode about Skidmore.

Skidmore is a tiny town that is famous for murder.

It's had many weird murders, and it's a tiny town.

We did the Ken McElroy case, which was the case of this guy bullying the whole town, and then basically they'd like murder on the Orient, expressed him, and no one ever got charged for it.

We did that case on Patreon as a bonus, but this is somehow even crazier and more harrowing.

And it's wild that this tiny, tiny town has all of this tragedy.

I feel bad for these people because if you just live there, you're like, I didn't do any of this, but this is what our town is known for.

People around likely call him Skid Mark.

Skid Mark.

That's what I'm going on over to Skid Mark.

At least the high school kids do.

You know that.

You play for Skid Mark High?

Ha ha ha.

We kicked your ass last year at the homecoming game.

Yeah, you know it's that.

This is in northwestern Missouri.

It's about an hour and a half to Kansas City.

So it's north of Kansas City, actually, too.

So it's really in the corner up there.

This is in Nottaway County, area code 660.

Motto, they don't have an official motto, but I think if they had one, it would be Murder Town USA because there's no other.

Also, not the way.

It's wild.

Not a way.

Not this way.

Watch out.

Murder comes here.

A little bit of history.

The Ken McElroy case was in 1981.

He was shot to death with at least two different guns while sitting in his truck in front of the tavern.

50 people saw the event, all of whom denied seeing a fucking thing.

That's how bad everyone hated this guy.

So McElroy's wife saw one of the gunmen and identified him.

Prosecutors took the case to two grand juries, but neither one thought any crime had been committed.

He was such a bad guy that they were like, nah, that's fine.

That's fine.

So that, that's wild.

He had that.

And then in October of 2000, Greg N.

Dragu

beat and dragged his girlfriend, Wendy Gillinwater, down several country roads outside of Skidmore, causing her to die.

Holy.

This is insane.

This is all in this one tiny town.

Her body was found outside her home in Skidmore, and he was convicted of second-degree murder and got life without parole.

Also, 2001, Branson Perry vanished under mysterious circumstances, and his grandmother stopped by his house, and her grandmother, by the way, will come up in our story.

It's all so weird.

Stopped by his house and found the door unlocked and the house deserted.

So

she called the residents periodically over the next few days, but didn't get an answer, and found out no one had talked to him.

So they searched and searched for this guy.

And over the following month and a half, 100 people were interviewed in the disappearance, but the case remained unsolved anyway.

Wow.

It's crazy.

Yeah, there's so much going on.

Unsolved.

Unsolved still to this day.

There are no reviews for this town.

People in this town.

Now, this varies because it depends on where you take it from.

It says there's 250 people in this town everywhere, but then when you go go to like spurlings best it says there's 700 people here now so i don't know it's a certain people will certain places take i think spurlings takes the whole zip code if it's a town like this is the problem so

people outside the town get lumped into it but in the town proper it's like 250 for the population there's so few people that the stats are a little out of whack too uh women in this town here 45.3 percent they're usually more women than men in this one that's way out of whack

54.7% men.

Jesus, that's going to, that's too much testosterone floating around.

People are going to be just punching each other for no reason.

That might be why there's murders.

I'm tired of looking at all these dudes, just angry people.

48 is the median age, which is about 10 years older than the national average.

It's about average in terms of married rates and people single with children and all that kind of thing.

Race in this zip code: 98.6% white, 0.6% black, 0.6% Hispanic.

So there you go.

You get that.

The religion here, 53.6%

of the people are religious, which is usually 50%, 50 is the average in the country.

And it's a pretty good mix of things.

Other Christian faith is the most.

It's just not enough.

It's not.

Who knows?

Yeah, the stats when you get a town under 1,000 people can be crazy.

There's a low unemployment rate here.

The median household income of Skidmore is also a little bit low.

It is $56,667 per year, which is about $13,000 below the national average.

So

the cost of living here, $100 is average regular.

Here it's $77.

And

the lowest thing in that is housing.

Median home cost here is $121,700.

Wow.

It's like 1986 prices.

Yeah, that's great.

That is is really, really cheap.

So, you know what?

If you're not afraid, say, I ain't scared of no murderers, then

I ain't scared.

We have for you the Skidmore, Missouri Real Estate Report.

All right, your average two-bedroom rental here goes for about $790 per month.

So that is way cheaper than the national average.

Here is house number one.

Now, a lot of these houses, for some reason, they say price unknown.

What?

I don't understand it.

They're like listed, but they're not, there's no price.

Our best offer?

Is this OBL?

I think it's OPE.

So we're going with the Zestimate on a lot of these here.

So here's a two-bedroom, two-bath.

So T-bowl for all your B-holes anyway.

1,056 square feet.

It looks like it's about to fall down.

Is that the color of it or is is that?

It's puke yellow.

Yeah.

No, it's like bile yellow.

It's like a light, pale, gross yellow.

It's not good.

This house, built in 1900, so pretty old.

There's no price shown, but the Zestimate is $17,500.

Make offer.

Make offer.

Trade a used Camry, basically.

Anybody got like a...

like a 2011 Camry, I'll trade you straight up for my house and property.

That's wild.

Here is a four-bedroom, one-bath, 1,824-square-foot house here.

Again, this one, price unknown, as you can see.

It looks like a farmhouse type of thing.

Two-car garage.

You know, it's all right.

Some siding.

It's fine.

This house, the Zestimate on it, is $123,100.

So it's right around kind of the average, basically, there.

And then finally, here's this one.

Four-bedroom, two-bath, 1,542 square feet on a 0.24-acre lot.

This is kind of the jewel of the bunch here.

This looks like a cute little farm.

It looks like where Dorothy lived from the Wizard of Oz.

It's like a cute little farmhouse.

All you get is that house and the side of that driveway, the side of that house to the other side of the house.

Yeah,

you get back to, so you see those crops back?

I think that's your yard up to there.

Where you stop mowing.

But there's power lines in your yard, which is weird.

$129,000 for that house, though.

It's so cheap to live here.

Pretty cheap.

Yeah, I'll say that is definitely cheap.

Things to do here.

Okay.

The Skidmore Pumpkin Show.

Pumpkin.

Pumpkin Show.

Pumpkin.

Yeah, not Pumpkin.

Pumpkin.

And it says we have an entire lineup.

You're not going to want to miss it.

We start nice and early at 7 a.m.

Jesus Christ.

Nice.

That's trying to get people to come to it.

Yeah.

That's to me, like, don't even bother.

We start way too early for you at 7 a.m.

Nice and early.

Nice and early.

That's earlier than a lot of people go to fucking work, man.

Oh, yeah.

9 to 5.

Yeah.

Right.

They start early.

It's nice and early at 7 a.m.

with the 5K and Tractor Antique Car Show.

All right, well, the Tractor and Antique Car Show, all those guys are like 80 years old.

They've all been up since 3 o'clock in the morning anyway.

They'll be there.

They've had coffee at 4.

Say they were standing in that field with their cars drinking coffee in the dark at 4.30 in the morning

together.

Absolutely.

Ready for a nap when this shit's over.

The smoke-off registration starts at 8.

I think I could win that.

I don't think that's what it is.

No, damn.

Weeds legal in Missouri.

You never know.

Yeah.

It's still the biggest thing.

No.

The baby show registration.

I don't like that.

Display your babies.

Starts at 8.

I'm an 81 baby.

I'm a fucking antique baby.

I might be

well they have the at

9.15 the antique baby show starts.

So you might want to enter yourself in that.

I'm an 81 baby.

Yeah.

Vintage.

You're in pretty good shape for an 81.

So the baby show registration starts then along with the little and mister, little Mr.

and Miss registration.

So we're going to take a look at the children too.

Horseshoe pitching tournament starts at 9.

They got all that going before 9 o'clock.

God damn, damn, it's early.

Oh, my God.

The parade will start at 11.

Then the ping-pong drop will be after the parade.

Okay.

All the winners will be announced around 7, followed by the barbed wire band starting around 8.

Oh, boy.

So, yeah, we got the Queen Contest.

That takes place at the Methodist Church where all the beauty contests take place, apparently.

There's a depot, museum, games, pumpkin central, a gun raffle, a donkey drop.

I don't know what a donkey drop is.

That doesn't seem like

if it's the same as

the ping-pong drop.

Yeah, I mean,

see how I bounces?

What are you doing?

I'm worried.

A quilt show.

Fuck yeah.

A garden tractor pull, a smoke-off registration.

There we go.

Horseshoe tournament.

Baby show is ages zero through two.

You know, once they're two, they're

aged out, man.

That's a hideous baby.

Oh, forget about it.

The little Mr.

and Miss Pumpkin Show is ages three to six.

Pumpkin Center's got to be near here.

There is one in Missouri, too.

It's got to be near here because I hate when they hate that misspelling so much.

I know.

It's like piscetty, any intentional misspelling.

I'm like, you know what you're doing.

Stop it.

There's a frog jumping contest, and it says, bring your own or use those provided.

So, I mean, they got frogs for it in case you can't find one.

Bring a newer used frog.

That's right.

We got it.

Then there's a cornhole tournament, of course.

Then there's a chicken throw for the ladies.

They're going to throw chickens.

Throw chickens.

I hope they're already dead.

Otherwise, those are going to be angry chickens.

And then there's a tire.

A tire toss for the guys.

So there you go.

This is a small town festival right here.

I mean,

there's kids on display,

women throwing chickens, frogs jumping.

as a man tossing a tire will make you feel like a giant bitch if you're not good at it well till you see the next guy do the same thing and you're like okay this just this is just not a good

throwing implement this is that's why we made balls i think because these are baseball would suck with tires that wouldn't be a good sport at all holding the bead and whipping it off your your hip that hurts it's not easy hurts no that's fucking rough uh crime rate in this town what we are interested in here property crime is slightly above the national average average.

Oh.

For a town with less than a thousand people, how is there that much crime?

Stealing frogs.

I mean, he got the longest jumping frogs in the whole county.

And then violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and of course, assault, the Mount Rushmore of crime is about one-third over the national average.

It is busy around here.

What's happening in this town, everybody?

I don't know what's going on, man.

And this isn't the murders.

It's not blighting crime.

This isn't the murders we brought up.

This is current.

No.

What are they doing?

That said, let's talk about some murder that's not the other murders we already talked about.

Here we go.

Okay, here we go.

Let's start out December the 17th, 2004 at 9.30 a.m.

Now, this is at the Whistle Stop Cafe.

Okay, this is in Kansas, downtown Malvern, Kansas.

Okay.

Nice and early.

9.30.

Oh, they've already,

half the thing is over at 9.30.

The whole festival's over.

All the pumpkins have been chunking and fucking the frogs have all jumped.

It's all over with.

Lisa Marie,

she's born Lisa Marie Hedberg.

She is now Lisa Marie Montgomery

here.

She is at the time, she had been born February 27th, 1968.

So at the time, she's 36 years old.

Her and her husband, Kevin Montgomery, are at the Whistle Stop Cafe for breakfast.

Okay, like I said, downtown

Melvern.

They are also with with their brand new baby that Lisa has just gave birth to last night.

Oh.

Which is weird to bring a newborn baby to a restaurant, like a one-day-old baby.

Last night?

Yeah, that baby's so susceptible to so much.

Usually keep them inside for a while.

You got to keep them

fucking

baby.

Yeah, can't let them out.

They're going to get eaten by something.

It's crazy.

So now they hadn't been to this diner very often.

They rarely came here, but Kevin's parents are regulars.

It's a small town in Kansas.

So, I mean, everybody.

We're just here to show the grandpigs the baby.

And show all the grandparents' friends.

Basically, this is like the center of town, and they're taking their baby to town to show everybody.

That's what's going on.

Period.

It's 2004, but they're doing a very kind of old-timey thing.

The couple here, Lisa and Kevin, they sit down at a little table.

Lisa sets the baby carrier on the floor.

They got fried eggs, bacon, and hash browns.

You have a baby the night before.

You want to load up on breakfast the next day.

That's a different kind of hangover.

You got to get that, you know.

That hospital food's garbage.

It's garbage.

So we'll find out.

There wasn't a hospital involved, too.

It was a birthing center.

We'll get into it.

Wow.

Now, this baby, because it's a brand new baby and it's a small town, everybody gathers around

to see the new baby.

And they're, oh, my goodness, look at this baby.

And, oh, how beautiful.

One of the customers picked the baby up and carried the baby from table to table, showing them.

What the fuck is going on?

Hey, get your refill on that Pepsi.

Look at this baby, by the way.

More home fries?

Check it out.

Look at this baby.

So that's

what they're doing, showing them off.

Kevin and Lisa are eating.

That gave them a second to eat.

So the baby's being passed around.

They're eating.

Kevin couldn't be happier.

He's just thrilled, dad.

He couldn't be happier here.

Now, the whistle-stop owner, Kathy, she said, Lisa, you don't bring a newborn out in public.

What are you doing?

What's wrong with you?

Which I'm surprised she's the first person to mention that in a restaurant full of people who presumably have had kids.

So Lisa said, yeah, it's only a day old.

Right.

And the owner there, Kathy, says, we didn't even know you were pregnant.

And Lisa says, nah, most people didn't.

Like, wow, didn't tell me.

We didn't tell nobody.

She's pretty private.

Well, she doesn't go out a lot.

She's kind of a homebody.

So if you don't go to town and see her big belly or whatever.

So Kathy, though, the owner

was still admiring the baby, kind of scolding them for taking it out, but

admiring the baby.

And

this is baby Abigail, she says.

So

there we go.

Now, Kevin's boss is there as well.

Kevin works at a

Kawasaki place, I want to say.

His boss is there.

He

sees the baby, and the baby, super cute.

But they said, where in the world did you get this baby?

He said to them.

And Lisa said, well, I had the baby before in Topeka.

And the boss said, you didn't look that close to delivery when I saw you a week ago.

And Kevin said, well, it's a small baby.

It's only five pounds and change.

It's a small baby.

And, you know, she said, Lisa never, and Lisa said, I never showed much during any of my pregnancies.

Okay.

And a lot of people are like that.

Some people show a lot.

Some people don't show much.

Everybody's different.

So they said.

These ladies that look like they swallowed a softball baffle me.

I don't understand that.

Their body doesn't get big at all.

They just get this skinny leg.

It's super round.

Yeah, it's just round, skinny legs, skinny everything, no face fat, nothing.

And then just

a ball.

It's so weird.

Yeah, I find that so.

And then some women, they blow up

everywhere.

You can barely tell they're pregnant.

They just look giant.

Yeah, it's really interesting.

So they, you know, they're talking to the boss here, and the boss asked Kevin about the experience, and Kevin said, I wasn't there.

Kevin said, I didn't know about the baby till I got home and Lisa called me from Topeka.

She didn't even tell him she was pregnant?

No, no, no, no.

She didn't know he, he didn't know she had the baby.

He's like, I got home from work and she was on the phone from Topeka going, hey, come pick me up.

Come grab me.

Baby.

All right.

Baby popped.

I did it.

And the boss said, what the fuck, Kevin?

Because Kevin was at work.

He goes, Kevin, you could have taken the day off for your birth of your your child for Christ's sake he said Kevin you should have been there you can get off from work for that yeah he told him literally like that's part of our we'll let you off work for that one Jesus Christ and they said the boss says why didn't you call him Lisa and Lisa said I tried but I couldn't get a hold of him yeah now

he's given birth at this point because he worked at a Kawasaki this is at the he works at the Acme sign company Okay

and the boss is the owner of the company and he thought that was was weird because it's always possible to get a message to his employees during the day, even for minor things.

Never mind your son, your daughter just was born, like your wife's going into labor.

But he was like, that's weird.

I don't know.

Maybe somebody couldn't find him.

Maybe he was in the shit or whatever.

He just gives up and compliments the baby.

Now,

miles and miles away in Skidmore, Missouri,

about 18 hours earlier, December 16th, about 3.30 in the afternoon, a woman named Becky Harper

walks up to her daughter's home.

It's a little house on Elm Street, West Elm Street, and the front door is open, which is strange because it's December.

And

this part of the country gets cold in December.

It's windy as shit.

It's, you know, it's all open.

Maybe.

There isn't a hill for 200 miles in any direction.

Nothing to slow this wind at all.

Nothing, nothing.

So she thought, this is weird.

You know, that's strange.

Now, this Becky Harper, she yells into the door for her daughter.

Bobby Joe is her daughter's name.

She says, Bobby Joe, Bobby Joe.

And nothing happens.

She doesn't hear anything.

All she hears is a lot of little dogs barking.

Yippie, yippie, yippie barks.

Okay.

So she calls 911.

when she discovers what she discovers.

And we'll talk about this.

They ask, what's your emergency?

And she's screaming incomprehensibly on the phone.

They can't even understand her at first.

The dispatcher says, ma'am, I need you to calm down.

What's wrong?

Yeah.

Okay.

Becky Harper said, it's my daughter.

She's, oh, God, there's blood everywhere.

Oh, no.

Yeah.

So they said, what's your location?

She said, 410 Elm in Skidmore.

She's pregnant, and it looks like her stomach exploded.

So the dispatcher says, is she breathing?

And Becky Harper says, I don't know.

There's so much blood.

Oh my God, Bobby Joe.

So the dispatcher says, I'm sending help right now.

I need you to check if she's breathing.

And for 11 minutes, it goes on with the dispatcher talking Becky through CPR and any kind of life-saving maneuvers that you can possibly tell somebody over the phone, which seems like it's harder than telling someone how to land a plane over the fucking headset.

Yeah.

You know, I would rather land a plane than deliver or than try to save someone's life.

Save somebody's life.

Forget that.

I think I'd be more successful at the plane.

Not that I don't want to save.

I just I think I'd be more successful doing that than this.

I'd be bad at this.

You don't want me stumbling on your body on only you in need of help.

No, no.

And you don't want me in a panic with my big stupid hands crushing your fucking chest plate.

Like, you don't want any of that.

It's all going to be bad.

My hands are around their neck.

Is that where you want these?

Oh, shit.

No, goddammit.

Okay, I messed this all up.

Wait, back to one.

It's all over.

Never mind.

We don't need help.

So the first responder, the sheriff Ben Espy, it's basically, if you look on GPS, it's a 30-minute drive from where he was.

He makes it there in 14 minutes.

Wow.

Rushes there pretty goddamn quick.

And we'll find out the fate of Bobby Joe in a moment here.

But back to Lisa Montgomery, the lady at the Whistle Stop Cafe with her husband, Kevin, and her daughter Abigail, eating breakfast.

with her proud newborn.

Okay.

A little bit on Lisa Montgomery's background here.

Okay, now she was born Lisa Marie Hedberg.

She's born in Washington state on February 27th, 1968 here.

Now, it's important to know about her mother, Judy.

Judy is from Kansas and,

I guess, had moved to the Northwest with her husband, which is

Lisa's father.

when they got married, okay?

John Hedberg, Lisa's father, was from Washington.

He was in the Army.

So then he got stationed in Fort Riley, Kansas.

So they relocated west of Topeka, the whole family, Lisa's family.

This is known as, by the way, America's War Fighting Center.

This is where they have a lot of the Army shit and a lot of the training things from World War II.

This is where they trained a lot of people and did stuff like that.

So

it's a big base, actually, too, and a big deal here.

Apparently,

George Custer commanded the fort after the end of the Civil War.

So Custer commanded this.

That's how old it is.

Yeah, super, super old.

Now, Lisa, very smart, despite the fact that she had fetal alcohol syndrome, because her mother is a rampant alcoholic that can't stop drinking even while pregnant.

Unbelievable.

Absolutely has some problems, Lisa does, but she's really smart.

She's very smart.

She learned to read by the time she was four, and she was like reading books on her own at five years old.

Hey, everybody, just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you a better way to feed your dog with Ollie.

Ollie.com.

O-L-L-I-E.com.

Absolutely.

I have three dogs.

You have a dog.

A couple of your dogs older.

My dog's older, has dietary issues and things like that.

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Now back to the show.

Just like, you know, you'd come in and she's sitting there with a reader's digest.

Like, yeah, can you put the groceries away?

And, you know,

you know, like an old lady, basically.

So she became really into reading.

She didn't play with dolls or anything like that, like the other kids did.

She just wanted to read.

So it was interesting.

She said her mother once said that while she's reading a book, the house could burn down and she wouldn't even smell the smoke.

She also

told a lot of tall tales.

A lot of tall tales.

Real big fibber.

And when you find out what's going on in her family, her mom's kind of a drunk that doesn't pay attention to her and things like that, it kind of makes sense.

Her mother and father will separate.

And when that happens, she just told everybody she meets, teachers, other kids, that her dad died in Vietnam.

My dad's dead.

He's in Vietnam, died.

All right.

So Judy is on her own, mom, with Lisa and another young child, and they are very poor.

Then Judy met a single father named Jack Kleiner.

He's got five kids of his own coming into this,

which is a Brady bunch now, plus one.

That's a brood, yeah.

So she moved with him, with Lisa and the two kids, Lisa and the other kid, to Oklahoma to live with this guy.

So then Lisa had another brother named Teddy, and then another brother named Jerry in 74 and then 75.

And

so then they had another child, her mom and stepdad here, born in 1978.

So

the family is huge.

This guy's got eight kids now and then two more stepkids.

So he's got 10 kids total

to deal with.

Oof.

Now, she does really well in school and things like that, but her fibbing really starts to be annoying to the family here.

She learns to play the violin and French horn in grade school, which are very different instruments.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's real different.

It's not like, you know, the flute and the oboe or something.

These are

very different.

She played the mellow phone, which I don't even know what that is.

Mellow phone?

Some kind of xylophone type of thing.

Did she create it?

I don't know.

It doesn't matter.

But she did that in the marching band, making first chair with ease.

Now, no one else knew what the hell a mellow phone was, so it was very easy to make first chair when you're the only person who knows what the fuck it even is.

But

she also was in class plays.

She was active in the Pep Club and was also in student council.

Great.

She got like all A's,

first chair for the whatever the hell that thing is, playing violins and French horns and student councils.

She's in a play.

Yeah.

So she's doing well in school.

Now, Lisa, for her home problems, her lying and things like that, everybody just blames her mom because there's a lot of reason to blame her mom.

Lisa basically,

people all around heard her mother, Judy, tell Lisa her whole life that she's not good for anything.

You're good for nothing.

You're a loser and all this.

She's getting like straight A's and I don't know what you want from the kid.

So yeah, it was really weird.

And Judy, there's a very unstable

environment when it comes to Judy, both emotionally and physically even.

So they said her moods were wild.

Mom's mood swings were crazy.

One of Lisa's friends said that she basically learned to duck her head when the wind blew the wrong way, was the way she put it.

She learned when one of mom's moods changed, stay out of the fucking way.

Right.

You know,

don't challenge it and let it happen, basically.

Now,

Lisa's mother continues to have some problems here.

She beats Judy, or Judy beats Lisa a lot with belts and brooms and cords.

She's forced to eat raw onions as punishment for things.

Which is absolutely disgusting.

Yeah, that doesn't sound good at all.

Is she like an apple or is she chopping these up and like

handfuls of it?

I don't think it matters.

It's gross either.

I mean, if it's chopped up, you can at least try to just swallow them whole.

I guess.

Yeah, if you have to bite into it, that's that's you're gonna get the whole essence of it hit you in the face, too, at the same time.

So

she locked her outside naked in the winter as a punishment.

And at one point,

Jesus Christ, Judy killed the family dog in front of Lisa with a shovel.

Say that again.

This woman beat the family dog to death with a shovel in front of her young daughter.

Good mom.

Good mom.

This is going great for her.

Can you even imagine?

That's just the most fucked up thing you can do.

Yeah.

It's not a good lesson to teach kids that you don't care for things at all.

This wasn't like they live on a farm and it was a sick dog and they took it out and put it out of its misery in a kind fashion and, you know, said some nice words over its corpse and dug a hole.

Right.

This is crazy.

This is just insane.

Now, the other problem is her stepfather, Jack,

here

basically begins molesting her at age 11.

Bad stuff.

So bad that they lived in a trailer.

He built a room off the trailer.

He built an extension on a trailer.

He went into construction for this.

This was the room he would take her in.

He said, I'm going to build a special fucking disgusting molestation room.

A date room.

Yes.

He would film it sometimes.

Oh, no.

Yeah.

Her mother knew this was going on, too.

Oh, boy.

She would pimper out to men who did work around the house when she was a teenager.

When she's like, you know, 14, 15.

She said, that's how you earn your keep.

Oh, my God.

This woman is a fucking monster, Judy.

She's a monster.

She's a fucking monster.

She's the worst there is.

Someone should beat her to death with a shovel.

This is terrible.

Imagine what the hell.

Imagine what happened to Judy when she was a kid.

Right.

To cause all this.

You know what I mean?

Because, I mean, generally, women aren't malicious out of nowhere.

She's just beating dogs.

That's guy behavior.

You know what I mean?

I mean, statistically.

Yeah.

Just women don't have that gear usually.

In them.

It's just not nature.

So some do, don't get me wrong, but most don't.

So,

yeah, this is horrifying.

Allegedly here in 1983 is when Judy, I guess, walked in on Lisa at 15 having intercourse, being raped by her stepfather.

Let's face it, that's what it is.

Judy was horrified.

Now, Jack threatened to kill Judy if she told anyone.

Right.

Right.

He was a very violent man who hit her and the children, and she's horrible.

He's a horrible monster.

And

Judy said, or I'm sorry, Lisa said, at first, I kept my mouth shut.

Then I told a policeman, and he took me to a lawyer.

This is good.

A lawyer, though.

To see how this is, I don't know why a policeman would need a lawyer to get a child molester put away.

I don't know.

That's a weird step.

The first step should be the police station.

But

I think it's to help her get out of the house, I think, is what they're trying to do.

They're trying to make it illegal so she doesn't have to go home to this, basically.

So, now the policeman was her cousin, also,

which is weird.

Now,

Judy said she was blind to all of this abuse and didn't understand it and didn't know what was going on and all that kind of thing, which is kind of hard to believe, be honest with you.

In a trailer,

it's interesting.

So,

we don't know if this was deliberately ignoring this or

whatever.

He, Jesus Christ, I can't even say those words.

It's so fucking horrible.

He actually,

wow, Jesus Christ.

He actually said

to

the mother, he said the words, quote, you can't rape the willing.

Yikes.

Yeah.

Well, you can if they're a child.

That's the difference.

Their willingness is really irrelevant at that point in terms of why there's something called laws or rules of the age of consent.

Because

at some point, you can't rape the willingness.

You can rape the willing.

And in some states, it is 14 or 15, but not if you're their stepfather.

I don't think that's part of the rule.

I don't think that's okay either.

Horrifying.

That's for some kid who's 16.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

That's so a junior doesn't go to jail for having sex with a freshman.

That's not so.

So your stepdad can fucking jump on top of you in the rape room he built.

That's gross.

So Lisa had told her cousin David Kidwell, who was a deputy sheriff, about it.

So, yeah, Judy, by the way, blamed Lisa for seducing the stepfather.

Holy fuck, man.

So, Judy eventually files for divorce and brings this up during the divorce proceedings, where Jack claimed in court that the whole story was made up to get custody of the children.

Judy ended up taking Lisa to counseling.

So, she actually understood at some point this happened.

You didn't want this to happen and you were traumatized.

So that's

the first motherly thing Judy's done here is take Lisa to counseling, but she would not admit to the counselor that any of this happened.

She said, that never happened.

Lisa said, I didn't have sex with my stepfather.

I don't know what you're talking about.

My mother made that up.

My mother made that up.

So in the end, who knows?

Because this is Judy's story later, so we don't know what's going on.

I tend to believe it happened here.

So

now every one of Judy's kids has problems with the law except for Lisa.

Understandably so.

I mean, this is your environment you're coming up in here.

Yeah, but she also is an admitted liar, so she's possibly lying to get out of things and they're believing it.

So there's possible

maybe that.

That's true.

That's true.

And tall tales for kids are, I don't mean rape tales.

I mean the other tall tales she tells are

different.

So now all of the kids except for lisa got into drugs and lisa never got into any of that stuff never got into drugs never got into alcohol never got into any of this shit so in 1986 judy gets married again really to a guy named richard bowman b-o-m-a-n and richard had grown children but his son carl came home after a stint in the navy Now at this point, she's 18 and Carl's 25.

Oh, no.

And her stepbrother, but Lisa falls hard for Carl, her stepbrother, who's 25.

So Lisa graduates.

Yeah, Malvern, they all need more people.

Lisa graduates from high school.

She planned to go into the Air Force to get money for college.

That was her plan.

But then she found out she was pregnant.

With Carl's baby?

Carl's baby.

God damn it.

Pregnant with your stepfucking brother's baby, which is...

That is crazy.

Literally just a thing on the bottom of the screen on the Jerry Springer show in 1997.

I'm pregnant with my stepbrother's baby.

That's a whole episode.

They got six people to talk about it.

Yep.

People fighting, fucking punching each other, chairs flying around.

So she and Carl get married in August of 1986 in Cleveland, Oklahoma.

Okay.

Cleveland, Oklahoma.

By the way, this week's episode was almost from California, Missouri.

So

these states, they just have no...

no.

Missouri's a big fan of other places.

They really love those different names.

So she's out of the house, though, and married to her stepbrother, which is great.

She ends up having four children.

Desiree.

Yeah, Lisa has Desiree, who's the oldest.

This starting from 18 to like 23, she has four children.

So, I mean, just pounding them out, pumping those kids out.

Yeah.

Desier,

yeah.

Desiree, Chelsea, Carl Jr.

Yep, of course.

Four kids with Carl?

With Carl, yeah.

Oh, good lord.

Four kids with your stepbrother.

Carl's Jr., I just want to say every time when I see that.

Yeah, he's got one.

He's got one.

And Kayla as well.

So four.

Now, Desiree Bowman was born in January 1987.

She's the first.

Now, apparently, by 1990 or 1991, when the last one is born, she has a tubal ligation,

but not of her own volition, apparently.

Apparently, the fourth birth was a very difficult birth.

There was some kind of process.

Something was going on that was wrong in there.

And they,

during some kind of emergency surgery, they tied her tubes.

So, which is crazy to tie somebody's tubes without telling them, like we're doing.

Hey, by the way, you're sterile now.

Like,

that's wild to do, number one.

But I don't know.

That's what goes on, apparently.

Now, she gets divorced from her stepbrother in 1993,

which is

probably healthy at this point, but

still, there's four kids.

Now, that's her first divorce from Carl, by the way.

They're going to do it again.

So run it back.

Would that make them then step-married if they get divorced and get remarried again?

Can we call that step-married?

I step married my stepbrother.

So bad.

This shit is crazy.

Okay, during their first divorce, she claims she's pregnant.

And he goes, she's a big liar, right?

You had your tubes tied.

How the fuck are you pregnant?

You know what I mean?

So then they remarry in 1994.

Wow.

So they get divorced in 93, go through all that paperwork, all that shit, and then go get married again,

which is crazy.

Then in 1994, she says she's pregnant again.

And this is amid them breaking up, her and Carl breaking up, and the custody battle with Carl.

She claims she was pregnant with twins at this point.

Okay, she's got two in there.

Yeah, she's not pregnant with anything at this point, but she claims she's got two kids in there.

Then finally, in 1998, she gets some peace here and finds Kevin Montgomery, who's a hell of a nice guy by all accounts, which is

shocking shocking that this woman would find a nice guy?

Like, yeah, because with her background,

I mean, anybody with a background like that's going to choose poorly in relationships because of all sorts of psychological trauma that you have.

But

she found some childhood lying is a big, big red flag in the first place because that indicates a lot, a host of mental issues

that could be going on.

And then creating your own world.

Yeah.

And then the traumatic behavior from adults that that happened to compound that.

Oh, yeah.

She's a fucking mess.

Yeah.

She started out with fetal alcohol syndrome.

So she didn't start out with

the best shit.

You know what I mean?

I spaced that horrific thing.

Yeah, there's that too.

And beatings and everything else.

So she marries Kevin Montgomery,

meets him around 98.

They get married and they live in

Malvern, Kansas.

Okay.

Kevin worked for the Acme Sign Company in Kansas City, and they lived in Malvern there.

Now, she has more pregnancies, according to her.

Fake ones.

Yes.

Well, I guess in 2000, she told Kevin Montgomery, her husband, that she's pregnant.

Then she said she had an abortion.

Didn't want to have that baby.

She's already got four.

Then in 2002, she was pregnant again.

and told Kevin that she went to a birthing center and it ended in a stillbirth baby.

Okay.

So dead baby came out.

That's how that worked.

She's been having a lot of pregnancies that don't go through.

That don't go through.

Yeah.

And she wore maternity clothes,

you know, everything.

She's pregnant.

She went through all the different things and she's eaten.

She did the steam.

She's eaten pickles and fucking pecan ice cream and she's pickles and pistachio ice cream.

She's got it all.

She's eating onions like hand fruit, not even nostalgic just because she's craving it.

Just because she really, really wants it.

So now she had lived in New Mexico.

She lived in Oklahoma.

She lived in all the, she lived in New Mexico with her first husband there, with Carl.

They had moved to New Mexico at some point.

All this kind of thing.

She works multiple menial jobs, by the way.

Not great when it comes to that.

Like her prowess in school and everything, no one thought that these, this would be her jobs in the future here.

She worked at a Greyhound bus station.

What does one do there?

Sell tickets to Greyhound buses and tell people, hey, stop peeing on the floor, please.

Please.

So many other people have peed already.

Please, please, sir, put your pants on.

Please, God, Jesus, stop doing it.

She worked at a Wendy's at one point.

Okay.

Yeah.

She worked at a gas station.

So just menial jobs.

You fill out an application, they hire you type of deal.

Nothing crazy.

She's diagnosed with some mental issues here, like depression, borderline personality disorder, PTSD.

She's got a lot of problems here.

Also, some organic brain damage from both alcohol exposure and abuse, basically.

And by 2002, in her 34 years,

she has moved

with family and by herself and all that 61 times in 34 years.

That is...

That's better than every six months.

That's, yeah, that's more than every six months.

Oh, my God.

I could probably hang with her till I got to about 12.

I bet I lived in more places by 12 than she did, but from 12 on, holy shit, she really took off and

left me in the dust like a loser.

Like a loser living in the same house all the time.

So a lot of problems and a lot of erratic behavior.

And now all of this doesn't manifest in a crazy, you know, drool dripping off the fangs type of lunatic.

Right.

Everybody describes her as a homebody.

She just likes to stay home.

She likes raising animals.

She loves dogs.

No shovels on the whole property.

Just, you know, just dogs with no shovels.

It's a paradise over there.

She hits the shovel aisle at Home Depot.

Oh, it doesn't go near it.

No.

She likes knitting very well, very good at knitting and likes that.

She's a small, thin-framed woman.

who

just wanted to have a child with her husband, everybody kept saying.

She kept talking about she wants to get pregnant with Kevin and they want to have a baby together.

And they say she rarely socialized in Kansas there.

She never attended, I guess the whole town would go to karaoke night at Gary's bar.

God dang.

That was the big social gathering of the week and she never attended that.

You know, if you don't go to karaoke night at Gary's, you're a weirdo.

You know what I mean?

What are you doing?

What are you doing with your life?

She rarely went to church also, which that was the other central gathering point of the town.

The only time you would see her is at her kids' sporting events, which she attended religiously.

She would go to little league games and her daughter's basketball games, where she was known as the parent who was knitting through the whole game.

She would sit there and knit.

All four of her kids are teenagers at this point.

The three oldest at the time were attending high school in Melvern, and the principal of that school said they're great kids.

They are positive individuals, and they take their schoolwork very seriously.

So,

somehow, this

very damaged woman who's had a lot of problems has somehow managed to create a stable

life for her fortune.

Like that's not expected.

You would not expect, you'd expect her kids' lives to be just as speckled with shit as hers was, and it's not.

They do well in school.

She did well in school.

Yeah, but she also doesn't like drugs or alcohol, which is interesting.

That helps a lot too.

And she, I think, marrying this guy also helped because it's a certain level of stability that he has that she's happy to kind of take part in.

You know what I'm saying?

So, yeah, so they had moved from Bartlesville, Oklahoma to Malvern.

We did.

We did a story about that.

We did a story.

We absolutely did.

Very much into dogs.

Okay.

Loves her dogs.

Now, 2004, Lisa's pregnant.

Really?

She says, I'm pregnant.

I'm knocked up.

You done put one in me.

You know what I mean?

And those tubal ligations, just like vasectomies, sometimes wear out.

Wear out?

I've looked this up and heard there's plenty of cases of vasectomies that end up

coming together, tubal ligations where shit ends up finding itself again, which makes no sense because they cauterize the fucking tubes and shit like that.

Right.

It's useless on the end.

You got to nip it to make it.

There's plenty of times that it's happened where it's actually a thing scientifically.

It doesn't happen often, don't get me wrong.

Am I to

have it checked all the time?

It can not take.

It cannot take.

Yeah.

It can wear out.

Yeah.

I might be.

That's what you're saying to me right now.

You might be spewing sperm, Jimmy.

You never know.

Oh, no.

So it's very rare, though.

I mean, very rare.

So

I don't care.

Her ex-husband, Carl, was filing for custody of their two youngest children at that point.

Now, he says he did this when she said she's pregnant because he says, Well, I know she had a tubal ligation,

and so he threatens to expose that in court, that she's having a lying about a pregnancy.

And she says, I'm not lying about my fucking pregnancy.

And he says, Well, we'll find out in court then.

Okay,

now

Lisa here

meets Remember Bobby Joe from before?

Yeah, yeah, she's Bobby Joe's mom here.

Bobby Joe Stanette is her name.

And Lisa meets Bobby Joe

with dog things, basically.

Yeah.

Bobby Joe's very into dogs, too.

Now, they had met at a dog show in November 2003.

And a fellow dog trainer saw them there.

They raise and show rat terriers.

Yeah, rat terriers.

A fellow terrier trainer said it was an outdoor show and it was cold.

We all

shivered together.

And after the show, we all went to a cafe.

So Lisa and Bobby Joe became friends.

And this woman, Nancy Strudel.

Nancy Strudel is her name.

Okay.

How about it?

S-T-R-U-D-L.

That's Strudel.

That's it.

Yeah.

Here we go.

I don't know what else to call her.

She's delicious.

Yeah, she is covered in a glaze.

Nancy Strudel said that as time went on,

Lisa started getting a bad reputation in the breeding circles for how she portrayed the pedigree of

her dogs.

Now, they said that, you know, that's a big deal in the community because if you fake paperwork and stuff like that, you can...

Oh, you're a fraud.

Yeah.

You're a total fraud.

So this Nancy Strudel said, basically, we took everything she said with a grain of salt, meaning Lisa.

So even these people who know her just through this know that she's kind of a liar, tells some tall tales.

Now, Lisa tells people that she met at the dog show in 2004 that she is pregnant and pregnant with twins.

That's pretty amazing.

At one point, she will announce that she lost one of the babies, but the other one is fine,

which happens with multiples a lot.

That's a very common thing.

Baby Garcia ate it.

We ate it up.

Now, Nancy Strudel said no one believed her.

She said, Nancy said she was skinny as a rail and she never gained an ounce.

None of the rat terrier people believed she was pregnant.

And as we know, too, the rat terrier people are the premier medical group across the world, really, if you think about it.

Yeah.

If you got like a disease or something, you don't go to a hospital, Mayo Clinic.

You go to the rat terrier people and they tell you what to do, usually.

So

the Reverend of Lisa's church, Reverend Mike Wheatley, of the First Church of God, said they wanted to have their own child desperately.

She said that way she would be attached, she said that way she would be attached to the hip to Kevin.

So that way they'll be more, they'll be closer if they have their own child together.

The guy, the pastor, also said, quote, there was a desperation there

in her.

Now, April of 2004, at a dog show in Kansas City, Lisa and Bobby Joe hang out again.

They met in 2003.

Now they meet again.

Now Bobby Joe is also pregnant.

They're both pregnant, they said.

Good to begin with.

You're pregnant.

I'm pregnant, too.

This is great.

A couple of pregos hanging together.

Yep.

So Lisa is there with her daughter, Desiree, her oldest, and helping her show the rat terriers.

So they talk a little bit, Bobby Joe and Lisa.

They even take a photo together.

It's Bobby Joe and Bobby Joe's husband.

And then you got Lisa and a couple of the other breeders are there.

Okay, now let's talk about Bobby Joe here.

Bobby Joe Potter, she's born.

She'll end up Bobby Joe Stinette with two N's and two T's at the end there.

She's born December 4th, 1981.

So, you know, more than a decade younger than

Lisa.

She's not even 23 at this point.

So

she's born in Maryville, Missouri.

She grew up in Skidmore, though.

Her whole life.

Her parents are Becky Harper and Joseph Buck Potter.

Old Buck Potter Potter is coming to town.

How they

get a buck.

Every town has to have a buck.

Potter.

Look at the Potter.

You don't make any goddamn sense.

Joey to Buck?

What are we doing?

That sounds like if your grandfather was telling you Korean war stories and he's like, let me tell you about Buck Potter, the toughest guy in our unit.

Buck Potter's six foot five, 275 pounds if he weighed an ounce.

Fucking Butch.

Those are two different guys.

I once saw him kill 12 Filipinos with his bare hands.

Not even in combat, just in a bar.

He was just a big guy.

Did you ever know a guy named Buck or Butch?

I think so.

Yes, yes, absolutely.

Both of them, I know two guys, both of them were their nicknames.

Neither of them were,

I don't believe there's a butch on this planet.

Every buck I've ever met's name is Robert.

Yeah.

I think that's what his name is.

Bob.

Bob turns into Buck for some reason.

Does he?

It's like John and Jack.

It's weird.

I don't understand it.

But that's every buck.

I've known like three bucks.

They're all Robert is their name.

Bob.

I've never known an actual butch or a a buck.

They've all been nicknames.

And I've known several.

Yeah, not on their birth certificate.

It wasn't a butcher buck yet.

What's the fucking name?

So now Joseph Buck Potter deserted the family when they were young.

You know, a buck's got to roam.

You know what I'm saying?

A buck just can't stay in one place.

Yeah.

You know,

she ends up with a half-brother named Tyler that's born when she's 13.

So Bobby Jo has a rough upbringing too here.

I mean, she's not,

she's not brutally beaten, raped, and forced to to eat onions, but she's born with a cleft palate also.

Oh, that's tough.

Which is tough for a little girl, or for any little kid.

But, you know, she

was surgically corrected at age two,

but she had a slight speech impediment as a child.

She had to go to speech therapy and all that.

She does overcome her shyness, though, and really comes out of her shell in high school.

She's an honor student.

She becomes a cheerleader.

Wow.

Doing great.

Active in the 4-H club, the school newspaper, does yearbook shit.

I mean, Bobby Joe, talk about coming out of your shell.

She's had a life, yeah.

Yeah, she graduated from Nottaway Holt High School in Graham, Missouri in 2000.

This is a town that's too small to have its own high school.

It would have 11 people in it.

Let's be realistic here.

She loves animals, loves dogs, as we know, because she's a rat terrier breeder, and horses as well.

One friend said she didn't just love them.

She responded to dogs, and dogs responded to her like she spoke their language.

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One friend said dogs just melted in her presence, which sounds gross.

I don't want to see any melted dog there.

Horny dog.

Yeah.

So she graduates from high school in 2000 and worked at a feed store because she loves animals and loves farm stuff.

Then she gets a job at a Kawasaki factory.

Sorry, I mixed up my husband's.

She gets a job at a Kawasaki factory in Maryville where she works with a childhood friend of hers and future husband.

So she reunites with a childhood friend of hers that they work together, and his name is Zeb.

Get

some romance going over that two-stroke motor.

That's right.

Oh, that 250 is looking the sound of that 250, the vibrations are just

flowing right now.

The smell of that two-smoker, I'm into it.

I'm hard too.

Well, all right then.

So Zeb Stanet is his name.

Z-E-B Zeb.

So they meet.

Now they get together as well, and they're right away all about each other.

She also opens a dog breeding business called Happy Haven Farms out of her home,

specializing in rat terriers.

She participated in dog shows and is very into the online rat terrier communities, including one called Ratter Chatter, which is the main,

that's the main place they all get together and fucking talk is Ratter Chatter.

The old ratter chatter, they're going to.

I'm getting on Ratter Chatter.

Now, she, I guess, talked to, she decided she wanted to breed these

dogs here.

Her first dog, Tipsy, was a seven-year-old white and brindle female mini

and delivered her first litter in 2002.

And from there, those puppies, Bobby Joe, kind of kept it going from there.

Bobby Joe loved Tipsy, her first dog here.

On her website, she says about Tipsy, quote, she's so intelligent that she can convey exactly what she's thinking or feeling to you, and you know it.

I think everybody thinks that about their animals, though, don't they?

That's projection.

I know when Vaughn has to use the restroom and eat.

Outside of that, I don't know what the fucking dogs think.

Mainly because he goes to the door and then stands by his ball.

He gives pretty clear signals of what he's interested in.

Yeah.

So Tipsy's second litter arrived in 2003 and Bobby Joe kept a white and brindle female who she wrote about and called the dog a true athlete, able to jump

five feet straight up from a standing position.

Said she was a natural for agility competitions.

And her philosophy in breeding was: our dogs are bred as house pets first and foremost as we live, sleep, and play with our dogs.

So, you know, and that's how she was, too.

If people bought the dogs, it couldn't be some dog they're going to keep somewhere and only train.

It had to be like she really like

vetted the people, you know what I mean?

So she said also that, quote, her dogs are bred to excel as well as well in hunting,

conformation, as well as performance events like weight, pull, agility, and obedience.

Said our litters are planned up to two years in advance, and the potential parents are

picked over to maximize their good qualities, as well as vet-checked prior to each breeding.

We offer our puppies for great homes only, and great is all capitalized.

Very particular about who adopts the puppies.

You had to like, it was an application process.

You couldn't just go buy a dog from her.

It didn't work.

So you had to fill it.

It's still a a terrier, man.

It's a rat, exactly.

Yeah.

What the fuck?

She's that into it.

She made them fill out a two-page form.

Oh.

This is a dog.

I have to fill out less form to go to the doctor.

This is ridiculous.

What are we doing?

Does your family have any history of cancer?

Yeah, what are we talking about here?

It requested details about the number and ages of the people in the household, whether the home was rented or owned, and how much time each day would be devoted to the puppy.

Oh, boy.

So really judgmental.

Devoted.

Like, when you adopt anything, they usually ask you, like, if you go to like a dog shelter, cat shelter, what kind of pets do you have?

And how old?

They ask you shit like that to see if they're going to eat this thing.

But other than that, you know, they think that

you can judge whether you have a home that's stable enough for one or not.

So,

anyway,

she wanted to know if the applicant had ever euthanized an animal and why.

Yeah.

It was sick, lady.

What?

And whether or not puppy obedience classes were planned.

So she is really fine-toothed comb in this adoption process.

No, it's a tonic, yeah.

But this earns her the respect of everyone in the rat terrier community because she's all about the dogs.

All about the dogs.

People would contact her for advice on breeding all the time and, you know, everything like that.

Like they said, she seemed to have a gift for it, basically.

Her emails that she sent to people were all technical language and scientific scientific things and

really, you know, really

intelligent.

She really looked this shit up.

She became an expert on it.

So she married Zeb in April of 2003.

And

Zeb is the

step-grandson, but for all intents and purposes, as basically grandma of Joanne Stinnette.

Remember Joanne Stinnette from the town part?

Right.

The grandmother of the kid.

Yeah, that.

That's Joanne Stinet.

Same one.

Son of a gun.

And we'll talk a little bit more about Joanne Stinnette just to give you a background on her and how cursed she seems to be.

Her first marriage produced

this, okay, produced those people, the Branson person.

Branson Perry, the one that disappeared, the 20-year-old.

Her first marriage.

produced Bob, who's Branson's father.

So she's Branson's grandmother.

Joanne later married A.B.

Stinette, becoming grandmother to Zeb Stinnette, Bobby Joe's husband, and becoming a member of that family.

So,

yeah.

Now, Joanne, let me give you some background on her.

Remember the

Wendy Gillenwater murder, where she was dragged by her boyfriend, her husband,

Gregory Dragu,

there.

Well, her grandmother, Wendy's grandmother, is Joanne Stinnette.

How do they all get into

this?

This is crazy.

Too small.

That's all.

They need more people.

Okay, now, Joanne Stinnette, by the way, is the one who identified Wendy by the rings on her fingers because she was so mangled.

Oh, boy.

In 2000, that was October 2000.

Then in April 2001, Branson Perry disappeared from his home.

His grandmother is Joanne Stinnette.

Of course she is.

So now two of her granddaughter, of her grandkids, have been,

one disappeared and one's been murdered in a period of six months.

Oh, boy.

That is fucking insane.

That Branson, the Branson Perry story is fucking weird, too.

Apparently, Perry,

the guy who was never found again, he was into meth and things like that a little bit at the time here.

He told his father that he he was gay and also told his dad that he had recently experienced a traumatic incident involving his neighbor, Jason Bierman.

According to Perry, Bierman had spiked his drink with hallucinogens, leading to Perry shaving his pubic hair, dancing naked, and engaging in sexual activity with Bierman.

He felt ashamed because he was afraid people would find out in this small town and he'd be ostracized, basically.

So Bob Perry was in the hospital, the father, and Branson was preparing the house for his father's return.

Around 3 p.m., a woman that was there to help him saw Branson outside speaking with two men who were replacing the alternator in Bob's car.

She said, what are you doing?

Branson said that he was going to put away the jumper cables, then run out for a bit, and he'd be right back.

She last saw him walking to the shed and he was never seen again.

Oh, my.

Which is fucking crazy.

The case went cold.

Then in April 2003, in an FBI investigation into online child pornography, they discovered Jack Wayne Rogers, a 75-year-old Presbyterian minister, Boy Scout leader

and resident of Fulton, Missouri, which is three and a half hours away, using the screen name Burger Butt.

Burger Butt.

Had disturbing online chats where he described picking up

a hitchhiking blonde boy from Skidmore, drugging him and

subjecting him to graphic sexual abuse and mutilation.

Wow.

Okay.

The descriptions matched Branson's appearance and the hitchhiking theory because he hitchhiked all the time too.

He was convicted of a whole bunch of shit, including child pornography, this Rogers guy, first-degree assault, practicing medicine without a license.

Oh, God.

Holy shit.

Which related to a botched surgery in a hotel room that nearly killed somebody.

But But they can't.

He's doing this in the hotel rooms.

Yeah, but they never connected him to Rogers.

It's a big thing that this guy is still out there.

No one ever found out what happened to him.

It's a very popular case that people have.

Perry's missing and they don't have anybody

in jail about it?

No, Branson Perry.

No one's been arrested for it.

He's never been found.

No one knows what happened to him.

Nothing.

Now, his middle name is Kanye, so maybe he just

got a huge change.

He's got a lot of peace and went crazy.

Turned into a dickhead.

Yeah, we don't know.

Started yelling at people at the Grammys.

I don't know.

So 2004.

Okay, back to this now.

Now we know where everybody is.

And Zeb Sinek comes from a, that Joanne is just littered with tragedy here.

Fascinating lady.

2004, Bobby Joe, pregnant with a baby girl.

This baby is due January 16th, 2005.

That's when the baby's due.

Now, Zeb, very happy.

Couldn't be more thrilled.

He supports her in her dog breeding business, and he's excited about being a father.

Oh, yeah.

Their life is going well.

They already picked cowies all day.

Yep, that's all he's doing, getting his jet skis ready.

So they pick a name out months ahead of time.

Well, they know.

She's Victoria Joe.

Yep.

Like Bobby Joe, but Victoria Joe.

That's cute.

Vicki Joe.

So

the Happy Haven Kennel, she keeps detailed records, travels to dog shows.

She has a rule about selling puppies, and that is she always meets the buyers in person before selling them a puppy.

Always.

You can't just come pick up a puppy.

You have to do a whole meeting with her, and then maybe the next day you can come back, and she's got to think about it, and then

you can come back.

But she couldn't be more thrilled.

She's 22.

She's married to the guy she's liked when she was a kid, even.

She's running a successful small business of her own while being pregnant with her first child.

Life is great.

Life is great.

Now, she gets along with Lisa Montgomery in the whole rat terrier circles.

They're both big members of the ratter chatter forum.

Big ratter chatters, these two.

It's hard to say that and not laugh.

Ratter chatter.

It's so dumb.

So this was all about rat terriers, the ratter chatter one.

People talked about breeding and training and dog shows and sales.

It's very niche.

This is one of those things that

only the internet could bring this type of niche to get to a lot of people.

Otherwise, there'd be one person in your town that you know that likes rat terriers too, and you'd go talk to them.

Yeah, it's too few people.

Yeah.

Now this platform also allows users to exchange

all sorts of communication on the site.

Kind of like a social media site, but in 2004.

Yeah, which is Reddit, but or

like a lot of

like anything, but they can exchange messages, private emails that are just on their server.

They can post content related to dogs.

It's like Instagram, basically, but for rat terrier people,

it would kind of put together people who are looking for dogs and breeders and all that kind of shit here.

So April 3rd, 2003 is when,

remember,

they met a little later at the dog show, but April 3rd, 2004,

here they had met the previous year.

There's a dog show.

This is two weeks before a dog show in Abilene, Kansas, when they're going to hang out and take that picture we talked about.

Lisa wrote to Bobby Joe.

She said, it's been a busy week here with five active pups, three of which my daughter is working with on crate training.

shit all over the place, in other words,

litter box training and

stacking on her table.

Her room is more like our kennel room here.

Her room is more like our kennel room here.

The kids are talking about switching bedrooms to give Kayla and the pups their own room, even if it means someone else has to share a bedroom.

They said, we are still planning on making the Abilene Kansas show on the 17th with at least two of the pups, depending on how well training goes.

Kayla is excited about this as this will be her first show.

She's the youngest.

So,

you know,

they ended up talking that day.

And then after the show, they stayed in contact online, Lisa and Bobby Joe.

They talked about their puppies, their breeding plans.

They compared notes about the progress of their pregnancies, too, because they're due around within a month of each other.

Yeah.

So

now another woman in the rat terrier group announced in April that she was pregnant with twins.

And

she said, so Lisa contacted her on Instant Messenger on the site and said, I've got you beat.

Yeah.

She said, my twins are due to arrive before your twins they'll be here a month earlier so ha joking around a few days later linda contact or lisa contacted the woman again she said that she's knitting a blanket for your babies yep what a sweet linda here or lisa i keep wanting to call her linda um so she thought it was strange because she didn't know her except for online Right.

But she's like, I guess she's just a real nice.

Whatever.

People we don't know send us weird shit all the time.

We appreciate it.

Yeah, please.

I've got got mugs that are insulting to me.

I have

fucking, yeah, I have goddamn bobbleheads of us and shit, like all sorts of cool shit that people have built.

So anyway, Lisa and Bobby Joe, in early October, Lisa posted on an online rat terrier site, said, I lost one of the twins.

It's so terrible, but they saved one twin.

On another site, she was complaining about lack of child support from Carl Bowman.

She complained that her attorney also represented Kevin's ex-wife.

Jesus.

Kevin got hauled into court nearly every year for an increase in child support and the difference was garnished from his wages within two weeks.

Dang.

So Lisa didn't understand that the same attorney was only able to get Carl into court on one occasion and on one time.

She said, well, it gets you into court paying extra child support all the time.

I got this guy.

Can't get a dime out of Carl.

Later that month, Kevin told the Reverend at the church,

Reverend Wheatley, that he'd been feeling the baby kick inside of Lisa's stomach.

And,

you know, when he saw Lisa, he said, you look too thin to be eight months pregnant.

And she said, I always have small babies.

I'm good at

rubbed her stomach.

So, yeah, this is number five.

You know, they come in small, they fly right out, no problem.

Pop out like a rat terrier.

So they also discuss the two of them, talk about ultrasounds and discuss morning sicknesses and, you know, all that kind of thing.

Bobby Joe's posting pictures of her giant belly.

Yeah.

Lisa also, same stuff.

Bobby Joe mentions December appointments.

Lisa mentions I have the same appointments.

Bobby Joe says I carry low.

Lisa says me too.

Hey.

So they got a lot in common.

Now, the weird thing is here

that Bobby Joe is using her name, Bobby Joe Stinette, on this site.

Now, Lisa is not using her real name on the site.

At the conventions, she's her.

She's Lisa Montgomery.

She talks.

But on these sites, she's a different person when she's talking to Bobby Joe.

She goes under Darlene Fisher and says she's from Fairfax, Missouri.

Well, what the fuck is that about?

Why use a...

I mean, a lot of people use aliases.

It's online.

Why not go buy Burger Bottom or some shit?

Yeah, I guess.

Well, it's the Ratter Chatter.

So you can't, it can't sound sexual probably on the old ratter chatterboard.

That's fine.

You know what I mean?

Big burger lips.

I don't care.

Just fucking anybody much less sexual.

But just, I don't know, why have a, why have a weird fucking name?

Like a person's name?

That's strange.

I mean, plenty of people, especially back then, because now they're social media and everybody uses their real name.

But back then,

the internet was this murky, I don't know what's out there.

So people used to use fake names all the time.

That was not abnormal.

But it's weird to do that with someone you know from in person.

If you already met the person in person, why are you pretending to be somebody else?

That makes no sense.

I think that's the weird part.

It's fucking bizarre to have you're just

an alias, like a criminal name.

If you were just on a message board talking to strangers back then, go ahead and use a fake name.

But yeah, if it's someone you know, be like, oh, my screen name is this, but I'm actually Lisa.

Remember, we met a bunch of times.

Oh, yeah, that's how you do that because you know this person.

I just just think it's weirder to have a fake actual name, like a pseudonym, rather than just like Assassin 12.

You know what I mean?

It's just

so bizarre.

But I know people on Facebook that still do that.

They do their different names.

A weird name?

Yeah.

Yeah, plenty of people.

People are weird, man.

It's 2004, too.

Like I said, the internet was still pretty new, especially in rural Missouri.

It was not in rural Kansas.

It wasn't, you know,

it was not like they just got dial-up probably two years earlier or something.

Who knows?

So October 2004,

the Reverend Wheatley said that, you know, he had talked to Kevin about the baby kicking and how happy Kevin was and all that kind of thing.

So early December 2004, remember Nancy Strudel?

Yeah.

The old Strudel saw Bobby Joe.

at a dog show in Norman, Oklahoma in November.

And

no one expected her to show up because she was super pregnant, but she showed up anyway.

Everybody said, holy crap, look at you.

You're a house.

Oh, my God.

You know, they were laughing.

And she was so uncomfortable, Bobby Joe, she changed outfits five times over the course of the show because she was just uncomfortable in her clothes.

She couldn't find anything that fit right, and everything was a mess.

So her dogs did well.

They took home some ribbons that weekend.

And

after the show, they congratulated each other

on emails that they both got some ribbons.

Now, around this same time in November, late November, early December, Lisa Montgomery goes to parents' night at a high school basketball game in Malvern,

and she's wearing maternity clothes and,

you know, fucking knitting.

The owner of the town barber shop said it seemed like she's pregnant.

It seems like she was pregnant all the time.

She's always pregnant, this lady.

December 8th, 2004, Lisa posted a message next to her name, Darlene Fisher, that said, baby any day, maybe today.

Maybe could come today.

December 15th, 2004, Bobby Joe gets an instant message over the ratter chatter line there

from Darlene Fisher

saying that Darlene is interested in purchasing a puppy from her new litter.

I'd love to get one of those.

So they decided that they would meet the next day at Bobby Joe's house in Skidmore.

This is from Darlene Fisher.

Her email address here is Fisher4Kids, number four.

Yep, yep.

Fisher, because she has four kids, Fisher4Kids at hotmail.com.

There's a blast from her pass.

So,

yeah, and the subject is puppy visit.

And she said, hi, I'm Darlene Fisher from Fairfax.

I'm very interested in purchasing one of your rat terrier puppies as a Christmas gift.

Would tomorrow work for a visit?

I can come by around noon.

And Bobby Joe said, that would be wonderful.

Here's my address.

Especially before Christmas.

You want to sell some dogs.

You have some Christmas.

That's the whole point of having a litter around then.

Absolutely.

So that night here,

the same day that all happens, Carl, her ex-husband and stepbrother,

files.

This is just making things weird at Thanksgiving, Carl.

Jesus.

Filed for custody of two of their four children because he would have been talking about it before.

Now, Desiree is close to 18, so they're basically going to let her decide on her own.

Now, the youngest, Kayla, wanted to stay

there and all that kind of thing.

So it's interesting.

But Carl planned to question Lisa's mental state by saying she faked pregnancies.

That's how this goes.

Now, December 16th, 2004, 6:30 a.m., Zeb, Bobby Joe's husband, kisses her goodbye, heads off to his shift at Kawasaki Motors in Maryville.

They talk about what they're going to do that evening.

Bobby Joe has got to pick her mother up from work at 3:30.

So that's what's going on.

That's it.

Otherwise, got nothing going on.

By 7 a.m.,

Lisa Montgomery here

now that's back on the other end, Kansas.

Lisa tells her husband, Kevin, that she's going Christmas shopping in Topeka.

She says that she's been having some weird contractions

and, you know, just having what she thinks are contractions.

She doesn't know if it's contractions or gas or what, but

who the hell knows what's going on here?

But she said she's had some contractions, but she's going to go try to walk it off and feel better.

So Kevin said, okay,

sure.

She's supposed to be due any day now.

But he doesn't know shit.

He's just this blue-collar guy.

He doesn't know a fucking thing about pregnancies like this.

He's like, I don't know.

I guess that sounds right.

So just have fun.

Go have fun.

So at 8 a.m.

Now, Bobby Jo

in Skidmore tends to her dogs.

She posts on Ratter Chatter about the upcoming puppy visit.

She's excited.

Another sale before Christmas means more baby money, basically.

They can buy shit for the nursery.

So that's what she posts.

Gonna sell a puppy today.

Very excited.

Blah, blah, blah.

9 a.m., Lisa Montgomery loads up her red Toyota Corolla.

Okay,

for the ride.

10 a.m., Lisa drives, starts her drive.

It's 175 miles from Melvern, Kansas to Skidmore.

She makes the drive.

Now,

Chris Law is Bobby Joe's neighbor, and we'll talk about him in a minute here in more detail.

He noticed that she's home and moving around the yard with her dogs, and he considered stopping by on his way out to ask her about a prenatal checkup she has.

Just, how are you doing?

That's a nosy neighbor.

Tell me about what's in your pussy.

Is everything good in there?

Do they do the finger thing where they check the size?

How's the size?

Your tubes, tubing, and everything.

All right, then.

They get in there.

I like how it's uterus and not you to rye.

You know what I mean?

The uterus is for the team.

That's what it's about now.

We're all in this together.

All in this together.

Now, 12.30 p.m., a dirty red Toyota Corolla with Kansas plates pulls up to 410 West Elm Street, parking the wrong way on the street.

Yeah.

Wrong direction.

Darlene Fisher gets out

slash Lisa Montgomery and walks up to the door.

Oh, boy.

Bobby Joe opens the door, greeting a customer, and she recognizes Lisa.

She goes, you know, she does that head tilt thing

where she's like, what, I know you.

You're Lisa.

Yeah.

And she said, yeah, yeah.

She said, quote, hi, you must be Darlene, but wait, you're Lisa, aren't you?

We met at the dog show.

Yeah.

And Lisa said, yeah, yeah, no, I just use that other name online for privacy.

I got an ex-husband that feels like real nosy into my shit.

So I use Darlene Fisher as my alias online.

So Bobby Joe's like, totally, internet's super dangerous.

I completely get it.

You know what I mean?

Sure.

So Bobby Joe brings out the puppies.

They're nice quality puppies, of course.

Here, they play with the puppies on the floor.

They talk about the bloodlines.

They talk about Christmas plans, all that kind of shit.

Now, Bobby Joe's eight months pregnant, moving around kind of hard, and she's sitting on the floor and wobbly.

She's shifting and doing all that.

She says, Jesus, I feel like I'm ready to pop.

And Lisa says, me too.

I'm due this month.

You're not due till next month.

I got a lot going on here.

2.15, Lisa asks to use the bathroom.

Bobby Joe says it's down the hall.

So Lisa walks through the house,

you know,

walks through the living room, the kitchen, the dog room, the bedroom, all that kind of shit.

2.30 p.m., the phone rings.

Becky Harper calls.

Bobby Joe's mother.

Remember her from the very beginning?

She said, hi, honey, just confirming you're picking me up at 3.30 from work.

She said, yes, mom, I've got someone here looking at puppies right now, but I will be there.

Don't worry.

She says, Okay, great.

See you soon.

Bobby Joe hangs up and tells Lisa that I need to wrap this up because I got to go pick my mother up.

She's expecting me.

Lisa says, Oh, God, yeah, no problem.

She said, I already made my decision anyway.

I know which puppy I want.

So

we're good.

Let's

speed this up.

So Lisa asks to see the puppies one more time in the room.

Can I go look at them one more time?

You just want to take a look.

Bobby Joe leads the way here, goes goes into the room.

Bobby Joe bends down to pick up a puppy.

At that point, Lisa throws a white cord around Bobby Joe's neck from behind and starts strangling her.

God dang.

She pulls her real tight and starts choking the shit out of her.

I mean, she's strangling her.

Bobby Joe is trying to pull the cord, trying to get her fingers under the cord.

She's, you know, kicking and trying to get some sort of grip to...

And she's fucking eight months pregnant, too, so she has no balance or anything like that.

So she passes out.

Lisa thinks she's dead.

Right.

She lowers her down to the floor, Lisa does,

and goes to the kitchen and gets a pairing knife.

A pairing knife?

Yes.

A pairing knife.

A tiny knife.

It's at this point, this is rough, everybody.

Hold on.

Hang on to your hats as we talk about this.

This is brutal here.

She slices across her belly

with the pairing knife.

Bobby Joe wakes up.

Oh, my God.

From being passed out.

She sees Lisa above her with a knife and starts to fucking fight.

Yeah.

She grabs Lisa by the hair.

Later on, she'll be found with blonde strands in her hands.

Oh, my God.

She's grabbing her by the hair.

She's kicking.

I mean, it is, she's trying to get up it's it's a struggle it's a struggle lisa this time gets the she has to go get the cord again now and strangle her more oh boy so she now really strangles her harder and longer until bobby joe stops moving

then

she

makes another incision into her stomach yeah and pulls the fucking baby out oh my god

eight months you know not premature by that much.

Eight months is fine.

It's a little girl, alive and crying.

Alive and crying.

Oh, boy.

Okay.

This is horrifying, obviously.

Jesus Christ, this is as disturbing as you could do.

So, at 2.50 p.m., she wraps the baby in blankets that she brought herself in the car.

She has a car seat in the Corolla already.

Oh, boy.

She She also has clamps and medical supplies where she cuts the umbilical cord.

Yeah.

By 2.55, she's walking out the front door with the baby against her.

Nobody sees hers.

We'll find out the neighbor had left to run errands, and other neighbors are either inside, or it's December.

I mean, people aren't hanging out in the front porch.

So 3 o'clock, the red Toyota turns around

in the dead end on Elm Street and drives away.

And she's got this baby in her car seat.

Ready to go.

Ready to go.

Lisa stops outside Skidmore to clean the baby more thoroughly, suction mucus from its mouth and nose like they have to do.

The baby seems super healthy, though, crying like it's supposed to and

doing great.

It has a small cut above her eye, probably from the knife.

From the knife, yeah.

Small cut, but babies have, their nails are super sharp.

They always have cuts all over them, fucking babies.

So the neighbor, Chris, that had, he had planned to see,

had planned to stop by and talk to Bobby Joe, but decided not to.

He hesitated because he saw a dirty, pinkish or red two-door Toyota parked the wrong way in front of her house.

So he thought, I better not bother her.

Yep, she's got company.

So he popped his head out the window a couple of times to see if the person was gone, but they they were never gone.

So he said it seemed like that car was there for hours.

So he just said he said, fuck it.

And he decided he'd catch up with Bobby Joe later and went to

run some errands.

He had to go to

out of town to go to anywhere.

Skidmore doesn't have anything.

He said that when he hit the end of Elm Street, he thought maybe he should stop in and check on Bobby Joe anyway.

What if something's wrong?

But he said he pulled out onto the main road and circled around around a block while he thought about it.

And he said, what the fuck am I talking about?

I'm not going to be a douchebag.

Go bother this neighbor who's got guests over.

I'm going on my way.

So December 16th, the same day, 3.30 p.m.

is when Becky Harper shows up to see her daughter.

You ask why she didn't pick her up.

Yeah, exactly.

Where are you?

So she stepped in.

She saw nothing when she first walked into the house.

Everything was neat and orderly.

She moved from the dining room to the kitchen.

You know, the house was in, you know, very nice shape.

It's a very small house.

It's only about 800 square feet.

It's a little house, two bedroom, two bath, but it's kept very clean and nice.

So Becky called out again and just dogs barking.

So she went toward where the dogs are barking there, and

she reached the doorway, and that's when she saw, she saw her on the floor, Bobby Joe, in pools of blood.

Smears are are streaked all over the place.

This was a huge struggle.

So

smears and spatter, and it's just blood fucking everywhere.

It's horrifying.

So she sees that splotches of blood are all over Bobby Joe's face, up and down her arms, everything.

Her stomach, obviously, is everything.

And she at one point said on 9-1-1, my daughter's intestines exploded.

That's what she said.

Oh, my God.

She thinks like there was an alien situation.

Her intestines exploded.

I know pregnant women are gassy, but that's a little much, I think.

Holy shit.

So then she called, like I said, she called 911.

She said there's blood everywhere, and we heard that.

So Sheriff Ben Espy arrives at 3:52 p.m.

Remember, he got there in 14 minutes, a 30-minute drive.

He's like the wolf.

He doubled it.

He doubled the speed limit.

Yeah, it's a 30-minute drive.

I'll be there in 12.

Showed up in Maccaana Sacks.

Absolutely.

In a tuxedo.

Now, this guy's been on the force for 20 years, never seen anything like this before.

He said he saw clear signs of a struggle.

Blood-stained soles of Bobby Joe's feet told him that she managed to get her feet after, like get to her feet after the attack started.

They said they found darkish blonde hair clutched in her hands, said looked like she fought whoever this was.

And

they said there was blood clots scattered across the floor.

They said it seemed to have passed through three distinctive phases: the initial assault, her collapse and revival, and then the fatal attack.

You can see like the different spots where all this happened.

They said the smeared bloody footprints on the floor basically were like choreography.

You could see

one of those dance steps.

Yeah, Ginger Rogers goes this way type of shit.

Now, as this cop is going through the house, they're also seeing certain things, like someone attempted to clean up in the sink.

They noticed there's blood spatter and clean attempts there.

They said,

did the killer pause and wash hands here?

Or what the fuck, basically?

That's interesting.

Off to the left of the dining room was a converted bedroom, and that's where all this went on.

Now,

this cop sends in crime scene experts to try to get any kind of prints, fibers, anything.

I mean, they know that this is going to be a, people are going to want this solved, ASAP.

And,

you know, everything else that's going on here.

So they, every door frame, doorknob, table server, I mean, they fucking print the entire house, which they normally aren't going to do,

tell you that.

So they're trying to find something here.

Anything they find, like a...

a snag in the wood with a fiber on it, they're taking that.

Anything they can fucking find, basically.

But massive blood pools in the dog room, blood spatter, defensive wounds on Bobby Joe's hands and all over her, blonde hairs clenched in her fists.

It's a lot.

The crude incision across the abdomen and the cut umbilical cord.

Right.

That look, it's definitely on purpose here.

So

the police officer told the paramedics that Bobby Joe is eight months pregnant.

Oh, boy.

And that's when one of the emergency medical technicians pointed to the cut umbilical cord and said, this lady has been murdered because someone came to get the child out of her body.

That's what happened.

This was the motive.

This baby was the thing.

Swinging around an umbilical cord with nothing attached to it.

That's pretty obvious.

So

first thing they got to talk to is Zeb.

Where's Zeb?

Where's Zeb at?

So

they said, you know, who knows?

The husband's always first.

So, and he's a young guy, and maybe he's not wanting to be a father in a month.

But basically, they confirmed that it wasn't him.

He never left his

space at work where he was at all day.

So never left the Kawasaki thing.

Didn't go home for lunch or anything.

Was just there the whole time.

I wouldn't leave either.

That sounds like such a fun job.

Yeah, I don't know what kind of Kawasakis, but something fun.

Dirt bikes, jet skis, some shit.

Street bikes, fucking anything.

Some cool shit they're making.

So fun.

So the medical examiner will determine later on that Bobby Joe died from strangulation, not blood loss.

So she was dead before her baby was cut out of her fucking stomach.

That's positive, I guess.

That's, I guess, positive, but

it was brutal, man.

That's not a lot of positive there.

So now they're starting, once they pronounce Bobby Joe dead at the hospital, which they do,

it's at this point that they're like, there's a fucking baby out there somewhere.

Yeah.

Who's got this baby?

Now it's, I mean, yeah, we got to find out who killed Bobby Joe, but we need to find this fucking baby, ASAP.

So

they call in, the cop here calls in the Northwest Missouri major case unit immediately, contacts the FBI, just in case there's state lines involved,

and starts the process for an Amber Alert.

This is the sheriff.

The problem is, okay, Amber Alert has specific criteria.

If you don't know, if you're from another country, by the way, Amber Alert is when there's a missing child, anyone under 17 that's missing.

As soon as they go missing, they put out an Amber Alert.

And on all the freeway overpasses, there's up on the things that'll say, you know, the description when they were last seen.

Yeah.

So everyone keeps an eye out, and they find a lot of kids like that when everyone's looking for them.

There was a child named Amber that went missing, and this didn't exist, so they built it

after her name.

Yeah.

Yep.

So

the parameters here

has to be a confirmed abduction.

Can't just be the kid, you know, might be at a friend's house.

Right.

A child in danger.

Now, this is also the 2004 parameters.

It's different now.

It's a lot less stringent now.

Also, the child has to be in danger of serious injury or death.

Sufficient description information of the child capture or vehicle, something to put out rather than just a baby.

You got to give leads.

Yeah.

And they have to be under 17.

The problem is no one has ever seen the baby and they have no idea who took the baby.

They don't even have a color.

They don't know.

The baby can come out black.

They have no idea.

So they have no idea what this baby looks like.

You can't just say, everybody look for a baby.

There's a lot of babies out there.

So they have no photos,

no description of a vehicle, no eye color, no weight.

They have no idea what this baby is.

No fucking clue.

So

they deny the Amber Alert.

Oh my God.

Authorities say we're not putting out an Amber Alert for a baby.

Be on the lookout for for a baby, period.

I mean, look.

With no information.

Anything suspicious with somebody with a baby?

That seems right.

That would seem logical to me, right?

I thought the same thing.

So this guy is like, what the fuck?

He doesn't accept it.

He goes, bullshit.

He starts.

calling anybody he knows that might have more power and go above this person's head basically anybody do you know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who can help me out here because he knows the baby's a month premature and who knows if this baby's injured if this baby's dying if this baby needs medical attention.

That's a great point, too.

At 5 p.m., he calls a congressman at his house.

He somehow gets a hold of someone who knows a congressman who call they call this congressman, and

that's when shit starts to move.

They start to, the congressman calls somebody, they call somebody.

So, as this is going on, multiple agencies begin to converge here.

The FBI, Missouri State Highway Patrol, St.

Joseph Police Department, Kansas Bureau of Investigation, Computer Forensics Unit, everybody shows up at this fucking house.

It is a mob scene there.

At the Congressman's house.

No, no, no.

At the murder house.

Oh, okay, good, good.

At the crime scene.

Yeah.

What the hell does he need people there for?

He just makes a phone call.

What the fuck?

He swirled his scotch around in his ice once and made a phone call.

Why are you guys all here?

Yeah, I'm not doing anything.

What do you want me to do about it?

So at this point, too,

as we'll talk about, word starts to spread in the town.

Yeah.

Because this is a gossipy little town.

Sure.

So now

the streets are going to be packed with the whole town basically coming to gawk at some point, too.

So that's not helpful at all.

At 6 p.m., investigators discover something crucial.

Now, as they were walking through the house, they noticed the home computer sitting there.

And then 2004, the PC with the monitor.

It's got its own table.

And, you know, that's the computer area back then.

It's got a rack for that tower.

Oh, yeah, CDs next to it and shit like that.

You know, with fucking programs and discs and stuff.

So

then at one point, they start to realize that computer might be helpful.

We don't know if she goes online or not or what's going on.

So they said, if she goes online, this could be very helpful for us.

So they discover recent communications with someone calling themselves Darlene Fisher from Fairfax, Missouri.

Well done.

Yeah, not bad at all here.

So they found that they explored a chat room and they found a mention mention of a woman from Fairfax who was supposed to meet that day with Bobby Joe.

So he typed in a keyword for Fairfax and an internet conversation between HappyHaven Farms at hotmail.com and xgringo at hotmail.com and Fisher4Kids at Hotmail popped up.

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So the Happy Haven belonged to Bobby Joe.

The Fisher for Kids address belonged to a woman identified as Darlene Fisher.

So they watched, they looked at these conversations where the woman talked about her four kids, her need to get out of the chat room and into the kitchen to make supper for the children, and chatting about her plans to drop by Bobby Joe's house for for puppies.

So they were like, this is, did Fisher for Kids do this?

What the hell is going on?

What a crazy accidental name.

Yeah, that is weird as fuck.

They were like, that's, is this a part of it?

Like, is this some weird clue?

So that's when they find all this.

Now they finally trace the IP address linked to the Fisher for Kids Hotmail account.

Sure.

And they locate, they locate it to

Melvern, Kansas.

Okay.

Now,

by the way, while they're looking through this, other members of the Ratter Chatter community raised suspicions about Lisa Montgomery's behavior in their history of faking

pregnancies and all that kind of shit.

So the document highlights that members of Ratter Chatter became suspicious of her, noting her history of bullshit, basically, sending handmade quilts to someone she claimed was expecting twins and all this type of weird shit that she does, basically.

So,

when they're looking up everything, they find all this ongoing conversations between these two Fisher for Kids.

They trace the IP address to Melvern, like I said, traced to a dial-up internet service.

Yeah.

And the phone number linked to that account is registered to Kevin Montgomery

with a physical address of 32419 South Adams Road, Melvern, Kansas, 175 miles away.

So now they have Lisa Montgomery and an address.

Something to go on.

So they look into her background.

Yeah.

They find out she's 36, she's married, mother of four, history of false pregnancies, allegedly underwent a tubal ligation in 1990.

Oh.

Currently claiming to be pregnant and also drives a red Toyota Corolla, which is the exact car they're looking for.

We got a lot of talking to do with that gal.

Yeah.

So then the neighbor comes forward

who remember was going to stop by and didn't want to be a pest.

He said, I saw a dirty red Toyota at Bobby Joe's house parked the wrong way.

It had Kansas plates.

Does that mean anything?

So it's at this point at 9 p.m., FBI agents are dispatched to Melvern, Kansas, and surveillance begins on the Montgomery home that night.

Because that is a different house in a different state, and that's a problem for her.

That's a huge problem.

So now 11.45 p.m., after hours of fucking

the wheels of shit turning, the wheels of government turning slowly,

the first ever amber alert for an unseen child is issued nationwide.

They did it.

They got it issued at 11.45 p.m.

Yeah.

It's like, what do we just say it's a fucking baby?

If you see a baby and a red car and some suspicious shit, call somebody.

That's it.

It's easy to prove if it's your baby or not.

You know what I mean?

Super easy.

And the problem is that first 48 is so crucial.

In the first 48 hours, anybody can be dead so fast.

Yes.

And especially a premature baby.

Right.

This is like you're chasing a Faberge egg that people have

that people are playing fucking tossing.

We have no idea how viable this child is at the moment.

It's crazy.

No.

So earlier in that evening, Lisa Montgomery drove home with the newborn in the car, and at 5.15 p.m.,

the evening of the 16th, while all this FBI craziness is going on, and while they're finding ratter-chatter and all that kind of shit, Lisa calls her husband from a Long John Silvers parking lot in Topedo.

Nice.

All-class.

The old Long John Silver.

It's so good, though.

The old LJS.

I love those fried clams.

Yeah.

Rubbery little fuck.

Fuck.

Yeah, I love a fried clam.

They're so funny.

That chicken was the best.

Oh, man.

That flitch is god-awful.

I'll eat some trash Long John Silvers.

I don't give a fuck.

I'll eat it.

The hot strawberries get out of my life.

It's so good.

So she calls her husband from the parking lot.

It's on Southwest 6th Avenue.

She told him, yeah, you know, I went to Topeka to do some shopping.

Well, I went into labor in the middle of running errands.

Weird, right?

Needed some horsey sauce or whatever the shit is in here.

I don't know.

I thought, actually, she thought she was giving birth.

Then she said, ooh, I just ate Long John Silvers.

Never mind.

I'm okay.

So she said.

She's a fucking cocktail on my lap

she said she'd rush to the birth and women's center where little abigail was born

um

so yeah he was so excited he was thrilled so he this was his first daughter he had three boys from the previous marriage oh it's his first daughter he's super excited um

you know jacked basically uh here.

So he gets the kids in the car.

He has two of her four are are at home.

So they pile in the car, and I think it's Desiree and Kayla.

It's the two daughters.

And he says, your mom had a baby.

So they start going.

She sits in the Long John Silver's parking lot.

She called the minister at her church.

And she said, I had the baby.

Can you believe it?

Isn't it great?

She told the preacher about the labor pains that took her by surprise.

And she said, as soon as her husband gets to Topeka, she and the baby are going home.

and I'll bring the baby by the church soon so you can see it yeah here comes Kevin pulling into the parking lot couldn't be happier he rushes over

fucking picks the baby up and oh it's his new daughter and they all settle into the cab of the pickup truck and fucking take off right he's couldn't be happier The two older kids, the senior in high school, hopped into mom's car and drove while they drove in the truck, the parents with the baby.

Okay.

So, yeah,

so funny though.

Kevin, I had the baby.

I went into labor while shopping.

Nice.

I'm at the law.

Yeah.

She said, I'm at the birthing center in Topeka.

Can you come pick us up?

I'm in the Long John Silvers parking lot across the street.

Which usually when you have a baby, within an hour, they go, fuck out of here and go hang out in the fast food fucking parking lot over there for a while.

I'll have a ride.

Long John's is right there, lady.

You'll be all right.

You'll be fine.

Call somebody from there.

You'll be cool.

Wow.

So he doesn't care.

He just rushes right over there.

He arrived at 6 p.m.

And she said, I already named her.

So

her name's Bother.

Yeah.

She said her name's Abigail from the Bible.

There you go.

Baby's wrapped in nice clean blankets, small cut near her eye, but that, you know, figure she scratched herself here.

7 p.m., they return home.

She's sitting in the living room holding the baby with everyone around cooing and awing and awing and everything else here.

Desiree is using her cell phone to take pictures of the baby.

Oh my God, this is so cute.

Kevin breaks out his RCA camcorder

to record the whole thing.

I mean, unbelievable.

So they prepared a makeshift bed for the infant and settled her in for the night.

And then She sits down at her computer and emails the youngest of her daughters, who was living, because it was the other kid who was living with a family friend in Alabama because of problems they had with each other.

She announces the birth and attaches a photo.

This is Abigail.

Now, at 12.45 a.m.

that night, Acheson County, Kansas police spot a red, a dirty red Toyota Corolla and give chase, but then lose it.

They lose the car.

They couldn't get the car.

The fucking car escaped.

It's not her, though.

They chased somebody else who was doing something bad in a red Corolla, and they escaped.

They outran them.

Yeah.

So they think there went the baby is what they're thinking the whole time.

Why else would they run?

So December 17th, the next morning, Lisa takes the baby to the pastor, to Mike Wheatley's for a blessing.

Bless this baby, would you?

Then they go to the Whistle Stop Cafe where she shows off Kathy or she shows off Abigail to Kathy, the owner, and Kathy says, what the hell are you doing out here?

And now

the pastor and his wife noticed a little scratch on the baby but they figured she cut herself with her fingernail they also saw a tiny bruise on the back of her hand but they didn't seem out of place the kid just tumbled out of a vagina anything could happen you don't know what was in there it could have been like a tricycle off to the side or something you hit your hand on um

so yeah they they they also couldn't understand why the infant's head was not at all misshapen from yeah why is it not a cone coming out of the birth canal because she said it was a natural birth but i guess you're lucky You got a round-headed baby.

So

then Kevin, Lisa, and little baby Abigail went down to the county clerk's office after that.

All right.

Absolutely.

They showing off the birth and talking about that and, you know, all that shit.

Get her fucking birth certificate.

Let's go.

The next stop was

her ex-husband and stepbrother, Carl's house.

Why?

They're in a custody dispute.

This makes no sense.

Now, Carl has a new wife named Vanessa, and this, I guess, they live,

they rent a house from Lisa's mother, Judy,

who's also his stepmother.

So

this is a mess.

Wow.

Now,

they pulled in.

The reason they showed up is because Carl's been saying, you're not really pregnant.

You're not really pregnant.

You had your tubes tied, and I'll prove it to everybody.

Now she shows up and goes, eh?

What do you think of that asshole?

That's right.

So Vanessa, the wife, pulled Kevin aside and said, Is this really your baby?

Like, what's going on?

And Kevin said, Yeah, of course it is.

She says, Are you sure Lisa didn't buy it somewhere or steal it from someone?

Oh, which is a lot.

So Kevin's like, What are you fucking talking about?

And he doesn't even, he just turns to Lisa and said, It's time to go now.

We're getting the fuck out of here.

So then they went back to their home.

Now, Judy lives just outside of town of

where her ex lived, but they don't take the baby to Judy's house to visit.

No.

They probably thought she would, you know, give it booze or get it molested or something, so they said, don't go there.

So Judy was surprised by a phone call from one of her friends who worked at the courthouse, small town.

The woman said, hey, congratulations, your grandma.

And Judy said, quote, yeah, right.

She either stole it or bought it.

Everybody's saying it.

Yep.

so lisa posts photos online meet abigail all of her friends congratulate her you know you post your new baby you get hundreds of likes on that kind of shit that'll do it all all up so the in the meantime the cops are fucking hunting for this baby right

this is insane um they by the way looked everywhere they looked in every dumpster in town They looked in every creek and river and everywhere else to make sure this baby wasn't dumped.

They,

yeah, they would look, if there was discarded trash on the side of the road, they'd stop and look at it, make sure it wasn't a baby because it's a newborn's tiny.

Yeah.

Oh my God.

Every bridge, they'd stop and look over to see if they could see a baby.

It's crazy.

So

now word spreads about this.

Cheryl Hudson, who is Becky Harper, Bobby Joe's mother's close friend from high school, is working at Walmart and her shift ends.

On the way out, one of the greeters at the door stops to tell her about, Did you hear what happened in Skidmore?

I don't know the person's name, but did you hear some lady got her killed and her baby cut out of her?

So, this woman, as she's driving home from Walmart, started thinking about all the pregnant women she knew in town, and only one matched the age, and only one was that pregnant, and that's Bobby Joe.

Uh-oh.

So, that's her, she's very good friends with her mother.

So, she's like, oh my God.

So, she drove past Bobby Joe's house to make sure it wasn't her.

And she drove past and saw its crime scene tape and every fucking law enforcement agency that exists around there.

So she's like, oh my God, this is fucking horrible.

Then word spread to the local media, everybody's gossiping, and then here it comes.

So they ended up having to seal off the entire end of the street and going to the dead end.

Get the fuck out of here.

Yeah, they couldn't let people on the street.

So December 14th, or December 17th, I'm sorry, 2004, 5:30 p.m.

special agent, FBI special agent Mickey Roberts and Detective Randy Strong of the Maryville Public Safety Committee or whatever, it was public safety thing,

arrive at Lisa and Kevin's house, and they knock on the door.

Kevin answers the door.

Yeah.

Because, you know, people come and pay in their visits and all that.

These two, the FBI agent and the other guy, passed Kevin with the door open, see Lisa sitting on the couch holding a baby, watching TV.

What's on TV?

Coverage of the fucking Amber Alert and this missing baby and people giving interviews, crying, and all this shit.

And she's there holding the baby.

Sitting there holding the baby.

Holding the baby.

So the FBI agent says, Mr.

Montgomery, we're investigating the murder of a woman in Missouri and the kidnapping of her baby.

Kevin says, okay, how can we help?

Here, yeah.

Yeah, what do you need?

And the FBI agent said, is that your child?

And Lisa says, yes, I just gave birth yesterday.

And they say, where?

And she said, at a birthing center in Topeka.

Yeah.

And so the detectives thinks the baby just looks just looks real settled to be there for a day.

And it's just real weird.

They said, Lisa doesn't look like she just gave birth yesterday either.

She looks, doesn't even look like she drank last night or anything.

Like, she looks fine.

She looks very, very well rested.

Yeah.

They said, okay, fuck, can we just see the discharge papers and we'll be out of your hair then?

So Kevin goes to his truck to look for them and he can't find them.

Now, that's when Lisa says, quote, actually, I gave birth at home.

We couldn't afford the birthing center.

Okay.

They said, okay, well, who helped you?

Get us some witnesses.

Get somebody to corroborate this.

She said, two friends, but they weren't here.

They were available by phone.

So she had somebody over the phone directing her through giving birth, through delivering her own child.

Dropped a baby on the living room floor?

Yeah, that's

wow.

Just her own, she delivered her own child.

So

they said, what did you do with the placenta?

Which is a good question.

Yeah.

She said, I

threw it in the creek.

Oh, boy.

Which is what you do with a placenta, obviously.

You know, some people eat it.

I think

the Jewish people bury the foreskin, not that.

Different people,

but not

throw it in the creek.

Holy fish.

Never heard that one before.

Yeah, never heard that one before.

So then the FBI agent says, I'd like to speak to you privately to Lisa.

Now they get away from Kevin, and now he starts pressing her.

And she goes, okay, well, yeah, that was a lie, but this is true.

But then that was a lie, but then, okay, fine, this happened.

Why would you lie about your, what's going on?

That's what I mean.

Her story is unraveling.

Yeah.

And then finally, she just spits it out and says, quote, the baby isn't mine.

I killed Bobby Joe and took her baby.

God dang.

Okay.

And the cuffs go on you super quick.

Great job, investigator.

His instincts were right off.

Oh, yeah.

He knew.

So 7.45 p.m., the baby's taken into protective custody and rushed to the hospital for evaluation.

She's approximately 36 weeks of gestational age, which is fine.

Yeah.

Totally fine to have a baby then.

Five pounds, 11 ounces.

Again,

fine.

That's later than and weighs more than when my daughter was born.

No kidding.

Yeah.

Yeah, we were in the neonatal unit and all that.

My ex-wife had preeclampsia.

I was like 6'12, 6'8, I think.

I was 8-something.

Are you?

I was chubby.

Big fucker.

Yeah.

I was a chubby kid, though.

I was a fat kid till I was 13.

Really tiny little shit.

They said small laceration above the eye.

Otherwise, completely healthy and uninjured.

Wow.

Baby is perfectly fine.

Couldn't be more perfect.

That day, day, DNA testing confirms the baby is Bobby Joe and Zeb's daughter and not Lisa's.

Oh.

That day, December 19th, Zeb finally gets to hold his daughter.

Oh, poor bastard.

Yeah.

How do you even feel about that?

Oh, man.

I mean, good, obviously, but then horrible because your wife just, it's horrifying.

I don't even know.

And this baby survived the most traumatic thing.

Oh, my God.

Couldn't be more traumatic.

He names her Victoria Joe, as Bobby Joe had wanted to begin with.

And

it's crazy.

It's wild.

Now, a relative of his said that the recovery of this baby at least was something positive that they could cry tears of joy for.

They said it just makes us so happy.

So Lisa down at the police station.

Oh, my God.

Oh, yeah.

She's already admitted it.

Now she's just got to fill in the blanks here.

And here's her quotes.

She said, I've been telling people I was pregnant since April.

My ex-husband was trying to get custody of my kids.

He said he'd tell the court I was lying about being pregnant.

You could have just not lied about being pregnant.

That would have been solved all of these problems.

You could have adopted a child.

There's plenty of kids out there that need adopting.

You could have done all sorts of shit to get a baby, but this was not the way to do it.

So she said, I found Bobby Joe online.

She was pregnant due in January.

I pretended to be pregnant, too.

We talked online for months.

She said, I studied how to do C-sections.

What?

This is sick.

She said, on animals, online videos, medical websites, I knew what to do.

Dude.

She said, quote, I went to her house.

We looked at puppies.

She was so nice.

When she turned around, I strangled her with the rope.

I thought she was dead.

I cut her open, but she woke up.

She fought me.

I had to strangle her again, harder.

She said, the baby came out easily.

She was crying.

She was healthy.

I clamped the cord like I learned, cleaned her face.

She was perfect.

I'm sorry.

I just wanted a baby.

I needed a baby.

Oh, my God.

Dude, that's like you got to sit there.

Like,

what do you even say?

Listen to that from her?

No.

She's,

She's obviously sick in the fucking head.

There's obviously something wrong with her.

Lurch across the table and just strike her.

At the same time,

you want to put her in a glass container and look at her like a science experiment.

Like, what the hell is going on with this person?

Wow.

So, yeah, they found out her planning.

She spent hours studying C-sections online, watched veterinary videos of animal C-sections,

researched home birth procedures,

studied images of newborns to understand immediate post-birth appearance as well, what they're supposed to look like.

She purchased a home birthing kit online.

She bought sharp kitchen knives.

acquired medical clamps for umbilical cords, prepared blankets, towels, and baby clothes all in her car, in her trunk, all ready to go, and installed a car seat in her Toyota Corolla as well.

Yeah.

To get sicker.

Yeah.

December 16th wasn't the first time she came to the fucking house.

What?

She came the day before to do a practice run.

She drove

175 miles in each direction to do a practice.

Just to

route down.

300 miles.

Yep.

She studied the route, timed the route and locates the house, noted the isolation, the lack of traffic cameras, nobody outside

100 miles in two days.

In two days.

What?

And gave birth to a baby.

She's got a lot of stamina.

No, that's crazy.

So the town, much like it had three years ago when the one kid disappeared, the 20-year-old and McElroy and Wendy,

goes fucking nuts.

They're like, why us?

Why us again?

What's going on here?

This is way too many murders for a town with 250 people in it.

That's crazy shit.

News vans lined in Main Street.

And Main Street is just a few little businesses.

It's not a big thing here.

Reporters are knocking on every door.

It's huge.

It's a big story, obviously.

So,

man, it's wild.

They take the, you know, they undo the crime scene at the house, but Zeb does not move back in there with the baby.

No, he can't.

No, he can't.

No.

It's crazy.

One of the people who lives near there, a neighbor, said it's almost unbelievable that right under your nose, something so terrible can be happening.

Yeah.

And this person went on to say, they were kids in the neighborhood, nice young kids.

She's just a real nice girl, real pretty, quiet, and reserved, talking about Bobby Joe.

Now, the community does rally around Zeb.

They feel bad for him.

He is pure victim in this.

Poor boy.

Poor guy.

Poor, now he's a 22-year-old single father with no mother.

That's rough.

And I mean that because guys at 22 are not ready to take care of a child all by themselves.

We're just,

we don't have the natural instincts for it, and we need some maturity before we're going to be good at that.

So they have fundraisers for the care of the baby.

They have meal trains that last month, people bringing them dishes all the time and things and offers to babysit, to help, to hang out with him.

I mean, he's got all the help he could possibly want.

The whole town is at his disposal, which is nice, but he doesn't have a wife is the problem.

Right.

And basically, now his daughter's birthday is also the anniversary of Bobby Joe's murder.

Yeah.

Oh, man.

Which isn't fun at all here.

No.

Now, they talked to some of Lisa's relatives, and a lot of them say that they believe she was pregnant.

They thought she was pregnant.

Really?

Yeah.

Her parents, or I'm sorry, Kevin's parents, Joy and Roger Montgomery,

they said they never doubted it.

For a second, they said they never doubted their daughter-in-law's pregnancy three years ago when she said she had a miscarriage or whatever, stillborn.

And, um,

you know, even though

they had been told that it wasn't possible, they thought maybe it's possible.

Uh, Joy Montgomery, Kevin's mom, said, I just thought she was stirring up trouble.

She thought maybe she wasn't pregnant.

Who knows?

So, December 22nd, 2004 is the funeral for Bobby Joe.

It is closed casket, as you might imagine.

Um, Zeb just put a picture of Bobby Joe on top, all pregnant and happy and smiling.

So

Becky Harper, Bobby Joe's mother, is just sedated

through the whole thing.

She's like half out of it, as they do a lot of times at funerals for shit like that.

If you go to a kid's funeral, their parents are sedated for sure, or else they'd be losing their fucking mind.

So in court here, Lisa goes to court, and

she didn't look up at all as they read the charges.

She just kept her big glasses head down, type of thing.

Didn't want any part of it.

So her attorneys told the court that their client would not surrender her right to oppose moving the case immediately to federal court where the charges were filed.

Because

charges are filed in federal court, but then they have her in a state court being arraigned.

Sure.

Her attorneys demanded a preliminary and identity hearing in Kansas.

Federal law allows for such hearings when a defendant is arrested in one state and prosecuted in another.

So that's how this goes.

In a filing in U.S.

District Court in Kansas City, the Deputy U.S.

Attorney Mike Whitworth asked a judge to keep Montgomery in custody because she's a danger to the community and a flight risk, obviously.

He said, this case involves an act of extreme violence.

Further, the defendant is now charged with the offense of kidnapping, resulting in death, which carries a maximum sentence of life without parole or death.

Okay.

Spokesman for the U.S.

Attorney's Office said no decision had been made as to whether or not the prosecutors would seek the death penalty.

They said that comes down from above and we don't know.

Now,

Lisa's kids, the courts grant custody of Lisa's four children to Carl.

Obviously, they're dad, so that makes sense.

Kevin wanted them all to stay with him.

Really?

Yeah, I don't understand.

They're not my kids.

That's crazy.

Three of the kids chose to live with Carl.

They chose to go with Carl, but the oldest, Desiree elected to stay with Kevin in Melvern to finish her senior year in high school.

She didn't want to be uprooted.

She continued managing the basketball team and she got good grades.

The student body was nice to her also.

They didn't make fun of her and call her a piece of shit.

They actually like they treated her like a victim herself, like, yeah, you tore thing, which is nice.

I mean, she's a teenager, so she can't help this shit.

After the school year ended, she remained in Melvern and attended college in Emporia, and the community raised money for her to go to college and shit.

Nice.

Nice people.

So now in jail, Lisa was taken.

She's in Leavenworth is where she's being held after a while.

Really?

She is removed from Suicide Watch.

She was out of her cell on recreation time.

She was on Suicide Watch.

Then they took her off of it.

Then she's going out for wreck time in the yard when a jailer searches her cell.

in it he found a letter indicating that she's been stockpiling medications and is going to kill herself

okay

so they search her cell again and find hidden prescription drugs also seized from her cell were correspondence and other documents including a letter to her daughter desiree that had a strong suicidal theme quote unquote so the u.s marshal's office turned over all those papers to the judge and um all of that so the the public defender that she has at this point argued successfully that some of the documents should be withheld from prosecution since they fell under attorney-client privilege.

Now they couldn't conceal the medications or prevent the outcome of the discovery.

A psychiatrist ordered Lisa back on suicide watch.

She's put in a private cell in the medical unit.

She had to wear the suicide blanket and all that shit, as we've seen that.

So, yeah, all of her belongings were removed from her possession and she had to be watched at all times they said after she was moved she cried for an hour without stopping

but i mean you could not kill people but i mean christ her life was so fucked you don't even know where her decision-making could possibly be like you know her brain is

i mean before any of the thing even happened to her she had fetal fucking alcohol syndrome which is rough

She's been

pimped out and gangbanged by your stepfather.

Disgusting.

And her mother's fine with it.

So trial comes up, and it's a federal trial with the death penalty on the table.

Oh my God.

Yeah, she's charged with federal kidnapping resulting in death, which is a capital offense and across state lines, so it's federal jurisdiction.

She took the baby with her.

The prosecutor said this crime is so heinous, so beyond comprehension, that the death penalty is not only appropriate, but necessary.

Now, the defense team is a fucking disaster.

Why?

Well, there's Frederick Duckhart, Duchart, whatever you say his fucking last name, is a Missouri lawyer with some problems here.

He's had multiple clients sentenced to death.

Oh.

Uh-oh.

Multiple.

Not good.

If you try 20 death penalty cases, you're going to get some people sentenced to death, but you're also going to get some people not.

So this guy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's her one lawyer.

Her other lawyer is David Owen, who's never handled a capital case before.

So

crack squad she's got here.

Now,

Duchart, the one guy, represented at least four of seven of Missouri's federal death row inmates,

more than any other U.S.

defense lawyer.

Is that right?

He's got the, that's a brag.

I got the most people sitting on a federal death row of any lawyer in this country.

Wow.

With consistent criticisms of ineffective assistance of counsel.

That's always the appeal point here.

One case, a guy named Wesley Perkey, this lawyer omitted critical details about the defendant's background of abuse and mental illness, and he got sentenced to death anyway.

So,

yeah, three of his cases reaching appeals involved claims of ineffective assistance of counsel.

The judge adds another lawyer to the team.

Oh,

a death penalty lawyer.

They're like, okay, you suck at this and you've never done this before.

I'm giving you one more who's good at it.

How's that?

Her name, Judy Clark, she's brought in.

She has successfully gotten three very famous clients, not the death penalty.

Oh, who's that?

Susan Smith, who drowned all her kids.

Ted Kaczynski, the unabomber,

and Eric Rudolph, who turned out the Olympic bomber.

The bomber, yeah.

And involved, I believe he was involved in Oklahoma City, too, as well in that.

I believe.

Or at least influenced.

Was he a part of those?

I thought he was a part of that group.

Not involved in the actual crime, but a part of the whatever.

Anyway, I thought that he was just influenced by the guy.

Maybe that's that's possible.

So, this is also a female lawyer as well, and she builds a bond with Lisa pretty quick.

She uncovers Lisa, she tells her about her childhood shit.

She didn't tell the other lawyers about it, they don't really know too much about it.

They just know the basics, but they don't know the details.

So, she finds that.

Now,

Ducart, though, the other lawyer doesn't like this lawyer.

No,

no, I mean doesn't want her the spotlight stolen I guess yeah

so he secretly petitions the judge to have her removed and the judge agrees why which that should be the client's choice not the other lawyer's choice she's not at this you're not so Clark is then this lawyer is that now banned from seeing Lisa not allowed to by by law to go see her now the defense strategy this is their strategy after they get rid of a lawyer who knows how to do this um first they claimed that Lisa's brother, Tommy, killed Bobby Joe.

Okay, so

they offer alternate theories.

Problem is, Tommy has as airtight an alibi as one could have because he was literally meeting with his parole officer at the time.

Somewhere else with a lot of people.

Already in the system.

Yeah, already in the system, babe.

Not going to worry.

Second, they just claimed that she didn't commit the crime.

That's crazy.

But she confessed in horrifying detail to the crime.

Real fast.

Real fast.

And then finally, they decide on an insanity

defense.

Pseudocisis, I think.

It's pseudo and then C-Y-E-S-I-S.

I mean, it's a false pregnancy delusion, meaning she actually thought she was pregnant.

Okay.

The problem is this is like a bread.

They only figure this out a week before trial, that that's going to be their strategy, which is not a lot of time to set up a strategy like that.

So

that's their thing, though.

Also, this doesn't really line up with the facts because to have that, you have to actually think you're pregnant and be delusional about it.

She knew she was lying the whole fucking time.

So it's interesting.

By the way, that defense

really pissed off the Montgomery family, the rest of like the husband's friends, family, and all that, which they stopped cooperating as much with the defense at that point because they didn't like that.

So here's the witnesses.

Zeb obviously has to testify.

He says, Bobby Joe was my everything.

We were building a life together, a family.

She was so excited about the baby.

She had the nursery perfect, little pink outfits all folded and ready.

That morning, she kissed me goodbye like always.

She said she loved me, said she'd see me after work.

I never saw her alive again.

My daughter's birthday is the worst day of my life.

Oh, my God.

That is.

Just give her a new birthday.

Just say fucking June 1st.

I don't know, man.

Just pick pick a day.

It doesn't matter.

Some other day in December.

Fuck.

Who cares?

Yeah, Halloween now.

Isn't that fun?

Yay, yeah.

Party every year.

So Kevin, the husband, Kevin Montgomery testifies, and he says, quote, I believed her.

He said,

why wouldn't I?

She was my wife.

She wore maternity clothes.

Her belly got bigger.

She had morning sickness.

I don't know.

Fuck do I know?

I don't think this guy really sweats the details much.

He's just like, I don't know, she seems fat.

What the fuck do I know?

right she seems fat she goes in the bathroom in the morning i don't know whatever he goes on to say when she called and said she had the baby i was so happy i rushed to pick them up the baby was perfect beautiful i had no idea no idea at all he said that baby wasn't mine to lose but well i lost her anyway and i found out my wife was well i don't know what she is

wow that's i would say a monster i mean honestly he's i don't even know what to say here so yeah he says that that he didn't think it was strange when his wife called him to say that she'd given birth and asked him to pick her up at a fast food restaurant.

He didn't think that was strange.

Did Kevin have fetal alcohol syndrome too?

What the fuck is happening?

He then says, I knew she didn't like hospitals and doctors, but she's having a baby.

Yeah.

I mean, what the fuck?

So.

He described meeting his wife in the parking lot and he said, you know, she showed off the newborn all around town, the bank, the courthouse, the diner, the convenience store where she worked,

took it to work with her.

He also testified about her two previously faked pregnancies.

The first time, he said she told him she was going to New Mexico to have an abortion, and that's what happened.

The second time, he said, Lisa told him there was something wrong with the baby, and she had donated the baby's body to science.

This guy does not ask a lot of questions.

He'd be a terrible detective.

Terrible.

So we got to your house.

There was blood all over the place.

And we found a human leg in your refrigerator.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, it's not mine.

I don't know.

It could have been something else.

I think I know how to make that out of cake.

And he'd be like, okay, that sounds reasonable.

It's raspberry, not blood.

Great.

All right.

Cross you off the list.

Have you seen that trend on the internet?

Is it cake?

Yeah.

Check it.

It might be.

It might be cake.

So Kevin said that a relative told him that Lisa couldn't have any more children because she had a tubal ligation.

Yeah.

Had her tubes tied.

This is an adult human man who's over 35 years old.

Boy, is he dopey.

You know what he said?

He said, I didn't understand what that term meant.

He didn't know what getting your tubes tied meant.

Absurd.

So she's not telling people tubal ligation, right?

No.

And even if they weren't tubal, tubes tied, you'd figure it out.

I would hope you'd at least ask a follow-up question and connect those two things.

Yeah, that was, I didn't know that's what it was called.

That was my guess earlier.

Yeah.

So I guess you just, you inferred it because you're not a moron.

You know, it helps.

Well,

he said,

we all are sometimes.

He said he became frustrated when Lisa told him not to go to prenatal doctor's appointments.

That's not a red flag.

Right.

Lots of women love to go to those by themselves.

That's usually how they love to do it.

Don't worry about it.

Wow.

But he said that she gained weight and he had no reason to doubt she was pregnant.

He also testified that he had nothing to do with the killing.

He said he remains married to Lisa.

This was fucking two years later.

Is that right?

And wore his wedding ring while testifying and said, quote, do I love my wife?

Yes.

You betcha.

Kevin, holy shit.

Kev.

Dude.

I mean, nice guy, but for the love of God, Kevin, you have got some real problems here.

Holy shit.

Now, Kevin's ex-wife, Lori, testified.

How great does she feel?

Yeah.

You want your ⁇ people want their ex's new person to be a nightmare for them.

This is like the ultimate nightmare.

Mary down in comparison to me, for sure.

Yeah, which I think Lisa's down from anybody who's not a murderer at this point.

She's terrible.

So she testified that Lisa had announced three fake pregnancies to family and friends in the years leading up to the murder.

Wow.

Whew, man, that is, I thought,

just keeps doing it and telling people.

She said that when she heard about Lisa's pregnancy in 2004, her response was, quote, here we go again.

I didn't believe her.

She said that her former husband has, this is about Kevin.

We'll get a little insight here.

He has, quote, poor social skills and is easily manipulated.

Is he okay?

Is he special?

What the fuck is happening?

She said that she tried to persuade Kevin to bring Lisa to a doctor so he would realize she wasn't pregnant.

An appointment was set up, but Lisa canceled it.

Yeah.

Okay.

Now, Kevin's parents testified, Joy and Roger Montgomery.

And they're like, you know, sorry, our son is so dumb, but

we did this, apparently.

They said that they went to see the baby when Lisa came home with the baby.

They said they never suspected any problems until she got arrested by the FBI the next day, and then there was obviously an issue.

They said she was small for being pregnant, but it was explained by saying all of her children were born small, so everybody's different.

Yeah.

Now, Joy also said Kevin's mom said she did fill out some in the face.

She's just eating more.

She just got fat and was fine.

Lisa's son, Carl, testifies.

Old Carl Jr.

here.

He said his mother sometimes said that she had morning sickness and he'd never doubted she was pregnant.

Lisa's daughter, Desiree, comes in here and she's an adult at this point.

She's like 20, 21 years old.

She said she bought maternity clothes for her mother and never suspected the pregnancy was a lie.

On cross-examination, she said her mother lied about other things and forced her children to cook, clean, and pay for their own clothes.

Yes.

She's a terrible mother, yes, but I believed her.

She said that her mother said in 2003 she was pregnant and suffered a miscarriage.

She also said her mother did not work for months after that and spent her time reading and using the computer.

Speaking of the computer,

the defense's computer expert says that for three years,

Lisa accessed websites for baby goods or information on pregnancy complications.

Three years she's been doing this for

three fucking years.

That is terrifying.

This guy said that Lisa started using her computer in 2002 to go to baby sites, shopping for diaper bags, pacifiers, and other goods.

She's not pregnant, but she's looking to...

Wow.

I mean, there's a mental, something mental going on in her head that we don't know what it is.

But why would you do that otherwise?

You know what I mean?

She also studied pregnancy problems.

Now, on cross-examination from the state, this expert agreed that weeks before Lisa cut the baby out of Bobby Joe's stomach, the research included how to do cesarean section deliveries at that point.

He said Montgomery only spent about eight minutes at the C-section website.

Yeah, what else do you need to see?

Cut here.

She's looking for a perforated line, is all.

Where's the line?

There it is.

Yep.

So now during the closings here, the prosecutor said this wasn't mental illness.

This was evil, pure calculated evil.

Verdict comes down and five hours of deliberations here.

Five hours.

That's a lot.

Five hours, a good amount of deliberations.

That's talking about it, at least.

That's not open and shut.

I mean, you see, I think we did one last week.

It was 45 minutes.

Yeah.

Case closed.

I mean, five hours of deliberations.

They find her guilty of everything.

Guilty of everything.

Guilty of everything,

which is not surprising.

Now, the same jury is going to immediately, they start the penalty phase, and the same jury decides life without parole or the death penalty.

Okay.

Now, the prosecutorial tactics here,

they're trying to go for emotions.

Obviously, that's what you do in this situation.

They challenge Lisa's portrayal as a devoted mother by questioning her lack of apologies to her children for the devastation she's wrought upon them.

Witnesses described her as nurturing, yet the cross-examination exposed inconsistencies like her pregnancy claims and the emotional toll on her family that those caused.

Now, for mitigating evidence, we have this Frederick Duchart guy who is not good at this, apparently, based on his track record and my opinion.

So

he presents some mitigating evidence.

He failed to fully investigate.

according to her or present her extensive history of severe childhood trauma, physical tortures, repeated sexual abuse, mental health issues, and PTSD and dissociation that she's had in the past.

He offers limited evidence of physical abuse during the penalty phase, describing,

they said, relying on poorly prepared witnesses, which allowed the prosecutors to use

the term abuse excuse.

Yeah.

They love shit that rhymes and they're abuse excuse.

That's what that is.

But if you say her stepfather ritually molested her and sold her to handymen,

it's a little different at that point.

You can't go abuse excuse, you know, because people go, Jesus Christ.

I mean, that's

you're taking it and summing it up in the worst way.

Yeah, that's that's Jesus Christ.

So

the defense expert, renowned neuroscientist, Dr.

Holy shit, that's a long name.

I'm not going to even attempt it.

Vilayanur Ramachar Chandran.

Okay.

He said that

Lisa had a dissociative state during the crime where her pseudocystis, that's the thinking of her pregnant, delusion propelled her to commit the unthinkable, which was strangling and performing a cesarean section.

Which, if she was delusional and thought she was pregnant, why would she need a baby at that point?

She'd be shocked when no baby came out, wouldn't she?

Why does she need a baby?

The problem is the court excludes

brain imaging evidence from a Dr.

Rupert Gerr, determining his PET scan analysis was unreliable due to

methodological disputes and lack of direct correlation to pseudocystis.

The exclusion nuanced everything and underscored how this lawyer had a hard time getting shit done, basically.

And also, there's a lot of standards that make,

it's called the Daubert standards, and it's kind of how they keep forensic shit out of here, forensic psychology specifically.

And it doesn't help the defense any.

Now,

the

male attorney, now she has two dude attorneys,

and they're both, they say that they're uncomfortable with the sexual abuse details and don't want to really present that.

It feels like that's like, I don't know, that feels like a good reason to not hurt this person in their

phasing, you know, I mean, of the punishment phase.

She's got a lot of problems.

And they use the term abuse excuse before the prosecutors can.

They say, this is an abuse excuse, just so you know, they had to get it in there.

The defense

is a psychiatrist here, renowned neuroscientist, said Lisa Montgomery suffers from pseudocystis, a condition where the brain truly believes the body is pregnant.

She wasn't lying in her mind.

She was pregnant.

The trauma of her childhood created a dissociative disorder so severe that she literally could not distinguish reality from delusion.

Okay.

The problem is the prosecutor brings in Park Dietz to

rebut that.

Yeah.

They're like, we get the most famous dude we could find.

We got a real good one.

He's going to talk about a conversation with the Iceman when he's done with this.

So we're all going to gather around and fucking sick fucking crisscross applesauce and see what we can do here.

He's so good he diagnosed the one of the worst people on the planet to his face.

To his face.

And that guy did not open him.

Nope.

Because he knew he was right.

He knew that this guy knows what he's doing.

Park Diet says this was not delusion.

This was deception.

She knew she wasn't pregnant.

The evidence, she bought supplies, created fake identities, covered her tracks.

Delusional people don't hide their delusions.

They proclaim them.

Right.

Yeah.

And I think she kind of goes in and out of it.

I think she, I honestly think she might think she's pregnant for a minute in the beginning.

She may, yeah.

And then she just goes, what if I just say I'm pregnant?

Because that's what I, you know, I'm not sure.

But the defense also finds bipolar disorder, complex PTSD, dissociative disorder, temporal lobe epilepsy, and brain damage from repeated head trauma from beatings as a child.

They had evidence showing an MRI showing structural brain abnormalities.

They document her history of 61 moves in 34 years, multiple psychiatric hospitalizations, and testimony from 18 family members about abuse that she suffered.

But none of them testified to the details of the sexual abuse that were that, you know, nasty.

The prosecutor's response to this is, quote, millions of people suffer trauma.

They don't murder pregnant women and steal their babies.

Right.

That's hard to argue, too.

It goes back and forth.

So basically, the jury heard she had physical abuse, some sexual abuse that was vaguely mentioned, some mental health issues, and, quote, a difficult childhood.

That's basically all the mitigating evidence they present.

That is brutal.

That's not good.

No.

And there's other stuff that is discovered, by the way, after trial when talking to other people

that there was horrible things that were done to her,

some of which were orchestrated by by her mother.

She had been urinated on after being raped before and stuff like that.

Mother held a gun to her head when she found her having sex with her stepfather, being raped by her stepfather.

Okay.

Now, the judge says, quote, The court finds that the aggravating factors substantially outweigh any mitigating factors.

The defendant showed a callous disregard for human life.

The crime was committed in an an especially heinous, cruel, and depraved manner.

You, ma'am, may fuck off death penalty.

Uh-oh.

Yeah, this is, I don't know if I like that a lot.

I'm not, we're not, like I said, we're not huge death penalty people to begin with because they just fuck up all the time.

But this lady,

I think she's pretty fucked in the head here.

I think she was fucked from jump.

I mean, you can't, I don't think.

And this might be,

no, and this might be us too.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I've said this before.

I'm not sure if this is like sexist or not, but as a guy, I don't like killing women.

You know what I mean?

I don't like when criminals do it.

I don't like when the state does it.

It's just weird to me.

I don't like when they sign up to punch each other in boxing events.

I don't even like that.

No, I don't even like that.

I don't even like foxy boxing.

Stop.

Yeah, I don't want any of that shit.

Never mind like UFC and stuff.

I'm like, God, ladies, calm down.

Don't hit each other.

I don't know what it is.

Like I said, maybe that's misogynist or whatever, but that's how I feel.

I'm uncomfortable executing women.

Sorry.

there's some advantages to sexism I guess and that's one of them is I don't want to execute you even though I don't think I'm she's so sick too it's like she she didn't have a fucking chance she married her stepbrother twice Twice,

right from birth, physical problems.

Never mind all the rest of the shit.

I don't know if a fetal alcohol syndrome brain can overcome all that shit.

Or maybe they can.

I don't know.

That's what I'm saying.

I just don't know.

A juror speaking anonymously later said the pictures of Bobby Jo was

what was done to her.

We couldn't get past that.

Mental illness or not, she knew what she was doing.

She planned it.

She did it.

She has to pay for it.

Yeah.

Now, she goes to death row

in the federal medical center in Carswell, in

Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas here.

She is the only woman on federal death row.

Is that right?

Just her.

Oh, boy.

So she does some appeals here.

We'll get through these here.

Ineffective assistance of counsel is number one.

Yeah.

Basically,

the problem is that

I guess

during the first appeal she did, she defended

his performance.

Okay, but it was criticized by every lawyer ever, like that he did a shit job is what they were all saying.

The ACLU labeled him the lawyer who keeps.

Oh, no, that's journalist.

His nickname became the lawyer who keeps losing.

The little lawyer who couldn't.

It's like the basketball player who shoots airballs.

That might as well be your name.

That's a terrible fucking thing to be.

The quarterback.

Holy shit.

Yeah.

The quarterback who can't take a snap.

So they said that, you know, a lot of his clients that got death penalties received had potential mitigating factors that he didn't explore real well.

He just didn't really believe in that that much, that you need to put up a case for that.

So

later on in these appeals process, they come up with more mitigation evidence.

They get 40 witnesses and expert evaluations, but this is only presented in the in the post-conviction appeals.

Sure.

That's the problem.

New lawyers uncover shit that the jury never heard.

Testimony from the cousin, who's the deputy she told about the abuse.

They didn't have him come to the trial and talk at the penalty phase.

He came and testified that she told, she's not making this up.

She told me this when she was 14, this was going on.

School records showing signs of severe neglect.

Medical records documenting injuries consistent with rape and beatings from her childhood.

And affidavits from 40-plus family members and friends about the abuse.

The problem is the legal system,

you can use this to say that your lawyer was ineffective, but that's it.

You can't use it as actual.

They won't go, your lawyer was effective, but you do have mitigators, so we're going to decide not to put you there.

The legal system doesn't allow new evidence after conviction unless it's to prove actual innocence, not to mitigate shit.

So she has multiple appeals.

2011, her direct appeal is denied.

2012, Supreme Court denies her petition.

2016, habeas corpus petition filed with new evidence of abuse.

That's what we just talked about, all the different people.

2018, that's denied.

2019, all of her final appeals are exhausted.

Oh, boy.

Now, her appeals points generally are that prosecutors accused her of faking mental illness,

noting that her killing was premeditated and used meticulous planning.

But they said that extensive brain scans and testing supported the diagnosis of mental illness.

Her appeals lawyer said that the issue is at the core of legal arguments are not whether she knew the killing was wrong in 2004, but whether she fully grasps why she's being slated to be executed now.

Okay.

The district judge, who had halted her execution for a stay before this,

basically

he halts the stay, then that gets overturned.

But

he cites defense experts who allege that she suffered from depression and all the personality problems.

The judge wrote also that she suffered around the time of the killing from an extremely rare condition called pseudosystem, in which a woman's false belief that she's pregnant triggers hormonal and physical changes as if she were pregnant.

And

she also experiences delusions and hallucinations, believing God spoke with her through connect the dot puzzles.

Wow.

Everybody knows God speaks to you through Sudoku, first of all.

So don't even try it with this connect the dot shit.

We know that.

Only the jumble.

God communicates through the jumble, and that's it.

Oh, my God.

So the government acknowledged the mental issues, but it disputes that she can't comprehend that she's scheduled for execution for killing another person because of these problems.

So

she gets it stayed, her execution.

We'll talk about it, and then it gets put back on.

Because July 2020, federal executions resume after a 17-year hiatus.

17 years.

Of no federal executions.

Yeah, it was 2003.

They stopped those.

October 16th, 2020.

Lisa Montgomery's execution is scheduled for December 8th, 2020.

What day do they schedule it?

October October 16th for December 8th.

I think you only have to give them 20 days' notice.

Gave them six weeks.

That's pretty good.

That's not bad.

Now, there's a campaign for Lisa to not get executed.

Not to let her out, to not execute her.

Don't kill her.

Over 1,000 prosecutors from around the country sign a letter opposing this execution.

She's got so many issues.

We can't do this.

This looks bad.

Not defense attorneys.

No, no, no, no, no.

Prosecutors.

The ones that try to get these convictions.

Every mental health organization files briefs going, dude, she's got serious shit wrong with her.

She's exhibited mental health issues as a child with her lying.

She's got problems.

Yep.

Multiple anti-trafficking groups argue that she was a victim.

She's being sex trafficked by her fucking parents.

She's

as victimized as you could be.

And even the UN human rights experts try to intervene here.

Meanwhile, she is in her cell crocheting angels and Christmas tree ornaments and elaborate nativity scenes with angels all over them.

That's what she's doing in jail that whole year.

They said on Christmas Eve, her attorneys called her to say that a judge in Washington had ruled that a new execution date for her couldn't even be scheduled until January at the earliest.

Then she'd have the

legally required 20 days notice of that new date, according to the ruling from a D.C.

district judge.

They said it wasn't clear how much of this Lisa really understood.

This person said her connection with reality is fairly tenuous.

They said, especially under the stress of what she's going through right now, one of her lawyers said.

So she's not real

greats.

Her death date is pre-Christmas.

December 8th, 2020 is execution day, but it's delayed not for legal reasons, because both of her lawyers caught bad cases of of COVID after visiting her on death row that week.

Oh, dang.

So they have to delay it because her lawyers aren't able to file things that they're supposed to be filing.

Yeah.

January 1st, 2021, a new execution date of January 12th, 2021 is set.

Okay.

Okay.

Now, January 11th, a judge grants a stay for a competency evaluation.

So the night before.

Yeah.

That happens.

Then the federal government appealed that ruling to the D.C.

Court of Appeals, and in their notice of appeal,

basically

they said that, quote, Montgomery received ample notice of her execution date and will not suffer irreparable harm from the bare procedural violation she alleges.

It's pretty funny to use the words, not suffer irreparable harm, so let's kill her.

She's not suffering irreparable harm.

Let's kill her.

You know, that's reparable.

Let's do something completely irreparable.

So,

yeah, this is fucking crazy.

So, they said

the people, her lawyers, say the federal government broke the law.

Judge Moss ruled in hustling to set a new execution date for January 12th while the stay of execution is still in place.

Because there is a federal stay of execution that the government just steamrolls and says we don't have to do that.

So, January 12th in the afternoon, the appeals court vacates the stay.

They say, no, no more stay.

We're executing you today.

January 12th in the evening, another judge grants a new stay.

What the fuck is going on?

Okay, now here's an article from the, I believe, Kansas City Star here.

It's an editorial about public opinion on the case.

And they say a few star readers have written to say that she should be put to death regardless of her illness or history.

One man said he'd love to kill her himself, and a woman said that since Oprah Winfrey was abused as a child and yet has refrained from cutting anyone open, Montgomery should have been able to do the same.

A man who works in mental health said that if she really had turned to Jesus then she would have never have done what she did.

Okay.

The vast majority of readers who responded to stories about the case, though, said they oppose Montgomery's execution.

They said they were praying for her, wanted to write to her, and wanted to know to who, wanted to know who to call to express their support for clemency, which would mean she'd spend the rest of her life in prison.

Yeah, no one's saying she should go home.

No, don't let her get out.

Jesus.

Her shit and shit now.

They said that,

yeah, so they said, Lisa is suffering beyond imagination, one star reader wrote.

Her execution would be as unconscionable as any war crime.

January 12th at 10 p.m., the Supreme Court of the United States vacates all stays and said, put her to death.

Push it forward.

Push it forward.

So she is

transferred to the Terre Haute Federal Prison, placed in a holding cell next to the chamber.

By this point,

she is completely out of her fucking mind.

They said she's no idea what's going on, basically.

Oh, boy.

And it's not an act.

It's all over.

I mean, the Supreme Court has said it's over.

So, I mean, she's just being herself.

And they said that she believes the prison staff are trying to help her get out of this.

Like, they're going to help her.

She's telling people, no, they're going to help me.

Totally.

She thinks that she's being moved to a hospital, not to death row.

Oh, boy.

She said, I know I'm a little fucked up in the head.

And she says soon, she's telling people, soon she'll be released and she can finally see her kids again.

Oh, dear Lord Lady.

Her lawyers are making last-minute appeals.

Her sister, Diane Mattingly, must have married Don.

Good for her.

pleads publicly, quote, she's not evil.

She's broken.

She was broken by the people who were supposed to protect her.

Please, Please, President Trump, show mercy.

Because now the president's a federal execution.

The president's the only person that can go above the Supreme Court on that.

January 13th, 2021, execution day.

Yeah.

This is so shitty, by the way.

I'll give a hard opinion on this.

We should give people last meals before we execute them.

It's ridiculous to spend.

When you, if you're to get all the...

We're doing it on money.

Yeah.

To get to the point where you're about to strap someone into something and kill them, you have spent tens of millions of dollars to get to this point.

All the appeals, all the stuff, everything you've done.

Now you're going, we're not spending 30 bucks on a meal.

Fuck that.

It's just, you know what I mean?

That's, it's from, they did that like from ancient Greek times so the ghosts wouldn't come back hungry and angry and shit.

That's literally why they did it.

And it's supposed to be like a, like a

civilized and that we, and that we're not just that's the other thing.

we're not as bad as you right you're bad.

You did this.

We do this shit.

We cooked you a fucking steak.

Yeah.

And even in like even in like Deadwood, which is the fucking old west, they're going to hang the guy the next morning.

He's treating him like a human being and not wanting him to get taken by the fucking mob.

You know what I mean?

It's just, I don't know.

It's weird.

So there is no federal, no meals for federal people.

She got a sack lunch.

Yikes.

Like she's going on a fucking southwest flight to Reno or some shit.

Here you go.

Here's your fucking turkey croissant.

Yeah, enjoy.

They bring her in.

They asked if she has any last words, and she said, no.

Oh, boy.

Nope.

That's it.

No.

1.31 a.m.

She is executed by lethal injection.

Wow.

Three and a half hours after the Supreme Court said no more.

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

That's.

She is the first woman executed by the federal government in 67 years.

Wow.

Yep.

The last woman executed by the federal government was Bonnie Brown Heddy on December 18th, 1953 for the kidnapping and murder of a six-year-old boy.

God dang.

Her lawyer,

Kelly Henry, said, quote, the government stopped at nothing in its zeal to kill this damaged and delusional woman.

Lisa Montgomery's execution was the craven bloodlust of a failed administration.

Everyone who who participated should feel shame.

Jesus.

Tell me how you really feel, Kelly.

Victoria Joe.

How's she doing?

Great.

She's 19 years old, doing fantastic.

Yeah.

Healthy as a horse, fine, doing wonderful.

Was raised by her father with support from the extended family.

Thankfully, they keep her out of the public eye.

Good.

Yeah.

They don't let people fuck with her.

They don't interview, you know, newspapers interview her or anything like that.

Leave this poor kid alone.

Jesus Christ, I mean.

Talk about hard times, man.

They said they wanted her to have as normal a childhood as she could have, obviously.

December 16th is her birthday and her mother's death day, which is horrifying.

She's never spoken publicly.

Those who do know her say she does well, and her father and family raised her really well.

Skidmore,

population is now under 250 people.

It keeps shrinking now because it's got a reputation, which isn't fair to the town.

It's really not.

The person who did this wasn't even from here.

You know what I'm saying?

It's not fair.

Yeah, they're in poding murder now.

Good lord.

Yeah.

And they call it the curse.

Yeah.

This town, everybody says, cursed town.

It's cursed.

Sure seems like it.

Yep.

They said it's more deaths, more tragedies.

The town that killed Ken McElroy, the town where babies are stolen from wombs, the town where people disappear and child pornographers have all this shit.

The murder house, by the way,

at 410 West Elm Street has never been lived in again.

Is that right?

21 years, not a soul has lived there since then.

It still stands.

Yeah.

If you'd like to see it, it's falling apart.

Look at it.

Oh, my word.

It's just a house that's been sitting there for over 20 years.

Look at the inside.

Oh, my God.

It's just falling apart.

There's no drywall or plaster.

No plaster.

It's down to those boards.

Oh, wow.

And a little spot of brick up.

Even the ceiling, there's nothing there.

It all fell.

Oh, what the hell?

It's a fucking mess.

It says it is off the market

for whatever that's worth.

Two-bedroom, 722-square-foot house there.

Now on Zillow, they have it off-market, but they have it listed for $680.

Is that the OBO?

Should we OBO it?

I don't know.

And

they describe it as vacant land.

Like, they're not even describing it as a house.

You're going to knock this house down.

Get rid of this, yeah.

Yeah, so that's that's fucking sad, that house.

Now it looks like a haunted house.

It looks creepy.

And

poor Jesus Christ, man, this is horrible.

What's that doing?

Is he still working at Kawasaki?

Is he Mr.

Kawasaki?

Not sure.

He must be ahead of Kawasaki now.

But the burial, she's buried

Bobby Joe at the Hillcrest Cemetery in Skidmore.

So there you go.

That is Skidmore, Missouri again.

This town creates some of the most fucked up murders that have ever happened in this world.

And I'm going to be real honest very quickly.

I didn't know whether to do this case or not because I'm like, this might be too much for people.

I don't know.

I don't know.

But it's just so crazy.

And it is small town murder.

It's all what it's all about.

And I said, all right, let's do it, but we got to do it respectfully because

somebody got a baby cut out of them, and that's pretty fucked up.

So hopefully we did a good job with that.

Real quickly here as we end, definitely head on to whatever app you're on and give us five stars.

It helps grow the show so much.

We don't know why, but it does.

So please keep doing that for us.

Tell your friends, post on social media, follow on social media.

We are at Small Town Murder on Instagram, at Small Town Pod on Facebook.

Head over to shutupandgivememurder.com for your tickets for live shows.

Only two shows with tickets left in the fall.

Everything else is sold out.

There's a few left in Philly, and I mean a few.

Very few.

And some left in Seattle, too.

That's a bigger theater, but it's still almost gone.

So get in there right now and get your tickets if you want to see us because we can't wait to to see you there.

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And you also get a shout out at the end of the the show.

Jimmy, hit me with the names of the best fucking people in the entire world who would just say, I can't have a baby.

Oh, well, hit me with them right now.

This week's executive producers are

Antony.

Antony Andy.

Auntie Andy.

It's so fucking difficult to say, but she's

a fan of his ass.

So good for you, Auntie.

Hey, whoop that ass, Auntie Antony.

Jillian Quinn, Jacqueline Hannaford, and

her pet cat.

A pet cat.

Every time I hear cat, in my head, I see Edgar Suit saying pet cat real loud.

Yes.

Pet Cat Pixie.

Mr.

Pixie.

Hey, Pixie.

Oh, pet cat.

Spencer Westcott, happy birthday.

Other producers this week.

Yes, thank you all so much for what you do.

Other producers are Liz Vasquez, Smothered and Covered.

Not necessarily Liz Smothered and Covered, but just smothered and covered.

Liz is a nice lady.

We don't want to smother her or cover.

No, no, no.

Happy hour checking in at home in Conroe, Texas.

Well, Janice Hill, Hannah Joe Kinyon, Mindy Jackson, Jerry Price, Shannon Campbell, May Lynn, Cheyenne with no last name, Clint Menard with a K.

Clint?

Wow.

Oh, wow.

Teresa.

Teresa Walsh.

Melissa Hibbett.

No-no.

I guess that's your no-no place.

I don't know what no-no means.

A penis deleted or

a giant.

The no-no.

Cecil, Cecil Moon, Julia Freitner, John with no last name.

Ronda Montgomery, Siobhan Odell, Lilibeth with no last name, Andrew Powley, Nay with no last name,

probably cousin of no-no, Patty Kaufman, Lynn Clausa, is that what it is?

Yep, Zach Irwin, Hannah with no last name, Bree Baby, Felice, Felisa, Feles, Felice, Shelton Scholes, yeah, Zach Irwin.

Is that a comedian?

I don't know who that is.

I feel like that.

It sounds like a country singer.

I feel like Zach Irwin's a, with an E, though, is a,

I think I know.

Absolutely sounds like a new country singer.

It does.

It does.

Ripped up jeans.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

You know the guy.

You see him.

A brand new hat that looks old.

Yep.

Marie

Leiden.

Brand new trucker hat that came with rips along the edges of the belt.

Came with those.

I was thinking the straw hat that's bent because it has a wire in it to make it look

like a little bastard.

That's good.

Well, let's stop making fun of this guy who gave us money.

Thank you.

Zach, you're true.

Thank you, Zach.

You're a good guy.

You're none of us.

Marie Ledane, Adam Yoder, James Plumer, Morgan Walsh.

That also.

Come on.

Gene Allen.

Sarah with no last name.

Grumpy or Gumpy?

Gumpy DuFrane.

Eric Thomas.

Nick with no last name.

Bill Rose, Kevin Pacheco, Jenny with no last name.

Casey Robinson.

Calypso with no last name.

Jesse Marriott, Connie B., Ryan Murphy.

Hope it's not that one.

Abby Smith, Doug McQuaid, Brian the Food Guy.

Justin Bronig, Al B, Carlisle Coffee.

Norton.

I'll be sure.

Give me a question.

Al B.

He'll be whatever we want him to be.

He's thinking about us night and day.

Is that the problem?

You go ahead and fill it in.

I'll be that.

Christopher McClain, Samantha Collins, and L.

Gabe with no last name.

Stephanie Massey, Mackenzie Mueller, or Mueller.

History Pierce, Michael Jackson.

You know.

Sure.

You know.

We already got Al B.

Shore money.

We got night and day money.

Let's get that thriller money, too.

Fuck it.

Why not?

Get that man in the mirror cast.

Chole Tong, K with no last name.

Just the letter K.

Caleb Stutz, D3, Mr.

Ball Sack, probably not.

Diabont,

Diablo.

Writer for the man.

The man.

Caitlin McMurphy.

Drew with no last name.

Faith Vieira, Marie with no last name.

Katie with no last name.

Jane Story.

Kaylee with no last name.

Chris W, Black Rain 4, Zero with no last name.

British Blonde Style Antner.

Noah with no last name.

Noah Gwinta.

Guinta.

Rebecca Morlock.

Brandon Budgel.

Bujel.

Aaron Morris, Dan Kook,

K-U-K.

I'm going to assume Cook.

Cook.

Cook?

Is it Cook or is it Cook?

Cuke.

Cuke.

He's a good man, is what Dan is.

Kaylee Britton.

Christian Krupa.

E-S.

The letters ES or S.

They is.

Ian Butle, Ian Budle.

Noah Trevet.

Trevitt.

Trevitt.

Veronica Vetter.

What is it?

Simon Hargood.

Lady Seton's sake.

I like when you stop.

It's got a regroup.

I like that for some.

It's a reschool on the yo-yo.

Amber Tomlinson, Ezra with no last name.

Elizabeth Scherzer, Samantha Houston, Tiffany Crusera, Gary Hyde, Nick Myers, Emily Church, Jodi Wurda, Jessica Hope, John Lennon Miller, Jessica Parks, Jess Phyllis, Phyllis, Phyllis, Felice, Sherry Kerr, Cassie with no last name, Linda with no last name, Wyatt Reese, Corin Ganilka.

Whew.

That's a boy, Nilka, maybe.

Maybe you don't pronounce the G.

Rashley.

Rashley McGusty.

Okay.

Ashley with the rash.

Abyss.

What is this?

Bistitual beekeeper.

What even is that?

I don't know.

Amy Kaysen, Casson, Kayson, Judy Patton, Judy Comix.

All the bees.

Marjoline Julia.

Juliao.

Juliao.

Michael Nation.

A whole nation of them.

Kate

with a

K, and then spell out the letter eight, Bruce.

That is bananas.

I've never seen that in my entire life.

No.

Trevor with no last name.

Walter Sonia,

star Jays, Brandi Hebert.

Is it Hebert?

Aber, perhaps.

Kimberly Kramer, Zayra, Zyra Diaz, Melanie Bruski, Laura Hardy, Oriana Nazis.

What?

Moving on.

Breonna Larkins, Roxy with no last name.

Anessa Boyer.

We'll have to talk about that one after the show.

Love to get into that.

Maria Jawarski, Shanae Auguste, Augusti, August, Sean Avery,

Dagoberto, Huerta, Dagoberto, Kaylee with no last name, Dylan Clayson, Vance LaBourgier,

LeBla Bourgia, Ashley Malay,

Malet, Kevin Hewitt, Scott Maton, Rebecca Quadrado, Quadrado, Henry Ritter, Hank, Shannon Howe, John's Kid,

John's kid, Hank, Sarah Catherman, Caterman, perhaps.

Miles with no last name.

Nikki G.

Bonnie

Urjavek.

LG, the fucking life is good utilities.

What are they?

Appliances.

That's it.

Appliances.

William Smith.

Bill Smith.

Carrie Griffin.

Randy Mosher.

Becky

Zadjicek.

Amy Stone.

That too.

Jackie with no last name.

Holly Josephine.

Weezy with no last name.

Darcy E., Caleb Miller.

Max with no last name.

Diego Lostra.

Amanda Lynn, Miss Chris, Greg Dorgan, Hannah with no last name, Alizae Shelke.

Aliza.

That's gotta be

Mabs with no last name.

Jamie, that's the grossest thing.

That stuff is vile.

Jamie Garmin, Kenny Carpen, Cassandra Cronin, Jack Kane, Angel Boss, Tammy Jackson, Michelle with no last name, Polly Pop, Paolo Pop, Nancy with no last name, Tyler G, Elizabeth Hislop, and with no last name, John Costello Costaldo,

Spence

Ollison, Kaylee Flata, Casey Johnson, Aaron Tilley, and all of our patrons.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, everybody.

You wonderful, beautiful, fantastic, fabulous bastards.

We appreciate all that you do for us.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Follow us on social media.

Head over to shutupandgivemeurder.com.

Drop down menus take you where you want to go.

Keep coming back and seeing us.

And until next week, everybody, it's been our pleasure.

Bye.

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