"It was violent and like a scene out of a horror movie," he said in a statement. Ms. Montgomery has bipolar disorder, temporal lobe epilepsy, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, dissociative disorder, psychosis, traumatic brain injury and most likely fetal alcohol syndrome. She helped him escape in a dog crate and went to prison after a vehicle chase 12 days later ended with their capture. One theory her lawyers put forward regarding the chain of events that led to the murder, is that Montgomery feared her ex-husband would expose her lies about being pregnant and use it against her as he sought custody of their children. But it is something that she carries with her and that she mourns not only for the effect on her life and that of her family, but for the terrible effect on Mrs. Stinnett, who was killed, and also her family who was left behind.. "Being psychotic, it does not mean you are not intelligent, nor that you cannot act in a planful way," she says. As the car drove further and further away, Mattingly began to vomit. More: Who was the last woman executed by the US government? Recently, there has been a virus outbreak on death row at the institution, and previous executions have been linked to outbreaks among the execution team and prison staff. She was quiet and kind, they say. When Mattingly and Montgomery were young, Shaughnessy beat them and doled out cruel forms of punishment, like taping Montgomery's mouth shut, or pushing Mattingly out into the snow, naked. The question is, should she be put to death for it? Lisa Montgomery lived a tortured life, from the day she was born in a small Washington town till the day she became the first woman in 67 years to be executed by the U.S. government. Her case is one of the most extreme of all the cases that Ive looked at, in terms of the severity and repetition of the violence that she experienced, she said. When Judy, Lisa's mother and my stepmother, came to beat us, I stood between her and the younger girls and took the beating, whether it was belts, cords or hangers. Prosecutors said Montgomery was faking mental illness, notingthat many people are sexually abused, but few go on to kill. A newspaper article quoted him as saying he had been convinced his wife was pregnant and had given birth. She said Montgomery's crimes have affected the way Melvern is perceived in the same manner anti-gay picketing by Westboro Baptist Church has influenced perceptions about Topeka. Shaughnessy beat her children with belts, cords and hangers, put them in cold showers and put duct tape over Montgomery's mouth to silence her, the attorneys said. Babcock noted that while at least a dozen other women across the U.S. have committed a similar crime in the past 20 years killing a pregnant woman to kidnap her baby Montgomery was the only one sentenced to death. Montgomery is "evil personified," he said. She has always accepted responsibility. But those who believe she should be put to death say her lifetime of horrorscan't excuse what came next: OnDec. 16, 2004, she loaded a steak knife, umbilical cord clamps and part of a clothesline into her car anddrove 175 miles from her home in east-central Kansas to the northwest Missouri home of Bobbie Jo Stinnett, an expectant mother she had met at a dog show. It is the only federal prison with an active death chamber. He was pumping her, Shaughnessy testified. He said he was "reduced to tears" when Zeb Stinnett sent him a message last month on the 16th anniversary of Montgomery's arrest for the murder of his wife. In 1986, when Montgomery was 18, she married her stepbrother, Carl Boman. Montgomery eventually divorced her first husband and married Kevin Montgomery. She lived with her children in poverty, without running water and other basic necessities, while her mental health deteriorated. Judy Shaughnessy, Montgomery ' s mother, raised Lisa in poverty and chaos, with multiple stepfathers and in dozens of different homes, according to scores of interviews and documents cited. She has writtenopinion piecespublished in Elle and Newsweek. Montgomery lamented that she couldn't be present to console them because she was in solitary confinement, said Dorr, Montgomery's friend since they met in a federal prison in 2006. "I'm asking him to have compassion on her as a person that has been failed over and over and over again. Montgomery's family moved from place to place during her adult years, continuing the pattern she hadknown as a child. She got into multiple car accidents, struggled to keep a job, moved around constantly, drank heavily, engaged in sex work and neglected her children. And, in fact, blaming her for it.. When issuing his original stay of execution, the district. Im not a psychiatrist, so I cant go any further than that.. When Stinnett answered the door, Montgomery overpowered the pregnant woman, strangled her with a piece of rope, and cut the baby out of her womb. The crime itself shows that Lisa had lost all touch with reality. "We've seen crime for years and years in our country in which people enact terrible violence coming out of a psychotic set of beliefs or thought process. Teddy Kleiner, the son of Shaughnessy and Jack Kleiner, was 45 years old when he was fatally shot in 2019 in North Topeka. Her lawyers had argued she was a mentally ill victim of abuse who. Dr Katherine Porterfield, a clinical psychologist who evaluated Montgomery and spent about 18 hours with her, says that psychosis does not always look the way people expect it to. In late December, Montgomery's legal team submitted a petition to President Donald Trump that makes the case that after a lifetime of abuse - which they characterise as torture - she is too mentally ill to be executed and deserves mercy. Lisa's mother, Judy Shaughnessy, abused her "in extreme and sadistic ways," according to interviews with nearly 450 family members, neighbors, lawyers, social workers, and teachers. The cold, vicious, calculating and brutal nature of her crimes shows that Montgomery knew exactly what she was doing, Strong said. On December 8, the federal government plans to execute her for a crime she committed in the grip of severe mental illness after a lifetime of living hell. But the psychological abuse targeted at her was even more damaging. When Shaughnessy eventually split from her second husband, she and Montgomery testified in divorce proceedings about the sexual assaults. Montgomery was represented briefly after her arrest by Ron Wurtz, a now-retired attorney who has represented dozens of capital case defendants. . A clemency petition asking Trump to reduce Montgomerys sentence to life without parole is expected to be filed in the coming weeks. As one family story goes, Montgomerys first words as a toddler were, dont spank me.. In a letterin late November written with a black crayon, Montgomery told Dorr that other inmates at Carswell took it "really hard" when her execution date was set. But Fischer was a name that Montgomery had been using when she separately began messaging Stinnett from a different email address inquiring about buying one of her puppies. Authorities also questioned Kevin Montgomery but concluded he wasn't involved. Dorr said she and Montgomery were in the same pod,in which inmates may gather outside their cells,in 2006 and 2007 at Leavenworth Detention Center, a for-profit federal facility in northeast Kansas. Her mouth was covered with duct tape so frequently that she learned not to cry. When Floyd Gwin died last July at age 81, Mattingly was listed among the survivors in his obituary. Montgomery described feeling that she was unsure whether her environment was real, and confided that she used a strategy to ground herself in reality: She would look at a tree out the window and tell herself that the tree was real if she could see it. Tommy Kleiner and Montgomery have stayed in touch. Henry says this was an early sign of her mental illnesses, which include bipolar disorder, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, dissociative disorder and traumatic brain injury. It is hard to know if Montgomery understands that she is close to being executed; her mental state does not allow for much lucidity. In recommending execution, the jury spelled out six aggravating factors supporting capital punishment. They hold a collection and try to do something nice for Stinnett's mother. By multiple accounts, Kleiner was an erratic, violent man who beat the kids and his wife regularly. Stinnett bled to death. In her interviews with Montgomery, Porterfield said, the woman showed symptoms of dissociation, including confused thinking, major gaps in memory, and an inability to recognize the reality of certain events. Stinnett came to, grabbing at Montgomery's knife and pulling out somehair before Montgomery strangledher to death. The father was a teacher. If they all go ahead, the federal government will have executed more people than any administration in nearly 100 years. "But one of the things that the president can do is say - to women who have been trafficked, and who have been sexually abused - 'Your abuse matters'.". Montgomery often read her Bible or did things with her hands, including writing, quilting, and making placemats and bookmarks, Dorr said. Henry says Montgomery's original legal defence after she was arrested and charged with murder was woefully inadequate, and presented few of the details about her abuse, trauma and mental illness. She lives in Lebanon, Ky., is married with two adult children and has worked the past 19 years for the state of Kentucky. Around this time, Shaughnessy and Patterson separated, and Mattingly was removed from the house by child protective services an act which she credits for saving her life. According to Gallup, while support for the death penalty in the US is at its lowest level in more than 50 years, 55% of Americans still believe it is an appropriate punishment for murder. She would be the first woman executed by the federal government in 67. Although the alumni have scattered somewhat, in recent years, the Nodaway-Holt R-VII High School graduating class of 2000 - which had only 22 members - has a tradition to mark the anniversary of the death of their classmate Bobbie Jo Stinnett. Court records say Kleiner drank heavily, beat his wife and children, and made his daughters take off their clothes before he spanked them. On her way out the door, Mattingly said, Shaughnessy leaned over and told her it was all her fault she was being taken away. Montgomery gave birth to three daughters and a son from1987 to1990, court records say. If her execution goes forward, she will be the first federal female inmate to be executed in almost 70 years. At 18, Judy pressured Lisa to marry her stepbrother. And then there is the life that Montgomery and her siblings inhabited, one of domestic violence, dysfunction, humiliation, fear and pain. On the trip home, she stopped in Topeka and called her husband to say she had gone into labor while Christmas shopping and had given birth at a Topeka birthing center. When Montgomery was in her mid-teens,she was sexually assaulted by Kleiner and three or four of his friends, according to court records. Lisa was anally, orally, and vaginally raped by several men, one after the other for several hours at a time. Please, honey.". She had catfished Stinnett online under a fake name. "Being loved unconditionally helped me heal, find a caring husband and raise two children who have hearts of gold," Mattingly wrote. In her opinion, Montgomerys extreme childhood trauma created the conditions for her to grow into an adult with a disconnected sense of her emotions, a tenuous hold on reality, a completely warped view of human relationships, and a split and damaged sense of herself and of her body, according to expert testimony she provided for the defense. All the while, Lisa's mother was being paid to let strange men rape Lisa. I didn't know what to do or how to talk to my sister about it.". One of the lead investigators in the case, Randy Strong, wants Montgomery executed. Other inmates tended to keep Montgomery at arm's length because of the brutality of what she had done, Dorr said, but she liked Montgomery's quiet nature. She testified as. They also discovered that Shaughnessy prostituted. I support my wife and her request for clemency, but because I am sick with COVID and am caring for my parents who are also sick with COVID, I ask the media to respect our need for rest and privacy," he said. Lisa then took the baby home and cared for her as though she was her own. "Come on, baby. Both became infected with COVID-19, believing it to be transmitted duringthe prison visit. Lisa Montgomery's current legal team has conducted some 450 interviews with family members, friends, case workers, doctors and social workers. Montgomery suffered from pseudocyesis, the false belief she was pregnant, jurors heard from Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, director of the Center of Brain and Cognition at the University of California in San Diego. After she strangled Stinnett, Montgomery is alleged to have cut her open and stolen her unborn child Victoria, who survived the attack and is now living with her father. Those were disconnections that were tragic in their consequences. Nobody has said that Lisa should never have been punished. Montgomery, 52, the only woman on federal death row,is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection Jan. 12 in the U.S. Penitentiary at TerreHaute, Ind. When Montgomery was 15, Shaughnessy and Kleiner separated. Another case with Missouri ties. Recibi una inyeccin letal en una prisin de Terre Haute,. She was born into a family rife with mental illness, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression. This is the stuff of nightmares.". Montgomerys mother, Judy Shaughnessy, who was 20 at the time of her birth in 1968, drank heavily while pregnant with her daughter. If that disconnection is brought about with enough frequency and intensity, it can become more of a steady state of being, she added. Judy drank throughout her pregnancy with Lisa and caused her to be born with brain damage. But they were what we come to understand as neuro-physiological adaptations to survive being constantly under assault.. But what happened at the modest clapboard house where Stinnett lived with her husband still haunts some of those involved in the investigation. Montgomery also suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder and major depression, jurors were told. Lisa Montgomery tried to get counseling the year before she killed Stinnettbut wasn'tconnected to a quality provider, her attorneys said. "I felt sick watching the video. I was thinking, shes still back there. She would tell me I had to leave and I couldnt take anything with me because she bought everything, she recalled. Another case with Missouri ties. In the cases where women are sentenced to death, prosecutors often use gender stereotypes against the defendants, she said, characterizing them as transgressive or not normal in some way. She gives herself as an example - when Stinnett was murdered, Baumli was in rehab for a drug addiction. Newspaper accounts show Montgomery had upset other users of that board by making false statements, including claiming to be pregnant. You know, like, that doesn't happen to Bobbie," Morrow says. They introduced her as their daughter, Abigail, and made multiple other stops. I didn't know what to do or how to talk to my sister about it.". Patterson made a mistake by abandoning them to "that crazy lady," he said at Montgomery's sentencing hearing in 2007. In addition to her brain damage, Lisa developed multiple mental disorders, including bipolar disorder, temporal lobe epilepsy, dissociative disorder, and Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Back home, the couple announced the birth of their daughter to their friends and relatives. Montgomery told Stinnett that she was also expecting, and the pair shared pregnancy stories. The views expressed in this article are the author's own. She lived at 61 addresses in the 36 years before she went to prison, court documents show. Lisa Montgomery and Bobbie Jo Stinnett got to know each other online through a shared love of dogs. In Montgomerys early childhood, her older sister, Diane, suffered the worst of the violence. Montgomery contacted Stinnett, 23, after meeting her at a dog show earlier that year at Abilene, in north-central Kansas, where they posed with others in a photo. Lisa Montgomery, a Kansas native scheduled within days to become the first woman executed by the federal government in 67 years, lived a childhood so abusive her attorneys call it akin to torture. The case was ruled a homicide and remains unsolved. She became involved with Kevin Montgomery, a divorced electrician with children of his own, and theymarried the following year. The baby, who was uninjured, was returned to her father. Montgomery's older half-sister, Diane Mattingly, told reporters last week that Shaughnessy repeatedly beat Montgomery and Mattingly. And to not fail her.". She enjoyed torturing the people around her," says Mattingly. Her daughter remembered her acting like a young child in public, twirling and skipping with her arms swinging with abandon. Montgomery became the first female federal prisoner executed in 67 years, the first woman executed in the United States since Kelly Gissendaner in 2015, and the first person executed in the United States in 2021. Montgomerys case is not about whether she is responsible for the crime; she is. Lisa Montgomery be di 11th prisoner to receive di lethal injection since July when President Donald Trump, resume federal executions. Weddle said she moved to Melvern when she retired nine years ago because she wanted peace and quiet after more than 30 years as a Topeka police officer. Montgomery was also prone to delusional thinking. There was plenty of food, our clothes were clean, and the kids did our homework together. In the end, it was in prisonwhere she spent years on death row after committing a horrific crimethat she began to recover from a lifetime of nightmarish abuse. Montgomery claimed to live in northwest Missouri. Kleiner, the son of Shaughnessy and Jack Kleiner, was meeting witha parole officerat the time of the killing, Strong said. A lifelong opponent of the death penalty, Dorr said she wants the world to know about Lisa Montgomery the person. She was often spaced out, appearing disconnected from reality. Two days before the crime, her former husband (and stepbrother) sought custody of two of her children. Montgomery, her sister said, was repeatedly failed: by the deputy sheriff who was told of her abuse; by the judge who was aware she was being molested; by her trial. They recommended a sentence of death. But Strong says this is the first year he's heard directly from Stinnett's husband. 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