After she gave birth to four children, Judy pressured Lisa into an involuntary sterilization. She went home with a newborn, one she acquired by murdering the babys pregnant mother. . In the other cases, she said, prosecutors opted not to seek the death penalty or juries did not impose it because it was obvious the women were suffering from profound mental illnesses. In the haze of her mental illness, she went to the home of a pregnant woman, killed her, and removed the baby. "If I had, would they have taken Lisa out of the home also?" In asking for mercy, her family members and attorneys say the untreated trauma she experienced as a child exacerbated her brain damage and hergenetic disposition to severe mental illness, leading her to kill Stinnett during a psychotic episode a dissociative state similar to sleepwalking. Who was the last woman executed by the US government? Montgomery graduated in 1986 from high school at Cleveland, Okla., with hopes of joining the Air Force to earn money for college. She had four children in less than four years before being sterilized. When I was eight and Lisa was four, social services came and rescued me from Judy, leaving Lisa and our other sister behind. In December 2004, Montgomery, who was 36 at the time, strangled Bobbie Jo Stinnett before cutting the baby out of her womb and kidnapping it. People confuse punishment with culpability, she went on. She would be the first woman executed by the federal government in 67. Even at the age of 8, Mattingly recalled being worried about what would happen to Montgomery without her there. Two days before the crime, her former husband (and stepbrother) sought custody of two of her children. The tiny farming town of Skidmore sits in the far northwest corner of Missouri. The baby was returned to her father, after being recovered from Montgomery. They gave me unconditional love, they taught me my self-worth, she said. She didnt have nobody there to protect her once I was out of the home.. She liked to take her finger and poke it hard into her chest, over and over in the same spot. It is extremely rare for women to be sentenced to death, said Sandra Babcock, faculty director of the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide and an expert on women and the death penalty. Only 18 death sentences were handed down in 2020 and the number of executions carried out hit a 30-year low. 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. She became involved with Kevin Montgomery, a divorced electrician with children of his own, and theymarried the following year. Mattingly said she shielded her half-sister from random baby-sitters, often older men, whom their mother left with them during her near-nightly outings to a local bar. Bobbie's family deserves her," says Meagan Morrow, a high school classmate of Stinnett's. A home videoshowsCarl Boman raping and beating Montgomery, said her half-brother, Teddy Kleiner, who gave a sworn statementsaying he had seen it. 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. She has exhausted all legal options. Randy Strong, who investigated the case,is unhappy that some people are asking thatMontgomerys life be spared. 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. After their biological father left the home, Mattingly says they were left alone with Shaughnessy's boyfriends, at least one of whom started raping Mattingly. She is the most broken of the broken. At the same time, she blames it for the fate of her younger half-sister, Lisa Montgomery. The question is, should she be put to death for it. Babcock said the constant in every case she has seen is an overwhelming history of trauma. Those were disconnections that were tragic in their consequences. According to an interview with her father, Montgomery's mother Judy Shaughnessy drank heavily throughout her pregnancy, and their daughter was born with foetal alcohol syndrome. A lifelong opponent of the death penalty, Dorr said she wants the world to know about Lisa Montgomery the person. The U.S. has not executed a woman in 67 years. "She was hyperventilating," Henry said. Other times, her behavior could be erratic and inappropriate. ", "I live with regret for not speaking up about what happened to Lisa," Kidwell said, adding that he just didnt know what to do.. She began prostituting Lisa to older men when Lisa was in her early teens. Fourteen of those offenders are serving long prison sentences, while the twoothers died by suicide in custody, according to a list Henry provided. Violent acts against pregnant women and their fetuses fall into that category. Montgomery wasn't allowed eyeglasses, though she is far-sighted and near-sighted, or a CPAP machine, which has been prescribed since 2015 for her sleep apnea, Henry said. Every time she has a birthday, it will also be the anniversary of the slaughter of her mother, Whitworth said. I never molested her in any way, shape or form, said Kleiner, who died in 2009. "There's so many people that failed her throughout her whole life. I'm bruised, but I'm not broken. "This was a very coordinated and determined plan to ensure that as many people could be executed on federal death row as possible before the end of this administration term.". "I fell in love immediately.". Her lawyers at the time also presented an alternative theory of the crime, which was that Montgomery's brother had actually committed the murder, even though he had an alibi. "I felt sick watching the video. More: The U.S. has not executed a woman in 67 years. For example, she said, the jury that recommended Montgomery be executed wasn't asked to consider the impact that would have on her four children and 12 grandchildren. There is a decision that has to be made, separate from guilt, about whether someones behavior is so morally reprehensible that they deserve the death penalty, she said. At the instigation of Shaughnessys lawyer, Montgomery was connected to a therapist, but only briefly. She gives herself as an example - when Stinnett was murdered, Baumli was in rehab for a drug addiction. Lisa Montgomery and Bobbie Jo Stinnett got to know each other online through a shared love of dogs. Montgomery lived during her childhood in Washington, Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, California and Texas. Often the woman, now 52 and a grandmother of 12, is knitting or doing needlepoint. "She needs to be put to death.". Patterson was transferred after Montgomerys birth to Fort Riley inKansas, where their family lived when another daughter was born in 1970. And nowhere is that support more palpably felt in this case than in Skidmore. Lisa Montgomery, who endured years of sexual and physical abuse, murdered an expectant mother and took the baby. It is the only federal prison with an active death chamber. Shaughnessy sat so unmoved during her daughter's testimony that the judge reprimanded her for lacking empathy. She was born in 1968, the child of two troubled alcoholics. He was pumping her, Shaughnessy testified. Lisa's and my father was also mentally ill. Mattingly says looking back to the moment life changed for her as an eight-year-old, she feels guilty that when the social workers came for her, she didn't tell them what was going on in that house. She enjoyed torturing the people around her," says Mattingly. Montgomery also suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder and major depression, jurors were told. Stinnett lived with her husband, Zeb, in Skidmore, Mo., a town near the state's northwest corner with fewerthan 300 people today. And it's never about what my friend went through," she adds. DNA testing later showed they were Stinnett's. Moving often was the norm to Montgomery; by the time she was a teenager, she had moved approximately 16 times. She meets with Montgomery regularly, she said. Henry said Montgomery was expected to be transferred by Jan. 10 to the penitentiary at TerreHaute, Ind., her designated place of execution. My sister is on death row, Kleiner wrote in the lawsuit petition. Since 2008, Montgomery has been held in a federal prison in Texas for female inmates with special medical and psychological needs, where she has been receiving psychiatric care. 2023 BuzzFeed, Inc. All rights reserved. Three federal inmates - Orlando Hall, Alfred Bourgeois and Brandon Bernard - have been put to death since the 3 November presidential election. Montgomery's execution date was subsequently bumped back to Jan. 12. At state level, the number of sentences and executions continues a historic decline. "It was violent and like a scene out of a horror movie," he said in a statement. She has been let down over and over and over again by people in authority, people who were supposed to be caretakers for her, Mattingly said. 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. Shaughnessy forced Montgomery to have sex with men in exchange for money and services, and also punished her children by killing the family dog in front of them,smashing its head with a shovel, the attorneys said. Its not just the childhood maltreatment and psychological abuse and neglect, or the incredible sexual abuse by her stepfather, or the sex trafficking, Porterfield said. Montgomery's mother, Judy Shaughnessy, who was 20 at the time of her birth in 1968, drank heavily while pregnant with her daughter. The historic reports of her at the time are consistent with the idea that she was a completely impaired mentally ill nonfunctional person who was operating within the symptoms of her mental illness, Porterfield said. But it was not a pet that she was to retrieve that day. She was quiet and kind, they say. The nature and circumstances of Montgomerys crime show she had lost touch with reality, says her half-sister, Diane Mattingly. "There was a lot of talk both ways on it," he said when contacted by phone at his new home in Texas. As a result of her sexual torture, Lisa began to dissociate. She told Lisa she had to "earn her keep.". That was ultimately dropped in favour of an insanity defence, but Henry believes the damage to Montgomery's credibility was already done. ", More: Only woman on federal death row asks President Trump to be a 'hero,' commute her sentence. 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. The crime itself shows that Lisa had lost all touch with reality. They would beat and slap her if she was doing it wrong. When they were done, they urinated on her like she was trash..

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