The Execution
Soon after midnight on Wednesday, January 13, 2021, 52-year-old Lisa Montgomery became the first female inmate in 67 years to be executed by the US federal government.
The Murder
23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett was eight months pregnant with her first child at the time of her murder in her home in the small town of Skidmore, Missouri. Lisa Marie Montgomery, then aged 36, strangled Stinnett from behind with a rope and cut Stinnett’s unborn child from her womb using a kitchen knife on December 16, 2004. The unharmed baby was safely recovered by police the following day.
Montgomery met Stinnett in an online Rat Terrier chatroom called “Ratter Chatter.” Montgomery told Stinnett that she, too, was pregnant. The two women began chatting online and exchanging emails about their pregnancies. Montgomery used the name Darlene Fischer in these correspondences.
Montgomery drove 175 miles from her home in Melvern, Kansas, to Skidmore, ostensibly to view the puppies, posing as Darlene Fischer. Bobbie Jo was expecting her that day. The police found no sign of forced entry and believed that it was Montgomery who had arranged to visit Stinnett’s house.
Stinnett was discovered by her mother, Becky Harper, in a pool of blood about an hour after the assault. Harper immediately called 9-1-1. Harper described the wounds inflicted upon her daughter as appearing as if her “stomach had exploded.” Attempts by paramedics to revive Stinnett were unsuccessful, and she was pronounced dead at St. Francis Hospital in Maryville.
The next day, December 17, 2004, Montgomery was arrested at her farmhouse in Melvern, Kansas, where the baby was recovered. Montgomery claimed that she had given birth to it the previous day.
Examining Stinnett’s computer and her emails led detectives to a farmhouse in the 32400 block of South Adams Road in Melvern, Kansas. Here, they found Montgomery with Stinnett’s child in her arms. Police seized her computer and discovered that Montgomery had researched how to perform a caesarian section. Montgomery later confessed to the killing and abduction.
DNA testing was used to confirm the baby’s identity. She was later christened Victoria Jo Stinnett by her father, Zeb.
The Perpetrator
Lisa Marie Montgomery (DoB February 27, 1968) resided in Melvern, Kansas, at the time of the murder. She was raised in an abusive home where she was allegedly raped by her stepfather for many years. She sought escape mentally by drinking alcohol.
When Montgomery was 14, her mother discovered the abuse but reacted by threatening her daughter with a gun. She tried to escape this situation by marrying her stepbrother at age 18, but both the first marriage and a second marriage to Kevin Montgomery resulted in further abuse. In police interviews, Montgomery admitted she was attracted to the S&M scene and that she “liked taking the whip.”
Montgomery had four children before she underwent a tubal ligation in 1990. She falsely claimed to be pregnant several times after the procedure, according to both her first and second husbands.
A Federal Crime
In this case, the provisions of the Federal Kidnapping Act of 1932 applied, as the baby had been kidnapped and taken across state lines. Montgomery was tried and convicted of “kidnapping resulting in death,” under Title 18, United States Code § 1201.
Federal jurisdiction is established when a person dies as a result of kidnapping. Violations of Title 18 may result in the death penalty or any sentence up to life imprisonment.
Trial
Montgomery was tried before U.S. District Judge Gary A. Fenner in Kansas City, Missouri, in October 2007.
At a pre-trial hearing, a neuropsychologist testified that head injuries Montgomery sustained years before could have damaged the part of the brain controlling aggression. During her trial in federal court, her defense attorneys, led by Frederick Duchardt, asserted that she had pseudocyesis, a mental condition causing a woman to falsely believe she is pregnant and exhibit outward signs of pregnancy.
Montgomery was willing to take a plea deal for life imprisonment without parole, but the U.S. Department of Justice under President George W. Bush pushed for the death penalty.
Dr. V. S. Ramachandran and William Logan, MD, gave expert testimony that Montgomery had pseudocyesis, in addition to depression, borderline personality disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Ramachandran testified that Montgomery’s stories fluctuated because her delusional state fluctuated and that she was unable to appreciate the nature and quality of her acts.
Both federal prosecutor Roseann Ketchmark and opposing forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz strongly disagreed with the pseudocyesis diagnosis. The evidence showed the murder was premeditated and carefully planned.
On October 22, 2007, jurors found Montgomery guilty after deliberating for five hours, rejecting the defense claim she was delusional at the time of the murder. On October 26, they unanimously recommended the death sentence, and Judge Fenner formally sentenced her to death by lethal injection.
On April 4, 2008, a judge upheld the jury’s recommendation for death.
Subsequent Legal Proceedings
On March 19, 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Montgomery’s certiorari petition. Montgomery was registered at the Federal Bureau of Prisons under number 11072-031. She was incarcerated at Federal Medical Center, Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas, until transferred to Terre Haute, Indiana, for execution. She was the only female inmate with a federal death sentence.
Experts who examined Montgomery after conviction concluded that by the time of her crime, she had long been living with psychosis, bipolar disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder. She was often dissociated from reality and had permanent brain damage from numerous beatings by parents and spouses.
Execution
Montgomery’s initially scheduled execution on December 8, 2020, was delayed after her attorneys contracted COVID-19. On December 23, 2020, Montgomery was given a new execution date of January 12, 2021.
U.S. District Court Judge Randolph Moss found that “the director’s order setting a new execution date while the Court’s stay was in effect was ‘not in accordance with law,’” prohibiting Montgomery’s execution rescheduling until January 1, 2021, at the earliest.
On January 1, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacated Moss’s ruling, effectively reinstating Montgomery’s execution date of January 12. On that date, federal judge Patrick Hanlon granted a stay on the grounds that her mental competence must first be tested, as it could be argued she did not understand the grounds for her execution under the Eighth Amendment.
The stay was vacated by a 6–3 Supreme Court ruling, and the execution was ordered to proceed.
Montgomery was put to death by lethal injection on Wednesday, January 13, 2021. She was pronounced dead (EST) at 1:31 a.m. at the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana, following the Supreme Court’s denial of a stay.
As the execution began, a woman standing over Montgomery’s shoulder gently removed her face mask and asked if she had any last words. “No,” Montgomery responded. She kept licking her lips and gasped briefly as pentobarbital, the lethal drug, entered her body through IVs in both arms. A few minutes later, her midsection throbbed briefly but quickly stopped.
The Stinnett Family Response
The Stinnett family said Montgomery’s murder was so horrific that she deserved to be put to death regardless of her mental health. The city clerk, Meagan Morrow, who graduated from high school with Stinnett, said of Skidmore’s residents: “They are [ready] for an end to this madness. I hope Lisa gets everything she deserves.”
Comments
These 56 women were executed in 20 states (including Federal cases). Thirty-seven of them were white and 19 were African American. Ages in some cases are approximate.
Between them, they had at least 74 victims, with at least 11 further definite or probable victims for whom they were not tried or convicted.
In Texas, for instance, only one case at a time moves forward, and if a conviction and death sentence is forthcoming, other indictments are not proceeded with.
One wonders whether the advent of lethal injection has made it easier for juries to pass the death sentence on female offenders and for governors to sign their death warrants.
Many states were unwilling to execute female offenders by electrocution, hanging, or lethal gas while perfectly willing to execute males. Texas carried out 441 executions between 1930 and 1977 but none were women; Florida was similar, with all 268 executions between 1900 and 1964 being males. New York, however, carried out six of the seven female death sentences it passed in the 20th century.
From 1900–1962, there were 39 female executions nationwide, averaging 0.634 per year. Of these, nine were hanged, 23 electrocuted, and seven gassed. No woman has ever been executed by shooting.
It is interesting to note the difference in press coverage for these women. Mary Rogers, a young white woman, received tremendous coverage, her hanging making front pages. Pattie Purdue and Ann Knight’s hangings got little media attention, and Julia Moore’s hanging almost none. Was this because they were black? Mildred Johnson and Rosa Marie Stinnett likewise attracted little public interest, probably for the same reason. In several cases, no photographs of these women remain.
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