Kansan Lisa Montgomery is first woman executed by federal government in 67 years
The federal government early Wednesday morning executed Lisa Montgomery, who killed an expectant mother and kidnapped her baby 16 years earlier in northwest Missouri.
Montgomery, 52, of Melvern, Kansas, died by lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. She was the first woman executed by the federal government in 67 years.
In 2004, Montgomery strangled Bobbie Jo Stinnett, 23, of Skidmore, and cut her unborn baby from her womb with a knife. She was convicted of kidnapping resulting in death and in 2007 was sentenced to die.
Before the execution, a judge found Montgomery was likely mentally ill and couldn’t comprehend she would be put to death. Her attorneys had argued she was not competent to be executed and said she was unable to rationally understand why she would be executed or “even where she is.”
But late Tuesday night, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for the Justice Department to kill Montgomery. Several courts had issued injunctions, but they were all later lifted by appeals courts or the Supreme Court.
As the execution process began, a woman standing over Montgomery’s shoulder leaned over, gently removed Montgomery’s face mask and asked her if she had any last words. “No,” Montgomery responded.
Montgomery kept licking her lips and gasped briefly as pentobarbital, the lethal drug, entered her body through IVs on both arms. A few minutes later, her midsection throbbed for a moment, but quickly stopped.
She was pronounced dead at 12:31 a.m.
“The government stopped at nothing in its zeal to kill this damaged and delusional woman,” Montgomery’s attorney, Kelley Henry, said in a statement. “Lisa Montgomery’s execution was far from justice.”
In a Twitter post, Sandra Babcock, one of Montgomery’s lawyers, said the federal government “spent untold resources” to kill Montgomery, a child sex trafficking victim, on a day when thousands died of COVID-19.
Stinnett’s family members would not be issuing any statements, a Bureau of Prisons spokesperson told reporters gathered at the prison. Relatives previously said the execution was the outcome they wanted.
On the day of the murder, Montgomery traveled to Skidmore under the guise of buying a rat-terrier puppy from Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant.
Stinnett’s mother, Becky Harper, found her daughter in a pool of blood. She sobbed as she spoke to a dispatcher.
“It’s like she exploded or something,” Harper told the dispatcher Dec. 16, 2004.
When police arrived, Montgomery and the baby were gone.
Montgomery, then 36, drove the more than 160 miles home to Melvern and tried to pass the baby girl off as her own. She was arrested the next day.
The baby, Victoria Jo, was safely recovered. She is now 16, and has never spoken publicly.
Montgomery had claimed several times to be pregnant — despite undergoing sterilization surgery in 1990, which her lawyers say her mother pressured her into. Before the murder, her ex-husband filed for custody of two of her children and threatened to expose her lies about being pregnant. She needed a baby to back up her pregnancy claims, according to trial testimony.
It pushed her “over the brink,” according to her appeals. She killed Stinnett in the grip of a psychotic episode, her attorneys said.
Montgomery later confessed to the killing and abduction.
Those who grew up with Stinnett, as well as detectives who investigated the killing, have said they supported the execution and hoped it would bring some peace to Stinnett’s relatives.
“I hope Lisa gets everything she deserves,” said Meagan Morrow, Skidmore’s city manager who went to school with Stinnett.
Others, including Montgomery’s sister, Diane Mattingly, have said the execution would mark a devastating end to Montgomery’s traumatic life, which was scarred by childhood abuse, mental illness and gang rapes.
“Let her live her life out in jail,” Mattingly asked recently of President Donald Trump, who could have commuted Montgomery’s sentence to life in prison. “I’m begging as a sister, but more importantly, as a survivor.”
Speaking Sunday to CBS News, Henry, one of Montgomery’s lawyers, said she could not imagine the Stinnett family’s pain, but that it did not diminish the fact Montgomery’s sister, four children and 12 grandchildren would be traumatized by the execution.
Henry noted that Monday was National Human Trafficking Awareness Day, which she said would have been the “perfect time” for Trump to grant Montgomery clemency.
“There’s simply no reason to create more victims and have more death,” Henry told the program’s anchor.
Executing Montgomery, Henry said, would be “a stain on our country.”
In a previous interview with The Star, Henry said Stinnett would have never been killed had Montgomery received the community mental health and treatment she needed. Such resources, Henry said, continue to lag in America, and “certainly” were not available to poor people in 2004 in rural Kansas.
Montgomery, who was on anti-psychotic medications before her death, had expressed incredible remorse, Henry said. “That she could have even done such a thing is unimaginable to her,” she said.
At trial, prosecutors described Montgomery as a scheming manipulator and accused her of faking mental illness. They said her killing of Stinnett was premeditated and included meticulous planning, including online research on how to perform a C-section.
Henry recently balked at that idea, citing extensive testing and brain scans that supported the diagnosis of mental illness.
Montgomery, who had been on suicide watch, suffered from illnesses that caused dissociation and psychosis, her lawyers said. She endured traumatic injuries as a child, such as when her stepfather slammed her head on a concrete floor while raping her, they said.
In November, a coalition of more than 1,000 supporters — including former prosecutors, anti-sex trafficking and anti-domestic violence groups, child advocates and mental health groups — urged Trump to stop the execution.
Montgomery arrived at the Terre Haute facility Monday night from a Texas prison. Because there are no facilities for female inmates there, she had been kept in a cell in the execution-chamber building itself, Henry said.
Of the at least 14 other women across the U.S. who have carried out fetal abductions, Montgomery was the only executed. Most prosecutors, her attorneys say, understand the crime is the result of trauma and mental illness.
Montgomery could be the last inmate put to death under Trump, whose administration has carried out an unprecedented string of executions. Eleven inmates have now been executed since July, when the administration reinstated the federal death penalty after a 17-year hiatus.
Two other federal executions set for later this week were halted because the inmates tested positive for COVID-19.
Montgomery may have never been executed had her execution been delayed beyond President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration next week. Biden’s administration is expected to oppose carrying out of death sentences.
The federal government last executed a woman in 1953. Bonnie Heady, along with Carl Hall, was put to death for kidnapping a 6-year-old Kansas City boy, who was fatally shot and buried.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
This story was originally published January 13, 2021 at 12:51 AM.
