Murders & Miracles - Skidmore, Missouri

Summary

Small Town Murder – Episode Summary

Podcast: Small Town Murder
Hosts: James Pietragallo, Jimmie Whisman
Episode: "Murders & Miracles – Skidmore, Missouri"
Date: August 28, 2025

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Overview

This gripping episode takes listeners to Skidmore, Missouri—a tiny rural town with an infamous history of violent crimes and unsolved tragedies. James and Jimmie recount the horrific 2004 murder of a pregnant woman, Bobby Jo Stinnett, whose baby was brutally stolen from her womb. Through detailed, empathetic storytelling (interspersed with their signature dark comedy), the hosts explore Skidmore's troubled reputation, the backgrounds of both killer and victim, and the complex legal and ethical questions raised by the case.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Skidmore, MO Setting: "Murdertown, USA"

• Location & History: Skidmore is described as “a tiny town that is famous for murder” with a population fluctuating between 250 and 700 depending on how you count the outlying areas.
• Crime Legacy: The hosts recap several notorious local crimes:
  • The public daylight killing of town bully Ken McElroy (1981) that no one admitted witnessing.
  • The brutal murder of Wendy Gillenwater (2000).
  • The mysterious disappearance of Branson Perry (2001), who was never found.
• Demographics & Lifestyle:
  • 98.6% white, median income below national average.
  • Local events, like the annual (intentionally misspelled) "Pumpkin Show," paint a folksy yet sometimes odd picture.

Jimmie (05:34): “People around likely call them Skid Mark.”

James (06:09): “Motto. They don’t have an official motto, but if they did, it would be Murdertown, USA.”

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2. The Crime: The Murder of Bobby Jo Stinnett (December 2004)

The Victim: Bobby Jo Stinnett

• Background: Born and raised in Skidmore, loved animals, especially rat terriers; ran her small dog breeding business, "Happy Haven Farms."
• Personal Life: Married childhood friend Zeb Stinnett; pregnant with her first child.

The Perpetrator: Lisa Montgomery

• Early Life: Lisa’s history includes severe childhood trauma (physical, sexual abuse, extreme neglect), mental health issues stemming from fetal alcohol syndrome, and a lifelong pattern of compulsive lying.
• Adult Life: Married her stepbrother, had four kids, numerous alleged/false pregnancies, ongoing custody battles, moved 61 times in 34 years; eventually married Kevin Montgomery.
• Obsession with Pregnancy: Lisa fake-pregnant several times—eventually, custody stress and the urge to keep her new husband close collided with her mental illness.

Building Toward the Murder

• Online Connection: Lisa (as "Darlene Fisher") meets Bobby Jo on Rat Terrier enthusiast forums ("Ratter Chatter")—both share dog breeding and, supposedly, pregnancy in common.
• The Plan: Lisa studies C-section procedures, amasses supplies (knives, birthing kit), and arranges to visit Bobby Jo under a false identity, using the pretext of buying a puppy.

James (81:32): "The weird thing is here that Bobby Jo is using her name...Lisa is not using her real name on the site...she goes under Darlene Fisher."

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3. The Crime Scene (December 16, 2004)

Timeline

• 2:30pm: Lisa arrives at Bobby Jo's house. They talk, play with puppies; Bobby Jo mentions she has to pick up her mom soon.
• Attack: Lisa strangles Bobby Jo with a cord. Bobby Jo briefly regains consciousness and fights back, grabbing Lisa’s hair.
• Murder: Lisa strangles her again, then performs a crude C-section, removing the healthy, crying baby and fleeing with her. She cleans up and prepares the infant as if it were her own.

Quote:

• James (92:49): "She slices across her belly...Bobby Jo wakes up...sees Lisa above her with a knife and starts to fucking fight."
• Jimmie (93:40): "Oh my God."

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4. The Investigation and Rescue

• Discovery: Bobby Jo’s mother finds her daughter’s mutilated body; the baby is missing.
• Manhunt: Police, frustrated by Amber Alert limitations (no known description of the infant), rapidly mobilize state and federal agencies. They unravel the online Darlene Fisher identity, connect it to Lisa Montgomery in Kansas, and spot the distinctive red Toyota Corolla.
• Intervention: FBI knocks on Lisa’s door while she’s calmly showing off the baby in public; her story quickly unravels under questioning.
• Rescue: DNA establishes baby Victoria Jo's identity, and Bobby Jo's husband reunites with his daughter.

James (124:12): "She just spits it out and says, quote, ‘The baby isn’t mine. I killed Bobby Joe and took her baby.’”

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5. Aftermath: Justice and Legacy

The Trial

• Defense: Attempted insanity plea; claimed Lisa suffered from 'pseudocyesis' (false pregnancy delusion). Questionable legal team, with infighting and key mitigating evidence (her background of abuse) poorly presented.
• Prosecution: Argued meticulous planning and deception were evidence of sanity and malice.
• Outcome: Found guilty; sentenced to death—the first woman to be federally executed in 67 years.
• Execution: After years of appeals, international outcry, and legal battles (including last-minute COVID and competency challenges), Lisa was executed on January 13, 2021.

James (140:02): “The judge adds another lawyer to the team...Her name is Judy Clark...She has successfully gotten three very famous clients not the death penalty....But [other defense attorney] secretly petitions the judge to have her removed.”

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The Baby and Family

• Victoria Jo: Raised by her father, shielded from publicity—described as “doing fantastic” as a healthy young adult.

James (173:29): “Victoria Jo...Great. She’s 19 years old. Doing fantastic...never spoken publicly...they don’t let people fuck with her.”

Skidmore’s Ongoing Curse

• Residents grapple with national infamy (“curse”), as the house where the murder occurred remains abandoned and decaying over 20 years later.

James (174:30): “This town...is cursed. It’s more deaths, more tragedies. The town that killed Ken McElroy, the town where babies are stolen from wombs...The murder house...has never been lived in again.”

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• James (39:22): “She locked her outside naked in the winter as a punishment. And at one point...Judy killed the family dog in front of Lisa with a shovel.”
• Jimmie (95:05): [Describing the horror of the crime scene] “You can see like one of those dance step things. Yeah, Ginger Rogers goes this way...”
• James (156:43): “The prosecutor’s response: ‘Millions of people suffer trauma. They don’t murder pregnant women and steal their babies.’”
• James (171:03): “We should give people last meals before we execute them...you have spent tens of millions of dollars...now you’re going ‘we’re not spending $30 on a meal?’”
• On justice and trauma
  James (158:54): “I don’t think I’m sexist, but as a guy I don’t like killing women. I like when criminals do it. I don’t like when the State does it. It’s just weird to me.”

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Important Timestamps

• [06:09] - Town’s "motto" – "Murdertown, USA"
• [17:06] - Crime rate and bizarre small-town events
• [18:56] - Setting the crime: The Whistle Stop Café with Lisa and her newborn
• [24:39] - Bobby Jo’s mother discovers the murder scene
• [39:22] - Lisa’s disturbing childhood revealed
• [55:53] - Lisa and Bobby Jo’s dog-breeding relationship; Ratter Chatter forum
• [81:33] - Lisa’s internet alias and subterfuge
• [89:53] - Lisa arrives at Bobby Jo’s home
• [91:50] - The brutal attack and C-section described in detail
• [106:36] - Investigators trace the online alias to Lisa
• [124:12] - Lisa confesses to the FBI
• [133:48] - Charges, trial, and legal wrangling
• [150:46] - Verdict and sentencing
• [172:34] - Execution day
• [173:27] - Update on Victoria Jo
• [174:29] - The “curse” of Skidmore and the still-abandoned murder house

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Tone, Approach, and Listener Experience

The hosts bring their signature blend of unflinching research, gallows humor, and compassion for innocent victims. They openly struggle with the ethical complexities posed by Lisa’s background (“You gotta sit there like, what do you even say? ...she’s obviously sick in the head.”) while providing critical, sometimes darkly comic takes—especially regarding small town culture, law enforcement missteps, and the grim absurdities of rural life.

Their comedic tone prevails—never at the expense of the victims—offering listeners space to process unthinkable tragedy while remaining deeply human and critical of systemic failures.

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Conclusion

This episode is a chilling, in-depth journey through one of America’s most disturbing small-town crimes, shedding light on the fragility of rural life and the lasting scars of trauma. The Small Town Murder team provides a balanced, thought-provoking perspective, blending humor with a profound sense of empathy and justice.

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For more information, tickets, and bonus episodes: Visit shutupandgivememurder.com & patreon.com/crimeinsports

Content warning: This episode includes graphic descriptions of violence, abuse, and mental illness. Listener discretion is strongly advised.

Transcript

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[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yay.

[James Pietragallo]

Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petregallo. I'm here with my co host.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I'm Jimmy Wissman.

[James Pietragallo]

Thank you so much for joining us 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. Get into it. Oh my goodness. Before we do that, head over to shutupandgivememurder.com get your tickets for live shows. Seattle and Philly are the only ones available to buy right now. Everything else is sold out. Thank you guys for doing that. And those tickets are running pretty short. So if you want to get in there, do it right now. Come see us. Seattle, October, December is Philly. So do that. We're excited. We can't wait. Also definitely listen to our other shows, crime and sports and and your stupid opinions. And then when you're all caught up on everything, get yourself some Patreon, everybody.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh boy.

[James Pietragallo]

Do yourself a favor. Patreon.com CrimeInSports is where you get all the bonus material. All you have to do is be $5 a month or above and you get hundreds of bonus episodes you've never heard before immediately upon subscription to binge on. And then you get new ones every other week. One crime in sports, one small town murder, and you get them all. You get every drop of it. This week, what you're going to get for crime and sports, we're going to talk about gambling in sports since it became legal outside of Nevada. And that's seven years ago and in the last Seven years there's been just boatloads of player scandals with them, gambling and, you know, competitive people that can gamble on their phone. You're going to have problems, you know what I mean? Then for small town murder, it's a choice. You pick them, everybody. I'm giving you the choice. Either Ted Bundy helping catch the Green River Killer for his own benefit, obviously, but still, it's a very interesting story. Or the history of executions in the United States. Hit me up on messages on Instagram and that's how I'm tallying the votes here. And it's close, closer than I thought. So get your votes in and get what you want in there. So do that. That is patreon.com crimeinsports and you get all of our shows, crime and sports, your stupid opinions and small town murder all ad free on Patreon as well. It's really cool. All you have to do is put your RSS feed. You can listen on Patreon or put it into whatever player you play. Then you get a shout out at the end of the show too. We're doing all we can for you. That said, I think it's time for the disclaimer here. Yeah, this is a comedy show, number one. We are comedians, so we're gonna make jokes. That's the thing. And you might go, well, why are you making jokes during a murder show? 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Why, James?

[James Pietragallo]

Because we're assholes. But, but we're not scumbags. And you'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 other people, we're gonna 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Here we go.

[James Pietragallo]

Let's go on a trip, shall we? We are going to Skidmore, Missouri. Now, that's gonna 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 Expressdom 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

People around likely call them skid Mark.

[James Pietragallo]

Skidmark. That's where I'm going on over to skid. At least the high school kids do you know that. You know, you play for Skidmark 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. It's north of Kansas City actually, too. So it's really in the corner up there. This is in Nottoway county. Area code, 660. Motto. They don't have an official motto, but I think if they had one, it would be Murdertown, usa. Because there's no other.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Also not the way it's wild.

[James Pietragallo]

Not away, 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. Basically, 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 Gillenwater, down several country roads outside of Skidmore, causing her to die.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Holy.

[James Pietragallo]

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 to, like, Sperling's 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 Spurling 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. Women in this town here, 45.3%. They're usually more women than men. This one, it's way out of way. 54.7% men. Jesus, that's gonna. That's too much testosterone floating around. People are gonna be just punching each other for no reason.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That might be why there's murders.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

So it's just not enough.

[James Pietragallo]

It's not. Who knows? Yeah, the stats. When you get a town under a thousand 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. The lowest thing in that is housing. Median home cost here is $121,700.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Pietragallo]

It's like 1986 prices like.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, that's great.

[James Pietragallo]

That is really, really cheap. So you know what? If you're not afraid, say, I ain't scared of no murderers, then scared. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What?

[James Pietragallo]

I don't understand it. They're like listed, but they're not. There's no price.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Best offer is it obl?

[James Pietragallo]

It's. I think it's. Oh. 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. 1056 square feet. Yeah, it looks like it's about to fall down.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Is that the color of it or is that.

[James Pietragallo]

It's no, it's. It's puke yellow. Yeah, it's blue like bile yellow. It's like a light pale, gross yellow.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's not good.

[James Pietragallo]

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, 1824 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, 1542 square feet on a.24 acre lot. This is kind of the jewel of the bunch here. This looks like a cute little far. It looks like where Dorothy lived from the wizard of Oz. It's like a cute little farmhouse.

[Jimmy Wissman]

All you get is that house in the side of that driveway. Side of that house to the other side of the house.

[James Pietragallo]

Yeah. You get back to see those crops back. I think that's your yard up to.

[Jimmy Wissman]

There where you stop mowing.

[James Pietragallo]

But there's power lines in your yard, which is weird. 129,000 bucks for that house though.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It. It's so cheap to live here.

[James Pietragallo]

Pretty cheap. Yeah. I'll say. That is definitely cheap things to do here. Okay. The Skidmore Pumpkin Show. Pumpkin Show? Pumpkin, yeah. Not pumpkin, punkin. And it says we have an entire lineup. You're not gonna wanna miss it. We start nice and early at 7am Jesus Christ.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Nice.

[James Pietragallo]

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 7am Nice and early.

[Jimmy Wissman]

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

[James Pietragallo]

Oh yeah, nine to five. Yeah, right. They start early. It's nice and early at 7am 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They made coffee at 4.

[James Pietragallo]

They say they were standing in that field with their cars drinking coffee in the dark at 4:30 in the morning together.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Absolutely ready for a nap when this shit's over.

[James Pietragallo]

The smoke off registration starts at 8. I think I could win that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

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

[James Pietragallo]

No damn weed's legal in Missouri. You never know.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, I still don't think it's that.

[James Pietragallo]

No, the baby show registration, I don't like that display. Your babies starts, I'm an 81 baby.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I'm a fucking antique baby. I might.

[James Pietragallo]

Yeah, well, they have the. At 8, 9, 15, the antique baby show starts. So you might want to enter yourself in that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I'm an 81 baby.

[James Pietragallo]

Yeah. Vintage.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Pretty good shape for an 81.

[James Pietragallo]

So the baby show registration starts then along with the little and mister. Little Mister 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

God damn, it's early.

[James Pietragallo]

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 seven, followed by the Barb wire band starting around eight.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, boy.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

If it's a. If it's the same as the. As the ping pong drop.

[James Pietragallo]

Yeah, I mean, where are they dropping? 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 0 through 2. You know, once or two. They're, you know, aged out.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Man, that's a hideous baby.

[James Pietragallo]

Forget about it. The Little Mr. And Ms. Pumpkin show is ages 3 to 6.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Pumpkin Center's got to be near here. There. There is one in Missouri, too. It's got to be near here because I hate when they. I hate that misspelling so much.

[James Pietragallo]

I know it's any intent. It's like Paschetti. 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 you in case you can't find one.

[Jimmy Wissman]

New or used frog.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Throw chickens.

[James Pietragallo]

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. This is.

[Jimmy Wissman]

As a man, tossing a tire will make you feel like a giant bitch if you're not good at it.

[James Pietragallo]

Well, till you see the next guy do the same thing. Like, okay, this just. This is just not a good throwing implement. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Holding the bead and whipping it off your hip. That hurts. It's not easy.

[James Pietragallo]

It hurts. No. That's fucking rough. Crime rate in this town, what we are interested in here, property crime is slightly above the national average for a town with less than 1000 people. How is there that much crime?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Stealing frogs.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It is busy around here.

[James Pietragallo]

What's happening in this town, everybody? I don't know what's, what's going on man. And this isn't the murders crime. This isn't the murders we brought up. This is current. What are they doing? That said, let's talk about some murder that's not the other murders. We already.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Here we go.

[James Pietragallo]

Okay, here we go. Let's start out December 17, 2004 at 9:30am now this is at the Whistle Stop Cafe. Okay. This is in Kansas, downtown Malvern, Kansas. Okay. Nice and early. 9:30 off. They've already. Half the. 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 27, 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 Malvern, they're also with their brand new baby that Lisa has just gave birth to last night. Which is weird to bring a newborn baby to a restaurant. Like a one day old baby last night.

[Jimmy Wissman]

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

[James Pietragallo]

Usually keep them inside for a while to keep them. They're like a kitten. 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 in this. It's a small town in Kansas. So I mean everybody just here to.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Show the grandpa the baby and show.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That hospital food's garbage.

[James Pietragallo]

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 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 all, 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. Get your refill on that Pepsi. Look at this baby, by the way, more home fries. Check it out. Look at us, 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's. 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?

[Jimmy Wissman]

What's wrong with you?

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

We didn't tell nobody.

[James Pietragallo]

She's pretty private. Well, she doesn't go out a lot. Kind of a homebody. So if you don't, like, go to town and see her big belly or whatever. So Kathy, though, the owner, you know, was still admiring the baby. Kind of scolding them for taking it out, but admiring. 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. It's a Kawasaki place. I want to say his boss is there. He, you know, 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 £5 and change. That'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, there's ladies that look.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Like they swallowed a softball. Baffle me. I don't understand that. Their body doesn't get big at all. You just get this skinny legs, super round.

[James Pietragallo]

Yeah, it's just round. Skinny legs, skinny everything. No face, fat, nothing. And then just baffling ball. It's so weird. Yeah, I find that so. And then some women, they blow up everywhere.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You can barely tell they're pregnant. They just look giant.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She didn't even tell him she was pregnant.

[James Pietragallo]

No, no, no. She didn't know. He didn't know she had the baby. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I did it.

[James Pietragallo]

And the boss said, what the fuck, Kevin? Because Kevin was at work, and he goes, kevin, you could have taken the day off for your birth of your child, for Christ's sake. He said, kevin, you should have been there. You can get off from work for that. He told him, literally, like, that's part of our. We'll let you off work for that one. Jesus Christ. And 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'd given birth at this point because he worked at a Kawasaki. This is the. He works at the Acme sign company. Okay. And the boss is the owner of the company. And he thought that was weird because it's always possible to get a message to his employees during the day, even for minor things. Never mind. Your daughter just was born, 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 shitter. Whatever. He just gives up and compliments the baby. Now, miles and miles away, in Skidmore, Missouri, about 18 hours earlier, December 16, 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, yeah, it's cold. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Nothing to slow this wind at all.

[James Pietragallo]

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 Jo is her daughter's name. Says Bobby Jo. Bobby Jo. And nothing happens. She doesn't hear anything. All she hears is a lot of little dogs barking. Yippee, yippee, yippee. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, no.

[James Pietragallo]

Yeah, so they said, what's your location? She said, 410 Elm in Skidmore. She's pregnant and it looks like her stomach exploded.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Ooh.

[James Pietragallo]

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 brecky 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

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

[Jimmy Wissman]

Forget that.

[James Pietragallo]

I think I'd be more successful at the plane. Not that I don't want to say. I just. I think I'd be more successful doing that than the. This. I'd be bad at this.

[Jimmy Wissman]

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

[James Pietragallo]

No, no. 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 gonna be bad.

[Jimmy Wissman]

My hands are around their neck. Is that where you want these?

[James Pietragallo]

Is that. Oh, shit.

[Jimmy Wissman]

No.

[James Pietragallo]

God damn it. Okay, I messed this all up. Wait, back to one.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's all over. Nevermind. We don't need help.

[James Pietragallo]

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. So. Wow, Rush is 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, little bit on Lisa Montgomery's background here. Okay? Now, she was born Lisa Marie Hedberg. She's born in Washington State on February 27, 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, when they got married. Okay. John Hadberg, 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Unbelievable.

[James Pietragallo]

Absolutely has some problems. Lisa does, but she's really smart. She's very smart. She learned to read by the time she was 4. And she was like reading books on her own at 5 years old. Hey, everybody, Just gonna take a quick break from the show to tell you a better way to feed your dog.

[Jimmy Wissman]

With Ollie, ollie.com O L L I E.com Absolutely.

[James Pietragallo]

I have three dogs. You have a dog. Couple of your dog's older. My dog's older, has dietary issues and things like that. You got to get them the right food, the good food. And if your dog could talk, they'd say, don't give me this kibble, it stinks.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Give me the Ollie.

[James Pietragallo]

And it's weird and I don't want it. That's what they would say. I'm telling you. Mysterious byproducts, all the stuff that. Who knows what's in there. It's a crime scene in that bowl. It's awful. You don't want that. Ollie is here though. They crack the case on pet nutrition with fresh human grade meals made with the highest quality ingredients. I've been tempted to take a bite once in a while. I gotta be honest with you. It looks pretty good. But the dogs would be mad at me. They would. So no mystery meats, no artificial stuff, just real Minimally processed food made in US Kitchens. You're gonna love it. They have five fresh protein first recipes like Beef with sweet potatoes and Turkey with blue blueberries. Your pup will not have to wonder what's in their food. They're going to know what's in their food. You can do that. You just fill out a 30 second quiz. They'll create a customized meal plan based on your pup's weight, activity level and other stuff. They're going to be more excited about this shinier coat. You're going to pick their poop up easier. It's going to be great. They offer three meal plans to choose from so you can choose between a fresh plan, a full fresh plan, a fresh topper plan, a mixed plan. They want it to be good. They also have freshly baked recipes as well. Ollie is the only fresh dog food that comes with unlimited routine health screening so you can get your pup on track to living their healthiest, happiest life. Dogs deserve the best and that means fresh, healthy food. Head to ollie.com STM tell them about your dog and use the code STM to get 60% off your welcome kit when you subscribe today. Plus, they offer a happiness guarantee on the first box, so if you're not completely satisfied, you'll get your Money back. That's ollyollie.com STM and enter code STM to get 60% off your first box.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Now back to the show.

[James Pietragallo]

Hey everybody, just going to take a quick break from the show to give you a better way to shop with Thrive Market.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Thrivemarket.com you know it.

[James Pietragallo]

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[Jimmy Wissman]

Now back to the show.

[James Pietragallo]

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. She's a fiber, real big fibber. And when you find out what's going on in her family or mom's kind of a drunk that doesn't pay attention to her and things like that 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

All right.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's a brute. Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

So she moved with him with Lisa and the two kid, 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 they, 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 step kids. So he's got 10 kids total to deal with. 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, that's real different. It's not like, you know, the flute and the oboe or something. It's. These are very different. She played the mellophone, which. I don't even know what that is.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Mellow phone.

[James Pietragallo]

Some kind of xylophone type of thing.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Did you create it?

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Great.

[James Pietragallo]

She got, like, all A's. First chair for the. Whatever the hell that thing is. Playing violins and French horns and student council. 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. But 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. Her moods were wild. Mom's mood swings were crazy. It's. 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 change, stay out of the fucking way. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Like an apple. Or is she chopping these up and, like, handfuls of it?

[James Pietragallo]

I don't think it matters. It's gross either.

[Jimmy Wissman]

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

[James Pietragallo]

Them whole, I guess. Yeah, if you have to bite into it. You're going to 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Say that again.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Can you even imagine? That's just the most fucked up thing you can do.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right.

[James Pietragallo]

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 disgusting molestation room. Date room, yes. He would film it sometimes.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, no.

[James Pietragallo]

Yeah. Her mother knew this was going on, too. She would pimp her 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, my God.

[James Pietragallo]

This woman is a fucking monster. Judy, she's a monster. She's a fucking monster. She. Someone should beat her to death with a shovel. This is terrible. Imagine what the hell was tougher. 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 beating dogs. That. That's guy behavior. You know what I mean? I mean, statistically, men.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

Just women don't have that gear usually. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right.

[James Pietragallo]

He was a very violent man who hit her and the children. And she's horrible. He's a horrible monster. And Judy said at. 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 was. I don't know why a policeman would need a lawyer to get a child molester put away. I don't understand that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's a weird step. The first step should the police station.

[James Pietragallo]

But I think it's. 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. Yeah, it's interesting. So we don't know if this was, you know, 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 willingness.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yikes.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Called laws or rules of the age of consent. Because at some point, you can't rape the will. You can't. You can rape the willing.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I think that's okay either.

[James Pietragallo]

That's horrifying. That's for some kid who's 16. You know what I mean? 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Holy fuck, man.

[James Pietragallo]

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 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, but she also is an admitted liar, so she's possibly lying out of things and they're believing it. So there's maybe that.

[James Pietragallo]

That's true. That's true. And tall tales for kids. I don't mean rape tales. I mean the other tall tales she tells are, you know, 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 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 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, so.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Carl's baby.

[James Pietragallo]

Carl's baby.

[Jimmy Wissman]

So, God damn it.

[James Pietragallo]

Pregnant with your step fucking brother's baby.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Which is crazy.

[James Pietragallo]

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 an episode.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They got so many people to talk about it.

[James Pietragallo]

Yep. People fighting, fucking punching each other, chairs flying around. So she and Carl get married in August of 1986 in Cleveland, Oklahoma. Cleveland, Oklahoma. By the way, this week's episode was almost from California. Missouri. So these states, they just have.

[Jimmy Wissman]

No, Missouri's a big fan of other places.

[James Pietragallo]

They really. They 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Really?

[James Pietragallo]

Desiree. Yeah. Lisa has Desiree, who's the oldest, starting at 8, from 18 to, like 23. She has four children. So, I mean, just pounding Them out, pumping those kids out. Desire. Yeah. Desiree, Chelsea, Carl Jr. Yep, of course.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Four kids with Carl.

[James Pietragallo]

With Carl, yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, good Lord.

[James Pietragallo]

Four kids with your stepbrother, Carl's Jr. I just want to say every time when I see that 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 this. Hey, by the way, you're sterile now. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They're going to do it again.

[James Pietragallo]

So run it back. Would that make them then. Then step married if they get divorced and get remarried again? Can we call that step married? I step married my stepbrother. This shit is crazy. So, okay, during their first divorce, she claims she's pregnant. And he goes, she's a big liar.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right?

[James Pietragallo]

You had your tubes tied. How the fuck are you pregnant? You know what I mean? So then they remarry in 1994, 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 that custody battle with Carl. She claims she was pregnant with twins at this point.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay, she's got two in there.

[James Pietragallo]

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 that this woman would find a nice guy like. Yeah, because with her background. I mean, anybody with a background like that's gonna choose poorly in relationships because of all sorts of psychological drama that you have.

[Jimmy Wissman]

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

[James Pietragallo]

Absolutely.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Could be going on and then creating your own world. Yeah. And then the traumatic behavior from adults that happen to compound that. Oh, yeah, she's a fucking mess.

[James Pietragallo]

Yeah. She started out with fetal alcohol syndrome, so she didn't start out then that. You know what I mean?

[Jimmy Wissman]

I spaced. That horrific thing.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Pietragallo]

So dead baby came out. That's how that worked.

[Jimmy Wissman]

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

[James Pietragallo]

That don't go through. Yeah. And she wore maternity clothes, you know, everything that she. You know, she's pregnant. She went through all the different things. And she's eaten. She's eaten pickles and fucking pecan ice cream and she's. Pickles and pistachio ice cream. She's got it all.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Eating onions like hand fruit. Not even nostalgic, just because she's craving it.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What does one do there?

[James Pietragallo]

Sell tickets to Greyhound buses and tell people, hey, stop peeing on the floor, please. Please. So many other people have peed already.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Please, sir, put your pants on.

[James Pietragallo]

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

[Jimmy Wissman]

That is. That's better than every six months.

[James Pietragallo]

That's. Yeah, that's more than every six. I mean, oh my God. I could probably hang with her until 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. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right?

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's the shovel aisle at Home Depot.

[James Pietragallo]

Oh, it doesn't go near it. Now. 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. 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, 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 Melbourne. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

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

[James Pietragallo]

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, and 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Really?

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wear out.

[James Pietragallo]

There's. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right. It's useless on the end. You got to nip it to make it there.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. Am I to have it checked all the time? If I.

[James Pietragallo]

It cannot take. It cannot take. Yeah. It can wear out. Yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

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

[James Pietragallo]

You might be spewing sperm, Jimmy. You never know.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, no.

[James Pietragallo]

So it's very rare, though. I mean, very rare.

[Jimmy Wissman]

So I don't care.

[James Pietragallo]

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. She's 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?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

Bobby Joe's mom here, Bobby Jo Stanette is her name. And Lisa meets Bobby Joe with dog things, basically.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Ew.

[James Pietragallo]

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 Jo 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's it.

[James Pietragallo]

Yeah. Here we go. I don't know what else to call her.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She's delicious.

[James Pietragallo]

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

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, you're a fraud.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

Which happens with multiples a lot. That's a very common thing.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Baby Garcia.

[James Pietragallo]

It's ate it up. So 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, 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. The guy, the pastor also said, quote, there was a desperation there.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

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 Jo is also pregnant. They're both pregnant. They said, you're pregnant. I'm pregnant, too. This is great.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Couple of pregos hanging together.

[James Pietragallo]

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 Stinnett with two ends and two T's at the end there. She's born December 4, 1981. So, you know, more than a decade younger than. 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. She. Her parents are Becky Harper and Joseph Buck Potter. Oh, Buck Potter is coming to town. Jesus.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Everybody gets a buck. Every town has to have Potter. Any goddamn sense. Joey to Buck. What are we doing?

[James Pietragallo]

That sounds like if your grandfather was telling you, like, Korean War stories. And he's like, let me tell you about Buck Potter, the toughest guy in our unit. Buck Potter. 6 foot 5, 275 pounds if he weighed an ounce.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Buck and Butch. Those are two different guys.

[James Pietragallo]

Once saw him kill 12 Filipinos with his bare hands. Not even in combat, just in a bar. He was just a big guy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Did you ever know a guy named Buck or Butch?

[James Pietragallo]

I think so. Nickname? Yes, absolutely.

[Jimmy Wissman]

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.

[James Pietragallo]

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

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, I think that's what his name was.

[James Pietragallo]

Bob. Bob turns into Buck for some reason, does it? 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 Bop.

[Jimmy Wissman]

So I've never known an actual Butch or a Buck. They've all been nicknames, and I've known several.

[James Pietragallo]

Interesting. Yeah, not on their birth certificate, it wasn't. Butcher Buck. No, no.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's not their fucking name.

[James Pietragallo]

So now Joseph Buck Potter deserted the family when they were young. You know, a Buck's gotta 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 brutally beaten, raped, and forced to eat onions but she's born with a cleft palate also.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, that's tough.

[James Pietragallo]

Which is tough for a little girl, for any little kid. But you know, she was surgically corrected at age 2. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Pietragallo]

Doing great. Active in the 4H club. The school newspaper does yearbook shit. I mean, Bobby Jo, talk about coming out of your shell.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She's had a life. Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

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. Lets map out this week's amazing destinations and travel tips.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Honestly, Will, I didn't plan any trips, but I did switch to T Mobile with their new family freedom offer.

[James Pietragallo]

That's not the itinerary we're following.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Well, I'm departing from ATT and embarking on a new journey with T Mobile. They paid off my family's four phones up to $3200 and gave us four new phones on the house.

[James Pietragallo]

Bon voyage.

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[James Pietragallo]

From unsolved mysteries to unexplained phenomena. From comedy gold to relationship fails. Amazon Music's got the most ad free top podcasts included with prime because the only thing that should interrupt your listening is, well, nothing. Download the Amazon music app today. One friend said dogs just melted in her presence, which sounds gross. I don't want to see any melted dog here.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Horny dog.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Get some romance going over that two stroke motor.

[James Pietragallo]

That's right. Oh, that 250 is looking. The sound of that 250, the vibrations are just. I'm flowing right now.

[Jimmy Wissman]

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

[James Pietragallo]

I'm hard too. Well, all right then. So Zeb Stanette is his name. Z E B Zeb. So they meet now they get together as well and they're gonna, 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. She, I guess talked to, she decided she wanted to breed these dogs here. Her first dog, tipsy was a 7 year old white and brindle female mini and delivered her first litter in 2002. And from there those puppies, Bobby Jo kind of kept it going from there. Bobbi Jo loved Tipsy, her first dog here. On her website she says about Tipsy, she's so intelligent that she can convey exactly what she's thinking or feeling to you. And you know, it's. I think everybody thinks that about their animals though, don't they? That's projection.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I know when Vaughn has to use the restroom and eat outside of that, I don't know.

[James Pietragallo]

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 street 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. 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 trained. 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. 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 to 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 a terrier. Man, it's a rat. Exactly. Yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What the fuck?

[James Pietragallo]

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?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Does your family have any history of cancer?

[James Pietragallo]

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. 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 are they asking shit like that to see if they're gonna eat this thing. But other than that, you know, they think that you. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, was sick lady. What?

[James Pietragallo]

And whether or not puppy obedience classes were planned. So she is really fine tooth comb in this adoption process.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Militant on it. Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

But this earns her the respect of everyone in the rat terrier community because she. It'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 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 grand or step grandson, but for all intents and purposes, as a basically grandma of Joanne Stinnett. Remember Joanne Stinnett from the town part?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right.

[James Pietragallo]

The grandmother of the. Yeah, that, that Joanne Same one.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Son of a gun.

[James Pietragallo]

And we'll talk a little bit more about Joanne Sinette, 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. stinnette, becoming grandmother to Zeb Stanette, 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, well, Wendy Gillenwater murder where she was dragged by her boyfriend, her husband, Gregory Dragu, there. Well, her grandmother, Wendy's grandmother is Joanne Stinnett.

[Jimmy Wissman]

How do they all get into this? This is crazy.

[James Pietragallo]

Too small. That's all they need more people. Okay? Now, Joanne Stanette, by the way, is the one who identified Wendy by the rings on her fingers because she was so mangled. In 2000. That was October 2000. Then in April 2001, Branson Perry disappeared from his home. His grandmother is Joanne Stinnett.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Of course she is.

[James Pietragallo]

So now two of her granddaughter of her grandkids have been. One disappeared and one's been murdered in a period of six months.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, boy.

[James Pietragallo]

That is fucking insane. That Branson, the Branson Perry story is fucking weird too. Apparently, Perry, the guy who, you know, was never found again, he was into like meth and things like that a little bit at the time here. He told his father that he was gay and also told his dad that he had recently experienced a traumatic incident involving his neighbor, Jason Bierman. According to Perry, Biermann had spiked his drink with hallucinogens, leading to Perry shaving his pubic hair, dancing naked and engaging in sexual activity with Biermann. 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 3pm, 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 gonna 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, my.

[James Pietragallo]

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 hitchhiking blonde. A hitchhiking blonde boy from Skidmore, drugging him and subjecting him to graphic sex, sexual abuse and mutilation. 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. Holy shit. Which related to a botched surgery in a hotel room that nearly killed somebody. But they can't connect.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He's doing this in the hotel rooms.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Perry's missing and they don't have anybody in jail about it.

[James Pietragallo]

No Branson Perry. No one's been arrested for it. No one's. 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 tan, 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. Now, 2004, Bobby Joe pregnant with a baby girl. This baby is due January 16, 2005. That's when the babies do. 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. Their life is going well. They already picked cowies all day. Yeah, that's all he's doing, getting his jet Skis ready. So they pick a name out months ahead of time. She's Victoria Jo. Like Bobby Jo, but Victoria Joe. That's cute. Vicki Jo. 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 all 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. The 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. See, this was all about rat terriers. The ratter chatter 1 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

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

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. It's too few people.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. Which is Reddit, but.

[James Pietragallo]

Or. Yeah, like a lot of like. 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 3, 2003 is when, remember, they had. They're gonna. They met a little later at the dog show, but April 3, 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 her. Stacking on her table. Her room is more like our kennel room here. Her room is more like our kennel room here. Okay. 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, yeah, they. 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 this 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 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. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right.

[James Pietragallo]

But she's like, I guess she's just a real nice whatever. Yeah, we people we don't know send us weird shit all the time. We appreciate it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, please. I've got. I got mugs that. That are insulting to me.

[James Pietragallo]

I have fucking. Yeah, I have goddamn like 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, he 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I'm good at thin.

[James Pietragallo]

Rubbed her stomach. So, yeah, this is number five. You know, they come in small, they fly right out, no problem, pop out.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Like a rat terrier.

[James Pietragallo]

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'm. I carry low. Lisa says, me too.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Hey.

[James Pietragallo]

So they got a lot in common. Now, the weird thing is here that Bobby Joe is using her name, Bobby Jostenette 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 Jo, she goes under Darlene Fisher and says she's from Fairfax, Missouri.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Well, what the fuck is that about? Why use them?

[James Pietragallo]

I mean, a lot of people use aliases. It's online.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Why not go buy burger bottom or some shit?

[James Pietragallo]

Yeah, I guess. Well, it's the rat or chatter. So you can't. Can't sound sexual, probably on the old.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Rat or chatterboard burger lips. I don't care.

[James Pietragallo]

Just much less sexual.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Why have a. Why have a weird fucking name like a person's name? That's strange.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I think that's.

[James Pietragallo]

That's the weird part.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's fucking bizarre to have just a. Just a. An alias, like a criminal name.

[James Pietragallo]

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. That's how you do that. Because you know this person.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I 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.

[James Pietragallo]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

So bizarre.

[James Pietragallo]

But I know people on Facebook that still do that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They do their different name. A weird name.

[James Pietragallo]

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 Jo 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 Jo, 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. Always pregnant, this lady. December 8, 2004, Lisa posted a message next to her name, Darlene Fisher, that said, baby, any day, maybe today, maybe could come today. December 15, 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 fisherforkids number four. Fisher because she has four kids. Fisher,4kidsotmail.com There's a blast from the past. 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?

[Jimmy Wissman]

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

[James Pietragallo]

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 had 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 16, 2004, 6:30am 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 7:00am Lisa Montgomery here. Now that's back on the In 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 constrution. 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 computer 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 pregnant pregnancies like this. He's like, I don't know. I guess that sounds right. So go have fun. So at 8am Now, Bobby Joe in Skidmore tends to her dogs. She posts on ratter chatter about the upcoming puppy visit. She's excited. Another Chris, another sale before Christmas means more baby money. Basically they can buy shit for the nursery. So that's what she posts. Going to sell a puppy today. Very excited, blah blah blah. 9:00am Lisa Montgomery loads up her red Toyota Corolla, okay for the ride. 10:00am Lisa drives, starts her drive. It's 175 miles from Melbourne, 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 you doing? That's a nosy neighbor. Tell me about what's in your pussy. Is everything good in there? You're right.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Do they do the finger thing where they check the size? How's the size?

[James Pietragallo]

Your tubes, tubing and everything. All right then. I like how it's uterus and not uteri. You know what I mean? The uterus is for the team. That's what it's about.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Now we're all in this together.

[James Pietragallo]

All in this together now. 12:30pm, A Dirty Red Toyota Corolla with Kansas plates pulls up to 410 W. Elm St. Parking the wrong way on the street, wrong direction. Darlene Fisher gets out, slash, Lisa Montgomery and walks up to the door. Bobby Jo opens the door greeting a customer and she recognizes Lisa. She goes, yeah. She does that head tilt thing where she's like, what are. I know you. You're Lisa.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Why are you here? Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

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 super dangerous. I completely get it. You know what I mean?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Sure.

[James Pietragallo]

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 doodle next month. I got a lot going on here. 2:15. Lisa asked to use the bathroom. Bobby Jo 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. 2:30pm the phone rings. Becky Harper calls Bobby Jo's mother. Remember her? From the very beginning? She said, hi, honey, just confirming you're picking me up at 3:30 from work. Yeah. 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 gotta 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, let's, you know, speed this up. So Lisa asked to see the Puppies one more time in the room. Can I go look at them one more time? I just want to take a look. Bobby Joe leads the way here, goes into the room. Bobby Joe bends down to pick up a puppy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

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

[Jimmy Wissman]

God dang.

[James Pietragallo]

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 kicking and trying to get some sort of grip. 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 paring knife.

[Jimmy Wissman]

A paring knife?

[James Pietragallo]

Yes, a paring knife.

[Jimmy Wissman]

A tiny knife.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

With the paring knife. Bobby Jo wakes up.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, my God.

[James Pietragallo]

From being passed out. She sees Lisa above her with a knife and starts to fucking fight.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

She grabs Lisa by the hair. Later on she'll be found with blonde strands in her hands. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, boy.

[James Pietragallo]

So she now really strangles her harder and longer until Bobby Joe stops moving. Then she makes another incision into her stomach and pulls the fucking baby out.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, my God.

[James Pietragallo]

Eight months, you know, not premature, that by that much. Eight months is fine. It's a little girl, alive and crying. Alive and crying.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, boy.

[James Pietragallo]

Okay. This is horrifying, obviously. Jesus Christ. This is as disturbing as you could do. So at 2:50pm she wraps the baby in blankets that she brought in her herself in the car. She has baby. She has a car seat in the Corolla already. She also has clamps and medical supplies where she cuts the umbilical cord. By 2:55, she's walking out the front door with the baby against her. Nobody sees her, as 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 their front porch. So three 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. 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 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 to run some errands he had. He had to go to out of town to go to anywhere Skidmore doesn't have anything. So 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 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 on my way. So December 16th, the same day, 3:30pm is when Becky Harper shows up to see her daughter.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She ask why she didn't pick her up?

[James Pietragallo]

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, 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 her on the floor. Bobby Joe in pools of blood. Smears 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 Jo's face, up and down her arms, everything. Her stomach obviously is everything. And she at one Point said on 911, my daughter's intestines exploded. That's what she said. 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 91 1. She said there's blood everywhere. And we heard that. So Sheriff Ben espy arrives at 3:52pm Remember he got there in 14 minutes, a 30 minute drive. He's like the wolf, he doubled it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's a speed limit.

[James Pietragallo]

Yeah, it's a 30 minute drive. I'll be there in 12.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Showed up in Acura NSX.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow. Yeah, you can see like one of.

[James Pietragallo]

Those dance step things. Yeah, Frontier.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

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 somebody. 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 everything else that's going on here. So every door frame, doorknob, table, I mean they fucking print the entire house, which they normally aren't going to do. Tell you that. So they were trying to find something here, anything they find, like, 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. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Like, this was the motive. This. This baby was the thing. Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

Swinging around an umbilical cord with nothing attached to it. That's, you know, 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 have be a father in a month, but basically they confirmed that it wasn't him. He never left his space at work or 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I wouldn't leave either. That sounds like such a fun job.

[James Pietragallo]

I don't know what kind of Kawasaki's, but something fun. Dirt bikes, jet skis, some shit.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Street bikes, fucking anything, some cool shit.

[James Pietragallo]

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

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

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

[Jimmy Wissman]

So that's positive, I guess.

[James Pietragallo]

That's I guess, positive. But it was such. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

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, you know, up on the things it'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 him.

[Jimmy Wissman]

So there was a child named Amber that went missing, and this didn't exist, so they built it. They built it after her name. Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

Yep. So the parameters here have to. Has to be a confirmed abduction. Can't just be the kid, you know, might be at a friend's house.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right.

[James Pietragallo]

A child in danger. Now, this is also the 2004 parameters. It's different. 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 captor or vehicle, something to put out rather than just a baby. 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. Yeah, they don't have. They don't even have a color like the. They don't know the baby could 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, my God.

[James Pietragallo]

Authorities say we're not putting out an Amber Alert for a baby. Be on the lookout for a baby, period.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I mean, look, no information, anything suspicious with somebody with a baby, that seems. Right.

[James Pietragallo]

That would seem. 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?

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's a great point, too.

[James Pietragallo]

At 5pm he calls a congressman at his house. He somehow gets a hold of someone who knows a congressman, who they call this congressman, and that's when shit starts to Move. They start to. The congressman calls somebody. They call somebody. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

At the congressman's house?

[James Pietragallo]

No, no, no. At the murder house.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, okay, good, good.

[James Pietragallo]

The crime scene. Yeah. What the hell does he need people there for? He makes a phone call. He swirled his scotch around in his ice once and made a phone call.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Why are you guys all here?

[James Pietragallo]

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, because this is a gossipy little town.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Sure.

[James Pietragallo]

So now the street's gonna be packed with the whole town basically coming to gawk at some point, too. So that's not helpful at all. At 6pm Investigators discover something crucial. Now, as they were walking through the house, they noticed a. 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. You know, it's got a rack for that tower. Oh, yeah. CDs next to it and shit like that. You know, fucking programs and discs and stuff. So then at one point that 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Well done.

[James Pietragallo]

Yeah, not bad at all here. So they found that they explored a chat room, and they found a 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 Happy Haven farmsotmail.com and xgringootmail.com and fisherforkidsotmail popped up. Let's map out this week's amazing destinations and travel tips.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Honestly, Will, I didn't plan any trips, but I did switch to T Mobile with their new Family Freedom offer.

[James Pietragallo]

That's not the itinerary we're following.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Well, I'm departing from AT&T and embarking on a new journey with T Mobile. They paid off my family's four phones up to $3200 and gave us four new phones on the house.

[James Pietragallo]

Bon voyage.

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[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

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 Jo's house for puppies. So they were like, this is. Did Fisher, four kids do this? What the hell is going on?

[Jimmy Wissman]

What a crazy accidental name.

[James Pietragallo]

Yeah. That is weird as fuck. They're 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 Malvern, 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 sheet. 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 to twins and all this type of weird shit that she does. Basically. So the. When they're looking up everything, they find all this ongoing conversations between these two Fisher for Kids. They trace the IP address to Melbourne. Like I said. Traced to a dial up Internet service.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

And the phone number linked to that account is registered to Kevin Montgomery with a Physical address of 32419 South Adams Road, Melbourne, Kansas. 175 miles away. Here we go. Now they have Lisa Montgomery and an address. Something to go on. So they look into her background.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

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

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh.

[James Pietragallo]

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

[Jimmy Wissman]

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

[James Pietragallo]

Yeah. So then the neighbor comes forward who remember was gonna stop by and didn't wanna 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 9:00pm FBI agents are dispatched to Melbourne, Kansas, and surveillance begins on the Montgomery home that night.

[Jimmy Wissman]

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

[James Pietragallo]

That's a huge problem. So now, 11:45pm 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They did it.

[James Pietragallo]

They got it issued at 11:45pm 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And the problem is that first 48 is so crucial. In the first 48 hours, anybody can be dead so fast.

[James Pietragallo]

Yes. And especially a premature baby.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right?

[James Pietragallo]

This is like you're chasing a Faberge egg that people have that people are playing fucking, you know, toss back and forth.

[Jimmy Wissman]

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

[James Pietragallo]

It's crazy. No. So earlier in that evening, Lisa Montgomery drove home with the newborn in the car. And at 5:15pm 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 Silver's parking lot in Topeka.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Nice.

[James Pietragallo]

All class. The old Long John. So good, though, the old ljs. I love those fried clams.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

Rubbery little fuck. Fuck, yeah, I love a fried clam.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They're so chicken was the best. Oh, man, that fish has gone awful.

[James Pietragallo]

I'll eat some trash. Long John Silver's. I don't give a fuck. I'll eat it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

The hospital. Just get out of my life. It's so good.

[James Pietragallo]

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?

[Jimmy Wissman]

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

[James Pietragallo]

I don't know. I thought. Actually, she thought she was giving birth. Then she said, oh, I just ate Long John Silver's. Never mind, I'm okay.

[Jimmy Wissman]

So she said, fucking cocktail on my lap.

[James Pietragallo]

She said she'd rush to the Birth and Women's center where little Abigail was born. So, yeah, he was so excited. He was thrilled. So he. This was his first daughter. He had three boys from the previous marriage. It's his first daughter. He's super excited, you know, jacked, basically, here. So he gets the kids in the car. He has two of her, four 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. See it?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

Here comes Kevin pulling into the parking lot. Couldn't be happier. He rushes over, picks the baby up, and, oh, it's his new daughter. And they all settle into the cab with a pickup truck and fucking take off, right? He couldn't be happier. The two older kids, the senior in high school, hopped into mom's car and drove. While they drove, drove in the truck. The parents with the baby. Okay, so, yeah, he's so funny, though. Kevin. I had the baby. I went into labor while shopping. I met 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 Silver's 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I'll have a ride. Long John's is right there, lady.

[James Pietragallo]

You'll be all right. You'll be fine. Call somebody from there. You'll be cool. Well, so he doesn't care. He just rushes right over there. He arrived at 6pm and she said, I already named her. So you're not a father. Yeah, she said her name's Abigail from the Bible. There you go. Babies wrapped in nice clean blankets. Small cut near her eye, but that, you know, figure she scratched herself here. 7pm they return home. She's sitting in the living room holding the baby with everyone around cooing and ahhing and awing and everything else. Here. This Desiree is using her cell phone to take pictures of the baby. Oh, my God. This is so cute.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Happened. Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

Kevin breaks out his RCA camcorder.

[Jimmy Wissman]

There we go.

[James Pietragallo]

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 12:45am that night, Atchison 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They outran them.

[James Pietragallo]

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? 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 have happened. You don't know what was in there. There could have been like a tricycle off to the side or something you hit your. Get your hand on. So yeah. They also couldn't understand why the infant's head was not at all misshapen from.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, why is it not a cone.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Get her fucking birth certificate. Let's go.

[James Pietragallo]

The next stop was her ex husband and stepbrother Carl's house.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Why?

[James Pietragallo]

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. 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?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Deal with that.

[James Pietragallo]

Yeah, 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?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh.

[James Pietragallo]

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 lease of where her ex lived, but they don't take the baby to Judy's house to visit. They probably thought she would give it booze or get it molested or something, so they said, no, 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, you're grandma. And Judy said, quote, yeah, right. She either stole it or bought it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Everybody's saying it.

[James Pietragallo]

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 up. So in the meantime, the cops are fucking hunting for this baby.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right?

[James Pietragallo]

This is insane. 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. 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. It wasn't a baby because it's. A newborn's tiny.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

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 Jo'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. So that's her. She's very good friends with her mother. So she's like, oh, my God. So she drove past Bobby Jo's house to make sure it wasn't her, and she drove past and saw 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. Going to the dead end.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Fuck out of here.

[James Pietragallo]

Yeah. They couldn't let people on the street. So. December 14th or December 17th. I'm sorry. 2004, 5:30pm, Special Agent FBI, Special Agent Mickey Roberts and Detective Randy Strong of the Maryville Public Safety Committee, or whatever 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. Past 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 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 in the kidnapping of her baby. Kevin says, okay, how can we help? 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

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

[Jimmy Wissman]

She looks very, very well rested.

[James Pietragallo]

Yeah. They said, okay, could 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, actually, I gave birth at home. We couldn't afford the birthing center.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Dropped a baby on the living room floor.

[James Pietragallo]

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. She said, I threw it in the creek.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, boy.

[James Pietragallo]

Which is what you do with a placenta, obviously. Some people eat it, I think. Don't Jewish people? Or they bury the foreskin. Not that different people. But not throw it in the creek as a. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Why would you lie about your. What's going on?

[James Pietragallo]

That's what I mean. Her story is unraveling.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

And then finally she just spits it out and says, quote, the baby isn't mine. I killed Bobby Joe and took her baby.

[Jimmy Wissman]

God dang it.

[James Pietragallo]

Okay. And cuffs. Go on you super quick.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Great job, investigator. His instincts were right on.

[James Pietragallo]

Oh, yeah, he knew. So, 7:45pm 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 then. And weighs more than when my daughter was born. No kidding. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, we were in the neonatal unit and all that. My ex wife had preeclampsia.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I was like 6 12, 6, 8.

[James Pietragallo]

I think I was 8 something.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Are you.

[James Pietragallo]

I was chubby.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Big fucking.

[James Pietragallo]

I was a chubby kid, though. I was a fat kid till I was 13, they said. Small laceration above the eye. Otherwise completely healthy and uninjured.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Pietragallo]

Baby is perfectly fine. Couldn't be more perfect. That day. DNA testing confirms the baby is Bobby Joe and Zeb's daughter and not Lisa's. That day, December 19th, Zeb finally gets to hold his daughter.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, poor bastard.

[James Pietragallo]

This? Yeah. How do you even feel about that?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Like, man.

[James Pietragallo]

I mean, good, obviously, but then horrible, because you just. Your wife just died. It's horrifying. I don't even know.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And this baby survived the most traumatic thing.

[James Pietragallo]

Oh, my God. Couldn't be more traumatic. He names her Victoria Jo, as Bobby Jo had wanted to begin with. And it's crazy. It's. It's wild. Now, a relative of his said that the recovery of this baby at least was something positive. Of that they could cry tears of joy for sure. They said, it just makes us so happy. So Lisa down at the police station.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh my God.

[James Pietragallo]

Oh yeah. She's already admitted it. Now she's just gotta 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 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 Jo 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What?

[James Pietragallo]

This is sick. She said, on animals, online videos, medical websites. I knew what to do, dude. She said, 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 gotta sit there like, what do you even say?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Listen to that from her. No, she's.

[James Pietragallo]

But like, she's obviously sick in the fucking head. There's obviously something wrong with her.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Lurch across the table and strangle her.

[James Pietragallo]

At the same time. You want to put her in like a glass container and look at her like a science experiment, like, what the hell's 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 to get sicker. Yeah, December 16th wasn't the first time she came to the fucking house.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What?

[James Pietragallo]

She came the day before to do a practice run. She drove 175 miles in each direction to do a practice. Just the route down. 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 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?

[Jimmy Wissman]

What's going on here?

[James Pietragallo]

This is way too many murders for a town with 250 people in it. That's crazy. Shit. News vans lining 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, 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. I mean they have poor. Now he's a 22 year old single father with no mother. Like this is, that's rough. So they, 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, 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 them. 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. And basically now his daughter's birthday is also the anniversary of Bobby Joe's murder.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh man.

[James Pietragallo]

Which isn't fun at all here.

[Jimmy Wissman]

No.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Really?

[James Pietragallo]

Yeah. Her parents. 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, you know, even though they had been told that it wasn't possible, they thought, maybe it's possible. 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 22, 2004, is the funeral for Bobby Joe. It is closed casket, as you might imagine. Zeb just put a picture of Bobby Joe on top, all pregnant and happy and smiling. So Becky Harper, Bobby Jo'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 there's a. Charges are filed in federal court, but then they have her in a state court being arraigned.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Sure.

[James Pietragallo]

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, defendant is now charged with the offense of kidnapping resulting in death, which carries a maximum Senate sentence of life without parole or death.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Pietragallo]

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 their dad. So that makes sense. Kevin wanted them all to stay with him.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Really?

[James Pietragallo]

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 Melbourne to finish her senior year in high school. Okay, 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, you poor thing. Which is nice. I mean, she's a teenager. She can't help this shit. After the school year ended, she remained in Malvern 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Pietragallo]

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 all of that. So the. The defect 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, 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 this thing even happened to her, she had fetal fucking alcohol syndrome, which is rough.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, she's been so pimped out and gang banged by your step.

[James Pietragallo]

Disgusting. Her mother's fine with it. So trial comes up and it's a federal trial with the death penalty on the table.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, my God.

[James Pietragallo]

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. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Why?

[James Pietragallo]

Well, there's Frederick Duckhart. Duchart, whenever you say his fucking last name is. A Missouri lawyer with some problems here. He's had multiple clients sentenced to death. Oh, multiple. Not good. Which.

[Jimmy Wissman]

A lot good at this.

[James Pietragallo]

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 4 of 7 of Missouri's federal death row inmates, more than any other U.S. defense lawyer.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Is that right?

[James Pietragallo]

He's got the. That's a brag. I got the most people sitting on federal death row of any lawyer in this country. Wow. With consistent criticisms of ineffective assistance of counsel. Those are always. That's always the appeal point here. One case, a guy named Wesley Perky. 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. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, who's that?

[James Pietragallo]

Susan Smith, who drowned all her kids. Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, and Eric Rudolph, who turned out the Olympic bomber.

[Jimmy Wissman]

The bomber, yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

And involved. I believe he was involved in Oklahoma City, too, as well, in that mix.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Or at least influenced by.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Anyway, I thought that he was just influenced by the guy, maybe.

[James Pietragallo]

That's possible. So this is also a female lawyer as well. And she builds a bond with Lisa pretty quick. Lisa tells her about her childhood. Shit, she didn't tell the other lawyers about it. They don't really know too much about. They know the basics, but they don't Know the details. So she finds that now Dukart, though, the other lawyer doesn't like this lawyer. No, no. I mean, doesn't want the spotlight stolen, I guess. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She's good at this. You're not.

[James Pietragallo]

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. First, they claimed that Lisa's brother Tommy killed Bobby Joe.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay, okay. Offer alternate theories.

[James Pietragallo]

Problem is, Tommy has as airtight an alibi as one could have because he was literally meeting with his parole officer.

[Jimmy Wissman]

At the time somewhere else with.

[James Pietragallo]

Already in the system. Yeah, already in the system, Dave. Not gonna work. Second, they just claimed that she didn't commit the crime. That's crazy. But she confessed in horrifying detail to the crime.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Real fast.

[James Pietragallo]

Real fast. And then finally they decide on an insanity to defense. Pseudo sis. I think it's pseudo. And then C Y E S I S. It's a false pregnancy delusion. Meaning she actually thought she was pregnant. 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 be. 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, this. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, my.

[James Pietragallo]

That is. Just give her a new birthday. Just say fucking June 1st. I don't know, man. Just pick a day. It doesn't matter.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Some other day in December. Fuck.

[James Pietragallo]

Who cares? Yeah. Halloween, now, isn't that fun? Yay. Yeah. Party every year. So Kevin, the husband, Kevin Montgomery, testifies, and he says, 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? 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. That's.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I would say a monster.

[James Pietragallo]

I mean, honestly, he's. I don't even know what to say here. So, yeah, he says 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 the 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

I mean, what the fuck? So he described meeting his wife in the parking lot, and he said 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. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Have you seen that trend on the Internet? Is it cake?

[James Pietragallo]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Check it. It might be.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

Had her tubes tied. This is an adult human man who's over 35 years old.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Boy, is he dopey.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

A 30 something year old people tubal ligation. Right.

[James Pietragallo]

No. And even if they were 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, that was. I didn't know that's what it was called. That was my guess earlier.

[James Pietragallo]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

So I guess you just.

[James Pietragallo]

You inferred it because you're not a moron. You know, it helps. 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. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Is that right?

[James Pietragallo]

And wore his wedding ring while testifying. And said, quote, do I love my wife?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yes, you betcha.

[James Pietragallo]

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?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

You want your people want their ex's new person to be a nightmare for them. This is like the ultimate nightmare.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. Married down in comparison to me for sure.

[James Pietragallo]

Yeah. Which I think Lisa's down from anybody who's not a murderer at this point.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She's terrible.

[James Pietragallo]

So she testified that Lisa had announced three fake pregnancies to family and friends in the years leading up to the murder. Wow. Who man, that is 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

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 now. Joy also said the. 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 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. Yeah, 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. And 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. Yeah. Yeah. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Five hours.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

Case closed. I mean, they. Five hours of deliberations, they find her guilty of everything.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Guilty of everything.

[James Pietragallo]

Guilty of everything.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Pietragallo]

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 fear, 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 they. 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 offered only limit. 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 their 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 because people go, jesus Christ. I mean, that's.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You're taking it and summing it up in the worst way.

[James Pietragallo]

Yeah, that's. Jesus Christ. So the defense expert, renowned neuroscientist, doctor. Holy shit. That's a long name. I'm not going to even attempt it. Vilianor Ramachandran. Okay. He said that Lisa had a dissociative state during the crime where her pseudo sis. That's the thinking they're 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?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Why does she need a baby?

[James Pietragallo]

The problem is the court excludes Brain scans, brain imaging. Evidence from a Dr. Rupert Gurr determining his PET scan analysis was unreliable due to methodological disputes and lack of direct correlation to pseudo sis. 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 attorneys here. Now she has two dude attorneys, and they're both. They say that they're uncomfortable with the sexual abuse details and don't. Don't want to really present that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It feels like that's like. I don't know. That feels like a good reason to. To not hurt this person in their. In their phasing. I mean, of the punishment phase. She's. She's got a lot of problems.

[James Pietragallo]

And they use the term abuse excuse before the prosecutors can. They say, this isn't 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 pseudocysis, 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. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

We got a real good one.

[James Pietragallo]

He's gonna talk about a conversation with the Iceman when he's done with this. So we're all gonna gather around and find fucking sick, fucking crisscross applesauce and see what we can do here.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He's so good. He diagnosed one of the worst people on the planet. To his face.

[James Pietragallo]

To his face.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And that guy did not open him.

[James Pietragallo]

No. Because he knew he was right. He knew that this guy knows what he's doing. Park Dietz 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She may. Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That is brutal. That's not good.

[James Pietragallo]

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 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 step. 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 especially heinous, cruel and depraved manner. You, ma', am, may fuck off. Death penalty. Oh, yeah, this is. I don't know if I like that a lot. I'm. No, 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I think she was fucked from jump. I mean, you can't. I don't think.

[James Pietragallo]

And this might be. No. And this might be us, too.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

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 like when criminals do it. I don't like when the state does it. It's just weird to me.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I don't like when they sign up to punch each other in boxing events.

[James Pietragallo]

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. Nevermind like UFC and stuff. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I don't think I'm sick too. It's like she. She didn't have a fucking chance. She married her stepbrother twice.

[James Pietragallo]

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. Maybe they can or they. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Is that right?

[James Pietragallo]

Just her.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, boy.

[James Pietragallo]

So she does some appeals here. We'll get through these here. Ineffective assistance of counsel is number one.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

Basically the problem is that I guess during a. 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. Sorry, that's journalist, his nickname became the Lawyer who Keeps Losing.

[Jimmy Wissman]

The little Lawyer who Couldn't.

[James Pietragallo]

It's like the basketball player who shoots air balls. That might as well be your name. That's a terrible fucking thing to be. Holy shit. Yeah, the quarterback who can't take a snap. So they said that 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

So.

[James Pietragallo]

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 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 gonna 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, boy.

[James Pietragallo]

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 suffered around the time of the killing from an extremely rare condition called pseudocysis, 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. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What day do they do?

[James Pietragallo]

They schedule it October 16th for December 8th. I think you only have to give them 20 days notice.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Gave them six weeks. That's pretty good.

[James Pietragallo]

That's not bad. Now there's a campaign for Lisa to get. Not get executed. Not to let her out, to not execute her.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Just don't kill her. Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

Over 1,000 prosecutors from around the country sign a letter opposing this execution.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She's got so many issues. We can't do this. This looks bad.

[James Pietragallo]

Not defense attorneys. No, no, no, no, no prosecutors.

[Jimmy Wissman]

The ones that try to get these convictions.

[James Pietragallo]

Every mental health organization files briefs going, dude, she's got serious shit wrong with her.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She's exhibited mental health issues with, as a child with her lying. She's got problems.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Her death date is pre Christmas.

[James Pietragallo]

December 8, 2020 is execution day. But it's delayed, not for legal reasons, because both of her lawyers caught bad cases of COVID after visiting her on death row that week. So they have to delay it because her lawyers aren't able to file things that they're supposed to be filing. January 1, 2021. A new execution date of January 12, 2021 is set. Okay. Now, January 11, 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, they. They basically, they Said that. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Let's do something completely irreparable.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What the fuck is going on?

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Pietragallo]

The vast majority of readers who responded to stories about the case, though, said they opposed 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. And no one's saying she should go home.

[Jimmy Wissman]

No, don't get it. Don't let her get out. Jesus.

[James Pietragallo]

For shit and shit. Now.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Dangerous.

[James Pietragallo]

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 12, at 10pm The Supreme Court of the United States vacates all stays and said, put her to death.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Push it forward.

[James Pietragallo]

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. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, boy.

[James Pietragallo]

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. 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, President Trump, show mercy. Because now it's that the President's a federal execution. The President's the only person that can up go above the supreme court on that January 13, 2021 execution day.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, they.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

We're doing it on money. Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

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 this 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? 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Like a religious thing, civilized. And that way and that. We're not just.

[James Pietragallo]

That's the other thing. We're not as bad as you.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right?

[James Pietragallo]

You're bad. You did this. We do this shit.

[Jimmy Wissman]

We cooked you a fucking steak.

[James Pietragallo]

Yeah. And even in like, even in like Deadwood, which is the fucking Old west, they're gonna 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yikes.

[James Pietragallo]

Like she's going on a fucking Southwest flight to Reno or some shit. There 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, boy.

[James Pietragallo]

Nope. That's it. No. 1:31am she is executed by lethal injection.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Pietragallo]

Three and a half hours after the Supreme Court said no more.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Go ahead.

[James Pietragallo]

Go ahead. That's. She is the first woman executed by the federal government in 67 years.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Pietragallo]

The last woman executed by the federal government was Bonnie Brown Hetty on December 18, 1953, for the kidnapping and murder of a six year old boy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

God dang.

[James Pietragallo]

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 participated should feel shame. Jesus, tell me how you really feel. Kelly. Victoria. Joe.

[Jimmy Wissman]

How's she doing?

[James Pietragallo]

Great. She's 19 years old. Doing fantastic.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

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. They don't let people fuck with her. They don't interview newspapers, interview her or anything like that. Leave this poor kid alone. Jesus Christ. Talk about hard times, man. They said they want 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's 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. They're in public murder now. Good Lord.

[James Pietragallo]

Yeah. And they call it the curse.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

This town, everybody, it's cursed. Town, it's cursed.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Sure seems like it.

[James Pietragallo]

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 W. Elm St. Has never been lived in again.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Is that right?

[James Pietragallo]

21 years. Not a soul has lived there since then. It still stands.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

If you'd like to see it. It's falling apart. Look at it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, my word.

[James Pietragallo]

It's a. It's just a house that's been sitting there for over 20 years. Look at the inside.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, my God. It's just falling apart. There's no drywall or plaster.

[James Pietragallo]

There's no plaster. It's down to those boards.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, wow.

[James Pietragallo]

And a little spot of brick up. Even the ceiling. There's nothing there. It all fell. It's a fucking mess. It says it is off the market.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Is that the OBO. Should we. Should we OVO it?

[James Pietragallo]

I don't know. And it was. 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Rid of this. Yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

Yeah. So that's. That's fucking sad. That house. Now it looks like a haunted house.

[Jimmy Wissman]

No shit.

[James Pietragallo]

And poor Jesus Christ, man. This is horrifying.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Is he still working at Kawasaki, is he?

[James Pietragallo]

Not sure yet. He must be head 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 gonna be real honest, very quickly, I didn't know whether to do this case or not. Cause I'm like, this might be too much for people. I don't know. I don't know. But it's. It's just so crazy. And it's. It is small town murder. It's all what it's all about. And I said, all right, let's do it. But we gotta do it respectfully because somebody got a baby cut out of him 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 Smalltown Pod on Facebook. Head over to shut up and give me murder.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 see you there. Shut up and give me murder.com patreon.com Crime in sports is where you get all of the bonus material. Anybody $5 a month or above, you're going to get everything. Hundreds of bonus episodes you've never heard immediately upon subscription. New ones every other week, including this week, where you get. For crime and sports, we're gonna talk about all these athletes getting busted for gambling. Since 2018 when it became legal to do outside of Nevada, it's really thrown sports into kind of a turmoil. And then for small town murder, it's a. It's a. You pick them.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, boy.

[James Pietragallo]

Hit me up with a message on Instagram and let me know. Either Ted Bundy helping to catch the Green river killer or the history of executions in the United States. Either one, you let me know. It's pretty fucking close. So get your votes in there. I have to say that is patreon.com crimeinsports and you get all the shows, crime and sports. Your stupid opinion. Small town murder, all ad free with your Patreon subscription as well. And you also get a shout out at the end of 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.

[Jimmy Wissman]

This week's executive producers are. Anthony, Auntie. Auntie Anti.

[James Pietragallo]

Or Antony.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Antony Andy. Auntie Andy. It's so fucking difficult to say, but she's Auntie Anthony's ass. So good for you, Auntie.

[James Pietragallo]

Hey, whoop that ass. Auntie Ant.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Jillian Quinn, Jacqueline Hannaford. And her and her pet cat. A pet cat. Every time I hear cat in my head, I see Edgar Suit saying pet cat real loud.

[James Pietragallo]

Yes for Pixie. Mr. Pixie. Hey.

[Jimmy Wissman]

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 smothered cover.

[James Pietragallo]

Liz is a nice lady. We don't want to smother her or cover.

[Jimmy Wissman]

No, no, no. Happy hour. Checking in at home in Conroe, Texas. Janice Hill. Hannah Joe Kenyon. Mindy Jackson. Jerry Price. Shannon Campbell. May Lynn, Cheyenne with no last name. Clint Menard with a K. Clint. Wow.

[James Pietragallo]

Oh, wow.

[Jimmy Wissman]

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 giant. The. No, no. Cecil. Cecil Moon. Julia Frater. John with no last name. Rhonda Montgomery. Siobhan o'. Dell. Lilibeth with no last name. Andrew Powley. Nay with no last name. Probably cousin of. No, no. Patty Kaufman. Lynn Klausea. Is that what it is? Yep. Zach Irwin. Hannah with no last name. Bri Baby Felice. Felicia Fe. Less Felice Shelton Scholes. Yeah. Zach Irwin. Is that a comedian? I don't know who that is.

[James Pietragallo]

I feel like that's sounds like a country singer.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I feel like Zach Irwin's with an E though, is a. I think I know.

[James Pietragallo]

Absolutely. Sounds like a new country singer.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It does.

[James Pietragallo]

Ripped up jeans.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[James Pietragallo]

You know the guy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You see a brand new hat that looks old?

[James Pietragallo]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Marie.

[James Pietragallo]

Brand new trucker hat. That hat that came with rips along the edges of the belt. Came with those.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I was thinking the straw hat that's bent because it has a wire in it to make it look a little bastard.

[James Pietragallo]

That's good. Let's. Well, let's stop making fun of this guy who gave us money. Thank you, Zach.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You're terrific.

[James Pietragallo]

Thank you, Zach. You're a good guy. You're none of us.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Marie La Daine. Adam Yoder. James Plumer. Morgan Walsh. That also. Come on. Gene Allen. Sarah with no last name. Grumpy or Gumpy. Gumpy DeFrain. 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.

[James Pietragallo]

I'll be sure I'll be.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He'll be whatever we want him to be.

[James Pietragallo]

He's thinking about us night and day. Is that the problem?

[Jimmy Wissman]

You go ahead and fill it in. I'll be that Christopher McLean. Samantha Collins and L. Gabe with no last name. Stephanie Massey. Mackenzie. Mueller or Mueller History Pierce. Michael Jackson. You know.

[James Pietragallo]

Sure. You know, we already got Albie Shore money. We got night and day money. Let's get that thriller money too. Fuck it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Well, get that man in the Mirror cast. Choal Tong. K with no last name. Just the letter K. Caleb stutz. D. Freed. Mr. Ball Sack. Probably not. Diabon Diablo.

[James Pietragallo]

Writer or the man.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, the man. Caitlyn 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 40 with no last name. British blonde style. Antner. Noah with no last name. Noah Gwinta Guinta. Rebecca Moorlock. Brandon Budgel. Boogil. Aaron Morris. Dan. Kook. Kuk. I'm gonna assume cook. Cook. Is it Cook or is it Cuck?

[James Pietragallo]

Cuke. Cuke.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He's a good man. Is what Dan is. Kaylee Britain. Christian Krupa. Es. The letters Es or S? They is I. And Butyl. Ian Butle. Noah Trevette Travet. Trevitt. Veronica Vetter. What is it? Simon Hargood. Lady Seaton.

[James Pietragallo]

Satan. I like when you stop. Gotta regroup.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I like that it's a respool on the Yo Yo. Amber Tomlinson. Ezra with no last name. Elizabeth Scherzer. Samantha Houston. Tiffany Crucera. Uh. Gary Hyde. Nick Myers. Emily Church. Jody Werda. 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. That's boy. Nilka. Maybe. Maybe you don't pronounce the g. Rashley. Rashley McGusty. Okay. Ashley with the Rash. This constituel. Beekeeper. What? What even is that?

[James Pietragallo]

I don't know.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Amy Case. And Cass. And Case On. Judy Patton. Judy Commence. Marjolaine. Julia. Julia. Julio. Michael. Nation. A whole nation of them. Kate with. With it. K. And then spell out the letter 8.

[James Pietragallo]

Bruce.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That is bananas. I've never seen that in my entire life.

[James Pietragallo]

No.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Trevor with no last name. Walter. Sonya Star. Jay's Brandy. Hebert. Is it Hebert? Heber? Perhaps. Kimberly Kramer. Zara Zyra Diaz. Melanie Brusky. Laura Hardy. Orianna Nazis. What? I'm moving on. Brianna Larkins. Roxy with no last name. Anessa Boyer.

[James Pietragallo]

We'll have to talk about that one after the show.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Love to get into that. Maria Jaworski. Shanae. Auguste. Augusti. August. Sean Avery. Dagoberto Huerta. Dagoberto. Kaylee with no last name. Dylan Clayson. Vance Laborgier Le Blaborjo. Ashley Malate Mallet. Kevin Hewitt. Scott Maton. Rebecca Quadrado. Quadrado. Henry Ritter. Hank Shannon. John's kid. Hank. Sarah Catherman. Catterman. Perhaps Miles with no last name. Nikki G. Bonnie. Herb. Urge. LG The. The life is good. Utilities, Appliances. That's it. William Smith. Bill Smith. Carrie Griffin. Randy Mosier. Becky Zagicheck. Amy Stone.

[James Pietragallo]

That too.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Jackie with no last name. Holly. Josephine Wheezy with no last name. Darcy E. Kayla Miller. Max with no last name. Diego lostra. Amanda Lynn. Ms. Chris. Greg Dorgan. Hannah with no last name Alize, Shelkey, Alice. Gotta be. Wow. Mavs with no last name Jamie. That's the grossest thing. That stuff is vile. Jamie Garmin, Kenny Carpin, Cassandra Cronin, Jack Kane, Angel Boss, Tammy Jackson, Michelle with no last name Polly Pop, Palo Pop, Nancy with no last name Tyler G. Elizabeth Hyslop, Ann with no last name John Castaldo, Spence, Allison, Allison, Kaylee Flatta, Casey Johnson, Aaron Tilly, and all of our patrons. Thank you so much.

[James Pietragallo]

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 shut upandgivemerder.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.

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[James Pietragallo]

It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great.

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[James Pietragallo]

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[James Pietragallo]

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[James Pietragallo]

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[James Pietragallo]

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[James Pietragallo]

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