Lisa Montgomery is no different. Montgomery lived during her childhood in Washington, Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, California and Texas. Montgomery then said she had given birth at home with help from two female friends and, later, that she had given birth alone. "One sister got taken out and got put into a loving home and was nurtured and had time to heal," says Mattingly. A generation ago, it was the kind of place where you could "get your hair cut, see a show, buy rabbit feed and eat dinner" - but those days are long gone. She married her stepbrother at 18 and gave birth to four children in less than five years, before having a sterilization procedure. Judy drank throughout her pregnancy with Lisa and caused her to be born with brain damage. Lisa Montgomery has been held at theCarswell Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas, for 12 years. Theyre saying that a sentence of life without the possibility of parole is more than sufficient punishment for someone who has endured what she did.. Lisa Montgomery's friend, Toby Dorr, provided this photo she took of a letter Montgomery wrote to her in November using black crayon. And though there's been much recent debate over the fairness of Montgomery's sentence in courthouses and in the opinion pages of newspapers like the New York Times, a similar debate does not exist here. As Strong crossed the threshold, hesaw a TV set airing an Amber Alert about the abduction of Stinnett's baby. School friend Baumli says she's read the descriptions of Montgomery's abuse, but it mostly just makes her angry. When children grow up in a chronic state of fear and terror, their brains adapt to survive, explained Katherine Porterfield, a clinical psychologist at the Bellevue/New York University Program for Survivors of Torture, who has evaluated Montgomery in prison. Patterson and Shaughnessy divorced in 1971, and Shaughnessy took custody of the girls. For one thing, the wider world won't let them forget. "She needs to be put to death.". Tommy Kleiner and Montgomery have stayed in touch. In the haze of her mental illness, she went to the home of a pregnant woman, killed her, and removed the baby. It would be 34 years before the half-sisters would see each other again. They believe that at the time of the crime, Montgomery was psychotic and out of touch with reality. "If I did speak up, maybe Zella and Floyd would have gone back for Lisa," she wrote. My sister is on death row, Kleiner wrote in the lawsuit petition. Her children even came up with a nickname to pull her out of her trances when she was unresponsive: They called her Martha instead of mom to get her attention. Her terror was well-founded, said Montgomery's attorneys, Kelley Henry and Amy Harwell. Montgomery wasn't allowed eyeglasses, though she is far-sighted and near-sighted, or a CPAP machine, which has been prescribed since 2015 for her sleep apnea, Henry said. Around age 8, she said, a man began raping her in the bedroom she shared with Montgomery, then 4, who lay in bed right next to her. After their biological father left the home, Mattingly says they were left alone with Shaughnessy's boyfriends, at least one of whom started raping Mattingly. Violent acts against pregnant women and their fetuses fall into that category. There were always different men around the house. A former paramedic who had watched the births of all three of his children, Strong also considered the baby's head to be unusually round. She told Lisa she had to "earn her keep." Judy later. She went home with a newborn, one she acquired by murdering the babys pregnant mother. Montgomery often read her Bible or did things with her hands, including writing, quilting, and making placemats and bookmarks, Dorr said. Diane Mattingly has been speaking publicly for the first time in the hope it can make a difference. She would tell me I had to leave and I couldnt take anything with me because she bought everything, she recalled. She liked to take her finger and poke it hard into her chest, over and over in the same spot. At that time, Montgomery was awaiting trial. She is the most broken of the broken. Two other inmates are scheduled to die at Terre Haute prison before Mr Trump's presidency ends. On the ride home, she clamped the umbilical cord and cleaned the baby girl with wipes. When Shaughnessy eventually split from her second husband, she and Montgomery testified in divorce proceedings about the sexual assaults. And to not fail her.". Mattingly said she shielded her half-sister from random baby-sitters, often older men, whom their mother left with them during her near-nightly outings to a local bar. She was broken by people who were supposed to be her caregivers. But none of those other victims responded by killing a woman and cutting her baby out of her stomach, hesaid. "She is the most broken of the broken," Mattingly said. She didnt have nobody there to protect her once I was out of the home.. At one point, one of Montgomery's brothers found a home movie that showed Montgomery's husband raping and beating her. She began prostituting Lisa to older men when Lisa was in her early teens. "Maybe she could have been saved, too. Court records say Kleiner drank heavily, beat his wife and children, and made his daughters take off their clothes before he spanked them. "And then go, 'Look at this body'. She was sick. The girls' biological father left the home, and after a while, Mattingly was whisked away to foster care. Stinnett's husband was at work, andStinnett was on the phone with her mother, Becky Harper, when Montgomery's dirty red Toyota pulled upon the afternoon of Dec. 16. However, calls for Trump to be merciful are hardly unanimous. Kleiner, the son of Shaughnessy and Jack Kleiner, was meeting witha parole officerat the time of the killing, Strong said. Shaughnessy drank excessively during her pregnancy, causing brain damage to Montgomery, according to court records. She pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Lisa Montgomery, la nica mujer en el corredor de la muerte federal de Estados Unidos, fue ejecutada este mircoles por asesinato. The historic reports of her at the time are consistent with the idea that she was a completely impaired mentally ill nonfunctional person who was operating within the symptoms of her mental illness, Porterfield said. ", More: Only woman on federal death row asks President Trump to be a 'hero,' commute her sentence. The Trump administration announced it was reinstating executions last summer after an almost 20-year hiatus. She lived at 61 addresses in the 36 years before she went to prison, court documents show. In what Mattingly described as the most lucky thing to ever happen to her, she was placed with a loving foster family who showered her with affection. Family members have claimed that Shaughnessy blamed Montgomery for the abuse and the divorce. At the time of her murder, she was newly married and pregnant with her first child. Both became infected with COVID-19, believing it to be transmitted duringthe prison visit. Bobbie's family deserves her," says Meagan Morrow, a high school classmate of Stinnett's. They recommended a sentence of death. But blind outrage over the brutality of the crime leaves little room for curiosity about why Montgomery committed the act, and whether she deserves the most severe penalty that exists in the criminal justice system. He recalled that Montgomery begged him not to tell anyone, for fear that Kleiner would kill her. The girls father was often away from the house for long periods, and Shaughnessy would have other men over. "I get these images in my head of [Bobbie Jo's mother] finding her daughter that way.". That is exactly what Lisa Montgomery developed into, which is a person who had profound disconnection from her body, from her mind, from her experience, Porterfield said. Montgomery contacted Stinnett, 23, after meeting her at a dog show earlier that year at Abilene, in north-central Kansas, where they posed with others in a photo. He threatened to expose the imagined pregnancy and use it against her in the custody battle. Recently, there has been a virus outbreak on death row at the institution, and previous executions have been linked to outbreaks among the execution team and prison staff. At least five of the 12 jurors and three alternate jurorswiped away tears. "She got joy out of it.". Her mouth was covered with duct tape so frequently that she learned not to cry. Lisa Montgomery, a federal prisoner, is now slated to be executed on Jan. 12. She has exhausted all legal options. Montgomery and Carl Boman divorced, remarried and divorced again in 1998. The threat of losing her children, combined with the years of untreated trauma and severe mental illness, pushed Lisa over the edge. While my path to healing was very hard, the difference between Lisa and me is that no one ever intervened to rescue Lisa from a lifetime of abuse. After Mattingly was removed from the home by social services, Montgomery fell prey to her mother's new husband, who according to statements from his other children, was a violent alcoholic who began sexually abusing Montgomery when she was a pre-teen. "Being psychotic, it does not mean you are not intelligent, nor that you cannot act in a planful way," she says. It was a terrifying household, she says, where physical, psychological and sexual abuse at the hands of Judy Shaughnessy, Montgomery's mother, and her boyfriends was routine. When they came to take me, I thought they were coming to take all of us. Lisa Montgomery's half-sister Diane Mattingly, who was separated from her in 1972 has taken a more high-profile role in trying to save her life. The murder 16 years ago is never far from the minds of the town's residents. According to interviews with her half-siblings and others who spent time with the family, Montgomery's stepfather built a shed onto the trailer where he, and eventually his friends, raped and beat her. Dr Katherine Porterfield, a clinical psychologist who evaluated Montgomery and spent about 18 hours with her, says that psychosis does not always look the way people expect it to. Right: This cemetery at Melvern, where Lisa Montgomery formerly lived, has more than 1,800 gravesites, which is nearly five times the city's population. More recently, the states that have been carrying out executions, such as Texas and Tennessee, have halted and delayed executions because of the pandemic. I am begging that somebody will finally stand up for her and say, shes been punished enough.. Mattingly says looking back to the moment life changed for her as an eight-year-old, she feels guilty that when the social workers came for her, she didn't tell them what was going on in that house. Montgomery described feeling that she was unsure whether her environment was real, and confided that she used a strategy to ground herself in reality: She would look at a tree out the window and tell herself that the tree was real if she could see it. "I looked to my right and there was Lisa Montgomery on the sofa, holding the baby," he said. Defense attorney Fred Duchardt told jurors that sexual abuse during her childhood had caused Montgomeryto become mentally ill and killed her soul. She was quiet and kind, they say. My heart goes out to the family of Bobbie Jo Stinnett and the loss that they have felt and are still feeling. As her attorneys fight for her life, Montgomery has at times seemed out of touch with reality,Henry said:Hermental illness causesher to disconnectwhen life becomes too terrible to endure. Her lawyers at the time also presented an alternative theory of the crime, which was that Montgomery's brother had actually committed the murder, even though he had an alibi. And then at the end, she was broken.". But it is something that she carries with her and that she mourns not only for the effect on her life and that of her family, but for the terrible effect on Mrs. Stinnett, who was killed, and also her family who was left behind.. Being loved unconditionally helped me heal, find a caring husband, and raise two children who have hearts of gold. . Ms. Montgomery has bipolar disorder, temporal lobe epilepsy, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, dissociative disorder, psychosis, traumatic brain injury and most likely fetal alcohol syndrome. President-elect Joe Biden has already pledged to end death penalty proceedings, although he hasn't said when. In an interview with HuffPost her first ever Diane Mattingly, now 57 and a longtime state government employee living in Kentucky, described what it was like growing up in a home without love or affection. Join half a million readers enjoying Newsweek's free newsletters, Everyone Practices Cancel Culture | Opinion, Deplatforming Free Speech is Dangerous | Opinion. Im not a psychiatrist, so I cant go any further than that.. Around this time, Shaughnessy and Patterson separated, and Mattingly was removed from the house by child protective services an act which she credits for saving her life. As a result of her sexual torture, Lisa began to dissociate. When I was eight and Lisa was four, social services came and rescued me from Judy, leaving Lisa and our other sister behind. Shaughnessy also beat the girls with brooms and belts,Mattingly said. She helped him escape in a dog crate and went to prison after a vehicle chase 12 days later ended with their capture. Lisa Montgomery lived a tortured life, from the day she was born in a small Washington town till the day she became the first woman in 67 years to be executed by the U.S. government. In the cases where women are sentenced to death, prosecutors often use gender stereotypes against the defendants, she said, characterizing them as transgressive or not normal in some way. She had brain damage, likely caused by exposure to alcohol when she was a. Montgomery suffered from pseudocyesis, the false belief she was pregnant, jurors heard from Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, director of the Center of Brain and Cognition at the University of California in San Diego. In the other cases, she said, prosecutors opted not to seek the death penalty or juries did not impose it because it was obvious the women were suffering from profound mental illnesses. The infant found later that day to weigh 5 pounds, 11 ounces was "very still" and didn't cry, which concerned Strong. They had been called in as part of the Northwest Missouri Major Case Squad, which was workingwith the FBI to identify Stinnett's killer and find the missing child. The cold, vicious, calculating and brutal nature of her crimes shows that Montgomery knew exactly what she was doing, Strong said. On her way out the door, Mattingly said, Shaughnessy leaned over and told her it was all her fault she was being taken away. To help keep her mind occupied, Henry said, Montgomery was initially given one crayon and one piece of paper, but nothing else. He was being held in the Shawnee County Jail in 2018 when he filed a federal lawsuit contending the county was violating his constitutional rights by preventing him from sending letters to Montgomery. Stinnett came to, grabbing at Montgomery's knife and pulling out somehair before Montgomery strangledher to death. His message contained a "very heartfelt thank you. Montgomery, 52, the only woman on federal death row, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection Jan. 12 in the U.S. Penitentiary at Terre Haute, Ind. Bobbie Jo's mother and husband have have not spoken publicly in many years. And, in fact, blaming her for it.. Mattingly, Montgomerys sister, is planning on visiting her next week. At the time, Lisa had told her new husband that she was pregnant, which her former husband knew wasn't possible because of the forced sterilization. The judge in the case scolded Shaughnessy for not reporting the abuse - but did not report the abuse himself. Montgomery is "evil personified," he said. He had a daughter from a previous relationship, Diane, who was four years older than Montgomery. Skidmore has suffered lasting effects as a result of Stinnett's murder, said Strong, the investigator who helped prodMontgomery to confess. When Lisa was a small child, Judy allowed men to rape her for money, including allowing her to be gang raped on multiple occasions. These days, she requires a regimen of psychotropic drugs to function. And theyre taking me away from her.. I was thinking, shes still back there. I support my wife and her request for clemency, but because I am sick with COVID and am caring for my parents who are also sick with COVID, I ask the media to respect our need for rest and privacy," he said. "We've seen crime for years and years in our country in which people enact terrible violence coming out of a psychotic set of beliefs or thought process. Montgomery strangled Stinnett into unconsciousness, then sliced into her stomach with the steak knife, Strong said. Shaughnessy's nephew, David Kidwell, testified that she believed Montgomery "had brought [the abuse] on herself, that she enticed him". "God, no, please," she said. Lisa told me that when these men raped her, she would go away in her mind and try not to be present, the brother said in a court declaration. She was often spaced out, appearing disconnected from reality. At 1:31 AM on Wednesday, Lisa Montgomery was pronounced dead. After previously being allowed contact with a limited number of inmates, Montgomery was moved to a solitary confinement cell at Carswell and kept there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, Henry said. "I'm sick of hearing about Lisa Montgomery and what she went through. And then go, 'Stand there and listen to the 911 call of [Stinnett's mother]. "The other sister stayed in that situation, and it got worse and worse and worse. Montgomery eventually divorced her first husband and married Kevin Montgomery. It has been the subject of two books, multiple true crime television shows, documentaries and countless podcast episodes. She lapsed increasingly into mental illness and repeatedly faked pregnancy. In a letterin late November written with a black crayon, Montgomery told Dorr that other inmates at Carswell took it "really hard" when her execution date was set. "I cried," says Strong. The family treated Mattingly as one of their own, and gave her a sense of belonging and self-worth, she said. Judy Shaughnessy had already raised two convicted felons at the time. Montgomerys legal team is fighting against the clock to gather the information needed for her clemency petition, which has been complicated by the coronavirus crisis. Who was the last woman executed by the US government? Many of the residents of Skidmore cite the details of the crime, and the amount of planning that went into it, as evidence that Montgomery was a calculating killer. If her execution goes forward, she will be the first federal female inmate to be executed in almost 70 years. Montgomery lamented that she couldn't be present to console them because she was in solitary confinement, said Dorr, Montgomery's friend since they met in a federal prison in 2006. On the trip home, she stopped in Topeka and called her husband to say she had gone into labor while Christmas shopping and had given birth at a Topeka birthing center. Its also people hearing it, knowing it and doing nothing about it. "This was a very coordinated and determined plan to ensure that as many people could be executed on federal death row as possible before the end of this administration term.". One of the lead investigators in the case, Randy Strong, wants Montgomery executed. As a teenager, Montgomery confided in her cousin, a deputy sheriff, that she was being raped by Kleiner and other men orally, vaginally and anally. View the profiles of people named Judy Shaughnessy. A clemency petition asking Trump to reduce Montgomerys sentence to life without parole is expected to be filed in the coming weeks. He threatened to rape our little sister if Lisa resisted and said he would kill her whole family if she told anyone. All the while, Lisa's mother was being paid to let strange men rape Lisa. Please, honey.". The father was a teacher. They gave me unconditional love, they taught me my self-worth, she said. When I was around eight years old, and Lisa was about four, one of Judy's male friends began coming into our room at night and regularly raping me, with Lisa in the next bedclose enough we could reach for each other and touch fingers. 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