On December 16, 2004 36-year-old Lisa M. Montgomery strangled 23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett to death in her Skidmore, Missouri home. Following the murder Montgomery cut open the eight month pregnant victim and removed her unborn child, a baby she intended to pass off as her own. The two women met on an Internet chatroom called "Ratter Chatter."
On December 17, the day after the murder, FBI agents arrested Montgomery at her farmhouse in Melvern, Kansas. The baby, rushed to a hospital, survived the traumatic event. A federal prosecutor charged Montgomery with the crime of kidnapping resulting in death, a capital offense.
Tried in October 2007 the jury found the defendant guilty as charged and recommended the death penalty. On April 4, 2008 the federal judge sentenced Lisa Montgomery to death. Incarcerated at the federal prison complex at Terre Haute, Indiana, she was the only women in the federal system on death row. If executed she would be the fourth woman his U.S. history to be executed by the federal government.
Montgomery's execution by lethal injection was scheduled for December 8, 2020. Her appeals attorneys alleged that their client's trial attorneys were incompetent in that they had failed to reveal to jurors the extent of the defendant's mental illness. On this and other procedural issues appeals courts have often ruled in favor of the government.
Lisa Montgomery was executed on January 13, 2021.
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