A lifetime of sexual torture causes her to lose touch with reality. The baby girl survived, andMontgomery took her home and briefly passed her off as her own until investigators arrested her the next day. "They made this a priority at the risk of the health and lives of corrections officials, of the prisoners on death row, and the communities that all of those Bureau of Prisons officials who flew in from across the country were returning to," says Ngozi Ndulue, senior director of research and special projects at the Death Penalty Information Center. But the cousin, a sheriff's deputy, confessed to Montgomery's current legal team that he did nothing. 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. However, calls for Trump to be merciful are hardly unanimous. Mattingly has enjoyed a "blessed life," she said. Montgomery's execution date was subsequently bumped back to Jan. 12. "I'm asking him to have compassion on her as a person that has been failed over and over and over again. Although the alumni have scattered somewhat, in recent years, the Nodaway-Holt R-VII High School graduating class of 2000 - which had only 22 members - has a tradition to mark the anniversary of the death of their classmate Bobbie Jo Stinnett. When she called her attorneys that day, she could hardly speak. Now, she called him to tell him that shed gone into labor while shopping and had given birth at a clinic. She lapsed increasingly into mental illness and repeatedly faked pregnancy. 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. "The Lisa I knew was a good person who cared about the other women in the pod and was quiet and generous and kind," Dorr said. She had bought supplies, including a home birth kit, and searched online for how to perform a caesarean section. The views expressed in this article are the author's own. "There was a lot of talk both ways on it," he said when contacted by phone at his new home in Texas. In Trumps final days in office, Lisa Montgomery a mentally ill victim of sex trafficking is set to be the first woman the U.S. executes in 70 years. Shaughnessy has since died. That was ultimately dropped in favour of an insanity defence, but Henry believes the damage to Montgomery's credibility was already done. Meanwhile, her mother in 1985 had married Richard Boman, whose son Montgomery's stepbrother, Carl Boman got Montgomery pregnant. If Mattinglycould speak directly to Trump, she said, she would tell him: "Please dont take my sister. Montgomery achieved considerable emotional growth once she was put in a stable environment where she felt safe and was receiving psychiatric medications for the first time, Dorrsaid. Today, residents are tired of Melvernbeing connected with Lisa Montgomery, said current Mayor Lyndon Weddle, who describesMelvern asafriendlyrural community where people wave when they pass each other. For Diane Mattingly, there is one moment from her childhood for which she feels both enormous gratitude and guilt. As Fritz patted Montgomery on the back of her hand, Strong said he noticed dried blood and tissue embedded beneath her fingernails. What you need to know about Montgomery and her victim, Bobbie Jo Stinnett. Mattingly said she saw terror in her half-sister's bright green eyes. While all five are haunted by Stinnett's murder, they are also "bonded for life," Strong said. It makes him even angrier that it was Stinnett's mother who discovered her that way. In late December, Montgomery's legal team submitted a petition to President Donald Trump that makes the case that after a lifetime of abuse - which they characterise as torture - she is too mentally ill to be executed and deserves mercy. "I cried," says Strong. She faked pregnancies several times during her marriages to Carl Boman and Kevin Montgomery, court records say. Another case with Missouri ties. When Judy, Lisa's mother and my stepmother, came to beat us, I stood between her and the younger girls and took the beating, whether it was belts, cords or hangers. They were also physically violent. Fourteen of those offenders are serving long prison sentences, while the twoothers died by suicide in custody, according to a list Henry provided. The question is, should she be put to death for it? These days, she requires a regimen of psychotropic drugs to function. She lived with her children in poverty, without running water and other basic necessities, while her mental health deteriorated. "She is the most broken of the broken," Mattingly said. Diane Mattingly has been speaking publicly for the first time in the hope it can make a difference. Mattingly said she was fortunate to have been moved to a lovinghome of high school history teacher and coach Floyd Gwin;his wife, Zella Gwin;and their three biological children. 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. The Trump administration announced it was reinstating executions last summer after an almost 20-year hiatus. "My sister was crying and in pain. Investigators quickly realised that "Darlene Fischer" did not exist, and tracked Montgomery down the next day using her emails and computer IP address. Authorities also questioned Kevin Montgomery but concluded he wasn't involved. Another case with Missouri ties. 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. She has exhausted all legal options. "She needs to be put to death.". Montgomery's lawyers argue that because of a combination of years of horrific abuse, and a raft of psychological issues, she should never have been given the death penalty. She believes that if Montgomery had been rescued too, and given what she was given contact with loving, protective adults everything would have been different. Melvern residents want that perception to end, she said. Lisa was anally, orally, and vaginally raped by several men, one after the other for several hours at a time. We lived in a house of horrors. "Being loved unconditionally helped me heal, find a caring husband and raise two children who have hearts of gold," Mattingly wrote. 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. "If I did speak up, maybe Zella and Floyd would have gone back for Lisa," she wrote. 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. Her children were disturbed by it. When I was eight and Lisa was four, social services came and rescued me from Judy, leaving Lisa and our other sister behind. Kevin Montgomery let investigators inside. Montgomery's mother, Judy Shaughnessy, drank while Montgomery was in utero, leaving her with brain damage, court documents say. Kleiner built a makeshift shed on the side of the trailer for Montgomery, where he began molesting, and then raping, her. "The people that are defending [Montgomery], I wish I could take them back in time, and put them in that room," he says. In December 2004, Boman filed a court action seeking custody of two of their children who still lived with Montgomery while arguing that the pregnancy Montgomery was fakingillustrated she was an unfit mother, according to newspaper accounts. She said it was over and over, one man right after the other, and went on for hours, her cousin said in a sworn statement. After she gave birth to four children, Judy pressured Lisa into an involuntary sterilization. She meets with Montgomery regularly, she said. Her death is scheduled a little over a month before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, who has pledged to end the federal death penalty. Read about our approach to external linking. Montgomery graduated in 1986 from high school at Cleveland, Okla., with hopes of joining the Air Force to earn money for college. "There's so many people that failed her throughout her whole life. And, in fact, blaming her for it.. Harper told a dispatcher her daughter's womb appeared to have "exploded" and that blood was "everywhere." She was broken by people who were supposed to be her caregivers. . [N]ot only was it bizarre behavior, but it was very embarrassing for me as her daughter, she said. A social worker found Lisa's allegations of abuse credible and turned the file. Even at the age of 8, Mattingly recalled being worried about what would happen to Montgomery without her there. Many there believe the final moments of Bobbie Jo Stinnett were so horrific, the death sentence is warranted. When Lisa Montgomery murdered pregnant Bobbie Jo Stinnett and ripped her unborn baby from her womb, the whole world reeled in horror. Kleiner, the son of Shaughnessy and Jack Kleiner, was meeting witha parole officerat the time of the killing, Strong said. In the end, it was in prisonwhere she spent years on death row after committing a horrific crimethat she began to recover from a lifetime of nightmarish abuse. Nodaway County Sheriff Randy Strong says that the scene that he and his four colleagues found that day was so bloody, they are still traumatised by it. Montgomery was left behind with her mother. In fact, he drove her back home and dropped her off in the hands of her abusers. The father was a teacher. It is hard to know if Montgomery understands that she is close to being executed; her mental state does not allow for much lucidity. One of those men started coming into their bedroom and raping Mattingly regularly, Mattingly said. At one point, one of Montgomery's brothers found a home movie that showed Montgomery's husband raping and beating her. At the time of her murder, she was newly married and pregnant with her first child. Until July 2020, there had been no federal executions for 17 years. Several high-profile figures had appealed for clemency in Brandon's case but Mr Trump did not heed those calls. Mattingly was 8 years old and Montgomery was 4 when Mattingly was removed in 1972 from Shaughnessy's mobile home at Ogden, a community of about 1,960 people in Riley County. As her big sister, Diane feels immense guilt about leaving Montgomery behind in that broken home, so many years ago. Strong was a police detective in Maryville, Mo., 14 miles northeast of Skidmore, and Fritz was a detective at Cameron, also in northwest Missouri. Thats happened since Montgomery's childhood, when theterror she experienced while being raped forced her to retreat emotionally into an imaginary house,where everything is fine, Henry said. Henry stressed that no one faces a death sentence linked to the 16 other U.S. cases from 1987 to2015 in which a woman has attacked a pregnant woman and her unborn child in an effort to take the childand ended up killing one or both. In asking for mercy, her family members and attorneys say the untreated trauma she experienced as a child exacerbated her brain damage and hergenetic disposition to severe mental illness, leading her to kill Stinnett during a psychotic episode a dissociative state similar to sleepwalking. Diane Mattingly is the sister of Lisa Montgomery, who is scheduled for execution by the federal government on December 8, 2020. Ms. 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 says. After she strangled Stinnett, Montgomery is alleged to have cut her open and stolen her unborn child Victoria, who survived the attack and is now living with her father. 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. Montgomery was repeatedly molested by her stepdad Jack Kleiner, starting at . And theyre taking me away from her.. As Strong crossed the threshold, hesaw a TV set airing an Amber Alert about the abduction of Stinnett's baby. In response to traumatic events, children may dissociate from their feelings and their bodies to protect themselves from experiencing what is happening. He thanked the sheriff for recovering his daughter and allowing him to be the parent that his wife couldn't be. President-elect Joe Biden has already pledged to end death penalty proceedings, although he hasn't said when. He threatened to rape our little sister if Lisa resisted and said he would kill her whole family if she told anyone. After five hours of deliberation, the jury found Montgomery guilty. But none of those other victims responded by killing a woman and cutting her baby out of her stomach, hesaid. "Come on, baby. Montgomery told Stinnett that she was also expecting, and the pair shared pregnancy stories. Some nights, she said, Shaughnessy would leave them in the house with a male babysitter. The population hovers around just 250, and everyone knew Bobbie Jo Stinnett and her family. "The whole community over there's traumatised by this.". When Lisa was a small child, Judy allowed men to rape her for money, including allowing her to be gang raped on multiple occasions. 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. The nature and circumstances of Montgomerys crime show she had lost touch with reality, says her half-sister, Diane Mattingly. This story was first published on 11 January - before Lisa Montgomery's execution on 13 January. "She was hyperventilating," Henry said. ", "I live with regret for not speaking up about what happened to Lisa," Kidwell said, adding that he just didnt know what to do.. He had a daughter from a previous relationship, Diane, who was four years older than Montgomery. A federal judge in November postponed Montgomery's execution from Dec. 8 until Jan. 12 to give her attorneys more time to file her clemency petition, after concluding that their COVID-19 symptoms limited their ability to file thepetition. The counselor noted that her mother appeared to have a lack of empathy for Montgomery, who was left with the distinct impression that the sexual abuse was her fault. More recently, the states that have been carrying out executions, such as Texas and Tennessee, have halted and delayed executions because of the pandemic. 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. 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