They slept in twin beds in a small bedroomand fell asleep most nights holding hands, Mattingly said. She was born into a family rife with mental illness, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression. "I'm sick of hearing about Lisa Montgomery and what she went through. However, calls for Trump to be merciful are hardly unanimous. Every year. She liked going down to the Nodaway River to swim, and playing Nintendo games at slumber parties. Since they began, the federal government has executed seven people. Investigators quickly realised that "Darlene Fischer" did not exist, and tracked Montgomery down the next day using her emails and computer IP address. One of those men started coming into their bedroom and raping Mattingly regularly, Mattingly said. If Mattinglycould speak directly to Trump, she said, she would tell him: "Please dont take my sister. Mattingly has enjoyed a "blessed life," she said. She is not the "worst of the worst" for whom the death penalty was intended. She helped him escape in a dog crate and went to prison after a vehicle chase 12 days later ended with their capture. Part of HuffPost Crime. Other times, her behavior could be erratic and inappropriate. She had brain damage, likely caused by exposure to alcohol when she was a. Weddle said she moved to Melvern when she retired nine years ago because she wanted peace and quiet after more than 30 years as a Topeka police officer. 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. More: The U.S. has not executed a woman in 67 years. And it's never about what my friend went through," she adds. On the ride home, she clamped the umbilical cord and cleaned the baby girl with wipes. 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. 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. 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. "Maybe she could have been saved, too. But the psychological abuse targeted at her was even more damaging. I was put in foster care with a wonderful family. 2023 BuzzFeed, Inc. All rights reserved. Her story quickly fell apart and she confessed to the killing. "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.". Lisa Montgomery - the only female inmate on federal death row in the US - has been executed for murder in the state of Indiana. And then there is the life that Montgomery and her siblings inhabited, one of domestic violence, dysfunction, humiliation, fear and pain. Diane Mattingly has been speaking publicly for the first time in the hope it can make a difference. In 1986, when Montgomery was 18, she married her stepbrother, Carl Boman. 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. Montgomery eventually divorced her first husband and married Kevin Montgomery. "One sister got taken out and got put into a loving home and was nurtured and had time to heal," says Mattingly. Montgomery took Stinnetts baby, clamped the umbilical cord and used baby wipes to clean her. I thought they knew what was going on, she said. "Oh, they're here, I've got to go," she said. When she called her attorneys that day, she could hardly speak. However, in the tiny town of Skidmore, Missouri, where the crime was committed, there is little sympathy for that argument. At state level, the number of sentences and executions continues a historic decline. All the while, Lisa's mother was being paid to let strange men rape Lisa. She got into multiple car accidents, struggled to keep a job, moved around constantly, drank heavily, engaged in sex work and neglected her children. 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. 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. We cant travel to talk to witnesses or to prepare experts at this point, Harwell, Montgomerys lawyer, said. "But one of the things that the president can do is say - to women who have been trafficked, and who have been sexually abused - 'Your abuse matters'.". 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. Why the fate of the only woman on federal death row hinges on these Tennessee attorneys and their health, Lisa Montgomery's execution, delayed by attorneys' COVID-19 cases, rescheduled for Jan. 12, Only woman on federal death row asks President Trump to be a 'hero,' commute her sentence, Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. Montgomery, who confessed, was later sentenced to death for the especially heinous murder as decided by a jury who heard her trial. Family members have claimed that Shaughnessy blamed Montgomery for the abuse and the divorce. The father was a teacher. She says it's not as if all the other people of Skidmore lead idyllic lives free from abuse, poverty and other destructive tragedies. For Montgomery, her lawyers argue, it began before she was born. Since receiving her execution date, she's been placed on suicide watch in an isolated cell. He married Judy Shaughnessy, who would become Montgomery's mother, in 1967 in Miami, Okla. Patterson was the second of six husbands Shaughnessy . "I would say, 'President Trump, I want you to look at the life that Lisa had led, I want to look at all the people that have failed her, I want you to look at the rape, the torture, the mental abuse, the physical abuse that this woman had endured,'" she says. Many there believe the final moments of Bobbie Jo Stinnett were so horrific, the death sentence is warranted. As Fritz patted Montgomery on the back of her hand, Strong said he noticed dried blood and tissue embedded beneath her fingernails. ", Strong said he arranged for that message to be shared with the four others, "because we were all a part of that.". The cold, vicious, calculating and brutal nature of her crimes shows that Montgomery knew exactly what she was doing, Strong said. He threatened to expose the imagined pregnancy and use it against her in the custody battle. The six-man, six-woman jury in October 2007 found Montgomery guilty and recommended she be executed. Authorities also questioned Kevin Montgomery but concluded he wasn't involved. A herd of rat terriers greeted them. Ramachandran said Montgomery told him she didn't remember killing Stinnett or cutting the baby out of her body. She faulted Montgomerys defense team at the time of the initial trial for failing to connect the dots between Montgomerys childhood trauma and her later behavior. "They put her on suicide watch to keep her from killing herself, so that they can execute her," she said. 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.. Babies born naturally tend to have misshapen heads initially because of the pressure experienced as they go through the birth canal, he said. Montgomery became the first female federal prisoner executed in 67 years, the first woman executed in the United States since Kelly Gissendaner in 2015, and the first person executed in the United States in 2021. Dorr met Montgomery after being imprisoned for helping an inmate escape in 2006 as Dorrran a dog training program for inmates at Lansing Correctional Facility in northeast Kansas. She has exhausted all legal options except a last-ditch appeal for clemency from President Donald Trump, which was filed Christmas Eve. She told Lisa she had to "earn her keep." Judy later. Judy Shaughnessy and her boyfriend physical, psychological and sexual abuse Lisa. They were also physically violent. Henry said Montgomery seemed out of touch with reality when Henry and Harwell, who work in Tennessee, traveled by plane to visit her in October and early November at Fort Worth. It was clear that she was traumatized, that she was somewhere else, he said. [N]ot only was it bizarre behavior, but it was very embarrassing for me as her daughter, she said. In response to traumatic events, children may dissociate from their feelings and their bodies to protect themselves from experiencing what is happening. The clemency process enables convicted criminals to request mercy and ask the nation's executive branch to step in, Henry said. If that disconnection is brought about with enough frequency and intensity, it can become more of a steady state of being, she added. Another case with Missouri ties. The crime itself shows that Lisa had lost all 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. But it wasn't Montgomery that Stinnett was expecting, it was a woman who went by the name of Darlene Fischer. 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. When Floyd Gwin died last July at age 81, Mattingly was listed among the survivors in his obituary. Three federal inmates - Orlando Hall, Alfred Bourgeois and Brandon Bernard - have been put to death since the 3 November presidential election. 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. she says. In the haze of her mental illness, she went to the home of a pregnant woman, killed her, and removed the baby. Lisa Montgomery has been charged in the December 16 death of Bobbie Jo Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant at the time. She would tell me I had to leave and I couldnt take anything with me because she bought everything, she recalled. Lisa Montgomery tried to get counseling the year before she killed Stinnettbut wasn'tconnected to a quality provider, her attorneys said. They believe that at the time of the crime, Montgomery was psychotic and out of touch with reality. As her big sister, Diane feels immense guilt about leaving Montgomery behind in that broken home, so many years ago. They had corresponded for weeks on an online forum for rat terrier breeders and enthusiasts called "Ratter Chatter". She was broken by people who were supposed to be her caregivers. Bobbie's family deserves her," says Meagan Morrow, a high school classmate of Stinnett's. Lisa Montgomery, a Kansas native scheduled within days to becomethe first woman executed by the federal government in 67 years, lived a childhood so abusive her attorneys call it akin to torture. Prosecutors shared records showing Montgomery had visited a website featuring a video of a live C-section birth, described as lasting from first cut to last stitch, and had made a practice run by driving the roughly 350 miles from Melvern to Skidmore and back the day before the killing. 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. Mattingly, Montgomerys sister, is planning on visiting her next week. "I felt sick watching the video. Judy Shaughnessy, Montgomery ' s mother, raised Lisa in poverty and chaos, with multiple stepfathers and in dozens of different homes, according to scores of interviews and documents cited. 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. 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. Though capital case defendants tend to be confused and stunned, those emotions were heightened with Montgomery, who had trouble responding to questions, Wurtz said. "She always wanted to be a mom," says Baumli. 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. But none of those other victims responded by killing a woman and cutting her baby out of her stomach, hesaid. Kleiner and Shaughnessy divorced in 1985, with Shaughnessy contending she once walked in on Kleiner and Montgomery having sex. The nature and circumstances of Montgomerys crime show she had lost touch with reality, says her half-sister, Diane Mattingly. Newspaper accounts show Montgomery had upset other users of that board by making false statements, including claiming to be pregnant. More recently, the states that have been carrying out executions, such as Texas and Tennessee, have halted and delayed executions because of the pandemic. For example, she said, the jury that recommended Montgomery be executed wasn't asked to consider the impact that would have on her four children and 12 grandchildren. Residents there tend to think her execution would bring an appropriate end to a painful chapter in their city's history, he said. Mattingly, 57, recalled the day her half-sister was brought home in a pink bundle after being born Feb. 27, 1968, in Pierce County, Washington. Montgomery was already vulnerable to serious mental illness, she added. Maybe you should focus your efforts on the fact that Lisa's mother, Judy Shaughnessy, was granted custody of a grandson the year prior to Lisa's crime. So my letters are important.. Judy drank throughout her pregnancy with Lisa and caused her to be born with brain damage. Montgomery claimed to live in northwest Missouri. Warnersaid the killinghad left Melvern residents stunned.. Likewise, that jury wasn't directed to consider whether Montgomery was severely mentally ill, which Montgomery's attorneys are asking the president to take into account. 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. "I have seen a lot of horrible things happen to women and children in my more than 40 years in law enforcement," Strongsaid. "She was hyperventilating," Henry said. As the car drove further and further away, Mattingly began to vomit. The couple returned to their home near Melvern, which was being watched by investigators working to identify the woman who had told Stinnett she was Darlene Fischer. "If I had, would they have taken Lisa out of the home also?" Shaughnessy was cruel and violent to both girls, according to a sworn statement from Patterson, who reported feeling ashamed that he did not step in to stop the abuse. Montgomerys family tree, on both her mother and fathers side, is filled with psychiatric and neurologic impairment, including mood disorders, intellectual disability, PTSD and schizophrenia. Stinnett wasn't breathing and was cold. Montgomery is worried that her fellow inmates will have trouble coping with her upcoming execution, said her friendToby Dorr. Recibi una inyeccin letal en una prisin de Terre Haute,. She gives herself as an example - when Stinnett was murdered, Baumli was in rehab for a drug addiction. In closing arguments, assistant U.S. Attorney Matt Whitworth asked the jury to think about Stinnett's daughter, Victoria Jo Stinnett. When Stinnett answered the door, Montgomery overpowered the pregnant woman, strangled her with a piece of rope, and cut the baby out of her womb. As Montgomery grew up, court records say, observersnoticed that she increasingly appeared to be "spaced out," "not emotionally present" or in "her own little world.". "She needs to be put to death.". In addition to her brain damage, Lisa developed multiple mental disorders, including bipolar disorder, temporal lobe epilepsy, dissociative disorder, and Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Montgomery was also prone to delusional thinking. She had catfished Stinnett online under a fake name. 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