Join Facebook to connect with Judy Shaughnessy and others you may know. "My sister was crying and in pain. When Montgomery was 15, Shaughnessy and Kleiner separated. Montgomery's father, John Patterson, a 25-year-old in the military, was also an alcoholic. The crime itself shows that Lisa had lost all touch with reality. Montgomery graduated in 1986 from high school at Cleveland, Okla., with hopes of joining the Air Force to earn money for college. 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. Montgomery also talked about the abuseshe had endured from her stepfather, Jack Kleiner, and the first of her two husbands, Carl Boman, Dorr said. A survivor of incest and sex trafficking, she is diagnosed with bipolar disorder with psychotic features, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, temporal lobe epilepsy, and cerebellar dysfunction, said Amy Harwell, a federal public defender in Tennessee who is working on Montgomerys case. Montgomery often read her Bible or did things with her hands, including writing, quilting, and making placemats and bookmarks, Dorr said. Lisa Montgomery and Bobbie Jo Stinnett got to know each other online through a shared love of dogs. "They put her on suicide watch to keep her from killing herself, so that they can execute her," she said. As the car drove further and further away, Mattingly began to vomit. Lisa Montgomery strangle one pregnant woman for Missouri before cutting and kidnapping her baby in 2004. . 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. They recommended a sentence of death. Dorr said she and Montgomery were in the same pod,in which inmates may gather outside their cells,in 2006 and 2007 at Leavenworth Detention Center, a for-profit federal facility in northeast Kansas. ", More: Only woman on federal death row asks President Trump to be a 'hero,' commute her sentence. She would be the first woman executed by the federal government in 67. The U.S. has not executed a woman in 67 years. I cant understand why they have to kill this woman, knowing her background and everything that happened, he said. When issuing his original stay of execution, the district. 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. They would beat and slap her if she was doing it wrong. When they were done, they urinated on her like she was trash.. Mattingly said she saw terror in her half-sister's bright green eyes. He said she stood out to the extentthere appeared to be something wrong" with her. The population hovers around just 250, and everyone knew Bobbie Jo Stinnett and her family. I didn't know what to do or how to talk to my sister about it.". "Maybe she could have been saved, too. "I felt sick watching the video. A home videoshowsCarl Boman raping and beating Montgomery, said her half-brother, Teddy Kleiner, who gave a sworn statementsaying he had seen it. Montgomery smelled like a sour ashtray and body sweat" as Don Fritz and Randy Strong interrogated her on Dec. 17, 2004, Strong recalled. The baby was returned to her father, after being recovered from Montgomery. But it was not a pet that she was to retrieve that day. She had brain damage, likely caused by exposure to alcohol when she was a. Patterson made a mistake by abandoning them to "that crazy lady," he said at Montgomery's sentencing hearing in 2007. 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 TerreHaute, Ind. And that would be from across a courtroom, where lawyers for the US government were trying to persuade a jury to sentence Montgomery to death. The girls' biological father left the home, and after a while, Mattingly was whisked away to foster care. Nobody has said that Lisa should never have been punished. The only woman on federal death row, Montgomery is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Dec. 8 at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. 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. she says. Patterson was transferred after Montgomerys birth to Fort Riley inKansas, where their family lived when another daughter was born in 1970. 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.. The divorce left Shaughnessy no longer entitled to be Mattingly's legal guardian. Its not just the childhood maltreatment and psychological abuse and neglect, or the incredible sexual abuse by her stepfather, or the sex trafficking, Porterfield said. Stinnett lived with her husband, Zeb, in Skidmore, Mo., a town near the state's northwest corner with fewerthan 300 people today. She told Lisa she had to "earn her keep.". During divorce proceedings, Shaughnessy admitted to the court that she had walked in on her husband raping Montgomery. They hold a collection and try to do something nice for Stinnett's mother. His message contained a "very heartfelt thank you. "Little Lisa was in the bed next to mine every time," she said. Her children were disturbed by it. She says it's not as if all the other people of Skidmore lead idyllic lives free from abuse, poverty and other destructive tragedies. More: Lisa Montgomery's execution, delayed by attorneys' COVID-19 cases, rescheduled for Jan. 12. But they were what we come to understand as neuro-physiological adaptations to survive being constantly under assault.. Every year. Shaughnessy in 1974 married her third husband, Jack Kleiner, a divorced father of five. Montgomery's number of crayons and pieces of paper hassince been increased to 10 each. Lisa Montgomery's friend, Toby Dorr, provided this photo she took of a letter Montgomery wrote to her in November using black crayon. Since 2008, Montgomery has been held in a federal prison in Texas for female inmates with special medical and psychological needs, where she has been receiving psychiatric care. Read about our approach to external linking. They also discovered that Shaughnessy prostituted. One of the lead investigators in the case, Randy Strong, wants Montgomery executed. Read about our approach to external linking. A few years after Mattingly was removed from the home, when Montgomery was in kindergarten, her mother remarried a man named Jack Kleiner. 2023 BuzzFeed, Inc. All rights reserved. A sworn statement from David Kidwell Sr. identified as being Montgomery's cousin and a deputy sheriff said shecried as she told him Kleiner and his friends on more than one occasion had raped her for hours, then "urinated on her like trash. Henry says Montgomery's original legal defence after she was arrested and charged with murder was woefully inadequate, and presented few of the details about her abuse, trauma and mental illness. Lisa Montgomery is no different. On her way out the door, Mattingly said, Shaughnessy leaned over and told her it was all her fault she was being taken away. "God, no, please," she said. Montgomery lived during her childhood in Washington, Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, California and Texas. Meanwhile, her mother in 1985 had married Richard Boman, whose son Montgomery's stepbrother, Carl Boman got Montgomery pregnant. "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. It turns out that it only takes a few people to save a child's life: being loved by my foster parents saved mine. Montgomery's second husband Kevin Montgomery, who lives near Melvern and remains married to her voiced support for her bid for clemency in a statement releasedthrough his wife's attorneys. His physical abuse of the children had sexual undercurrents: He would make the girls strip naked before whipping them. Lisa was anally, orally, and vaginally raped by several men, one after the other for several hours at a time. One theory her lawyers put forward regarding the chain of events that led to the murder, is that Montgomery feared her ex-husband would expose her lies about being pregnant and use it against her as he sought custody of their children. In addition to Strong and Fritz, those investigators were FBI Special Agents Mike Miller and Scott Gentine and Topeka police officer Tom Glor. Montgomery was put on suicide watch as soon as her execution date was set, Henry said, adding thatMontgomery had previously attempted suicide but not since 2012. 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. But Fischer was a name that Montgomery had been using when she separately began messaging Stinnett from a different email address inquiring about buying one of her puppies. She did not see her again until Montgomerys trial 34 years later. "It was pretty awful.". But Lisa was broken. People confuse punishment with culpability, she went on. As the oldest, I was the protector of Lisa and our baby sister. Mattingly and Montgomery were best friends. They slept in twin beds in a small bedroomand fell asleep most nights holding hands, Mattingly said. The couple had three children in rapid succession. Henry says this was an early sign of her mental illnesses, which include bipolar disorder, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, dissociative disorder and traumatic brain injury. President Donald Trump can "break the chain of evil" experienced by Montgomery and other members of her family by granting clemency and commuting her sentence to life imprisonment, Mattingly said. He said he was "reduced to tears" when Zeb Stinnett sent him a message last month on the 16th anniversary of Montgomery's arrest for the murder of his wife. I couldn't believe how good it felt to be part of a loving family. As one family story goes, Montgomerys first words as a toddler were, dont spank me.. However, calls for Trump to be merciful are hardly unanimous. She has always accepted responsibility. However, the executions ordered by President Trump are continuing. 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. She is not the "worst of the worst" for whom the death penalty was intended. Judy Shaughnessy had already raised two convicted felons at the time. They gave me unconditional love, they taught me my self-worth, she said. Her mother also began trafficking her, allowing handymen like electricians and plumbers to sexually abuse Montgomery in exchange for work on the house. The Trump administration announced it was reinstating executions last summer after an almost 20-year hiatus. 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. . 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. Residents there tend to think her execution would bring an appropriate end to a painful chapter in their city's history, he said. When Mattingly attendedMontgomery's sentencing hearing in 2007, which was the first time she had seen her sister in about 35 years, she said Montgomery's face bore the same look of fear it had when they were separated. Facebook gives people the. 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. 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. She enacted this in the grip of a very broken mind.". Judy later married a man named Jack who punched, kicked and choked his children, including Lisa. Lisa Montgomery - the only female inmate on federal death row in the US - has been executed for murder in the state of Indiana. 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. She is permitted Sudoku puzzles and coloring pages andone book at a time. Violent acts against pregnant women and their fetuses fall into that category. They have been joined by a chorus of supportive voices from the legal field, including 41 former and current prosecutors, as well as human rights entities like the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. She testified as. "She needs to be put to death.". They married in 1986. Her mother and father, teachers at school who suspected abuse, and the courts who learned of her victimization when she was a teen and did nothing. 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. After five hours of deliberation, the jury found Montgomery guilty. But the psychological abuse targeted at her was even more damaging. She moved in 1999 to Melvern, a town about 40 miles south of Topeka with 375 people today. She also told one of her stepbrothers about the sexual abuse around that time. 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