A death row inmate, 43, will become the first female federal prisoner to be executed in 70 years after she was convicted of strangling a p...
A death row inmate, 43, will become the first female federal prisoner to be executed in 70 years after she was convicted of strangling a pregnant woman to death and cutting the unborn baby out of her womb in 2004.
The US Justice Department announced Friday that convicted killer Lisa Montgomery will be put to death on December 8 by lethal injection.
Montgomery was sentenced to death for the depraved Missouri murder of Bobbie Jo Stinnett after she strangled the 23-year-old and cut her baby out of her womb with a carving knife - while Montgomery was faking being pregnant at the time.
The baby, Victoria Jo Stinnett, survived the attack and is now 16 years old.
Montgomery's execution will mark the eighth federal one this year after the Trump administration began pushing ahead with executions this summer ahead of the 2020 presidential race after a 17-year pause.
She will become the first female federal inmate put to death in 70 years, since the execution of Bonnie Heady for kidnapping and murdering a 6-year-old boy back in 1953.
Montgomery will be executed by lethal injection at US Penitentiary Terre Haute, Indiana, the DOJ said in a statement Friday.
She was found guilty of federal kidnapping resulting in death and sentenced to death in 2007 for the slaying of Stinnett.
Montgomery met her victim online under the pretence of wanting to buy a rat terrier.
Montgomery was sentenced to death for the depraved Missouri murder of Bobbie Jo Stinnett (pictured) after she strangled the 23-year-old and cut her baby out of her womb with a carving knife - while Montgomery faked being pregnant at the time
The baby Victoria Jo miraculously survived the attack and is now 16 years old. Stinett's husband Zeb is pictured with Victoria Jo in 2004
Montgomery posed as 'Darlene Fischer' and started chatting with Stinnett in the chatroom called 'Ratter Chatter.'
She told her victim she was pregnant and the two women chatted in the room and over email about their pregnancies.
Stinnett was eight months' pregnant while Montgomery was faking her pregnancy, telling her victim as well as her family and friends that she was full term.
On December 16 2004, the two women arranged to meet at Stinnett's home over a purchase of a rat terrier.
Montgomery arrived at the home in Skidmore and strangled Stinnett with a neon pink rope.
She then cut the baby girl from her victim's womb.
The killer then tried to pass the infant girl off as her own child.
Bobbie Jo and Zeb Stinnett before her brutal murder in 2004
Victoria Jo Stinnett, who is now 16 years old, was cut from her mother's womb by Montgomery
Stinnett's mother discovered her daughter's butchered body hours later.
Police arrested Montgomery the next day at her farmhouse and the baby, who miraculously survived, was returned to her father Zeb Stinnett.
In 2007, a US District Court for the Western District of Missouri sentenced Montgomery to death for the crimes.
During her trial, Montgomery's defense argued the Kansas woman suffered from a delusional belief that she was pregnant, and said she may have been unable to differentiate between right and wrong when she killed Stinnett.
The defense team portrayed her as a victim of severe mental illness whose delusion of being pregnant was being threatened, causing her to enter a dreamlike state when the killing took place.
They also argued that she had post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by mental, physical and sexual abuse in her childhood.
But prosecutors said Montgomery carefully planned the fatal meeting at Stinnett's home in Skidmore, Missouri, pretending she wanted to purchase a rat terrier puppy.
They said Montgomery tried to pass off Stinnett's baby as her own, telling her husband she had gone into labor while on a shopping trip and having him pick her up near a Topeka health centre where she said she gave birth.
Montgomery had undergone a tubal ligation in 1990 after the birth of her fourth child.
The US Justice Department announced Friday that convicted killer Lisa Montgomery (pictured) will be put to death on December 8 by lethal injection
Montgomery (pictured) was sentenced to death for the depraved Missouri murder of Bobbie Jo Stinnett. Her federal execution will mark the eighth this year
But soon after, she began falsely reporting a series of pregnancies. In 2004, she claimed to be due in mid-December.
Her husband, Carl Boman, had become suspicious of her latest pregnancy claim and threatened to use it against her as he sought custody of two of the couple's four children. A custody hearing had been set for January 2005.
Montgomery's mother and sister also had been telling Montgomery's husband and his parents that it was impossible for her to carry a child.
Prosecutors said Montgomery used a rope to choke Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant. But Stinnett was conscious and trying to defend herself as Montgomery used a kitchen knife to cut the baby girl from the womb, prosecutors said.
'The only good thing that comes from this tragedy is that little Victoria is a healthy baby and is reunited with her family,' US Attorney John F. Wood said at the time of the trial.
After initially denying the crime, Montgomery told investigators she had taken a knife, rope and umbilical cord clamp with her to Stinnett's home.
Her attorney, Kelley Henry, said that Montgomery deserves to live because she is mentally ill and suffered childhood abuse.
'Lisa Montgomery has long accepted full responsibility for her crime, and she will never leave prison,' Henry said in a statement.
The last woman to be executed by the U.S. government was Bonnie Heady, who was put to death in a gas chamber in Missouri in 1953
Bonnie Heady (left, on the day of her arrest) was involved in the kidnapping and subsequent murder of 6-year-old Bobby Greenlease in October 1953. The boy ended up being buried in Heady's back yard. She was put to death in a gas chamber (right)
'But her severe mental illness and the devastating impacts of her childhood trauma make executing her a profound injustice.'
The justice department on Friday also scheduled a December 10 execution for Brandon Bernard, who with his accomplices murdered two youth ministers in 1999.
The two executions will be the eighth and ninth the federal government has carried out in 2020.
The last woman to be executed by the U.S. government was Bonnie Heady, who was put to death in a gas chamber in Missouri in 1953, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
She was involved in the kidnapping and subsequent murder of 6-year-old Bobby Greenlease in October 1953. The boy ended up being buried in Heady's back yard.
The Trump administration ended an informal 17-year-hiatus in federal executions in July, after announcing last year that the Bureau of Prisons was switching to a new single-drug protocol for lethal injections, from a three-drug combination it last used in 2003.
The new protocol revived long-running legal challenges to lethal injections. In August, a federal judge in Washington, D.C. ruled the Justice Department was violating the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act in not seeking a doctor's prescription to administer the highly regulated barbiturate.
But an appeals court held the violation did not in itself amount to 'irreparable harm' and allowed federal executions to proceed.
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