Strong was a police detective in Maryville, Mo., 14 miles northeast of Skidmore, and Fritz was a detective at Cameron, also in northwest Missouri. Babcock said the constant in every case she has seen is an overwhelming history of trauma. 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. 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. Nobody has said that Lisa should never have been punished. Judy later married a man named Jack who punched, kicked and choked his children, including Lisa. I'm bruised, but I'm not broken. Lisa Montgomery, a federal prisoner, is now slated to be executed on Jan. 12. The family moved often. As an adult, Montgomerys dysfunctional life mimicked that of her childhood. She enacted this in the grip of a very broken mind.". "It was pretty awful.". After their biological father left the home, Mattingly says they were left alone with Shaughnessy's boyfriends, at least one of whom started raping Mattingly. 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. Montgomery's execution, scheduled less than 60 days, will be the first of three federal executions in January before Trump leaves office. 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. My sister is on death row, Kleiner wrote in the lawsuit petition. Her mother, Judy Shaughnessy, beat and tormented all of her children, proudly telling an investigator that her daughter's first sentence was "Don't spank me, it hurts." Montgomery's first stepfather . When Montgomery was in her mid-teens,she was sexually assaulted by Kleiner and three or four of his friends, according to court records. "I cried," says Strong. Montgomery's mother, Judy Shaughnessy, drank while Montgomery was in utero, leaving her with brain damage, court documents say. For Montgomery, her lawyers argue, it began before she was born. They found her cradling a new-born girl she claimed to have given birth to the previous day. He recalled that Montgomery begged him not to tell anyone, for fear that Kleiner would kill her. 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 legal team is fighting against the clock to gather the information needed for her clemency petition, which has been complicated by the coronavirus crisis. Around this time, Shaughnessy and Patterson separated, and Mattingly was removed from the house by child protective services an act which she credits for saving her life. She had four children in less than four years before being sterilized. I didn't know what to do or how to talk to my sister about it.". I couldn't believe how good it felt to be part of a loving family. In December 2004, Montgomery drove 281.5 km (175 miles) from her home in Kansas to Skidmore, where she had an appointment to look at some puppies owned by Stinnett. 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. "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.". Ive always said that I am bruised, but not broken, Mattingly said, her voice choked with tears. "It was violent and like a scene out of a horror movie," he 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. Lisa Montgomery, a Kansas native scheduled within days to become the first woman executed by the federal government in 67 years, lived a childhood so abusive her attorneys call it akin to torture. And, in fact, blaming her for it.. The couple had four children in five years, but the relationship was not the escape from violence that Montgomery might have hoped it would be. Montgomerys case is not about whether she is responsible for the crime; she is. A herd of rat terriers greeted them. Stinnett bled to death. She struggles to maintain her own hygiene, loses focus during conversations with others and has trouble planning simple tasks.". Lisa Montgomery and Bobbie Jo Stinnett got to know each other online through a shared love of dogs. In a letterin late November written with a black crayon, Montgomery told Dorr that other inmates at Carswell took it "really hard" when her execution date was set. 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. Montgomery's alcoholic mother, Judy Shaughnessy, knew about the assaults but blamed Montgomery for bringing them upon herself. My sister, Lisa Montgomery, is broken. 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.. On her way out the door, Mattingly said, Shaughnessy leaned over and told her it was all her fault she was being taken away. Mattingly, Montgomerys sister, is planning on visiting her next week. Montgomery was left behind with her mother. I was put in foster care with a wonderful family. 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. 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. More recently, the states that have been carrying out executions, such as Texas and Tennessee, have halted and delayed executions because of the pandemic. On the trip home, she stopped in Topeka and called her husband to say she had gone into labor while Christmas shopping and had given birth at a Topeka birthing center. Montgomery is scheduled to be put to death by a lethal injection of pentobarbital at Terre Haute prison in Indiana. When I was eight and Lisa was four, social services came and rescued me from Judy, leaving Lisa and our other sister behind. Court records say Kleiner drank heavily, beat his wife and children, and made his daughters take off their clothes before he spanked them. He was in her. But it wasn't Montgomery that Stinnett was expecting, it was a woman who went by the name of Darlene Fischer. She didnt have nobody there to protect her once I was out of the home.. 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. While a six-week time period to prepare for clemency might always be unreasonable, it is particularly arduous given the pandemic.. However, calls for Trump to be merciful are hardly unanimous. Today there is a single restaurant and few of the streets are paved. According to interviews with her half-siblings and others who spent time with the family, Montgomery's stepfather built a shed onto the trailer where he, and eventually his friends, raped and beat her. The five investigators who went to Montgomery's home that day recently began communicating with oneanother again, said Strong, who is now sheriff ofNodaway County, which includes Maryville and Skidmore. 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. Mental health experts who examined her believe that her history of childhood trauma exacerbated a genetic predisposition to mental illness that ran in her family. She lapsed increasingly into mental illness and repeatedly faked pregnancy. She had catfished Stinnett online under a fake name. 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. When Mattingly and Montgomery were young, Shaughnessy beat them and doled out cruel forms of punishment, like taping Montgomery's mouth shut, or pushing Mattingly out into the snow, naked. She had bought supplies, including a home birth kit, and searched online for how to perform a caesarean section. Montgomery took Stinnetts baby, clamped the umbilical cord and used baby wipes to clean her. 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. 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. That was ultimately dropped in favour of an insanity defence, but Henry believes the damage to Montgomery's credibility was already done. Prosecutors said Montgomery was faking mental illness, notingthat many people are sexually abused, but few go on to kill. "Come on, baby. 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. The baby was returned to her father, after being recovered from Montgomery. She is permitted Sudoku puzzles and coloring pages andone book at a time. Nationwide, only 54 women have been executed since 1900. Jack also raped Lisa for years. Her lawyers had argued she was a mentally ill victim of abuse who. 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. 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. Shaughnessy forced Montgomery to have sex with men in exchange for money and services, and also punished her children by killing the family dog in front of them,smashing its head with a shovel, the attorneys said. Ms. But my hope is President Trump will stop Lisa's execution and commute her sentence to life in prison. In the haze of her mental illness, she went to the home of a pregnant woman, killed her, and removed the baby. Her children were disturbed by it. Warnersaid the killinghad left Melvern residents stunned.. At least five times after she was sterilized, she told people that she was pregnant. "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. As the oldest, I was the protector of Lisa and our baby sister. Newspaper accounts show Montgomery had upset other users of that board by making false statements, including claiming to be pregnant. Being loved unconditionally helped me heal, find a caring husband, and raise two children who have hearts of gold. 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. Please, honey.". And to not fail her.". Her victim's community said otherwise. She was often spaced out, appearing disconnected from reality. "I think that side of Lisa needs to be out there.". 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. Stitched together, they form a tapestry of family dysfunction, abuse, neglect, professional negligence, substance abuse and untreated mental illness. Kleiner was never charged. "Today the death penalty has a face of my friend and I just can't be quiet about it," she said. Court records describe her as a quiet loner who spent a lot of time reading books. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Randy Strong, one of the investigators who would later get Montgomery to confess, said she apparently used part of a clotheslineto create a garrote, slipping it over Stinnett's head from behind, probably as she was on her knees putting a puppy into a dog carrier. Including a home birth kit, and raise two children who have hearts of.. 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