Murder In The Heartland. M. William Phelps
said, starting the vehicle and lighting a cigarette.
One shot rang out, hitting McElroy in the head. After that, another…this time hitting him in the chest…then another…and another.
As McElroy bled to death, his foot hit the accelerator of his truck and raced the engine.
Thirty-five to forty-five townspeople reportedly watched the murder take place and later refused to talk about it to anyone, including law enforcement. McElroy’s wife, who was sitting next to him in the truck as he was shot to death, came out of it untouched.
One resident later called McElroy’s killers heroes, comparing them to the inventors of penicillin.
The McElroy slaying was the first of a set of bizarre and unusually rare murders in Skidmore. In 2000, a local woman, Mary Gillenwater, was reportedly stomped to death by her boyfriend. Months later, a twenty-year-old, Branson Perry, vanished after leaving his house one afternoon. Law enforcement speculated Perry had been abducted by a local convicted child pornographer, but to date, the case remains unsolved.
Sixty-four-year-old Jo Ann Stinnett, Zeb and Bobbie Jo Stinnett’s aunt, was Mary Gillenwater’s grandmother. Branson Perry was her grandson. Such is life in small-town Skidmore.
“People will ask,” Jo Ann told a reporter later, “‘What’s wrong with Skidmore?’ But it’s not Skidmore’s fault. I love Skidmore.”
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Two key factors would emerge later regarding Lisa Montgomery’s visit to Bobbie Jo’s home under the subterfuge of buying one of her rat terrier puppies: one, Lisa had made a promise to herself she wasn’t leaving Bobbie Jo’s house without her baby; two, that Bobbie Jo wasn’t going to stop her.
The blood–soaked wood-grain floors left behind in the den of Bobbie Jo and Zeb’s house were an indication of the horror that took place in Skidmore that afternoon. The house Bobbie Jo and Zeb rented had a tiny living room off to the right side as soon as you walked in, which was directly across from their bedroom. If you walked toward the back of the house, there was a kitchen with a small dining room attached to it, which led into the den on the left. Bobbie Jo had fixed up this room—where, law enforcement later said, she and Lisa ended up—for her dogs. It had two black metal dog cages on the floor and an old dresser in the corner, where Bobbie groomed the dogs.
Bobbie Jo and Lisa must have talked for a time about rat terriers. They’d had several discussions online about the canines and here they were now face-to-face, brought together—albeit by a lie—because of the dogs.
Being eight months pregnant, Bobbie Jo was, of course, clearly showing. Photographs from the time prove she wore her extra weight well and had a lovely expectant-mother glow.
Bobbie Jo was under the impression that Lisa, too, was in the final stages of pregnancy. Lisa had told Bobbie Jo via e-mail and instant messages that she was carrying twins. Still, why wasn’t Lisa showing? She wasn’t overweight, nor was she trying to hide the fact that she wasn’t pregnant. Wasn’t she worried about what Bobbie Jo might say when they met in person?
Crime-scene photographs give clues as to what happened. In those photographs, blood is spread from one end of the room to the other; heel marks and palm prints were fused with several units of blood and smudged all over, as if a child had gone wild on the floor with red finger paint, proving there was movement in the room after Bobbie Jo had been cut open. Moreover, authorities would later discover evidence on Lisa Montgomery’s personal computer proving she had downloaded an Internet video of how to perform a Caesarean section.
“They struggled,” said one official. “You can see, from the photographs, that Bobbie Jo didn’t die immediately. Or you wouldn’t have blood or blood clots spread all over the room like it was.”
Because of the blood spread all over the floor, law enforcement believed there had been a violent struggle for life and death. Bobbie Jo fought for her child. That much was clear.
“What [happened] was that she [Lisa] took a quarter-inch rope and choked Bobbie Jo out with it.”
The theory was that Lisa talked Bobbie Jo into bending down to open one of the dog cages on the floor, so she could pick up a terrier to show it to Lisa. The position made her vulnerable because she had to turn her back to Lisa while she was doing it.
“When Bobbie Jo bent over, Lisa came up from behind and choked her out. So she [Bobbie Jo] passes out, and Lisa starts cutting her open with a four-inch serrated paring knife she brought from her home.”
Unlike the way it plays out in movies, choking a human being to death is not easy. It takes several minutes to cut off someone’s oxygen enough to cause death. Yet, within a matter of seconds, the person being choked loses consciousness—as Bobbie Jo did. If the person doing the choking doesn’t continue, the victim will regain consciousness at some point.
“After Bobbie Jo passed out, Lisa started cutting her open and…that’s when Bobbie Jo came back to life.”
Blood clots scattered around the floor in different areas of the room provide clues to a struggle that resulted after Bobbie Jo regained consciousness. While bleeding profusely from her abdomen, she fought for her and her child’s lives.
“Well, the struggle was then back on…. Then Lisa managed to get Bobbie Jo choked out for a second time. By then, she had lost enough blood and was being choked to where she…well…she died.”
During the fight for life and death, Bobbie Jo grabbed her assailant’s hair and ended up with strands of it in both her hands. DNA testing later proved the hair to be Lisa Montgomery’s.
Graphic doesn’t even begin to describe the scene in Bobbie Jo’s den when Becky Harper decided to walk over to the house and find out why Bobbie Jo wasn’t answering her telephone.
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Twenty-three-year-old Chris Law had lived a few houses away from the Stinnetts ever since they moved into the neighborhood. Law, though, had known Zeb, he told reporters later, “since we were in Head Start together.”
On occasion, Zeb would pop over to the Laws’, and the two men would work on cars together. Bobbie Jo would wander over sometimes, most likely just to be near Zeb, but Law said she rarely spoke and, at times, “hardly said a word at all.”
On December 16, Law planned on visiting Bobbie Jo. Not to have coffee or chat about the latest gossip in town, but mainly to be a “good neighbor” and check up on his friend’s pregnant wife.
“They were good-natured people,” said Chris Law.
So, Chris Law was going to do what anybody else in town might have done under the same circumstances. Bobbie Jo had been to the hospital recently for several prenatal tests. As far as Law knew, she faced no major complications, but it wouldn’t hurt to stop in and say hello on his way into Maryville to run a few errands.
“I observed a pinkish red two-door vehicle,” Law told the FBI later, “in front of the Stinnett residence…possibly a Mazda, a Toyota, or a Hyundai.”
Law was referring to Lisa Montgomery’s car; she had been inside the house with Bobbie Jo at the time Law was considering stopping by.
When Law turned onto the corner of West Elm from North Orchard, he spied a “dirty” vehicle sitting in the Stinnett driveway and drove around the block in his truck, he said, “rethinking his decision” to pop in.
Well, she’s got company, Law told himself, and I won’t bother her.
“I never considered the idea that [Bobbie Jo] was in danger,” Law said later on television. “Stuff like that just doesn’t happen ’round here.”
Moreover, the front door to the Stinnett house was wide open the entire time Law observed the red car in the driveway. It was winter. Although it was an unseasonably warm day, leaving the door open wasn’t something Bobbie Jo likely would have done.
Then again,