Murder In The Heartland. M. William Phelps
gold earring, five o’clock shadow, grease under his fingernails, and mechanic hands as rough as sandpaper. He spoke with a Western drawl, like most in the neighborhood.
“[Lisa] was pretty much a part of Bobbie Jo’s life, anyway,” Law told a British television producer. “They went to dog shows together, swapped dog secrets, you know. I thought she was a friend.”
Indeed, the visitor had to be someone Bobbie Jo knew and, perhaps, trusted. This led some to later speculate when Lisa showed up at the door, Bobbie Jo must have recognized her as Lisa Montgomery. The question became then: with her cover blown, did Lisa charge at Bobbie Jo and push the door open, forcing her way into the house? (Law reported the door being wide open when he drove by.)
Or did Bobbie Jo, recognizing her, invite her in?
12
Becky Harper started walking to her daughter’s house sometime around 3:18 P.M., after she tried calling Bobbie Jo a few more times, but got no answer. Since Bobbie Jo had not shown up at Harper’s place of work to pick her up, she decided to walk to West Elm Street and see what was going on.
A mother’s instinct.
“I keep thinking,” Harper later told a reporter, “I wish I had gone over there earlier.”
When Harper arrived, Bobbie Jo’s door was wide open. That was strange, since those unseasonably warm temperatures that had moved in during the early-afternoon hours had given way to the low thirties by late afternoon. There was also a slight southerly wind curling up around the fields south of town, kicking the mercury down a notch further.
Why was the door open?
“Bobbie?”
No answer.
“Bobbie,” Harper said, walking in. “Honey, you here?”
The porch swing Bobbie Jo and Zeb had hanging from the ceiling of the overhead porch was rattling a bit in the wind. It was spooky. Bad karma was in the air. Something was obviously wrong.
At 3:26 P.M., Becky Harper entered the room in which the horribly bloodied body of her daughter lay. Bobbie Jo’s arms were folded up over her chest; her face was covered with blood.
Although quite unnerved by what she was looking at, Harper reacted immediately, reaching for her cell phone to call the Nodaway County Sheriff’s Department in Maryville.
Speaking to the 911 dispatcher, Harper was frantic and struggled to find the right words. It couldn’t be real. It had to be some sort prank, some inconsiderate joke that didn’t make any sense.
“My baby is dead!” Harper screamed into the phone at 3:28 P.M., her voice raw with agony. “My baby…she’s lying in a pool of blood.”
“Ma’am, please tell us what happened,” said dispatcher Lindsey Steins with as much composure as she could manage. “Please try to remain calm and give me an address.”
Ben Espey, the county sheriff, was sitting in his office ten feet away when he heard the call come in. He walked toward Steins’s desk, which was flanked by three computer screens, a switchboard, and several two-way radios. It was located in a dark area of the sheriff’s department, in front of a line of jail cells. As Steins and dispatcher Melissa Wallace sat wearing headsets and typed on a keyboard, their work area resembled some sort of Bat Cave setting.
“It’s my…my daughter…It appears as though her stomach is exposed.”
Stomach exposed? thought Espey, looking at Steins.
As Steins and Wallace, who was now listening in, typed, Espey stood over their shoulders and read the computer screen, realizing there was a “major problem” in Skidmore.
“Hey,” yelled Espey to one of his deputies.
“Yes, sir?”
“Radio my lieutenant investigator now and tell him to meet me in Skidmore ASAP. Give him the address.”
Harper was delirious by this time. Bobbie Jo was sprawled on the floor, blood all over the room, a large pool of it underneath her lifeless body.
What is going on?
Even more disturbing to Harper was that Bobbie Jo’s midsection was flat.
“It looks like her stomach exploded!” screamed Harper, in tears.
13
Within eleven minutes of the 911 call, Nodaway County sheriff Ben Espey arrived in Skidmore, one of his chief investigators not far behind. Espey was contemplating several different scenarios. “It looks like her stomach exploded” kept playing back in his mind. What went on inside that house?
“Nobody here could ever conceive of this taking place,” said Espey. “It’s inconceivable.”
With sixteen towns in Nodaway County, housing some twenty-three thousand people in about five thousand households, the county seat is located in Maryville, a family-oriented town held together by strong bonds of community. Petit larcenies and drug-related felonies largely account for the majority of Nodaway County’s criminal activities. In the twelve years Ben Espey had been sheriff, he responded to six murders, all of which he and his deputies, with help from other agencies, solved within a twenty-four-hour period.
Maryville and its surrounding counties are farming country, semiflat land amid rolling short hills spread out far and wide. People watch one another’s backs and try to keep their communities as safe as they can. A crime such as the one just called into the Nodaway County Sheriff’s Department on the afternoon of December 16 was beyond comprehension. As Sheriff Espey drove to Skidmore, he could see Christmas ornaments up all over the county. Inflatable Santa Clauses perched in front yards along the roadside, with plastic reindeer and tinsel dressed on pine trees throughout town greens. Churches were planning food drives and Secret Santa programs, midnight services and holiday celebrations. Houses were decked with colored lights and fake snow.
When Espey arrived at Bobbie Jo and Zeb’s house, he ran into the den, where Becky Harper, crying desperately while pleading for help, was trying, she believed, to keep Bobbie Jo alive by administering CPR. One of Espey’s 911 dispatchers, Melissa Wallace, had instructed Harper over the phone on how to do CPR properly.
“Does she have a pulse?” Melissa asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Is she breathing?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“Well, I’m going to tell you how to do CPR. Have you ever done CPR?”
When Espey first looked at Bobbie Jo, he could tell “immediately,” he said, it was too late. “I took a pulse and there was no life.”
“Give me your cell phone,” Espey told Harper. It was covered with Bobbie Jo’s blood, dripping as Espey told his dispatcher, “I’m here…. I’ll continue the CPR.”
Despite the horror of the scene, Harper kept her composure and focused, she thought, on trying to keep Bobbie Jo alive.
“It was a pretty gruesome sight,” Espey commented. One of the worst he had seen in his two decades of law enforcement experience.
Since Harper had started CPR, by law Espey had to continue.
“Step aside, ma’am,” he said as calmly as he could after folding Harper’s cell phone and throwing it out of the room. “Go get me a wet washcloth and bring it back.”
Bobbie Jo’s face was covered with blood, her mouth full of it. “I needed the cloth to wipe off all the blood.”
“My daughter’s eight months pregnant,” Harper cried at one point.
Espey looked down. Her stomach’s flat. Pregnant? Her words made no sense to him.
Within five minutes, medics came into the room and took over. As