Murder In The Heartland. M. William Phelps
his best to lead the investigation. While cops did their jobs working in and around the house, Espey walked next door, to “the neighbor to the west,” and started asking questions.
“A red car,” the neighbor said. “There was a red car there…. It had a big H on the hood.”
When they met up with Zeb and Bobbie Jo’s neighbor Chris Law some time later, “he confirmed there was a red car there in Bobbie Jo’s driveway,” Espey said. But it was the neighbor next door who broke the “red car” lead, not Law.
Espey and his team had the following tips: a “red car” with an H on the hood, a “Darlene Fischer” name of unknown origin, and a premature newborn “hopefully still alive.” Considering it was so early in the investigation—an hour hadn’t even passed yet—Espey had quite a few leads.
Espey realized the first thing he had to do was find Bobbie Jo’s missing child. No one knew what the child’s kidnapper had in mind after cutting the baby from the mother’s womb. For Espey, it felt personal. His daughter had just given birth to his second grandchild the week before. He knew what it was like to hold a newborn in his hands. He knew how special a time it should be for Becky Harper and Zeb Stinnett. With Bobbie Jo gone, finding the baby would be the only real victory he could give back to the family.
“I needed to find that baby,” he said. “It was very personal to me—and, no matter who got in my way, I wasn’t going to stop until I did.”
15
Prosecutors believe that Lisa Montgomery left Skidmore with the child and traveled west out of town on Highway “DD,” toward Hickory Creek and the Nodaway River. “The blacktop road,” Ben Espey called it.
“She was heading out of town, going west,” said Espey, “while we were heading into town, from the east.”
They missed each other by fewer than thirty minutes.
Lisa probably chose Highway “DD” because it bypassed the more direct route of Highway 113 to Highway 71 toward St. Joseph and Kansas City. She must have realized urban authorities, outnumbering those in the outlying towns almost ten to one, would be looking for anyone—male or female—traveling with a newborn baby.
When Espey found out that the last vehicle to be seen at Bobbie Jo’s was a red car, he radioed the lead out to every law enforcement agency, while his office in Maryville sent out a teletype. Shortly after the call went out, a Missouri State Highway Patrol (MSHP) cruiser engaged a red car in a high-speed pursuit on Highway 71 near Maryville.
“That pursuit,” said Espey, “ended up back in toward us in Skidmore, so we joined the chase.”
Espey wouldn’t normally have left his post at a crime scene, but someone over the radio said, “Red car in pursuit on seventy-one, possibly connected to the death in Skidmore.”
When Espey heard that, he took right off.
Fifteen to twenty minutes later, law enforcement ended up cornering a man in a red car on Route 29. He had nothing whatsoever to do with the crime. He was running from police because he had some overdue tickets and thought they were going to put him in jail.
Learning this, Espey headed back to the Stinnett home.
By now, the Buchanan County CSI team had logged on to Bobbie Jo’s computer and figured out Darlene Fischer was, indeed, the last person to meet with Bobbie Jo, according to the e-mails they were able to retrieve. Based on one specific e-mail Darlene had sent to Bobbie Jo, authorities thought they knew where she lived: Fairfax, Missouri, one county over.
Espey and one of his deputies took off, lights flashing, sirens blaring, for Fairfax, to see if they could locate Darlene Fischer.
16
Heading south on Route 59 after leaving the blacktop road, Lisa Montgomery is believed to have hit Highway 29 and set a beeline for Topeka, Kansas. She had to be careful. It wouldn’t take much to get pulled over: running a red light, speeding, weaving, maybe a broken turn signal on her vehicle she didn’t even know of.
At some point during her trip, she pulled over on the side of the road, washed the baby, sealed her belly button with a pair of “clips” a hospital might use for the same purpose, and threw the bloodied towels and blankets into the trunk, where they sat next to the rope she allegedly used to strangle Bobbie Jo and the serrated paring knife she used to cut her open, law enforcement said.
Lisa admitted later that here, along the side of the road, she started to put her elaborate story of giving birth to the child into effect.
After cleaning up the child, she called Mike Wheatley, pastor of the First Church of God in downtown Melvern, Kansas, where Lisa’s children had been going to church for the past four years.
“I just gave birth,” she told Pastor Wheatley. She seemed excited.
“Congratulations, Lisa,” answered Wheatley.
Lisa pulled out from the side of the road, Bobbie Jo’s baby next to her in a carry-on car seat, and headed for Kansas.
17
While family members of Bobbie Jo Stinnett were contacted on the evening of December 16, doctors at St. Francis Hospital in Maryville pronounced the twenty-three-year-old wife and mother dead. The trauma had been too much. Her petite body couldn’t take the punishment authorities claim Lisa Montgomery had unleashed in the act of violent fury that was, by now, being reported around the world.
Satellite trucks were pulling into Skidmore as Bobbie Jo lay on a gurney somewhere in St. Francis Hospital. All the major networks were sending reporters to the region: MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, even the British Broadcasting Company (BBC). Every major metropolitan newspaper across the country posted the story on their Web sites. The Christmas season was generally a slow news period. The murder of Bobbie Jo Stinnett was going to be a huge story. By nightfall, the world would hear of the horror in Skidmore. By the following morning, reporters would be swarming the area, looking to uncover anything they could about what had happened inside the small house at West Elm Street.
As word spread throughout town, Skidmore residents locked their doors and watched their backs, noting that until Bobbie Jo’s killer was caught, things would never be the same. Most were obviously appalled such a crime could take place in their tight-knit, close community. And to think it happened right in the middle of the day.
“Things like that just don’t happen ’roun he’a,” said one local.
Reverend Harold Hamon, who had married Zeb and Bobbie Jo about twenty months earlier, said he was likely “addressing Christmas cards” when the murder occurred. He remembered the time of day because a member of his congregation had called about the commotion going on up the road from his parish.
“Reverend,” asked the worried neighbor, “I heard an ambulance down by the church. Was anyone near the church hurt?”
Hamon could see Bobbie Jo’s house from the church rectory as he looked out the window. “Hold on,” he said, staring down the street. “There’s police cars down there. Don’t know what’s going on, though.”
“It’s almost unbelievable,” Hamon recalled, “that right under your nose something terrible can be happening.”
After talking it over with doctors, Sheriff Ben Espey was convinced there was a strong possibility Bobbie Jo’s child was still alive. He had no doubt in his mind what he had to do next.
“That’s the minute,” Espey said, “I started pushing to get the Amber Alert issued.” And that was where the problems and infighting among different law enforcement agencies began.
The base of the investigation had been moved from Skidmore to downtown Maryville. The Nodaway County Sheriff’s Department on North Vine Street, just below the center of town, was a small station compared to bigger-city police departments. But Espey felt comfortable in the building. It was a second home