Lisa Montgomery Cut Open a Pregnant Lady's Belly and Stole Her Baby

Lisa Montgomery was an American criminal who only killed one person but it was done in a very gruesome way.

Just because she wanted a baby!

On 16th December 2004 at Skidmore, Missouri, Lisa Montgomery strangled an eight month pregnant Bobbie Jo Stinnett, cut her belly open while she was still alive, stole the baby, and left her to bleed to death.

She then tried to pass the baby off as her own.

Lisa was the first woman to be federally executed since 1953. Which means the federal government said, “You’re going to die!” and they executed her on 13th January 2021.

This is one crazy story guys, so grab your popcorn and have a seat! Let’s start with Lisa’s traumatic childhood and see the numerous times numerous people have failed her in her life.

Lisa was born to Judy Shaughnessy on 27th February 1968 in Melvern, Kansas. She was born with permanent brain damage because Judy was an alcoholic while pregnant with Lisa.

Lisa’s biological father left when she was a baby. She never had a stable home because Judy moved them around constantly. To make things worse, Judy was an extremely evil person.

When Lisa was still a baby, Judy forced her to sit on her high-chair for hours because she didn’t finish her food. Poor baby Lisa didn’t even know what was going on.

Evil Judy also covered Lisa’s mouth with duct tape when she cried and if that didn’t stop her crying, Judy shoved her finger up Lisa’s nose to suffocate her!

Judy even proudly told everyone that Lisa’s first words were, “Don’t spank me, it hurts!”

Lisa had an older half-sister, Diane Mattingly. Diane was raped by one of Evil Judy’s boyfriend when she was eight years old. She was then sent to foster care by Child Protective Services (CPS).

CPS dashed in and was like, “Diane, listen, you can no longer stay in this house because we don’t think that your mom can protect you anymore but guess what? Your half-sister Lisa can continue to stay here!”

Diane threw up on the driveway while being escorted out of the house by CPS because she realized that if she’s no longer in the house, the next target would be Lisa.

What made me even angrier was, after the CPS took Diane away, they never followed up on Lisa to see how she was doing or if she was ever assaulted. The CPS was among the first to fail Lisa.

When Lisa was in elementary school, she did really well. However, in middle school, she started needing special needs classes and constantly spaced out during classes. She just wasn’t doing very well.

The school administration thought that this was due to some deep emotional trauma. They suspected she was experiencing sexual, physical or verbal abuse at home.

Unfortunately, they also failed Lisa because they did not take any further steps to investigate.

There was once when Judy was so mad at her, so she threatened Lisa that she would kill the family dog.

TRIGGER WARNING! (ANIMAL CRUELTY) Evil Judy forced Lisa to watch as she repeatedly smashed the dog’s head with a shovel until he died. TRIGGER OVER.

Can you imagine the trauma that would have caused Lisa? This was just so sad, for both the dog and Lisa. Both were innocent.

Judy got remarried to a man by the name of Jack Kleiner. And this is when shit really started hitting the fan. He’s Lisa’s stepdad now and he began sexually assaulting her since she was eleven years old.

Jack even took another step for the worse as he invited his friends over to gang-rape Lisa. This went on for hours and it became a daily routine in a specially-built room.

They even physically assaulted her and urinated on her once they were done.

And guess what? Evil Judy knew about all of this. She even had the audacity to blame Lisa for it and threatened her with a gun.

Judy also took another step for the worse as she pimped out eleven year old Lisa to any guys that came over like the plumber or electrician, just to make some extra money.

Only God knows how much this all this made my blood boil!

When Lisa was fourteen years old, she went to stay with her cousin, David. David is a Deputy Sheriff. She told David about everything that had happened to her.

David genuinely believed her and he was truly horrified and outraged!

So was this the end of her abuse? It would have been but unfortunately Deputy Sheriff David didn’t tell anyone! He just went on with his life. Yet another person to fail Lisa!

When Lisa was 17 years old, Judy and her stepdad, Jack got divorced.

Judy forced Lisa to follow her to the divorce proceedings to tell the judge how the stepdad sexually assaulted her in order to the upper hand in the divorce!

Evil Judy was like, “Oh yeah, that definitely happened and honey, there’s this incident you forgot. Tell the judge about that too!” while Lisa was sobbing her eyes out in front of the judge.

“You’re such a disgusting woman! No empathy for your own daughter! Your husband had raped her for years and years and you did nothing?!” the judge was really pissed off.

Judy didn’t care, “Yeah, so like, do I get the house?”

The worst part of all of this was the fact that Jack was never charged. The social worker created a file on this sexual abuse, turned it over to the Tulsa County District Attorney’s office and nothing happened.

They didn’t follow up. They never went after her stepdad. They were like, “Thanks for the file. We will just put it in with the rest of our paperwork where we keep our traffic tickets because it’s such a low priority.”

All the people that could have helped Lisa kept failing her.

When Lisa was eighteen years old, she got married to her stepbrother, Carl Bowman. He wasn’t the son of her stepdad, Jack. He was the son of Judy’s fourth husband.

Carl was a monster. He repeatedly raped her and often used foreign objects. He even physically abused her during these rapes like holding a knife to her throat. He even made video recordings of this!

Lisa’s half-brother saw one of the videos and he said that it was like straight out of a horror movie, like a snuff film. And yes, you guessed it! He didn’t do anything about it.

“Oh my God! This is so brutal! How could someone do that to my sister?! Oops, I’m hungry! Better go get some food!” I think that’s what went through his mind at that time. So he also failed Lisa.

When Lisa was twenty four years old, her husband, Monster Carl went to jail for child sexual abuse. By this time, she already had four children with him.

She frequently had psychotic episodes. There was once she woke all her children up at 3.00 a.m. and took them along with the family goat on a road trip because she wanted to teach the goat about of life.

Lisa also became very bad with hygiene. She never kept herself, her children or their home clean. She had lice for five years and she didn’t even realize it!

Before Monster Carl went to jail, he forced Lisa to get tubal ligation in 1990 because he didn’t want any more kids.

Lisa claimed to be pregnant five more times after this but Carl ignored her because it was impossible.

Lisa and Monster Carl eventually got divorced before he went to jail. She then got married to Kevin Montgomery.

He also incorporated sexual violence into the marriage. Kevin was unaware that Lisa underwent tubal ligation.

Lisa on the other hand wanted more children although she was barely able to take care of herself and her four children.

She told Kevin on three different occasions that she was pregnant. And the first two times, she told him, “Honey, I went to the doctor and there was something wrong, so it had to be aborted!”

He actually believed and was very sympathetic and caring towards Lisa.

During her third ‘pregnancy’, she had pseudocyesis which is a condition where a woman experiences all the signs and symptoms of pregnancy without actually being pregnant.

The most common cause of pseudocyesis is an intense desire to be pregnant until the woman convinces herself that she actually is pregnant.

Women who have had phantom pregnancies like this have always experienced emotional trauma and sexual abuse.

Now we move on to Bobbie Jo Stinnett, a twenty three year old woman who was eight months pregnant with her first baby.

Bobbie Jo and her husband, Zeb, ran a Rat Terrier dog-breeding business. Bobbie Jo ran an online Rat Terrier chat room called Ratter Chatter.

In Ratter Chatter, she shared breeding tips and also life updates like how she was due for delivery in January 2005.

Lisa was also in Ratter Chatter as she loved Rat Terriers. She also announced in Ratter Chatter that she was ‘pregnant’ with twins but one of them had died so she was due to give birth to the surviving twin in December 2004.

She even told this lie to her husband, Kevin and he believed. She got sonograms off the internet and Photoshopped her name onto them. She then showed these to Kevin and all her friends.

However, a lot of people were skeptical because they saw her in dog shows but she didn’t look pregnant and there was not even a little weight gain. But they didn’t ask her anything though.

Bobbie Jo and Lisa became friends on Ratter Chatter and they would like talk about the ups and downs of pregnancy and other stuff.

Lisa then pretended to want to get a Rat Terrier puppy for her children for Christmas. Bobbie Jo was more than happy because she just had a litter.

Lisa said she wanted to have a look at the puppy first and Bobbie Jo agreed and they planned to meet at Bobbie Jo’s house.

The moment Bobbie Jo opened the door when Lisa arrived, Lisa barged in and strangled her with a cord until she stopped struggling.

Lisa then grabbed a kitchen knife and cut open Bobbie Jo’s belly while she was still alive!

Bobbie Jo was in and out of consciousness during this time. She then put her hand into Bobbie Jo’s belly, extracted the fetus and wrapped the baby girl in a blanket.

Then Lisa got in her car with the baby and drove off, leaving Bobbie Jo to bleed to death.

Prior to Lisa coming to Bobbie Jo’s house, Bobbie Jo was on the phone with her mom, Becky Harper. She hung up because Lisa arrived.

Becky called her after an hour but there obviously was no answer so she went over to Bobbie Jo’s house. She walked in and saw blood everywhere and Bobbie Jo unconscious on the floor.

She called 911, “Please hurry, my daughter’s stomach, it looks like it exploded! And I can’t find her baby anywhere!” The paramedics arrived and Bobbie Jo was pronounced dead.

After that they put out an AMBER Alert (America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response) to find the baby.

One of the breeders in Ratter Chatter came forward with Lisa’s details saying that she was close to Bobbie Jo and asked to check the Ratter Chatter chat room.

The next day, 17th December 2004, they traced the IP address to the home of Kevin Montgomery and a bunch of authorities were sent over.

Lisa and Kevin on the other hand, were showing off their new born, Abigail.

Lisa told Kevin and her friends that she was grocery shopping and suddenly she went into full-on labour and was rushed to a women’s center where she gave birth so easily.

The FBI got to their house and asked Lisa some questions about her delivery and she told the same story that she told everyone.

The FBI then said that they checked the hospitals nearby and nobody gave birth that day and there was no record of her giving birth anywhere.

Lisa immediately broke down and confessed everything. Kevin was shell-shocked. Lisa was arrested an hour later.

Before the trial, Lisa was diagnosed with pseudocyesis, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder, psychosis, dissociative identity disorder and amnesia.

Lisa’s trial was an absolute shitshow. There was just a lot of controversy and political involvement. So, I’m not going to go into that.

If you’re interested in that, I’ll provide the link to the podcast that goes into great details about the trial at the end of this article.

Lisa’s defense attorneys made numerous attempts to save her life, citing her mental health and the sexual abuse she suffered as a child but to no avail.

She was found guilty and sentenced to death on 22nd October 2007

Lisa was executed on 13th January 2021 by lethal injection (Pentobarbital) at the Federal Correctional Complex, Terre Haute, Indiana.

The baby, Victoria Jo Stinnett, survived her traumatic birth and is now a healthy teenager.

I do not justify what Lisa did in any way but it’s undeniable that Lisa was mentally unstable. Her life was filled with sexual abuse and trauma. And everyone that suspected of such a thing going on or knew what was going on didn’t do anything to help her.

I think she deserved a sentence where she could have spent half of it in prison and half of it in a criminal asylum, like Leonarda Cianciulli in my previous article. Lisa didn’t deserve death.

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This article is a summary I made of the same case in the True Crime Podcast, Rotten Mango by Stephanie Soo. She dives deep into each of the cases that she covers. Linked below is the episode of this case.