Lisa Montgomery drove from Kansas to Missouri and fatally strangled a pregnant woman, Bobbie Jo Stinnett, cut open her body, and kidnapped her baby on Dec. 16, 2004, as part of a premeditated murder-kidnap scheme.
Montgomery, 52, the only woman among 52 federal death row prisoners, is scheduled to be executed Jan. 12 by lethal injection by the Federal Bureau of Prisons in the federal death chamber at U.S. Penitentiary Terre Haute, Indiana. The Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington, D.C. based a national non-profit organization, says 22 of the federal death row inmates are white, 22 are black, seven are Latino and one is Asian.
She would be the first female United States federal prisoner executed since Bonny Brown Heady, 41, was executed in Missouri’s gas chamber, along with co-defendant Carl Hall, 34, in Jefferson City on Dec. 18, 1953, for the Sept. 28 kidnapping and murder across the state line in Lenexa in Johnson County, Kansas of six-year-old Robert “Bobby” Cosgrove Greenlease Jr. from Kansas City, Missouri, whose father Robert Greenlease Sr. was a multi-millionaire auto dealer, and the requested $600,000 ransom payment was the largest in American history at the time.
As well as being the first female federal inmate executed in more than 67 years, Montgomery would be only the fourth woman to be executed by federal authorities, the first being Lincoln assassination conspirator Mary Surratt, one of eight Lincoln co-conspirators tried by a military court and found guilty on June 30, 1865, and given various sentences depending upon their involvement.
Lewis Powell, George Atzerodt, David Herold, and Mary Surratt were charged and convicted of conspiring with John Wilkes Booth, who entered President Abraham Lincoln’s State Box at the Ford Theatre in Washington, D.C. on April 14, 1865, and shot and mortally wounded him. All were hanged at the Washington Arsenal on July 7, 1865 – with Surratt becoming the first woman executed by the United States federal government.
Ethel Rosenberg, 37, who, along with her husband Julius, 35, were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage as Soviet spies, and were executed by electric chair on June 19, 1953, six months before Heady.
Montgomery, who doctors, psychologists and social workers have all concluded over the last 15 years, is seriously mentally ill after being sexually abused as a child in what amounted to torture enduring across years, drove from her home in Kansas to Stinnett’s home in Skidmore, Missouri, purportedly to purchase a puppy. Once inside the residence, Montgomery attacked and strangled Stinnett – who was eight months pregnant – until the victim lost consciousness. Using a kitchen knife, Montgomery then cut into Stinnett’s abdomen, causing her to regain consciousness. A struggle ensued, and Montgomery strangled Stinnett to death. Montgomery then removed the baby from Stinnett’s body, took the baby with her, and attempted to pass it off as her own. Montgomery subsequently confessed to murdering Stinnett and abducting her child. In October 2007, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri found Montgomery guilty of federal kidnapping resulting in death, and unanimously recommended a death sentence, which the court imposed. Her conviction and sentence were affirmed on appeal. On Jan. 1, a three-judge federal appeals panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed a Dec. 24, 2020 district court ruling that had vacated her execution date, and reinstated her execution date subject to review by the full appeals court.
You can also follow me on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/jwbarker22
soundingsjohnbarker 