Posted on 01/09/2005 8:49:00 AM PST by knuthom
The congratulations caught Judy Shaughnessy by surprise: She was a grandmother again.
Her daughter, Lisa Montgomery, had left the courthouse in Lyndon, Kan., a few minutes earlier after proudly showing off a day-old infant, an acquaintance told Judy.
Judy knew better.
“I just said, ‘Yeah, right, she either stole it or bought it,” Judy recalled Tuesday.
Lisa had been incapable of having children since a 1990 operation, but she fooled her husband, his parents and the whole community, Judy said.
“I tried to tell them and tell them, but nobody listened,” she recalled.
Even as Judy was hearing about the newborn, the FBI was waiting for Lisa to arrive at home in Melvern, Kan., to arrest her on a charge of killing a Missouri woman and cutting her 8-month fetus from the womb.
Montgomery's two sisters, Patty Hedberg and Jerri Kleiner, said they also tried to warn the family about her history of five faked pregnancies.
“Nobody believed us; nobody wanted to believe us,” Patty said.
In their first media interviews, Lisa's sisters and mother talked about the woman who authorities say wanted a baby so badly she killed to get one. They described her as a smart loner who even as a child spun a lot of tales that often angered her family.
The family had much to overcome, including poverty and alcohol. But Lisa had an additional hurdle: As a teenager, she was sexually abused, her mother said.
Twenty years later, Lisa Montgomery, 36, stands accused of a crime that has received worldwide notoriety.
The FBI said in an affidavit that she traveled to the home of Bobbie Jo Stinnett in Skidmore, Mo., on Dec. 16, strangled her and kidnapped her baby. After confessing, she was charged with kidnapping resulting in death and faces life in prison or the death penalty. Lisa has not entered a plea to the charge.
“There is a difference between evil and insane, and I think she's evil,” said Jerri, who believed her sister had become “dangerous” in her quest to have a newborn.
There has been recent acrimony between Lisa and her mother and Patty. Last year, Lisa sought a restraining order to keep them from seeing her children but later dropped that effort. They contend she filed the order to stop them from telling people she was faking pregnancies.
Patty and Jerri, who are half sisters, agreed to exclusive interviews with The Kansas City Star if only their maiden names were used, because they want to respect the privacy of their children.
One of Lisa's public defenders, David Owen, said Friday that he had no comment on her background or the charges and that she would be unavailable for an interview.
Stinnett's mother, Becky Harper, tearfully said Friday that she wished someone would have listened to warnings about Lisa.
“Let's just don't let her get off with being insane, OK, because the woman is not,” said Harper, who discovered her daughter's body.
Lisa's husband, Kevin Montgomery, declined to be interviewed about whether he had been told about her fake pregnancies. Last month, he told The Star that he was convinced that she was pregnant and had delivered their baby.
“I held that baby proudly,” he said.
Lisa doesn't have many defenders, but the pastor of the church the Montgomerys attended in Melvern said she obviously was burdened with a troubled background and personality.
“I know enough to know I do sympathize with her to some degree,” said the Rev. Mike Wheatly of the First Church of God.
A different child
She was born Lisa Marie Hedberg in Washington state. Soon after, she and her mother moved to Topeka, where her sister Patty was born. Lisa and Patty were toddlers when their parents split up, and they have had no contact with their father, Patty said.
But some of the first stories Lisa would make up were about her father, that he died in Vietnam or that something else befell him, Patty said.
From the beginning, Lisa was different, Patty said. She never did the things many girls do, such as playing with dolls, but she was obsessed with learning.
“I always said the house could burn down, and she wouldn't even smell the smoke, she was so engrossed in books,” her mother said.
By the time Lisa was 6 her mother had married Jack Kleiner, who had five children of his own, and the family was living in Oklahoma. Her mother had three children with Kleiner.
Beginning in grade school, Lisa played the violin and then the French horn. In high school she played the mellophone in the marching band.
She made first chair with ease and was “very intellectual,” her sisters said.
“Everything Lisa did she was good at,” Patty said. “She didn't have to try.”
Life turns sour
Lisa's life might have been very different.
In the spring of 1984, her grades were good, and she had plans for college. The 16-year-old sophomore had been accepted at a summer college preparatory program at Rogers State University in Claremore, Okla.
But her life was about to unravel, according to family members.
Kleiner was sexually abusing Lisa, her mother said in court records when she filed for divorce that summer.
She and the children left Kleiner, and she took Lisa to counseling. But Lisa denied she'd had sex with her stepfather, the sisters said.
In a telephone interview from his home in Manhattan, Kan., Jack Kleiner said that the story had been concocted to support his wife's divorce case and that he was never found guilty of anything.
“I never molested her in any way, shape or form,” Kleiner said, and he denied ever being an alcoholic, as Judy contended in the divorce.
Kleiner said he was not to blame for problems Lisa had in her life. “She screwed up her life after she left me, not while I was there, I guarantee.”
Kleiner said he provided the family a good life, although after the divorce he would be sentenced to jail at least twice for failing to pay child support, according to court records.
The family tried to cling to shreds of normalcy even as it went on welfare. That tumultuous summer of 1984 also had a tranquil side — picnics, trips to the lake, to a wedding, to go fishing, to get ice cream.
At Sperry High School, Lisa was in band, a class play, the pep club and student council. The family moved to nearby Cleveland, Okla., where she graduated in 1986 with mostly A's and B's, a school official said.
By 1986, Lisa's mother had married Richard Boman, a former mayor and police chief of Sperry and retired Navy sailor. Richard Boman's son, Carl Boman, had returned from the Navy and was dating Lisa.
Lisa was ready to join the Air Force as a way to pay for college when she learned she was pregnant, her mother said. She and Carl married in August 1986, and her dreams of college died.
Her first marriage
As an adult, Lisa fabricated five pregnancies and other yarns about her children, about boyfriends and about sleeping with people, causing continuing rifts in her extended family, her relatives said.
“She made up stories to upset people and to get crap stirred up so there was controversy,” Patty said. “She was always seeking attention.” Her mother said Lisa became more cunning and manipulative after she started having children.
Lisa had four children in a little more than three years. After her fourth child in 1990, Lisa got a tubal ligation, rendering her sterile, said Carl Boman and her sisters. Her mother was at the hospital when the procedure was done.
Carl Boman worked many hours to make ends meet, and his wife stayed home to take care of the children and the house.
But the house was filthy and roach-infested, her sisters said.
One time, her mother said, she visited the house while Lisa was making lunch for the children. She pulled a dish of scalloped potatoes from the oven, stuck in a fork, plunked it on the floor and said, “Here, kids, here's your lunch,” her mother recalled.
Often Lisa could be found lying on the couch reading. She favored fiction, such as Stephen King novels, Carl Boman said.
Carl could not make Lisa happy, his father said.
“They fought all the time,” Richard Boman said.
Lisa also was having affairs, Carl Boman said. Sometimes she would leave the family for days or weeks, and she once showed up at her husband's family reunion with another man, her mother said.
Carl Boman filed for divorce in October 1993 and moved to a new job in Springdale, Ark. But Lisa followed him, and eight months later they remarried in the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which they had attended as part of an effort to rebuild their relationship.
In Arkansas, she told her family she was pregnant with twins, but it was untrue, her sisters said.
The couple and their four children moved to Deming, N.M., where Richard Boman had bought a double-wide trailer, said Bill Boomhower. Boomhower owned a restaurant and gave Carl Boman a job.
Lisa had difficulty keeping the children clean, Judy and Boomhower said. At their elementary school, the teachers would wash the children's hair, bathe them and put clean clothes on them, Boomhower said.
Richard Boman said Lisa and her mother shared an affection for rural life.
“They both liked animals, especially goats and dogs and chickens,” Boman said.
But Boomhower said Lisa clearly seemed unhappy with her life.
“You look back and it's not really a bad, bad family,” Boomhower said. “There were a lot of underlying things going on that nobody knew about.”
Divorce, remarriage
In 1998 the marriage ended for good. Carl Boman went to Bartlesville, Okla., and Lisa returned to Kansas with her mother. Judy and Richard Boman had divorced.
After meeting Kevin Montgomery in 1999, Lisa fabricated two pregnancies, relatives said.
First, she told Montgomery she was pregnant, and he gave her $200 or $300 for an abortion, her sisters said.
Her sisters also said that Lisa told Montgomery she had gotten pregnant as a teenager. She claimed she initially had been told the baby died during delivery. But later she learned that the baby was put up for adoption, and she had found the adoptive parents. Her daughter's name was Sarah.
“It was all made up,” Patty said.
In March 2000, Lisa married Montgomery, who had three children from a previous marriage.
Over the past six years, Lisa worked as a ticket agent at Greyhound Bus Lines in Topeka; at a Wendy's restaurant in Lebo, Kan.; at a Casey's store in Lyndon, Kan.; and in security in Pauline, Kan., all small towns south of Topeka.
Meanwhile, Lisa became involved in the Melvern community.
She was involved in 4-H and Little League with the children. She sewed pioneer-style clothing for her daughters and nieces and took them to an annual apple festival. She made goat cheese. She attended school plays.
Baby obsession
By 2002 and 2003, Lisa's desire for a newborn was becoming uncontrollable, her mother and sisters said.
Carl Boman was behind on child support payments, and she told him that if he didn't pay up, he would not be allowed to see the children.
She told him she needed the money because she wanted to buy a baby, said James Campbell, Carl Boman's attorney. Lisa estimated the cost to buy a baby would be about $45,000.
But the Bomans did not have that kind of money, Campbell said.
A custody battle in fall 2003 over Lisa's newborn nephew revealed a fourth phantom pregnancy.
The state had taken custody of her brother Teddy Kleiner's newborn son after he was jailed on drug charges.
Lisa's mother was trying to get custody of the boy, who had been placed with foster parents, but Lisa wanted the child, too, her sisters said. At the hearings, Lisa testified she was pregnant, several people said.
But later, she testified she had miscarried and donated the fetus to science, according to family members who attended the hearing.
In December 2003, Patty went to her sister's home, confronted Kevin Montgomery and told him his wife could not be pregnant because she had had a tubal ligation in 1990. Lisa told her to leave and never come back, Patty said.
About a week later, Jerri and their mother went to the home of Kevin Montgomery's parents, Roger and Joy Montgomery.
“My mom told them everything,” Jerri said. She warned that Lisa “was fooling you guys.”
They also strongly urged Lisa to tell her husband the truth, they said.
“You cannot keep lying to the man; he doesn't deserve it,” Judy recalled telling Lisa. “She ignored everything I said.”
While Roger Montgomery said he was advised by his lawyer not to comment on whether he and his wife had been warned about Lisa, he voiced doubt about the credibility of Lisa's sisters and mother. His lawyer did not return calls.
To stop her family from spreading the accusations, Lisa sought restraining orders against her mother and Patty, Judy and Patty said. Those orders were later dismissed by a judge at Lisa's request, according to court records.
Judy said she spoke to some attorneys about having Lisa committed to a psychiatric institution but was told that would be unlikely unless Lisa harmed herself or someone else.
Lisa began negotiating with a pregnant acquaintance to buy her baby once it was born, but the woman eventually refused, Lisa's sisters said.
Pressure mounts
Last summer, Lisa announced to her family and friends she was pregnant again.
In November, the sisters and their mother learned that Lisa had bought a home birth kit, used by midwives to deliver babies.
Jerri feared that her sister would finally do something drastic to get a baby.
On Dec. 10, Carl Boman filed for custody of the four children he had with Lisa. Boman said in an interview he had planned to use Lisa's phantom pregnancy as a way to show she was mentally unfit to keep the children.
While it is unclear whether that was the last straw for Lisa, her mother said her daughter was determined to prove her truthfulness.
“All her lies were catching up with her,” Judy said. “I think the desperation got to her.”
On Dec. 17 about 4 p.m., after returning home, Judy got a call from a niece in Texas who asked if it was true that Lisa had a baby. The mother said yes. The niece then asked if the baby was a girl. Yes.
Then the niece told her about an Amber Alert involving the stolen baby from Skidmore.
Judy called Jerri and asked her to check out the kidnapping and homicide story on the Internet. As Jerri read over the news stories, the horrible thought that it might be Lisa washed over her.
She turned on the TV and saw that Lisa had just been arrested.
The family gathered to watch the news.
“We just sat here shocked and astonished,” Patty said.
While Lisa's family believes she was sane when she allegedly stole the baby, Judy said she feels for her daughter.
“I love her with all my heart,” Judy said. But, she added, “Justice has to be served. I have to leave it up to God.”
The defense will use mental illness as her defense. If it worked for Anrea Yates then it might work for her.
Wow! What a ****ed up family. Although, that doesn't excuse evil. Thank God the baby was found healthy and returned to her family. What a burden for that child when she finds out that her mother was killed so some lunatic could steal her. You wish she would never know, but being in the "information age," it's only a matter of time. Poor thing!
Too bad Lisa's mother didn't have a tubal ligation 37 years ago.
I bet NARAL and other pro-aborts will pay for Lisa Montgomery's legal defense in an effort to challenge the Laci Peterson law, the bill that john Kerry opposed.
The woman should be executed. However, I feel nothing but contempt for her mother and sisters. If my daughter or sister murdered someone and I believed that they were guilty, I still would not air my family's dirty laundry to reporters. They seem to be getting some kind of sick thrill out of this.
I suspect the abuse story is going to play a prominent role in the trial--but I hope someone points out that very few abused children go on to commit a murder as brutal as this one was.
BRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!
That'll pretty much ruin everybody's weekend.
In 1995, there was a case similar to this one near where I live in Addison, IL. An African-American couple removed the unborn baby from a pregnant white woman. The local media was outraged. The black couple is serving a life sentence and rightfully so. Notice now the media is expressing sympathy for this white trash witch. This goes to show that the MSM is full of elitist white liberals.
Lisa Montgomery is a hard core sociopath. I still prefer the term psychopath, but no one uses that designation anymore. The story telling and obsessive attention getting manuevers, are big clues. Of course parents never think about the implications of such behavior, just that it's irritating as hell to be around the person. At least her family tried to warn people about her when they realized she was a dangerous liar.
I'd say the death penalty is in order.
Btw, I'm sure the comparisons between her and Andrea Yates will start popping up. Andrea Yates=undermedicated schizophrenic.....Lisa Montgomery=murdering sociopath.
The place to do that would be in court, not to reporters.
Okay, here's a story. A little girl grew up in extreme poverty, I believe partly in Chicago. When she was an adolescent, she was sexually molested by a family member. She was impregnated, but miscarried the baby. She had some problems, but eventually got her act together, finished school, and decided to be a success.
Her name is Oprah Winfrey. Unlike the charges against Lisa's stepfather, what happened to Oprah is documented. She was able to not only get through the trauma, she became a huge business success, who imo is a good decent person. So let's just see them excuse Lisa's behavior on what could be false allegations by mamma during a divorce proceeding.
Uh, longwinded? I'm just waiting for her whole lying life to be excused by alleged sexual molestation.
Usually I would agree with you. I think her sisters feel guilty for not trying harder in warning everyone about Lisa. She ended up murdering a woman for her baby, and there was nothing they could do to prevent it. They knew what she was capable of, and no one listened.
I could give you several examples from less famous persons, too, one of whom went on to become a respected officer in the USCG. No, "bad" childhoods, abusive childhoods, none of that is an excuse for what happened in this instance.
BTW, I think (someone will doubtless correct me if I'm wrong) that the difference between sociopaths and psychopaths is that sociopaths are stone-cold sane--and psychopaths are not. On the Westerfield threads, someone once explained the difference, and I think she might have been a psychiatrist--wish I could think of her FR name.
Next time you start thinking about how dysfunctional my family was, I'll read this article again. WOW WOW WOW.
http://www.crimelibrary.com/fillicide/downs/
So far there is absolutely no evidence Lisa was ever abused. Reports of alleged abuse are a dime a dozen in divorce cases and as Lisa's stepfather points out, he was never charged, tried, or found guilty of any abuse. It's the facts that will matter once this goes to criminal court and not innuendo's from a long past divorce.
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