In an interview with HuffPost her first ever Diane Mattingly, now 57 and a longtime state government employee living in Kentucky, described what it was like growing up in a home without love or affection. Her lawyers are pursuing an insanity defense. Prosecutors said Montgomery was faking mental illness, notingthat many people are sexually abused, but few go on to kill. Montgomery, 52, the only woman on federal death row, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection Jan. 12 in the U.S. Penitentiary at Terre Haute, Ind. She struggles to maintain her own hygiene, loses focus during conversations with others and has trouble planning simple tasks.". The father was a teacher. At 1:31 AM on Wednesday, Lisa Montgomery was pronounced dead. Dorr's marriage was failing when she fell in love with John Manard, a convicted murderer 21 years her junior. . The baby, who was uninjured, was returned to her father. Two days before the crime, her former husband (and stepbrother) sought custody of two of her children. A social worker found Lisa's allegations of abuse credible and turned the file. Ms. The five investigators who went to Montgomery's home that day recently began communicating with oneanother again, said Strong, who is now sheriff ofNodaway County, which includes Maryville and Skidmore. Multiple medical experts have given statements agreeing with that diagnosis. She became involved with Kevin Montgomery, a divorced electrician with children of his own, and theymarried the following year. They hold a collection and try to do something nice for Stinnett's mother. - Sandra Babcock, faculty director of the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide, Montgomery, who confessed, was later sentenced to death for the , The Trump administration announced it was. As a result of her sexual torture, Lisa began to dissociate. Lisa Montgomery and her half-sister Diane Mattingly as children, Judy Shaughnessy, Lisa Montgomery's mother, Bobbie Jo Stinnett's home lies empty today, Protest against federal executions of death row inmates - outside the US Justice Department, Washington DC, December 2020. And that would be from across a courtroom, where lawyers for the US government were trying to persuade a jury to sentence Montgomery to death. Nodaway County Sheriff Randy Strong says that the scene that he and his four colleagues found that day was so bloody, they are still traumatised by it. That could change in Terre Haute. When Mattingly attendedMontgomery's sentencing hearing in 2007, which was the first time she had seen her sister in about 35 years, she said Montgomery's face bore the same look of fear it had when they were separated. Montgomerys case is not about whether she is responsible for the crime; she is. "I was like, 'Oh, she was not.' Teddy Kleiner, the son of Shaughnessy and Jack Kleiner, was 45 years old when he was fatally shot in 2019 in North Topeka. "There was a lot of talk both ways on it," he said when contacted by phone at his new home in Texas. Authorities also questioned Kevin Montgomery but concluded he wasn't involved. Her mother also began trafficking her, allowing handymen like electricians and plumbers to sexually abuse Montgomery in exchange for work on the house. Two other inmates are scheduled to die at Terre Haute prison before Mr Trump's presidency ends. Her lawyers had argued she was a mentally ill victim of abuse who deserved mercy. As Strongand other investigators were about to pull into the driveway of Montgomery's house, he said, he learned via a phone callthat the last email Stinnett received had come from that home. During divorce proceedings, Shaughnessy admitted to the court that she had walked in on her husband raping Montgomery. She has exhausted all legal options except a last-ditch appeal for clemency from President Donald Trump, which was filed Christmas Eve. For the rest of her life.. Multiple medical experts have given statements agreeing with that diagnosis. The following day, the police arrested Montgomery at her home. He threatened to expose the imagined pregnancy and use it against her in the custody battle. But blind outrage over the brutality of the crime leaves little room for curiosity about why Montgomery committed the act, and whether she deserves the most severe penalty that exists in the criminal justice system. Since 2008, Montgomery has been held in a federal prison in Texas for female inmates with special medical and psychological needs, where she has been receiving psychiatric care. According to interviews with her half-siblings and others who spent time with the family, Montgomery's stepfather built a shed onto the trailer where he, and eventually his friends, raped and beat her. "I would say, 'President Trump, I want you to look at the life that Lisa had led, I want to look at all the people that have failed her, I want you to look at the rape, the torture, the mental abuse, the physical abuse that this woman had endured,'" she says. Join half a million readers enjoying Newsweek's free newsletters, Everyone Practices Cancel Culture | Opinion, Deplatforming Free Speech is Dangerous | Opinion. Her story quickly fell apart and she confessed to the killing. The baby was returned to her father, after being recovered from Montgomery. So my letters are important.. He threatened to rape our little sister if Lisa resisted and said he would kill her whole family if she told anyone. Her lawyers had argued she was a mentally ill victim of abuse who. Montgomery took Stinnetts baby, clamped the umbilical cord and used baby wipes to clean her. JUDY SHAUGHNESSY OBITUARY Judy K. Shaughnessy Judy K. Shaughnessy, 66, Topeka, formerly of Lyndon, entered into the kingdom of heaven Saturday, November 2, 2013 at Midland Hospice House. Montgomery's mother, Judy Shaughnessy, told The . On the ride home, she clamped the umbilical cord and cleaned the baby girl with wipes. Judy drank throughout her pregnancy with Lisa and caused her to be born with brain damage. "The whole story is tragic," says Kelley Henry, one of Montgomery's federal defence lawyers. On the trip home, she stopped in Topeka and called her husband to say she had gone into labor while Christmas shopping and had given birth at a Topeka birthing center. Today there is a single restaurant and few of the streets are paved. More: Why the fate of the only woman on federal death row hinges on these Tennessee attorneys and their health, "Lisas trauma was so severe that it compromised her neurological functioning and development," they said in a written statement. This story was first published on 11 January - before Lisa Montgomery's execution on 13 January. "She was really the first one to have a decent marriage, you know, and I guess looking at Bobbie Jo was like, what your dreams were when you were younger.". Montgomery's lawyers argue that because of a combination of years of horrific abuse, and a raft of psychological issues, she should never have been given the death penalty. She told Lisa she had to "earn her keep.". "I'm asking him to have compassion on her as a person that has been failed over and over and over again. She credits this moment for her "fairly normal" life - a house on eight peaceful acres, a loving relationship with her children, nearly two decades at a job working for the state of Kentucky. At the instigation of Shaughnessys lawyer, Montgomery was connected to a therapist, but only briefly. Other times, her behavior could be erratic and inappropriate. Dorr has since been released from prison and remarried. Mrs. Lisa Montgomery, who endured years of sexual and physical abuse, murdered an expectant mother and took the baby. Mattingly said Patterson was often away, and Shaughnessy became increasingly abusive toward them, at times forcing Mattingly to eat raw onions as punishment and go outdoors into the cold naked. President-elect Joe Biden has already pledged to end death penalty proceedings, although he hasn't said when. This is someone who was deeply remorseful, once she became appropriately medicated and had full contact with reality, although that is a situation that waxes and wanes.. Montgomery wasn't allowed eyeglasses, though she is far-sighted and near-sighted, or a CPAP machine, which has been prescribed since 2015 for her sleep apnea, Henry said. The couple returned to their home near Melvern, which was being watched by investigators working to identify the woman who had told Stinnett she was Darlene Fischer. Montgomerys mother, Judy Shaughnessy, who was 20 at the time of her birth in 1968, drank heavily while pregnant with her daughter. Read about our approach to external linking. Lisa Montgomery, a federal prisoner, is now slated to be executed on Jan. 12. Montgomery told investigators she was surprised at how nicely they had treated her, considering what she had done. 2023 BBC. They had been called in as part of the Northwest Missouri Major Case Squad, which was workingwith the FBI to identify Stinnett's killer and find the missing child. Sheriff Strong insists that the crime was meticulously planned and that the woman he arrested continued to lie until backed into a corner. She also told one of her stepbrothers about the sexual abuse around that time. Montgomery also talked about the abuseshe had endured from her stepfather, Jack Kleiner, and the first of her two husbands, Carl Boman, Dorr said. While the court admonished her for not reporting it to authorities, they did not report it either. Bobbie Jo's mother and husband have have not spoken publicly in many years. The tiny farming town of Skidmore sits in the far northwest corner of Missouri. Several high-profile figures had appealed for clemency in Brandon's case but Mr Trump did not heed those calls. Montgomery suffered from pseudocyesis, the false belief she was pregnant, jurors heard from Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, director of the Center of Brain and Cognition at the University of California in San Diego. Lisa Montgomery and Bobbie Jo Stinnett got to know each other online through a shared love of dogs. Shaughnessy has since died. "She is the most broken of the broken," Mattingly said. Defense attorney Fred Duchardt told jurors that sexual abuse during her childhood had caused Montgomeryto become mentally ill and killed her soul. For example, she said, the jury that recommended Montgomery be executed wasn't asked to consider the impact that would have on her four children and 12 grandchildren. DNA testing later showed they were Stinnett's. Lisa Montgomery, a Kansas native scheduled within days to becomethe first woman executed by the federal government in 67 years, lived a childhood so abusive her attorneys call it akin to torture. The family moved often. She had catfished Stinnett online under a fake name. Lisa Montgomery is no different. When Lisa was a small child, Judy allowed men to rape her for money, including allowing her to be gang raped on multiple occasions. When issuing his original stay of execution, the district. It is extremely rare for women to be sentenced to death, said Sandra Babcock, faculty director of the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide and an expert on women and the death penalty. Montgomery is scheduled to be put to death by a lethal injection of pentobarbital at Terre Haute prison in Indiana. They also discovered that Shaughnessy prostituted. More: Lisa Montgomery's execution, delayed by attorneys' COVID-19 cases, rescheduled for Jan. 12. When Floyd Gwin died last July at age 81, Mattingly was listed among the survivors in his obituary. Her victim's community said otherwise. Residents there tend to think her execution would bring an appropriate end to a painful chapter in their city's history, he said. Lisa Montgomery - the only female inmate on federal death row in the US - has been executed for murder in the state of Indiana. This is the stuff of nightmares.". Victims of severe childhood sexual abuse can overcome their trauma with certain factors, Porterfield said, such as the presence of a nurturing adult who provides love and connects them to resources to promote healing. Bobbie Jo Stinnetts hometown waits as killers execution date nears. Montgomery told Stinnett that she was also expecting, and the pair shared pregnancy stories. By multiple accounts, Kleiner was an erratic, violent man who beat the kids and his wife regularly. After their biological father left the home, Mattingly says they were left alone with Shaughnessy's boyfriends, at least one of whom started raping Mattingly. Recently, there has been a virus outbreak on death row at the institution, and previous executions have been linked to outbreaks among the execution team and prison staff. He continued the cycle of abuse, rapes and beatings, which he sadistically videotaped. Shaughnessy also beat the girls with brooms and belts,Mattingly said. Montgomery's mother, Judy Shaughnessy, who was 20 at the time of her birth in 1968, drank heavily while pregnant with her daughter. The six-man, six-woman jury in October 2007 found Montgomery guilty and recommended she be executed. Violent acts against pregnant women and their fetuses fall into that category. But it was not a pet that she was to retrieve that day. Shaughnessy would beat Mattingly with whatever was in her hand, be it a belt or a broom, she said. "As a result, Lisa has trouble processing information and navigating social relationships. And then go, 'Stand there and listen to the 911 call of [Stinnett's mother]. Montgomery became the first female federal prisoner executed in 67 years, the first woman executed in the United States since Kelly Gissendaner in 2015, and the first person executed in the United States in 2021. And though there's been much recent debate over the fairness of Montgomery's sentence in courthouses and in the opinion pages of newspapers like the New York Times, a similar debate does not exist here. Lisa told me that when these men raped her, she would go away in her mind and try not to be present, the brother said in a court declaration. Prosecutors shared records showing Montgomery had visited a website featuring a video of a live C-section birth, described as lasting from first cut to last stitch, and had made a practice run by driving the roughly 350 miles from Melvern to Skidmore and back the day before the killing. A survivor of incest and sex trafficking, she is diagnosed with bipolar disorder with psychotic features, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, temporal lobe epilepsy, and cerebellar dysfunction, said Amy Harwell, a federal public defender in Tennessee who is working on Montgomerys case. Let it be done: Bobbie Jo Stinnetts hometown waits as killers execution date nears. She strangled Stinnett to death and cut the baby from her stomach. He stressed that the juryheard testimony about her mental illness and her history of being abused, yet still unanimously recommended her execution. According to her lawyers and witnesses, Montgomery suffered years of childhood abuse so severe it was akin to torture. 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