Jack the Ripper's London

How London's Socioeconomic and Industrial Changes Led to the Birth of England's Most Infamous Serial Killer

Commercial Street in Whitechapel, late 1800s 
(photo source)

When Alexandrina Victoria ascended to the throne of England in June of 1837, London was the largest city in the world, boasting not only the largest port (an honor held for about a decade), but the heart of global finance, trade and politics.  At the start of the 19th century, London's population was around 1 million.  By the end of the century, the population was nearly seven times that size, larger than Beijing, Paris and five times greater than that of New York City.   With the population bloat, London's actual territory expanded as well.  At 122 square miles around 1850, by the end of the century it had expanded to 693 miles. 

The port of London, in addition to being the largest port in the world, was also a major shipbuilding center, producing some of the most technologically advanced vessels the world had seen.   Unfortunately, the ports simply didn't have the capacity to endure the massive growth, rendering its operations less than efficient.  Ships clogged the stretch of the Thames known as the Pool of London, with sailors sometimes having to wait as long as a week or more to unload cargo, an invitation not only for theft but also evasion of paying import duties.  The sailors brought their earnings, however meager, into the local pubs where they would spend it on drink and women.   

With its financial, political and international trade connections, London soon became a draw for immigrants throughout Europe and the colonies.  A famine in Ireland led to 20% of London's residents being Irish, a population large enough in itself to make up a city the size of Limerick, Belfast, and Cork combined.  The Jewish population in London was estimated as a sizable 46,000 souls in 1882, many of them having fled to London to escape persecution and poverty.  Most of the Jewish community ended up in the area of London known as the East End, the core of Eastern London north of the Thames and indisputably, the poorest district of London.  

The East End and Whitechapel in 1888

Much of London celebrated Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee in the summer of 1887 with adornments of  Union Jacks and royal standards, toasting to the Queen's health with champagne, claret and beer,   In a perfect homage to Victorian life (at least for the upper classes), concerts, picnics, dinners, regattas, puppet shows for children and services at Westminster Abbey were held. Debutantes and eligible bachelors danced and sipped lemonade with little knowledge or concern as to what was happening outside their sheltered environments.  

The spring leading into summer of 1887 had been a particularly warm and dry one, leading to water shortages and destroyed harvests.  Unemployment soared, thanks to the lack of agricultural jobs due to the drought.  With no produce to ship, move and sell, it also meant the working class that came into London in an attempt to find work at Covent Garden Market instead found themselves sleeping rough on the streets or in Trafalgar Square.   

This all coincided with Britain's industrial preeminence being challenged by America and Germany.  A trade slump had begun to fester the previous decade and by 1887 and 1888, it led to massive unemployment.  There was a clear line drawn between the West End, where the upper and middle classes resided, and the East End, where the poor working class was shuttered away.  

If the East End was the poorest area of London, the district of Whitechapel was its epicenter, a slum and ghetto where the occupants suffered from poverty, overcrowding, starvation, homelessness and desperation.   Until the mid-nineteenth century the city had been prosperous but by the time Jack the Ripper began making his murderous swath through the area, it was one of the most dangerous areas in London. 

The streets were dirty by day, with sewage, rotting fruit, runoff from the slaughterhouses, human waste and animal waste from the many horses that clip-clopped throughout the area at all times of day and night.  Even in the middle of the day, Whitechapel seemed to be perpetually under a blanket of gloom.  Smoke belched from the nearby shipyard, as well as the multitude of factories, clogging the air.  The stench of waste (human and animal), the slaughterhouses and body odors comingled constantly with the overwhelming hopelessness.  At night, gas street lamps were manually lit by men who climbed ladders to do so.  Lighting was rarely more than adequate and only in certain areas.  Some alleys and walkways were cloaked in almost complete darkness. 

The streets, from the peak of the morning's light to the night's darkest hour, were never silent.  Besides the echoing noise of horses' hooves, drunkards yelled of their discontent at passersby, street performers and barrel organs played on, hawkers yelled of their wares, and soapbox preachers attempted to get the guilty to repent.  

Crime was rampant, along with daily cruelty, making Whitechapel somewhat inured to brutality.  Of the children born there, only half would live to see their fifth birthday, dying from either malnutrition, disease or accident.  Domestic disputes and drunken fights were so commonplace that many who lived in Whitechapel and the East End simply ignored them.  Murder, however, was uncommon.

1888, off Dorset Street in Whitechapel (photo source) 

  

Employment for the majority of residents was mostly intermittent.  The docks always offered jobs but this required turning up early to await a foreman at the gates, where the sought-after positions were literally fought over; kicking, punching and even biting was a normal means of getting to the front of the line and thus, securing a job.  

Ohers toiled in the many sweatshops and factories that dotted Whitechapel and its environs, from boot making to cabinet making.  The hours were long (10 to 18 hours a day, six days a week) and the pay was abysmal.  An inexperienced factory worker might collect 4 shillings for a week's work (there were 20 shillings to the pound), one shilling less than the 5 shillings required for reasonable lodgings in the poorer areas.  Women who could operate a sewing machine could hope to make 16 shillings a week.  Showing up late to work would likely garner you a financial penalty, as could having dirty feet or an untidy work area.  Some workers were subjected to the constant breathing in of noxious fumes and/or fibers, leading to debilitating respiratory disorders, for which they were given no remedy, and sometimes death.  As there was always another man, woman or child willing to take someone's place, job security was nonexistent.    

The public houses, or pubs, were always busy with many of Whitechapel's residents attempting to drink away their misery, at least for a while.  The pubs, and their closing times, provided thieves, pickpockets and other cunning folks with opportune (and often inebriated) targets.     

The majority of Whitechapel's residents lived in one of the dwelling houses that densely packed the streets.  Oftentimes, as many as 20 people resided in a dwelling, with entire families sharing a single, squalid room.  These buildings were often infested with rats and mice.  The toilet facilities were either a hole dug into the cellar of the property, with the resultant odors and unsanitary conditions, or an outhouse.  Since many of the dwelling houses did not have bathtubs or washing facilities, communal wash houses were available in the area - if the resident could afford it.  If not, neither clothes nor body was washed.  

Landlords of these properties were very often greedy, renting the rooms at extortionate rates and packing as many people as possible into a property.  Unsurprisingly, disease was rampant.  A cholera outbreak had killed more than 3,000 in the 1860s.  Sexually transmitted diseases were common and incurable.

For those who were not fortunate enough to be able to afford to pay for a dwelling house were the lodging houses or doss houses.  In doss houses, four pence paid simply for a bed for the night, where the occupant was packed into an overcrowded facility with poor conditions.  Some of the area's doss houses would let a bed to one person during the day and another during the evening, a sort of "relay" system, and some even let their beds in eight-hour shifts, allowing the owner to basically collect three rent payments for the same bed.  For two pence, some of the lodging houses would allow a person to lean against a rope that was strung from one wall to another.  It was not unusual to have prostitutes conducting their business in a bed next to a poverty-stricken mother and her child.   

Those who didn't have the funds for a lodging house, or who used their money for drink instead, could be found "sleeping rough," choosing to attempt to sleep in doorways and stairwells and even up against gates throughout the area.  These "accommodations" were free but left the individual vulnerable to other homeless, knife-wielding gangs and, eventually, Jack the Ripper.   

      

The "Fallen" Women

The queen's own identification with strict moral codes had an unusual juxtaposition with London during her reign, as well as general notions of the time as far as marriage, sex, and independence.  Divorce was not only taboo at the time but costly enough to elude most working class couples.  While men could retain their jobs and standing in the community after separating from their wives and unofficially remarrying with another woman, the wives, by comparison, had no such luxury.  Married, they had no independence; they could not own property and could not execute contracts.  Without the protection of their husband, and living outside of what was considered conventional matrimony, they were considered "fallen women," unlikely to find what was considered respectable work and provide for themselves.  Women who were fortunate enough to receive financial support from their estranged husbands could just as quickly find that support forfeited should their husbands ever be able to prove they were cohabitating with another man (even if the husband was living with another woman.)  

For the most unfortunate of women, who received no financial support (and this included widows who had received nothing on their husband's deaths), they could apply for public assistance.  In that case, they had to prove their husbands abandoned them (either by leaving or via death) and therefore, they were destitute.  Such an admission required them to live and work in the local workhouses, labeled an "inmate" and forced to wear a uniform.  Workhouses were little more than institutions rife with squalor, degradation, and sexual violence.  Meals were sparse, often a watery porridge made of bread, cheese and potatoes.  Vermin infestation was common, as was illness.  Work was hard labor consisting of stone-breaking, milling corn, and using a spike and bare hands to pull apart ship ropes for fibers that could be used to caulk ships.      

So horrific were the workhouses that it was not uncommon to hear of women who chose to end their lives versus going into a workhouse.  One such woman reportedly set herself alight, after asking two children for matches with which to do the job and ended up in the morgue.  

For other women, sex work seemed a preferable option to the workhouse.  Back in 1888, prostitution was not illegal.  Unfortunately, whether working in a brothel, kept by wealthy men or soliciting on a street corner, be it full-time or part-time, the women were stained by the association and were unable to escape it.

Young women were not immune from the necessity of sex work, should their parents or siblings be unable to work.  In such cases, the daughters/sisters were expected to contribute to the family's coffer however they could. 

It was unknown exactly how many females were forced to prostitute themselves in order to survive.  The founder of the Salvation Army claimed 60,000 to 80,000 in the East End, although that number may have been exaggerated.  At the height of Jack the Ripper's reign, the police constables believed there were 1,200 prostitutes just in the quarter-mile area to the east and west of Commercial Street in Whitechapel and they were "mostly of a very low condition." 

This particular class of prostitutes, most of whom were homeless, were called "unfortunates."  These were the workers who would lead clients into the darkest alleys and corners of Whitechapel, where there was less chance of interruption by police or anyone else.  It also put them at greater risk.  Besides Jack the Ripper in 1888, they were also vulnerable to gangs who would often beat them in order to steal their pitiful earnings, clients who would do the same in order to get out of paying them and on occasion, even other prostitutes who would get territorial over someone else coming into her territory.

During the winter of 1887/1888, Frederick Charrington, heir to a local brewing dynasty, took it upon himself to rid the East End of vice.  The Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 allowed him, as a citizen, to report any house suspected of operating as a brothel to the police -- and he did so.  Police reportedly closed down 200 brothels, which had dire results for the displaced workers.  For those who did not pack up and move elsewhere (and "spread their moral contagion elsewhere" as newspapers of the time reported), they were forced to work on the streets, amid all types of weather and potential violence.  Charrington, instead of being a do-gooder, was accused of adding to the general misfortune.    

For those in the West End, who preferred to live as though the East End simply did not exist, when they did think of sex workers, it was under the misapprehension that they were doing so out of an immoral desire for sex.  

Some of London's finest, circa 1888 (photo source) 

The Police

To patrol London before, during and after Jack the Ripper, were two police forces:  the Metropolitan Police and the City of London Police.  Both were dealing with a serious manpower shortage.  For London's over five million occupants, the city had a reported 14,000 officers.   

At that time, officers were allowed to be men only.  Wearing a blue uniform and hat, their gear consisted of a wooden baton, handcuffs (called shackles in those days), a lantern, and a whistle to signal for assistance.  

Sixty percent of the police force worked the night shift - 10 p.m. until 6 a.m., patrolling their beat on foot.  Most officers walked up to 20 miles a day during their shift, moving at the regulated pace of two and a half miles per hour.  The passageways that snaked through areas like Whitechapel made the officers' jobs that much harder; standing on a street corner, they could only see what was happening on that particular street at that particular intersection.  

For most of the officers, they weren't able to prevent crime so much as catching criminals in the act. 

They were, however, kept constantly busy.  Those who broke the law, if convicted, faced harsh conditions.  Prisons were notoriously tough with enforced hard labor and damp cells.  Being sentenced to flogging and whipping was not uncommon, nor was a date with the hangman.  Public executions were banned in 1868 but reporters would still flock to the prisons, where executions were carried out inside the prison walls.  In 1887, the year before the Ripper committed his acts that would put him into infamy, 21 men and women died on the gallows.

Standard police equipment in 1888 (photo source)

   

The Metropolitan Police was headed by Sir Charles Warren, a Wales native with extensive military service before becoming Police Commissioner.  At first hailed by The Times upon his commission, Warren came under fire during Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee in June of 1887 when an allegedly respectable young seamstress was arrested for alleged solicitation.  When the seamstress's employer supported her in the courts, and was quite verbal about it, Warren, and the Metropolitan Police, took a bashing in the press.

The more radical press turned against him completely only months later, in November of 1887 when Warren, in response to a socialist demonstration in Trafalgar Square, sent in baton-wielding police officers, soldiers, and mounted police.  While the majority of the 40,000 protestors were peaceful, the small percentage that was not were armed with knives, pokers, and iron bars and pipes.  The result was a violent explosion that ended with 75 persons badly injured and 400 persons arrested and would become known as "Bloody Sunday."  Worse, it became known that Warren had turned down the use of a steam fire engine as a water cannon in order to clear protestors more peacefully out of the Square.

(photo source) 

Warren's style of leadership also apparently caused problems within the police department itself.  Things grew so bad between him and his assistant commissioner, James Monro, that Monro abruptly quit on August 31, 1888 -- in the very thick of the Ripper investigation.  The department, already stretched thin and working on what would end up being the greatest unsolved murder cases in Britain's history, were demoralized and worn out.  

To replace Munro and given direct responsibility for the Ripper case, a Dublin-born lawyer by the name of Dr. Robert Anderson was chosen.   Unfortunately, Anderson arrived on the job suffering from exhaustion and within a week was forced to take recuperative leave to Switzerland, a break that would last a month.  To take Anderson's place, at least until October, was Chief Inspector Donald Swanson, who would eventually become most knowledgeable about the elusive Ripper.    

Within the Metropolitan Police were divisions, each of which had responsibility for policing a specific area.   Once the ghastly murders of 1888 began, two different divisions would be involved in the investigations:  H and J.  

The H Division was headed by a popular detective called Edmund Reid.  Reid, who had been a pastry cook and a ship's steward before joining the force in 1872, had the unusual distinction of being the shortest man with the Metropolitan Police, standing at only five foot six.   In 1887, he succeeded Frederick Abberline as the Local Inspector and Head of the Criminal Investigation Department at H Division in Whitechapel.   Reid, unlike many of his coworkers, was spared the brutal criticisms they were regularly subjected to by the increasingly hostile press.

Frederick Abberline, after moving to Scotland Yard following his tenure in the H Division, would soon return to Whitechapel.  The former clockmaker, who had been with the Metropolitan Police since 1863, was placed in charge of the J Division on August 31, 1888 - the same day that James Munro resigned and the day Ripper victim Mary Ann Nichols was murdered.  His extensive experience in the Whitechapel area led him to be placed in charge of the detectives investigating the Ripper murders, leading the on-the-ground hunt for the unknown killer.

The murder of Catherine Eddowes in Mitre Square on September 30, 1888 took place in the City of London and so fell within the jurisdiction of the City of London Police.  Acting Commissioner Major Henry Smith and Detective Inspector James McWilliam, whose forte pre-Ripper was the investigation of financial fraud, joined the investigation with the Metropolitan Police.

George Lusk (photo source)

The Mile End, or Whitechapel, Vigilance Committee

On September 10, 1888, following Annie Chapman's murder by the Ripper, a group of some sixteen Whitechapel and Spitalfields businessmen and tradesmen got together to form a volunteer group to patrol the streets of Whitechapel during the Ripper's killing season.  They elected local builder George Lusk as their president and made it their goal to assist the police in bringing the killer to justice.   

They orchestrated their own nighttime patrols of the area, paying unemployed men a small stipend and furnishing them with a police whistle and stick, and worked on raising funds to offer as a reward for information on the Ripper.   The Committee met each evening at 9 p.m. in The Crown pub. 

As president and chairman, Lusk's name appeared in national newspapers and posters around Whitechapel, bringing him unwanted attention and threats, the most famous of which would be the October 15, 1888 "From Hell" letter address to him and containing half of a human kidney.    

(photo source)

 The Newspapers

Before the  mid-1880s, newspapers had been subject to a wide variety of taxes that made them very expensive and typically beyond the average person's means.  Repealing these taxes over a decade or so, along with the Education Act of 1870 in which elementary education was compulsory, meant that newspapers would reach a wider mass of the populace.  

Circulation skyrocketed and led to more newspapers being launched.  By 1880, there were a reported 158 daily newspapers in the United Kingdom, all of them in a daily circulation war, working hard to grab a maximum share of the readers' market.  

At the same time, a new kind of journalism emerged, one we recognize today as investigative journalism, brought about by a fascination of the habits of the rich and famous and an ever-growing need for sensationalism.  The paper Truth exposed political and financial scandals while the Pall Mall Gazette exposed society scandals.   

On January 17, 1888, a newspaper called The Star made its debut in London.  Its editor, Thomas P. O'Connor, found a young journalist named Ernest Parke who could be trusted to come up with daily sensationalistic stories.  While all the papers would devote coverage to the Ripper, it was O'Connor, and The Star in particular, who realized the public's thirst for every gory detail and went about titillating its readers with any morsel, no matter how small, it could find.   Soon, The Star had reached unparalleled circulation, particularly with its evening editions.   

Before long, the other newspapers jumped on the bandwagon, making a cottage industry of not only the Ripper but pointing out the local police's mistakes and missteps and suggesting they were buffoons.  

Journalist William Le Queux, who wrote for The Globe, would write in 1923 of "writing lurid and picturesque details" while he and two journalist friends "stood in the very spot where the tragedy occurred."  If one newspaper published a theory on how the murder happened, a competing newspaper would publish its own the following day, leading another newspaper to do the same the following day, and so on.  Truth mattered little when death, disaster and murder sold papers.    

Other Attacks and Acts of Murder

At the time the Ripper picked up his knife in 1888, a string of murders in London spanning nearly 15 years had been taking place.  Beginning in September of 1873, when a portion of a woman's torso had been found floating in the Thames (more body parts, including her severed head, were discovered over the next seven days but she was never identified), six more victims would be found , with the last being discovered in July of 1887.  All victims were women and none were ever identified.   Neither was their killer or killers, who was dubbed "The Embankment Killer," 

On February 25, 1888, a 38-year-old widow named Annie Milwood was admitted to the Whitechapel Infirmary with numerous stab wounds in her legs and "the lower part" of her body.  She said she had been attacked by a man with a clasp knife that he had pulled from his pocket and claimed to not know him.  It is not known where the actual attack took place, although the time was said to be at 5 p.m., but Annie lived in a lodging house at Number 8 White's Row in Spitalfields, very near the Ten Bells pub and the Christ Church on Commercial Street.  She survived the knife attack but on March 31, after being admitted to the South Grove Workhouse on Mile End and while working at the rear of the building, she fell.  It was assumed she was ill.  She was, in fact, dead.  

On Tuesday night, April 3, a woman named Malvina Haynes was attacked by a knife-wielding man near the Leman Street railway station.  Her screams for help got the attention of a nearby lodging house keeper, who came outside to investigate.  He arrived to see Malvina being attacked "with great violence" and her assailant ran off.   By the time a police constable arrived, Malvina was lying in a pool of blood, moaning and "insensible."  Upon arrival at London Hospital on Whitechapel Road it was determined that she was suffering from "a concussion of the brain" and a scalp wound "of rather extensive character."  She was not expected to recover, much less survive, but after laying unconscious for a week she did recover but with no memory of her attack.  Unlike Annie Milwood, Malvina Haynes was a married woman, or at least considered herself to be a married woman.  

On the same night of Tuesday, April 3, a 45-year-old widow by the name of Emma Smith suffered a horrible, and ultimately fatal, attack.  She had been on Whitechapel High Street around 1:30 a.m., heading back to her lodgings on George Street when she saw "some men" coming and crossed the road to get out of their way.  They followed her to Osborn Street and Brick Lane and near Taylor Brothers Limited, a chocolate and cocoa manufacturer on Brick Lane, she was "assaulted in the most brutal manner" and robbed of what little money she had.  She managed to get herself back to her lodgings on George Street, her face bleeding, her right ear torn, and with an injury "to the lower part" of her body - a blunt instrument had been forced into her vagina with such force that it had penetrated her peritoneum (the membrane that lines the abdominal cavity) and caused peritonitis.  Emma could not describe her attackers other than to say that one of them she suspected was a youth of around 19.  

Emma was taken to the London Hospital on Whitechapel Road, same as Malvina Haynes, but she wasn't as lucky.  Soon after arriving, she fell into a coma and died.  

On Saturday, May 5, 26-year-old Georgina Green, a resident of Spitalfields, was attacked by a man as she walked along to Whitechapel in the early hours of the morning.  She was stabbed in the forehead and lost "a quantity of blood" but was taken to London Hospital on Whitechapel Road and survived.  

Whoever attacked and/or killed these women remained at large as Jack took to the streets and were never caught.    

Whitechapel in 1888 (photo source)

 

Sources:

Jack the Ripper 1888 (2021).  The Metropolitan Police 1888.

Jack the Ripper Tour (5/10/2017).  London in 1888.

Jones, Richard.  The Jack the Ripper Files, Andre Deutsch Limited, 2015.

Mr. Castle History (2021).  The Metropolitan Police, 1888.

Priestley, M.P.  One Autumn in Whitechapel, Flower and Dean Street Ltd., 2016.

Roland, Paul.  The Crimes of Jack the Ripper: The Whitechapel Murders Reexamined, Arcturus Publishing Limited, 2012.

The Jack the Ripper Tour (2021).  Jack the Ripper and the London Press.

The Victorian Web (2021).  Slums and Slumming in Late Victorian London.

Trow, M.J. Jack the Ripper:  Quest for a Killer, Pen & Sword Books Ltd., 2009.

Whitechapel Jack (2021).  The 1888 Autumn of Terror.

 

Lisa Montgomery and the Murder of Bobbie Jo Stinnett

Did a Lifetime of Torture and Abuse Lead Lisa Montgomery to Slaughter Bobbie Jo Stinnett and Steal Her Unborn Child or Was Lisa Just Evil?  

Bobbie Jo Stinnett (photo source)

Bobbie Jo 

In December of 2004, Skidmore, Missouri was a quiet farm town south of Omaha and north of Kansas City, with its less than 300 residents working mostly in farming and in nearby factories.  Throughout the twentieth century, Skidmore saw half its population depart for the draw of bigger, more exciting cities.  The only "excitement" that Skidmore could boast was the infamous 1982 murder of Ken Rex McElroy, a town bully who had been shot to death in broad daylight by an unknown number of Skidmore residents.

Thursday, December 16 began like any other for Zeb and Bobbie Jo Stinnett.  The couple, childhood sweethearts, had recently celebrated two important dates:  their first wedding anniversary and Bobbie Jo's twenty-third birthday.  They had an even greater event to look forward to:  Bobbie Jo was expecting their first child in January and the two were talking of upgrading from their current small, cottage-style home to a larger one to accommodate their growing family.

Zeb and Bobbie Jo bred rat terriers from their Skidmore home, a business called Happy Haven Farms, and supplemented their income by working at the Kawasaki Motors plant in nearby Maryville.   On this Thursday, Zeb left to go to work in Marysville while Bobbie Jo, who had a litter of puppies for sale, prepared to meet a prospective buyer.  A woman named Darlene Fischer had contacted her the day before through instant message on a rat terrier enthusiast chat board called Ratter Chatter.  She said she was from Fairfax, about 25 minutes from Skidmore, and anxious to purchase a pup as a Christmas gift for her kids.  The two women agreed that Fischer could drop by the following day and take a look at the Stinnetts' litter.  

Around 2:30 in the afternoon, Bobbie Jo's mother, Becky Harper, called and Bobbie Jo confirmed that she would give Becky a ride home from work around 3:30.  Becky would have no way of knowing this would be the last time she would talk to her daughter.      

As 3:30 came and went, Becky Harper was puzzled that her daughter had not arrived to pick her up and so she walked the two blocks to the Stinnett home.  She found the front door open and so she went inside, calling Bobbie Jo's name.  When she got to the dining room, she was greeted by the horrific sight of her daughter lying on the floor and covered in blood.  To Becky, as she told the 911 operator, it appeared as though her daughter's stomach had simply exploded.  There was no sign of the baby Bobbie Jo had been carrying.  

Although the paramedics arrived quickly to the Stinnett home, they were unable to save Bobbie Jo.  She was pronounced dead at 4:27 p.m.   

(photo source)

The Investigation

The investigation into who had killed Bobbie Jo Stinnett began almost immediately.  Police knocked on doors throughout Skidmore, searching out any potential witnesses or residents who might have seen something unusual or off.  One mentioned seeing a dirty, red car parked in the Stinnetts' driveway around 2:30 p.m. and it stuck out because they had never seen it before.   

Blonde hairs had been found clutched in Bobbie Jo's hand, a sign that she had fought her attacker.  Although it would be determined that she had been strangled with a cord, that had not killed her.  Blood found on the bottoms of her feet suggested that after her killer had cut into her womb with a knife, Bobbie Jo had regained consciousness and stood up, even briefly, in an attempt to save herself and her unborn child.  

The child, doctors believed, would likely be alive, given that he or she had been carried to almost full term, but probably small.  Their greatest worry was that the infant would be in distress from his or her traumatic birth.

It was Nodaway County Sheriff Ben Espey who insisted and got an AMBER alert issued for the kidnapped Stinnett newborn shortly after midnight.  He was met with much resistance as an AMBER alert for a newly born, unseen infant had never before been issued.  They didn't know whether Bobbie Jo's child was a boy or girl or what he or she looked like.   

Zeb and Bobbie Jo (photo source)

  

Zeb Stinnett's whereabouts were routinely verified.  His solid alibi and genuine grief over his wife's brutal death had him quickly dismissed as a suspect.  Authorities then focused on Darlene Fischer, whom Bobbie Jo had mentioned to both her husband and her mother.  At the same time, another member of the Ratter Chatter forum saw the messages between Bobbie Jo and Darlene Fischer on December 15, the day before Bobbie Jo was killed, and Darlene Fischer's email address led her to contact the FBI.  The FBI did their own investigation into the emails between Bobbie Jo and Fischer and found that there was no Darlene Fischer from Fairfax, Missouri.  Their computer forensic analysis was able to trace the emails to a modem hooked into a telephone line in Melvern, Kansas.  The line belonged to Kevin and Lisa Montgomery.

On December 17, Kevin and Lisa Montgomery were at the Whistle Stop Café in Melvern showing off their newborn daughter, Abigail.  Thirty-six year old Lisa had been shopping in Topeka the day before, she told friends and family, when she went into labor and was taken to a birthing center where she delivered the baby girl.  She had then called Kevin, who, along with his two teenage children, drove to Topeka, picking her and the baby up.  The baby was small but she otherwise appeared healthy.

When Kevin and Lisa left the Whistle Stop Café, they had no way of knowing that FBI agents were parked outside their home on South Adams Road.  The agents had learned, just before pulling up to the house, that the last email Bobbie Jo had received had come from the Montgomery home.   The agents watched as the Montgomerys pulled up in a dirty red Toyota Corolla, Lisa holding the newborn baby.  After Kevin and Lisa went inside the house, they walked up the driveway and were greeted by many rat terriers.  Kevin answered the knock at the front door; Lisa was on the sofa, still holding the infant, and watching an AMBER alert for the Stinnett baby on the television.

Sergeant Investigator Randy Strong explained to the couple that he was investigating Bobbie Jo Stinnett's murder and asked about the baby.  Lisa explained how she had given birth the day before at the birthing center in Topeka; she asked Kevin to retrieve her discharge papers from his truck.  He returned empty-handed, stating that he couldn't find them.   While waiting, Strong noticed that there was dried blood and tissue around Lisa's fingernails.  DNA testing would later show it to be from Bobbie Jo Stinnett.  

SI Strong asked to speak to Lisa outside the house and she agreed, giving the baby to a law enforcement officer.  Once outside, Lisa told Strong that her family was suffering with financial problems and unbeknownst to Kevin, she had given birth at home with two friends assisting her.  When pressed for names of the friends, Lisa said they weren't actually in the house with her but assisted over the phone.  She said she had given birth in the kitchen and disposed of the placenta in a nearby creek.  It was at that point that Lisa requested the interview continue at the nearby sheriff's office.

After arriving at the sheriff's office, Lisa broke down and confessed to having strangled the baby's mother, cutting the baby from the womb, and then kidnapping the infant.  According to Lisa, she arrived at the Stinnett home around 12:30 in the afternoon, armed with a sharp kitchen knife and white cord.  She and Bobbie Jo had played with the puppies outside until Becky Harper had called around 2:15 or 2:30.  After Bobbie Jo hung up the phone, Lisa attacked her, strangling her with the cord.  When Lisa had begun cutting the baby out, Bobbie Jo had regained consciousness and the result was a struggle.  Lisa strangled her a second time and removed the baby from her body.  

Lisa Montgomery was arrested and charged with the federal offense of kidnapping resulting in death.  Agents did not believe that Kevin was aware of what his wife did, nor had anything to do with the crime.  Kevin himself was shocked, so convinced was he that his wife had been pregnant and that the baby he had held proudly was his.  

SI Strong, a former paramedic, had noticed that the baby girl, only 5 pounds, 11 ounces, had been very still and quiet in the Montgomery home.  He also considered the baby's head to be unusually round.  She was taken to a hospital to be checked out, where although small, she was indeed healthy.  Her round head came from the lack of pressure as she did not pass through the birth canal.  

Bobbie Jo is laid to rest (photo source)

On December 21, a bitterly cold day in Skidmore, Bobbie Jo Stinnett was laid to rest at Hillcrest Cemetery.  More than 400 mourners turned up to pay their final respects to her.  The next day, the baby was discharged from the hospital and returned to her father.  Zeb named her Victoria Jo and said she was "a miracle." 

Lisa as a child (photo source)

All About Lisa

Lisa was born prematurely in February of 1968 to an alcohol-addicted mother named Judy.  Her early birth, along with an alcoholic mother, contributed to what was later diagnosed as permanent brain damage.  Lisa's father also suffered with mental illness and the family lived in poverty.  The only bright spot in her world, it seemed, was Lisa's older half-sister, Diane, who was four at the time Lisa entered the world, and her younger half-sister Patty, who was born when Lisa was two and Diane was six.  

Lisa's father abandoned the family when Lisa was very small, leaving her and Diane (who was his biological daughter with another woman) to endure Judy's negligence and violence; she beat her children with belts, cords, and hangers and punished them with cold showers and forced feeding of raw onions.  If the infant and toddler Lisa didn't eat every bit of food given to her, Judy would leave her strapped into her high chair for hours.  Reportedly, Lisa's first words were "Don't spank me.  It hurts."    As she grew, Lisa would have her mouth duct-taped shut when Judy decided she didn't want to hear her child speaking.  In one incident, Judy punished Lisa and Diane by beating the family dog to death in front of them.  In another, Lisa was encouraged and forced to hit Patty with a board until the little girl bled.   

Throughout Lisa's childhood, and in between her six marriages, Judy had multiple relationships.  During this period, she would often leave her daughters with a male babysitter while she went out barhopping.  Lisa, only three at the time, would later recall lying next to Diane, who was then seven, in their bed while the babysitter raped Diane in what would, sadly, become a regular occurrence when he was in the house.  Judy either didn't know or didn't care; she had taken to punishing Diane by stripping her naked and then locking her outside.  

Social services was notified and they took Diane away, putting her into a foster home, where she would be safe and would flourish.  Unfortunately, Lisa was left behind.  Years later, Diane, as an adult, would bemoan that, as a child, she had never spoken up to either social services or her foster family about the full extent of the abuse and the rape she had suffered, as well as to what abuse Lisa had also endured.  

Without Diane in the home, all of Judy's abusive rages turned to Lisa.  Worse was when Judy married a man by the name of Jack.  Jack was a mean drunk who would often beat, punch, kick and choke not only Judy but Lisa as well.  He took it a step further with Lisa, making her remove all her clothing before he would beat her.  When Lisa was 11, Jack began raping her, with the assaults occurring once or twice a week for the next four years.  He went so far as to build a room for Lisa on the side of a trailer he had moved the family into, deep in the woods of Oklahoma (Lisa was moved 17 times during the first 14 years of her life).  This "special" room had a separate entrance so that he could come and go as he pleased as well as a hole in the closet so he could watch her.  When Lisa resisted the rapes, he would either attempt to smother her with a pillow or smash her head into the concrete floor.  In later years, an MRI would show that one of the times Jack had bashed her head into the floor caused a traumatic brain injury.

On another occasion, Judy walked into the room while Jack was raping Lisa.  Judy grabbed a gun and rather than confronting Jack, held the firearm to Lisa's head, screaming that Lisa had betrayed her.

Eventually, Lisa's stepfather began inviting friends over to the trailer to gang rape her, assaults that often ended with the men urinating on her.  This was ostensibly done with Judy's consent, as she would sell Lisa out to the local plumber or electrician in exchange for whatever work needed to be done on the trailer and to male friends who were willing to pay Judy for time with Lisa.   Judy told Lisa that she had to "pay" for her room and for the new plumbing being installed by submitting to oral, vaginal and anal rape.  That was when Lisa began drinking wine as a means of coping.

Lisa at the time the rapes began (photo source)

At school, it was noticed that Lisa was dirty, wore ill-fitting and obviously used, hand-me-down clothing.  She would often space out and lose her train of thought.  It wasn't uncommon for her to speak of herself in the third person.  Her teachers knew there were problems at home but had no idea how serious and horrific they were.  Her grades rapidly declined and she was placed into a special needs class.  Although the school administration wisely suspected abuse, they apparently took no steps on Lisa's behalf.  

Judy and Jack eventually divorced in 1985, with Lisa testifying about the abuse and rapes she routinely suffered.  The judge in the divorce case scolded Judy for neglecting to report the abuse her daughter had suffered but then did not report it himself even though the statute of limitations had not run out.  Lisa was allowed to return back home with Judy, who continued to abuse her.   (Jack would tell a reporter in 2005 that he never touched Lisa and that the entire thing was made up by Judy to support her divorce action.  He died in 2009; Judy died in 2013.)

Lisa told a male cousin of hers about the abuse she was suffering at Judy's hands and the men her mother routinely brought around who would rape Lisa, one after the other, as well as beat her.  He was horrified and disgusted but he too told no one and did nothing.  Like so many others, in later years he would speak of the regret of staying quiet and wonder if things would have turned out differently if he had only spoken out.

Lisa as a bride (photo source)

 When she was seventeen, Lisa took an Air Force summer program that   she excelled in and decided she wanted to apply to enlist, believing not   only that enlistment would get her out of her mother's house but the   strictly regimented lifestyle would be good for her.  It was not to be.     Shortly after her divorce from Jack, Judy married a man by the name of   Richard Boman.  Boman's son Carl either got Lisa pregnant and/or Judy   instigated an engagement but by August of 1986, when Lisa was 18 and   shortly after graduating from high school, she and Carl were married.     Her new married life mirrored her life up to that point:  Carl was abusive  and would beat and rape Lisa, filming it, along with her cries of pain, so that he could view it later.  Lisa's half-brother Teddy Kleiner later gave a sworn statement attesting that he had viewed a homemade video made by Carl Boman of Lisa being beaten and then raped.  Kleiner said that at the time he had no idea what to do or how to approach Lisa about the video and so did nothing at the time.  (In 2019, Teddy Kleiner was shot to death in Topeka in a still-unsolved homicide.) 

Lisa and Boman lived in abject poverty, with their home missing walls and floors, had no running water or plumbing, with loose wires and devoid of furniture.  Lisa gave birth to four children during the marriage; the first was born in January of 1987, with three following over the next three years.  Due to the lack of beds, the children had to sleep on the floor.  In 1990, following the birth of her fourth child, Lisa underwent a tubal ligation, which she said was forced upon her by Boman and Judy.  About 12 weeks after the sterilization, a hysterosalpingo-foam sonogram was performed on Lisa, which verified the sterilization was successful and she would no longer be able to have children.

Despite her mental and emotional issues that included being emotionally absent at times throughout her children's childhoods, Lisa was never abusive to them although her parental fitness was called into question when her young children were seen running naked in the yard and one of her daughters, not quite three years old, ingested a bottle of Tylenol.

In 1994, while separated from Carl Boman, Lisa had an affair and claimed that it resulted in pregnancy.  She and Boman would divorce, reconcile and remarry and then divorce for a second and final time in 1998.    

In 1999, Lisa moved to Melvern, Kansas, a tiny town roughly 40 miles south of Topeka.  Less than 500 residents called Melvern home, among them a divorced electrician named Kevin Montgomery whom she soon began dating.  

Before their marriage in 2000, Lisa informed Kevin she was pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.  Kevin gave her the money for the procedure and neither spoke of that alleged pregnancy again.  Two years later, now married, Lisa told Kevin she was again pregnant but she would not allow him to attend what she said were prenatal visits with her doctor; that doctor would later testify that despite Lisa's claims, he treated her for a cold and for ankle pain.  When the supposed due date came and went, Lisa told Kevin that the baby had died and she had donated its body to science.  

In February of 2004, Lisa turned 36 years old.  By that time, she had moved 61 times in her life. 

April 2004.  Bobbie Jo and Zeb are on the far right; Lisa is second from the left
(photo source)

In April of 2004, Lisa met Bobbie Jo Stinnett at a dog show in Abilene, Kansas.  Both women were breeders of rat terriers and both were members of the Ratter Chatter online forum.  Bobbie Jo was known to be a sweet and caring person and so when she shared news of her pregnancy to the forum group, all were happy for her.  During that same spring, Lisa too began to tell friends and family that she was pregnant and she too shared the happy news with the online Ratter Chatter group, claiming she was due in December, a month ahead of Bobbie Jo.   She and Bobbie Jo exchanged messages about pregnancy cravings, maternity wear and baby names.  Bobbie Jo had no idea that it was impossible for Lisa to conceive.  

Lisa's husband Kevin and her children also had no idea that she wasn't truly pregnant.  She wore maternity clothing, appeared to gain weight and have other pregnancy-related effects and symptoms.   

In the fall of 2004, as both the Stinnett and Montgomery households were preparing for the upcoming arrival of a baby, Lisa's first husband, Carl Boman, began legal proceedings to get custody of their two minor children who lived with Lisa and Kevin.  He and his current wife emailed Lisa, saying they knew she could not possibly be pregnant and they were going to expose her lies and use them against her in Boman's quest for custody.  Lisa asserted that she would prove them both wrong.

On December 10, 2004, six days before Bobbie Jo Stinnett's cruel end and Victoria Jo Stinnett's violent and premature delivery, Carl Boman filed a motion for change of custody of the two minor children. 

(photo source)

Trial

After the initial indictment against Lisa Montgomery was filed for kidnapping resulting in death, statutory aggregating factors were included that mentioned Bobbie Jo's death as being especially cruel, heinous and depraved and involved serious physical abuse against Bobbie Jo.  As  a result, the government noted its intent to seek the death penalty against Lisa.  

The first motion Lisa's legal team filed was to attempt to prohibit the sentence of death being an option; she said there was no proof that the kidnapping of a person resulted in Bobbie Jo's death.  That motion was denied.

The defense then filed its notice of its intent to assert insanity due to mental disease or defect.  The two medical doctors that the defense engaged diagnosed Lisa with depression, borderline personality disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and pseudocyesis (false pregnancy).  The government brought their own expert in, Dr. Park Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist well known for testifying in many high profile cases.  Dr. Dietz agreed that Lisa suffered with depression, borderline personality disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder but disagreed on the diagnosis of pseudocyesis.   In turn, the defense had Lisa submit to an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and a PET (positron emission tomography).  Following two days of expert testimony from both sides, the court found that the MRI did not show any abnormalities, although the PET scan indicated abnormalities on the somatomotor region of Lisa's brain; such abnormalities were indicative of pseudocyesis. 

During her sessions with her experts and interviews with the government, Lisa claimed that her half-brother Tommy had accompanied her to the Stinnett home on December 16, 2004.  Her attorneys arranged for her to undergo a polygraph examination in which the operator found that Lisa's statements "were not indicative of deception."   Despite this, the court granted the government's motion to exclude any evidence regarding the polygraph examination.  (Tommy was later found to have a solid alibi during the hours that Bobbie Jo Stinnett was murdered; he had been with his parole officer.)  

The defense took another hit when, before opening statements were made, the court ruled that testimony on Lisa's PET scan and its analysis would be excluded as it believed the evidence would have minimal impact in the case and that the findings could be indicative of many disorders, including pseudocyesis. 

Lisa's defense team was primarily male and one of her attorneys, Dave Owen, had never before defended a capital case.  Some of the experts hired by the defense suggested that Judy Clarke be appointed to help represent Lisa.  Clarke was a seasoned defense attorney who had experience working with victims of abuse and trauma.  While Lisa worked well with Clarke, the other attorneys did not and began actively working to get her off the case.  Even the chief investigator made comments along the line that he was "not going to take any orders from any damn woman."   Without informing Clarke or Lisa, Owen asked the judge to remove Clarke from the case, claiming there was "friction" between Clarke and the rest of the defense team and that Clarke was "obstructive," "abusive," and "non-productive."  Without any input from Clarke, or giving her a chance to speak for herself, the judge removed her from the case and ordered that all contact between Lisa and Clarke be cut off.  The forced departure of Clarke left Lisa with insomnia, an inability to eat, uncontrolled crying and, reportedly, suicidal.   

Trial testimony would stretch for eleven days, during which a defense expert stated that Lisa suffered from severe pseudocyesis delusion and was in a disassociative state when she murdered Bobbie Jo Stinnett and stole her baby.  It was this doctor's belief that Lisa's childhood sexual abuse and resulting post-traumatic stress disorder that predisposed her to pseudocyesis.  He cited Lisa buying maternity clothing, a home birthing kit and items for a baby nursery as facts consistent with pseudocyesis.

Dr. Dietz testified that in his opinion, Lisa did not suffer with pseudocyesis, as evidenced by her knowledge that she had undergone sterilization (despite her claims it had been reversed).  He did not think that she truly believed she were pregnant.  The government presented a September 2004 insurance application that Lisa had filled out as evidence; she had indicated she was not pregnant on that form.   The jury was also told of the time that Lisa informed Kevin she had had a stillborn baby and donated the infant's body to science.  Then, she had gone so far as to forge a letter from a research institution as "proof" she had indeed given birth and had donated the infant's body.   They also introduced internet searches Lisa had conducted before killing Bobbie Jo on how to perform a Caesarian (C-section) delivery.   

Ultimately, Dr. Dietz found that Lisa did not suffer from any mental illness or defect and that she could appreciate the wrongfulness of her actions.  

Lisa's attorneys failed to present testimony and evidence of the abuse, torture and sexual exploitation she had been subjected to for the majority of her life, much less how it had affected her.  Their only mention of any kind of rape was during the closing argument, when a poem about rape was read.  By  comparison, the prosecution rolled their eyes at rape and called it nothing but an "abuse excuse."    

Victoria Jo (photo source)

The Sentence

On October 22, 2007, after five hours of deliberation, the jury found Lisa guilty, rejecting her claim that she suffered with mental illness and defect.  During the two-day penalty phase of the trial, Lisa's friends, family, coworkers and doctors testified on her behalf.  The defense hoped for life imprisonment, citing to Lisa's ability to appreciate the wrongfulness of her conduct, her remorse over her actions, the emotional support she received and would continue to receive from her four children, as well as her husband, Kevin.  Her attorneys stressed that she was and always had been a loving mother who had a harmonious relationship with her children. 

Even Lisa's biological father, who had not been in her life since 1971, when he and her mother Judy divorced, testified, saying he had made a mistake leaving Lisa and Diane in the custody of "that crazy lady." 

The prosecution struck back, stating that Lisa was not and had never been a good mother; the fact she had asked her children to testify on her behalf demonstrated that.  Over objections from the defense, the prosecution went so far as to ask Lisa's daughter if Lisa had ever apologized to her children and family for the suffering she had caused them.

Lisa's attorneys requested that the jury be instructed that it was not required to return a sentence of death.  The court denied her request and instructed the jury that if it unanimously concluded the death penalty was the appropriate sentence, it must be imposed.

On October 26, the jury returned with a death penalty verdict.  Lisa's sister, Diane, who had not seen Lisa since she was four years old, had been reunited with her following her arrest.  Upon hearing the verdict handed down in the courtroom, she screamed.  

Ironically, once on federal death row in Fort Worth, Texas, Lisa began to see psychiatrists and receive treatment she had never gotten while free.  The doctors she saw concluded she suffered with psychosis, bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder and were suffering with all three at the time she murdered Bobbie Jo Stinnett.  They also felt she had permanent brain damage from the repeated beatings inflicted by her mother, her stepfathers, and her first husband.  She was put on a variety of psychotropic medications that controlled many of her symptoms.  

On April 4, 2008, Lisa's death sentence was affirmed.  

Almost exactly three years later, on April 5, 2011, her attorneys filed an appeal with the Eighth Circuit arguing, among other things, that the government failed to prove that death resulted from a kidnapping, that the court erred in excluding certain evidence, and the jury was not properly instructed.   On March 19, 2012, her petition was denied.   

Her legal team worked feverishly to keep her from her date with the executioner, claiming that carrying out a death sentence on her violated her Eighth Amendment rights regarding cruel and unusual punishment and citing the case of Atkins v. Virginia, in which it was ruled unconstitutional to execute individuals with mental disabilities.  

Lisa on death row (photo source)

The Sentence is Carried Out

Lisa was scheduled to be executed on December 8, 2020.   However, when at least one attorney on her legal team was diagnosed with COVID-19, the execution was delayed.  On December 23, a new execution date of January 12, 2021 was announced.  

On January 1, 2021, a stay was granted by federal judge Patrick Hanlon, stating that her mental competence needed to be tested as it could feasibly be argued that she did not understand the grounds for her execution.  In a 6 to 3 vote, the Supreme Court vacated that stay and the January 12 execution date was ordered to be carried out.

On January 12, Lisa was moved from Texas, where she had requested to be executed, to the death row of an almost all-male federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.  When asked if she had any last words before the lethal injection was administered, she said only, "No."    At 1:31 a.m. on January 13, 2021 Lisa Montgomery was pronounced dead, becoming the third woman to be executed by the U.S. federal government, the first female federal prisoner executed in 67 years, and the first woman executed in the United States since 2015.  At the time of her death, she was still married to Kevin Montgomery.   

Reportedly, the majority of Skidmore, Missouri residents supported the execution while the town of Melvern, where the Montgomerys had resided, were divided.

Sergeant Investigator Randy Strong, who had interviewed and interrogated Lisa back on December 17, 2004, believed the cold and calculating nature of her crime demonstrated that she knew exactly what she was doing.  "That was the act of a monster," he said, "she needs to be put to death."   

Zeb and Victoria Jo (photo source) 

Remembering Bobbie Jo

Since her brutal and untimely murder, Bobbie Jo has not been forgotten in Skidmore.   Members of her high school graduating class have an annual memorial donation in her memory.    

Off Walnut Street, a brick memorial was erected in her memory, inscribed with "Loving Wife and Mother."  

Her greatest legacy has, and always will be, her daughter, Victoria Jo, whom Zeb raised with support and help from his family and Bobbie Jo's.  On December 16, 2021 she will turn 17 years old.  

Bobbie Jo's final resting place (photo source) 

Sources:

Associated Press (01/11/21).  Woman Set to Die For Killing Woman, Cutting Baby From Womb.

Cornell Law School Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide (2021).  The Case of Lisa Montgomery.  

The Guardian (01/05/21).  A Lifetime of Torture. 

Ms. Magazine (01/11/21).  A Prisoner of War Story: The Life and Captivity of Lisa Montgomery.

The Scotsman (01/21/21). Lisa Montgomery Execution.

Talk Murder with Me (10/04/19), Skidmore Part One, The Murder of Bobbie Jo Stinnett.

Topeka Capital-Journal (01/07/21).  Who is Lisa Montgomery? 

United States v. Montgomery, 635 F. 3d 1074 (8th Cir. 2011).

Wikipedia (2021), Murder of Bobbie Jo Stinnett.