Criminal Misconduct: 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.