quote: SKIDMORE, Mo. -- An eight-months-pregnant woman was slain in her home, and her fetus was then cut from her womb, authorities said. Believing the infant survived, they issued an Amber Alert early Friday.
Bobbi Jo Stinnett's mother found her body Thursday afternoon. The 23-year-old woman had apparently been strangled. Authorities issued an alert hours later for the infant, a girl.
"The doctors who examined Bobbi Jo gave us information indicating we probably would have a live child if we could find it," Nodaway County Sheriff Ben Espey said Friday. "The child would be in danger because of being one month premature."
"Someone was wanting a baby awful bad," he had said earlier.
posted
I wonder if the person who did this got the idea from Law and Order. That was one of the most chilling, awful episodes....John Ritter played the one who did it.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
There was also that woman last year who told her husband she was pregnant, then killed a woman and cut out her baby, which died, and then took it to the hospital saying it was stillborn. Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
very recently, perhaps in the past two months, a woman in colombia was drugged and given a c-section. it was colombia's first kidnapping-from-the-womb episode. the woman thankfully got her baby back.
man. yeah, a lot of people aren't worth the carbon dioxide they exhale.
Posts: 3936 | Registered: Jul 2000
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posted
I just saw a news flash (sorry, I'm almost out the door so someone else can look for it) that says they found the baby girl alive and "in good health."
But the headline was "stolen fetus recovered."
(apparently the posts that announced the finding of the baby girl didn't show up in my browser until after I posted - I'm too glad she's alive to be too embarrassed.)
posted
The instant she came out of the mother she stopped being a fetus. She was a human even by our warped legal standards.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:The instant she came out of the mother she stopped being a fetus. She was a human even by our warped legal standards.
The headline on the AOL story really threw me. It led me to believe that a "dead fetus" rather than a "live baby" was found. Needless to say, I was very relieved.
But I was still stuck for what in heck goes through the heads of people who write the headlines for these stories.
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
It is a strange way to get a baby, why not wait a month and take it then? Opportunism? Why not make it the old fashioned way? Were they trying to avoid having it be identifiable? No sense to it at all, the other time I heard of it was when a girl stole the baby of her x-boyfriends girlfriend. She felt that she could get him back with the baby. This is just sick nonsense.
posted
I live about 20 miles from the town where the infant was recovered. It is a nice little town although it used to be overrun by bikers every Friday the Thirteenth. Melvern gained some notoriety for its biker bashes and attendance continued to climb until several people died from violence.
The town of Skidmore also has a rather grisly history as detailed in The Kansas City Star. I was going to provide a link but you need to be registered so here is the article in toto.
quote:SKIDMORE, Mo. –– How, wonder the people still left in this small town getting smaller, could such horrible things happen in a place they treasure for its friendly rural charms?
First came the notorious “Skidmore bully,” Ken Rex McElroy, whose death made national headlines. He had so terrorized the town that when somebody gunned him down in broad daylight in 1981, nobody would admit to seeing a thing.
Then on Oct. 16, 2000, pretty Wendy Gillenwater was stomped to death by her boyfriend. Locals take comfort in knowing the killer is serving life in prison.
The next year, a 20-year-old resident vanished. Many think he was murdered.
And now the police cars and media crews are back. Somebody on Thursday killed 23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett, butchering her body to pull out the little girl due next month to be Stinnett's firstborn.
“Why do they all come to Skidmore to do this?” decadelong resident Pauline Dragoo asked on Friday, her 91st birthday. “I'm going to move out of this town.”
Other residents see the string of violent history as random and inexplicable.
“It's just a freak thing,” said Roland Langford, who works as a custodian in nearby Maryville. “It's a real nice town. People get along. That's what you like about it here — the people.”
Skidmore's crime rates are enviably low most years, but residents concede the town's reputation is a grisly one.
Travel somewhere and mention that you live in Skidmore and faces usually show a blank. But mention the McElroy case — the basis for books and movies and TV documentaries that still run on cable — and a light of recognition clicks on.
“People look at you funny,” acknowledged M.C. Derr, the town's postmaster.
Skidmore is a collection of small houses and mostly shuttered businesses at the junction of Missouri 113 and Route DD. Its Little People's Park has four working swings, one small bench and a basketball backboard with no rim.
With only about 330 residents — estimated in 2003 for the census (the postmaster and others think it is more like 250) — Skidmore has lost more than a quarter of its population since July 10, 1981, when the killing of McElroy drew nationwide fascination.
Dozens of witnesses are thought to have kept quiet all these years after someone settled an old score with 47-year-old McElroy, who had a history of threatening his neighbors, chasing young girls and pilfering livestock.
Burly and hard-drinking, McElroy was free on bond after a second-degree assault conviction when he was shot in his truck outside Skidmore's only bank. The townspeople clammed up. The national media streamed in to report on the town's “vigilantes,” which many locals considered a slur at the time, citing a legal system that kept a belligerent McElroy on the streets.
Even sightseers drove through. A TV movie followed.
Just months ago, an independent filmmaker from Connecticut released “Without Mercy,” a graphic dramatization of the McElroy story that won a top prize at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival.
“What's happened now is going to be shock for them all over again,” said Harry MacLean, a Colorado author. MacLean's book In Broad Daylight, an account of the McElroy case, reached No. 2 on the New York Times best-seller list.
The domestic violence that claimed Gillenwater in 2000 drew little media attention. But a year later the town was tied to another macabre mystery that remains unsolved.
Branson Perry, a slender 20-year-old with blond hair and a friendly air, suddenly went missing in 2001, never to be seen again. Authorities would investigate Jack Wayne Rogers of Fulton, Mo., on suspicion of abduction and murder in the case.
No charges were filed, but authorities found a claw necklace belonging to Perry in Rogers' possession. Earlier this year prosecutors told a federal judge that they discovered the transcript of a computer chat in which Rogers purportedly discussed Perry's abduction and mutilation.
Rogers in April received a 30-year prison sentence in a child pornography and obscenity case.
Still, overall crime is perennially low in Skidmore and surrounding Nodaway County.
The county's crime rate in 2003 was less than half the statewide average, according to the Missouri Department of Public Safety. Authorities recorded only 23 violent offenses, mostly for aggravated assault, in the county of nearly 22,000 people.
“They're quiet people … mostly farmers who all knew each other since kindergarten,” said MacLean, who while doing research for his book in the mid-1980s lived with a family outside Skidmore.
“Even then, they had sort of an ‘us versus the world' approach” to outsiders, he said.
“As in any rural town, I think a lot of people there feel isolated,” said Horton, Kan., Police Chief Dick Luzier, who as a Nodaway County sheriff's deputy investigated McElroy's killing. “When bad stuff happens, some don't feel they have anybody they can turn to — not even to authorities — because they may feel threatened by retaliation,” as many felt when McElroy stalked the streets.
A place typical of the rural terrain of northwest Missouri, Skidmore is a town few people would move to, even though a home sells there for about $30,000, according to U.S. census data.
The nearest hospital is 15 miles away. Skidmore children are bused to school in either Maitland or Graham. The town's elementary school closed three years ago.
That was about the time the bank branch closed, as did Mom's Cafe — the place outside of which McElroy died. The cafe was converted to the Newton Hall Community Building.
This fall marked the first time anyone can remember that the fall Pumpkin Show was canceled. Not enough people were interested.
But the town still puffs up its chest about its Freedom Festival — a tribute to veterans and patriotism that draws people from 20 states every year the weekend after Labor Day. Heather French Henry, Miss America 2000, showed up in 2002. Light-heavyweight prizefighter Rob Calloway of St. Joseph came this year.
“This is a really great little town,” said Carla Wetzel, a chief organizer of the Freedom Festival and the mother of school-age girls who now plans to lock her doors more often. “We moved back here because it was a safe place. And it is a safe place.”
Wetzel got calls on Friday from Freedom Festival visitors from Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and Florida, all sending condolences to the town.
On KMBZ radio in Kansas City, drive-time talk-show host Russ Johnson wondered aloud, “Maybe there's something in the water there in Skidmore.”
But residents rejected the idea that anything more than coincidence explained Skidmore's violent history.
“It's not a matter of where they lived,” said JoAnn Stinnett, Branson Perry's grandmother and a more distant relative to Bobbie Jo Stinnett. “All this just happened to hit here. It could have happened anywhere.”
posted
Hmmm... Would if had been less sick for this murderer to have left the baby in the womb to die?
Posts: 2432 | Registered: Feb 2001
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The whole point of killing the mother was to get the baby. She didn't kill the mother and then say "Oh, wow! Now I will save the baby!"
Posts: 10890 | Registered: May 2003
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AOL, at least is still at it. The headline they gave today's AP story is:
"Stolen Fetus Recovered After Mom Slain"
It gets weirder, because this is the actual first line of the news article:
quote:A baby girl that had been cut out of her mother's womb was found after a frantic search, and authorities arrested the woman they say strangled the mother and stole the child.
So the headline refers to a "fetus" and the article refers to a "baby girl" and "child."
posted
What a horrid thing. All I can think of now is who will tell this child how their mother died, and when will they tell her, and how. My mother died when I was a baby, and her death was a part of my whole life story. No one forced it on me, it was just something I needed to know. I just feel so sad for this child. And the dad.
Posts: 10890 | Registered: May 2003
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posted
Yes, well, you should have seen the sheriff who was the spokesman for the search on the news last night. His grammar was so atrocious, I felt bad for wincing at it when he was announcing that the Amber Alert system works, people had done all the right things, and a healthy baby who they were testing to confirm that it was the right one had been found.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
Jeez . . . feel awful about the family and the baby and all, but also I'm thinking, well, it says the murderer has two high-school age kids. Think what it must be like for them too . . .
Posts: 1735 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
Apparently there's a pattern to these cases. A woman unable to conceive despite trying for years decides that she really needs a baby -- usually in an attempt to keep a failing marriage together. Sometimes the husband/boyfriend is an accomplice.
Infant theft is, obviously, more common than cutting the baby out of the womb and leaving the mother for dead...but this has happened before.
It is almost enough to make me wish God would end the World and start over with a better species.
posted
Bob, She has two sons! She was pregnant and lost the baby, then called her family and said she was due any minute with a baby. It is just so sick. Liz
Posts: 10890 | Registered: May 2003
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posted
I just want to resurrect this thread to say it is amazing that this woman was caught BECAUSE of posts to a forum (like ours here) in which she set up the meeting between herself and the victim. She was supposedly meeting with her about buying one of her purebred dogs.
Posters at the forum saw that their friend had been killed (in news reports) went back over messages and realized she had a meeting with this lady, and turned in the IP address of the poster.
Kinda freaky. What if someone bopping into here tried to kill one of us? Would we think to do this?
quote: Suspected baby thief traced by messages
A chilling exchange on an Internet chat board for rat terrier owners shows how a Kansas woman who allegedly ripped the baby out of a pregnant dog breeder set up their meeting.
Other exchanges show how chat board members figured out what might have happened and pointed police to the suspect.
Lisa Montgomery, 36, is accused of killing Bobbie Jo Stinnett on Thursday, removing the baby from her womb and trying to pass it off as her own to family and friends. The baby, a girl named Victoria Jo, was later recovered unharmed.
The first message in the tragic chain was posted at 4:22 p.m. Wednesday by a woman calling herself Darlene Fischer, with the screen name "fischer4kids" -- but who was really Montgomery, authorities have said. The note appears to be the bait used to trap Stinnett.
"I was recommended to you by (name withheld) and have been unable to reach you by either phone or e-mail," the message read. "Please get in touch with me soon as we are considering the purchase of one of your puppies and would like to ask you a few questions."
Stinnett replied with a cheerful message at 7:44 p.m.:
"Darlene, I've e-mailed you with the directions so we can meet. I do so hope that the e-mail reaches you. Great chatting with you on messenger. And do look forward to chatting with you tomorrow a.m.
"Thanks (name withheld), and talk to you soon, Darlene!
"Have a great evening
"Bobbie"
Montgomery had been on the chat board often, using her own name and posting photos of her own rat terrier puppies and seeking mates for her own breeding projects.
Early Friday, as news reports aired about the horrific baby snatching, the regulars on the Ratter Chatter site realized the victim was one of their own.
And then they realized that "Darlene" would have met Bobbie Jo on the day she was killed, and that the woman had arranged the deadly meeting through their chat board.
They also recalled that Stinnett and Montgomery had discussed their pregnancies on the chat site. Montgomery, who was not pregnant, was claiming as recently as last week that she was due in days.
"Darlene Fischer was supposed to meet her on (Thursday)," one poster wrote.
One chatter figured out that the Internet address for Fischer traced back to Kansas -- where the baby was eventually recovered at Montgomery's home in Melvern.
By 8 a.m. Friday, several members had called police with the information they had gathered.
Police said the tips and a sighting of the suspect's car led them quickly to Montgomery.
By the time it was over, the pain was palpable in the chat board's messages. "We just saw a murder plan in front of us and it makes me so sad," one poster wrote.
One woman wrote that she had just been told by the suspect that she was due to give birth the day Stinnett was killed.
"Now I'm just sick as heck.. "the woman wrote. "If this is true... she just posted to me not long ago that she was going to have her baby Thursday."
Montgomery, a mother of two, lied to family and friends about being pregnant with twins and suffering a miscarriage with one of the babies, investigators said. Detectives doubt whether she was pregnant at all.
Authorities said Montgomery has confessed to strangling Stinnett, cutting out the baby and taking the infant girl back to Kansas.
She met her husband at a Topeka fast-food restaurant with Stinnett's baby, telling him she had gone into labor while shopping in the city, authorities said. Montgomery's husband has not been charged.
Stinnett's baby was in good condition Sunday at a Topeka hospital.
Services will be held for Stinnett on Tuesday.
The Rev. Harold Hamon said he was probably addressing Christmas cards when Stinnett, his pregnant neighbor, was killed.
"It's almost unbelievable that right under your nose something terrible can be happening," said Hamon, who lives in the tiny town of Skidmore in northwestern Missouri.
Hamon married Bobbie Jo and Zeb Stinnett in spring 2003 at his Skidmore Christian Church. "She was all dressed in white and very beautiful," he said.
Stinnett, 23, grew up in Skidmore and worked at an engine factory. She was eight months pregnant with the couple's first child.
"They were kids in the neighborhood, nice young kids," Hamon said. "She's just a real nice girl, real pretty, quiet and reserved."
Stinnett's mother found her body in a pool of blood inside the couple's small white home Thursday afternoon.
Montgomery was being held Sunday at the Wyandotte County Detention Center in Kansas City, Kan. She is expected to appear in court today, but authorities have not yet said whether she will be arraigned in Kansas or Missouri.
posted
I do not think much slips by this crew. Eek. Sometimes I think we trust each other a bit too much, and I HATE it when I think that!
Posts: 10890 | Registered: May 2003
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posted
Perhaps this would be a good time to remind people that no matter how well you know someone online, when you're going to meet them IRL, bring a friend--preferably a strong, intimidating friend. And TELL other people where you are going.
There are crazies everywhere, but the 'net really increases their territory for victims.
quote: She met her husband at a Topeka fast-food restaurant with Stinnett's baby, telling him she had gone into labor while shopping in the city...
And hubby didn't think to take her and the baby to the hospital to get checked on? He bought that story?
But then, I guess I shouldn't expect too much from a man who obviously didn't go to any of the prenatal exams or ask to see any of the sonograms.
Posts: 2283 | Registered: Dec 2003
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