Randy Strong
Appearances
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
We're headed to Atchison County, and we're going to the sheriff's office, and we're going to be waking people up. Who is this Darlene Fisher and where do we find her? The highway patrol checking driver's licenses and running a name search, it's just not coming up. No one knew this person. That's very sketchy at that point. That's a person we need to find who made this call.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
Bobby Joe was a local girl. She was eight months pregnant, expecting her first child. She had married Zeb Stennett just less than two years earlier. They lived there. That was her first place.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
Their local dispatchers were handling tips that were coming in. We spent the rest of that night following up leads. People are calling into the sheriff's office now. This has hit the news.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
She was also showcasing her pregnancy and I guess had quite a following there.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
While I'm at the sheriff's office, a woman named Patsy Hughes, who lived in Georgia, called and she said she raises rat terrier dogs. She knows a woman named Lisa Montgomery. She met her at dog shows.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
We were told that Lisa said she was pregnant, but she didn't look pregnant. And then, oddly enough, on the night of the murder, Lisa called her daughter on December 16th and said, Hey, your baby sister has come.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
And then Patsy heard on this chat line about Bobby Joe's murder, and it concerned her enough that she called this lead in. And I was standing next to Sheriff Espy, and I said, Sheriff, I want that lead. He says, you have it.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
And I said, we've got to get past the reporters, so I'm going to walk out of the sheriff's office. I'm going to walk the two blocks to my office. I'm going to grab some things. I'm going to walk out the back door. I want your car waiting for me at the back door. Make sure none of the reporters are following you, and we're going to take off. And that's exactly what we did.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
We made the turn off the highway and they said, hey, I want you to know that you remember that Darlene Fisher email from Fairfax? And I said, yeah. They said, it came from the house you're going to. We've run it backwards. It's a dial-up number, but it came from that house you're going to. I just looked at Don and said, my God, we're here, man. Game on. We're going to find our baby.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
They were just two young married individuals that were getting ready to start their family and by all accounts were really good people.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
So as we get close, I'm told that they had activated a couple of FBI agents out of the Topeka office and had them go put eyes on the scene. And once they got there, they see a dirty red Toyota. I don't remember exactly, but it fit the description of what we were looking for that had been seen at the house. They said they saw a man and a woman carry an infant into the house.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
I said, hey, look, I know the case. I said, this baby's a month premature. We don't know what condition it is. But I said, there's five of us. Let's go there. We're going to soft knock our way into the house. I'm going to tell them, I said, you know, we're here following up on leads to understand things.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
that you maybe know our victim and had been on a dog show with them in Abilene, Kansas, and just tell them that we're there looking for leads and just kind of see if we can get our foot in the door.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
Frankly, they were a little hesitant. They said, you know, we got help coming on the way. I said, guys, there's five of us. I said, we can do this. And I just said, Don, turn the car around. We're going.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
This is in a rural farm area, and it's one of those small, older two-story farmhouses with an outbuilding, and it's got a gravel driveway. As we're driving up, I said, Don, we don't know if her husband Kevin's involved in this murder, but I said, I'm going to talk us into the house. You don't take your eyes off him. Just be prepared for anything.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
So my Silence of the Lambs moment is when I stepped out of Don's car and I'm surrounded by rat terrier dogs barking at my feet.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
Kevin's obviously nervous. So I just called him out by name, Kevin. And he said, yeah. And I introduced ourselves. And I said, this is why we're here. We understand that you knew Bobby Jo Stennett. Maybe you had met her at a dog show. And you probably heard about her murder. And we're looking for leads. So that's why we're here. Can we come in and talk?
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
He worked at Kawasaki factory here in Maryville. There's not a lot of jobs in Skidmore for anybody. So a lot of the people at work, if they're not in the farm industry, they come to Maryville or elsewhere to go to work.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
As I'm walking up on the porch, he goes, my wife had a baby yesterday. I go, really? And he opened the door for me. I was the first one to cross the threshold and I'm really, really nervous. You know, I don't know if we walk in, if we're going to get shot or what.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
It's a dim-lit room. It's incredibly cluttered. Cigarette smoke. Well, on the opposing wall from the door is a television set. And at that very moment, our Amber Alert is running across the screen. And I turn to my right, and there's a sofa. And there sat Lisa Montgomery holding our baby. And she's smiling, smiling enough that it unnerved me.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
I'm looking at the baby and I can see it's coloring is good. It's breathing. It's silent. It's not crying. And there's a little scratch above her eye.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
And so I just started talking to her, told her why we were there. Same story I told Kevin. I said, you know, we're looking for him to Bobby Joe Stanton's homicide. And she goes, Bobby Joe. And she kind of frowned. And Kevin threw her under the bus. He goes, you know, Lisa, we talked about that this morning. We heard about that. She goes, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
So I'm making small talk with her and I said, I see you have a baby. And she goes, yeah, I had it yesterday. And I said, where'd you have it? And she said, I gave birth at the women's clinic in Topeka, Kansas. She said, I went there to go shopping and went into labor. So I went there and had the baby. She said, you know, I had Kevin drive up in his vehicle and pick me up.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
And I said, okay, by any chance, could I see some discharge papers or anything to validate that? And she said, yeah, they're out in the truck. I said, Kevin, would you go get those?
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
Short time later, Kevin comes back with Don and he goes, tells Lisa he can't find these papers. And she goes, well, I don't know where they're at.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
She knew the victim. The email came from that house. At that point, she's not leaving. We're going to talk. She and I are going to talk. We're going to have a come to Jesus meeting. I'm convinced. I just wanted to get that baby away from her without her doing a violent act to the kid.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
I said, maybe we could go outside and talk and maybe you would let one of these other guys hold your baby while we did that. She agreed to do that. She got up. Oddly enough, she walked like a woman had just given birth.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
I'm that guy that gets Miranda out of the way pretty quick. And so I gave the spiel and got that signed off with. And we started talking and she said, you know, I got to be honest with you. She said, now that Kevin's not here, I want to tell you what really happened. I said, well, okay. Now's your chance to talk. And she said, Kevin doesn't make much money. We're poor.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
And she said, I didn't really want to spend a lot of money on a doctor's visit or a hospital visit to give birth. So I had the baby at home. She says, but I want to assure you that it was a safe delivery. She said, I had three of my girlfriends here with me to help me.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
I said, do you mind if I could get their names? And then it changed. Well, two of them were actually at their house. I could have called them if I needed them, but one was here and she gave me the lady's name. I said, may I have her phone number? And she goes, well... She really wasn't here either. I gave birth by myself.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
I'm sitting in this car with this woman. It's cold, and I'm wishing I had an office to take her to, but she's got a Band-Aid on her finger that's fresh, and I can see that it's bled through. And I'm looking at her cuticles, and I can literally see dried blood and tissue under her nails and in her nail beds.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
I'm really starting to get concerned that things are going to fall apart. And so I'm trying to keep her talking about this and ask her about how she cut her fingers. And she said, well, when she was driving to Topeka yesterday, she had a flat tire. So she told me after she delivered the baby at home, she put the baby in the car, drove to Topeka so that Kevin wouldn't be upset.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
And she told him a lie. She said, I had birth at the women's clinic there and he come up and picked me up just so that he wouldn't be upset with me having a baby at home alone. And she said she had to stop and change a tire on the way. And that's how she cut her finger. And I mean, it was just one lie after another.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
It was an elderly couple. And Lisa's demeanor just immediately changed. She got angry. She looked at me and she goes, get me the hell out of here. I said, okay. What's going on? Who is this? And she said, that's Kevin's parents. I don't want to deal with them right now.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
I stepped out of the car and I told him what we had. And he's like, oh, my God. I said, listen, I've got the suspect in the car. I need a place to interview her.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
I said, I think the media is probably going to be here shortly. I said, you're about to get overworked. I said, where can I go? Where can you take me that they're not going to find me? And he goes, you know, there's a narcotics office in a small town close to here. How about if I take you there?
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
Short time later, he came back with a couple of cartons of cigarettes and we sat down. Don and I got to business with her.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
As we're driving up, I said, Don, we don't know if her husband was involved in this murder, but I said, you don't take your eyes off of him. Just be prepared for anything. I don't know if we walk in, if we're going to get shot or what.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
So my approach is it's got to change because if you have a suspect that has sympathy for the victim, maybe remorse for what they did, they're pretty easy. That's not this case. She had absolutely zero remorse. None. It was all about her. And that become very, very apparent. So with that, my strategy was, all right, we have you. We know what you did.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
How do you want to be perceived in a court of law? Because we know that that's going to have a bearing on what's going to happen to you. Here's your opportunity to tell us what happened.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
She was tough. I mean, it was back and forth. She never asked for an attorney, never stopped talking to us. If she had a lit cigarette and was smoking, she would talk. As soon as that cigarette went out, she stopped talking. And I picked up on that pretty quick. I'd hand her another one, light it, and we would keep going.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
Finally, it was at 2.28 p.m. I have it wrote down. She just finally gave it up. She looked up and she goes, you have Bobby Joe's baby. We crossed that hurdle. And once we crossed that hurdle, she started giving things up.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
She told us that yesterday she got up early and borrowed her daughter's Desiree's cell phone for the trip. And after her kids left for school, she took off in a red Toyota Corolla.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
Bobby Joe believed she was there to buy a puppy, which we kind of thought was probably how she got inside. She said her and Bobby Joe took the puppies out to play with and look at. And she was there when Bobby Joe got a phone call and Bobby told the caller that someone was here to see the puppies and cut the call short.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
Really, the most chilling part was she said, I almost left without doing it. But she decided to go ahead and try to get the baby.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
She brought with her a knife and a white rope that were hidden in her coat pockets. And she said she choked Bobby Joe with the white rope.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
She said she stopped at a location, she got into the trunk, and she got cord clamps out, and she clamped the umbilical cord. The baby was crying at that point, and she said, I got a bulb syringe out and suctioned the baby out and then cleaned the baby up with baby wipes. And she got a child seat out of the trunk and put the baby in the child seat. And she drove to Topeka, Kansas.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
Her head hung lower. Her voice lowered a little bit. Her shoulders did slump forward. But at no time did she mention feeling bad about what she had done. Nothing. There was just zero empathy.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
Lisa phoned Kevin from Topeka and said, hey, I've had a baby girl come get us. Lisa told Kevin to meet him at the Long John Silver's across from this birthing clinic. She said she went into the gas station bathroom and cleaned up, changed clothes, and then drove to a Long John Silver's and waited for Kevin.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
And then Kevin showed up in his pickup truck with her daughter, and her daughter drove the red Toyota car back, and then she rode in the pickup truck with Kevin on the way back and carried the baby.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
She said everything that she used to do the murder with was still in the trunk of the car. She'd not thrown anything away.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
Don and I both realized that we had a first-degree homicide and possibly a death penalty case on our hands. There was so much pre-planning that went into this. I mean, she had a birthing kit with her. Without calling her out on it, she describes it. You know, she had a bulb syringe. She had cord clamps. She had a baby car. We knew exactly that this was pre-planned.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
I walked around to the back to the alley. I got my cell phone out, and I heard a helicopter coming. I looked up, and a Kansas City News helicopter arrived. was flying overhead, headed to the house. It was that close. We found out later on the news media was following the same leads that we were on the Rat Terrier website.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
And they were in all the chat rooms and they were picking up the same thing we were. And they were just minutes behind us. Can you imagine that the media shown up at that house before we got there?
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
Zeb, I'm sure, emotionally was just devastated. He was grateful to get his daughter back, but I know that he suffered immensely.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
We learned that later on during the follow-up investigation that there was a disagreement of some sort at this Abilene dog show that both these women attended to that went towards Bobby Joe's favor and not Lisa. And so there was probably a grudge there.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
Her husband, I believe his name was Carl Bowman, was taking her to court trying to get custody of the kids. And we believe that's what motivated this.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
She was being brought back into court to address this continual custody hearing, and she knew that that was going to be brought up. So we think that Lisa was just going to walk into the courtroom saying, hey, look, you're a liar. I've had a baby. Here it is.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
The follow-up investigation revealed that she had printed off an ultrasound picture of a baby and claimed that to be hers. What they found out when they looked at her computer, her home computer, they discovered that she had downloaded that picture from an internet site.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
And then Lisa got in using a photo editing, I think it was Adobe Photoshop, and changed the doctor, changed the hospital, changed the name and the date.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
And then the white cotton rope, you know, it was like the old white cotton rope that you would make a clothesline in your backyard with. It was covered in blood and it had hair wrapped into it. That was a treasure trove of DNA.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
I told the marshals, I said, when you get her to Kansas City, get somebody to do fingernail scrapings because there's a lot of DNA evidence. And sure enough, there was. She had... massive amounts of DNA underneath her nails.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
The defense was that mental illness due to trauma during her growing up, sexual abuse from stepfathers, unloving mother. That was her defense. They caved in and said, yeah, she did this, but here's why.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
I actually heard the sheriff's office get dispatched over there, and the dispatch was that mother found her pregnant daughter on the floor, and it looks like her stomach has exploded. I thought, my God, what's going on here?
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
They were so grateful. This horrible nightmare that's maybe going to start coming to an end here is kind of the impression I got. They were very grateful for everything that everybody had done.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
I saw her graduation was coming up, and I reached out to Zeb, and I said, hey, look, the FBI agents that were there, and my partner Don Fritz and I, we don't want to take away from her graduation, but What do you think? Could we maybe come to a pre-graduation party or something like that and meet her? He goes, I'd be honored if you guys showed up. So I made that happen.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
I called those guys and we showed up at her grandmother's pre-graduation party, met her for the first time formally. And my God was that emotional. I was crying. She was crying. I'll get choked up now talking about it, but she was so thankful.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
I stayed and watched her walk down the aisle and get her diploma and come out. And she sought me out and saw me sitting up in the bleachers and motioned to me, come down. She gave me a big hug and I'll never forget that.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
A short time later, Sheriff Espy called me, and he said, hey, this is what we got. He says we have a homicide, and he says we have a missing infant.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
He said, I want you to go down there to the ER, document the body, photograph the body, and collect any evidence you see on it. I gathered my kit, my camera, and I went down to the hospital. And I was in a room privately with Bobby Joe. And it was really difficult to fathom what I was looking at.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
I could see that she was battered about the face. I looked at her neck and I could see that there were rope ligature marks around her neck that looked like had been applied several different times because they were layered on top of each other. She had this large gaping wound to her lower abdomen.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
Personally, I have two daughters and both of them had their first children about the same time and they lived fairly close by too. So it was very, very troubling to me.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
Not only do we have a terribly gruesome homicide, but we have a missing child. And that made such an impact on me. I was just really, really praying that we were going to quickly find who did this and recover the baby.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
While these are rare, they do occur in the United States. There's a profile. The killer is usually a woman who has been telling people that they're pregnant. It's usually a large woman, and she can hide a pregnancy, but just by her body size. And it's time to bring forth a baby and goes out and murders somebody and takes that infant. I just felt very strongly that this is what we were looking for.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
The baby's a month premature, taken from her mother. If it survived... this really, really crude cesarean, chances are it would survive if it was cared for. And so that weighed really, really heavy on us. We need to find this child fast.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
Across the streets, a couple of established people have lived there for a while. And of course, the area is being canvassed. And a neighbor across the street described seeing a small, dirty, red vehicle he thought was a Japanese-made vehicle, like a Hyundai or something like that, that was there during this time period.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
And he had never seen it before, but he didn't see who got out of it or who went inside. And of course, now that vehicle was gone.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
Sheriff Espy tried to activate an Amber Alert. We run into a first with the Amber Alert. situation here because we couldn't meet the criteria. Certain criteria had been set up with the state and they denied it based on unknown color of hair of the child, unknown eye color, unknown height, unknown weight.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
They had not thought this through and there was no protocol for an unseen newborn or fetus that had been taken in such a manner. I can tell you, Sheriff Espy, man, he was upset.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
So he got on the phone to U.S. Congressman Sam Graves in the Missouri 6th District and explained the problem. And Congressman Graves, much to his credit, he says, sheriff, you give me two hours. Before two hours was up, the highway patrol called back, and our Amber Alert went out at 1230 in the morning on December 17th.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
I know the sun was coming up when I pulled up to the sheriff's office, and I could not believe my eyes, but we had Every major news station there with all the satellite trucks, they had filled the parking lot. And you couldn't walk anyplace without having a microphone and a camera on you.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
There was so much blood on the floor that one of the detectives that did the crime scene, he said, you know what a snow angel is? He goes, this looks like a snow angel, except it's in blood.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
They did not find a murder weapon at the house. I don't think they recovered any fingerprints. There were blood samples taken from the house. We were very much aware of DNA and how important that is. So all of those bases were covered. The place was diagrammed. It was photographed. Samples were taken. Thorough search throughout the house to see if we were missing anything.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
Everybody that was there working on that were experienced homicide investigators. So we were just making sure that we were doing our due diligence.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
saying that he didn't show up to pick me up to take me shopping, so I'm going to walk down to the house. That was just a short time later the night that her mother found her and called 911. So they surmise that maybe that phone call was heard by the killer who exited shortly after that.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
The St. Joe crime scene people brought her home computer into the mobile crime lab and they mirrored the hard drive. So they got to looking into what was in there and they found a message from a person that had set up an appointment to come look at the dogs.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
We were starting to lean that direction that maybe that person did the murder or maybe that person saw something that would be helpful.
Anatomy of Murder
Eerily Calm (Bobbie Jo Stinnett)
The frightening part of that was the email name that this individual used. She claimed to be Darlene Fisher, and her email was fisher4kids at Hotmail.