A horrific homicide of a mom-to-be and the abduction of her unborn child leave investigators baffled. The clock was ticking to find the newborn and to identify the killer. View source material and photos for this episode at: anatomyofmurder.com/eerily-calmCan’t get enough AoM? Find us on social media!Instagram: @aom_podcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @AOM_podcast | @audiochuckFacebook: /listenAOMpod | /audiochuckllc
Chapter 1: Who are the hosts of Anatomy of Murder?
I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff.
I'm Anastasia Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction.
And this is Anatomy of Murph.
Before we begin, we just wanted to let you know that today's story includes some particularly disturbing content and graphic details.
Chapter 2: What happened to Bobbie Jo Stinnett?
As we've endeavored to do in the past, our aim in telling this story is to pay respect to the victim, her family, and the outstanding investigative work of local law enforcement, and not to focus solely on the horrifying details of the murder itself or the person responsible.
With a population of less than 300, Skidmore, Missouri is what you might imagine when you hear the words Small Town, USA.
Located about 100 miles north of Kansas City, this small farming community in the heartland is not the bustling hub of opportunity that many young people seek when they're heading out on their own. But for 23-year-old Bobby Joe Stinnett, it was home. Here's former sheriff and retired detective Randy Strong, who was assigned to the major K-Squad in northwest Missouri back in 2004.
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.
Along with preparing for the arrival of their first child, Bobby Joe was also the proud proprietor of Happy Haven Farms, a dog breeding business she and Zeb ran from home that specialized in rat terriers.
They were just two young married individuals that were getting ready to start their family and by all accounts were really good people.
On the morning of December 16th, 2004, Zeb Stinnett left for work early like he always did to drive the two hours to his factory job across the border in Kansas.
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.
With their first baby on the way, a daughter, Bobbie Jo, sometimes worried that if she went into labor or there was some type of emergency, Zeb wouldn't make it back in time. But thankfully, Bobbie Jo's mother lived nearby and had always promised to be just a phone call away.
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Chapter 3: How did investigators first respond to the crime scene?
Somehow, between trying to staunch the wound and attempting CPR, Bobby Joe's mom frantically dials 911.
Out of respect for Bobbie Jo and her family, we've chosen not to play the recording of that call, as it is particularly graphic and distressing. Randy Strong, who was at the police station that afternoon, was there when first responders were dispatched to the scene.
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?
The local sheriff and two deputies arrived at the scene 11 minutes after the call, followed shortly after by EMS. Despite desperate life-saving measures, Bobbie Jo's injuries proved too severe and she died of her wounds.
But incredibly, that was not the full extent of this shocking tragedy. The paramedic on scene reported that the umbilical cord attached to Bobbie Jo's womb had been severed. and her baby was missing.
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.
Bobby Joe's body was transported to the hospital in Maryville. Randy had been involved in several homicide investigations, but nothing could have prepared him for this.
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.
Needless to say, Bobby Joe's injuries were severe and horrific. But they also told a story.
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Chapter 4: Why was the Amber Alert initially denied?
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.
The brutal murder left Bobbie Jo's family and the community in utter shock. The motive, while deeply disturbing, was clear. Someone murdered Bobbie Jo to kidnap her unborn child.
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.
But as we've said, time is always of the essence in the first few hours of a homicide. But in this case, there was even a greater sense of urgency. Not only were authorities searching for Bobby Joe's killer, they were searching for a missing infant whose young life was in imminent danger.
And they immediately began by looking for any witnesses that may have seen who had been at the Stinnett's house that afternoon.
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.
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.
Now, as you can imagine, local law enforcement called in all of the help they could get, enlisting investigators from multiple agencies to help with the search. But they also ran into a unique and frustrating roadblock.
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.
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Chapter 5: How did investigators identify the suspect, Lisa Montgomery?
The crime scene itself was beyond disturbing. It was unlike anything these investigators had ever seen before.
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.
Investigators found no signs of forced entry into the house, and the blood evidence made it clear that the attack started and concluded inside the small back bedroom of the Stinnett house, where Bobbie Jo also kept some kennels for her dogs.
So the presumption would be that either Bobbie Jo knew or was expecting her attacker, but whoever that person was, he or she left very few clues at the scene.
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.
Everybody that was there working on that were experienced homicide investigators. So we were just making sure that we were doing our due diligence.
The next thing for investigators to do was to try to pinpoint the exact time of the murder. You know, it's our timeline. And according to Bobby Joe's mom, the last time she spoke to her daughter, her call was interrupted by a visit from someone that Bobby Joe claimed was there to see dogs.
Shortly after that call, Bobby Joe's mom called her again to confirm the ride home. But instead of Bobby Joe, she got the answering machine. And this was one of those machines where you would have been able to hear the incoming message being played on the speaker while it was being recorded. So now as investigators listened, they heard the recorded message from Bobby Joe's mom.
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.
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Chapter 6: What led investigators to the Montgomery residence?
And thanks to the Amber Alert and the resulting media attention on the case, they were getting other leads as well.
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.
And one of those tips came from a woman in North Carolina who was also a terrier breeder and a regular on a community message board called the Ratter Chatter.
It turned out that Bobbie Jo was a popular and prolific poster on Ratter Chatter, which she used not just to generate business, but to share her love of terriers, dog breeding, and even more personal aspects of her life.
She was also showcasing her pregnancy and I guess had quite a following there.
As news of Bobby Joe's murder hit the message board, this particular tipster from North Carolina recalled an exchange that was posted just a day before the murder between Bobby Joe and a user calling herself Darlene Fisher.
But when investigators traced that user's account information, it actually led to the residence of a man named Kevin Montgomery.
And at this point, alarm bells start going off because there was another tip that had come in regarding a similar name.
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.
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