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Lisa Montgomery will be the first woman to be executed in the United States in 67 years. At the age of 52, she was found guilty of a heinous crime that she committed 16 years ago. It was a case that shook America and then became the subject of a movie.
The federal government of the United States has set a date for two more executions of those sentenced to death. One of the people whose execution is planned is a woman and she will be the first to be sentenced to death in the United States after more than 60 years.
Lisa Montgomery will receive the lethal injection on Dec. 8, the Justice Department announced. In 2004, she was found guilty of strangling a woman who was eight months pregnant. Then he broke her belly and stole her baby.
Lisa Montgomery will be the eighth person to be executed at the federal level this year, following a 17-year break in executions. From 2003 to this year, the federal government had not executed any death row inmate and from 1960 to 2003 it had executed only four people.
The last woman to be executed by the federal government was Bonnie Brown Heady, on December 18, 1953. She had been convicted of kidnapping and murder. Also from that year dates the famous espionage execution of Ethel Rosenberg, who was executed along with her husband, Julius, writes CNN. In fact, they are the only women executed in the United States in the last 156 years.
The second person for whom an execution date has been set this year, and who will be the ninth detainee to be executed in 2020, is Brandon Bernard. He is 40 years old and was convicted of killing two young men in Texas in 1999. He will also be executed by lethal injection on December 10. His accomplice in this case, Christopher Vialva, was already executed on September 22.
Montgomery and Bernard are being held in a federal prison in Indiana.
Lisa Montgomery, a sad fate and an extraordinary murder
The attorney for Lisa Montgomery, the first woman to be executed by the federal government in nearly seven decades, says the decision is unfair because her client suffers from mental illness, is abused as a child and is poorly defended at trial.
Lisa Montgomery, as featured in the 2004 police file photo © Photo: Guliver / GettyImages
Lisa Montgomery was 36 years old at the time of the crime. She killed her in 2004 Bobbie Jo Stinnett, a 23-year-old woman who was eight months pregnant with her first child. She and her husband raised purebred dogs, and Lisa and Bobbie met on a dog discussion forum. Lisa told Bobbie that she was pregnant too. They became friends and started emailing each other talking about how her pregnancy was going.
On the day of the murder, Montgomery pretended to be a client and arranged a visit to Stinnett’s home. On December 16, 2004, Montgomery entered the home, strangled Stinnett, cut her up, and removed the premature baby from her womb. She took it and crossed the state line with it, taking it home with her.
Bobbie was found in the home by her mother in a pool of blood about an hour after being attacked. The woman called 911 and told operators that her daughter looked as if “her tummy had exploded.” Attempts by paramedics to resuscitate her were in vain.
The next day, December 17, Lisa Montgomery was arrested at her Kansas home, where she had taken the child, claiming to be hers. Miraculously, the boy survived and was later entrusted to the father.
The speed with which the case was resolved was attributed, in part, to the use of computer data, which revealed the exchange of emails between Montgomery and Stinnett, but also to the use of the public alert system and the immense attention the case attracted In the press.
Lisa had a traumatic childhood, being raped for years by her stepfather. He began to drink. The mother discovered the facts when Lisa was 14 years old and reacted by threatening her daughter with a gun. Lisa tried to run away from home by getting married when she was young, at age 18, but this marriage, like the next, turned out to be a new series of abuses. He had four children until 1990, when he underwent a procedure to tie his fallopian tubes. Even after having her tubes tied, the woman claimed several times that she was pregnant.
Experts who examined Lisa Montgomery after she was found guilty concluded that she suffered from psychosis, bipolar syndrome, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Additionally, she had permanent brain damage from numerous beatings from her parents and husbands.
The Lisa Montgomery case has been described in two books, Baby be mine, by Diane Fanning and Murder in Heartland of Mr. William Phelps. It then inspired an episode of the series “Criminal Women” and another episode of a documentary series, No one saw anything.
Editor: Luana Pavaluca
