Murder in the Heartland (28 page)

M
any of Lisa Montgomery’s friends and extended family had a hard time accepting the fact that Lisa wasn’t pregnant, because she had been so convincing in spinning her tale. Lisa, of course, wasn’t the first female to feign pregnancy; her case was one more in a growing list in the United States over the past thirty-odd years.

In 1982,
The American Journal of Psychiatry
published a detailed description of the condition pseudocyesis, a term John Mason Good coined in 1923 from the Greek words
pseudes
(false) and
kyesis
(pregnancy). Many claim the condition has been around for thousands of years, as it was first mentioned in 300
B.C
. by Hippocrates, who wrote about twelve women who “believed they were pregnant.” Every definition of pseudocyesis is, for the most part, the same: a hallucination “pregnancy in women usually resulting from a strong desire or need for motherhood,” which clearly defined Lisa Montgomery’s behavior. Many women even stop menstruating as their “abdomen becomes enlarged and the breasts swell and even secrete milk, mimicking genuine pregnancy.”

Lisa Montgomery, several members of her immediate family agreed, had been irregular with her menstrual cycle most of her life. Whenever she claimed to be pregnant, her stomach was distended—possibly because she swallowed air and made it happen—and she displayed other characteristics that would have led people to have no reason to question her. In some women, the syndrome is so pronounced, the desire to have a child so deeply engrained in their psyche, the uterus and cervix “show signs of pregnancy” and “urine tests may be falsely positive.”

No one has suggested that any of Lisa’s false pregnancies had gone that far. But some agree that the mind is, indeed, a controlling machine, and a person’s will, if powerful enough, can cause the body to react in many different ways.

In 1990, Dowden Health Media, Inc., a company publishing “journals that reach more than 300,000 physicians each month,” published an article with supporting research to break down the dynamics of women—and, shockingly, four men—who suffered from pseudocyesis. “There are several theories regarding the cause of pseudocyesis,” the article stated. Among the most common included are: (1) the “conflict theory: A desire for or fear of pregnancy creates an internal conflict and causes endocrine changes to explain the signs, symptoms, and laboratory findings in pseudocyesis”(2) the “wish-fulfillment theory: Minor body changes initiate the false belief in pregnancy in susceptible individuals” and (3) the “depression theory: pseudocyesis may be initiated by the neuroendocrine changes associated with a major depressive disorder.”

“Pseudocyesis,” the article went on to explain, “is considered a heterogeneous disorder without a unifying cause. Research to discover the underlying cause of pseudocyesis has been hampered by the relatively low numbers of patients with the illness.”

Dowden Health Media’s research was substantiated by a study dating back as far as 1890 to 1910, “when one-hundred-fifty-six cases were reported….” By contrast, “only forty-two cases were reported between 1959 and 1979.” Interestingly enough, as it pertained to Lisa’s life, “the age range of patients with pseudocyesis is six-and-a-half” years old to “seventy-nine” years old. Even more important, the “average age” of a female suffering from the disorder was “thirty-three” years old. (Lisa was thirty-six when she alledgedly murdered Bobbie Jo and kidnapped her child; thirty-two when she began talking about a series of false pregnancies.) “Eighty percent of women with pseydocyesis [
sic
] are married,” the article continued, while “14.6 percent [were] unmarried….”

Perhaps most relevant, Dowden’s research found that “pseudocyesis is more common in women during their second marriage” and “thirty-seven percent of women with pseudocyesis have been pregnant at least once.”

For some women, the belief they are pregnant is rooted so deeply in their minds that it is hard for them ever to admit the opposite. Friends and family of these women are stunned later when they learn the truth because the argument by the affected person was so powerful.

The night before Bobbie Jo was murdered, Lisa had called a former friend, Brenda Stanford, and told her she’d just had a baby girl. The possibility that Lisa was lying about being pregnant was something Brenda had never considered. Brenda had been over to Kevin and Lisa’s house in Melvern for dinner. “Kevin and Lisa loved each other.” She knew Kevin from her work in the community. “Great guy. He was really suckered. An innocent victim.” A lot of people, Brenda said, believed it as much as she did.

In addition, weeks before Bobbie Jo was murdered, Lisa had talked to Brenda about a home-birthing kit she had purchased online. “I want to have the baby at home,” Lisa said.

“Well, call me,” Brenda said, “if you need any help when you go into labor. Be glad to help you out.”

“Thank you, Brenda; you’re the best.”

“I know an EMT,” Brenda added. “If you need help, Lisa, just call.”

“I will.”

O
n October 20, 1989, Lisa gave birth to her and Carl’s third child, Ryan. They were still living in Hominy. By then, Carl’s job at the prison had become a burden. According to him, there were 120 inmates per guard. He was increasingly bothered by the name-calling, spitting, fighting, and aggressive behavior. “I had always told myself that if I woke up in the morning, went to work, and feared for my life, I’m not working there anymore.”

During his tenure as a guard, Carl was assaulted several times, receiving stitches, broken bones, cuts, minor bruises. He could, in some way, accept all of that as part of the job. But then one day he arrived home with a rather large welt on his head and two black eyes.

“What happened to you?” asked Lisa. She was holding Ryan. The other two kids were in the playpen.

An inmate had whacked Carl over the head with a two-by-four and knocked him unconscious.

“My, God, Carl.” Lisa put her free hand over her mouth.

“It’s just not worth it anymore.”

With three kids and a wife at home, Carl needed a job with stability that paid well.

By this point, Richard and Judy had moved to San Diego, California, seeking new surroundings for their fractured, dissolving marriage. Richard claimed Judy had cheated on him. In a way, moving to the West was an attempt to save the marriage.

It didn’t take long before they were at odds again.

“I left Richard in California,” said Judy. “I moved to Ponca City [Oklahoma] and filed for divorce. Yes, I did go with someone, and if you want to call it ‘cheating,’ fine with me. But I had already filed for a divorce. The man I was going out with was divorced. He helped me a lot. While he was fixing my car, I used his. We knew some of the same people. We went out to eat and didn’t hide a thing. So, yes, I had an affair. But I was separated and, at the time, thought my marriage was over with Richard.”

Richard and Judy still had feelings for each other, though.

“I divorced Richard on the seventh day of December 1989,” Judy recalled. “He called me soon afterward.”

“Let’s work things out, Judy,” she claimed Richard said. “Come back out here.”

Judy called the court and got “a paper” she and Richard would have to sign. She told him after he signed it, he would have to send thirty dollars to the court with the paper and their marriage would be reinstated.

“I’ll take care of it,” Richard told Judy when she arrived in California. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay, Richard.”

With Richard and Judy in San Diego, Carl sat one night and thought about it. “Sun and fun was the real reason. The prison was dangerous and I’d had enough of it.” Looking at Lisa with a strange, daydreaming look in his eye, as if he were picturing himself on the beach, Carl stated, “San Diego sounds perfect.”

I
n January 1990, Carl packed up Rebecca and Alicia and took off for San Diego, while Lisa stayed behind in Hominy with Ryan, who was only a few months old. Carl figured he’d find a house or apartment close to Richard and Judy, move in, and then send for Lisa and Ryan.

On paper, it seemed like a good plan.

While Carl was in San Diego, he developed a sense things weren’t right back home with Lisa. “I felt she was either being unfaithful, or was about to be.” Carl had never had this type of “strong sixth sense” before, he recalled, and had no real reason to even consider Lisa was fooling around. Since they married in 1986, things had gone well. Work. Baby. Work. Baby. Work. Another baby.

But now it seemed something were terribly out of balance with the relationship. Lisa seemed “distant” when he called her. “No ‘I love you,’” said Carl. Lisa wasn’t asking when she could “come out there to be with me. Her whole mood was different.”

Judy told Carl that Lisa had received a visit in his absence from her former stepfather.

“What are you talking about?” asked Carl.
No way.
The man had been out of her life for so long, what purpose would he have calling on her now?

“He was there, Carl,” Judy swore.

Carl never believed it.

Around this same time, Judy and Richard were making plans to drive back to Oklahoma from San Diego. They wanted to bring some of Judy’s belongings home so she could eventually move back. After talking to Lisa a few more times, Carl decided that he needed to be home with her. She seemed “different” and withdrawn, the polar opposite to the person he had left just weeks before.

Throughout the ride from San Diego to Oklahoma, Judy bad-mouthed Lisa, said Carl. It was as if Judy were trying to convince Carl he should leave Lisa.

“Yes, many times I would ask [Carl], why do you put up with her?” Judy recalled.

“For the kids,” Carl would respond.

“She’s no good,” Carl recalled Judy telling him. “You can’t trust her.”

“What are you talking about, Judy? What do you mean by that?”

“She’s messing around on you, Carl.”

When Carl returned to Oklahoma, he found out Lisa was pregnant again—in fact, several months pregnant. At first, she claimed the baby wasn’t his. But Carl did the math after they received a projected due date and figured out Lisa had become pregnant a few months after she gave birth to Ryan. Carl was working at the prison then, they were still living together. It was well before he took off for San Diego to scout for a place to live.

Even so, Carl said he allowed Judy to influence his decision to leave Lisa when he returned home.

“She was heartbroken. But what I didn’t see when I left for San Diego was how much Lisa needed someone to be around her.” He believed she was unfaithful while he was gone. “She felt I had abandoned her when I left.”

Carl couldn’t get over her infidelity. It hurt too much. So, he left her in Oklahoma and drove back to San Diego with Alicia and Rebecca.

J
udge John Maughmer filed an official order on March 23, 2005, detailing an earlier decision to postpone Lisa’s trial until April 24, 2006, about a year after it was first scheduled. “It would be unreasonable to expect defense counsel to prepare adequately for trial prior to [this date],” the judge wrote. Furthermore, the U.S. Attorney’s Office continued to say it was “leaning toward seeking the death penalty,” but wouldn’t—and couldn’t—make a formal announcement of its intent until September 2005, after obtaining approval from the Department of Justice.

With a trial date firmly in place and the government likely to pursue the death penalty, Lisa’s defense team went to work on her behalf, noting it was “way too early to determine what kind of defense” to pursue. It could be argued, of course, that Lisa was insane at the time of the crime. Yet with the premeditation and careful planning that the evidence seemed to prove, many agreed an insanity plea would be a tough sell to a jury.

A plea of “incompetent to stand trial” was another option, but Susan Hunt, one of Lisa’s attorneys, indicated she didn’t see it as a viable argument.

Lisa seemed to be developing into her own worst enemy. While searching her cell, guards at Leavenworth uncovered a letter, which purportedly placed Lisa in an entirely new light. When her attorneys found out, they asked the judge not to give prosecutors copies of the four documents. Under a routine search, jailers took several pieces of paper from Lisa’s cell, then passed them to the U.S. Marshals Service, who then turned them over to Judge John Maughmer.

In a court filing, Susan Hunt said she wanted the documents withheld from prosecutors. “Our client asserts the documents must be returned to her, all copies destroyed, and not provided to the government,” Hunt wrote. One of the missives Lisa penned was addressed to Anita, who was an assistant federal public defender working on the case, thus making the letter part of the attorney-client privilege act.

“This document,” Hunt continued, “was prepared by [Lisa] pursuant to a request of Ron Ninemire, one of the [defense’s] investigators on this case. Mr. Ninemire, in one of his visits, requested [Lisa] write down certain information for use by him and the attorneys in preparing [her] case.”

Near the end of March, the prison placed Lisa on “suicide watch,” because it felt she had implied in one letter that she might take her life if given the opportunity. After finding a letter in which Lisa talked about killing herself, guards searched her cell and found a “handful,” one source later said, of Thorazine pills she had been hoarding. Because of the discovery, Lisa wasn’t allowed visitors and was put under twenty-four-hour surveillance for about a month.

Deputy U.S. attorney Matt Whitworth explained in a court filing after the incident that a “corrections officer searched Montgomery’s cell on March 4 and discovered a letter and drugs” she had been hiding. The letter, Whitworth wrote, had “a strong suicidal theme.” Because of it, Lisa was placed on suicide watch and monitored by a psychiatrist, dressed in different clothes, and given a blanket that would be too difficult to use in constructing a noose.

After the suicide watch was lifted in early April, Lisa called the kids. Carl got on the phone with her. He was tired of Lisa and her evident game-playing. He didn’t want the children to get dragged—once again—into the problems of a person who, he believed, was struggling with a mental illness.

“What are you doing now, Lisa?” asked Carl.

“That’s all nonsense,” said Lisa, according to Carl. “I never would have killed myself. The FBI is playing games.”

“You are really something else, you know that. You’re not bringing the kids into this craziness anymore, Lisa. I am tired of it.”

“Carl! That’s not what happened. I wouldn’t do that. It’s all a stage show.”

Carl handed the phone to one of the kids, later recalling how he felt: “She accused [the government] of lying. Reality and accountability were not in Lisa. Why would she continue to lie, even after everyone else knew the truth? I honestly believe she would have thought about it, but Lisa is too selfish to take her own life. She still had hope then that she would get out of everything. After she is convicted, it may be a different story.”