Murder in the Heartland (32 page)

T
he Mormon church was like nothing Carl Boman had ever seen in his life. Although he spoke highly of the people he met in the church, its rules began to wear on him as he and Lisa were integrated into its core belief system.

The one aspect of their lives the church would not tolerate was Carl and Lisa’s living together in the same household without being married.

“I liked the people,” Carl said. “I’d never go back to the church. I know it was a mistake.”

It started with church members coming into the home and hijacking Carl and Lisa’s coffeepot. They weren’t allowed caffeine, even tea. At the time, Carl and Lisa smoked. The church said they couldn’t. Then it was the money: 10 percent of everything Carl made had to go to the church. If he missed a day of work and didn’t get paid for the day, he would have to make up the difference to the church by the end of the month.

During the initiation process, church members took Carl and Lisa to meetings, where they talked comfortingly about family values. Food was served. It was like having an extended family to fall back on. Lisa and Carl enjoyed it. They felt they were doing the right thing for the kids, for themselves.

After they joined, however, Carl began to question things.

“God has a God,” church members told Carl one day. Furthermore, “God has a God, who has a God, who
also
has a God.” They talked about “different places in Heaven,” as if Heaven were some sort of ladder you had to climb in order to reach your final resting place, and on every rung a different God was there to lead you.

Carl and Lisa had always followed the Christian way of thinking, even though they hadn’t dedicated their lives to Christ. One God. Jesus Christ. It was easy to grasp.

Now disciples of the church were stopping by the house to “check in” on them.

“I smell coffee,” one disciple—or “Mormon police,” as Carl called them later—said. “Are you two drinking coffee?”

“You don’t smell
coffee
,” Carl said. He was appalled.

The man then went into the kitchen and looked around. (“I was offended by that.”)

Lisa was addicted to Pepsi. Even though the church preached abstinence, no way was she going to give it up. And cigarettes: Lisa liked to smoke, but they told her she couldn’t anymore.

When they moved to Arkansas, Carl and Lisa felt they could rediscover the love they had shared when they were young. And when they agreed to become Mormons, it was a turning point in their relationship; they had finally agreed on
something
. Regardless of what happened afterward, Carl said, it was a “meeting point between us that ultimately brought us back together.”

Thus, in June, they remarried.

“We were baptized Mormons one day and the next day married—boom!” Carl recalled, snapping his fingers. “Just like that.”

The church had helped them form a new bond, which brought them closer together than they had been in years. They felt they owed it to themselves to give the Mormon way of life a try.

“I remember living in Arkansas as being one of the happiest times of my life,” Rebecca said later. She enjoyed being around the Mormon community. “We were happy as a family.”

Carl and Lisa, however, weren’t.

By the end of 1995, they moved back to Bartlesville.

S
tanding behind a Department of Justice plaque inscribed with a large brass eagle taking flight, and with a United States flag to his right, U.S. attorney Todd Graves held a press conference on Wednesday, November 16, 2005. Wearing his signature dark blue suit, aqua tie, and white shirt, he formally announced the government’s intention of seeking the death penalty against Lisa Montgomery.

A reporter asked him how he felt about everything.

“My name is on the document,” he said, “and I wouldn’t sign anything I wasn’t comfortable with.”

Regarding the filing itself, and why it took so long, he said, “It’s a very organized, methodical process that we go through.”

Most had known for at least six months that Graves was planning on going forward with the death penalty, so the press conference wasn’t all that surprising. But the television crews on hand, as one reporter said later, were pushing Graves to “throw some red meat out there” for everyone to chew on. Graves didn’t do it. “It was fine for me,” that same reporter noted, “but television wanted an angry Todd Graves, and they didn’t get it.”

The waiting and wondering were over. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had given his consent in the form of a letter for Graves and his office to go ahead and seek the ultimate justice. Judy Clarke was named in the notice of intent, for the first time formally, as one of Lisa’s public defenders, with Susan Hunt and David Owen rounding out the team. If they planned on cutting a deal before the government made its final decision, the time to do so had come and gone.

Lisa was thirty-seven years old on the day she heard the United States government was prosecuting her to the fullest extent of the law. It had been eleven months to the day that Bobbie Jo Stinnett’s mother had found her daughter murdered. Todd Graves was sending a message that the crime his office was alleging Lisa had committed deserved the strongest punishment the law appropriated.

In the months since Lisa’s arrest, she had gone from being a desolate, desperate woman to a seemingly fragile-minded one, who was still not ready to come to terms with the criminal allegations made against her. Lisa had told some in her family she was going to be set free when the facts of the case emerged. She even mentioned to one family member that Darci Pierce had been let out of prison recently (not true), giving her reason to think maybe the same would happen in her case—that after serving some time, she would be set free.

Her story kept changing. One day it appeared she was coming to grips with her predicament; the next day, she denied having stepped foot in Bobbie Jo’s house. When she heard a book was being written about the case, and certain members of her family had been talking to the author about her, she stopped receiving visitors for a time and went into a self-imposed seclusion.

To add to her problems, for the first time since she was indicted back in January, the death penalty was a reality. It wasn’t talk from the U.S. Attorney’s Office anymore, or speculation on television. It was written in black and white on the “Notice of Intent to Seek the Death Penalty” court filing.

In a press release accompanying the notice, Todd Graves voiced his determination in prosecuting the case.

“We filed notice with the court today,” Graves said in the press release, “of intent to seek the death penalty against Lisa Montgomery…. In [this] case, [a] federal indictment alleges that murder was committed under circumstances that justify the death penalty.” Thirty-six prisoners are “currently under sentence of death in the federal system,” Graves noted, “including four from the Western District of Missouri. As the numbers indicate, we intend to prosecute [Lisa Montgomery] to the full extent of the law, and will not shy away from seeking the ultimate penalty for the ultimate crime. Our decision to seek the death penalty…is made with careful deliberation so that justice is served.”

Several “aggravating factors” became the government’s basis for seeking such a severe penalty. Number one was that Lisa “intentionally killed Bobbie Jo…” that she “intentionally inflicted serious bodily injury which resulted in the death…” and she “intentionally participated in an act, contemplating that the life of Bobbie Jo…would be taken and that lethal force would be used….”

The filing claimed Lisa had a “reckless disregard for human life,” taking into account the brutality and ruthlessness of the crime.

More in touch with the nature of what went on inside Bobbie Jo’s house that afternoon, the filing explained how Lisa “killed the victim in an especially heinous, cruel, and depraved manner in that the killing involved torture and serious physical abuse to Bobbie Jo…that is, [Lisa] strangled Bobbie Jo…with a rope and then used a kitchen knife to cut her infant daughter…from the womb.”

When Carl Boman heard the news, it saddened him greatly.

“Phil, the investigator working for Lisa’s team, called and informed me,” Carl said. “After they officially announced they were seeking the death penalty against Lisa, I thought, there is a side of Lisa no one knows but me—a side no one has ever seen. When we first got together, we spent many hours talking. For years, we would spend hours talking in private. That was the real Lisa. She couldn’t talk to her mom. There was no relationship there. She had no father. She never had to pretend with me. There were no secrets.”

Carl and the children had, of course, realized the government was likely to seek the death penalty, but it didn’t seem real until it was actually on paper. He had since separated from Vanessa, but was rebuilding his relationship with Rebecca. He knew he would play a role ultimately in the defense’s case. The government, by late November, hadn’t contacted him regarding testifying. He had been in touch with Lisa’s lawyers all along the way. He knew the ins and outs of her defense as it was explained to him. But it was always changing, like Lisa. One day it was “insanity.” The next, she was going to claim that because of her upbringing, because she had been abused by her stepfather and, in Carl’s words, “neglected” by her mother, she was going to blame it on Judy.

“I was the only one she trusted and could confide in,” Carl said later in defense of Lisa. “When she talked with Kevin, it was full of lies and deceit. She could still confide in me after she was with Kevin, but only if it was me and her, never if Kevin was in the house, or Vanessa was around. When you asked about why I could still be with Lisa after she messed around on me so many times, it is because I knew the
real
Lisa. I still love the Lisa I first met. She is long gone now. Lies and deceit and manipulations took their toll. She was responsible for the constant friction in her family. She wanted so badly to be normal and accepted. But she couldn’t get that from them.”

No one in Lisa’s family wanted to see her put to death—even Carl, who had said once it might be the best thing for the children, instead of having to watch her waste away in prison. As time passed, it became harder and harder for the family to imagine one day Lisa would be strapped to a gurney and injected with a final solution. After all, her relatives claimed, she truly is sick.

F
rom Springdale, Lisa and Carl left the Mormon Church and moved to Bartlesville. But they didn’t stay long. Soon they were waking up to glorious New Mexican sunrises, and sinking their toes in sand as soft as velvet.

A friend of Richard and Judy’s had asked Lisa and Carl to take care of some acreage he owned. He had a horse. Some cattle. A few dogs. And a house. The only obligation on Lisa and Carl’s part was to pay their own bills: water, electric, food. It was an idyllic situation.

The kids recall their stay in New Mexico as one of their family’s best times. Their father worked long hours to support the large family, while Lisa was a stay-at-home mom.

Before they arrived in New Mexico, while still in Bartlesville, Carl found out Lisa had run into an old boyfriend. “But I was told she pushed him away…and said she was in love again with her husband, had remarried, and was working on rebuilding her family.” That sat well with Carl. He felt Lisa was serious about building a new, stronger relationship. “We weren’t walking off into the sunset together, or anything like that,” Carl remembered. “But I believed she wasn’t being unfaithful anymore. As a plus, we heard there was work and cheap real estate in New Mexico.”

Soon, those long talks Lisa and Carl had shared when they first met began again. They wanted their marriage to work—not just for the kids, but for themselves.

In what might have been a sign of things to come, Carl woke up one morning, walked outside onto the porch to enjoy the sunrise, and ran into a rattlesnake coiled up like a garden hose.

Soon after they settled, Lisa started working for a local newspaper, delivering inserts. Then she got her own newspaper route.

“That’s when the old habits started to emerge. Lisa started to want to be
more
than what she was,” Carl recalled.

In fact, Carl said, a few weeks after Lisa started working, she began hanging around a local bar, the Adobe Deli, after completing her paper route. And their troubles returned.

A
s the children grew older, Carl and Lisa continued working on their second marriage, in New Mexico. During the spring of 1997, Carl sensed something, a faint undertone maybe, about the entire family, especially as Lisa started spending time at the Adobe Deli. Putting up with Lisa’s old habits wasn’t something Carl could do anymore; he had promised himself as much the day they moved to New Mexico. Carl was working long hours contracting mobile homes and delivering newspapers with Lisa. He didn’t have time to keep watch on his wife. He had to trust her, or let her go.

As Carl told the press at the time, Lisa started “having affairs” in New Mexico “not long after we made the move.”

What hurt Carl most was that the guy was a friend; Carl was helping him do some work on his house. (“I taught him how to tape and texture, put up Sheetrock.”)

It wasn’t just this one guy, Carl insisted. “There were several. Things got worse than they had ever been.”

And now they were married again.

For the kids, New Mexico provided some of their most vivid memories of their mom and dad together.

“
Titanic
was the last movie we all—Dad, Mom, Alicia, Rebecca, and Ryan—saw together as a family,” Kayla said. She loved it. She felt close to her siblings and parents.

Around this same time, the kids started calling Lisa “Martha.” It was an odd nickname, considering her middle name is Marie. But the kids had good reason for it.

“One day we were all in the car with Mom,” Kayla remembered, “and we were talking to her, and we were all trying to get her attention at the same time.” With all four of them talking at once, trying to be heard, calling Lisa “Mom” wasn’t working. “So we just began calling her ‘Martha’ when we really,
really
wanted her attention.”

Carl ended up moving out of the house into a small apartment nearby. He just couldn’t kid himself into believing they would ever have a chance as a couple again.

After three months, Lisa convinced him to move back into the house for the sake of the children.

“She was hanging out in a bar all night long and tagging the kids along,” remembered Carl. “I had to move in to make sure my kids didn’t grow up inside a bar. They were being neglected.”

Carl tried setting some ground rules until he and Lisa could figure out how to end the second marriage and move on.

“I am so out of here,” he told Lisa one night. “I’m not going to be your stooge again and again.”

“Yeah, right! You’re not going anywhere, Carl Boman.” She laughed.

“Huh. Is that what you think?”

“You aren’t taking the kids…and you’ll always hang around because of the kids, Carl.”

About three days after one of their arguments, Lisa went to Carl and said, “Run down to the pharmacy and get me a home pregnancy kit.”

Carl looked at her…
What is she talking about now?
“Come on, Lisa. Be real. I’m not wasting money on a home pregnancy kit.”

“No, no, no. I’m serious. I haven’t had my period in weeks. It’s really late.”

“No, Lisa! I’m not going to buy you that.”

“Carl. Go get it.”

“Your tubes were burned. You can’t be pregnant.”

Lisa became more serious: “Sometimes it
doesn’t
work. It doesn’t always stay that way.”

“Come on, Lisa. You’re kidding me, right?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” raged Lisa. She stormed out of the house, slamming the door, and went to the pharmacy herself.

An hour or so later, she returned with the pregnancy test kit.

When it turned out negative, Carl did everything he could to stop himself from saying, “I told you so.”

“Damn it, Carl.” She shook the thing and started yelling. “These things aren’t always right, you know.”

Carl believed this episode was the beginning of Lisa’s obsession to become pregnant again. Knowing the pregnancy test was negative, she still went back to the bar and told people she had become pregnant by sleeping with Carl’s friend.

Word trickled back to Carl, of course, that Lisa was claiming to be pregnant. Carl laughed when a mutual friend stopped by the house and told him what she had been saying.

Carl decided he’d finally had enough. He was taking two of the kids and heading back to Oklahoma. It was over. No more would he be “suckered” into taking Lisa back. He knew he could not drag her into court and get custody of the kids. His only option, to make sure the kids were taken care of, was to leave Lisa in New Mexico, knowing she would follow him northeast to Oklahoma or Kansas, wherever he decided to settle.