Baby Be Mine (10 page)

In September, the current felony charges involving his half-sisters were reduced to misdemeanors. Tommy received a 60-day suspended sentence with a year of probation. He paid $177 in court costs and was ordered to continue counseling and to have no contact with Lisa Montgomery. There was no restraining order issued on behalf of Patty Baldwin because she did not seek one. She sent a short handwritten letter to the court: “I, Patty Baldwin, am requesting that the ‘no contact order' for my brother Tommy Kleiner be lifted. I do not agree with the charges that the state has filed against him.” Although she was upset at the time of the incident, she no longer saw it as a big deal at all—and she was upset with Lisa for not letting it all go.

But Lisa still thought it was a big deal. Tommy only served one day behind bars and Lisa was not satisfied. According to Tommy and Lisa's mother, she followed Tommy around and then reported him for violating the restraining order.

However, the report Officer Stout of the Lyndon police turned in told a different story. Lisa was at work at Casey's General Store on the afternoon of November 30. Tommy and his girlfriend, Adrienne Von Behren, entered the store. Tommy picked up an item, went to the counter, threw down some money and left.

Lisa turned to Adrienne and said, “I'm calling the police.”

“Please do,” Adrienne said. “He came in here on purpose.”

One of Lisa's friends insisted that Adrienne sided with
Lisa because her relationship with Tommy was temporary—a month-long fling in the middle of Tommy's relationship with another woman.

Why either woman was interested in Tommy was a big question. When he and his regular girlfriend finally broke up for good, they both went to court and obtained mutual restraining orders.

Lisa and Adrienne's story was contradicted by a man who was pumping gas when it all came down. He said Tommy never entered the store at all. He just pulled in, filled up his truck and drove away.

The authorities may not have been able to discern the truth, but they nonetheless filed a motion to revoke Tommy's probation. While it was pending, Lisa filed another complaint that Tommy was in violation of the restraining order.

On December 13, Jeremiah Tull drove Tommy to the Citizens State Bank in Lyndon. Both men went inside. While they were there, Lisa arrived at the bank. There was no communication between Lisa and Tommy, and Tommy left as soon as he finished his business there. Lisa accused him of stalking her, but the version of events as portrayed by banking personnel gave more credence to Judy's claim that Lisa was following Tommy.

Tommy's anger management group leader, Fred Elesland, wrote a positive report on Tommy's progress to his attorney, who submitted it to the court. He wrote:

Tommy Kleiner has completed one course of anger management at this agency and recently asked if he can come back for more therapy due to another incident with another agency for which he needs to go to court.

[. . .] He has indicated that seeing me has been helpful. When I first met him he was reacting negatively to almost every interaction he had with authority figures. I'm afraid he still has problems with them but, at least now, he is more apt to take a time out and cool off rather
than respond in a negative way and be arrested. It seems to me that this is progress.

I like him. He is very open with his feelings and I have the feeling that I can confront him openly and can challenge him to respond in ways that aren't going to get him into further trouble.

Despite this letter and regardless of the questionable integrity of Lisa's testimony, on February 11, 2004, the court found Tommy violated the no-contact provision of his suspended sentence and sent him to jail to serve the remaining 57 days of his sentence.

In the fall of 2003, Lisa was wearing maternity clothes again. She chattered to everyone who would listen about the upcoming birth of her baby. This pregnancy was conceived as part of Lisa's ramp-up campaign to wrestle possession of her half-brother's child, Justin, from her mother, Judy. Authorities had placed the boy in foster care when they arrested Teddy and his girlfriend.

Before the day of the hearing, Judy assumed she would have no trouble gaining custody of her grandchild. She had serious doubts when Lisa stepped into the courtroom. Lisa faced the judge clad in the apparel of an expectant mother. She argued that, as a mother-to-be, she was a better choice for rearing a small child. The final decision on Justin's fate was continued to a second hearing.

Waiting for that day in court, Lisa's due date grew near. She discarded her maternity clothing and claimed she had a miscarriage. In the next hearing, Lisa mournfully explained to the judge that she lost the baby at six months and donated the unborn child's body to science. She believed her loss and sacrifice would force the court's hand. The judge, however, was not moved by her pregnancy at the first hearing and was not moved by sympathy for her loss in this one. The court awarded custody of Justin Kleiner to his grandmother Judy.

Lisa did find sympathy at the First Church of God. The
congregation wrapped around her in fellowship. They prayed for her as she grieved over her miscarriage. They shed tears on her behalf.

Soon after her failure to get the child, Lisa gave birth to her plan to buy a baby. She heard a rumor that her ex-husband's new wife, Vanessa, was coming into an inheritance from her father. She contacted Carl and Vanessa demanding $45,000 in cash.

When they denied her request, she badgered them again and again. On one occasion, she even threatened to “destroy” Vanessa. Vanessa later told the London
Mail:
“We were really concerned about what was going to happen because we couldn't afford to give her the money even if we'd wanted to. I was convinced she was going to do something dreadful, and I thought Carl and I were in danger.”

Later in 2004, Patty ran into her sister at the Whistle Stop Cafe in Lyndon. Lisa lifted up her shirt, grabbed Patty's hand and placed it on her distended belly. “Feel it. Feel it,” she said.

Patty was confused. She knew Lisa couldn't be pregnant, but all the same, she knew that her abdomen was as hard as if she were.

Despite the physical evidence, Lisa's family knew she was lying again. Kevin and his family, on the other hand, believed every word. In December, Lisa's sister Patty decided to intervene and set the record straight. She went to Lisa's home. She brushed past her sister and confronted Kevin. “Your wife cannot be pregnant because she had a tubal ligation in 1990.”

Lisa ordered Patty to leave her home and never come back.

A week later, Judy and Jerri visited Kevin's parents, Roger and Joy Montgomery. Judy explained Lisa's long history of falsehoods and said, “Lisa is fooling you again.”

Although warned, the Montgomery family did not put any credibility in the allegations made by Lisa's family. Lisa had been busy since her marriage poisoning the minds of
her husband's family against her own. The Montgomerys did not understand why Lisa's mother and sisters wanted to hurt her, but they took Lisa's word that they did.

Judy told Lisa, “You cannot keep lying to this man. He doesn't deserve it.”

Lisa plotted her revenge. First, she attempted to get a restraining order prohibiting her mother and sister from seeing her children. When that didn't work, she filed a court order to stop them from telling people that she faked pregnancies.

Judy was concerned enough about Lisa's mental stability that she consulted attorneys about getting Lisa into a psychiatric institution. She felt it was the only option that would prevent her daughter from spiralling out of control. She was told by her lawyer, though, that unless Lisa harmed herself or someone else, there were no legal grounds for an involuntary commitment.

In the midst of all of this family turmoil, Lisa went to a dog show with her daughter Kayla. It was a cold and rainy venue. It was the first face-to-face meeting between Lisa and Bobbie Jo Stinnett, a small-town girl from Skidmore, Missouri. But it would not be the last.

T
he town of Skidmore was founded when Marteny Skidmore moved from Virginia to Missouri and purchased 700 acres of land in the Nodaway River Valley. By 1880, it had a population of 400. On December 29, 1886, the first town newspaper—the
Skidmore Advance
—rolled off the presses. The motto on its masthead read: “To publish a paper and make money.”

Skidmore was small, but it was proud and determined to etch out its own distinct identity. There was no better way to draw attention in the rural countryside of northwest Missouri than with a yearly event that attracted visitors from miles around.

The annual Punkin Show—a tradition that lasted more than a century—began on October 17, 1899. The first year, it was a one-day show. In time it expanded to a four-day event. Produce, handiwork, crafts and baked goods were judged. Special entertainment—from biplane
rides to dances—livened up life in the small town.

The town initiated a second annual event in 1988 to commemorate veterans—Freedom Fest. This event drew visitors from thirty states. Every year, it featured food and craft vendors and a live bald eagle named Moose provided by Operation Wildlife out of Linwood, Kansas. The organizers tried to bring back crowd favorites and find new unique entertainment each year.

Large-scale living history exhibitions including re-enactments of military drills were a big draw for the children in attendance. A Civil War-era baseball game brought a new dimension to the all-American sport. Special speakers included Adrian Cronauer, author of
Good Morning, Vietnam
, John Burnam, a dog handler in the Vietnam War and Dorinda Nicholson, who as a child witnessed the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

To raise money to cover the basic expenses, the organizers auctioned homemade pies. In 2005, a new fundraising event was added before the event—flamingoing. People associated with the event snuck into the yards of neighbors to plant a flock of plastic flamingoes. To have the pink birds removed, homeowners made a $5 contribution to Freedom Fest. For another five bucks, that person could designate the next home to be invaded by the flock.

Demand was greater than anticipated. The waiting list was long—filled with people who wanted the flock to visit their own homes, and others who wanted them to land in a friend's yard. Organizers had to invest in a second flock to meet demand and get the flock to every yard on the list before the celebration began. Patriotic sentiment, homemade pies and family fun—nothing was more symbolic of the heartland of America than that. Co-organizer Cheryl Huston said, “If you didn't love America when you got here, you will when you leave.”

Skidmore, situated at the junction of Missouri Highway 113 and Route DD, was surrounded by endless acres of rolling
farmland. Dusty gravel roads wended past large white farmhouses, weathered barns and fields of soybeans.

In the year of Bobbie Jo's birth, the population of her home town was 437. Since then, Skidmore had wasted away. By 2004, only 320 folks called it home.

At the heart of town—the intersection known as Newton's corner—Skidmore sagged with weariness. A sense of ennui went beyond the occupied buildings with their flaky paint and sagging gutters—past the vacant structures whose blinded, grime-caked windows were desperate for a swipe of ammonia water—and deep into the pores of the community.

In some ways, the downsizing of this small town was similar to what was happening all across rural Missouri. In Skidmore, though, it seemed more extreme and more mind-numbing. One quarter of the population was gone, the doors to its only elementary school closed in 2001 and many of its businesses shuttered for good. The annual Skidmore Punkin Show was cancelled for the first time in 2004 due to lack of interest. The worn water tower bearing the town's name loomed over Skidmore like a prescient tombstone.

Still, Skidmore—and all of northwest Missouri—was a safe place to raise a family with rock-solid Midwestern values grounded in a sense of community and belonging that was as natural to the residents as the dirt beneath their feet. The rate of crime in the county was low. In the year 2000, only 317 crimes were reported, and two-thirds of those were for larceny charges. Only one was murder. Only one was rape.

Somehow, though, many of the crimes in Nodaway County seemed to have a peculiarity about them that made them stand out from the bare statistics. In 1930, 20-year-old Velma Colter was a teacher at the Garrett School, a little white country schoolhouse with only a handful of students. On December 16, she was raped and beaten to death at her place of work.

Before Christmas, authorities arrested a black ex-convict named Raymond Gunn. He confessed to the murder after he
was behind bars. A group of men planned to remove Gunn from official custody and administer their idea of swift justice. Sheriff Havre English heard about the plot and moved Gunn down to jail in St. Joseph for his safety before trial.

The prisoner was returned to the Nodaway County Jail in time to attend his January 12 arraignment. When Sheriff English attempted to transport Gunn from the prison to the courthouse, he was overwhelmed by a large angry mob—estimates placed the number of people at somewhere between 800 to 3,000. They marched the handcuffed Gunn away from the authorities and out of town—down three miles of road to the place where Velma had died.

Their thirst for vengeance intensified with each step they took, and their number grew with every passing minute. People from surrounding Missouri towns and even some from across the state line in Iowa gathered at the Garrett School.

Gunn begged for his life all along the route of his forced death march. Instead of soothing the crowd or bringing it to its senses, his appeals to their mercy and humanity inflamed their passions even more. By the time the front of the mob escorting Gunn arrived at the schoolhouse, lines of incoming participants stretched out in lines a mile long in all four directions.