Baby Be Mine (2 page)

As she reached the doorway, a vision out of a slaughterhouse exploded before Becky's eyes. Blood. Pools of blood. Garish red smears streaked and swirled on the oak floor boards. Huge, dark clots of blood scattered on the surface like trampled roses in mud.

Becky saw the body on the floor, but in her heart she wanted to believe all this carnage was from one of the dogs. Whatever horrible thing happened to any one of them would break Bobbie Jo's heart. She could deny the reality before her dazed eyes for brief seconds only. There at her feet lay her only daughter—the mother of her soon-to-be first grandchild—and she was covered in blood. The young woman who, twenty-three short years ago, was only a small warm burden inside of Becky's body now lay still on the floor.

Splotches of blood covered Bobbie Jo's face. Streaks of ruby red ran up and down her arms. Her belly, distended from pregnancy, splayed open to reveal protruding internal organs scorched with a screaming crimson. Even the small soles of Bobbie Jo's feet glistened with blood.

Becky's eyes saw the truth of the horror. Her mind ran from it. Her eyes had to be lying. She tried to deny the truth of her senses and failed. Still, the scene made no sense to her. She struggled to frame it into a coherent possibility. “My daughter's intestines exploded,” she said when she called 9-1-1.

As soon as the words passed her lips, she was no longer certain of their reliability. Her world tilted and wobbled on an unreliable axis. She was undone.

The operator asked, “Is she still-breathing?”

“I don't know,” Becky wailed. She kneeled in the blood
beside her oldest child's side struggling to numb the paralyzing emotions that siezed her own limbs. She followed instructions as the operator talked her step-by-step through the administration of cardio-pulmonary resuscitation.

She tilted back Bobbie Jo's head and pinched her nose. She covered her daughter's mouth with her own and delivered the sharpest breath she could. She rose up and placed her hands on Bobbie Jo's chest and pushed down. One time. Two times. Thirty times.

In less than twenty seconds she was back on her daughter's mouth with two more breaths. Then back to the chest compressions again. Over and over. Breathing and pushing. Counting the compressions aloud to block the noise of her own dreadful thoughts and keep her focus.

She choked. She sobbed. But she did not stop.

Four-term Nodaway County Sheriff Ben Espey was in the dispatch center in Maryville when Becky's frantic call shattered the peace of a quiet afternoon. He jumped in his truck and floored the pedal—making the half-hour drive in fourteen minutes. He was the first responder on the scene.

Becky turned to him with crazed yet determined eyes and pleaded, “I need help with this.” CPR was so simple but so exhausting.

Espey got down on the floor to assist. He smelled the slight musky undertone of dog present even in this clean, well-kept kennel. Blaring above that scent was the iron-rich scream of freshly-shed blood. He saw no signs of life in the body of the young woman on the floor, but did not whisper his fears to the mother. He just worked with Becky as a team while distressed dogs whimpered their mournful fears.

On the east end of Elm Street, Carla Wetzel heard the howl of the sirens. She could not see where the vehicles stopped. But it was just past the time school let out and she worried that a school bus had wrecked.

Across the street from the Stinnett home, Tracy Grossoehme played in the yard with her two small children, enjoying the relative balminess of that winter afternoon. They
stopped what they were doing as the ambulance pulled into their street, staring open-mouthed.

As it parked in front of their neighbor's home, Tracy's oldest child asked, “Can we say a prayer for the hurt person?”

“Yes, we can,” Tracy said.

Three heads bowed in a moment of silence, marking the first public prayer sent to the heavens for Bobbie Jo and her baby. It certainly would not be the last.

Five minutes after Espey's arrival, the paramedics flew out of the ambulance and into the house, where they relieved Becky and the sheriff of their hopeless duty. The emergency medical pair checked for vital signs and found no indication of life. Just the same, they attempted to revive Bobbie Jo, continuing the performance of CPR her mother started, but they, too, failed to get a response. It was far too late.

Espey told the paramedics that Bobbie Jo was eight months pregnant. He then listened in disbelief as one of the emergency medical technicians pointed to the cut umbilical cord and informed him, “This lady has been murdered because someone came to get the child out of her body.”

It didn't seem possible. Espey struggled to wrap his mind around the crime. How could anyone attack a pregnant woman? How could anyone abduct a baby in such a vicious, violent way? In his mind, he ran through the list of brutal people in his jurisdiction. Certainly there were those who could commit murder. But someone who would kill this young woman and then run off with the baby? It made no sense.

In the kitchen, the shell of Becky Harper shuffled to the sink and turned on the water. Her shoulders slumped. Her vision blurred from the buildup of an abundant but not yet fallen rush of tears. A burning in her midsection made her want to double over, slide on the floor and sleep. She stuck her reddened hands under the faucet and tried to wash away the stain of her child's blood. No matter how clear the water ran, she would forever see the red spots on her hands.

The last trace of her living baby girl, who'd brightened her life—made her proud—swirled down the drain with a finality
that hit Becky hard. A pounding sufge of love rose and crashed down—shattering on the rough rocks on her newly earned, hard-as-granite grief.

Bobbie Jo Stinnett, a soft-spoken, sweet-smiling 23-year-old woman, streaked away from her home in an ambulance. It headed up the road traveled by Chris Law just a short time before. Bobbie Jo was declared dead upon arrival at St. Francis Hospital & Health Services in the nearby county seat of Maryville.

T
he dark blonde drove along a small country road. Up and down the rolling hills. Past empty, harvested fields, over one-lane bridges, past the placid faces of huddled cattle, beyond the cemetery that would soon be home to her victim. Past white farmhouses and faded red barns. Through mile after mile of barren countryside.

Before she reached St. Joseph, Missouri, she took a ramp onto Interstate 29 and headed south. She skirted the town and pushed on to Kansas City. She crossed the Missouri River and entered Kansas. She turned due west on Interstate 70 and made a beeline to Topeka.

She did not travel alone in her dirty red Toyota Corolla. In the seat beside her was a passenger. It slept and cried and slept again. It was not the puppy she claimed she wanted. Beside her was more precious cargo, a newborn infant—my baby, she insisted. My baby. My baby. My baby. The mantra pounded in her head.

What went through her mind as she made the two-and-a-half-hour drive from Skidmore, Missouri, to Topeka, Kansas? Did she believe her own lies that she had given birth to this child? Or did she think that, regardless of how it was born, the infant belonged to her now?

Did she subscribe to the self-serving story she later told her mother—that she found the baby on the floor, whisked it up and ran from the violence committed by some unknown perpetrator? Was she disturbed enough to become convinced of her own falsehoods? Or did she know what she had done?

Is it possible that she beat the plowshares of fantasy into the sword of truth as mile after mile passed beneath her wheels? Or did she instead spend the time plotting and planning her actions to ensure each move was designed to help her get away with murder and retain her stolen prize? Was she self-deluded or was she self-aware?

Whatever she believed, that stark afternoon, at 5:15, she called her husband from the parking lot of Long John Silver's on Southwest Sixth Avenue. She told him that she'd gone to Topeka to do some shopping. Much to her surprise, she said, she went into labor right in the middle of running her errands. She said she'd rushed to the Birth & Women's Center where their beautiful daughter was born.

The man had believed his wife when she told him she was pregnant. He believed her now. He thought he was the father of a newborn baby girl. In his first marriage he'd had three boys. This baby was his first daughter. He was ecstatic. Excitement rippled through his voice as he called to his wife's children from a previous marriage. Only two of the four were at home at the time—a ninth-grader and a senior in high school. He related the good news from their mother. All three of them piled into his pickup and headed north.

The woman sat in her car awaiting her family's arrival at Long John Silver's and picked up her cell phone. She jabbed in the number of the minister at the church where
she and her husband were married. Was it a sign of remorse or regret? No, it was merely another step in the perpetuation of the big lie. It was as if the more people shared in her fantasy of the birth of the baby, the more she believed it herself.

She told the preacher about the labor pains that took her by surprise and that as soon as her husband got to Topeka, she and the baby would be heading home. And said she would bring her new daughter by soon.

Grinning from ear to ear, her husband pulled into the parking lot. He and his two passengers clambered out of the truck. He rushed to his wife's side and helped her and the baby settle into the cab of the pickup and then climbed in beside them. Love beamed from his eyes. Love for his daughter. Love for his wife. The two older kids hopped into their mother's car and the high school senior drove, following her father's truck down Highway 75 and State Route 31 to their home in Melvern, Kansas.

This late in December, the sun set by 5
P.M.
The mini-caravan drove in darkness down the highway. Traveling south from Topeka, there was no need to pass through the town center of Melvern where Garry's Bar & Grill was the solitary lively venue on Main Street. They approached South Adams Road from the opposite direction.

In the night unlit by streetlights, barren trees stretched eerie branches to the sky in the glare of the headlights. In the pickup truck, the woman clutched the false proof of her fertility to her chest.

At home, the senior used her cell phone to capture images of her mother and the baby she believed was her half-sister. The husband used an RCA camcorder to record the homecoming on videotape and a digital camera preserved the moment in a computer-ready format.

When the initial excitement died down, the woman prepared a makeshift bed for the infant and settled her in for the night. The woman then sat down at her computer and emailed the youngest of her three daughters, who now lived
with a family friend in Alabama because of the irreconcilable differences she had with her mother. To the email announcing the birth, the counterfeit new mother attached a photo of her new baby, Abigail.

A
few blocks away from the crime scene in Skidmore, Reverend Harold Hamon, the minister at Skidmore Christian Church, sat at his kitchen table addressing Christmas cards. The day his congregation would join him in the celebration of the birth of Christ was near at hand. Soon voices would rise in jubilation as they sang out the words to “Silent Night,” “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” and “Joy to the World.” Together they would pay homage to God for his wondrous gift to man—his son, Jesus Christ, the savior.

He had no idea that before the day was over, his thoughts would turn to contemplation of the power of darkness and evil that stalked the world. Had anyone suggested it, he would rebuke their negativity as the next thing to blasphemy. Then his phone rang. A member of his congregation called to report that he'd heard a siren and was concerned. Engrossed in his thoughts and the task at hand, Reverend Hamon had
not heard a thing. His parishioner asked, “Was anyone near the church hurt?”

Hamon looked out of his front window and peered across the neighborhood. From his vantage point, he could see the flashing lights just a short distance away. It looked as if the police cars were parked in front of the home of two members of his church, Bobbie Jo and Zeb Stinnett. He was concerned that something went wrong with Bobbie Jo's pregnancy. But there was no way he could have imagined the actual nature of the nightmare that came calling on Elm Street.

Sheriff Espey surveyed the scene in the small bedroom of the Stinnett house. He saw clear signs of a struggle. The bloodstained soles of Bobbie Jo's feet told him that she managed to get to her feet after the attack began. The strands of darkish blond hair clutched in her hands informed him that she did not give up easily. She fought hard with her attacker to jerk those strands out by the roots. The blood clots scattered across the floor indicated that her death was not swift. It had to have passed through at least three distinct phases—the initial assault, Bobbie Jo's collapse and revival, then the fatal attack. The smeared bloody footprints on the floor choreographed a mute testimony to Bobbie Jo's valiant fight for life.

Espey was a proud man—but not too proud to ask for help. The Nodaway County Sheriff's Department was a small outfit They did not have a team of crime-scene investigators and they did not have sufficient manpower to blanket the countryside. On top of that, in this low-crime county, homicide was a rare event, and their department's experience was limited. Espey placed a call to the Missouri Highway Patrol.

Another priority for the sheriff was Bobbie Jo's husband. As a rule, in his jurisdiction, murder happened one of two ways—either it was a drunken brawl or a domestic violence incident. Was Zeb Stinnett a widowed victim?
Or was he the perpetrator? Before the first hour of the investigation passed, Espey had confirmation that Zeb Stinnett was not responsible for his wife's death. He had never left his job at Kawasaki Motors in Maryville that afternoon. An awareness of his brief moment as a suspect probably didn't cross Zeb's mind that day. His wife was dead. His baby was missing. There was no room for any other concerns.