Baby Be Mine (8 page)

Carl worked long hours to meet the high financial demands
of his family of six. Lisa stayed home to care for the children and the housekeeping.

But Lisa did not live up to her part of the bargain. The house was filthy and roach-infested. She was known to feed lunch to her children, on at least one occasion, by setting a cold casserole dish of leftovers on the floor in front of them while they played. She preferred to spend her time stretched out on the sofa reading. Her favorite books were novels by Stephen King.

Her lackadaisical attitude toward the maintenance of the family home drove Carl to distraction and spawned endless rounds of marital spats. According to family lore, as Lisa's marriage deteriorated, she made a bad situation even worse by traipsing off for wild flings—leaving her family for days or even weeks. Once she even showed up at a family reunion with another man.

One of Lisa's friends contradicted that version of events, saying that Carl was the one who cheated on Lisa—again and again. He also battered his wife on a regular basis, she said.

Whoever was violating their wedding vows, Carl had enough of the marriage. He filed for divorce in October 1993. He moved to Springdale, Arkansas—a town of 46,000 just north of Fayetteville on Interstate 540. Nestled in the northwest corner of the state in the Ozark Mountains, Springdale was surrounded by a lush, natural beauty. It was difficult to decide which season was the most glorious time of year there—spring with its explosive rebirth of brilliant green or autumn with the variegated splendor of turning foliage.

Springdale was an embarkation point for scenic train trips through the Ozark Mountains, the corporate headquarters for chicken giant Tyson Foods and the home of the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History. The museum was dedicated to the development of an understanding and appreciation of the history of northwest Arkansas. The collections in its six historical buildings included 400,000 photographic images of life in the six-county region.

Carl was states away now, but Lisa was not ready to give
up on her marriage yet. She packed up the kids and followed him to his new home.

At the end of 1993, Lisa looked Carl in the eye and said that she was pregnant with a fifth child. It was the perfect way to manipulate him, and she knew it. Carl was aware that she'd had her tubes tied at his request, but he also knew that, on occasion, the procedure failed.

As a family, they attended the Fayetteville Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints on Old Wire Road in Springdale. The denomination was an offshoot of the traditional Salt Lake City-based Mormon Church that had split from the home body over the election of Brigham Young as church leader more than a century before. In 2002, this Independence, Missouri-based denomination of 250,000 members in fifty countries changed their name to the Community of Christ.

Through the Church, the divorced couple worked on their relationship. For a couple interested in healing their family, their choice of congregation made sense. Although the Church had deep historical roots in polygamy, it now embraced monogamy as the basic principle of marriage. Solidarity of the family was a basic tenet of the faithful. The teachings led them to strengthen family ties through mutual respect and the building of healthy relationships.

Unfortunately, their definition of marriage did not include the concept of equal rights for women—an absence that fed into Lisa's feelings of worthlessness outside of her role as mother. The philosophy of equality between the sexes was considered disruptive to family life by the Church.

The counseling and fellowship achieved the desired goal for Carl and Lisa. Eight months after they started attending the church, they remarried in a service there on June 11,1994.

The 1993 pregnancy vanished into thin air. It was a new year and Lisa was telling her family that she was pregnant again—this time with twins. Carl knew the only place the pregnancy existed was in Lisa's own mind. Her mother,
Judy, doubted it was possible. She'd been at the hospital with Lisa when she had her tubes tied. She believed her daughter was lying again.

Carl, Lisa and the four children then moved to Deming, New Mexico. Carl claimed the move was initiated by Lisa, who could not bear to stick around Springdale after months passed and no birth was forthcoming. Carl's father, Richard, owned a double-wide trailer there, and the young Boman family moved in and made a fresh start.

Deming was located in the southwest corner of New Mexico—west of Las Cruces and El Paso, Texas—just off of Interstate 10. It was the seat of Luna County, the “Chile capital of the world” where the long growing season made a success of crops like green and red chilies, melons, pecans, cotton and a variety of grains and vegetables.

In the early 1800s, Deming was such a rough place that outlaws rounded up in Arizona were given a one-way ticket to Deming as punishment. Many now were glad to call Deming home. Surrounded by wide-open spaces, clean air, mountains, high desert and panoramic views, Deming was a place where the sunshine was nearly constant and cacti sprout on every bare patch of ground. Because of its high elevation, warm summer days were tempered by comfortable nights, clear skies dominated the winter months and humidity was low year round.

The beauty and bounty of colorful desert rocks in and around Deming earned it the moniker of a “Rock-Hunters Paradise.” It was a small town compared to the Bomans' last home in Springdale. Deming's population was just over 14,000. The stark landscape was in sharp contrast to the endless green wildness of the Ozark Mountain home they left behind.

Carl worked as a delivery man for a restaurant, the Desert Inn. Lisa got a job working for the local newspaper,
The Headlight
, as an inserter and route supervisor. The periodical was published Monday through Friday and had a daily circulation of 3,700.

At home, Lisa raised chickens and goats. She taught all of her children how to weave, dye and spin the wool she harvested from the goats. She had boundless reserves of energy for pursuit of this back-to-the-earth hobby.

Her poor household habits, however, showed no sign of improvement. Carl's supervisor, Bill Boomhower, said, “You could barely walk through the place. The only time the place got clean was when Carl did it. Teachers at the Sunshine School would take care of the children and bring in clean clothes for them.”

“Lisa was very quiet,” Bill said. “She didn't have a lot of friends.”

Monica Gutierrez, Lisa's coworker at
The Headlight
told reporters, “She loved her kids. She was always with them. She was always worried about them.”

Unlike most of the others at the newspaper, Monica was willing to listen with sympathy to Lisa's endless litany of problems. “She'd get in trouble with management because she'd be talking. She couldn't focus on her work.”

She obviously could not focus on nurturing her marriage, either. In 1998, it ended. Lisa had no more tricks up her sleeve to hold it together. She knew she could no longer claim pregnancy and bind Carl to her side. He was awake and aware—he saw her lies coming before they crossed her lips.

Carl left with all four children and settled in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Lisa filed divorce papers in Deming on June 30. Carl was served on July 3. The marriage was over for good.

The Sixth Judicial District Court in Luna County granted the divorce on August 6. The ruling gave joint custody of the children to both parents, but granted physical custody to Lisa and visitation rights to Carl.

Once the legal process was behind her, Lisa moved to Kansas to live with her mother. By then, Judy and Richard Boman had divorced, too. Judy had a new husband, Danny Shaughnessy. They lived on a farm outside of the town of Lyndon—population 1,038. There they raised cows, geese,
chickens, pigs, sheep and goats. They made their own sausage, tended a strawberry patch and cultivated a large vegetable garden. They did everything they could to live off the land.

According to one of Lisa's friends, Judy built up a negative reputation with many in her community. Most of the time, it was easy to get along with her. Then, for no discernible reason, she'd flip. Without warning, a few women who thought she was a friend were startled to hear outrageous stories about themselves blanketing the community—all handwoven by Judy Shaughnessy.

In Kansas in 1999, Lisa Boman met Kevin Montgomery. In a few short years, she tore his normal small-town world apart.

M
elvern, Kansas, just off of Interstate Highway 35 between Kansas City and Wichita, was settled in 1868. Not many people knew that the town was named after the Malvern Hills in Scotland—a nine-mile-long landmark that humped above the flat Malvern Plain. An unfortunate error in the original town filing spelled the name with an “e” instead of an “a“—and obscured the connection between the two places. The hills across the ocean were filled with prehistoric sites and were home of one of this new town's founders.

By 1871, Melvern consisted of 100 people living in twenty houses, along with a small sawmill, three dry goods stores, a drugstore and a blacksmith shop. The town didn't grow until rail arrived in the mid-1880s. At that point, the population soared to 491 and remained fairly stable thereafter.

Many small towns the size of Melvern went into a spiral of decay and ennui in the social upheaval of the 1960s and
never recovered. Fortunately for this small village, there were folks who cared enough to make plans for improvement and follow through on their commitments.

In 1988, thirty folks gathered for a town hall meeting at the local extension office. They divided into five or six work groups and got busy ascertaining the town's needs. The two top items on the list were a grocery store and a community building. They couldn't do much about a private enterprise, but they got busy fulfilling their dream of a community center in 2000, accumulating money with a series of fundraisers. When they reached $30,000, they found out about the possibility of funding through the KAN STEP program in the state's commerce department and secured a $340,000 grant.

It was an awesome accomplishment for a town of its size, but the people of Melvern did not stop there. Next, they tackled Jones Park.

The Jones brothers passed away in the 1950s, leaving behind the Jones Fund as their legacy. Initially, the money was used to provide college scholarships and meet medical expenses for needy families in a three-county area. As the funds grew, the mission expanded in the 60s to include grants for parks and other recreational sites. At that time, money was provided to establish a basic park in the center of Melvern.

It was a nice green space, but lacked any amenities. In the 90s, the townspeople wanted more. They presented a proposal to add a playground and restrooms to the park and received a $50,000 matching grant from the Jones Fund. After four months of donated labor and additional monetary contributions from the citizens of the town, they had a created a cheerful spot in the middle of town. Colorful jungle gyms, slides and swings for the children added a brightness and vivacity to the downtown area.

Projects like these provided more than an aesthetic lift. They also revitalized the town spirit and defeated the dreariness found in many small rural towns. Instead of a glum
giving-up attitude, visitors were greeted with the upbeat energy of a small vital community.

Kevin's parents, Roger and Joy Montgomery, moved to Melvern in the early 70s. Roger, an electrician, was drawn to the area by the promise of work on the development of Melvem Lake.

The lake in the Marais Des Cygnes River Basin was one of a network of Army Corps of Engineer projects authorized by the United States Congress in the 50s to reduce flood damage and enhance water resources. It was situated on over 23,000 acres of federally owned land—the footprint of the lake itself covered nearly 7,000 of those acres.

Melvern felt like home to the Montgomerys after the completion of that project, and the family dug its roots deeper and stayed. Roger found a new job at the Wolf Creek Generating Station in neighboring Coffey County. The nuclear plant was a pressurized water reactor providing 1,200,000 kilowatts of energy daily.

Roger and Joy were active in the community, helping to make the difference that was so clear to see on a drive through town. They were an instrumental force in the construction of the community building and in the improvements to Jones Park. Their son, Kevin, also donated his labor to the cause.

Kevin and Lisa met when they worked together in Topeka. He was a family-oriented man who unlike Lisa, came from a functional, intact home. The attraction was mutual—the love of kids a shared value. They began dating soon after their first encounter.

In 1999, the relationship was still quite new when Lisa pulled one of her old tricks out of the bag and informed Kevin that she was pregnant. If she had hoped to coerce a wedding proposal with this news, she was sorely mistaken—the wounds from a bitter divorce were still too fresh for Kevin. He gave her the money to get an abortion. Lisa pocketed the cash, but never got the procedure—there wasn't any need.

Then she concocted another pregnancy tale to stir up Kevin's sympathy. She confessed that she'd gotten pregnant when she was a teenager. She carried the baby full term, she said, but after the delivery—no baby. Everyone told her that the infant was born dead—but that was just a horrible trick.

Her baby had survived, she told Kevin. Behind her back, her own mother put the baby up for adoption. Years later, her suspicions that her family duped her became more certain in her mind. She investigated and tracked down the baby's adoptive parents, discovering that her oldest biological child was named Sarah.

There is no indication that any part of this story was true.

Kevin, though, accepted everything Lisa told him without question. He took her at face value and believed her version of any event over that of everyone else. He was a quiet, clean-cut guy who accepted life the way it was—preferring to go along to get along, rather than challenge much of anything.