Lisa Montgomery: The road to execution

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 21 January 2021

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Lisa Montgomery’s crime was an especially abominable murder: In 2004 in the small mid-West American town of Skidmore, she strangled an expectant mother, Bobbie Jo Stinnett. She then cut open her victim’s womb and kidnapped her baby, who survived the ordeal. Her lawyers argued that she was mentally ill at the time – as a consequence of appalling abuse she had suffered in childhood, including gang rape and torture. They said she was also brain-damaged and delusional. Nevertheless, in the final days of Donald Trump’s presidency, she paid for her actions with her own life - the first female to be executed by the US federal government in almost seven decades. As a new President assumes office, promising reform of America’s criminal justice system, Hilary Andersson charts the story of this unsettling case, from Lisa Montgomery’s tragic beginnings to her final moments, and finds a nation deeply divided over the issue.

Warning: Disturbing content

Producer: Michael Gallagher Editor: Bridget Harney

(Image: Lisa Montgomery. Credit: Wyandotte County Sheriff / via EPA)

Transcript

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0:00.0	It was a
0:02.0	towards the end of the day. We had worked all day. I was a detective from Maryville Police Department
0:07.0	and I heard the Sheriff's Office and an ambulance get dispatched to Skidmore.
0:12.0	BBC World Service.
0:15.0	This is assignment.
0:16.0	And the nature of the call was just horrendous.
0:20.0	Notaway County 911, What is your emergency?
0:24.0	December 16, 2004, Skidmore, Missouri,
0:30.0	A woman dials 911. She'd gone to the home of her heavily pregnant daughter and found her in a pool of blood on the floor.
0:42.0	Sheriff Randy Strong was among those first on the scene.
0:45.6	You're listening to a mother that has just found their daughter dead.
0:54.1	Anguish, and it's just, yeah, I don't ever want to hear it again.
1:00.6	At 23 years old, Bobby Joe Stinnett had been strangled.
1:04.4	Her unborn child had been cut out of her womb.
1:08.2	Be warned, the story contains further graphic accounts of violence and sexual abuse.
1:15.0	Blood was on the floor, a tremendous amount of blood.
1:18.0	This case haunts those of us that worked it.
1:21.0	I was angry.
1:22.0	I had a daughter at the same age of
1:23.8	pregnant at the same time. So I was going to find out who did this.
1:28.0	The killer has now become the first woman in almost 70 years to be executed by the US federal government.
1:36.0	Lisa Montgomery confessed to her crimes, but what led her to these depths of depravity?
	...

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