Woman ‘showed off’ baby cut from dead mother

A WOMAN charged with killing an expectant mother and cutting the baby from her womb was showing the child off to people at a cafe and to her pastor hours before she was arrested, residents said.

Lisa M Montgomery, aged 36, was charged last Friday with kidnapping resulting in murder and is expected to appear in federal court today.

Montgomery had suffered a miscarriage earlier this year and may have been trying to replace the baby she had lost, American authorities believe.

The baby, whose mother had been eight months pregnant, was in good condition.

Hours before her arrest, Montgomery and her husband showed off a newborn girl at a restaurant, said Kathy Sage, owner of the Whistle Stop Cafe in Melvern, a small eastern Kansas town.

Many customers were surprised to hear the infant was only a day old, Sage said. She knew a special alert had been issued for a baby missing from Missouri but did not realise the infant the Montgomerys carried was connected until hearing from a reporter.

“You read about this stuff,” she said.

“It blows you away when it’s here. This stuff is supposed to be in New York City or Los Angeles.”

Montgomery was arrested later for the death of Bobbie Jo Stinnett, who was found on Thursday in a pool of blood inside her home in the northwest Missouri town of Skidmore.

Montgomery’s husband, Kevin, has not been charged in the case.

The arrest stunned many in this community of about 420 residents, who apparently had believed for months that Lisa Montgomery was pregnant. While the Montgomerys ate breakfast, another customer showed the baby off around the cafe.

After eating, they took the girl to visit their pastor.

“It was a beautiful baby,” Mike Wheatly said.

“Absolutely beautiful.”

Wheatly and his wife commented that the baby, whom the couple called Abigail, did not look like a newborn because her head was not misshapen from passing through the birth canal, a common result of childbirth that soon goes away. The only marks she had were a small scratch on her head and a slight bruise on her hand.

The pastor had not seen the couple since October, and everyone in the congregation expected her to give birth around December 12.

US Attorney Todd Graves said Lisa Montgomery contacted Stinnett through an online message board after seeing a website about the rat terriers Stinnett bred and raised. The site included a picture of Stinnett, showing she was pregnant.

Investigators searched Stinnett’s computer and found the victim had been communicating through the message board with someone interested in buying a dog claiming to be a Darlene Fischer who lived north of Fairfax, Missouri.

Authorities, helped by a North Carolina dog breeder who was familiar with the message board, determined the communication from Fischer actually came from Montgomery’s house.

The Montgomerys were taken in for questioning, and Lisa Montgomery was charged. Investigators said she confessed to the crimes.

Jeff Lanza, an FBI spokesman in Kansas City, Missouri, declined to discuss motives and said the investigation was ongoing.

He would say only that Montgomery was being held in Kansas and was expected to make her first appearance in federal court today, though authorities did not know if it would be in Missouri or Kansas.

The baby’s father and several other family members saw the infant, named Victoria Jo, for the first time on Friday night at Stormont-Vail Regional Health Centre in Topeka.

The infant was in an intensive care unit. Hospital officials said she was responding normally for a baby taken from the womb one month premature.