![]() The day I came back, Lisa ran to me with open arms like I had just returned home from war. When I turned seven, I stayed with another family for nine months. Periodically, Judy would drop me off at a friends house for a few weeks. ![]() When one of them came into our bedroom and raped me, I prayed Lisa would be safe from him. I shielded her from the random babysitters, often older men, Judy left us with for her near-nightly outings to the bar. Protecting Lisa became my sole purpose in life. I can’t tell you if it was 5 minutes, 10 minutes, or 30 minutes, but I was out there alone, and so scared. I waited outside in the freezing cold, before she finally opened the door to let me back in. When I was six, Judy ordered me to strip down naked, leave the house, and never come back. Worse than that was Judy’s ability to find out what hurt you most and use it against you. She forced me to eat raw onions until I cried. She would poke her finger into my chest over and over in the same spot until it bruised. Courtesy Diane MattinglyĪs we got older, Judy became abusive, hitting us with brooms and belts and whatever else she got her hands on. Because maybe if she hadn’t been failed by the people she needed most in society, she could have been part of it.ĭiane, here as a little girl, says her "sole purpose in life" became to protect her baby sister. Lisa should spend the rest of her life in prison, no doubt, but she shouldn’t have to die. I will always love her, but what she did was the most awful thing a person can do. If executed, she will become the first woman to be federally executed in the U.S. My sister has been sentenced to die for her crime. On the stand, Lisa looked just as scared as the day I left her 36 years ago. I didn’t see Lisa again until 2007, when I testified at her sentencing hearing for brutally murdering a pregnant woman named Bobbie Jo Stinnett she cut the baby out of Stinnett’s belly with a knife. ![]() When I turned back to take one last look of her, there was terror in her bright green eyes. She was four years younger than me, with wispy hair, and a sweet demeanor. I was finally going into foster care, but Lisa, my little sister and best friend, was staying behind. But when two child protective services workers knocked on our front door later that day, my heart sank to my stomach. “Well,” she hissed in my face, “they’re coming to take you away, hope you’re happy.” I was eight years old, living in a trailer park with my abusive step-mom Judy who, after screaming on the phone for what seemed like an hour, was now squatting down in front of me. It was a drizzly morning in Ogden, Kansas. Below, Montgomery’s 57-year-old half-sister Diane Mattingly opens up to about her sister's tragic past-and why she thinks sparing her life can "break the chain of evil actions." Mattingly's account of the abuse she and Montgomery both endured growing up was part of her testimony in court in support of Montgomery's unsuccessful motion to vacate the death sentence. Her lawyers say she is diagnosed with bipolar disorder and complex post-traumatic stress disorder, and regularly dissociates and hallucinates. Montgomery, a mentally ill woman with childhood trauma stemming from years of rape and physical assault, fled with the baby and tried to pass it off as her own, proudly announcing the “birth” of her daughter to friends and family.Īlmost exactly 16 years after Stinnett’s murder, Montgomery, at age 52, is set to be executed, making her the first female federal inmate to die by lethal injection since the Trump administration resurrected federal executions in July. Once inside her house, Montgomery killed Stinnett and then removed her 8-month-old fetus with a kitchen knife. Under the guise of purchasing a puppy, Lisa Montgomery set up a meeting with Stinnett. One week before Christmas in 2004, a pregnant 23-year-old dog breeder named Bobbie Jo Stinnett was strangled to death at her home in Skidmore, Missouri.
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