Lisa Montgomery Execution Video

:00It looks like her stomach exploded.

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2 secondsDecember 16th, 2004. In the small, quiet town of Skidmore, Missouri, first responders arrived at an unassuming little house only to find a scene so

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11 secondsgruesome it was almost beyond comprehension. A young woman, 8 months pregnant, was dead. But her baby was

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18 secondsgone. This is the story of how a fake pregnancy and a chilling online deception led to one of the most horrifying crimes imaginable. It’s the

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26 secondsstory of Lisa Montgomery and the baby she stole from the womb. Before the tragedy, there was a life brimming with joy. Bobby Join It was 23 years old, and

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36 secondsshe was in love with her life. She’d married her childhood sweetheart, Zeb, and they were building their future together in the same tiny community

0:44

44 secondswhere they both grew up. Bobby Joe’s passion was breeding rat terriers. Her business, Happy Haven Farms, was well

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51 secondsknown in the tight-knit world of dog lovers. But in 2004, a new passion took over, motherhood. Bobby Joe was 8 months

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1 minutepregnant with her first child, a little girl, and she was just radiant with excitement. She chronicled her pregnancy online, sharing her happiness with

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1 minute, 8 secondsfriends and fellow breeders. People knew her for her kind, trusting nature. She was a woman who simply saw the good in people. And it was that beautiful,

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1 minute, 17 secondsopen-heartedness that, in a cruel twist of fate, would make her the perfect target. She was counting down the days until she could finally hold her

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1 minute, 24 secondsdaughter, completely unaware that someone else was counting down those same days for a very different and much darker reason. About 175 mi away in

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1 minute, 34 secondsMelbourne, Kansas, lived a 36-year-old woman named Lisa Montgomery. To her neighbors, she was just a quiet home

1:41

1 minute, 41 secondsbuddy, a married mother of four. But the life she lived behind closed doors was a story of almost unbelievable horror.

1:48

1 minute, 48 secondsLisa Montgomery’s life wasn’t just difficult. It was a catalog of suffering. From a young age, she was a victim of relentless physical and sexual

1:57

1 minute, 57 secondsabuse. Much of it at the hands of her own stepfather. Court documents and psychological evaluations would later paint a grim picture. A childhood where

2:05

2 minutes, 5 secondsevery single system designed to protect a child failed her. According to testimony from defense experts, her own mother was often complicit and at times

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2 minutes, 14 secondseven exploited Lisa. This decade’s long trauma left deep invisible scars leading to severe mental health issues,

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2 minutes, 22 secondsincluding complex post-traumatic stress disorder and dissociative disorders. On several occasions, she had lied about being pregnant, a desperate and

2:30

2 minutes, 30 secondsdistorted attempt to feel some control over her own body after it had been violated for so long. She had a tubilagation years earlier, making it

2:39

2 minutes, 39 secondsimpossible for her to conceive. But in 2004, she once again appeared pregnant to her husband and community. She wore

2:46

2 minutes, 46 secondsmaternity clothes and talked about the baby that was coming. It was all a lie.

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2 minutes, 50 secondsAnd as her fake due date got closer, she knew she needed to find a baby. The worlds of Bobby Join it and Lisa Montgomery didn’t first collide in

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2 minutes, 59 secondsviolence, but in their shared interest in rat terriers. They met once very briefly at a dog show in April 2004. It

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3 minutes, 7 secondswas an insignificant meeting, the kind that happens all the time. But for Lisa Montgomery, it planted a seed. She found

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3 minutes, 14 secondsBobby Joe online on a message board for dog breeders. There she saw the happy pregnancy announcements, the ultrasound photos, and the due date, December 2004.

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3 minutes, 25 secondsFor Montgomery, who was already deep in her own fabricated pregnancy, it must have felt like a sign, an opportunity.

3:32

3 minutes, 32 secondsUsing the internet, Montgomery began to meticulously stalk Bobby Joe. She created a fake online persona, Darlin

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3 minutes, 39 secondsFischer, and started talking with Bobby Joe, pretending she wanted to buy a puppy. She built a raore, slowly earning the trust of the kind-hearted and

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3 minutes, 48 secondsunsuspecting mother to be. Bobby Joe, always a friendly businesswoman, just saw a potential customer. She had no

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3 minutes, 55 secondsidea she was talking to the woman who was methodically planning to destroy her life and steal her child. Montgomery’s deception was chillingly elaborate. She

4:04

4 minutes, 4 secondsmade sure her own fake due date lined up with Bobby Joe’s. She spent hours online, not just chatting with her target, but researching. Her search

4:12

4 minutes, 12 secondshistory later showed that she’d been looking up information on home births and, most disturbingly, crude C-sections. On December 15th, 2004, Lisa

4:21

4 minutes, 21 secondstold her husband she was heading out on an overnight trip to pick up a puppy.

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4 minutes, 25 secondsThe next morning, December 16th, she got in her car and started the 175m drive from Kansas to Missouri. This wasn’t a

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4 minutes, 34 secondscrime of passion. It was a calculated premeditated act months in the making.

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4 minutes, 39 secondsEvery mile she drove brought her closer to Bobby Joe’s quiet home. Every minute that passed was another chance to turn back. She never did. She arrived at

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4 minutes, 48 secondsBobby Joe’s house around 12:30 that afternoon, disguised as the friendly Darling Fisher, there to finally see the puppies. The visit started normally. For

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4 minutes, 57 secondsa while, the two women made small talk while Bobby Joe, warm and welcoming, showed off her dogs. At one point, the

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5 minutes, 4 secondsphone rang. It was Bobby Joe’s mother calling to confirm their plans for later that afternoon. It was a normal everyday

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5 minutes, 12 secondsconversation, and it was the last one Bobby Joe would ever have. After the call ended, something changed.

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5 minutes, 18 secondsMontgomery attacked. She lunged at the 8-mon pregnant woman, using the rope she brought to strangle her until she passed

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5 minutes, 25 secondsout. Then with Bobby Joe lying motionless on the floor, Montgomery took out the kitchen knife. What happened next is almost too horrific to put into

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5 minutes, 34 secondswords. As Montgomery started cutting into her abdomen, the shock and pain caused Bobby Joe to regain consciousness. A desperate struggle

5:42

5 minutes, 42 secondsbegan, but she was no match for her attacker. Montgomery strangled her a second time, this time until she was sure Bobby Joe was dead. With her victim

5:51

5 minutes, 51 secondssilenced, Montgomery finished the gruesome task. She removed the baby girl from her mother’s womb, cut the umbilical cord, and gathered the tiny

6:00

6 minutespremature infant into her arms. She then walked out of the blood soaked house, left Bobby Joe’s body on the floor, and

6:06

6 minutes, 6 secondssimply drove away. Just a few hours later, Bobby Joe’s mother, Becky Harper, showed up at the house as planned. The

6:14

6 minutes, 14 secondsfront door was unlocked. When she walked inside, she was met with a scene from a nightmare. She found her daughter’s body and made a frantic call to 911,

6:23

6 minutes, 23 secondsscreaming that it looked like her daughter’s stomach had exploded. Police and paramedics arrived, but it was clear Bobby Joe was gone, and so was her baby.

6:32

6 minutes, 32 secondsAn Amber Alert was issued later that day, and the case immediately became a top priority for law enforcement across multiple states. Their biggest break, though, came from the digital world.

6:43

6 minutes, 43 secondsInvestigators looked into Bobby Joe’s emails and message board posts where they found the communications with Darlin Fischer. By tracing the digital

6:51

6 minutes, 51 secondsfootprints of that alias, they connected it back to a user in Melbourne, Kansas, Lisa Montgomery. The pieces were coming

6:59

6 minutes, 59 secondstogether with terrifying speed. Less than 24 hours after the murder, on December 17th, police descended on Lisa

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7 minutes, 6 secondsMontgomery’s farmhouse. They found her cradling a newborn baby girl who she claimed she had given birth to just the day before. She even showed off the

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7 minutes, 15 secondsinfant to her shocked but initially unsuspecting family. But her story quickly unraveled. It didn’t take long for Montgomery to confess to the entire

7:24

7 minutes, 24 secondscrime under questioning. She admitted to driving to Missouri, strangling Bobby Joinet, and cutting the baby from her

7:30

7 minutes, 30 secondswomb. Miraculously, the baby, whom her father would name Victoria Joe, was physically unharmed. She was safely

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7 minutes, 38 secondsrecovered and returned to her grieving father, a tiny symbol of life emerging from an act of pure darkness. While her father and family would now face the

7:46

7 minutes, 46 secondsimpossible task of going on without Bobby Joe, the recovery of baby Victoria was the one ray of light in an utterly

7:52

7 minutes, 52 secondstragic story. In 2007, a federal jury found Lisa Montgomery guilty of kidnapping, resulting in death and unanimously recommended the death

8:01

8 minutes, 1 secondpenalty. For years, her case moves through the appeals process. Her lawyers argued that her lifetime of horrific abuse and resulting mental illness meant

8:10

8 minutes, 10 secondsshe wasn’t competent to be executed. But in the end, the appeals were denied. On January 13th, 2021, Lisa Montgomery was

8:19

8 minutes, 19 secondsexecuted by lethal injection, the first woman to be executed by the US federal government in 67 years.

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