In Skidmore, Jo Ann Stinnett said she might have to let a recent family tradition die. She made scrapbooks about every family member who died of an illness, an accident or a murder. She made one for Wendy Gillenwater. She made one for Branson Perry.
But with all of her accumulated grief and pain, she did not know if she could bring herself to start one for Bobbie Jo Stinnett. “They say time heals, and it does,” she said, “but time does not make you forget.”
In Lyndon, Kansas, in the aftermath of Lisa’s arrest, her ex-husband, Carl Boman, told WDAF-TV that Lisa was so wrapped up in her pregnancy story that she needed to come up with a baby to save face. “I believe it drove her, this fact that she didn’t want to be proven wrong in this situation. People were looking at her like something wasn’t quite right.”
In Deming, New Mexico, the people who knew Lisa and Carl Boman scratched their heads. Lisa had not ever seemed to be a violent person. On top of that, she made no secret of her tubal ligation. She told friends that she regretted having the procedure because it meant she could not have any more children, but she did not obsess over having another child.
In Melvern, Kansas, the dazed citizenry struggled to make sense of it all. The twinkling lights and cheerful Christmas decorations put up weeks before seemed to mock their sorrow. The joy of the season died an early death and lay buried beneath their gloom and horror. They performed the rituals of Christmas with wooden determination, for the sake of the children. But their hearts were heavy and the days were dark.
The reason for their community becoming a household name filled them all with torment. Led by Darrell Schultze, the Community Pride group that worked year-round to improve the town met informally to tackle the problem. Roger and Joy Montgomery were active members in the loose-knit organization, but they were not in attendance at this gathering.
The group of concerned citizens wanted to rebuild their image—to let the world know that Melvern was a town full of good people. Lisa Montgomery was only a solitary aberration, not a common denominator.
Although none of them knew Bobbie Jo Stinnett, they ached for her family’s loss. They wanted to do something positive—to assuage their unmerited feelings of guilt and to reach out a helping hand to a family in another rural community whom they envisioned as kindred spirits.
They set up a fund for Bobbie Jo’s family and hung signs up and down Melvern’s main streets and in the nearby county seat of Lyndon. The Lyndon State Bank accepted donations at its branches in both of those towns. They raised a little over $2,000 in a month and transferred that money up to a bank in Maitland, Missouri, and into an account in Zeb’s name.
Then they turned their fundraising concerns to finding money to meet the needs of the children Lisa had left behind. They were sickened by the burden placed on their young shoulders by the thoughtless and despicable actions of their mother. It some ways what these kids had to face in their current circumstances was more difficult and more challenging than if they’d been forced to deal with the death of their mother.
Whistle Stop Café owner Kathy Sage rued the day she ever spoke to the media. Immediately after the arrest of Lisa Montgomery, she was quoted saying: “You read about this stuff. It blows you away when it’s here. This stuff is supposed to be in New York City or Los Angeles.”
Kathy—along with the whole town of Melvern—was shocked at the massive news coverage the statement received. Melvern rarely made statewide news. Now their every word streaked across the nation and around the world.
Kathy hunkered down as attacks and ridicule for her sound bite rained on her head. Nobody made allowances for the shock of the moment or the inexperience Kathy had with the media. To the world at large, she had spoken, and now she was fair game. Scorn thundered in from journalists in New York and Los Angeles. Worst of all though were the bloggers on the Internet.
One man wrote:
This stuff is supposed to be in New York City or Los Angeles, But strangely happen mostly in the Red States. Just ask Andrea Yates about that. Oh, and most of these pregnant women murders occurred in Red States, too. So, tell me, Ms. Sage, why is it supposed to be happening in NYC or LA?
I wasn’t going to say anything about this case being an example of Red State pathology, but how insulting can you get, Ms. Sage? This is your crazy neighbor lady, you need to take responsibility in your community for her, don’t blame NYC or LA for her, she wouldn’t fit in or be welcome here either. We have [our] own problems and we are just as appalled by your mama-killin’-baby-stealin’ crazy as a loon Lisa Montgomery as you are. Possibly more so because, you know what? In a big city somebody might have spotted crazy Lisa and sent in Social Services before she subdued Bobbie Jo Stinnett and sliced her baby out of her still living body. Contrary to popular belief in the Red States, big city people look out for each other. That seems not to have been the case in Skidmore, Missouri or Melvern, Kansas.
A woman in New York added more fuel to the fire:
Ms. Sage, let me assure you, as a New Yorker, as a non-Christian, as a member of a population routinely accused of treating People Not Like Us with contempt: this stuff is not supposed to be in New York City or Los Angeles. I assure you, if one of my neighbors came into the Italian deli where I buy my cheese and polenta on a nearly daily basis, with a baby to whom she had just given birth, and we found out three days later that she had murdered a pregnant woman and stolen her child from her body, we would not just be horrified, we would be shocked. We would be in pain for the man who has just lost his wife, the mother of his child; and we would be sickened by the deception practiced on us by a killer. And yes, I’ll say it again, we would be shocked, because this stuff, as you put it, is not supposed to be anywhere. Not New York, not Los Angeles. Not Melvern, Kansas or Skidmore, Missouri. Not London, not Paris, not rural China, not Central Africa, not in a packed tenement neighborhood or an isolated farm belt town. This is an abomination no matter where it happened, and your suggestion that it is less so in my backyard than yours is contemptible. And I’m sorry, but your shock, while understandable, does not get you off the hook.
Another blogger lashed out with an attack that encompassed everyone in the Midwest and the South.
Perhaps, like Kathy Sage, Red-Staters are just full of themselves—and full of something else, too.
The old adage that tragedy brings us all together struck a hollow note. This spirit of brotherhood had been seen many times and in many ways in the past, but at the time of Bobbie Jo’s death, the nation was divided and its people divisive. Even a tremendous personal tragedy like this one did not bring out the best in everyone. In the America of 2005, it was easier to find people content to point fingers and scold than it was to find those willing to hold hands and sing “Kum Ba Yah.”