(TERRE HAUTE) – A woman convicted of fatally strangling a pregnant woman, cutting her body open and kidnapping her baby is scheduled to be the first female inmate put to death by the U.S. government in more than six decades, the Justice Department said Friday.
The Department of Justice has scheduled the execution of a woman, the first in nearly 70-years.
Lisa Montgomery of Kansas is scheduled die by lethal injection December 8th.
Montgomery fatally strangled a pregnant woman, Bobbie Jo Stinnett of Missouri, cut open her body, and kidnapped her baby.
Montgomery drove from her Kansas home to Stinnett’s house in Skidmore under the guise of adopting a rat terrier puppy, prosecutors said. When she arrived at the home, Montgomery used a rope to strangle Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant, but Stinnett was conscious and trying to defend herself as Montgomery used a kitchen knife to cut the baby girl from the womb, authorities said.
Prosecutors said Montgomery removed the baby from Stinnett’s body, took the child with her, and attempted to pass the girl off as her own.
Montgomery’s lawyers argued that she had been suffering from delusions when she killed Stinnett, but a jury rejected her defense. Her lawyers had also argued that she was suffering from pseudocyesis, which causes a woman to falsely believe she is pregnant and exhibit outward signs of pregnancy.
A second inmate will be executed on December 10th.
Brandon Bernard, 40, and his accomplices brutally murdered two youth ministers, Todd and Stacie Bagley, on a military reservation in 1999.
Bernard and his co-defendant, Christopher Vialva, were convicted in the 1999 kidnapping and killing of Todd and Stacie Bagley, an Iowa couple who had stopped to use a payphone in Killeen, Texas. The couple agreed to give Vialva and two others a ride, authorities said. Vialva pulled out a gun, forced the couple into the trunk and drove around for several hours, stopping at ATMs to withdraw cash and attempting to pawn the woman’s wedding ring, according to prosecutors. Both the victims were shot in the head and placed in the trunk of their car, which then was set on fire.
Vialva was executed last month at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute.
