Lisa Montgomery was executed by lethal injection on Wednesday for strangling a pregnant woman and cutting her baby from her womb.
Montgomery was put to death at the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana on Jan. 13, just after midnight. She declined a Chaplain’s offer to pray over her.
When asked if she had any final words, she whispered “No,” her voice muffled by a face mask.
Montgomery was pronounced dead at 1:31 a.m. Wednesday morning.
Outgoing President Donald Trump ordered the executions of four Black men and one woman. Montgomery was the last on Trump’s execution list to die before he leaves office on Jan. 20.
Trump’s administration executed 10 federal death row inmates in 2020 — more than any other president in a single year.
Montgomery, 52, won a reprieve on Christmas Eve when a judge granted a stay of execution. But after the Trump administration fought back, the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a DC court’s stay of execution on Tuesday, clearing the way for the Kansas woman to be put to death.
Nashville public defender Kelley Henry argued that her client suffered from a mental illness caused by childhood abuse, rape and torture. She said Montgomery had been “issued the highest mental health designation.”
“The craven bloodlust of a failed administration was on full display tonight,” Henry, said in a statement after Montgomery was executed.
Family members came forward with childhood horror stories of Montgomery being gang raped for hours by her stepfather and his friends, who beat her and urinated on her when they were done.
Montgomery’s mother knew about the rapes but did nothing to stop them. She reportedly offered her teenage daughter to men in exchange for drugs.
Montgomery’s unspeakable crimes took place in the sleepy town of Skidmore, Kansas in late 2004. Then-36-years-old, Montgomery met Bobbie Jo Stinnett, a 23-year-old dog breeder, in an online chatroom.
The killer arranged a meeting with Stinnett at the pregnant woman’s home under the pretense that she was going there to purchase a puppy.
Montgomery, who had her tubes tied after the birth of her fourth child, was desperate for a newborn baby to save her marriage.
On Dec. 16, 2004, Montgomery arrived at Stinnett’s home and strangled the eight months pregnant woman who fell unconscious.
Montgomery then took an unsanitary kitchen knife and sliced Stinnett’s abdomen open, removing the premature baby girl. At some point during the procedure, Stinnett regained consciousness and fought for her life, only to be strangled to death.
Friends and family say Montgomery dressed the newborn baby girl in Winnie the Pooh outfits and paraded her around town as if the child was her own. She named the baby Abigail.
Stinnett’s body was discovered by her mother, about an hour after the murder.
The following day, after forensic computer experts traced the online chat communication to Montgomery’s computer, she was arrested at her home in Melvern, Kansas.
The newborn girl was returned to her father, Stinnett’s grieving husband. The girl is now 16, and lives a quiet life out of the public eye.
Montgomery was the only woman on death row in the U.S. and the first woman to be executed by the federal government in 67 years.
