Читать книгу Murder In The Heartland - M. William Phelps - Страница 27

While family members of Bobbie Jo Stinnett were contacted on the evening of December 16, doctors at St. Francis Hospital in Maryville pronounced the twenty-three-year-old wife and mother dead. The trauma had been too much. Her petite body couldn’t take the punishment authorities claim Lisa Montgomery had unleashed in the act of violent fury that was, by now, being reported around the world.

Satellite trucks were pulling into Skidmore as Bobbie Jo lay on a gurney somewhere in St. Francis Hospital. All the major networks were sending reporters to the region: MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, even the British Broadcasting Company (BBC). Every major metropolitan newspaper across the country posted the story on their Web sites. The Christmas season was generally a slow news period. The murder of Bobbie Jo Stinnett was going to be a huge story. By nightfall, the world would hear of the horror in Skidmore. By the following morning, reporters would be swarming the area, looking to uncover anything they could about what had happened inside the small house at West Elm Street.

As word spread throughout town, Skidmore residents locked their doors and watched their backs, noting that until Bobbie Jo’s killer was caught, things would never be the same. Most were obviously appalled such a crime could take place in their tight-knit, close community. And to think it happened right in the middle of the day.

“Things like that just don’t happen ’roun he’a,” said one local.

Reverend Harold Hamon, who had married Zeb and Bobbie Jo about twenty months earlier, said he was likely “addressing Christmas cards” when the murder occurred. He remembered the time of day because a member of his congregation had called about the commotion going on up the road from his parish.

“Reverend,” asked the worried neighbor, “I heard an ambulance down by the church. Was anyone near the church hurt?”

Hamon could see Bobbie Jo’s house from the church rectory as he looked out the window. “Hold on,” he said, staring down the street. “There’s police cars down there. Don’t know what’s going on, though.”

“It’s almost unbelievable,” Hamon recalled, “that right under your nose something terrible can be happening.”

After talking it over with doctors, Sheriff Ben Espey was convinced there was a strong possibility Bobbie Jo’s child was still alive. He had no doubt in his mind what he had to do next.

“That’s the minute,” Espey said, “I started pushing to get the Amber Alert issued.” And that was where the problems and infighting among different law enforcement agencies began.

The base of the investigation had been moved from Skidmore to downtown Maryville. The Nodaway County Sheriff’s Department on North Vine Street, just below the center of town, was a small station compared to bigger-city police departments. But Espey felt comfortable in the building. It was a second home to him. On the wall of its large basement was a long blackboard he could fill up with leads and ideas. By this means, he could sketch out the entire case and keep track of it, step by step.

Espey returned to the department and began a push to get the Amber Alert issued. Find the baby, find the killer. It seemed that simple. His emphasis was on finding the child first. After clearing Zeb Stinnett and informing him that his wife had been killed and his child kidnapped, Espey promised Zeb he would get his child back.

Getting an Amber Alert issued for an unborn child would be an unprecedented move, and Espey would run into harsh opposition in the coming hours regarding his desire to get it done, because an Amber Alert had never been issued for, as some were calling Bobbie Jo’s child, “a fetus.”

A major factor that made Ben Espey an asset to his community was his determination to get a job done when the powers to be, bound by bureaucracy, stood in his way. If Espey believed an Amber Alert was warranted, he was going get it—and no one was going to tell him he couldn’t.