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Baby stolen from womb said in good condition
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-12-21 11:41
A baby girl cut from her murdered mother's womb by a woman who later tried to
pass the child off as her own was in very good condition, a Kansas hospital said
on Monday.
Stormont-Vail Regional Health Center in Topeka also said the case had
generated an outpouring of concern and sympathy from the public for five-day-old
Victoria Jo Stinnett and her family, with calls, notes and gifts including tiny
baskets of infant clothes sent to the hospital.
Lisa Montgomery,
36, of Melvern, Kansas, the woman who FBI agents say confessed to the
kidnapping and murder of eight months pregnant Bobbie Jo Stinnett, 23, has
been charged under federal law with kidnapping resulting in death.
[Reuters] | "She remains in very good condition,
resting comfortably in the neonatal intensive care unit," hospital spokeswoman
Tami Motley said. She said the girl's father, Zeb Stinnett, had asked that no
other information be released, and it was not known how long the child would
remain at the medical center.
Lisa Montgomery, 36, the woman who FBI agents said confessed to the murder
and kidnapping, has been charged under federal law with kidnapping resulting in
death.
The victim, eight months pregnant Bobbie Jo Stinnett, 23, was found strangled
in her Missouri home on Thursday with her abdomen sliced open, the baby gone and
the umbilical cord cut.
The FBI said Montgomery came to Stinnett's home after inquiring over the
Internet about buying a rat terrier dog, a breed Stinnett raised. It was a trace
on the e-mail that led investigators to track down Montgomery at her home in
Kansas. She had been showing off the child as her own and told her husband that
she had suddenly given birth.
Police also said Montgomery had told her family she suffered a miscarriage at
some time in the past, though it was not known when or if she really had been
pregnant. No information has been released on what might have motivated the
crime.
Stinnett said the fact that his daughter survived the ordeal was a miracle.
Todd Graves, the U.S. Attorney in Kansas City, Missouri, said on Monday it
was too early to say whether Montgomery suffered from mental illness.
"We're still very early in the investigation and I'm not aware of that one
way or the other," he said in an interview on NBC's "Today" show.
He said the crime underlined how the Internet both brought crime into the
victim's home in a small rural town but also allowed investigators to solve the
case and recover the baby a day later.
Montgomery's husband has not been charged.
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