Paperback: On a December night in 2004, a 911 operator in Nodaway County, Missouri, received a frantic call from a woman who had found her pregnant 23-year-old daughter in a pool of blood on the living room floor. Most shocking of all, the dying woman's unborn baby had been viciously ripped from her womb.
Across the border in Melvern, Kansas, Lisa Montgomery showed off a beautiful newborn she proudly claimed as her own. While some shared her excitement, others harboured suspicions.
Meanwhile, televisions across the nation broadcast the first Amber Alert for an unborn child.
As I was finishing my last book in December 2004, the Bobbie Jo Stinnett murder became front-page news. For about a week during the Christmas holiday, I couldn't turn on the television or open a newspaper without hearing something about the case. Everyone wanted to know what had driven a woman to cut another woman's child from her womb, killing the mother of the child. It became one of the most high-profile crime stories of the year.
One afternoon, a few months later, I was working at my desk when a little dialogue box on the bottom corner of my computer screen alerted me an e-mail had just arrived. Then the name of the sender appeared in the box: Carl Boman (Lisa Montgomery's ex-husband). "I want you to write this story," he wrote. "I need to get the truth out. There's way too much speculation and rumour out in public right now."
I've learned in the years of writing true-crime books, along with a tragedy of similar scope in my own family, the pain involved in the aftermath of murder - that is, if it is to be weighed on a scale of emotion - is equal, no matter which side you're on. People suffer. No pain is greater than any other.
Fundamentally, this is a story of life, loss and being able to move forward in the face of an immeasurable tragedy. The accused killer's children still love their mother but more than that, as Carl Boman said to me once, "This is a tragic death that should have never happened - and that's one of the main reasons why I want to get this story out. The whole story. Everything that led up to this senseless murder needs to be told as a cautionary tale so people understand how mentally ill people who don't get professional help are potentially time bombs. In this country (and in other countries around the world), we need to take the issue of mental health more seriously."
To understand why this crime happened is one thing: yet to sit and digest this material for as long as I did made me realize that people truly are capable of just about anything, especially when driven by desperation.
Newly updated with the latest surprising developments and exclusive access to key witnesses, family members and potential victims, Murder in the Heartland (2006) goes behind the scenes of two picture-perfect American towns forever changed by one horrifying act of violence. This, then, is not your typical, straightforward true-crime account although some of those elements will certainly appear. This story, however, encompasses two families, many victims and two towns coming to terms with an incredibly hideous murder. The result is a telling look into the heart of America as well as the quest for justice.
M William Phelps gives you the entire story as it played out from day one but also, most importantly, the all-inclusive backstory of the alleged perpetrator, which explains why she did what she did and how she, her immediate family, and the two towns are coping with the aftermath today.
About the author: Crime, murder and serial killer expert, creator/producer/writer and former host of the Investigation Discovery series Dark Minds, acclaimed, award-winning investigative journalist M William Phelps is the New York Times best-selling author of thirty books and winner of the 2013 Excellence in (Investigative) Journalism Award and the 2008 New England Book Festival Award.
A highly sought-after pundit, Phelps has made over 100 media-related television appearances: Early Show, The Today Show, The View, Fox & Friends, truTV, Discovery Channel, Fox News Channel, Good Morning America, TLC, BIO, History, Oxygen, OWN, on top of over 100 additional media appearances: USA Radio Network, Catholic Radio, Mancow, Wall Street Journal Radio, Zac Daniel, Ave Maria Radio, Catholic Channel, EWTN Radio, ABC News Radio, and many more.
Phelps is one of the regular and recurring experts frequently appearing on two long-running series, Deadly Women and Snapped. Radio America calls Phelps “the nation’s leading authority on the mind of the female murderer,” and TV Rage says, “M. William Phelps dares to tread where few others will: into the mind of a killer.” A respected journalist, beyond his book writing Phelps has written for numerous publications - including the Providence Journal, Connecticut Magazine and Hartford Courant - and consulted on the first season of the hit Showtime cable television series Dexter.
Phelps grew up in East Hartford, CT, moved to Vernon, CT, at age 12, where he lived for 25 years. He now lives in a reclusive Connecticut farming community north of Hartford.
Beyond crime, Phelps has also written several history books, including the acclaimed, New York Times bestselling Nathan Hale: The Life and Death of America’s First Spy, The Devil's Rooming House, The Devil's Right Hand, Murder, New England, and more.
No comments:
Post a Comment