Lisa Montgomery's Computer Had Visited Sites on Caesareans

Oct 11, 05:16 AM

Current Headlines: By Tony Rizzo, The Kansas City Star, Mo.

Oct. 11--Someone used a computer in Lisa Montgomery's home to visit several Web sites picturing and describing Caesarean sections being performed.

Those visits occurred in the weeks before Bobbie Jo Stinnett was killed and her daughter cut from her womb in December 2004, FBI computer examiner Adam Krob testified in federal court Wednesday.

Krob said he spent more than a month tracing the Internet history of the computer, which earlier testimony showed was used almost exclusively by Montgomery.

Other birth-related sites were visited, including one that featured information about inducing labor and another that advised how to obtain a birth certificate for home-birthed babies, Krob testified.

There was also a link to a news article about how the state of Kansas intended to crack down on birth certificate fraud, he said.

In addition to learning about online activity, jurors in Montgomery's federal death penalty trial heard Wednesday how FBI agents re-traced her movements on the day Stinnett died.

Cell phone and credit card records showed that she made the 350-mile round trip from her home in Melvern, Kan., to Stinnett's residence in Skidmore, Mo., that day as well as the previous day, said Special Agent Kurt Lipanovich.

Stinnett died Dec. 16, 2004, a day before investigators found Montgomery with the baby.

A search of Montgomery's car turned up blood-stained evidence: a plastic trash bag in the trunk that yielded a knife stained with blood and tissue, a piece of rope caked with blood and hair, and a section of umbilical cord, said Special Agent Andrew Alvey.

The defense has conceded that Montgomery killed Stinnett but is relying on a mental health defense.

Defense attorney John P. O'Connor asked Alvey if the trunk evidence could be categorized as "all of the instrumentalities of this particular crime."

"That would be my assessment," the agent said.

In the passenger compartment, investigators found a piece of paper with Stinnett's address jotted on it, Alvey said.

Examiners from the Kansas City Police Department's crime lab testified that hair tangled in the bloody piece of rope matched Stinnett.

They found a mixture of her blood and the blood of her daughter on the knife blade. The knife handle also contained her DNA and possibly Montgomery's and one other unknown donor, according to the examiner.

Also Wednesday, an Alabama dog breeder described a "gut feeling" that prompted her to provide Montgomery's name to investigators. The timing of Stinnett's killing and Montgomery's claim of giving birth made her feel "uneasy," Patricia Hughes testified.

"The circumstances don't fit," Hughes said she told a dispatcher for the Nodaway County, Mo., Sheriff's Department the day after the killing.

Hughes knew both women because of a shared interest in raising and breeding rat terriers, and Montgomery's teenage daughter was living with Hughes at the time in Alabama.

She said that she provided authorities with Montgomery's name, address and e-mail contacts.

Hughes said she grew suspicious because of Montgomery's previous statements about whether she was pregnant with twins or just one baby. She said she was also troubled when she heard that after Montgomery gave birth, she asked her husband to pick her up in a fast-food restaurant parking lot.

"I told the dispatcher I was hoping I was wrong," Hughes testified.

The trial continues today.

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