Strong Trail In Stolen-Fetus Case

The 36-year-old wife and mother accused of killing a pregnant fellow dog breeder and cutting the fetus out of her womb made her first court appearance Monday. Lisa Montgomery appeared in a Kansas courtroom, facing charges of kidnapping resulting in death.

The Kansas woman stayed silent throughout the appearance, but her husband, Kevin, apologized for his wife's actions outside the courthouse after the hearing, CBS News Correspondent Cynthia Bowers reports.

"My heart ain't just broke for Lisa and them kids, but for them, too. That was a precious baby, I know," Kevin Montgomery said outside the courthouse.

Montgomery confessed to strangling Bobbie Jo Stinnett of Skidmore, Mo., on Thursday, police said. Montgomery allegedly cut the fetus out of Skidmore's womb and took the baby back to Kansas, where she lives. She is accused of trying to pass the child off as her own to family and friends.

Victoria Jo Stinnett, the baby girl, was later recovered unharmed. Now four days old, she remains in a Topeka hospital's neonatal intensive care unit.

Originally investigators believed Montgomery "stumbled onto" her victim on the Internet, Bowers reports. Authorities discovered the connection between victim and alleged murderer by examining online message boards and tracing Montgomery's IP address to a computer at her Melvern, Kan., home.

Investigators say that just before the slaying, Montgomery corresponded over the Internet with the victim about buying a dog. But a woman who asked not to be identifie says Montgomery first encountered Stinnet roughly year ago on the dog show circuit. Both bred rat terriers, and even appeared together in a group photo.

Sara Simmons of CBS Affiliate KMTV in Omaha, Neb., talked with the woman, who only wishes to be known as "Nancy," who says she has known both Montgomery and the 23-year-old murder victim for about one year. The woman also requested her face not be shown in order to remain anonymous.

Nancy said she showed dogs with Stinnett and her husband. Simmons reports that Nancy said people in the dog-breeding community didn't trust Montgomery, because she would lie about her dogs' pedigrees

"Later she told us she had miscarried one of the twins, but still was carrying one." Nancy said. "Then within the last couple of weeks her IM message said 'baby any day. Maybe today.'"

Nancy said that she, along with others in the dog-breeding community, didn't believe Montgomery was pregnant. When she heard the news of her friend Stinnett's death, she says: "[Montgomery] was the first person I thought of, but I didn't think she was capable until I saw her name."

According to locals, Montgomery wasted no time showing off the baby around town, including stopping off at a diner.

"We had no idea," said family friend Darrel Schultz. "I'm sure that a lot of people that held that baby that day feel terrible that this happened."

"The one thing I've found has brought me a lot of joy is that they found her daughter alive and that way a small portion of Bobbi Jo will live on," said Buck Potter, her father.

The Rev. Harold Hamon refrained from directly discussing the death of his neighbor whose baby was cut from her womb after she had been strangled.

Instead, the subject of this week's sermon was forgiveness.

Churchgoers in two communities grieved Sunday for the young woman and struggled to understand the horrific slaying.

"It's almost unbelievable that right under your nose something terrible can be happening," said Hamon, who lives in the small town of Skidmore in northwestern Missouri.

Hamon said he was probably addressing Christmas cards when Stinnett was killed. A short time later, a member of his congregation called to say she had heard an ambulance and wondered if anyone near the church was hurt. Hamon said he looked out the window and saw police cars parked in front of Stinnett's house.

The Rev. Mike Wheatly, pastor of First Church of God in Melvern, said he wrote his sermon about the birth of Jesus before details about Stinnett's death surfaced.

Titled, "A Baby Changed Everything," it had added relevance.

"You could've put the situation of Bobbie Jo Stinnett in the same sermon because they are both special babies," he said.

Hamon married Bobbie Jo and Zeb Stinnett last year at his Skidmore Christian Church.

"They were kids in the neighborhood, nice young kids," Hamon said. "She's just a real nice girl, real pretty, quiet and reserved."

Stinnett's mother found her body in a pool of blood inside the couple's small white home on Thursday afternoon. Stinnett had been eight months pregnant with the couple's first child.

Police recovered Stinnett's baby a day later after tracking down Montgomery through e-mails she had sent Stinnett about buying a dog.

Montgomery, a mother of two, lied to family and friends about being pregnant with twins and suffering a miscarriage, investigators said. Detectives doubt whether she was pregnant at all.

She met her husband at a Topeka fast-food restaurant with Stinnett's baby, telling him she had gone into labor while shopping in the city, authorities said.

Montgomery's husband has not been charged.

A few similar cases have been reported. Two of the most highly publicized were in 1987, when Cindy Lynn Ray, who was 8½ months pregnant, was abducted and slain in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and in 1995, when Debra Evans, nine months pregnant, was slain in Addison, Illinois In both cases, infants were cut from their wombs and kidnapped.