'Womb theft' baby recovering after ordeal
The four-day-old girl who was cut from her strangled mother’s womb was in “remarkably good” condition today as the alleged attacker faced an initial court appearance.
Lisa Montgomery was set to appear at the federal courthouse in Kansas City, Missouri.
A spokesman for US Attorney Todd Graves said the magistrate would read the charge – kidnapping resulting in death – and possibly appoint a lawyer for Montgomery and scheduled an arraignment.
Authorities said Montgomery, aged 36, confessed to strangling Bobbie Jo Stinnett of Skidmore, Missouri, on Thursday, cutting out the foetus and taking the baby back to Kansas.
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.
The child remained in the neonatal intensive care unit today at Stormont-Vail Regional Health Centre in Topeka, Kansas.
“She’s in remarkably good condition for what has happened to her,” hospital spokeswoman Tami Motley said. There was no immediate indication when the baby might go home to her father.
The court appearance came one day after churchgoers in two communities struggled to understand the death.
Mrs Stinnett’s mother found her daughter’s body in a pool of blood inside the couple’s small white home on Thursday afternoon. She had been eight months pregnant with her first child.
Police recovered the baby a day later after tracking down Montgomery through e-mails she had sent Mrs 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 labour while shopping, authorities said.
Montgomery’s husband has not been charged.
