No One Saw A Thing (2019) s01e05 Episode Script
A Pound of Flesh
1 (Diane Fanning) Here's a crime that hasn't been solved for decades.
It's there, it's constant, it's part of your fabric of life.
Does that compel more violent acts to occur? (Mark Reinig) Since Ken's death, we've had a lot of tragedies in the town that is unusual for a rural American town.
(Fanning) Skidmore is so haunted that it permeates their culture and makes violence more likely.
(male reporter) Since 2001, folks here in Skidmore have lived with a big question on their minds: What happened to one of their own? (James Klino) Branson went to the shed to return some jumper cables, and, at that point, was not seen from thereafter.
(Marty Small) Branson, you know, he had a lot of potential in life.
Growin' up, I used to go over to his house.
(Reinig) It's just one of those things we sit there and go, "Why is this happening?" (Ben Espey) Branson was no innocent young kid that somebody just walked up and shot they didn't even know.
Branson was totally involved with fixin' and makin' methamphetamine.
We know exactly what's happened.
We know who was involved.
And I can tell you right now, they were from Skidmore.
(Steve Booher) Nobody saw anything, nobody overheard anything, but make no mistake about this, just like in the murder of Ken Rex McElroy, somebody knows.
() (Kirby Goslee) Being a farmer is so many, many things.
It's changing so very, very fast.
But the root part of being a farmer, for me, it's a great sense of satisfaction that you've weathered the elements, you've got rid of the weeds, you get to work outside, you're close to nature and God.
That's just basic life on this earth.
I enjoyed it growing up and I enjoyed it as a man.
(Espey) I graduated out of high school in 1971, and I always thought then I'd kind like to be in law enforcement and maybe be a highway patrolman.
They drove nice cars, dressed nice and they was well respected.
I loved doin' my job.
But if somebody called-- and I didn't care what time of day or night it was-- if they wanted me to come and protect them from somebody, that's what I was there for.
(David Baird) When I became prosecutor, I didn't want to be prosecutor.
I was the newest and youngest attorney in town, and they contacted me and said, "Would you serve as prosecutor?" So I went and got sage advice from my father, who had lived here a long time, and said, "What do you think?" And his quote was, "Go ahead and take it.
"It'll be good experience for a couple years.
"And besides, nothing ever exciting ever happens in Nodaway County anyway.
" (Goslee) I let my daughter have our home place to raise her two boys.
You know, that's my gift to her.
And my grandsons.
That's the thing to do, you pass it on.
(Small) As a kid, I knew I was gonna be a soldier.
I knew that it more important to take care of the people around me, because that's the way I was raised.
Shakespeare said, "All the world's a stage.
All I am is a player.
" You have to understand your role.
And we all pick our own roles.
Well, in some cases, you get thrown into your role, and you get stuck.
Branson was a good kid.
He was one of those people that, if he'd have made different decisions in life, he could've done a lot of great things.
(Fanning) Branson was kind of a shy boy.
Blue eyes, blonde hair, and he had that baby face that made him look a lot younger than his years.
His parents got divorced when he was a small kid.
(Klino) He liked snakes, reptiles and things.
And he liked his artifact collection.
(Small) I tried to spend time with him as much as I could.
As we get older, you start to drift apart.
And it's truly unfortunate, 'cause I do think he's a great kid.
It's about life choices.
But ultimately, he made the choice and go do what he was gonna do, and it came back to haunt him.
I think the family still has a hard time coming to terms with that.
And it's horrible that they had to go through what they went through.
You live with the fear that the worst has happened, but you pray for the best.
(Small) The big part of gettin' through hard things in life is hope.
We've heard about hope.
Some people's hope is religion and faith.
Some people's hope is love.
If there's no hope, at the end, then what's there to live for? It was a little more than eight years ago when Branson Perry vanished from his hometown in western Nodaway County, and this weekend, authorities honed in on a farm in that area, hoping to uncover clues as to what happened to Branson.
There's one true story to Branson Perry's case.
(male reporter) In 2001, Perry, who was 20, vanished from outside his home.
Signs from across the area are giving the message out about this missing man, but still, there have been no signs of Branson himself.
(Espey) Branson Perry's case led us into the drug scene.
(Booher) During a time of his disappearance, there was an active drug culture in rural northwest Missouri.
(Britt Small) At that time, when you hear of a house blowing up, very frequently, it was a meth lab explosion.
They do happen.
(Leona Hayes) Ben Espey, he was a pretty good sheriff to have been trusted.
Pretty good.
Back then, Skidmore was full of drugs, and he was thinnin' 'em out in this town pretty good.
(Espey) We developed drug enforcement agencies, that that's all they did.
Their whole job was to go out and find these young kids, follow them, film them, and we would bust their labs where they was makin' it.
Several people were taken, put on a polygraph, and asked questions about, "Were you there?" "What do you know?" Then we started puttin' things together.
Branson was totally involved with fixin' and makin' methamphetamine.
Part of Branson's job was to supply the ingredients to make the drugs.
Branson somehow had gotten in some kind of trouble with an officer, and, I think, what happened is that the kingpin of several different people that would meet thought that Branson would talk.
() I can tell you right now, there was nine people involved in that case.
And we knew, all of us knew, who the nine players were that were involved in it, who the person was that pulled the trigger.
(male reporter) Investigators say a tip came into them about two weeks ago that Branson could be buried here in Quintmet.
(male officer) The information that we received in this case we felt was very credible and that we certainly needed to act on it.
(Espey) Two of the people involved showed us on a map where they thought that they'd buried Branson.
Both people were interrogated separately, both people showed us the same place on the map.
(male reporter) They combed these empty fields and the area near these old grain beds.
A canine unit from North Carolina even joined this search.
We turned the dogs loose and we cover about a two-mile area.
(Klino) These dogs kept hittin' this one spot pretty hard.
So they took the dogs a mile away, and walked 'em back towards there, and they hit the spot again.
(Espey) Nine of the ten dogs hit on exactly the same place.
(male reporter) Clues to what happened to him my still lie beneath this dirt.
We found some items that we feel has substantiated the information that was given to us.
So we feel that we're on the right track.
(Espey) When they was diggin' right where the dogs hit, the earth underneath the ground was different.
So what that told me is, the body probably had been buried there, but it had been removed.
We have a case, we don't have a body.
I suspect that's when the heat got on and law enforcement got a little too close, I think they dug the body up and put it somewhere else.
Ultimately, at the end, our investigation led us to that house where Branson Perry was shot.
(Klino) Unfortunately, the house burned before the investigation got to see if there was any evidence in the home.
No evidence was found.
The disappearance of Branson is like the bully case-- there's a lot more out there that is known that people are not talking about.
They're a small town, they're all close knit.
They don't want to open their mouths.
They're afraid of retaliation.
(Becky Klino) People say that they're afraid to mention something because they're afraid for their own safety.
And I don't understand, because how could they be so afraid of something that is causing somebody else so much pain? (Hayes) A lot of people in town wouldn't talk because, in this town, you'll get killed for tellin' the truth.
Nearly 10 years ago, Branson Perry disappeared from his Skidmore home.
Law enforcement says leads are more valuable than ever in the case and tips continue to come in.
(Randy Strong) We are still working the disappearance of Branson Perry.
That case, I have open.
We are actively pursuing that case.
There is an underbelly of people that live there that they're involved in the drug culture.
We believed him to be a homicide victim at this time, but his body has yet to be recovered.
(Hayes) They'll never find the boy.
To me, I think that's the closure of that one, because the FBI has come in and everything and they couldn't find nothing.
(Marty Small) Now, his body was never found.
I mean, there's been no official report of his death.
What they speculate happened is the body had been cut up, and then dispersed in a body of water.
The way law enforcement finds things now is you find big chunks, you find a whole arm, you find a whole body.
Little tiny pieces of things that are chopped up are really difficult to find.
So they didn't have any of the normal physical evidence of the murder.
(female reporter) So far, all tips have led to dead ends, but the case remains active, as those involved hope for what they've been waiting for since he first went missing in April 2001.
Those close to the case are pushing forward, still determined to find answers.
(Espey) The sheriff and the chief of police and the highway patrol, we don't file charges, we can't.
It's up to the prosecuting attorney to file a charge on a case.
And that's the reason that Branson Perry is still pending.
Back then, prosecuting attorney was David Baird.
Obviously, David decided that he didn't have enough.
(Baird) My focus has never been, "Gosh, I wish I had this," or "Boy, wouldn't it be great to have that," because that's not what reality is.
The role of prosecutor is that we are not to file charges until we are convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that a particular individual committed a particular crime.
(Baird) Before we file charges, we want to make sure we have that evidence.
We do not simply take someone to trial for the purpose of taking someone to trial to get the case over with.
(Espey) Everything is there.
Because when I left, everything was there.
That's the deal: the prosecutor is kind of like God.
He has enough to file.
But if he decides he's not gonna file, then it never goes in front of a judge.
When you're the sheriff of the county, you feel like whatever crimes are committed, you carry 'em with you.
And you never get rid of 'em.
(Tom Carneal) It's a terrible thing for the family, when you never know for sure-- it's like, "Is he coming home?" (Reinig) The signs are fading and starting to fall in.
It's just kind of the ruminants and the memorial to a child that disappeared.
(male reporter) This Skidmore cemetery backs up to the Stinnett home.
Family members say they can't bear the thought of preparing for yet another funeral.
I asked my mom, I said, "Why are we burying our children instead of our parents?" Our plots are all full of our children.
(Reinig) Needless to say, Bob and Becky had a hard time.
And Bob eventually moved out of town.
When he passed away, I think that he died of a broken heart.
In your heart, where do you think Branson is? I have to keep believin' he's alive.
I can't go the other side yet.
I can't go that way.
I can't give up hope.
She prayed to God every day for answers.
Like any mother would want to do for their own child.
She went through hell trying to find answers.
(Espey) When I got to the point that the charges did not get filed, but we knew who did it, Branson Perry's mother was dying of cancer.
But before Branson's mother went to her grave, I had a meeting and told her exactly what I knew and what we feel 99.
9% sure that happened to her son.
(Fanning) When Branson's mother died, her obituary said that she was preceded in death by her son Branson.
Obviously, she accepted the fact that he was gone.
(Booher) The question that haunts Skidmore to this day is, "Why all this violence?" And "Why isn't anybody talking?" (Fanning) Wendy Gillenwater, who was brutally murdered, Branson Perry disappeared and is presumed dead, and the murder of Ken Rex McElroy (Booher) That's a bad legacy for a town.
And then you have probably the most horrific case in the town's history, Bobbie Jo Stinnett.
And it is literally repugnant to think of what happened to that woman.
And the person that did this.
This is something a normal person can't do.
a very, very horrible thing happened.
Part of a line of amazingly horrible events that have happened in this town, particularly after the killing of Ken Rex McElroy, Wendy, Branson.
We had a couple other incidents where there was supposed suicides-- a young boy was found hung another was swimming underneath the bridge, and he drowned.
And I came to the end of my rope, as it were.
And so, I found Christ.
I had a prayer partner.
And he lived two blocks away from me.
And we would go out every morning that we could, and we'd walk through the town and we'd pray.
We'd pray over the streets, we'd pray over the houses.
We'd pray for the people who lived in the houses.
And one day, as I was praying, I heard an audible voice, and it was not the voice of God.
And the voice said, "I am stealing the children from under your noses.
" And I looked up, and from under my nose, was Branson Perry's house, and then across the street was Bobbie Jo Stinnett's house.
(Fanning) Bobbie Jo Stinnett was brutally murdered in her own home right there in Skidmore.
(Marty Small) I remember being in college in 2004, sitting in class, I got a text message that there had been another murder in Skidmore.
Bobbie Jo, she was a really nice girl.
There was not a mean bone in her body.
She had been in my little sister's class in junior high, and that was crazy.
I remember the name comes across, I'm like, "Holy crap, I know her.
" You know, I can't believe that happened, yet it didn't surprise me.
(phone line ringing) (Espey) I was in the sheriff's department when the 911 call came in.
(phone line ringing) I could hear the conversation from the person on the other end of the line, which was Bobbi Jo Stinnett's mother.
She said, "I need somebody here right now.
My daughter's stomach has exploded.
" (police siren blaring) (Reinig) It was a sight that probably a county sheriff in rural northwest Missouri was not used to seeing.
(Espey) When I got there, I walked through the house, and get to the room where Bobbie Joe Stinnett is.
I could tell, as I walked through the door, that there was probably no life there.
(camera shutter clicking) Bobbie Jo was laying flat on her back, face up.
Becky, the mother, looked at me and says, "I don't know-- "I've never done CPR.
I don't know that I'm doing it right.
Can you help?" I continued CPR until the ambulance personnel walked in with a cot.
(Booher) From the bedroom to the kitchen, it was a horrific crime scene.
(Britt Small) There was so much blood, I mean, it just-- It made me sick.
And the reason I knew what all happened there was because my chiropractor was the coroner at the time.
(Booher) I was actually here in the news room.
We had gotten calls from people around the area, saying, "Hey, looks like there's something big goin' on in Skidmore.
" And of course, we thought, "What, again?" (people chattering) Okay, here's modulation mic check for KXCV Radio.
KXCV Maryville, KRNW Chillicothe.
Mic check modulation.
And, uh, we don't have anything yet.
(Espey) There's been several crimes in Skidmore over the past several years.
But the Bobbie Jo Stinnett case was probably the biggest case that I had in my career.
Okay, we're gonna be real brief.
Is everybody ready? This conference won't last very long.
There was a lot of manpower put into this.
There was a lot of hard investigative work.
Right now, there's investigators doing questioning.
(male reporter 1) There's two people being questioned at this time.
And, uh, I think that's where we'll leave it.
(male reporter 1) They're still in the process of doing an investigation on that.
(male reporter 2) We're in the process of doing that right now.
(Espey) As they loaded Bobbie Jo onto the stretcher and took her out to the ambulance, I could see that her stomach was cut from side to side.
I then went back into the house and asked Becky, the mother, I said, "Is Bobbie Jo pregnant?" "Yes, she was within a month of delivering a new child.
" So we had a baby that was cut out of her mother, and the baby's gone.
(male reporter) When police entered this house in tiny Skidmore, Missouri, they discovered the slain body of pregnant mother-to-be, Bobbie Jo Stinnett.
Her murder was made all the more horrifying by what police did not find: a pregnant woman attacked in her home, the baby she was carrying, cut from her womb and gone.
and I cried a lot that night and I prayed a lot that night.
Makes me shiver yet today.
The cruelest, meanest that I had ever seen in my life.
And I was raised rough in the country, and everything, and never seen anything like that.
It as just horrible.
Bobbie Jo was the niece of my daughters.
And Bobbie Jo and Zeb got married and was doin' real good.
They were raising dogs together.
And I never knew of Bobbie Jo and Zeb ever had any problems.
The mother, Becky, worked at the filling station, and Bobbie Jo would come down and pick her mother up and take her down home.
Well, that very day, Becky knew that there must have been something wrong, because Bobbie Jo hadn't got down there.
And so, that's when her mother went up there, and that's when the mother had found out they'd cut Bobbie Jo's baby out of her.
(Brett Small) She was a good friend of my daughters.
And she used to come out here, ride her pony out here, and sit right here at the table and eat with the family.
(Goslee) I knew Bobbie Jo real well.
I knew her folks.
Young cowgirl.
She wouldn't hurt a fly.
It's a real, real, real tragedy of what happened to her.
(male officer) The sheriff, when he started the investigation, right away, he activated the major case squad, which brought in other law enforcement agencies, such as the highway patrol, the FBI, different sheriffs, police departments in northwest Missouri.
Essentially, half the town was blocked off because of the crime scene.
(Fanning) They wanted every little tiny piece of trace evidence they could find that would nail down who came into this home.
(Booher) The first thing they did was take blood samples of everything.
(camera shutter clicking) There was a trail of blood where her murderer had dragged her body down a hallway; a bloody knife laying on the counter that was used to cut the baby out of Bobbie Jo's womb.
(Fanning) Forensic scientists took up a piece of floor where she breathed her last breath to see what evidence they could find.
(Booher) They don't want to disturb the body.
They want the body to remain as it was when she died.
So they just cut the whole floor up-- they pry it up, they lift it up and they take it out of the house.
(Strong) At the time, I was a detective here in Maryville.
And shortly after Sheriff Espey and his deputies arrived there, I got a phone call.
The body was being taken to St.
Francis Hospital.
I was told to go down there and document the body-- photograph the body and look for evidence.
There were ligature marks around her neck, where I could see a pattern-- she was strangled at least twice, if not, three times.
I could see the distinct bruising and the marks of the rope around her neck.
She was barefoot.
I noticed that on the top of her feet there was no blood.
Her feet had been flat in blood and that blood had come up between her toes, which told me that once she had been cut, and cut severely, that she was not dead yet for a little bit, that she was able to get up and stand.
I believe that her attacker started cutting on her, blood spilled out and that Bobbie Jo continued to fight for her life, or her baby's life.
People live in an area like Skidmore, Missouri because, basically, they want a quiet life.
Then when Bobbie Jo Stinnett died, all their old misbehaviors were brought out.
Everybody was focused on what was wrong with Skidmore.
(male reporter 1) Bobbie Jo Stinnett was found strangled, lying in a pool of blood inside this Skidmore home.
(male reporter 2) Keep in mind, Skidmore was already no stranger to the media, and this case put them on the map again.
All these reporters and all these journalists were comin' into town, and they were dredging all this stuff up again.
This was something so unusual that it captured the attention of media outlets all over the world.
A baby born of violence, ripped from the womb and her mother Fetal abduction in the nation's heartland.
(female reporter) The vicious crime has shaken this tight knit small town.
I just can't understand why anybody would do a trick like that.
-(woman) Sheriff-- -(man) What time you talkin', like later on tonight? Yes, later on tonight, I would anticipate.
I don't have a specific time, okay? (female reporter) Nobody here, nobody here could ever perceive this ever taking place, to have a fetus taken out of someone's womb.
It's unconceivable.
And I'm a grandparent, and I had a grandson born six days prior to this incident.
And then for me to think that now I'm workin' a case here where someone's taken a baby out of a mother The grandparents, the family, nobody was gonna be able to see this baby.
I know you guys, you really want a lot of stuff.
We're in the middle of this investigation.
We're not in the back of it.
What I can't do and we can't afford to do is let anything slip from here that can jeopardize the murder case.
And you're gonna want-- If it's your grandkid, you're gonna want this person behind bars as well as we are.
(male reporter) We're really not gonna comment on that right now.
If you stick around for a little while, we may have some more information about the case in general.
Thank you very much.
-(reporters clamoring) -(Lanza) Get it right here.
(Booher) Law enforcement was under enormous pressure to solve this case, and do it damn quick.
(female reporter) Officials ask if you know anything, to come forward.
(Espey) Don't assume that we already know, 'cause we may not.
And that may be the one piece of the puzzle that we might need.
(Hayes) It was December the 16th, around 3:30 my son and I rolled up in the yard, and here come this red car, just abarrelin'.
I seen a woman in the back seat doing something.
And the little one that was doing the driving, her hands were small.
So we run around the truck to see, and the vehicle went south.
And I thought, "Should I call the sheriff to see? Maybe it would give him a lead.
" I did go ahead and call.
I called the sheriff to tell the FBI what I seen.
(male reporter) Early on, investigators got a lead-- an anonymous phone call about a red car.
(Booher) The day that Bobbie Jo Stinnett was killed was different from Ken Rex and Branson Perry's case.
I don't know if it was because there was an infant involved, but Nodaway County asked for help that day.
Townspeople responded that day.
Tonight, the authorities are still looking for the red car-- they believe the red car was used to take the baby away.
(male reporter) The FBI, highway patrol, the sheriff, had nothing but red as the color of the getaway car.
That was it.
Remember, they didn't know if they would find a baby, if the baby would be alive or healthy, or how to even tell if it's the right baby.
Because this baby had not gone full term, but he's probably alive out there somewhere.
(Fanning) And so the time factor is even more critical.
(Espey) The mother was eight months pregnant, so we're lookin' at a one-month premature baby.
From what it looks like to us is, there was, the evidence would show that the baby was probably wrapped up and taken out of the home.
(Reinig) The sheriff immediately called for an amber alert, for the child that was missing.
And apparently, the state refused.
We didn't have enough criteria to meet it, which would be like hair color, eye color, skin complexion, size, weight.
(Espey) The amber alert is a system here in the United States.
Law enforcement started this up, and it's meant to help find a child that's in distress or somebody's kidnapped.
(beeping) There's a description of the child, description of the vehicle you're looking for.
It goes out on all the law enforcement networks, on all the television, all the radio, right now on all the cell phones.
(Fanning) But there was a problem.
He could not describe the baby.
The baby hadn't been born.
(male reporter) Sheriff Ben Espey had a brutal crime to solve, and fast.
But how could he request an amber alert for a child that had technically never been born? (Fanning) No one could describe the baby, but the person who just abducted the baby.
And they've been in the process of tearin' this down ever since the murder, but uh, it's a real slow process.
Sad, sad deal.
My stepdaughter lived here with her two boys for a couple years prior to what happened to Bobbie Jo.
I used to come up here all the time.
(knocks on wood frame) Living room and a spare bedroom.
Bathroom right there.
Little kitchen area.
I don't know the gruesome details.
I wouldn't talk about 'em if I did.
But you take a young woman gettin' ready to have a baby, and somebody murdered her? I mean, it can't get any worse than that.
Can't get any worse than that.
Probably the saddest thing that's ever happened in this town.
(Fanning) We have long heard the phrase that "The sins of the father are visited upon their sons.
" One generation stood in the street and shot down Ken McElroy and ended his life.
With a small town like Skidmore, these violent crimes leave a mark on the whole town.
It's almost biblical, that one act of violence seemed to have bred three acts of violence in the next generation.
(male reporter 1) Bobby Jo Stinnett would never see her child born.
The 23-year-old pregnant woman was strangled in their small town home-- her womb cut and her unborn baby kidnapped.
The medics told us at the hospital that this baby is probably still alive and is gonna need medical attention.
(male reporter 2) The sheriff's first amber alert request was denied, because this child had not been born yet.
(Espey) Well, they wouldn't give me the amber alert.
The said you gotta have the baby's height, weight, eye color, hair color.
Well, we didn't have any of that.
The only thing I really had was the fact that we had a baby that was a month premature that had been taken.
And to me, that should be enough.
(male reporter 3) Espey would not be deterred.
He made some calls, pushed his case, He even lobbied his congressman to make sure the word got out.
(Espey) So here's what we got.
We've got a baby that was cut out, we've got a murder-- the mother's dead-- and I need the amber alert.
Within two hours, the highway patrol called me and said, "All right, Sheriff, you got what you wanted.
" Well, I didn't like that attitude.
But I got it.
I got what I wanted.
(male reporter 4) After a day long nightmare, police sounded an amber alert, triggering a dragnet in Missouri and nearby states.
(Espey over radio) Keep an eye out for an infant with possible health issues, a newly cut umbilical cord and bloody clothing.
(Fanning) It was all over national television.
Where is this baby? We're back here live.
Now, they are just going to go with a press conference-- they're going to give an update.
Here is the latest from the investigators -in this case.
-(Espey)involved in the case.
(Espey) When this amber alert come out, we took an anonymous tip that come from several states away from here (Fanning) Meanwhile, they're taking lots of calls from people who are noticing odd things.
But the real trigger to find out what was going on was in Bobbie Jo's computer.
(male reporter) A fellow dog breeder from North Carolina led FBI agents to Stinnett's website.
Investigators searched her computer, discovering a vital clue.
(man) Bobbie Jo ran a website where she sold rat terrier dogs.
(mouse clicks) They took that computer in, they started analyzing it, and they found this chat group of rat terrier breeders (mouse clicks) (Booher) At the time, we didn't think it was important.
(Strong) Anybody getting on the website could look at that and see that she was pregnant.
(mouse clicks) She documented her pregnancy on that.
She showed different stages of that, and she talked about how excited she was-- this was gonna be her and Zeb's first child.
(mouse clicks) Her address is on the website, so anybody could get on there and find out where she lived.
The day before the murder, a woman gets online, and introduces herself as Darlene Fischer.
She says she wants to buy a dog from Bobbie Jo Stinnett in Skidmore, Missouri.
Bobbie Jo was making arrangements to meet with someone, and it was supposed to happen that day.
So they wanted to find this person-- find out if that person had come to the house to look at the puppies.
She was Darlene Fischer from Fairfax, Missouri.
They flooded Fairfax with tons of cops, trying to find Darlene Fischer.
(police siren blaring in distance) (thunder crashes) But it was all a ruse.
The FBI then, very quickl, was able to track this Darlene Fischer's domain name back to Melvern, Kansas.
() (Espey) So that's when I sent Randy Strong and Don Fritz to Melvern, Kansas to try to figure out who Darlene Fischer was.
(thunder crashes) And at the same time, a woman from Melvern was calling in and saying, "There was this woman walking around with a newborn baby.
" Lisa Montgomery.
() Lisa Montgomery is incapable of having a newborn baby.
She had a tubal ligation years ago.
(female reporter) That woman, Darlene Fischer, turns out to be Lisa Montgomery.
(Fanning) Everything was closing in.
That baby had to be located as fast as they could.
There are all sorts of things that could go wrong.
This child is in danger.
()
It's there, it's constant, it's part of your fabric of life.
Does that compel more violent acts to occur? (Mark Reinig) Since Ken's death, we've had a lot of tragedies in the town that is unusual for a rural American town.
(Fanning) Skidmore is so haunted that it permeates their culture and makes violence more likely.
(male reporter) Since 2001, folks here in Skidmore have lived with a big question on their minds: What happened to one of their own? (James Klino) Branson went to the shed to return some jumper cables, and, at that point, was not seen from thereafter.
(Marty Small) Branson, you know, he had a lot of potential in life.
Growin' up, I used to go over to his house.
(Reinig) It's just one of those things we sit there and go, "Why is this happening?" (Ben Espey) Branson was no innocent young kid that somebody just walked up and shot they didn't even know.
Branson was totally involved with fixin' and makin' methamphetamine.
We know exactly what's happened.
We know who was involved.
And I can tell you right now, they were from Skidmore.
(Steve Booher) Nobody saw anything, nobody overheard anything, but make no mistake about this, just like in the murder of Ken Rex McElroy, somebody knows.
() (Kirby Goslee) Being a farmer is so many, many things.
It's changing so very, very fast.
But the root part of being a farmer, for me, it's a great sense of satisfaction that you've weathered the elements, you've got rid of the weeds, you get to work outside, you're close to nature and God.
That's just basic life on this earth.
I enjoyed it growing up and I enjoyed it as a man.
(Espey) I graduated out of high school in 1971, and I always thought then I'd kind like to be in law enforcement and maybe be a highway patrolman.
They drove nice cars, dressed nice and they was well respected.
I loved doin' my job.
But if somebody called-- and I didn't care what time of day or night it was-- if they wanted me to come and protect them from somebody, that's what I was there for.
(David Baird) When I became prosecutor, I didn't want to be prosecutor.
I was the newest and youngest attorney in town, and they contacted me and said, "Would you serve as prosecutor?" So I went and got sage advice from my father, who had lived here a long time, and said, "What do you think?" And his quote was, "Go ahead and take it.
"It'll be good experience for a couple years.
"And besides, nothing ever exciting ever happens in Nodaway County anyway.
" (Goslee) I let my daughter have our home place to raise her two boys.
You know, that's my gift to her.
And my grandsons.
That's the thing to do, you pass it on.
(Small) As a kid, I knew I was gonna be a soldier.
I knew that it more important to take care of the people around me, because that's the way I was raised.
Shakespeare said, "All the world's a stage.
All I am is a player.
" You have to understand your role.
And we all pick our own roles.
Well, in some cases, you get thrown into your role, and you get stuck.
Branson was a good kid.
He was one of those people that, if he'd have made different decisions in life, he could've done a lot of great things.
(Fanning) Branson was kind of a shy boy.
Blue eyes, blonde hair, and he had that baby face that made him look a lot younger than his years.
His parents got divorced when he was a small kid.
(Klino) He liked snakes, reptiles and things.
And he liked his artifact collection.
(Small) I tried to spend time with him as much as I could.
As we get older, you start to drift apart.
And it's truly unfortunate, 'cause I do think he's a great kid.
It's about life choices.
But ultimately, he made the choice and go do what he was gonna do, and it came back to haunt him.
I think the family still has a hard time coming to terms with that.
And it's horrible that they had to go through what they went through.
You live with the fear that the worst has happened, but you pray for the best.
(Small) The big part of gettin' through hard things in life is hope.
We've heard about hope.
Some people's hope is religion and faith.
Some people's hope is love.
If there's no hope, at the end, then what's there to live for? It was a little more than eight years ago when Branson Perry vanished from his hometown in western Nodaway County, and this weekend, authorities honed in on a farm in that area, hoping to uncover clues as to what happened to Branson.
There's one true story to Branson Perry's case.
(male reporter) In 2001, Perry, who was 20, vanished from outside his home.
Signs from across the area are giving the message out about this missing man, but still, there have been no signs of Branson himself.
(Espey) Branson Perry's case led us into the drug scene.
(Booher) During a time of his disappearance, there was an active drug culture in rural northwest Missouri.
(Britt Small) At that time, when you hear of a house blowing up, very frequently, it was a meth lab explosion.
They do happen.
(Leona Hayes) Ben Espey, he was a pretty good sheriff to have been trusted.
Pretty good.
Back then, Skidmore was full of drugs, and he was thinnin' 'em out in this town pretty good.
(Espey) We developed drug enforcement agencies, that that's all they did.
Their whole job was to go out and find these young kids, follow them, film them, and we would bust their labs where they was makin' it.
Several people were taken, put on a polygraph, and asked questions about, "Were you there?" "What do you know?" Then we started puttin' things together.
Branson was totally involved with fixin' and makin' methamphetamine.
Part of Branson's job was to supply the ingredients to make the drugs.
Branson somehow had gotten in some kind of trouble with an officer, and, I think, what happened is that the kingpin of several different people that would meet thought that Branson would talk.
() I can tell you right now, there was nine people involved in that case.
And we knew, all of us knew, who the nine players were that were involved in it, who the person was that pulled the trigger.
(male reporter) Investigators say a tip came into them about two weeks ago that Branson could be buried here in Quintmet.
(male officer) The information that we received in this case we felt was very credible and that we certainly needed to act on it.
(Espey) Two of the people involved showed us on a map where they thought that they'd buried Branson.
Both people were interrogated separately, both people showed us the same place on the map.
(male reporter) They combed these empty fields and the area near these old grain beds.
A canine unit from North Carolina even joined this search.
We turned the dogs loose and we cover about a two-mile area.
(Klino) These dogs kept hittin' this one spot pretty hard.
So they took the dogs a mile away, and walked 'em back towards there, and they hit the spot again.
(Espey) Nine of the ten dogs hit on exactly the same place.
(male reporter) Clues to what happened to him my still lie beneath this dirt.
We found some items that we feel has substantiated the information that was given to us.
So we feel that we're on the right track.
(Espey) When they was diggin' right where the dogs hit, the earth underneath the ground was different.
So what that told me is, the body probably had been buried there, but it had been removed.
We have a case, we don't have a body.
I suspect that's when the heat got on and law enforcement got a little too close, I think they dug the body up and put it somewhere else.
Ultimately, at the end, our investigation led us to that house where Branson Perry was shot.
(Klino) Unfortunately, the house burned before the investigation got to see if there was any evidence in the home.
No evidence was found.
The disappearance of Branson is like the bully case-- there's a lot more out there that is known that people are not talking about.
They're a small town, they're all close knit.
They don't want to open their mouths.
They're afraid of retaliation.
(Becky Klino) People say that they're afraid to mention something because they're afraid for their own safety.
And I don't understand, because how could they be so afraid of something that is causing somebody else so much pain? (Hayes) A lot of people in town wouldn't talk because, in this town, you'll get killed for tellin' the truth.
Nearly 10 years ago, Branson Perry disappeared from his Skidmore home.
Law enforcement says leads are more valuable than ever in the case and tips continue to come in.
(Randy Strong) We are still working the disappearance of Branson Perry.
That case, I have open.
We are actively pursuing that case.
There is an underbelly of people that live there that they're involved in the drug culture.
We believed him to be a homicide victim at this time, but his body has yet to be recovered.
(Hayes) They'll never find the boy.
To me, I think that's the closure of that one, because the FBI has come in and everything and they couldn't find nothing.
(Marty Small) Now, his body was never found.
I mean, there's been no official report of his death.
What they speculate happened is the body had been cut up, and then dispersed in a body of water.
The way law enforcement finds things now is you find big chunks, you find a whole arm, you find a whole body.
Little tiny pieces of things that are chopped up are really difficult to find.
So they didn't have any of the normal physical evidence of the murder.
(female reporter) So far, all tips have led to dead ends, but the case remains active, as those involved hope for what they've been waiting for since he first went missing in April 2001.
Those close to the case are pushing forward, still determined to find answers.
(Espey) The sheriff and the chief of police and the highway patrol, we don't file charges, we can't.
It's up to the prosecuting attorney to file a charge on a case.
And that's the reason that Branson Perry is still pending.
Back then, prosecuting attorney was David Baird.
Obviously, David decided that he didn't have enough.
(Baird) My focus has never been, "Gosh, I wish I had this," or "Boy, wouldn't it be great to have that," because that's not what reality is.
The role of prosecutor is that we are not to file charges until we are convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that a particular individual committed a particular crime.
(Baird) Before we file charges, we want to make sure we have that evidence.
We do not simply take someone to trial for the purpose of taking someone to trial to get the case over with.
(Espey) Everything is there.
Because when I left, everything was there.
That's the deal: the prosecutor is kind of like God.
He has enough to file.
But if he decides he's not gonna file, then it never goes in front of a judge.
When you're the sheriff of the county, you feel like whatever crimes are committed, you carry 'em with you.
And you never get rid of 'em.
(Tom Carneal) It's a terrible thing for the family, when you never know for sure-- it's like, "Is he coming home?" (Reinig) The signs are fading and starting to fall in.
It's just kind of the ruminants and the memorial to a child that disappeared.
(male reporter) This Skidmore cemetery backs up to the Stinnett home.
Family members say they can't bear the thought of preparing for yet another funeral.
I asked my mom, I said, "Why are we burying our children instead of our parents?" Our plots are all full of our children.
(Reinig) Needless to say, Bob and Becky had a hard time.
And Bob eventually moved out of town.
When he passed away, I think that he died of a broken heart.
In your heart, where do you think Branson is? I have to keep believin' he's alive.
I can't go the other side yet.
I can't go that way.
I can't give up hope.
She prayed to God every day for answers.
Like any mother would want to do for their own child.
She went through hell trying to find answers.
(Espey) When I got to the point that the charges did not get filed, but we knew who did it, Branson Perry's mother was dying of cancer.
But before Branson's mother went to her grave, I had a meeting and told her exactly what I knew and what we feel 99.
9% sure that happened to her son.
(Fanning) When Branson's mother died, her obituary said that she was preceded in death by her son Branson.
Obviously, she accepted the fact that he was gone.
(Booher) The question that haunts Skidmore to this day is, "Why all this violence?" And "Why isn't anybody talking?" (Fanning) Wendy Gillenwater, who was brutally murdered, Branson Perry disappeared and is presumed dead, and the murder of Ken Rex McElroy (Booher) That's a bad legacy for a town.
And then you have probably the most horrific case in the town's history, Bobbie Jo Stinnett.
And it is literally repugnant to think of what happened to that woman.
And the person that did this.
This is something a normal person can't do.
a very, very horrible thing happened.
Part of a line of amazingly horrible events that have happened in this town, particularly after the killing of Ken Rex McElroy, Wendy, Branson.
We had a couple other incidents where there was supposed suicides-- a young boy was found hung another was swimming underneath the bridge, and he drowned.
And I came to the end of my rope, as it were.
And so, I found Christ.
I had a prayer partner.
And he lived two blocks away from me.
And we would go out every morning that we could, and we'd walk through the town and we'd pray.
We'd pray over the streets, we'd pray over the houses.
We'd pray for the people who lived in the houses.
And one day, as I was praying, I heard an audible voice, and it was not the voice of God.
And the voice said, "I am stealing the children from under your noses.
" And I looked up, and from under my nose, was Branson Perry's house, and then across the street was Bobbie Jo Stinnett's house.
(Fanning) Bobbie Jo Stinnett was brutally murdered in her own home right there in Skidmore.
(Marty Small) I remember being in college in 2004, sitting in class, I got a text message that there had been another murder in Skidmore.
Bobbie Jo, she was a really nice girl.
There was not a mean bone in her body.
She had been in my little sister's class in junior high, and that was crazy.
I remember the name comes across, I'm like, "Holy crap, I know her.
" You know, I can't believe that happened, yet it didn't surprise me.
(phone line ringing) (Espey) I was in the sheriff's department when the 911 call came in.
(phone line ringing) I could hear the conversation from the person on the other end of the line, which was Bobbi Jo Stinnett's mother.
She said, "I need somebody here right now.
My daughter's stomach has exploded.
" (police siren blaring) (Reinig) It was a sight that probably a county sheriff in rural northwest Missouri was not used to seeing.
(Espey) When I got there, I walked through the house, and get to the room where Bobbie Joe Stinnett is.
I could tell, as I walked through the door, that there was probably no life there.
(camera shutter clicking) Bobbie Jo was laying flat on her back, face up.
Becky, the mother, looked at me and says, "I don't know-- "I've never done CPR.
I don't know that I'm doing it right.
Can you help?" I continued CPR until the ambulance personnel walked in with a cot.
(Booher) From the bedroom to the kitchen, it was a horrific crime scene.
(Britt Small) There was so much blood, I mean, it just-- It made me sick.
And the reason I knew what all happened there was because my chiropractor was the coroner at the time.
(Booher) I was actually here in the news room.
We had gotten calls from people around the area, saying, "Hey, looks like there's something big goin' on in Skidmore.
" And of course, we thought, "What, again?" (people chattering) Okay, here's modulation mic check for KXCV Radio.
KXCV Maryville, KRNW Chillicothe.
Mic check modulation.
And, uh, we don't have anything yet.
(Espey) There's been several crimes in Skidmore over the past several years.
But the Bobbie Jo Stinnett case was probably the biggest case that I had in my career.
Okay, we're gonna be real brief.
Is everybody ready? This conference won't last very long.
There was a lot of manpower put into this.
There was a lot of hard investigative work.
Right now, there's investigators doing questioning.
(male reporter 1) There's two people being questioned at this time.
And, uh, I think that's where we'll leave it.
(male reporter 1) They're still in the process of doing an investigation on that.
(male reporter 2) We're in the process of doing that right now.
(Espey) As they loaded Bobbie Jo onto the stretcher and took her out to the ambulance, I could see that her stomach was cut from side to side.
I then went back into the house and asked Becky, the mother, I said, "Is Bobbie Jo pregnant?" "Yes, she was within a month of delivering a new child.
" So we had a baby that was cut out of her mother, and the baby's gone.
(male reporter) When police entered this house in tiny Skidmore, Missouri, they discovered the slain body of pregnant mother-to-be, Bobbie Jo Stinnett.
Her murder was made all the more horrifying by what police did not find: a pregnant woman attacked in her home, the baby she was carrying, cut from her womb and gone.
and I cried a lot that night and I prayed a lot that night.
Makes me shiver yet today.
The cruelest, meanest that I had ever seen in my life.
And I was raised rough in the country, and everything, and never seen anything like that.
It as just horrible.
Bobbie Jo was the niece of my daughters.
And Bobbie Jo and Zeb got married and was doin' real good.
They were raising dogs together.
And I never knew of Bobbie Jo and Zeb ever had any problems.
The mother, Becky, worked at the filling station, and Bobbie Jo would come down and pick her mother up and take her down home.
Well, that very day, Becky knew that there must have been something wrong, because Bobbie Jo hadn't got down there.
And so, that's when her mother went up there, and that's when the mother had found out they'd cut Bobbie Jo's baby out of her.
(Brett Small) She was a good friend of my daughters.
And she used to come out here, ride her pony out here, and sit right here at the table and eat with the family.
(Goslee) I knew Bobbie Jo real well.
I knew her folks.
Young cowgirl.
She wouldn't hurt a fly.
It's a real, real, real tragedy of what happened to her.
(male officer) The sheriff, when he started the investigation, right away, he activated the major case squad, which brought in other law enforcement agencies, such as the highway patrol, the FBI, different sheriffs, police departments in northwest Missouri.
Essentially, half the town was blocked off because of the crime scene.
(Fanning) They wanted every little tiny piece of trace evidence they could find that would nail down who came into this home.
(Booher) The first thing they did was take blood samples of everything.
(camera shutter clicking) There was a trail of blood where her murderer had dragged her body down a hallway; a bloody knife laying on the counter that was used to cut the baby out of Bobbie Jo's womb.
(Fanning) Forensic scientists took up a piece of floor where she breathed her last breath to see what evidence they could find.
(Booher) They don't want to disturb the body.
They want the body to remain as it was when she died.
So they just cut the whole floor up-- they pry it up, they lift it up and they take it out of the house.
(Strong) At the time, I was a detective here in Maryville.
And shortly after Sheriff Espey and his deputies arrived there, I got a phone call.
The body was being taken to St.
Francis Hospital.
I was told to go down there and document the body-- photograph the body and look for evidence.
There were ligature marks around her neck, where I could see a pattern-- she was strangled at least twice, if not, three times.
I could see the distinct bruising and the marks of the rope around her neck.
She was barefoot.
I noticed that on the top of her feet there was no blood.
Her feet had been flat in blood and that blood had come up between her toes, which told me that once she had been cut, and cut severely, that she was not dead yet for a little bit, that she was able to get up and stand.
I believe that her attacker started cutting on her, blood spilled out and that Bobbie Jo continued to fight for her life, or her baby's life.
People live in an area like Skidmore, Missouri because, basically, they want a quiet life.
Then when Bobbie Jo Stinnett died, all their old misbehaviors were brought out.
Everybody was focused on what was wrong with Skidmore.
(male reporter 1) Bobbie Jo Stinnett was found strangled, lying in a pool of blood inside this Skidmore home.
(male reporter 2) Keep in mind, Skidmore was already no stranger to the media, and this case put them on the map again.
All these reporters and all these journalists were comin' into town, and they were dredging all this stuff up again.
This was something so unusual that it captured the attention of media outlets all over the world.
A baby born of violence, ripped from the womb and her mother Fetal abduction in the nation's heartland.
(female reporter) The vicious crime has shaken this tight knit small town.
I just can't understand why anybody would do a trick like that.
-(woman) Sheriff-- -(man) What time you talkin', like later on tonight? Yes, later on tonight, I would anticipate.
I don't have a specific time, okay? (female reporter) Nobody here, nobody here could ever perceive this ever taking place, to have a fetus taken out of someone's womb.
It's unconceivable.
And I'm a grandparent, and I had a grandson born six days prior to this incident.
And then for me to think that now I'm workin' a case here where someone's taken a baby out of a mother The grandparents, the family, nobody was gonna be able to see this baby.
I know you guys, you really want a lot of stuff.
We're in the middle of this investigation.
We're not in the back of it.
What I can't do and we can't afford to do is let anything slip from here that can jeopardize the murder case.
And you're gonna want-- If it's your grandkid, you're gonna want this person behind bars as well as we are.
(male reporter) We're really not gonna comment on that right now.
If you stick around for a little while, we may have some more information about the case in general.
Thank you very much.
-(reporters clamoring) -(Lanza) Get it right here.
(Booher) Law enforcement was under enormous pressure to solve this case, and do it damn quick.
(female reporter) Officials ask if you know anything, to come forward.
(Espey) Don't assume that we already know, 'cause we may not.
And that may be the one piece of the puzzle that we might need.
(Hayes) It was December the 16th, around 3:30 my son and I rolled up in the yard, and here come this red car, just abarrelin'.
I seen a woman in the back seat doing something.
And the little one that was doing the driving, her hands were small.
So we run around the truck to see, and the vehicle went south.
And I thought, "Should I call the sheriff to see? Maybe it would give him a lead.
" I did go ahead and call.
I called the sheriff to tell the FBI what I seen.
(male reporter) Early on, investigators got a lead-- an anonymous phone call about a red car.
(Booher) The day that Bobbie Jo Stinnett was killed was different from Ken Rex and Branson Perry's case.
I don't know if it was because there was an infant involved, but Nodaway County asked for help that day.
Townspeople responded that day.
Tonight, the authorities are still looking for the red car-- they believe the red car was used to take the baby away.
(male reporter) The FBI, highway patrol, the sheriff, had nothing but red as the color of the getaway car.
That was it.
Remember, they didn't know if they would find a baby, if the baby would be alive or healthy, or how to even tell if it's the right baby.
Because this baby had not gone full term, but he's probably alive out there somewhere.
(Fanning) And so the time factor is even more critical.
(Espey) The mother was eight months pregnant, so we're lookin' at a one-month premature baby.
From what it looks like to us is, there was, the evidence would show that the baby was probably wrapped up and taken out of the home.
(Reinig) The sheriff immediately called for an amber alert, for the child that was missing.
And apparently, the state refused.
We didn't have enough criteria to meet it, which would be like hair color, eye color, skin complexion, size, weight.
(Espey) The amber alert is a system here in the United States.
Law enforcement started this up, and it's meant to help find a child that's in distress or somebody's kidnapped.
(beeping) There's a description of the child, description of the vehicle you're looking for.
It goes out on all the law enforcement networks, on all the television, all the radio, right now on all the cell phones.
(Fanning) But there was a problem.
He could not describe the baby.
The baby hadn't been born.
(male reporter) Sheriff Ben Espey had a brutal crime to solve, and fast.
But how could he request an amber alert for a child that had technically never been born? (Fanning) No one could describe the baby, but the person who just abducted the baby.
And they've been in the process of tearin' this down ever since the murder, but uh, it's a real slow process.
Sad, sad deal.
My stepdaughter lived here with her two boys for a couple years prior to what happened to Bobbie Jo.
I used to come up here all the time.
(knocks on wood frame) Living room and a spare bedroom.
Bathroom right there.
Little kitchen area.
I don't know the gruesome details.
I wouldn't talk about 'em if I did.
But you take a young woman gettin' ready to have a baby, and somebody murdered her? I mean, it can't get any worse than that.
Can't get any worse than that.
Probably the saddest thing that's ever happened in this town.
(Fanning) We have long heard the phrase that "The sins of the father are visited upon their sons.
" One generation stood in the street and shot down Ken McElroy and ended his life.
With a small town like Skidmore, these violent crimes leave a mark on the whole town.
It's almost biblical, that one act of violence seemed to have bred three acts of violence in the next generation.
(male reporter 1) Bobby Jo Stinnett would never see her child born.
The 23-year-old pregnant woman was strangled in their small town home-- her womb cut and her unborn baby kidnapped.
The medics told us at the hospital that this baby is probably still alive and is gonna need medical attention.
(male reporter 2) The sheriff's first amber alert request was denied, because this child had not been born yet.
(Espey) Well, they wouldn't give me the amber alert.
The said you gotta have the baby's height, weight, eye color, hair color.
Well, we didn't have any of that.
The only thing I really had was the fact that we had a baby that was a month premature that had been taken.
And to me, that should be enough.
(male reporter 3) Espey would not be deterred.
He made some calls, pushed his case, He even lobbied his congressman to make sure the word got out.
(Espey) So here's what we got.
We've got a baby that was cut out, we've got a murder-- the mother's dead-- and I need the amber alert.
Within two hours, the highway patrol called me and said, "All right, Sheriff, you got what you wanted.
" Well, I didn't like that attitude.
But I got it.
I got what I wanted.
(male reporter 4) After a day long nightmare, police sounded an amber alert, triggering a dragnet in Missouri and nearby states.
(Espey over radio) Keep an eye out for an infant with possible health issues, a newly cut umbilical cord and bloody clothing.
(Fanning) It was all over national television.
Where is this baby? We're back here live.
Now, they are just going to go with a press conference-- they're going to give an update.
Here is the latest from the investigators -in this case.
-(Espey)involved in the case.
(Espey) When this amber alert come out, we took an anonymous tip that come from several states away from here (Fanning) Meanwhile, they're taking lots of calls from people who are noticing odd things.
But the real trigger to find out what was going on was in Bobbie Jo's computer.
(male reporter) A fellow dog breeder from North Carolina led FBI agents to Stinnett's website.
Investigators searched her computer, discovering a vital clue.
(man) Bobbie Jo ran a website where she sold rat terrier dogs.
(mouse clicks) They took that computer in, they started analyzing it, and they found this chat group of rat terrier breeders (mouse clicks) (Booher) At the time, we didn't think it was important.
(Strong) Anybody getting on the website could look at that and see that she was pregnant.
(mouse clicks) She documented her pregnancy on that.
She showed different stages of that, and she talked about how excited she was-- this was gonna be her and Zeb's first child.
(mouse clicks) Her address is on the website, so anybody could get on there and find out where she lived.
The day before the murder, a woman gets online, and introduces herself as Darlene Fischer.
She says she wants to buy a dog from Bobbie Jo Stinnett in Skidmore, Missouri.
Bobbie Jo was making arrangements to meet with someone, and it was supposed to happen that day.
So they wanted to find this person-- find out if that person had come to the house to look at the puppies.
She was Darlene Fischer from Fairfax, Missouri.
They flooded Fairfax with tons of cops, trying to find Darlene Fischer.
(police siren blaring in distance) (thunder crashes) But it was all a ruse.
The FBI then, very quickl, was able to track this Darlene Fischer's domain name back to Melvern, Kansas.
() (Espey) So that's when I sent Randy Strong and Don Fritz to Melvern, Kansas to try to figure out who Darlene Fischer was.
(thunder crashes) And at the same time, a woman from Melvern was calling in and saying, "There was this woman walking around with a newborn baby.
" Lisa Montgomery.
() Lisa Montgomery is incapable of having a newborn baby.
She had a tubal ligation years ago.
(female reporter) That woman, Darlene Fischer, turns out to be Lisa Montgomery.
(Fanning) Everything was closing in.
That baby had to be located as fast as they could.
There are all sorts of things that could go wrong.
This child is in danger.
()