How Common is Murder of Pregnant Women?
JONATHAN MANN, CNN HOST: A strange and terrible story. An American woman is accused of murdering a pregnant mother and stealing the child in her womb. Hello and welcome. Hearing about it may make you cringe. But across the United States, a lot of people, especially mothers, are cringing pretty hard. A woman in the American Midwest appeared in court Monday in connection with a bizarre crime. Days after proudly showing her neighbors the newborn she called her own, she confessed to strangling the child's real mother and cutting the baby out of her womb. The child who came into the world so violently four days ago is, though, apparently unharmed. On our program today, not her baby. We begin with CNN's Jonathan Freed.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've been in law enforcement 20 years, 12 as sheriff, and this is one of the worst ordeals we've had to deal with.</s>JONATHAN FREED, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The gruesome kidnapping and murder case has stunned even veteran members of law enforcement.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No one here could ever perceive this ever taking place, to have a fetus taken out of someone's womb and then doing an Amber Alert and trying to find a child that -- it's inconceivable.</s>FREED: According to the FBI, Lisa Montgomery contacted the victim, 23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett, through an Internet, through an Internet chatroom, pretending to be interested in the dogs she bred. The two arranged to meet last Thursday at Stinnett's home in Skidmore, Missouri. Montgomery is accused of strangling Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant, and cutting the fetus out of her womb. Police issued an Amber Alert for a car a neighbor had seen outside the murdered woman's home.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We may have not ever recovered this little baby if the Amber Alert system was not put into place.</s>FREED: The 36-year-old Montgomery was arrested on Friday and allegedly confessed to the crime. Neighbors in Melvern, Kansas say Montgomery and her husband were showing off the baby as their own. After surviving the tragic ordeal, the infant has been united with her real father. Zeb Stinnett has named his daughter Victoria Jo, in memory of her mother, and says she's truly a little miracle. Jonathan Freed, CNN, Kansas City, Missouri.</s>MANN: Skidmore, Missouri, where Bobbie Jo Stinnett was murdered, is a small town of just about 300 people. Melvern, Kansas, where Lisa Montgomery lived and brought the baby, has fewer than 500. Needless to say, people in both places are stunned. Sandra Olivas spoke to the local pastor.</s>MIKE WHEATLY, PASTOR: She was precious. You know, one of the prettiest babies I've seen for a long time. They always look a little smooshed up and wrinkled and stuff when they're first born, but -- and all bright red and everything. She was -- this baby was beautiful.</s>SANDRA OLIVAS, KCTV REPORTER (voice-over): Pastor Mike Wheatly and his wife are used to welcoming families and their new babies into the church, so it wasn't unusual when they got a call yesterday morning from Lisa Montgomery and her husband about stopping by to show off their new baby girl they had named Abigail.</s>WHEATLY: We got to hold the baby and just love on it. And she sat there and just watched us and commented about the delivery and about how her water broke. And my wife asked her where she'd it. And she said she had it at the birthing center in Topeka.</s>OLIVAS: Pastor Wheatly says for months Lisa had everyone, including her own husband, convinced she was pregnant.</s>WHEATLY: She was pretty small, and I commented to her about it. I asked her if -- if she was due -- when she was due. And she said she was due in December. And I said, well, you're kind of small to be having a baby that soon. And she said, "Well, I always had small babies." And so I just let it go at that. She calls me at 3:15 in the afternoon on Thursday and wanted to talk to my wife and tell her about the baby. And I said, "Well, did you -- do we have a baby yet?" She said, "C.J.'s holding it right now."</s>OLIVAS: The pastor says Montgomery's husband had no idea the baby wasn't his wife's. He even brought the newborn here to the town cafe to show her off to friends.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They were going around town flaunting the baby to everyone.</s>OLIVAS: She was known as a good neighbor, a nurturing mother and a caring Christian woman. Now the townspeople of Melvern say it was all a lie.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Very psychotic. Just completely insane.</s>WHEATLY: We felt betrayed, we were angry, but most of all, we're very, very, very sad.</s>OLIVAS: Reporting for CNN, I'm Sandra Olivas.</s>MANN: We take a break. When we come back, the broader crime, maternal murder in the United States. It is more common than you might think.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The state of California versus Scott Peterson, we the jury in the above entitled cause fix the penalty at death, dated December 13, 2004. Foreperson Number Six.</s>MANN: It was the year's most closely watched murder case in the United States. Scott Peterson was found guilty and last week sentenced to death for murdering his pregnant wife. Laci Peterson's case was covered in the news for months, but it was hardly unique. Welcome back. A woman's childbearing years tend to be among her strongest and most healthy. In affluent countries, like the United States, pregnant women are not likely to die of natural causes. Maybe just the opposite. A study in one U.S. state looking at mortality over a six year period found that murder was the leading cause of death. Mary Snow has this look.</s>MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Bobbie Jo Stinnett's murder with her eight-month-old baby pulled from her womb is a crime even seasoned psychiatrist deem deeply disturbing and rate. But they way what is not so rare is violence against pregnant women.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think this brings attention to a really under- addressed issue that is more of a trend than we would like to admit. I think the public doesn't like to hear about these things because it's so abominable.</s>SNOW: While the murder of Laci Peterson and her unborn baby were widely reported, homicide's of pregnant women are not specifically tracked. But a "Washington Post" investigation found that since 1990, more than 1,300 pregnant women and new mothers were murdered and a 2001 study in Maryland found homicide was the leading cause of death among pregnant women. The report cites in most cases men committed the murders. In the few cases where women killed another woman for a baby, forensic psychiatrist Dr. Michael Stone says he found a common thread.</s>MICHAEL STONE, FORENSIC PSYCHIATRIST: The only thing I can think of that they all had in common was a desperate wish to be able to show the world that they had a child. Not all for the same reason, but the desperate wish to prove motherhood.</s>SNOW: Stone worked on a 1987 Oregon case in which a woman used a car key to perform a cesarean. Doctor's say that desperate wish to become pregnant can even convince some women they are expecting a child when they are not.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They can actually become somewhat swollen in the abdominal area, have belly swelling, so that they appear somewhat pregnant. They may gain weight. They may become nauseous and vomit and they have breast tenderness. And they convince themselves and people around them that they are in fact pregnant.</s>SNOW: Authorities say Lisa Montgomery, the suspect in Bobbie Jo Stinnett's murder, had told people in past months that she had been pregnant and miscarried. Mary Snow, CNN, New York.</s>MANN: Joining us now to talk about women and pregnancy and murder is Donna St. George, who has been reporting on the subject in that special series in the "Washington Post." Thanks so much for being with us. Let me ask you first of all about the numbers and what they mean. Roughly 1,400 pregnant women and new mothers murdered in a 14-year period. In relative terms, how common is that? How dangerous is it to be pregnant in the United States?</s>DONNA ST. GEORGE, "WASHINGTON POST": Well, that's a hard question to answer, Jon. What we tried to do was document how many women were killed. It was a daunting challenge, going through all 50 states and trying to collect data from death certificates. We accumulated a number of cases, the 1,400 number, but in terms of measuring risk, that's a little bit harder and the researchers are still at work on that.</s>MANN: Well, tell me, were you able to figure out why they were killed?</s>ST. GEORGE: We looked at a subset of cases to look at why they were killed, and in 72 cases from 2002, where we analyzed the circumstances of the death, in 2/3 of those cases the baby -- the pregnancy was either a factor in the conflict that preceded the killing or there was a domestic violence situation in which the pregnancy may have been a factor. The other close to 1/3 of cases were cases that could have been related to other things.</s>MANN: Is it obvious why someone would murder to end a pregnancy? I'm assuming on the basis of what you've been reporting and what Mary Snow just said that in most cases it was a man, presumably the child's father. Do I have that right?</s>ST. GEORGE: In the cases that I looked at, that was the case. It was mostly boyfriends, ex-boyfriends, husbands, ex-husbands. Often there were conflicts about child support. Sometimes there were conflicts about the paternity of the child. There were sometimes domestic conflicts that just escalated to the point of homicide. We went case by case through 72 cases from 2002 and another 48 cases from Virginia that were a part of the larger 1,400 cases we found across the country.</s>MANN: OK. You've mentioned this twice so let me ask you about it. You say previous domestic violence was found. Do women in violent relationships tend to be more likely to become victims when they're pregnant? Does it make a dangerous situation worse? I would think that in some sense it would -- I don't know if the word is protect them, but it would at least make a man think twice before hitting a pregnant woman.</s>ST. GEORGE: Well, the experts say that for some women, pregnancy is protective, but for other women, pregnancy is a very vulnerable time, and it can come as a great stressor in an already troubled relationship. And so in those cases perhaps it's a riskier situation.</s>MANN: Now, I'm surprised hearing about this. I'm curious about whether the families of the people you spoke to or the police who investigated these crimes were surprised or if people said, oh, well, he was a bad apple, they had a bad relationship and, ultimately, as sad as the killing was, it wasn't a surprise.</s>ST. GEORGE: Most of the families I spoke with were very surprised by what happened. I don't think this is the kind of thing you anticipate. So they were, you know, almost universally upset and not at all thinking that the situation would end as badly as it did.</s>MANN: This is amazing. How much do authorities know about this?</s>ST. GEORGE: Well, authorities don't know a lot yet. This is a subject that has kind of fallen through the cracks a little bit in terms of research. Public health experts have in the last say five or so years really focused on this topic. There was a very pivotal study that you already mentioned, from Maryland, that looked very closely at maternal deaths and then found homicide -- it was a surprising finding in that study, that homicide accounted for more maternal deaths than any given medical cause.</s>MANN: What about people who try and work with and protect battered women? Do they know? Do they warn women that pregnancy is a dangerous time?</s>ST. GEORGE: I think people are becoming increasingly aware of pregnancy having the possibility of being a very dangerous and stressful time. I think domestic violence experts are aware that that is a vulnerable time, but the statistics haven't been here, and are still really just coming out now.</s>MANN: Now, in all of this we are presuming that the culprits are men. How much evidence did you find in your research of women murdering other women who are pregnant?</s>ST. GEORGE: Well, there were cases like that. We mentioned one in our first-day story. There was a case of a woman, a kind of love triangle situation, and she stabbed and killed another woman who was going to be with and have the baby of the man that she was romantically attached to also. So there are cases like that, but it seemed predominantly the people who were convicted in these killings were ex-boyfriends or boyfriends or husbands or ex-husbands, and then sometimes romantic rivals and then sometimes, you know, there was that portion of cases that involved drug- related situations or random shootings.</s>MANN: It's just a mess, really. Donna St. George, of the "Washington Post," thank you for this.</s>ST. GEORGE: Thank you.</s>MANN: We take a brief break. When we come back, that unimaginable crime: mothers who kill their children.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What sort of things did they do which showed you they weren't right?</s>ANDREA YATES, CONVICTED MURDERER: They just did a lot of silly stuff and didn't obey.</s>MANN (voice-over): Andrea Yates drowned her own five children, ages six months to seven years. Her lawyer said she was insane and not responsible for her actions. The jury disagreed and sentenced her to life in prison.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Was that a good thing or a bad thing, for you to be executed?</s>YATES: Probably a good thing.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why would that be a good thing, for you to be executed?</s>YATES: Because I'm not righteous.</s>MANN: Welcome back. Yates' husband said he was stunned when he heard the verdict. He said he thing his wife was a victim, mentally ill and in need of help. A lot of people found that easy to believe. Postpartum depression is well-known among mothers and there is a much more severe sickness called postpartum psychosis. It's when a mother has hallucinations, delusions or paranoia focused on her baby. And when that happens, it is a dangerous medical emergency. Joining us now to talk about women, babies and mental illness is one of the psychiatrists you saw in Mary Snow's report a little earlier in the program, Dr. Michael Stone, of Columbia University. Thanks so much for being with us. How much psychosis, how much psychotic behavior among women, is focused on children?</s>STONE: Well, a good deal of it. I mean, women -- motherhood is a prime function that mothers carry out -- that women carry out -- so that many women who develop a psychosis do so in the context of either being unable to care for a child, wishing they had a child, wishing that they were not bothered by the children they do have because they are overwhelmed by it. In other words, there are many different varieties, but children and the difficulties in caring for the children or the wish to have a child that they may not be able to have, all of those things occupy a pretty big space in the mental functioning of women so that their psychosis are more often child-centered than would be the case with men.</s>MANN: Now, you've mentioned a number of different ways it can happen. Do women tend to fixate on their own children or on other women's children?</s>STONE: I think more on their own children. The ones that fixate on other children are fewer and they may do so, for example, if they don't have a child and they have a tremendous desire for a child and they have a tremendous envy for some woman who has become a mother or is a mother. That would be the focus on another woman's child. But mostly they're focused one way or another on their own children, which was the case --</s>MANN: And how often does that turn into violence?</s>STONE: Not very often, but when it does, it's so dramatic that it creates headlines. In other words, bearing a child and creating new life is such a sacred moment in a woman's life and however you think about life in general, that when something happens to violate that sacredness, it draws everyone's attention, even though it's very uncommon. There may be only several hundred cases of women killing their children in the course of let's say a large state like New York in a year, and most of those are newborns. What is very uncommon is for a woman to kill a child with whom she has already bonded, because the child is now one, two, three, four, five years old. That's much less common and much --</s>MANN: You introduced the idea that there is a difference between the genders, which is intuitive. Do men kill children for different reasons than women do?</s>STONE: Yes. They kill often for different reasons. They will, for example, will children because they may be associated with a woman, but not the father of the child, and the child, especially if it is a baby, is making noise or being a bother or being a burden, and the man may kill the child.</s>MANN: So it's evil, but not necessarily psychotic.</s>STONE: That's right. As a matter of fact, there is a big distinction. You mentioned the word evil. Some of the child murders and the same is true for these women that have taken a baby out of another woman's womb. Some of them are done for reasons that strike me as belonging to the concept of evil, because the women do it for reasons which are very callous, and others do it -- it's an evil act but it's done within the context of psychosis, so that it's not because the woman has callous disregard for the poor mother. She's not even really thinking about it. The psychotic woman wants that child and it's almost like an afterthought that -- and the woman who is really the mother has to die in order for the woman to get that baby. That probably was the case with Lisa Montgomery, my best guess, and may very well have been the case with Michelle Beaka (ph) in Ohio four years ago. But there are two other cases I know about where the reason had much more to do with the concept of evil, because in one case, Darcy Pierce (ph), in '87, wanted to have a man marry her and she conned him into marrying her by saying she was pregnant, which she really was not, and she then killed a woman just to get the baby, so she could say to her boyfriend, I've got a baby, you've got to marry me. That belongs to psychopathy and evil. And she's not psychotic. That's very different from the kind of woman that I think Lisa Montgomery and the Michelle Beaka (ph) were.</s>MANN: How often does that kind of crime happen, where a woman murders another woman for her baby.</s>STONE: Well, I know of four case altogether. Spoke with a news reporter earlier this afternoon who said she knew of another four. So if that's correct, collectively she and I know eight. That's exceptionally rare. Infanticide, I personally studied about five dozen cases at the forensic hospital were I had worked up until a few months ago. 57 cases and there are really hundreds and hundreds of vases of infanticide that occur in any large country like the United States/ or Canada over the course of a year, a woman killing her own baby or her own older child, but a woman killing another pregnant woman to get the baby, I would say eight cases. That's a staggering number. It's so rare that we almost know about every single case. It's something you can count literally on the fingers of your two hands.</s>MANN: Michael Stone, forensic psychiatrist, thank you so much for this. A final word about all of this. The baby who was introduced to friends and neighbors, as we've heard, as Abigail Montgomery, now has her real name chosen by her real father, Victoria Jo Stinnett. She is in a neonatal intensive care unit and according to a hospital spokesman is in remarkably good condition for what's happened to her. That's INSIGHT. I'm Jonathan Mann. The news continues. END TO ORDER VIDEOTAPES AND TRANSCRIPTS OF CNN INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMMING, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE THE SECURE ONLINE ORDER FROM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com