When paramedics arrived at Stinnett’s home (pictured above), they were unable to revive her. Police were able to piece together several important facts when examining the crime scene. There was no sign of forced entry, so it was concluded that Stinnett let her killer into the home willingly. Stinnett was strangled to death by her assailant, who then used a kitchen knife to cut open her body (per The Washington Post). Stinnett, who was in her final month of pregnancy at the time of her murder, had her unborn child removed from her body, and the baby was nowhere to be found.
For more clues, police began to examine Stinnett’s computer. She and her husband bred and sold rat terriers on the side, and Stinnett was part of an online chat community for rat terrier lovers called “Ratter Chatter.” Police noted that Stinnett and a woman named Darlene Fischer met on this forum and exchanged emails about Fischer driving to Skidmore to look at some puppies Stinnett had for sale (per BBC News).
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Police used the emails between the two women to isolate the IP address of the sender. They soon discovered that “Darlene Fischer” was an alias for a woman named Lisa Montgomery from Topeka, Kansas. BBC News reports that when police arrived at Montgomery’s home, they found her “cradling a new-born girl” that she told officers she gave birth to the day before. However, it wouldn’t take long for detectives to extract the real story from Montgomery. Tripped up by inconsistencies in her statements, Montgomery confessed to murdering Stinnett.
