Fetus Snatch Suspect Waives Hearing
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}A woman accused of killing an expectant mother and cutting the baby from her womb waived her right to a preliminary hearing Thursday and was being moved to federal custody in Missouri.
Federal prosecutors charged Lisa Montgomery (search), 36, of Melvern, Kan., with kidnapping resulting in death. She is accused of strangling 23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett (search), who was eight months pregnant, in her Skidmore, Mo., home on Dec. 16, then cutting her baby from her womb.
Montgomery will make an initial appearance before a federal judge in Missouri on Tuesday, to be followed by a detention hearing on Thursday.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Clad in an orange jumpsuit, a somber Montgomery was asked to speak up Thursday when she acknowledged to the judge in Kansas City, Kan., that she understood what she was doing in court.
She briefly glanced back toward her husband, who was sitting in the front row in the courtroom, as she was being led out.
Authorities said the baby was found Dec. 17 with Montgomery and her husband, Kevin, in Melvern. The infant, named Victoria Jo Stinnett, went home with her now-widowed father, Zeb Stinnett, after spending the weekend in a Topeka, Kan., hospital.