THE sister of a killer who ripped an unborn baby from her victim’s womb has urged Donald Trump to spare her from execution.
Lisa Montgomery murdered pregnant Bobbie Jo Stinnett in December 2004 and is set to be the first woman to be executed by the federal government in almost 70 years.
Her family are desperate for a reprieve from the lethal injection that she is due to receive in three weeks time.
They claim the jury were told little of her vast mental health problems – caused by rape, trafficking and torture, The Mirror reports.
Montgomery’s sister Diane Mattingly said: “My heart goes out to the family of Bobbie Jo Stinnett and the loss they have felt.
“But my hope is President Trump will stop Lisa’s execution and commute her sentence to life in prison.
“My sister does not deserve to die. She is not the worst of the worst for whom the death penalty was intended. She is the most broken of the broken,” Diane said.
Trump has been widely slammed for becoming the first president in 130 years to order executions while waiting for president-elect Joe Biden to take office.
Until this year, no one has been killed by the federal government since 2003.
Trump has rubber-stamped ten executions before he leaves office on January 20, and it comes despite president-elect Biden’s plans to abolish the federal death penalty.
Montgomery, 52, is due to die on January 12 but her lawyers claim she was suffering from psychosis when she went to Bobbie Jo’s home in Skidmore, Missouri 16 years ago.
She strangled the 23-year-old who was eight months pregnant, then cut into her stomach with her kitchen knife and removed the baby from her womb.
The baby, later named as Victoria Jo, survived and celebrated her 16th birthday this week.
Experts believe that Montgomery was “completely detached” from reality when she carried out the murder, according to legal documents seen by the Sunday People.
When describing how she felt, she said: “I’m not in my body, I’m not real.”
It’s claimed that the 52-year-old suffers from bipolar disorder and complex post traumatic stress disorder.
Scans reportedly show she has suffered brain damage because her mom allegedly drank during pregnancy.
One neurologist compared her brain to a “city hit by a bomb”.
Her lawyer Kelley Henry says her mental health has worsened now she has to live with the “overwhelming pain” of what she did to Bobbie Jo.
She said: “Lisa is incredibly remorseful. She was spiralling out of control when it happened.”
“She was tortured from birth and repeatedly gang-raped. That causes your mind to detach from reality,” Ms Henry claimed.
“All we can do is present the facts to President Trump and ask him to exercise mercy.”
It’s claimed that Montgomery was forced to marry her stepbrother Carl Boman when she was 18.
Court documents allege that he raped her and poured hot wax on her.
But, Boman was never convicted of raping Lisa.
Bobbie Jo’s body was discovered after an hour she was killed on December 16 2004.
In 2007, Montgomery was found guilty of kidnapping resulting in death, by a jury who recommended the death penalty.
Ms Henry claims lawyers who represented Lisa “bungled” the evidence.
She said: “All the evidence of her brain damage was excluded.
“Only a slice of the abuse was presented. If she’d had competent counsel, it’s likely she would have been sentenced to life.”
The last female federal prisoner to be executed was Bonnie Heady in 1953.
Montgomery, who is waiting to die in the Federal Medical Center Carswell, in Fort Worth, Texas, will have to go to an all-male prison in Indiana to be killed.
