My Life and Times

December 20, 2004
Fetus Cases Show Signs of SimilarityBy BENEDICT CAREY
he reports coming out of Kansas over the weekend seem beyond grisly, as if pulled from a horror movie: a woman kills an expectant mother, rips a baby girl from the victim's abdomen, then shows off the child to friends, neighbors and a pastor as her own.
The woman accused as the attacker, Lisa M. Montgomery, 36, of Melvern, Kan., was charged with kidnapping resulting in murder and is due to appear in court today. The baby, pulled from the womb of her mother, Bobbie Jo Stinnett, in the eighth month of the pregnancy, is doing well, The Associated Press reported.
Although more than 1,000 pregnant women have been killed in the past decade, according to a Washington Post article published yesterday, experts say that in only a handful of these cases does the killer try to steal the unborn child. Each case is different, they say, but the psychological threads are similar: a desperate longing for a child combined with either psychopathic tendencies or a psychotic break, which creates a delusional belief that a infant must be claimed, at any cost, to be "saved" or "returned" to its rightful mother.
Psychiatrists said they could draw no firm conclusions about Ms. Montgomery without evaluating her. But the woman, who has two high-school-age children, told people in recent months that she had been pregnant with twins and miscarried, the authorities said, suggesting the possibility of postpartum depression, the psychiatrists said.
"Some women feel that the ability to be pregnant and give birth is very essential to being a successful woman," said Dr. Gail Saltz, an associate professor of psychiatry at New York Presbyterian Hospital, "and the inability to maintain a pregnancy can be devastating."
"Add fluctuating hormones, and you can have someone who develops a postpartum depression and a psychosis that could drive them to do completely out-of-character, irrational things," Dr. Saltz said.
Forensic psychiatrists say a pregnancy does not even have to be real. In a rare condition, pseudocyesis, the stomach bloats slightly in response to an obsessive belief by a woman that she is pregnant. "Most often women do this to fool the husband, and they don't want to break the spell and there comes a time when they need to go get a baby," said Dr. Saul Faerstein, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles. Most often, it means taking a child from a stroller or nursery, Dr. Faerstein said.
Murder suggests deeper psychological trouble, as illustrated by several cases in which women have killed expectant mothers and taken infants. In 1987, an Oregon woman, Darci Pierce, killed a pregnant woman and performed a Caesarean section with a key. Described as grandiose and deceptive, Ms. Pierce, who was adopted, was desperate to have a child of her own to "prove" that she was a better mother than her adoptive and biological mothers, said Dr. Michael Stone, a specialist in forensic psychiatry at Columbia University who has followed the cases.
In 1995, a Chicago woman, Annette Williams, enlisted two men to help kill a pregnant mother of two, using scissors to cut free the unborn child. According to Dr. Stone's evaluation, Ms. Williams had a pathological dependence on her boyfriend, who wanted her to have a baby. "What they had in common is this amorality, it seems to me, a deep sense of entitlement, and a longing to have this baby at all costs," Dr. Stone said.
Ms. Montgomery, news reports said, showed off the baby proudly, as if nothing were wrong. This almost certainly reflects delusional thinking, psychiatrists said.
Psychosis may give rise to elaborate narrative fantasies of good and evil and voices commanding some action. The criminal complaint said Ms. Montgomery found her victim over the Internet, where a picture of the pregnant woman could have prompted any number of thoughts and plots, forensic psychiatrists say.
"In these cases a woman might have a delusion that that's my baby in that woman, she's stolen it, and if I don't rescue it she's going to kill it, and the motivation is so overwhelming that you just lose contact with reality," said Dr. Jack M. Gorman, chairman of the department of psychiatry at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. "It's hard for people who've never had this kind of experience to understand, but the voices and hallucinations and demands become overwhelming."
Denise Grady contributed reporting for this article.
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