Bad Bonnie: Last woman executed in America

It was a crime that scandalised America, with a judge calling it the most “brutal” he had ever seen – and it cost Bonnie Heady her life.

They are Missouri murderers, both women, equally reviled and sentenced to death for their despicable crimes, almost 70 years apart.

In the case of “womb raider” killer Lisa Montgomery, it has taken 13 years for the wheels of justice to grind forward to the point that US Federal authorities are now preparing to kill her.

Montgomery was set to become the first woman since 1953 to be federally executed when she was due to go to the death chamber on December 8.

A judge has agreed to briefly stay the execution date until Christmas Eve to allow Montgomery’s lawyers, who have COVID-19, to make a last ditch bid for clemency.

But Montgomery could go to the death chamber as early as February 2021, if her clemency plea fails as some observers say is the most likely result.

In the case of the last woman America put to death under federal law, the executioners didn’t waste their time.

Bonnie Heady was a bad woman, even before she and her last felonious boyfriend, Carl Austin Hall, committed the most heinous of crimes.

Gun moll and prostitute Bonnie, an alcoholic, drug addict and gangster groupie, committed a crime with Hall which 67 years ago scandalised the nation.

The couple kidnapped and murdered six-year-old Bobby Greenlease, burying him in their yard even while promising the boy’s parents he would be returned unharmed as they collected a massive ransom.

The murder of Bobby, a trusting child born late to devoted, elderly and wealthy parents, had Americans baying for Bonnie’s blood.

Gun moll and prostitute Bonnie Heady (right) was a gangster groupie, but found deadly purpose with Carl Hall (left) in the Bobby Greenlease murder.

Gas chamber where Bonnie Heady was put to death in the since closed-down Missouri State Penitentiary.

Bobby Greenlease, 6, with his father Robert C. Greenlease Sr, 71, just before the boy’s kidnap in 1953.

Within little more than 11 weeks of murdering Bobby, Carl Hall and 41-year-old Bonnie were marched jointly to the Missouri gas chamber in a bizarre and chilling ritual to be killed.

Almost seven decades later, the US is preparing to execute Montgomery.

At the age of 52, Montgomery is due to die by lethal injection at the federal penitentiary at Terre Haute, Indiana, 300km south of Chicago.

Capital punishment of women in the US in the modern era is rare enough, the last being a Texas state execution of pickaxe murderer Karla Faye Tucker in 1998.

Montgomery was sentenced to death in 2007 for the “womb raider” murder three years earlier of 23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett.

Montgomery, then age 36, had been telling friends in late 2004 that she was pregnant, despite having undergone medical sterilisation in her 20s.

Ms Stinnett, a dog breeder, had shared the news online about becoming pregnant with her first baby earlier in the year.

In December 2004, Montgomery contacted Ms Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant, on the pretext of meeting up to discuss buying a rat terrier puppy.

Montgomery packed a knife and a cord and drove 250km from Kansas to Stinnett’s house in northwestern Missouri.

She strangled Stinnett, cut out the baby from her body with the knife, and fled with the child.

Bobbie Jo’s mother found her daughter’s body in a pool of blood, in what police described as “the most horrific crime scene”, and an Amber Alert was issued for the missing child.

‘Womb raider’ Lisa Montgomery is due for execution in Indiana. Picture: AFP/Getty

Montgomery throttled Bobbie Jo Stinnett (above) and cut the 8-month-old foetus from her body.

Montgomery pretended she was buying a puppy from eight-months pregnant Bobbie Jo, and strangled her at the dog breeder’s house in Skidmore, Missouri (above) in 2004.

Montgomery is on death row at Terre Haute federal penitentiary in Indiana (above, the execution house) and will be the first female federal case put to death in 67 years.

Montgomery tried to pass the baby off as her own, before eventually confessing.

The baby, Victoria Jo Stinnett, who survived and was returned to her father, turns 16 on the anniversary of her mother’s murder, on December 16 this year.

It is a waiting game for the victim’s family as to when her mother’s killer may be put to death.

Sixty-seven years ago, the parents of Robert Cosgrove Greenlease Jr did not have to wait long.

Bonnie Emily Brown Heady had already seen one lover die when she met up with playboy crook Carl Hall.

Her husband, bank robber Dan Heady had escaped from prison to be with his then young wife, when he was shot dead by law enforcers.

Then aged just 23, Bonnie is said to have remarked on learning of her husband’s death, “that’s too bad”.

After meeting up with newly-released prison inmate Carl Hall, the pair shacked up in her house in St Joseph, Missouri, where Hall shot up heroin and both drank booze.

Hall already had a plan to kidnap the son of multi-millionaire automobile dealer Robert Cosgrove Greenlease Sr who lived in Kansas City, 80km south.

The execution chamber in USA penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana where Lisa Montgomery is due to be put to death unless she wins clemency.

Chart used by newsmen at the execution of Carl Hall and Bonnie Heady to relay the sequence of events from inside Missouri State Penitentiary.

Hall, from an upper middle class family himself, had attended school with Bobby’s adopted older brother, and in prison had finessed his plan to target the wealthy Greenleases for profit.

Photos of Robert Greenlease Sr with Bobby show a man who looks old enough to be the boy’s grandfather, and the Greenleases were known to dote on the boy.

Whether it was her infatuation with her new lover or a sociopath’s delight in the atrocious, Bonnie reportedly was eager to participate in Hall’s ghastly plot.

At no point did Bonnie or Hall ever plan to let the boy live.

The night before the kidnapping, the couple got drunk and dug a small shallow grave in the back yard.

On the morning of September 28, 1953, Bonnie went to the exclusive preschool, the French Institute of Notre Dame de Scion inKansas City, arriving at 10.55am.

Posing as Bobby’s aunt, Bonnie told school nuns that the boy’s mother had suffered a heart attack and was in hospital.

FBI agents remove the body of Bobby Greenlease, 6, from a shallow, lime-lined grave in back of the residence of Bonnie Heady. Picture: Bettmann/Getty Images

Bonnie Heady and Carl Hall, above in a St Louis Post Despatch article, were photographed at a local police station after their arrest. Picture: Post Dispatch.

The sister returned with Bobby, and handed over the boy who took Bonnie’s hand and went along with her.

Hall and Heady took Bobby to Kansas, where Hall tried to strangle him with a rope, but when the boy struggled, Hall shot him dead with a .38 revolver.

The couple then took the boy’s body to St Joseph and buried him, planting flowers on top of the grave.

Within a few hours, Hall sent Robert Greenlease Sr a ransom note, demanding $600,000 in $20 and $10 bills be placed in a duffel bag, promising Bobby’s safe return.

The kidnappers sent a second demand the next day, demanding no tricks with police and enclosing the Jerusalem medal Bobby had been wearing when abducted.

More ransom demands and phone calls ensued.

Bobby’s desperate father thought that by circumventing the help of police and the FBI, he would see his son alive, and arranged for a drop of the money.

Finally on October 5, the Greenleases received a call saying the money had been collected and Bobby would be returned alive and well within 24 hours.

That was the last the family heard from the kidnappers.

Local paper in Bonnie Heady’s home town reports on the ghastly kidnap murder carried out by her and Hall of Bobby Greenlease, 6.

Bonnie Heady’s mug shot printed in the St Louis Post Despatch. Picture: Post Despatch.

Murderer Lisa Montgomery is on death row.

The sum paid by the family was the largest ransom to that date in US history.

Hall and Heady drove east to St Louis, holed up in a motel, and Hall went out to meet with criminal associates.

St Louis police caught wind of the fact a man was flashing large amounts of cash around town and tracked down Hall and took him in for questioning.

Hall readily confessed and implicated Bonnie, who was arrested on October 6 and taken into custody in St Louis.

The following day, FBI agents went to Bonnie’s house on 1201 South 38th Street in St. Joseph, Missouri, and found Bobby’s body buried near the porch.

The boy had been placed in a plastic bag, into which a large quantity of lime had been poured.

The Greenlease’s dentist confirmed that afternoon that the body was Bobby’s.

Detectives found blood on steps of the house and in the basement, along with .38 caliber shell casings.

Only half the ransom money was recovered, with speculation running to Hall burying some or hiding it in a wall, or St Louis mob bosses, or local police, appropriating the rest.

Two arresting officers Lieutenant Louis Ira Shoulders and Patrolman Elmer Dolan, were later indicted for perjury, but the money was never recovered.

Bonnie Heady’s mug shot after her arrest and incarceration awaiting execution in Missouri in 1953.

The 1953 gas chamber execution made headlines throughout the US, the last time a federal female prisoner was put to death in America.

Inside the now defunct Missouri State Penitentiary where Bonnie Heady was gassed in 1953. Picture: Google.

On October 30, 1953, Carl Hall and Bonnie Heady entered pleas of guilty to kidnap and murder in the federal court in Kansas City.

On November 19, a jury took just over an hour to recommend the death penalty for both of them.

Judge Albert Reeves sentenced both to be executed on December 18, 1953, calling their crime “the most cold-blooded, brutal murder I have ever tried”.

Bonnie Heady and Carl Hall were placed on death row at Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City.

On the scheduled evening, guards turned off the Christmas lights on death row and allowed the couple to hold hands and kiss.

They were blindfolded and taken together to the gas chamber, an oddly shaped nautical or space-age looking capsule with steel execution chairs inside a pressure-sealed capsule.

Just after midnight on December 18, 1953, Bonnie and Carl were seated and strapped into their metal chairs.

The doors were closed and officers wound the levers to pressure seal the capsule. An officer pulled a switch and cyanide gas filled the chamber.

Hall was pronounced dead at 12.12am and Bonnie Heady 20 seconds later.

Robert Greenlease Sr was reportedly a broken man, although he lived on until 1969, when he died aged 87, Bobby’s mother Virginia dying in 2001 aged 91.

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