A baby girl that had been cut out of her mother's womb in the US has been found after a frantic search, and authorities arrested the woman they say strangled the mother and stole the child.
The child was found yesterday in seemingly good health in an eastern Kansas home. A red Toyota similar to a description offered earlier by police was in the driveway.
Ms Lisa M. Montgomery (36), of Melvern, Kansas, was arrested later and charged with kidnapping resulting in death.
Authorities say Ms Bobbie Jo Stinnett (23), was found on Thursday in a pool of blood inside her small white home in Skidmore, a town in northwest Missouri.
Earlier Ms Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant, had been talking with her mother on the phone, and hung up saying a woman she had chatted with online had just arrived at her door.
US Attorney Todd Graves said Ms Montgomery contacted Ms Stinnett through an online message board, and authorities zeroed in on her using computer forensics.
Montgomery was seeking to buy a dog from Stinnett, who raised rat terriers, he said. Ms Stinnett, married for little more than a year and expecting her first child, worked at an engine factory in nearby Maryville. Her husband was at work when she was killed, authorities said.
Ms Montgomery is the mother of two high school-age children, but Mr Graves said she had been pregnant with another child that was never born. It's unclear when she lost the baby or under what circumstances, but the complaint said she had lied to her husband about giving birth.
Mr Graves declined to give a motive for the crime.
According to the criminal complaint, Ms Montgomery travelled about 40 miles to Topeka, Kansas, on Thursday to go shopping. Her husband received a call from her saying she had gone into labour and given birth.
Mr Kevin Montgomery and the couple's two children met Lisa and the newborn at a parking lot in Topeka and drove home, according to the affidavit.
The next day, authorities say, Ms Montgomery confessed that she strangled Ms tinnett from behind, laterally cut her open, removed the baby and cut her umbilical cord. She also admitted that she lied to her husband about the ordeal.
DNA tests positively confirming the child was the Stinnetts' are pending.
Several pregnant women have been killed in recent years by attackers who then removed their foetuses, in some cases to pass the children off as their own.
In one of the most recent cases, a 21-year-old woman was shot to death in Oklahoma in December 2003, allegedly by another woman who pretended the six-month-old foetus was her child. The foetus died and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.