Killing Lisa
The Life, Crime, and Execution of Lisa Montgomery
This is not a defense. It is a remembering.
Why This Book Exists
Killing Lisa was written because silence is not neutral.
Lisa Montgomery’s story has been told in fragments — through headlines, court rulings, and the moment of her execution. What has been missing is the fullness of her humanity.
This book does not ask the reader to excuse the crime. It asks something harder: to see the person the world reduced, and to sit with what it costs us to kill in the name of justice.
From the Author
I met Lisa Montgomery in prison.
Behind bars, she was gentle, creative, deeply wounded, and endlessly giving. She was also profoundly ill — shaped by a lifetime of abuse that no system ever stopped.
I write this book not as an advocate making an argument, but as a friend bearing witness. I carry both her faces with me: the woman the world broke, and the woman it never truly saw.
Lisa’s story did not end with her execution.
Every time we speak her name with truth, we resist the silence that allowed her suffering.