A date has been set for the execution of a Kansas woman who was convicted of killing a pregnant woman and cutting the baby from her abdomen in what would be the first federal execution of a woman in nearly 70 years, officials said on Friday.

The inmate, Lisa Montgomery of Melvern, was convicted of kidnapping resulting in death by a jury in federal court in Missouri in 2008. Her death, by lethal injection, is scheduled for December 8 at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana.

In 2004, Montgomery told her friends and family that she was pregnant, despite having undergone a sterilisation procedure years earlier, according to court documents.

In December of that year, she contacted Bobbie Jo Stinnett, who was 23 and eight months pregnant, under the guise of wanting to buy a rat terrier puppy from a litter that Stinnett had advertised online.

Montgomery drove to Stinnett’s home in northwestern Missouri, where she strangled her to death and cut the baby girl from her abdomen. She went home and attempted to pass the baby off as her own.

New York Times News Service