by John Coston
Deanne’s hairstyle became Ellen’s. When her friend decided to put more highlight in her already frosted hair, Ellen tried to do the same with her own hair. When Deanne saw it, it looked like Ellen had either done a home rinse or had someone else do it who didn’t know how. Ellen’s hair turned out to be unacceptably orange in color. Another time, Deanne decided to go heavier with the frost to be more of a blonde, Ellen lightened her hair for the same effect. Even when Deanne got a permanent so all she would have to do for her shoulder-length hair was curl the top and let the sides fall, Ellen got a permanent just like hers.
The two women shared similar coloring, so it was natural for their choices in makeup or lipstick to match. Sometimes they wore cool colors, sometimes warm. Sometimes Deanne would notice a lipstick shade on Ellen that she especially liked, and she would try it herself. But Deanne never tried to imitate Ellen. It was the other way around: Deanne was the dominant one, and Ellen was going out of her way, if only in pretense, to be like Deanne.
Deanne, on the other hand, never wanted to be anybody else, and from Ellen’s viewpoint, it was clear that Deanne was moving on with her life. She had navigated the nasty divorce scene, was now doing something about her weight, and had already moved out of St. Louis into a nice apartment in Collinsville. Ellen knew that there wasn’t much hope of ever getting child support. The house on Wyoming was long gone. While Deanne was getting it together, Ellen was bankrupt, in more ways than one.
Ellen was also forced to return to her job at Elicia’s after a two-month hiatus, and was now back to humping two jobs again. Somehow, too she had screwed up on the John Hancock premium. Though she didn’t tell Deanne about it, Ellen was disappointed and angry, and she bore a grudge against the company that would influence her decisions in the months ahead.
During the first few months of 1989, partly because Deanne had moved to Illinois, but also because Ellen was starting a new friendship with another woman through work, the two of them began to spend less time together. They still talked practically every day on the phone, but that was mostly from the office because of the toll charges, and they often grabbed lunch together downtown.
One day, while the two of them were having lunch in an open-air cafeteria, Ellen pointed to a man who was sitting several tables away. She said his name was Jeff Stark, and that he was a staff consultant at Andersen. From the day he started at the company, Ellen had shown interest in him, and once had suggested that they have drinks some night after work. Jeff declined, and Deanne, upon seeing this nice-looking man, who was in his early twenties, immediately understood why. But Ellen carried on about how he was interested in her.
“He wants to go away for the weekend,” Ellen said.
“Oh?” Deanne said, going along.
“Yeah, he wants to take me and the kids to Cleveland to Sea World,” Ellen continued. “He said, you know, because we have the kids, we’ll get separate rooms.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Yeah, one room would be in my name, and then the other would be in his, just because of the kids.”
Ellen elaborated on the story even further, saying that they would take his car and leave hers at home, but by this time Deanne was thinking Nah, nah. I don’t think so.
In fact, that weekend when Ellen was supposed to be rollicking with Jeff and her kids in Cleveland, Deanne drove to St. Louis to see if Ellen’s car was there. With her was a friend, Betty Andrews, who had recently begun to join them on the wrestling circuit. The three of them had been together on the trip to Cleveland and Indianapolis in June, and they had driven to Kansas City together. Ellen’s car was gone when they pulled into the lot at 4720 South Broadway, but they guessed she must be out on an errand. They just knew Ellen’s cockamamie story wasn’t true. Then, back at Deanne’s apartment, they called the Marriott in Cleveland, where Ellen said they planned to stay, and sure enough, there was no Ellen Boehm on the registry.
None of this surprised Deanne, because she knew Ellen was a liar, and a good one at that. Most of the time there was some shred of truth to the lie, but Ellen couldn’t resist making a story better than it really was. She would do it with a facial expression, or by omitting some key fact that might undercut the impression she wanted to make. Deanne had seen her do it many times. More than once Ellen had gone out of her way to impress her girlfriends by telling them that she and Deanne were spending a lot of intimate time with the wrestlers on the circuit.
“We had drinks with,” Ellen would start out, mentioning the name of some important wrestler. The truth was that Deanne and Ellen had been hanging out in a lounge in Cleveland, where the wrestlers also hung out. Maybe they would wander over and say hello. It was not unusual for some of the wrestlers to do the same, and maybe linger in a chance conversation for fifteen or twenty minutes. But Ellen would imply that there was much more to it. It was not a predetermined meeting as she would want her friends to believe. Deanne and Ellen forked over their own money for their drinks, though Ellen, by changing a fact here and there or leaving one out, would leave the impression that the wrestlers were throwing a party for them. What Ellen said wasn’t exactly a lie, but it was how she said it that would transform it into one.
There was a time when a well-known wrestling announcer got to know Deanne and Ellen on the circuit, and at times he would call them both, making flirtatious conversation. But it never went beyond talk. Once when he was in town, the two women went to dinner with him. They picked him up at the Marriott, drove to a restaurant, and then dropped him back at the hotel. Ellen would later embellish the tale for her other friends, making it seem there was much more to her night out with a radio and television personality. Deanne wasn’t the only one to witness Ellen exaggerate the case, making her appear to be more popular than she really was. On the few occasions when Ellen and Susan Emily had gone out for drinks after Paul was out of the picture, if a man would look in Ellen’s general direction, she would insist that he was looking at her, not at someone else in the bar. Susan knew better, but she wasn’t interested in debating it for very long, because it was clear that Ellen was fixed on the fantasy. If Ellen wanted to pretend that men were always looking at her, Susan wasn’t going to stop her.
It was the same with Deanne, who didn’t let the game Ellen played with her friends get in the way of their friendship. After all, Ellen was a pip, and that was part of the fun. Besides, she didn’t know anyone else who was as crazy about wrestling as she was, and who would drive to Cleveland and Indianapolis over a weekend just to see the Road Warriors, which is exactly what these two fans planned to do on a long weekend in June. They started to plan for the trip in the spring, and because it was going to be one of the bigger ones they would take, they often chatted about saving up for it.
During this same time something else captured Ellen’s attention. Though she never talked about it to Deanne, she did with some of her coworkers at Andersen. What was fascinating to Ellen had also captured the attention of thousands, if not millions, of Americans by the time it was all over.
It all started on April 29, 1989, when a young couple who lived across the river from St. Louis in the small town of Alton, Illinois, reported a kidnapping. Robert and Paula Sims called the police in a panic late in the night, saying that an armed man wearing dark clothes and a ski mask had ambushed her as she was taking out the trash. Mrs. Sims said the man then forced her into the house and struck her from behind, knocking her unconscious. The next thing she knew, when she came to, was that Heather Lee Sims the couple’s six-week-old daughter, was missing from her bassinet.
Mr. Sims found his wife on the kitchen floor when he arrived home from work shortly after 11 P.M. Randy, their fifteen-month-old son, was asleep in his bed upstairs, but the baby was gone.
What catapulted this baby-napping story from the ranks of a local news story was not the fact that someone had entered a home and taken a mother’s infant right out of its crib. No, the sensation was that this was the second time that it had happened to the Simses.
In June 1986, when they had lived near Brighton, Illinois, the local police there had gotten a call in the night from a frantic mother, who said that someone had entered her home and taken her newborn from its bassinet. Then, just as now, Paula Sims reported that a masked gunman entered her home and had snatched her daughter, Loralei Marie, a reddish-blond infant who was only thirteen days old. Mrs. Sims told police then that the intruder came upon her as she was watching the news on TV, and told her to lie on the floor for ten minutes or he would kill her. When she heard the man leave the house, she ran after him, but saw only a fleeting shadow running down her driveway.
Loralei’s kidnapping became an overnight sensation. A reward fund was started. The grief-stricken parents appeared on local television newscasts, standing in front of their home, Paula sobbing, all of which fed a growing sympathy from the community. But the local authorities who were investigating the case became suspicious of Paula Sims’s story. As the days passed, she came under more and more pressure during what evolved from questioning into stiff interrogation, but the case remained stalled.
On June 24th, a week after Loralei was reported missing, in a small wood behind the Simses’ house, police found the partial remains of a human infant who was within the first month of birth. The intense summer heat had accelerated decomposition. An autopsy was inconclusive, and a coroner’s jury ruled in September that the cause of baby Loralei’s death could not be determined.
In the intervening years, the Simses had moved to Alton to put it all behind them, but the local sheriff, Frank Yocom, still believed the case would be solved someday, and he kept the book open.
Now the news that a second Sims daughter was missing was indeed a blockbuster story. This new kidnapping became the top story for the television stations and newspapers in St. Louis. Radio and television reporters from outside the region became interested, and when the wire services jumped on the story, it became a national event.
On May 3rd, the body of Heather Lee Sims was found. It had been wrapped in a black plastic trash bag and dumped in a refuse barrel in West Alton. In a matter of days, Paula Sims was charged with murder. The autopsy revealed small cuts on the inside of the infant’s upper lip, an indication that she had been smothered. Something had been pressed against her mouth, causing trauma to the soft tissues as they were forced against the bony tissue underneath.
By the time of her arrest, Paula Sims had caught the attention of local, regional, and national television and newspapers. Even People magazine was covering her story now, and so it was no surprise that Ellen, a mother who only five months ago had smothered her own child, followed Paula’s progress.
“You know, that’s weird,” she said to Renee Chastain, a secretary at Andersen. “I don’t know how people could do that.”
Renee couldn’t have agreed more, but there was more to this than routine office chitchat. Renee felt a chill run down her back. Work associates for the past two years, Renee had by now noticed that Ellen indulged herself on the phone—on company time—and before she had started talking about the Sims case, she had just gotten off the phone.
Renee had overheard bits and pieces of Ellen’s conversation. From what Ellen was saying, it was clear that she was talking about premiums for various levels of insurance for her children, and it seemed to Renee that Ellen was either raising the policy coverage amounts or getting new policies.
“She did it for the insurance money,” Ellen went on blandly.
“What?” Renee didn’t get it.
“The insurance money. She did it for the insurance money.”
Ellen couldn’t have been further from the truth as it turned out. What struck Renee, though, was the fact that Ellen had just hung up the phone with State Farm Insurance. Renee was so scared by this weird twist that she had to talk to another coworker, Lisa Schultz, about it.
Ellen’s new apparent indifference toward her children was something that Deanne noticed that summer, and she had been friends with Ellen for almost a decade now. On their three-day jaunt in June, it dawned on Deanne that Ellen hadn’t called home once, though Ellen would call into her phone at work and check for messages.
“If I had lost a child I would be checking in at least once a day,” Deanne said to a friend after she got home from the road trip. “Just to hear my kids’ voices, to know they were all right.”
What Deanne didn’t know was that Ellen’s home phone had recently been disconnected. Ellen called her office because she had worked out an arrangement with her mother to leave messages there, if there was a need.
Ellen’s plan for solving such problems as the phone bill would be put into action late that summer. To augment the two policies from Aetna providing $5,000 death benefits each for Stacy and Steven, in the last days of August 1989 and during the first week of September, Ellen signed up for policies from four different companies.
When Sam Bevell, an agent for the Shelter Insurance Company, received a call from Ellen, she inquired about life insurance for her children and asked for a quote on a policy that would pay $30,000 upon death. He promptly gave the answer: it would be $18.02 per month for Steven and $16.00 for Stacy. Ellen thanked him and said she would get back to him in a few days.
Ellen then turned to a coworker at Andersen. She knew that Jim Reed’s father was in the insurance business with State Farm, so she asked for a referral. Jim Reed was glad to comply, giving her his father’s phone number.
What Ellen wanted from William Reed was a quote for the cost of $30,000 of life insurance for each of her children. Mr. Reed quoted her rates for quarterly payments.
“I’ll have to get back to you after payday,” Ellen said. “I don’t have the money right now.”
“Fine,” he responded, and that was that.
A few days later, Ellen called back and asked what the monthly rate would be for the same coverage. So he provided those premium prices: $18.00 for Steven and $16.00 for Stacy.
“Sounds good. Okay,” Ellen said.
With that agreement she asked him to forward an application, and instructed him that she wanted to pay on a per-month basis.
Even though the quoted premiums from both Shelter and State Farm were nearly identical (Shelter was two cents a month more), Ellen made a case of it. She called Mr. Bevell at Shelter and advised him that she had been given a lower quote from State Farm, and that she was going to use that company instead.
Ellen then called State Farm back and asked how much it would cost for $50,000 worth of coverage on each child. Again Mr. Reed complied, and Ellen then asked how she could make the change on the application to $50,000 instead of $30,000. He told her simply to write in the new amount and initial the change on the application, which she did. Both policies were issued on August 22, 1989.
Then, a few days later, Ellen called Mr. Bevell at Shelter and told him that State Farm had changed its quote, and that she had, after all, decided to go with Shelter. The policies—$30,000 each on Stacy and Steven—would take effect on September 6, 1989, and the premiums would be paid by automatic withdrawal from Ellen’s checking account at South Side National Bank.
Up to this point, Ellen had insured each of her children for $85,000, counting the $5,000 policy from Aetna provided through Andersen. She then proceeded to purchase additional coverage from United of Omaha in the amount of $12,000 for each child. This brought the grand total to $97,000 apiece.
Then, on August 29th, Ellen sent in an application to the Gerber Insurance Company for $3,000 worth of additional life insurance, bringing the total coverage to a round figure: $100,000.
At the time, she also applied to Gerber for $20,000 worth of life insurance on herself.
Because Steven had been hospitalized the year before for hypoglycemia, the company had some question about covering his life. Six months before David died, in April, Steven had been hospitalized after he suffered a seizure. It happened after the weekend trip to Chicago that Ellen had taken with the children, when she flew up to buy
the wrestling tickets in advance.
Steven was weak and drowsy during much of the weekend, and fell asleep frequently as they rode around town in the limo. At one point, when they stopped for lunch at a McDonald’s, Steven walked into a table at the restaurant, bumping his head.
By the time they got back home, he was still listless. A few days later, he was gripped by a mild seizure and Ellen rushed him to the hospital. Doctors diagnosed Steven’s problem as hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar. He was kept at St. Louis Children’s Hospital for four days and then released. Doctors told Ellen to keep an eye on him, but assured her that he would be all right.
By the time Gerber Insurance eventually would decide to write a policy for him, it would be too late.
The timing of this flurry of activity would seem obvious in hindsight. A week later, Stacy would have an electrocution scare in the bathtub, and following that, Susan Emily, who knew nothing about Ellen’s insurance war chest, would hear Ellen say some strange things over a cup of coffee.
It was a normal visit in every other way. Susan and her daughter Terrie had come over, and the children played as they always had before while the women talked. As they sat at the table, sharing their troubles, Susan noticed that Ellen was extremely downbeat about her finances.
“I don’t know what I am going to do,” she said more than once. “If they ever lock me up for anything, don’t let Paul get Stacy.”
“What are you talking about?” Susan was at a loss to understand why Ellen would say such a thing, though she understood the part about keeping Stacy from Paul.
“I don’t know,” Ellen muttered, “just don’t let Paul get Stacy.”
Less than two weeks later, Steven would be found by paramedics, lying on the sofa in Apartment 501. This would be the second time in his brief life that he was rushed to a hospital, but this time he would be D.O.A.
