by John Coston
The girl said further that on the way to the hospital, her mother told her that if the doctors asked what happened to say that Steven had thrown the hair dryer into the tub. Her mother explained that she had talked to Steven, and that he had thought she would want to dry her dolls’ hair.
Stacy also said that on the way to the hospital, her mother had told her that she had pulled the plug out of the wall.
“Where is the hair dryer kept normally?”
“It’s in my mommy’s room, on the floor by her dresser,” Stacy said, adding that her mother’s hair dryer is white, and that she has one, too, but it is pink and it is kept in the closet.
Detective Jones turned the subject to the day David had died.
“He was lying on the floor, and when my mommy tried to wake him up, his face was blue and he didn’t say anything. They took him to the hospital, and my mommy told me that David was dead.
“I sometimes have dreams about David.”
“What are they like?”
“I see a black man in a white hat, black shirt, and pink pants. He’s killing David.”
This stirred the detective’s interest. “How is he killing him?”
“I can’t remember.”
“Do you have any dreams about Steven?”
“No.”
Detective Jones circled back to the man in Stacy’s dreams. She asked if anybody ever came to the apartment. The child replied that “Bobbie” used to come up to talk to her mother, but that he hasn’t been around, because he no longer worked at the apartments.
So now they had another lead.
The next morning, Joe arranged an appointment for Ellen’s polygraph test. It would be at 2:15 that same day, January 4th. Then Ellen was called at her office and asked to come in that afternoon, and she agreed. Before going downtown, Ellen made a call to her manicurist, Lisa Schneider, to say she wanted to cancel all her future appointments. Ellen didn’t really give any reason, and Lisa just scratched her off the appointment book. She wouldn’t miss Ellen Boehm as a customer. It wasn’t just Ellen’s apparent fantasizing about dating wrestlers, or about the guys who were chasing her.
She remembered how she had seen Ellen right on schedule only two weeks after Steven had died. It surprised her that Ellen was so much herself, so composed after the death, and wanting to be primped, talking almost nonstop about wrestling. She acted as if nothing had happened. What troubled Lisa the most, though, was Stacy’s behavior. Ellen had brought her daughter with her, and the girl, just like her mother, seemed to act as if nothing had happened. All Lisa could think was that she was just too young to understand.
Stacy sat quietly in a chair while Lisa worked on Ellen’s nails. She held two dolls in her lap, and she was deep in concentrated play with them. Every few moments Lisa would steal a glance at the girl, wondering.
Then Stacy spoke up, and it broke Lisa’s heart.
“These are my brothers now,” the little girl said, holding up her dolls.
My Mommy Told Me
When the detectives knocked on the door of Apartment 501, they were prepared to meet Catherine Booker, Ellen’s mother, for an interview. It was a little disconcerting to find Stacy there, too, but her grandmother explained that she had a stomachache and had stayed home from school.
Detectives Jones and Cordia informed Mrs. Booker that they wished to speak with her alone. Could Stacy leave the room? Detective Jones, who had talked to Stacy only the night before, offered to accompany her to her room, if that was all right. Catherine had no objection.
She was beginning to realize that her daughter was in some kind of trouble. The night before, after Ellen and Stacy had gone to police headquarters, Ellen had stopped to tell her mother about it. Stacy was also beginning to get a picture, as Detective Jones quickly learned. “My mommy told me that you guys say that she killed David and Steven,” she said. Detective Jones hadn’t expected this. “She didn’t! Would you go back and tell the other guys that my mommy did not kill Steven and David?”
Outside in the living room, Detective Cordia pressed this fragile, sixty-five-year-old grandmother with questions about her knowledge of Ellen’s insurance portfolio. Catherine said that her daughter had first told her about the policies sometime in the middle of December, which was only a couple of weeks ago. The detective probed into Ellen’s relationship with her parents, and Catherine said that Ellen had been an only child, and that she had always gotten along well with both her and her father. Catherine said they had not been strict parents, but that Ellen’s father had been somewhat protective of Ellen. Her daughter had always been honest with her, she said.
Ellen hadn’t dated much prior to marriage, she said, and all Catherine added beyond that was to remark that Paul Boehm had left Ellen with a lot of financial problems. “She appeared to be glad to be rid of him, just the same,” Catherine added with a fillip.
When asked about how Ellen had dealt with the loss of the two boys, Catherine said her daughter had taken the deaths very badly. “She still sleeps with two of her sons’ favorite dolls,” she said.
Catherine’s version of the events of the night of September 13, 1989, when Stacy suffered the electrical shock in the tub, tracked with what Ellen had stated. As to how it had happened, the grandmother said Ellen had told her that Steven was responsible.
Detective Cordia was about finished with the interview, but she wanted to ask once again about the insurance, which seemed to be a rather large amount. Catherine acknowledged that it was, but she said she was certain that Ellen had not taken the policies out on her children with any hope of collecting.
Before the two detectives left, Detective Jones asked Detective Cordia to come into the bedroom to hear something Stacy had said.
“Mommy didn’t kill Steven and Dave,” the girl said.
“Why are you saying this?” Detective Cordia asked.
“Mommy said that you guys said that she killed my brothers,” Stacy said with conviction. There was a short pause, then she said it again: “Mommy didn’t kill my brothers.”
This was a tough part of their jobs. On one hand, there was a human inclination to want to respond with sympathy and support, especially when a child is involved. On the other, it was just good police work to ask Stacy to repeat her statement for Detective Cordia, who could also then witness it for the record. After that, they left.
The rest of the day for Detective Cordia was spent running down loose ends, including making a trip to Children’s Hospital on South Kingshighway to verify the record of the hair dryer incident. The medical report showed that Stacy had been there and treated for petechiae on the top of her tongue, a form of bleeding that was the result of electric shock. The report also included the explanation that the girl’s little brother had dropped a hair dryer in the tub.
Back at headquarters, Detective Wiber was on the phone, calling more insurance companies. Carl Carver at Shelter Insurance had eagerly given him the names and phone numbers of additional insurers to help him in his canvassing. Detective Wiber hit pay dirt when he called the Gerber Insurance Company and spoke with Barbara Gregg. Ellen had filled out a mail-in application for insurance on Steven and Stacy, as well as herself. The application was made on August 29, 1989, but because of questions about Steven’s health, the $3,000 policy on his life hadn’t been written until October 18th. While it was a moot point now, the fact remained that Ellen hadn’t mentioned this to any of the detectives yet. Wiber also noticed that the amount—$3,000—expanded the coverage on her children to a nice round number: $100,000.
In addition, he made a phone call to William Reed, the State Farm agent who had sold Ellen the $50,000 policy. Mr. Reed recalled that Ellen had initially contacted him in the early part of August 1989, wanting to apply for $30,000 on each child. Later, he said, she asked how difficult it would be to increase the coverage to $50,000, and he advised that all she needed to do was write in the new amount and send in the application and the first premium payment. This didn’t track
with Ellen’s assertion that she was “convinced” that the bigger policy was a better deal. The policies were issued on August 22, 1989, and Mr. Reed stated that Ellen had missed the September payment on Stacy, which came due after the bathtub ordeal. Detective Wiber would later get a call from the helpful Mr. Carver at Shelter Insurance. He wanted to make sure the detective knew that the $30,000 policy on Stacy’s life had lapsed, effective October 22, 1989. Later, in November, she was sent a letter advising her that if the payment wasn’t made, the policy was in jeopardy of cancellation. That, he said, was the last record of any transaction on the policy for Stacy.
By 2:15, the task force had compared notes from the morning’s work. This supplied the basis for the questions that would be asked during the polygraph examination. The main point of the polygraph was to determine whether Ellen had killed her boys, and she would be asked that question point-blank. When Ellen appeared at the appointed hour, Robert Greeley, the department’s polygraphist, was ready.
The test was quite short, and the results were inconclusive. Ellen showed little or no reaction to any of the questions Greeley put to her, including the so-called test questions that are posed to provide the polygraphist with a baseline to measure the results.
Immediately following the polygraph, Ellen was escorted by Detectives Wiber and Waggoner to Interview Room 1 again, where she had been questioned the night before. They had a few, more-pointed questions for her.
First she was asked about the medical bills she had incurred when David died. The detectives had only that morning learned that Ellen had claimed to the bankruptcy court that she faced $16,000 in leftover bills for medical treatment for her sons and for funeral expenses.
“On David,” Ellen said, “the bills amounted to about $30,000, and the insurance paid all of it except $500.”
“And how was it with Steven?”
“I didn’t get any bills with Steven. I guess the insurance paid all of it, except twenty-five dollars for an emergency room fee from Cardinal Glennon.”
In other words, she had lied to the bankruptcy court.
Then they asked her about the life insurance on David. Specifically they asked about the John Hancock policy, and Ellen told them that John Hancock had refused to pay up the $10,000, claiming that the policy had lapsed. Ellen was adamant that the policy had not lapsed, and she was angry that the company didn’t honor her claim.
“Ellen, last night you stated that you had collected the $10,000, and that you had spent it,” one of the detectives said.
Ellen looked down at the table, but she couldn’t explain the discrepancy in her statements.
They moved on, asking her about her bills, and Ellen gave a laundry list of her liabilities: $57 a month for parking, deducted from her paycheck; $156 a month budget billing for Union Electric, an account $700 in arrears; $57 a month garnishment for Southwestern Bell for service that had been disconnected; $350 every six months for State Farm Insurance, which insured her car; and $135 a month for a bankruptcy payment. It all added up to almost $500 a month, and when the monthly life insurance payments were counted, it was clear that almost a third of Ellen’s monthly income was locked up by these fixed obligations. She still had to pay her $323 rent and put food on the table.
This recitation of her mountain of bills ended the interview. Now the detectives had a better sense of what had been driving the woman. That still left a large question, though: Why had she just bought a new car?
A Blue Car, After All
When Ellen called to announce that she had bought the Lumina, Deanne was incredulous. Actually, Ellen had bought the car more than two weeks before, but she hadn’t worked up the nerve to tell Deanne. In fact, the only reason she was even telling her now was that she knew Deanne would find out about it from Lisa, their manicurist.
The last time Ellen had gone there, Stacy Ann had mentioned that they had a new car. Ellen knew that it was only a matter of time before Deanne would learn about it, and she definitely would be suspicious if Ellen had never said anything.
After all, cars were something they shared. They weren’t motorheads, but they had logged thousands of miles together in journeying to wrestling matches on long weekends. Whose car they took was always a decision that had to be made, and a number of times they had taken Ellen’s 1984 Chevy Cavalier.
Another reason she was calling about her new car was that she knew Deanne had recently started talking about getting a new car herself. She wanted a blue one. She had even narrowed her choice down to either a Chevy Lumina or a Chevy Beretta.
“I got my payments low enough,” Ellen said over the phone.
Deanne couldn’t figure it out, knowing that Ellen had filed for bankruptcy. She, of course, didn’t know about the insurance money.
“You always wanted a red car,” Deanne remarked.
“Well, I shopped around.”
“Did you get it from Don Brown?” Deanne asked, knowing that Ellen’s car had been serviced at that Chevrolet dealership on frequent occasions. “Boy, they ought to give you a good deal.”
“No, I got a better deal at Weber.”
“You did?”
“Yeah, and they had what I wanted.”
“But this car’s blue!”
“Yeah.”
“I thought you always wanted a red one.”
“Well, I just saw this blue one.”
Deanne let it ride, just as she had done with the comment Ellen had made a while back about the mechanics at Don Brown being interested in her. But she was still puzzled. Though Deanne had decided to hold off for a while on a new car purchase, she had recently looked at Weber Chevrolet, too. It was a Weber dealership in Illinois. All of a sudden, Deanne realized that Ellen had bought just the car she herself would have bought—a blue Lumina—and that Ellen had even gone considerably out of her way to buy it at a Weber dealer, which is where Deanne had been looking. It all seemed too strange. I thought she always wanted a red car. She must have gotten a better deal, that’s all, Deanne thought to herself.
On January 8th, Detective Cordia drove down to the South Side to follow up further on Stacy’s hair dryer incident. To date, the fact that it had happened was well-established. Now what he hoped to find out was exactly how the news of it had spread in the first place. He would see Caroline Fenton, the friendly, thirty-six-year-old custodian who had worked at the Riverbend Apartments for the past year.
Ms. Fenton, in fact, had seen Ellen’s children, Steven and Stacy, almost daily since the beginning of the previous summer. She would usually see them when their grandmother was baby-sitting, often out by the building’s pool. One afternoon in September, while she was walking through the community room, heading for a small chamber off to the side, she saw Pauline Sumokowski talking with Ellen’s mother.
The two elderly women chatted regularly. Pauline was only a few years younger than Catherine and, like Catherine, quite often was baby-sitting for someone. She had even sat for the Boehm children once. Ms. Sumokowski knew Ellen only to say hello, but she and Catherine would sit by the hour when it was warm outside, passing the time, and watching the children play.
Ms. Fenton had been within earshot when the two women started talking about Stacy. Ms. Sumokowski was asking Catherine about her granddaughter, specifically about how she was. “Did they keep her in the hospital?”
At that, Ms. Fenton became curious and perked up her ears. She looked out through the half-open door and saw a look of surprise on Catherine’s face. It was obvious that Catherine was unaware of what had happened. Then Ms. Sumokowski continued to explain that Ellen had come to her apartment the previous night and asked her to watch Steven. Catherine listened as the whole incident was laid out: How Steven had thrown the hairdryer in the bath while Stacy was in it, and that she had to be taken to the hospital.
Catherine replied that Ellen had not told her about this. She was going to ask her about it that very night. Just then both of the women noticed that Ms. Fenton was there, listening. The
conversation ceased.
Detective Cordia took notes as Ms. Fenton relayed her story, and then he asked her if she had ever witnessed any other incidents involving the children. She said there had been one other, involving Stacy. One morning as she was pulling into the apartments’ parking lot, she heard a child crying. This had occurred sometime after Steven’s death, but the weather was unusually warm and she had her driver’s side window down. As she looked to see who was crying, she saw a child crouched behind a car. It was Stacy.
Ms. Fenton said it was sometime between 7:30 and 8:00 A.M., because that’s when she arrived for work. She quickly parked her car and approached the girl, asking what was the matter. Stacy was hysterical as she explained that she had missed her school bus.
When Ms. Fenton tried to reassure her that it was all right, and tried further to coax her inside the building’s lobby to find Ellen, Stacy became even more upset, telling Ms. Fenton that her mother had told her that if she missed her bus, she was to wait by the car. She was not to come back inside.
Ms. Fenton told the detective that the upsetting episode had stuck in her mind. She had been jarred by it, as she had been at Steven’s wake when she observed that Ellen didn’t display the slightest emotion. It didn’t fit. Why would a child break down so because she missed her bus?
Had it not been for the children, Ms. Fenton told Detective Cordia, she would never really have talked to Ellen, and perhaps no one else would have either, because she viewed her as a quiet and private person.
When Detective Cordia finished his questioning with Ms. Fenton, he thanked her and proceeded to Apartment 608, where he, along with Detective Jones, would interview Ms. Sumokowski. Almost the first thing she told the detectives emphatically was that she was not a friend of Ellen Boehm’s. She really had started talking with Ellen only after Steven died, and that was only because Ellen had started asking to use her phone. Yes, she said she was an acquaintance of Catherine Booker, but she related the report of the hair dryer incident the other way around: Catherine had told her about it.
