Sleep, My Child, Forever

by John Coston

  At least to friends and family, Ellen was still admitting her guilt. Just as she had conceded guilt to Susan Emily on the phone only two weeks after her arrest, she would come clean with Susan’s daughter Cheryl during a visit at the workhouse. Cheryl made it clear she was there as a family representative, that she had come for Ellen’s mother, who was too frail to visit. “I’m doing this for your mother,” she said, “for Catherine.”

  That was all it took. Ellen, who never had a kind word for her mother and had even told Cheryl’s mother that she would be glad when she was dead, broke down. She admitted to Cheryl that she had killed the boys. She was sorry now, she said.

  Ms. Rogers knew that Ellen’s videotaped confession would be a powerful arbiter during the trial. She, like many prosecutors in St. Louis Circuit Court, also recognized the effectiveness of such confessions on juries. This winning prosecutor didn’t have to think very hard about how the jury would react to Ellen’s vivid description of David’s death:

  “… and I put the couch pillow over him. And my hands were on both sides. And he was really strong. He did struggle a little. And, then I put that right there for about forty-five seconds at the most. Then I put the pillow back on the, on the couch and at this point he was lying on his back. And, I called my girlfriend Sandy and we talked, you know, about what each of us did for our Thanksgiving.”

  “Yes, Your Honor”

  Ellen’s response was swift. That same day she appeared before Judge Kitchin, ready to plead guilty.

  The prison van picked her up at the Workhouse and took her to the Municipal Court building on Market Street, only a few city blocks west of the Arthur Andersen offices. She was escorted through the back corridors, entering the chamber of one of the toughest judges in the city via a series of locked, steel-mesh doors. The grandeur implicit in the high ceilings in the main hallways, the large windows that admitted light onto the ornate, cast-iron embellishments of the stairways, and the well-worn classic American dark oak woodwork that trimmed the expansive walls and doorways, would not serve to elevate any spirits today. Ellen had been brought here to cut a deal with the state.

  The judge was careful, making certain that Ellen was fully cognizant of the proceeding’s consequences.

  “Ellen, how old are you?”

  “Thirty-two.”

  “How far did you go in school?”

  “Twelfth grade.”

  “What has been your work experience?”

  “Secretarial.”

  “Do you do typing and shorthand?”

  “I do typing. No shorthand.”

  Ellen, along with her attorney, Karen Kraft, and Assistant Circuit Attorney Rogers, spent almost an hour and a half with Judge Kitchin. He was deliberate and thorough, beginning by observing for the record that Ellen was an intelligent and articulate person. He questioned Ellen about Ms. Kraft, assuring himself with Ellen’s answer that the attorney hadn’t refused to do anything in preparation for the defense.

  “Have you discussed these charges and the nature of them with your lawyer?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “And now you have had sufficient time to discuss the charges and go over them with her?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  Judge Kitchin proceeded to state what changes the state had made in her charges. Count 1, the indictment had been lowered to murder in the second degree in the matter of David Boehm’s death. Count 2, pertaining to Steven’s death, remained unchanged, as did the first-degree assault charge brought against her in the incident involving Stacy in the bathtub.

  Ellen also listened as he delivered full narrative descriptions of the crimes, describing how Ellen held pillows over the faces of her two sons with the intent of suffocating them so that she could collect life insurance premiums, and how Ellen placed a plugged-in hair dryer into a bathtub full of water in an attempt to kill or cause serious injury to her daughter.

  Judge Kitchin asked Ellen if she understood that her plea to these charges would result in life imprisonment without the possibility of probation or parole in the case of Steven’s death, and a concurrent sentence of life imprisonment for David’s death, and that the new indictment on the assault charge would be nolle prosequi, which meant she would not be prosecuted on that count. He also explained to her that if she opted for a trial, he assumed the state would not knock Count 1 down from murder in the first degree.

  “If you were to go to trial on May tenth, you would be tried on two counts of murder one, and there are only two punishments for such a crime. Death is one, and life without probation or parole is the other. You understand that?”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” she answered.

  “And you’re admitting and stating you’re pleading guilty then, voluntarily and of your own free will, because you are guilty of these two offenses as charged?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.’”

  Justice had been done. Judge Kitchen then sentenced Ellen to her two life terms. Before she was escorted away in the sheriff’s custody, she made a request. She wanted to visit her mother, who was recovering at Alexian Brothers Hospital from a knee operation the day before. Judge Kitchin granted her request, and told the sheriff to escort Ellen to see her mother the next day, a Tuesday, at a convenient time.

  On Wednesday, the story of Ellen’s conviction appeared in the Post-Dispatch under the headline MOTHER GETS LIFE TERMS IN MURDERS OF 2 BOYS. Shirley Rogers praised Sergeant Burgoon and Dr. Graham for the weeks and months of work they had done to bring about a successful prosecution. She also saluted the FBI agents who had drawn the profile of Ellen as a psychopath who saw killing her children as a way of making money. In an ironic note, that same day another headline appeared: PAULA SIMS CONFESSES IN BOOK, PUBLISHER SAYS. This time the woman was admitting to the deaths of her two daughters, a reversal of her staunch denials of the crimes in court.

  No one familiar with Ellen’s case could believe the coincidence of having two mothers—both child killers—appearing in the news on the same day, each reversing themselves and admitting to nearly identical crimes. Plus, Sergeant Burgoon and Shirley Rogers and Karen Kraft, along with a host of Ellen’s coworkers, all knew about Ellen’s perverse fascination with the Paula Sims’s case. What was this? Providence?

  Ellen had no way of knowing, but on that Tuesday afternoon, Steven’s and David’s father was also in the South Side neighborhood where they had tried but failed to make a life together. Paul Boehm had collapsed at home earlier that day when he heard about Ellen’s plea bargain. He was taken to the veterans’ hospital at Jefferson Barracks, and he would remain there for six weeks. By the time he would get out, he would be considered one-hundred-percent disabled.

  Ellen’s dreams as a young wife and mother had been shattered. Those who knew her well believed that all she ever wanted was a home and a family, and someone to share her life. When the FBI’s criminal profilers saw the snapshot of evidence put before them by the St. Louis Police Department, it was easy to see motive and opportunity. They failed to see the softer, hidden side of Ellen that had been nurtured in her youth but extinguished over time by the circumstances of her life as a child and then as a young adult. Now, after all the time waiting for an overcrowded court system to act, she would enter an overcrowded prison system.

  Shirley Rogers would have the last word that would ever count when she told Post-Dispatch reporter Tim Bryant: “I just feel sorry for the remaining child. Now she has to deal with her mother, who killed her brothers and tried to kill her.”

  By the middle of the month, Ellen would board the van that would take her on a trip west on I-70—the same interstate she and Deanne had cruised many times to Kansas City—to the Fulton Reception and Diagnostic Center. A couple of months later, Ellen would be transferred to Renz Farm, the women’s prison in Jefferson City, 128 miles west in the heartland of Missouri.

  Like so many other coincidences in Ellen’s life history, about the time she was moved to Renz, it had started to rain—and rain
and rain. The jet stream had altered course, arcing south, bringing cool Canadian air across the entire Mississippi River Basin. The warm, moist air that drove north from the Gulf of Mexico every year created the seasonal thundershowers that made flooding a fact of life in the Midwest. This year, however, a Bermuda high had stationed itself over much of the East Coast, imprisoning the cloudbursts across several states. It was to be the Great Flood of ’93.

  Afterthoughts

  In early July, the rising Missouri River forced the evacuation of the 373 women inmates at Renz Farm. Ellen, along with all the others, was moved across town and into the gymnasium at Central Missouri Correctional Center, known as Church Farm. For state prison officials, it became a game of musical cells, because many of the men at the correctional center were shuffled out to another prison farther west in Cameron. The Cameron prison, which was also overcrowded, turned to the state hospital in Jefferson City.

  By the time the floodwaters broke through the levee, pouring into the Callaway County lowland where the prison stood, workers had to be brought in by boat to move files and equipment to the second floor of the 1930s-era prison. The water reached almost to the ceiling of the first floor, and the force of it moved heavy kitchen equipment across the room. Mud covered everything. The security system was destroyed, as was the entire stretch of perimeter fencing. Outbuildings, including trailers for visitations with inmates, were obliterated.

  Renz Farm had been built in 1937 to house fifty men in minimum-security quarters. By 1989, it had become a maximum-security facility for women, housing six times as many inmates.

  The water disaster at Renz claimed many personal items of the inmates, but prison officials managed to retrieve many of their legal records. In Ellen’s case, that was a blessing, because she had begun a process of appeal. In late May she filed a motion to vacate her sentence and the judgment. Under Missouri law, Ellen had ninety days to file for what is termed “post-conviction relief.”

  Karen Kraft was out of the picture by now. Another public defender, Beverly Biemdiek, was on the case, and by the time Ellen filed her appeal, on August 9th, Deborah Wafer, another staff lawyer from the Public Defender’s office, had appeared.

  Ellen raised several issues, starting with the statement that her videotaped confession had been coerced. She also claimed she had been denied her right to counsel. Sergeant Burgoon and Detective Bender, she stated, refused to let her telephone Michael Frank, the lawyer who had contacted Sergeant Burgoon in January 1990 and again in January 1991, saying he represented Ellen in her attempts to collect on unpaid insurance claims.

  Ellen also claimed in her appeal that she had felt threatened by her trial counsel, Karen Kraft, and by Shirley Rogers that if she didn’t plead guilty she would automatically get the death penalty. She further argued that Karen Kraft had failed to call Sandy Nelson and her mother, Catherine, in her defense. Ellen also stated flat out that there was no factual basis for a first-degree murder charge in the death of Steven. Moreover, Ellen charged that Karen Kraft had failed to have tissue samples sent to Dr. Piero Rinaldo, a world renowned geneticist at Yale Medical School.

  Curiously, Ellen had written a four-page letter to Dr. Rinaldo, describing the sudden and inexplicable deaths of her boys and requesting that he get involved in the case. Ellen knew about him from the news, because he was an unsung hero who had helped convince prosecutors to drop all charges against Patricia Stallings, the mother accused of poisoning her son with automobile antifreeze. Dr. Rinaldo, along with two others doctors, had identified the inborn error in metabolism that had been mistaken for an external poison in the original lab tests.

  Judge Kitchin was not swayed by Ellen’s appeal for relief, and on August 14th, a week later, he denied her claim without a hearing. He cited as reasons the fact that Ellen was pleading conclusions instead of facts. Second, he did not see how the voluntary nature of Ellen’s plea bore any connection with the issue of tissue samples and a possible genetic cause of death.

  That same August, the matter of Stacy’s custody was finally resolved. Following a hearing in July, the court declared Stacy a ward of the state, who would remain in foster care. Ellen had appeared at the hearing, clad in pants and a shirt. When Paul spoke to her, stating that he was trying to get Stacy back, Ellen laughed in his face.

  Ellen also told her daughter that she was tired of being in jail, and that she would be getting out soon. It was a cruel promise to make to an eleven-year-old, especially because Ellen knew it wouldn’t be that easy.

  The next month, on September 23rd, Ellen’s public defender, Deborah Wafer, filed a motion to the Missouri Court of Appeals. The issue for the appeals court likely would be whether Ellen had been denied rights to due process of law, equal protection of the law, and whether she had been subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. These are Constitutional questions covered by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. Ellen also was appealing Judge Kitchin’s decision to deny her an evidentiary hearing to air the claims she made with her appeal for post-conviction relief.

  As of June, 1994, Ellen was still holding out hope, even though her request for a hearing had been rejected by the state attorney general’s office, which agreed with Judge Kitchin’s original decision. But her newest public defender, David Hemingway, who had come on board in January, was nevertheless preparing a response to the state.

  Six months before, perhaps buoyed by the release of a hard-case acquaintance she had made at Renz, who was getting out on a technicality, Ellen would pick up the phone to call an old friend. But it wouldn’t be like old times.

  Epilogue

  “We really had some good times. I could never say to anybody that Ellen wasn’t a good friend to me. Whatever I needed, if Ellen had it, it was mine.”

  —Deanne Bond

  “Well, are you Mrs. Steve Williams yet?” the caller asked.

  Deanne recognized the voice. “No, Ellen, not quite. I haven’t even talked to him in about a year and a half.”

  “Oh, I thought maybe you guys would be together.”

  “No, no. I don’t think so.” Deanne chuckled a little at having just picked up with Ellen again. “I don’t even go to wrestling anymore.”

  Deanne hadn’t thought she was ever again going to hear from Ellen. The last time she had talked to her was on September 13, 1991, the day she was arrested. Today was January 2, 1994. Deanne had dropped Ellen from her life. She wondered at times exactly where Ellen was, but she didn’t care enough to make the effort to find out.

  “Well, did you keep the weight off?” Ellen wanted to know.

  “Uh-huh,” Deanne was proud to say.

  “Remember that?”

  Deanne knew what she was talking about—all the times that Deanne would weaken in front of a dessert and Ellen would admonish her to stretch it for another week.

  Ellen said the reason she called was that she had been thinking about Deanne for a long time. “I just felt that I had to call you,” she said.

  “Of course, that’s fine, Ellen.” Deanne tried to remain natural, but she felt trapped. Three weeks earlier, at approximately midnight on a Saturday night, she had received an operator-assisted collect call from someone named “Jackie.” The operator stated that the caller was in a Missouri Correctional facility. The only person Deanne knew who was in prison was Ellen, so she didn’t accept the call.

  Then, on this Sunday evening when she arrived home from a visit with her parents, Deanne’s answering machine had a message: “If you wish to accept charges, press five.” Deanne carried through with it, and Ellen called about five o’clock. Ellen could have written a letter, but she hadn’t, and Deanne knew there had to be some other reason behind this call. Ellen wasn’t calling to inquire about her health.

  “Did you ever see the police report?” Ellen asked.

  “No, Ellen, I haven’t seen the police report.”

  Ellen’s voice was changing now, and there was an edge that Deanne didn’t like. “Well, you know what they’ve d
one to you? You know what they’ve done, they made you out to be Burgoon’s stooge.”

  “The only part I’ve seen is my part of it, because they were getting ready to take my deposition,” Deanne said. “Ellen, you know every time I talked to the police, because I told you.”

  “I know, that’s what makes me so furious. Anytime I would talk to you there was either a call to the police or they would call you. You know, those bastards plotted for a year and a half on how to get me to confess.”

  Deanne paused, thinking about what to say next. “I was relieved that there wasn’t a trial,” she said, treading as delicately as she could. “I didn’t know how I was going to feel sitting across the room, and have to look at you, knowing what you’ve been charged with. I didn’t know how I could sit there and not just grab something and brain you as you went by.”

  “I had no choice,” Ellen said, referring to her confession. “At eleven o’clock I told them—to get ’em off my back. I’d tell them whatever they wanted to hear.

  “And they wouldn’t let me call my attorney. And you know we had discussed it. If I’m ever arrested isn’t that the first thing I’m supposed to do?”

  Deanne had been offered the opportunity to view Ellen’s taped confession, but she declined. She already had the indelible images of those little boys in her mind, and somebody putting a pillow over their faces. She suspected Ellen knew that, too, which explained why Ellen hadn’t made contact in all this time.

  Then, abruptly switching gears, Ellen said she had wanted to spare her mother and Stacy the ordeal of a trial. But Deanne knew that Ellen was one of the best liars she had ever met. Deanne couldn’t imagine what new tricks Ellen was learning on the inside, but she sensed that Ellen was picking up some of the lingo. She had never been much of an emotional person, so the sidekicks she was meeting in prison would work out fine. Deanne also sensed that the reserved side of Ellen had now progressed into a stone coldness. Plus, Ellen was starting to think like someone who was on the inside, and she was a lifer.