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.

The two detectives had little else to ask Ms. Sumokowski, and they thanked her for her time. Before they left the Riverbend Apartments, they stopped in at the office of Karen Grimes. Once again she corroborated what the others had said, that Ellen was oddly calm following the deaths of both boys. They also learned of a janitor, who had become very friendly with Ellen. In fact, he sometimes had spent the night in Ellen’s apartment. His name was Robert E. Brown, Jr., known as “Bobbie.” He had changed jobs in October, and was now employed at a nursing home.

It seemed like a promising lead, and the detectives pounced on it. They got on the radio to Joe, who immediately dispatched Detective Waggoner to find Brown. It didn’t take any time at all, but the lead turned out to be less than exciting.

Mr. Brown was full of information about Ellen. He had been employed at Riverbend for about three years before he had left in the fall. He knew that Ellen had moved there in August 1988, and that she had previously lived in a house on Wyoming. He knew that she had been married, and he said that as far as he knew, she was seeing a bus driver named Bob.

Brown further stated that he and Ellen had become more than just friends, and that on at least three occasions, they had had sex, and that he had visited her even after he left the Riverbend Apartments.

As Detective Waggoner listened, he became more and more surprised. Ellen had fabricated an entire string of boyfriends. Mr. Brown said that Ellen was also seeing the manager of the Road Warriors, a professional wrestling tag team, and that he thought his name was Paul Ellering. Ellen had told him that Ellering would call her frequently. She also said she was seeing the manager of a local take-out pizzeria, Elicia’s Pizza, and that whenever she ordered pizza, he would often deliver it himself. Then there was a phantom boyfriend who drove a blue Saab equipped with a car phone. The man, Mr. Brown said, supposedly stayed with Ellen from about January to June 1989, but because he would arrive late at night and leave early in the morning, no one actually had seen him. Mr. Brown said Ellen once called him and told him she was calling from the car phone. By the summer of 1989, Ellen announced that she was no longer seeing this man, explaining that things just didn’t work out.

The last time he had seen Ellen was a couple of months ago, when he stopped at her apartment to say hello. Ellen told him about Steven’s death, though she seemed unmoved by it all, he said, just the way she had been after David died. As he was making his move to leave, Ellen pleaded with him to stay the night, but he declined. This was part of the pattern: Ellen wanted to have sex more often, and he didn’t. Only when the mystery man with the Saab was hanging around had she been sexually uninterested in him, though they still maintained a close relationship.

Mr. Brown had given Detective Waggoner an earful, but he saved a disturbing detail for last. Explaining that Ellen had been fairly open with him, lingering with him in discussions about life, sex, other men, and a variety of topics, she also had told him that her father had tried to sexually abuse her.

Later that day, the task force reviewed what it had learned about Ellen Kay Booker Boehm. First of all, everyone who had observed Ellen over any period of time had concluded that she rarely displayed normal human emotion. How could any parent not be profoundly struck by the death of her own child? How could any mother even hold herself together if death had taken two of her children? It also appeared that Ms. Fenton was a very credible witness, and that what she saw and heard was true: that Ellen hadn’t even told her own mother about Stacy’s bathtub scare.

What was more confusing was the picture that Ellen was projecting of herself as a woman in great demand. They knew that she was short and fat, and not particularly pretty. How could all these men be after her? Could this be tied into the report that her father had tried to sexually abuse her? The disclosure was packed with meaning, they knew.

Joe said he would make an attempt to run down the bus driver named Bob the next day. Then he and Detective Waggoner would interview their informant again, to get a better picture of this woman who seemed not to care that her children had died, while possibly also indulging in what sounded like fantastic stories about all the men in her life.

The hearsay about Ellen dating the manager of Elicia’s certainly would prove to be false. Mike Romay’s only relationship with Ellen was as her boss. In fact, Mr. Romay had met all of Ellen’s children, but that was only because she had been a customer when they lived on Wyoming, and then an employee for more than five years. Mr. Romay didn’t know much about Ellen’s private life. She just came to work and did her job.

Deanne Bond was at her desk when the phone rang. It was Sergeant Burgoon.

“Deanne, we’re going to have to have you come in.”

“Oh, no, Joe,” she responded. “I don’t want to do this.”

“You’ve got to,” he said softly.

There was a pause. Deanne knew she didn’t have any choice. In the months since she and her friend had made the original call, they had spent hours on the phone discussing this topic. They couldn’t get it off their minds. They also were becoming frightened that Ellen would somehow discover that someone had called the police. Besides worrying about that, they were also aware of the possibility that it was all one big mistake. Maybe Ellen had nothing to do with this. In fact, Deanne still wished that Dr. Graham, the medical examiner, would suddenly uncover some previously hidden illness that explained the deaths of both David and Steven.

“When is convenient?” Joe asked. “Today.”

“Oh.” Deanne’s thoughts stalled as she telescoped the rest of her day, realizing that she could just as easily leave the office by midafternoon. “Is three okay?”

“Sure, fine.”

At the appointed hour, as Deanne parked her car outside police headquarters on Clark Street, she was shaking so badly she couldn’t get out of the car. So she sat there for a few minutes, controlling her breath and screwing up her courage.

Once inside, she announced herself to the officer at the front desk. “I’m supposed to see a Sergeant Burgoon, from Homicide.”

In no time, she saw the elevator doors in front of her open, and out stepped Joe. He escorted her to the Homicide Section, and she sat down with him and Detective Waggoner, who noted the time: 2:55. Deanne was five minutes early.

The detectives began by asking background questions. When had she first met Ellen? How had they become friends? The answers led Deanne to describe her own marriage and divorce, which turned the discussion to Ellen’s marriage and divorce, and her loss of the house on Wyoming, and then her growing financial problems.

Deanne said the principal connection between her and Ellen was their interest in professional wrestling.

The questions that followed uncovered the relationship centered on the National Wrestling Alliance. Deanne, they learned, was a true-blue fan. She had saved all the ticket stubs from all the matches that she and Ellen had attended. There, before their eyes, was a chronological trail of evidence that showed how between May 1986 and June 1989, Ellen had traveled far and wide, and at considerable expense, to indulge her passion for the sport.

When Deanne touched on the name of the Road Warriors, mentioning that she and Ellen would often try to stay in the same hotel, they stopped her.

“Have the Road Warriors ever been in a motel room with Ellen?”

Deanne was anything but phlegmatic in her response. “If those two men were in my room, I would sure as hell know it! Trust me, the same motel room?”

“Did she ever leave the room? You know, later.”

“Not to my knowledge. I’m such a light sleeper.”

Deanne explained that nine times out of ten, she and Ellen weren’t able to get rooms in the same section or floor of the hotel. The wrestlers would often stay on floors that required a special pass.

“Trust me, I would know.”

Deanne knew that Ellen was crazy about the wrestlers, and she told the detectives so. Ellen had been crazy about Ted DiBiasi for fourteen or fifteen years. One year, for his birthday, Ellen had gone to K Mart and bought him a burgundy velour shirt that was on sale. She paid $14.95 for it, wrapped it up as a present, and took it with her to the Marriott in St. Louis, the one near the airport, where she presented it to him.

To Deanne, it was bordering on hopeless to give a man who earned six figures a year a gift that represented such outrageous bad taste, but she also knew Ellen might realize it, too. Maybe Ellen was just goofing on the man of her dreams. Still, Deanne was a little shocked that Ellen, who at the time was still very much married to Paul, would give any present at all to another man. She certainly wouldn’t, she knew.

“When they would come to St. Louis,” Deanne said, “I have known her to stay at the Marriott instead of going home.”

Ellen would also call up and ask for adjoining rooms with Ted DiBiasi, and then he would find out about it when he arrived in town and be forced to ask for a room change.

In short, Deanne was making it quite clear to these detectives that Ellen’s statements about romantic involvement with anybody on the professional wrestling circuit were utter fabrication.

Deanne then mentioned that both she and Ellen would write letters and cards to the wrestlers. Ellen took it more seriously, even to the point of sending her friend carbon copies of the letters. The detectives quickly asked if Deanne had any in her possession. Yes, she said, she actually had dropped a lot of them into a file at her desk at work. Yes, she would provide them to the police.

“A lot of it was just B.S. and fantasy. They really weren’t anything. Normally I would just throw that stuff away, but I have a miscellaneous file and I would throw them in there, thinking I would read them later. Sometimes I did.”

“How did these wrestlers, I mean, what was their reaction to these letters, do you know?”

“Oh, Ellering would look for her just the minute he would start down the aisle,” Deanne said. “You know, they’re out on the road all the time, and they start looking for your mail. It’s like a pen-pal thing. They get used to it.

“After they got to know you, and know that you weren’t just arena rats. You really enjoyed wrestling and you enjoyed the show they put on and the work that they did, they loved it. They loved it when we went on the road, following them.

“They put on a hell of a show, because it was nice to put on a show for somebody that really appreciated it.

“Then, when you’d stop, they would really play up to you, because you had stopped writing to them. They knew it couldn’t be that you’d gotten tired of it.”

“Did Ellen ever sleep with DiBiasi?” they asked.

“Never. He never slept with her.”

“What about Paul Ellering?”

Given a chance, Deanne said she believed that Ellen would have gone through with it and slept with any one of the men. But over the last couple of years, as Ellen had tried to get Ellering interested in her sexually, he had tired of her advances and seemed to close her out. Finally he wouldn’t even acknowledge her presence. Ellen, she said, became vindictive about it and began to write nasty letters, or tried to have girlfriends write such letters. She said Ellen signed false names to these letters and would sometimes mail them from other cities. In them, Deanne said, Ellen talked about having sex with Mr. Ellering, among other things.

Deanne also said she knew Ellen had a vivid imagination on this subject, and that her fixation on Paul Ellering had ended abruptly one night at the Marriott in St. Louis, when he turned his back on Ellen at the bar.

“Do you know of any other instances like this?”

Deanne said that since she had known Ellen, she had caught her in numerous lies about dating men. “Ellen got angry at one of the guys at Don Brown Chevrolet, and she asked me what she could do to get back at him,” she recalled. She also said Ellen had lied to her about a guy at Andersen.

Deanne said she would find it difficult to believe much of anything Ellen said when it came to the subject of men. “In fact,” she said, “I have never seen Ellen with a man.”

When the interview was over, Joe walked her back outside to her car. She would never forget what he said to her. She was physically and emotionally spent from the grilling at the hands of some very tough-minded, and sometimes unsympathetic detectives who were also in the room with Joe. She had been kept for almost four hours in a closed room. Outside, Joe thanked her for coming in. He was still holding back somewhat, and when he said she had been very helpful, it was an understatement.

As they crossed Tucker Boulevard, the sergeant spoke.

“You know, I’m ninety-nine percent sure she did it.”

Deanne looked up at him.

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah.”

Then she paused for a second, but then didn’t hesitate.

“If she did, then I want you to get her.”

“That’s the one thing I promise you. No matter how long it takes, I will get her.”