A Mother’s Lie

As Gregory Allen filled in the picture of Ellen—AKA “Fuzzy Bunny”—other leads of the Boehm case squad were being chased down. Detective Cordia interviewed Ken Bise, who was assigned to the city’s Medic Unit No. 1 on the night the call came in for David. Although more than a year had elapsed since he and Steven Koehne had responded to Apartment 501 on Thanksgiving night, 1988, he remembered the call.

What stood out vividly in his memory was the fact that after pounding on the door several times, it was finally answered by a young girl. For no parent to be in the apartment seemed out of the ordinary. Mr. Bise administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, concentrating on the boy’s response, but still aware that there was no adult present yet. Finally, some ten minutes later, as he and his partner were ready to leave for the hospital, the mother entered the apartment, announcing that she had been elsewhere in the building to find someone to watch her children.

All she said about her son was that he had been sick. She gave no further history. As she talked, he noticed that this woman didn’t appear to be upset about the fact that her son was not responding to their life-saving efforts. He was dying, if not already dead, and Ellen seemed undisturbed by it all. Mr. Koehne would confirm that the mother didn’t appear to be upset about her son’s condition, and it was certainly unusual for these paramedics, who, in fact, are trained to keep hysterical parents and loved ones from spinning out of control.

Both men also remembered that the mother chose not to accompany her son to the hospital in the ambulance, and that seemed just as peculiar as everything else about this call.

Downtown, Detective Wiber was on the telephone, calling the Fairfield Airport Inn in Detroit, Michigan. He was connected to a room where Paul Ellering, a manager of the Road Warriors, was staying. Ellering didn’t hesitate to say that he knew who Ellen Boehm was. He had met her in person, had seen her at many of the matches, and he had spoken with her many times at the St. Louis Airport Marriott, where she was a lounge lizard during their stays there.

As he talked, Detective Wiber jotted down his notes. It was the same old story. Ellen, he said, had contacted him numerous times on the telephone. She had also sent him countless cards and letters. The relationship that was spawned by Ellen’s fanatic obsession with wrestling and the Road Warriors had never progressed beyond the casual level, he said. Ellen would certainly have preferred something more, he knew, judging by the tone and subject matter of her fan mail, which he said would be right at home in Penthouse’s “Forum.”

When Detective Wiber pressed the question of anything other than casual involvement, Mr. Ellering was quite clear that his dealings with Ellen Boehm were always limited to one activity: conversation. He added that he wouldn’t have had it any other way. Not only did he politely note that she was less than physically attractive, but he thought she was some kind of nut to boot.

On Friday night, Detective Wiber went to the St. Louis Arena on Oakland Avenue for an interview with Ted DiBiasi, the Million Dollar Man. By now Detective Wiber pretty much knew what to expect. The collection of evidence was becoming a repetitive stream of denials about the kinds of things Ellen had said. The positive side was that a profile was emerging.

“Are you acquainted with Ellen Boehm?” the detective asked.

At first the answer was unexpected, because the wrestler said, “No.” Then after a moment’s hesitation, he said, “Wait! Did you say Ellen? Is she a short, fat girl?”

“Yes, she fits that description,” the detective said.

Mr. DiBiasi then corrected himself and said that he had received cards and letters all over the country from Ellen, and added that she had called his hotels numerous times at various locations. On top of it, she had made many romantic advances.

When Detective Wiber asked him to continue, Mr. DiBiasi said that he had told Ellen that he wouldn’t make any dates with a woman he had never seen. On one occasion Ellen said she could fix that, and she said they could meet in the lounge at the Airport Marriott in St. Louis. He said that he did meet and speak very briefly with Ellen, but that after seeing her, he declined to have anything else to do with her.

Detective Wiber asked for a description of the kinds of cards and letters he had received from Ellen, but Mr. DiBiasi wasn’t much help. He said that as soon as he saw who they were from, he threw them in the trash.

Detectives Cordia and Jones spent part of the day at the Children’s Hospital Emergency Room, interviewing Dr. Anna Fitz-James, the attending physician the night Stacy was brought in.

The doctor remembered that on that night, both Ellen and her daughter were present when the doctors asked the routine questions about what had happened. Dr. Fitz-James said that Stacy had not come right out to say it, but the suggestion was clearly there that her brother, Steven, had dropped the hair dryer in the bathtub.

As for Ellen’s statement, she had told the doctors that because she wasn’t in the bathroom, she hadn’t seen what happened. When she heard a scream and ran to see what it was, Ellen said she found Steven in the bathroom with Stacy, and she assumed that he had put the hair dryer in the water.

Stacy had told the doctor that she didn’t remember whether Steven was in the bathroom or not.

One other thing the doctor offered was the observation that Ellen seemed concerned about Stacy’s well-being, and that it was exactly the kind of motherly attention that would be appropriate for the situation.

The evidence was confirming a pattern. Ellen went to great lengths to effuse emotion when she was indulging in romantic fantasy, which obviously gave her some kind of thrill, but she was inhumanely cold as a mother, when faced with a life-and-death situation involving her children.

Joe meanwhile called an old friend, a lawyer who also happened to represent the corporate interests of Arthur Andersen. Joe had known John Emde for more than twenty years, and when Joe called, saying he was looking into the death of Steven Boehm, the son of one of Andersen’s employees, Mr. Emde was all ears.

He had already been approached by two of Andersen’s employees, who had told him that certain things about the deaths of David and Steven bothered them. Elaine Herman and Ruth Brock thought they ought to talk to someone about it, and when they approached Mr. Emde, he advised them to talk to the police. Elaine was Ellen’s immediate supervisor, and Ruth was Elaine’s superior.

Joe told his old friend about the case. Starting with the details that he had collected about Steven’s death in September, he related how the boy had been feeling ill on a Monday morning, and so Ellen had elected to stay home with him. As Joe continued, telling about how Ellen traipsed around the South Side with her son in tow, seeing her mother, then buying something from the pharmacy, and stopping at a Taco Bell, Mr. Emde was getting a sinking feeling. By the time Joe finished the brief outline of events, culminating with Steven watching Sesame Street shortly before noon, and then suddenly no longer breathing, Mr. Emde interrupted.

What Elaine and Ruth had told him had definitely stuck in his mind, because it was so vivid and unusual. They had said that Ellen called first thing in the morning to say: “The same thing that happened to David is happening to Steven.”

Mr. Emde further related that Ellen told Elaine that she was calling from a pay phone, because she was already on the way to the hospital.

Fireworks were going off in Joe’s head as Mr. Emde continued to describe how Ellen had called back, sometime before noon, to tell Elaine that the doctors at the hospital had found nothing wrong with Steven, and had sent him home. But, as Ellen had explained to Elaine, on the way home Steven stopped breathing again, and was turning blue. So now, she said, she was rushing back to the hospital.

This was the jackpot. This version of events was radically different from the one Ellen was telling, and Joe knew just what to do about it. With Mr. Emde’s permission, he would interview Elaine Herman and Ruth Brock immediately, tomorrow if possible. He also would want to talk with anyone else who worked with Ellen.

They agreed to set up the interview for the next day, and Mr. Emde would arrange to have the Andersen employees come to his office at the law offices of Armstrong, Teasdale, Kramer, Vaugh and Schlafly, which was located at No. 1 Metropolitan Square in the heart of downtown.

After he hung up, Joe felt a rush of excitement. Up to now, the team had two bodies but no physical cause of death. They had the insurance motive, which ached to be exploited for proof of premeditation, but in the end, without any proof of homicide, the cases were little more than circumstantial. They had amassed a collection of Ellen’s tall tales about all the men in her life, but there was no law against that. If tomorrow’s interviews bore out as he expected, though, Ellen would be caught in a calculated lie. She would have called up her office, stating that Steven was in a life-threatening condition—in fact, turning blue for lack of oxygen—roughly four hours before it actually happened. If that isn’t premeditative, what is? he thought to himself.

When the team divvied up the interview assignments, it was decided that Detectives Waggoner and Wiber would handle Jeffrey Stark, whom Mr. Emde had identified for Joe as the man who had been described only as “Jeff from work.” Mr. Stark was a staff consultant who had been at a dinner party given by one of the managers. They would also talk to Elaine Herman. Ruth Brock, Renee Chastain, and Lisa Schultz, who all worked in Ellen’s department, would be interviewed by Detectives Cordia and Jones. Ms. Chastain and Ms. Schultz were secretaries who had shared proximity with Ellen. Sometimes Ellen would fill in for Lisa, when she was on vacation.

The first order of business for Detectives Waggoner and Wiber was to give Mr. Stark a glimpse of the nature of the investigation, and to advise him that his name had been romantically linked with Ellen Boehm. He was not completely surprised by this, but assured the two that he knew Ellen only to say hi to her, and that he had attended a couple of social occasions when she was present. One was at his boss’s home. They certainly were not together at this event, but he realized, now that he was looking back on it, that he and Ellen may have been the only two single people at the party.

He said he had heard office rumors that Ellen was interested in him, but he said the feeling was not mutual. He also said Ellen had once suggested that the two of them have a drink together, but it never happened.

“Have you ever received any obscene phone calls?”

“Yes,” he said. “Three or four times.”

Mr. Stark explained that only three months ago a woman had started to call him, three or four times at work and once at home. He said the caller used very graphic language in describing what she would like to do with him. She also said she had seen him in person. After that, the calls stopped until December, which was only last month. Then the same woman called, saying she was at the Tropicana Bowl. This time the caller was considerably more tame with her language, and stated that she only called because she wanted to know how he was doing. This call, he said, was received at his home, and this further puzzled him because he didn’t know how anyone could have gotten his home phone number.

Elaine Herman was next. What she had to say riveted the attention of Detectives Waggoner and Wiber. Ms. Herman, a consulting administrative senior, started off by saying that she was usually one of the first people in the office. On the day of Steven’s death, she said, she was there when Ellen called in, sometime between 8:15 and 8:45 A.M. Ellen had blurted out the statement: “The same thing that happened to David is happening to Steven.” Ms. Herman continued to explain that Ellen had said she was on her way to the hospital, and that she asked Ellen to keep her posted. Later in the morning, sometime between 11:30 and noon, Ms. Herman said she received a second call from Ellen, who said they had gone and come from the hospital, but were now returning because Steven had stopped breathing again. Again, Ellen was asked to stay in touch with any news. Then, between two and three that afternoon, Ellen called the third time to report that Steven was on life support, and that the doctors were talking about taking him off the equipment.

Ms. Herman had kept her own superior, Ms. Brock, informed of the progress of events, and the two of them, they told the detectives, then went to the hospital later that afternoon to visit Ellen and Steven. They stayed a couple of hours and then returned to the Andersen offices.

Ms. Herman remembered the day Ellen’s younger son died, when Ellen called up to say, “I’ve lost David.” She said at first she thought Ellen meant that David was missing, but then Ellen made it clear that the boy had died.

She also told the detectives that Ellen had been talking recently about the investigation, and had mentioned that she had taken a polygraph test, even saying that the police thought that she had killed Steven. Among other topics she mentioned the police asking about, Ellen emphasized that she had bought a $50,000 policy from Jim Reed’s father, and, almost in passing, alluded to the purchase of a couple more policies, all of which, Ellen let it be known, totaled about $94,000. As if to justify the unexplained sudden death that ensued, Ellen had said to Ms. Herman: “These things happen all the time. You buy mortgage insurance on your house. Someone dies and it’s paid for.”

Ruth Brock, an administrative manager, remembered well the day of September 25, 1989. She had been at her desk when Ms. Herman came in, shaken by what Ellen had just told her: that Ellen had been getting dressed for work when her son, Steven, stopped breathing. Ms. Brock’s recollection tracked identically with Ms. Herman’s. In particular, both women were curious that Ellen was dressed much too casually to have been preparing to come to work, as she had said on the phone. Then Ms. Brock recalled her astonishment at learning from Ellen’s mother, who was at the hospital, that Ellen had driven to a cemetery that morning so that Steven could visit his little brother’s grave.

Ms. Brock went on to tell Jones and Cordia that she also had been disturbed recently by the fact that Ellen was openly discussing the investigation into the boys’ deaths, even as she maintained a business-as-usual attitude at work.

Renee Chastain, a secretary who worked with Ellen and was several years her junior, told the detectives that she noticed the excessive number of personal phone calls Ellen made. Ms. Chastain also said she observed that when Ellen was making a clearly personal call, she would lower her voice so no one else could hear the conversation. Once, when she filled in for another employee who was on vacation, she overheard Ellen on the phone, and she could tell that Ellen was talking about insurance policies for her children. Ms. Chastain’s view of Ellen was typical. To her, Ellen seemed like a nice person who did her work. There were times, she said, when Ellen did seem a little off, like the time she had commented about Paula Sims killing the children for the insurance.

Detectives Jones and Cordia wanted to verify when it was that Ellen had filled in for Lisa Schultz, which would pinpoint the time of Ellen’s discussion about insurance policies. It was the third week of August 1989, they were told. Bingo!

Ms. Schultz gave pretty much the same portrait of Ellen that everyone else had. They learned that Ellen’s lunch hour was typically between 11:30 and 12:30, and that Ellen usually ate alone. Ms. Schultz said she had met all of Ellen’s children during the last two and a half years during work-related activities, but that Ellen never discussed the death of David and Steven with her. One thing that impressed Ms. Schultz as “weird” was Ellen’s ability to return to the job after such profound tragedy had occurred in her life. Ms. Schultz had attended both funerals, and it appeared to her that Ellen was upset on those occasions, but when Ellen was back at her desk, it was as if nothing had ever happened.

She also told the detectives that in the last few months, Ellen was beginning to get pushy about the collection that had been taken up at the office for Steven. She had asked about it several times, and all Ms. Schultz could say was that her supervisor was holding the money, and that she thought it was going to go into a fund for Stacy’s education.

Oddly enough, on the same day that Detectives Wiber, Waggoner, Jones, and Cordia had convened Ellen’s coworkers in the gleaming skyscraper in downtown St. Louis, the news was dominated by the start of the Paula Sims trial in Peoria, Illinois, some 160 miles to the east. And that night, when the team was debriefed back in the offices of the Homicide section, Joe was electrified by the report from Jones and Cordia that Ellen had discussed the Sims case at work. Was this a copycat killing? Had Ellen actually gotten the idea from Paula Sims?