Our Best Bet

“I think it was just all the frustrations that I had just built up inside of me. Even though I loved him (David) dearly, and I know what I did was wrong, I just did it.”

—Ellen Boehm

Ellen Boehm’s case was exactly the kind of diabolic puzzle that the special agents at the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit relish. The unit, which is located at the FBI Academy, assists local law enforcement agencies with its expertise in solving difficult or unusual crimes, applying a methodology that emphasizes the behavior of the victim and the evidence suggested by the crime scene itself, which is treated as a potentially rich forensic resource. By deduction, the victim or the crime scene can reveal valuable information about the killer. Sometimes it’s a matter of what isn’t there as much as what is.

As a result of helping to solve thousands of cases, the agents have become quite successful at finding meaningful correlation between crime scenes and criminals, and the unit has a track record to prove it. While it is difficult to reduce violent human behavior—especially when it is unlimited to geography or social strata—to a science, the agents have identified some fundamental facts about killers. For example, they know from serial-killer cases that after someone has killed once, there is some probability that they will attempt it again. The science of these so-called “mind-hunters” mixes with art, too, because they know from experience that a seasoned investigator’s pure hunch about something often will prove more meaningful than all the forensic psychology they could possibly throw at a case. Still, with all the murder and mayhem they study, patterns do emerge. For example, they know that some serial killers go through a sort of graduation phase, in which it appears they heighten the personal challenge once they’ve tired of a tried-and-true M.O. As the challenge grows, so does the risk. With more risk, there might be a bigger reward, which to the killing mind is the rush of power and control.

When Agent Wright and his associate, Agent Steven Etter, arrived in St. Louis, they were a welcome sight. For Agent Wright, the feeling was mutual. He considered Sergeant Joe Burgoon one of the best homicide detectives he had ever known.

Lieutenant Colonel Hackett, Captain Bauman, and all the members of the priority team, along with Assistant Circuit Attorney Shirley Loepker, were present as the agents were presented with the mass of circumstantial evidence in the Boehm case. All Joe hoped for was a sign that he was on the right track, that Ellen Boehm was without a question a viable suspect in the deaths of her two sons. Of course, given that nod, he was looking for a green light to pursue the investigation to its end.

Agent Wright didn’t take long to draw a conclusion. The victim in this case was insured for almost $100,000, and Ellen needed money. Plus, she fit the profile in other ways, he said. She had fantasies of living life in the fast lane. It was not unusual for someone like Ellen, who was overweight and unattractive, to dream of a better life. What was unusual, he said, was the degree to which she was willing to pursue means to achieve that dream.

Agent Wright said that clearly Ellen had to find a way to afford the life she wanted. So she had to make herself attractive to those people. Money was always a draw, wasn’t it? He said she was like a lot of people he had seen, who had a desire for something but no practical way to obtain it. She saw a short-term goal and threw caution to the wind to achieve it. She didn’t really consider the consequences of her acts.

The hallmark of these kinds of people, he said, was: “Live for today. Spend, spend, spend.”

Agent Wright said it didn’t matter to Ellen that she had a daughter who might need a college education. “Whenever she gets some money, she will spend it on a new stereo or a new car, whatever she wants at the time.

“Being the dreamer that she was, even the high-falutin dream of making it with professional wrestlers, the kids were an impediment. They were millstones around her neck. She just wanted to make a lot of money and get rid of those kids,” he said.

“I knew that there was something wrong,” Joe said, not meaning to sound so obvious, but hoping to keep Wright’s stream of analysis flowing.

“If she did this one,” Agent Wright said, referring to Steven’s death, “then our best bet is she did the first one, too.

“In my opinion, Ellen is a full-blown psychopath who saw killing her children as a way of making money.”

The circumstantial evidence was convincing enough. A substantial amount of material suggested Ellen was also, in her own right, a victim of sorts. She had confided in Bobbie Brown, a lover, that her father had tried to sexually abuse her. Her father had also been an alcoholic. He had abandoned Ellen—and her mother—when Ellen was still a teenager. Then her own husband, and the father of her three children, skipped out on all of them.

Clinical studies show correlations between such traumatic experiences and eating disorders, notably those that lead to obesity. Moreover, compulsive eating disorders lead to many other manifestations, such as overindulgence in fantasy, a need to control, and a flair for the dramatic move.

Fantasy, controlling behavior, and histrionics may serve to transport the victim beyond the actual circumstances of their real life, but only temporarily. Whatever unresolved issues remain at the psychological level create a constant internal tension that struggles for resolution. For example, at times Ellen’s behavior with her friends showed that she was unsure whether to reveal her true self, or maintain the cover that shielded her from the world. When she finally admitted many of her lies to Deanne, Ellen was testing the waters of absolution, trusting that it was okay to be revealed. But in other important ways, Ellen kept her secrets for as long as possible—such as waiting until the last moment to tell Deanne about her new car and even then misleading her about paying for it with installments instead of with a lump sum.

Hindsight would suggest that openly discussing the Paula Sims case with her coworkers, and linking it with an insurance murder plot, was a foolish move. Perhaps because she knew that Deanne knew her so well, Ellen never mentioned the Sims case to her.

The strange remark made to Susan Emily, when she asked her to make sure Paul didn’t get custody of Stacy if she were ever to be locked up for anything, was a partial disclosure of Ellen’s painful internal struggle. It showed how out of control she viewed her own life to be. The fact that she revealed anything about a scenario like this could also be interpreted as a cry for help.

If as a child she had been unable to control her situation, it would not be surprising that as an adult, Ellen would attempt to relive those vivid and compelling circumstances that she would view as the source of the ugly memories. Especially with her compulsive eating, Ellen may have been restaging—through a constant reenactment—all the pain and suffering of her childhood, when she was denied normalcy and a sense of self-worth. This time, though, she would be in control of the experience and would direct a different outcome.

Not only would she be ultimately in control, she would also see herself as immune from any harm as a consequence of her behavior now. In this kind of reenactment, which has been documented in cases where women have experienced childhood abuse and grow up struggling with obesity, one can detect a yearning for a kind of catharsis that resolves the internal struggle, even though it never does.

This kind of compulsion for control is evident among serial killers, too, and can constitute the essence, if not the thrill of the kill.

Agent Wright didn’t delve much into Ellen’s background, or consider any underlying reasons for her obese condition when he made his official assessment. The agents at the Behavioral Science Unit dwell more on external behavior, which, after all, can be observed as well as categorized. Whether Ellen may have been so full of despair and pain that she would be compelled to “restage” some childhood trauma, so that she could this time “control” it—by putting that child to sleep, forever—did not enter the equation when the FBI drew its conclusion about her personality.

Even though he told Joe that he had never heard of a case like this, Agent Wright could predict how Ellen would behave, given a defined scenario for her arrest. He told Joe exactly how to deal with her when it came time to bring her in.

He suggested that they arrange a room with file cabinets and desks, and post some charts that laid out her financial records. He also said it would be best to make an arrest when she got off work on a Friday night.

The officers shouldn’t ask any questions once they have her in the room. They should just start by telling Ellen the facts.

Joe enlisted the help of Nell Redman, from the Laboratory division, and William Swyers, from the Technical Arts Section, and briefed them on the nature of the investigation. He told them he wanted them to prepare charts that would illustrate the suspect’s financial condition. These charts, he said, would be needed by the time of the arrest, when they would be posted in a squad-room setting.

Subpoenas were served to obtain access to Ellen’s checking and savings accounts at South Side National Bank. Mrs. Redman and Mr. Swyers also worked up Ellen’s insurance records, and by the time they were done, they had prepared no fewer than eighteen placard-sized illustrations. They would be ready when Joe needed them. He didn’t know how long that would be, but it would be a very long time, indeed.