“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.