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.