by John Coston
The two detectives then asked Mrs. Booker to show them her daughter’s hair dryer, and they were directed to Ellen’s bedroom. There, resting on the floor in the northeast corner of the room, was a white Conair Pro Style 1200 hair dryer. The cord, they noted, was approximately six feet in length, easily sufficient to reach around the doorway from the hallway outlet and into the tub.
Ellen’s mother was becoming nervous about all of this, and started blurting out information. First, she told the detectives that she was certain that her daughter had not dated anyone.
“If she had,” Catherine said, “she would have told me.”
Then Catherine wanted to drive home more points about the hair dryer episode, and she stated that she had learned about it from Ellen, who had told her the morning after it happened.
Detectives Jones and Cordia had first interviewed Mrs. Booker at length only six days before. At that time, Mrs. Booker had said that Ellen had told her about the incident about two weeks before Steven died. Detective Cordia also had now interviewed Caroline Fenton, the custodian, who had witnessed Mrs. Booker’s surprise in learning of the event from Pauline Sumokowski.
They thanked Ellen’s mother for showing them around, and they left with what they had come for in the first place: some corroboration of Stacy’s statement that her mother’s white hair dryer had been used, and that it could have been plugged into a wall outlet outside the bathroom.
That same afternoon, Detectives Waggoner and Wiber drove to Don Brown Buick/Chevrolet on South Kingshighway to run down the lead that surfaced when Deanne Bond mentioned that Ellen had experienced problems there.
Michael Yarborough, the service manager, was not pleased when he was told that two detectives wanted to question him about Ellen Boehm. He had already had enough of this particular customer, and Waggoner and Wiber learned why.
They said they just wanted to ask him some questions, because they were conducting a background investigation of Ellen Boehm, and had been told that Ellen had dated him and another service manager, named Gregory Allen. Mr. Yarborough told them that he knew Ellen as a customer of the dealership. He said that she was always cheerful and pleasant to deal with, but she had pestered him several times to go have drinks with her. He explained that he had repeatedly refused, and that Ellen was aggressive about asking again and again, though she was always pleasant about it.
He couldn’t have been more emphatic when he said he had never seen Ellen socially. The detectives understood what he was saying. They had heard it before. When they wanted to talk to Mr. Allen, they were told that he was no longer employed at the dealership.
Mr. Yarborough said that over the time that Ellen had been a customer, he had observed some strange behavior on her part. Once, he said, Ellen had called from Florida just to make an appointment to have an oil change. At the time, he considered it amusing, and it sort of fit with Ellen’s unpredictable style. But if Ellen were somehow trying to impress him by making a long-distance call just to schedule routine maintenance on her car, it didn’t work. If she thought he would be impressed because she was calling from Disney World, she couldn’t have been more wrong.
What was more worrisome, he said, was that during the time when Ellen had been pushing to get him to go out for a drink, he and Mr. Allen received obscene phone calls from a woman. The caller identified herself only as “Fuzzy Bunny.” Everyone in the shop thought it was either Ellen or a friend of hers, because in the calls reference was made to Ellen.
It was cloddish humor, if not sick, but he remembered receiving a phone call from Ellen on one occasion when she was all business, making some appointment for car service. Then, a day or two later, she called and told him that when she had called him last, her son had died—on the very day that she was making casual conversation about her car. Ellen then proceeded to talk about the funeral arrangements.
Mr. Yarborough was nonplussed. He was a busy man, but he would not be rude to a customer, so he listened. It then became even stranger, because soon thereafter “Fuzzy Bunny” called more or less to say that she had heard that someone they knew—“they” being the Don Brown employees—had lost a child.
Before they thanked him and left, Mr. Yarborough again emphasized that he had never seen Ellen socially, or had drinks with her. The detectives understood. They were beginning to know more and more—or less and less—about Ellen.
The next day, when they talked to Gregory Allen, they met another victim of Ellen’s fabrications. Mr. Allen, too, had declined Ellen’s advances and her invitations to have a drink after work. On several occasions, she had asked him to meet her at the Tropicana Bowl, but he never went. Once, when he was eating by himself at a Shoney’s Restaurant, Ellen just walked in. At the time he considered it a coincidence, though it did cross his mind that maybe it wasn’t, considering how contrived Ellen had been with the “Fuzzy Bunny” phone calling.
He and Michael were sure it was Ellen as soon as the mention was made of the child who died, but they went so far as to prove it to themselves by catching her in the act. The next time “Fuzzy Bunny” called, Michael, who had Ellen’s number at Andersen on file, called her at the office. As soon as Ellen answered, “Fuzzy Bunny” put Gregory on hold. After Michael had discussed whatever trumped-up reason he had to call her and had hung up, “Fuzzy Bunny” immediately returned to the other line with Gregory.
The last thing Mr. Allen had to say to the detectives added to the puzzle. It was alternately bizarre and gross. Once, when he was working on Ellen’s Cavalier, he noticed something on the floor in the backseat. It was a canister of some kind, and curiosity got the better of him as he peered in to read the label. To his disgust, what Ellen had left out in plain view was a can of anal lubricant, which carried a lurid label, BUTT GREASE.
What the hell? was all he could think.
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 ti
mes 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 intereste
d 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.