Parole hearing today for Alton mom who killed babies. Here’s a look back at her trial
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Paula Sims coverage
Here’s the BND’s coverage leading up to the parole hearing for Paula Sims:
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Opening arguments began on Jan. 9, 1990, for one of the most sensational and widely covered trials in Illinois history.
Paula Sims, 30, of Alton, was accused of suffocating to death her 6-week-old daughter, Heather Sims, despite her claim that a masked gunman abducted the baby. Officials moved the trial from Edwardsville to Peoria due to intense publicity in the St. Louis region.
A jury convicted Sims of first-degree murder, concealing a homicide and obstructing justice. She ultimately admitted to killing Heather and her other daughter, 13-day-old Loralei Sims, three years earlier.
Paula Sims has been in prison for more than 30 years. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker commuted her life sentence in March, making her parole-eligible for the first time. A hearing before the Illinois Prisoner Review Board is set for Thursday in Springfield.
Sims’ attorney, Jed Stone, will argue that she committed the crimes while suffering from postpartum psychosis. That wasn’t the defense used at her trial. She claimed innocence.
Here’s a list of testimony and evidence that the prosecution and defense were allowed (or not allowed) to present, as described on Jan. 14, 1990, in the Belleville News-Democrat.
Jurors will be allowed to see or hear:
- Testimony from Paula Sims
- Testimony from FBI agents that a plastic garbage bag wrapped around Heather’s body was manufactured within minutes or seconds of bags confiscated from the family’s home. (The body was found in a trash barrel in a public park four days after Paula Sims and her husband, Robert Sims, reported her missing.)
- Evidence from Jersey County police about the disappearance and death 3 1/2 years ago of 13-day-old Loralei, a case in which Paula Sims has been charged with concealment of a homicide and obstruction of justice.
- Statements from women who were hospital roommates with Paula Sims when Heather was born on March 18, 1989. One will testify that she overheard a crying Paula Sims apologize to Robert Sims for giving birth to a girl. The other will say that Paula Sims told her about Loralei’s 1986 kidnapping, using details Paula Sims did not relate to police until six weeks after Heather’s disappearance.
- Testimony from an Alton hospital emergency room physician who treated Paula Sims the night she claimed Heather’s kidnapper struck her on the back of the neck, rendering her unconscious for 45 minutes. Although the doctor has declined to say the story is impossible, he also has stated that the minor redness of her skin was not consistent with the type of blow she described.
- The defense’s exhibit of notes between Robert and Paula Sims, expressing mutual love and happiness about Heather’s birth, and a family friend’s testimony that she saw the notes on a kitchen calendar before Heather’s disappearance.
- The same friend will testify for the prosecution that Paula Sims told her she was considering divorce, that her husband was making her and Heather sleep in the downstairs dining room because Heather’s crying at night would disturb him and their son, Randy. The woman also will say that she has seen Paula Sims smoking marijuana.
- Defense testimony from Robert Sims, who has previously invoked his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination. If he testifies for the defense, he cannot take the Fifth during the prosecution’s cross-examination.
- Testimony of an undisclosed nature from Paula Sims’ parents, Orville and Nylene Blew of Cottage Hills, who were forced to testify before the Madison County grand jury last year by a grant of immunity from prosecution. Prosecutors obtained the grant immediately after the Blews invoked the Fifth Amendment.
- Two graphic videotapes — one of Heather’s autopsy and the other of her nude, partially-frozen body being retrieved from the trash barrel in West Alton, Missouri.
- Testimony from a former co-worker of Paula Sims who has told investigators that Paula Sims said shortly after her marriage that she hoped she never had children and that she especially did not like female children.
Jurors will not be allowed to see or hear:
- The defense’s collection of various tips and leads that police discarded or did not pursue during their investigations into the disappearances of Heather and Loralei. Circuit Judge Andy Matoesian’s barring of this evidence was one of the most serious blows suffered by Paula Sims’ defense during pretrial hearings.
- Several items confiscated from the Sims home — including a book called “The Stash Book” with suggestions on how to conceal things, including drugs and bodies.
- Sexually-explicit books and photographs confiscated by police from Robert Sims’ locker at Jefferson Smurfit Co. in Alton, where he worked.
- Testimony that Robert Sims resigned from a job in 1976 after he was accused of making obscene phone calls and mailing obscene and threatening pictures to a female supervisor.
- Video re-enactments by Madison County authorities of Paula Sims’ accounts of the kidnappings of Heather and Loralei. Prosecutors said they made the videos in hopes of demonstrating to the jury that the details Paula Sims described were not logistically possible.
- Testimony from Alton Chief of Detectives Rick McCain that Robert Sims told investigators he did not believe his wife’s accounts of the two babies’ kidnappings.
- An FBI agent’s testimony that Robert Sims said he and his wife had better and longer sex after Heather’s disappearance.
- Blood tests that revealed marijuana traces in Paula Sims’ blood hours after she reported the gunman had kidnapped Heather.
This story was originally published October 28, 2021 at 5:00 AM.