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- After working the night
shift, Robert Sims returned
home and found his wife unconscious on the kitchen
floor. To his relief, their
two year old son Randy was
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asleep undisturbed in an
upstairs bedroom, but their
six-week-old daughter Heather
00:00:31
was missing. When she regained
consciousness, Paula Sims was
the only witness to a crime that
baffles investigators to this
day.
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♪ [theme music] ♪ [theme music] - Robert and Paula Sims had
recently moved into this frame
home in St. Louis suburb
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of Alton, Illinois. Neighbors
describe the Sims as a quiet
and private couple who
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spent most of their free time
with their children. - They really seemed to be
living the American dream.
That was one of the things
00:01:26
that was so intriguing about
the story, to have this kind
of violence, this kind of
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tragedy visited on such
an all American couple. That was what really turned
the story for us at the
beginning.
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- When police were called to
the Sims home on April 19,
1989, they heard details of an
unusual crime.
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Paula said she was taking
out the trash just after 10 pm when a masked man armed with a
gun forced her back inside the
house.
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- What are you doing to me?
Will you let go of me? - And knocked her unconscious
with a blow to the back of her
head.
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That was the last thing she
remembered before her husband
found her on the floor 45 minutes later.
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Their infant daughter Heather
was missing, but the area
around the bassinet was undisturbed.
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Police could find no foreign
finger prints or foot prints and no valuables were missing.
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- We stayed there seem it
seemed like forever. I know we
were there for a good half day. We looked
everywhere. Every conceivable
place where that child might
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have been, we looked. - Assuming the worse, police
also searched the bottom of
the Mississippi River
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near the Sims home. - We had asked Mr. and Mrs.
Sims if they had any enemies
that, for whatever reason,
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might want to steal their baby
in order to punish them in
some way and they were pretty adamant that
didn't have anybody that they
would suspect
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of doing that. - A neighbor reported seeing a
suspicious character walking
near the Sims' home.
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Another informant saw an
individual burying something
that night behind a nearby factory.
All of the leads were dead
ends.
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Police had little to go on and
no motive. - Seldom does anybody take a
baby just to be taking it.
There's usually a ransom
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demand which we had none. - We found no evidence that
there was any extramarital
problem,
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any involvement of a boyfriend
who might suspect he's the
real father of the child and he wanted his
child. We couldn't find
anything that would explain
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why someone would target
the Sims' for a kidnapping. - Four days later, Charles
Saunders was fishing on the
Missouri side
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of the Mississippi River. Around noon, as Saunders was
about to leave, he stopped to
empty some trash into
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a barrel. Inside, he noticed a large
black garbage bag. Because of
its size, it looked
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suspicious. Inside, he
discovered the well preserved
remains of a dead baby girl.
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Homicide investigators
converged on the parking lot
where the body of a baby girl
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was found in a garbage can. - Lying on her back, face up,
her head tilted to on side.
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She was still rather pink,
appeared that if you look at
her, you'd think at first, she was
asleep but she was in fact
dead.
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- Hand and foot prints from
the dead baby were compared to
the prints of Heather
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Sims taken at the hospital
just after she was born. The
body was positively identified as Heather Lee
Sims. Medical examiner Dr.
Mary Case performed the
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autopsy. One of the first
things she noticed, three
small vertical cuts on the inside of the baby's lip.
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- Obviously, this is not, for
example, a sudden infant death
which is a natural death. It's not a death by
accident. It's not a death by
suicide so it's a homicidal
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death and when I begin the
examination, there is no gun
shot wound, there's no stab wound,
there's no battering,
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and the inner lip showed
changes that I associated with
someone placing their hand over the
nose and mouth and causing
suffocation.
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- When death occurs, blood
settles in parts of the body
closest to the ground. This is called post mortem
lividity and is usually dark
red or purple in color.
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Heather's face showed signs of
lividity but it was cherry red
in color. This told Dr. Case that the
body had been placed in a
freezer during the time
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lividity occurs, eight to
twelve hours after death, and
there was another clue the body had been frozen.
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- The external appearance was
that there was no
decomposition when I looked internally. Then I even had to
look microscopically at those
internal organs
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to see this, but there was
early decomposition beginning
but it was a little bit more advance than
externally.
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- Dr. Case concluded that
Heather Sims had been
suffocated, placed in a freezer face
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down, then placed in the trash
bin face up either the night
before or the morning
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that the body was discovered.
Assistant State's Attorney Don
Weber was keeping a
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close eye on this case. There
was no evidence linking Paula
or Robert Sims to the crime but Weber decided to
take a closer look at their
story. Something
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Robert Sims told the FBI
disturbed him. - He made the statement to the
FBI that during the time that
Heather was reported
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missing and the time she was
found that they have had
longest and longest lasting
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and best sex that they'd ever
had. And that is such a
startling statement to me.
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- I couldn't and I don't
believe the other people
involved in the case could really
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think that would be a normal
response after your baby was
kidnapped. - And when authorities looked
into the couples' past, they
found an alarming
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coincidence. At Heather Sims' funeral,
Robert and Paula Sims looked
every bit
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the grieving parents to the
outside world. But a background check
revealed that the Sims had
experienced
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another kidnapping. Three years earlier, while
living in another town, the
Sims' first daughter,
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Loralei, had also been
kidnapped. It was a same
scenario. Robert was at work and Paula said a
masked intruder confronted her
in the house and
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kidnapped her baby. A few
weeks later, the infant's
skeletal remains were found
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scattered in a field behind
the Sims' home. Although
authorities had their suspicions at the time, they
could find no evidence linking
Robert or Paula Sims to
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Lorelei's murder. - The remains appeared to have
been moved by some type of
animal. The quality of
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the remains were of such that
the investigation could not be put together
murder.
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The Sims' themselves became
even stronger suspects after
that and in my opinion is that they got away
with murder.
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- But in the case of Heather's
abduction, there was something
about Paula's head
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injury that didn't sound right
to prosecutor Dan Weber. So
Weber paid a visit to the Medical Examiner,
Dr. Mary Case who had a unique
background. She was
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not only the pathologist who
performed Heather Sims'
autopsy, she was also a
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board certified neuro
pathologist, an expert in the
study of the brain and nervous system.
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- Paula says that she saw the
guy outside, that the guy made
her come inside. That he
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gave her instructions inside.
That once she was inside, he
hit her and she gestured, Paula gestured with
a karate chop on the back of
the neck and that
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knocked her out and she was
out for about 45 minutes. And that she remembered
getting hit.
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And I said, is that possible
and I remember Mary Case
thought about it very carefully and she sort of
leaned back in her chair and
she said,
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now that's impossible. - When an individual is hit
hard enough to cause
unconsciousness, the soft brain
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tissue collides with the hard
inner surface of the cranium, creating a brain injury.
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This disrupts the electrical
activity in the outer areas of
the brain where memories are stored. And it's
this disruption which prevents
memory from
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forming, not only of the
traumatic event but for
several minutes preceding the traumatic event. This explains
why individuals knocked
unconscious
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in an automobile accident, for
example, remember very little
about the accident or the events leading up to
the accident.
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When police learned about this
neurologic inconsistency, they looked for some connection
between Paula Sims and the
location where the body was
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discovered. Police found some
three dimensional shoe
impression in the dirt a few feet away from the trash
bin. They appeared to be from
an athletic shoe, but
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it did not match any of the
shoes found in the Sims home.
Next, police sent the black
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garbage bag which contained
Heather's body to the FBI
laboratory in Washington, DC.
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Forensic examiner David
Actinburger had little to work
with since there were no finger prints, hairs
or fibers found on the bag.
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- The baby was found in a
black garbage bag. The bag
itself was made by Polytech
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Corporation out of
Minneapolis. K-Mart was the
retailer of the bags and they were
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sold under the brand name of
Kurbside. - However, more than one
million of these Kurbside
garbage bags were made for
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K-Mart each and everyday. - Actinburger compared the
edges of the bag containing
Heather Sims body to the
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first unused garbage bag from
the Sims' kitchen. But the
stretching that occurs
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when bags are pulled from the
roll made matching the ends
impossible. But the bag
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Heather Sims was in did have a
signature characteristic.
Trash bags are made from
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large sheets of melted
plastic. A blade makes the
perforations so that the bags can be ripped from the end of
the roll. At the same time, a
heat seal melts
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the bottom of the bags shut. - The heat seal, as we found
out from the manufacturer, as
the plastic traveled
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beneath and through the heat
seal, more debris collected on
that heat seal. The more debris that collected on
there, the more unique
identifying
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characteristics that we found. We found incomplete melting
of the heat seal. - This incomplete melting
caused a small opening in the
bottom of the Heather Sims
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bag. Debris on the heat seal
also produced a small puncture
hole in the bag. When
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Actinburger analyzed the bags
found in the Sims' kitchen, he
found the same puncture
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hole in the same location. And
he also found the same small
opening in the bottom
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of the bags caused by debris
on the heat seal. The last step was to analyze
the dye lines in the garbage
bags.
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As the plastic is pulled over
the rollers in the manufacturing process, it gets
stretched, leaving lines or
stretch marks in the
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plastic called dye lines. When
the dye lines on the inside of
the Heather Sims bag were compared to the dye
lines inside the first unused
bag found in the Sims'
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kitchen, the lines matched. The tiny puncture hole, the
defect in the bottom heat seal
and the dye line
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comparison lead the FBI to
conclude that the first unused
garbage bag in the Sims'
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kitchen was made within ten
seconds of the bag Heather
Sims body was found. Police
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now had first piece of
physical evidence linking an
item in the Sims' home to where
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Heather's body was found. They
were no longer searching for a
mysterious kidnapper but a cold blooded
murderer.
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When the FBI discovered that
the Heather Sims garbage bag
came from the same roll of bags in
the Sims' kitchen, they were
now
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convinced that Paula Sims was
involved in her daughter's
disappearance. Investigators learned
that Paula and Robert Sims
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had an unusual marital
relationship, a relationship Charles
Bosworth described in his book
"Precious Victims."
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- When Paula brought the
little girls home from the
hospital, she was essentially
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ousted from the marital
bedroom. In the first case,
she and Lorelie slept in the
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basement which was where the
family room was. It was a
walkout basement. - Only after Lorelie's death
did Paula sleep upstairs again
with her husband. A
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year after Lorelie's death,
Paula gave birth to a son,
Randy. And in 1989, after
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moving to Alton, Illinois, the
Sims had another baby. This
time a daughter, Heather. In the hospital,
Paula reportedly told her
roommate that she didn't want
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another daughter, that she
and Robert preferred boys. - The evidence clearly
suggested that boys were fine,
little girls were not
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welcome. We were told
repeatedly by witnesses that
Robert adored the little boy and was just completely
uninterested in the little
girls even in the hospital
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after their births. - When Paula brought Heather
home, separate sleeping
arrangements
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started again, Paula and
Heather in the living room, Robert and 2-year-old Randy,
upstairs.
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- And one of the comments that
Paula made to one of her
friends was that these sleeping arrangements are
gonna have to stop or I'm
gonna have
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to do something about it. - Based on the garbage bag
analysis and the
inconsistencies with her head
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injury story, Paula Sims was
arrested and charged with
murder. On Saturday night, April 29th, 1989, while
Robert was working the night
shift at the paper
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plant, prosecutors believe
that Paula suffocated her
daughter Heather. She placed the body in a garbage
bag from the kitchen. She
probably wore gloves since no
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finger prints were found on
the bag. After the murder,
Paula drove across town to her
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parent's home where she placed
Heather's body in her parent's
freezer.
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Paula's parents were away that
week on vacation. Paula returned home in enough
time to feign unconsciousness
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before her husband returned
from work. The next day, when Paula's
parents heard about the
kidnapping,
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they decided to end their
vacation and return home
immediately. - I don't mean to ruin your
vacation.
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- This required a change to
her plan. Paula now had to go
back to her parent's
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home and remove Heather's body
before they returned. With
nowhere else to go,
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prosecutors believe she
brought Heather's body back
home, placing it in her own
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basement freezer. By this
time, police had concluded
their search of the Sims' home
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and had left. Three days
later, Paula needed to get rid
of the body once and for
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all. She made the two mile
drive over the Mississippi
River across the Louis and
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Clark bridge into a parking
area and left the frozen body
in a trash bin where it
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was discovered by a fisherman
a short time later. - It was very premeditated,
very well thought out, very
cold blooded,
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very systematic. - The prosecution had no
trouble showing motive. - As you walk through the
Sims' home, it was very
apparent that they had a boy
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that they were very proud of,
which would be very normal for
a couple. But if you look around the
house, there was absolutely no
indication
00:19:28
whatsoever that they even had
a daughter. There weren't any
baby pictures, there weren't any pictures at
all, on the tables or around
the walls or
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whatever to indicate
that they had a baby at all. - Paula Sims was found guilty
of murder and sentenced to
life in prison.
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- I think it is tragic event
any time in society when a
parent comes to the point
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that they are so frustrated
and for whatever reason, that
they decide to take the life of one of their
children.
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- Well, any time you got the
death of two and I might add,
very beautiful, perfect
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little girls, it's a very sad
case. When you add the element that their mother killed them,
it gets even worse.
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On the other hand, justice
prevailed. - No charges were filed
against Robert Sims,
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who denies he had anything to
do with these two crimes. - There's no doubt in my mind
the right person is in prison
right now
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for this particular crime. She did it. She murdered her
child. She was tried by a jury
of her peers
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and she is now doing life.
There is absolutely no doubt
in my mind that she did it.
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- And Robert Sims? - Not enough evidence right
now, but I haven't forgotten
Robert
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and I still have
the case file. ♪ [theme music]