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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
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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
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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 the grieving parents to the
outside world.
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But a background check revealed
that the Sims had experienced another kidnapping.
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Three years earlier, while
living in another town, the
Sims' first daughter, Loralei, had also been
kidnapped. It was a same
scenario. Robert
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was at work and Paula said a
masked intruder confronted her
in the house and 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 board certified neuro
pathologist, an expert in the
study of the brain
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and nervous system. - 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 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. Paula's parents were away that
week on vacation.
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Paula returned home in enough
time to feign unconsciousness before her husband returned from
work.
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The next day, when Paula's
parents heard about the
kidnapping, they decided to end their
vacation and return home
immediately.
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- I don't mean to ruin your
vacation. - 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, 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
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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] ♪