Update on a Grim Tale
(“Similar Circumstances,” Forensic Files)
Note: Updated with news from 2021
This week’s post tells the story of a woman who reversed a common Forensic Files equation. Usually, it’s one spouse killing another to ensure access to the children.
Paula Sims murdered her kids to — allegedly — gain access to her spouse.
Unusual folks. Actually, she killed only her daughters, allowing her son to live, because her husband wanted male children exclusively, or so she believed.
For this week, I looked for biographical information that might hold clues as to why life at the Sims household went so horribly wrong.
And because prisoners guilty of harming children tend to get the harshest treatment from other inmates, I also checked into how Paula, who’s serving a life sentence, is faring in captivity.
Athletic kid. So let’s get started on the recap of “Similar Circumstances” along with extra information from internet research:
Paula Marie Blew came into the world on May 29, 1959, the youngest of three children born to a middle-class Missouri couple, Nylene and Orville Blew. Orville worked as an operator for Amoco Pipeline, according to the Alton Telegraph.
Growing up, Paula acquired a reputation first as a tomboy and later as a partyer, according to The Encyclopedia of Kidnappings by Michael Newton.
Pain and loss. Overall, Paula had an unremarkable youth until tragedy struck.
Her brother Randy, with whom she was close, died in an auto accident. Paula sustained facial lacerations in the wreck.
Paula’s other brother, Dennis, wasn’t hurt in the crash, but he already lived with disabilities resulting from childhood seizures.
Husband’s checkered job history. It’s not clear what Paula’s educational background was, but media sources list her occupation as supermarket worker or cashier.
As for Robert Sims, he graduated from Alton High School, where he played the tuba in the marching band.
In adulthood, he hit some sour notes, however. Robert served in the Navy but was declined when he sought to reenlist. He worked as a loan collector but left the job amid allegations of misbehavior.
Earlier marriage. His relationship status wasn’t wonderful either. Robert’s first wife divorced him on charges of “extreme and repeated mental cruelty,” according to the Encyclopedia of Kidnappings.
He also had a tiny bit of legal trouble, having paid $115 to settle a shoplifting charge in 1979, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
But he got his act together soon after.
Robert found steady work at the Alton Box Board Co., a paper products manufacturer that employed many locals in Alton, Illinois, a St. Louis suburb.
Paula and Robert got married in 1981 and later settled into a picturesque wood-framed house in Alton. Robert was a few years older than Paula, so perhaps she was looking to replace her deceased big brother.
Or maybe she hoped to compensate for her brother’s loss by creating a household full of male children.
Terrifying story. On April 29, 1989, Robert Sims came home after a late shift and found Paula unconscious on the floor and their 6-week-old daughter missing from her crib. The couple’s 2-year-old son, Randall, known as Randy, was fine.
Paula, a slender 29-year-old Amelia Earhart lookalike, said that a masked intruder knocked her out and took her baby daughter, Heather Lee.
During the ensuing effort to find Heather, reporters camped out at the Sims house constantly. The FBI, state law officers, and trained dogs were brought in to help local police with the frantic search.
No sign of an invader. It came to a halt four days later, when a fisherman found the baby’s body in a trash barrel.
Medical examiner Mary Case determined someone had suffocated Heather.
Meanwhile, police couldn’t find any forensic evidence of a stranger at either crime scene.
He said what? Soon, investigators started realizing something was awry inside the Sims household and it didn’t have anything to do with an anonymous intruder.
For one, Robert volunteered that he and Paula had been having great sex since the baby’s disappearance.
Yikes.
It got more bizarre. Police found out that the Simses’ first baby, a girl named Lorelei Marie, had been kidnapped in 1986. Paula had given a similar story about an unknown home invader. Lorelei’s remains turned up, but no one was ever charged.
In the bag. After Heather disappeared, investigators noticed the Simses had pictures of their son displayed in the house, but none of her.
Detectives got a break when an FBI lab matched the plastic bag used to discard Heather’s body to one found in the Sims household.
Then, it came out that Robert Sims had banned Paula from the bedroom after she gave birth to Lorelei, her first child. She had to sleep in a separate room downstairs with the baby.
Contradictory evidence. After Paula brought home her infant son, her husband allowed her back on his mattress again — but he banished her a second time, after she had Heather.
Robert would later explain that he needed his rest because of his work schedule — that’s why he liked to sleep alone.
Prosecutors alleged that Paula murdered Heather while Robert was at work, then disposed of the body in the trash barrel.
At the trial, which took place in the same Peoria court house where nurse killer Richard Speck was convicted in 1967, Paula testified that she loved having daughters and had saved her old Barbie clothes for them. Other witnesses said the Simses were “thrilled” and “walking on air” over Lorelei’s birth.
Orville Blew testified that the babies’ deaths devastated his daughter.
Husband stands by her. During the legal proceedings, which were so packed with spectators that the court had to bring in extra chairs and turn away some people, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Paula appeared frail, sickly, and weak and “walked into the courtroom with her arms hanging limply at her sides” every morning, and rarely spoke to her defense lawyer during the proceedings.
Robert Sims testified that Paula was a good mother and he didn’t believe she was involved in the homicides. He also said that the FBI had lied in an attempt to make him turn against his wife.
But a maternity ward roommate testified that she overheard Paula making a “tearful apology on the telephone to her husband for having a daughter,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
Coming clean. Nurses present around the births of all three Sims babies at Alton Memorial Hospital said that Robert ignored the girls but was ecstatic over Randy.
Robert Sims admitted that the couple had hoped to have a boy first, but said that he was happy about the girls just the same.
When prosecutor Don W. Weber grilled Robert Sims over his remark about the couple’s sex life, Robert explained that it was a stress reliever and a comfort to his wife, adding, “What are we supposed to do 24 hours day?”
On Jan. 30, 1990, a jury found Paula guilty of murder.
After receiving a sentence of life in prison without parole, she admitted to killing both her daughters.
Court of public opinion. Amid the requisite flood of outrage at a mother who would murder her own children, there was a bit of sympathy in the community.
“We ignore heart-breaking problems,” read a St. Louis Post-Dispatch letter from Margaret B. Phillips of University City. “Then, when a tragedy happens, we rush to assign blame.”
Paula’s defense lawyer Donald E. Groshong vowed to fight to overturn the conviction.
Although Robert Sims eventually divorced Paula and remarried, the couple never turned against each other in legal proceedings (another deviation from the Forensic Files norm).
Psychiatric factors. Robert Sims later said he believed Paula had killed both infants by accident.
In a 2006 interview with St. Louis TV station KSDK, Paula refused to talk about her former husband. She blamed the murders on postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis and said that she loved and missed both her daughters.
According to a segment on a Deadly Women episode, Paula Sims fed her postpartum depression with marijuana and alcohol, which made her problems worse.
Male mystery remains. Many online commenters expressed frustration that Robert Sims was never charged in connection with the murders, and an officer who appeared on Forensic Files hinted that Robert remained under investigation.
It’s still not clear why Robert didn’t want daughters — or whether that contention was true in the first place.
The state gave Robert custody of Randy, who had been placed in a foster home during the trial. It was a controversial decision, but they went on to lead a pleasant life together — until another horrible tragedy.
More loss. In 2015, an intoxicated Volvo driver clipped Robert Sims’ Jeep and sent it flying off an Interstate 55 overpass. Robert, 63, and Randy, 27, were ejected from the vehicle, and they both died.
A local office holder expressed sympathy for Paula, as the Belleville News-Democrat reported:
“The whole history is sad to me. It’s very sad when people die tragically. It’s very disturbing,” said State Sen. Bill Haine, who was Madison County state’s attorney when Sims was prosecuted. “My heart goes out to Paula. The poor woman is still in jail and now will grieve the loss of her only child.”
Blood money refused. Around the same time, a supporter started a Change.org petition asking Gov. Bruce Rauner to free Paula Sims based on a diagnosis of postpartum psychosis. It collected 178 signatures.
Paula herself has requested clemency from the governor because of her mental illness.
The efforts have been unsuccessful.
Paula Sims’ name surfaced in the media again in 2017, when the Belleville News-Democrat reported that she signed away any rights to her late son’s $900,000 estate; the money came from a car insurance settlement. Robert Sims’ widow, Victoria, was pegged to get the jackpot.
Fading scar. Today, Paula is an inmate at the Logan Correctional Center. Her profile mentions no disciplinary problems and she has resisted the siren song of prison-yard tattoo artists.
There’s no indication that she’s faced abuse from other inmates. In recent mug shots, she appears healthy and unmarked. (The prison record mentions one facial scar, but it’s faint and probably came from the car accident in the 1970s.)
Although Logan offers courses like hair braiding and cake decorating, it’s a rough place.
Guards gone bad. A 2016 study for the Illinois Department of Corrections found the prison to have unnecessary use of harsh isolation “cages” and “few chances to prepare for community re-entry, contributing to a recidivism rate of 50 percent.”
In 2018, five male Logan employees were accused of sexually abusing female inmates.
Candice DeLong, a former FBI profiler who hosts Deadly Women, said she believes Paula would no longer be a danger to society. DeLong also said that a woman with postpartum depression should not have been left alone to take care of a baby.
Deserving of reconsideration. And it should be noted that, in another departure from the typical Forensic Files motives, Paula clearly didn’t commit her crimes out of ill will or pursuit of money.
At age 62 today, Paula doesn’t face the risk of postpartum mental illness.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker commuted Sims’ reduced Paula’s life without parole sentence.
In October 2021, a board voted to give Paula parole. (Thanks to reader TJ for sending in the scoop.)
Her lawyer, Jed Stone, pointed out that she had committed no infractions while in prison, regretted the murders, and thought about her lost daughters every day.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Paula had a job on the outside and would continuing living in Illinois after her release.
In addition to the Forensic Files and Deadly Women episodes, there’s a mediocre (despite a good cast) Lifetime movie based on the case, Precious Victims.
There’s also a Belleville News-Democrat article with photos of the Sims daughters and video interviews with acquaintances of Robert and Randy Sims.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Amazon Prime
