Paula Sims ‘conned’ parole board, says Madison County prosecutor who put her behind bars
Former Madison County Assistant State’s Attorney Don Weber has some choice words for the recent Illinois Prisoner Review Board decision to grant parole to Paula Sims, an Alton woman who killed her two infant daughters in the late 1980s.
Weber, 73, prosecuted the case and later co-authored a true-crime book called “Precious Victims: The Horrific Crime that Shocked America,” which was made into a TV movie.
Weber said Sims, who was released Oct. 29 after more than 30 years in prison, “conned” her way to freedom.
“These nitwits on the parole board and these urban bumpkins who came to support her were just that,” Weber said last week. “They could have never stood up in a court of law in front of a jury and made their case.
“I would’ve loved to cross-examine them,” he added.
Weber said he had been “neutral” on whether Sims, 62, deserved parole because he hadn’t seen her since 1990, when she was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of 6-week-old daughter Heather, and he didn’t know what she’d done with her life or whether she was remorseful.
Weber’s objection relates to what he calls “ridiculous” reasons the Review Board decided to release Sims from prison, based on arguments by the board member in charge of researching her case, her attorney and two psychologists at an Oct. 28 hearing in Springfield.
They argued that Sims committed the crimes due to postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness that causes some new mothers to experience delusions, hallucinations and paranoia; that experts didn’t fully understand it three decades ago; and that a new Illinois law allows it to be a mitigating factor in sentencing.
“We knew about postpartum depression back then,” Weber said. “It was looked at very carefully. She didn’t have it.”
Weber maintained that:
Sims clearly demonstrated that she knew right from wrong during police investigations and the trial.
She continued telling the lie that a masked intruder had kidnapped 13-day-old Loralie in 1986 and Heather in 1989.
She was represented by a “dream team” of capable attorneys who decided against an insanity defense due to her claims of innocence.
She admitted to killing the babies only after a jury convicted her and she faced a possible death-penalty sentence.
In later years, Sims told another book author, Audrey Becker, that she didn’t suffocate Loralie or Heather, as alleged by prosecutors, but allowed them to drown in their baths.
Not true, according to Weber.
“I asked Dr. Mary Case, a pathologist (who) did the autopsy on Heather ... I said, ‘Is it possible that Paula drowned Heather?’ She thinks that’s kinder somehow rather than smothering her,” he said.
“And the answer was, ‘No. Scientifically, that cannot have happened.’ Baby Heather had some striations, some bruises on the inside of her upper lip in the center. Those are always an indication of smothering, and there was no indication of drowning. That is a scientific fact, and it shows that Paula is still lying about it.”
After the trial, Weber went on to serve as state’s attorney, assistant Illinois attorney general and circuit court judge and now is semi-retired as an attorney in private practice.
Waukegan attorney Jed Stone represented Sims at the Review Board hearing with input from psychologists Susan Feingold and Diana Sanford, who had diagnosed and treated Sims.
Board member Donald Shelton made a presentation on Sims’ behalf, describing his extensive research on postpartum psychosis and expressing his belief that she wasn’t an “evil” person.
“I trust in the judgment of the psychologists,” he said.
Shelton said Sims had an “outstanding” prison record, receiving only two tickets for non-violent incidents and earning a long list of educational certificates. She mentored other inmates and co-authored state legislation related to postpartum illnesses.
Review Board Chairman Craig Findley also spoke in support of Sims at the hearing. He had visited her years ago while doing research for another case in which a mother killed a child.
“I found Paula Sims to be a very gentle and kind soul, someone who said, ‘I accept my fate. I understand that I will spend the rest of my life in prison,’” Findley said.
In March, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker commuted Sims’ sentence from life in prison without parole to life in prison with the possibility of parole. The Review Board voted 12-1 to grant it.
Weber also is accusing Madison County State’s Attorney Tom Haine of not fighting hard enough to keep Sims in prison. No one from Haine’s office attended the Oct. 28 hearing.
“They didn’t bother to call me and check out some of these things (that Sims claimed),” Weber said. “It sort of makes me think they were asleep at the switch on this.”
“Whose job was it to make the state’s case and who didn’t do it?” he asked.
Haine said his office regularly gets Review Board requests for comment on Madison County cases involving prison inmates up for parole and that it can’t send someone in person to every hearing.
Haine said his office did extensive research on the Sims case and sent a detailed, five-page letter to the Review Board. The letter argued that Sims lied about her crimes for years to avoid punishment and confessed only after she was found guilty of murder and wanted to avoid the death penalty.
The letter characterized Sims’ request for clemency as a “shifting and far-fetched psychological story” that shouldn’t change the conclusions of jurors at her trial or the decisions of judges who handled appeals, petitions and other court reviews.
“I think it’s a travesty of justice that Paula Sims is on parole right now,” Haine said in an interview last week. “And I think that’s clear by the content of the very strongly worded letter of opposition that we sent to the Prisoner Review Board.”
Tom Haine’s father, the late William Haine, was state’s attorney when Sims was charged and prosecuted.
Other Illinois officials also have spoken out against the Review Board for granting parole to Sims. State Sen. Rachelle Crowe (D-Glen Carbon) released the following statement:
“At the time of her trial, Sims created a fabricated story under oath, showed no remorse for murdering her daughters and as a result, worked to delegitimize mothers who suffer from postpartum mental health issues.
“The decision to grant parole to Sims is truly insulting to those whose lives were destroyed by her crimes. To secure justice for victims and protect the integrity of our criminal justice system, individuals must be held accountable for their vile actions.”
State Sens. Jason Plummer (R-Edwardsville), Steve McClure (R-Springfield) and Terry Bryant (R-Murphysboro) released a statement that focused mainly on their previous criticisms about the board’s make-up.
“Yet again, the 14-member Prisoner Review Board, 10 of which are acting and serving unconfirmed, has voted to release another individual who has committed heinous, unspeakable crimes,” it read.
“It’s the gravity of these crimes and the heavy responsibility that these board members hold that make it vital and imperative that they go through the constitutionally-required vetting process and come before the Illinois Senate for confirmation.”
Paula Sims and her husband, Robert Sims, reported Heather missing from their Alton home on April 29, 1989. The baby’s partially-frozen body was found four days later, wrapped in a garbage bag and dumped in a trash can in a public park in West Alton, Missouri.
Three years earlier, Loralei’s skeletal remains had been found in a wooded ravine near the family’s former home in Brighton.
In both cases, Paula Sims told police that the babies were abducted by a masked gunman. In the second, she described being knocked unconscious for 45 minutes.
