Sleep, My Child, Forever: The Riveting True Story of a Mother Who Murdered Her Own Children

by John Coston

The dark double life of Ellen Boehm, the St. Louis, Missouri, mother who murdered her two sons—and nearly killed her daughter.

Ellen Boehm, a single mom from St. Louis, Missouri, appeared devoted to her children. But in reality, she was unequipped for motherhood, financially strapped, and desperate. Within a year of each other, her sons, ages two and four, died mysteriously, and Boehm’s eight-year-old daughter suffered a near-fatal mishap when a hair dryer fell into the girl’s bath. While neighbors wondered how Boehm remained so calm through it all, Det. Sgt. Joseph Burgoon of St. Louis Homicide had darker suspicions.
 
Burgoon soon unraveled a labyrinth of deception, greed, and obsession that revealed a cold-blooded killer whose get-rich-quick scheme came at the cost of her children’s lives. Boehm had taken out insurance policies on her children with six different companies totaling nearly $100,000. Using police reports, case documents, and photos, veteran journalist John Coston recreates the events that led to one mother’s unspeakable acts of filicide—and a cop’s relentless pursuit of the truth.
 

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Crime, Horror, Ebooks, Biography

266 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 1, 1995

Reviews

[Ellie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting case, but really could've done without the excessive mention of how much Ellen weighed. She murdered two children and the author of this book seems to think weighing over 200 pounds is just as, if not more, reprehensible

[lindsey sacco. · Rating 2 out of 5]

most of the time I read nonfiction, it's via audiobook. It's easier for me to focus that way. this narrator wasn't BAD, but he was extremely flat. Read everything like a court stenographer reading back notes.

also John Coston's determination to remind us that Ellen Bohem was overweight almost every chapter was gross and unnecessary.

[Liz · Rating 1 out of 5]

I tried so hard to finish this book, but the author’s central assertion is that Ellen Boehm murdered her children because she’s “overweight and unattractive.” No. Just, no. Get out of here with your unexamined anti-fat bias and misogyny.

[🩶 April • A.M. Flynn • 🩶 · Rating 3 out of 5]

The narrator for this audiobook was so boring. The story was a bit repetitive but decent. It’s heartbreaking though..

[RoseDevoursBooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

A horrible crime that goes into detail on how a mother nonchalantly killed two of her children to collect insurance money. As interesting of a read this was, the author was too repetitive and I found myself skimming through parts I've already read about in previous pages. Also, just be aware that the author wants to make it absolutely CLEAR to the reader that Ellen Boehm is fat and unattractive.

[Eva-Marie Nevarez · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm giving this five stars because I think this is what true crime is really all about. I'm a big true crime reader, I'm taking a break currently but have been reading t.c for years. This book turned my stomach. I would tell anyone who was going to read this to approach with extreme caution and I mean that. I wasn't prepared for what this book showed me.

[♥ Marlene♥ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good book and I am glad I read this. I have a collection of books of women that kill there own children but most suffer from Proxy by Munchausen syndrome. not this selfish obese woman. She suffers from greed and just killed her 2 kids. Very well written.

[M · Rating 2 out of 5]

The story itself is fascinating and we get glimpses of the background of Ellen & her own (possible) sexual abuse plus the grooming she experienced from her first husband who then went on to abandon her and their kids, which must have had some impact on shaping her into a murderer. Unfortunately the author gives us these tidbits without ever analysing them or delving further into whether the things she said are true or had any basis in reality. Why did she hate her mother, eg? There also isn’t a particularly coherent storyline, with details often repeated and mentioned out of order, and some minor players being mentioned under various names which makes it hard to always know exactly who is being spoken about (particularly when listened to on audiobook as the reader is very monotone).

Furthermore the author is incredibly sexist and fat phobic. You would be forgiven for thinking that her real crime was her weight given the amount of times he mentions it. He also focuses significantly on her sexuality and attractiveness which he doesn’t manage to link to the murders in any significant way, and also focuses on the sexual appeal of the female lawyers involved in the case. On the other hand, the men in the story are heroes or victims and sexuality isn’t mentioned in regards to them at all (not even for the grooming ex husband of Ellen). The detective is spoken about like he is the lead in an 70s cop show. There are certain assertions made about police work that don’t quite match up to the many books written by / documentaries and shows about the Mindhunter team. The father of the children is a POS who had so little contact with his kids that he didn’t know his son was dead and had already been buried for 2 weeks until a cousin of his new wife called her to ask about it, but the author tries very hard to show how badly he was affected. We are supposed to feel more sorry for him than for the children that he abandoned and who were then killed or survived a murderous mother.

So an interesting and very sad case that isn’t covered with any particular skill or sensitivity. Pretty sure you could get most of this info on wiki.

[Librarian Alli · Rating 3 out of 5]

I tried to like this book, I really did..but the author seemed obsessed with this lady's weight and that really confused me.

[J.H. Moncrieff · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Don't be fooled by the cheesy, 80s horror-era title: this is actually pretty good. I only wish Coston had delved a little deeper into the mother's psyche. How could a seemingly normal, "good" mother coldly murder two children and attempt to kill another for the insurance payout? It's almost like she snapped and completely lost any sense of reality.

She's not the only villain, either. Her "husband," the disgusting excuse of a father who keeps abandoning his children and wives in favour of the young girls he meets as a bus driver, is the one who got Ellen into the financial mess that led to this tragedy. After convincing her to quit her job to be a stay-at-home mom, he abandoned her when she was eight months pregnant, and didn't bother to even be honest about it. (He claimed he was going to a hospital for treatment. Ellen didn't find out she'd been dumped until his latest paramour's husband spilled the beans.) One has to wonder how things would have turned out if she'd been with a responsible husband and father who'd loved her.

Still, it's very sad the courts left the surviving child in foster care rather than let her go with her father, who wanted custody of her. But I guess his track record, along with his failure to pay a cent of child support to his two abandoned wives, indicated what kind of parent he was going to be. Too bad he only cared about his children after they were dead (or after an attempt was made on their lives, in the case of the daughter). In the epilogue, we learn that the daughter was later hospitalized for depression. I hope she ended up being okay.

Very sad that the daughter, little David, and Stevie had to pay for so many adults' mistakes.

While it was refreshing to read a true crime that didn't automatically describe the perpetrator as beautiful, I don't think it was necessary to keep referring to her as fat and unattractive, either, or reiterate how many men wanted it clear they weren't romantically involved with her because she was overweight and unattractive. Just made me feel sorry for her.

[Mandi Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

So much fat shaming. Sure, the lady is probably a monster, but the author’s continuous reference to her obesity and how ‘no man would ever love her because she’s fat’ was really distracting from the overall story. The section about her childhood was difficult to follow and didn’t flow well.
Also the use of “woman lawyer”......

I got a sense of the case, but I didn’t feel like I saw all the elements involved. The book relied heavily on anecdotal accounts and I would have liked more hard evidence. The science behind autopsies was mostly glossed over as was the general investigative work that led to an arrest.

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting but poorly written - I found this book very difficult to follow. The chronology of the story seemed garbled and arbitrary. The author frequently

Interesting but poorly written - I found this book very difficult to follow. The chronology of the story seemed garbled and arbitrary. The author frequently referred to the characters by first and last names, last name only, or first name only which added to the overall confusion.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating true story of a mother who killed two of her children and tried to kill the third. She was a pure psychopath, with no mental illness. The case is described thoroughly and without any particular bias.

[Nicole · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ellen Booker Boehm’s life was a tragedy in the making. Between her physical appearance, her questionable upbringing, her need to feel socially accepted, and her overactive imagination coupled with a flare for exaggeration and drama, the young woman’s propensity for being the center of attention stood at odds with her reality. Marrying into a one-sided love story, she carries three pregnancies- one not even fully to term- before she is left bereft and in dire financial straits by her philandering husband, Paul. Though she works hard (at times carrying the burden of two jobs), and has her mother’s assistance with childcare, poor financial decisions revolving around myriad obsessive fan-girl trips to follow the professional wrestling circuit around the country lead to her financial demise. After losing her home, she relocates to a shabby apartment she can barely afford. Spending most of her resources on hotels and travel expenses in the company of her friend, Deeanne, Ellen finds herself the unhappy recipient of multiple red-notices on utility bills and medical expenses, further compounding her financial instability. When her two year old son, David, dies under mysterious and initially unidentified circumstances just a few days after his sister, Stacy, was hospitalized for a bathtub-related electrocution (which she survived), Ellen inherits the proceeds of his $5k life insurance policy as well as $1200 in collection money from her work associates, which should have paid for his funeral and assisted in catching the small family up on their bills. Although some notices were paid, the funeral home was stiffed, the phone was shut off, and Ellen’s trips on the wrestling circuit went on unabated. Strange? Yes. But grief makes people do weird things, and thus nothing is questioned… that is, until her second son, Steven, passes suddenly, as well… this time leaving Ellen the recipient of nearly $100k in insurance compensation. As friends of the family become suspicious, a call to law enforcement and child services starts a chain of events that will uncover gruesome allegations of murder in the name of money.

The Ellen Booker Boehm case is unpalatable. The reader knows that going into the book- no one expects a happily-ever-after when indulging in true crime. This reader’s bevy of complaints against the work has nothing to do with the content, but rather the overall presentation. The fact that the author was a former New York Times editor would have suggested that he had some skills (and some objectivity), but sadly, this would not prove to be the case. From the very first chapters, in his commitment to focusing more heavily on physical characteristics of the primary players’ appearances, the reader is led to assume that these descriptions would somehow weigh heavily (no pun intended) on the events and outcome of the case. They do not. The author takes extraordinary care in denigrating the physical features of females involved in the case, and little to no effort at all in describing the attributes of any of the men. This belies the author’s disdain and inability to remain emotionally detached from the characters themselves, in spite of his strong history in journalism. Add to that the fact that his telling of the events as they unfolded is redundant and, at times, nearly impossible to follow in linear and chronological time, and the entire work is (for this reader) spoiled. Though it is understandable that, as a consequence of the accused killer’s unreliability as a witness to her own crimes, the story could become cloudy, the author did little to assist the reader in navigating the timeline. And though much attention is paid to crimes and aftermath themselves, little if any attention is paid at all to the mental health issues that may have led up to their execution.

Don’t misunderstand- this reader is not suggesting an apathy toward the tragic ends to children’s lives, nor suggesting a sympathy toward the person responsible. However, failure to focus any attention at all to the series of red flags leading up to the events, intrinsic issues, and/or extrinsic influences over the perpetrator is, in this reader’s opinion, inexcusable in objective writing. There is no focus at all on Ellen’s allegations of child abuse at the hands of her father, the potential negative impacts of her mother’s failure to protect her, the contributing factors to Ellen’s need for attention and love, or the struggles of being left by a dead-beat husband who never paid child support, resulting in the financial ruin of the family he left behind. In fact, the author goes so far as to thank Paul Boehm in his post-script acknowledgement for welcoming him into his home as part of his writing research!

Ellen Booker Boehm is a monster. This does not mitigate the fact that she is also a product of her environment- an environment the author conveniently failed to fully disclose, investigate, or entertain. The failings of the justice system notwithstanding, and having no bearing on this work, the author himself failed the story, and the reader, with a subjective and incomplete telling of a tragedy.

Would not recommend.

[Nat PlainJanetheBookworm · Rating 4 out of 5]

A case I’ve not come across before although that’s because it’s a crime type I’m not generally interested in reading (I know that does sound a bit odd) although I did enjoy this book. Writing was ok, the crimes themselves horrific, and despite my job and education, still blows my mind that people are capable of this sort of heartbreak.

[Jill Crosby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty basic and straightforward. Reads up quickly.

[Japheth Grimm · Rating 2 out of 5]

This case seems to be well researched. The timeline of events was easy to follow. However, as other reviews have mentioned, the body-shaming by the author is disturbingly obsessive. Not cool.

[Cassie · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF - these books are usually fascinating to read but not even 30% in I could no longer stomach the way this author describes women. Apparently according to this author if a women is over 200 pounds she is not only hideous but also completely undesirable to all men everywhere.

Actual quote from the book: “Now at age twenty-eight, Ellen was tipping the scales almost on the par with the male wrestlers she adored. At five feet three inches she weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. Ellen was not attractive to men, and she knew it.” Huh?????

Yes Ellen is a horrible person for what she did - and this isn’t defending her actions at all. But this author’s preoccupation with women and their weight was brought up again and again. In the first half of the book, almost every woman that was introduced got a mention on if they were overweight or not. Why does it matter how much Ellen’s FRIEND weighed and if she was “”obese”” to this author?

I can usually stomach a lot before choosing to DNF a book, but after the thirtieth mention of weight and how much that equals every women’s overall worth as a human being, I just couldn’t do it anymore.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the late 80s Ellen Boehm killed her two young sons and tried to kill her daughter. Many people thought there was something strange about the boys’ deaths and Ellen’s behavior, but there was nothing to prove the they were not natural or that Ellen’s version of what happened to her daughter was not accurate. Eventually detectives were able to piece together what really happened and get a confession out of Ellen. Sleep, My Child, Forever does not get bogged down in the criminal justice system part of the case. In fact, the time leading up to the trial date is less than a tenth of the book. More than half of the book gives an overview of Ellen’s life in the time just leading up to her committing the crimes and puts together the timeline in story form. The remainder focuses on the policework leading to Ellen’s arrest. It’s very well written and really sucked me into Ellen’s life. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys true crime.

[Jessica Patterson · Rating 3 out of 5]

True crime nonfiction is usually compelling enough, and this one wasn’t any different. However I would agree with other reviewers that Coston’s constant mention of Ellen’s weight, attractiveness, or choice of meals had little to do with her actions. She murdered those kids because she’s a murderer, not because she’s conventionally unattractive. Yikes.

Those poor babies. I truly can’t imagine losing my kids, and the thought of harming them -and harming them for good- makes me sick. She’s a monster and I hope she’s miserable in prison and in hell forever.

[Peggy · Rating 4 out of 5]

THis is such a sad story! It goes to show that we don't always know what a person is truly capable of and this person proved just that! If you like true crime this is one to read! It will grip you at the heart no doubt!

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent

[Diana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Riveting story about a mother who murdered two of her children and tried to kill the third. A psychological analysis of the mother would have been interesting but outside of that the details that the author researched were very specific and showed the difficulty of building a case against the mother.

[Ichar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Truly heartbreaking read. I felt such sadness for the children. I found the fact that the author kept referring to Ellen’s weight over and over again, even suggesting that it could be a reason for her actions very off putting. The author describes Ellen’s dad’s youngest daughter from his previous marriage as Ellen’s ‘step’ sister. Two people who share the same father would be ‘half’ siblings and not ‘step’ siblings.

[Eileen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well written but a hard story to read.. As a mother I can not imagine what this woman was thinking and how she can live with herself. Evil is the word to describe her.

[Daniel Lang · Rating 3 out of 5]

The narrative unfolds with intriguing glimpses into the troubled background of Ellen, possibly a survivor of sexual abuse, and the grooming she endured from her first husband, who later abandoned her and their children. These elements could have played a role in shaping her into a murderer. Regrettably, the author introduces these details without a thorough analysis or exploration of their veracity. Questions about Ellen's hatred for her mother and other pivotal aspects are left unanswered.

The storyline lacks coherence, with details often repeated and presented out of order. The use of multiple names for minor characters creates confusion, especially when listening to the audiobook with a monotone reader.

Furthermore, the author's portrayal is marred by evident sexism and fat-phobia. The excessive focus on Ellen's weight and attractiveness seems disproportionate, failing to establish a meaningful connection to the murders. The narrative also fixates on the sexual appeal of female figures, such as the lawyers, without adding significant relevance to the case. In contrast, male characters are depicted as heroes or victims, and their sexuality remains untouched, even in the case of Ellen's grooming ex-husband.

The detective is characterized in a manner reminiscent of a 70s cop show, and certain assertions about police work appear inconsistent with other sources on criminal profiling, such as those related to the Mindhunter team. The portrayal of the children's father, who had minimal contact with his kids, is skewed in an attempt to garner sympathy for him rather than for the abandoned children who either fell victim to their murderous mother or survived.

While the case itself is undeniably interesting and tragic, the book lacks finesse and sensitivity in its coverage. The author's apparent biases, combined with a disjointed narrative structure, detract from the potential depth of the story. Much of the information presented seems accessible on Wikipedia, making it questionable whether the book adds significant value to the reader's understanding of the case.

[Bettye McKee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent true crime reporting

This is a well-written, well-researched true story about Ellen Boehm, a St. Louis woman who murdered her two little boys and attempted to murder her daughter. All three children were heavily insured.

But for a couple of people who cared, she would have gotten away with it and most likely would have murdered her daughter as well. A social worker called a friend on the police force which set things in motion. Thanks to the hard work and dedication of Detective Joe Burgoon, Dr. Michael Graham, and others, the daughter was not killed.

And she did it all for insurance money.

16

[Tessa Ingram · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nicely done. Very to-the-point about the situation without trying to pad the book too much in unnecessary detail. Tragic story that attempts to explain, but not excuse, the circumstances upon which this woman took the lives of her children. No doubt she was stressed and felt helpless, but she was not insane or had an altered mindset. She had one addiction: wrestling, but it was not even for this that she killed them. This story was also a segment on Deadly Women.

[Black Butterfly · Rating 4 out of 5]

THIS WAS CLEARLY A FAMILY WHO SHOULD HAVE NEVER, EVER, EVER BEEN ALLOWED TO REPRODUCE. BOTH ELLEN & HER HUSBAND CAME FROM A LONG LINE OF STRANGE CRAAZE PEOPLE. I FELT SO SAD AND ANGRY READING THIS, MADE ME WONDER WHAT MAKES SOME PEOPLE SO HARD HEARTED, GAVE ME CHILLS. I WONDERED WHAT HAPPENED TO THE DAUGHTER, HOPE SHE IS DOING WELL. ;X

[Nikki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very chilling. I gave this 5 stars because I like this author didn't include information that wasn't needed. I feel some true crime authors talk a lot about a secondary family member that really isn't needed. It kept me reading and I finished it in just one day!