SPRINGFIELD – People still buy a book that former Madison County prosecutor Don Weber wrote about sending murderer Paula Sims to prison, but in the final chapter she wins.
The state parole board granted freedom to Sims on Oct. 28.
The board hadn’t posted minutes as of Nov. 2, but news sources reported that 12 members voted for parole and member Jared Bohland voted against it.
Weber, in an interview on Nov. 2, said he wouldn’t have picked any of them for the jury at Sims’s murder trial.
“These urban nitwits want everyone out,” Weber said.
He said no one represented Heather, the infant daughter Sims murdered in 1989.
“Thousands of us who know the truth were not represented,” at the parole board, Weber said. “Everyone I talked to is aghast that she got parole.”
In a memo to the board, Madison County State’s Attorney Tom Haine opposed the granting of parole, following a commutation issued by Governor J.B. Pritzker in March that made her sentence parole-eligible. But Haine did not attend Sims’ hearing last week.
Weber said the board heard Sims was a kind person.
“I wonder if Heather thought her mother was a kind person when she held her down for two minutes,” he said.
The board also heard Sims turned Heather over in the tub so she would drown, but according to Weber, a forensic expert who testified at trial said “it was positively not true.”
Weber said the expert found a bruise inside the upper lip that indicated smothering.
“Paula lied to the parole board about that,” he said, and lied for a year after Heather died, sticking to a story that a masked man with a gun took Heather and fled.
That same story had held up three years earlier, when daughter Loralei vanished from their home in Jersey County.
Police found Loralei’s remains 150 feet from the house, but no charges resulted.
Police found Heather’s body in a trash can in a parking lot near the Mississippi River in West Alton, Mo.
Grand jurors indicted Sims, and Circuit Judge Andy Matoesian held trial in 1990.
Sims maintained her innocence, but jurors found her guilty of murder, concealing homicide, and obstructing justice.
Awaiting the jury’s decision on a death sentence, she admitted both murders.
Jurors deadlocked, and Matoesian sentenced her for life without parole.
Weber and journalist Charles Bosworth collaborated on a book, “Precious Victims,” currently available online.
Weber said sales spiked this year after news of Sims’s parole petition came out.
An Amazon site describes the book as a story of a massive investigation and a nerve shattering trial that made the unthinkable a reality.
“It’s too bad the parole board didn’t read it,” Weber said.
Republican Senators Jason Plummer of Vandalia, Terri Bryant of Murphysboro, and Steve McClure of Jacksonville issued a protest statement on a broader scale.
They stated that 10 of 14 board members serve without Senate confirmation.
“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,” the statement reads.
They stated that Pritzker’s allies in the legislature are complicit in allowing him to avoid transparency and oversight.
According to a report of their caucus, Pritzker appointed four members in March and April 2019.
As a constitutional limit of 60 session days for confirmation approached this March, Pritzker withdrew the appointments and appointed all four again.
He appointed six members this year, and the Senate hasn’t confirmed them.
According to the caucus, the terms of the 10 members who lack confirmation add up to 13 years.