Sleep, My Child, Forever cover art

Sleep, My Child, Forever

The Riveting True Story of a Mother Who Murdered Her Own Children

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Sleep, My Child, Forever

By: John Coston
Narrated by: A. T. Chandler
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About this listen

The dark double life of Ellen Boehm, the 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 then 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, 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.

©1995 John Coston (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Crime Murder Social Sciences True Crime Violence in Society Scary
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This book was easy to listen to albeit the murderous actions of the subject were horrific. Well laid out and navigated through the process of apprehending and bringing to justice the perpetrator of such vile acts

A clear and succinct narrative of events

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I found this book difficult to listen to, but the writer had written it so well that I was hooked from the beginning. The narrator was superb and dealt with a difficult subject matter in a neutral but engaging tone.

Excellent Writing Of an Horrific Crime

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Well written, horrifying true story of a mother who killed her children for insurance.

Poorly narrated in a monotone with no inflection in his voice.

Horrific True Crime

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I found this book hard to follow it was only when it was half way through that I kind of got the story. It seemed to jump from one person to the next and different subjects which kind of irritated me however by the time I had finished I found it an “ok” read. I would be annoyed if I paid for it but was interesting enough to download. Narrator was average no real issues with that at all. It was a very difficult book to read, if I was actually reading it I would have lost interest early on.

Hard to follow

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I really enjoyed this book for the most part. It’s such a horrific story of these poor children who had to lose their lives in such awful circumstances, at the hands of the person who was supposed to love and care for them.

My slight annoyance is the last part of the book where we get a conversation with Ellen and the police. Every time the someone says something in the conversation, it states who is saying it like you would when reading a text conversation aloud. I figure this book was intended to be a physical paper copy where people were reading it rather than it being translated to audio and people would get the picture without reading the names every few words/sentences. Surely it could have been done better where we don’t have to hear Ellen’s name 50 times in a chapter. It really made the book hard to listen to at the end

Slightly repetitive

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Really interesting case. Great work done by St Louis homicide squad detectives and the pathologist who conducted the autopsies.
If you're after macabre detail, this is not that book.

Matter of fact

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Haven't been so chilled since Diane Downes..... have to do a shout out to the dead beat dad. I think Ellen's psyche is much more complicated than Downes or Smith.... and the dad needs to take some responsibility for what happened to his wee lads.

Chilling

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Hated the narrator voice so robot like.
I don’t understand how any mother can do that to her children. So sad..

Robot

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sad story and horrible woman but a great book. very well written and narrated.

sad story

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Sad but great true story. It was hard not to feel so much anger towards this woman.

Brilliant narration

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