by Robert Scott
Then Jarrell said to Miriam to hold out her hands. Miriam did so and was embarrassed by her dirty fingernails.
Detective Jarrell said, “I understand. I grew up on a farm.” Then Jarrell pointed at one of Miriam’s fingers and asked, “That’s an old injury?”
Miriam said that it was.
“How did you get that?”
Miriam responded that she had injured her finger at Lake Powell.
At that moment, another woman who worked in the sheriff’s office came into the room to find out what size clothing Miriam wore. At that point, Detective Norris sat down next to Miriam. A test for gunshot reside (GSR) was just about to be performed upon her.
Before actually starting the GSR test, Detective Norris told Miriam, “We do this whenever a weapon’s involved.” He opened the kit, removed some latex gloves, and put them on. Miriam, meanwhile, looked relaxed, as if she wasn’t worried at all that GSR would be found anywhere on her.
Norris had Miriam hold up her right hand and dabbed all over it with a “rod,” which looked somewhat like a large Q-tip. He did this on the right hand, and then the left hand. Then he did it to her face and neck.
Miriam spoke up and said, “I picked up and held his twenty-two rifle this last weekend. Would that show traces?”
“Not if you washed your hands since then,” Norris replied.
Miriam assured him that she had washed her hands since then.
Norris asked, “Were you around a firearm that was fired today?”
Miriam said no.
Norris added, “When a weapon is shot, the powder and all sorts of chemicals go out into the air. This test picks that up.”
There was a knock at the door, and Detective Jarrell soon entered once again. Jarrell asked, “Do we need her bra and panties?”
Norris answered, “No, she can keep those.”
After he was done collecting all the swabs and placing them into the kit, Norris left the room. For the first time, Miriam was in there all alone.
Miriam sat in the interview room at the small table while the hidden camera filmed everything. She heaved a big sigh; then she put her hand to her mouth and began crying. At first, she was fairly quiet, but then she began sobbing. Her upper body rocked back and forth as she sobbed. About one minute into this, Miriam said under her breath, “Damn it!” She used some Kleenex to wipe her nose, and then the sobs quieted down until she was only sniffling.
After nearly five minutes, Detective Jarrell came back into the room. By this point, Miriam had composed herself once again. Jarrell asked how Miriam was, and she replied, “Tired.”
Jarrell agreed. “Yes, this is very draining.”
Bev Jarrell wanted to know if Miriam had changed her last name from Giles to Helmick when she got married. Miriam said that she had done so. This would show up on her driver’s license, but that was in her purse back at the house.
“You made mention that Alan’s first wife died. Did you know her?”
Miriam said that she had not. When asked what Alan’s first wife’s name was, Miriam answered, “Sharon.” Then she added, “After I’d met him, he had the girls come over to the house where we lived in Delta to divide up the things that had belonged to their mother, Sharon. And that’s when I first met Wendy.”
Jarrell asked, “How did you meet Alan?”
Miriam responded, “I taught him to dance.”
Surprised, Jarrell said, “Oh, really!” Then she added, “Oh, you had the ballroom dance studio. That’s a lost art, isn’t it?”
Miriam agreed that it was. And then she said something that was odd. “I didn’t like Alan initially.”
Taken aback, Jarrell replied, “Really?”
Miriam didn’t elaborate why she didn’t like him. She just said, “He was taking dance lessons from me. Then he grew on me.”
“Where’d you guys get married?”
“We had a big party at the Two Rivers Convention Center.”
Detective Jarrell was impressed. This was the largest convention center in Grand Junction. Jarrell said, “Oh, wow.”
Miriam added, “He had a lot of family and friends there.”
Jarrell asked, “Was your marriage good?”
Miriam said that it was and remarked, “He was a good person.”
“Sounds like it. But it sounds like he was very tight to the vest with some of his information, though. I guess I would find that frustrating in my world.”
Miriam said, “I figured if he really had issues, he’d let me know. He never wanted me to worry about anything.”
Detective Jarrell said, “You’ve been very open and honest about things. I assume you’ve never had any contact with law enforcement in an investigation before. Or have you?”
Miriam put her hand to her chin and answered, “The only contact I’ve had was in Delta. Somebody tried to torch our car. And they (the police) thought I did it because I was the only one with Alan at the time.”
Detective Jarrell let out a gasp of genuine surprise. “Oh, really!”
The interview was just about to go into a whole new and unexpected direction.
After letting out this revelation about the car fire, Miriam quickly relayed, “Nothing ever came of it. We never were contacted back by the Delta Police.”
Jarrell asked, “So it actually got torched in Delta?” Obviously, she knew nothing about this incident.
Miriam said that the car had been in front of the title insurance company that Alan had owned in part in Delta. She recounted, “This occurred on April 30, [2008], and I was with him. His car has a back gas tank, where it fills up from the back and not the side. I had just bought gasoline a few days before, so it was a full tank. And we went to Delta and he closed the thing (meaning a deal) and I was having stomach issues pretty badly. I went back inside. He was in the car and smelled something. He turned off the ignition, but it got worse. He popped open the trunk, went around to the back of the car, and the rubber lining back there was burning. It looked to him like somebody had done something.”
“Wow!” Jarrell declared. “I guess we covered about Alan having problems with anyone here, but how about in Delta County? That car fire seems pretty significant.”
Miriam replied, “Well, the police said there were surveillance cameras up there. They were supposed to call us back and say what they’d seen. They had told me, ‘We’ve got surveillance from across the street. What do you hope we’ll f ind?’ And I said, ‘Well, I hope you find who did it.’ It was very strange. Alan had just closed a deal he had in selling his share of the title company for one hundred twenty thousand dollars. And he had the check in his pocket. And somebody would wanna burn it up? Or I’d wanna burn it up? I don’t think so.”
Jarrell asked, “There was a surveillance camera at . . .”
Miriam responded, “From across the street.”
Once again, Jarrell asked, “Can you think of anybody in Delta who had any problems with Alan?”
Miriam said, “Nobody knew we were going to be there. Alan did say he saw a teenager going through the parking lot. He thought it might have been a random-type deal.”
Jarrell queried, “Did they have to take the cap off of the gas tank?”
Miriam answered, “Um, there was a big restaurant-style skewer that was wrapped with like gauze or something. And then they stuck it down in the gas tank and lit it. But because the gas tank was full, it didn’t do anything except catch the rubber on the outside of the trunk on fire.”
Jarrell replied again, “Wow! That’s significant!”
Miriam said, “Alan called the Delta PD a couple of times, but they never called us back.”
“Huh.” Jarrell turned to Detective Norris, who had returned to the interview room, and said, “We have to follow up on this.”
Detective Jarrell was exasperated that all of this was coming up so late in the interview. She said, “What did Alan think about that situation?”
Miriam replied, “Oh, he talked about it. And at first
it was scary. Because if I had not gone into the bathroom when I did, we would have driven down the road and things would have been a lot worse. After a while, Alan said he couldn’t think of anything. It had to be random because—”
Before she finished, Jarrell asked, “How much damage was done?”
Miriam said, “It wasn’t too much.”
“You said you were the only ones who knew you were going there. Did anyone in his family know you were going there?”
“I don’t know.”
Detective Norris took down Miriam’s date of birth, January 26, 1957, and he looked at her hands again. Jarrell asked, “Any other suspicious incidents?” Miriam said no. When asked about Alan’s will, Miriam answered that she didn’t know all the details about it, and would have to contact Alan’s lawyer. Then Miriam added, “Where things stand today, I don’t have enough money to make the next house payment.”
Jarrell wanted to know how much that was, and Miriam said that it was $3,200 per month. Jarrell replied, “Wow, that’s a pretty substantial house payment.” Then she paused and wanted to know, “Who do you think has the most to gain from all of this?”
Miriam thought for a while and then said, “Probably Alan Jr.” And then Miriam dropped another bombshell late in the proceedings. She said about daughter Wendy’s ex-husband, “He (Alan) threatened to kill him one time.”
Jarrell was flabbergasted that this was only being revealed now. The list of possible suspects seemed to keep growing and growing. Miriam added, “Wendy was at a Red Lobster restaurant and saw her husband there with his girlfriend. She threw a big scene. At least that’s what Alan told me. Wendy came to live with Alan for a while. And the Grand Junction police had her stay away from her ex-husband. Alan told them she could go wherever she wanted to go. Then he said, ‘If her ex-husband ever turns up dead, you can come looking for me!’”
Jarrell’s head must have been spinning at this point. But obviously the car fire incident in Delta had grabbed most of her attention. She asked, “Had you ever seen that skewer before, or the gauze, or whatever?”
Miriam replied, “No. It looked like something that might have come out of a hurricane lamp.”
“The wick?”
“Yes.”
Finally, after two hours and forty-five minutes, the interview was over. Detectives Jarrell and Norris exited the room, and a female employee entered with a bag of clothing for Miriam to put on once she gave up her own clothing. This woman asked Miriam, “You okay?”
Miriam replied, “I’m getting there. What time is it?”
The woman answered that it was 4:20 P.M. To this, Miriam said, “Oh, I have to feed the horses sometime tonight. Could you call them?” (She was referring to the officers who were still at the Helmick residence in Whitewater.)
The woman said that she would, and then asked where Miriam intended to stay the night. Miriam replied that she was going to go over to Alan’s sister’s residence in Grand Junction. Then she said that she didn’t want Alan’s kids to find out about their father by some news report.
Perhaps to lighten the mood, the woman said to Miriam, “Well, I hope I color coordinated the clothes okay.”
Miriam chuckled and replied, “The clothes, well, they’re good enough to get me out of here.” Then she joked, “They’re not orange, are they?” This might have been in reference to orange jumpsuits that jail inmates wore.
The woman laughed and said, “No.”
Miriam was given a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and red clogs. Then she exited the room to exchange her clothing, and the long interview was over.
CHAPTER 9
“THEIR ACTIONS WITH EACH OTHER WERE VERY STRANGE.”
Dr. Robert Kurtzman, a forensic pathologist who worked at Community Hospital in Grand Junction, arrived at the Helmick residence around 3:00 P.M., June 10, 2008. Several law enforcement investigators were there, and the scene was under the control of MCSO investigator Jim Hebenstreit.
Dr. Kurtzman had graduated from medical school at the Des Moines University College of Osteopathic Medicine and Surgery. He later interned at Cranston General Hospital in Rhode Island. Since then, Kurtzman had become a medical examiner (ME), first in Wayne County, Indiana, and later in Grand Junction, Colorado.
As Kurtzman later said, causes of death could be broken down into several categories: “A heart attack, for instance, is typically regarded as a natural disease process, and so ‘natural’ would be the cause of death. If somebody walked down the street and they fell and sustained a head injury and died, that would be an accident. If somebody takes a gun and shoots somebody, that’s a homicide. And if the person uses the gun on themselves, that’s a suicide.
“As far as forensic pathology goes, it’s the analysis of injury patterns. We’re looking at the mechanism by which an injury is produced. It’s helpful for me to see where the individual is located to see characteristics of flooring, the bloodstains, things of that sort.”
When Dr. Kurtzman came on the scene, there were already bags on Alan Helmick’s hands to ensure that any transfer evidence or evidence under his fingernails stayed in place. It very quickly became obvious to Dr. Kurtzman that Alan Helmick had sustained a gunshot wound to the back of the head. There didn’t seem to be any transfer blood patterns around Alan. Kurtzman believed that as soon as Alan was shot, he ended up in the position where he now lay. No one had shot him elsewhere and then dragged his body to that position.
Multiple law enforcement individuals took many photographs, and finally Alan Helmick’s body was loaded into a body bag and removed from the residence. Several investigators stayed behind, going over the whole house and taking literally hundreds of photos of everything they thought might be significant.
On June 11, around 3:15 P.M., Dr. Kurtzman began his autopsy of Alan Helmick. Blood that had accumulated at the back of Alan’s head was washed away and a portion of the hair was shaved. When that was done, Kurtzman noted a “defect” six and a half inches from the top of the head and an inch and a half from midline. That defect was where a bullet had entered into the back of Alan’s head.
From lack of stippling and soot on the skin, Dr. Kurtzman determined that the shooter was at least two feet away from Alan, but not at a great distance. The actual bullet was recovered from the right side of the front of Alan’s brain. Such a wound would have caused Alan’s death within seconds or up to about a minute. He would have been instantly incapacitated.
Kurtzman also determined the trajectory of the bullet’s path would most likely have made Alan fall to where his body had been found. Kurtzman added that a bump on the back of Alan’s head was consistent with being struck by a bullet and falling onto the floor. “In this case, a broad diffuse appearance, typical of falling onto a surface such as the floor of his residence.”
Kurtzman noted that Alan did not have any defensive wounds on his hands. There were no needle marks or other signs of illicit drug use. Alan did have two black eyes, but that was not from being punched in that area by a fist or some object. Instead, as Dr. Kurtzman later explained, “The bullet was like a speedboat through calm water. It would create a huge wake. So, when a bullet strikes the brain and it’s traveling so fast, it actually displaces the brain tissue and creates a temporary cavity. The bullet in this case was traveling from back to front, and recovered from near the forehead. Because bones near there were fractured, they produced bleeding around the eyes. So it looked like black eyes, like somebody had punched him.”
As far as toxicology went, Alan had caffeine in his system and cotinine, which was a by-product of smoking. He did not have alcohol in his system. With all the factors weighed in, Dr. Kurtzman determined that Alan Helmick had died a few hours before the first officers had arrived on the scene. Official cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head.
The Mesa County Coroner’s Office (MCCO) released a short press statement on June 11, 2008. It noted that a sixty-two-year-old resident in Whitewater had been identified as Alan Helmick: A postmort
em examination was performed at the Mesa County Coroner’s Office and a gunshot wound to the head was determined to be the cause of death. The manner of death has been classified as a homicide. No additional information is currently available from this office. The release was signed by Robert Kurtzman, Forensic Pathologist. All further inquiries were directed to the Mesa County Sheriff ’s Office.
One of the first things the MCSO investigators did was transcribe phone messages that had been received on Alan Helmick’s cell phone. Besides the messages left by Miriam on the morning of June 10, there were others as well. At 9:29 A.M., Alan’s daughter Portia called him, but he did not respond. She left a voice message, saying, “Hi, Dad. I hate to bother you so much. It’s just I haven’t been able to talk to you, so things are piling up. I have a verification that I need for you to fill out. Call me and let me know [about this]. That would be great. Thanks. Bye.”
Another phone message came in that day, from one of the Helmicks’ neighbors, who did not know that Alan was dead. The phone message came in at 2:22 P.M.: “Hey, Alan. This is your neighbor Joe. My daughter just called and said there’s investigators and police going all over your property. They came up to our house and asked us questions about your whereabouts. I’m just calling you to touch base in case you weren’t aware of this. I hope you’re okay. Give me a call. And then I can call them (the police) and lay to rest . . . um, put their mind at ease, is what I’m trying to say.”
Another message was left on Alan’s cell phone, even though it was directed to Miriam. It was from Miriam’s friend, Penny Lyons, at six thirty-nine on the morning after Alan’s murder. Penny was crying on the phone: “Miriam, if you get this message, this is Penny. Please call me if you get this. I love you sweetie. Bye.”
Another message was left on June 11, at 7:58 A.M. “Hi, this is Trish. I read in the paper about the robbery at your house. Just making sure you guys are okay. Please call me back and let me know.”