And Then She Killed Him
Page 8
Wendy had lived with Miriam and her father at the Whitewater residence from May 2006 until June 2007. While she lived with Miriam and Alan, everything seemed to be fine between her father and his new girlfriend. However, Miriam did over time “start confiscating” her father’s cell phone and turning it off. Wendy didn’t say anything at the time because she was trying not to be “a burden to my father and Miriam,” as she put it.
Between the time Wendy moved out of the Whitewater residence, and until she moved to Denver in March 2008, she only saw her father twice. She did phone the residence on occasion, but she only spoke with her father in very few instances. Wendy added that she would ask her father why he didn’t phone her back, as she had left a message. Alan often replied that he hadn’t received any message.
As to Miriam’s statement that she had tried phoning Alan several times on the morning he was killed, Wendy said that made no sense. Wendy claimed, “Miriam always had my father’s phone and kept it turned off.” Alan had even told Wendy that Miriam kept his cell phone in her purse.
Then Wendy wondered why Miriam had gone out so early on June 10. Wendy told Investigator Norcross, “Miriam is not a morning person. While I lived there, I never saw Miriam get up first and go out by herself somewhere. My father was a morning person, but Miriam wouldn’t get up until ten A.M. and start moving around.”
When Wendy had lived with her father and Miriam, she fed the horses in the morning or her father did. Miriam never fed the horses in the morning at all. Not once while living there, had she seen her father and Miriam leave the house before ten o’clock in the morning.
In a later interview with Wendy, Investigator Norcross brought up the aspect of a will that her father had made. Wendy said that in 2007, while her father and Miriam were living together before being married, her father had shown Wendy a handwritten document. Her father had not let her read the document, but he had only said that it concerned his children. Alan did say that the children didn’t have to worry if he died, because Miriam was not to get any of the assets that Alan had amassed previous to her arrival. That was the bulk of the property and money involved. Alan did say that Miriam would receive assets from the period after they were married, which basically concerned the new house and property in Whitewater. Wendy didn’t know where this document was, but she believed it was probably in a filing cabinet, where he kept all his important papers.
On June 13 as well, Lissah Norcross interviewed Alan Helmick’s youngest daughter, Kristy Helmick-Burd, who was thirty. Kristy lived in Seattle, but she had returned to Colorado because of her father’s death. In fact, Kristy stated that she and her husband had planned to visit her father in the current week, and then they suddenly found out that he had been murdered. This, of course, had required that they go to Colorado even earlier than planned.
Kristy related that she and her husband had lived in several places, but they had moved back to Delta in August 2004 to November 2004, when her mother had died. They had done so to help her father during that period. Kristy said that her father had been very depressed after his first wife died. Just before Kristy and her husband moved to Seattle, she did meet Miriam. She said that her father and Miriam were “like newlyweds.”
Kristy had last spoken with her father on Sunday, June 1; for the next nine days, she had tried to reach him on his cell phone. Kristy was unable to do so. She learned of his unexpected death on June 10. The aspect of not being able to reach him for those nine days greatly concerned her. Kristy said that before the advent of Miriam on the scene, she had always been able to reach her father by phone. In total frustration during that nine-day period, Kristy finally called Miriam’s cell phone and asked Miriam to have Alan phone her back because she had to make travel plans. Kristy wanted her father to call her back immediately. To this, Miriam replied, “Well, he’s in one of those financial moods. Kind of being a jackass.”
Kristy told Investigator Norcross that she didn’t know what Miriam meant by that. Alan had not been in that “kind of mood” before, especially with his children. Kristy added that despite her request for Miriam to tell her father to call her back, he never did. Kristy stated that she didn’t know of her father having any problems or of anyone who would want to hurt him. She did say, “He was kind of a hard-ass in business, but always fair.” Then Kristy related about the phone situation, “Miriam always had my father’s phone as a way of gradual isolation and manipulation.”
Investigator Norcross asked Kristy if her father had ever asked her to forge his signature. Kristy said no, and she added that she could not imagine him ever asking anyone to do that. Her father had fired people for lying before, and he would not tolerate lying or cheating. As to the vehicle fire, Kristy said that Miriam had spoken to her about that. Miriam had stated at the time that if Alan died, she (Miriam) would not get anything because of the prenuptial agreement. About this prenup, Miriam even said, “I didn’t want him to be so infatuated with me that he forgot you girls.” And Miriam made it a point that it was she who had insisted upon the prenuptial agreement before she and Alan got married. Kristy now told Norcross how these comments were very odd at that time of the vehicle fire. Instead of reducing her suspicions about Miriam, they only increased them.
CHAPTER 12
A FUNERAL AND A SHOCK
On June 15, 2008, Investigator Jim Hebenstreit was notified at the sheriff’s office to phone J. P. Morgan. This J. P. Morgan was not the financial institution, but rather a patrol officer with the Duval County, Florida, Sheriff ’s Office. Hebenstreit phoned Officer Morgan, who told Hebenstreit that Miriam was his half sister. Morgan said that he hadn’t seen or spoken with Miriam in five or six years. And then Morgan dropped a bombshell. He said that Miriam had stolen $120,000 from their parents, who lived in Jacksonville, Florida.
That wasn’t all. Morgan related that Miriam’s first husband, Jack Giles, had died in a violent manner. This was the first time MCSO investigators heard anything about this. Morgan believed, because of the investigation, that Jack’s death was a legitimate suicide. Morgan added that Jack and Miriam had been married for twenty-three or twenty-four years, when Jack pulled out a pistol and shot himself in the head while both he and Miriam were in bed. Apparently, Jack had been distraught about the death of his daughter on his birthday, two years after the young woman had died.
Officer Morgan added that Jack Giles was a “gun nut.” According to Morgan, Jack had even persuaded Miriam to always carry a loaded .38 handgun with her. Morgan also said that Miriam was a good shot. As to Investigator Hebenstreit’s question of whether Morgan ever knew Miriam to own a .25-caliber gun, Morgan didn’t know. It had been determined by now that Alan Helmick had died from a .25-caliber bullet to the brain.
A few days later, MCSO investigator Chuck Warner interviewed Sergeant Lewis, who was with the Jacksonville Police Department (Jacksonville PD) in Florida. Lewis had investigated the death of Miriam’s first husband, Jack Giles, on April 15, 2002. Lewis, not unlike Morgan, said that Jack had been in bed with Miriam when he shot himself. After Jack had shot himself, his thumb was found in the trigger guard. That was unusual, but Sergeant Lewis said that Jack had been depressed over the death of his daughter and committed suicide because of it. The death of Jack Giles was officially ruled a suicide.
Investigator Warner received photos connected to the death of Jack Giles and a report about gunshot residue testing. GSR was not found to have been on samples taken from Miriam. However, GSR testing had not been done on Jack Giles’s hands and clothing to see if he had, in fact, fired the pistol.
Investigator Warner later received copies of two reports from the Jacksonville PD concerning the death of Jack Giles. In looking through these reports, Warner noted that Miriam had been investigated for depositing counterfeit checks in January 2004. The total amount had been $6,800. The report went on to state that Miriam eventually admitted to depositing and cashing the counterfeit checks.
Investigator Warner also checked on the time M
iriam had spent in Gulfport, Mississippi, before she had come to Colorado. While living there, Miriam had gone under the name of Francehssea (her unique spelling) Miriam Giles. Warner contacted the Gulfport courts and found that there were three inactive court cases involving Miriam from 2005.
Investigator Hebenstreit later received court documents from Gulfport noting that in two cases Miriam had been charged with embezzlement and the third charge was for petty larceny. The date of all the charges was November 12, 2004. According to the documents, Miriam was found not guilty on all the charges. But it seemed to be “not guilty” because the charges had never gone forward. A big part of the reason was that Hurricane Katrina had ripped apart Gulfport, Mississippi, around that time, and these charges were of little concern in the wider scope of that disaster.
Investigator Warner received Gulfport Police Department (Gulfport PD) charges on the incidents and learned that Miriam had been investigated for taking monies belonging to Barbara Watts, who owned a dance studio there. Miriam left Gulfport for Colorado before she was arrested; but then for some reason, she went back to Gulfport on March 15, 2005. Barbara Watts saw Miriam there, and Miriam was arrested and eventually had her court date. And, of course, because of Hurricane Katrina, the charges were eventually dropped.
The funeral services for Alan Helmick didn’t occur until June 17 in Delta. Alan had a wide group of friends and family from all over who attended the services. An important person who would later speak with investigators after the funeral about what occurred there was Mike Pruett. Pruett was Alan Helmick’s former brother-in-law, having been Sharon Helmick’s brother. Pruett recalled of the funeral, “After the cemetery, we came back to the church, and there was a dinner there. There were a lot of people, and at some point Miriam came over and sat down where I was. And we began to speak to each other.
“She came over and said that Alan had mentioned that when he passed on, Sharon’s ashes would be spread at his grave. Apparently, the ashes had never been distributed anywhere, and Alan had been in control of them.
“She and I sat face-to-face at a table. We just pulled our chairs out more or less and faced each other. There was no one else involved in the conversation. From time to time throughout our conversation, people would come and say, ‘It’s good to see you again, Mike,’ and they’d say, ‘We’re sorry for you, Miriam.’ Just exchanging pleasantries and moving on, but no one else entered into our conversation.
“I asked how she was doing, and she responded, ‘I’m the number one suspect.’
“And I said, ‘Well, that’s probably to be understood. That’s just the way it is. I think everyone’s a suspect until you’re eliminated, so it doesn’t surprise me that you’re a suspect.’
“I asked her if she thought Alan might have known the shooter. And she said that she didn’t know. Then she talked about the day that it happened. She said she had laid out some clothes for him on the bed that morning, but then she said he didn’t pick those clothes. He apparently didn’t like what she had picked out.
“She also talked about somebody that had worked for her at one point in time at the dance studio. Alan had a real dislike for that guy for some reason. She said there was a beef between this guy and Alan. She may have said that the ex-employee had been stealing from them.”
And then Miriam said something about the ex-employee that caught Pruett completely by surprise. According to Pruett, Miriam declared about the man, “He’d better have a fucking good alibi!”
Pruett said later, “I was taken off guard. I asked her, ‘What did you say?’ So she repeated it. ‘He’d better have a fucking good alibi!’
“I asked her if she had given that information to her attorney so that it could be passed on to law enforcement. And she said that she had not done so yet. Then she mentioned something about a prenuptial agreement. My belief was at the time that Alan probably had some kind of provision for her in some way, while the bulk of his estate would go to his family.
“We were concluding our conversation, and I asked her, ‘Well, where do you go from here?’ And she said, ‘I’m going back to the house.’
“I found it troubling that she would go back to the house with an unknown shooter out there somewhere. It was like, ‘Why would you go back and put yourself in harm’s way?’”
Penny Lyons, who was also at the funeral, recalled, “When I saw Miriam at the funeral, she was sitting up front with the family. And I felt really compelled to let her know that I was there for her. So I went up just to let her know I was there.
“After the funeral, she asked if I could come to the meal afterward, but I couldn’t. I had to get back to work. We had to open the clinic that afternoon. So I told her that I would come by after work, and I did. I went straight out to her house after seven P.M. I stayed until close to midnight. It was just me and Miriam there. We sat in the living room for a while and Miriam smoked. Then we spent the rest of the time in the garage, because she didn’t like to smoke in the house.
“I did not enter the kitchen. I walked past it. There were some towels placed on the floor in a T shape that I assumed was covering bloodstains that were there. I didn’t want to look at it. I was just there to comfort my friend. I was really surprised that stains were still there. That they wouldn’t have been cleaned up already.
“Most of our conversation, I just let her talk. She did mention that when she first walked in from the utility room to the house, she saw Alan’s feet first and didn’t realize something was wrong right away. This was odd, though, because it seemed to be in direct contrast to the way the towels were laid out. I simply chose to shine that on at the time and let it go. I just wanted to be there for her, so I didn’t think any more about it.”
Housekeeper Patricia Erikson also attended the memorial service. Later she recalled, “I walked up to Miriam and apologized for telling the police that I was there the day before, and I apologized for telling them how I felt about that day. I said, ‘I had to tell them how I felt that day.’” (She was speaking about her interview with the police.)
Miriam didn’t seem to be too upset by Patricia’s words. In fact, Miriam was basically telling various people that she was being investigated by the authorities, and she realized that was all very routine in a murder case like this.
The day after the funeral, the Delta County Independent ran an article about Alan Helmick entitled FORMER RESIDENT MURDERED. The reporter spoke with various people who had known Alan over the years, including his friend, John Taylor. John spoke of both of them loving to hunt, fish, golf, and play cards. He relayed, “He’ll be missed. He would bend over backward to put you in the home you wanted with a mortgage you could handle.”
Another friend, Les Mitchell, had known Alan since 1974, when Alan had been hired as the golf pro at Cottonwood Golf Course. Les recalled, “We played a lot of golf together. We took fishing trips to Canada and to Mexico. Our families spent time together as our children grew up. He was big on his kids.”
The article went on to note that Alan had sold his mortgage business to daughter Portia in the previous year, and he’d currently been pursuing land development projects. One of those was before the Delta Planning Commission for town houses between Sixth and Seventh Streets in the city of Delta at the time of Alan’s death.
The article revealed one more thing: The Delta Police Department had forwarded information on an investigation into a fire which damaged a vehicle owned by Alan Helmick. The incident, which occurred at the end of April, was labeled suspicious, according to DPD spokesman Jamie Head.
CHAPTER 13
“SHE WASN’T GOING TO MISS HIM AT ALL.”
Detective Beverly Jarrell interviewed Jeri Yarbrough, who was an equestrian trainer and lived in Fort Lupton, Colorado. Fort Lupton was a town hundreds of miles away from Mesa County, just northeast of Denver. Yarbrough had originally met Alan and Miriam Helmick through Stephanie Soule. Much later, Jeri recounted what had occurred when she began talking to investigators.
“They put all the horses on Nationwide (a trucking company) and hauled them up to their ranch. Later, Miriam called me in December 2007 and said that Stephanie was not going to be working for them anymore. They had all these young horses and they were concerned about who they would get to train them. My friend, Shannon Dahmer, was training out of my barn at the time, and I suggested that Shannon could help her get her horses ridden, and they sent them down. They sent three horses, Hollywood, Pharaoh, and Vegas. They used Nationwide for that and it cost at least a thousand dollars.
“The horses were there from about February 2008 to May 2008. After May 2008, the horses were going back up to Miriam’s place. She said that she missed them and she had found a trainer named Sue Boulware, that I knew of. Sue would be taking over the training and that way they’d be able to see them more.
“I had a lot of contact with Miriam Helmick right around then. The mare I had sold them, Sadie, had just foaled. Miriam called me and said the foal was doing really well. She’d call about horse stuff. Things like how the horses were doing, ’cause I care about all my horses, and like to know that they’re doing well and that they’re being taken care of.