And Then She Killed Him

by Robert Scott

  On the front of the card was an illustration of a woman sitting in a chair reading a book. Next to the illustration was a quote attributed to Albert Einstein: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.” Part of the card containing the UPC code had been cut out.

  The investigation was going in a lot of directions now. Jim Hebenstreit spoke with Robin Cook at the Title Company of Delta. Cook told Hebenstreit that she had bought Alan Helmick’s share of the title company in April 2008. Cook had first met Alan in 1987 and later went to work for him at Helmick Mortgage. Cook added that Alan had loaned her money to start the Title Company of Delta, and he was a 50 percent partner until April 2008. For thirteen years, Cook had given Alan 50 percent of the profits she had made.

  Over the years, Alan had asked Cook if she wanted to buy him out. However, she didn’t want to incur more debt and declined. Then in March 2008, Alan had told her that she could either buy his share out, or he would sell his share to someone else. Cook agreed to buy Alan’s interest in the company for $125,000.

  On the day of this transaction, April 30, 2008, Miriam and Alan came to Cook’s office without calling first to set up an appointment time. Cook was distressed by this arrangement, because she was very busy. She told Hebenstreit that she wasn’t happy about the circumstances or in a “visiting mood.” Cook said she just wanted to give Alan his check and estimated the meeting lasted ten minutes. Then Cook added that she learned a short time later that same day that Alan’s car had caught fire right outside her office building in the parking lot. Nothing like that had ever occurred there before.

  CHAPTER 17

  THE CARD

  Investigator Robin Martin followed up about the greeting-card angle in the case. Investigator Martin found a Web site on the Internet concerning the greeting card, based on the creator’s name being on the back of the card, which had been seized by law enforcement. Martin located several stores in the Grand Junction area that carried the creator’s cards, and Martin was able to narrow down the particular card as being sold at City Market at a couple of locations in Grand Junction.

  On June 30, Martin contacted Joe Vessels, who was a store-loss prevention officer with City Market, and asked if he could track the sale of the card. Vessels thought that he could track the card by the price of the card selling for $2.95, instead of $2.99. Obviously, the UPC code had been cut off on the card. Investigator Martin then asked Vessels to search the date range of June 10, 2008, to June 27, 2008.

  Meanwhile, Investigator Jim Hebenstreit spoke with Miriam Helmick’s friend, Penny Lyons, who confirmed that she had been the one who had been with Miriam on the day that Miriam found a card beneath the doormat. Hebenstreit asked Penny to describe the events leading up to the discovery of the card. Penny recounted that Miriam had been out doing some errands and phoned her about 1:45 P.M. on Thursday, June 26. Penny told Miriam she had to work for about another hour and suggested that Miriam go to Lyons’s house and relax. After that, Penny would come home, and Miriam could go with her as she ran a few errands.

  The two women got together sometime after three in the afternoon, ran a couple of errands, and got back to Lyons’s house around 5:45 P.M. During their driving around, Miriam told Penny that over the past three days she had noticed that several things in her residence had been moved around and some things didn’t seem right. It was all mysterious and very frightening in light of what had happened to Alan.

  Lyons told Hebenstreit about following Miriam to her home in Whitewater, and Miriam noticing the police tape had been removed from the front door. When they went to investigate, they noticed a yellow envelope sticking out from beneath the doormat. Penny said that the envelope was not sealed, and then she told Hebenstreit about the contents of the message. Penny added about hurrying out of there, and Miriam not wanting her to call the police, but rather her lawyer. Penny added that Miriam spent the night at her residence.

  Investigator Hebenstreit asked Penny if Miriam recognized the handwriting on the card. She said that Miriam had not. Just who might have placed that envelope and card under the doormat, Penny didn’t know.

  The investigators also learned later that Miriam had told Jeri Yarbrough about the card. Jeri recalled, “Miriam said she had come home and she had found it at the front door. I told her she shouldn’t handle it, that she should call the police about it and let them come over and fingerprint it, and find out who did this. I was concerned about who did this.

  “She said she put some powder down on the floor and that one time she saw footprints in her house. I told her she needed to contact the police and get them over there. And that she shouldn’t stay there because it wasn’t safe. She said she was okay, that her dogs were there and she felt okay. I don’t know if she ever did contact the police about this.”

  On June 30, service technician Christi Walker contacted Bob Dundas, who lived on Pronghorn Drive in Whitewater. Dundas lived near the Helmick residence, and he said that he had been outside his home when Miriam contacted him on June 27, 2008. Miriam asked him if he had seen any strange vehicles around the Helmick home. She also said to him, “There’s been some issues over at the house.” Dundas described her demeanor as being “weird” and that she appeared to be nervous. Then he added that his gut feeling was that Miriam wanted him to support her observation about strange vehicles in the area.

  Investigator Jim Hebenstreit also looked into this issue of Miriam contacting neighbors about “strange vehicles” that might have been around the Helmick residence. Hebenstreit interviewed Josh Devries, who lived near the Helmick place. Miriam had gone to Devries’s home on June 27 about noon. Josh was home that day with his two children when Miriam pulled into the driveway and came to the door.

  Miriam asked Josh, “Have you seen anything strange going on next door? Cars or people who aren’t normally there?”

  He replied that he hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary. Then he added, “Unfortunately, we didn’t see anything the day of the incident, either.” (He was referencing the day that Alan Helmick was murdered.) Josh asked Miriam why she was asking him about this, and she responded it was because she had been finding things out of place in the home. She mentioned doors being left open and particularly mentioned two medicine cabinet doors left ajar. Miriam said there wasn’t anything in those medicine cabinets, and she wondered if she was losing her mind.

  Miriam added that she had seen a midsize white truck driving around the area lately and hadn’t seen it before. She described opaque canisters being in the back of the truck. She had never caught a glimpse of its license plate. However, Miriam told her neighbor that she only saw the driver of the truck in silhouette and he had dark, curly hair.

  Hebenstreit asked if Devries had seen a truck or a person like that around the area, and Josh said no. He then added that he could see the Helmick property from the front of his house.

  Miriam had also told Josh about the card she had found beneath her doormat. When he asked her about it, “she started choking up a little bit and became teary.” Then Miriam told him the contents of the note. “Alan was first, you’re next. Run, run, run,” as he put it. Miriam said she had given the note to her lawyer. Then Miriam added she had placed objects in front of her door to see if they had been moved around. Josh related that this was the longest conversation he had ever had with Miriam Helmick.

  In the four years that he had lived there with his family, he had only spoken with Alan a few times, and with Miriam almost not at all. His wife had spoken with Miriam on occasion, but only briefly. Asked if he ever had prowlers around his place, or had anything suspicious occur, Josh said “zero” occurrences, and that it was “very quiet around here.” So quiet, in fact, there were times that he and his family would be eating dinner and they would see a herd of antelope between his house and the Helmicks’ house. Nothing, especially prowlers, had frightened those antelope.

  CHAPTER 18

  AN INCIDENCE OF FIRE

&nbs
p; Investigator Michael “Mike” Piechota was an investigator for MCSO’s Property Crime Unit. He was going to be an important part of the MCSO team of investigators to try and find a modus operandi (MO) for why Miriam might have murdered her husband. To reach his level of expertise, Piechota had taken intense and varied courses after becoming an investigator. In 2001, he’d attended the Computer Crimes Conference; a year later, he took part in an Advanced Crime Scene Investigation conference. In 2003, Piechota studied with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation on Bloodstain Pattern Recognition and Collection, as well as a conference on Death and Homicide Training.

  Just as important, Piechota took a six-week course at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in 2006 and attended a Mortgage Fraud Conference in 2008. These two subjects were important elements of the Alan Helmick case. It was looking more and more that financial matters might have been a big part of the murder. As yet, however, MCSO couldn’t say why.

  Piechota faxed a request to Carol Hee, of CBI, about a suspicious activity report (SAR). All of it had to do with Miriam Helmick, aka Miriam Giles, Francehssea Giles Miriam Giles, and Miriam Morgan. What came back to Piechota was the possibility that Miriam had defrauded her own parents at some point.

  Francis Morgan, Miriam’s father, had indeed filed the police report with the Jacksonville PD on October 11, 2004, and Piechota wanted to look into this matter. One SAR concerned the SouthTrust Bank; and early in 2004, a check of $2,500 was made payable to Showcase Dancewear. Miriam was involved with Showcase Dancewear, and it may have been a company name she created for herself. Soon thereafter, a $1,875 check was also made payable to this company.

  Through a videotape at that bank branch, the suspect was described as a white adult female. A police officer reviewed the videotape, and the woman on the tape and the photo on Miriam Giles’s driver’s license were one in the same.

  Another SAR was filed because MBNA suspected that Francis and Frankie Morgan had some of their checks stolen. Francis and Frankie said they had not written checks against a credit card account in 2004. However, $32,312 in checks had been used to obtain cash from that credit card account. Worst of all for the Morgans, MBNA was holding them responsible for the amount taken out as cash.

  Following up on this information, Investigator Norcross contacted Frankie Morgan, Miriam’s stepmother, in Jacksonville, Florida. Frankie Morgan told Norcross that for the past four years, she and her husband had been dealing with fraudulent debt incurred by Miriam.

  Frankie said that Miriam had moved into their house after Miriam’s first husband, Jack Giles, committed suicide. Miriam had told the Morgans that she couldn’t stand living in the house where her husband had killed himself. Frankie estimated that Miriam lived with them for six to eight weeks.

  Miriam’s father was going through heart surgery and Frankie was battling cancer at the time. Miriam said she would take care of the bills for them, which they thought was great. A short time later, Miriam bought her own home in the Jacksonville area. Frankie was with Miriam on the day she bought her home. She noted that Miriam paid cash when she moved in. Frankie was also with Miriam on a day that she bought new furniture for the house. She paid cash for that as well.

  Frankie said that Miriam acted as if she didn’t have to work full-time. About this circumstance, Miriam told Frankie that her deceased husband had a large 401(k) account and large life insurance policy. Frankie said she thought it was good that Miriam only needed a part-time job to help pay taxes and for incidental expenses.

  Frankie told Investigator Lissah Norcross that after Miriam had her own home, she still came over almost every day to visit around noon. Frankie thought it was odd that she visited every day around the same time, but she didn’t comment on it. She and Miriam’s father thought it was wonderful that Miriam liked visiting them so often.

  Investigator Norcross wanted to know about Jack Giles’s suicide and possible financial problems, and Frankie related that Miriam had told her that part of the reason was that Jack had a child by another woman. Whether it was blackmail or some other reason, Jack ended up paying that woman $84,000 over time, and he bought her a new Mercedes as well. Frankie didn’t know if this other child really existed, but she took Miriam at her word.

  Miriam also brought up that Jack allegedly had not paid his taxes for years; and now after his death, she was being sued by the IRS to collect back taxes. This eventually got so bad, Miriam told Frankie, she had to sell her new house, which she had purchased so recently, just to pay back taxes to the IRS. Miriam was very bitter about this, and she had to rent a room in the area. Frankie even learned later from a housemate of Miriam’s that Miriam sold very expensive furniture, which she had just purchased, for practically nothing at garage sales.

  Frankie told Investigator Norcross that one day her husband received a phone call from his bank advising him that he owed $10,000. Frankie added that she and Miriam’s father knew that there was no way they were that overdrawn. Nonetheless, Frankie’s husband went to a credit union, pulled $10,000 out of there, and paid the bank. Around that same time, the bank manager showed Miriam’s dad surveillance footage of Miriam making a withdrawal, and the manager asked if that was Francis’s wife. He, of course, said no, that was his daughter.

  Frankie related that at the time her husband thought it was no more than a mistake, but the bank manager showed Francis that his daughter had to use her driver’s license to obtain the money. After that, Francis called Miriam at her new job and told her not to contact the bank, but rather to come over to his house, where they would discuss the matter. Instead, Miriam never showed up. Frankie and Francis found out later that right after the phone call, Miriam left her desk at work and went home to the room she rented. Miriam quickly collected her dogs, and enough items to get by, and simply vanished.

  That wasn’t the worst of it. The same night that Miriam disappeared, Francis and Frankie’s home was set on fire. Frankie told Investigator Norcross that she thought it was too much of a coincidence that their house was set on fire the same night that Miriam disappeared. Frankie said that their house had a screened-in back porch, and much of it was constructed of wood. Her husband had some rags on the porch covered with oil, and someone had set those rags on fire during the night. It was obvious that the fire had been intentionally set.

  Frankie noted that there was a large plant hanging in a plastic pot above where the fire had been set. The fire melted the plastic pot; luckily, the pot, which was full of water, fell on the fire and doused it. Frankie added that the police department was immediately called. They told the Morgans that it was arson.

  The fire department also arrived quickly and firemen noted that the walls were still burning inside the wooden porch structure. Frankie told Norcross that the point of origin was directly opposite her bedroom wall and she had been home at the time. Frankie said that she suspected the fire was started by Miriam, because Frankie’s dog, which barked at strangers, did not bark when the fire was set. At the time, Frankie and Francis did not know that Miriam had disappeared, but they found out the next day when Francis went to the place where Miriam rented a room.

  It was on that morning when Francis went to his daughter’s residence that he discovered many items of hers were missing and a large moving box in the room contained shredded bank statements and cut-up credit card statements. It was at that point that Francis knew for sure that Miriam had been taking out credit cards in his and his wife’s name and running up huge amounts on them. Frankie told Norcross that they suspected Miriam had been obtaining their information from the mail. That was the reason why Miriam had always come over to their home around noon, about the time that the mail was delivered.

  Frankie said that Miriam always sat in the kitchen, where she could see the mail lady when she arrived. And according to Frankie, Miriam was always the one who rushed out to get the mail first. Frankie asked Miriam why she always insisted on getting the mail, and Miriam replied that she liked to look through the “junk c
atalogs.”

  Frankie told Investigator Norcross that after Miriam disappeared, Miriam sent an e-mail to her and her father. Miriam claimed she was now in Maryland and would one day explain what had happened. Miriam added for them not to believe what others were saying about the matter and she would explain it all in time.

  After some time had passed, Frankie learned that Miriam had not gone north to Maryland, as she had claimed, but rather west to Mobile, Alabama, where Miriam’s mother lived. And Frankie somehow learned that Miriam had allegedly stolen $6,000 or $7,000 from her mother, before moving on to Gulfport, Mississippi.

  Frankie also learned that Miriam met a woman in Gulfport named Barbara Watts, who owned a dance studio there. According to Watts, Miriam wanted to go into the business of designing dance costumes. Eventually, Barbara Watts hired Miriam as a bookkeeper and wanted Miriam to run a dance studio that she owned in Colorado.

  A while later, Frankie said, Miriam started her own dance studio, Dance Junction, in Grand Junction “and stole Barbara’s customers away from her.” Frankie also related that Barbara found out that Miriam had written checks to herself, using Barbara’s account. It was Barbara Watts who had actually first contacted the Morgans, because she found one of their checkbooks when Miriam left the Gulfport area.

  After speaking with Frankie, Investigator Lissah Norcross spoke with Miriam’s father, Francis Morgan. Francis reiterated what Frankie had said, and he added that he’d made a police report with the Jacksonville Police Department, which put out a warrant for Miriam’s arrest. Eventually the district attorney (DA) got back to Francis about this and told him that it was going to be too difficult prosecuting a case that involved a father and daughter. Francis told Norcross that Miriam had, in essence, stolen about $80,000 from him and that he would probably never get it back.