by Robert Scott
After getting the car fire report, Investigator Hebenstreit received another package of items connected to the Buick car fire from the Delta PD. Among the items was a photo they referred to as the “wick.” Also in the package were photos of the scene, including some photos showing the filler cap of the gas tank, which was at the rear of the vehicle below the license plate.
Jim Hebenstreit went to the Delta Police Department headquarters and met with Sergeant Sean Wells. Hebenstreit viewed the wick, which he described as “a wooden skewer with a piece of fabric or rope attached at one end with what appeared to be glue.”
The next day, Hebenstreit took a photo of the wick to show Josh and Portia Vigil at the Helmick residence in Whitewater. Since Portia was the executor of Alan’s estate, she was there packing up items and cleaning the house. After looking at the photo, Josh said he had found a rope at the Helmick residence that looked similar to the one in the photo. It was a rope that appeared to have been glued to the “skewer” part of the wick.
Josh brought out a short, braided lead rope for use with horses, which was attached at one end to a brass snap. He told Hebenstreit he found the rope in the Helmicks’ horse trailer. Hebenstreit collected the rope and contacted Sergeant Wells.
Wells met with Hebenstreit two days later, and he brought along items connected to the car fire. One of the items was the wooden skewer and rope, which had been termed as the wick. The rope on the wick and the lead rope found by Josh in the Helmicks’ horse trailer appeared to be similar. Hebenstreit noted that to the human eye they had the same color and composition. It even appeared that the wick rope had been cut from the lead rope. Hebenstreit sent strands of rope from the wick rope and lead rope to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.
All of this was just one more item in a chain of items and incidents that made Miriam Helmick’s actions very suspicious.
CHAPTER 25
A KITTEN AND TIGER
While all of this was going on, it still remained a mystery as to where Miriam Helmick was, and what she was doing. And that remained a mystery until links started connecting her to her son, Chris.
Miriam’s son, Chris, had flown out of Grand Junction to Denver in early July 2008, and then to Jacksonville, Florida, on July 6. He was back in Florida only a few days when he received a call from his mother, Miriam. She told him that she was on her way to Jacksonville; Chris was totally surprised by this.
He recalled, “I wanted to make sure everything was clear with the police in Grand Junction. I mean, if you’re under investigation or whatever, sometimes it’s not feasible to leave the area. She indicated to me that law enforcement knew she was on her way out to Florida.
“I kind of advised her to stop and try and find something, maybe a job or a place to stay for a little while in Savannah, Georgia. Kind of settle everything down. She was born and raised in that area. And she got there, but I got a couple of phone calls from her while she was there, saying that she couldn’t find anything, so she was going to come on down to Florida.”
Miriam arrived in Jacksonville near the end of July 2008. Apparently, she had stopped off in Savannah first. None of this was known to MCSO investigators until they received a phone call from Portia Vigil.
On October 16, 2008, Portia Vigil contacted Jim Hebenstreit and told him that she had recently received an e-mail from Miriam, who was now living in Florida. This e-mail was in response to a letter that one of Alan’s attorneys, had sent Miriam. Portia forwarded the e-mail from Miriam to Hebenstreit. Within the text, Miriam had written about items she had sold since leaving Colorado.
Miriam indicated that she had sold ten used horse panels and a manure spreader for $1,000. Then Miriam listed four bills that she had paid before leaving Colorado. These included a barn and training bill of $2,700 to Sue Boulware and car insurance of $114.98 in May for all the Helmicks’ vehicles. The list also included an April and May electric bill of $156 and new battery and electric repair of $120.
Then Miriam wrote that she was going to try and bring back the Buick Roadmaster herself, but she wanted to be reimbursed for the trip. Miriam added that before she left Colorado, the vehicle had 121,998 miles on the odometer. Since then, she had been careful not to drive it too often.
Miriam concluded the e-mail without asking any questions about the investigation or the status of Alan’s estate. This obviously seemed strange to both Portia and Hebenstreit.
A few days later, Investigator Hebenstreit received an official document on Alan Helmick’s estate. The main residence in Whitewater was valued at $620,000, with a first mortgage balance of $411,488 and a second mortgage of $57,873. Based on those figures, there was $150,639 of equity in the property. As things stood, eventually Miriam was to receive that money.
Meanwhile, concerning events that occurred in Florida, a man named Charles Kirkpatrick began searching on Internet dating sites for a woman who shared his tastes. Kirkpatrick was a wealthy man who owned a Fred Astaire ballroom dance studio and an Arthur Murray one as well. He also owned a human resources management company in Albany, Georgia.
Kirkpatrick began his Internet dating search on Seeking Arrangement.com and later on MillionaireMatch.com. That was because Charles fell into the multimillionaire category. He liked the MillionaireMatch.com site because they had an identity-verification feature. For his own profile, Charles stated that he lived in an expensive Florida high-rise building and made over $500,000 per year. Kirkpatrick’s apartment in the high-rise was very spacious and overlooked a pool and Jacuzzi. Not only that, he had several expensive automobiles, including a BMW, a Mercedes, and a 1985 neo-classic Zimmer Golden Spirit, which he said looked like a 1930s Rolls-Royce.
A woman calling herself “Sharon Helmick” did contact Charles Kirkpatrick and he became interested in her. Her initial message to him stated: Saw your profile and loved it. I can dance any dance and I’m pretty good at it, too. I just haven’t learned the West Coast Swing. Your profile requirements described me completely. She sent along a photo of herself on horseback, and described herself as a pretty lady with an impish smile.
Charles sent some more information about himself, including that he lived in Orlando, Florida. To this, Sharon sent a return e-mail: Honesty is the best policy. I’m sure you won’t be disappointed. I’d love to come to Orlando. I will call you soon. Then she added that all the photos she posted were of her riding horses, but she would take another photo in the coming week. And she also stated, I can’t wait to be a kitten and a tiger all in one day.
The woman calling herself “Sharon” said that she liked the finer things in life, and that she could participate in them with “elegance” and “finesse.”
Apparently, Charles had made some comment about going from a “ballroom to a barroom.” Sharon thought that was a clever remark. She said that she was very “sensual and sexual,” and there were many things that they could explore.
After this exchange of e-mails, Charles and Sharon had a telephone conversation. He suggested that they meet in person within the next few days. Kirkpatrick didn’t have to wait long; Sharon showed up in Orlando that same day. They went to a T.G.I. Friday’s restaurant and stayed there until two in the morning. During that time, Sharon told him about her previous husband.
Charles recalled, “She told me that he had been dead about six to twelve months. Something like that. I commented that it was pretty soon to be out with someone, and was she okay with that?
“She said it was okay. She told me that he had died with some type of brain disease or something, and that he had been sick for three to four years prior to that. She said it wasn’t like a sudden thing. She didn’t show any emotion about her former husband. At the restaurant, she was excited and very up and positive. She even brought her dance shoes with her in case we could find a place to go dancing.”
Kirkpatrick recalled that they had dinner and drinks and had hit it off. And then they went back to his place; and as he put it later, they had “intimate relationships.”
S
haron stayed for the weekend. On Monday, Charles had to work. One thing that began to turn him off to her was that she said that she didn’t have any close ties to Jacksonville, where she was now living. She wanted to move in with him right away. Charles relayed, “It was the manner in which she said it. It was repeated several times.”
Kirkpatrick was suspicious about this urgency. He lied to her and said that he was going out of town to see his kids and grandkids in Georgia. Even though they exchanged e-mails again, he never saw her in person after that.
One of the few people back in Colorado who was contacted by Miriam during this time period was Jeri Yarbrough. Sometime in September 2008, Jeri received a phone call from Miriam, who was now residing in Florida. As part of a settlement for buying back the horses, Jeri said that she wanted part of the proceeds to go to Sue Boulware, to whom Miriam still owed money. After that was accomplished, Miriam would get the balance. Miriam told Jeri to go ahead and do that.
Jeri remarked about this transaction, “I paid the debt off to Sue Boulware, who actually had the horses at that time. I paid Sue two thousand five hundred and sixty dollars. Later I paid Miriam two thousand. And I asked Miriam how she was, and she said that she hadn’t been good. She had been in an institution because she tried to commit suicide.” (Law enforcement checked later on and could not find any evidence that this was true.)
“She called me again and said that she was trying to find a job in Florida. It was during this phone call that she said [of the alleged suicide attempt], ‘I didn’t try to shoot myself.’ I couldn’t understand how she really tried to kill herself. It was getting more crazy, as far as the stuff she said. The whole case was going bizarre. I wanted to handle the horse stuff, and strictly deal with that and keep all the other stuff to a minimum. When I asked where to send the money, she said to her son’s account. She indicated that she was living with him in Florida.”
CHAPTER 26
SPECIAL AGENT MORTON
Possibly because of their experience with the Michael Blagg case, which had elements of a staged robbery in the home, MCSO contacted Robert Morton, of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Morton was an expert in this field, and he came with a lot of experience.
Morton began his FBI career in Chicago as a senior member of an evidence response team (ERT). During his tenure there, he investigated evidence in the Oklahoma City Bombing case and the Atlanta Olympics Bombing case. He also did work at the Pentagon when terrorists crashed a plane into it on September 11, 2001.
Later, Morton transferred to the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC), in Quantico, Virginia. As Morton noted later, “We worked on cases that are so unusual, they don’t usually occur with normal policeman’s experience level. We focus specifically on those types of crimes, and by doing so, we maintain an expertise in those kinds of crimes.”
By the fall of 2008, Morton was certified by the International Association for Identification (IAI) as a senior crime analyst. In order to qualify, he needed a minimum of five years of experience supervising crime scene work and had to pass a four-hundred-question test.
Of the Helmick case in particular, Agent Morton would later recount that he came to Grand Junction to meet with members of the Mesa County Sheriff ’s Office. According to Morton, MCSO wanted his opinion on whether the crime scene at the Helmick home had been staged to look like a burglary gone bad.
Of such a crime scene in general, Morton said, “The whole purpose of doing so is because the offender feels they will be targeted by the police as a prime suspect. So they stage the crime scene to disguise the crime scene to make it appear as something else other than what it really is.
“Staging almost always, in my experience, reflects some type of relationship between the offender and the victim. If I’m a stranger, there’s no connection between me and the victim. Therefore, I have no need to stage a crime scene. I can just walk away from whatever happened.
“In my experience, most of the crime scenes that are staged are done so by people who have very little familiarity with the offense they’re attempting to portray. In other words, if I want to stage a crime scene as a robbery gone bad, but I’ve never been a robber, I don’t actually know what happens in that scene. So I use instead my experience or exposure through the media, television, et cetera, to gain those experiences.
“Because police officers are exposed to real crime scenes on a daily basis, they understand the dynamics and the interactions that occur in those crimes. So when they come across a staged crime scene, it looks to be convoluted or made up to them because it doesn’t have the necessary elements that they’re used to seeing when they investigate certain types of crimes.”
Agent Morton looked at various Helmick crime scene photographs that MCSO had taken right after the murder. Morton commented later, “What was interesting in reviewing the scene and looking at the aerial shots was that it wasn’t the first residence that you would come to. You would have to go past several other residences to target that house for a burglary.
“And there was a long driveway where you couldn’t see the residence from the roadway. You’d almost have to know there was a residence back there to drive back there and find it. That would be a concern to a burglar. If I’m a burglar and I’m stealing property because I need money to do whatever I need to do with it, my concern is not being detected. Getting in as quickly as I can and exiting as quickly as I can. To limit myself to one way in and one way out—well, I can’t even see if there’s anybody at home. If I drive up there and there’s somebody home, and I attempt to flee the residence, I’m basically pinning myself in a very difficult situation.”
As far as two pickup trucks being parked in the driveway at the time of the crime, Morton stated, “Most daytime burglars are looking for an unoccupied house so they can go in and steal things. That there’s vehicles parked in the driveway would almost indicate someone was there. There’s better targets to choose than going into a house and taking a chance that somebody would be home.”
About the photos taken by the sheriff ’s office of the interior of the Helmick home, Morton related, “The ransacking that took place in the residence did not appear as other burglaries I’ve seen. Burglars are interested in finding things quickly. They’ll empty drawers out. There’s no concern for neatness in how you open drawers or close drawers. When you looked at those photographs, the drawers were open, but it doesn’t look like some of the contents were gone through other than there was a jewelry box in the bedroom on the dresser and its drawers were open. Even that was left on the dresser. It wasn’t thrown on the bed and the drawers pulled out.”
As far as the kitchen went, Morton observed, “The trash can was knocked over. If I’m a burglar, there’s no need for me to knock a trash can over and look through the trash can. People don’t keep valuables there. Same thing with the home office. Valuables are kept, for the most part, in a master bedroom because it’s the inner sanctum. That’s where everybody keeps their valuables, guns, money, all those kinds of things.”
When it came to drawers just being opened up and made to look as if they had been searched through, Morton said, “The whole idea for a real burglar is to get in and out as quickly as possible. So you search the areas where you know most people keep things that they can trade. In reviewing the crime scene report, I noticed that there was a handgun and several long guns that were not taken.”
Morton noted that computers, a fax machine, and a laptop were not taken. These were all items most burglars wanted to get their hands on—especially the laptop. And as far as a pistol went, Morton stated, “It’s a very good item for a burglar to steal, simply because you can sell it on the street with no strings attached. You can get a very quick turnover of money.”
And when it came to the master bedroom, Morton said, “Other than the drawer on the nightstand being opened, and the jewelry box drawer being pulled out and some other drawers ajar, nothing seemed to be taken. The jewelry box was still in plac
e on the dresser instead of drawers being pulled out and contents dumped. That was unique to me. If I was trying to steal things, what happened to those person’s belongings were of no concern to me. I’m only concerned with taking things out of there and leaving as quickly as I can.”
And there was the position of Alan Helmick’s body as well. Morton stated, “From my experience and training, the position that he fell in . . . Well, most people, unlike on television, when you get shot, you fall in the direction of the shot. You don’t get blown across a room and through windows, and all those other things they love to do. What happens is, especially with a shot like Mr. Helmick received, which would have been almost instantaneous in killing him, he falls directly back toward the direction of the shot. It would put the position of the person who did the shooting in very tight quarters near him. A very narrow position.
“The distance of the gunshot was not a contact shot, so the offender didn’t have the gun at the back of his head when it was fired. For a stranger to shoot him in that position would be very unusual. It seemed to have occurred at about a two-foot range. If I was a burglar and I’m confronted by the homeowner, the easiest thing for me to do is run out the door and escape. And for the offender to literally target Mr. Helmick is not consistent with any kind of daytime burglar who’s there to steal.”
CHAPTER 27
AN ARREST
By the end of November 2008, investigators for MCSO had amassed an immense amount of material that put Miriam Helmick in a bad light concerning the murder of her husband, Alan. There wasn’t a smoking gun found in Miriam’s hands, or, for that matter, any GSR on her hands or clothing that could link her to the murder. But all the bits and pieces of evidence collected by the investigators kept pointing to only one viable suspect in Alan’s death—Miriam Helmick.
On December 1, 2008, Investigator Jim Hebenstreit wrote up a probable cause warrant for the arrest of Miriam Helmick. The document was eighty-three pages long and contained incident after incident alleging the acts that Miriam Helmick had engaged in to murder her husband, Alan. The key lines at the end stated: Based on the preceding, there is probable cause to believe that on June 10, 2008, in the county of Mesa and State of Colorado, Miriam Helmick (AKA Miriam Morgan Giles) committed the crime of Murder in the First Degree.