by Robert Scott
Also based on the preceding, there is probable cause to believe that on April 30, 2008, in the County of Delta and State of Colorado, Miriam Helmick committed the crime of Criminal Attempt to commit Murder in the First Degree.
As to this second charge, Hebenstreit noted that it had happened forty-one days before Alan Helmick was actually murdered. And he wrote, Although the two crimes were committed in separate counties, they arise from the same continuing criminal episode.
Investigator Hebenstreit wanted all of these acts charged, contending that Miriam Helmick had been trying to kill Alan all spring long to cover up the fact that she was stealing from him. She may have even tried to poison him, although that possibility was only alluded to in the document, and was not part of the charged acts.
The actual arrest of Miriam Helmick was carried out by MCSO investigators, Jacksonville Police Department (JPD) detectives, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), and the United States Marshals Service (USMS). It happened on December 8, 2008, in Jacksonville, Florida, and Miriam went under arrest quietly. She was taken to the Duval County Jail and was booked on first-degree murder and the other stated charges stemming from the car fire in Delta in April 2008.
In a short press release, MCSO announced, Today, investigators with the Sheriff’s Office in cooperation with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and U.S. Marshals Service arrested Miriam Helmick for the murder of her husband, Alan Helmick. As with any on-going investigation, details which led to Miriam Helmick’s arrest cannot be discussed or released at this time.
That didn’t mean that Colorado newspapers and television stations didn’t try to find out as many details as possible. On December 9, the Daily Sentinel ran an article with the headline WOMAN ACCUSED OF KILLING HUSBAND. MCSO sheriff Stan Hilkey wouldn’t say much to the reporter other than sharing, “Miriam Helmick was a suspect right from the beginning. We’re confident we’ve got the right person.”
The reporter managed to contact Barbara Watts, and she said that she wasn’t surprised when she heard about Miriam’s arrest for the murder. Watts declared, “Miriam is a very, very powerful lady and she plans things very, very well and wisely. She was a dynamic woman and experienced dancer. I thought she was dynamite. She was after a hot sugar daddy. She wanted someone to take care of her.”
Watts went on to say that she learned Miriam had stolen money from her, and she told Alan “watch your back.” Watts added that Alan couldn’t see the dark side of Miriam because he was so much in love with her.
The reporter contacted Miriam’s attorney, Colleen Scissors, but Scissors made no comment. Duval County Sheriff ’s Office (DCSO) spokeswoman Melissa Bujeda, however, had a few things to say about the fact that Miriam’s first husband had died from a gunshot wound to the head, just as Alan Helmick had. Bujeda revealed, “Mesa County Sheriff’s Office investigators have discussed their case with our investigators.”
Picking up on this story of Miriam’s first husband being shot to death with a pistol, allegedly by his own hand, the Florida Times-Union ran a story headlined, TWO-TIME WIDOW HELD IN COLORADO KILLING: Jacksonville homicide detectives reviewed the 2002 death of Miriam Helmick’s first husband, Jack Giles, after learning several months ago that she was a possible suspect in a Colorado slaying. Chief Rick Graham, of the sheriff’s office, will likely stay in touch with Colorado officials to see whether anything relevant to the local case turns up in their investigation.
There were several interesting comments, in relation to this article, that readers posted on the Florida Times-Union Internet page. One person who had known Miriam before she had moved to Colorado commented: Having been a former roommate of Miriam, it’s not surprising at all. Always had a gut feeling she had a dark side.
Another person wrote: Miriam—the moll of the docks.
The Denver Post ran an article, stating, Miriam Helmick appeared in court, shackled, stooped and dressed in a high-security red jail jumpsuit.
Even Jacksonville television station Channel 4 reported about the two dead husbands, and its news coverage noted that both men had been shot in the head. Miriam had claimed about Alan, “I came in and found him, and then it went from there. That’s all I know.”
Miriam soon had her first court appearance in a Florida court. Bail was set at $2 million, an amount she could not post. So she remained in jail, awaiting extradition to Colorado. And instead of fighting extradition, Miriam told the judge she looked forward to going back there to clear her name. Perhaps she was buoyed up by the fact that in all the charges brought against her in an earlier case by Barbara Watts, she had eventually been acquitted. Even the alleged burning down of her parents’ house and stealing money from them had never gone to trial.
A few days later, the Grand Junction Free Press was still looking at the aspect of the car fire in Delta County. A reporter spoke with Mesa County assistant district attorney (ADA) Richard “Rich” Tuttle, who said, “We’re alleging this [car fire] is part of the same criminal episode.” Tuttle added that it didn’t matter that the car fire incident had occurred in Delta County. Under Colorado law, it could be prosecuted in Mesa County, as long as it was part of the same criminal acts by Miriam Helmick to murder her husband, Alan. Tuttle contended that Miriam had been attempting to murder Alan Helmick since at least April 30, 2008. According to Tuttle, she had succeeded in doing that on June 10, 2008.
Following a different angle, the Daily Sentinel ran the headline DESIRE TO DANCE MAY HAVE COST MAN HIS LIFE. The article described Alan Helmick in the following way: a natural athlete who played college baseball and had a solid golf game. Helmick was trying to get a new lease on life after his first wife, Sharon, died, said Dennis Edson, a longtime business associate and friend of Helmick in Grand Junction.
In a prophetic turn of phrase, Edson said that one of the items on Alan’s “bucket list” was to learn to dance. Of course, “bucket list” included things a person wanted to do before they “kicked the bucket.”
The reporter also spoke with Barbara Watts again. Watts said, “Miriam Giles asked to be sent to Grand Junction. She begged me to send her. She was very persuasive.” Barbara also said that during the time she knew Miriam in Gulfport, “I had told her not to fraternize with customers outside of class.” Then she added, “It didn’t take long for her to get her claws into Alan.”
Another associate of Alan’s had a very different take on the couple. Ken Rabideau said, “There was nothing at all to make you cast any suspicion or doubts about the relationship.”
Even Dennis Edson agreed with this assessment by Rabideau. He declared, “It came as a great surprise when we found out he was murdered. He wasn’t the type of guy I would have thought had enemies.” In this case, the enemy wasn’t someone he did business with, but rather the person who lived in his own home.
As good as her statement, Miriam Helmick did not fight extradition, and was back in a Mesa County, Colorado, courtroom by December 12, 2008. Miriam was clad in a red jail jumpsuit, which indicated that she was being held in a high-security pod at the Mesa County Jail.
In front of Judge Bruce Raaum, Miriam asked for a court-appointed defense lawyer, because she could no longer afford the services of Colleen Scissors. Miriam’s bail was set once more at $2 million, which was an amount she could not raise. So Miriam stayed in the Mesa County Jail, awaiting trial.
CHAPTER 28
A WOMAN POSING AS SHARON
Even after the arrest of Miriam Helmick, the investigation against her did not cease. Investigator Jim Hebenstreit noted that he and FDLE agent Larry Perez learned that Miriam Helmick had been using identification with the name of Sharon Helmick, Alan’s first wife. Searching this name at pawnshops around the Jacksonville area, Perez discovered a person claiming to be “Sharon Helmick” had pawned a necklace at Value Pawn and Jewelry on November 29, 2008. Of course, this was impossible, since Sharon Helmick had been dead for many years by then. It had to have been Miriam Helmick, using Sharon’s name.
Hebenstreit and Agent Perez went to the pawnshop on Atlantic Boulevard in Jacksonville, and a transaction slip there showed a woman who had identified herself as Sharon Helmick, using a Florida driver’s license. She had received $35 for a ten-karat necklace.
Looking more closely at the driver’s license, Agent Perez said the numbers were not consistent with Florida driver’s licenses. It had to be a fake. Later, Hebenstreit and Perez looked at surveillance video of the transaction. The woman purporting to be Sharon was actually Miriam.
The next day, Hebenstreit went with Florida agent Greg Holycross to A&B Marketing, which was a distributor of RainSoft water-conditioning products. Miriam had been working at A&B Marketing after leaving Colorado, but she was passing herself off as Sharon Helmick. Once Hebenstreit and Holycross arrived at the office, general manager Jay Toblin said that he assumed they were there to talk about Sharon. According to Toblin, several employees had seen a story in the local newspapers about the person they had known as Sharon Helmick.
The files on “Sharon Helmick” at A&B Marketing included copies of a birth certificate and Colorado driver’s license. There was also a W-4 form, with the signature of Sharon Helmick. “Sharon” had written as her work history that from 1990 to 1999 she had been a receptionist/secretary for the East Slope Mortgage Company. As to why she had quit that job, she wrote: My husband owned the business and passed away. The application was dated September 8, 2008. The termination report at A&B Marketing was for November 21, 2008, and the reason was absenteeism/tardiness.
Investigator Hebenstreit spoke with Chris, Miriam’s son, about this business enterprise. According to Chris, he thought Miriam had quit her job with A&B Marketing because she was going to move to Orlando, Florida, to work as an assistant for the company’s owner, Michael Keck. Both Keck and Toblin said that was not true. In fact, they said that Miriam had not done a good job while she was employed with them at A&B Marketing. They certainly weren’t going to hire her as an assistant in Orlando.
Asked by Investigator Hebenstreit if Miriam had made any friends while working at the company, Keck and Toblin said that she had often talked with a woman named Pamela Miller while on her breaks.
Meanwhile, Sergeant Henry Stoffel talked with Aline Lee, Miriam’s next-door neighbor in Florida. Lee had plenty to say about Miriam. Later, Lee recalled, “Miriam was my neighbor back in 1988 when she was married to Jack Giles. She moved and I didn’t see her again until August 2008. She called me out of the blue. I knew her son, Chris, and attended the same church he did. When Miriam came back, we met at a Chili’s restaurant in Jacksonville.
“She told me about her husband in Colorado being murdered, and she was a widow. And she told me about the dance studio. She had moved out to Mississippi and she was in contact with someone there who set her up in a dance studio in Denver.” (Lee had misunderstood and thought Miriam was in Denver, not in Grand Junction.)
“She started telling me about what she was doing on the day her husband was murdered. She said she had gone shopping and he was supposed to meet her for lunch. She kept calling him and he didn’t show, so she decided to go home. And then she found him. She found him in the house. She said the house was all ransacked.
“She told me that when they were first married, how happy they were. A happy marriage. They did a lot of fun things together and had a lot in common. She said that at first she didn’t date him because she didn’t date students, but he pursued her. There were months before she agreed to go out on a date with him, and they just hit it off. They went sailing, liked horses, and they fell in love. She said he provided for her and took care of her. She was very, very happy. He lavished her with a nice, beautiful home and everything.
“One thing was strange when I met her at Chili’s. Her hair color was black, and she’d had brown hair like mine. I’d never seen it that dark before. She just didn’t look the same. She had lost a lot of weight. But it was mainly her hair color that stuck out.
“While at Chili’s, I asked her point-blank if she had killed him. She said that she hadn’t and there was a prenup. Then she said that he’d been shot by a robber. She cried. Not hysterically, but she cried. She said she loved him. I thought it was all kind of strange telling me there at Chili’s, but she acted like a grieving widow.
“She said that she was not allowed to live in the house after the murder. She said that the locks had been changed and the police wouldn’t let her live in the house.” (That, of course, was not true.) “Alan’s children had changed the locks. That’s what she said. She said she had been living out of her car until she got to Florida. She hadn’t even been able to get any of her personal belongings out of the house. Her papers, birth certificate, or purse.
“She said that she had a driver’s license and it was of Alan’s previous wife. I told her, ‘Miriam, you can’t do that! You need to get your own driver’s license.’ But she said she couldn’t because it was kept by the police. So I asked her, ‘Were you a suspect and not supposed to leave?’ And she said no. Later, at some other time, she said that she got a Georgia driver’s license. She said that she didn’t have to use a birth certificate there.
“Beforehand, she did say that she had a driver’s license from someone who had her weight and hair color.” (Actually, it was Sharon Helmick’s driver’s license. And that may have been why Miriam dyed her hair black upon returning to Florida.)
“Miriam said that Alan had given her a wad of money, so she had a little of that. Later I gave her money. I wrote her a check for a hundred dollars. The check was made to Chris, her son, because she had no way of cashing it. She said that the car she was driving was a gift from Alan, and that was one of the only things she had left from him.
“Miriam said that one of the daughters was causing trouble for her. They didn’t get along. The daughter’s name was like a car—Porsche.” (The name was actually Portia, easily mistaken as the auto name by Aline.) “There was some kind of holdup with Alan’s estate, and she was trying to get what belonged to her. She said that they (Portia and law enforcement) could reach her through her lawyer, and so forth. She did say that she was eventually cleared by the authorities in Colorado.”
One thing that Aline thought was odd was that Miriam used a disposable cell phone. Aline recounted, “It was like a prepaid thing. It couldn’t be traced. And I told her, ‘Well, if they (Alan’s daughters and law enforcement) tried to get ahold of you, how could they do it?’ And she said that they knew she was in Florida and could contact her at her son’s house. And she said she was also in contact with her lawyer.”
As far as Miriam keeping up with the murder case, Aline related, “Miriam said she tried, but she couldn’t get through to the authorities. That sounded odd to me.”
And about Alan and his business practices, Aline recalled, “Miriam described him as an unusual businessman that didn’t keep good records. She did talk about how rich he was. It was over a million dollars. But he was sick the last few months of his life. Miriam came here with just the clothes she wore. And she needed good clothes because of the job she was doing in Florida. A water softener–type thing.
“She was the size of my daughters, so I took her two big bags of clothing from them. I took ’em to Chris’s house, where she was staying. And it was at that time that she was on a computer at the house. She started talking about being online with a dating service. I thought it was kind of strange, but she showed me the Web site. It was to meet someone online.
“She said she wanted a sexual partner, someone to have fun with. She said she needed a sugar daddy. She also said that she was horny and needed some sexual satisfaction and to be taken care of. She needed to let her hair down. Her exact words were that she was as ‘horny as hell.’”
Aline said that Miriam showed her the ads that she was looking at. Aline observed, “She didn’t have anything in common with some, and others didn’t have enough money. She wanted one with lots of money. A high income. She showed me one man from Orlando. His na
me was Kilpatrick.” (Obviously, Aline was referencing Kirkpatrick.) “He liked horses, was a dancer, and had lots of money. He even owned a dance studio.
“She was excited about going and meeting him, but kind of nervous, too. I was very nervous for her because I didn’t really think she should go there, because it’s kind of scary the way the world is now. She had never met him in person, and she was going down there. To her son, she said she was going for a job interview. A personal assistant–type job.
“And I talked to her on the phone when she was actually at the restaurant with this man. He went to the bathroom, and Miriam told me that everything was great. He was awesome. He was a gentleman and everything was wonderful.
“I even talked to her on the phone a day later. To make sure she was all right. She was at his place, and said everything was fine. She said he was everything she dreamed of. She was very impressed with him.”
Jim Hebenstreit did more investigation on Miriam Helmick while he was in Florida. Hebenstreit discovered that Miriam had the cell phone number of a man named Chuck. Hebenstreit contacted Chuck and asked if he knew a woman from Colorado who had run a dance studio and had a horse training center. The name Miriam didn’t mean anything to Chuck, but the description of a dark-haired woman, answering to the name Sharon, did. She had contacted him on a Web site titled MillionaireMatch.com. In fact, “Chuck” was Charles Kirkpatrick.