by Robert Scott
Miriam said, “No, I did not.”
“Did you ever want to date Keith Coppage?”
“No, I did not.”
“Was Keith Coppage a good manager?”
“Yes and no.”
“Okay. In what ways was he a good manager?”
“He was good at getting people moving, motivated. He was very positive in that respect.”
“In what ways wasn’t he a good manager?”
“He wasn’t always on the level with Alan. He didn’t want to abide by the contract.”
“In what ways?”
“On the contract, there was a specific amount that Keith got for dance lessons that he taught. And then he started having students make out a check to him instead of Dance Junction. Alan tried to nail him down on this. Once they got through that, Alan was going to extend Keith’s contract, but Keith backed out completely and wouldn’t communicate with Alan anymore.”
“So, did their relationship end on good terms or—”
“No. It was very angry.”
McGuirk wanted to know if Keith Coppage no longer being a part of Dance Junction hurt the business, and Miriam said that it did. “As manager, he had taught most of the women there. And the last thing that you want in a dance studio is animosity. People come there to have fun and enjoy themselves, and not get into the middle of other people’s problems. So we hired another manager, named Cody. It brought some of the ladies back that had left because they all loved Cody.”
As far as day-to-day finances at Dance Junction, Miriam said that she handled petty cash there, and on occasion wrote out checks when Alan instructed her to do so. These checks were signed by Miriam on Alan’s instructions, and that’s why there was so much confusion on law enforcement’s part. They were trying to say she had done so without Alan’s knowledge. At least that was what Miriam was contending now.
Moving on to the sports horse facility, Miriam said the business was also a joint effort by her and Alan. She responded that it wasn’t just because she wanted the business, but Alan had been interested in it as well.
McGuirk asked, “Did you know why Alan wanted to go into the sports horse business?”
Miriam replied, “We were looking to buy a dressage horse for me. And we were surprised by the cost—anywhere from twenty-f ive thousand to forty-five thousand. And he thought that it would be a great business to be in. It would be something you could enjoy, even though it was a lot of work. I was basically chief flunkey. I got to clean stalls and move horses around and brush them down, tack them up, et cetera. I did all the heavy work.”
“Did you ride horses as part of your job?”
“Only in lesson. I didn’t ride them as part of a job.”
“Alan was the one who ran the business?”
“He watched over everything. He handled the finances.”
“Did you like the sports horse business?”
“Yes and no. I mean, I wanted to take lessons, but it was a lot of work. You had to get down and feed and move the horses and clean the stalls before they started training. I had to stay down there till one or two o’ clock every day. And then turn around and go to the dance studio at four or five o’clock in the afternoon. I wouldn’t get home until ten o’ clock at night. So I was pretty busy.”
“Okay, you heard Stephanie Soule testify that you told her to fudge her pay so Alan would get used to the expense of the sport business. Do you remember that?”
Miriam replied, “When she would submit hours, it would be like ten minutes or eight minutes, or whatever, for the time she spent with a horse. I wanted her to round it up to the quarter hour so that it would be easier to calculate.”
“Why did you care if it was easier to calculate?”
“That’s what Alan had asked for.”
“Jeri Yarbrough testified that she received bounced checks from Alan for work that she did for the business. Did you write those checks to her?”
“No, I did not.”
“Did you know anything about those checks when you got the call?”
“No, I did not.”
“Were you surprised when she called you?”
“Very. It’s embarrassing when anybody calls to say there are bounced checks. All I could do was forward the message to Alan.”
Jody McGuirk then started asking questions about what kind of relationship Miriam Helmick had had with Alan’s daughters. During the course of the questioning, Miriam replied, “I thought I had a good relationship with Wendy and Kristy. We (Alan and Miriam) were still working on building a better relationship with Portia. I just wasn’t very close with her. I always felt like she kept me at arm’s distance the whole time. It wasn’t much communication, and I wanted to bridge that gap a little more.”
Asked what kind of relationship Miriam and Alan had, she testified, “A wonderful relationship. He was a wonderful human being. He just treated me well. He had a saying, ‘Have fun like hell.’ That’s what his life was like. We enjoyed each other very much. We built things in common along the way. Like the horses, the dancing. We enjoyed sitting on the back porch and looking over everything that we’d accomplished. I always told Alan he reminded me of the John Wayne movie when he sat up on the hill watching his entire little ranch every afternoon.
“We took trips together and just had fun. We had found out that by digging down from six to twelve feet that we had water underground at our place in Whitewater. So he wanted to tap into that and put in grass and make it into a really nice horse property. If he split up the property, then it would basically pay for the mortgage on the house, and he could pay the house off. He’d do that by selling off the front of the property.”
Asked to tell more about the trips they’d taken together, Miriam said, “We went to Denver to visit his sister before Christmas. Then we went to Lake Tahoe for Christmas. We went to a stock show in January for my birthday. We went to Lake Powell twice, once in April and once in May. We went to Mesquite, Nevada, for a golf trip for him and a gambling trip there.”
McGuirk asked if Miriam took messages for Alan, answered his cell phone, and kept appointments for him. She said she did all those things when he wanted her to. And, according to Miriam, he had wanted that a lot during the time he had been sick from the winter of 2007 through the spring of 2008.
McGuirk wondered why Miriam didn’t make sure that Alan called back everyone who had left a message. Miriam answered, “That wasn’t my job.”
Then McGuirk asked, “When you were calling Elizabeth Callister about the insurance policy, why did you call her?”
Miriam replied, “Alan asked me to call her.”
This brought an immediate objection from Richard Tuttle, who said, “That asks for an answer based on hearsay.”
McGuirk replied, “Your Honor, this isn’t being offered for the truth of the matter asserted. It’s being offered for the effect on the listener, what she did in reaction to him telling her what to do.”
What followed was a long sidebar, out of the hearing of the jury. The judge was just about to decide what the jurors were going to hear on the important matter of why Miriam Helmick had allegedly called Elizabeth Callister about a large insurance policy on Alan’s life, not long before he was murdered.
CHAPTER 39
DEADLY DRUGS
The first real argument between the prosecution and defense during Miriam’s testimony came over this issue of a life insurance policy for Alan Helmick. Richard Tuttle told the judge, “This is clearly hearsay. If the court’s going to admit it, I’d ask that the jury be instructed that it’s not being offered for the truth, just for the effect on the listener. And I would argue that the defense not argue that it’s the truth in closing.”
Jody McGuirk replied, “It’s not hearsay, because we’re offering it for the effect it had on Miriam.”
Tammy Eret joined in on this, saying, “If they bring it up in closing argument, we’ll never hear again that the only reason why that insurance policy was purchased was be
cause Alan wanted it.”
McGuirk shot back, “I’m not saying that at all. I’m not saying anything about purchasing the policy. I’m saying why did she call her (Callister) that one time.”
Eret wasn’t backing down. “This is so sidestepping hearsay.”
Soon Steve Colvin was in the argument as well. “I would just add that the prosecution has elicited several times statements that were offered for the effect on the listener and we’ve never asked for a limiting instruction. So I think that at this time for the court to start issuing limiting instructions would unfairly highlight the fact that some statements are elicited that are not offered for the truth of the matter asserted. I think to avoid unduly and unfairly highlighting, we need to go back and find every statement that’s been admitted and do a limiting instruction for all of them. Otherwise, this is unfairly saying only Ms. Helmick’s testimony needs to be looked at with caution.”
If Steve Colvin got his way, this would be a major headache. It would mean that every witness so far—who the defense thought was bringing in hearsay testimony—would need the testimony explained to the jurors. And the judge would have to remind the jurors that those statements had to be looked at with caution.
Tuttle wasn’t buying any of this and said, “For Mr. Colvin, who didn’t take advantage of that—it doesn’t make sense now! Every situation is judged on its own merits.”
Colvin responded, “The prosecution wants you to preclude Ms. Helmick from explaining why she did something that they are saying is evidence of guilt. That flies in the face of everything that you have a right to do. If we can’t explain why she did it, they can’t be allowed to say that it’s evidence of guilt.”
Judge Robison responded, “I do find that it is the effect on listener that is being elicited—why she made the phone call.” Then Robison asked the prosecution what kind of limiting instruction they wanted to be given to the jurors.
Tuttle replied, “I’d ask for the same language I proposed. ‘Why did you (Miriam) call Elizabeth Callister?’”
Eret added, “When we go to do closing arguments, and I say Miriam was looking to take out an insurance policy, then they’re gonna stand up and say, ‘No, she wasn’t. She only called because Alan told her to,’ and they offer that for the truth. You can’t do that, because it’s hearsay.”
Judge Robison wanted to get into this more in depth, so she excused the jurors and told them to take a break. Once they were out of the courtroom, Robison put together an instruction that read: You have heard the defendant testify to statements allegedly made by the victim in this case, Alan Helmick. These statements have only been allowed to show the effect on the listener and cannot be considered by you for the truth of the statements. In other words, Miriam supposedly heard those words coming from Alan’s mouth, and she acted upon what she thought she heard. Therefore, what she thought she heard could never be determined to have been what Alan actually had said. Alan was obviously no longer around to verify that.
As far as limiting instructions being used now, and not earlier when the prosecution had been eliciting testimony, Judge Robison said, “I don’t feel that it is unduly prejudicial to Ms. Helmick. The simple fact is, that if limiting instructions had been requested during testimony earlier, the court would have considered that and determined whether or not it would be appropriate to give it. No such request was made.” Since neither Jody McGuirk or Steve Colvin had asked for limiting instructions, that was their decision and no one else’s, as far as Judge Robison was concerned.
When the jurors came back in, Judge Robison gave them the limiting instructions. Jody McGuirk asked Miriam, “When you called Elizabeth Callister about the health insurance policy, why did you call her?”
Miriam replied, “Alan asked me to.”
McGuirk wanted to know about Alan Helmick and his phone calls and messages. Miriam said, “He just threw his phone in my purse when he didn’t want to carry it. He didn’t like carrying it around in his pockets while he walked around.”
“Did you ever keep Alan’s phone from him?”
“No, I did not.”
“Did you ever hide his phone from him?”
“No, I did not.”
“Did he ever use your phone?”
“Yes. He used my phone because he liked to put it on a speakerphone, especially if we were driving. My speaker was clearer than his.”
Getting back to Elizabeth Callister, McGuirk said that Callister had testified earlier that Miriam had phoned her and asked if she could set up a life insurance policy on Alan without his knowledge.
Miriam answered that she had not used those exact words. Miriam stated now, “I asked her because of the size of the policy if he had to have the nurse or whoever came in to do blood pressure and all of that. And she said yes, we needed to have that done. He wanted an insurance policy, but he couldn’t get it at the time. His blood pressure was up and he started smoking again.”
The topic soon turned to the car fire incident. Miriam told her version of the car fire incident and stressed that she’d never made it to the trunk of the car. She said that she’d gotten sick to her stomach and had to rush to the restroom in the building. When Alan first alerted her to the fact there was a car fire, Miriam testified, “I was walking out toward the other stairs to the front door, and Alan came in and said that the car was on fire, that he needed an extinguisher or some water. I didn’t see an extinguisher, and I had a Pepsi bottle in my hand, so I handed it to him.” (This was different from searching for a pitcher of water in the building, which had been mentioned previously.)
As far as the “wick” went, and the smell of gasoline in the restroom, Miriam testified, “He pried the stick with cotton out of the tank and looked at it, and then handed it to me. I went to get some water and I took it with me. I was upset about the car, so I wasn’t really paying attention. I put it in the garbage can in the ladies’ room. I took water back outside and he was calling 911. Somewhere along the line, he asked me to go get it (the wick), so I got it. I just don’t remember the timing on it.”
McGuirk asked, “Do you know why Alan wanted it?”
Miriam answered, “To have it for the police.”
Asked how Alan had responded to the whole car fire incident, Miriam said, “He was very calm. I thought it was kind of unusual. I was not so calm.”
After the lunch break, Jody McGuirk wondered if Alan Helmick sometimes used Miriam in a “secretarial role,” and she said yes. She would take phone messages for him and sometimes return calls. She added, “I called more when he was sick. He asked me to do it more often.”
Asked about when they got up in the morning, Miriam said she usually got up between nine and ten in the morning. As for Alan, it could be any time. He did not sleep well, and he might get up between two and seven in the morning. And then Miriam spoke of Alan sleepwalking. She said, “I came out to the garage one time. He was in the car asleep at the wheel with the keys in his hand. One time he was trying to find something to eat, and he had all the Tupperware out, looking, I guess. I finally got him back to bed, but when I put my hand on a cereal bowl to take out the next morning for him, it had oatmeal in it, so I knew he was up. Another time we were in Las Vegas. I heard a real loud banging on the door, and when I opened the door, he was standing there naked in the hallway. So he had awakened somewhere in the hall.”
McGuirk asked about Alan being sick a lot, and Miriam said, “He was very tired. Flu-y. He would be that way for a little while, for a few days, and then he’d be fine for a few days, and it would just go back and forth. He had back issues during the whole year. With his back, he had two swollen disks, where he had to get an MRI, and he was going to the chiropractor twice a week. When he was sick, he normally didn’t want to talk to anybody. He didn’t want to have to think about things. He just liked to be left alone.”
McGuirk wanted to know if this included Alan’s children. To this, Miriam said Alan didn’t want to talk to them, and at times he didn’t even
want to talk to her. And that was the reason she began answering his phone messages. She said she passed the information on to him; but whether he called people back, she didn’t know.
As far as home computers went, Miriam stated that she used the Gateway computer and Alan had an Acer notebook computer. But according to Miriam, he started having problems with it, so he also used the Gateway computer more and more often.
Now came the important questions about whether Miriam had ever signed any of Alan’s checks. To this, she said yes. McGuirk showed her one check after another that she had signed; and to each, when asked why she had signed those checks, Miriam said, “Because Alan asked me to.” Most of these were to Dance Junction, and Miriam could, of course, cash Alan’s checks going to that business.
Questioning also came up as to why Alan supposedly didn’t want to talk to Alan Watkins concerning bank accounts. Miriam replied that she thought this was strange and it upset her. She added, “I got angry at Alan because I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t like being put on the spot. He said not to worry about it, that he would take care of it. He was keeping me at arm’s distance on things.”
Back to computers, McGuirk asked about Internet searches on the computers regarding various medicines. Miriam said, “He’d been ill, and I brought it to his attention that he couldn’t keep his blood pressure down. We didn’t know if it was a combination of the medications he was taking or what was wrong.”
McGuirk asked, “Did you look up articles about horse euthanasia?”
“No, that would have been Alan, not me.”
“What about articles concerning the death of Heath Ledger?”
“I don’t know if he did.”
“What about an article concerning death by liquid nicotine? Did you look that one up?”
“ No.”
“Some of the searches were done at odd times. One o’clock in the morning. Two o’clock in the morning.”
“That was probably when Alan was up.”