A loving husband is found murdered in his home. Weeks later, his wife receives a chilling death threat on her doorstep. Investigators are left to unravel a web of dark secrets dating back decades. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Tonight, a woman's husband is shot and killed and she fears she could be next.
But everything isn't what it seems when a decades-old family secret comes to light. An all-new 2020 begins right now.
My husband is dead.
I'm missing my right arm. I feel like I'm just missing my life. I don't know what to do.
Miriam gets home. It looked like the house had been ransacked. She sees Alan laying on the kitchen floor. He was shot right in the back of the head.
62-year-old Alan Hellmick dead.
Here in this parking lot, less than two months before Alan was murdered, there was an earlier attempt on his life. Somebody tried to torch our car.
So the car actually got torched?
We found a vehicle that had a wick in its gas tank and had been set on fire.
You ever seen anything like that before?
We didn't know if this person could come back.
Miriam became convinced she was being watched. She thought somebody was trying to come into the house, and she was scared for her life.
Two weeks after Alan's murder, Miriam finds a dramatic discovery under her doormat.
And she goes, what should I do? What should I do? And I said, you call the police, and you get away from them.
There's a card inside that says, Alan's first, you're next. Run, run, run.
Out here in the Western Colorado countryside, the wide open spaces can stretch for miles. In a place this remote, it might seem unlikely that two lonely souls might find each other and a second chance at love. But that's exactly what happened here until one warm summer day when the peace of this place was shattered by unimaginable violence. This was a big story that shocked a small town.
There was a scare in the community, you know, that something like that could happen. We don't have a lot of crime here.
Murders just didn't really happen there, especially murders with so many twists, and especially to a well-respected businessman that everybody really loved.
Alam Helmick was a fixture in this community, a man who dedicated his life to helping others achieve their dreams, getting small businesses off the ground and families into their first homes. In fact, he was known as the broker of Main Street.
Alan Helmick was a prominent businessman. He had a mortgage business. Everybody respected him. He was firm, but he was very friendly.
An avid outdoorsman, Alan took advantage of all western Colorado had to offer.
The Western Slope is just gorgeous. It really is where the West meets a bit of suburbia. And in Whitewater, people have these sprawling homes, very affluent, very safe.
How would you describe this town of Grand Junction? We pride ourselves on our outdoor activities, our beaches, our wine industry. Great for families.
Alan had grown up in the nearby town of Delta and settled into Grand Junction to raise a family. What was Alan Helmick like?
You know, he was a good guy.
He was a great athlete. Bob Caccetti was Alan's friend and longtime accountant.
Good instincts? Yeah. Oh, he was a risk taker. Oh, he was a gambler. We went to Vegas once, and I think by the time we checked in the hotel, he was borrowing money. He recovered, you know.
He was a good business person. He took a lot of chances, but it seemed to, more than not, played out and worked well for him.
And definitely not one to shy away from attention.
One time we were in Mexico. A bunch of us were down there on a fishing trip, and the mariachi band came around the restaurant. Alan handed them a few dollars and asked for the trumpet from one of them. And he joined them on the trumpet. And he was really good. It was like, wow, where'd that come from?
So it didn't surprise those who knew Alan that after his first wife unexpectedly passed away, he wanted to meet new people. So he decided to try something different, dance classes. And his instructor is this woman, Miriam Giles.
Oh, yeah, he came in one time and we were doing something and he says, yeah, I just love dancing.
Miriam was a very good dancer, a good instructor. She had me dancing, which was a miracle.
Alan, I believe, kind of had that love at first sight feeling and really wanted to pursue Miriam and did so on the dance floor.
Miriam was 10 years his junior, but Alan didn't let that discourage him. He described meeting Miriam in an interview he did shortly before he died.
She didn't want to date me, but I persisted. She was my dance instructor, so I could go on a cruise and not be caught footage. And we ended up being pretty compatible.
Alan seemed reborn. He was so very happy.
They ended up falling madly in love and got married within two years of knowing each other.
They would talk about how they would go out on their boats late at night to watch the sunsets together, have an evening cocktail, and just how they felt like they had just found a true partner late in life. It was just like a little fairy tale come true.
It's June 10, 2008, typical beautiful Tuesday morning in Whitewater, and Miriam leaves to go run some errands. Alan was going to get his car serviced, and then they were going to meet up for lunch.
She stopped to get cigarettes, stuff for her horse, even check on a prescription for him.
She went to City Market to pick up his prescription and found out that he hadn't dropped it off. So she called him, could not get a hold of him.
When Miriam gets to the Chinese restaurant, she calls Alan again to see if they're gonna meet, but Alan never shows.
Miriam, after 15 minutes, decides to leave and head home. Miriam gets home. It looked like the house had been ransacked.
At that point, she sees Alan laying on the kitchen floor on his back with blood under his head. She calls 911 immediately. She's sobbing. She's frantic. He's all bloody.
He's all bloody? Yeah. Where's he bleeding from?
We knew patrol had been dispatched out to what was reported as a robbery, and then we had a deceased person on scene.
Robin Martin is a detective who worked the case. When the first officers arrived on the scene, they find Miriam distraught and kneeling over her husband.
Alan was on the floor in the kitchen. It looked like he had been shot in the head and we had a bullet casing next to his body. They did a very quick security sweep to make sure there wasn't a suspect still on scene.
There's no one in the house. As they conduct their sweep, deputies notice drawers pulled out in the kitchen and a trash can tipped over in Allen's office.
In the newsroom, we have police scanners and we heard the call go out saying there was a robbery homicide out in Whitewater. I packed up my camera gear and went out there immediately. What I saw when I got out there was a scene that was taped off. Multiple officers going in and out of the house conducting their investigation.
A lot of media attention? Yes. This was a big deal in that town, I guess.
It was. Very much so. And everybody wanted to know what was going on.
My wife and I were getting ready for bed. 10 o'clock news come on. The headline was there has been a homicide in Whitewater.
The Mesa County Sheriff's Office has called out to this Whitewater home.
Kind of jokingly said to my wife, I says, oh no, I wonder if that's Alan. And lo and behold, it was Alan.
What they find is 62-year-old Alan Hellmick dead, shot in the head.
It's Detective Work 101 that you start with the people closest to the victim. But in this case, Alan's wife, Miriam, was running those errands, expecting to meet Alan for lunch. She even had the voicemails to prove it.
Hey, Alan, this isn't funny anymore. I've been sitting here in front of a Chinese place for 15 minutes, so would you call me?
Things did not add up. Everybody knew him. Everybody loved him. Who would do such a thing?
The Mesa County Sheriff's Office has called out to this Whitewater home on a report of a possible robbery. What they find is 62-year-old Allen Helmick dead, shot in the head.
After finding her husband Allen dead in a pool of blood on the floor of their Whitewater, Colorado home, Miriam Helmick is brought in for an interview with the Mesa County Sheriff's Office.
Thank you for coming down and helping us get to the bottom of this. We appreciate it. It's Miriam, right?
Investigators are trying to solve this murder. The first 24 to 48 hours are critical and she is the first person you want to talk to.
Miriam was at our office. They, as we do with all, what were you doing today? Can you go through your day for us?
I had some errands I needed to run today. So he was going to be with me later. So he got in the shower and got dressed. OK. What time did you leave?
And what did she tell investigators about her whereabouts that morning?
She started listing off everywhere she had been. She told us that she was calling Alan several times, was getting his voicemail. Hi, Alan.
I just want to let you know I'm going to Walmart. If you're going to meet me for lunch, let's meet at the Chinese buffet. Love ya. Bye. Then what happened?
I still hadn't heard from him. And then I went from there to Orchard Mason City Market to pick up his prescription.
What time is it now? I probably got there about 10, around 10.
Hey, Alan. You need to turn your phone on. Question for you. When we got to pick up your prescription, they said that you hadn't been by yet. So are we still going to be able to meet for lunch? It's not like you to call, not call me. So give me a holler. Thanks. Bye.
And since he hadn't called me back, I thought he was caught up somewhere to me. So I left a message and told him I was going home in case he decided to, um, meet me there anyway.
Okay, Alan, this isn't funny anymore. Um, I've been sitting here in front of a Chinese place for, um,
15 minutes in, you're never late, so would you call me? Miriam's entire morning is accounted for. She even offers up proof of where she's been.
I think I have all the receipts in my pocket.
She actually went from one end of the valley to the other end, and we were able to track her movements, not only by her receipts, but by her cell phone interacting with cell phone towers.
She was tested for gunshot residue?
Yes, she was tested for gunshot residue. Her clothes were collected? That's right.
They take those items to check them for any kind of gunshot residue or blood spatter that might indicate Miriam had something to do with this. And those results came back negative.
She's also caught on several surveillance cameras throughout the morning. Miriam seemingly has an airtight alibi. So naturally, investigators are anxious to ask her who she thinks may have wanted to harm Alan.
Did he have any enemies, any problems with any of his contracting work going on, any disputes? Would he share that with you if he did?
I think so.
He shared a lot with me.
Miriam said Allen was generally well-liked, but detectives also knew he'd been a local mortgage broker. Could he have turned someone down? Maybe had a disgruntled former client or coworker who was out for revenge?
He did not like lying or dishonesty. He would fire people for that, but that was respected.
And he had started his own business here decades earlier. Alan had married his high school sweetheart, Sharon, and had four children through 37 years together. But on New Year's Eve 2003, she died of a sudden heart attack. How did that affect him?
Friends said that he was quite depressed and wasn't doing that well. And soon afterward, he takes up dancing. He was encouraged to try a new activity.
When Alan met Miriam, I know she had a policy of not dating her students, but Alan was pretty relentless.
Karen Wilson was a local journalist in Grand Junction, Colorado, who covered this case. Just days after Alan's murder, she spoke to an emotional Miriam.
I met him teaching how to dance, and I didn't really like him while he grew on me. But he was such a gentleman, and he was so sweet, and just loved him to death.
Miriam had been dealt her own difficult hand in life, having faced not one, but two unimaginable tragedies back in her home state of Florida. Chris Giles is Miriam's son. Grew up in Jacksonville, mom, dad, a sister. What was it like?
It was good. Typical kind of four family. You know, me and my sister were super close. Mom kind of led us to do our things, but was also there to kind of shepherd everything and help us through.
In 2000, Miriam and her first husband, Jack, were devastated when their eldest child, 23-year-old daughter Amy, died suddenly after an accidental overdose. How did the family cope with this, with her death?
We didn't really talk about it. After a while, things kind of, just kind of started going downhill.
And Jack just, he kind of, you know, he just couldn't, he just could not live without his daughter. It just tore him apart.
And then two years after your sister dies, tragedy strikes again.
Yeah. My dad took his own life and I woke up to the gunshot.
Miriam's husband, Jack, shot himself while he and Miriam were in bed.
Mom kind of runs out the door, and she's hysterical, just Losing her mind, like a scream I've never heard before in my entire life. That was a dramatic change in your family. Yeah. The loss of father. Yeah, you just, you know, you're trying to figure out how to deal with those things. You got to deal with the pain, you got to deal with the hurt, you know? She turned to dancing after all this.
Yeah.
It was kind of her escape, where she kind of felt normal. And then your mom decides to move to Colorado.
Yes. And not long after is when Alan Helmick walked through the door of the dance studio where Miriam worked.
Everybody's really happy for Alan. He seemed real happy. Yeah, another chance at love.
Everybody said that her and Alan were kind of a good team for dancing. They were a real, you know, they were a real couple.
So Alan and Miriam decided to build a house together, and they chose the community of Whitewater. The house was set pretty far back from the road, and it was about a 40-acre property.
Your mom goes through all this, seemingly happy again, and all of a sudden, this happens.
911, what do you have to tell your emergency? My husband is dead.
How did you learn that Alan had died? She called me. He called me and told me that, um, mid-shot. Still kind of another shock to the system. Another loss. Yeah, another loss.
So far, investigators don't seem to have much to go on. But about an hour into that police interview, Miriam says something that would raise the eyebrows of any homicide detective.
In Delta. Uh-huh. And somebody tried to torch our car. So the car actually got torched in Delta?
Had Alan's killer made an earlier attempt on his life? After Alan Helmick is found murdered in his Whitewater, Colorado home, his wife Miriam is interviewed by investigators. And she tells them about a shocking incident that happened just six weeks earlier.
Somebody tried to torture a car. They took a stick or a big restaurant skewer and put some kind of gauze on it and stuck it down in the gas tank and lit it.
Here in this parking lot, less than two months before he was murdered, there was an earlier attempt on Allen's life. Someone tried to set his car on fire. It looked like something straight out of a movie. But for the Helmicks, this brush with death was all too real. Tell me about that incident. What happened that day with the car?
Well, Alan and Miriam had driven to Delta for the closing on their business. They were selling Alan's title company to a purchaser. And they had finished the transaction and had parked out front. Collected a check? And collected a check for over $100,000 for the sale of this business and got in the car. At that point, Miriam went in to use the restroom.
And while she's in the business, the car starts smoking.
Alan looked in the mirror and saw that the vehicle was on fire. He got out of the vehicle, went to the back of the car, and a wick was in the gas tank.
When Miriam comes out, she hears that Alan's screaming at her to bring her to get a fire extinguisher, that the car is on fire.
Upon arrival, we found a vehicle that had a wick in its gas tank and had been set on fire.
You ever seen anything like that before? No.
No, I had not seen anything like that.
It was pretty obvious someone had tried to start that fire. Correct. So if someone was trying to set the car on fire, it didn't quite work. Correct.
The fumes did not ignite, fortunately.
Were they able to glean anything else from the crime scene?
No security cameras from the surrounding businesses, no video footage whatsoever of what had transpired.
The police both questioned Miriam and Allen after the car incident.
You have no idea who would do this to you or Allen? No, not at all.
I mean, it's just weird. I don't know. We've been hashing it over last night. We can't figure it out.
Allen didn't have a lot of enemies, and so who would want to kill Allen in that kind of way by blowing up his car? That was a real mystery.
Do you know anyone that would have a problem with you?
I do not. Over the years, as active as I was in business in this area, going to be some unhappy people because i turn people down on loans from time to time but i think i was well respected in the savings and loan industry There are two people that have had a problem with it.
Okay, who are those two people?
Allen mentions two bankers with whom he had prior dealings, but quickly downplays their potential involvement in the arson.
I can't imagine them being vindictive because they're too much exposed. You know, they do stupid things, but they're not stupid people.
Investigators will ultimately determine that those bankers are not involved, but they're exploring every avenue, even asking Alan if he thinks it's possible Miriam could have been responsible for the car fire.
Oh, God. No, I don't think that.
Not at all.
That would be terrible. Why would you do that?
So during the interviews with officers, Alan and Miriam had mentioned that Miriam was would not hurt Alan or harm him because Alan was worth more to her alive than if he were dead.
What would she gain if you died yesterday?
What he would get? It's a mess. She is nothing that was created prior to the marriage.
Allen was convinced that it wasn't Miriam. And if the investigators in Delta had any suspicions of Miriam being involved in this, Allen was the first to defend her and say she wouldn't do this.
And besides, what reason would Miriam have for trying to kill Allen? He'd always gone out of his way to make her dreams come true with lavish gifts. and gestures.
His goal in life was to make me happy, and he took care of me. His favorite saying was, have fun like hell. So anytime he knew I was going shopping or he gave me money or anything like that, he would say, have fun like hell.
Alan loved Miriam, and he was always happy to dote on her, buying her lavish gifts like her own dance studio and even a horse training business, always intent on making her lifelong dreams a reality.
I met Alan and Miriam Helmick at my farm because they wanted to buy some horses to start a horse breeding operation. It was always her passion to start riding, and Alan just said, you know, I'm going to give this dream to you.
horse training centers. It's extremely difficult way to make a living. Most of those never pay off. It's a labor of love. You told him it was not a good idea to invest in this horse.
No, you know, and I said, you know, it's a good hobby, but it's too expensive.
And his desire to open up that dance studio came from where? Oh, it had to be Miriam. You had your concerns about him investing in these things.
Oh, I told him. I said, get your head up your ass.
Sounds like you really wanted to make Miriam happy.
I think so.
Alan was always very good with his finances, but with the horse business and the dance business, they were hemorrhaging money.
As investigators began digging into Alan's finances, they found that bad business decisions had left him in a serious financial hole. But were his money troubles enough of a reason for someone to want him dead? Or could the murder have been more personal?
Does Alan Jr. know where you guys live now? Yes, he's been there.
He's my wayward kid because he's sort of a bum.
Investigators will soon learn about some long-standing Helmick family tension.
He shows up when he's not announced, you call the cops.
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One week after his untimely death, Alan Helmick is laid to rest.
When we were at Alan's funeral, Mariam sat in a pew in the very front, of course. She was crying, looked real despondent. Alan's family, his daughters, were just heartbroken and devastated. Alan was, he was a really good dad to those kids. He was like their rock and hit them real hard.
What's it like around here with Alan, I guess?
Very quiet. I'm missing my right arm, I feel like. I'm just missing my life. I don't know what to do.
In the days after Alan Helmick's murder, investigators had diligently chased down leads and conducted interviews with people in his orbit, but they hadn't announced any suspects. There was, however, one thing they were pretty sure of. This was not a robbery gone wrong. What stood out to you?
It was odd. You had property still in the house. that was, you could assume, was a value that a normal burglar would take.
Like what?
Computers, phones, jewelry. The normal type of stuff you would expect somebody to steal.
There were drawers pulled out evenly. There was a trash can knocked over. There were drawers that were open that wouldn't hold valuables anyway. And most of the drawers were open in the kitchen, right?
Correct, in the kitchen. throughout the house. It just did not sit right. It did not feel right. It was looking staged.
And Alan's autopsy confirmed that he probably had not walked in on anyone committing a burglary.
There was no indication that Alan had tried to fight off his attacker. It was very clear that he was caught by surprise as he was shot right in the back of the head.
I don't know.
But there was someone in Alan's life that Miriam had told investigators he'd been wary of. At one point, Miriam starts pointing fingers at Alan's son, Alan Jr. What did she say about him?
Miriam talked about how Alan and Alan Jr. never got along and that there was some falling out between the two of them and some animosity.
Tell me more about Alan Jr.
He's had, um... He's had run-ins with the law.
What was the relationship between Alan and Alan Jr. three to four months ago? Same. Same distance?
It's been that way for many years.
Okay, kind of. Very distant. Okay.
There's some real animosity there.
Does Alan Jr. know where you guys live now?
Yes, he's been there.
And after that car fire six weeks earlier, Allen had also mentioned his strained relationship with his son to those investigators.
He's my wayward kid because he's sort of a bum. And you can't fix that by just handing him money.
Allen's personal issues with his son, coupled with the fact that he may have known his attacker, was enough for detectives to bring Allen Jr. in for an interview.
Come on in and have a seat. And I, um... Right here? Yes, that's fine. He's the kind of guy that if he saw something that wasn't right, he would give you his two cents about it, and it would not be nice. It would be sharp.
He just told it anyway.
Alan Jr. goes on to say that his father had effectively cut him off financially. I'm sure that I had back then, and they repeated, you know, hey, this is something you need to learn to take care of yourself.
When asked, Allen Jr. insists he would never hurt his father, and he had an alibi. He was working out of state at the time of the murder.
Allen Jr. was cleared as a suspect. That's right. No evidence linking Allen Jr. to having anything to do with Allen's murder. So investigators are back to square one.
That's right.
There were no suspects. We didn't know if this person could come back. I never thought it would happen here or anything like that would ever happen here.
It's always quiet around here.
Are you scared that this person might come back?
I don't know. Yes and no. I don't want to leave because I'm closer to him here.
Had there been a murder in my home, would not want to stay there, especially not a few days after. But she said it was her home. She said she felt closer to him there.
But if Miriam says she felt safe enough to stay in her and Alan's home, that was about to change. And then two weeks after Alan's murder, Miriam finds a dramatic discovery under her doormat at the house.
And she goes, what should I do? What should I do? And I said, you get off the phone and you call the police and you get away from there.
Was the killer now coming after Miriam?
Miriam Helmick came home last Tuesday to find her husband Alan shot and killed. Her quiet Whitewater neighborhood was turned upside down.
The baffling murder of businessman Alan Helmick had left the community desperate for answers. Detectives were taking a close look at everyone in Alan's life, even close friends like Ed Benson, who was brought in for an interview.
I've known Alan, oh shoot, I don't know, a long time. You're good friends. Well, is it safe to say you're good friends? We're friends. I mean, yeah, we're good friends.
Strange interviews with the sheriff's department, the investigator. You know, you go in and we're friends, but yet we were treated as like suspects.
Did you guys ever have any bad blooded between you two or anything like that?
Not from my standpoint.
No, no, no. any enemies that you know of without Alan telling you or any said rumors that Alan's not a good guy or anything like that? Never. Okay. Never.
And there was that mysterious car fire just weeks earlier. Everyone wondering, could the two incidents be linked?
Take it all that they may be connected. A good possibility. I was letting them figure that out. It was, I mean, it was a shock to us. But he never mentioned anything about anybody that would do something like that.
As days passed with no suspects in custody, Miriam became convinced she was being watched. She reported seeing a white pickup truck with a driver she didn't recognize circling the property, leaving her to wonder whether the same people who killed Alan were now coming after her.
I talked to Miriam almost on a daily basis. And in a lot of our conversations, she talked about that she thought somebody was trying to come into the house and she was scared for her life.
Miriam starts reporting that weird things have been happening around the house. She is saying that she will come home and a door that she knows she locked is unlocked.
She was finding lights on. She was finding medicine cabinet doors open that shouldn't be.
She saw one or more suspicious vehicles that she didn't know who was linked to them. And mind you, this is a very small area, only a handful of homes out there. And you recognize most of the vehicles that are driving in and out of the area.
But the strange happenings at the home weren't the only thing worrying Miriam. With Alan, the sole breadwinner, gone, there wasn't any money coming in. During her police interview, Miriam had explained to investigators that they had a prenup.
She really didn't have anything without him. She didn't stand to gain a lot.
I did not have any legal claim to anything that he owned. Okay. It was pretty cut and dry.
Miriam's financial situation was fairly dire. In fact, she started selling off some of the property they had together.
She said she had no money. All the money was in Alan's name. So I said, well, let me buy the horses back. I'll pay your debt off to the other trainer. That way, it'll give you some money for what you need to live on.
And then, as Miriam is struggling to stay financially afloat, an ominous message shows up on her doorstep.
She was with her friend Penny. They had just gotten back from shopping. She goes up to her front door and she sees an envelope sticking out from under the map. And when she opens that envelope, there's a card inside that says, Alan's first, you're next. Run, run, run.
She collapses to the ground, becomes very distraught.
Miriam calls me and she's frantic and she goes, what should I do? And I said, well, you need to hang up the phone and call the police and get out of there. I said, because somebody could be there trying to hurt you.
The greeting card is turned over by Miriam to her lawyer, who then notifies the police.
I was given a copy of the card. It said, to the grieving window in block letters. On the front is a picture of a middle-aged female. And it said, insanity, doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. And then inside, Allen spelled A-L-L-E-N.
Misspelled.
Misspelled. Your was also Y-O-U-R. A grammatical thing, okay.
Whoever left it there had cut out the barcode, seemingly in an effort to obfuscate anybody tracing that card, where it was purchased, who purchased it, that sort of thing.
It looks like Miriam might be the next target.
Maybe there is somebody out there who really wants to kill Miriam as well.
After Miriam received the threatening card, she left and she went back to Florida, Jacksonville, Florida, where she's from. She moved in with her son, Chris.
How was she coping? Oh, it was not good. You know, it was, you could, it was, there was some brokenness there. I just knew that she was in a bad place. I was trying to help her through that stuff. What did you make of that?
I think that's not that abnormal. She didn't have a lot to her name, so she needed to figure out how to live without Alan.
Back in Colorado, that bizarre greeting card gives police something they have been desperately searching for, a solid lead.
I had actually seen this card before.
Just coincidentally, you had seen the card?
It's kind of a unique front on a card.
It's at this city market that investigators finally get the break they've been waiting for. The person who bought that card with the threatening message from Miriam is caught on surveillance tape here. And just who that person is will take everyone by surprise. You see, clear as day. Then a bombshell discovery from decades earlier.
The piece of evidence that was really the smoking gun, almost literally, was recovered from that lawn in Delta.
What investigators find buried here will crack this case wide open.
What we had was a man who had led a good life and he ended up murdered.
I saw Ellen on the floor. It was cold and gray.
People were in disbelief. People were scared. I know.
Held his hand for a few minutes and tried to make some sense of it all.
Miriam comes home. There's a handwritten note, and it says, to the grieving widow, Alan's first, you're next.
Run, run, run.
It looks like Miriam might be the next target. The killer was now after her.
You want twists and turns, there's no shortage of that here.
I met Miriam on a dating site. She wrote, saw your profile and loved it.
She was moving on. Him and my girls were like, ah, she's dating already?
She's trying to get on with her life in a new state, but another incident with a gun comes to the surface.
I heard the shot. Mom kind of runs out the door, and she's hysterical, just screaming, like a scream I've never heard before in my entire life.
Could what they find buried in this yard be the smoking gun? On June 10, 2008, 62-year-old respected businessman Alan Helmick was found dead in his home by his wife Miriam.
When we arrived, Alan was on the floor in the kitchen. He had been shot in the head, and we had a bullet casing next to his body.
The place had been ransacked, but nothing seemed to have been taken.
They realized fairly quickly that this was a staged attempt to hide what really happened.
A tragic ending to what appeared to be a perfect second chance at love.
Both Alan and Miriam were widows. She was his dance instructor for ballroom dancing lessons.
I'm missing my right arm. I feel like I'm just missing my life. I don't know what to do.
Miriam told police she'd been running errands all morning and provided receipts to back up her alibi.
I went to Walmart, okay? I needed to buy some shirts.
Police were at a loss as to who would want this well-liked businessman dead. Alan had some enemies, but nobody was going to kill him. As investigators began to dig deeper, the story took a frightening turn.
Miriam comes home. There's a handwritten note, and it says, to the grieving widow, Alan was first. You're next. Run, run, run.
It looks like Miriam might be the next target. The real killer was now after her.
After Miriam received the threatening card, she went back to Florida, where she's from.
When Miriam came back to Florida, I was so surprised. I just couldn't believe it. She gave me a call. And I got a lot to tell you, she says.
In Florida, Miriam turned to old friends for support, reconnecting with her former neighbor, Aline Lee.
Miriam didn't have any money. She said, all I've got is just the clothes on my back. I have nothing. I said, I can get you clothes. My girls are your size. I bought a gas card for her and I gave her a bag of jewelry. I just felt bad for her.
While Miriam tries to restart her life in Florida, detectives in Colorado are continuing to work the case, trying to figure out where that threatening card she received came from.
They got in touch with the manufacturer of the card. He was able to tell them where these cards were sold. I checked the Hallmark.
I checked the Hobby Lobby. We finally get to the city markets. I contacted their loss prevention guy. They found two cells. One person paid in cash, didn't know who that person was. The other one was with a credit card. So we had a name and then he found one more purchase. He called me and he's like, I've got video.
That store uses VHS tapes?
That particular store was not as up to date as their others. And they did use VHS and they used it over and over and over again. So by the time we got this tape, it was kind of delicate. It was her. She was wearing the same style of shirt that she had walked in with her interview. It was just a different color combination.
You see Miriam going first to the area where the cards are sold within the city market and then to the cash register where she pays for it. Clear as day.
So now it appears that Miriam, the grieving widow, seemingly afraid for her own life, had actually sent that threatening card to herself. But when investigators confront her about this, she says she has an explanation.
What Miriam told them is that she felt like the police weren't paying enough attention to the case. They weren't doing much. And so she wanted to kind of jog that with this card.
That was probably not the best decision to make. Not what I kind of would have done in this situation, but she felt she needed to do this. She felt she needed to.
Did that greeting card incident change the way you and investigators approached the case?
What innocent person would do this, obfuscate, complicate a murder investigation with this bruise?
But remember, when she was interviewed by investigators, Miriam said she had very little to gain from Alan's death.
did a prenup okay everything he has is his everything mine is mine he has more than i do okay with no clear motive inside the mesa county sheriff's office turned their attention to miriam's past learning about that double tragedy she and her family suffered years earlier in florida there was the sudden loss of her daughter and then a shocking development with her first husband
While Miriam and her first husband, Jack, were in bed, Jack shot himself in the head. Now you say, okay, she's had not one, but two husbands shot in the head.
Was there a common thread? And they were both married to Miriam Helmick.
Police ruled it a suicide. There were some strange circumstances, though. Things like he used his right hand to pull the trigger. Jack was a lefty.
Investigators then start looking back at your father's death.
Yes. I woke up to the gunshot. You were just down the hall. Yeah, I was sleeping on the couch in the family room, and I heard the shot. Mom kind of runs out the door, and she's hysterical, just screaming. like a scream I've never heard before in my entire life. There's certain things in life that can't be faked. Did you question her? No.
I know one of the things that came up is that my dad was left-handed. Well, my dad learned how to write left-handed because he had a cast on his arm when he was younger, so he was able to actually use his right hand too. And you had seen him depressed before this?
Yeah. Was the death of her first husband, that case, ever reopened?
No, it was Rule Day suicide.
But with clouds of suspicion gathering over Miriam about the death of her second husband, she does something unexpected.
I met Miriam on a dating site.
A millionaire match? Millionaire match.
Your profile described me to a T.
Investigators are starting to wonder if they could actually have a black widow on their hand.
I mean, she was finding the husband, she was looking for the money, and then moving on.
With suspicion now mounting that she may be the person who killed her husband, Alan, Miriam Helmick does something unexpected. She goes looking for love again.
Miriam took me to this website for dating men that had a lot of money. I mean, we're talking about very rich. And she picked out this one guy from Orlando, had a lot in common with her. He liked to dance and he loved horses and all this stuff.
I met Miriam on a dating site. I owned a dance studio for about six or seven years, and then I had a human resources company for about 20 years. I did very well for myself. Miriam had contacted me first. She wrote, saw your profile and loved it. I can dance, any dance, and I'm pretty good at it. if your profile requirement described me complete to a T. She says, I'm going to go down there.
I said, what? I mean, this is just months after Alan had died. Even my girls were like, ah, she's dating already? And I says, no.
We met at TGI Fridays. She was very talkative, very nice. We hit it off really good, actually.
Miriam even opens up about the recent loss of her husband.
Miriam had told me that her husband had died of some brain disease. She said that we both felt he was going to die soon anyway, and there was no big deal. We were just waiting for the time. She handled his death very well. I just thought to myself, okay, well, big deal.
Miriam may have been trying to move on and put Alan's death behind her, but back in Colorado, investigators are taking a closer look at her, starting with her alibi from the day of Alan's murder.
I went to, of course, Mesa Market. I went to Walmart. I think I have all the receipts in my pocket.
She was able to pull out the receipts from her pocket of everywhere she had been that morning. Just didn't seem natural to us.
To show up at the police interview with a pocket full of receipts. Suspicious or just thorough?
I would say very odd. That is not a normal thing.
Is that really your first thought, to explain where you had gone in great detail and keeping the receipts? What did investigators make of her alibi? Well, they thought it was suspicious. Didn't make a lot of sense to them.
And investigators weren't the only ones with suspicions about Miriam. M-I-R-I-A-M.
Helmick, H-E-L-M-I-C-K.
Remember that local reporter who sat down with her after Alan's murder? She couldn't shake the feeling that something was off with her story.
Do you have any plans for the funeral yet?
It's tomorrow at 10. I start to get a weird feeling as she's talking.
I wanted to get back into dressage and decided I should have a dressage horse, so he bought several.
It was all about her. And these interviews are really supposed to be about the deceased.
His goal in life was to make me happy. He never wanted me to worry about anything or have any problems or anything, and he took care of me, everything.
As I was speaking with her, it went from feeling really bad for her to being suspicious.
Are you scared that this person might come back?
That was it.
Yes and no. That's the look. I don't want to leave because I'm closer to him here.
She started looking to the side. It's just like when you're talking to somebody and you know that they're lying because of non-verbal cues that they have. When I left that house, I've never scurried away from a place so quickly in my life. I was genuinely scared.
And while Miriam is talking to the media, investigators are talking to those closest to Alan. You continue with the investigation. Actually, you interview Alan's children.
Yes. Right after Alan passed, we were speaking to the daughters and they had expressed concerns of an inability to get ahold of their dad.
He's been completely out of character drastically for the last, since January. It's odd for my dad. You've seen him change his character. And maybe not so much see him change his character, but through her, I can't even get to him.
He wasn't answering phone calls. He wasn't returning voicemails.
Hi, Dad, it's Portia. I hate to bother you so much. I just haven't been able to talk to you, so things are piling up.
Hey, Miriam, this is Christy. I've been calling my dad for about a week, and I'm not hearing back.
And every time I call, Miriam answers. Before then. His phone? Yeah. Okay. His cell phone. which I thought was weird. He always answered his phone.
It appeared that he was being distanced from them.
I'm like, well, Dad, is your home phone hooked up? He's like, no. I'm like, well, how does anybody get a hold of you? Well, Mary doesn't want you to bother me.
And when they would call Miriam, there was excuses as to, oh, I'll have him call you back, or he's not around.
She certainly, in the days leading up to his murder, was isolating him from his children.
Allen's kids couldn't help but wonder why Miriam seemed to be keeping them from their father in the months leading up to his murder. Could it have been something to do with a sudden decline in his health?
Father's never sick. My father's like an ox. And every time I would talk to him, he was sick. And did he say what he was sick from? He didn't know.
I don't think he had a clue. But he said he couldn't even stand up. He was so dizzy.
The more investigators dig, the more troubling details they uncover, like a gun that seemed to have disappeared from Miriam and Alan's home.
One of Alan's children said she specifically remembered seeing a .25 caliber pistol in his sock drawer.
They couldn't find that gun after the murder.
Police learn of a shooting incident that had happened outside this house decades before. Could what they find buried in this yard be the break they need?
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Why would somebody fake cancer?
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Detectives will often say that when it comes to investigating, there are no coincidences. And for those working the murder of Alan Helmick, they were certain that attempted car fire just weeks earlier was somehow connected to their case.
This area is where I was dispatched to a car fire. We saw that somebody had placed a wick in the gas tank of a vehicle. We contacted the driver. We were speaking with him. We were speaking with his wife. As I started questioning both of them, I noticed she became a bit nervous and she'd said that she wasn't feeling well and needed to run to the restroom.
I watched her leave the back of the vehicle, not go into the restroom she just came out of. Not right here. Not right here where she just went to the restroom. She actually went across four lanes of traffic. That's strange. Very strange. Did she ever come back? Not while I was on scene. She stayed over there. She stayed over there. When you were still here, you went into the ladies room. We did.
What did you find there? We smelled the odor of gasoline. It was fairly strong.
Since investigators learned that Miriam had been standing at the trunk right before Alan discovered the fire, they decided to bluff him, telling Alan there was surveillance video of the incident to see if he thought his wife could have been responsible.
I watched the video.
Is she on there?
I'm asking you what you think.
No, not she on there. Did she light it? I'm asking you what you think. No. But I could be wrong.
We bluffed Alan, and he said he didn't believe it.
And you didn't answer my question. You looked at the video. No. Nice little wink there. If you'd seen her on the video doing that, I would have been shocked.
The crime scene reminded investigators of a movie scene.
After all the dust had settled, art investigators started thinking about what had transpired in Delta. They thought, this sounds like the car explosion scene in No Country for Old Men, which had just come out in the last year. It was a popular movie where the villain had created a distraction by lighting a magazine, sticking it into the gas inlet, and exploding the car.
As police are looking into this, they discovered that the Hellmicks had rented that movie about four days prior to the incident.
Was this the smoking gun or smoking car?
It definitely was part of the investigation. Miriam was not charged with the arson in Delta because of the roadblock put up when Alan demanded the investigation be closed. He did not want to pursue it if we were looking at Miriam and that he would not cooperate with the investigation.
And the detectives now investigating Alan's murder are still searching for any hard evidence that Miriam pulled the trigger. After all, they still hadn't recovered a murder weapon.
There was the issue of the firearm that was missing from the home. And in talking to the daughters, we knew that there should have been a .25 caliber Lorsen in the house.
Because people had seen that gun there before?
Correct.
As luck would have it, there was an old Helmick family story from decades earlier of Allen's first wife's stepfather firing that same gun into the ground during a domestic dispute back in 1989. Could this gun, now missing, be the murder weapon?
There was some evidence that had been in the house in the years leading up to the murder, and no evidence of what he would have done with that weapon. No evidence he sold it, gave it away, traded it. You know, where is this gun?
And then investigators bring in a metal detector into the case. Right. Detectives come up with a long-shot idea. Go back to the property where that domestic dispute happened back in 1989. Could they recover the bullet fired from that gun and compare it to the bullet that killed Alan?
I received a phone call from the chief investigator at the Sheriff's Department of Mesa County asking me if I would assist them in searching for a bullet.
Carol Quarles is a retired law enforcement officer who has experience using a metal detector to search for missing evidence. So your reaction when they asked you to get involved in this case?
Oh, yeah, heck yeah. Anytime. Just call me. I love finding evidence.
And you started over here?
and I started working my way around. And then I just slowly worked my way around to about midway in the yard. And I hadn't found anything.
And they were getting nervous. The investigator said, well, maybe you're not going to find it.
Yeah, maybe the witness wasn't remembering things right.
Right. To what you said.
Let me check over there in case the shooter shot into that corner of the yard. And so I walked over there, and it wasn't 30 to 45 seconds, and I had the bullet.
Where did you find that bullet?
That bullet was right in this area right here. It was an aha moment. I mean, it was euphoric. That's the best way that I can explain it.
When they dug up that bullet that had been there since 1989, they were able to compare that bullet from the ground to the bullet that was recovered from Alan's headshot. And what we were able to determine was that two bullets were consistent with each other.
The evidence is building up against her.
It is. At this point, police believe that they have enough to arrest Miriam for Alan's murder.
But this is a woman who police believe orchestrated an attempted firebombing and shot her husband in the head in cold blood. Is she just going to go quietly?
She's being investigated for a homicide. You don't ever know that she doesn't have a gun. If she sees you and she's scared, knows what's going on, it's a real game out there at that point.
In the fall of 2008, just a few months after Alan Helmick's murder, Miriam was living in Jacksonville, Florida, attempting to move on with her life. But her past in Colorado was about to catch up with her.
I was a special agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement here in the Jacksonville field office. I got a call from Asa County Sheriff's detectives, and they were investigating a homicide in Colorado.
Did you have an inkling that she might be a suspect?
It wasn't kind of until I was driving home one day and the Grand Junction police called me and said, is she living? I was like, yeah, she's with me. I don't know what's going on, but she's there.
We sent two investigators down there with an arrest warrant.
They handcuffed her and set her right on the ground. She had a blank expression on her face, like a little bit angry looking almost.
Six months after Alan's death, Miriam is charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder for that car fire, and forgery. She pleads not guilty and is extradited from Florida back to Colorado.
What we had was a man who had led a good life, and he ended up murdered. And there's a need to bring to justice the right person.
A year after being arrested and charged, Miriam Helmick goes on trial here at the Mesa County Courthouse. Prosecutors argue that the grieving widow is actually a cold-blooded killer.
Miriam Helmick standing trial for the murder of her husband was a huge deal. The courtroom was pretty packed. It was a bit chilling. Miriam did not show a lot of emotion. She didn't look like herself.
So why do prosecutors believe Miriam killed Allen? They argue the motive was as age-old as they come, money. Financial motive was the critical part of your argument.
There were suspicious bank account activity where it appeared that Miriam had forged multiple checks from Allen's account. All told, she had taken about $40,000 out of his account through writing those checks.
But the defense pushed back, saying that Miriam had Allen's permission to write those checks, both as his wife and his secretary.
Banks had been calling, trying to get a hold of Allen.
He wasn't being available to his banker, something that had never happened before.
Now there was an urgency.
Right. In fact, the banker had reached out to one of Alan's daughters, and that was tension that was building, building, building.
Prosecutors put Alan's daughter, Portia, on the stand to testify about the way Miriam seemed to be isolating her father in the months leading up to his murder.
He was much less involved in my life. He was much more distant. I called him, and when I didn't get to his phone, I called Miriam's phone.
And when they would call Miriam, there was excuses as to, oh, I'll have him call you back, or he's not around.
If Alan was discovering that she had been taking money from him without permission, that was a possible motive.
How would he have reacted if he had found it?
Everything would have been over. You'd had our attorney on a hotline, and it would have been over.
And prosecutors argued that Miriam had tried to kill Alan not once, but twice. The first time in that failed attempt at blowing up his car, they called Miriam's horse breeder and friend, Jerry Yarborough, to the stand.
When I went on the stand, I was super scared because I knew my testimony was going to be not so good for Miriam.
Jerry told jurors about a conversation she said she had with Miriam after that failed car bombing.
She had said that she found out that a car won't explode if it has a full tank of gas.
And when she said that, what was her demeanor? She laughed. That catch you off guard?
Pretty much. But the defense pointed out that if Miriam was after Alan's money, why would she try to blow up his car while he was holding that large cashier's check he had just received?
The piece of evidence that was really the smoking gun, almost literally, was the bullet that was able to be recovered from that lawn in Delta.
How pivotal was that in tying Miriam to the crime?
That was a nice piece of evidence because we didn't actually find the gun, but we had a story about the gun, how it was seen in the home. Now we have a bullet that roughly matches the bullet that was recovered from Alan.
But as Miriam's defense pointed out, roughly matched is not the same as a perfect match. Couldn't prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. Then the defense did something you don't often see at a murder trial. They called Miriam to testify in her own defense.
Once you got inside, what did you see?
I saw Ellen on the floor. Oh, yeah. I dropped my bags and went to him. He was cold and gray. I held his hand for a few minutes and tried to make some sense of it all.
Miriam stayed on that stand for two days, denying that she had anything to do with Alan's murder. When prosecutors got their chance to cross-examine her, they pressed her on the infamous run, run, run card that she admitted sending to herself.
You were just acting at that time, weren't you? Yes, just briefly. You concocted a complete ruse to lead them on a wild goose chase away from you and towards some phantom killer out there, correct?
If they actually had contacted me or listened, then maybe I wouldn't have been at that point.
That was probably not the best decision to make, but I think at that point she was probably broken, just emotionally and mentally broken.
That video really did undermine Miriam's credibility.
Showing her purchasing that card was very difficult for the defense to rebut.
After 16 days of testimony, the jury gets the case.
They come back with a verdict in five hours for a first degree murder case. You just don't see that. Five hours was very fast.
The verdict, guilty on all counts.
There was a little bit of a sigh of relief.
You thought, good, she's going to get what she has coming.
She was sentenced to life without parole. I think that spoke volumes to all of the evidence, circumstantial or not, that was stacked up against her.
But Miriam says the jury got it wrong, and she had a lot more to say when we spoke in her first interview since being convicted. Miriam, are you telling me that your husband, Alan, started the car fire himself? Why would he do that? It's now been 15 years since Miriam Helmick was sentenced to life for killing her husband, Alan.
Since then, she's been at the Denver Women's Correctional Facility, where she recently called me from.
An incarcerated individual at Denver Women's Correctional Facility.
Hello, Miriam. Hi. How are you doing over there?
Good, good.
This is the first time she's spoken publicly since her 2009 sentencing. I asked Miriam about first meeting Alan back when she was his dance instructor in Grand Junction. And was it love at first sight?
Well, not really, no, because I was there trying to work, but he just never gave up. Let's just put it that way.
He was very persistent.
Yes, very.
And eventually you fell in love with him.
Yes. It was kind of hard not to. I mean, he's a very, very kind, very sweet man, and he always had your best interest at heart, usually.
Alan's kids say that you were isolating him from them in the months prior to his death. Was that true?
No. He would get really pale during the day and I would make him rest. And so I would take his phone away where he wouldn't ring so that he could get some rest. Because it seemed like they always called when he was trying to get a nap.
Next message. Hey, this is Portia. I'm starting to get a complex here because you guys have never not picked up your phone.
Our pathologist, Dr. Kurtzman, indicated there was evidence of advanced heart disease. So if he was not feeling well, it was probably attributable to the heart disease.
Prosecutors say that you fraudulently had written about $40,000 in checks on Alan's money that he was about to find out, and that's why you killed him.
Did you steal any money from Alan? Did you have anything to do with starting that car fire? No, I didn't have any explanation to do it. But I almost believe
You mean to tell me that Alan started the car fire himself? Why would he try to do that and possibly hurt himself?
Well, I don't think he thought about hurting himself. And it took me a while to wrap my head around that he would possibly do anything like that.
Miriam says Alan may have tried to set the car fire for the insurance money.
I started to wonder if he just because as soon as he got his car home, he applied for the insurance money.
It's a claim that's hard to back up, but Allen was adamant with authorities that he did not believe Miriam would ever try to kill him.
I had called Allen to advise him that I felt his current wife, Miriam, was trying to kill him. And Allen got upset with me and told me that Miriam would never do that to him. And at that point, he asked me to terminate the case.
What about the gun that was missing from your home and Alan's home?
I didn't know it was missing until this whole thing, so I have no idea how or where it went.
It had an unusual family history, that gun.
I know. When I first met him two years before that, I saw that he was removing, and I asked him to put it away because I don't like handguns. I just don't. I already had to deal with that kind of thing. It was very unnerving to me. That was the last time I saw him.
Now authorities also questioned your alibi. All the receipts that you had, it looked like you were trying so hard to create an alibi. Were you?
It makes sense to us that she shot him before she ran the errands, then she runs all the errands, and she creates an alibi for herself on purpose, intending to throw people off.
Miriam, did you kill your husband, Alan?
I did not.
Do you think you'll get out of prison someday? What do you think will prove your innocence now? Wouldn't the blood spatter and the gunshot residue be easily washed off if you took a shower?
Well, you know, that's funny because when I went to the police that afternoon, you could tell I hadn't taken a shower. So you had not washed anything off? Miriam has filed numerous appeals with the courts. They've all been rejected. But she vows to keep on fighting. and I do have hope. I know that I've been killing. Now that I'm on this path, I'm not gonna lay down and die with it.
I'm sorry, it's just not in my nature to do that.
How often do you think about him?
I think about him all the time. He would say things that I remember. His biggest saying was, it's only business, treat it that way. He was fun to be around.
After the trial, did you see your mom again?
I did not.
I have not seen her since the trial. After so long, what did Miriam finally have to say to her son?
Don't forget, you have to put on your jacket too. We're not used to the 30 degree weather that's awaiting us.
This past November, Chris Giles and his wife, Kelly, flew to Colorado for a much-anticipated visit to see his mom, Miriam, in prison.
So she's in the Demons Women's Correctional Facility. This will be the first time in probably about 15 years that I've seen her. I have not seen her since the trial.
Why not?
I think, for one, I didn't want to have to... Just see her that way. See her kind of broken and see her in that situation. I was also kind of mad. I was mad that all this had kind of happened.
Over the years, one by one, Chris lost his entire family to different forms of tragedy.
It's just kind of a whirlwind, and then all of a sudden this happens.
That new husband dies, and then she's arrested.
Yeah, you're trying to figure out how to deal with those things and you kind of got to deal with the, you got to deal with the pain, you got to deal with the hurt. Let's rock and roll. She's probably nervous like me, you know, a little bit nervous, a little excited.
Our cameras were not allowed inside the prison, but Chris tells me that reuniting with his mom, while complicated, was also healing for him.
First thing she did was apologize. What did she say as soon as we sat down? She said, I'm sorry for everything I put you through. She said, I'm sorry that we had to go through this. But still, once we got to the Allen part, she was affirming that she was innocent of all that stuff. And so she kind of, we just hashed out kind of what had happened.
Do you believe your mother had anything to do with Allen's murder?
I do not. With your father? I do not, no. Seeing your mom was a big step for you after all these years. Yes.
Forgiveness is a big thing, you know. It's huge when you can work through that and go, I don't have to forget about it, but I can choose to forgive you for it.
But when it comes to Alan's family and friends, there are some things that they say they would rather forget.
Try not to think about the murder. I more like to think about the fun times that we had with Alan. Those are good memories.
What do you think Alan would have wanted people to remember about him?
He was a lot of fun. He was the kind of guy you could meet and have a drink with and have a good laugh.
He treated everybody with fairness and respect and gave a lot of love to those around him. Nobody wanted to hurt him except for his own wife. She ended up taking this man's life.
Oh, I mean, a good man was killed. I don't know whether justice is served or not. She's in jail, and apparently she's never going to get out. But he's still dead. You can't bring him back.
I think his legacy is that he was tried and true in the community. He did what he said he was going to do. Alan was truly loved by everyone that knew him.
Miriam Helmick was sentenced to life plus 78 years.
David, she has exhausted her appeals, but she says she still plans to fight for her freedom. That's our program for tonight. Thanks so much for watching. I'm Deborah Roberts.
And I'm David Muir from all of us here at 2020 and ABC News.