Run, Run, Run

Speaker 1 Hi 911, what is the address to your emergency?

Speaker 3 This 911 call began an investigation that would turn the town of Ashland, Ohio into a crime scene. We've got something big going on here.

Speaker 4 The first thing that hit my mind is a monster.

Speaker 2 A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, The Hand in the Window.

Speaker 6 Out now, wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 8 Tonight, a woman's husband is shot and killed, and she fears she could be next.

Speaker 10 But everything isn't what it seems when a decades-old family secret comes to light. And all new 2020 begins right now.

Speaker 13 I'm missing my right arm, I feel like.

Speaker 14 I'm just missing my life.

Speaker 15 I don't know what to do.

Speaker 16 Miriam gets home. It looked like the house had been been ransacked.

Speaker 17 She sees Alan laying on the kitchen floor.

Speaker 16 He was shot right in the back of the head.

Speaker 18 62-year-old Alan Helmick dead.

Speaker 21 Here in this parking lot, less than two months before Alan was murdered, there was an earlier attempt on his life.

Speaker 14 Somebody tried to torch her car.

Speaker 15 So the car actually got torched?

Speaker 24 We found a vehicle that had a wick in its gas tank and had been set on fire.

Speaker 25 Never seen anything like that before.

Speaker 16 We didn't know if this person could come back.

Speaker 27 Miriam became convinced she was being watched.

Speaker 28 She thought somebody was trying to come into the house and she was scared for her life.

Speaker 31 Two weeks after Alan's murder, Miriam finds a dramatic discovery under her doormat.

Speaker 28 And she goes, What should I do? What should I do? And I said, You call the police and you get away from there.

Speaker 16 There's a card inside that says, Alan's first, you're next.

Speaker 16 Run, run, run.

Speaker 19 Out here in the western Colorado countryside, the wide open spaces can stretch for miles.

Speaker 19 In a place this remote, it might seem unlikely that two lonely souls might find each other and a second chance at love.

Speaker 20 But that's exactly what happened here until one warm summer day when the peace of this place was shattered by unimaginable violence.

Speaker 38 I don't want what he had a favor murder to say.

Speaker 40 I hate you, my husband.

Speaker 11 You what?

Speaker 11 My husband is dead.

Speaker 17 This was a big story that shocked a small town.

Speaker 40 He's not everywhere.

Speaker 40 He has blood under his head.

Speaker 43 There is a scare in the community, you know, that something like that could happen.

Speaker 44 We don't have a lot of crime here.

Speaker 42 No.

Speaker 41 I've got to do this.

Speaker 17 Murders just didn't really happen there, especially murders with so many twists, and especially to a well-respected businessman that everybody really loved.

Speaker 6 Alan 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.

Speaker 47 In fact, he was known as the broker of Main Street.

Speaker 16 Alan Helmick was a prominent businessman. He had a mortgage business.
Everybody respected him. He was firm, but he was very friendly.

Speaker 47 An avid outdoorsman, Alan took advantage of all western Colorado had to offer.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 48 How would you describe this town of Grand Junction?

Speaker 38 We pride ourselves on our outdoor activities, our peaches, our wine industry. Great for families.

Speaker 25 Alan had grown up in the nearby town of Delta and settled into Grand Junction to raise a family.

Speaker 51 What was Alan Helmick like?

Speaker 11 You know, he was a good guy.

Speaker 38 He was a great athlete.

Speaker 44 Bob Cochetti was Alan's friend and longtime accountant.

Speaker 12 Good instincts?

Speaker 52 Yeah. Oh, he was a risk-taker.

Speaker 53 Oh, he was a gambler.

Speaker 52 We went to Vegas once and I think by the time we checked in the hotel he was borrowing money.

Speaker 52 He recovered, you know.

Speaker 43 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.

Speaker 54 And definitely not one to shy away from attention.

Speaker 43 One time we were in Mexico, a bunch of us were down there on a fishing trip and the mariachi band came around the the restaurant.

Speaker 43 Alan handed him a few dollars and asked for the trumpet from one of them. And he joined him on the trumpet.

Speaker 6 And it was really good. It was like, wow, where'd that come from?

Speaker 45 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.

Speaker 49 Dance classes.

Speaker 25 And his instructor is this woman, Miriam Giles.

Speaker 53 Oh, yeah, he came in one time and we were doing something and he says, yeah, I just love dancing.

Speaker 43 Miriam was a very good dancer.

Speaker 3 Good instructor.

Speaker 43 She had me dancing, which was a miracle.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 57 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.

Speaker 39 She didn't want to date me, but I persisted. She's like, she's my gas expected, so I could go on cruise and not be caught footage.

Speaker 62 We ended up kind of pretty compatible.

Speaker 43 Alan seemed reborn. He was so very happy.

Speaker 17 They ended up falling madly in love and got married within two years of knowing each other.

Speaker 28 They would talk about how they would go out on their boats late at night to watch the sun sets together, have an evening cocktail, and just how they felt like they had just found a true partner late in life.

Speaker 28 It was just like a little fairy tale come true.

Speaker 16 It's June 10th, 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.

Speaker 17 She stopped to get cigarettes, stuff for her horse,

Speaker 17 even check on a prescription for him.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 17 When Miriam gets to the Chinese restaurant, she calls Alan again to see if they're going to meet, but Alan never shows.

Speaker 16 Miriam, after 15 minutes, decides to leave and head home.

Speaker 16 Miriam gets home.

Speaker 16 It looked like the house had been ransacked.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 63 It's all bloody. He's all bloody? Yeah.
Where's he bleeding from? It looks like the back of his head.

Speaker 63 Lucy, it looks like somebody's been through the community.

Speaker 64 We knew patrol had been dispatched out to what was reported as a robbery, and then we had a deceased person on scene.

Speaker 43 Robin Martin is a detective who worked the case.

Speaker 7 When the first officers arrived on the scene, they find Miriam distraught and kneeling over her husband.

Speaker 64 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.

Speaker 64 They did a very quick security sweep to make sure there wasn't a suspect still on scene.

Speaker 21 There's no one in the house.

Speaker 57 As they conduct their sweep, deputies notice drawers pulled out in the kitchen and and a trash can tipped over in Alan's office.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 44 A lot of media attention?

Speaker 64 Yes.

Speaker 66 This was a big deal in that town, I guess.

Speaker 64 It was. Very much so.
But everybody wanted to know what was going on.

Speaker 43 My wife and I were getting ready for bed. 10 o'clock news come on.

Speaker 43 The headline was, there has been a homicide in Whitewater.

Speaker 68 The Mesa County Sheriff's Office is called out to this Whitewater home.

Speaker 43 Kind of jokingly said to my wife, I says, oh no, I wonder if that's Alan.

Speaker 67 And lo and behold, it was Alan.

Speaker 68 What they find is 62-year-old Alan Helmick dead, shot in the head.

Speaker 57 It's Detective Work 101 that you start with the people closest to the victim.

Speaker 20 But in this case, Alan's wife, Miriam, was running those errands, expecting to meet Alan for lunch.

Speaker 45 She even had the voicemails to prove it.

Speaker 70 Okay, Alan, this isn't funny anymore.

Speaker 71 I've been sitting here in front of a Chinese place for

Speaker 71 15 minutes, so would you call me?

Speaker 16 Things did not add up. Everybody knew him.
Everybody loved him. Who would do such a thing?

Speaker 68 The Mesa County Sheriff's Office is called out to this Whitewater home on a report of a possible robbery. What they find is 62-year-old Alan Helmick dead, shot in the head.

Speaker 69 After finding her husband Alan 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.

Speaker 1 Thank you, Techno.

Speaker 14 I'm helping us get to the bottom of this.

Speaker 74 We appreciate it.

Speaker 15 It's Miriam, right?

Speaker 38 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.

Speaker 64 Miriam was at our office. They,

Speaker 64 as we do with all. What were you doing today? Can you go through your day for us?

Speaker 75 I had some errands I needed to run today, so

Speaker 42 he...

Speaker 42 Was gonna

Speaker 14 we would meet later, so he got in the shower and got dressed.

Speaker 74 okay what time did you leave

Speaker 64 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 um 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

Speaker 77 Then what happened?

Speaker 14 I still hadn't heard from him.

Speaker 14 And

Speaker 42 then I went from there to

Speaker 14 Orchard, Mason City Market to pick up this prescription. Okay.

Speaker 14 What time is it now?

Speaker 42 I probably got there about 10 or around 10.

Speaker 1 Hey, Alan, you need to turn your phone on.

Speaker 71 Question for you.

Speaker 71 When we thought you picked up your prescription, they said that you hadn't been by yet.

Speaker 70 So are we still going to be able to meet for lunch?

Speaker 71 It's not like you to call not call me, so give me a holler.

Speaker 41 Thanks.

Speaker 77 Bye.

Speaker 74 Since he hadn't called me back, I thought he he was caught up somewhere to me

Speaker 75 so i left him a message and told him i was going home in case he decided to um

Speaker 38 meet me there anyway

Speaker 77 okay alan this isn't funny anymore um i've been sitting here in front of a chinese place for um

Speaker 20 15 minutes and 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.

Speaker 74 I think I have all the receipts in my pocket.

Speaker 38 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.

Speaker 30 She was tested for gunshot residue?

Speaker 38 Yes, she was tested for gunshot residue.

Speaker 46 Clothes were collected?

Speaker 47 That's right.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 And those results came back negative.

Speaker 23 She's also caught on several surveillance cameras throughout the morning.

Speaker 56 Miriam seemingly has an airtight alibi.

Speaker 35 So naturally, investigators are anxious to ask her who she thinks may have wanted to harm Alan.

Speaker 9 Did he have any enemies, any problems with any of his contracting work going on, any disputes?

Speaker 79 Would he share that with you if he did?

Speaker 42 I think so.

Speaker 74 He shared a lot with me.

Speaker 50 Miriam said Alan was generally well-liked, but detectives also knew he'd been a local mortgage broker.

Speaker 35 Could he have turned someone down?

Speaker 65 Maybe had a disgruntled former client or co-worker who was out for revenge.

Speaker 17 He did not like lying or dishonesty. He would fire people for that, but that was respected.

Speaker 20 And he had started his own business here decades earlier.

Speaker 29 Alan had married his high school sweetheart, Sharon, and had four children through 37 years together.

Speaker 20 But on New Year's Eve, 2003, she died of a sudden heart attack.

Speaker 35 How did that affect him?

Speaker 38 Friends said that he was quite depressed and wasn't doing that well.

Speaker 30 And soon afterward, he takes up dancing.

Speaker 38 He was encouraged to try a new activity.

Speaker 16 When Alan met Miriam, I know she had a policy of not dating her students, but Alan was pretty relentless.

Speaker 7 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.

Speaker 78 I met him teaching him how to dance

Speaker 80 and I didn't really like him.

Speaker 80 Wow, he grew up me.

Speaker 14 But he was such a gentleman. And he was so sweet and

Speaker 11 just

Speaker 78 loving to death.

Speaker 49 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.

Speaker 35 Chris Giles is Miriam's son.

Speaker 25 Grew up in Jacksonville, mom, dad, a sister.

Speaker 72 What was it like?

Speaker 52 It was good.

Speaker 82 A typical kind of four-family. You know, me and my sister were super close.
Mom kind of led us to do our things, but it was also there to kind of shepherd everything and help us through.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 61 How did the family cope with this, with her death?

Speaker 12 We didn't really talk about it.

Speaker 82 After a while, things kind of just kind of started going downhill.

Speaker 79 And Jack just,

Speaker 79 he kind of, you know, he just couldn't, he just could not live without his daughter.

Speaker 14 They just tore him apart.

Speaker 6 And then two years after your sister dies, tragedy strikes again.

Speaker 66 Yeah.

Speaker 82 My dad took his own life and

Speaker 82 I woke up to the gunshot.

Speaker 72 Miriam's husband, Jack, shot himself while he and Miriam were in bed.

Speaker 82 Mom kind of

Speaker 82 runs out the door and she's hysterical,

Speaker 82 just

Speaker 12 losing her mind

Speaker 84 like a scream I've never heard before in my entire life.

Speaker 66 That was a dramatic change in your family.

Speaker 47 The loss of father.

Speaker 82 Yeah, you just, you, and, you know, you just, 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?

Speaker 66 She turned to dancing after all this.

Speaker 26 Yeah.

Speaker 82 It was kind of her escape, where she kind of felt normal.

Speaker 45 And then your mom decides to...

Speaker 33 move to Colorado.

Speaker 12 Yes.

Speaker 72 And not long after is when Alan Helmick walked through the door of the dance studio where Miriam worked.

Speaker 43 Everybody's really happy for Alan.

Speaker 85 He seemed real happy.

Speaker 43 Yeah, another chance a lot.

Speaker 53 Everybody said that her and Alan were kind of a good team for dancing.

Speaker 11 They were real,

Speaker 33 you know, they were a real couple.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 67 Your mom

Speaker 82 ghosts all this seemingly happy again and all of a sudden this happens.

Speaker 82 911 what you had to sell your emergency.

Speaker 31 How did you learn that Alan had died?

Speaker 82 She called me.

Speaker 52 Called me and told me that

Speaker 82 mid-shot

Speaker 82 still kind of another shock to the system.

Speaker 66 Another loss.

Speaker 9 Yeah, another loss.

Speaker 36 So far, investigators don't seem to have much to go on.

Speaker 50 But about an hour into that police interview, Miriam says something that would raise the eyebrows of any homicide detective.

Speaker 11 In

Speaker 41 Delta.

Speaker 14 And somebody tried to torch our car.

Speaker 15 So the car actually got torched in Delta?

Speaker 30 Had Alan's killer made an earlier attempt on his life?

Speaker 65 After Alan Helmack is found murdered in his Whitewater, Colorado home, his wife Miriam is interviewed by investigators.

Speaker 27 And she tells them about a shocking incident that happened just six weeks earlier.

Speaker 75 Somebody tried to torch our car. They took a stick or a big, big like restaurant skewer

Speaker 75 and put some kind of gauze on it

Speaker 89 and stuck it down in the gas tank and lit it.

Speaker 19 Here in this parking lot, less than two months before he was murdered, there was an earlier attempt on Alan's life.

Speaker 20 Someone tried to set his car on fire.

Speaker 21 It looked like something straight out of a movie.

Speaker 20 But for the Helmicks, this brush with death was all too real.

Speaker 55 Tell me about that incident.

Speaker 33 What happened that day with the car?

Speaker 38 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.

Speaker 55 Collected a check.

Speaker 38 And collected a check for over $100,000 for the sale of this business and got in the car.

Speaker 24 At that point, Miriam went in to use the restroom.

Speaker 38 And while she's in the business,

Speaker 38 the car starts smoking.

Speaker 24 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,

Speaker 24 and a wick was in the gas tank.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 24 On arrival, we found a vehicle that had a wick in its gas tank and had been set on fire.

Speaker 44 Ever seen anything like that before?

Speaker 33 No.

Speaker 24 No, I had not seen anything like that.

Speaker 19 It was pretty obvious someone had tried to start that fire.

Speaker 91 Correct.

Speaker 44 So if someone was trying to set the car on fire, it didn't quite work.

Speaker 73 Correct.

Speaker 61 The fumes did not ignite, fortunately.

Speaker 73 Were they able to glean anything else from the crime scene?

Speaker 38 No security cameras from the surrounding businesses, no video footage whatsoever of what had transpired.

Speaker 17 The police both questioned Miriam and Alan after the car incident.

Speaker 92 You have no idea who would do this to you or Alan?

Speaker 12 No,

Speaker 17 not at all.

Speaker 16 I mean,

Speaker 17 it's just weird. I don't know.

Speaker 28 We've been hashing it over last night.

Speaker 38 We can't figure it out. Alan didn't have a lot of enemies, and so who would want to kill Alan in that kind of way by blowing up his car? That was a real mystery.

Speaker 92 Do you know anyone that would have a problem with you?

Speaker 39 I do not. Over the years, active as I was in business in this area, there's going to be some unhappy people because I turn people down on loans from time to time.

Speaker 11 But

Speaker 39 I think I was well respected in the clipping cologne industry.

Speaker 39 There are two people that have had a problem with it.

Speaker 41 Okay, who are those two people?

Speaker 87 Alan mentions two bankers with whom he had prior dealings, but quickly downplays their potential involvement in the arson.

Speaker 39 I can't imagine them being convicted because they're too much exposed.

Speaker 31 Right.

Speaker 39 You know, they do stupid things, but they're not stupid people.

Speaker 55 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.

Speaker 22 Oh, God.

Speaker 39 No, I don't think that. Not at all.
That would be terrible.

Speaker 39 Why would you do that?

Speaker 24 So during the interviews with officers, Alan and Miriam had mentioned that Miriam would not hurt Alan or harm him because Alan was worth more to her alive than if he were dead.

Speaker 79 What would she gain if you died yesterday?

Speaker 39 What he would get is a mess. She gets nothing that was created prior to the marriage.

Speaker 38 Alan was convinced that it wasn't Miriam. And if the investigators in Delta had any suspicions of Miriam being involved in this, Alan was the first to defend her and say, she wouldn't do this.

Speaker 44 And besides, what reason would Miriam have for trying to kill Alan?

Speaker 50 He'd always gone out of his way to make her dreams come true with lavish gifts and gestures.

Speaker 80 His goal in life was to make me happy and he took care of me.

Speaker 14 His favorite saying was, have fun like hell. So anytime he knew he was going shopping or he gave me money or anything like that, he would say, have fun like hell.

Speaker 21 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.

Speaker 28 I met Alan and Miriam Helmick at my farm because they wanted to buy some horses to start a horse breeding operation.

Speaker 28 It was always her passion to start riding and Alan was just said, you know, I'm going to give this dream to you.

Speaker 43 Horse training centers,

Speaker 43 it's extremely difficult way to make a living. Most of those never pay off.
It's a labor of love.

Speaker 88 You told him it was not a good idea to invest in this horse.

Speaker 52 No, you know, and I said, you know, it's a good hobby, but it's too expensive.

Speaker 44 And his desire to open up that dance studio came from where?

Speaker 11 Oh, it had to be her. Miriam.

Speaker 6 You had your concerns about him investing in these things.

Speaker 52 Oh, I told him. I says,

Speaker 11 get your head off your ass.

Speaker 44 Sounds like he really wanted to make Miriam happy.

Speaker 12 I think so.

Speaker 16 Alan was always very good with his finances, but with the horse business and the dance business, they were hemorrhaging money.

Speaker 49 As investigators began digging into Alan's finances, they found that bad business decisions had left him in a serious financial hole.

Speaker 50 But were his money troubles enough of a reason for someone to want him dead?

Speaker 33 Or could the murder have been more personal?

Speaker 74 Does Alan Jr. know where you guys live now?

Speaker 74 Yes, he's been there.

Speaker 39 He's my wayward kid because he's sort of a bum.

Speaker 54 Investigators will soon learn about some long-standing Helmack family tension.

Speaker 75 If he shows up when he's not announced, you call the cops.

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Speaker 20 One week after his untimely death, Alan Helmick is laid to rest.

Speaker 43 When we were at Alan's funeral, Miriam sat in a pew in the very front, of course.

Speaker 43 She was crying, looked real despondent. Alan's family, his daughters, were just heartbroken and devastated.

Speaker 43 Alan was a really good dad to those kids. He was like their rock and

Speaker 94 hit them real hard.

Speaker 43 What's it like around here without him, I guess?

Speaker 28 Very quiet.

Speaker 13 I'm missing my right arm, I feel like.

Speaker 14 I'm just missing

Speaker 42 my life.

Speaker 42 I

Speaker 74 don't know what to do.

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 60 There was, however, one thing they were pretty sure of.

Speaker 69 This was not a robbery gone wrong.

Speaker 73 What stood out to you?

Speaker 64 It was odd. You had property still in the house

Speaker 64 that was, you could assume, was a value that a normal burglar would take.

Speaker 67 Like what?

Speaker 12 Computers, phones, jewelry.

Speaker 64 The normal type of stuff you would expect somebody to steal.

Speaker 52 There were drawers pulled out evenly.

Speaker 24 There was a trash can knocked over. There were drawers that were open that wouldn't hold valuables anyway.

Speaker 44 And most of the drawers were open in the kitchen, right?

Speaker 64 Correct.

Speaker 16 In the kitchen, throughout the house.

Speaker 64 It just did not sit right. It did not feel right.
It was looking staged.

Speaker 45 And Alan's autopsy confirmed that he probably had not walked in on anyone committing a burglary.

Speaker 16 There was no

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 10 Do you think Alan knew his attacker?

Speaker 41 I don't know.

Speaker 41 I don't know.

Speaker 20 But there was someone in Alan's life that Miriam had told investigators he'd been wary of.

Speaker 31 At one point, Miriam starts pointing fingers at Alan's son, Alan Jr.

Speaker 29 What did she say about him?

Speaker 38 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

Speaker 38 animosity.

Speaker 74 Tell me more about Alan Jr.

Speaker 74 He's had

Speaker 11 run insult to law.

Speaker 15 What was the relationship between Alan and Alan Jr.

Speaker 49 three to four months ago?

Speaker 42 Same.

Speaker 74 Same?

Speaker 47 It's been that way for many years.

Speaker 55 Okay, kind of.

Speaker 42 Stay distant. Okay.

Speaker 74 There's some real animosity there.

Speaker 74 Does Alan Jr. know where you guys live now?

Speaker 74 Yes, he's been there.

Speaker 6 And after that car fire six weeks earlier, Alan had also mentioned his strained relationship with his son to those investigators.

Speaker 39 He's my wayward kid because he's sort of a pump.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 39 you can't fix that by just handing him money.

Speaker 35 Alan's personal issues with his son, coupled with the fact that he may have known his attacker, was enough for detectives to bring Alan Jr.

Speaker 69 in for an interview.

Speaker 93 Right here. Yes, that's fine.

Speaker 99 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.

Speaker 18 He just told it as it is.

Speaker 43 Yeah, it's sharp. Yeah, right out.
Sure.

Speaker 43 You're out. You know, you're right.

Speaker 93 You're

Speaker 100 I like you because you're doing this.

Speaker 27 Alan Jr.

Speaker 57 goes on to say that his father had effectively cut him off financially.

Speaker 99 Steve and Dad would kick me and die.

Speaker 93 Did you ask?

Speaker 43 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.

Speaker 29 When asked, Alan Jr.

Speaker 49 insists he would never hurt his father and he had an alibi.

Speaker 47 He was working out of state at the time of the murder.

Speaker 92 Where were you Tuesday? Because I had everybody been asked that question.

Speaker 93 Hey, you know,

Speaker 25 I'm not an ignorant human being.

Speaker 99 And I would be offended if you didn't ask those questions. In fact, I would be angry with you if you didn't ask them in that way.

Speaker 41 I would have been working on the computers.

Speaker 93 I would have been at the hostel. Okay.

Speaker 20 Alan Jr.

Speaker 57 was cleared as a suspect.

Speaker 38 That's right. No evidence linking Alan Jr.
to having anything to do with Alan's murder.

Speaker 46 So investigators are back to square one.

Speaker 38 That's right.

Speaker 16 There were no suspects. We didn't know if this person could come back.

Speaker 13 I never thought what happened here or anything like that would ever happen here.

Speaker 80 It's just always quiet around here.

Speaker 80 Are you scared that this person might come back?

Speaker 56 I don't know.

Speaker 89 Yes and no.

Speaker 14 I don't want to leave because I'm closer to him here.

Speaker 16 Had there been a murder in my home, would not want to stay there.

Speaker 16 Especially not a few days after. But she said it was her home.
She said she felt closer to him there.

Speaker 83 But if Miriam says she felt safe enough to stay in her and Alan's home, that was about to change.

Speaker 30 And then, two weeks after Alan's murder, Miriam finds a dramatic discovery under her doormat at the house.

Speaker 28 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.

Speaker 58 Was the killer now coming after Miriam?

Speaker 101 Miriam Helmick came home last Tuesday to find her husband Alan shot and killed. Her quiet Whitewater neighborhood was turned upside down.

Speaker 33 The baffling murder of businessman Alan Helmick had left a community desperate for answers.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 38 I've known Alan.

Speaker 61 Oh, shoot.

Speaker 62 I don't know in a long time.

Speaker 41 They were good friends. I could say.

Speaker 100 Is it safe to say you're good friends or?

Speaker 81 We're friends. I mean, they're not, I mean, yeah, I mean, we're good friends.

Speaker 43 Strange interviews with the Sheriff's Department, the investigator. You know, you go in and we're friends, but yet we were treated as

Speaker 43 like suspects.

Speaker 100 Did you guys ever have any

Speaker 100 bad blood between you two or anything like that?

Speaker 43 Not from my standpoint.

Speaker 41 Not at all. No.

Speaker 100 Any enemies that you know of without Alan telling you or any, you know, said rumors that, you know, Alan's not a good guy or anything like that? Never.

Speaker 84 Okay, never.

Speaker 57 And there was that mysterious car fire just weeks earlier.

Speaker 27 Everyone wondering, could the two incidents be linked?

Speaker 39 Take it all that they're maybe connected?

Speaker 28 A good possibility.

Speaker 14 I was letting them figure that out.

Speaker 28 It was,

Speaker 14 I mean, it was a shock to us.

Speaker 78 But he never mentioned anything about anybody that could would do something like that.

Speaker 19 As days passed with no suspects in custody, Miriam became convinced she was being watched.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 28 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.

Speaker 17 Miriam starts reporting that weird things have been happening around the house. She's saying that she will come home and a door that she knows she locked is unlocked.

Speaker 64 She was finding lights on. She was finding medicine cabinet doors open that shouldn't be.

Speaker 38 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.

Speaker 38 And you recognize most of the vehicles that are driving in and out of the area.

Speaker 69 But the strange happenings at the home weren't the only thing worrying Miriam.

Speaker 46 With Alan, the sole breadwinner, gone, there wasn't any money coming in.

Speaker 20 During her police interview, Miriam had explained to investigators that they had a prenup.

Speaker 17 She really didn't have anything without him. She didn't stand to gain a lot.

Speaker 78 I did not have any legal claim to anything that he

Speaker 41 owned.

Speaker 75 Okay, let's pre-cut dry.

Speaker 16 Miriam's financial situation was fairly dire. In fact, she started selling off some of the property they had together.

Speaker 28 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.

Speaker 28 That way he'll give you some money for what you need to live on.

Speaker 26 And then, as Miriam is struggling to stay financially afloat, An ominous message shows up on her doorstep.

Speaker 16 She was with her friend 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.

Speaker 16 And when she opens that envelope, there's a card inside that says, Alan's first, you're next. Run, run, run.

Speaker 17 She collapses to the ground. becomes very distraught.

Speaker 28 Marion calls me and she's frantic and she goes, what should I do? And I said, said, well, you need to hang up the phone and call the police and get out of there.

Speaker 18 I said, because somebody could be there trying to hurt you.

Speaker 38 The greeting card is turned over by Miriam to her lawyer who then notifies the police.

Speaker 64 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

Speaker 64 middle-aged female. And it said, insanity, doing

Speaker 64 the same thing over and over again, expecting expecting a different result.

Speaker 64 And then inside, Alan spelled A-L-L-E-N.

Speaker 66 Misspelled. Misspelled.

Speaker 64 Your was also Y-O-U-R.

Speaker 64 A grammatical thing, okay.

Speaker 38 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.

Speaker 58 It looks like Miriam might be the next target.

Speaker 38 Maybe there is somebody out there who really wants to kill Miriam as well.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 55 How was she coping?

Speaker 82 Oh, it was

Speaker 102 not good.

Speaker 82 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.

Speaker 6 What did you make of that?

Speaker 38 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.

Speaker 55 Back in Colorado, that bizarre greeting card gives police something they have been desperately searching for.

Speaker 7 A solid lead.

Speaker 64 I had actually seen this card before.

Speaker 55 Just coincidentally, you had seen the card?

Speaker 64 It's kind of a unique front on a card.

Speaker 20 It's at this city market that investigators finally get the break they've been waiting for.

Speaker 47 The person who bought that card with the threatening message from Miriam is caught on surveillance tape here.

Speaker 23 And just who that person is will take everyone by surprise.

Speaker 38 You see it clear as day.

Speaker 48 Then a bombshell discovery from decades earlier.

Speaker 16 The piece of evidence that was really the smoking gun, almost literally, was recovered from that lawn in Delta.

Speaker 26 What investigators find buried here will crack this case wide open.

Speaker 38 What we had was a man who had led a good life and he ended up murdered.

Speaker 11 I saw Alan on the floor.

Speaker 78 He was cold and gray.

Speaker 17 People were in disbelief. People were scared.

Speaker 103 I held his hand for a few minutes and tried to make some sense of it all.

Speaker 17 Miriam comes home. There's a handwritten note and it says to the grieving widow, Alan's first, you're next.

Speaker 16 Run, run, run.

Speaker 58 It looks like Miriam might be the next target.

Speaker 38 The killer was now after her.

Speaker 16 You want twists and turns. There's no shortage of that here.

Speaker 104 I met Miriam on a dating site.

Speaker 85 She wrote, saw your profile, and loved it.

Speaker 64 She was moving on.

Speaker 79 Even my girls were like, ah, she's dating already.

Speaker 83 She's trying to get on with her life in a new state. But another incident with a gun comes to the surface.

Speaker 84 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.

Speaker 21 Could what they find buried in this yard be the smoking gun?

Speaker 69 On June 10th, 2008, 62-year-old respected businessman Alan Helmick was found dead in his home by his wife Miriam.

Speaker 64 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.

Speaker 105 The place had been ransacked, but nothing seemed to have been taken.

Speaker 24 They realized fairly quickly that this was a staged attempt to hide what really happened.

Speaker 60 A tragic ending to what appeared to be a perfect second chance at love.

Speaker 16 Both Alan and Miriam were widows. She was his dance instructor for ballroom dancing lessons.

Speaker 13 I'm missing my right arm, I feel like.

Speaker 14 I'm just missing

Speaker 13 my life.

Speaker 95 I

Speaker 75 don't know what to do.

Speaker 50 Miriam told police she'd been running errands all morning and provided receipts to back up her alibi.

Speaker 50 I went to Walmart, okay?

Speaker 50 I needed to buy some shirts.

Speaker 50 Police were at a loss as to who would want this well-liked businessman dead.

Speaker 84 Alan had some enemies, but nobody wasn't going to kill him.

Speaker 20 And as investigators began to dig deeper, the story took a frightening turn.

Speaker 17 Miriam comes home.

Speaker 17 There's a handwritten note, and it says to the grieving widow.

Speaker 17 Alan was first. You're next.
Run, run, run.

Speaker 58 It looks like Miriam might be the next target.

Speaker 38 The real killer was now after her.

Speaker 16 After Miriam received the threatening card, she went back to Florida where she's from.

Speaker 79 When Miriam came back to Florida, I was so surprised. I just couldn't believe it.
She gave me a call and,

Speaker 79 you know, I got a lot to tell you, she says.

Speaker 36 In Florida, Miriam turned to old friends for support, reconnecting with her former neighbor, Aline Lee.

Speaker 79 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.

Speaker 79 I bought a gas card for her and I gave her a bag of jewelry. I just felt bad for her.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 16 They got in touch with the manufacturer of the card. He was able to tell them where these cards were sold.

Speaker 64 I checked the hallmark.

Speaker 14 I checked the hobby lobby.

Speaker 64 We finally get to the city markets.

Speaker 64 I contacted their loss prevention guy. They found two sales.
One person paid in cash. Didn't know who that person was.

Speaker 14 The other one was with a credit card.

Speaker 64 So we had a name and then he found one more purchase. He called me and he's like, I've got video.

Speaker 46 That store uses VHS tapes.

Speaker 64 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.

Speaker 64 It was her.

Speaker 64 She was wearing the same style of shirt that she had walked in with her interview. It was just a different color combination.

Speaker 38 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.

Speaker 38 Clear as day.

Speaker 47 So now it appears that Miriam, the grieving widow, seemingly afraid for her own life, had actually sent that threatening card to herself.

Speaker 47 But when investigators confront her about this, she says she has an explanation.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 82 That was probably not

Speaker 82 the best decision to make.

Speaker 61 Not what I kind of would have done in the situation, but she felt she needed to do that.

Speaker 82 She felt she needed to.

Speaker 30 Did that greeting card incident change the way you and investigators approached the case?

Speaker 38 What innocent person would do this, obfuscate, complicate a murder investigation with this bruise?

Speaker 83 But remember, when she was interviewed by investigators, Miriam said she had very little to gain from Alan's death.

Speaker 75 We did a prenunt.

Speaker 56 Everything his is his. Everything mine is mine.

Speaker 14 He has more than I do.

Speaker 41 Okay.

Speaker 83 With no clear motive insight, 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.

Speaker 47 There was the sudden loss of her daughter and then a shocking development with her first husband.

Speaker 16 While Miriam and her first husband, Jack, were in bed, Jack shot himself in the head.

Speaker 16 Now you say, okay, she's had not one, but two husbands shot in the head.

Speaker 46 Was there a common thread?

Speaker 38 And they were both married to Miriam Helmack.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 88 Investigators then started looking back at your father's death.

Speaker 12 Yes.

Speaker 82 I woke up to the gunshot.

Speaker 49 You were just down the hall.

Speaker 82 Yeah, I was sleeping on the couch in the family room and I heard the shot. Mom kind of

Speaker 82 runs out the door and she's hysterical, just screaming.

Speaker 84 Like a scream I've never heard before in my entire life. There's certain things in life that can't be faked.

Speaker 6 Did you question her? No.

Speaker 82 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 in his arm when he was younger.

Speaker 82 So he was amid actually could use his right hand too.

Speaker 88 And you had seen him depressed

Speaker 47 before it. Yeah.

Speaker 88 Was the death of her first husband, that case, ever reopened?

Speaker 64 No, it was ruled a suicide.

Speaker 29 But with clouds of suspicion gathering over Miriam about the death of her second husband, she does something unexpected.

Speaker 104 I met Miriam on a dating site.

Speaker 58 A millionaire match.

Speaker 38 A millionaire match.

Speaker 85 Your profile described me to a teeth.

Speaker 26 Investigators are starting to wonder if they could actually have a black widow on their hands.

Speaker 64 I mean, she was finding the husbands, she was looking for the money, and then moving on.

Speaker 35 With suspicion now mounting that she may be the person who killed her husband Alan, Miriam Helmig does something unexpected.

Speaker 27 She goes looking for love again.

Speaker 79 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.

Speaker 79 He liked to dance and he loved horses and all this stuff.

Speaker 104 I met Miriam on a dating side.

Speaker 106 I owned a dance studio for about six or seven years and then I had a human resources company for about 20 years.

Speaker 106 I did very well for myself.

Speaker 85 Miriam had contacted me first. She wrote, saw your profile and loved it.
I can dance any dance

Speaker 35 and I'm pretty good at it.

Speaker 90 Your profile requirement described me complete to a T.

Speaker 79 She says, I'm going to go down there. I said,

Speaker 42 what?

Speaker 79 I mean, this is just months after Alan had died.

Speaker 15 Even my girls were like,

Speaker 79 she's dating already.

Speaker 74 And I said, no.

Speaker 104 We met at TGI Fridays.

Speaker 106 She was very talkative, very nice.

Speaker 106 We hit it off really good, actually.

Speaker 29 Miriam even opens up about the recent loss of her husband.

Speaker 106 Miriam had told me that her husband had died of some brain disease.

Speaker 106 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.

Speaker 104 She handled his death very well.

Speaker 85 I just thought to myself, okay, well, big deal.

Speaker 50 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.

Speaker 15 I went to

Speaker 75 Mesa Market.

Speaker 42 I went to Walmart.

Speaker 62 I think I have all the receipts in my pocket.

Speaker 38 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.

Speaker 6 To show up at the police interview with a pocket full of receipts.

Speaker 55 Suspicious or just thorough?

Speaker 64 I would say very odd.

Speaker 64 That is not a normal thing.

Speaker 38 Is that really your first thought to explain where you had gone in great detail and keeping the receipts?

Speaker 88 What did investigators make of her alibi?

Speaker 38 Well, they thought it was suspicious, didn't make a lot of sense to them.

Speaker 6 And investigators weren't the only ones with suspicions about Miriam.

Speaker 24 M-I-R-I-A-M,

Speaker 80 Helmick, H-E-L-M-I-C-K.

Speaker 36 Remember that local reporter who sat down with her after Alan's murder?

Speaker 20 She couldn't shake the feeling that something was off with her story.

Speaker 80 Do you have any plan the funeral yet?

Speaker 80 Oh, it's tomorrow at 10.

Speaker 16 I start to get a weird feeling as she's talking.

Speaker 14 So I wanted to get back into a dressage and decided I should

Speaker 16 have

Speaker 14 a dressage horse, so he bought several.

Speaker 16 It was all about her.

Speaker 16 And these interviews are really supposed to be about. the deceased.

Speaker 80 His goal in life was to make me happy.

Speaker 17 He never wanted me to worry about anything or have any problems or anything and he took care of me, everything.

Speaker 16 As I was speaking with her, it went from

Speaker 16 feeling really bad for her to

Speaker 16 being suspicious.

Speaker 80 Are you scared that this person might come back?

Speaker 16 That was it.

Speaker 12 Yes, that was. That's the look.

Speaker 80 I don't want to leave because I'm closer to him here.

Speaker 16 She started looking to the side.

Speaker 16 It's just like when you're talking to somebody and you know you know that they're lying because of nonverbal cues that they have.

Speaker 16 When I left that house, I've never scurried away from a place so quickly in my life. I was genuinely scared.

Speaker 35 And while Miriam is talking to the media, Investigators are talking to those closest to Alan.

Speaker 88 You continue with the investigation.

Speaker 47 Actually, you interview Alan's children.

Speaker 64 Yes. Right after Alan passed, we were speaking to the daughters and they had expressed concerns of an inability to get a hold of their dad.

Speaker 92 He's been completely out of character drastically for the last, since January.

Speaker 92 It's odd for my dad.

Speaker 12 You've seen him change.

Speaker 17 You've seen him change his character.

Speaker 92 And maybe not so much see him change his character, but through her, I can't even get to him.

Speaker 64 He wasn't answering phone calls. He wasn't returning voicemails.

Speaker 70 Hi dad, it's Portia. I hate to bother you so much.

Speaker 41 Just

Speaker 1 I haven't been able to talk to you, so things are piling up.

Speaker 70 Hey Miriam, this is Christy.

Speaker 70 I've been calling my dad for about a week and I'm not hearing back.

Speaker 99 And every time I call, Miriam answered.

Speaker 41 Before then, his phone. Yeah, okay.

Speaker 92 A cell phone. Which I thought was weird.

Speaker 93 He always answered his phone.

Speaker 64 It appeared that he was being distanced from them.

Speaker 92 I'm like, well, Dad, is your home phone hooked up? He's like, no. Like, well, how does anybody get a hold of you? Well, Miriam doesn't want anybody to bother me.

Speaker 64 And when they would call Miriam, there was excuses as to,

Speaker 64 oh, I'll have him call you back, or he's not around.

Speaker 38 She certainly, in the days leading up to his murder, was isolating him from his children.

Speaker 20 Alan'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.

Speaker 21 Could it have been something to do with a sudden decline in his health?

Speaker 24 Father's never sick.

Speaker 93 You know, my father's like an ox.

Speaker 99 And he was, every time I would talk to him, he was sick.

Speaker 17 And did he say what he was sick from?

Speaker 3 He didn't know.

Speaker 55 I don't think he had a clue.

Speaker 18 But he said he couldn't even stand up.

Speaker 14 He was so dizzy.

Speaker 20 The more investigators dig, the more troubling details they uncover, like a gun that seemed to have disappeared from Miriam and Alan's home.

Speaker 16 One of Alan's children said she specifically remembered seeing a.25-caliber pistol in his sock drawer.

Speaker 38 They

Speaker 38 couldn't find that gun after the murder.

Speaker 19 Police learn of a shooting incident that had happened outside this house decades before.

Speaker 94 Could what they find buried in this yard be the break they need

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Speaker 20 Detectives will often say that when it comes to investigating, there are no coincidences.

Speaker 21 And for those working the murder of Alan Helmig, they were certain that attempted car fire just weeks earlier was somehow connected to their case.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 24 We were speaking with his wife. As I started questioning both of them,

Speaker 24 I noticed she became a bit nervous and she said that she wasn't feeling well, 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.

Speaker 69 Up right here.

Speaker 24 Not right here where she just went to the restroom. She actually went across four lanes of traffic, which

Speaker 24 very strange.

Speaker 88 Did she ever come back?

Speaker 24 Not while I was on scene.

Speaker 91 She stayed over there.

Speaker 24 She stayed over there.

Speaker 22 When you were still here, you went into the ladies' room.

Speaker 22 We did. What did you find there?

Speaker 24 We smelled the odor of gasoline.

Speaker 24 It was fairly strong.

Speaker 47 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 a surveillance video of the incident to see if he thought his wife could have been responsible.

Speaker 92 I watched the video.

Speaker 39 Is she on there?

Speaker 66 I'm asking you what do you think?

Speaker 41 How is she on there?

Speaker 39 What did you think? No,

Speaker 39 but I could be wrong.

Speaker 24 We bluffed Alan,

Speaker 24 and he said he didn't didn't believe it.

Speaker 55 And you need to answer my question.

Speaker 39 You looked at the video. Yeah.

Speaker 39 Nice little click there.

Speaker 37 If you've seen her on the video doing that, I would have been shocked.

Speaker 88 The crime scene reminded investigators of a movie scene.

Speaker 38 After all the dust had settled, our investigators started thinking about what had transpired in Delta.

Speaker 38 They thought, This sounds like the car explosion scene in No Country for Old Men, Men, which had just come out in the last year and 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.

Speaker 16 As police are looking into this, they discovered that the Helmicks had rented that movie about four days prior to the incident.

Speaker 25 Was this the smoking gun or smoking car?

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 24 He did not want to pursue it if we were looking at Miriam, and that he would not cooperate with the investigation.

Speaker 25 And the detectives now investigating Alan's murder are still searching for any hard evidence that Miriam pulled the trigger.

Speaker 51 After all, they still hadn't recovered a murder weapon.

Speaker 64 There was the issue of the firearm that was missing from the home.

Speaker 64 And in talking to the daughters, we knew that there should have been a.25 caliber Lorsen in the house.

Speaker 30 Because people had seen that gun there before.

Speaker 9 Correct.

Speaker 51 As luck would have it, there was an old Helmick family story from decades earlier of Alan's first wife's stepfather firing that same gun into the ground during a domestic dispute back in 1989.

Speaker 69 Could this gun, now missing, be the murder weapon?

Speaker 38 There was some evidence that it 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.

Speaker 38 No evidence he sold it, gave it away, traded it. You know, where is this gun?

Speaker 88 And then investigators bring in a metal detector into the case.

Speaker 47 Right.

Speaker 44 Detectives come up with a long-shot idea.

Speaker 50 Go back to the property where that domestic dispute happened back in 1989.

Speaker 25 Could they recover the bullet fired from that gun and compare it to the bullet that killed Alan?

Speaker 102 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.

Speaker 87 Carol Quarles is a retired law enforcement officer who has experience using a metal detector to search for missing evidence.

Speaker 19 So your reaction when they asked you to get involved in this case?

Speaker 9 Oh, yeah, heck yeah.

Speaker 85 Anytime, just call me.

Speaker 12 I love finding evidence.

Speaker 20 And you started over here?

Speaker 59 And I started working my way around.

Speaker 109 And then I just slowly worked my way around

Speaker 109 to about midway in the yard.

Speaker 50 And I hadn't found anything.

Speaker 20 And they were getting nervous.

Speaker 23 The investigator said, well, maybe you're not going to find it.

Speaker 50 Yeah, maybe the witness wasn't remembering things right.

Speaker 29 Right.

Speaker 19 To what you said.

Speaker 109 Let me check over there in case the shooter shot into that corner of the yard.

Speaker 59 And so I walked over there and it wasn't 30 to 45 seconds and I had the bullet.

Speaker 19 Where did you find that bullet?

Speaker 109 That bullet was right in this area right here.

Speaker 109 It was an aha moment. I mean it was euphoric.

Speaker 102 That's the best way that I can explain it.

Speaker 38 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.

Speaker 38 And

Speaker 38 what we were able to determine was that the two bullets were consistent with each other.

Speaker 25 The evidence is building up against her.

Speaker 72 It is.

Speaker 17 At this point, police believe that they have enough to arrest Miriam for Alan's murder.

Speaker 20 But this is a woman who police believe orchestrated an attempted firebombing and shot her husband in the head in cold blood.

Speaker 27 Is she just going to go quietly?

Speaker 105 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.

Speaker 58 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.

Speaker 55 But her past in Colorado was about to catch up with her.

Speaker 105 I was a special agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement here in the Jacksonville Field Office.

Speaker 105 I got a call from Asa County Sheriff's Detectives and they were investigating a homicide in Colorado.

Speaker 31 Did you have an inkling that she might be a suspect?

Speaker 82 It wasn't kind of until I was driving home one day and the Grand Junction police called me and said, is she living?

Speaker 61 I was like, yeah, she's with me.

Speaker 82 I don't know what's going on, like, but she's there.

Speaker 38 We sent two investigators down there with an arrest warrant.

Speaker 105 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.

Speaker 29 Six months after Alan's death, Miriam is charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder for that car fire, and forgery.

Speaker 83 She pleads not guilty and is extradited from Florida back to Colorado.

Speaker 38 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.

Speaker 21 A year after being arrested and charged, Miriam Helmick goes on trial here at the Mesa County Courthouse.

Speaker 29 Prosecutors argue that the grieving widow is actually a cold-blooded killer.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 29 So why do prosecutors believe Miriam killed Alan?

Speaker 20 They argue the motive was as age-old as they come.

Speaker 2 Money.

Speaker 45 Financial motive was the critical part of your argument.

Speaker 38 There were suspicious bank account activity where it appeared that Miriam had forged multiple checks from Alan's account.

Speaker 38 All told, she had taken about $40,000 out of his account through writing those checks.

Speaker 29 But the defense pushed back, saying that Miriam had Alan's permission to write those checks, both as his wife and his secretary.

Speaker 17 Banks had been calling, trying to get a hold of Alan.

Speaker 38 He wasn't being available to his banker, something that had never happened before.

Speaker 30 Now there was an urgency. Right.

Speaker 38 In fact, the banker had reached out to one of Alan's daughters and that was tension that was building, building, building.

Speaker 50 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.

Speaker 89 He was much less involved in

Speaker 89 my life. He was much more distant.
Well, I called him, and when I didn't get to his phone, I called Miriam's phone.

Speaker 64 And when they would call Miriam, there was excuses as to, oh, I'll have him call you back, or he's not around.

Speaker 38 If Alan was discovering that she had been taking money from him without permission, that was a possible motive.

Speaker 25 How would he have reacted if he had found it?

Speaker 52 Everything would have been over.

Speaker 11 He had had our attorney on a hotline, and

Speaker 41 it would have been over.

Speaker 29 And prosecutors argued that Miriam had tried to kill Alan not once, but twice.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 28 When I went on the stand, I was super scared because I knew my testimony was going to be not so good for Miriam.

Speaker 48 Jerry told jurors about a conversation she said she had with Miriam after that failed car bombing.

Speaker 28 She had said that she found out that a car won't explode if it has a full tank of gas.

Speaker 17 And when she said that, what was her demeanor? She laughed.

Speaker 92 Did that catch you off guard?

Speaker 28 Pretty much.

Speaker 58 But the defense pointed out that if Miriam was after Alan's money, why would she try to blow up his car?

Speaker 27 while he was holding that large cashier's check he had just received.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 31 How pivotal was that in tying Miriam to the crime?

Speaker 38 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.

Speaker 38 Now we have a bullet that roughly matches the bullet that was recovered from Alan.

Speaker 50 But as Miriam's defense pointed out, roughly matched is not the same as a perfect match.

Speaker 38 Couldn't prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.

Speaker 20 Then the defense did something you don't often see at a murder trial.

Speaker 14 The defense calls Miriam Hunt to the same.

Speaker 25 They called Miriam to testify in her own defense.

Speaker 14 Once you got inside, what did you see?

Speaker 11 I saw Alan on the floor. I

Speaker 78 dropped my bags and went to him. He was cold and gray.

Speaker 74 I held his hand for a few minutes and tried to make some sense of it all.

Speaker 83 Miriam stayed on that stand for two days, denying that she had anything to do with Alan's murder.

Speaker 48 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.

Speaker 38 You were just acting at that time, weren't you?

Speaker 24 Yes, just briefly.

Speaker 38 You concocted a complete ruse to lead them on a wild goose chase away from you and towards some phantom killer out there, correct?

Speaker 78 If they'd actually had contacted me or listened, then maybe I wouldn't have been at that point.

Speaker 82 That was probably not the best decision to make, but I think at that point she was probably broken, just emotionally and mentally broken.

Speaker 25 That video really did undermine Miriam's credibility.

Speaker 38 Showing her purchasing that card was very difficult for the defense to rebut.

Speaker 29 After 16 days of testimony, the jury gets the case.

Speaker 16 They come back with a verdict in five hours for a first-degree murder case. You just don't see that.

Speaker 14 Five hours was very fast.

Speaker 27 The verdict, guilty on all counts.

Speaker 16 There was a little bit of a sigh of relief.

Speaker 43 Well, you thought, good, she's going to get what she has coming.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 29 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.

Speaker 32 Miriam, are you telling me that your husband Alan started the car fire himself?

Speaker 37 Why would he do that?

Speaker 4 An all-new season of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives is now streaming on Hulu.

Speaker 110 Mom Talk started as a sisterhood, and that's gone to flames. New secrets and lies are coming out.
This is going to be catastrophic.

Speaker 108 We're fighting for our marriages, and the girls are just putting us through hell.

Speaker 110 They make everything about themselves.

Speaker 96 I can't.

Speaker 110 Hopefully, this doesn't end in a bloodbath.

Speaker 4 Watch the Hulu original, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

Speaker 25 It's now been 15 years since Miriam Helmik was sentenced to life for killing her husband, Alan.

Speaker 29 Since then, she's been at the Denver Women's Correctional Facility, where she recently called me from.

Speaker 1 An incarcerated individual at Denver Women's Correctional Facility.

Speaker 69 Hello, Miriam. Hi.

Speaker 94 How are you doing over there?

Speaker 94 Good, good.

Speaker 48 This is the first time she's spoken publicly since her 2009 sentencing.

Speaker 29 I asked Miriam about first meeting Alan back when she was his dance instructor in Grand Junction.

Speaker 23 And was it love at first sight?

Speaker 77 Well, not really, no, because I was there trying to work,

Speaker 77 but he just never gave up. Let's just put it that way.

Speaker 26 He was very persistent.

Speaker 26 Yes, very.

Speaker 49 And eventually you fell in love with him.

Speaker 49 Yes.

Speaker 49 It was kind of hard not to. I mean, he's a very, very kind, very sweet man, and

Speaker 49 he always had your best interests at heart, usually.

Speaker 57 Alan's kids say that you were isolating him from them in the months prior to his death.

Speaker 6 Was that true?

Speaker 6 No.

Speaker 41 But he would get really pale during the day, and I would make him rest.

Speaker 1 And And so I would take his phone away where he couldn't 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.

Speaker 70 Next message. Hey, this is Portia.
I'm starting to get a complex here because you guys have never not picked up your phone.

Speaker 38 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.

Speaker 87 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.

Speaker 77 He could look up online anytime and see what was coming out of his bank account. Nobody stopped him from doing that.

Speaker 1 So anything that was written was written with his approval.

Speaker 29 Did you steal any money from Alan?

Speaker 41 No, I didn't take anything from him.

Speaker 1 Because everything that was put in the bank went into his bank account. None of it came to me.

Speaker 6 Did you have anything to do with starting that car fire?

Speaker 1 No, I didn't have any inclination to do it.

Speaker 77 But I almost believe that he started his own car fire.

Speaker 30 You mean to tell me that Alan started the car fire himself?

Speaker 29 Why would he try to do that and possibly hurt himself?

Speaker 29 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.

Speaker 26 Miriam says Alan may have tried to set the car fire for the insurance money.

Speaker 77 I started to wonder if he did, because as soon as he got his car home, he applied for the insurance on it.

Speaker 86 It's a claim that's hard to back up.

Speaker 87 But Alan was adamant with authorities that he did not believe Miriam would ever try to kill him.

Speaker 24 I had called Alan to advise him that I felt his current wife, Miriam, was trying to kill him.

Speaker 24 And Alan got upset with me and told me that Miriam would never do that to him.

Speaker 24 And at that point, he asked me to terminate the case.

Speaker 45 What about the gun that was missing from your home, at Alan's home?

Speaker 45 I didn't know it was missing until this whole thing, so I have no idea how or where it went.

Speaker 87 It had an unusual family history, that gun.

Speaker 33 I know when I first met him two years before that, I saw it,

Speaker 1 what we were moving and I asked him to put it away because I don't like handguns. I just don't.

Speaker 41 I already had to deal with that kind of thing. It was

Speaker 41 very unnerving to me. That was the last time I saw him.

Speaker 57 Now authorities also questioned your alibi. All the receipts that you had.

Speaker 20 It looked like you were trying so hard to create an alibi.

Speaker 11 Were you?

Speaker 11 It's not uncommon for anybody to their receipts. I had cash and receipts, so they went in my pocket.

Speaker 38 I've done that all my life. 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,

Speaker 38 intending to throw people off.

Speaker 29 Miriam, did you kill your husband, Alan?

Speaker 29 I did not.

Speaker 36 you think you'll get out of prison someday

Speaker 36 I do eventually because I know that I'm gonna keep digging and I know that we're going to be able to put this together

Speaker 6 what do you think will prove your innocence now

Speaker 47 the fact that I had no good scar on me I had no blood spray off me wouldn't the blood spatter and the gunshot residue be easily washed off if you took a shower.

Speaker 47 Well, you know, that's funny because when I went to the police station that afternoon, you could know I hadn't taken a shower.

Speaker 47 There was even some dirt under my fingernails, pretty much from

Speaker 47 doing the barn that morning and helping him shovel out stalls.

Speaker 45 So you had not washed anything off?

Speaker 45 No, I hadn't changed clothes, nothing.

Speaker 86 Miriam has filed numerous appeals with the courts.

Speaker 22 They've all been rejected, but she vows to keep on fighting.

Speaker 77 It won't be over for anybody until it's over for me. And I do have hope.
I know that I could kill him. Now that I'm on this path, I'm not going to lay down and die with it.
I'm sorry.

Speaker 77 It's just not in my nature to do that.

Speaker 33 How often do you think about him?

Speaker 1 I think about him all the time. He was, he was, but I would say things that I remember.

Speaker 77 But his biggest saying was, it's only business to treat it that way. You know,

Speaker 77 just

Speaker 1 he was, he was fun to be be around.

Speaker 6 After the trial, did you see your mom again?

Speaker 82 I didn't know. I have not seen her since the trial.

Speaker 6 After so long, what did Miriam finally have to say to her son?

Speaker 61 Don't forget, you know, put on your jacket too.

Speaker 82 We're not used to the

Speaker 82 30-degree weather that's awaiting us.

Speaker 95 No, we're from Florida.

Speaker 20 This past November, November, Chris Giles and his wife Kelly flew to Colorado for a much anticipated visit to see his mom, Miriam, in prison.

Speaker 82 So she's in the Denman's 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.

Speaker 11 Why not?

Speaker 84 I think for one, I didn't want to have to

Speaker 48 just see her that way.

Speaker 82 See her kind of broken and see her in that

Speaker 82 situation.

Speaker 51 I also, I was also kind of mad.

Speaker 82 I was mad that all this had kind of happened.

Speaker 34 Over the years, one by one, Chris lost his entire family to different forms of tragedy.

Speaker 84 It's just kind of a whirlwind, and then all of a sudden, this happens.

Speaker 6 That new husband dies, and then she's arrested.

Speaker 41 Yeah.

Speaker 82 You're trying to figure out how to deal with those things, and you kind of got to deal with the

Speaker 82 pain. You got to deal with the hurt.

Speaker 61 Let's rock and roll.

Speaker 61 She's probably nervous like me, you know, a little bit nervous, a little excited.

Speaker 83 Our cameras were not allowed inside the prison, but Chris tells me that reuniting with his mom, while complicated, was also healing for him.

Speaker 9 First thing she did was apologize.

Speaker 49 What did she say as soon as we sat down?

Speaker 61 she said, I'm sorry for everything I put you through.

Speaker 61 She said, I'm sorry that we had to go through this.

Speaker 82 But still, once we got to the Allen part, she was firming that she was innocent of all that stuff. And so she kind of,

Speaker 82 we just hashed out kind of what had happened.

Speaker 6 Do you believe your mother had anything to do with Alan's murder?

Speaker 67 I do not.

Speaker 43 With your father?

Speaker 67 I do not.

Speaker 38 No.

Speaker 6 Seeing your mom was a big step for you after all these years.

Speaker 82 Forgiveness is a big thing, you know?

Speaker 52 It's huge when you can work through that and go,

Speaker 61 I don't have to forget about it, but I can choose to forgive you for it.

Speaker 49 But when it comes to Alan's family and friends, there are some things that they say they would rather forget.

Speaker 67 I try not to think about the murder. I more like to think about

Speaker 43 the fun times that we had with Alan.

Speaker 33 Those are good memories.

Speaker 25 What do you think Alan would have wanted people to remember about him?

Speaker 12 He was

Speaker 9 a lot of fun.

Speaker 52 He's the kind of guy you could meet and have a drink with and have a good laugh.

Speaker 17 He treated everybody with fairness and respect and gave a lot of love love to those around him. Nobody wanted to hurt him except for his own wife.

Speaker 17 She ended up taking this man's life.

Speaker 43 Oh, I mean, a good man was killed.

Speaker 67 I don't know

Speaker 43 whether justice is served or not. She's in jail and apparently she's never going to get out, but he's still dead.

Speaker 67 You can't bring him back.

Speaker 17 I think his legacy is that he was tried and true in the community. He did what he said he was going to do.

Speaker 17 Alan was truly loved by everyone that knew him.

Speaker 8 Miriam Helmick was sentenced to life plus 78 years.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 8 And I'm David Muir from All of Us here at 2020 and ABC News.

Speaker 33 Good night.