Dateline NBC - Last Dance in the Rockies

Episode Date: April 19, 2023

For Miriam and Alan Helmick, both widowed, life gave them a second chance at love – until Alan was found dead, and details from Miriam’s past revealed she had some dark secrets. Dennis Murphy reports. Originally aired on NBC on May 14, 2010. 

The dance of love begins with one hand taking another. A simple step, a spin, and then the magic starts. At least that's how it all began for Alan and Miriam Hellman, two lost souls who found each other on the dance floor. They were awesome. There's no other word that comes into mind except fun. They made everything they did fun. They met in a small dance studio in the quiet town of Grand Junction, Colorado.

Two widowers getting a second chance at love. Favorite vignette where you see them in your mind? You see what they're doing? Alan doing the swing moves. Miriam going, oh my God. To fellow dance students like Penny Lyons, their romance seemed to be what little girls dreamed about. Alan for her was like her knight in shining armor.

I mean, he came into her life and said, I want to care for you, I want to care about you, and your joy is my goal. And 59-year-old Alan Helmick wasn't just the knight in armor to Miriam. A lot of people in his hometown of Delta, Colorado, felt the same way about him. Alan, the broker on Main Street, had helped people get into their homes and help build their businesses. My father was probably one of the best people I've ever met in my life. And I don't just say that because I'm his son.

To Alan Helmick Jr., his father was the epitome of the all-American success story. Forty years before his life crisscrossed with Miriam's, he was a golden-eared musician and star baseball pitcher who married his high school sweetheart, Sharon. Together, they raised four children, while Alan ran the local savings and loan and eventually his own mortgage and title companies. I almost think of the George Bailey character and it's a wonderful life. Coming to the savings and loan and what if I hadn't lived? Right, except my dad would have got a second job to make up the money he lost. But on New Year's Eve 2003, the wonderful life of Alan Helmick fell apart. His lifetime companion, Sharon, had died of a sudden heart attack.

I think that he died that day, a big part of him. You know, he lost my mother, who he'd been with since he was 14, his love, his life. I'm sure that everything that he thought was real was ripped out from under him. Months passed before Alan could pick himself up and rejoin the world. His ticket back turned out to be some unused credit at a ballroom dance studio where he'd once taken classes. He thought, well, maybe it's something I should do.

You know, he's trying to break out of, you know, the slump he's in. So he goes back to the classes. And that's where he met his dance instructor, 48-year-old Miriam Giles. Miriam had lived in Florida and recently moved to Colorado to start a new life of her own. Like Alan, she was still raw from back-to-back losses. Her daughter, Amy, had passed away in 2000 from a drug overdose. And her husband, Jack, suicide two years later.

Romance was the last thing on Miriam's mind. But as her friend Penny remembers it, Alan was persistent. He went for dance lessons. She wasn't interested in anything else. He was. She told him no. He had to fight to get her to go out with him. What do you think he found in her,

in the kind of mysterious chemistry of people becoming couples? She was exhilarating. She was very lively. And she'd match him in his joy of doing the things they like to do. And you get someone to do it with. You can't beat that. The couple soon became inseparable. Miriam moved into Alan's home in Delta, and in June 2006, they decided to marry. Did you see the lights go back on in your father?

It was definitely miles, miles better. Yeah, I think the traditional role that he grew up in, you know, there's the man and the woman, and they grow old together and they die together. So I think that she felt a purpose that he needed sorely. The Alan everyone had missed, fun-loving, happy, optimistic, was finally back. And with his new wife,

he was looking for new business opportunities too. Before his wedding, Alan stopped by the office of his accountant and longtime friend, Bob Cuschetti. Alan came in, and we were doing some taxes, and he said that he was going to invest in a dance salon. A dance salon? Yeah. Where did that itch to open a dance studio come from, do you think?

Oh, it had to be Mario. I mean, why would he do that? It'd be like having a root canal. Well, if Alan wanted to open a dance studio, so be it. Supportive friends of many years, people like Ed Benson, a contractor, signed up for dance lessons along with his wife. Alan actually put on an exhibition, Alan and Marion Dance. Alan is a very competitive person, and he was good. I mean, whoa, he was very, very good.

But a small-town ballroom dance studio would always be a business of the heart, and a couple of years later, it was bleeding money. By then, though, Allen and Miriam had turned their attentions in a new direction. They had bought a 40-acre property in Whitewater, a rural community just outside Grand Junction, with the idea of starting a horse breeding business. Allen's accountant didn't sugarcoat his opinion of that venture either. That was a nightmare. I told him, I said, Allen, anybody that gets raising horses is going to lose some money.

But he was determined he was going to make money at it. Friends thought it a little odd that someone as smart and business savvy as Allen would get involved in such a risky startup. But they shrugged it off as an investment in a new bride. It was just, you know, something to make his wife happy. I don't think he was, you know, naive enough to realize that he was going to make money doing that. The Helmicks threw themselves into developing their horse property and breeding business. Work seemed to fill the aching hollow spots in both their lives.

And they might have happily ever aftered on their little ranch. But it didn't work out that way. The Mesa County Sheriff's Office and the CBI are investigating a suspicious death tonight and say it's too early. They say whether it's a suicide or a homicide. Deputies were called out to a... On June 10, 2008, the local news carried the story of an apparent robbery homicide out in the Helmick's neighborhood. My wife and I were starting to get ready for bed, and I said, I wonder if that's Alan. And by the morning's news release, it was out that that is exactly

who it was. Alan Helmick had been murdered in his home, the victim apparently of a robbery gone bad. But as investigators began to dig, they would come up with the theory of a crime darker than anyone on the western slope of the Rockies could have guessed. It was a Tuesday afternoon, about lunchtime. A call came in from 911 dispatch. It was June 10, 2008, when Miriam Helmick walked into her rural Colorado home and found her husband on the floor, shot to death. Investigator Jim Habenstreit of the Mesa County Sheriff's Department heard the dispatch call go out on his radio. Tell me exactly what happened. He was on the floor. It looks like somebody came in and robbed us. He was stuck everywhere. He had blood under his head.

Some of our deputies responded to the residents. They were advised as they were en route that the person who had called 911 was the wife and that she was beginning CPR. Is he breathing? No. Let's go do this. Ma'am, we're going to get you some help. Hold on, okay? When the Mesa County deputies arrived, they saw Miriam Helmick kneeling over her husband's body. He'd been shot in the back of the head. On the floor beside him, a.25 caliber shell casing, a wallet, and a cell phone. The inspector joined the first responders at the scene. Mr. Helmick was lying on his back in an office area that adjoins the kitchen.

At first glance, it looked like a home invasion. But to the detective, something about it just didn't seem right. It appeared that someone attempted to make it look like a burglary or a robbery gone bad, but it looked very suspicious. There were drawers pulled out of desks and the office area. There was a small trash can turned over. Wouldn't that speak to an intruder with a botched robbery rather than a staged robbery? It more speaks to someone who doesn't know really what a burglary or a robbery looks like because the drawers weren't dumped out. There weren't things scattered all over the floor. There were a few drawers open in the kitchen and

typically that's not someplace that burglars go to look for valuables. Police cordoned off a crime scene in an area that hasn't seen very many of them. Tell me about this neighborhood you got sent to. It's just a little bedroom community. It's probably about 10 miles south of Grand Junction. Country properties, people have a little acreage. Exactly. Run some animals. Right. Crime there. It's pretty crime-free in that area because it is so remote. As investigators processed the scene, people started to congregate outside the house. Cameras were there when Alan's son-in-law arrived, anxious to see what was going on. Learning the news, he collapsed in grief and rage. Miriam was said to be shaken as well.

What is she showing you in terms of demeanor in these early hours? The original deputies indicated that she was crying. And because homicide detectors always do, they put the surviving spouse through the mill until they can rule him or her out. So they brought Miriam down to the sheriff's office where they tested her hands for gunshot residue. Just hold your right hand out for me here. She came out clean, the first hurdle. Verifying her alibi was the second. Miriam described her morning in detail, from wake up at 6 a.m. to feeding the horses with Alan. We had coffee for another while, so he came upstairs.

It was about cleaning stalls, and I was about 8 o'clock when we got back upstairs. Miriam says she left her home around 8.15 for a busy morning of errands with plans to meet Alan later for lunch. She first stopped at the market for cigarettes and a drink, and on her way to the next stop, phoned Alan, who was busy running his own errands. Did you leave a message or I got his voicemail? Hi, Alan. Love you. 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. Once you get your car service, call me, let me know. Love ya. Bye. No call back. No big deal. Miriam said that after she finished at Walmart, she moved on to the third item on her to-do list for that day. I needed a big, really big bag of carrots for horses, so I had to go over to Safeway that I'll want to carry. Still no Alan. Hey Alan, you need to turn your phone on.

I'd like you to call, not call me, so give me a holler. Thanks. Bye. Miriam drove to her fourth stop, the City Market, where Allen was supposed to have dropped off a prescription. I probably got there about 10, around 10. They know it. He hadn't come in and dropped it off. At this time, has he called you back yet? No. Is that odd? in and dropped it off. At this time, has he called you back yet? No.

Is that odd? Yes, it's odd. I pitted around there until it was time to meet him at 11 o'clock at the Chinese place. Miriam drove over to the Chinese restaurant, parked, and waited in the line. The plan, she said, had been to have lunch with Alan about 11 a.m. She left another voicemail. Hey, Alan, this isn't funny anymore. Allen about 11 a.m. Because normally he's like right on time or early or whatever. And since he hadn't called me back, I thought he was caught up somewhere to be.

Miriam's story seemed to check out. There were even receipts from her shopping morning, which tracked her from store to store from 8.49 a.m. until she was recorded by a security cam near the Chinese restaurant around 11. Basically, we were able to determine that the route that she had described and the places she described were in fact accurate. So that's a pretty good alibi. She's not around her house when this awful thing is going on, it seems. Tired of waiting for Alan, Miriam decided to drive home.

What time do you think he got home? I don't remember. I saw his truck, and I was going to go in and give him a piece of my mind at that point. We're standing you up for lunch, huh? Yes. I'm not calling you. Okay. I saw him on the floor.

Okay. And he wasn't moving. So I knelt down beside him and shook him. And then I saw blood under his head. Who had paid a fatal house call on Alan Helmick while his wife was out shopping? What had happened at that ranch? Something random and botched? Or something planned? The investigators didn't know, yet.

What had happened to Alan Helmick while his wife Miriam was out? He hadn't responded to her phone calls, had been a no-show for their lunch date. And when Miriam returned home, she'd discovered him on the kitchen floor with a gunshot wound to the head. Is he conscious? No. Is he breathing? No. I've got to go do this.

The murder had become not only a major investigation, it was also a red-hot story in the local media thirsty for developments. I'm missing my right arm, I feel like. I'm just missing my life. I don't know what to do. Miriam Helmick agreed to talk to a couple of television reporters, mostly softball stuff about her life with Alan. I met him teaching how to dance.

And I didn't really like him. He grew on me. It took a little while, he grew on me. Warm and fuzzy about their courtship. But he was such a gentleman, and he was so sweet. So it's just hard to imagine somebody, he would take my car and fill it up with gas without asking. I mean, just little things. She spoke of Alan's generosity, his love. I mean, once we got married, he spent most of his time trying to make me happy, so it was,

we did a lot of things, and I have no regrets. Meanwhile, the cops were playing their investigation close to the vest, giving the heavy-breathing news people only dribs and drabs. And the more they looked at the house where Allen was killed, the more their experience told them that the scene smelled to high heaven.

In a burglary or a robbery, it's unlikely that someone is going to be shot in the back of the head. Why is that? Because if the burglary is in progress, the burglar is probably going to run. Most burglars don't carry a gun into a crime scene with them. The working theory became this wasn't a robbery. Alan Helmick knew his killer. Investigators asked Miriam who she thought might be responsible.

Your immediate question is, well, does he have any enemies, any idea who could have done this? What's he been doing for the previous couple of days, that kind of line? Right. She wasn't able to think of anyone who might have been responsible for his death. She mentioned that Alan and his son, Alan Jr., had a somewhat strained relationship. Ranking people that you found Alan to be tenuous with. Who would be number one? Who would be at the top of the list? His son. Everybody else loves him. Allen's son.

Police called him in for questioning. But since he lived out of state, he was able to prove that he wasn't around at the time of the murder. Still, he left the sheriff's office unimpressed. I remember being a little bit upset during the interview with her that she didn't ask enough questions. She didn't give me a polygraph.

Not that she should be looking at me more, but is this how you're treating everyone? I mean, are you spending so little time, you know, investigating? Be tougher. Yeah, exactly. Regardless of how he felt the investigation was progressing, he quickly moved down that list of people of interest. Maybe Alan had a business deal that had soured. Detectives asked Miriam about any bad blood with former business partners.

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. Some of the people who had worked for him in the past said he could be difficult to work for, but nothing that rose to the level of a motive for somebody to want to kill Alan Helmick. But someone had wanted to kill Alan, and just recently, too. Investigators didn't know what to make of a bizarre failed attempt on Helmick's life they'd only just become aware of. And the reporters were on it, too. Investigators didn't know what to make of a bizarre failed attempt on Helmick's

life they'd only just become aware of. And the reporters were on it, too. New details in a Mesa County homicide investigation, why an unsolved arson case has deputies looking at evidence in another county. 41 days before Allen's murder, he was involved in a disturbing incident in his hometown of Delta. It happened outside of the office of his old title company. Allen had just finished a business meeting. He was selling his company, sitting in his car, waiting for Miriam to come back from the ladies' room. All of a sudden, the gas tank on his Buick caught fire. The police thought it was a case of arson. The fire was quickly doused. Helmick wasn't injured. But that question,

why would someone try something as outlandish as torching Alan Helmick's car as he sat in it in broad daylight on the town's main drag? Was the failed arsonist, weeks later, a successful shooter? In her TV interview, Miriam had been asked about the lighted wick in the gas tank of the Buick.

I don't know what the Delta Police have come up with since then. They never would call us back when he called, so. Think at all that they're maybe connected? Good possibility. I'm just letting a shock to us. But he never mentioned anything about anybody that would do something like that. Do you think Alan knew his attacker? I don't know.

I don't know. In the days after Alan's murder, amidst the grief and confusion, Miriam had to confront one more emotion, fear. Because it seemed her life might also have been in danger. Back at home, Miriam was noticing some odd things happening around her. Doors unlocked, lights turned on, cabinet drawers that were pulled open. She asked the neighbors if anyone had seen a strange car in the area, but no one had. But perhaps the most troubling sign of all was left right there at her doorstep.

And what could that be but a warning that her nightmare was far from over. Good friend Penny Lyons was by her side when it happened, finding an envelope by the front door of the house. When we opened up the card, handwritten inside it said, Alan was first, you're next. Run, run, run. Two weeks after her husband had been shot to death in their home, Miriam Helmick was telling friends she was convinced someone was out to get her too. It was Miriam's assertion that whoever killed Alan was still harassing her, stalking her.

She was going on about a white pickup that Miriam said repeatedly drove past her home. She reported it to Investigator Habenstreit of the Mesa County Sheriff's Department. Left a message for me on a Saturday on my cell phone and said there's a suspicious vehicle driving around the property, and it was a white GMC, possibly a pickup with a white male subject with long curly hair, was all the description we had from that. So had any of the neighbors seen this vehicle? None of the neighbors did, but Alan's daughter, Portia, one day was driving by the property and did see a white pickup truck near the house. The ominous truck, then that really scary thing on her doorstep.

It was about 10 days after the funeral. Miriam had been saying for about three days that odd things were going on in the home. She thought what, someone was coming in the house and trying to spook her? Well, that's certainly what it seemed like. Penny Lyons had offered to see her uneasy friend Miriam home. As they pulled into the garage that evening, Miriam noticed that police crime scene tape, which she'd purposely left on the door, had been removed. So we walked over to the front door and down underneath the welcome mat was a bright canary yellow envelope. So I picked it up and handwritten on the front said,

To the grieving widow. When we opened up the card, handwritten inside it said, Alan was first, you're next. Run, run, run. Penny remembers the fear she saw etched on Miriam's face. She just started to shake and go down. I mean, how can you not? Alan had been murdered and now there's a physical threat that you're looking at. Good God, scared the living daylights right out of you. So I just told her to get in the car, get in the car, get in the car. And I had enough sense, I guess, to grab the card in the envelope and throw it in the back seat.

Investigators started to trace that greeting card, tracking down all the local stores where it could have been sold. Could the card have come from a shady associate who'd been out to get Alan, and it was now out to get Miriam, too? Just where was this case heading? In the absence of hard information, rumors began to fill the void. Word on the street was that it might have had something to do with a business deal gone bad. Bob Cuschetti, Allen's accountant, heard the scuttlebutt. You know, there was some talk about him owing people money, and I go, that's a bunch of crap. Nobody around here does that, you know what I mean? He had a couple debts, but... The other rumors, though, were about Miriam herself. Increasingly, in the court of public

opinion, as well as in the official investigation, it was felt Miriam had to start explaining herself better. Investigators had been digging into her story and found that once you broke down her alibi, the grieving widow, so graceful on the dance floor, was looking more and more like a suspect. Her day a bit too pre-planned as the cops heard it. I don't think that we put that together immediately, but as we began to look at things a little closer, it did seem that she had every,

practically every minute of her movement accounted for. You ask me a lot of questions about where I've been. I think I have all the receipts in my pocket. Okay. Do you mind? I don't know if they're all here. Miriam had those receipts from her morning shopping in her pants pocket, ready for inspection. So offering it up in the spirit of...

Offering it up. If you guys need to see the proof of what I'm talking about. Right. If you need to check up on me what i'm talking about right if you need to check up on me or um if there's some question about where i've been here i here's the proof that that these were the places that i went and the more investigators studied her police interview the more they found miriam's emotions to be a little off visibly upset woman one minute no sooner laughing and then when officers left her by herself, hysterics.

She actually laughed, I think at least twice during the interview, so her demeanor during that interview seemed a little unusual for a spouse who had come home and found her husband dead on the floor. Though everybody treats grief and shock in different manners. Exactly. So in those early hours, we still didn't really know what we had. But now as they dug around, they realized there was a discrepancy in her story of how it was that she'd been able to clear the deck for such a busy morning of shopping. Originally, the day was going to be about Alan's granddaughter

coming over to the house for an afternoon horse riding lesson. But early that morning, Miriam phoned the riding instructor, Sue Boulware, to cancel. The granddaughter lives about 45 minutes from their house, and they hadn't gone and picked her up the night before, which is what they usually did. At least that's the excuse Miriam gave the riding instructor. But she gave a different account altogether of why the lesson had been canceled when she spoke to Alan's daughter, Portia. Miriam told her it was the riding instructor who'd canceled. The instructor says that's not true. Miriam canceled the riding lesson. Alan's children were getting suspicious over little things mounting up before and after their father was murdered.

There's so many odd things that happened concerning that woman that in retrospect, in hindsight, that I look back and I say that just doesn't seem right. All along, they'd been worried for their father. No more so than after his marriage to Miriam, when his physical condition began to slide downhill fast. He was sick a lot during that time though, which was very odd. Flu-y? Yeah, yeah. I'm in bed, you know. Was that like him to be sick or complain about being sick? Never, never. Strong as an ox. That was during that time that I started having nightmares that she was trying to poison him. And I'd wake up in the middle of the night with these crisp dreams and it was just horrifying. And I'd wake up in the middle of the night with these crisp dreams,

and it was just horrifying, and I thought, this has got to be an emotional reaction to her replacing my mother. Crime scene investigators had found plenty of prescription pills in the Helmick medicine cabinet. Now the family thought Alan Jr.'s dreams might have held the answer to why their father was sick. They believed Miriam was slowly poisoning him with cocktails of remedies. We did not know at the time exactly what happened,

although we all had, of course, our feelings. You and all the sisters? Yeah. Amazingly so. When we got together, we all saw eye to eye, which was kind of odd. We all kind of looked at each other and went, really? You felt that way too? But on the medical examiner's autopsy table, no trace of poison was found in Alan Helmick's body. There was no evidence of poisoning in the complete toxicology analysis that was performed. The M.E. Robert Kurtzman did discover, though, that Allen had suffered from serious heart disease.

A symptom of that condition is extreme fatigue. Allen Helmick had a severe blockage of his coronary arteries. So if his family had reported as they did, he'd been acting out of sorts, ill in the previous months, what you saw with his heart, would that explain those symptoms? Certainly, that would be very consistent. But something else troubled the family. Alan Helmick had been all but bedridden, virtually unreachable, in the weeks before his death. Whenever someone called his cell phone, it was more than likely that Miriam would pick up,

or that no one would answer and the calls would go straight to voicemail. 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. voicemail. Alan's children would also leave messages on Miriam's phone to have their dad call them back. I've been calling my dad for about a week and I'm not hearing back and I was just hoping to be able to get a hold of him. If you could have him call me as soon as you get this, that would be great. None of our calls got returned. Calling both the house phone and his cell phone. Yeah, and that was, okay, there you go. That was one of the weird things.

She started answering his cell phone, which was strange. I thought she had her own phone. You know, the house phone was understandable, but cell phone, he would answer that. Always had, same number for years. Hey, this is Portia. I'm starting to get a complex here. I'm starting to get to know you don't want to talk to me because you guys have never not picked up your phone. His family wasn't the only one having trouble getting through. For the previous three months, Alan's bank had also

been trying to reach him with some urgent news concerning his finances. News that Miriam definitely did not want him to hear. In the weeks after Alan Helmick had been murdered in his home, authorities were increasingly regarding his widow Miriam as their main suspect. But even with evidence piling up against her, most of it not yet disclosed to the press, some friends, like Penny Lyons, were convinced she was innocent. She couldn't conceive of a motive. He took care of everything. Her whole life was Alan,

and everything provided in that life was provided by Alan. So what... There was nothing to gain. You want a little dance studio? I'll buy you one. Yeah. You want to do horses? We'll do horses. We'll have a horse farm. Yeah. He was awesome. All that mattered was that you do what you enjoy.

And that's the philosophy he lived by. The perception of her friends was that Miriam didn't obviously benefit financially from her husband's death. Alan had been careful to keep their bank accounts and credit cards in his name only. Miriam told the investigators about their yours and mine approach to money. Everything his is his.

Everything mine is mine. He has more than I do. The Helmick's horse trainer, Sue Boulware, said Miriam had been cut out of her husband's finances by design. Miriam told me after this all happened that she wasn't on any of the bank accounts because the family, Alan's family, were worried that she was a younger woman and that she might want his money. And to make the family happy, they had signed a pren-nep. In fact, in the days and weeks after Alan's death, Miriam had to

borrow from friends just to buy groceries and gas. She was struggling to pay her bills. The trainer had to help Miriam sell some horses to raise cash. I needed to be paid for my services as the bank had put a hold on all the funds for any checks that had been written. Even on the most cynical of ledgers, it seemed that always so generous Alan was worth more to Miriam alive than dead. In that TV interview, she acknowledged that her husband had been like a sugar daddy to her. 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. But was Miriam getting more from Alan than simply walk-around pocket money? It appeared she had been, and it also seemed that Alan didn't know about the extra allowance

that she was giving herself, if that's what it was. Investigators began to follow the money trail and discovered that for the previous year, Miriam had been forging checks in Alan's name, checks written payable to herself and the dance studio. A young man named Alan Laurel, who'd been hired to manage the dance studio, said he suspected all along that Miriam had been signing Alan's checks, and he didn't see anything sneaky in it. I usually figured that Alan Helmick was just perfectly okay with Miriam handling the checks in and out of the studio. They were the legitimate bills, the money that

was owed for the month, the fees to the instructors. Certain legitimate bills were getting paid. Of course, it's not uncommon for husbands and wives to sign each other's checks. Maybe he knew about it. But when investigators spoke to the manager at Allen's bank, they came upon something else Miriam may have been trying to hide from her husband. In the three months before Allen died, the bank had been trying to contact him but could never get past his voicemail. An account manager even button-holed Miriam once when she'd visited the bank and told her Allen really did need to call them immediately. He never did. So finally, his backers resorted to writing formal letters.

At the Helmick house, the investigators found a letter waiting in the mailbox. It was posted four days before Allen's murder. And if he'd lived to take delivery of that letter, he would have learned that he was in serious financial trouble. It was a notification from the bank telling him that almost $140,000 had been transferred from his personal checking account to cover two outstanding commercial loans, and the bank wanted him to pay off the balance on those loans immediately. Did Allen realize he was short of cash, and was that why he was dodging his bankers?

His accountant, who regarded Allen as a friend and an honorable businessman, said it would have been totally out of character for Allen to have been evasive if he owed anyone substantial money. He was a banker. I mean, you know, if he couldn't pay a bill, he would sure go down and explain to the guy and make arrangements.

When investigators looked at what appeared to be monkey business going on in Allen's financial affairs, and when they considered Miriam's apparent lies about how it was that she was free that morning to run so many errands, it became harder and harder for them to eliminate her as a suspect, and for Allen's family. I was already 110% convinced in my mind that if she didn't do it, that she was solely responsible for who did. Evidence-wise, the business about the checking accounts was intriguing, but also perhaps ambiguous. So the detectives took a harder look at that weird incident weeks before his death when someone had tried to set fire to Allen's car as he sat in it.

The police in Delta had forwarded audio tapes of their interview with Allen right after the attempt on his life. It made for interesting listening. When I said this is criminal, this is bad. Investigator Jim Habenstreit was tossing and turning because the puzzle pieces of the Allen Helmick murder case weren't dropping neatly into place. There were nights when I'd wake up at 2 or 3 in the morning and think about something that a witness had said

or something that needed to be done. Does this puzzle piece fit here? Exactly. Yeah, it's the kind of case that has not only me, but a lot of other investigators kind of thinking all the time. One of those things he decided to take a closer look at was the attempt on Allen's life a few weeks before his death. Allen and Miriam drove to Delta the morning of April 30th because he was having his partner buy him out. He just wanted the cash. They had the meeting in which she gave him a cashier's check for $120,000. After the transaction was complete, they got up and went down to the car. As Allen sat in the car, someone had tried to ignite his

gas tank. He wasn't hurt and neither was his wife Miriam, who was in a ladies' room when the Buick caught fire. If you connect the dots, someone tried to kill Alan Helmick as he went inside to do his business there. Exactly. Blow him up in his car. Right. When he came out. That's the way it appeared, yes. Miriam would later be asked about that incident in her TV interview. Do you think Alan knew his attacker? I don't know. I don't know. But more to the point, perhaps, what had Alan made of that weird attempt? The Delta, Colorado Police Department, it turned out, had made an audio tape interview with Alan the day after the incident. And the homicide detectives investigating his murder had a listen.

Alan hadn't shrugged it off. My wife said, this is criminal. This is bad. According to the police, a homemade wick had been dunked in the gas tank of the Buick. Miriam, who'd been fiddling around in the trunk just moments before going to the ladies' room, had been the only person near that gas tank. She thought she had some shoes in the trunk. So she said, pop the trunk. I need to look for shoes. And that would have been, I think, just before she went into the bathroom.

While she was inside the ladies, Alan saw smoke in his rearview mirror. I said, hmm, there's something really wrong. Flames going everywhere. And Marion comes back out. Alan raced to the back of the car and managed to pull out a charred foot-long wick. I refer to it as a wick, but it was a wooden skewer about 12, 14 inches long with a piece of rope-type material glued to it that had been stuck down inside the gas camp. Homemade wick, but somebody had thought about it.

Yes, obviously somebody had taken the time to put that device together, stick it down in his gas tank and light it. Where was Marion when you pulled it out? She was right there, I think, because I said, what's that? She said, I don't know. She didn't take it in and throw it away? No.

Bring it back out? No, why'd she do that? That's what she told me she did. Oh, did she? Oh, I didn't see it. Because the bathroom smells like lighter fluid. That's what she told me she did. Oh, did she? Oh, I didn't see it. Because the bathroom smells like lighter fluid. That's what I'm having a problem with. The officer made it clear that she was suspicious of Miriam.

Allen acknowledged that his wife had been backed by the gas cap, but trying to incinerate him? Did she really do that? No. No. Okay. You know, you never know 100% about anybody. And then Allen said that thing that so many people would say later. No. You know, you never know 100% about anybody.

And then Allen said that thing that so many people would say later. Miriam had no motive to kill him. Certainly not for money. I'm still more valuable alive than I am dead, by the way. What would she gain if you died yesterday? She is nothing that was created prior to the marriage. As the interview continued, the officer sensed that Helmick was covering for his wife, and she tried to fake out.

I watched the video. Is she on there? Telling him that a security camera had captured the whole event and suggested Miriam was seen lighting the doused wick. Is she on there? I'm asking you. What do you think? No, is she on there? Did she light it?

What do you think? No, but I could be wrong. In fact, no such camera footage existed. You've looked at the video? No. Nice little twig there. But you made me think that you might have seen her. No, I...

That was scary. If you'd seen her on the video doing it, I would have been shocked. She would be in custody if I had. I can't imagine her being malicious. Alan never talked about what had almost happened in Delta. Allen's friends, like Ed Benson, didn't learn about the car fire incident until after Allen had died. It didn't make our local newspapers, and Allen didn't say anything about it, but I'm guessing that if the local police said, we think your wife tried to kill you, you probably wouldn't tell your friends that I think my wife just tried to kill me.

In fact, Allen told virtually no one, not even his own son. My father didn't even mention it to me, which was very odd, you know, that he didn't bring that up. That wasn't headline news around the family, this thing that had happened? No. In fact, that was really strange to me. But that's not to say that a lot of strange things didn't seem to happen during this time frame. The homicide detective was pretty sure Miriam was responsible for the car fire, but he couldn't prove it to a jury.

Frustrating. So much of his case was vapors, all suspicions and circumstance. And then came the investigative breakthrough the cops had been praying for. Not a found murder weapon, not a new witness, but new information about a greeting card. That greeting card left on Miriam's doorstep, the one that threatened she might be the killer's next victim. What a surprise that turned out to be. It was a greeting card designed to give a friend a chuckle.

But the handwritten message on the one left at Miriam Helmick's doorstep was clearly meant to inspire fear. Alan was first, it read. You're next. Run, run, run. It shook up friend Penny Lyons twice. First, when she discovered it that evening with Miriam. Then, when she found out from the cops what the card was really all about. You're asked some more questions about that card that was found. And there's some more questions about that card that was found, and there's a very disturbing story that comes to light, huh? Yeah. Here's what happened. Investigators found that this particular card was sold at a chain of City Market grocery stores. Using the UPC code on the back of the card, City Market was able to trace the card to three

purchases from the latter half of June. And they had surveillance video of those purchases. And of those three buyers, investigators recognized one in particular. They picked Miriam out of that video. The camera showed Miriam, showed her entering the store, showed her back in the card section, showed her at the checkout, showed her walking in the card section, showed her at the checkout, showed her walking out of the store very clearly and very obviously it was Miriam Helmick. That was a pretty nifty bit of detective work. If we had doubts about whether or not Miriam Helmick was our person in this case, I think that that pretty much eliminated them.

According to the videotape, Miriam bought the card at the city market that's right next to my home. Miriam herself had bought the card on June 22nd, four days before she'd discovered it with Penny. If that's all true, the business about the card, Penny, it looks as though she was using you. Yeah, it does. As the kind of witness to this set-up story about an intruder continuing to harass her? If that's true, yeah. What do you do with that information that's got to be just awful to deal with? No, it's not. It's really not. My feelings aren't an issue here. All I was doing was

being the best friend that I could. Now, however someone chooses to use that, that's out of my control. And all that matters now is finding the truth. The truth about Miriam, the one-time dance instructor, would be hard for friends to digest. But as the investigation continued, some disturbing stories bubbled up from her past. Right before moving to Grand Junction, Miriam had gotten a job in Gulfport, Mississippi as a dance instructor at a studio there. In 2004, it got messy. Her boss at the dance studio accused her of petty theft and embezzlement.

She was eventually found not guilty on those charges. But earlier that same year, Miriam had gotten in real trouble with the law. Back in Jacksonville, Florida, she tried to cash almost $7,000 worth of counterfeit checks. She admitted the crime and spent three days in jail, a history of financial mischief that was news to her stepson. So we didn't know anything about those things. Those were things that were presented that was not the wedding invitation, you know. Allen's son may have been in the dark, but not some of Allen's friends like Ed Benson. He had more than an inkling about Miriam's past.

She told us there was allegations of embezzlement, and she really didn't deny it. It kind of made you wonder. As a matter of fact, at some point, my wife and I both says, boy, I wonder if Allen really knows what he's gotten himself into here. Bob Cuschetti, Alan's accountant. Were people saying things like she's getting her mitts into him? Yes. She's a gold digger?

Yes. She wants to get Alan wrapped up? Yep. They said to Alan, give her whatever she wanted. Still, friends had hoped for the best. And they were, after all, fond of Miriam. Until that day in June, when Alan turned up dead. I feel that Miriam is either responsible for Alan's death and or it was because of something that she did or directed.

By August, less than two months after the murder, Miriam, now out of cash and with dwindling support in town, had left Colorado and returned to Florida to live with her son. I was actually very glad that she was there with him. That was where she would have the most support, and the officers had never said she couldn't leave, so there was no reason why she couldn't go. Authorities, though, were keeping tabs on her as they continued to build their case, one that kept coming back to Miriam, the former dance instructor. While it was a circumstantial case, we felt like there was an overwhelming amount of evidence that pointed to Miriam Helmick. We were able to eliminate other people whose names came up,

but we were never able to eliminate her, and everything seemed to point right back to her. And that was enough to convince the prosecutor that they had a case. Finally, on December 8, 2008, the detective went down to Florida to arrest Miriam. Basically, I went up to her and said, you know, you might remember me and identified myself. And I said, you're under arrest for the murder of Alan Helmick. Is that right, ma'am? You want to go back to the Rocky Mountain State to take care of this? All right, take it, sir.

Miriam was transferred back to Colorado, where 10 days later, she was charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder, and forgery. Stan Hilke, the Mesa County Sheriff at the time, announced the news. She was not a person that could be eliminated, you know, from the very beginning. Pretty confident that we've got the person responsible. So with Miriam Helmick on ice awaiting trial for the shooting death of her husband, people began to buzz about another mysterious incident in her past. The death of her first husband also found shot to death.

A suicide according to the authorities, but was it? Before the western slope of the Rockies and the little dance studio there with the lonely widower, Miriam was known as Miriam Giles of Jacksonville, Florida. She was married there to her first husband, Jack, and they had two children together. The daughter, Amy, died of a drug overdose in 2000. She was survived by, among others, her brother, Chris. My dad took it hard. He took it really, really hard, and it always lingered in his mind, what if I was there? What if I'd been there? You know, what if I would have

been there to help her out? And I wasn't there, so it's my fault. Looking back, Miriam's son Chris says in the wake of his sister's death, he detected a change in his parents' relationship. They really wouldn't talk to each other, and there was some just kind of tension in the house. Miriam's brother-in-law from her Florida marriage, Tim Giles, had never regarded his brother and Miriam as the perfect couple. Far from it.

They'd even separated at one point when Miriam left Jack to live with another man. She came back, but her former brother-in-law said things were never the same in that house. They always seemed indifferent. If Miriam was in the kitchen, Jack was in the front room. If Miriam was in the front room, Jack was in the kitchen. That says something, huh? Yeah, they were never really together. My personal feeling is that they just tolerated each other because of the kids. And then came a morning in 2002 that Miriam's son will never

forget. He was asleep down the hall when he heard the concussion from his parents' bedroom. I wake up to the gunshot. Mom came running out of the room, you know, hysterical. Chris remembers restraining his mother from going back into the bedroom where his father now lay dead. He called 911. She just said he shot himself, he shot himself, and she was just hysterically crying

and stuff of that nature. And so that's when I just kind of, I just closed the door. I wouldn't let her, she wanted to go back in there. I had to restrain her a couple of times from trying to go back in there. Jacksonville authorities ruled the death a suicide, and the case was closed. But not for Jack's brother, Tim, who suspected Miriam's hand in the death. After Jack's suicide, Miriam was very quick to go out and do her own thing. She was really almost too quick to go out and start a dance studio. Getting out there on the circuit

again. She was out there already and she had been out there. I never knew she could dance, much less do the tango. Tim lost touch with his sister-in-law after Jack passed away in 2002. In fact, he had no idea what had happened to Miriam or that she'd been charged with murder until we called him out of the blue. It shocked me a lot. Probably hadn't thought of the name Miriam in a while. I had to open that door in my mind and figure out who Miriam was again. And Miriam Hemlick didn't register at all because I never knew she was remarried. I never knew where she was. But once I sat down and started thinking about it

and started thinking about the circumstances with Miriam, with Jack, my brother, it didn't surprise me. The brother-in-law never bought Miriam's story that Jack had been so overwhelmed by grief following their daughter's death that he took his own life. Jack just wasn't that depressed. Jack was a workaholic. Jack was just not that type of person that would just want to shoot himself in the head for because he's depressed over Amy,

who passed away two years before that. And there was something else that was strange, something Tim didn't know and we didn't discover until we interviewed him. When we went through the original sheriff's report, we saw that Jack Giles had been shot on the right side of his head and that the gun was found in his right hand. We asked him about that. Tim, your brother Jack, was he right-handed or left-handed? Jack was left-handed. If you learn from the MA's report that the fatal wound was in fact on the right side, would that make you wonder? Definitely. Jack was totally left-handed. He couldn't tie his shoes with his right hand. There's no question your brother, Jack, was killed with a gunshot to the head. No, no question.

Who do you think was holding the gun? My personal opinion, Miriam. That this was a murder? This was a murder. A right-handed suicide by a left-handed man? The Jacksonville Sheriff's Department agreed to hand over the Jack Giles records to the team investigating Alan Helmick's murder. Her first husband died of a gunshot wound when she was the only other person present in the room with him. Alan Helmick died of a single gunshot wound to the head,

and Miriam seemed to be kind of the common denominator in both of those cases. Colorado forensic pathologist Dr. Robert Kurtzman, who performed Alan Helmick's autopsy, studied the Giles death photos. I felt as though it had the appearance that it had been staged. That was your feeling about the Jacksonville death? That's correct. When we spoke to him, Dr. Kurtzman had investigated close to a thousand suicides in his career. And as he studied the photographs of Jack Giles' body as it was found, he observed some oddities. The guard and the gun position would indicate that the gun would have to have been held upside down on the right side of the decedent's head in order to sustain the gunshot wound. Now, when you say upside down, do you mean the pistol grip facing the

ceiling rather than the floor? That's correct. And when that shot is down, you mean the pistol grip facing the ceiling rather than the floor? That's correct. And when that shot is fired, how does the pistol come to rest on the victim's chest? Well, that's a part which I don't understand, because the arm would have had to swing around the pillow and then drop onto the front of the chest, as opposed to just dropping out straight. So that's a lot of motion. That's defying gravity. And another observation, soot on the pillowcase, meaning the bullet was fired through the pillow before it struck Giles. Can you explain why the person committing suicide would do that?

Unusual findings. Certainly not typical. So now I'm thinking, wrong hand, holding a weapon at an awkward angle, upside down, as it were, and then has to be fired through a pillow as well. Not putting it directly in contact with the temple, say. That's correct. That's an awful lot going on. My conclusion is that this is a homicide until proven otherwise. Had Miriam Helmick done the unthinkable, not once, but twice. In November 2009, Miriam Helmick went on trial for the murder of her husband,

Alan. First degree, she'd pleaded not guilty. It was all a premeditated scheme, argued the prosecution in its open. She cleared the way for Alan to be alone at the residence, and she shot him, and then she staged this very hokey burglary to cover up his death. Shot in cold blood, left to die on the kitchen floor for one of the oldest of reasons. It was always the money. Prosecutors Tammy Arad and Rich Tuttle painted a picture for the jury of a cunning grifter with her claws into a straight arrow nice guy. Someone too lonely and too much in love to save himself from her treachery. A victim who probably caught on, but way too late into her game.

We think he basically discovered some of her shenanigans with the checks, forging checks. The prosecutors were selling the jury a circumstantial case, a history of a brief marriage as much as the account of a crime. The murder weapon had never been found. There was nothing forensically helpful like blood, fingerprints, or DNA from the scene. You didn't have an eyewitness. Didn't have a murder weapon, and boy, don't jurors like to see all that good CSI type stuff. They do. They do like to see it. DNA, fingerprints, whatever you got, and you didn't have it for him, did you? No, we didn't, but we had a lot of other evidence that pointed to her that we thought was just as valuable.

To depict her as Little Miss Golddigger, the prosecution called witnesses who testified to Miriam's brazen remarks about finding her ideal man. She mentioned that he was the only one with a portfolio that was large enough to consider dating. She just said she wanted to find a rich man, and she didn't care if he had one foot in the grave. And once Mr. Heel-Do danced into her life, claimed the prosecution, she went right for his money. Buy me a dance studio. Buy me a horse farm.

The prosecutors presented evidence that in the six months before his murder, Miriam had forged $40,000 in checks from Allen's bank accounts. In my opinion, a handwriting expert, it is highly probable that Allen Helmick did not write the maker's signature or the payee line on this check. A fraud that couldn't last forever. And according to the prosecution, Miriam knew it. Allen is going to realize that his assets are no longer what he believes them to be.

We had a theory, and something that we believed happened was he had discovered that she had forged his checks. Murder became her solution, said the prosecution, and the plan was afoot. Miriam bought herself time, argued the prosecution, by isolating Alan, keeping his family away from him. Alan's daughter Portia testified that it was nearly impossible to reach her father in the months leading up to his death. I hadn't seen him and I could not get a hold of him by phone.

So I started calling Miriam's phone and I did get a hold of her. Another daughter said Miriam gave countless excuses as to why Allen couldn't pick up his cell phone. He's sleeping. He doesn't want to be bothered. It's charging. She would just turn it off and put it in the drawer. She was isolating him in order to do what she did so that they were by themselves and he was by himself. Just the night before his death, Miriam told one of the daughters that her father couldn't come to the phone because he'd come home drunk from the Elks Lodge and she'd had to put him to bed. Prosecutors called the bartender from the lodge, who said that story wasn't true.

Allen hadn't been in. I was the only bartender. I would have had to serve him. And to serve somebody, I would have to see him. Lies about drinking at the lodge. Lies the jury was told about why the granddaughter's horse riding lesson was canceled on the day of the murder. The Helmick's housekeeper testifying that she felt something bad brewing the day before. Marion was sitting at the desk and she had an awful look on her face.

They're usually very cordial and busy doing their things. But there was something very strange that day. So this was a plot that was building. I think she thought it out and thought it through, and it developed over time until she decided this is the day. And this is the day may have come more than once. Remember the story of someone trying to set Alan's car on fire while he was in it? The prosecution said that was pure undiluted Miriam. That she was the one who stuffed a homemade wick in the gas tank

and lit it while she dashed to the ladies' room. It was so outrageous that we thought, well, where did she even get the idea? And one of the detectives said, this looks a lot like the scene from No Country for Old Men. In the Oscar-winning movie No Country for Old Men, the injured villain needs to steal some drugs from a pharmacy. He diverts attention from his crime by sticking a wick in the tank of a car and blowing it up. And sure enough, the Helmix had rented No Country for Old Men just four days before

that incident in Delta. With the motive established and Miriam's oddball behavior on the record, the prosecution next had to take apart what had initially been Miriam's strongest argument, her alibi. A busy shopping day hither and yon with receipts to prove it, indicating she wasn't at home when Allen was killed. But investigators had found gaps in that timeline. Time enough to kill, time enough to dispose of a weapon. Officers had driven for themselves Miriam's shopping route of June 10th and timed it. It actually took me between 10 and 13. And what they learned was that Miriam could have done everything she'd claimed,

gathered her receipts, posed for security camp pics, and still had plenty of unaccounted time left over. She told us she left at about 8.15, and the first cell phone call that we found on the cell phone records was at about 8.42. So there was nearly 30 minutes of time from the time she told us that she left that was unaccounted for. The prosecution's theory was that Miriam shot Allen in the early morning hours and sometime after 8.15 a.m. tossed the murder weapon. She could ditch pretty much whatever she wanted out in the desert area south of town. And then there was Miriam's behavior after the

crime. Guilty behavior claimed the prosecution. Things like purchasing that greeting card that she left on her own doorstep and then quickly leaving Colorado to live with her son in Florida, who was called as an extremely reluctant prosecution witness. Was it difficult? Yes. Was it the hardest thing I've probably ever had to do in my entire life? Yes. Miriam's son told the jury that while she was living with him, she was using false identification and not just any phony ID. She was posing as Alan Helmick's dead wife, Sharon. She proceeded to tell me that she had copies of Sharon Helmick's ID and I advised her that that wasn't a good course because I

understand that that's just not legal, nor is it the right thing to do. The police found her with a driver's license, paycheck stubs, and credit cards, all under the name of Allen's late wife. She went back to Jacksonville, Florida, and very quickly started up a new life. With a new name. A new name, the name of Sharon Helmick. And the court heard that while she was in Florida, she went back on the chase for a new man, a wealthy one. On a dating website catering to individuals looking for sugar daddies, as the site says, Miriam hooked up with a Florida man, now called to testify in a murder trial in Colorado. Did she talk about her husband having recently died? She told me that he had died about six to 12 months before that with some type of brain disease or something that he had been sick for

three to four years prior to that. Did you have intimate relations with the defendant that night? Yes. Did she express an interest to you in relocating to Orlando to be with you? Yes. Were you ready for that? No. We thought it painted a picture that was quite different than her just having lost the love of her life, Ellen Helmick. It really showed

who she really was. One thing the jury would not hear about was the death of her first husband in Jacksonville, the suicide that some experts thought looked shaky. The judge ruled in pre-trial not to allow it. But the prosecutors were satisfied with the story they had told, about Miriam's brief marriage to a lonely man. And she left him three years later lying in a pool of blood on his kitchen floor. Find her guilty. Thank you. But the defense was about to rise to say that the state had it all wrong. The bumper sticker of Miriam Helmick's defense was concise. Jurors, the prosecution's got nothing.

The requirement that they have to prove the case is a powerful tool in our arsenal. No bloody fingerprints, no murder weapon, and so many people scratching their heads as to why the gun would be in Miriam's hand in the first place. She, with no motive to kill a husband, worth more alive than dead. From the moment law enforcement was called, they turned the presumption of innocence upside down. Miriam's attorney, Steve Colvin, alleged that the Helmick investigation was really driven by Allen's children, who felt nothing but contempt for the gold-digging new wife. You thought the person who did this was Ms. Hellman. I did not have any other persons that I could think of that was the only person that had been around him enough for me.

But Attorney Colvin said their suspicions about Miriam, a woman they barely knew, had no foundation in the real facts of her situation without Alan in her life. Specifically, the prenup, something she had mentioned to friends and quite often. Yeah, she mentioned that there was a prenuptial agreement. She mentioned the prenup and she mentioned that she loved him. With Alan dead, Miriam stood to gain very little. According to his will, everything was left to his kids and grandkids. Our position is that she got virtually nothing out of the homicide. That was one of the reasons why we thought there was reasonable doubt. So the defense

broke down the money trail evidence, starting with the prosecution's claim that Allen had gotten wise to Miriam forging his signature on $40,000 worth of checks. That check sign encountered the defense was the husband-wife arrangement that they'd made. On cross-examination, the prosecution's handwriting expert couldn't say for sure if all the checks had been forged by Miriam. There is no conclusion as to who wrote that. Ms. Helmick functioned as his secretary or in a secretarial role, even though she was his wife. To that end, it was our position that the evidence showed that she had authority to write every check that she wrote. And what's more, that whole strange business of someone trying to set

Allen on fire as he sat in his car. Remember, in that incident, there was also a check involved, a big one. Allen had just sold off a portion of his title company to his partner. Not exactly the right moment for Miriam to have incinerated him. What form was that in? A cashier's check. He's got a check for $125,000 in his pocket. If you want to kill somebody for money, the last time you do it is when they've got $125,000 in their pocket. If you want to kill somebody for money, the last time you do it is when they've got $125,000 in their pocket. And continuing to knock down the argument that she murdered for money,

the defense further asserted that in June when Allen was killed, his bank account was at an all-time low. Why in the world does Miriam Helmick get any benefit from murdering the man if he knows his financial situation is in disarray. She gains nothing from that. Of course, people don't get indicted for first-degree murder because they have a good set of facts. In Miriam's case, one of the strongest pieces of evidence against her was that greeting card that she bought herself, placed on the doorstep with a message she wrote by hand, your next run, run, run. Well, she did do that, conceded the defense. It was dumb, but her excuse was police were focusing on her and not the real killer, like maybe that person in the white truck who was driving past her home. She had seen the white car.

She was frightened. She did call law enforcement and ask for assistance. There was no immediate follow-up on that. I think that there's clearly evidence that there was a vehicle in that neighborhood, and they've never found that person. The defense calls Miriam Holland to the stand. As for the rest of it, Miriam would do something fairly rare in a murder case. She would take the stand and tell the jury her story in her own words.

Could you state and spell your last name for the record, please? Miriam Helmick. Miriam wanted the jury to see her not as a gold digger, but a grieving widow who'd lost the second chance in her life. She spoke of the night Alan proposed to her, his dance instructor. Did a little spin out into a nice little dip and asked me to marry him. How did it make you feel when he proposed to you? I was very excited about it. And she remembered that terrible June day when she says she found Alan on the kitchen floor. I didn't know what happened to

him. I held his hand for a few minutes and tried to make some sense of it all. As for Alan being reclusive in his final months, that wasn't her deliberately isolating him as the prosecution charged. It was simply Allen being a very sick man with heart disease. How did Allen act when he was sick? He was, he normally, he didn't want to talk to anybody. Even his own children? Sometimes not even me. What about business people?

No, he wouldn't. So you would check his phone messages for him when he was sick? Yes. Did you make sure he called back everyone that called him when he was sick? No. Why didn't you? He wasn't a baby. He could do that on his own. So his unavailability, I think, is pretty obviously explained by his illness.

A man maybe more ill than his own family even knew. I think he was more ill than anybody knew, including himself. And Allen's keeping his family at arm's length when he was sickly explained two other things. White lies about the canceled riding lesson and a night of drinking at the lodge that never happened. Did you call Portia and tell her that Alan was drunk? I didn't say it quite like that. What did you say? I said that he had a bit much to drink. That's what he asked me to tell her. The final behavior Miriam had to put in context was her activity after Alan's murder,

when she picked up and moved back to Florida. Why, everyone wondered, had she assumed the identity of Alan Helmick's late wife, Sharon? Dumb admitted the defense, like the greeting card left on the doorway. But Miriam's explanation of the assumed ID business was that investigators in Colorado had confiscated all her legitimate IDs. And without photo IDs, she was lost. So she became Sharon Helmick. Why did you take the ID? Because I was going to try to get a hotel room on the way. So why not stay Miriam Helmick if there were no charges against her? She literally had no form of photo identification and it's impossible to do anything in this country without a photo ID. You can't even get a hotel room. As for going online

once she got to Florida to find a new guy, chalk it up to loneliness, not gold digging. I felt like I was drowning most of the time. I didn't, or maybe you could even call it depressed most of the time. I didn't... Or maybe you could even call it depressed most of the time. I couldn't get out from under it. Did you shoot your husband? No, I did not. Could you have done anything to hurt him? No. Why not? I loved him.

So jurors summed up the defense, you have a nice little fable about a money-grubbing wife, but no evidence whatsoever that she had anything to do with Alan's murder. All circumstances with plenty of reasonable doubt. And that's why we're going to ask you to find her not guilty. Thank you. The jury had the case. Miriam Helmick.

Which portrait of a wife should the jury believe? The grieving widow so unfortunate that she discovered her own husband murdered? Or the gold digger, happy to grab what she could and move on down the road? Dateline sat down with six of the 12 jurors. I was just waiting to hear the evidence and everything, but no, I thought it was a good case. The big question to resolve was this. Had Miriam Helmick murdered her husband and staged the scene,

as the prosecution alleged, or was the killer still at large, as the defense suggested? Maybe someone else had done this awful thing. That was a possibility at that time. You know, it is a story that you can say, well, maybe somebody else did it. But a botched robbery? The jury didn't buy that. They agreed with the prosecution. The scene looked staged. Nothing was really amiss.

The house wasn't ransacked like it had been a robbery scene. The manner of Allen's death, shot in the head from behind, persuaded them that Allen probably knew his killer and had been taken by surprise. It says to me that whoever committed the crime was someone that knew him. We decided that he was probably standing and just totally trusting of the individual behind him and got ambushed. To me, it looked like he never knew what was coming. And the jury went back over the police interview tape with Miriam just hours after Alan had been found dead and appraised her emotions. We thought that the crying that she did might have looked

fake. She never said during the thing, oh my poor husband. Of course, one juror conceded grief is handled differently by each person. Nobody acts the same. People respond differently to the same

situation. And then there was the issue of the murder weapon, the.25 caliber gun the investigators never found. Was that tough for you as a juror? Very big problem. Would have made your job easier, wouldn't it? Yeah, I would have. Especially if her fingerprints would have been on it and she'd have had gunshot residue on her hands.

And that was a big problem. And what did the jury make of Allen's apparent inability to call his family, his business associates? Was he being isolated by Miriam, as the prosecution alleged? I found that very disturbing, actually, that Miriam had taken over his cell phone. This is just not right. Of course, he's not incapacitated. He's not disabled. He's perfectly able to pick up the phone and call them, and's not incapacitated. He's not disabled. He's perfectly able to pick up the phone and call them, and yet he doesn't. And yet he doesn't. He wasn't

returning calls to anybody. The only thing that would make sense to me is that she had a plan, and isolating him is all part of it. You know, get him away from the children, get him away from his friends, get him away from his normal routine. But they also noted Alan Helmick did have a serious case of heart disease, that he was sick a lot. That possibly could have caused a little delay in him getting back to some of these issues, but... Because it was unlike him not to respond. Oh, absolutely. He was a money man. He was on top of everything. But the motive, why Miriam Helmick would have killed her husband, that's what perplexed the jurors most. The prosecution argued it all came down to money. The defense said that made no sense, and the jury sort of agreed.

She has no reason to murder Alan. She's better off with him alive. They have a prenup in effect. She's not going to get anything from him being dead. And when the jurors reviewed that greeting card threat that Miriam admitted she'd planted herself, they found her spin on that lame. Okay, well, I did it. Golly, I'm sorry. I was lonely. I just, the police were, they were ignoring my story and I wanted to give them some more ammunition to look for this white pickup truck. And finally, what did the jurors make of Miriam Helmick's testimony on the stand? For the first few moments that she was on the stand, I felt some empathy for her.

Empathy. She was alone in a town that she didn't know very well. That's got to be a terrible position to be in. I didn't know he was gone. But once Miriam started testifying, the jury's perhaps initial sympathy evaporated. Her being on the stand changed my opinion of her and the case. Changed you how? Because of her stories and her lies just kept building and building. You were giving her the benefit of the doubt until she took the stand? Yes, I was. I was. In the end, the jury took only five hours to come up with a verdict. And that's a pretty short amount of time for a four to five week murder trial. So, of course, we are thinking the worst at that point.

How'd you feel coming back into the courtroom? I was scared to death. A lady's life was on the line. Allen's family had waited a long time for this moment. I've spent a lot of time staring at the wall and wondering what it is as a son I could have done maybe, you know, to be more communicative about my feelings about this woman. Miriam sat calmly at the defense table as the judge read the verdict. At this time, I will read the verdicts of the jury. Jury verdict count number one, first degree murder and the lesser included charge of second degree murder. We, the jury, find the defendant Miriam Helmick guilty of first degree murder. Guilty. The jury had found Miriam Helmick guilty of murdering her husband,

guilty of attempted murder by arson two months before, and guilty of 10 of the 11 counts of forgery. Miriam's face was unreadable. She seemed emotionless. But in the benches of the courtroom behind her, Allen's children were all but transparent, sadness and relief flooding over them at the same time. The jury had agreed with their long-held belief that Miriam Helmick had murdered their father. At her sentencing, two of Allen's daughters stood just feet from their father's now convicted killer and addressed the court. She murdered not just a man that had become her target, rather my father. She is ripped from the hands of five little girls, their grandfather. We will find now joy and healing and believe that she has received what she deserves.

The judge sentenced Miriam to life plus 108 years in prison. Without the possibility of parole. Back in Florida, Miriam's son Chris got the latest in a run of bad family news. Sister, father, now mother. It's hard. You know, it's, you wouldn't ever think that somebody would do something like that. You know, for me, if she did do this, then I just didn't lose one friend. I lost two that summer. Because the friend that I had could never have done this. The Miriam you knew.

Yeah. For Alan's son, the death of his father left him in an emotional abyss. You can't get in the time machine and throw your dad in the truck and go fishing and take him away from all of that. You know, that's something I've been robbed of. The ability to exceed my father's expectations, to be, you know, that older guy where we're sitting down and he says, you know, you did good here. I'll never get that. I've been robbed of that completely. In a footnote, the death of Miriam's first husband, Jack Giles, will remain a closed case. The suicide ruling stands according to Jacksonville, Florida authorities.

For Miriam Helmick, the last waltz in the Rockies is over.