Fifteen years in the past, Miriam Helmick was sentenced to life with out parole for the homicide of her second husband, Colorado businessman Alan Helmick. She at the moment sits behind bars on the Colorado Ladies’s Correctional Facility serving a jail sentence for against the law she says she didn’t commit.
Now, Miriam Helmick is talking publicly for the primary time since her conviction, providing particulars about her relationship with Alan and the occasions of the fateful day when he died.
“It will not be over for anyone till it is over for me, and I do have hopes,” Helmick stated. “I do know that I did not kill him.”
Miriam Helmick is seen on this undated mugshot.
Colorado Dept. of Corrections
Helmick spoke with ABC Information’ John Quiñones in a jail interview for a brand new “20/20” airing Friday, January 31, at 9 p.m. ET on ABC, and streaming the following day on Hulu.
The couple’s story started on the dance ground. Miriam, a dance teacher, taught Alan ballroom dancing and their friendship blossomed into romance. Their nuptials had been a second marriage for them each, and so they had desires of sharing a life collectively. Miriam describes Alan as a “very type, very candy man.” She stated he was humorous and nicely appreciated locally.
“He all the time had your greatest curiosity at coronary heart often,” Miriam Helmick stated about Alan.
Their desires got here to a sudden and tragic finish on June 10, 2008. Miriam stated she was operating errands that morning and deliberate to satisfy Alan for lunch. When she couldn’t attain him by cellphone, she advised police she returned to their Whitewater, Colorado, dwelling and located her husband mendacity in a pool of blood.
The home appeared ransacked, and Miriam frantically known as 911.
Robin Martin, an investigator with the Mesa County Sheriff’s Workplace, mirrored on the Miriam Helmick case.
ABC Information
Robin Martin, an investigator with the Mesa County Sheriff’s Workplace who labored on the case, remembered how the primary officers who arrived on the scene stated they discovered Miriam distraught and kneeling over her husband.
“Alan was on the ground within the kitchen,” Martin stated. “It regarded like he had been shot within the head. We had a bullet casing subsequent to his physique.”
Police discovered nobody else in the home. As they carried out a sweep of the house, they seen drawers pulled out within the kitchen and a trash can tipped over in Alan’s workplace.
Investigators adopted routine protocol to totally evaluation the partner’s whereabouts. They examined Miriam for gunshot residue and swabbed her garments for blood. These assessments got here again destructive. She even confirmed police all of the printed receipts from the place she was procuring that day.
“She really went from one finish of the valley to the opposite finish,” Mesa County Prosecutor Wealthy Tuttle stated. “We had been capable of observe her actions not solely by her receipts, however by her cellphone interacting with cellphone towers.”
Miriam additionally advised police a few stunning incident that occurred simply six weeks earlier.
Throughout an interview after her husband’s homicide, Miriam Helmick confirmed police all of the printed receipts from the place she was procuring that day.
Mesa County Police Division
Miriam stated that somebody had tried to explode Alan’s automobile. The couple had been in close by Delta, Colorado, when Miriam went to the restroom and got here again to see Alan’s automobile on fireplace. A wick was discovered within the gasoline tank.
“He got here in saying that his automobile was on fireplace, and he requested me to get water, and that is all I find out about it from there,” Miriam Helmick advised “20/20.”
When investigators in Delta requested Alan if Miriam might have been the one to begin the fireplace, Alan insisted she wouldn’t have executed that and requested that police cease the investigation.
“Oh God. No, I do not assume that,” Alan Helmick is heard on a recording of the police interview in regards to the fireplace incident in Delta, Colorado. “Why would she do this?“
In her “20/20” interview, Miriam Helmick steered that Alan may need began the fireplace himself. She stated that he might have been making an attempt to gather insurance coverage cash.
“The factor about Alan (was) if he had thought I had executed it, he’d have helped me pack a bag, put me on I-70,” Helmick stated. In response to Miriam, Alan advised her the investigation was executed and that was the final they spoke of it.
Weeks after her husband’s loss of life, Miriam Helmick stated she discovered a disturbing card on her doorstep with an ominous message inside.
Mesa County DA
As days handed with no suspects in custody for Alan’s homicide, Miriam Helmick stated she turned satisfied she was being watched, reporting that bizarre issues had been taking place round her home.
Then weeks after Alan’s loss of life, Miriam stated she discovered a disturbing card on her doorstep with a message inside that stated, “Allen [sic] was first, your [sic] subsequent. Run, run, run!”
It was a mysterious be aware that made Miriam’s associates fear for her security and that she often is the subsequent goal.
“Miriam calls me and she or he’s frantic,” Jeri Yarbrough recalled of the incident together with her buddy. “She goes, ‘What ought to I do?’ And I stated, ‘Effectively, that you must cling up the cellphone and name the police and get out of there.’ I stated, ‘as a result of any individual may very well be there making an attempt to harm you.’”
When Martin investigated the cardboard, she stated she was shocked by what she tracked down. The surveillance video from the shop the place the cardboard was bought confirmed it was Miriam Helmick who purchased that greeting card.
“It was her. She was sporting the identical type of blouse that she had walked in together with her [police] interview,” Martin stated.
In her interview with ABC Information Correspondent John Quiñones, Helmick claimed that she noticed suspicious automobiles driving round her property within the time after Alan’s loss of life and that she felt police weren’t taking it critically. She stated she wrote the cardboard herself within the hopes that police would up their investigation.
“Perhaps it was a extremely unhealthy resolution,” Miriam stated, “however on the identical time, I believed they’d come out and truly look to see who this particular person was as a result of it did not appear to be care very a lot about my security at that time, and so they hadn’t advised me that I used to be an individual of curiosity.”
Prosecutors stated Miriam alone was liable for Alan’s loss of life. Six months after the homicide, Miriam was charged with first-degree homicide, tried homicide for the automobile fireplace incident and a number of other counts of forgery. Prosecutors claimed Miriam’s motive for homicide was cash.
“There have been suspicious checking account exercise the place it appeared that Miriam had solid a number of checks from Alan’s account,” Tuttle stated. “All advised, she had taken about $40,000 out of his account via writing these checks.”
Miriam advised Quiñones that Alan knew that she was writing these checks. She stated that they owned a dance studio and a horse farm collectively and Miriam was liable for payroll and different enterprise bills.
Mesa County Prosecutor Wealthy Tuttle advised “20/20” he believes the jury was right in convicting Miriam Helmick.
ABC Information
In December 2009, a jury discovered Miriam Helmick responsible of first-degree homicide within the loss of life of Alan Helmick. She was additionally convicted of tried first-degree homicide for the automobile fireplace and a number of forgery counts. She was sentenced to life in jail plus 78 years.
Tuttle advised Quiñones he thinks the jury bought it proper. “I believe there isn’t any method that Miriam Helmick ought to ever be free in society once more. So, life in jail with out the potential for parole, it is the one sentence that serves justice,” Tuttle stated.
From jail, Miriam stated she is set to clear her title and won’t cease till she is profitable.
“I do know that I did not kill him, Helmick stated. “I do not care about anyone else’s opinion. What I need greater than something is to show that.”
Miriam Helmick has filed quite a few appeals with the courts. They’ve all been rejected.
Relating to Alan’s household and associates, there are some issues that they’d fairly neglect, they advised “20/20.”
“I attempt not to consider the homicide. I extra like to consider the enjoyable instances that we had with Alan. These are good reminiscences,” Ed Benson stated of his buddy.
Alan’s associates desire to recollect him as somebody who “was plenty of enjoyable.”
“He was the sort of man you might meet and have a drink with and have a great snicker,” Alan’s buddy, Bob Cucchetti, stated.
