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Authors: Robert Scott

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BOOK: And Then She Killed Him
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P
ROLOGUE
Delta, Colorado, April 30, 2008
 
Businessman Alan Helmick, age sixty-two, was finally selling his part ownership of a mortgage company in the picturesque Colorado city of Delta. Alan had recently told a friend he wanted to take more time off and “smell the roses.” Ever since the death of his first wife, Sharon, from a sudden heart attack, Alan had a new appreciation about the fragility of life. He began to believe that a person had to enjoy himself, as well as work hard at a profession.
Alan’s second wife, Miriam, certainly embraced that belief. She, too, had shared her own tragedies. Miriam’s daughter, Amy, age twenty-three, had died from an accidental overdose of medication in 2000. Two years after that tragedy, her first husband, Jack, had committed suicide over the loss of their daughter. Now Miriam spent all the time that she could teaching dance lessons in the nearby city of Grand Junction, as well as running a horse-training center, which Alan owned.
On April 30, however, Miriam was not feeling good. She complained of stomach problems; and as Alan finalized the documents at the title company, Miriam kept having to dash off to a restroom in the business complex. Returning to their car in the parking lot, Miriam found Alan already sitting inside the vehicle behind the steering wheel. It was a hot day, and she asked him to pop the back trunk lid so that she could retrieve a pair of sandals from the trunk. She wanted to wear the sandals instead of her tennis shoes. But before Miriam had a chance to grab her sandals, she suddenly felt sick again and rushed off to the ladies’ room.
As Alan sat in the car waiting for Miriam to return, the engine of his Buick was running. Suddenly, to his amazement, he noticed a white plume of smoke coming from the rear of the vehicle. At first, he thought it was just normal exhaust fumes, so he turned the vehicle off. But soon the white plume turned darker and became more intense. Alan realized that the rear of the vehicle was on fire. He jumped out of the driver’s seat and noticed flames leaping upward.
Alan rushed into the building to try and find a fire extinguisher, but he was unable to find one there. He met Miriam coming out of the restroom and told her the astounding news of what was happening. Miriam scurried down the hall and was able to obtain a large pitcher of water. She ran outside and threw the water on the car fire. Miriam ran back inside the building several times, filled the pitcher with water, ran back out and threw the contents on the fire. Finally, after several trips, the fire went out.
Alan looked at the gas tank area and noticed a cloth-type article sticking out of the gas tank. It suddenly struck him—someone had just tried killing him or Miriam, or both of them, in a car fire.
The next day, May 1, both Alan and Miriam were interviewed by a sergeant at the headquarters of the Delta Police Department (Delta PD). Asked if Alan could think of anyone who might want him dead, Alan could only think of one person, a man named Don. Don was a former vice president of the Olathe State Bank, and Alan had done business with him. Alan discovered that Don was involved in fraud and deception in bank dealings, something Alan despised. Alan’s testimony helped send Don to prison.
The Delta PD officer then asked Miriam if she could think of anyone who would want to kill her or Alan. The only name Miriam came up with was a woman named Barbara, but Barbara lived a long distance away, in Gulfport, Mississippi. Miriam had worked at Barbara’s dance studio there after the suicide of her first husband. Barbara had accused Miriam of stealing from her, but eventually those charges had been dropped. Miriam also thought that when she started her own dance studio in Grand Junction, Barbara, who owned a dance studio there as well, was angry at the competition.
The investigators kept looking into the car fire, but no one was arrested for the incident. And as May 2008 turned into June, the car fire remained a mystery.
C
HAPTER 1
U
NANSWERED
M
ESSAGES
Life went on at the Helmicks’ extensive home on their sixty-acre ranch in Whitewater, Colorado, after the car fire incident. Alan had been sick all spring, and there were times he couldn’t even get out of bed. He felt much better now, however, and was enjoying getting back into his normal routine. Alan was a particularly good golfer, and he looked forward to more rounds on the local golf courses, now that the weather was getting better all the time.
Alan was a local boy, having grown up in Delta. He’d been an outstanding baseball player and all-around athlete. He married his high-school sweetheart, Sharon, eventually raising four children, three girls and one boy. He had lived an almost Horatio Alger–like life, building up a business as a real estate broker from practically nothing. He then branched off into subdivision developments and other business ventures. Alan created a comfortable and secure environment for his family.
All of that came crashing down on New Year’s Eve, 2003, when Sharon Helmick unexpectedly died from a massive heart attack. Alan went into a state of shock and deep depression. Alan’s son, Alan Jr., later said of this event, “I think that he died that day—a big part of him. He lost my mother, who he’d been with since he was fourteen. His love, his life.”
It was only the advent of a newcomer to the area, Miriam Giles, that helped to pull Alan out of his depression. Penny Lyons, a friend who knew them both, later said about Miriam, “She was exhilarating. She was very lively. And she’d match him in his joy of doing the things they liked to do. You get someone to do it with, you can’t beat that.”
After the car fire incident of April 2008, Miriam also went back to her normal routine of running the dance studio in Grand Junction and especially the task of taking care of the Helmicks’ horses. Miriam loved horseback riding, and she did so whenever she could. The Helmicks not only had three horses on their Whitewater property, but also a horse-training facility in the nearby town of Loma. The facility was tucked beneath the red cliffs of Colorado National Monument. This was a quintessential Colorado landscape, with green pastures beneath soaring red rocks. There was a picture-postcard quality to the setting and Miriam loved it.
As far as the dance studio went, it was the reason that Miriam and Alan had met in the first place. After the death of his first wife, Sharon, Alan decided to use some unused credits he had at a local ballroom dance studio in Grand Junction. At the time, Miriam was managing a studio, Amour Danzar, in Grand Junction. It was there that Alan met forty-eight-year-old Miriam Giles, and Alan soon became her student. He was fifty-eight years old at the time.
Penny Lyons, who took dance lessons at the dance studio, agreed with Alan that Miriam was very good at dancing. Penny spoke of Miriam as not only being technically good, but having a lot of flair and style as well. Later, Penny would say of the reason she took dance lessons, “I worked at New Life Chiropractic as an assistant, and I met Miriam and Alan at the studio in December of 2005. The dance studio was on Main Street, down in the lower garden area off of Winery Alley.” Penny was very impressed about the way Miriam was able to teach her dance students.
By the time Penny took dance lessons, Alan had become so enraptured with Miriam that he bought her a dance studio, Dance Junction, in downtown Grand Junction. Now Miriam could not only manage a place, but she could tailor it the way she wished.
Penny recalled, “I started with group classes, and there were maybe six to ten people in the group on an average night. A young gentleman named Gabe and a young woman named Vanessa taught us most of the time. But Miriam did as well. And Alan was in one of the groups. He participated a lot. I became pretty addicted to the lessons and began taking them three or four nights a week. The people in the group—we got to know each other quite well, and we became friends.
“There were a couple of dinner parties and stuff out at Miriam and Alan’s house, when they got together as a couple. At other times, we would meet at Boomers. Bars weren’t really my thing, but I went a few times. There was one night a week where they would do dance lessons at Boomers, and then everyone would just stay and dance.
“There were some times I wasn’t interested in the dance lessons, such as salsa, so Miriam and I would just stand outside while she had a smoke, and we’d talk the whole hour. Later, in March 2007, there was a dance recital for me. Some people who take piano lessons, they would do a little piano recital for friends and family. This was my little dance recital, and Alan was my partner. After that, Alan quit coming so often to the dance studio. He and Miriam were getting into horses and horse training. By 2008, they didn’t come much at all. A nice young teacher named Luda Miller started teaching me and my brother-in-law with private lessons. Miriam and Alan were mostly doing the horses and just weren’t coming into the studio by then.”
Miriam did have flair and style, as Penny noted. The one thing she didn’t have in the beginning was a yen to go out with Alan on dates. Miriam had a policy of not dating her dance students. But Alan was persistent, and eventually they did go out together. After a while, a romance blossomed, and Lyons later said, “Alan, to her, was like her knight in shining armor. He came into her life and said, ‘I want to care about you. And your joy is my goal.’” Perhaps part of it was Alan’s realization that Miriam had suffered grievous personal losses of her own, with the suicide of her husband and accidental death of her daughter.
Miriam moved in with Alan in his residence in Delta, a home they shared for a while with his daughter, Wendy, who moved in for a while after her divorce. This was a home that Alan had shared for so many years with wife Sharon and their children. Perhaps to make a break from the past, Miriam began looking at other properties in the area. And because of her love of horses, she took a closer look at the area of Whitewater. A few new homes were sprouting up there on lots with forty, sixty, and even higher acreage. It was a very good locale to have a few horses on the property. And Whitewater was also located between Delta and Grand Junction. Alan still had business interests in Delta, while Miriam managed the dance studio in Grand Junction. In many ways, Whitewater was a good in-between choice as the site for a new home.
In 2006, Alan Helmick bought sixty acres and nice modern 3,200-square-foot house on Siminoe Road in Whitewater. To the east, rising above it all, was Grand Mesa, the largest mesa in the world. The top of Grand Mesa was covered with forest and numerous small lakes, ideal for hunting and fishing. On the east side of Whitewater, East Creek wound its way through an array of colorful red cliffs and cottonwood trees.
Alan and Miriam were married in 2006, and they had a large reception afterward at a Grand Junction convention center. Many of Alan’s friends were there, including Bob Cucchetti. Cucchetti had been a friend of Alan’s for years, and an accountant as well. As far as Alan taking on a project like Dance Junction, Bob later said, “Oh, it had to be Miriam.” Cucchetti thought that Alan would never have opened up a dance studio on his own in a million years, but Alan loved Miriam so much that he bought the dance studio for her.
Alan put his heart into it, as he did all business ventures, and even held a dance competition to showcase the new opening of Dance Junction. Ed Benson, a good friend of Alan’s, who watched Miriam and Alan dance at the competition, said, “He was good. I mean very, very good!”
 
In Alan’s world, the business ventures were par for the course, and he always liked having something of that nature going. But the dark cloud lingering in the background about the car fire incident was something else. Why would someone want to start a car fire in the Helmicks’ car? Had he been targeted? Had it been just a random prank?
Other than that, life seemed to have taken a turn for a more stable and happier aspect in Alan’s life by June. And yet, in the background, there were other troubling incidents in the Helmicks’ lives. Especially for Alan’s daughters, Kristy and Portia. Kristy lived in Denver, and Portia was in Delta. They both wondered why their father wouldn’t call them back after they’d left numerous messages on his cell phone. Was he depressed? Was he angry with them for some reason? Neither one of them knew.
To try and reach their father, both women began leaving phone messages on Miriam’s cell phone. On June 4, 2008, Portia left a message at 10:27
A.M.
: “Hey, Miriam. It’s Portia. I need to talk to my dad. I just got a phone call that I need to relay to him.” Portia didn’t go into more details than that, other than she seemed distressed at the time.
Kristy, who was planning to visit Alan and Miriam soon in Whitewater, phoned on June 6 at 8:29
P.M.
and left a message. “Hey, Miriam. This is Kristy. I’ve been calling my dad for about a week and a half, and not hearing back. I was just hoping to get ahold of him. If you can, have him call me as soon as you get this. Thanks so much. Bye.”
The next day, Kristy left a message once again on Miriam’s voice mail at 11:52
A.M.
: “Hey, Miriam. I just got your message. Thank you so much for calling me back. I’m just trying to get ahold of my dad. Would you really try to talk to him, if he does know that I’m calling him, and not really calling me back—um, that’s what I’m assuming. Thanks.”
The next morning, June 8, at nine o’clock, Kristy phoned once again to Miriam’s voice mail. “Hi, Miriam. It’s Kristy. Sorry to bother you again. I’ve just been leaving messages with my dad. And I thought I’d try leaving a message with you. I wanted to talk to him just ’cause I’m coming on Thursday. And Alan Jr., he left a weird message. I’m trying to cut him off at the get-go. Because I don’t want to do what everybody else does. I’m not interested in housing him or anything. But I wanted to ask what Dad thought. And just talk to him in general and see how he is.”
On the morning of June 9, 2008, Portia left another message on voice mail: “Hey, this is Portia. I’m starting to get a complex here. I had a flash that you weren’t picking up because of what I said for not picking up for Alan Jr. If you don’t want to talk to him, and you guys aren’t wanting to talk to me because of that, um, you guys have never not picked up before.
“So maybe somebody could call me back. I have a few things I need to talk to Dad about. I need to know if you guys are coming by tonight, and at what time. I have an appointment tonight. So I was going to see if you guys could come by at that point and watch the kids for about an hour. I have a whole other list of things I’ve been trying to get ahold of somebody about. So give me a call if you can. Thank you.”
Miriam already knew that there was a lot of friction between Alan and his son, Alan Jr. The friction tended to spill over to Alan’s daughters as well, when it came to Alan Jr. Miriam’s understanding was somewhat vague about the problems between Alan and his son. Alan didn’t like talking about it.
All of these phone messages hung in the background as night closed down on the Helmick residence in Whitewater on June 9, 2008. Among the unanswered questions were why Alan wouldn’t return Portia and Kristy’s phone calls. And what “weird message” had Alan Jr. left for Kristy?

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