C
HAPTER 31
A P
ATH OF
G
REED AND
L
ONELINESS
Chief Deputy District Attorney (DDA) Tammy Eret had been an important component in the Michael Blagg trial of 2004. Now she was once again in a murder trial that had some similar characteristics of one spouse allegedly killing another, and trying to make it look like a burglary gone bad.
Eret began opening statements by telling the jurors that at the end of 2007, Alan and Miriam Helmick sat down with a life insurance agent. Alan wasn’t enthused about the idea, but in Eret’s words, “Miriam was raring to go.” Miriam later wanted the life insurance policy upped to a million dollars, but the limit for Alan was $250,000.
Wanting to implement that amount, the life insurance agent wrote and called Alan Helmick. Alan returned no messages, but Miriam did. She asked the agent, “Can we do this without him?” The agent said that would not be possible.
Alan Helmick eventually did take out a $25,000 life insurance policy, and Eret noted that six days after Alan’s murder, Miriam called the agent and asked how she could cash in that amount. The agent told Miriam that she couldn’t do so, because several monthly payments had been missed by Alan during the spring of 2008. And Eret contended that Alan missed those payments because Miriam was keeping all messages and mail from him.
Eret claimed that Miriam kept Alan isolated from friends and family for months, because she was raiding his bank accounts at an alarming rate. According to Eret, when Alan found out about this, Miriam murdered him and tried to make it look like a robbery gone bad. Eret declared, “When someone on the path to loneliness crosses paths with greed, the results are devastating!”
Eret also told the jurors that when Miriam’s desk at her business, Dance Junction, was searched, stacks of bills addressed to Alan were inside a drawer there, unopened. “She kept his phone. She refused to pass on phone messages to him, and she did everything to cover up her theft and forgery.”
Deputy public defender Jody McGuirk, of course, had a very different take about what had occurred in the Helmick household. McGuirk said that investigators ignored a series of leads, including a white pickup truck spotted on several occasions in the Helmicks’ neighborhood. McGuirk also said that two individuals, dressed in black, were spotted in the area at 6:00
A.M.
on June 10, 2008—the same morning that Alan Helmick was shot to death.
McGuirk said that none of the other leads mattered to the investigators, because they’d already made up their minds that Miriam had murdered her husband. “From the get-go, she was treated like a suspect and not a victim.” In essence, McGuirk said, the investigators only collected evidence that would help what they believed had happened, and they ignored evidence if it veered off from that premise.
McGuirk did admit to the jurors that Miriam had made a “horrible error in judgment” when she purchased a greeting card and wrote on it:
Allen was first. Your next. Run, run, run.
The deputy public defender said that Miriam had done so because no investigator was taking her seriously about mysterious things occurring at her home after Alan’s murder. And no investigator would take her seriously about the white pickup truck. According to McGuirk, the reason they didn’t was that they only wanted the pieces that fit into what they wanted to believe about Miriam being the prime suspect.
Actual testimony and admission of evidence began with the prosecution showing the jurors a series of photos of the crime scene at the Helmick home. Many of the photos were of Alan Helmick lying on the floor, with a pool of blood at the back of his head. Several drawers were open and a wastebasket was pushed over, but nothing else seemed to be disturbed. One photo after another depicted expensive items still untouched in the home.
Then the eighteen-minute 911 tape was played as Miriam spoke with the emergency operator. While the audiotape was played to jurors, Miriam sat at the defense table, dabbing her eyes with a tissue.
Deputy John Brownlee, the first law enforcement officer to arrive on scene on June 10, 2008, took the stand for the prosecution. On direct, he spoke of the things he had seen and how Miriam had acted when he got there. All of this went fairly smoothly until the subject of how Josh Vigil acted that day, as opposed to the reaction of Miriam Helmick, commenced. Steve Colvin asked Judge Robison for a sidebar, which was granted.
Out of the hearing of jurors, Colvin said, “I’m objecting to this witness (Brownlee) offering lay opinion testimony.” In other words, Colvin was saying that Deputy Brownlee was not an expert witness on how someone should react when they found out that someone they knew had been murdered.
Tammy Eret responded, “I would say that this evidence is proper.”
Judge Robison decided that the objection was overruled and Brownlee could state his opinion about how he viewed Josh Vigil’s reaction and Miriam Helmick’s reaction.
Eret questioned Brownlee, saying, “So Josh Vigil fell within the part of being very upset and crying?”
Brownlee responded, “Yes, ma’am.”
“What about the defendant? Did she fall within either one of these categories?” (The two categories were considered to be visibly very upset or noticeably not responsive.)
Brownlee said, “No, she did not. It was strange to me that she wasn’t like most people would react. When I asked her to leave the house, she went outside with Deputy Quigley. She didn’t ask why or make any protest.”
“Did she ask anything to you about whether you were going to do CPR or anything to save her husband?”
“No, ma’am. She never did.”
Eret wanted to know more about people who were non-responsive during an incident like what had occurred at the Helmick residence.
Deputy Brownlee replied, “They just shut pretty much completely down. You have to help them up because they’re not able to get up. They just kinda shut their bodies down.”
“When you looked around, were there any types of rags or washcloths or towels around the body to help clean some blood off or anything like that?”
“Not that I saw.”
Steve Colvin, on cross-examination, got Deputy Brownlee to admit that when he first entered the house, and saw a male lying on the kitchen floor, he knew there was a serious situation. And to be on the safe side, Brownlee searched the house until Deputy Pennay arrived. At that point, Brownlee returned to Miriam and Alan Helmick.
Colvin asked, “How long had you been in the house until you touched Alan Helmick to feel for a pulse?”
Brownlee answered, “It was about five minutes. He was cold to the touch and had no pulse.”
Brownlee agreed with Colvin that, in his opinion, Alan Helmick was already dead. For that reason, neither he nor Deputy Pennay did not do any CPR. Colvin wondered why Miriam should have done any CPR on a dead man, since she had already told the 911 operator that Alan was dead. Brownlee said it was his understanding that Miriam had told the 911 operator that she was trying CPR.
Colvin asked, “And when you saw the bullet casing on the floor, you knew that it was a crime scene, correct?”
Brownlee said that was so. And he also agreed with Colvin that he’d stayed at the Helmicks’ house for nearly six hours that day. Much of the time, he spent outside, maintaining security of the perimeter.
Colvin asked if Brownlee had put into his report of June 10, 2008, anything about his thoughts concerning the way Miriam Helmick had acted. Brownlee said that he had not. It wasn’t until his next report, thirty-six hours after he first arrived on scene, that he noted how he felt Miriam Helmick’s behavior was strange.
Colvin then asked how many death scenes he’d been to. Brownlee said about fifty. Wanting to know how many of those had been suicides, Brownlee answered ten to fifteen. Others had been accidents and natural deaths. When asked how many homicides Brownlee had been to, he admitted that the one at the Helmick house was his first.
Colvin queried, “Are you a trained psychologist?”
Brownlee replied, “No, I am not.”
“Are you trained in grieving processes or post-traumatic stress disorder or any of those psychological processes?”
“We have some basic classes, but nothing classroom oriented or anything like that.”
Brownlee did add that he’d taken training at the police academy and had follow-up courses on how to deal with people in traumatic situations. These included everything from traffic accidents to actual homicide.
Colvin asked, “You recall from training that the first thing they teach you about dealing with a traumatic event is that everyone acts differently, right?”
Brownlee answered that was true.
“When you first went there, she was not a suspect, right?”
“No, sir.”
“She’s a victim?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Because if you thought of her as a suspect, you wouldn’t have gone to clear the house and left her alone with Mr. Helmick, right?”
“Correct, sir.”
“Certainly wouldn’t have been turning your back on her, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So, at what point did she shift out of that victim role for you?”
“It was later on in the investigation that it changed.” Colvin noted that Deputy Brownlee had testified on direct that he hadn’t heard Miriam crying while he was clearing the house. Colvin asked, “How loud is it that spouses have to cry when you’re not with them?”
Brownlee responded, “I’m not stating that they have to cry a certain amount. When I was nearby at the laundry room, I couldn’t hear any crying.”
“How many homicides have you investigated?”
“This was my first, sir.”
“Of all the cases, when it’s clear the person was deceased, someone always says to you, ‘Did you get a pulse?’”
“Not always. But I did find it weird with the no sobbing and those kinds of things. So I put it into the report.”
“She didn’t ask a bunch of questions. She just did what she was told. That’s suspicious?”
“In my training and experience, it was.”
“Okay, so of those who are not catatonic, all of the rest of them ask questions?”
“I’d have to say probably ninety percent of them do.”
“But again, you agree that you’re not an expert in the field of grieving people?”
“Yes, sir.”
Tammy Eret took her turn again on redirect. She asked Deputy Brownlee if he was taught to evaluate scenes and take notes about things that were out of the ordinary. He said that was so.
Asked about Miriam crying, Brownlee said that she was sobbing when he first made contact with her. However, when he searched the other parts of the house, he couldn’t hear any more sobs. And that’s why he put that in his report.
In a somewhat unusual circumstance, after the attorneys were done, Judge Robison related to Deputy Brownlee questions that jurors had written down. One such question:
Did a supervisor review your first report before you wrote your second report?
Brownlee responded, “I’m not positive if it was reviewed before or after the second report. Most of the time, it would have been after the first.”
Another juror question:
Based on your observations, was the defendant in shock?
Brownlee answered, “I don’t believe so. That’s why I wrote the part about her not crying, and those sorts of things.”
A third question:
Was she sent to the hospital?
Brownlee replied, “No, she was not.”
C
HAPTER 32
T
IME OF
D
EATH
Robert Kurtzman testified to what he had seen when he was at the Helmicks’ residence on June 10, 2008, and what he had observed during the autopsy of Alan Helmick. One important question Richard Tuttle wanted to get at was Dr. Kurtzman’s toxicology report. In it, Kurtzman had noted that there was no alcohol in Alan Helmick’s system. This was at variance with Miriam Helmick claiming that Alan had come home drunk from the Elks Lodge in Delta, on the afternoon of June 9, 2008.
Tuttle asked, “If Mr. Helmick had been drunk the night before, let’s say very intoxicated, would you expect to see some evidence of that in his urine as part of toxicology examination?”
Kurtzman replied, “There would be a good possibility. It would depend on the amount of alcohol in Mr. Helmick’s system. If Mr. Helmick had consumed alcohol the night before, he would have to have had a level of alcohol sufficiently high enough to register.”
Then Tuttle wanted to know about a very important question: Could a forensic pathologist nail down a very specific time when death had occurred? To this, Kurtzman said, “Unfortunately, no. On TV programs, they say when a person dies. But in reality, you can’t do that unless a person happens to be hooked up on a monitor and you’re evaluating the transition from life to death. We can only give general estimates.”
Tuttle wanted to know what Kurtzman looked at in determining a time of death range. Kurtzman responded, “One of the things I look for is what’s called lividity and rigidity. Lividity is the pooling of the blood that occurs after a person has passed away. When a person’s heart stops beating, the blood doesn’t circulate through the skin. When a person dies, the blood will gravitate toward the most dependent portions of the body—in the particular instance with Mr. Helmick toward the back.
“And the blood is liquid for a period of time. As that time gets longer, what happens is that there’s water lost from the body, and different types of proteins in the blood congeal. When I evaluated Mr. Helmick at the residence at three-fifteen
P.M.
on June 10, 2008, his lividity was not fixed, so that typically would be in less than twelve hours.
“The other thing we look for is rigidity. Rigidity is the stiffening of the muscles after death. The muscles don’t typically become fully stiffened throughout the body for about twelve hours. And when I evaluated Mr. Helmick at the scene, he did not have well-developed rigidity. The earliest time of his death would have been around three-fifteen
A.M.
”
Tuttle asked, “If the first responding deputy arrived on the scene at around twelve noon and noted some rigidity in the body, how would that affect your assessment?”
Kurtzman responded, “Typically, rigidity takes a while to develop. It’s usually a few hours before it becomes readily apparent.”
“Eight o’clock
A.M.
?”
“Certainly.”
“Eight-thirty
A.M.
?”
“Certainly.”
Then Tuttle asked if Alan Helmick could have been killed around 10:00
A.M.
Kurtzman said that was unlikely. As far as gunshot residue testing went, Dr. Kurtzman hadn’t done the actual test. Law enforcement had done that, but he had collected samples of GSR from Alan Helmick.
When it came to Alan Helmick’s heart condition, Kurtzman said, “He had severe coronary artery disease. He also had an older heart attack that had occurred weeks, possibly months, prior to the time that the death occurred.” This may have been why Alan had been so sick and weak during the spring of 2008.
As far as Alan possibly being poisoned by Miriam in the months preceding his death, Dr. Kurtzman stated, “I feel confident that Mr. Helmick was not poisoned. It was actually remarkable that Mr. Helmick was even alive with his heart condition at the time he sustained the gunshot wound. The vast majority of individuals who had the severe coronary artery disease and heart attack, [which] he had, typically would have perished long before.”
This was a new wrinkle. If Miriam Helmick had not shot Alan in the back of the head on June 10, 2008, as the prosecution contended—and she had been patient, instead—another heart attack might have ended Alan’s life.
Perhaps this was not the way Tuttle wished things were going in reference to the poisoning. He said, “Are you positive that if the poisoning had taken place, to whatever degree, several months earlier that it would have dissipated entirely, or would you still see evidence of it, even if it was months earlier?”
Kurtzman replied, “It would just depend on what type of poison. When you talk poison, there’s lots and lots of different compounds that can be used as poisons. If we were looking at heavy metal poisons, like arsenic, lead, mercury, or Valium, things of that sort, those are very, very toxic compounds and they will lead to physical findings or symptoms in some way. Therapeutic drugs or illicit drugs that can be administered to a person, those types of drugs have a half-life. In other words, a time period [in] which the body eliminates them if the person survives. In theory, they may be completely eliminated if the person doesn’t succumb to their effects. So it is possible that he was administered some drugs or something with the intent of taking his life. It’s possible. Would I detect anything or everything that could have been used? No, I wouldn’t.”
Now Tuttle had the answer he wanted to hear, and said, “No more questions.”
Steve Colvin had plenty of questions, however. And the main thing he wanted to blow out of the water was the theory about Alan Helmick being poisoned. Dr. Kurtzman agreed with Colvin that Alan had severe blockage of his arteries, and that in January and February 2008, he probably would have been feeling sick and weak.
Colvin asked if Dr. Kurtzman had seen any type of poison in Alan’s system that could have caused a heart attack. Kurtzman responded, “I didn’t see anything that would be causing a heart attack.”
“Other than Big Macs, cigarettes, and illness?”
“Right. There are plenty of drugs that can cause heart attacks. Methamphetamine, cocaine, others, stress the heart. But, again, I didn’t see anything in the toxicology that was unusual.”
Law enforcement had even asked Dr. Kurtzman to run tests looking specifically for signs of poisoning. About this, Colvin asked, “You informed law enforcement July first of last year that you thought additional tests were unnecessary because poisoning was improbable. Is that correct?”
“That’s correct.”
And as to time of death, Colvin said, “Assuming the rigidity or rigor was found at noon by someone, fair to say that nine thirty-seven
A.M.
, for instance, would be perfectly consistent with rigidity found at noon?”
“Sure.”
This was important. Miriam could prove she was not at home at 9:37
A.M.
, June 10, 2008, because she had a sales receipt proving that fact.
Dr. Kurtzman said because of the amount of rigidity he saw at 3:15
P.M.
, he thought Alan Helmick had died in the early-morning hours. Kurtzman could not narrow it down any further than that.
Asked if Dr. Kurtzman could tell by the trajectory of the bullet where the gunman had been standing, Kurtzman said no. “If you take a look at the injury, I don’t know what position Mr. Helmick had his head at, [at] the time he sustained the gunshot wound. So if he had his head turned to the left, that would place the shooter farther to the right. If he had his head to the right, then it would place the shooter far to the left. If the head was tipped down, then it would line up with somebody being higher in the room. If it was tipped back, then it would be somebody lower in the room.”
On redirect, Richard Tuttle once again questioned Dr. Kurtzman. Tuttle asked, “In general terms, the bullet path as it entered Mr. Helmick’s body tells you very little about his relationship to the shooter. Is that correct?”
Kurtzman replied, “Correct. The only thing that I would say is that he’s got a gunshot wound entrance, and there’s no evidence of close-range fire on skin around the wound of entry.”
Once again, the jurors had some questions, which Judge Robison read out loud to Dr. Kurtzman. One of the jury queries:
How much alcohol could Mr. Helmick have ingested the night before without any being detected in his urine?
Kurtzman answered, “There’s a number of variables. Mr. Helmick may have voided first thing in the morning when he got up. If he did so, then he would completely empty his bladder. In order for Mr. Helmick to have a detectable blood alcohol level at eight o’clock in the morning from eight o’clock the night before, he would have had to have an alcohol level equal to or greater than .24 at eight the night before. That would have been equivalent to twelve beers the night before. It’s a hard question to answer, not knowing the starting point and ending point. He would have had to have a lot of drinks the night before for it to show up.”
On this same topic, another juror questioned:
Is there any way to know if Alan Helmick could have been drunk the night before?
Dr. Kurtzman replied, “Not from the information I have.”
A third juror’s question asked:
Did it look like someone had cleaned the mouth and nose area?
(This alluded to giving CPR.)
Kurtzman answered, “Not that I recall.”
The judge asked if the prosecution or defense had any more questions. Steve Colvin did, and asked, “Can you say definitively that a layperson, untrained in performing CPR, could not have attempted CPR in a poor fashion?”
Kurtzman said, “I wouldn’t be able to say definitively. But when somebody performs CPR, they’re pressing on the chest. In an individual the age of Mr. Helmick, it’s not uncommon that you’ll see rib fractures associated with CPR. And normally to do CPR, you have to turn the head. Mr. Helmick’s body was resting in the position I believe he fell. In my opinion, I would say no CPR was performed.”
“But you can’t say for certain that nobody tried to perform chest compressions. You can say for certain they didn’t do so with a lot of force, correct?”
“That’s correct.”
In the end, both the prosecution and defense had scored points from Dr. Kurtzman’s testimony. Kurtzman had just said that he didn’t believe Miriam had done any CPR on Alan, so she had lied about that to the 911 operator and police. On the other hand, Kurtzman didn’t believe Alan had been poisoned, and he gave a window for the time of death that encompassed when Miriam had not been at home.