C
HAPTER 38
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EFENSE
The most dramatic part of the trial was, of course, the presence of Miriam Helmick on the stand. Her defense was taking a huge gamble that the jurors would find Miriam’s testimony compelling. It was her one chance to try and explain all of the “coincidences” that pointed to her having murdered her husband. If she could explain them in a rational manner, it would take her a long way toward ensuring a verdict of not guilty. But if she came off as arrogant or evasive, the effect could be devastating for her.
Because this was so important, even before Miriam testified, the prosecution wrote up a memo for Judge Robison. Its title was “People’s Motion Regarding Defendant’s Anticipated Testimony.” The motion read in part:
The People are particularly concerned with alleged statements attributed to Alan Helmick which are directly offered to negate the eleven counts of check forgery in this case. It is clear that the defense will argue that the defendant had the permission of Alan Helmick to write the checks at issue.
This was a huge part of the prosecution’s contention that Miriam had killed Alan Helmick because he found out that she was forging his checks. And the prosecution was worried that Miriam was going to get up on the stand and testify that Alan knew she was making out the amounts on those checks and signing them—in essence, forging his signature because he told her it was okay to do so. If that was true, then what did Miriam gain by killing him? She obviously had been strapped for cash after he was dead. Even Alan had told the investigating officer after the car fire, he was worth more to Miriam alive than dead.
In its motion, the prosecution related that if Miriam Helmick testified in that manner, the jurors should hear that these statements were not facts. Rather, they were the “worst kind of hearsay,” because Alan was deceased and could not refute what Miriam was saying on the stand.
In the end, Judge Robison wrote on the motion:
Denied in part and granted in part.
In other words, she would take up these issues one by one, depending upon what Miriam Helmick actually did say during testimony.
Jody McGuirk began by asking Miriam Helmick how and why she had moved to Grand Junction, and Miriam retold that story. Then McGuirk asked Miriam about her first impressions of Alan Helmick.
Miriam said, “I really didn’t have much of an impression of him at first. He was different. Very businesslike. He wanted to make sure that I could teach him, and teach him well. He only wanted to take ten lessons at first. Alan had dance lessons twice a week. He was very analytical. You couldn’t just tell him to turn right or left. He wanted to know how many degrees.”
McGuirk asked Miriam about her first dates with Alan and how her attitude changed over time about him. Miriam said that she began to realize that she and Alan had so much in common. And he was fun to be around, once he loosened up.
Then Miriam spoke about living in a room underneath Alan’s main house in Delta, in the beginning. Asked how this situation changed, Miriam said, “I was standing on the back porch waiting on him to walk across the street. I had just come home from teaching a dance lesson. He walked up and told me that he thought I looked wonderful standing there, that I belonged with him. If he had only one day, one week, one month, with me, he felt blessed to have been with me at all.” After that, Miriam said that she moved in with Alan into the main part of the house.
McGuirk wanted to know about one incident that had come in during Laegan McGee’s testimony. It concerned a time when Laegan, Alan, and Miriam were at Boomers restaurant. McGuirk said, “You heard Laegan McGee testify in court earlier about seeing you at Boomers with Alan and that you waved to her in an embarrassed way, and that you came up to her and you talked to her about Alan buying you a house and horses. Did you ever see Laegan McGee at Boomers?”
Miriam said that she recalled seeing her at Boomers, but that she had never been embarrassed about being with Alan. Then Miriam added, “He made me feel like a queen. Wonderful.” And Miriam said that she never spoke to Laegan McGee about Keith Coppage having been a boyfriend of hers.
As far as Alan “buying a house for her,” Miriam said that it was a mutual decision to get a new house in Whitewater. “He had actually started looking at a house before he met me. He was trying for a fresh start. He’d been in the house in Delta for many, many years, and there were a lot of reminders of his wife there. We thought it was best to get a place in Whitewater. Halfway between his office in Delta and the dance studio in Grand Junction.
“It was twenty-seven miles away from Delta, so it was different than living there. In Delta, we could run over to the Elks Lodge and play pool and have a good time on the weekends. When we moved to Whitewater, he put in his own pool table, because we didn’t want to drive that far away. We did see less people out there, but Alan wasn’t bothered by that.”
McGuirk asked about the day that she and Alan got married, and why Alan had thrown money at her after the ceremony. Miriam responded, “It was because he had written a poem, and in this poem—well, he brought out a wheelbarrow and buckets and horse manure, pitchforks and all kinds of things. It was to show we would be doing all those things in the new house. It was to show that money would have to be spent and I’d have to be doing all those kinds of things after we were married.”
The contention from the prosecution and law enforcement, of course, was that Miriam had cajoled Alan into buying Dance Junction for her, and it lost a lot of money. Miriam now testified that Alan’s reasons were very different. She said, “When I met him, he was paying a lot of money out of pocket each month to the IRS. And he said that he believed that if he was going to give money to the IRS, he’d rather put it into something he could enjoy than just giving it away. He enjoyed Dance Junction. I taught the teachers there, got them prepared, taught couples, group lessons, and I would figure the payroll. He did all the financial things. The hiring of managers, the setting up accounts, talking to creditors. He took care of the business end of it.”
Miriam said that Dance Junction actually suffered financially when Alan quit going there as often as he used to do. Miriam testified, “My ladies loved dancing with him on Friday nights and at the groups. And you have more ladies than you have men in those, and they missed him. When he quit showing up, they didn’t show.” Miriam agreed that Dance Junction had never been a profitable business, and then she added that it never was supposed to be. According to Miriam, Alan was content with it being a loss; otherwise, he would have had to pay even more taxes to the IRS than he already was paying.
McGuirk wanted to know why Keith Coppage was at Dance Junction. Miriam answered, “Alan hired him. He was a previous dance instructor of mine. Alan hired him because Keith had had his own dance studio at one time, and he knew how to run one.”
As to Miriam’s relationship with Keith Coppage, McGuirk asked, “Did you ever date him?”
Miriam said, “No, I did not.”
“Did you ever want to date Keith Coppage?”
“No, I did not.”
“Was Keith Coppage a good manager?”
“Yes and no.”
“Okay. In what ways was he a good manager?”
“He was good at getting people moving, motivated. He was very positive in that respect.”
“In what ways wasn’t he a good manager?”
“He wasn’t always on the level with Alan. He didn’t want to abide by the contract.”
“In what ways?”
“On the contract, there was a specific amount that Keith got for dance lessons that he taught. And then he started having students make out a check to him instead of Dance Junction. Alan tried to nail him down on this. Once they got through that, Alan was going to extend Keith’s contract, but Keith backed out completely and wouldn’t communicate with Alan anymore.”
“So, did their relationship end on good terms or—”
“No. It was very angry.”
McGuirk wanted to know if Keith Coppage no longer being a part of Dance Junction hurt the business, and Miriam said that it did. “As manager, he had taught most of the women there. And the last thing that you want in a dance studio is animosity. People come there to have fun and enjoy themselves, and not get into the middle of other people’s problems. So we hired another manager, named Cody. It brought some of the ladies back that had left because they all loved Cody.”
As far as day-to-day finances at Dance Junction, Miriam said that she handled petty cash there, and on occasion wrote out checks when Alan instructed her to do so. These checks were signed by Miriam on Alan’s instructions, and that’s why there was so much confusion on law enforcement’s part. They were trying to say she had done so without Alan’s knowledge. At least that was what Miriam was contending now.
Moving on to the sports horse facility, Miriam said the business was also a joint effort by her and Alan. She responded that it wasn’t just because she wanted the business, but Alan had been interested in it as well.
McGuirk asked, “Did you know why Alan wanted to go into the sports horse business?”
Miriam replied, “We were looking to buy a dressage horse for me. And we were surprised by the cost—anywhere from twenty-f ive thousand to forty-five thousand. And he thought that it would be a great business to be in. It would be something you could enjoy, even though it was a lot of work. I was basically chief flunkey. I got to clean stalls and move horses around and brush them down, tack them up, et cetera. I did all the heavy work.”
“Did you ride horses as part of your job?”
“Only in lesson. I didn’t ride them as part of a job.”
“Alan was the one who ran the business?”
“He watched over everything. He handled the finances.”
“Did you like the sports horse business?”
“Yes and no. I mean, I wanted to take lessons, but it was a lot of work. You had to get down and feed and move the horses and clean the stalls before they started training. I had to stay down there till one or two o’ clock every day. And then turn around and go to the dance studio at four or five o’clock in the afternoon. I wouldn’t get home until ten o’ clock at night. So I was pretty busy.”
“Okay, you heard Stephanie Soule testify that you told her to fudge her pay so Alan would get used to the expense of the sport business. Do you remember that?”
Miriam replied, “When she would submit hours, it would be like ten minutes or eight minutes, or whatever, for the time she spent with a horse. I wanted her to round it up to the quarter hour so that it would be easier to calculate.”
“Why did you care if it was easier to calculate?”
“That’s what Alan had asked for.”
“Jeri Yarbrough testified that she received bounced checks from Alan for work that she did for the business. Did you write those checks to her?”
“No, I did not.”
“Did you know anything about those checks when you got the call?”
“No, I did not.”
“Were you surprised when she called you?”
“Very. It’s embarrassing when anybody calls to say there are bounced checks. All I could do was forward the message to Alan.”
Jody McGuirk then started asking questions about what kind of relationship Miriam Helmick had had with Alan’s daughters. During the course of the questioning, Miriam replied, “I thought I had a good relationship with Wendy and Kristy. We (Alan and Miriam) were still working on building a better relationship with Portia. I just wasn’t very close with her. I always felt like she kept me at arm’s distance the whole time. It wasn’t much communication, and I wanted to bridge that gap a little more.”
Asked what kind of relationship Miriam and Alan had, she testified, “A wonderful relationship. He was a wonderful human being. He just treated me well. He had a saying, ‘Have fun like hell.’ That’s what his life was like. We enjoyed each other very much. We built things in common along the way. Like the horses, the dancing. We enjoyed sitting on the back porch and looking over everything that we’d accomplished. I always told Alan he reminded me of the John Wayne movie when he sat up on the hill watching his entire little ranch every afternoon.
“We took trips together and just had fun. We had found out that by digging down from six to twelve feet that we had water underground at our place in Whitewater. So he wanted to tap into that and put in grass and make it into a really nice horse property. If he split up the property, then it would basically pay for the mortgage on the house, and he could pay the house off. He’d do that by selling off the front of the property.”
Asked to tell more about the trips they’d taken together, Miriam said, “We went to Denver to visit his sister before Christmas. Then we went to Lake Tahoe for Christmas. We went to a stock show in January for my birthday. We went to Lake Powell twice, once in April and once in May. We went to Mesquite, Nevada, for a golf trip for him and a gambling trip there.”
McGuirk asked if Miriam took messages for Alan, answered his cell phone, and kept appointments for him. She said she did all those things when he wanted her to. And, according to Miriam, he had wanted that a lot during the time he had been sick from the winter of 2007 through the spring of 2008.