C
HAPTER 41
“I L
OVED
H
IM
.”
Now came time for the very important issue of the yellow greeting card under the doormat. Jody McGuirk asked, “Did you leave that greeting card for Penny Lyons to find that day?”
Miriam replied, “Yes.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Up until that point, nobody had done anything about the truck I had seen and called in about. I’d seen it again, and there were other things that were happening.”
“What were you hoping to do with the card?”
“I hoped the police would actually take it seriously and maybe watch the road.”
“And did they do that?”
“No, they did not.”
Miriam said that it had been the wrong thing to do, but she was in a panic at the time. “I used Penny badly. She’s a friend of mine, and I shouldn’t have done that. It didn’t accomplish anything. I thought the police might listen to her, since they weren’t listening to me. I feel very badly about using her now, but I had seen that white truck and the way it had behaved. It was driving around the side of the house and I saw it from the master bathroom window. I went down to the garage, because I thought it was maybe someone that I knew. And when I opened the garage door, it drove by slowly, and then they just kicked it into gear and spun gravel and left.”
McGuirk asked if Miriam saw who was driving the truck. She responded, “It was a white male, with kind of light, curly hair. I called law enforcement about it. I called Mr. Hebenstreit. I didn’t hear anything back from him about it. Then I saw the truck again, a week later. I heard the horses running around at night, and I went out and checked and shined a light down there and saw the truck again. As soon as I shined the light, it moved off.”
Asked if she phoned law enforcement about it this time, Miriam said that she hadn’t. As to why, she replied that they hadn’t done anything about it after her first call. McGuirk wanted to know why Miriam stayed in the house if she was scared. Miriam replied, “I still had animals to feed. I didn’t have money to go anywhere, and I didn’t want somebody pushing me out of my own house. I didn’t have family in the area, and Alan’s family had changed.”
McGuirk said, “Was anything else happening around your property?”
Miriam answered, “I would come home and there would be a back door open. Just little things. At first, I thought I was going nuts. Then I started putting it together.”
McGuirk wanted to know how law enforcement had treated Miriam. She replied, “The day they came to measure the house, I was sitting in the garage, and when the gentleman left (Mike Piechota), he told me they really needed to talk to me. He said it in a way that was very mean. I felt like he was treating me as a suspect. I had asked for my driver’s license back and they wouldn’t give it to me.”
As for how Alan’s daughters began treating her, Miriam said, “I believe it was three days after the funeral, Kristy called me and told me they were going to sue me for everything. I knew their attitudes had definitely changed. I knew they were treating me like a suspect at that point. And Alan’s friends—it was strange. When something like this happens, you usually reach out, and nobody reached out to me. I felt like I was drowning the whole time. I couldn’t seem to get ahead. I didn’t know where my next income was coming from.”
Miriam said that she just wanted to leave Grand Junction to be closer to her son, Chris. She added, “It wasn’t until I put him on the plane that I decided to go. He was there (in the Grand Junction area) for several days and I felt secure while he was there. And when I put him on the plane and he left, it just started all over again. Like I was alone. I drove all the way through to Brunswick, Georgia.”
Asked if she had law enforcement’s permission to go, Miriam said, “I didn’t ask. No one said I couldn’t go.”
“Were you running from law enforcement?”
“ No.”
“Your son, Chris, testified that you acted mad when he told you that he spoke to law enforcement and told them that you were staying with him. Were you mad about that?”
Miriam responded, “I wasn’t mad about that. He had spoken with them, and he didn’t tell me about it right away. He told me about a week later. I wasn’t happy about that. If I had wanted someone not to find me, I wouldn’t have gone to see my son.”
McGuirk next wanted to know why Miriam had used Sharon Helmick’s identification. Miriam said, “After all the things the police took from the house, that’s actually the one thing they left. They had my driver’s license and birth certificate. Her ID was in a drawer all by itself. You can’t even get a hotel room without a license. I hadn’t planned on using it in any other way.”
Miriam had also done possible ID searches on her son’s computer when she was in Florida; McGuirk asked about that. Miriam responded, “It was kind of a last-ditch effort to find an ID that I could actually send in to get my birth certificate and get a Florida driver’s license.”
As to why she didn’t call any of Alan’s family when she got to Florida, Miriam said that she wanted to put all of the bad memories of Alan’s murder behind her. “I was not in a good state to call anybody. I needed to put my head under a pillow for several weeks.”
This led into questioning about going on Internet dating sites, and Miriam said, “It was for communication, something that was lively and interesting, so that I could laugh a little bit again. A little intelligent conversation. I joined those sites to chat with someone. I wasn’t looking for anyone in particular. I did it as an escape from always feeling bad. I had been drowning most of the time. I couldn’t get out from underneath it.”
McGuirk asked why Miriam used Sharon Helmick’s name when she joined the computer sites. Miriam responded, “It was hard enough using one name. There would have been confusion of going back and forth between ‘Sharon’ and ‘Miriam.’ So I just used it.”
As far as meeting Charles Kirkpatrick, Miriam said, “It was a fling. I didn’t see him again after that. I wasn’t interested.”
After a long period of questioning, Jody McGuirk began to wrap things up. She asked, “Were you keeping Alan from his family?”
“No, I was not.”
“Were you writing checks on his accounts without his permission?”
“No, I was not.”
“Did you set his car on fire in Delta?”
“No, I did not.”
“Did you shoot your husband?”
“No, I did not.”
“Do you know who did?”
“No, I do not.”
“Do you miss him?”
“Yes.”
“Could you have done anything to hurt him?”
“ No.”
“Why not?”
“I loved him.”
For Miriam Helmick, the direct examination had been the easy part. Now she was about to be questioned by the prosecution, and Richard Tuttle had believed almost nothing of what she had just said.
C
HAPTER 42
A B
ATTLE OF
W
ILLS
Richard Tuttle began by asking, “You described Alan as the love of your life in 2005?”
Miriam answered, “Yes.”
“Was he the love of your life in June 2008?”
“Yes.”
“But you said in January 2005 that you really didn’t like him. Do you remember saying that?”
“Yes.”
“And Barbara Watts testified that by Valentine’s Day, you were in love with him and living in his house. You went in the course of a month from the El Rio Rancho Motel to living with him. Can you describe the El Rio Rancho Motel?”
“It’s just a weekly-stay motel.”
“Would you describe it as a cheap motel?”
“Yes.”
“And how much did it cost to stay there?”
“One hundred seventy dollars per week.”
“And at the time you came to Grand Junction, what did you have with you?”
“Clothes, a couple of suitcases, and I brought my dogs with me.”
Tuttle asserted that Miriam Giles had come to Grand Junction with very little; and within a month, she was living with a wealthy man in Delta. Tuttle added that Miriam’s lifestyle changed dramatically once she moved in with Alan Helmick; Miriam agreed. Then Tuttle retold the story of Laegan McGee coming over to her at Boomers in 2005, and Miriam saying to McGee in a singsongy voice, “I hear wedding bells.”
Tuttle asked, “At that time, Laegan McGee talked about how you actually labeled off on your fingers, ‘He’s gonna buy me a studio. He’s gonna buy me a house in Whitewater. He’s gonna buy me horses.’ Do you recall saying that?”
“I recall her saying that. Those conversations happened over the course of a year. We hadn’t even decided to buy a house in Whitewater at that point. We hadn’t talked about horses at that time. Wedding bells maybe, but not the rest of it.”
Tuttle asserted that Laegan McGee was surprised about Alan Helmick, since she thought that Miriam Giles and Keith Coppage were a couple.
Miriam replied, “I didn’t have a boyfriend. I had dated a fellow in Mississippi, but that was it.”
Tuttle was very dubious that Alan Helmick wanted to buy a dance studio because it would help him pay less to the Internal Revenue Service. But Miriam responded, “He knew that I liked to teach. He wanted a tax break. So together, it worked out. I certainly wouldn’t have done it on my own.”
“So, in the course of two months of meeting you, he’s now a big dance aficionado and this is his dream, not yours.”
“I don’t know if you’d call it a dream. I mean, that’s just the way Alan did things. When he decided to do something, he moved on it, and he moved on it very fast. He enjoyed dancing.”
“What about horses? Whose passion was that?”
Miriam replied, “He had this list of things to do over the next ten years. He wanted to trail ride up to a lake on the Mesa, where he could camp and go fishing, places where you couldn’t go by car or truck.”
But Tuttle got Miriam to agree that a trail horse and a dressage horse-training business were a lot different. And Tuttle got Miriam to agree that Alan never did take dressage lessons, only she did.
Changing subjects, Richard Tuttle asked if her relationship with Charles Kirkpatrick had moved along just as quickly as her relationship had with Alan Helmick. Miriam said that her time with Kirkpatrick was not a relationship. She described it as a fling.
Tuttle rejoined, “You were exchanging e-mails with him on MillionaireMatch-dot-com. And you saw how many assets he had, correct?”
Miriam replied, “I actually didn’t look at his assets.” Tuttle responded with mock surprise. “Oh, you didn’t look at his assets?”
“No, I was looking at more of what we had in common. His income wasn’t actually all that important. He liked to dance and do those kind of things.”
Now Tuttle was very scornful. “So his income was inconsequential to you?”
Miriam said, “That’s correct.”
“But, in fact, you were trying to build yourself up to fit the profile. There was that [admission that] you were a 2007 Western Colorado Dressage Champion?”
Miriam replied, “Actually, Shadow was a 2006 Grand Valley Dressage Horse of the Year.”
“You talked about working for three CFOs of three Fortune 500 companies, correct? That wasn’t true?”
Miriam answered, “I did work for CFOs of Fortune 500 companies. Regency Centers, a real estate investment trust, [and] for a publicly traded railroad, and the Southeastern Development Company.” Miriam said that she worked as an assistant to the president of that company, but she could only recall his last name as being Morgan.
Tuttle was skeptical of this, and also skeptical when Miriam said that she had been a chef at one time. Tuttle asked, “You didn’t actually work as a chef, did you?”
Miriam replied, “My dad taught me how to cook. My dad was a chef in the military.” And then Miriam finally admitted that she hadn’t worked as a chef.
Tuttle asked if her story now was that she had not been interested in Charles Kirkpatrick. Miriam answered that she hadn’t been. So Tuttle asked why she had spent several days with him in Orlando if she wasn’t interested. Miriam answered that she had only spent two days with Kirkpatrick.
Tuttle wouldn’t let her off on this. “He didn’t hold you prisoner there. Would you agree with me that shows quite a bit of interest in somebody that you just met for the first time?”
Miriam said in her mind that it did not. So Tuttle asked, “You weren’t interested in his money?” Miriam replied that she wasn’t. Sarcastically Tuttle replied, “Well, he’s not exactly Brad Pitt. Would you agree with that?” Miriam did agree.
Getting back to the unattended house in Whitewater, Colorado, Tuttle questioned if Miriam was so worried about someone sneaking into the house, why had she abandoned it so that someone could go in there at any time. Miriam replied that Katie Turcotte was keeping an eye on the house.
Shifting gears, Rich Tuttle asked, “Do you recall telling Jeri Yarbrough two days after Alan was murdered—well, actually joking—about how you didn’t know a full tank of gas would not blow up?”
Miriam responded, “I wasn’t joking, but I do remember saying that.”
“Do you remember telling her that Alan was being an asshole for the last two weeks?”
“Yes, I do.”
“This is the love of your life who just had been murdered?”
“Yes.”
“Pretty harsh words two days after he was murdered. Would you agree with that?”
Miriam replied, “It was just responding to a question that she asked in the conversation. I wouldn’t have just blurted it out.”
Getting back to the house, Tuttle asked why Miriam had lived there for six days after the murder: “With blood all over the kitchen floor?”
Miriam answered, “I didn’t think it would be that way when I came home, because that’s not how it was when I left.”
“Well, everybody else seems to have been shocked by that blood on the floor, except you. Would you agree with that?”
Miriam said that she had been shocked by the blood on the floor, and that’s why she hadn’t cleaned it up. It was too traumatic for her to do so, Miriam claimed. Tuttle wanted to know why she hadn’t expressed that to others. Miriam asked a question of her own. She wanted to know what “others” Tuttle was talking about. So Tuttle listed them: “Merredith Von Burg, Katie Turcotte, Penny Lyons.”
Miriam didn’t reply directly to this, but she answered that she had tried to clean up the blood. So Tuttle asked how she had done that. Miriam answered that she had tried getting down on her hands and knees to clean it up. Then she added, “I couldn’t stay around it. I tried not going into that room as much as possible. If anyone came to the house, I asked them not to go into the kitchen.”