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tv   Forensic Files  CNN  July 14, 2014 1:00am-1:31am PDT

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monster, and, frankly, it doesn't matter to me how he became a monster. >> and the dna is what solved this crime. if this crime had happened 30 years ago, robert ward frazier would have gotten away with it. up next, a real estate developer lives in fear for his life. >> somebody wanted this guy dead. >> i was scared for him. i was very scared for him. >> on a spring afternoon, his worst fears come true. a computer search exposes some dark secrets. >> someone was researching death. >> but it's a 20-year-old clue that helps unlock the case. >> are you kidding? you found a bullet that had been fired in 1989? in western colorado, a
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successful land developer, alan helmick, and his wife, miriam, were going through difficult times. professionally, alan's real estate ventures weren't what they once were. on a personal level, someone had recently tried to take alan's life. >> while alan is waiting for miriam, he notices smoke coming out the back end of his car. >> it was right in the middle of a parking lot in broad daylight. >> apparently, someone had placed a lit fuse in the gas tank. fortunately, alan saw the smoke and got out in time. >> for whatever reason, the conditions weren't right for an explosion. the car did not explode. >> unfortunately, the parking lot had no surveillance cameras, so it was impossible to tell who had planted the device. >> do you know anyone that would have a problem with you?
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>> there are two people that have had a problem with me. >> okay. who are those two people? >> or two entities. one was the state bank, the president and vice president were trying to accuse me of an illegal loan which i didn't make. they made. >> i had the sense, and i think the investigators had a sense that this was going to be a drawn out deal. >> did a business deal go bad? there were some sales of some properties that involved various people. were one of those people angry and took it out on alan in a different way maybe because they lost money? >> six weeks later, alan missed a scheduled lunch date with his wife. when miriam drove home, she found him on the floor of his office. >> my husband is dead! >> what's the problem? tell me exactly what happened. >> he's on the floor. it looks like somebody came in and robbed us. >> when police and paramedics arrived, they pronounced alan
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helmick dead at the scene. he had been shot once in the back of his ahead. a shell casing from a .25-caliber handgun was next to the body. >> suicide was immediately eliminated. no weapon present and the location of where the injury was was not feasible to be suicide. >> alan's son-in-law learned of the murder when he arrived at the scene. >> i knew it. >> it was terrible for all of us. it was beyond terrible. it's terrible for someone to get shot because this is a person that people loved and respected and he loved his family and he tried to make his life better, and he loved people around him. >> at first, it looked like robbery was a possible motive.
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several drawers were pulled out, and the jewelry box was empty. but there was no forced entry. so that theory was quickly ruled out. >> it was not consistent with other burglary cases that i have worked. the rest of the house was not ransacked as you would expect to find in most of the burglary cases that we've worked. >> since miriam helmick found the body, she was automatically considered a suspect, but she willingly agreed to take a gunshot residue test. anyone who fires a gun usually comes into contact with the gases discharged when the bullet is fired. detectives swabbed marian's hands, arms, and face. but no gunshot residue was detected. investigators now wondered, who wanted alan helmick dead? and why? [ female announcer ] there's a gap out there.
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i'm missing my rig arm.
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i feel like i'm just missing my life. i came in and found him. >> alan and miriam helmick had been married for about two years. it was a second marriage for both. >> alan and miriam were known as being inseparable. social friends of theirs said they were always together. they were like two peas in a pod. >> miriam was convinced that alan's murder and the attempted car bombing six weeks earlier were both related. a week after alan's funeral, miriam found a greeting card under her front door mat. it was addressed to the grieving widow. >> so opened the card and it read, "insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. alan was first, you're next. run, run, run." >> miriam essentially collapses, physically collapses. >> many words in the message were misspelled, including alan's name.
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there was no postmark on the envelope, which meant it had been hand delivered. >> miriam is frantic about this. she is convinced that the killer is now out to get her. >> the simple block lettering made handwriting analysis impossible. there were no fingerprints on the envelope or the letter. the envelope wasn't sealed, so there was no saliva on the envelope flap and no dna to recover. and the barcode on the back of the card was missing. >> it had been cut out, and -- as if somebody knew we might want to try to trace that greeting card and find out where it came from. >> investigators contacted the company that made the card and learned it was sold in three different stores in the area. the most recent sale happened just four days before the card
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was delivered. it was a cash purchase at a store 13 miles from the helmicks' house. detectives asked to see the store's surveillance tapes. >> lo and behold, who is purchasing the greeting card? it's miriam helmick. >> based on her haircut, her glasse the way she walked, her body shape, there's no doubt in our mind that it was miriam helmick. >> miriam was confronted with the surveillance image. >> she did admit to placing the card at her house. her explanation was to get law enforcement to refocus on the investigation and be more active. >> now, suspicious investigators searched miriam and alan's computer hard drives for possible clues. >> they had two distinct computers side by side. alan used one. miriam used one. >> people tend to be very intimate with their computers. they will ask it questions through google that they would
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not ask another human being. >> and investigators soon learned that miriam had been searching the internet for all sorts of interesting information, especially about the prescription drugs alan had been taking. >> i recovered approximately 180 online medical searches for things such as viagra overdose. ambien overdose, lisinopril overdose, a combination of those three drugs mixed together, pain killing overdoses. >> i think she was looking at various ways to kill alan. >> investigators also learned miriam would benefit handsomely as a result of alan's death. alan's real estate holdings were worth millions. >> it's the oldest motive in the world.
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michelob ultra. the superior light beer. investigators now believed that alan helmick might have been murdered not by an angry business associate but by his second wife, miriam.
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when police checked her background, they discovered something suspicious. six years earlier, miriam's first husband, jack giles, shot himself to death while he was sleeping next to her. >> anytime you hear that a woman has more than one husband die of a gunshot wound to the head, you get concerned. >> and colorado investigators soon discovered something odd about this suicide. for one thing, it was miriam's half-brother, a local policeman, who was first on the scene and declared the death a suicide. this despite the fact jack giles apparently killed himself with his right hand. >> jack couldn't do anything with his right hand. he was a complete lefty. and yet, he would choose to shoot himself, kill himself with his off hand, his right hand? that didn't make sense to us.
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>> also strange was miriam's explanation as to why jack committed suicide. >> she said yes, he was very depressed because of her daughter, amy who had supposedly overdosed. miriam changed that story when she told it to me quite a few times. it was overdose once and one time it was some sort of physical ailment. >> records showed miriam was the beneficiary of jack giles' $100,000 life insurance policy. while trying to solve the murder of miriam's second husband, alan helmick, investigators found a series of checks totaling $40,000 made out to miriam. the checks were signed by alan.
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but now, police weren't so sure. >> we believe there were a lot more checks that she probably forged, but we tried to limit them to the checks that we thought we had the best evidence on. >> forensic document examiners determined ten checks were forgeries, although it was impossible to say conclusively that miriam was the forger. police now believed that the attempted bombing of alan's car was miriam's work. she was conveniently away from the car, inside the store, when alan found the lighted wick sticking out of his gas tank. to investigators, it reminded them of the car bombing scene in the hit film, "no country for old men." >> the villain in that particular movie blows up a car using a homemade wick. and we wondered if alan and miriam had actually seen that movie.
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we checked their cable billing statements, and sure enough, they had rented that movie four days before this attempted car fire in delta, colorado. >> police had a wealth of circumstantial evidence, their surveillance image in the card store, the check forgeries, the attempted car bombing, and the computer searches. >> there are so many components. and if you look at the totality of all the components, it's very clear what happened in this case. >> the only thing they didn't have was the murder weapon, a .25-caliber handgun. alan's daughter told police her father did own a .25-caliber gun that was a family heirloom. >> my little sister, christy, recalled seeing the gun that they believed was used in the murder in my father's dresser
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drawer under the socks. she was putting away laundry for him. >> that gun was now missing from the home's inventory. >> it would have pointed the finger at miriam helmick, the person who would have had access to it and easy access to it. >> and investigators learned something more. 20 years earlier, that same gun had been fired in a domestic dispute involving wendy's grandparents. >> my grandfather went a little crazy and tried to shoot my grandmother in their front lawn one day. >> a neighbor saw what was happening and intervened. >> turns out, it went into the lawn. that's where this history from this gun comes from. >> the neighbor who intervened in the shooting incident 20 years earlier was still alive, and remembered it vividly. >> the neighbor did tell the police where he believed it had entered the lawn.
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[ gunshot ] >> with the slimmest of hopes, forensic analysts searched for the bullet that had been buried for almost 20 years. >> after some time, we were able to locate the bullet. >> are you kidding? you found a bullet that had been fired in 1989? amazing. we don't get those sorts of breaks. >> could the bullet from the 1989 shooting tie miriam to the gun that killed her husband?
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family members told police that alan helmick owned a .25-caliber handgun, but it was now missing. >> the thing that alan's daughter remembered about this gun was that it was smallish and that it had a white handle. >> a bullet from that the weapon was fired into the ground 20 years earlier in a domestic dispute. incredibly, with the help of an eyewitness and metal detectors, investigators found that bullet. unfortunately, after two decades in the ground, it had taken a beating. >> the bullet was badly corroded and weathered and it bore marks
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that are consistent with damage caused by striking sand or small stone particles. >> the bullet that killed alan helmick was also damaged as a result of impact. but the lands and grooves from both bullets were still visible. investigators compared those markings to see if both bullets came from the same weapon. >> i was able to determine that the bullet recovered from the yard corresponded with the bullet from the victim in number of land and groove impressions and their widths. i was able to determine also that the fired bullet from the yard was a right-hand twist. my result was that the two bullets could have been fired by the same firearm. >> the ballistics, along with the circumstantial evidence, was more than enough to charge miriam helmick with murder.
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prosecutors believed miriam was systematically stealing money from alan's business accounts, and that, at some point, alan found out about it. thinking their relationship was soon to end, prosecutors believe miriam tried to kill alan, first by giving him an overdose of his prescription medicines. when that didn't work, prosecutors believed miriam placed a lighted wick in the gas tank of the car while alan waited for her in a shopping center parking lot. but prosecutors believe miriam knew about the family heirloom .25-caliber pistol alan kept in his sock drawer, and when the couple was alone, miriam fired a single shot. she showered, changed her clothes, and drove to the chinese restaurant in order to
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set up her alibi. she left a message on alan's voicemail asking where he was. >> hey, alan, this isn't funny anymore. i've been sitting here in front of the chinese dragon or the chinese place for 15 minutes and you're never late. >> no one knows where she disposed of the murder weapon and her clothes. but presumably, she did so on her way to or from the chinese restaurant. when miriam returned home, she called 911, saying she had just found alan's body in a pool of blood. >> my husband is dead! it looks like somebody came in and robbed us. >> after alan's funeral, miriam purchased the greeting card and used it to make it appear that she, too, was a potential target. she didn't realize the store's surveillance camera would
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capture the purchase. during her trial, miriam took the stand in her own defense. trial watchers said her performance did more harm than good. >> i held his hand for a few minutes and tried to make some sense of it all. >> in speaking with the jury, when i asked what was your impression with her, about six people answered together and said "liar." >> we, the jury, find the defendant, miriam helmick, guilty of first-degree murder. >> miriam helmick was sentenced to life in prison, plus 108 years. >> our father is gone. but we are going to move forward and we're going to have a fulfilling life. and you, miriam, got what you deserved. >> he was looking for love. he thought he found it. he found someone that was after his money. and it cost him his life. >> all the unique twists that this case took will be one that will be etched in my memory.
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the greeting card stands out. the bullet from 1989. the likelihood of us finding that one bullet that allows us to compare it to that one gun that we can't find is -- the work that was done on that is amazing. >> up next, a teenage girl varnishes from her bedroom. >> all they had was evidence that she was gone. >> investigators hoped her computer would hold a clue. >> you can create whatever kind of persona you want when you're online. >> for almost two years, her case went unsolved until another girl from the same town also went missing. >> all we had was a suitcase, a body and a tattoo on an ankle. >> police suspected a serial killer was on the loose. one who had a penchant for redheads. >> the end result wasn't sex. it was power and it was murder.

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