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There's a saying here in Minnesota Minnesota nice. And that Minnesota nice only goes so
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far. And Heidi Firkus, she went all the way. She was genuine and she loved deep.
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She definitely lived a life of love. That was the mark that she left. And that's hard to let go.
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You know, this is a a terrible terrible incident. You know, we're hoping to find
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other physical evidence that might help us lead us in a direction toward a suspect.
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The morning of April 25th, 2010 at 6:30 a.m. Heidi Firkus calls 911. Someone's trying to break into my home.
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She tells the state patrol dispatcher that someone is trying to break into her house
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and she's trying to give her address. 1394 Minnehaha Avenue. While she's on the phone, you can hear a loud noise.
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And the phone goes dead. Well, I don't know where she went there 6 Approximately a minute later Nicholas
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Firkus calls 911, says that he and his wife have both been shot. Okay, are you in St. Paul, sir? St. Paul
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fire paramedics took Nick out to the ambulance and transported him to Regions Hospital. He had been shot in the leg.
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Heidi was struck in the back as she was trying to flee towards the kitchen. It was a shotgun blast that killed her
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right away. The shotgun was laying inside front door area. There's a little foyer.
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Nick gave a brief story. He heard somebody fiddling around with the door and that he then armed himself
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with a shotgun and that Nick and the intruder struggled over the shotgun. Responding officers uh went up and down
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the block, tried to talk to neighbors. I was next door house sitting when the crime happened. Really all I heard was
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kind of this agonizing yell of "You shot her, you shot me." It never felt right.
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The story never made sense to me. He tells investigators that he grabbed a shotgun, loaded it with two shells
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and then proceeded to have Heidi go down the stairs in front of him towards the very door that this alleged
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burglar was at. Why you would send the unarmed person down in front of you is beyond me.
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To me, there were only two people in that house when Heidi was killed. And they were
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Nick and Heidi. In order to believe that Nick killed Heidi, you have to believe that a good
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man with no history of violence killed the woman that he loved more than anything
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in life for no reason. [music] That's what you have to believe. We can't get there.
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>> [music] [music] >> Well, this area of St. Paul where Heidi and Nick Firkus [music]
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lived I would characterize it generally a quiet neighborhood. Back in 2010, 9 years before she took
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charge of the Firkus case >> [music] >> Detective Nicole Sipes of the St. Paul Police Department was a patrol cop who
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worked this neighborhood. Do you remember first hearing about the Firkus case? I do.
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Okay, are you >> It was early on a Sunday morning. The 911 [music] call was at 6:30.
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Nick Firkus's story of a burglar didn't make sense to Sipes. >> Most people are home at 6:30 on a Sunday
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morning. Especially in a family neighborhood like that. The last thing that most burglars
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want to encounter are people. Did police ever have any luck tracking down the intruder that Nick described?
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No. >> [music] >> You know, I'm looking. I didn't see anybody come out of that house. Brandon
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O'Connell was house sitting next door to the Firkuses and taking care of kittens.
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I was woken up by the kittens kind of walking around. Some noise got my attention, so stuck my head out the
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window, kind of listen. Brandon says he recalls hearing a muffled argument coming from the Firkuses' house
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listening through an open window. That's when I ended up hearing what sounded like gunshots. Around this
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time, Brandon said he also heard that voice crying out. Kind of this >> [music] >> agonizing yell of
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"You shot her, you shot me. Uh please, please, [music] no." Something along those lines and then then it was done.
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First responders rushed to the scene. There was nothing they could do for Heidi.
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She was pronounced dead. Nick was rushed to the hospital and treated for a graze gunshot wound to his
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leg. He seemed not to be sure whether or not Heidi had been killed. >> Like I said, we'll do our best to find
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out how how Heidi's doing. Okay? Hours later, Nick was transported to the St. Paul Police Department.
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>> Then Nick and I started to have our conversation in the conference room. Sergeant Jim Gray took Nick's statement.
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>> You know, I know this is a very traumatic situation, okay? And I'm just going to try and
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ease into it, okay? So, we'll go through Nick said the couple ordered in food the
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night before and watched the movie Avatar. They went upstairs to their bedroom around 11:00 p.m. The next
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morning, Nick got up around 6:00 a.m. to get a drink of water from the bathroom.
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Go back to sleep, but just kind of fitfully sleep for 10 or 15 minutes and then I heard the screen door open.
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I tried to let it go for a little while, but then I started hearing fiddling with our doorknob.
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And is Heidi still sleeping in there? Yeah. Okay. Like a rock. Nick said he retrieved his shotgun from
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the closet. I keep two shells for it just in case things go weird. So, when I heard things
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this morning, I did load it. And then I wake up Heidi. Okay. According to Nick he told Heidi someone was trying to
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break in and to call 911. As she spoke with the dispatcher >> Someone's trying to break into my home.
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they headed downstairs so they could get out of the house. >> What address are you at? All right. So,
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you're going first down the stairs or is she? Is she behind you or is she in front of
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you or what? Um she's in front cuz I'm kind of trying to move her along quickly. Nick said as
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they passed by the front door, it burst open. Guy that was there, I think he he grabbed the barrel.
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I don't remember exactly when the gun went off. So, my finger slipped onto the trigger. Nick told Sergeant Gray during
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the struggle over the weapon, the gun fired striking Heidi, who he said was in the
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kitchen. Okay, so the gun's gun's here at chest height. >> Yep. You and I are like this.
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>> Yeah. And then the gun goes off. >> Mhm. I I mean, I know it hit Heidi. I just I know it did.
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She was running away, so it definitely hit her in the back. It hit her in the back.
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>> Yeah. I couldn't believe it. I I didn't want to believe it. It can't be true. That's
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there's no way. Katina and Marcus Sarazin mentored Heidi at Calvary Church. I think she's one of
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those uh people that you can't not like. Everyone liked Heidi. She genuinely loved people.
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>> [music] >> She was the life of the party, always finding fun ways to engage people and
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uh she was very loyal. The couple met at the church. And in 2005, Heidi, 20, and Nick, 22,
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got married. Nick Firkus had a very warm and engaging personality. Always smiling. He carried himself with
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confidence and he had high character, high integrity in the church. That was the reputation he'd built for himself.
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But just a few hours after Heidi's death Sergeant Jim Gray found himself questioning Nick Firkus's account. He
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couldn't figure out why the couple would leave the safety of their bedroom. And you come upstairs
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you know, I hate I hate to tell you this, but my house, you know, I'm justified killing you if you can come
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break in my house. Yeah, and I guess the Nick explained that the couple had a plan in place. If they were ever in a
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precarious situation, they would avoid a confrontation [music] and escape to their car in the garage and get away. If
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we can save ourselves, let's let's do that instead of getting into a situation where His story didn't make a lot of
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sense to me. Sergeant Gray started probing into their marriage. Is uh having any problems or
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anything like that? Mostly just the normal stuff. Like uh you know, stresses about finances
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quality time vacations and all that stuff. >> Yeah. But You guys aren't behind in the
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bills or anything like that? >> We are behind in the in the bills. Which is a little stress. In fact, we
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were planning on moving tomorrow. Uh moving where? Well, we hadn't figured that out yet. We
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in and this is a a hard It's a hard place for us. We we're foreclosed on our we foreclosed on our
00:10:05
house. Nick revealed they were behind on their mortgage payments and just 24 hours away from being evicted from their
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home. Well, it's kind of I mean kind of cold solace. It is and I think the reason is cuz we're both kind of
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dealing with the shame of the whole thing. Gray says his suspicions were raised and minutes later he was struck
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by the way Nick asked about Heidi. Well, I I just wanted to know the final answer on
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the final answer on Heidi is something else. She didn't make it. I figured that. I mean
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Is that typically how someone asks if their loved one or spouse is been killed? Not only is that not typical that that's
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how they'd ask it, but they wouldn't wait an hour and 40 minutes into this conversation to ask that question.
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And I've watched the interview obviously numerous times and I understand people react to trauma differently.
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But this was different than what I'd seen. Anybody that's watched that interview
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cannot help but be struck by Nick's demeanor [music] during it. And that demeanor was?
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This was just another day. This was something he had to get through. Skeptical of Nick's story, Sergeant Gray
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confronted Nick about [music] what happened that day. Nick, I you know, part of me
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wants to ask you this question. Did you have anything to do with this? No? Absolutely not. Okay.
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Absolutely not. All right. Why is there a part of you that wants to ask that? Well, Nick, I I'm a police
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officer, okay? I got to ask I got to ask the tough questions, all right? After the interview, Nick left the
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police station. That day, investigators returned to the Ferkus' home with a search warrant.
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Gray says it did not look like anyone was planning to move out the next day. Nothing was packaged up at all. The
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closet was still full of clothes. We noticed that there was still food in the refrigerator. And there was something
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else that investigators questioned. >> We didn't see any signs of forced entry into the house.
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Based off of the physical evidence at the scene, his version of the incident couldn't be
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plausible. What do you think of Nick's story about the intruder? Chat now on Facebook and
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X. 48 hours [music] after Nick Ferkus said an intruder shot and killed his wife Heidi,
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police went back to the crime scene to check out his story. He told us that there was a life and
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death struggle inside the house. But Sergeant Gray says the evidence at the crime scene didn't match Nick's account.
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>> a vase, some receipts, a beer bottle and none of that was knocked over. So, that
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kind of raised suspicion to us that if [music] there was such a struggle, why wasn't any of this stuff knocked over?
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Sergeant Gray says he examined the front door for signs of a break-in >> [music]
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>> and did notice some markings. But it wasn't anything new that would lead us to believe that the door had been forced
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open the day of the murder. In his interview, Nick said he heard someone fiddling with the front door
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from upstairs. And like what were they doing? Were they just going like this? Yeah. Kind of like that?
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>> Yeah, just shaking the knob and Okay. Shaking the door. That day, Sergeant Gray and his
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colleagues did a reenactment. April 27th, 2010. To determine if they could hear the front door shaking from
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the bedroom. >> We're in the bedroom looking Sergeant Shackelford Sergeant Wright were
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upstairs in the bedroom. I'm at the front door, so let me know when you guys are ready. I'll I'll try the knob for 15
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seconds then. We are ready. They could not hear me fiddling with the door. All right.
00:14:08
Sergeant Gray says he also doubted Nick's story about the couple's eviction and a scheduled move the day after Heidi
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was shot. There didn't appear to be anything boxed up or packaged up to go. There were a few empty boxes in the
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dining room area. There was not a grand stack of boxes or anything for that matter that would lead
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us to believe that they were going to pack up all in one day. Meanwhile, Heidi's mentors from Calvary
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Church, Marcus and Katina, were learning the details about her death and the eviction.
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It just didn't add up. It just [music] something wasn't right with that story. It seemed so out of the
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ordinary that she would be moving and not have notified anyone, not have anything prepared for that because she
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planned things out and she liked things to be orderly. On April 30th, 2010, 5 days after her
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passing, Marcus and Katina attended [music] Heidi's funeral. Yeah, the atmosphere at the funeral was
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there was a lot of emotion. At the funeral, Marcus and Katina say they were struck by Nick's demeanor. I
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remember going through the receiving line and shaking his hand. [music] There was no grief showing. It just felt
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like he lacked emotion. Marcus says he went as far as asking some of the couple's friends if Nick
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could have shot his wife. And the answer I got was no, there's no way that Nick killed Heidi. He loved her. There
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there's just no way he could have done that. And I just wasn't so sure about that.
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From what we gathered during our investigation, Nick and Heidi were in a loving relationship. There was no problems or
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issues that anybody saw. Your first impression upon meeting Nick Ferkus is no way in the world could he
00:16:05
have committed a violent act. The day after the shooting, Nick's family hired attorney Joe Friedberg, who
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advised Nick to stop talking to the police. It didn't take long to realize that he was being looked at as a
00:16:22
suspect. When investigators asked Nick to sit down with their artist to draw a sketch
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of the intruder, Friedberg advised him not to. They were going to use it as an opportunity to further interview him.
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Instead, Nick and his attorney hired their own sketch artist. It was quite odd that Nick would work with a private
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sketch artist and brought that drawing to police. And at that point we were basically told
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that Nick would not be answering any more questions with regards to our investigation.
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Investigators released Nick's sketch to the public, but it didn't generate any leads.
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They kept working the case. Nick moved out of their home a few weeks after Heidi's death.
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Two months later, he began a friendship with the sister of one of Heidi's best friends, Rachel Sanchez, who was going
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through a divorce. At the time [music] I thought because we shared something traumatic, there was a
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deep connection there because I had come out of something traumatic myself in a relationship.
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I think Nick seemed to be handling [music] things well. It felt like he was very grounded. He was
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[music] with his friends a lot and they were processing together. So, I think just his his steadiness was
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an attractive [music] quality. Rachel says the two bonded over their faith. They began
00:17:54
in the spring of 2011. At the time God played a big part in my life and I think that's another quality that I saw
00:18:02
in him that he he loved God like I did. One year into their relationship, Nick proposed. I knew it was coming. We had
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looked at rings beforehand, so it wasn't really a huge surprise. And a few months
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later, the couple married. They started a family. We did have kids pretty quickly and soon were the parents
00:18:24
of three children. He absolutely loves his kids so much. Andrew and Emily Erickson are friends of
00:18:31
Nick. They say for a long time Nick didn't talk much about Heidi's murder. It just didn't seem like there was a lot
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of room for his grief during that time. But they say when he did talk about it, his story
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was always the same. What did he tell you? Same thing he's always told everyone from the first day, same thing he'd tell
00:18:52
you today. That someone was breaking into the house and they were going to try to [music]
00:18:59
get out and there was an altercation and tragically Heidi was killed. Investigators still did not believe that
00:19:08
story, but 5 years after Heidi's death, with little movement in the case, they finally got a break. Someone called in a
00:19:17
tip. There was somebody that looked exactly like the sketch and put a name to Nick's sketch. Somebody called, said
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I have an experience with this guy. I think I know who it is. After 5 years without a break in Heidi
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Ferkus' murder case, out of the blue, a tipster called police with a name after seeing this sketch of suspect, but
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there was a problem, says investigator Sipes. He was already in prison on the date of Heidi's death.
00:20:04
Nick's second wife, Rachel, says her husband rarely talked about the case being solved. I had asked him, "Are you
00:20:11
going to put effort into seeing if you can find the person that did this?" He didn't reach out to anyone as far as I
00:20:17
know. I know that from his [music] lawyers he was told to just stay silent. Police found it odd Nick never checked
00:20:25
in. There were four investigators in this case. He never contacted one of us to ask the status. Was this case ever
00:20:33
considered a cold case? It wasn't ever considered a cold case because >> Prosecutors Rachel Crocker and Elizabeth
00:20:39
Lawman joined the investigation in 2015. There just was not a lot of new information coming in. Heidi's family
00:20:48
would check in on her birthday, "Is there anything new development?" And there would be new
00:20:55
developments when Detective Sipes took over Heidi's case in 2019. Seems her fresh set of eyes really made a huge
00:21:02
difference. It was absolutely critical. I think Sipes definitely restarted something. Sipes dug deep, reviewing the
00:21:10
entire case file, including an examination of a financial timeline she compiled with the help of the FBI.
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[music] I had the luxury of looking back on all of these things several years later.
00:21:24
Sipes learned Nick worked at his family's carpet installation business. They were contractors for Home Depot.
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Heidi was a clerk at a financial services company in St. Paul. Their combined income was about $70,000
00:21:38
a year. They seemed like they were on top of all the bills before [music] they bought the
00:21:44
house. But Lawman says the home purchase in 2007 strained the couple's finances.
00:21:53
And that home was just too much for them. By the time Heidi died in April of 2010,
00:21:58
the couple was deeply in debt. He had not paid mortgage in 22 months. In fact, the couple had lost their home
00:22:07
to foreclosure and would be forced to move out. But Sipes discovered Heidi apparently had no idea.
00:22:15
After reviewing the couple's texts and emails, >> [music] >> Sipes saw no evidence Nick ever told
00:22:21
Heidi they were in financial trouble. There was no communication between the two of them [music] to indicate that she
00:22:27
had any idea of the depth of their financial issues. I was able to determine [music] through
00:22:35
the foreclosure and eviction attorneys that there was no paperwork Heidi had signed. That nobody had ever talked to
00:22:42
Heidi. [music] Nobody met Heidi. Heidi didn't go to the eviction hearing on March 8th, 2010.
00:22:48
Sipes says Nick and Heidi's family and friends didn't know the couple had to relocate. And if she was serious about
00:22:55
moving, she would have gotten the day off. So she was planning to go to work? >> Yes.
00:23:01
Why do you think he kept her in the dark so long? Shame. I believe he was concerned about the
00:23:06
shame of what he had done, how it would look that he couldn't come clean with her. You know, it had gotten too big at
00:23:12
that point. And when Sipes talked to the couple's friends, she learned why Nick wanted to
00:23:19
hide their financial situation. He was described by his friends as being wise and being the person that they
00:23:26
would go to for advice. Nick Firkus really presented as somebody who had some of those bigger, tougher
00:23:33
life questions figured out. What kind of person do you want to be? What kind of relationship do you want to have with
00:23:39
God? What does that tell you as you're investigating [music] the case and you see someone
00:23:46
in that type of personality? It just became easier to see that this was someone who did not want his
00:23:53
friends, his family to know the extent which he had failed. Sipes says she discovered more of Nick's
00:24:00
lies when she learned about a conversation Heidi had with a friend just the day before she died. Heidi had talked to us
00:24:09
about how Nick had told her that they were victims of identity theft. It was somewhere around $180 to $200,000 worth
00:24:15
of identity theft. Wasn't true. They weren't the victims. This was all untrue. But as Sipes tried to figure out if
00:24:25
there was a connection between Nick's lies and Heidi's death, she learned Nick and Rachel had
00:24:32
divorced. I remember very well when Nikki Sipes came to my door. And that Nick had also kept secrets from
00:24:40
her. Did Rachel ever say anything about why their marriage dissolved? She did. There
00:24:47
were financial issues between the two of them. Nick was lying about a lot of things.
00:24:53
This is a story that's happened before and it didn't end well. That terrified me.
00:25:19
Could there actually have been an intruder? After spending 19 months digging deep
00:25:25
into the Firkus case file, reviewing crime scene photos, 911 calls, Do you remember what he was
00:25:32
wearing? and Nick's video interview, She was running away, so he definitely did her in the back. Investigator Nicole
00:25:39
Sipes had come to one conclusion. What really matters is what happened in that foyer.
00:25:45
And there was no third person. You never found anyone else's DNA. No. No DNA evidence. No physical evidence. No sign
00:25:53
of a struggle. To me, there were only two people in that house when Heidi was killed. And they were
00:26:01
Nick and Heidi. As part of the new investigation, Sipes reached out to Nick's second wife,
00:26:08
Rachel. What did she know? In 2020, she came to my door. And I was like, "Why are you here?" And
00:26:18
she was like, "To talk about Heidi Firkus." At first, Rachel, then divorced from Nick, said she was reluctant to
00:26:24
talk. You're asking for a lot when you get involved in something like this. And I didn't want to, but I also knew that
00:26:31
it was the right thing to do and it was for truth. Rachel told Sipes Nick had lied about their finances during their
00:26:39
marriage. >> I found a letter saying that we hadn't paid our property taxes and that we were
00:26:44
going to get evicted in 2020 if we didn't pay them. And when I saw that, I was like,
00:26:50
"Oh, no. Like he was definitely repeating the same things as he did with Heidi with me."
00:26:58
During that time, Rachel says Nick's dishonesty started to make her question whether he had also lied about Heidi's
00:27:06
death. And I said, "We got to sit down and talk." Rachel secretly recorded the conversation on her phone.
00:27:14
Your actions have caused me to just distrust you completely. If there was going to be a confession, I was going to
00:27:20
make sure that I could prove that he said it. >> And the fact that you're lying was so easy for you to do in front of me
00:27:29
over and over and over makes me think that I could murder my wife. That you could lie about something. That I could
00:27:38
murder my wife. Yes. When I listen, I think this silence kills me. He's angry at me. How dare I think those
00:27:55
things? Why aren't you saying you didn't? Tell me I'm not right. Rachel later shared the recordings with
00:28:04
investigator Sipes. The behavior that he exhibited in his marriage with Rachel was almost
00:28:10
duplicative of how he hid things from Heidi. We cannot let this man be out on the
00:28:16
street any longer. For prosecutor Elizabeth Lawman, the time had come to act. I told Sergeant
00:28:24
Sipes, "We're charging him. Let's do it." 11 years after Heidi was shot to death
00:28:30
on May 19th, 2021, a St. Paul police SWAT team arrested Nick Firkus at his house
00:28:38
and charged him with second-degree murder. A grand jury ultimately indicted Firkus
00:28:44
on first- and second-degree murder charges. Our minds were absolutely blown. Heidi's
00:28:51
friends, Marcus and Katina, were relieved. It's hard to to say. I don't know what emotion you even put to it.
00:28:57
It's hard to say excited. >> I felt grateful. We don't understand. Nick's friends, Emily and Andrew, You
00:29:04
have to believe that a good man with no history of violence killed the woman that he loved more than anything
00:29:10
in life for no reason. That's what you have to believe. We can't get there. After remaining free on bail for almost
00:29:18
2 years, on January 27th, 2023, Nick Firkus went on trial. Prosecutors would not be allowed to call
00:29:28
Nick's second wife, Rachel, to testify or use her taped conversation with Nick. The judge ruled her testimony and the
00:29:36
recording had no bearing on the case. I went into it with an open mind. Natalie Michael served on the jury. Did
00:29:46
he appear like a man who would kill his wife? No, he did not. A lot through the trial he was putting
00:29:54
his head down when they showed the photos of the two of them together. You know, he seemed like he really was
00:29:59
in love with her. I think Nick was someone who lived two lives. Prosecutors presented an unusual
00:30:06
motive. They told the jurors Nick Firkus staged a burglary because he was desperate and ashamed. His secrets were
00:30:14
about to be revealed to Heidi and everyone else. All of his kind of cards of lies are about to crumble. He would
00:30:23
have been exposed as a complete failure, a liar, um, to his friends and community and
00:30:29
instead he's a victim. He walks away from this supported by his friends, supported by his family. Nick
00:30:39
had no reason. Nick's lawyers, Joe Friedberg and Robert Richmond, say that simply makes no sense as a motive. There
00:30:47
was nothing about murdering the woman who everyone agreed he loved that would help his situation. And they say the
00:30:56
state's contention that Heidi didn't know about the couple's finances simply was not true. Nick said she was in on
00:31:04
all of the major decisions. He would say to us that they're making Heidi out to be an imbecile.
00:31:14
At first I was wondering how she couldn't know about the finances or some of the foreclosures, some of the things
00:31:20
happening. But Natalie Michael says the prosecution's case did not hinge on motive. The prosecution said it really
00:31:29
is was there an intruder in the house or was there not an intruder? It was our position that there had been
00:31:35
an intruder exactly the way Nick described to the police on the 911 call. I think somebody just broke in our
00:31:42
house. He shot me. at the scene, >> The information that Nick [music] gave at the scene is that this intruder came
00:31:49
into the house, at the hospital, He just came in and to Sergeant Gray. The guy that was there, I think he he grabbed
00:31:58
the barrel. Nick's lawyers say police didn't find the intruder's fingerprints or DNA at the scene because, as Nick
00:32:05
told investigators in his interview at the hospital, >> And what else can you describe from him?
00:32:10
the intruder was wearing gloves. >> Gloves. He's wearing gloves. You don't always
00:32:16
leave DNA and especially when your hands are covered. So, what am I looking at here? But prosecutors say there was
00:32:23
something else missing from the scene besides fingerprints. This is a physical model to scale that was created by the
00:32:31
FBI. They used this model to show the jurors there was no evidence of a struggle. I felt that it was very
00:32:38
important for us to be able to recreate how small that entryway is. Let's say the intruder gets in, they have the
00:32:46
struggle. And they have this life and death struggle right in this area with nothing disturbed
00:32:52
>> on the table. Exactly. And then Heidi gets shot square in the back in a very clear shot. This
00:33:01
animation, created by the FBI, shows that the bullet that killed Heidi was most likely shot from shoulder level.
00:33:08
The height at which Heidi is shot fits exactly on Nick's shoulder to aim and to fire.
00:33:16
Nick's attorneys say there was direct evidence that showed there was an intruder. In fact, there were tool marks
00:33:24
in the door which would be consistent with someone wedging a screwdriver between the frame and the door. Attorney
00:33:34
Joe Friedberg says Firkus's next door neighbor, Brandon O'Connor, testified he heard a voice. You shot her, you shot
00:33:42
me, uh, please, please no, something along those lines. >> That means there must have been another
00:33:50
person in that house. Nick was talking to a third person when he said that. But prosecutors say Brandon may have
00:33:59
misheard Nick while he was on the phone with the 911 dispatcher. He is screaming about being shot and he
00:34:11
did that over almost 7 minutes. Stay on the phone with me, okay? Nick Firkus did not take the stand.
00:34:22
After an 11-day trial, the case went to the jury. If there's anything in this case,
00:34:28
there's reasonable doubt. >> Yeah. See more evidence from the case at 48hours.com.
00:34:52
It was a hard fought litigated trial. As the state and Nick Firkus's defense team
00:34:58
presented their closing arguments on February 10th, 2023, We had great, we thought, circumstantial evidence that
00:35:06
what Nick said happened did not happen. Attorneys on both sides were hopeful the
00:35:12
jury would make the right decision. [music] It's not enough if you have a hunch.
00:35:16
There was no direct evidence that Nick murdered his wife. In her closing argument, Prosecutor
00:35:27
Crocker said Firkus shot Heidi while she was on the phone with the 911 operator.
00:35:34
Someone's trying west. So, that call does end with a very, very loud noise and the call goes dead and we
00:35:44
believe that that's the gunshot. According to phone records, 65 seconds passed [music] from that moment until
00:35:51
Firkus made his 911 call. Crocker reenacted for jurors what she believed Nick Firkus did before he made
00:36:04
that call. I walked over in the courtroom to roughly as far as Heidi would have been on the ground, crouched
00:36:10
down, turned her over, um, to check for a pulse to be sure that she was in fact deceased, walked back over, picked up
00:36:18
the firearm, [music] and demonstrated how he could shoot himself and call 911. Where was the guy
00:36:25
that shot you? At 65 seconds, there was more than enough time for all of that to
00:36:30
happen. To prove their theory Firkus shot himself in the thigh, >> [music] >> they point to marks left by shotgun
00:36:36
pellets at the bottom of the front door. When he shot himself, we believe that Nick was about, um, here.
00:36:48
Which is how you would brace yourself, probably against the door if you're doing it to yourself. But if his
00:36:53
reasonable suspicion >> But Firkus's attorneys challenged [music] the 65-second time frame.
00:36:58
Attorney Robert Richmond says phone records also show Firkus misdialed two numbers before getting through to 911,
00:37:07
making it impossible to shoot himself. What they reenacted was 65 seconds, which was ignoring the two misdials
00:37:17
which happened at 38 seconds. The fact that we cannot find the intruder is not evidence that there was no intruder. And
00:37:29
if anything, because of [music] the next door neighbor, because of the tool marks, because of the 38 seconds,
00:37:35
we feel that the evidence supports [music] that there was an intruder. This isn't blind belief.
00:37:43
Nick's friends, Emily and Andrew, were convinced the prosecution failed to prove Firkus was the shooter. We were
00:37:50
open to hearing inconsistency of what Nick said, but that didn't happen. On February 10th, 2023, the jurors got
00:38:00
the case and in 5 hours returned with a verdict. My last text to Nick was [music] it has
00:38:08
to be innocent. There's no way that they got to guilty this quickly. We rushed to
00:38:12
the courthouse and we were so wrong. Nick Firkus was found guilty on two counts of murder, premeditated and
00:38:22
intentional. I believe [music] justice was served. Marcus and Katina were in the courtroom
00:38:28
when the verdict was read. Justice may have been slow, but fortunately the jury got it right. It feels like this is the
00:38:35
beginning of healing. It's the beginning of a of a new chapter. Heidi's mom actually said
00:38:43
that for so many years >> [music] >> they had to live with Nick Firkus's narrative and they knew it was wrong,
00:38:49
but they just didn't have another narrative. And to finally be able to have him finally held accountable, it it
00:38:56
meant a lot to us. For Sergeant Sipes, there is still the mystery of what led to the couple's
00:39:04
financial problems. We weren't able to definitively say what the money was spent on. Does that
00:39:10
frustrate you? Greatly. I think it would help complete the picture for some people.
00:39:15
On April [music] 13th, 2023, Nick Firkus was back in court for his sentencing hearing
00:39:21
>> [music] >> and to hear victim impact statements. Growing up, Heidi was the quintessential
00:39:27
little sister to me. Heidi's brother, Peter Erickson. Because of the lies we were told as early as the
00:39:33
day after her murder, it's been virtually impossible to find closure to our grief.
00:39:38
>> [music] >> Firkus refused to would guilt. >> I do maintain and will maintain to my
00:39:42
dying breath my innocence of this crime. My body stands condemned to serve another man's sentence.
00:39:49
But my soul my soul remains free. Judge Leonardo Castro imposed the maximum sentence.
00:40:00
It is the sentence [music] of law and judgment of this court that you be committed to the commission of
00:40:05
corrections for the remainder of your life without the possibility of release. Good luck to you, sir.
00:40:13
>> [music] >> Godspeed. My kids are always what I think [music] of first. Ferkus' second wife, Rachel.
00:40:22
They lost in this, too, because one day they had a dad that they thought was somebody and the [music] next day he's
00:40:27
not that person anymore. She often thinks about Heidi, too. I like to think I have a connection with
00:40:35
Heidi. She didn't [music] get to have the voice that I have now. And so I can only hope that my voice
00:40:43
is something [music] she would be proud of. Heidi was a genuine, loving, sincere [music] young woman who wanted
00:40:52
to live life to the fullest. She wouldn't want people to become bitter or angry [music] because of what
00:41:00
she had to experience. I think that Heidi would want people to choose to love regardless of circumstances.
00:41:15
>> [music] >> CBS next Saturday, 48 Hours brings you back-to-back episodes all summer long.
00:41:29
Next week, social media clues. >> Johnny Altinger would answer a dating ad and disappear. But she would track his
00:41:36
location. 48 Hours crime time double feature next Saturday on CBS, streaming on Paramount Plus.