31. UNSOLVED: A Tragic Murder and A Missing Diary - The Christa Helm Story with Jamey DuVall - Dark City

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi friends, this is Leah and this is April.
Today, it's easier than ever tomake and publish a podcast, but
that also means it's never beenharder to stand out, especially
as an indie podcast.
We absolutely love creatingDark City episodes for you, so
to make sure the show is asuccess, we need your help.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
There are three easy ways to do it.
Number one rate and review theshow wherever you get your
podcasts.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
Number two click that share button and send a link to
friends and family.
You think might also like theshow.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
And number three follow us on social media at
Dark City Pod.
That's Dark City Pod onInstagram, facebook Threads and
TikTok.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
So remember one rate and review, two, share with
family and friends, and threefollow us on social media.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Thank you so much and we hope you enjoy the episode.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
On February 12, 1977, aspiring actress Krista Helm
was brutally stabbed to death ina quiet West Hollywood
neighborhood.
The night she was murdered, shewas carrying with her personal
diary filled with names, secretsand scandals, one that
mysteriously vanished and hasnever been found.
Decades later, her killer stillremains unknown.

(01:44):
Joining us today to talk aboutKrista Helm's life and the
mystery that still surrounds herdeath is Jamie Duvall, who has
spent years researching Krista'scase.
Jamie, before we go intoKrista's life and also untimely
death, can you introduceyourself and share how you
became involved in her story?

Speaker 3 (02:03):
you introduce yourself and share how you
became involved in her story.
Sure, and thank you for havingme on the show today, thank you.
I started podcasting in 2007.
I did a movie podcast calledMovie Geeks United and a few
years into it I thought, hey,let me start a Hollywood true
crime, and I wanted to dosomething that strayed from the

(02:24):
usual Manson Dahlia kind ofstuff even though I did that
stuff too and so I went on aYouTube rabbit hole and I found
an old 48 hours episode onKrista.
This episode was from 2008, Ithink, and it was a story I
hadn't heard before.
And it was fascinating because,unlike most true crime stories,

(02:47):
the resolution is either thisor that.
Krista's case had like fivedifferent potential motives and
suspects and all of them werevalid.
So I thought, man, this is aninteresting concept to do a show
about her.
So I did the show.
I brought in Krista's daughter,the original investigator, the

(03:08):
two cold case investigators,some friends I found of Krista's
, and I aired the show.
But the story never left me.
So for the past 10 years 10years, my goodness I have
continued to look into her casebecause it's a real labyrinth
and she knew so many people andI've discovered a lot of new

(03:32):
information that had previouslybeen unfounded or unreleased.
And years into that research Ithought I've got all of this
research on my computer.
I should write a book because,gosh forbid, anything should
happen to me.
All this stuff will go with me.
I wanted to start making itpublic.

(03:54):
I've been working on a book forthe past couple of years as I
continue my research.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
Jamie, let's start at the beginning.
Who was Krista Helm and whatdrove her from small town life
over to Hollywood?

Speaker 3 (04:10):
Well, krista was born Sandra Woefile in 1949 in
Milwaukee, wisconsin, and froman early age she loved the
movies and she had stars in hereyes.
She dreamt of kind of the oldHollywood glamour and being an
actress.
But she was in Milwaukee.
You might as well be fromanother planet than make it in

(04:32):
Hollywood, but she was verybeautiful.
Her parents divorced early andshe and her two sisters stayed
with their mother for a time.
Their mother was an alcoholicand was in and out of a lot of
abusive relationships apparently, and the children bore the
brunt of some of the abuse aswell.
So I think Krista or Sandy backthen kind of overcompensated in

(04:57):
manufactured confidence and shewas obviously already a very
pretty girl.
And then at the age of 16, shemet a man named Gary Clements
who was twice her age, and heended up impregnating her.
They married at the insistenceof Krista's father.

(05:18):
They married and he disappearedright after the honeymoon and
she was told that he had died ina motorcycle accident.
And so now she's a singlemother and she still has this
dream of making it.
She hatches a plan to go to NewYork City with a good friend of
hers.
Meanwhile she and this friendhave their daughters stay with a

(05:42):
friend of this friend's familybecause she's an older,
experienced person.
She's reared many childrenbefore and so they leave their
daughters with this older womanin Vermont while they go to New
York and try to make it.
The other woman leaves prettysoon.
Into that venture, krista stays.

(06:03):
The plan is once her daughterturns 10, she'll live with her
full time, but for now it's toomuch of a dangerous proposition
in a place like New York City inthe early 70s.
But she and her daughter seeeach other quite often.
They talk all the time on thephone and she comes to visit her
in New York, krista goes to herin Vermont, they travel back

(06:28):
home to Milwaukee together.
So it wasn't like anabandonment, but it was still.
You know it's a difficultreality.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
So when I started researching this case and
looking at pictures of Kristayou're right, she's absolutely
stunning Just before airbrushingor anything like that it's like
I just woke up looking likethis she's really, really
beautiful.
She definitely grabs you.
I feel like even without evergetting to meet her really,
because a lot of her work is alittle bit more obscure, harder

(07:01):
to find you can tell she hasthis magnetic appeal to her
right away.
She did.
Sort of it quality.

Speaker 3 (07:08):
Yeah, I mean, having never met her, obviously, in
person, I've been told by somany people that knew her that
there was a magnetism, thatthere was something.
So there was a generosity ofspirit and I know that Krista
had the reputation that she doeshave A lot of.
It may be that she wasmercenary about her career and

(07:32):
backstabbing, but I have foundfrom talking to people that
actually knew her best that shewas very protective of her
career ambitions careerambitions and nothing was going
to stop her.
But she would give you theshirt off of her back.
She was generous to a fault, toher friends and the people who
were dear to her.
There were many of them thatjust spoke absolutely glowingly

(07:54):
of her.
She did have a personality anda presence and aura that drew
you in.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
She had a very event-filled life and, you could
say, lived in the fast lane abit.
And I think also too, jamie,when we were looking into this
case and researching I saw inyour blog the way you talked
about her.
It was like no, this is just aso much more complex case than
just someone who is an aspiringactress.
She dropped off her kid andlived in a way that was kind of

(08:24):
frivolous.
You can tell, even justlistening to her daughter talk
about her, that they're verydeeply bonded.
This is not a child that hasbeen abandoned.
This is someone who deeplyloved her mother.

Speaker 3 (08:36):
And her child has a lot of her mother in her, even
though she was only nine whenher mother was killed.
The more she interviewed peoplein her later years you know,
tell me about my mother the moreshe realized how much of her
mother she has in her.
There's a resilience, there's agenerosity of spirit, there's a
goodness of heart in Krista'sdaughter.

(08:58):
I mean, krista's daughter hashad a really hard life herself
and it's miraculous that sheturned out to be such a
wonderful person and she isbecause I've communicated often
with her and I met her in NewYork City and I was able to
visit a lot of her mother'sstomping grounds in New York and
that was a very specialexperience for me.

Speaker 2 (09:19):
She went to New York.
How did she eventually make herway over to Hollywood?

Speaker 3 (09:33):
It was a five-year journey with a lot of detours In
writing this book.
It's not so much about.
90% of the book is about herlife and about 10% about her
murder and what I could find outabout it Because of the time in
which she lived in New YorkCity and LA.
There's all this culturalexplosion going on, political
movements, the art world withAndy Warhol, excitement of

(09:55):
movies and theater and music,and Krista was in the center of
all of it.
So a lot of this is just sofascinating for me to explore.
But I guess the two mostimportant things that happened
to her in New York City is shemet a guy named Stuart Duncan.
Stuart Duncan, his familylineage.
They were the founders ofWorcestershire sauce,

(10:18):
worcestershire, worcestershire.
I'm so glad that you are theone who has to pronounce it.

(10:39):
Producer.
He produced Godspell.
I think it premiered in 70.
Krista was an early investor inGodspell.
Godspell, even today, is anincredibly popular musical and
movie.
It made them a lot of money bythat time.
Apparently, the Stuart Duncanguy he had started an affair

(11:01):
with Krista.
He for all intents and purposes, was her sugar daddy.
Krista had a fancy sports car.
She had a fancy townhouse inthe center of New York City.
She had a vacation home in theHamptons.
She was set.
This guy, stuart, was crazyabout her and in 73, she

(11:22):
convinced him to produce afeature film starring her, which
was called let's Go for Broke.
She plays an investigativereporter that goes undercover in
this slave ring in Haiti.
It was shot in Haiti, which wasreally, really interesting to
be in that country in 1973.
To be in that country in 73.

(11:42):
And the movie played for twoweeks in a Cincinnati theater
and then it was never seen again.
So it wasn't the career boostthat she hoped for, but she
starred in a movie.
The other important thing thathappened in New York City is she
met a guy named Lenny Barronwho was a costume designer.
He designed Wonder Woman'scostumes.
That was probably the mostfamous thing he did

(12:03):
professionally.
They became inseparable and hewould introduce her to glamorous
society and she would help himpromote his fashions and all
that kind of stuff.
When she moved to LA in 1975,he moved with her.
Lenny did, and so they tookthis whole journey together and

(12:24):
Stuart financed a lot of thatmove to LA as well I mean Krista
through investments.
She apparently built animpressive bankroll of her own,
I believe, separate from Stuart,but Stuart was definite
presence and supporter in herlife for quite some time before
death.

Speaker 1 (12:40):
I didn't realize that , I didn't realize that she had
made those investments and eachof newspaper coverage, a lot of
media coverage in the New YorkPost.

Speaker 3 (13:10):
She had got notices in the Times and syndicated
worldwide in Earl Wilson'sgossip column, and a lot of it
too had to do with the famouspeople that she dated.
Famous people that she dated.
I mean she dated Joe Namath andJack Nicholson and Warren
Beatty and apparently Polanskiand maybe Burt Reynolds.

(13:30):
I mean it goes on and on.
Ryan O'Neill you think of astar at the time, mick Jagger.
She was probably tied up withthem in some way.
So she got a lot of mediacoverage just based on her
social life.
But she in one of thoseinterviews said that she had
invested in several ventures andshe was very successful in that

(13:50):
realm.

Speaker 1 (13:51):
So she was dating.
She had a very busy personallife, social life, but she was
also really hardworking.
It sounds like just from whatyou've written in some of the
research that I had done to helpmake it in Hollywood.
There were a lot of differentthings that she was doing, so
what sorts of things was sheinvolved in like on a day-to-day
basis?

Speaker 3 (14:11):
Well, the most important thing is she was
making all the connections andand Lenny had a modeling agency
called oddities and so she'd geta lot of modeling work through
that agency and through otheravenues and she met a lot of
people.
Those connections she wascounting on to get her to the
next point in her career and insome measure they probably did

(14:37):
advance her somewhat.
But yes, she studied acting,she studied dance, I believe I
think at one point she startedtaking singing lessons.
She was already a singer.
Her mother loved to hear hersing and she sang in a Golden
Girls review in Milwaukee whenshe was a kid.
So that was already in herblood Golden Girls, not the TV

(14:59):
show.
Apparently it was some musicalreview in Milwaukee back in the
50s and 60s.
But yeah, she studied hard andshe cared about it.
She was so singularly focusedon advancing in this career and
making a life for herself whereshe could support her daughter
doing what she loved which wasentertaining.

(15:21):
She wanted to be a star whichwas entertaining, which she
wanted to be a star.
I can't say that she was like aserious actor, but she wanted
to do whatever it took to tomake it.
And so when she got to thatfeature film.
Talking to people that werepart of that film shoot, they
said she loved being in the roleof the star and she showed up.

(15:45):
She had an entourage, she hadthe plane full of luggage and
all this kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 (15:50):
She was playing out her fantasy detailed diaries of
men and women that she dated,and even guess some videotapes.

Speaker 3 (16:08):
Do we know what her intention was?
Why did she always carry herdiary with her?
Yeah, this is probably thejuiciest part of her story for
people that follow true crime.
In this case in particular.
It was a practice that startedwhen she was a kid.
She and her best friend inchildhood, Darlene Thorson.
They kept kind of a boy listand they rated their boyfriends
like from one to 10.

(16:28):
It was like a silly littlepractice that a teenage girl
would engage in.
But as Krista became an adultand she moved to New York City
and she started having all theseexciting experiences with all
these famous people, Darlenecame to visit her and saw that
she was continuing to keep adiary, but it had advanced to

(16:49):
another level.
So she looked through it andshe recognized most of the names
on it.

Speaker 1 (16:56):
Quick question Just because, like her life was so
event filled, was it all in onediary?
Or I wonder, if she, did sheever get to a part two, a second
book, or was it just this onethat she was always carrying
with her?

Speaker 3 (17:07):
Well, you know, I wish I knew for sure.
It wasn't my understanding shemight've kept a diary, an
official diary as well, which Ihope she did.
But the book that everyonetalks about, it's a list of
names with ratings attributed toeach of them.
So you could I mean, I don'tthink she could fill more than

(17:28):
one book, because that's likethousands upon thousands of
lines.
I don't know how in depth shewent with the diary necessarily.

Speaker 1 (17:37):
Yeah, I was just wondering if it was mixed in
with detailed passages of herlife and maybe a little bit more
on the backstory of thesepeople especially.
I could see how people wouldget very bored.

Speaker 3 (17:49):
That would be interesting.
I haven't heard that there wasmore than just a name and a
rating, but I wouldn't besurprised if there were more
details, because I found thisold interview with Burt Reynolds
on Katie Couric.
This was in the 2000s and hejust mentions having a one-night
stand with this beautifulblonde and after they had their

(18:11):
encounter she pulled out a bookand started writing in it and
Burt Reynolds said what are youdoing?
And he said that the girl saidI'm rating you and so that has
to be Krista.
I mean, he didn't know her byname, but I bet anything because
this would have been in the mid70s when Burt Reynolds was
starting to be the hottest actor.
He was the hottest number oneactor for five years straight in

(18:32):
the 70s, so the timing works.
I think that was probablyKrista.
Probably a good chance, butthat's another interesting point
and I asked the detectivesabout this because she not only
would mark her intimateencounters in a diary, she'd
also audio tape them and some ofthem.

(18:52):
And I asked the detectivesabout that and they said, yeah,
the tapes that we were able tofind and we could identify the
actor or star that was in thosetapes.
We went to visit them and allof them said they were very much
aware that they were beingtaped.
She didn't have that technology.

(19:13):
She was like, hang on, let mewhip out this huge monster,
because they're the technology.
Back then, I mean, she had, Iguess, a portable tape player or
something.
But all of them knew,apparently, that they were being
taped yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:26):
There's no discreet way to do that back then.
It's not like you have aniPhone where you could just
subtly put it aside.

Speaker 3 (19:31):
Yeah, which I thought was interesting.
So all this talk about what wasshe going to do with them?
Interesting?
So all this talk about what wasshe going to do with them?
She was planning to write abook about her life and these
experiences, and a lot of itwould be drawn from the entries
in her diary, which makes herpretty much ahead of her time,

(19:53):
because eventually that happened.
I mean, there were tell-allbooks of that same fashion later
on in the 70s and 80s.
I think you'll never eat lunchin this town again.
Her plans were to write a book,and she would hold the diary
close to her chest.
One of her friends said andsaid and she would say, this is
going to make me a lot of moneyone day.
But I'm surprised though.

(20:46):
I'm surprised like she was soopen with it.
It's keeping like keeping itout there because I would be
worried somebody would snatch it, or I guess also too, maybe it
was less risky back then.
It's kind of unsavory.
But look, this was the 70s.
This was an incrediblydebauched period of time, and
krista was open about theseencounters that she was having
to friends and probablystrangers.
There was a naivete about her.
She wasn't the most worldlyperson.
She was a girl from small townin Wisconsin and this was all

(21:07):
new and exciting for her, so sheprobably wasn't as discreet as
she should have been about a lotof things.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
We kind of talked earlier about her magnetism and
that kind of thing.
But we know that she could alsobe kind of polarizing and I
don't know maybe we touched onthat a little bit earlier with
how much she defended her career.
Why do you think she was foundto kind of be that way or why
people thought she was that?

Speaker 3 (21:35):
way.
What I'm trying to do inresearching her life and writing
the book and trying to figureout who she was, is to be honest
about every aspect of herpersonality that I can uncover,
but not to be judgmental of it.
We are all more than one thing.

(21:58):
I mean.
We each contain darkness andlight and shades in between.
So some people for instance,when she was on the set of her
movie, one of the actresses feltlike she was giving a great
performance in the movie andKrista was jealous of it.
Because Krista's attitude wasthis is my movie, you're not

(22:18):
going to outshine me.
And so the actress said so shefelt that tension.
But then another actress I justspoke to earlier this week,
who's also in the movie andstarred in it opposite her, said
she was the sweetest, nicestthing and she'd sit with me and
she talked to me about the movieand she was so helpful and open
and welcoming.

(22:39):
Essentially she was complicated, you know, like all of us are.

Speaker 1 (22:44):
And not to say that she was never at fault, or maybe
her interactions, there wasn'tthings she could have done
differently, or maybe even justpersonality flaws.
But I also imagine too she'sprobably incredibly intimidating
.
I'm thinking in the seventies.
Someone who's that confident,that sexually confident, that
beautiful, I could see how alsopeople would be threatened by

(23:07):
her, not necessarily that shewas treating them poorly.
So you always kind of wonder,in a very competitive industry
how much of that sort of playsinto it too, much of that sort
of plays into it too.

Speaker 3 (23:22):
Yeah, and how women experience someone they perceive
as sleeping their way to thetop, which is one specific thing
how men can be dismissive ofwomen.
They perceive that way as well.
But I'm telling you almost tolike 90 some odd percent people
I talked to who knew Krista, whowere friendly with her,
absolutely loved her like,adored her, and they talk about
how much they miss that sweetperson.

Speaker 2 (23:44):
Maybe she kind of had to fight for her own survival
in whatever way she could, andso maybe that left her open to
some interactions not alwaysbeing pleasant, and maybe she
was defensive.
Or this is my movie and justout of like that
self-preservation.

Speaker 3 (24:02):
It's also, yeah, and a big part of that
self-preservation, I think, as achild of abuse, how she felt.
I mean, I can only speculateand go by what others have
shared with me.
Her identity or her perceptionof herself and her means of
getting ahead was always tiedinto her sexuality at a young

(24:25):
age, and I think it wasespecially triggered by the
abuse she suffered.
Because it it has to bepersonality altering, it has to
kind of inform oh, this is value, this is how I'm viewed and I
can turn it into somethingadvantageous.

Speaker 1 (24:47):
And that's why, especially when we were telling
the story, I thought it would begreat to come on the show to
talk about it, because I didn'twant her to be just dismissed as
someone who slept her way tothe top or was just frivolous,
because there's just so muchbackstory too.
She had a very tough childhood.
She did have that trauma.
She was left when she was 17with a child Plus.

(25:08):
Just being in the seventies,being a woman trying to make it
on your own without familybackup, is incredibly hard, and
there's also so much evidence,too, that she was really she
truly was hardworking andtalented, and that shouldn't be
dismissed either.

Speaker 3 (25:22):
I think so too, and it isn't to ignore questionable
things that she did in life.
I've seen comment threads fromother videos that people have
done about Krista, and it'susually the guys.
Usually the guys start with.
I'm not saying she deserved it,no one deserves to die but she
was asking for it and blah, blah, blah and she was terrible and

(25:44):
they tune out, you know, acouple of minutes into her story
because she didn't live apristine life.

Speaker 1 (25:50):
It's also, too, with some of the cases we've come
across.
Anytime there's a sex workerthat's involved, they don't
always get the same level.
They usually don't get the samelevel of investigative support.
They're treated like it's lessthan because of the nature of
the way they live their life.

Speaker 3 (26:05):
She was probably an escort.
I'd say it's probably safe tosay she was an escort, but I'm
sure some of the times thatmeant just they call up the
agency and they say I want to goto this party with this girl,
for this girl to show up on myarm or whatever.
And then you know, if it's afamous person, they probably had
.
They might've had an intimateencounter, whatever.

(26:27):
She wasn't standing on a streetcorner.
She had an affair with a Shah ofIran in the early seventies
when she was in New York city,probably arranged by an agency
that she was with, probablyLenny's talent agency, but I
don't know that for sure.
But I do know that she madeseveral trips to see the Shaw

(26:47):
and that was probably afinancial kind of thing.
But she gets to go to a foreigncountry and she gets to have
this extraordinary experienceand she's showered with jewels
and all this kind of stuff.
I mean, and it's the 70s andit's an adventure and it's
women's liberation is justtaking hold in the culture and I

(27:11):
think that Krista wasincredibly liberated.

Speaker 1 (27:16):
Yes, she was.
Yes, she was.
Let's get to the disco albumthat she was working on before
her death, because there's a lotof questions and controversies
around that that could maybeunlock what happened and why.
But what were some of whatwould you say were her key
accomplishments up to this pointin terms of making it as an

(27:37):
actress?

Speaker 3 (27:38):
Her ability to acclimate into this world.
That was totally out of herrealm and yet she kind of she,
she took a kind of fake it tillI make it approach, I think.
So she, just from sheerfortitude and determination she
became comfortable and becamepart of this society and so she

(28:02):
did the feature and a lot ofopportunities came from that.
She did the feature film, shedid a bit role in Stars beauty
pageant episode that's competingagainst Linda Carter and she's
great in it.
Actually she is so winning init.

(28:24):
She auditioned for Charlie'sAngels when Farrah Fawcett
dropped out and they eventuallywent with Cheryl Blatt I think,
but she auditioned for that partright before she died.
I think.
She auditioned for King Kong Iheard that somewhere the 1976
version of that film.
So she was seizing as manyopportunities as she could and

(28:47):
the disco album was another suchopportunity.
She said look, this actingthing isn't happening.
Maybe disco's all the rage,maybe if I make a disco album.
And around that same time therewere porn actors.
I'm not comparing Krista to aporn actress because she didn't
do any porn, but there was apornographic actress named

(29:08):
Andrea True and she had a numberone disco hit at that time with
a song called More, more.
So there was precedence for anon-professional singer to
really make it big in disco, andso she met this New York DJ who

(29:28):
was in LA at the time.
His name was Frankie Crocker.
He was a big deal.
He coined the phrase urbancontemporary, I think and as a
DJ there was no one more popular.
And he agreed to produce adisco album for Krista, and so
she assembled some musicians andan interesting group of people.

Speaker 1 (29:50):
There was a lot of stuff, a lot of drama going on
around the production of thatand different characters
involved.
So can you describe what thiswas like and the details around
it?

Speaker 3 (30:05):
Yeah, I mean, there's so many players so I'll try to
keep it as simple as possible.
I won't mention everyone in theband, but there are three
members of the band that are ofinterest.
There's Blair Aronson.
He was the keyboardist on theproject.
There's Blair Aronson.
He was the keyboardist on theproject, Blair and some of his
friends who are also members ofthe band.
They were musicians.

(30:25):
They had their own band namedSilver Spoon.
They did some of the coversongs for the TV movie Helter
Skelter, so they had experiencein the music industry.
He was the keyboardist.
A woman named Debbie Danilo wasone of the backup singers.
Another woman named PattyCollins was another backup

(30:47):
singer.
The reason why I mentionedthese three is because there was
significant sexual dramabetween all of them during that
recording session.
Patti Collins was kind ofobsessed with Krista.
They even lived together for atime while they were making this
album together.
Now Krista, I think, wasprobably willing to go with

(31:13):
either sex.
It was like the freedom of the70s, I guess.
But Patti was a lot moreobsessed with Krista than Krista
had any interest in Patty.
But people in the studio said,yeah, if we talked to Krista and
we looked across the room,Patty would be giving us the
stink eye because she was justvery possessive.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (31:35):
Yeah, debbie Danilo apparently had a thing for Blair
Aronson and Blair Aronson had athing for Krista.
So Blair Aronson said that heand Krista were intimate
together in his apartment onenight and they looked out window

(31:59):
and debbie danilo was standingoutside the window staring at
them oh no they didn't thinkmuch of it.
They kind of laughed that youknow it's a kind of jealous,
kooky thing to do but theydidn't feel threatened.
But it gained more resonancebecause the next night is when
crystal was murdered.
So I.
So Blair Aronson will not talkto me and Debbie Danilo will not

(32:22):
talk to me.
They're among two of maybe fiveor six that won't talk to me,
but they're the two mostimportant voices that I'm not
going to be able to include anypersonal anecdotes of theirs in
the book because they refuse toprovide them, but I think that's
odd that they just will nottalk about it.

Speaker 2 (32:42):
Before Krista was murdered, she sent a message to
a friend saying I'm in way overmy head into something I can't
get out of.
Do we know what she meant bythis?

Speaker 3 (32:57):
That friend was Darlene, the girl that she grew
up with, that they started thediary concept.
We don't know exactly what itis.
I can tell you that Darlene wasa little puzzled by the
postcard when she received it.
Krista was always intosomething.
There was always kind of dramain her life.
After she kind of disappearedfor a little while that she

(33:19):
might've been in witnessprotection or something, because
Krista always spoke kind ofsecretively, that there was
stuff going on I can't tell youabout and you know so.
She had ideas like that, but I,you know, if I knew the true
meaning of that postcard I'dknow what happened to her.
Probably it's another kind ofmystical kind of question mark

(33:45):
hanging out there.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
Did Darlene think this was like out of pattern or
odd, then?
Or this was just more of like.
Okay, this is Krista.

Speaker 3 (33:55):
She held out hope Like she didn't know how.
I mean I'm speaking for her,but she didn't quite know how to
take the postcard.
Other than what I just said,that Krista led a pretty
dramatic life and she was verydramatic about certain things.
That it can't be true.

(34:19):
She has to be in witnessprotection or she disappeared.
I mean, she even says in thepostcard I might have to
disappear for a while, until itgot to the point where Darlene
had to kind of accept forherself that she had been
murdered.
So yeah, it's a big mystery.
But what it tells you mostly isthat Kristen knew she was into
something, that there was dangeraround the corner.

(34:41):
Right before this she had herlast visit with her daughter and
she told her daughter that shewas going to leave LA and she
said you and I will be togetherall the time, full time now.
And she even asked her if shewanted a sibling and did you
want a brother or a sister?
And she even asked her if shewanted a sibling and did you

(35:01):
want a brother or a sister.
So she was getting ready toleave because some danger was
around.
I think it was more than just Ihaven't had any luck.
I think it was some impendingdoom that she sensed.

Speaker 1 (35:13):
That is so heartbreaking too, because this
was about the time her daughterwas 10.
So that was the cutoff whenthey were supposed to be

(35:37):
together.
That's interesting that shesaid do you want a brother or
sister?
Was she pregnant by chance, orwas that just-?
I don't think so.
I think she was serious aboutmoving on to a different future.
Well, let's talk about February12th 1977.

Speaker 3 (35:47):
So in the early morning hours Krista was
brutally stabbed to death.
Jimmy, can you talk about whathappened exactly?
She was kind of getting anallowance I don't know what
you'd call it, but whether hewas kind of fed up or he just
couldn't do it anymore.
Stuart Duncan was married thiswhole time.
He ended up being married forsomething like 60 years to the

(36:08):
same woman.
So he cut her off and so shesuffered.
She moved out of her Bel Airhome, all of her furniture went
to her friend Lenny's house andshe went from couch to couch a
little bit.
She ended up living with awoman named Stephanie in an
apartment.
They only knew each other for Idon't know a month, two months,

(36:30):
no more than three months, andthey ended up living together.
She and Stephanie went to aparty in the hills Sometime
during that party this isaccording to Stephanie.
Sometime during that party,krista encountered something
that gave her the creeps.
And Stephanie says this becausewhen she saw Krista walk back

(36:54):
up to her she had a reallystrange look on her face, like
she was freaked out aboutsomething.
Stephanie asked what was wrongand Krista wouldn't say she was
like I'm fine, but it wasclearly in her eyes.
Something had happened at thatparty with Krista.
So Stephanie had a guy at theparty that she was going to

(37:14):
spend the weekend with at thebeach.
Stephanie gave her car keys toKrista and said I'm going to go
to the beach with this guy inhis car.
You can use my car until I getback.
And so Krista left the party inher roommate's car.
She ended up driving just a fewmiles away to the home of a man
named Sandy Smith.

(37:35):
He was a music agent but heclaims, because I've interviewed
him, the cold case police werenever able to find him, to
interview him, but I found him.
So I went to his house andthat's where she was murdered.
This was about 1.30 in themorning.
I don't know if she made it inthe house and walked back out or

(38:00):
just knocked on the door andturned around, but however it
happened.
When she turned around from thedoor she was attacked.
Just a few feet from that doorshe was stabbed 22 times,
bludgeoned several times aboutthe face, nose, scalp, and she
died there on the concrete rightoutside of that house.

(38:24):
1.30 in the morning there wereearwitnesses.
One heard two women and one manarguing before the screaming
began.
Another heard screams thatsounded like a cat dying or
fighting or something horrible.
Screams like a cat dying orfighting or something horrible
screams.
And so he walked outside of hishouse and looked down, walked

(38:44):
to the sidewalk and looked downthe street.
The screaming had stopped.
He didn't see anything.
If he would have walked outinto the street he would have
seen it happening, or at leastthe immediate aftermath.
He would have seen her body and, coincidentally, the guy that
was the ear witness that walkedout, his name is John Grise.
He's an actor.
He was in Napoleon Dynamite.

(39:05):
He was in the last season ofthe White Lotus.
You'd recognize his face.

Speaker 1 (39:10):
He sees a lot of stuff.
Did he call the police when heheard the screaming?

Speaker 3 (39:14):
Nobody called the police.

Speaker 1 (39:16):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 3 (39:17):
Because it was the middle of the night.
I guess Grice thought was Ijust dreaming or was it a cat
Like?
Am I going to call the policeabout it like a cat?
It is odd.
But there were severalearwitnesses.
One person looked out theirblinds but the shrubbery was
covering the scene of the murder.
She didn't see anything.
Oh my gosh.
It reminds you of that famouscase of Kitty Genovese or

(39:40):
whatever her name was thewitness in New York City where
she was killed and all these 60people heard it and saw it, but
nobody called the police.
Her body was discovered by alimo driver.
He was going to Sandy Smith'shouse.
He pulled up to Sandy's houseand saw the dead body in front
there and he thought it was ahit and run and he said that
when he approached the body shedied, like she drew her last

(40:03):
breath, and so he hopped back inthe car and drove a mile to the
sheriff's office and thenbrought them there to her body.
She was on her stomach, kind ofon her side, and her legs were
partially tucked under the carin front of the house.
And the car belonged to Sandy'sgirlfriend, even though

(40:25):
apparently she wasn't in thehouse that night and Sandy's
alibi was look, I had a partyearlier in the night but I
hadn't slept for 36 hours, so Icleared everybody out about 10
o'clock and I went to sleep, andI'm impossible to wake up once
I'm asleep.
So he claims not to have heardany of it.

Speaker 2 (40:44):
Interesting.
Did he think she was draggedunder the car?

Speaker 3 (40:48):
She had to have been either dragged even though that
seems very awkward to dragsomebody under a car or maybe
she, with any strength that shehad, maybe she pushed herself
back partially under the car soshe wouldn't get run over,
because it's a very it's aone-lane street essentially.

(41:08):
I mean, you know some of thosestreets lay, they're impossible
for two cars to, and it's one ofthose kinds of streets right
right and there were tire tracksrunning through the blood, so
somebody drove through that.

Speaker 1 (41:23):
The nature of what happened to her just screams
rage.
This is clearly a very targetedperson.
It's very, very angry.
What's interesting, too, not tosay that murders, crimes of
passion, are always the mostthoughtful, but that seems like
the worst place that you wouldwant to commit that crime,
because they are one way streets.

(41:45):
There are houses all around you.

Speaker 3 (41:46):
Yeah, I totally agree .
It wasn't a mugging, eventhough her purse was missing,
her diary was missing, but itwasn't a mugging.
But it wasn't a mugging.

(42:16):
It was intimate, it was closeup, it was brutal, it was
overkill, it took time timebecause she fought back 22 stab
wounds, maybe a separate weaponfor the blunt force, trauma
which says to me there mighthave been two killers with two
different weapons, because itjust seems odd to me that you'd
bring a knife and say a hammer,and you'd say, okay, let me put
the knife away.

(42:36):
Now you use the hammer in the,in the fury of a of that murder.

Speaker 1 (42:46):
It just seems odd.
It feels like it's premeditated.

Speaker 3 (42:48):
Yeah, yeah, but it also not because of the location
, it feels like someone snapped.
Yes, I think murdering her waspremeditated.
Where it was done was not.
So maybe I'm following her fromthe party, maybe I'm the one
that she saw at the party andshe got freaked out and I'm
following her from there and shestops at this house then this
is where it's got to happen.

Speaker 1 (43:08):
One thing also to it I noted in the research was that
Krista was terrified of knivesand she'd even told friends that
she believed she would die thatway old friends, that she
believed she would die that way.
And then in one of her films,the legacy of Satan, she was
stabbed to death on screen.
Yeah, is that all?

Speaker 3 (43:28):
accurate, accurate.
Yeah, it's just eerie.
That's a bad movie, but butlegacy of Satan.
Last time I checked it was onTubi and I got excited.
I'm like, oh, I can finally seethis movie.
So I watched it and a lot of itwas shot in Krista's New York
City apartment.
First of all because I lookedat the wallpaper and said that
wallpaper looks familiar and Irealized, oh, that's her

(43:49):
apartment.
So I was able to get an insideview of what it looked like back
then.
But at the end of it shestabbed to death with a shard of
glass.

Speaker 1 (43:57):
And so to watch that movie now it's a horrible movie,
but it takes on a deeper kindof resonance because of that.
It kind of makes you wonderwhoever?

Speaker 2 (44:08):
did it?
Were they replicating the movie?
Did they know?
Was it just?

Speaker 1 (44:11):
I don't think so, but Do they know what knife it was?

Speaker 3 (44:16):
The detective described it as a large buck
knife, like a hunting knife,maybe Like something that you'd
cut something open with.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (44:25):
Debbie fled town in disguise just days after Krista
was killed.
Do we know why she fled?
What was she running from?

Speaker 3 (44:35):
Yeah, having not spoken to her personally, but I
did read a letter that she wroteto other researchers who
approached her 15, almost 20years ago, and she explained her
thinking in that letter.
She said I was freaked out.
Nothing like this had everhappened to me before.
I didn't know if this wassomething in our circle, because

(44:55):
it happened during this timewhen we were all in the album
together in this tight knit kindof group.
She said uh, there was also.
I had a stalker at the time, uh, and some people theorized that
krista was mistaken for anotherblonde at the party, so she got
a disguise and she flew out ofthere and she went to texas and

(45:16):
that's where she's been since oh, interesting, interesting,
don't blame her.

Speaker 1 (45:21):
Do you think it's possible that they were not
after Krista?
Then again, her diary and herpurse disappeared.

Speaker 3 (45:29):
I really don't think that's a possibility, but it's
just another theory to throwonto the fire.
I will say that George Hamilton, which was one of the actors
that was intimate with Krista,dated her for a time, months
before her death.
He said that he met Krista at aparty hosted by Gray
Fredrickson.
And I read that and I thought,oh, I know Gray Fredrickson.

(45:51):
He was the producer of theGodfather and a bunch of other
movies.
I had interviewed him years ago, so I sent him an email.
He's since passed away.
Sent him an email, he's sincepassed away.
But uh, I said, hey, youremember krista helmed.
You remember dating her?
And he said, yeah, I think wewent out once or twice.
He said, uh, you know, I hadheard that she was mistaken for
another woman and that's why shewas killed walking out of that

(46:13):
house that night.
But you know the person must.
If that was the case, thisperson probably didn't know what
the hell Debbie Danilu lookedlike, because he was facing
Krista for a long time as he wastrying to kill her.
I don't know what the lightingwas like in 1977 on that road.
I visited that road since, so Iwould imagine, like any

(46:38):
residential street, it probablyhad some lighting.

Speaker 2 (46:42):
And didn't you see balloons on the front, the back
of her?

Speaker 3 (46:46):
Yeah, it was 10 on the front, 12 on the back, or
vice versa.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
I would just think to be that up close and to do that
much damage you would at onepoint getting to 22 stabs, you'd
probably realize that's not theright person, yeah.

Speaker 3 (47:01):
I mean this was up close.
He or she, or two of them, theywere clearly at a certain point
.
They were out to defile herbecause of the trauma to her
face and her head and to kind ofdecimate that chiseled beauty.

(47:21):
Because I tracked down theoriginal medical examiner who
did the autopsy and the mostsurprising thing he said after
he reviewed his files, he saidafter she was, she has a two
stab wounds on her back.
That that are the trajectory ofthem appear to me as though she

(47:42):
was already on the ground andthe killer stabbed from above on
one side of the back and thenwalked to the other side of her
and stabbed on the other side ofthe back.
I mean that's overkill.
So he said that whoever did thiswas clearly pissed off.
But the reason why I thinkthere's a possibility of two
attackers beyond the two weaponsis why did she stand her ground

(48:06):
, Even though she knew karate?
Why didn't she just run away?
One explanation of that couldbe that there were two attackers
.
She was cornered.
There was nowhere to go.
Why didn't you run to adifferent house down the road
and knock on the door, screamyour head off or whatever?

Speaker 1 (48:24):
Yeah, I mean, depending on how they got hurt,
where the first stab wound wasand how painful it was, maybe
she couldn't run or not run thatfast.

Speaker 3 (48:36):
Yeah, but she had a chance to fight back.
Because she fought back, shewas physical against this person
, right?
So before the fatal woundsthere was obviously time because
she physically attacked thisperson in return.

Speaker 1 (48:55):
Well, initially investigators thought her murder
was connected to anotherHollywood killing, the stabbing
of actor Sal Mineo.

Speaker 3 (49:04):
Sal Mineo yeah.

Speaker 1 (49:06):
Sal Mineo.
Both were murdered on the sameday in the same neighborhood,
which is a very eeriecoincidence.

Speaker 3 (49:12):
So just a year apart.
One year apart, yeah, one yearapart.
Anything to that.
I think the originalinvestigator focused on this
coincidence so long that it kindof put the other potential
motives by the wayside, which isa shame, because Minio's murder
was completely different.
He was surprised during a homeburglary.

(49:36):
He came home and found this guyand the guy ran off and in a
haste stabbed Mineo once in theheart near the parking garage
where he just got out of his carand then ran off.

Speaker 2 (49:47):
That doesn't sound anything like yeah, it doesn't,
yeah, it's too different.

Speaker 3 (49:51):
Yeah, it was the date .
It was the coincidence of onedate later, right, one year
later, which is crazy to me onits own.
What is this guy going to say?
All right, february 12th nextyear, I got to figure out who
else I'm going to murder.
It just seems weird.

Speaker 1 (50:07):
Without a connection.

Speaker 2 (50:08):
There was also another beheading that was
nearby.
Was this just kind of an eeriecoincidence as well?

Speaker 3 (50:17):
This one.
I don't.
I mean my.
My gut says that there's moreto this than mere coincidence.
And in the the day afterKrista's body was found, la
Times started report on themurder and other papers in the
area did too.
Two and they connected thesetwo murders because they

(50:44):
happened less than a day apartfrom each other, within five
miles of each other, and theywere both extremely brutal.
Sheila Green the paper saidthat she was 22 years old.
She was actually 18 when shewas killed.
She was killed like fiveminutes away, up in the
Hollywood Hills, in a park inthe middle of the night, the
Hollywood Hills, in a park inthe middle of the night.

(51:05):
So the park was abandoned.
There's no houses nearby, sothere are no ear witnesses to
this one.
She was stabbed repeatedly, shewas gutted and eventually her
head was cut off.
And then less than 24 hourslater you know, five minutes,
less than five minutes, fiveminutes down the road there is
when Krista was killed.
Now police tried to connect thetwo themselves because Sheila's

(51:32):
murder was handled by the LAPD.
I contacted them years ago andhad them look and they actually
looked in the cold case filesfor me.
I found someone who answeredthe phone and she said oh, I'll
pull that cold case file I'llsee, cause I was interested in
Krista's name in there.
And she said Krista's names allover Sheila's file.
Apparently they were trying tomake the connection themselves
but were unable to.

(51:52):
She said but I have a list of afew potential suspects in
Sheila's file here.
I said, oh, let me give you acouple of names, see if any of
them match.
So I gave them a couple ofnames that were potential
witnesses and Krista's orperpetrators, and none of them
matched.
Unfortunately, it wasn't untilafter that phone call with LAPD

(52:15):
that I discovered a potentialconnection between Sheila and
Krista was an escort, a malemadam named David Marcus.
I was like, okay, maybe DavidMarcus's name is in Sheila's
file, but I can't get anybody onthe phone that will help me
look in that box again.
So I don't know if DavidMarcus's name is in the list of

(52:37):
suspects or not and that woulddefinitively prove a connection
between the two.
The argument against the samekiller doing both killings was
that Sheila was so much morebrutal.
But my point is Krista wasstabbed 22 times, hit multiple
times with a blunt object andleft to bleed out in the middle

(52:59):
of a residential street.
Sheila was in the middle ofnowhere where no one could hear
her scream.
Now, if Krista were in themiddle of nowhere, could you
imagine how much worse thatmurder would have been, if this
guy is willing to stab her 22times in public?
Essentially, if Sheila andKrista knew one another, if they
both saw something theyshouldn't have seen and they're

(53:22):
both gotten rid of within a dayof each other, that's a
possibility and the cold casedetectives have never looked
into it and it's hard to findthat connection myself, even
though I was able to find arelative of Sheila Green a few
months ago after searching foryears and it ended up being

(53:44):
Sheila's daughter.
Sheila had a four-year-old childwhen she was killed at the age
of 18.
And the daughter kind offreaked out when I contacted her
and said I've been, and I saidI've been looking into your
mother's murder and I think it'sconnected to another murder, a
woman named Krista Helm and thedaughter said that she heard

(54:05):
very little about her mother andshe didn't ask about her mother
for the longest time, until sheturned 18 or something.
And then she asked hergrandmother what happened to my
mother.
Grandmother didn't give anydetails about the gruesomeness
of the crime.
But the grandmother did say thepolice told us the person who
killed your mother was the sameperson who killed this white

(54:26):
woman on the same day.
So her, her family, told herthere was a connection between
her mother's murder and krista'smurder, because the family said
that the police had told themthat yeah what a quick.
I just can't prove it yeah, yeah.
But they were both escorts.
They were both escorts.

(54:47):
If they were both escorts forDavid Marcus, then there is no
doubt there's a connection.

Speaker 1 (54:54):
Tony Sirico, best known later as Polly Wommets on
the Sopranos, was sent to cleanout Krista's apartment after her
murder.
So he did take a few things.
What was the story around that?

Speaker 3 (55:08):
Yeah, tony Sirico used to be kind of associate of
the Colombo crime family in NewYork City and he spent time in
prison, a lot of time in prison.
He had a big rap sheet when hegot out he wanted to make it in
Hollywood.
So he moved to LA andapparently he was really close

(55:28):
friends with Krista's bestfriend, the gay costume designer
named Lenny Baron, which is anodd pairing Like this tough
mobster.
Tony Sirico and Lenny Baron arebest pals.
It was kind of strangebedfellows but apparently they
got on famously.

Speaker 1 (55:49):
He designed the Superwoman, the Wonder Woman,
yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:53):
So apparently, as Stephanie, krista's last
roommate, told detectives, afterKrista's murder it might have
been that night, it might havebeen the next night Lenny and
Tony went to the apartment herapartment and they took a lot of
Krista's things.
She knew that they took fursand jewelry and just a lot of

(56:16):
belongings.
They probably took the tapesthe audio tapes too, because
apparently there was a libraryof those audio tapes and the
detectives only found a few ofthem.
Now, was the diary at theapartment?
Did they take that too?
Or was the diary kept inKrista's purse that was stolen

(56:37):
from her body?
I don't know, nobody knows.
But Tony Sirico went to thathouse with Lenny and they took a
lot of Krista's things.
Nothing nefarious, I mean, ithas to go somewhere.
It would go to her best friend.
I'm not making any accusations.
So anyway, the cold case.
Detectives find out about thisTony Sirico connection and they

(56:59):
call him in to interview him andhe, he denies knowing Krista.
At first he says, well, no, Idon't know what you're talking
about.
And then he kind of breaks downa little bit and says oh yeah,
I knew her a little bit, but Idon't have any idea about her
murder, or I might've heardsomething.
But and then when they askedhim, where were you the night
that she was killed, he calledhis attorney in and the attorney

(57:22):
ended the whole thing.
Tony Sirico would never speakagain about it Not to the cops
and not to me certainly when Italked to Krista's sister
Krista's sister also lived in LAat the time.
She got home that Saturday froma beach excursion and got a
phone call from Lenny.
Lenny said I'm sending a carfor you to bring you back to my

(57:45):
house.
So a car brought Marissa,krista's sister, to Lenny's
house and Lenny told herKrista's been stabbed to death.
That's how she got the news ofher sister's death and then she
had to go identify the body.
The only other person inLenny's house when she was told

(58:05):
about her sister's murder wasTony Sirico.
He was sitting on the couchlooking at her the whole time.
So, tony, he knew the sister,he knew Lenny.
He had to have known Krista andhe was there when her sister
was told that Krista wasmurdered.
So he's lying.
He was lying.
He's dead now.
I can't do anything to drag itout of him.

Speaker 2 (58:29):
In 2006, so nearly 30 years later, Krista's daughter
was pushing for the case to bereopened.
Why did it take so long forthem to be willing to take a
second look at all that?

Speaker 3 (58:42):
Why did it take so long for them to be willing to
take a second look at all?
That Actually Steve Hodel shedsome light on this, because
Steve Hodel was the investigatoron Sheila Green's murder, which
I didn't know until I got herautopsy.
So I contacted Steve Hodel.
I said, hey, you rememberSheila Green, this case?
And he said no, I have nomemory, because even though it
was a beheading, you'd thinkthat somebody would remember

(59:02):
that.
But he said we investigatedthings for two months and then
we stored it away.
When Chris's daughter became acertain age and started to have
her own children, there grewkind of a fire in her to learn
more about her mom, and so shemade the necessary contacts at
the LA Sheriff's Department andjust ringing that bell led to

(59:26):
them reopening the case andlooking into it again in the
2000s.
And their investigation reallystarted with this new technology
called DNA, because the medicalexaminer had taken samples of
tissue from under Krista's nailand saved it for evidence.
He didn't know what DNA waseither, but I guess that was

(59:48):
just a practice.
If they found blood orsomething, they saved it, and so
they had that tested, and itwas a massively long and costly
process.
They had to apply for grants tofinance it.
It took three years to get thetest results back.
They came back as a female DNAsample.
So they said, oh man, we'relooking for a female killer.

(01:00:09):
So they tested all the femalesthat they interviewed and
everybody came out negative.
But I don't even know if it wasa female killer.
It was tissue.
She was driving her roommate'scar.
She had been with her roommatethat night which, by the way,
her roommate Stephanie, was oneperson they haven't done DNA
testing on.
She could have been intimatewith a woman that night.

(01:00:33):
It doesn't necessarily speakwith the person who killed her
there was no blood in the sample.

Speaker 1 (01:00:36):
What about the two women in the band?
It was Debbie and Patty CollinsPatty.
The one that was Debbie andPatty Collins Patty.

Speaker 3 (01:00:42):
The one that was incredibly jealous of Krista.
Krista kicked Patty out of theband right before she was
murdered.
Patty apparently thinks she wasinterviewed by the original
investigator and she didn'tadmit to having a relationship
with Krista.
When the Cole case picked upthe case they couldn't find

(01:01:05):
Patty.
No one's been able to findPatty.
It's too common of a name.
I mean.
I've continued to work on it.
I texted about three dozenPatricia Collins throughout the
country who are in that agegroup and I said hey, did you
know Krista Helm?
So I'm continuing to reach outto Patty Collins but nobody can

(01:01:27):
find this person, if she's evenstill alive.
But she's a main suspect.
She's the major suspect Becauseit was either somebody listed
in her book, in her diary,listed in her book, in her diary
, it was a drug deal gone badsomehow, because there's another

(01:01:47):
man named Rudy Mazzella.
That's in Krista's life, a reallow life.
And Rudy had admitted to afriend that he killed her and
then when the police interviewedhim he said I just like to brag
about doing bad shit, I wouldnever hurt Krista.
And I interviewed Rudy's widowand his widow said I can't see
that he would ever kill Krista.

Speaker 1 (01:02:08):
I wouldn't even brag about that, just sometimes the
choices people make.

Speaker 3 (01:02:13):
He's the second main suspect and Patty Collins, I
would say, is the big one.

Speaker 2 (01:02:18):
My next question for you.
So, beyond DNA, what supportsthose theories for them as the
two strongest?

Speaker 3 (01:02:27):
The diary is just juicy.
Was somebody worried aboutbeing outed?
I think that's all windowdressing.
Did Krista see something sheshouldn't have because she was
pretty loose-lipped about things?
There were a lot of drugs backthen, a lot of famous people, a
lot of debauchery.
Did she see someone influential, something really incriminating

(01:02:52):
with someone influential, andthey had her killed?
I don't know.
Was it mob-related, Was itdrug-related?
Was it a jealous lover?
Was it the wife of someone shehad an affair with?
And then you throw in the Shahand the political stuff about
that and her outing being withthe Shah.

(01:03:13):
It's honestly endless and it'sa very difficult case to crack
because all these people,they're not going to come
forward.
So your only hope is can Icatch their best friend If they
passed on?
Can I get their best friend?

(01:03:34):
Maybe they told their bestfriend or relative something
before they died.
That's really what you'rehanging your hopes on.

Speaker 1 (01:03:40):
It just seems very personal and it seems very rage
oriented.

Speaker 3 (01:03:51):
When you investigate a story like this, there are
months and months and months andmonths of nothing happening,
and then, oh my gosh, anavalanche of new stuff I'm
finding and it's exhilarating.
And then you go back to a yearor more months of nothing
happening, like there was.
There was a time when I foundout the true identity and true
fate of Nicole's father and Iwas able to tell Nicole what

(01:04:12):
happened to her birth father andit came out.
You know, I was looking into itfor years and then one night
everything came to be.
I found one piece of the puzzleand then I I looked at it and
all the information was there,like it poured out, like his
whole life story.
He outlived Krista.
He didn't die in a motorcycleaccident, he outlived her.

(01:04:33):
But as it turns out, he was acon man.
He would go to different states, he would marry people, he'd
usually take all their money,and then he'd disappear.
He would go to different states, he would marry people, he'd
usually take all their money,and then he'd disappear.
And then the widow wouldreceive a call saying your
husband's died in a motorcycleaccident.
So that birth father actuallywas married to two other women
at the same time.
He married Krista and heoutlived her by about a year and

(01:04:56):
a half and he finally he killedhimself in a Days Inn in
Savannah, georgia.
I drove to the Days Inn, Idrove to the police station and
read the police reports.

Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 3 (01:05:06):
Yeah, and this was all news to Nicole.

Speaker 1 (01:05:10):
How's her daughter now?

Speaker 3 (01:05:13):
Oh, she's great.
She's great.
I mean, it wasn't pleasant tohear that information and yet it
was some degree of closure, Iwould imagine.
But yeah, no, she's a greatperson and has a beautiful life
that she's made for herself andher kids.

Speaker 1 (01:05:25):
As far as physical evidence really, then the only
thing that you have right nowwould be the DNA under the
fingernails, or is thereanything else that can be tested
?

Speaker 3 (01:05:37):
I think that's it.
If they still have the jumpsuitthat she was wearing that night
, that's covered in her ownblood, so I don't know how they
differentiate where a samplefrom someone else might be on
that jumpsuit, especially afterso many years.
I'm keen not to trust the DNA.

(01:06:00):
Actually, I don't know that theDNA is definitive or if the DNA
was processed correctly,because it took a long time.
It was kind of bumbling thewhole process of getting that
done.

Speaker 2 (01:06:12):
Leaves you more open for errors.
I think in that process, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:06:18):
Yeah, and it might just be circumstantial.
It might not point to a killer,even if it is legitimate from
what was on her nails.

Speaker 2 (01:06:27):
So with any modern forensic technology, do you
think there's ever a way forthis to be solved?

Speaker 3 (01:06:33):
They could do I don't know the exact term for it, but
the genetic DNA, I guess, ifthey still have the reading or
have another sample, I guess ifthey still have the reading or
have another sample, and so theycould find out the contributor
of that DNA through genealogy.
But that's cost prohibitive andno one's going to pay for it,
and maybe not definitive.

Speaker 1 (01:06:52):
That's how Joseph D'Angelo the Golden State Killer
.
That's ultimately how theyfound him through family DNA.

Speaker 3 (01:07:01):
The same the cold case cop on Krista's case.
He solved a murder using thefamily DNA.
It was the wife of Bill Medley,the guy that sang that dirty
dancing song.
I've had the time in my life.
They solved that through familyDNA.
Oh interesting, but it's tooexpensive and the LASD isn't
going to do anything about thiscase.

(01:07:23):
I think they're done with it.
That's why I need to see thosefiles.
They're collecting dust,nothing's happening with it and
nothing will ever happen with it.
So why don't you give herfamily closure?
Right, let them know what wasfound.
So anyone from the Los AngelesSheriff's Department that might
be listening to your showtonight or today, hey, get in

(01:07:45):
touch with me.
I'd love to get some insidetrack into seeing those files.

Speaker 1 (01:07:50):
Jamie, as far as your book, when do you anticipate it
would come out, or is thatstill TBD?

Speaker 3 (01:07:57):
I'm about 70, 70, 75% through it, but the book will
be done.
When I it doesn't, I don't haveto solve the crime to put out
the book.
That's not what I'm waiting on.
I'm just waiting on being themost informed I possibly can to
fill the book with information,correct information.
So whenever that happens andhopefully it'll be soon I'll

(01:08:20):
send it to, I'll shop around foran agent and a publisher and
I'll get the thing out there.

Speaker 2 (01:08:26):
Where can listeners follow your work and stay
updated on this case, and evenwhen your book does come out?

Speaker 3 (01:08:33):
The best way to do that is to visit my website,
whokilledchristahelmcom.
There's a recap of her lifestory and murder investigation
on those pages, some of whatI've uncovered.
I don't reveal everything onthere, or else why would I write
a book and I upkeep a blogthere with updates when I find
new photos or new documents.

(01:08:55):
Oftentimes I'll put it there onthe blog or I'll put it on the
Facebook page I have.
Who Killed Krista Helm onFacebook.
Through the website or Facebookpage, you can also submit a tip
If you knew her, if you havesome information, if a relative
or friend used to know her andsaid something about her to you.
However you receive theinformation, I'll be happy to

(01:09:15):
receive it from you.
However, you're willing to giveit.

Speaker 1 (01:09:20):
And what we'll do is we'll link all of that
information in the show notes toyour website and your social
media so people can find you.
Thank you Well, jamie.
Thank you so much for coming onthe show and wish you luck in
hopefully finding some sort ofresolution to the case.

Speaker 3 (01:09:36):
Thank you, I'll keep you guys updated.

Speaker 2 (01:09:38):
Definitely Love it, thank you.

All Episodes

31. UNSOLVED: A Tragic Murder and A Missing Diary - The Christa Helm Story with Jamey DuVall

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}31. UNSOLVED: A Tragic Murder and A Missing Diary - The Christa Helm Story with Jamey DuVall