In the years after Heidi Firkus was fatally shot in her St. Paul home, Sgt. Nichole Sipes was drawn to the unsolved case.
At the time of the killing in 2010, Sipes was a patrol officer in the area that includes Hamline-Midway and she thought, “The story just didn’t make sense.”
Firkus’ husband, Nicholas, told police that an intruder broke into their home. He said he armed himself with his shotgun and, as he struggled with the unknown man, the weapon went off. Heidi was shot in the back and Nicholas Firkus in the leg.
Sipes said she was especially moved by the tragedy of a 25-year-old woman losing her life and her family being “left behind to wonder what happened and why they have this loss.”
After Sipes became a homicide investigator in 2019, the sergeant who’d been investigating the Firkus case moved onto another assignment and Sipes asked if she could take over.
She investigated it for 18 months — along with her regular caseload of new homicides — until law enforcement and prosecutors reached a point that Heidi Firkus’ family wasn’t sure they’d ever see happen: Nicholas Firkus was arrested Wednesday, after being charged with murder.
Though some people refer to it as a cold case, Sipes said the trail never went cold because investigators didn’t stop working on it and the case was never closed.
She is quick to point out that she built on the work of the homicide investigators who came before her, and that she worked hand-in-hand with the FBI and Ramsey County prosecutors.
Ramsey County Attorney John Choi said Sipes brought a “fresh set of eyes” to the investigation. He also said information from the FBI, specifically enhanced audio from 911 calls from the Firkus home, “helped us better understand what had happened.”
Andy Johnson and Elizabeth Lamin, both assistant Ramsey County attorneys who’ve spent years on the Firkus case and are prosecuting Nicholas Firkus, “worked tirelessly on this case to never forget” Heidi Firkus, Choi said at a Thursday press conference.
They and Rick Dusterhoft, the county attorney’s trial division director, comprise a cold case unit. Firkus is the fourth person that Choi’s office has charged since 2015 in a homicide from years earlier.
SHE ‘TURNED OVER SOME STONES’
Each of the investigators “poured their hearts into this case, moving it forward one step at a time, one day at a time,” said Police Chief Todd Axtell.
When Heidi Firkus was killed on April 25, 2010, Sgt. Jim Gray was the original investigator, assisted by Sgts. Jane Laurence and John Wright. Sgt. Jake Peterson took over the investigation in 2012 and then Sipes got the case in November 2019.
“Some things stuck out to her,” said Senior Cmdr. Bryant Gaden, who heads the homicide unit. “She turned over some stones and some pebbles and decided to stay with it.”
Sipes started by reading each police report, looking through all the evidence and making lists of what she thought would be helpful to reexamine. She went back to interview people again.
The FBI had assisted St. Paul at the start of the investigation. At the suggestion of an FBI agent, Sipes partnered with the federal agency again early last year, saying they provided resources she otherwise wouldn’t have had access to.
The Minneapolis field office assisted with investigative strategy and developing timelines, while the FBI’s behavioral analysis unit provided support and the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Va., analyzed ballistics and enhanced 911 calls.
Sipes and the prosecutors, Johnson and Lamin, had to fit the investigation around their regular caseloads.
At any given time, Sipes was working on 25 other cases — new homicides, aggravated assaults and robberies — though the Firkus case was the only older homicide she was investigating.
FROM SEX CRIMES TO HOMICIDE INVESTIGATOR
Sipes began her career in law enforcement in 1996 as an Ames, Iowa, police officer. She moved back to the Twin Cities, where she was originally from, in 2000 and joined the St. Paul police department.
She became an investigator in 2017 in the sex crimes unit and joined the homicide unit in August 2019.
Back in 2010, when Firkus was killed, Sipes was a patrol officer in the Western District. She was not one of the officers who responded to the homicide scene on Minnehaha Avenue near Fairview Avenue, though she heard about the case.
“I was familiar with that area and it was generally a pretty quiet, family neighborhood,” Sipes said.
A stranger breaking into someone’s home would be unusual, let alone a burglary ending in a homicide.
Nicholas Firkus, now 38, told police on the day of the shooting about a life-or-death struggle with an intruder, but investigators didn’t find evidence of any fight at the couple’s home, according to the criminal complaint unsealed Thursday, which charges him with second-degree murder with intent.
Heidi Firkus didn’t say anything about seeing an intruder when she was on the phone with a 911 operator and no sounds of a struggle were heard on the call before the gunshot, the criminal complaint continued.
Firkus’ attorney, Joe Friedberg, however, called the case “completely circumstantial” during Firkus’ first court appearance on Thursday.
A week or two before Firkus’ arrest, he and Friedberg were “aware that something might be about to happen,” Friedberg said, because police had knocked on Firkus’ door and asked to talk to him; Friedberg advised him not to.
Friedberg disagreed with the bail amount that prosecutors were seeking on Thursday and pointed out that Firkus has no criminal record. Firkus was released from jail Thursday afternoon after posting $1 million bond and agreeing to surrender his passport.
‘THIS IS ABOUT HEIDI’
On the day after Heidi Firkus was killed, the couple was due to be evicted from their house because of foreclosure, though police noted that nothing was packed up. Sipes said she was able to confirm in her investigation that only Nicholas Firkus signed paperwork related to the foreclosure, and she said Heidi Firkus “was unaware or uninvolved in any part of the foreclosure process.”
Was the looming eviction the reason for the shooting?
Sipes said it’s difficult “to speak to the motive of the case,” but the timing around the foreclosure “would lead someone to make a conclusion.”
The St. Paul police SWAT team arrested Firkus at his Mounds View home on Wednesday and Sipes was there. He declined to be interviewed by police, Sipes said.
Sipes and the FBI special agent she worked with on the case, Patrick Rielly of the Minneapolis field office, took Firkus to be booked at the jail.
Previously, Sipes and Rielly met with Heidi Firkus’ parents, Linda and John Erickson, to tell them Nicholas Firkus would be charged.
Since their first meeting with Sipes in 2020, the Ericksons said she “demonstrated time and again her complete commitment to doing everything possible to move the case forward” and they said they couldn’t be more appreciative.
“Sgt. Sipes’ energy, empathy and tenacity is truly impressive,” Linda and John Erickson said in a statement. “She is clearly an experienced professional, yet personal in the way she has listened and kept us informed. We have felt that every concern and question of ours is important to her.”
Sipes said she doesn’t want Heidi Firkus to be forgotten as the case progresses against Nicholas Firkus.
“We honor her life by moving this case forward,” Sipes said. “At the end of the day, this is about Heidi and a young woman who lost her life and a family that’s left to grieve for her. They’ve been extremely patient for 11 years while we have worked on this.”
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Heidi Firkus’ family wasn’t sure they’d find justice for her. 11 years later, this sergeant’s investigation helped get her husband charged. - TwinCities.com-Pioneer Press
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