Twenty-one years after being convicted together of first-degree murder, a mother and son from Cabot were ordered to spend time in federal prison on drug and gun charges.
The sentences were handed down Tuesday to Nancy Helfrich, 68, and her son, James Helfrich, 39, who have been in custody since their arrests on federal charges after a June 19, 2013, raid of their home at 27102 Arkansas 107 in Cabot by agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration. The agents reported finding methamphetamine and a loaded rifle inside the home.
At the time, the mother and son were on parole from the Arkansas Department of Correction, where they had been serving sentences of 50 years for her and 30 years for him, since 1994. That's when they and Helfrich's daughter, Sheri Copeland, pleaded guilty in Pulaski County Circuit Court to murder charges in the Nov. 3, 1992, baseball-bat beating death of a "friend," 36-year-old Juanita Bearden.
Kimberly Rena Forrester, then 26, also pleaded guilty in 1994 to first-degree murder, admitting that she waited in an isolated area of Camp Robinson with Nancy Helfrich and Copeland while James Helfrich, then 18, and his girlfriend, 16-year-old Christie Lunsford of Jacksonville, lured Bearden there on the pretext of helping her find her stolen credit cards, which they said they knew had been discarded there.
Forrester said she ran up to the car and hit Bearden over the head with a baseball bat three times, as planned by Nancy Helfrich, who police called the "mastermind" of the murder. Forrester said the plan was to rob Bearden of $6,500 that the killers believed Bearden had received as a life insurance payout after her husband's death.
The group believed the three strikes from the bat had killed Bearden, but as they started to leave, Bearden got up and began walking toward her assailants, bleeding from the head, according to testimony. Forrester said she hit Bearden with the bat four more times and the woman finally died, but the assailants never found any money.
North Little Rock police said Bearden's body was moved to a pond in Burns Park a few days later after Forrester, who lived nearby, began having "irrational fears" that Bearden would rise again. Police found the body in the water on Nov. 10, 1992.
Forrester also received a 50-year prison sentence, and Lunsford's case was transferred to juvenile court, where proceedings aren't public.
According to federal court documents, the 2013 raid in Cabot was the result of a task force investigation into the distribution of methamphetamine, which led agents to focus on James Helfrich. Agents reported kicking the door down after investigators and parole officers announced their presence and ordered James Helfrich to emerge, and then heard someone lock the front door. Inside the house, according to the documents, James Helfrich resisted arrest, and his parents, Nancy and Bill Helfrich, emerged from the master bedroom yelling at officers, then resisted arrest as well. Several other people ran out of the home.
Agents reported finding marijuana, drug paraphernalia, ledgers, ammunition and gun accessories throughout the home, as well as a loaded rifle under the bed in the master bedroom. Nancy Helfrich said it belonged to her grandson.
Earlier this year, James Helfrich pleaded guilty to a charge of possession of methamphetamine with the intent to deliver, and his mother pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm.
U.S. District Judge Leon Holmes cited their murder convictions, and the fact that they were on parole at the time of their arrest in the federal case, as reasons behind sentences of 17 1/2 years for James Helfrich and 45 months for Nancy Helfrich. Holmes gave Nancy Helfrich credit for 21 months she has spent in prison after her parole was revoked as a result of the gun possession, leaving her to serve the remaining two years in federal prison.
Metro on 06/14/2015