Who Killed Heidi Firkus? Fatal shooting captured on 911 call to report intruder | Full Episode | Forensic Files

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

A frantic 911 call captures the sound of a gunshot as a Minnesota couple reports a break-in. How did the intruder disappear? "48 Hours" contributor Jamie Yuccas reports. This episode aired on Aug. 10, 2024. Watch more full episodes of "48 Hours" on Pluto TV.

True crime. Real justice. "48 Hours" investigates the most intriguing crime and justice cases that touch on all areas of the human experience including greed and passion. "48 Hours," which premiered in 1988, has developed a rich history of original reporting and impact journalism that has helped exonerate wrongly convicted people, caused cold cases to be reopened and solved, and along the way changed lives.

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Brief Summary

Heidi Firkus was murdered; her husband Nick was found guilty after inconsistencies in his story and hidden financial troubles emerged.

Key points

The 911 Call. Heidi Firkus calls 911 reporting a break-in, but the call ends abruptly.
The Tragic Outcome. Heidi is shot and killed during the incident, while Nick is injured.
Suspicion Arises. Detective Gray questions Nick's account of the events, raising doubts about his story.
Financial Troubles. Investigators discover the couple was deeply in debt and facing foreclosure.
A Break in the Case. Five years later, a tipster provides a name matching Nick's sketch, but he's in prison.
Nick Firkus Charged with Murder. After years of investigation, Nick Firkus was arrested and charged with second-degree murder.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It never felt right.

2:10WatchMar 27, 2026

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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