Star Tribune
Nicholas Firkus sentenced to life in prison for wife’s 2010 shooting death
Nicholas Firkus, the St. Paul man who claimed his wife was fatally shot during a home invasion nearly 13 years ago, was sentenced Thursday to life in prison without the possibility of parole for her murder.
The sentence, handed down by Judge Leonardo Castro, came after a Ramsey County jury found Firkus guilty of first-degree premeditated murder and second-degree murder with intent in connection with Heidi Firkus’ death on April 25, 2010.
“I maintain to my dying breath my innocence of this crime,” Firkus said in front of a full courtroom in the Ramsey County Courthouse before his sentence was read. Though he was convicted of his wife’s murder, he said, “it does not diminish the grief I feel from losing her.”
Firkus, 40, showed little emotion as he was sentenced. He has been held in the Ramsey County jail since February, when he was convicted after a two-week trial that included testimony from nearly 50 witnesses. Firkus has not formally appealed, but his life sentence could be reviewed by the Minnesota Supreme Court, a court spokesman said.
Prosecutors argued that Firkus killed his wife out of shame and fear stemming from financial problems. They said he had not told her about $18,000 in credit card debt and a foreclosure on their Hamline-Midway home.
Defense attorneys countered that Heidi’s death was a tragic accident. They said a shotgun Nicholas had in his hand went off as he struggled with an intruder just inside the front door of the couple’s home on W. Minnehaha Avenue. One shot struck Heidi in the back of the head. The second hit Nicholas in the leg, his lawyers said.
Before the sentencing Thursday, Firkus claimed he had not received a fair trial. But Castro said Firkus was represented by “the most skilled defense lawyers in the state,” adding, “I’m sure you received a fair trial.”
“There are no winners here,” Castro continued. “Many lives were left in pain as a result.”
In the years after Heidi’s death, Nicholas Firkus remarried and had three children. Many who gave victim impact statements Thursday lamented that Heidi, 25, never got to realize her dream of having children of her own.
“She looked forward to being a mother” and wanted to cut back to part-time work to focus on that, said Heidi’s mother, Linda Erickson, as she held back tears. “She was robbed. We have had to live with a false public narrative of what happened, a narrative concealing the truth. There is a definite relief of having the record set straight.”
Erickson called Heidi “a joyful child of God” who liked camping, biking and hiking and was filled with humor and a loving spirit. Others remembered Heidi for her beautiful voice, charismatic personality and infectious laugh.
Christa Gibbs, who had known Heidi since they met in nursery school, said she has experienced fear, pain and sadness since her friend’s death.
“I no longer have the ability to look at others without suspicion,” she said.
The case baffled police for more than a decade and had gone cold until 2019, when a St. Paul Police Department sergeant reopened it. With help from the FBI and new evidence, Firkus was charged in 2021.
Joel Howells, who met Firkus after Heidi’s death, on Thursday described his friend as a “loving human being” who put others first. He said he believes Firkus is innocent.
Firkus’ father, Steve, does, too.
“To the depth of my heart, I know he did not commit this crime,” Steve Firkus said. “It is impossible Nick could have done what he is accused of doing. We continue pray justice can still be done, and that the truth of what happened will finally emerge.”
Defense attorney Joe Friedberg argued at trial that prosecutors had not provided direct evidence that Firkus fired the fatal shot. He said the couple’s financial problems were not a motive for murder because if Firkus killed his wife, everything would become public.
“He told me his story and I believed it,” Friedberg said in court Thursday. “He is a wonderful and sincere human being. There is not a better man you are going to sentence than Nick Firkus.”
Star Tribune
Celebrity chef Justin Sutherland gets two years of probation for threatening girlfriend
According to the criminal complaint:
Police were twice called on June 28 to an apartment in the 800 block of Front Avenue. During the first call, a woman told officers that everything was fine despite previously reporting that Sutherland had choked her and tried kicking her out of the apartment.
During the second call about 90 minutes later, the woman told police that Sutherland had briefly squeezed her neck with both hands, said “I want you dead,” pointed a gun at her and hit her in the chest with it, and at one point said he would shoot her if she came back after running off. Officers then arrested Sutherland.
Staff writers Paul Walsh and Alex Chhith contributed to this story.
Operators of the Hennepin County Juvenile Detention Center (JDC) have agreed to consolidate housing units, create a new programming schedule and retrain correctional officers in an effort to satisfy state regulators, who rebuked the downtown facility last month for violating resident rights.
Changes come in the wake of a scathing inspection report that accused the center of placing minors in seclusion without good reason to compensate for ongoing staff shortages. An annual audit by the Department of Corrections found that teens were frequently locked in their rooms for long stretches, due to a lack of personnel rather than bad behavior.
In response, county officials vowed to bolster staffing and retrain all officers tasked with performing wellness checks. Last week, the facility closed its “orientation mod,” typically reserved for new admissions, and combined male age groups to reduce the number of living units and provide heightened supervision.
The moves, including a new schedule, are expected to help prevent the undue cancellation of recreation, parent visits and other privileges to children in their custody.
“[Previous] staffing levels did not allow for all units to run programming simultaneously while having sufficient staff available to respond to incidents and emergencies in the building,” JDC Superintendent Dana Swayze wrote in a seven-page letter to state inspectors. “Programming is only cancelled on an as-needed basis based on the JDC’s ability to safely accommodate [it].”
In a Dec. 4 email to the County Board, Mary Ellen Heng, acting director of Hennepin’s Department of Community Corrections and Rehabilitation, assured elected officials that they had begun taking corrective actions but asserted that some of the report’s findings lacked context.
Heng pointed to a violation where teens were allegedly confined without cause, even when multiple correctional officers were sitting in a nearby office. She explained that, during the dates of the inspection earlier this fall, several officers observed in the office were still in training — and therefore not permitted to interact with the youths alone.
She also contended that while programming has been modified by staffing limitations, “this additional room time is not reflective of punishment, disciplinary techniques, or restrictive procedures.”
Tired of surging gun violence across St. Paul, community leaders and police are asking residents to help create a safer city.
The call for community support came Thursday night when officials from the St. Paul NAACP, St. Paul Police Department, Black Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance and the African American Leadership Council gathered at Arlington Hills Lutheran Church to talk about ways to decrease gun violence in the city.
St. Paul has recorded 30 homicides so far this year according to a Star Tribune database, two fewer than last year. But four of this year’s homicides happened in the same week, frustrating law enforcement and alarming residents.
St. Paul NAACP President Richard Pittman Sr. said that solutions to gun violence are “right here, in the room.” But without the community’s help, Pittman said their efforts could fall short.
“Over the last several weeks and months, we have experienced an uptick in violent crimes in our communities. [That’s] turned on a light bulb that it’s time [to] not have the police feeling like all the pressure is on them,” Pittman said. “Nobody wants to the responsibility of having to shoot someone down in the street. Nobody wants the responsibility of hurting somebody’s family. We all want the best outcome.”
Attendee Carrie Johnson worried generational trauma is derailing youth’s behavior, adding that she’s seen boys in middle school punch girls in the face. Migdalia Baez said mothers living along Rice Street feel they have nowhere to turn for help in redirecting their children. Some worry that their child would be incarcerated if they ask for help.
Larry McPherson, a violence interrupter for 21 Days of Peace St. Paul, said some issues stem from youth with no guidance. McPherson and others patrol hot spots for crime across the city, including near the Midway neighborhood’s Kimball Court apartments where fentanyl drove a spike in robberies and drug violations.
“We’ve got a lot of mental health [struggles]. We’ve got a lot of doggone drug addiction that’s going on in our neighborhoods. We all got the best interests at hand for all people in our community, but we’re just not working fast enough,” McPherson said. “Until we get feet on the ground, people coming out of their own community and standing up for this real cause to take back the community, we’re going to have the same outcome.”
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