Murder of Heidi Firkus

Heidi Firkus, 25, was fatally shot in the early morning hours of April 25, 2010, inside the home she shared with her husband, Nick Firkus, in the Hamline-Midway neighborhood of St. Paul, Minnesota. Heidi called 911 to report a break-in in progress; a loud noise, later determined to be a gunshot, was audible before the call cut off. About 65 seconds later, Nick called 911 from Heidi's phone and told the dispatcher that an intruder had shot them both. Responding officers found Heidi dead of a gunshot wound to her back. Nick had a gunshot wound to his leg and was hospitalized.

Nick told investigators that he had heard someone trying to force open the front door, grabbed a shotgun, and woke Heidi. He said the two went downstairs together, that he struggled with an unseen intruder near the entryway, and that the gun discharged twice during the fight, striking Heidi and then him, before the intruder fled without being seen by anyone else.

Investigators were skeptical from early on. No physical evidence of forced entry was found at the house, the entryway was undisturbed, and swabs of the shotgun and door turned up no unidentified DNA. A neighbor who was house-sitting next door reported hearing a muffled argument, then gunshots, then a voice pleading words to the effect of "you shot her, you shot me" — an account investigators found difficult to reconcile with a stranger's presence. A tip that initially pointed to a possible intruder matching a police sketch was ruled out after the person named was confirmed to have been incarcerated at the time of the shooting.

The investigation also uncovered a financial motive. The Firkuses were deeply in debt, had already lost their home to a sheriff's sale roughly ten months before the shooting, and faced a court-ordered lockout for eviction that had been delayed until the day after Heidi was killed. Investigators found no indication Heidi was aware of the extent of the couple's financial collapse.

The case remained unsolved for nearly a decade. In 2019, St. Paul Police Sgt. Nichole Sipes reopened the investigation and worked with the FBI, which built a three-dimensional model and animation of the home's entryway to argue the shooting pattern was inconsistent with an accidental struggle. Investigators also learned that Nick Firkus's second wife, whom he married in 2012 and later divorced, had experienced a similar pattern of concealed financial trouble during their own marriage; she provided police with a recorded conversation in which she confronted him about their finances.

On May 19, 2021, Nick Firkus was arrested at his home in Mounds View, Minnesota, and charged with second-degree murder in Heidi's death; a grand jury later indicted him on first-degree murder as well. At an 11-day trial, prosecutors with the Ramsey County Attorney's Office argued that Nick staged the shooting to avoid the shame of the couple's financial ruin, while his defense attorneys maintained he had no motive and pointed to tool marks on the door as evidence of a break-in. On February 10, 2023, a jury convicted Nick Firkus of both first- and second-degree murder. He was sentenced on April 13, 2023, to life in prison without the possibility of parole, and maintained his innocence at sentencing.