12News anchor Rachel Cole came to me and said she got a tip that one of the suspects in the Anthem armed robbery case from 2022 could also be a victim of trafficking. Rachel covered the robbery when it happened and the tipster saw that Rachel went to ASU, where Helen was supposed to go to college. She reached out by chance. She thought 12News might care to look into the case further.
At that point, it was mid-August 2023 and I was already overwhelmed with an avalanche of tips and records from our prison heat investigation. Plus, Helen’s situation was complicated.
On so many days our jobs as journalists are to figure out what’s happening, digest it and put it together and present it in a way that people can understand. How could I break this story down simply? Part of me wondered if her claims of trafficking and abuse were an attempt to get out of the criminal charges in the robbery case. It would have been easy to skip the tip and move on to another project. I’m glad we didn’t.
By the time the I-Team learned about Helen’s situation in August 2023, she had already taken a plea deal for the robbery case and she was in jail, waiting to be sentenced to prison in September. We had to play a lot of catch-up.
I-Team Executive Producer Katie Wilcox and I started where we always do on an investigative project: What’s documented? What records can we get? What can we confirm?
I went to court and pulled all the court documents I could on the robbery case. We put in records requests with law enforcement agencies in Arizona and California that had contact with Helen. We asked for an interview with the office that was prosecuting Helen in the robbery. We called Helen’s attorney, Helen’s family and people involved in her defense. We put in a camera request with the court so we could cover the sentencing. We talked to Helen from jail.
Katie and I had a lot of conversations on when we should start to report on our findings.
Before the sentencing? No. We didn’t have all the documents yet and we hadn’t been able to get all sides to the story on the record.
The day of the sentencing? No. There was a way bigger story here than this moment of judicial judgment.
We envisioned a story about domestic violence and how hard it can be to escape. A story about whether being a suspect in a violent crime overshadows allegations of abuse. A story about whether Helen’s allegations are true and how hard it can be to investigate sex crimes claims. A story that would take time to put together.
We were approved to go and record both Helen Simmons’ and Matthew Jones’ sentencing hearings on September 14th, 2023. But after that, I wound up moving on to some different projects while Helen’s case sat on my plate.
As a reporter, it’s incredibly unnerving to sit on a story, especially one that’s so heavy. I’d think about it all the time. A lot of times the circumstances of Helen’s case and what happened to the people in the jewelry store would keep me up at night.
But as the months went by, I slowly chipped away at records requests. I tracked people down who might be able to shed light on the case. I spent hours and hours going through the discovery and the case files. I went to meet Helen face-to-face in prison.
With the volume of everything we reported, we eventually landed on a six-part docuseries. I spent the majority of this summer writing and editing the project while working on a robust release plan.
Now that the full docuseries is out, I look forward to seeing how people respond to our work. And I’m so grateful to have had the time to work on a project like this and do it right.
That’s not to say it was easy. As we worked on this story over the past year, I encountered many challenges: from unfilled records requests to unresponsive police agencies to my own inner conflict on dissecting a story that is filled with so much trauma.
At the end of the day, I feel that this reporting was worth it. Even if what we uncovered about the criminal justice system led to more questions than answers. This is precisely why we should be asking these questions in the first place.
If you have a tip for the 12News I-Team, you can email connect@12news.com or call or text 602-444-1212.
Watch the full docuseries on 12News.com or on the 12News+ app.
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'He Made Me Do It' docuseries
Catch up on the latest episodes of the 'He Made Me Do It' I-Team docuseries here.