From the Seattle Times:
Before Nicholas Helhowski became a well-liked young advocate for homeless youth in Seattle — before he was fatally beaten at a North Seattle bus stop in the spring of 2002 — he was a tough-guy street punk, quick with his fists and fast with his mouth.
Now, two young men, also street toughs, are suspected of killing Helhowski.
Wednesday night, Seattle homicide detectives arrested a 21-year-old transient and have forwarded charges to prosecutors against a 20-year-old man already serving time in state prison.
Prosecutors expect to file first-degree manslaughter charges against them next week.
"Nick was killed by the exact kinds of kids he had been hanging out with — and the same kinds of kids he was trying to help," Deputy King County Prosecutor Steve Fogg said.
Seattle District Court Judge Eileen Kato set bail for the 21-year-old suspect at $750,000 yesterday, saying she was concerned for the safety of the public if he were to be released from the King County Jail.
The news of the arrests came as welcome news, from the Capitol Hill advocacy group Helhowski helped run all the way to Mayor Greg Nickels' office.
Helhowski had changed from his Mohawk-wearing, street-kid persona, "Rooster," to an AmeriCorps volunteer and member of a city youth advisory committee. His funeral on Capitol Hill last year drew junkies, uniformed cops and Nickels to stand side by side in the street.
"I'm thrilled for closure," said Elaine Simons, director of Peace For The Streets By Kids From The Streets, the drop-in center on East Olive Way where Helhowski worked.
"But I look at it from all sides, that Nick Helhowski's family has been hurt so greatly, but now these two young men's families are going to be hurting."
Prosecutors say this time it wasn't DNA evidence or clever crime-lab science that solved the slaying. It was dogged, old-fashioned detective work.
Two Seattle detectives, Nat Gasperetti and Steve Kilburg, had been pursuing the case even as the trail seemed cold.
"Nat Gasperetti worked his tail off on this case," Fogg said yesterday. "This was a very difficult case to solve."
Nickels echoed Fogg's sentiment.
"The Seattle Police Department has, once again, done an outstanding job," Nickels said in a statement yesterday. "Perhaps the relentless work done by detectives Gasperetti and Kilburg will bring some closure to Nicholas' family.
"Nicholas was a wonderful man who made every moment of his short life count. He was a hero to many and a great example for us all."
Helhowski, 20, who had moved to Seattle from his small hometown of Hebron, Ind., only a year or so before, was on his way home to a transitional halfway house for homeless youth when he was attacked at the corner of North 85th Street and Wallingford Avenue North.
All police knew was that Helhowski had argued on the bus with two young men who got on the bus at Seattle Center with two or three teenage girls. They all got off at the stop, outside Bishop Blanchet High School, and the two men knocked Helhowski to the pavement. Helhowski's head hit the concrete and he died in the hospital three days later.
Detectives had been combing street-youth circles looking for leads, figuring someone would know who the two young attackers were.
Early last month, they found the girlfriend of the 21-year-old suspect, who told the investigators she watched the whole thing, authorities say.
Apparently, the 21-year-old man made a snide remark to Helhowski about some dried blood on Helhowski's shirt. Helhowski had cut himself while skateboarding several days before.
Helhowski told the man to mind his own business, and the pair spent the bus ride trading insults, authorities said.
After they all got off the bus, the two men repeatedly punched Helhowski, and he fell.
"Rooster never threw a punch," said Fogg.
Detectives learned that the suspects had lengthy criminal records and were known as street people.
Only a month after Helhowski's death, the 20-year-old man raped a young homeless woman in the middle of a downtown sidewalk, near the King County Jail.
Two police officers saw the crime and pulled the man off the woman. The police reported that the young man appeared stoned, and admitted using crack and heroin earlier.
He was convicted of second-degree rape and is serving an eight-year prison term at the state prison at Walla Walla, court records show.
He has a 10th-grade education and has prior convictions for theft, stolen-property trafficking and domestic assault, according to court records.
Detectives interviewed him in prison Tuesday.
The 21-year-old suspect, also a high-school dropout, has an even longer record.
Two months before Helhowski's death, the suspect was convicted of stealing a car from Capitol Hill, which he used to help a friend break into a gas station in Magnolia.
Last December, he led State Patrol troopers on a high-speed chase down Interstate 5 in a stolen van, which he crashed in Tacoma. He was jailed for three months.
He also has convictions including repeated car thefts, stalking, unlawful bus conduct, gun theft and marijuana possession.
Wednesday night, a team of police staked out an apartment in Tacoma where the 21-year-old had been staying. They arrested him as he tried to jump off a balcony in an effort to escape.
Prosecutors say they now have plenty of eyewitnesses and other evidence that assures them the two men are the killers.
"This is not going to be a whodunit," Fogg said.
But outside the 21-year-old suspect's bail hearing yesterday, one of several friends attending the proceedings implied that Helhowski was just as responsible for the altercation that killed him.
"It was a fight," said the young man, who didn't give his name. The suspect "had no idea that dude passed away," the friend said.
Given the men's criminal records, they would be facing roughly nine to 13 years in prison if convicted.
Before last fall, prosecutors would likely be filing second-degree murder charges against the men under the felony-murder rule.
A Supreme Court case last year invalidated the felony-murder law as it was then written. So manslaughter charges are the toughest that can be filed, because authorities can't prove the two men intended for Helhowski to die.
The state Legislature earlier this year restored the felony-murder law, but it doesn't apply to crimes that happened before it was restored.
Nevertheless, Simons, the homeless-center director, says she wonders what Helhowski himself would think about the case.
"He probably would have said, 'Let's put out a hand to help them,' " she said.
"Where he was in his life, in his transition, he still wanted to be that cocky boy that he was. … But I think he would have wanted to sit down and talk to these boys. Yes, they did something horrible, and yes, we lost a friend and colleague, but these boys' lives are going to be impacted, too."
Helhowski's father, Jim, at home in Hebron, Ind., said there were times he doubted police were doing everything they could to catch the killers, so he was thankful to detectives for sticking with it.
"I'm actually quite glad they caught the guys, though it's not going to bring my son back," he said.
But he agreed that it would be hard to predict what his son's reaction might be.
"I believe he would want justice done," Jim Helhowski said. "But I don't believe, with the direction he was headed, that he would be crying out for blood."