Mother Of Baby Killed By Fiance Speaks

By Mike Perleberg

Michelle Helfrich with her late son, Nolan. The child died on his first birthday of injuries inflicted by Helfrich's fiancé, Brian Woeste.

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Brian Woeste was sentenced to 50 years in prison on Friday, December 13 for the death of Nolan Helfrich.

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(Rising Sun, Ind.) - The one-time fiancée of a man convicted of causing her one-year-old son’s death is speaking out about the tragic case.

“Nolan was my little, innocent baby boy. He never deserved any of this,” Michelle Helfrich tells Eagle 99.3.

Brian Woeste was ordered to serve 50 years in prison during his sentencing in Ohio Circuit Court on Friday, December 13. The 27-year-old had pleaded guilty to a charge of Neglect of a Dependant Resulting in Death (Class A felony) as prosecutors agreed to drop a Murder charge.

Woeste was charged in June 2012 after Indiana State Police investigators were told by doctors and pathologists that baby Nolan Helfrich’s injuries led to his death the prior January 18. The date should have been celebrated as Nolan’s first birthday.

At the time of Nolan’s death, Michelle Helfrich was engaged to be married to Brian Woeste. She called him a monster and master manipulator.

“My hurt is beyond explainable, the betrayal and dishonesty is horrible, but the feeling of losing your sweet innocent baby to a murderer is unexplainable,” Helfrich said.

“Throughout the entire time I knew him he played the innocent act and that he cared for Nolan. The autopsy showed that this was not the truth. Brian had broken some of his ribs previous to his death.”

For eight of the 12 months he was alive, Nolan Helfrich was in foster care. He had been returned to his mother’s care in November 2011. Two months later the child would be dead.

Helfrich said her son had been taken from her and placed with a foster family because of prior injuries. A doctor had speculated that Nolan had brittle bone disease, she claims. Helfrich said that was never the case.

“Nolan was a strong healthy boy. Child Services were involved, but Nolan was placed back in the home. This was because I was doing anything and everything possible to get my baby back because I had thought he had genetic issues,” Helfrich said.

Helfrich said that child services and others were in the couple’s Rising Sun apartment daily and weekly to monitor Nolan’s well-being. She claims that a social worker came to the apartment the morning that Nolan was taken to the hospital, but failed to check on the baby.

The mother admits that even she was oblivious to the danger her son was in.

“Living everyday going over every memory and every day trying to figure out how I did not see it is an excruciating internal pain.  The only thing that settles my mind is the fact that there were so many people who specialize in child abuse who were involved in our case that should have known but did not believe that Nolan’s case was an abuse case,” she said.

The 50-year sentence for Woeste is a measure of justice, Helfrich believes, but not enough. She’ll never forgive him.

“The only justice I see fit is Brian being treated the way he treated Nolan.  Now that he is going to prison it is a relief that he will be far away, but nothing will ever amount to what he did to Nolan.”

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