Mielke: relief tempered by sadness

PALMER -- The spectrums of joy and sorrow were displayed just a few feet apart Monday afternoon in the Palmer courthouse parking lot.

Phillip Mielke and wife Helen beamed with happiness as they talked to defense attorney Jim Gilmore minutes after a jury acquitted the Big Lake pastor on all four charges in the April 24 shooting deaths of Chris Palmer and Frank Jones.

"My heart is still beating so fast," said Helen, who sat in the back row of seats as the jury foreman delivered the verdicts.

Gilmore flashed what might have been his first real smile since the trial began weeks earlier. There was plenty of time for nervousness while the jury deliberated for two full days.

"Anytime a jury is gone that long it's high anxiety," the Anchorage attorney said. "I'm totally relieved."

Mielke, too, expressed thanks that the long ordeal was over.

"You never know what's in their minds," he said of jurors. "I'm happy."

However, the moment was bittersweet.

"It's still sad that this happened," Mielke said. "I know the other families feel bad."

Some of Palmer's relatives were linking arms in a group prayer as Mielke spoke. They stayed motionless, locked in the embrace, for what seemed like several minutes as cars streamed out of the parking lot around them.

When the private moment was over, Palmer's mother said that despite her pain she would be able to forgive Mielke in time. That is God's will, Shirley Novak said.

"I believe Satan had control of the Big Lake chapel that morning," she said. "I'm relieved it's over. I hope somewhere down the line something good comes of this."

Her husband, Jim, Palmer's stepfather since the boy was 6 months old, had harsher words. He said the least Mielke could have done was apologize to the families.

"We never even got a phone call," he said. "Mielke never got the gravity of what he did."

Both Novaks acknowledged their son was wrong to be burglarizing the church, even if it was for "a loaf of bread and can of beans," as Jim said.

"My son was in the wrong but Chris was not a hostile man," Jim Novak said.

Meanwhile, assistant district attorney Bob Collins said the state did everything it could to show Mielke had not acted in self-defense.

"The troopers did a good job and the investigation was reviewed at length by the grand jury," Collins said of the panel that brought manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide indictments against Mielke.

Collins praised jurors for attentiveness during court sessions and for giving thorough consideration to the evidence. The prosecutor, who has been involved in nearly 200 trials, said he hadn't formed an opinion as to what the verdict would be.

"I learned long ago not to try to guess what a jury is thinking. I will not fault this jury. It was a good jury."