A wild feud between a rising GOP star and the mom of her late ex-husband erupted into public view on Wednesday when candidate Elizabeth Helgelien’s infuriated former mother-in-law accused the MAGA-centric Nevada politician of being a liar and an adulterer.
Daniel Halseth, Christine Halseth’s son, was stabbed to death in 2021 by the couple’s teenage daughter, Sierra Halseth, and her boyfriend, Aaron Guerrero. The pair are now serving life sentences.
In a scathing op-ed published Wednesday in The Nevada Globe, Halseth pleaded with Helgelien to drop out of the race for the state’s 3rd Congressional District “for my family’s sake, and out of respect for voters and the office she’s seeking.”
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“Elizabeth raised a murderer, was forced out of office after a series of sex scandals, was caught in a series of lies, posed for lewd photographs, and has already proven to be unelectable,” Halseth wrote. “…We cannot, in good conscience, allow Elizabeth Helgelien to represent honest, decent Americans in Congress.”
“I don’t care about the politics,” Halseth told The Daily Beast on Thursday. “I just want to stop her.”
Helgelien responded to a request for comment through political strategist Woodrow Johnson, who shared a tranche of materials and said in an email, “Here are the facts that the documents we’ve attached verify: 1. Daniel Halseth is a convicted batterer. 2. The custody Judge expressed the belief that Sierra was experiencing abuse from Daniel Halseth and ordered sole custody to Elizabeth. 3. Daniel Halseth defied a court order, illegally detaining his daughter. 4. Sierra submitted a letter to the court stating that she was being abused, mentally, physically, and sexually by Daniel Halseth.”
Daniel Halseth and Helgelien both attended Corban University, a private evangelical Christian school in Salem, Oregon. In Christine Halseth’s piece in the Globe, she described Daniel as “a loving father, an incredible musician, a talented photographer, and an avid outdoorsman.”
“He should’ve turned 48 in January,” Halseth wrote.
Helgelien threw her hat into the ring last March, and is now attempting to unseat Democratic Rep. Susie Lee, more than a decade after Helgelien left the Nevada State Senate under an adulterous cloud.
“It’s time for a Congress that carries the will of the real America, not ivory tower college professors and woke mega-corporations,” bellows Helgelien’s campaign website, which features a photograph of the candidate toting an AR-15-style rifle. “Elizabeth stands on the side of law and order against woke liberals who are comfortable watching our streets go to chaos as long as it makes them feel ‘diverse’ and ‘inclusive.’ Before any meaningful immigration reform can take place, we need to finish building the wall on our border.”
Shortly after midnight on Wednesday, Helgelien posted a picture on social media of herself with former President Trump, captioned, “A picture with President @realDonaldTrump (candidate Trump back then) before the polls closed at the Nevada caucus 2016. Proud supporter since day 1! I can’t wait to see you back in the White House President Trump! I’m going to help deliver NV-03 for you!”
Halseth sees her ex-daughter-in-law’s campaign as an insult to her and her entire family, she wrote.
“My son was married to Elizabeth for 11 years, and they had three children together,” Halseth’s op-ed explained. “Two decades ago, Elizabeth was seen as a rising star in local Republican politics. In 2010, she pulled off a major upset by knocking off an incumbent state senator to become the youngest Republican State Senator in Nevada history. Soon after, it all came crashing down.”
The two divorced after Daniel discovered his wife was having an affair with Tiger Helgelien, a onetime golf pro and realtor whose website Daniel, an IT expert, was helping to build, Halseth said Thursday, echoing existing reporting from Republican strategist Chuck Muth. While Elizabeth was conducting official business—and sleeping with Tiger—in the state capital of Carson City, Daniel was home taking care of their three young kids, Halseth wrote in her op-ed. There were rumors emerging of Elizabeth’s infidelity, which Daniel confirmed when he was given a packet of opposition research compiled by a rival pol, Halseth told The Daily Beast. (Tiger Helgelien did not respond to a request for comment.)
Daniel confronted Helgelien about the affair after a marriage counseling session, at their Las Vegas home—while Tiger Helgelien was at the house, authorities said. The ensuing argument led to Daniel’s arrest five days later on a charge of “open and gross lewdness,” which, according to a police report, involved Daniel yanking his wife’s pants down while demanding she “fuck” him, shouting, “What’s he got that I don’t have? Does he have a big cock? I’m your husband. I just want to know what I’m up against.” Daniel said he never touched Helgelien’s genitals; he later pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of coercion and battery, for which he received six months probation.
Halseth called Helgelien a “hypocrite,” since she was almost simultaneously calling for Sen. John Ensign, a Nevada Republican, to resign over his own extramarital affair. During this same period, Helgelien was also caught fudging her own educational background, “claiming she was pursuing an MBA when she didn’t even have a bachelor’s degree,” according to Halseth’s op-ed.
“When I met with the reporter who wrote the initial story, we spent some time talking about Corban University and the fact that I was taking a break and the fact that I planned to pursue an MBA,” Helgelien told the Las Vegas Sun in a 2011 email. “I suppose I didn’t clarify that the break was during the undergraduate work rather than during master’s work. In hindsight, I regret that I both missed the story and didn’t spend more time thinking about that conversation.”
But not only did Helgelien’s “apparently extensive infidelity tear her family apart… it also significantly affected her ability to do the job she was elected to do,” Halseth wrote in the Globe. She “regularly missed crucial committee meetings and bill hearings,” the op-ed goes on, pointing out that then-Nevada Rep. Marilyn Kirkpatrick, a Democrat, said during a Legislative Commission meeting that she and others on the panel had been having “a hard time reaching” Helgelien, the Las Vegas Sun reported at the time. Republican state Sen. Michael Roberson tried to smooth things over, saying Helgelien had “things going on in her life that have necessitated her missing a lot of meetings,” according to the Sun.
“After her regular absences during the legislature, failing the constituents she was elected to represent, and the public humiliation that came due to her cheating scandals, Elizabeth was forced to resign,” Halseth wrote on Wednesday.
Helgelien subsequently married Tiger—who majored in psychology at Corban U—and posed for Maxim magazine’s 2012 “Hot 100 List,” calling herself “somebody who wants to make a real difference and for somebody who wants to truly serve and do the right thing.” The couple moved to Alaska, taking Helgelien’s kids with them, and Daniel started fresh in Texas, according to Halseth. They returned to Las Vegas in 2018, and Helgelien tried to get back into politics, running once again for her old state senate seat. However, she finished third in the GOP primary, after which she and Tiger established their own real estate agency, called Simply Vegas.
“I wish this were the end of the story, but unfortunately, it’s just the tip of a tragic iceberg,” Halseth wrote in her op-ed.
In 2020, Daniel moved back to Las Vegas “at the request of Sierra, the 16-year-old daughter he shared with Elizabeth,” the op-ed explains.
The following year, Daniel, 45, was murdered by Sierra and her 18-year-old boyfriend, Aaron. The pair stabbed him more than 70 times, then tried to dismember and torch the body, the Clark County Office of the Coroner/Medical Examiner determined.
“Following the stabbings, they dismembered and burned my son’s body, then bragged and laughed about the brutal killings on social media,” Halseth wrote.
On Thursday, she told The Daily Beast, “I still can’t read all the condolence cards. I have hundreds of cards. But not a word from [Helgelien].”
The two were arrested in Utah, allegedly en route to California, and decided to kill Daniel over his opposition to the relationship, according to court records. But, on the day she was sentenced to life in prison, Sierra would float a brand-new motive for the murder. She said she had been abused by Daniel, a claim she had reportedly never mentioned previously, telling the judge that her “biological father has traumatized me.”
In a video of an October 2020 court proceeding Woodrow Johnston shared with The Daily Beast, the judge said he got the sense that “something else is going on with Sierra.”
“I don’t know yet what that is,” he said, “whether that’s parental alienation, whether that’s human trafficking, whether that’s manipulation. And I don’t know who at this point is to blame for that.”
“We believe Sierra,” Johnston said in an email on Friday morning.
Defense attorney Michael Sanft later told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that he had not corroborated Sierra’s claims. Helgelien told the paper that she believed her daughter, but that the “system had failed” her. Christine Halseth, for her part, told the Review-Journal at the time that the claim was “nothing but a lie,” which she emphasized again in her Wednesday op-ed.
“Sierra never mentioned any abuse by her father, and all evidence indicated that Daniel was a caring and loving father,” Halseth wrote, quickly turning her ire back squarely on Helgelien. “…There was no mention of my son, our family, or any remorse whatsoever after her daughter’s unspeakable actions. There was also no mention that Elizabeth had primary custody of the child for years and clearly failed in her role as a mother. In other words, Elizabeth raised a murderer and now wants to be a member of Congress.”
Halseth told The Daily Beast that she has not spoken to Sierra since Daniel’s death. She said her other two grandchildren have also iced her out, and that she believes Helgelien is the one keeping them from having any contact with her.
Sanft and Guerrero’s defense attorney, Gabriel Grasso, did not respond on Thursday to requests for comment.
Daniel, Halseth said, “just wanted the kids to be okay, and she used them like a pawn. It really is so sad. None of this should have happened. None of it.”
“I have nothing to gain except to stop her,” Halseth said Thursday. “Maybe someday, the kids will know the truth. She controlled the narrative. She’s just a power-hungry narcissist… I don’t want her in my life. But I had a choice: do I say something, or do I just let it go again? And I decided to say something.”
