Gold E. Locks acquitted in Helena 3rd grade class’s mock trial on classic fable

The evidence: a half-eaten bowl of porridge, a broken children’s chair and golden hairs found on a pillow.

The witnesses: a neighborly squirrel, a curmudgeonly ladybug and an expert carpenter.

The defendant: one third-grade girl who allegedly intruded on a family of bears, ate their food, broke their furniture and napped in their youngest member’s bed.

In a mock trial, put on by a Jefferson Elementary third grade class and guided by the Capital High Mock Trial team, Gold E. Locks, 9, was found not guilty of breaking and entering when one Babe E. Bear’s chair was discovered to have already been broken before Locks allegedly sat in it.

According to opening statements, Locks was charged in fall 2025 when she was allegedly found sleeping in Babe E. Bear's bedroom after the Bear family went on a walk. Authorities discovered a broken chair and a near-empty bowl in the Bears' Canyon Ferry cottage.

Witnesses Mama and Papa Bear testified that they'd gone on the walk after Babe E. Bear's porridge was too hot to eat, and that they had instructed Babe E. Bear to close the door behind them.

Throughout the trial, the third graders had to face belligerent witnesses, speculation on if Mama Bear’s porridge really was the tastiest in the world, and even courtroom plot twists, as Gold E. Locks’ attorney John Pierce began to allege witness Sam E. Squirrel may have feasted on porridge after Locks fell asleep.

“Objection: revelance!” the Bears’ attorney, Luken Lipetzky, shouted, aiming for "relevance" but not quite landing it.

“I plead the fifth,” witness Squirrel said, played by McKenna Clouse.

But the smoking-gun evidence came from Charlie Chairmaker, a Townsend carpenter of more than 50 years, as his actor Harrison Nixon told it. He made the very chair Locks was accused of breaking.

At this point, the defense had poked holes in the Bears’ timeline. Despite his mother’s requests, Babe E. Bear said he may have left the cottage door open during that fateful morning walk.

A classmate, Bear Lee Withit, testified that he and Babe E. had broken the back leg of Babe E.’s chair three days prior to Locks’ alleged breaking and entering.

Gold E. and Babe E. were both students in Sammi Conrad’s class at Jefferson Elementary School, and Gold E. had knocked multiple times before entering the cottage. Though she had eaten the Bears’ porridge, sat in their chairs and slept in their beds, she said she'd only done so while waiting for them to return.

Surely if the door was open and the porridge was still hot, the Bears couldn’t have been far away, Gold E. had thought.

After a brief spat between Lipetzky and Pierce over Chairmaker’s qualifications as an expert, Chairmaker was asked if he thought Locks could break Babe E. Bear’s chair just by sitting in it.

“Absolutely not!” Chairmaker said. “It’s a very sturdy chair that could hold two little girls, fully sized.”

The jury found Gold E. Locks not guilty, cueing whoops and applause from an audience of parents filling the courtroom pews.

The Tuesday field trip was a joint effort to boost Conrad's classroom reading minutes and earn the Capital High Mock Trial team some community service hours, Conrad said. She worked with attorney Sara Berg, the mock trial team's coach, to coordinate the field trip in Lewis and Clark County District Court Judge Christopher Abbott's courtroom.

A big part of mock trials is learning how the justice system works, the mock trial team's President Jaidyn McClain said.

The team was created just last year after McClain, co-vice president Codi Brown and four of their classmates completed a semester-long class on law and justice.

Sure, the class's mandatory mock trial was a lot of fun, but it also solidified how the mechanics of law work and arguments are made, Brown said. The students reached out to Berg and enrolled in local competitions.

"Most adults don't know how trials work beyond basic vocabulary," McClain said. "Like, what actually is an objection?"

Working with third graders is a new endeavor, but it's a great way to start that curiosity early, the high school seniors said. After three days of on-and-off coaching, the mock trial team said they were surprised with just how much the elementary students seemed to absorb.

Their favorite example? A moment of adlib during the trial when Locks' attorney questioned a Bear's witness testimony.

“I have the eyes of an eagle, young man,” a student playing Gram E. Bear said off-script, scowling at Locks’ attorney.

That showed an impressive understanding of cross-examination for a third grader, Brown said. The student knew this attorney didn’t have her “family’s” best interests in mind and acted accordingly.

The whole thing was interesting, Gold E.'s actress Leah Helvik said. She said she didn't know much about how trials worked before. She held a particular fascination with the judicial robe and gavel.

"I want to be a judge one day," Helvik said. "It's cool you get to decide on stuff."