While I was researching an article on Arthur Fiedler (link below), I came across an item of an incident I had completely forgotten about that happened at the prestigious Metropolitan Opera on July 23, 1980.
Helen Hagnes Mintiks
Photo: The New York Times
Helen Hagnes Muntiks, was a violinist in an orchestra performing with the Berlin Ballet at the Metropolitan Opera House. The ballet being performed was The Idiot with music composed in 1979 by Dimitri Shostakovich. The ballet is based on the Fyodor Dostoevsky novel. The last scene is of a woman being stabbed to death.
After the first act, Hagnes left her seat and went into the back corridors of Lincoln Center. She never told anyone where she was going. When the second act began other musicians noted her empty chair and assumed she had gotten sick.
Helen Hagnes Mintiks, a Canadian-born violinist, was
murdered by stagehand, Craig S. Crimmins, during a performance of the Berlin Ballet. I recall the tabloid headlines that proclaimed, "Phantom of the Opera" Murder!
As
music is a cherished, one could almost say, sacred subject for me, the
story had quite a shocking effect on me at the time.
Helen Hagnes Muntiks, was a violinist in an orchestra performing with the Berlin Ballet at the Metropolitan Opera House. The ballet being performed was The Idiot with music composed in 1979 by Dimitri Shostakovich. The ballet is based on the Fyodor Dostoevsky novel. The last scene is of a woman being stabbed to death.
After the first act, Hagnes left her seat and went into the back corridors of Lincoln Center. She never told anyone where she was going. When the second act began other musicians noted her empty chair and assumed she had gotten sick.
The "phantom" in the internationally publicized case turned out to be Craig S. Crimmins, 21, a Met stagehand. In 1981, a jury convicted him of murder, finding that after trying to rape Ms. Mintiks, 31, in a stairwell, he forced her to the roof and kicked her into the shaft.
Craig S. Crimmins
Photo: The New York Times
The
Hagnes murder created a tabloid stir. Weeks passed and the
investigation stalled. Old boyfriends were checked out. All of her
fellow employees seemed to have good alibis. Then the detectives caught a
break. A Bronx stagehand, Craig Crimmins, 21, broke under questioning. He was arrested for Hagnes’ murder.
Crimmins was an Irish Catholic kid from the Mosholu Pkwy area in the north section of the Bronx. His babyish looks and immature demeanor were a surprise to a city expecting some kind of fiend. Crimmins went for the altar boy look during his trial.
The story came out that on July 23 Crimmins got high at work. Booze and pot left him in a staggering state as he wandered around the back corridors of Lincoln Center. There he ran into Hagnes and propositioned her. When she blew him off he beat her, tied her up and threw her down the air shaft, where she died. Crimmins was sentenced to 20-years-to-life, making him eligible for parole in 2001 and the "Phantom of the Opera" story died.
Crimmins was an Irish Catholic kid from the Mosholu Pkwy area in the north section of the Bronx. His babyish looks and immature demeanor were a surprise to a city expecting some kind of fiend. Crimmins went for the altar boy look during his trial.
The story came out that on July 23 Crimmins got high at work. Booze and pot left him in a staggering state as he wandered around the back corridors of Lincoln Center. There he ran into Hagnes and propositioned her. When she blew him off he beat her, tied her up and threw her down the air shaft, where she died. Crimmins was sentenced to 20-years-to-life, making him eligible for parole in 2001 and the "Phantom of the Opera" story died.
Metropolitan Opera House air shaft
Photo by Don Hogan Charles/The New York Times
The description by Assistant District Attorney Roger S. Hayes during his
opening statement to the jury in State Supreme Court provided the first
official details of what Crimmins is said to have confessed to the
police prior to his formal booking on the morning of Aug. 30. All along,
the defense lawyers have contended that detectives used ''psychological
threats'' to force their client to make the incriminating statements.
The jurors rejected the defense argument that Manhattan detectives had pressured Crimmins into falsely admitting he was guilty of the crime. He was sentenced to 20 years to life.
During the trial, Ida Libby Dengrove, a New York courtroom artist, made sketches of the people involved in the trial. Her pictorial reportage won two Emmy awards, one for the "Murder at the Met" trial (1980-81) of Craig S. Crimmins, the stagehand convicted of slaying Helen Hagnes Mintiks.
Crimmins was denied parole twice and is in the Auburn Correctional Facility in Auburn, New York, with his next parole hearing scheduled for November.
"I'm sincerely sorry for what I've done, and I wish I could take it back," he said at his last hearing, in 2002. He said nothing about his confession having been coerced, according too transcript of the hearing. "I was drank," he said. "She slapped me in the face and kneed me is the groin, and I don't know, something snapped in my brain." He maintained that he had "tried to leave her" on the roof, but "she kept jumping up and down" until he gave her "one kick" and she "just slipped, rolled right in" in the shaft. "If you feel that I ain't been in prison long enough and hit me, aube is," Crimmins said.
So it was. Noting also that he used heroin in 2001, the parole commissioners said, "Releasing you to the community would make a mockery of the criminal justice system."
According to the Hayes reconstruction of the
killing, on the evening of July 23, Hagnes left the orchestra pit
around 9:30 P.M. and was to be free until 10:19 P.M. ''She left telling a
friend that she was going to try to speak to Mr. Valery Panov about arranging a
meeting with her husband,'' he said. Panov, the Russian emigre choreographer and
dancer, was the guest star of the show. Hagnes's husband, Janis
Mintiks, is a sculptor who later sued the Met (link below). When Hagnes entered a backstage elevator, No. 12, Hayes said, ''the defendant also got on it with her, as did a third
person, Laura Cutler.''
Cutler is an American dancer in the company of the Berlin troupe.
Hayes said that the violinist asked Cutler, ''Where is Mr.
Panov's dressing room?'' and that Crimmins answered, ''on three.''
At first the elevator went down to C-level, the last of 10 floors in the
opera house, the prosecutor said, and there Cutler left Crimmins and Hagnes in the elevator. The trial got bizarre as Cutler was hypnotized to aid her memory (link below).
The jurors rejected the defense argument that Manhattan detectives had pressured Crimmins into falsely admitting he was guilty of the crime. He was sentenced to 20 years to life.
During the trial, Ida Libby Dengrove, a New York courtroom artist, made sketches of the people involved in the trial. Her pictorial reportage won two Emmy awards, one for the "Murder at the Met" trial (1980-81) of Craig S. Crimmins, the stagehand convicted of slaying Helen Hagnes Mintiks.
Helen Hagnes Mintiks
Trial Courtroom sketch by Ida Libby Dengrove
Crimmins was denied parole twice and is in the Auburn Correctional Facility in Auburn, New York, with his next parole hearing scheduled for November.
"I'm sincerely sorry for what I've done, and I wish I could take it back," he said at his last hearing, in 2002. He said nothing about his confession having been coerced, according too transcript of the hearing. "I was drank," he said. "She slapped me in the face and kneed me is the groin, and I don't know, something snapped in my brain." He maintained that he had "tried to leave her" on the roof, but "she kept jumping up and down" until he gave her "one kick" and she "just slipped, rolled right in" in the shaft. "If you feel that I ain't been in prison long enough and hit me, aube is," Crimmins said.
So it was. Noting also that he used heroin in 2001, the parole commissioners said, "Releasing you to the community would make a mockery of the criminal justice system."
Hagnes earned a scholarship to North Carolina School of the Arts and graduated in 1973. She is now listed on the university’s website as one of their missing alumni. After graduating there, Hagnes went on to Europe and studied under master violinists in Switzerland and Italy. She moved back to America and married. She and her sculptor husband settled in New York City. Here her dream of playing classical music professionally came true: she earned a violin seat in the Metropolitan Opera orchestra pit.
There was a book written about the event by David Black. Entitled, Murder at the Met,
it is based on the exclusive accounts of Detectives Mike Struk and
Jerry Giorgio of how they solved the "Phantom of the Opera" Case. It was
Published in 1984 by Dial Press in Garden City, New York.
Murder at the Met, by David Black
Viewfinder links:
Music & Mayhem
Arthur Fiedler
Net links:
The Washington Post ~ Death Of a Violinist
The Washington Post ~ The Berlin Ballet's Enigmatic Idiot
NY Times ~ Confession details of Opera Murder trial
NY Times ~ Testimony of a Hypnotized Dancer
NY Times ~ Ida Libby Dengrove obit
Murderpedia ~ "The Phantom of the Opera"
UPI ~ Craig Crimmins: Stagehand convicted of murder
Ida Libby Dengrove ~ Courtroom Sketches: Murder at the Met
Mintiks v. Metro. Opera
The Metropolitan Opera ~ Death, Murder & Tear Gas
YouTube link:
The Murder of Helen Mintiks
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