July 23rd, 1980. The Metropolitan Opera House in New York. The Berlin Ballet's 11-day residency at the Met was a four Parter; Stravinsky’s The Firebird, Piazzolla’s Five Tangos, Ludwig Minkus’s Don Quixote, and Miss Julie by Ture Rangström.
In the orchestra that night sat a 30-year-old violinist, Helen Hagnes Mintiks. She came from a very humble background and was the child of chicken farmers. A Juilliard graduate, Mintiks was an award-winning performer, who had made her professional solo debut with the Seattle Symphony while still a teenager. She was very accomplished and played the violin beautifully.
After playing Stravinsky’s score, the orchestra, including Helen, left the stage as Five Tangos used pre-recorded music, so the musicians used the 45-minute-long ballet to take a break. However, when the orchestra was summoned back at 9.30pm to perform Don Quixote, there was an empty chair in the violin section, belonging to Mintiks. She never returned. What is more puzzling is that she left her 20,000-dollar violin. She was going to come back. What happened to Helen? Was she still in the building? Where else could she have gone?
The last ballet was played without Helen. As they say, the show must go on. Some of the other orchestra members stayed behind to look for her and even called her house thinking she had gone home, there was no answer. The stage manager at that point called the police to report Helen missing. Music was Helen's life, and she would have never risked losing everything she had worked for to just walk out. The police then checked her locker and found that her street clothes were still there. Meaning that she had never changed out of her performance clothes. They knew she had to be in the building. Looking for her was to be a feat. The police were warned to not go anywhere alone because there were so many doors you could go in, some of them would lock you in. The place was like a maze.
Meanwhile Helen's husband was waiting for her by the stage door. Janis, her husband, called home when she never appeared and got a busy signal. Thinking she was on the phone at home, he left. Sadly, that call was police checking to see if she had gone home.
As they searched into the morning, one of the engineers found a pair of womans shoes on the roof. Helen's shoes. Officers went to the roof to start looking because the roof had several levels and would take time to walk all of it. An officer looked down a narrow air shaft and there she was. Bloody, Broken, and Nude. She was down about three floors from the roof laying face up. She was bound, gagged, and blindfolded. Obviously, a homicide victim. The medical examiner arrived and did an extensive examination of the body. Sexual assault was presumed because she was nude and her clothes had been cut off. Her purse and personal belongings were right beside her and were taken for evidence.
As crime scene investigators were looking around, they noticed that a full palm print was on a pillar just above where the body had been found. That was dusted and taken in as well. Detectives went and spoke with Janis, Helen's husband, and it was blatantly obvious that he had nothing to do with this crime. They were very much in love. They were inseparable. Janis was cleared. At this point, detectives had to sit down and come up with a suspect list. There were 4004 audience members, many stagehands, actors, and the fact that anyone could have walked in through the stage door. It was not going to be a menial task to try and interview everyone that was in the building that night. So, they decided to set up a temporary base right in the Met. The detectives were backstage while the actors were getting ready the next night showing them Helen's picture. One of the dancer's realized that she had seen Helen the night before. They had gotten on the same elevator together.
She stated during the recorded music ballet, she was waiting for the elevator by the stage and while she was waiting, Helen and a man approached and also waited for the elevator. She stated that Helen was interested in trying to Mr. Panov, a Russian ballet actor. She had asked what floor she would have to get off on and the man on the elevator stated she needed the 4th floor. The elevator went to the basement first where the witness got off. Helen and the mysterious man continued on. The police knew that whoever did this had to be familiar with the Opera house. It came to light that Helen wanted to speak with Mr. Panov to assist her husband with a job. Panov insisted he never saw her. Police were weary of him because he was a defective from Russia that had been followed by the KGB. He ended up just being shady in his past, he never killed Helen.
When the autopsy came in there was no evidence of a sexual assault. However, it did show that Helen was still breathing when she was thrown down the shaft. She was alive when she hit. She had died between 9:30 pm and 11 pm. I cannot even imagine the pain and fear she must have felt. Now police are starting to look into the man in the elevator. He had told Helen that Mr. Panov's dressing room was on the 4th floor. That was incorrect because all of the stars of the ballet had dressing rooms on the stage level. Was he mistaken or did he tell her the 4th floor with ill intentions?
Laura, the ballet dancer that saw Helen and the mysterious man, went to the station and was able to give a composite sketch of the man in the elevator. It was determined that it had to be a stagehand because of the way he was dressed, what he was wearing, and the knot that was bound on Helen's body. The police proceeded to interview and get palm prints on all of the stagehands that worked that night. Many came and went without fitting the description. What police came to learn; stagehands were in a league of their own. Unionized, they covered for one another. No one wanted to talk. However, one thing they refuse to permit of one another is a stagehand that misses their cues. So that became the new lead that police start to look for and use as leverage to get the stagehands to talk.
We are now 3 weeks into the death of the Helen and no answers. Everyone was still on edge with a killer lose. The police were slowly dwindling down their suspect list. One stagehand, Craig Crimmons, was acting so strange they thought he was going to have a panic attack. Then his palm print came back, it was a match. He resembled the sketch AND he missed his cues that night as well. A co-worker who was with Craig the day of the murder stated that he was in the electrician's lounge with him at the time of the murder. Police called his bluff and the cow
orker admitted that Craig asked him to give that story.
Craig then asked to speak with the detective alone and admitted that he was the person on the elevator with Helen but did not kill her. At 8 am on 8/17, Craig walked out of the station a free man. They didn't have enough to hold him, but they refused to stop investigating because they knew he was the murderer. The newspaper informed the police that at 7 pm that night they were releasing a special edition stating that Crimmons was the prime suspect and they tried to stop it, however, it had already gone to press. They knew they had to nab him before he lawyered up or fled.
The investigator talked to Craig and got him to come to the station for further questioning before the press leaked the information. They knew they needed to get a confession and that is what they got! He confessed that he had been drinking beers and he got on the elevator. He made a pass at Helen on the elevator, and she slapped him. He took out his hammer and threatened her. She tried to get out of a door, but he caught her and tried to rape her. He decided that he was going to gag her and leave her bound on the roof. As he walked away, he stated he could here Helen trying to get lose and moving. He decided to pick her up and drop her down the shaft.
He was sentenced to 20 years to life and has been denied parole 11 times. Her husband died a few years ago and never got over the death of Helen. He grieved from that day until the day he died.
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