The Real Life Phantom of The Opera Murder
She was murdered with hundreds of people present.
How can someone be murdered with so many people in one of the most famous and well-known buildings in New York City? That is exactly what happened to Helen Mintiks, a professional and gifted violinist.
On the summer evening of July 23rd, 1980 in New York City, crowds of people have gathered in the Metropolitan Opera House, affectionately named the Met by locals. The famed Berlin Ballet were performing at the Met, Helen Mintiks, a native of Aldergrove, British Columbia, Canada was in the orchestra as a violinist. Helen was the youngest of three sisters; her close family unit whose parents originally came to Canada from Finland.
“When Helen was 2, she’d hear songs on the radio and then play them on the parlor piano,” her sister, Belcie Hill, told the Associated Press. “Mum and Dad put a great deal of time and effort and money they didn’t have into Helen’s music.”
She had talent that much was clear. Her parents nurtured this developing love of music by taking her to violin lessons every week from the age of 2 to 19 years old; they would drive her 76 mile round-trip to support their daughter. All this hard work paid off, when Helen was a teenager, she was the concertmaster of the Vancouver Junior Philharmonic and a soloist with the Seattle Symphony. Helen was academically smart as well, she left Canada and attended the Julliard School in New York City where she completed her Bachelors and Masters degrees.
During a summer job as a camp counselor outside of Montreal, she met the man that would become her husband, Janis Mintiks, a sculptor. An artistic soul like herself, they married in 1976, by all accounts, they were happily married. Before getting married, Helen studied in Italy and later scored a spot at the Institute of Advanced Musical Training in Montreux, Switzerland. However, New York was always home to her so she returned once she convinced the famous violinist Nathan Milstein to accept her as his student. Helen went on to win international awards and carved out a home in the West Side of the city, she was close to all the areas where she can be booked for performances as a freelance violinist.
As part of the orchestra, it’s vital that each member makes sure to pay attention to their cues. Can someone go missing during a mid-performance intermission with so many people in the same building?
During the performance, record music was played, giving the freelance musicians a break. Helen left her violin in her seat and took her break but when everyone was expected back in their seats at 9:30pm, Helen, the 30 year old violinist was no where in sight. During the rest of the ballet performance, her seat was filled by her lone violin. After the performance, worried friends and fellow musicians searched for Helen but could not find her anywhere. The Met is a large building and each floor is like a maze, at the time, some sections of the Met was being renovated. It was obvious to everyone that Helen did not leave the building, her violin worth thousands of dollars was still in her seat. Some friends, worried by her sudden uncharacteristic disappearance, called the police to report the incident.
Judith Olsen, a friend of Helen’s, they both met while studying at the Julliard School; had this to say about her friend “she was friendly, she talked to everyone, she was constantly making cheesecakes for her friends … a world class giggler. … I also saw the serious side. She was hooked on music and that was going to be her life.”
The night of her disappearance, Janis Mintiks was waiting for his wife at the Met to finish her performance so they can walk together back to her apartment, but he would never see his wife alive again. Thinking she had gone home already or they missed each other, Janis went home to look for her there but when he couldn’t find her, his worry sunk in.
Back at the Met, the police were on the scene. Searching for Helen within the maze of the Met was going to be difficult but a quick search of her locker proved that Helen had never left the building, her regular outfit was still in the locker, this meant that Helen was still wearing the mandatory outfit that she wore during her performance. She would never have left the building without her clothes or her violin. Authorities roamed each floor of the building, carefully searching every space for the missing musician.
“Investigators were warned by some of the stagehands: ‘Do not go anywhere by yourself because you can go somewhere, make a wrong turn, close a door, get lost, and realize you’re locked in,” Judith Olsen commented to the producers of Oxygen’s show New York Homicide which aired an episode recently of covering Helen’s murder.
After a day of searching, detectives could not find Helen within the building, that is until the next day when they made a horrifying discovery. A detective found the body of Helen in a shaft within the roof of the Met. Her nude and battered body lay 30 to 45 feet at the bottom of the shaft, she was bound, gagged and blindfolded with her clothes and purse beside her body. Two things were clear, someone had done this and robbery was not the motive of this crime, all her belongings were there and nothing was taken. A palm print on a pipe next to her body was the only piece of evidence of the killer. According to the Medical Examiner, Helen had no signs of sexual assault and that she died between 9:00pm to 11:30pm; shortly after she left her seat. Her cause of death was injuries of the fall, she had broken ribs and limbs with a fractured skull; Helen was alive when she fell.
The investigators had their work cut out for them, they quickly came up with a theory, given the short window of time of Helen’s murder and the difficulties of navigating the Met building, the killer was very familiar with the building and had the time to commit the murder. They started questioning everyone present backstage, they started with showing Helen’s photo to everyone; asking if anyone had seen her the night before. Someone had, a woman came forward with an interesting story, Laura Cameron Cutler informed investigators: “I had seen her the night before. During the recorded music ballet I was waiting for an elevator that was near the stage and there was this woman and a man and they came and started waiting for the elevator too and she spoke to me and that was Helen … the elevator went down to the basement first and I got off the elevator and they went on”. Laura, was a dancer of the ballet performing that night.
Helen was searching for a Russian dancer performing that night, she wanted to link the dancer with her husband Janis for possible job opportunities. When they met at the elevator, Helen asked Laura if she knew where she could find the dancer; before Laura could even answer her the man replied to Helen “the fourth floor” Laura recounts. It was later found that the man had lied, all dancers were residing on the stage level, Laura described the man as wearing a workman uniform, investigators knew he was a stagehand. A stagehand would know where the performers were that night, why had this man lied to Helen? To get her alone?
The theory was that the stagehand, who would be familiar with the various floors of the Met, could navigate easily and go unnoticed in the vast building if he wanted to. He purposely led Helen to the wrong floor where he knew no one would be able to see or hear them. He then took the opportunity to murder Helen, the motive still unclear. Another clue pointing to the stagehand was the expert knots used to tie Helen was the exact type stagehands used on the stage of the Met.
Laura Cutler helped police make a composite sketch of the man she saw that night with Helen, it matched that of a stagehand; Craig S. Crimmins. When questioned by investigators, Crimmins was obviously nervous, he had reason to be, he gave his fingerprints which later matched the palm print found on the pipe next to Helen’s body. If his weird behavior wasn’t suspicious enough, Crimmins was absent during the performance intermission and didn’t return at the time expected. This really sealed his fate, at least in the eyes of investigators, he was guilty and all evidence did point to him. That night, Crimmins didn’t make his cues, it was so unusual and alarming that other stagehands went looking for him.
However, a colleague said he saw Crimmins that night sleeping in the electrician’s lounge during the intermission, giving him an alibi, but it later came to light that this colleague lied at the request of Crimmins. No matter how guilty he seemed, Crimmins denied any involvement in Helen’s murder. After many visits to the police station for questioning, he finally confessed that he did in fact murder Helen. According to him, during the elevator ride together, he makes an attempt to proposition Helen but after she rejects him, he flies off the handle in anger leading him to use a hammer to chase Helen around, successfully trapping Helen into a corner, when he wasn’t able to sexually assault her, he took her to the roof where he savagely pushed her off.
Justice is served in September 1981, Craig S. Crimmins is sentenced to 20 years to life in prison for the murder of Helen Mintiks. Crimmins has applied for parole every two years since 2001, each time he is thankfully rejected, today he remains where he belongs, behind the secure bars of prison.
Though Helen’s life was cut short, she shared her passion and talent for music with the world and she will always be remembered by those who loved her.
References:
Oxygen True Crime: Violinist Thrown From NYC Opera House Roof After Vanishing Mid-Performance (2022). Website: https://www.oxygen.com/new-york-homicide/crime-news/helen-mintiks-killed-in-nyc-met-opera-house
Grunge: The Tragic Murder of Helen Mintiks At The MET Explained (2022). Website: https://www.grunge.com/736896/the-tragic-murder-of-helen-mintiks-at-the-met-explained/?utm_campaign=clip
Washington Post: Death of Violinist (1980). Website: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1980/07/26/death-of-a-violinist/4b994824-5132-4700-8b51-0dc40151664e/
