Craig Crimmins: The Met Opera Murder, Trial, and Parole

Craig Crimmins is the former Metropolitan Opera stagehand convicted of the Met Opera murder of violinist Helen Hagnes Mintiks, a killing carried out during a Berlin Ballet performance on July 23, 1980. He was 21 at the time. A Manhattan jury found him guilty of felony murder in June 1981, and Acting Justice Richard G. Denzer sentenced him to 20 years to life. After seven parole denials over two decades, Crimmins was released from Auburn Correctional Facility in August 2021, having served more than 40 years.¹

What Happened at the Opera House on July 23, 1980

Helen Hagnes Mintiks was a 30-year-old Juilliard-trained violinist from British Columbia, playing that night as a freelance musician in the orchestra pit. The program opened with Stravinsky’s The Firebird, followed by Five Tangos, which used pre-recorded music and gave the orchestra a roughly 45-minute break.²

Mintiks left the pit during the break, reportedly hoping to find a dancer she wanted to introduce to her husband. She did not return when the musicians were called back at about 9:30 p.m. for Don Quixote. Colleagues noticed her absence after the performance ended at 11:30 p.m., and a search began. At 8:30 the next morning, her body was found at the bottom of a ventilation shaft on the roof of the opera house. She had fallen 30 to 45 feet after being thrown from the sixth-story roof, nude, bound, gagged, and blindfolded. The medical examiner concluded she was alive when she went over the edge and placed the time of death between 9:00 p.m. and 11:30 p.m.³²

How Investigators Identified Crimmins

The Met is a huge, maze-like building, and detectives quickly concluded the killer had to know the backstage layout.⁴ Tabloids ran with the “Phantom of the Opera” label while police worked through hundreds of interviews.

An early lead came from Laura Cutler, a Berlin Ballet dancer, who reported seeing Mintiks with a man in work clothes near an elevator during the break. According to Cutler, Mintiks asked about the location of a Russian dancer and the man falsely directed them to the fourth floor, where performers were not located. Cutler helped produce a composite sketch, though she later acknowledged her description was limited: she noticed only that the man was “not black,” was in his twenties or thirties, “not well dressed,” and had hair that was “perhaps brown.”⁵

After more than 800 interviews, investigators focused on Crimmins. Several strands converged:

The composite sketch resembled him.
He was missing from his post when the orchestra returned from break, and a coworker later admitted Crimmins had asked him to lie about seeing him asleep in the electrician’s lounge.
The knots used to bind Mintiks were the sort a stagehand would tie.
When Crimmins voluntarily gave his fingerprints, a palm print from a pipe near where the body was thrown matched.³

The Confession and Who Crimmins Was

On August 16, 1980, detectives Gennaro Giorgio and Michael Struk brought Crimmins in for questioning at about 4:40 p.m. The session lasted roughly 15 hours. Around four hours in, Crimmins admitted he had been on a backstage elevator with Mintiks. Later, an assistant district attorney conducted a videotaped interrogation in which Crimmins confessed. He said he had made a pass at Mintiks in the elevator, and when she rejected him he menaced her with a hammer, chased her, and threw her from the roof. Detective Giorgio described the mood of the questioning as “very cordial.”⁶

The voluntariness of that confession became the central fight at trial, and Crimmins’s background was part of the argument. He was born March 24, 1959, in Manhattan; his father worked as a stagehand at the Met and helped him get the job. Press accounts described him as a “semi-literate high school dropout” who reportedly read at a fifth-grade level at age 13, with a history of sleepwalking, developmental difficulties his mother attributed to a difficult birth, and known problems with alcohol including blackouts.⁷

The Trial and Verdict

Trial began on April 27, 1981, in State Supreme Court in Manhattan before Acting Justice Richard G. Denzer. Crimmins was charged with murder and attempted rape. The prosecution’s case rested heavily on the videotaped confession, a six-page written statement, and detective testimony. Defense attorney Lawrence Hochheiser argued that Crimmins was a “pliable subject” coerced by “manipulative investigators” who put words in his mouth, and that during the videotaped session Crimmins had mostly answered “yes” or “no” to leading questions. Hochheiser called the confession “a police compilation of facts already known about the case.”⁸

On April 20, 1981, Justice Denzer ruled that Cutler could testify despite defense objections that hypnosis, which she had undergone to help her recall the night, had altered her memory.⁹ Her identification had weaknesses; authorities acknowledged she had failed to pick Crimmins out of a lineup the year before.⁵

Denzer removed the attempted rape charge from the jury’s instructions, finding no evidence of that crime apart from the disputed confession itself. He told jurors to decide whether the confession had been given voluntarily and whether Crimmins had knowingly waived his right to a lawyer.

On June 4, 1981, after 11 hours of deliberation, the jury of seven women and five men convicted Crimmins of felony murder, a killing committed during or in flight from another felony, here an attempted rape. He was acquitted on the separate count of intentional murder.¹⁰

The 20-Years-to-Life Sentence

On September 2, 1981, Justice Denzer sentenced Crimmins to 20 years to life, rejecting written pleas from nearly 100 relatives and friends who had asked for the statutory minimum of 15 years to life. Denzer called the killing “brutal,” “cruel,” and “senseless,” and described Mintiks as a “gifted, attractive and generally admirable young woman.”¹¹ Given the chance to speak, Crimmins whispered: “I would like to thank my parents, my girlfriend Mary Ann, and I hope to repay them someday.”¹²

Why Parole Was Denied Seven Times

Crimmins became parole-eligible in 2000 and appeared before the New York State Parole Board every two years. His first three hearings, in November 2000, November 2002, and November 2004, each ended with the board holding him another 24 months.¹³

The severity of the crime was always the foundation, but commissioners cited more than that. At his 2004 hearing, Crimmins told the board that Mintiks had “come on to him” and that when he tried to kiss her she resisted but “didn’t say no.” The board found that account minimized the victim’s resistance and showed a lack of accountability. Commissioners also faulted his behavior right after the killing, when he returned to his job and acted, in their words, as if the murder “didn’t affect him one bit.”¹³

Crimmins challenged the 2004 denial through the board’s internal appeal and then in an Article 78 court proceeding, but the denial was upheld in March 2006. By his eighth appearance in May 2014, the pattern was unchanged. “Every time they turn me down, it’s always about the nature of the crime, nothing about who I am now or what I’ve done since then,” he told a reporter. “I could have cured cancer, they wouldn’t care.”¹⁴

In prison, Crimmins earned an associate’s degree in substance abuse counseling and worked in the commissary. The board acknowledged those accomplishments in hearing after hearing but weighed them less than the crime itself.

Release in 2021 and Where He Is Now

After seven denials, Crimmins was granted parole and released from Auburn Correctional Facility in August 2021, having served more than 40 years of his sentence.¹² He reportedly continues to live in New York.

1
Sportskeeda. Where Is Craig Crimmins Now
2
Classic FM. Violinist Helen Mintiks Murder at the Orchestra
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Oxygen. Helen Mintiks Killed in NYC Met Opera House
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University of Virginia Law Library. Murder at the Met: Craig Crimmins Trial for Murder of Violinist
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UPI. Laura Cutler Testimony at Crimmins Trial
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The New York Times. Crimmins Jurors Are Told Details of Interrogation
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UPI. Personality Spotlight: Craig Crimmins, Stagehand Convicted of Murder
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UPI. Stagehand Craig Crimmins Convicted of Second-Degree Murder
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The New York Times. Testimony of a Hypnotized Dancer Is Permitted Into Met Murder Trial
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The New York Times. Crimmins Found Guilty of Murder as the Jury Accepts His Confession
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The New York Times. Crimmins Receives 20-Year-to-Life Term for Met Slaying
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UPI. Crimmins Sentenced to 20 Years to Life
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FindLaw. Crimmins v. New York State Division of Parole
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City Limits. Even Model NYS Inmates Face Steep Barriers to Parole