The Phantom of the Met (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)
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Hey Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. On a summer night in 1980, the audience in New York's world-famous Metropolitan Opera House rose to their feet and applauded at the end of an international ballet performance. The dancers and musicians rushed backstage and congratulated each other on a great show. But one of the musicians was missing.

Her prized violin sat on a chair in the orchestra pit. She had left it there during intermission of the ballet, and she had never come back. NYPD detectives would soon descend on the Met, where they would find themselves chasing down stagehands, musicians, and one of the most famous Russian dancers in the world, desperately trying to discover what had happened to the violin player who had just disappeared while thousands of people were in the audience.

But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of interest to you, please sell the follow button a German Shepherd puppy, but actually just give them a baby hyena instead. Okay, let's get into today's story.

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On July 23, 1980, 31-year-old Helen Hagnus stood with her husband, Giannis, outside their apartment building on New York's Upper West Side. Helen kissed Giannis and told him she would see him later, and then she turned and began walking to work. It was early evening, and Helen could already tell it was going to be another hot New York summer night. It was about 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and it was humid. As Helen walked, she could already feel herself starting to sweat, and she just hoped she would still look okay when she got to work.

She was dressed casually in a t-shirt and jeans, but her platinum blonde hair and makeup were perfectly styled, like she was going to a formal event. And in her hand, Helen carried an oblong case that held her most prized possession in the whole world: her violin. Helen had grown up as a musical prodigy, becoming an award-winning pianist at the age of four and a skilled violin player at the age of eight.

Now, Helen was a highly accomplished violinist, and she had performed with symphonies and opera and ballet companies all over Europe and North America. Helen made her way through the city and eventually turned onto a street about 10 blocks from her house. Up ahead, she saw the Metropolitan Opera House, or The Met as it's known, and her face lit up.

Helen had dreamed about playing violin at the Met ever since she was a little girl, and she still couldn't believe that she was getting paid to come to this beautiful opera house to work alongside some of the most talented artists in the world. She turned onto a side street that led around the Met, and she entered through the backstage door.

She smiled at a few Met employees and stagehands who were rushing back and forth getting ready for the night's ballet performance. Then Helen walked down a long, brightly lit hallway and went into the dressing room that was reserved for the women in the orchestra. Some of the other musicians had already arrived, and they all talked and laughed while they got dressed. Helen opened her locker and changed out of her street clothes into a black shirt, black pants, and black shoes. She took a blue flower from her locker and fastened it to her hair with a bobby pin.

Then, a little before 8 p.m., about an hour after she had arrived, Helen took her place in the orchestra pit with the rest of the musicians. The roar of the applause flooded the theater, the house lights dimmed, the curtain rose, and the orchestra conductor turned to the musicians and waved his hand. Helen felt butterflies in her stomach. Even after all these years of playing, she still got nervous and excited. She raised her violin to her shoulder, placed her bow on the strings, waited for her cue, and started to play.

About 40 minutes later, Helen heard the audience applauding once again. She had lost herself in the music like she always did, and so the first act of the ballet had sort of flown by in a blur. The curtain closed and the lights came up. It was the first of two intermissions. Helen placed her prized violin on her chair in the orchestra pit and headed backstage. She wasn't playing for the next section of the performance, and so she had an extended break.

Helen walked right to the backstage elevator. She wanted to meet with the lead male dancer in the ballet, a famous Russian named Valery Panov.

The elevator doors opened and Helen stepped inside and stood between a man and a young ballerina. Helen told the ballerina she was going to see Panov, but she couldn't remember where his dressing room was. The ballerina said she didn't know either. Panov was a huge star and he had his own dressing room that was separate from the rest of the dancers. Then the man chimed in and said Panov was on the third floor. Helen thanked him, hit the button for the third floor, and the elevator doors closed.

The young ballerina stepped off the elevator at her dressing room floor, then Helen rode up another floor, got off the elevator, and walked down a long hallway in search of Panov's dressing room. At 11:30 p.m., almost three hours after Helen got off that elevator, her husband, Yannis, sat outside the Met in his van. Yannis often picked his wife up to drive her home because walking at night in New York City in 1980 could be dangerous.

Yannis watched the dancers, musicians, and employees filing out of the Met, but he didn't see Helen. So he figured maybe she was still talking to one of her friends in the dressing room. But when it got to be midnight and Helen still had not come outside, Yannis thought maybe she was getting a ride home with someone else and she had just forgotten to let him know.

So, he hopped out of his van, went to the nearest payphone, and called home. But there was no answer. So, Yannis figured there just must have been some miscommunication between him and his wife, and he headed home. A few minutes later, Yannis walked into his and Helen's apartment, and it was empty. Yannis thought it was a bit strange Helen wasn't home yet, even if she did get a ride home with someone else. But he figured maybe they had grabbed a drink before heading this way.

Then he heard a knock at the door. This had to be Helen, and she must have forgotten her key or something.

Giannis went to the front door and opened it up, and suddenly he started to get worried. Because a nervous-looking man stood at the door with Helen's violin case in his hands. He said that he and some of the other musicians who played with Helen were really freaked out because Helen had left the orchestra pit during the first intermission and she never came back. He said a group of people had called the apartment and searched for Helen after the show, but they couldn't find her anywhere.

Giannis took Helen's violin case and he closed his eyes like he was fighting back tears. He knew his wife would never just leave her violin behind somewhere, not even at the Met. In a flat, quiet voice, Giannis thanked the man for coming by. Then he closed the door, put down Helen's violin case, and went to the phone and called the police. In the early morning of July 24th, several hours after Giannis called the police, Detective Jerry Giorgio of the NYPD walked into the lobby of the Met.

The two officers who had arrived first greeted him and showed him the photo they had of Helen Hagnus. Detective Giorgio looked at the photo and heard the lobby doors open behind him. He turned and saw a frantic-looking young woman running in. Giorgio held up his hand to try to get her to slow down and asked if she was okay,

She introduced herself and said she was a ballerina in the performance. She had heard about Helen going missing from one of her friends, and she thought she might be able to help, because she was pretty sure she was one of the last people who had seen Helen. The ballerina said that she and Helen happened to be on the backstage elevator together during the first intermission, and Helen had mentioned she was on her way to visit with Panov.

Detective Giorgio asked who Panov was. The ballerina smiled and said Valery Panov was one of the most famous male ballet dancers in the whole world. Giorgio thanked her and said her information was a huge help. He got the ballerina's information and told her he would contact her if he needed anything else. As the ballerina walked away, Giorgio handed the photo of Helen back to the two officers and told them to wait there in case anyone else showed up.

Then he walked further into the grand lobby of the Met, and the design of the place was like nothing he had ever seen. The huge staircases leading to the higher floors almost looked like they led to nowhere and just disappeared into the darkness. Giorgio had just started to search the lobby when a security guard walked in and introduced himself. His boss had told him to come down and help the police if they needed it.

Giorgio was relieved. He said he didn't want to waste any time. He needed a full tour of the opera house. But at this, the security guard busted out laughing. He said that would be impossible. The building was massive, with six stories above ground and three basements below. And there were so many hallways and hidden rooms that navigating the Met was like walking through a maze.

Giorgio said they would get as many cops as they needed to comb through the whole place, but in the meantime, he at least wanted a tour of the backstage area where Helen would have gone during intermission. So, the security guard led Giorgio into the theater, up onto the stage, and into the wings. Giorgio looked around the expansive backstage area, and he saw giant set pieces, black curtains hanging everywhere, multiple exits, and an elevator.

Then, he walked down a stairwell and found himself in a vast, dimly lit basement that made him feel like he was in a horror movie. Giorgio saw cases for double bass instruments that were bigger than him leaned up against the wall. And scattered throughout the basement, he saw old set pieces from past performances and large wooden crates filled with costumes and props.

Giorgio started to feel overwhelmed. He thought if the worst had happened, if Helen was dead, her body could be in a crate or an instrument case or in one of the countless dark corners, hiding just out of view. At around 8:00 AM, after hours of exploring the depths of the Met, Detective Giorgio went back to the lobby and checked in with the other two officers who were still there. He was about to find a phone to call the police station to get more help when a maintenance worker ran inside. And this guy looked like he'd just seen a ghost.

Giorgio asked him what was wrong, and the worker said he'd just gone up to the roof of the building to turn on one of the ventilation fans. And while he was up there, he found a pair of women's black shoes, like the ones he'd seen the women in the orchestra wear. Detective Giorgio's heart sank. Helen had disappeared in the middle of a performance, and now her shoes might have been found on the roof. And Giorgio's first thought was that Helen went up there, jumped off the building, taking her own life.

Giorgio and the other officers followed the maintenance worker to a service elevator, and they traveled up to the roof in complete silence. The elevator stopped, the doors opened, and Giorgio had to squint as the daylight hit his eyes.

The maintenance worker stepped out of the elevator and showed the police the pair of black shoes. Then, Giorgio walked to the edge of the building and looked down. But there was nothing on the ground that looked out of the ordinary. So, the officers spread out and searched the roof for any additional clues. And within a few minutes, Detective Giorgio heard one of them shout, "Oh my God!" Giorgio whipped around and saw an officer standing by this enormous metal fan, looking through the wide space between two of the blades down into the ventilation shaft.

Giorgio joined him and leaned over to look into the shaft as well, and he thought he saw something about 30 feet below, but it was a little dark down there, and he couldn't tell what it was. It took a few seconds for Giorgio's eyes to adjust, but slowly, everything came into focus. There at the bottom, he saw the nude, bloody body of a woman.

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Shortly after Detective Giorgio looked down the ventilation shaft and saw the woman's body, an NYPD homicide detective named Mike Strzok finished his morning run in Central Park and called into the station to check in for the day.

Dispatch told him not to even bother coming into the office. Instead, they said, go straight to the Metropolitan Opera House. Struck rushed home, got cleaned up and changed, and then raced down to the Met. The place was now buzzing with employees and police. And amid the crowd, Detective Struck was happy to see Detective Giorgio. The two men enjoyed working together, and they made a good team. Giorgio was calm and almost fatherly, while Struck was blunt and always seemed like he was moving 100 miles an hour.

Giorgio filled struck in on everything police had found that morning. They had found Helen Hagnus' body in a large maintenance tunnel on the third floor. It looked like she had fallen to her death through the ventilation shaft from the roof. But Giorgio was sure someone had pushed her, because her hands and feet had been bound with rope, and there was a gag stuffed in her mouth. Giorgio thought the attack could have been sexual, but he had no idea if it was random or if somebody had targeted Helen.

Then Strzok went to go take Polaroids of Helen's body, and he worked with crime scene technicians as they searched for clues. In addition to a pink bra, they found a pair of black pants, a black shirt, and a blue flower all near the body. Later that day, several hours after the discovery of Helen's body, the NYPD had set up a fully operational command post inside the offices of the Opera House, and teams of detectives, uniformed police, and forensics technicians scoured the building for more evidence.

Not long after the command center got set up, Detective Strzok left his and Giorgio's makeshift office, walked into the office of one of the Met's operations managers, and asked how many employees the Met had. But when the manager answered, "More than 800," all Strzok could do was laugh. That was an impossible number of people to interview.

Still, he asked the manager for a list of all of those employees, as well as a separate list of the people who were actually working or performing at the opera house when Helen had disappeared from the orchestra pit. When Strzok returned to his office, he found a crime scene technician waiting for him.

The tech told Strzok they were able to lift a pristine palm print off the outside of that ventilation shaft on the roof. In fact, the print was so good, the tech worried that some careless police officer or other investigator had touched the ventilation shaft that morning and made the print. Strzok thanked the tech for the update and asked him to report back as soon as he knew anything, even if it was just to say that a cop had messed up and left that print.

Then Strzok sat down at what was now his desk, he grabbed his phone, and called Helen's husband, Janusz, and told him he needed to come in to the Met.

Detective Strzok and Giorgio sat in their office reviewing their notes while they waited for their first suspect. Forensics officers and the medical examiner had not found any indication of sexual assault, which made them think it was possible that Helen's murder was actually just staged to look like a sexual assault. And they thought maybe Giannis had met with Helen at some point during the intermission. Then they fought, and he took her up to the roof of the building where he tied her up and killed her.

As the two detectives theorized and talked through the case, the door opened and an officer led Giannis in. Giannis actually stumbled into the room and then collapsed into a chair across from the two detectives. Struck and Giorgio could tell Giannis was drunk just from the smell. And even if they couldn't tell from the smell, the open bottle of Jack Daniels in his hand made it pretty clear.

This was a new one for both detectives. They had never seen someone show up to a police interview with a bottle of whiskey. But regardless, the detectives jumped right into the questions. They asked Yannis about his and his wife's relationship. Yannis was slurring his words, but he did manage to tell them that he loved his wife and he had gone to the Met to pick her up and drive her home, but she had never showed up.

Struck and Giorgio listened, but they knew that almost nothing Yanis said in his current state would ever hold up in court. I mean, the guy was drunk. So they told him they would have an officer drive him home, and after he'd gotten some rest, they would follow up with him if they needed to. Later that afternoon, Struck and Giorgio were sitting in the theater when the famous Russian dancer, Panov, and his interpreter walked in. Panov, according to that ballerina that Giorgio had met that morning, may have been the last person who'd seen Helen alive.

Panov took a seat near the detectives and asked how he could help. Then, through his interpreter, he said he did know a musician had gone missing at the Met, but he didn't know anything more than that. Georgiou handed Panov a picture of Helen and said she was the missing musician. And the last time anyone had seen her, she was on her way to meet Panov.

Panov looked down at the picture and then said something in Russian. The interpreter then told the detectives that Panov did not know this woman and she never came to visit him that night, and he had no idea she was even planning to.

Then Pannob spoke for himself. He explained in broken English that at least 50 people came to visit him every night. It was nothing unusual for audience members or other artists to flood his dressing room. And he tried to meet as many people as he could and be as gracious as he could because he knew that a lot of people had helped him become a ballet star.

Strzok asked him where he was at the time Helen disappeared during the first intermission. Panov said he had rushed to his dressing room to get changed and then went into the audience. He wasn't in the second part of the ballet, but his wife was, and he loved watching her dance. The detectives knew it would be easy to confirm this if it was true. Audience members and the crew would definitely have noticed one of the most famous dancers in the world walking amongst the crowd. So, the detectives told both men they could go.

Panov said he was sorry about what had happened to the musician, and then he and his interpreter headed backstage. It was late in the day at this point, and everyone working at the Met was getting ready for that evening's performance. So, Giorgio and Strzok decided to head home and regroup in the morning. The next day, the detectives walked into the Met lobby and greeted the young ballerina who had flagged down Giorgio the day before to say she had ridden on the backstage elevator with Helen.

As far as the detectives knew, she may have been the last person to see Helen alive other than the killer. So they had asked her to come back to see if maybe she could give them a clearer picture of Helen's movements that night. The detectives led the ballerina to their office and she sat down across from them. She said she was glad they called her because she had remembered something. When she was in the elevator with Helen, there was a man that was there with them.

He had told Helen that Panov's dressing room was on the third floor, and this man was still with Helen when the ballerina got off the elevator. Giorgio and Strzok leaned forward. This was huge. It meant that that man on the elevator was either the last witness to see Helen alive, or he was the killer.

Struck asked the ballerina if she could describe what this man in the elevator looked like. The ballerina squinted her eyes like she was trying to remember, but she shook her head and apologized. She knew he was a man, but that was about it.

Detective Giorgio leaned over to Strzok and whispered something in his ear, and Strzok nodded in agreement. Then Giorgio turned to the ballerina and said he knew this was going to sound strange, but sometimes the police used a hypnotist to help witnesses remember things in more detail. So Giorgio wanted to know if the ballerina would agree to be hypnotized. And the ballerina said yes.

So, that afternoon, a hypnotist dimmed the lights in the office and then took a seat across from the ballerina. At the same time, Giorgio and Strzok lingered in the corner, and an NYPD sketch artist sat a few feet away, holding his pencil and a sketchbook.

The hypnotist told the ballerina to close her eyes and listen only to his voice. And slowly, the hypnotist used his soothing voice and his words to draw the ballerina deeper and deeper into a state of relaxation, until finally she was in a trance. Once she was, the hypnotist asked the ballerina to turn back the clock in her mind to the moment that Helen had stepped on the elevator with her.

He asked the ballerina to look closely at the elevator and the man who was there and to describe him as best as she could. The ballerina concentrated and she began to speak, describing this man. She said he looked like he was between 20 and 25 years old. He was slightly overweight, had a large nose, brown hair, and bright red lips. And as the ballerina gave these details, the sketch artist began to draw.

A few minutes later, the hypnotist gently brought the ballerina out of her trance and turned the lights back on. Police quickly made copies of the sketch and circulated it among the Met's employees. And while they were hopeful, you know, there was the reality that a lot of people could fit the description of a young, slightly overweight guy with brown hair. But later that day, a Met employee walked into the detective's office and told them there was someone they needed to talk to right away. It was a stagehand named Vincent Donahue.

Strzok asked if Vincent fit the description of the man the sketch artist had drawn. The employee said he did, at least a few days ago, but on the night following Helen's murder, Vincent had showed up to work and he had completely shaved off his brown hair and he had a large scratch on his face. That afternoon, Vincent Donahue took a seat inside the detective's office and he looked annoyed. He said he needed this to be fast because he had a lot of work to do before the performance that night.

Giorgio smiled and said he understood, but first, he said he had to ask, where did that nasty scratch on his face come from? Vincent said he and his girlfriend had gotten into a pretty bad fight a couple of nights ago, and his girlfriend used her fingernails when she got angry.

Detective Strzok quickly jumped in and asked why Vincent had shaved his head. Vincent laughed and said during the argument with his girlfriend where she scratched him, she had said the only good thing about him was his hair. So after she had stormed out of the room, he had shaved his hair off just out of spite.

Struck had a look on his face like this seemed totally ridiculous, and Vincent could tell. So Vincent quickly said, really, this is the truth. Then he told the detectives he didn't have anything to do with that musician getting killed. And he said instead of wasting time talking to him, they needed to talk to a guy named Craig Crimmins. Vincent said Craig was also a stagehand, and he had missed a major cue to move scenery during the second act of the performance on the night Helen died.

He had just left his backstage post and disappeared. Now, Strzok thought Vincent could still be lying. However, the idea that a stagehand went missing around the same time that Helen went missing was suspicious. So Strzok told Vincent he could leave and go back to work, but they might need him again. And as soon as Vincent left the office, Strzok and Giorgio sent an officer to track down the stagehand, Craig Crimmins. When Craig stepped into Strzok and Giorgio's office, he looked exhausted.

Giorgio asked Craig to take a seat, and then once he had, he handed him a photo of Helen and asked Craig if he knew her. Craig glanced at the picture and said he only recognized her from what he had seen in the news. He never met her or talked to her. She was a musician, and he didn't really interact with the musicians.

Struck just stared at Craig while he spoke. He was young and had brown hair, just like the ballerina's description. So Struck asked if Craig had ridden the backstage elevator at all on the night Helen died. But Craig just shook his head. He said he'd been at his spot backstage the whole performance. Struck leaned across the desk and said, if that was true, then why had his colleagues claimed that Craig had been absent from backstage during an important cue that night, specifically during the second act?

Craig's face flushed, and he stared down at the floor. He said he did miss a cue that night, but he didn't leave backstage. He was embarrassed to admit it to the cops, but he had shown up to work that night drunk and fallen asleep at his post. He told the detectives that another stagehand who worked right beside him backstage had seen him and could back him up that he was telling the truth. Strzok and Giorgio questioned Craig a bit longer, and then they let him go.

They quickly found the other stagehand Craig had mentioned, and this guy said Craig was telling the truth. He had passed out backstage and basically slept through part of the performance.

With Craig's alibi checking out, the detectives still believed they had viable suspects among the other people they had talked to. But they still had hundreds more people to interview. And they still hadn't heard anything about the one major piece of forensic evidence that had been found: the fresh palm print that had been pulled from the ventilation shaft on the roof. So the detectives felt like if they didn't quickly find some new evidence, they were going to be stuck with an overwhelmingly massive suspect pool.

Six days after Helen's murder, on July 29, 1980, her memorial service was held at a New York City church. The church was filled with friends, family, and countless people from The Met. One of Helen's violinist friends performed at the service in her honor. In the two weeks following Helen's funeral, Detective Strzok and Giorgio continued their work at The Met, but the opera house had grown oddly quiet.

The ballet had finished its run of performances, and the next show had not opened yet. So the detectives found themselves wandering through the nearly empty, huge building, trying to find anything that they might have missed. But nothing came of those additional searches, and even after weeks of combing through the place, they still felt like there were corners of the Met that remained hidden. But just at the point when the detectives worried their case was about to go cold, Strzok got a call from an excited forensics technician.

The tech said he could not believe it, but that nearly perfect palm print found on the ventilation shaft did not belong to a careless police officer or investigator like the forensics team had originally suspected. And it was a relatively fresh print, so it could belong to the killer. When Detective Strzok hung up, he told Giorgio what he'd just learned, and Giorgio got excited. This palm print was not a smoking gun just yet, but it definitely could be.

It was very difficult to access the roof of the Met, so the detectives believed the print had to belong to somebody who worked or performed there, or someone who came by fairly often to visit a family member who worked there. Over the next several days, Opera House employees met with the police in groups of twos and threes, and they allowed officers to take their palm prints. And only one of them seemed really nervous about it when asked to give their print, and this was somebody Strzok and Giorgio had already spoken to.

This person broke out into a sweat and said that they were uncomfortable with this whole situation. But Detective Giorgio smiled softly, and in his best fatherly voice, he said providing a print was the best way for police to cross them off the list and allow them to put all this behind them. So ultimately, this person agreed and gave their palm print. And when testing on that print came back, Detectives Giorgio and Strzok saw that it was a perfect match to the one found on the roof. And they believed they had found Helen's killer.

Based on the palm print, evidence from the scene, and interviews conducted during the investigation, the following is a reconstruction of what police believe happened to Helen Hagnus on the night of July 23, 1980. The killer saw Helen walking down a hallway on the third floor during the first intermission of the ballet, and they quickly walked down the hall and grabbed her arm. Helen turned around and didn't understand what was happening, but the killer just pulled out a hammer and pushed her into a stairwell.

The killer dragged Helen down all the stairs to one of the sub-basements, and then once there, he demanded she take off her clothes. And Helen did. The killer attempted to rape Helen, but they couldn't. And so out of frustration, they demanded Helen put her clothes back on, and then they grabbed her by the arm, and still with the hammer in hand, they led her all the way upstairs to the roof. Once on the roof, the killer once again made Helen get undressed. Except this time, the killer also bound her wrists and her ankles, and they also gagged her.

But Helen fought back. And at some point during the struggle, the killer knew they were running out of time. And so out of frustration and panic and anger and embarrassment, they scooped up Helen and they walked over to the air conditioning vent and they placed her on the ledge. And then as Helen desperately tried to push past them and get back on the roof, the killer just raised up their leg, placed their foot on her side, and they pushed her into the vent.

Helen would fall six stories to her death. And after she was dead, the killer reached down, scooped up her clothes, and threw them into the vent after her. After that, the killer ran to the door, believing they had disposed of all the evidence. Except they hadn't. They had accidentally left Helen's shoes up on the roof.

The killer flew down the stairs all the way to the theater and ran backstage. However, by the time they got there, they were out of time. The intermission was over and the ballet had started again, meaning the killer had missed a very important cue. Craig Crimmins, the stagehand who claimed to have shown up drunk and fallen asleep backstage, killed Helen Hagnus.

On the night of the murder, Craig was in fact the man on the elevator with Helen and the young ballerina. And when Helen asked about where Panov's dressing room was, Craig had chimed in and said it was on the third floor. But that was a lie. He was simply trying to trap her. And so when Helen got off the elevator on the third floor, Craig followed her down the hallway, grabbed her, and brought her to the basement, intending to rape her.

However, he could not perform sexually, and so in his rage and humiliation, he dragged her up to the roof where he would kill her. Craig did resemble the sketch from the ballerina's hypnosis session. However, it was Craig's palm print on the air conditioning vent that made detectives turn their focus on him.

And soon after the detectives discovered Craig's print matched the one on the ventilation shaft, they learned that the other stagehand who said he saw Craig sleeping backstage was lying for his co-worker. But he thought Craig had asked him to lie for him just to cover up the fact that he had left backstage and missed an important cue. Craig Crimmins was found guilty of murder and sentenced to 20 years to life. He went on to serve 40 years in prison and was paroled in August of 2021.

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