Going West: True Crime - The Opera House Murder // 141

Episode Date: October 5, 2021

In 1980, a 31-year-old violinist performed the first act of a ballet at the Metropolitan Opera House before disappearing during intermission. When the show came to a close and all that was left of her was her instrument, police scoured the dark and seemingly never-ending theater until she was found murdered. Between suspicious stage hands, a ballerina undergoing hypnosis for investigators, and newspaper headlines that read “The Real Life Phantom of the Opera”, this baffling murder mystery shocked New York City to its core. This is the story of Helen Hagnes, also known as The Opera House Murder. BONUS EPISODES patreon.com/goingwestpodcast CASE SOURCES https://www.newspapers.com/image/114285078/?terms=Helen%20hagnes%20canada&match=1 https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1980/07/26/death-of-a-violinist/4b994824-5132-4700-8b51-0dc40151664e/ https://www.thestrad.com/playing-and-teaching/remembering-helen-hagnes-after-40-years/10938.article https://www.geni.com/people/Helen-Karin-Mintiks/6000000031016587092 https://archive.macleans.ca/article/1981/6/15/true-confessions https://murderpedia.org/male.C/c/crimmins-craig.htm https://www.facebook.com/PLMCentrs/photos/janis-mintiks-sculptures-prints-and-installations-on-view-at-the-global-center-f/2383988201885454/ https://www.abbynews.com/obituaries/mauritz-hagnes/ https://casetext.com/case/mintiks-v-metropolitan-opera Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on true crime fans, I'm your host Teeve and I'm your other host Daphne and you're listening to Going West. Today, well the day we're releasing this, October 5th is my birthday, and respectfully, the cases that interest me the most to research are the very mysterious, almost murder mystery as cases. And of course, this is still someone's devastating story, and the woman we're talking about today had an incredible talent and personality, and she was taken far too soon. But this was definitely a fascinating case to dive into, so thank you so much everybody for tuning in. Also for all you listeners out there, we have 50 ad free full length bonus episodes

for you guys to binge over on our Patreon. So if you're interested in getting more going west episodes, head over to patreon.com slash going west podcast and get listening. Yeah, we just released a different New York story actually on a woman named Raina Marro Keane and that just came out last week. So we're doing a couple episodes a month and hope you guys are digging it. Alright guys, without further delay, this is episode 141 of going West, so let's get into it. In 1980, a 31-year-old violinist performed the first act of a ballet at the Metropolitan Opera House before disappearing during intermission.

When the show came to a close and all that was left of her was her instrument, police scoured the dark and seemingly never-ending theater until she was found murdered. Between suspicious stage hands, a ballerina undergoing hypnosis for investigators, and newspaper headlines that read, The Real Life Phantom of the Opera, this baffling murder mystery shocked New York City to its core. This is the story of Helen Hagness, also known as the Opera House Murder. Helen Karen Hageness was born on February 11, 1949, to Swedish parents Heidi and Marie Edward Hagness, who went by Ed, who had immigrated to Canada from Finland to build their life

and family together in 1949 when Helen was just a baby. Helen had two older sisters, Delsey and Lilianne, and they all grew up on a poultry farm in Aldergrove, British Columbia, Canada, which is known as a farming and bedroom community that today hosts around 15,000 people. So although I didn't see the population for the 50s, I can imagine it was likely a bit smaller than this. Aldergrove is right on the Washington border, and it sits about an hour's drive southeast

from the city of Vancouver, BC. And actually a little fun fact, the small rural town of Alder Grove was the location for A&E's Bates Motel, so that's where it was filmed, and they had an exact replica of the Bates Motel and the psycho house built right there in Alder Grove from 2012 to 2017.

And obviously this is in a way after the story takes place, but I thought that was an interesting find in our research. Yeah, that is really interesting. Yeah, so moving on. Helen's father had previously worked in the logging industry in the 1920s in British Columbia, so he loved it 20 years before they even moved there. I'd love the hard work that went into the poultry farm and the whole family helped, and they actually also owned a local general store as well, so they were very much a part of supplying the community with what they needed. Nearly as soon as Helen was born, she showed true potential in music,

but at the age of just two, she was already learning to play the piano, and when she heard songs on the radio, she would go back and play them on piano, so she just naturally had this ear for music. She was so passionate about music at an early age that she would sell berries on the side of the road in her rural town, just to pay for violin lessons, and that's dedication to music. I know she was amazing. Yeah, and her parents really believed in her and her talents, so according to Helen's Sister Delce, their parents spent a lot of money that they didn't have towards Helen's budding music career,

and helped put her through eight years of violin lessons in Vancouver from age 11 to 19. In her late teens, Helen was already a concert master of the Vancouver Junior Philharmonic, as well as a soloist with the Seattle Symphony, and these talents brought her all the way to Manhattan to study at the very prestigious and private performing arts conservatory, the Juilliard School. There she would earn her bachelor's degree, and then her master's degree. Helen continued to follow her dreams and moved to study and perform violin in both Italy and Switzerland, so her music passion took her all over the world, but in 1975, she returned back to New York.

And one summer at the age of 27, Helen was working as a counselor at a summer arts camp outside of Montreal in Quebec, Canada, and she met a man named Janis Mintix, who was a sculptor. Janis Mintix was about five years older than Helen, and was born in an Austrian refugee camp for displaced Lopvians but was raised in Wisconsin and then moved around. And within a year of meeting Helen, they married in September of 1976. They shared an apartment together in Manhattan, and they both individually worked on their artistic careers, and they were very, very happy. They lived kind of a quiet life since they were very focused on their goals, but they still enjoyed time together and with friends,

but mostly in their own home, they just spent a lot of time cooking together or just relaxing in their own living room with their closest pals rather than going out. And speaking of friends, Helen was so incredibly loved by hers. She was also very generous. I mean, she was the type of woman who brought homemade cheesecake to share with orchestras and chamber groups that she was working with. And one of her bassoonist friends named Carrie Voit described Helen by saying, Helen was the sort of person who had come to your house for dinner and bring along the dinner.

And she even brought cookies to the man at the corner news stand when it was his birthday. I mean, that's just who she was. She also loved her family deeply and called her parents every weekend to keep in touch. Helen really established herself in the music scene and was very well known as a violin player, and she was known to be in the quote first call category, meaning that, let's say like a handful of musicians were needed for a job, she would be amongst the first who were called. So over the years, as Daphne said, Helen continued to excel in her music career, and she had racked up numerous international awards. And in July of 1980, she was set to perform at the Metropolitan Opera House for the 11-day Berlin Ballet of Dostoyevsky's The Idiot.

By this time, Helen was 31 years old and playing in this orchestra was something that she was really excited about. And on Wednesday, July 23, 1980, Helen performed the first act along with the rest of the orchestra before taking a break during intermission at around 9.30 pm. Many of her colleagues headed to the canteen for some coffee or some food, or just kind of hung out in the backstage lab. On the other hand, Helen was known to have gotten up to stretch her legs in the women's locker room downstairs, and speak with one of the performers, Valeri Panove, who was one of the stars of the ballet, because her husband wanted to sculpt him. But minutes later, as her colleagues headed back to their seats to prepare for the next act,

Helen did not return. A man named Thomas Suarez, who sat in the seat behind Helen, noticed her absence, but at first thought that she would return at any moment. But when she didn't, he and the other performers turned their heads looking around for her, but ultimately concluded that she had likely gotten sick and would not be coming back, as this was kind of the only real reason that would make sense. So before the lights dimmed and the curtains were pulled, Thomas grabbed Helen's violin, which was sitting on her chair and placed it in its case outside the orchestra pit.

Then, the next act began. After the performance was over, Helen still was not seen by any of the other performers, and many of them worried deeply about where she was. One member of the orchestra actually called the police, and another called the house manager, who then called Helen's home, but there was no answer. Because minutes after the show ended at around 11.30 p.m., outside the opera house was her husband, Yannis, patiently waiting at his car to pick her up as he always did after

her performances. And he did this because he wanted to make sure she was safe, but he also just wanted to see her as much as possible because they really just couldn't stand being a part according to Helen's friends like they were very much in love. When Helen didn't come out, Janice eventually went back to their upper west side apartment, which was only a few minutes away, to see if she had gotten a ride home from someone else, but she wasn't there. Janice was really confused and just unsure of where his wife could be, but he decided to

wait around a little bit longer hoping that she would just walk through the door. But within an hour or so of arriving home, one of Helen's colleagues knocked on the door to return her violin and check on her. And this is when Janis learned that Helen had not been seen for hours and only performed the first act of the ballet that evening. At this point, he was in sheer panic and called 911 to explain everything he knew. Almost immediately, police arrived at the opera house where they joined the house security in the search for Helen

Hagnus Mintix. And they continued their search throughout the evening because this place was like a maze full of secret corridors endless dark hallways and countless rooms full of props equipment and more. I mean you can imagine how kind of spooky that was to you know go throughout that whole building overnight with all the props and I mean, if you really think this as an opera house, it's a huge theater with so many different rooms for so many different things. It's, I imagine that was kind of creepy and you're looking for a person or a body. I mean, I personally have this weird irrational fear of theaters, but especially opera houses. I think that's why this case interested me so much because there's something so eerie

about a theater. Yeah, yeah definitely. So it wasn't until later that morning that something horrifying was discovered at the Metropolitan Opera House. On the morning of Thursday, July 24, 1980, at around 8.30 a.m. so about 12 hours after Helen was last seen, an investigator found her nude body face up on a steel platform halfway down a large six-story ventilation shaft near the back of the opera house, meaning that someone had stuffed her into that space from the roof access on the sixth floor. The sixth floor houses a restaurant, a kitchen, and offices for the caterers,

meaning it would be empty at the time that Helen was last seen, other than the occasional security check. Scary enough though, the executive director of the Met explained that the floor could be accessed by the elevator or the stairs, but when no one was up there, it would be more than likely that even screams from the sixth floor would not be heard on any of the other floors. Especially when there's a performance going on because it's so loud in the theater room because the orchestra is playing. Right, there's thousands of people in there. I mean, most of the people in the audience are going to be,

you know, not talking because there's a performance going on. But yes, there's a lot of like musicians. Exactly. And then also, you know, this is on a different floor. So mix that all the loud music and then the fact that you're, a few floors below, you know, it's not a good combination. And then the fact that it's New York City. Yeah, exactly.

So police noted that Helen was gagged with a rag, with her hands tied behind her back, and her legs tied with rope and a garment. And she had been beaten before she was dropped into the shaft, where she died after hitting the platform 60 feet below on the third floor of the air shaft. I just feel so terrible for this poor woman. I know and you're probably thinking that it's a smaller air shaft but it's actually quite big.

It's like bigger than an elevator and we will include a photo of it. Bigger than an elevator shaft if you're looking from above. So originally I was thinking a very small space because when you look up of it, and bigger than an elevator shaft if you're looking from above. So originally I was thinking a very small space because when you look up ventilation shaft on Google you just get claustrophobic looking at photos. Right, but yeah it is a very large space and she landed on this steel platform within this six-floor ventilation shaft. So New York City's chief medical examiner Dr. Elliott Gross, determined that he believed

Helen had died from multiple fractures of the skull and ribs, which occurred as a result of the fall, meaning she was alive before she went down the ventilation shaft. And it was a very hard fall, and I know this is a really awful detail, but it even snapped her hip bones. It was a very, very hard fall and I know this is a kind of a really awful detail But it even snapped her hip bones. It was it was a very very hard fall So that morning a maintenance worker went up to the roof to turn the fan on when he found black corks sold shoes Which were confirmed to be Helen's by her husband on the roof and he told investigators which led them to discover her body after peering off the roof and into the air shaft. On the staircase between the roof and where Helen's body was, police found a bra and a pocket book.

Due to her being nude, police pondered if the crime was sexually motivated, though it didn't appear that Helen had been raped, but it did appear that her clothes had been ripped off. The newspaper headlines read, Real Life Fantabove the Opera and Cops Hunt's Sex Killer at the Met. And interestingly enough, many of Helen's colleagues felt as though her death was directly related to a particular scene in the ballet. And according to violinist Bernard Zeller, there is a 37-minute segment titled Miss Julie where three violent rapes occur in the ballet where the attacker, quote, goes berserk and

tears the clothes off his victim. Bernard didn't think this was a coincidence at all, and stated that the piece was incredibly emotional to play. By the way, there's no actual mention of rape in the synopsis of the story, but this was according to a number of her colleagues, so I'm sure we can take their word for it. And I had read in a breakdown of the idiot that these situations weren't considered rape in the late 1800s, more so just an abuse of power, whatever that means. But I do wonder how this was performed in a ballet.

And also, the final scene is of a woman being stabbed to death, so although Helen wasn't stabbed, there does seem to be some very interesting parallels. As we know, Helen told one of her colleagues while in the women's locker room, which was essentially in the basement of the opera house, that she was going to speak with one of the performers, Valeri Panov. But when police questioned him, he stated through an interpreter since he was from the Soviet Union and had only immigrated to New York six years earlier, that 50 or 60 people would come to see him every day, and it's very common for other performers to talk to him during intermissions.

With that, he mentioned that he did not know Helen, nor that she was planning to visit him that evening during intermission. Investigators felt that the assailant must have had a pretty good knowledge of the layout of the Metropolitan Opera House, to have put Helen's body where it was. And Valeri had only been performing there for about 8 days. Still they wondered if he was possibly a Russian spy, and this case had ties to the Soviet Union in some way, because at this time the Cold War was in full swing, so they worried that he could potentially be a part of the KGB or something. But please confirm that at the time that Helen would have been killed, Valeri was watching his wife perform on stage.

36-year-old Yannis, of course, was unbelievably devastated to learn of his wife's death, and he actually told his father, quote, �Life isn't worth living anymore� I know, they were really in love. So although he wasn't typically a drinker as well, he said that he got through this period by drinking heavily because the grief was just beyond unbearable. And of course, police looked into him as a potential suspect, wondering if maybe he had any jealousy issues, but they came to find that he had never even been inside the Met, and they really felt

whoever killed her again knew the building extremely well. That day, police interviewed everyone in the orchestra to get their side of the story and see if they could bring anything into the case. But alongside the orchestra, police knew that they had to sweep through all 800 of the Met's employees, which would be no easy task. Yeah, that's not going to be easy to do at all. No, that's a lot of people, especially since they wanted to fingerprint everyone as well because they found a pom-print on a pipe on the roof near the air shaft, and they just

knew that print had to have been made by the killer. While speaking to some of the employees, one of the operating engineers at the Met said that he heard a woman's si-mone or grown coming from the bottom floor of the building on the night that Helen was murdered. His name is James Devlin, and he said that the sound didn't mean anything to him at the time, but he was definitely startled by it. And of course, he couldn't be sure that it was Helen, and since it was on the bottom floor of the building, which would have been where the locker room was, as we know Helen had been in during intermission, it made police kind of wonder if she was maybe met with

danger downstairs and was then brought upstairs. That same day, less than 24 hours after Helen disappeared and was killed, the show had to go on, and the team got ready for another show. Despite all the headlines and speculation going around, and a potential killer still amongst the opera, management just decided to hire over 50 extra security personnel for the evening, and people still lined up for tickets.

Which is really interesting to me because this was like the biggest story in New York City at this time. I mean, this like took the city by storm. So the fact that literally the next day people are, I mean, they pack the house even still. I don't know that just, that's interesting to me. Yeah, definitely interesting. So since there were some children in the ballet, many parents threatened to remove them from the production and fear that another murder would occur, but none of them did.

Instead, the mothers were allowed to attend the performance and babysitters were all around to keep watch of the children. This murder was big news, as Daphne just said, and many interviews were conducted with various audience members on Thursday, as well as employees, but for some reason, no one seemed to be worried about their safety that night. While Helen was at Juilliard a decade earlier, she met a PNS named Judith Olsen, who also came from a Scandinavian family, and had even grown up on a farm like Helen did.

And they became inseparable best friends and performed in many recitals together, and even two cruises. And a funny story about one of the cruises that really shows their friendship, so there was a costume party on the ship one night, and neither Helen nor Judith had a costume. So they scavenged their room for items and ended up going as a shower, Judith, and a person taking a shower, Helen who wore a towel and had beer can curlers in her hair, and they actually won first prize. So they just had a really good time together everywhere they went.

But moving on to a very frightening story, Judith actually had a terrifying encounter shortly before Helen was murdered in 1980. She had been rehearsing for a violin concerto at a different venue and were unsure of which one it was when she was attacked in an elevator and was forced up to the roof. And we weren't able to find information on who the perpetrator was and if he got away. But it's very much an eerie parallel to her best friend's death,

as we'll get into when we kind of discuss more about what happened to Helen. So remember these details, because it's just a little weird. And Judith actually didn't learn about Helen's murder until Friday, July 25th. So the day after Helen's body was found, when she opened her apartment door to see her best friend's picture on the cover of the New York

Times, and she said she just fell to the floor in tears. The following Tuesday, July 29, 1980, Judith gave the eulogy for Helen at St. Peter's Lutheran Church in Manhattan. As many celebrated Helen's life, investigators continued to work hard to find Helen's killer, and it was determined that she was murdered during the second act of the performance between 9.30 and 11pm, meaning whoever killed her had done so while thousands watched the ballet. In Vestigator's question, Helen's colleagues, her husband, who was completely at a loss at her death, her ex-boyfriends, etc., and everyone's alibis checked out. Yet one employee in particular looked more suspicious than the rest. A young man named Vincent Donahue, who worked as a stagehand and had shown up for work

at the Met the morning after the murder with a bloody scratch on his face and a newly-shaped head. Vincent told police that he and his wife were in the midst of a breakup, and the evening before they had gotten into a physical dispute, which caused the scratch. And the reason for shaving his head was because his wife said the best thing about him was his hair, so he went into the bathroom and he just shaved it off kind of out of spite. But police knew that they had to talk to his wife. But everything checked out.

Then they heard from Laura Cutler, an American ballerina who stated that she saw Helen the night she was killed at around 9.45pm on the stage floor elevator during intermission. Laura had never met Helen before and she also told police that they weren't the only two in the elevator, but she couldn told police that they weren't the only two in the elevator, but she couldn't remember who the guy was. And Laura actually agreed to go under hypnosis to see if she could recall specific details regarding the man in the elevator, and police sat by with her to hear what she saw. Laura told police that Helen had mentioned she was going to see Valery Panov and asked Laura what floor

she would need to go to to get to his dressing room. Because she, you know, she felt like maybe Laura would have more of an idea of that since she was a ballerina. But Laura Cutler didn't know the building very well because as we said, it's like a freaking maze. So she wasn't sure. But the man on the elevator with them spoke up and said that Helen needed to go to the third floor. So that's the button she pressed, while Laura pressed floor C to go to the practice room. Laura briefly noted that the man was white between 20 to 25 years old, wearing work clothes like what a stagehand would wear, you know, with a tool belt, and had tussled, unkempt light hair.

Then she got off the elevator. And police felt confident that this man could have been the one to kill Helen, or at least maybe he would have some more information as to who did, so they worked with Laura to create a composite sketch. Although this description matched Vincent Donahue in multiple ways, and they were a bit suspicious of him anyway, his wife did confirm their fight, as we mentioned, but many of his coworkers confirmed that he was working with them

in a completely different part of the building during the time that Helen was murdered. So, police now put more focus on the rest of the stage crew, because also the knot that Helen was bound by was a typical stage-hand knot. And this is how they got to talking to a 21-year-old stage-hand who lived in the Bronx named Craig Kremens. Craig was an Irish Catholic young man from the Maschulu or Maschulu parkway,

I'm not sure exactly which one, but from that area of the Bronx. He had a bit of a baby face to go along with an out-of-place mustache and styled middle part, and when police began to question him, they recognized his somewhat immature and very nervous demeanor, and they continued asking him questions about Helen.

And by the way, getting to be a part of the crew at the Met was incredibly hard. I mean, Nepotism was very much a thing, maybe it still is. Like, if you didn't have family ties, you were pretty much shit out of luck. And Craig had actually gotten the job through his stepdad because he was the Met Crews boss, so that was his inn. Yeah, so they first questioned him for over 15 hours on August 16, 3 weeks after Helen's death. And during this time, they obtained a palm print from Craig to compare it to the one that

they found on the roof pipe, near the air shaft where Helen was thrown into, which they worked quickly to do. But in the meantime, investigators questioned other members of the crew to see if what Craig was saying actually checked out. For example, Craig said that he didn't miss any of his cues the night of the murder, but Vincent Donahue, who was working stage right with Craig that night, said that he missed his cues for more than the second portion of the performance,

and that Vincent, other crew members, and even Craig's boss, so his stepdad, were actually looking for him, and this was true. The following morning investigators questioned Craig again, and he cracked a bit during his interview. After he knew he was caught when police showed him all this evidence that they had against him, he admitted to being the man in the elevator with the quote, violinist. And for those wondering if Laura Cutler was able to ID Craig in a lineup and confirm that he was the one in the elevator, she wasn't able to. She really just had a basic description of the man and wasn't paying attention to his

face to be able to determine who he specifically was. Yeah, and this is understandable because, you know, they kind of met in passing. I'm sure she only saw him for like, you know, about 30 seconds on the elevator, so. And they didn't even talk, so I mean, how many times you go in an elevator and like stare at the person next to you? So anyway, back to Craig's interview. He said that he only withheld the information about being the guy in the elevator because he was afraid that it would make him look guilty.

When police asked him again where he was when Helen was killed, he changed his story from not missing any of his cues and being staged right the whole night to he was sleeping in the electricians lounge. So they decided to check this new alibi out with other stage hands, and they actually found a guy who said that he was asleep in the electricians lounge that night. What are all these guys doing sleeping in the lounge? This will be working. I don't know, but you know, he says he didn't see Craig in there at all. So, that kind of confirmed things a little bit. Also, a fingerprint technician had concluded

that Craig's prints matched the one on the roof. And he also determined that the print couldn't have been on the roof longer than three days from the day that they found it, so the morning that Helen's body was found due to the weather conditions. So police were really itching to arrest Craig, but were hoping to get his confession to kind of pull it all together.

So on the night of August 29th, just over one month after Helen's murder, they stopped by Craig's house and asked if he'd come down with them for a few more questions. And he said yes. And this was actually their third time questioning him, and they laid it all out for him and showed him all the new things that they had uncovered that proved that he had been lying to them. And at that point, Craig came forward and said, I killed that lady and explained everything that happened.

He said that between the matinee and the evening performances, he and his buddies went out for some beers, and when they got back to work, he was drunk. He had also been sniffing diet capsules and smoking marijuana. While at work, he noticed how beautiful Helen looked, and he later followed her into the elevator with Laura Cutler at the ballerina. Craig said that Laura got off the elevator and before the doors closed he said something rude to Helen, and Helen slapped him in the face, which apparently pissed him off, making him feel lesser and even rejected. Next, Craig explained that when they got out of the elevator together, he pulled a hammer out of his

tool belt to threaten her while he attempted to rape her, but he was unsuccessful. Helen put up a big fight and then started running up the stairs to get away from him. And then Craig forced Helen up to the roof, which is when Craig told her to take off her shoes. He then pushed her to the ground and cut her clothes off using a knife on his belt, tied her hands behind her back, and then gagged her. But Helen got loose once again, so he got a hold of her again, and then just decided to kick her off the roof and down the air shaft. Which is just, I don't understand this. Like, why did you do that? You tied her up and then you just kick her off the roof.

Like, I don't, I don't understand what the purpose of this is. I think honestly because Helen had been fighting back and, you know, he felt like a little bitch. He decided to do something, you know, to have some power over her, which was kick her down the air shaft. I just feel like I've never heard anything like that. You just kick her off the roof? I know, a lot of times when we hear these assaults happening, when the perpetrator is unsuccessful,

they usually just run off. But this was this extra step. Yeah, so sad and just horrifying and bizarre. It's, I don't understand. I mean, I don't understand any murder, but this one is just like, what the fuck are you doing? So with that, 21-year-old Craig Kremens was arrested for the second-degree murder and attempted rape

of 31-year-old Helen Hagnus Mintix. The following summer in May of 1981, Craig's trial began. The jury got to hear his entire confession which had been read back to him and taped and they paused every couple sentences to let him agree to saying it. Yeah, like it wasn't him confessing and doing the whole confession on the tape. He'd

confessed, they had it written down, and then they read it back to him more like you said this right, and he was a yes. Right. And all the other evidence we discussed in this case was presented. The defense tried to argue that the cops coerced Craig's confession and that they made him say certain things. But as you can very clearly see in this video, the investigators often stopped to say that if anything that they were saying was confusing, that Craig, who never had an attorney present, had the right to stop them or ask them to rephrase something.

So it was obvious to the jury that everything Craig said was completely voluntary and not coerced or pushed. On June 4, 1981, after nine hours of deliberation, the jury found Craig Krimman's guilty of second degree murder and was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison. And interestingly enough, when Craig got to prison, he actually shared a cell with a man who killed John Lennon. Craig apparently wasn't a big fan of him either, because he just sat around all day reading Ketcher and the Rye. I thought that was a really interesting detail of this.

Case, I mean, not one of the chances, but I don't know, that's just interesting. So since the year 2000, Craig has applied every two years for parole, but he's been denied every time. years for parole, but he's been denied every time. He still maintains his innocence and is currently 62 years old. Ed and Heidi Hagnus lived for another 20 years after their daughter passed, and they lived very long lives. I mean, Ed passed at the age of 99 in March of 2003, and Heidi passed just three months later in June of 2003 at the age of 97.

Janis Mantix eventually moved to Norway, not that long after Helen was killed as well, he just couldn't be there without her, so he moved to Norway to build a new home and a sculpting studio, and he was very interested in Viking lore and this really showed in his work. But as it got a bit older, he decided to live out the rest of his days in Taos, New Mexico, where he created monumental steel sculptures and actually remarried. During Helen's life, she was a firm believer in reincarnation, and she also believed that Egypt was her home in a distant life. So she told her husband, Yannis, once that when she died, she wanted her ashes released in Egypt. But when she

passed, he didn't have enough money to do this. So Yannis actually wrote to the Egyptian president on Warsadah, and he actually arranged a flight for Yannis and Helen's ashes. So he laid his loving wife, Helen Hagness, to rest there, just like he had promised her. Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode, and next week we'll have an all-new case for you guys to dive into. Also, today is our lovely Daphne's birthday, so if you want to leave a nice review for us or just say happy birthday to her, I'm sure she would really appreciate that.

I'll be honest, see that I'll have to. But thank you guys so much for listening to this episode. I mean, I had such an interesting time researching. This case, so thank you guys so much for tuning in this week. And thank you guys for just being listeners. We love you so much. We appreciate your support forever. Yeah, and we also have to give thanks to everybody

who joined our Patreon in this past week. You guys are awesome. Patreon is where you guys can get bonus episodes, head on over to patreon.com slash going west podcast and subscribe. Yes, thank you so much everybody who subscribe this past week. Thank you Andrea or Andrea, I'm not sure which, but thank you so much.

Thank you Whitney, Kendra, Meg, Becky, Kelsey, Jackie, Ashley and Allison. Thank you to Ariel or Ariel, Kelsey, Jackie, Ashley and Allison. Thank you to Ariel or Ariel, Erica, Jessica, Dana, Caroline, Shanny and Lindsay. Thank you so much to Jessica, Dana, Joseph, Jodie, Esther, Julie, another Allison and Kate. And last but not least, thank you so much to Haley, Leanna, Monica, Karrissa, Carla, Wendy, and Catherine. You guys are awesome. Thank you so much for subscribing. Holy cow.

You really, really help keep going, West going. We say that all the time, but you really do. It's so true. We love our patrons so much. You guys just directly help. Keith and I produce this show, so thank you so so much. And thank you everybody for listening. Thank you for the kind reviews.

Heath and I read all of them still, and everybody who leaves us a good review, it just touches us right in the heart. Yeah, absolutely. And if you guys want to, and you love going last, please share the show with your friends and your family. That really helps us a lot too. All right, guys, so for everybody out there in the world, Cheerio and Don't Be a Stranger! you you