Heklina’s Friends Respond to New Development in Death

The Metropolitan Police has released an appeal for information in relation to the death of American drag legend Heklina, also known as Steven Grygelko.

via: SF Chronicle

Almost two years after the death of San Francisco drag star Heklina, London police have released surveillance footage of three men who were at the Soho flat where the performer was found on April 3, 2023.

Heklina’s body was discovered by friend and fellow drag performer Peaches Christ at the flat they were sharing. Heklina, whose birth name was Stefan Grygelko, was in London with Peaches Christ to perform in a two-week run of the drag parody “Mommie Queerest” at the Soho Theatre.

Her death, at 55, has been the subject of an ongoing investigation, with the release of the CCTV footage among the first significant news since 2023.

Peaches Christ told the Chronicle on Friday that she was stunned to learn about the existence of the recording and feels the London police didn’t thoroughly examine the case due to homophobic bias.

“What I believe happened is so upsetting. I’ve been keeping my mouth shut for all this time and trying to have some sort of reconciliation with an official autopsy report or certificate of death that says how she died, and two years later, I still don’t have that,” said Peaches Christ, who also directs films under her birth name Joshua Grannell. “The lack of closure and my anger is indescribable.”

London police are asking for the men shown in the video to come forward with any information they have about Heklina’s death. The police, who did not immediately respond to the Chronicle’s request for comment, did not state the men were suspects.

“Our thoughts are with Steven’s family and friends who still have a lot of unanswered questions about what happened to him,” London Detective Chief Inspector Dean Purvis said in a Daily Mail story. “We know that the three men in the CCTV images were at the flat in the early hours of 3 April 2023. I am asking them to contact police. We need to establish what happened, and how Steven was when they left. If you recognise any of the men, I would encourage you to let us know who they are.”

Nancy French, a friend of Heklina’s and executor of her estate, shares Peaches Christ’s frustrations.

“I am Heklina’s ‘next of kin’ with the London Police but have never received a cause of death, autopsy report or final death certificate,” French said in a statement to the Chronicle and Bay Area Reporter. “This CCTV footage should have been released 21 months ago. Releasing it now just proves their ineptitude and mismanagement that we’ve been dealing with for almost 2 years.”

Heklina and Peaches Christ were sharing the rented flat in the Soho area while rehearsing. When Heklina decided to arrange a sexual encounter, Peaches Christ said she opted to stay in a nearby hotel Saturday and Sunday to give her friend privacy.

“I am not airing any dirty laundry. If you knew her at all, this is all stuff she would have been glad to talk about on stage,” added Peaches Christ.

Peaches Christ said she returned to the flat Monday morning and immediately felt something was off when she found the front door ajar. She also noticed that a bathroom light connected to a noisy fan was on, something the two had discussed being irritated by.

“When Heklina was found by me, she was in drag in a very compromising position,” Peaches Christ said about finding her friend on the living room floor. “I think the bias started happening from the moment she was found. This was considered a dismissed case from the moment we started going down this road.”

After being cleared as a suspect, Peaches Christ returned to San Francisco and, with French, continued to press London police for answers about the status of the investigation.

Peaches Christ said that emails to the detective first assigned to the case went unanswered for months. It wasn’t until she emailed the department letting them know about possible scenarios for Heklina’s deaths — scenarios she had heard from a source in the London coroner’s office — that she began to get responses to her emails.

Peaches Christ also said she had been speaking to a London journalist about her suspicions about police inaction in the case.

Heklina was the cofounder of the legendary San Francisco drag night Trannyshack in 1996, which she hosted at the Stud Bar’s former location at Ninth and Harrison streets in the South of Market district. Hosted on Tuesdays at midnight, “The Shack” became known as one of the most experimental, artistically daring drag venues in the Bay Area and has been the subject of two documentaries.

The event, and Heklina herself, had a post-punk, defiant aesthetic that later influenced global drag culture. After renaming the event T-Shack and then Mother, Heklina hosted the final show in February 2020.

For decades, she performed with Peaches Christ in drag parodies of Hollywood films, touring internationally. Heklina also played Dorothy Zbornak along with D’Arcy Drollinger in the annual San Francisco holiday production, “The Golden Girls Live: The Christmas Episodes.” In 2015, Heklina opened the San Francisco nightclub and drag hot spot Oasis with Drollinger before divesting in 2020 and becoming a silent investor.

The performer’s death shook the Bay Area and international drag community, with tributes including a memorial card on an episode of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and a funeral at the Castro Theatre that required closing off the street so overflow crowds could watch the program on a jumbo screen. Heklina was also added to the mural “Showtime” at Oasis in 2023.

Peaches Christ said that in addition to continuing to push for answers from London police, she also has been discussing the possibility of making a documentary about Heklina with filmmaker Brian Benson that would ask questions about the case.

But before that, the next step for us is “to rally as many people as possible to push for answers.”