In commemorations and memorials after\u00a0her death, the view was unanimous: Heklina had been a\u00a0bitch. In the world of San Francisco\u2019s drag scene, where she made her name, this wasn\u2019t meant as an insult. Heklina had been a legendary performer whose stage persona was equal parts raunchy and abrasive, slinging insults known as \u201creads\u201d in fine drag tradition. \u201cYeah, she was a bitch,\u201d recalls her longtime collaborator Sister Roma, \u201cbut she was a bitch in the best possible way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Seven weeks after Heklina died, a memorial for her closed down San Francisco\u2019s Castro Street, with crowds gathering to watch the event on giant screens. Among comedy routines and performances, the city\u2019s queer community paid homage to Heklina not just as a drag queen, but also a shrewd promoter whose long-running event series Trannyshack created a platform for countless drag artists to cut their teeth, including those who went on to become stars on the hit show RuPaul\u2019s<\/a> Drag Race: Alaska, BenDeLaCreme and Jinkx Monsoon.<\/p>\n Monsoon says it was Heklina who gave her the drag gig that launched her career. She describes Heklina as part of the \u201cold guard of drag\u201d, who are \u201cthe queens who made it big before the TV shows began. To be a\u00a0drag artist who was known within the community, before Drag<\/a> Race \u2013 it was a special mantle held by only a handful of amazing performers.\u201d<\/p>\n I was, like: are you asleep? And I\u2019m shaking her, and eventually I touched her hand and it was cold<\/p>\n Alaska tells me it was a Heklina show that she attended on her 22nd birthday that originally inspired her to do drag. \u201cI witnessed drag on stage that was raw and real and told a story. It was lawless and wild. I was hooked.\u201d<\/p>\n Heklina was just 55 when she died in London, in circumstances that the Metropolitan police<\/a> would label \u201cunexpected\u201d. It was her close friend and collaborator of 27 years, the film-maker and drag performer Peaches Christ, who discovered her body. She wrote on 3 April 2023: \u201cI am shocked and horrified to bring this news to you. I am living in a real-life nightmare so forgive me if I don\u2019t have all the answers right now.\u201d<\/p>\n Peaches never expected that, close to three years later, she would still have very few answers to why and how Heklina died. The police investigation was so slow that it provoked demonstrations where queer protesters, drag queens and their allies marched outside Scotland Yard<\/a>, holding photos of Heklina and placards with slogans such as \u201cWe deserve justice, not discrimination\u201d. Why was the Met taking so long to provide answers? Peaches began to suspect it might be because drag queens who work in the \u201cseedy\u201d world of queer nightlife, whose sex lives might be unconventional, are not deemed worthy of the same level of care and attention by police as everyone else.<\/p>\n When she died, Heklina had been in London\u00a0to showcase Mommie Queerest, a drag parody of the gloriously trashy 1981 Joan Crawford biopic Mommie Dearest, which she had been performing with Peaches for more than two decades. The pair were staying in a\u00a0flat on Soho Square while rehearsing for their shows at the nearby Soho theatre.<\/p>\n On a day off between rehearsals, Heklina wanted to arrange a hook-up. She liked to dress in drag and meet men who identified as \u201cstraight\u201d for sex, a habit she often talked about on stage. Peaches didn\u2019t want to be around for that, so they agreed that she would go and stay in a nearby hotel. They stayed in touch via text, then, on the morning of Monday 3 April, Peaches returned to the apartment to pick up Heklina for rehearsals.<\/p>\n Poster for Mommie Queerest, in which Heklina was to star as Christina and Peaches Christ as Joan Crawford. Photograph: Soho Theatre<\/p>\n When Peaches went to put her key in the front door, she found it was already open. The inside of the apartment was a mess: Heklina\u2019s makeup was out on the table, her bedroom door was open. Peaches assumed that Heklina must have gone out to get coffees and forgotten to lock the door. She tidied the flat and prepared their lunches for the day before going into the darkened living room to draw the curtains. That\u2019s when she found Heklina\u2019s body.<\/p>\n \u201cI found her on the floor, in drag, in a very unusual position,\u201d she recalls. \u201cIt looked like yoga \u2013 she was on her knees with her face on the ground and both hands on either side of her head.\u201d At first she thought it must be some kind of prank. \u201cAnd then it\u2019s, like: are you asleep? And I\u2019m shaking her, and eventually I touched her hand and it was cold.\u201d The memory of Heklina\u2019s face still haunts Peaches today. \u201cIt\u2019s the image I see at night when I lay down in bed to sleep. It\u2019s the thing I think about when I wake up in the morning.\u201d<\/p>\n The police were called to the flat at 9.47am<\/a>, where Heklina was found unresponsive and later pronounced dead. The drugs GHB and methamphetamine were found in her body at levels that could be fatal.<\/p>\n Peaches was first treated as a potential suspect, but following interviews and a review of CCTV footage she was cleared and, as a close friend to Heklina, provided with a family liaison officer by the Met. At first the police seemed kind and helpful, promising to keep Peaches updated alongside Nancy French, another close friend who was designated next of kin.<\/p>\n While the fact that Heklina was meeting men for anonymous hook-ups, combined with the drugs found at the scene, probably indicated an accidental overdose during chemsex \u2013 a term used in the gay community for sex while consuming specific drugs \u2013 a cause of death has still not been confirmed, and an inquest has yet to take place. And when, almost two years after her death, police shared a previously unseen CCTV video showing three men walking away from Heklina\u2019s flat, it only raised more questions. The men remain unidentified, and Heklina\u2019s loved ones are still waiting for answers.<\/p>\n Heklina was born Steven Grygelko in\u00a01967\u00a0near Minneapolis, Minnesota. His father, of Native American and Polish heritage, had been stationed with the US Navy in Iceland, where he met Grygelko\u2019s mother at a\u00a0local dance. The two got married against the Icelandic grandparents\u2019 wishes, and moved to America to start a\u00a0family. They had a daughter, and then they had Steven.<\/p>\n He would later describe his childhood as unhappy. His parents divorced. Both struggled with alcoholism. He recalled once attending a family dinner where he realised that he was the only member of his immediate family who had never been to prison.<\/p>\n Through his childhood, Grygelko moved around a\u00a0lot. First to upstate New York and then Iceland for a few years in his teens with his mother, before she started finding him too difficult and sent him to live with his father back in the US. It wasn\u2019t long before he left his father\u2019s home, which he would describe as<\/a> \u201crepressively heterosexual\u201d.<\/p>\n At 18 years old, he joined the navy to escape from home, but was kicked out for failing a drug test while stationed in San Diego. By 20 he was in rehab back in Iceland, where he lived for another four years. \u201cThere was a lot of chaos in my childhood and teen years,\u201d he said in a 2022 episode<\/a> of the LGBTQ+ history podcast You Make Me Real. \u201cI was able to kind of rise above all that. And I\u00a0really credit the gay thing for that, because I just knew there was a more fabulous life waiting in the big city.\u201d<\/p>\n For decades, San Francisco has been a city where misfits from all over the world flock to find their tribe. \u201cFor many of us it\u2019s the American version of Oz,\u201d says Peaches. \u201cIf you\u2019re weird, queer or an outsider, it\u2019s been a place to run away to to reinvent yourself.\u201d Grygelko moved there in 1991 and instantly felt at home.<\/p>\n His first time on stage in drag was at the Miss Uranus pageant in 1992. He had to come up with a name, and spontaneously devised Heklina, derived from the Icelandic volcano Hekla. While he didn\u2019t win the pageant, he began to hungrily explore the city\u2019s drag scene.<\/p>\n By 1996, Heklina was working at a gay bar called The\u00a0Stud in the city\u2019s South of Market district, where she was offered the opportunity to put on an event in the traditionally slow Tuesday night slot. Trannyshack was born, a weekly party where drag shows began at\u00a0midnight. In the early days, the stage was made from\u00a0wooden planks stacked on top of beer crates, which were liable to collapse during particularly energetic performances. Back then, drag was still underground. Nobody expected it to lead to a career, much less celebrity.<\/p>\n Heklina (centre) with Peaches Christ (left) and Putanesca (right), at The Stud in San Francisco, where her party, Trannyshack, was held. Photograph: San Francisco Chronicle\/Getty<\/p>\n One of the distinctive features of San Francisco\u2019s drag scene that Heklina championed is the idea that everyone is welcome to perform. You didn\u2019t have to be a man dressed as a woman; you could be a bearded queen, a drag king, trans or a cisgender woman who might be excluded from conventional drag spaces. One example of the latter was Scissor Sisters\u2019 Ana Matronic, who performed at Trannyshack almost every week over three years. \u201cHeklina\u2019s policy was very open,\u201d she recalls. \u201cAs long as you were a good performer, you had a place on the stage.\u201d The band\u2019s 2004 song Filthy\/Gorgeous is inspired by this period and Heklina appears briefly in its music video.<\/p>\n While there were a few old-school drag shows around the city, Trannyshack was more transgressive. \u201cIt\u00a0wasn\u2019t your standard boa and sequins style of drag,\u201d says Matronic. \u201cIt was new drag, alternative drag, inspired more by John Waters than old Hollywood.\u201d Following in the footsteps of New York\u2019s Club Kid scene and earlier San Francisco parties such as Klubstitute, Heklina helped expand the envelope of drag \u2013 it was more about art, experimentation and provocation than female impersonation.<\/p>\n There were lip-syncs and DJ sets at Trannyshack, but that was just the start. \u201cNumbers would involve blood and vomit and faeces,\u201d says Sister Roma. \u201cYou never knew what you were going to get. It was wild, and if you went there, you had to be prepared for that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSan Francisco drag at that time had no rules,\u201d Alaska, a former winner of RuPaul\u2019s Drag Race All Stars, recalls. \u201cI love Drag Race and it has changed my life, but it has always existed within certain parameters and strict guidelines. Trannyshack was anti-rules. It was representative of the truth of our community in a way that something on television could never be, still to this day. And I think that\u2019s why the community loved it and needed it so much.\u201d<\/p>\n The shows provided an important outlet for the queer community, who were facing the devastation of the Aids epidemic. In the early 1990s, Heklina would check the obituary pages of the local newspaper each week to see who had died. \u201cIt was a very surreal time of intense grief,\u201d she later recalled, \u201cand everybody was dealing with it and walking through this constant sea of death.\u201d<\/p>\n Trannyshack rose from these ashes. \u201cPeople had just stopped dying of Aids because new medications came out,\u201d Heklina said in 2008. \u201cIt felt like a celebration after all that mourning \u2026 I\u2019d planned to go to some people\u2019s funerals and there they were on stage with me.\u201d<\/p>\n Heklina (second from left) in the drag production of The Golden Girls in 2021. Photograph: Gooch<\/p>\n Heklina herself had been living with HIV for many years. In early Trannyshack performances, the presence of blood and horror-filled imagery echoed the community\u2019s recent experiences. Heklina\u2019s friends remember her wicked sense of humour, her gravelly laugh and her ability to make light of even the darkest situations. With an enormous boxy wig and her famous beauty spot, she had a commanding stage presence and impeccable comic timing, able to volley a brutal comeback but also to get humour out of being very, very stupid. In a clip<\/a> of her drag version of The Golden Girls TV show, which became an annual tradition in San Francisco, she milks the simple word \u201cno\u201d into a\u00a0virtuosic comic sequence that goes on for over a\u00a0minute and a half, to such hysterical effect that her co-stars can\u2019t help but break character and laugh.<\/p>\n Trannyshack continued to grow, running weekly for 12 years, spawning a popular pageant competition and satellite editions in Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, London, New Orleans and Honolulu. Celebrities turned up, including Sofia Coppola, Gwen Stefani and Pink. Lady Gaga did a performance there just before she became famous, and then stayed to dance all night.<\/p>\n By 2015, however, the name Trannyshack had become controversial among younger members of the community, due to the term being increasingly viewed as a slur word. Heklina accepted that culture evolves and\u00a0words change their meanings. Her new regular show would be called Mother. And mother was what Heklina was to many younger queens \u2013perhaps an intimidating one, but still a supportive figure who gave a\u00a0lot of aspiring drag performers their first break. \u201cThere\u2019s a Heklina archetype in many drag communities,\u201d says Peaches, \u201cthe cold, calculated businesswoman who\u2019s running the gig. The Mama Rose who\u2019s in the trenches and building this amazing stage for you but is also going to hold you to a standard.\u201d<\/p>\n While she was known for her frosty persona, after her death many friends commented on Heklina\u2019s generosity. She helped one pay their rent, hired another when they were struggling for cash, and supported performers struggling with substance abuse. Heklina herself battled with substance addiction throughout her adult life. \u201cShe did not want to be known for being kind,\u201d says Peaches. \u201cBehind the scenes she helped many people out, but would never publicise it.\u201d<\/p>\n Heklina gets ready for a drag show at Oasis nightclub in San Francisco, 2020. Photograph: Santiago Mejia\/Polaris\/eyevine<\/p>\n In 2014, Heklina opened a theatre and nightclub called Oasis with three business partners, intending to create a space run by drag queens, for drag queens. \u201cIt was refreshing to see someone who actually does drag in charge of the business end of things, rather than some guy who had never put a wig on in his life,\u201d says Alaska. The club was a success, but by 2020 Heklina was tired of managing a venue. She started a podcast, toured a one-woman show (Heklina\u2019s Grand Opening), and in 2020 moved out of San Francisco to a house she had bought near Palm Springs, in southern California, a few doors down from her friend Nancy. They planned to grow old there together.<\/p>\n For a while after Heklina\u2019s death, friends\u00a0and family were busy dealing with her estate and organising memorial events. After a few months, Peaches and Nancy realised that London\u2019s Metropolitan police had gone silent. Emails to officers went unanswered for months. This information vacuum allowed conspiracy theories to take hold \u2013 some people believed Peaches and Nancy were hiding the truth, while others told Peaches they felt sure it was a covered-up murder.<\/p>\n It was only when Peaches put this theory to the Met that they finally responded, leading to a call with an officer in February 2024. According to a lawyer\u2019s notes from the meeting, the officer emphatically denied a\u00a0cover-up but did apologise for how the investigation had been handled. He said the main investigator on the case had been replaced, implying their failure to properly handle this matter may have been the result of \u201cconscious or unconscious bias\u201d.<\/p>\n Just a year earlier, the Baroness Casey Review<\/a>, a\u00a0report commissioned after the abduction, rape and murder of Sarah Everard by police officer Wayne Couzens, had raised urgent questions about bias in the police. The 363-page report, published in March 2023, determined the Met was institutionally racist, sexist and homophobic. In the LGBTQ+ section, the text chronicles homophobia experienced by queer officers within the Met, as well as reporting a 20% fall in LGBTQ+ Londoners\u2019 trust in the Met between 2015 and 2016 and 2021 and 2022, compared with a 12% fall among the non-LGBTQ+ community.<\/p>\n Homophobia within an institution such as the Met is not just exhibited in active acts of hatred, but also in the assumptions officers make during investigations. Between 2014 and 2015, the serial killer Stephen Port murdered four young men<\/a> by administering fatal doses of the drug GHB and dumping their bodies near his flat in Barking, east London. A series of fundamental failings in the Met\u2019s investigation were judged by an inquest jury to have potentially contributed to three of those deaths, as a more thorough investigation could have caught Port before he killed again. The families of the victims accused the Met of homophobic bias in its dealing with the case.<\/p>\n I think that police see that tableau and go: OK, case closed, it\u2019s not really worth looking into<\/p>\n When asked about improvements they had made following the Casey Review, a Met spokesperson said: \u201cWe understand more work needs to be done for us to build trust with the LGBT+ community in London,\u201d but pointed to the implementation of full-time LGBT+ community liaison officers across all boroughs of London, who act as a single point of contact for LGBT+ people and organisations.<\/p>\n Kai O\u2019Doherty, director of policy and research for Galop, an LGBT+ anti-abuse charity, was critical, noting the Casey Review recommended \u201ca complete overhaul\u201d of the Met, \u201cyet we have seen no meaningful action from the Met to address its institutional anti-LGBT+ prejudice. In order for LGBT+ victims and survivors of abuse to have meaningful access to safety and justice, a comprehensive strategy to combat homophobia and transphobia in the Met is urgently needed.\u201d<\/p>\n How might homophobic bias have affected the Met\u2019s dealing with Heklina\u2019s death? In the assumptions made by officers when they came upon a drag queen who has died following a drug-fuelled sexual encounter, \u201cI think that police see that tableau and go: OK, case closed, it\u2019s not really worth looking into. That\u2019s just what you get if you\u2019re that kind of gay,\u201d says the London-based Canadian drag queen Crystal, who attended the Scotland Yard protest.<\/p>\n Peaches Christ (in silver) leads a 2025 protest in Westminster \u2026\u2026 and outside New Scotland Yard \u2026\u2026 where Ana Matronic of Scissor Sisters spoke. Photographs: Zuma Press\/Alamy & Shutterstock<\/p>\n Bias might also explain why the investigation was deprioritised, taking so long and leaving Heklina\u2019s loved ones in the dark. \u201cIf that had been a young white girl found dead in an Airbnb with men coming and going, regardless of what drugs were in her system and regardless of whether she liked to have hook-ups, I guarantee you that investigation would have gone forward at full pelt. That\u2019s homophobia manifest,\u201d says Cheddar Gorgeous, another drag queen who was at the London protest.<\/p>\n Despite promising to be more communicative, after the apologetic call the Met went dark once more. There followed a series of bungling moves that annoyed Peaches, such as the police failing to access Heklina\u2019s phone, which might contain valuable information about who she met on the night of her death, then accidentally sending it to California, and subsequently needing to get it back. Then in January 2025, the police released CCTV footage<\/a> showing three men who had been in Heklina\u2019s flat on the night she died, with a\u00a0public call for information. Peaches pointed out that the chances of anybody recognising these men would have significantly diminished over nearly two years.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m still livid that it took almost two years and me going to the press and blasting the police for there to be any movement,\u201d says Peaches.<\/p>\n Steven Grygelko AKA Heklina (left) and Joshua Grannell AKA Peaches Christ in 2017. Photograph: Courtesy of Joshua Grannell<\/p>\n Peaches organised two protests in London and San Francisco on 31 March 2025 to raise awareness of Heklina\u2019s case, apply pressure on the police, and to draw attention to the LGBTQ+ community\u2019s unfair treatment by police more broadly. In a statement afterwards, DCI\u00a0Christina Jessah, who leads policing in the local area, said, \u201cWe know that many feel deep distress following Steven\u2019s death and some feel frustration with the pace of the police investigation. We are also aware of the concerns of Steven\u2019s next of kin and have apologised to them directly.\u201d<\/p>\n She added that a review of the Heklina investigation was under way to establish any missed opportunities. The police have now assigned a new investigator \u2013 the fifth on this case so far. \u201cThe detectives and the people they\u2019ve assigned to us now are lovely,\u201d says Peaches. \u201cThey\u2019re doing damage control and they\u2019re very effective at it. They\u2019re gentle, they\u2019re communicating. But, for me, the damage has already been done.\u201d<\/p>\n While the Met won\u2019t comment on an active investigation, based on off-the-record conversations with people familiar with the case, it seems likely that they will conclude that Heklina\u2019s death was caused by an accidental overdose after the three men left her apartment, and that there was no evidence of foul play. If this is the conclusion, wonders Peaches, why did it take so long to get answers? \u201cWhy not just say earlier she overdosed on drugs, no foul play, and be done with it? We would have thought it was sad and awful, but it never would have escalated into all this.\u201d<\/p>\n In the absence of closure, what would justice for Heklina mean? For Peaches, it would be \u201cshining a\u00a0light on the Met police\u2019s longstanding institutional homophobia\u201d, a cause in which she never expected to become entangled. She asks, \u201cCan we move the dial so that the police feel pressure to do better with future cases involving people from our community?\u201d<\/p>\n