Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / 'RUST' Star Alec Baldwin Deadly Shooting, Now Suing Prosecutors and Detectives

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'RUST' Star Alec Baldwin Deadly Shooting, Now Suing Prosecutors and Detectives · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:00
Speaker 1: Crime Stories with Nancy Grace, a young married mom of
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Speaker 1: one little boy, shot dead on a movie set by
0:13
Speaker 1: none other than movie star Alec Baldwin in the Last Hours,
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Speaker 1: a stunning twist to the so called Rust movie shooting death.
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Speaker 1: I'm Nancy Grace, this is Crime Stories. Thank you for
0:28
Speaker 1: being with us.
0:29
Speaker 2: That's right.
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Speaker 1: In the Last Days, movie star mega millionaire Alec Baldwin
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Speaker 1: is actually suing the prosecutors that brought a case against him.
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Speaker 2: The prosecutors and the investigators.
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Speaker 1: Tied to the Rust movie shooting death of Elena Hutchins.
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Speaker 2: Now remember, although he denied.
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Speaker 1: It, it was proven by forensic experts that Alec Baldwin
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Speaker 1: did pull the trigger the bullet that killed a young mom.
1:04
Speaker 1: But now actor Alec Baldwin files a civil lawsuit for
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Speaker 1: malicious prosecution and civil rights violation in the fatal shooting
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Speaker 1: of the gorgeous young cinematographer. The lawsuit file get a
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Speaker 1: state district court in Santa Fe, where a judge dismissed
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Speaker 1: manslaughter charges against Baldwin, claiming prosecutors and investigators mishandled evidence
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Speaker 1: as they pursued the case. Instead of sanctioning them, the
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Speaker 1: judge simply threw out the case and now Alec Baldwin
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Speaker 1: having a field day with that, actually suing the prosecutors
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Speaker 1: that oversaw the case.
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Speaker 3: What happened were tragedy on the film set of a
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Speaker 3: new Alec Baldwin movie and what police are calling a
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Speaker 3: misfire of a prop gun in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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Speaker 4: Griff's office there has just confirmed it was Baldwin who
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Speaker 4: fired the prop gun that killed a forty two year
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Speaker 4: old female director of photography, Helena Hutchins.
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Speaker 5: The film's director, Juel Suso, was also hurt. This incident
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Speaker 5: happened on the set of The Western Rust. Now detectives
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Speaker 5: are investigating what type of projectile discharged from this gun.
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Speaker 1: You were just hearing our friend Christine Johnson with CBS
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Speaker 1: what really happened. According to reports, the assistant yelled out
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Speaker 1: cold gun just before the shooting, which means the gun
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Speaker 1: was safe, that it was loaded with a blank.
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Speaker 2: So how do we have.
2:43
Speaker 1: A woman, dad, another film person injured? With me an
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Speaker 1: all star panel to make sense of it all if
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Speaker 1: we can with me Domini Romano Lawyer joining us out
2:54
Speaker 1: of New York at Romano Law dot Com is specialty
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Speaker 1: entertainment law and I can tell you if somebody's going
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Speaker 1: to a lawyer. Doctor Sherry Schortz, forensic psychologists joining us.
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Speaker 2: Karen L.
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Speaker 1: Smith, forensic expert, host of Shattered Soul's podcast at Beerbonesforensics
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Speaker 1: dot com. Paul Zeike joining us special guest, former police
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Speaker 1: commander and author of Stop Him From Killing Them on Amazon,
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Speaker 1: and he has lots of experience using firearms with blanks
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Speaker 1: during live action movie scenes like Terminator Salvation. Doctor Michelle Dupre,
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Speaker 1: forensic pathologist, former medical examiner, author of Homicide Investigation Field Guide,
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Speaker 1: and a former police detective. But first to Alexis Terresschuk
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Speaker 1: Crime online dot Com investigative reporter joining us from Hollywood.
3:45
Speaker 2: Alexis is what is getting folded into the story right
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Speaker 2: or wrong?
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Speaker 1: Is Alec Baldwin's history, his reputation for let me just
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Speaker 1: say headedness, to put it ephemistically. If he thought it
4:05
Speaker 1: was a blank and it should have been a blank,
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Speaker 1: then history aside it was an accident. But how can
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Speaker 1: it really be an accident when somebody loaded this prop
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Speaker 1: gun with real bullets? Just start at the beginning.
4:21
Speaker 6: They were on a set in Santa Fe, New Mexico,
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Speaker 6: it's a Western style movie. So they were sitting in
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Speaker 6: a church at an old church scene, and Alex Baldwin
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Speaker 6: was sitting in one of the pewes, and he was
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Speaker 6: practicing what's called a cross draw, and so that would
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Speaker 6: be where the person takes your left hand and grabs
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Speaker 6: the gun out of the holster on your opposite hip,
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Speaker 6: pulls it across to fire. He was practicing this move
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Speaker 6: standing the cinematographer, which is the person that makes the
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Speaker 6: movie beautiful.
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Speaker 7: This is the person that.
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Speaker 6: That films the scene. She was standing in front of
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Speaker 6: him with the assistant director stand i'mbard with the director
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Speaker 6: standing right behind her. He was looking over her shoulder
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Speaker 6: to see what it would look like when Alex.
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Speaker 2: Pulled the gun out.
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Speaker 6: He pulls it out of the side, points it at
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Speaker 6: her to show them, pulls the trigger and it fires
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Speaker 6: a live round into her. Hits her in the stomach
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Speaker 6: and actually, believe goes through her and grazes the director
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Speaker 6: sitting standing right behind her.
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Speaker 1: Hush has pronounced dead at an Albuquerque hospital after being
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Speaker 1: rushed to the emergency room. You know what, I always
5:26
Speaker 1: love playing nine one one calls for a jury because
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Speaker 1: it takes you back to what's really happening, not a description,
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Speaker 1: not someone recounting what happened, but you're hearing what really happened.
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Speaker 1: Take a listen to the beginning of that nine to
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Speaker 1: one one call.
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Speaker 6: We did like the location of your emergency.
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Speaker 8: At a Finanza Creek branch. Right now, we've got to
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Speaker 8: people shot on accidentally. She said, someone was shot. Two
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Speaker 8: people accidental gunshot movie steps and the Greek grandy, I'll
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Speaker 8: connect you with medical decides they don't need us.
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Speaker 6: Who are you calling?
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Speaker 2: Where are the roads?
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Speaker 7: Fire?
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Speaker 2: Any ms?
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Speaker 8: Emergency Bonanza Creek grants.
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Speaker 7: Two people accidentally.
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Speaker 8: Shot on the steps, top gun We need help the media,
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Speaker 8: Bonanza Creek grants.
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Speaker 2: Come on, stay almost phone.
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Speaker 8: We're gonna okay, what is your name?
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Speaker 6: Namely Mitchell?
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Speaker 7: Mitchell wants upon where you're calling from?
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Speaker 8: Five up?
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Speaker 1: Don't hang up?
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Speaker 8: Okay, hold on just one second. Sounds like somebody else
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Speaker 8: is calling to Its probably better, miss good. Everybody should
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Speaker 8: be We need some help us direct you're in our
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Speaker 8: cameraman's camera, woman's shot.
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Speaker 1: Now you hear repeatedly the word accident accidentally throughout that,
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Speaker 1: But is it an accident? Very often, when you have,
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Speaker 1: for instance, a dui crash. People go, well, it was
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Speaker 1: an accident, But was it because the driver chooses to
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Speaker 1: go to a bar to order drinks, to drink, to
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Speaker 1: become legally intoxicated, to then get the car keys, walk
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Speaker 1: to the car, get in the car, crank up reverse,
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Speaker 1: and drive out onto the roads. That sounds pretty deliberate.
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Speaker 1: So is it an accident? Is it gross negligence? Well,
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Speaker 1: take a listen to more of that nine to one
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Speaker 1: one call.
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Speaker 8: So was it loaded with a real bullet or I
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Speaker 8: cannot tell you that. Okay, we have two injuries from
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Speaker 8: the movie's done shots. Okay, we're getting out there already,
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Speaker 8: just down up on thing.
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Speaker 6: Okay, I see that yelled at me at lunch. Could
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Speaker 6: ask them about revision.
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Speaker 7: You can yell at me.
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Speaker 8: He's a suggested gun, so he's responsible. I don't have
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Speaker 8: to answer how many No, no, no, I'm super hard Iran.
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Speaker 8: People are angerous, true that I know of.
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Speaker 7: I was here.
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Speaker 8: We were a hurtant and it went off and I
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Speaker 8: ran out. We all ran out. There were but doubles
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Speaker 8: over the id and the camera woman and the director
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Speaker 8: and the directors were clearing the road and to come back.
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Speaker 8: We're back on the we're back in the town called
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Speaker 8: the We're back in the Western town.
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Speaker 7: Is there any serious bleeding?
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Speaker 9: I don't know.
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Speaker 8: I ran out of the building, but when R and
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Speaker 8: I still have to go through these.
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Speaker 6: Okay, are they comply alert on?
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Speaker 2: I'm here? A lot of discussion in the background.
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Speaker 1: You hear the speaker talking to somebody else about someone
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Speaker 1: yelling at her and Lutch about script revision, and she
9:04
Speaker 1: says she's supposed to shack the gun. He's responsible for
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Speaker 1: what happened. No, No, I'm a script supervisor Crime Stories
9:16
Speaker 1: with Nancy Grace. Young woman Helena Hutchins died very shortly
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Speaker 1: after she was shot during rehearsal on the movie set
9:28
Speaker 1: of Rust. It was at a film set ranch on
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Speaker 1: the outskirts of Santa Fe in Mexico. Baldwin was the
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Speaker 1: lead actor and co producer of the movie and was
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Speaker 1: pointing a pistol directly at Miss Hutchins when it went off,
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Speaker 1: killing her and wounding the director Joel Susa. Now, Baldwin
9:48
Speaker 1: admitted immediately he had pulled back the hammer but not
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Speaker 1: the trigger, and the gun fired. Ballistics proved he did
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Speaker 1: pull the trigger. Now, the whole thing went sideways. The
10:00
Speaker 1: trial was turned on his ear by claims ammunition was
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Speaker 1: brought into the Santa Fe County Sheriff's office by a
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Speaker 1: man who said it could be related to the killing.
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Speaker 1: Prosecutors at the time deemed the ammo was unrelated. Baldwin's
10:16
Speaker 1: lawyers say investigators buried the evidence in a separate folder,
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Speaker 1: and they filed a motion to dismiss, and the judge
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Speaker 1: granted it. That decision aside. In the last days, Alec
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Speaker 1: Baldwin not happy that his chargers were thrown out by
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Speaker 1: the judge, now suing prosecutors and investigators.
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Speaker 2: But what happened at the time, Paul Zake, thank you
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Speaker 2: for being with us.
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Speaker 1: What went wrong? Obviously there was a live bullet and
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Speaker 1: what should have been a prop gun.
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Speaker 10: But what happened, Nancy? The only explanation for this is
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Speaker 10: a systemic breakdown in systems that are in place to
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Speaker 10: ensure live ammunition is not present on the set.
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Speaker 1: Okay, now, that was a lot of words, Paul's I
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Speaker 1: think you're saying somebody didn't do their job.
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Speaker 10: Well, absolutely, somebody did not do their job and catastrophically
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Speaker 10: did not do that. There's no reason whatsoever for live
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Speaker 10: ammunition to be on the set of any set. Because
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Speaker 10: these weapons are capable of firing live rounds, they're not
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Speaker 10: really prop guns. They're deadly weapons being used as props.
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Speaker 2: Okay, hold on right there, I want to make that distinction.
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Speaker 1: You're absolutely right when look, I'm a trial lawyer, I'm
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Speaker 1: a legal expert. You're the expert in this world. When
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Speaker 1: I say prop gun, I mean they're using it as
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Speaker 1: a prop. But you're making a very fine, subtle, but
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Speaker 1: important distinction. A prompt gun is a fake gun. I
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Speaker 1: don't think it even can shoot. Is that right.
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Speaker 10: Exactly you're talking about?
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Speaker 11: And say it pop nice?
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Speaker 10: Correct? It has a flat edge on it, capable of
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Speaker 10: cutting you. These are things that are not deemed to
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Speaker 10: be dangerous. A prop gun is simply as utilized on set.
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Speaker 10: Our weapons that are capable of firing live ammunition and
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Speaker 10: therefore accidentally live ammunition could be mixed with blank rounds.
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Speaker 10: You know, given time, this is just a disaster waiting
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Speaker 10: to happen. They need to move to true guns that
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Speaker 10: are incapable of chambering live ammunition. Until that happens, this
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Speaker 10: has a very strong chance of repeating itself.
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Speaker 1: Well, okay, tell me this. Paul's II guys with me
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Speaker 1: Paul z I. He is a former police commander. He's
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Speaker 1: an author, screen actors gil and has experience using blanks
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Speaker 1: during live action movie scenes where we all think they're
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Speaker 1: shooting real guns. If you suspend your disbelief in movies
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Speaker 1: like his Terminator Salvation, those aren't real guns.
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Speaker 2: So why are they using a real gun? To start with?
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Speaker 1: Paul's I and I mean to me, having been forced
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Speaker 1: to handle so many guns and so many homicides, what
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Speaker 1: moron wouldn't make sure that there were blanks in the gun.
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Speaker 10: It's hard to imagine that during the loading of the
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Speaker 10: weapon that that was not viewed very strictly as the
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Speaker 10: weapon is loaded. And also there's a chaine of custody
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Speaker 10: issue here on the scene of Terminator Salvation. As we
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Speaker 10: would go out and we would you conduct the battle scene,
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Speaker 10: if you will, in the middle of the night. We
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Speaker 10: would be handed directly from the armor, fully automatic weapons
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Speaker 10: and magazines, fully loaded with blanks, and we would head
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Speaker 10: straight out to where the scene was to be shot,
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Speaker 10: and then we would engage in the scene. You know,
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Speaker 10: five ten minutes later, hand the weapons straight back to
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Speaker 10: the armor, all the ammunition back to the armor, all
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Speaker 10: the magazines back to the armor, and we would not
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Speaker 10: be able to touch those weapons again until the next scene.
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Speaker 10: So from a I mean a custody standpoint, and went
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Speaker 10: directly from the armor, directly to my hand, my the
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Speaker 10: co actor's hands that were with me, and that was
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Speaker 10: maintained very strictly.
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Speaker 1: Hold On, Paul, I've got to soak in everything you're saying,
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Speaker 1: because dominic Romano a high profile lawyer joining us out
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Speaker 1: of New York's specialty entertainment law.
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Speaker 2: And that's why Dominate's joining us today. Dominick, hold on.
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Speaker 1: When you heard Paul's like say, chain of custody, I
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Speaker 1: immediately thought of a serial murderer that I prosecuted on
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Speaker 1: one murder. We could get him on one and there
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Speaker 1: ended up I would say, three weeks before trial. I
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Speaker 1: was just looking at the evidence and I noticed that
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Speaker 1: the bag that contained the evidence wasn't signed.
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Speaker 2: It had never been signed by.
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Speaker 1: The homicide cop that picked it up from It was DNA,
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Speaker 1: and there's blood from where it had been taken and
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Speaker 1: carried to the crime lab. It wasn't written on the back.
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Speaker 1: Did anybody tamper with it? No, he just didn't put
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Speaker 1: his initials. I'm like, oh, dear Lord in Heaven, the
15:02
Speaker 1: chain is broken. This could be attacked at trial. I
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Speaker 1: had to go back out to the jail, stand there
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Speaker 1: and look at this killer while he pulled his blood again.
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Speaker 1: Then I carried it with my investigator myself back to
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Speaker 1: the crime lab to have it retested.
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Speaker 2: Praise the Lord in Heaven. It was his DNA. Long
15:21
Speaker 2: story short, that's chain of custody. Your case can be lost.
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Speaker 1: You can lose a serial killer because somebody didn't keep
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Speaker 1: the chain to preserve the integrity of the trial. That's
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Speaker 1: what I thought when Paul Zike said chain of custody.
15:36
Speaker 1: But did you also hear him say dominant romano. He
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Speaker 1: handed it back to the It sounded like he was
15:41
Speaker 1: saying armor or armory. But I've been reading about this case.
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Speaker 1: It's an arm er, armor er who is the person
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Speaker 1: in charge of all the weapons. Hey, somebody is either
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Speaker 1: going to jail. Are they going to lose their house
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Speaker 1: over a lawsuit?
15:58
Speaker 2: Dominant Romano?
16:00
Speaker 11: You're right, Nancy, and I think Paul is absolutely right.
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Speaker 11: Look in twenty twenty one, no one should ever be
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Speaker 11: killed by a gun on a film set. Period. Those
16:09
Speaker 11: are the words of Brandon Lee's sister Brandon Lee shot
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Speaker 11: on a film set in the early nineteen nineties. This
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Speaker 11: should not happen. There are established protocols, chains of commend
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Speaker 11: Naji said, someone would either going to jail or lose
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Speaker 11: their house. It's highly likely here. I mean, there appears
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Speaker 11: to be some serious gross negligence on that set to
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Speaker 11: allow that to have that. That is the appearance. And
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Speaker 11: I don't know what evidence can come out to rebut.
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Speaker 1: That presumption a live round in well as Paul's ike
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Speaker 1: is correct in me, it's not a prop gun. They
16:47
Speaker 1: were using real guns. Hey, let me ask you a question,
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Speaker 1: Paul's ike. Explain the difference and what a blank looks
16:54
Speaker 1: like as opposed to a live round a bullet. And
16:57
Speaker 1: we're saying live rounds, we're talking about a bullet. What's
17:00
Speaker 1: the difference. Can't you just look at them and you
17:02
Speaker 1: can see the difference In.
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Speaker 10: Most cases, absolutely, it's very clear. You can see the
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Speaker 10: difference in some types of calibers, say two two three,
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Speaker 10: if you will, that's what an AR fifteen would shoot.
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Speaker 10: The blanks are kind of crimped at the end to
17:20
Speaker 10: almost look like there's a bullet on the end of them.
17:23
Speaker 10: With any sort of trained professional whatsoever. When you're handling
17:27
Speaker 10: a blank, you know it's a blank. When it's a bullet,
17:29
Speaker 10: you know it's a bullet. The blank does not have
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Speaker 10: a lead projectile or a steel projectile at the end
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Speaker 10: of the round, So at the end it's either flat
17:39
Speaker 10: or it's slightly crimped to hold in the gunpowder, which
17:44
Speaker 10: you know, the firearm usually needs the gunpowder to correctly
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Speaker 10: function the weapon and cycle the weapon, and that's one
17:51
Speaker 10: of the reasons why blanks are used.
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Speaker 1: Okay, Paul's I really respect you, but you're going to
17:56
Speaker 1: have to dumb me down for me, okay, because I
17:59
Speaker 1: would have to put you through intensive training before you
18:02
Speaker 1: took the stand because a lot of people do not
18:05
Speaker 1: know what you just said. Just think about it and
18:08
Speaker 1: think if there's a way you can say it in
18:10
Speaker 1: more simple terms. What's the difference between a blank and
18:13
Speaker 1: a lie bullet when you look at it? Speak English
18:17
Speaker 1: Man in the meantime. Wait a minute, you mentioned Brandon Lee,
18:21
Speaker 1: and you're absolutely right. We pulled sound of other cases
18:24
Speaker 1: almost identical to this. This is not the first time
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Speaker 1: it's happened, Believe it or not, Tyler, could you roll
18:31
Speaker 1: our cut forty four. Let's follow up on what Paul
18:34
Speaker 1: Zike said about Brandon.
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Speaker 6: Lee's A bully comes from that killed Brandon Lee. Some
18:39
Speaker 6: believe a piece of a proply without gunpowder, and it
18:42
Speaker 6: may have been left accidentally in the gun.
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Speaker 11: The blank was fired at Brandon.
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Speaker 9: Some feel let's shot out the propoly.
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Speaker 10: Mortally wounding him.
18:50
Speaker 7: He was an action way and happened.
18:51
Speaker 6: The Crow crewmember we spoke with says that there were
18:54
Speaker 6: many opportunities for an accident to happen.
18:56
Speaker 7: Are the working conditions on the set of The Crow,
18:59
Speaker 7: particularly that threely.
19:01
Speaker 12: Long hours, eighteen hour days back to back at times
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Speaker 12: pushing ninety one hundred hours a week and six day
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Speaker 12: weeks way too much?
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Speaker 2: Do you think that that over work, that exhaustion might
19:14
Speaker 2: have resulted in this accident?
19:16
Speaker 12: Sage your concience olive them were definitely not call. It
19:19
Speaker 12: could have been prevented with better management.
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Speaker 10: The publicist for the movie The Crow denies that the
19:26
Speaker 10: working conditions were unsafe.
19:27
Speaker 13: Certainly, everyone was very tired and exhausted from the shoe,
19:31
Speaker 13: but these are professionals and they're used to working conditions
19:33
Speaker 13: like this.
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Speaker 1: Okay, guys, you were hearing our friends and inside edition,
19:37
Speaker 1: and I want to follow up on what we're just
19:38
Speaker 1: hearing with Alexis Tereschuk. I played that sound for a reason, Alexis,
19:43
Speaker 1: because on the Alec Baldwin set of Rust, there apparently
19:48
Speaker 1: were problems with working conditions. A group of the crew
19:54
Speaker 1: had walked out, I think the night before the claiming
19:57
Speaker 1: that they had bad hotel They were an hour away
20:01
Speaker 1: from a hotel or motel and if they worked late
20:04
Speaker 1: into the night, they have to drive.
20:05
Speaker 2: Through I guess the desert and a lot of them.
20:07
Speaker 1: Were actually sleeping in their cars overnight. That's just some
20:11
Speaker 1: of the complaints I've heard. But what are the other complaints,
20:16
Speaker 1: if any, on the Alec Baldwin movie set.
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Speaker 6: Well, there have been complaints that things were not safe quote.
20:23
Speaker 6: But one of the person is being directly blamed for
20:27
Speaker 6: a lot of the unfaked is when you were listening
20:29
Speaker 6: to the nine one one call and you said you
20:30
Speaker 6: heard the woman saying that he was yelling at me
20:33
Speaker 6: things like that. This is the assistant director that they're
20:35
Speaker 6: talking about. And this is the assistant director, David Halls,
20:39
Speaker 6: who handed the gun to Baldwin and said this is
20:42
Speaker 6: a cold gun. So what the people on the set
20:45
Speaker 6: were saying is that Halls was not a responsible person.
20:48
Speaker 6: He was very angry. He was making the job very
20:52
Speaker 6: difficult for everybody to do, and they did it trust him.
20:55
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, you're saying, David Halls was an assistant director.
20:58
Speaker 2: Yes, okay, Well what about the horror.
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Speaker 1: Isn't she the one responsible for all the weapons and
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Speaker 1: the blanks or the bullets? Guys, take another Listen to
21:08
Speaker 1: our cut forty three. This is about practically the same
21:12
Speaker 1: thing happening before.
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Speaker 2: Listen.
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Speaker 9: It was here at the Carrol Coast Studios in Wilmington,
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Speaker 9: North Carolina, that actor Brandon Lee was filming The Crow.
21:21
Speaker 2: Ironically, the film is about.
21:23
Speaker 7: A man who dies and comes back to life to
21:25
Speaker 7: advanish his death.
21:27
Speaker 10: Shortly after midnight last Tuesday, Brandon Lee was preparing to
21:30
Speaker 10: film a routine action scene.
21:32
Speaker 11: The script called for him to get shot at as he.
21:35
Speaker 10: Walks through door carrying a bag of groceries.
21:38
Speaker 8: Michael Massey, the actor doing the shooting, is reportedly devastated
21:42
Speaker 8: by Lee's death and.
21:43
Speaker 11: Remains in seclusion.
21:45
Speaker 2: The gun he was using was supposed to be loaded
21:47
Speaker 2: with blanks from the camera's rule.
21:49
Speaker 11: Brandon Lee was performing for the last.
21:51
Speaker 1: Time millionaire movie star Alec Baldwin suing prosecutors and investigators
21:57
Speaker 1: tied to the movie Rust shooting death off Alena Hutchins.
22:02
Speaker 1: You know some would argue, don't kick a gift horse
22:05
Speaker 1: in the mouth, take your dismissal and run. Apparently Alec
22:10
Speaker 1: Baldwin doesn't agree with that sage advice and is actually
22:15
Speaker 1: suing prosecutors.
22:17
Speaker 9: Way you and Karen Smith, Well, we deal a lot
22:19
Speaker 9: with forensics in physics.
22:21
Speaker 14: When we do a reconstruction, we use snippets of time
22:24
Speaker 14: and sometimes that can be split seconds, and this includes
22:27
Speaker 14: trajectories of projectiles, and this trajectory can.
22:31
Speaker 9: Generally be explained by the reporting. Alec Baldwin was reported
22:34
Speaker 9: to be sitting at a church pew to align a
22:36
Speaker 9: camera angle when the gun was fired. Alena Hutchins then
22:39
Speaker 9: collapsed on the floor and Joel's Susa was struck in
22:42
Speaker 9: the clavicles. That's an upward trajectory, which means both Hutchins
22:46
Speaker 9: and Susa were standing up when the event occurred. The projectile,
22:50
Speaker 9: now that has yet to be officially named as a
22:52
Speaker 9: specific caliber bullet or as something else that came out
22:56
Speaker 9: of the gun muzzle that perporated Helena's body and something
23:00
Speaker 9: cuinently structurals. Now, in order for that to happen, the
23:03
Speaker 9: kinetic energy, which is energy as the result of motion,
23:07
Speaker 9: would be very high. We're dealing with mass or.
23:10
Speaker 14: The amount of matter in an object and energy dispersion.
23:13
Speaker 9: Guns carry a high volume of energy in a small space,
23:17
Speaker 9: and that from my experience, it tells me that it
23:19
Speaker 9: was something other than just the paper or elastic wadding
23:23
Speaker 9: from a blank round. That needs to be confirmed by.
23:26
Speaker 14: The EMMY and the investigators.
23:27
Speaker 9: But there are reports of live ammunition bullets being on
23:31
Speaker 9: the set and that particular gun allegedly being used for target.
23:37
Speaker 14: Practice that morning. There's a lot of questions that needs
23:40
Speaker 14: to be answered by the investigators and.
23:41
Speaker 1: Theme again for the set being used as target practice.
23:46
Speaker 1: Paul Zike, that shouldn't be that you've got crew members
23:50
Speaker 1: out shooting bottles. I think that that's coming out with
23:54
Speaker 1: live bullets and use that same gun for a sane
23:59
Speaker 1: and a church full of people.
24:01
Speaker 10: And Nancy, I just want to clarify the prior point.
24:04
Speaker 10: So very simply, a blank is a shellcasing with gunpowder
24:08
Speaker 10: in it with no bullet. A bullet is the same
24:11
Speaker 10: exact thing with more gunpowder and a live bullet at
24:16
Speaker 10: the end of it that is made to travel through
24:19
Speaker 10: the barrel and exit the weapon. Back to what you
24:22
Speaker 10: were saying, that the cardinal rule, it's been broken, whether
24:25
Speaker 10: you're whether you're involved in police training or you're involved
24:28
Speaker 10: in a movie set, keeping live ammunition away from weapons
24:34
Speaker 10: that fire live ammunition, and keeping weapons at fire blanks
24:37
Speaker 10: away from those instances.
24:40
Speaker 11: And when you mix those two.
24:41
Speaker 10: Together, the odds of somebody having a spare live round
24:44
Speaker 10: in one of their pockets or you name it is
24:48
Speaker 10: super high, and it sounds very sloppy, and it just
24:53
Speaker 10: just opens the door for terrible things to happen. And
24:57
Speaker 10: that's where the systemic breakdown controlled environment.
25:01
Speaker 1: I'm telling you. Paul's like, you're right. Super sloppy is
25:04
Speaker 1: one way to put it. Gross negligence or unintentional murder
25:09
Speaker 1: is another.
25:10
Speaker 2: Way to put it. I think I hear dominant Ramano
25:11
Speaker 2: jumping in go ahead.
25:12
Speaker 11: Yeah, Basically it's a catastrophic miscalculation. I think two people
25:17
Speaker 11: here should be folks. We should focus on. One is
25:22
Speaker 11: the armor like this is only according to reports or
25:25
Speaker 11: second movie with chairs read and the assistant director Dave
25:29
Speaker 11: Hall's you mentioned before According to reports, he was fired
25:32
Speaker 11: from a twenty nineteen production of Freedom's Past. If a
25:36
Speaker 11: minor injury?
25:37
Speaker 2: Whoa white a minute? Why wh wh why white white?
25:40
Speaker 1: You got me drinking from the fire hydrant, which is
25:42
Speaker 1: not a bad thing. It's too much at once. Hold on,
25:44
Speaker 1: why in the world would you have somebody that was
25:47
Speaker 1: fired off another similar job handling your weapon?
25:51
Speaker 2: Okay? Is that what you just said, Dominic?
25:53
Speaker 11: Okay?
25:54
Speaker 2: Almost so almost.
25:56
Speaker 11: The armor is twenty four years old. The person in
25:59
Speaker 11: the handle the weapons. It's only her second film. She
26:03
Speaker 11: was just in a podcast last month where she said,
26:06
Speaker 11: you know, she's a bit nervous about her film, but
26:07
Speaker 11: it went well her while there is apparently a famous armor, okay,
26:10
Speaker 11: so we have that an experienced armor. Number two, we
26:13
Speaker 11: have the assistant director known as the ad Dve Holes. Apparently,
26:17
Speaker 11: according to a report, he was fired from its twenty
26:20
Speaker 11: nineteen production. The movie was Freedom Passed after crew members
26:24
Speaker 11: suffered guess what a minor injury when a gun unexpectedly discharged?
26:31
Speaker 1: Dominic Ramano, the words similar transactions are jumping to mind.
26:36
Speaker 1: I meant, if there is a trial, you know that
26:39
Speaker 1: previous incident is going to come in. I mean This
26:44
Speaker 1: solidifies my thought that this is not an accident, because
26:48
Speaker 1: an accident when you totally don't see it coming, it's
26:52
Speaker 1: just like out of the blue.
26:53
Speaker 2: But if this guy, if it's.
26:54
Speaker 1: Correct, the ad had a previous incident where somebody was
26:58
Speaker 1: shot on a set, even if it was a minor injury,
27:02
Speaker 1: then you should have seen either new or.
27:05
Speaker 2: Should have known. Would you agree with that, Dominic Romano.
27:07
Speaker 11: They're going to be some serious questions to be asked,
27:12
Speaker 11: and there have to be answers, and if we don't
27:17
Speaker 11: have good answers, someone is either going to be involved
27:21
Speaker 11: in a very expensive lawsuit or depending on what they
27:25
Speaker 11: knew and when they knew it and how careless they were,
27:28
Speaker 11: probably facing some time. The other issue you alluded to
27:31
Speaker 11: earlier is, you know, cost cutting. It's rampant in the
27:35
Speaker 11: industry right now. We're coming out of a pandemic, and
27:40
Speaker 11: the production company's decision not to book the crew hotel
27:45
Speaker 11: rooms near the actual set, but to have them travel
27:48
Speaker 11: an hour in each direction to get to and from
27:51
Speaker 11: their accommodation, to have long hours where people walked off
27:56
Speaker 11: the set earlier that day in protest. So this is
28:01
Speaker 11: a combination of what turned out to be a lethal
28:03
Speaker 11: combination at catastrophic calculation on the part of the production company.
28:08
Speaker 1: Well, you just said a mouthful, all in a good way.
28:11
Speaker 1: Between the armorer being an experience, the ad having a
28:15
Speaker 1: prior similar transaction, and budget cuts problems amongst the crew.
28:20
Speaker 1: Take a listen to our cut six that from our
28:23
Speaker 1: friends at News Nation.
28:24
Speaker 13: Now let's start with the people responsible for handling a gun.
28:28
Speaker 13: There are no ubiquitous rules across all film sets, but
28:31
Speaker 13: generally there are some guidelines.
28:32
Speaker 5: That they follow, and here into a budget.
28:34
Speaker 10: Budget usually plays a big role.
28:36
Speaker 13: In many sets, there are no fewer than three people
28:39
Speaker 13: responsible for monitoring a weapon. The prop master FUMS, in
28:42
Speaker 13: charge of all cropts, is often supported by a safety
28:44
Speaker 13: officer and a stunt coordinator, and depending on the state,
28:47
Speaker 13: you may also need to bring in an armorer whose
28:50
Speaker 13: only job is handling weapons. An armorer is required by
28:54
Speaker 13: New Mexico state law.
29:01
Speaker 2: Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.
29:08
Speaker 1: Instead of taking his trial dismissal headed to him, You're
29:12
Speaker 1: wrapped on a silver platter by in a Mexico judge
29:16
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin is now suing prosecutors and investigators linked to
29:21
Speaker 1: the Rust movie shooting. Death of Felina Hutchins. What actually
29:28
Speaker 1: happened that fateful day on the Rust movie set? Doctor Dupree,
29:32
Speaker 1: I'm sure you, like myself, have had to handle weapons
29:37
Speaker 1: in front of jury's and I learned this from watching
29:41
Speaker 1: a pro trycases. I would always pick the gun up,
29:46
Speaker 1: holding it face down with a barrel pointing to the ground,
29:51
Speaker 1: so the jury or anyone else would not be alarmed.
29:55
Speaker 1: What you don't want to do is scare your jury.
29:58
Speaker 2: I would walk in.
29:58
Speaker 1: Front of the jury holding the weapon nose down, open
30:02
Speaker 1: the chamber, let them see me check it, hold it
30:06
Speaker 1: up like I was examining it through you know, my
30:10
Speaker 1: eye level, so they could see that it was empty,
30:14
Speaker 1: and then shut it and then give it to the
30:17
Speaker 1: witness without fail, even if it was a weapon that
30:22
Speaker 1: I knew was inoperable, that was sp Why would that
30:30
Speaker 1: not occur on a movie set? But describe how you're
30:33
Speaker 1: supposed to handle weapons.
30:35
Speaker 7: Exactly, Nancy, You described it perfectly. That is exactly what
30:38
Speaker 7: you should do. And if you're giving a weapon to
30:40
Speaker 7: someone else, normally you have the chamber open so that
30:43
Speaker 7: they can also see, and then you both check it
30:47
Speaker 7: and know that it's empty or that the blanks.
30:49
Speaker 10: Are in it.
30:50
Speaker 1: Tell me what you can discern about what Karen Smith,
30:54
Speaker 1: forensics expert, just told us about the injuries.
30:58
Speaker 2: What happened, Nancy.
31:00
Speaker 7: Even though these are quote prop guns or blanks, they
31:03
Speaker 7: can still obviously do devastating damage the wadding or whatever
31:08
Speaker 7: they are filled with, even in a blank. But this
31:10
Speaker 7: was not a blank. This was an actual projectile.
31:13
Speaker 2: And as we know, you mean a bullet speak English,
31:17
Speaker 2: a bullet.
31:17
Speaker 7: Yes, yes, this is a bullet. And the caliber of
31:21
Speaker 7: that bullet of the gun is what is going to
31:24
Speaker 7: determine how much damage is done. As she explained, the
31:28
Speaker 7: higher the caliber, the more energy in that bullet, and
31:32
Speaker 7: so the more damage done to the physical bodies. And
31:34
Speaker 7: of course the location where that bullet enters the body
31:38
Speaker 7: in this case was devastating.
31:41
Speaker 2: You know, another issue to doctor Sherry Schwartz.
31:43
Speaker 1: I've been on a lot of TV sets obviously and
31:46
Speaker 1: movie sets for you know, cameos or some legal issue.
31:51
Speaker 1: And I got to tell you, doctor Sherry Schwartz, a
31:54
Speaker 1: movie set takes on a whole It's like you're in
31:57
Speaker 1: a different world. Like when you go to the movies
32:00
Speaker 1: and you sit down and it goes dark. Your mind
32:03
Speaker 1: takes you there. When you're on a movie set. I've
32:07
Speaker 1: never been on a single movie set that went on time.
32:10
Speaker 1: You go till one or two o'clock in the morning,
32:14
Speaker 1: it's pitch dark outside. You keep going until you get
32:17
Speaker 1: the shot or you finish the scene, or whatever it's
32:20
Speaker 1: called in movie world. I think that there is a
32:24
Speaker 1: suspended fear you think you're at a movie set, like
32:28
Speaker 1: when you go to Disneyland or when you're on vacation
32:32
Speaker 1: on a cruise ship. You suspend your normal thinking it
32:37
Speaker 1: doesn't seem real and you're not thinking, wow, there's a
32:40
Speaker 1: gun I could get shot because it's quote just a movie.
32:44
Speaker 2: It's not real.
32:47
Speaker 1: How do we let me just say, suspend our disbelief,
32:51
Speaker 1: suspend rational rules of functioning.
32:55
Speaker 2: When you're on a movie set or in a movie.
32:57
Speaker 2: You know, like in a movie is where there's.
32:59
Speaker 1: Some nut with a gun and you hear a sound,
33:02
Speaker 1: but you don't think it's real because you're in a movie.
33:05
Speaker 2: What happens in the human mind, doctor Sherry.
33:08
Speaker 15: Well, when you don't think that something is actually real,
33:13
Speaker 15: then you would not calculate accurately what the potential risks are, right,
33:19
Speaker 15: and so there is this gun on the set, but
33:23
Speaker 15: everybody thinks, oh, it's just make believe. We're setting this
33:25
Speaker 15: up to film it. Nobody's actually going to get hurt.
33:29
Speaker 15: And so what happens mentally is that you underestimate what
33:34
Speaker 15: the potential risks are. And what happened here is an
33:38
Speaker 15: egregious underestimation, right, So for the rest of us, it's
33:41
Speaker 15: to make believes.
33:42
Speaker 2: Maybe even for the actor.
33:44
Speaker 15: They know that they're just playing a role, and everybody
33:46
Speaker 15: around them might know they're playing a role. But there
33:49
Speaker 15: are people on the set who are responsible for that
33:52
Speaker 15: gun and for taking that proper care and knowing what
33:56
Speaker 15: the potential risks are.
33:58
Speaker 1: Hey, do you, Alexis Tresha Crime Online Common investigative reporter,
34:02
Speaker 1: you have heard Dominic Romano. Paul's like, well, everyone on
34:05
Speaker 1: the panel weighing in. But apparently there were a lot
34:08
Speaker 1: of problems and a lot of disgruntled crew members.
34:12
Speaker 2: I understand that.
34:13
Speaker 1: One of the motels they had set them up to
34:16
Speaker 1: stay overnight was at a place for the homeless, and
34:21
Speaker 1: there were drug addicts there.
34:24
Speaker 2: They were afraid to stay there.
34:26
Speaker 6: What was going on on the set, Well, it seems
34:28
Speaker 6: like what they were trying to do was make this
34:30
Speaker 6: film as cheaply as possible, understandable, but they were putting
34:35
Speaker 6: people's lives at risk. It was fifty hotels were fifty
34:37
Speaker 6: miles away, so after working fourteen hour days, the crew
34:41
Speaker 6: was having to drive over an hour to get to
34:43
Speaker 6: their hotel. Then they would have to be back within
34:46
Speaker 6: like six hours, so they would get almost no sleep
34:48
Speaker 6: at all. They were also saying that things were just
34:51
Speaker 6: not safe. There had been an incident a few days
34:54
Speaker 6: earlier that one of the prop gun again prop done
34:58
Speaker 6: real gun had been act dentally fired.
35:01
Speaker 7: And so the crew have.
35:02
Speaker 6: Been complaining to the producer saying this is not a
35:05
Speaker 6: safe working environment, and they walked off the set. And
35:10
Speaker 6: so Hollywood is very much a union business, but the
35:15
Speaker 6: producers hired non union people to replace them. These non
35:19
Speaker 6: union people, though, are not the people. That's not the armor,
35:22
Speaker 6: and it's not the assistant director. And everybody's been talking
35:25
Speaker 6: there at the line of protocol. You have so many
35:29
Speaker 6: steps in the line of defense, so that when this
35:32
Speaker 6: gun got to Alex Baldwin, at least two other people
35:36
Speaker 6: were responsible for saying that it wasn't loaded.
35:39
Speaker 2: I mean, didn't somebody even scream.
35:41
Speaker 1: Out cold gun? I mean they have to yell it out,
35:46
Speaker 1: you know what you were just saying. I know so
35:48
Speaker 1: many times for different shoots. I don't know who he
35:52
Speaker 1: is that carries it comes iver and they have to
35:55
Speaker 1: do it a certain way, they have to say a
35:58
Speaker 1: certain thing, and they say it really loudly. I don't
36:02
Speaker 1: know why, but I'm sure there's a reason for it,
36:04
Speaker 1: just like they would yell out cold gun and everybody
36:08
Speaker 1: would hear it. But I guess they yelled it out
36:10
Speaker 1: without checking Alexis.
36:12
Speaker 6: And there are reports that yes. So there were three
36:15
Speaker 6: guns that were set up and they were put on
36:17
Speaker 6: a table outside the church set.
36:19
Speaker 2: And this is because of COVID.
36:21
Speaker 6: Nineteen protocols, so not a lot of people are in
36:24
Speaker 6: the if it's an inclosed set, they're not there three guns.
36:27
Speaker 6: So the assistant director picked it up. Is Dave Halls,
36:31
Speaker 6: as the other guest said, you know, has a history
36:33
Speaker 6: of a lot of accidents on sets, and handed it
36:36
Speaker 6: to Bodmin and he is the one that yelled out
36:39
Speaker 6: cold gun. There's no nobody has said there's so many
36:42
Speaker 6: people have spoken to the police on the set, so
36:45
Speaker 6: many of the other crew members, and they said they
36:48
Speaker 6: didn't know whether it actually was empty or not. And
36:52
Speaker 6: these guns were used at lunch. This is a post
36:55
Speaker 6: lunch break, so they broke for lunch at twelve thirty.
36:57
Speaker 6: They come back after lunch that lunchtime.
37:00
Speaker 11: There are reports that those.
37:02
Speaker 6: Crew members were using this gun and other guns to
37:05
Speaker 6: shoot beer bottles out in the desert area and using
37:09
Speaker 6: it as target practice. So there could have been alive
37:11
Speaker 6: and there said there were lots of live ammunition. Nobody
37:15
Speaker 6: was told they couldn't bring live ammunition on set. That's
37:18
Speaker 6: another thing that do.
37:19
Speaker 2: You need live around on set?
37:21
Speaker 6: That's a big problem here. And I think I've seen.
37:25
Speaker 10: I'd like to jump in there. It's it's it's simply
37:28
Speaker 10: a breakdown of the security of the scene. The only
37:31
Speaker 10: people there that our arms should be security personnel. And
37:35
Speaker 10: you know, in my years, my decade of fighting to
37:38
Speaker 10: keep workplaces safe and to stop stalking offenders from killing victims,
37:44
Speaker 10: I can tell you one thing, and that is nobody
37:47
Speaker 10: thinks the unthinkable is going to happen. It's a matter
37:50
Speaker 10: of just human thinking. They think that, well, that happened
37:53
Speaker 10: to somebody else, that didn't happen to me. And because
37:56
Speaker 10: this is somewhat of a rare occurrence on a set.
38:00
Speaker 10: People got laxed, they got lack a days hole about
38:03
Speaker 10: fundamental when it comes to shooting a scene such as this,
38:07
Speaker 10: And just like at any workplace, this is a workplace
38:10
Speaker 10: out in the middle of the desert, just like it
38:12
Speaker 10: would be in an office building. Those protocols broke down,
38:16
Speaker 10: and people at work, attempting to do the right thing
38:20
Speaker 10: for the right reasons, had a catastrophic, devastating thing happen.
38:24
Speaker 10: Because we as human beings think well, if it hasn't happened,
38:28
Speaker 10: it won't happen. And that's just not the reality of
38:30
Speaker 10: life when it comes to dangerous events.
38:32
Speaker 1: You know, Alec Baldwin is a great, great actor. A
38:37
Speaker 1: lot of people don't like him because he rubs him
38:40
Speaker 1: the wrong way with his jokes, with his actions, with
38:45
Speaker 1: just a history of comments and behavior that irritates some people.
38:53
Speaker 1: But I can tell you this, when I saw the
38:56
Speaker 1: photos of him literally doubled over in Greek.
39:01
Speaker 2: I don't think that was acting. I think that was real.
39:06
Speaker 2: Who bears the fault of the death of a beautiful
39:10
Speaker 2: young woman? We wait as justice and false Goodbye friend,