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Alec Baldwin's Rust Hits Theaters · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:00
Speaker 1: Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. The Alec Baldwin movie Rust
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Speaker 1: is actually out. Surprisingly, let me say shockingly, after the
0:19
Speaker 1: shooting death of a beautiful young mom a cinematographer on
0:24
Speaker 1: the set, Helena Hutchins, they went forward with the movie. Okay,
0:30
Speaker 1: I'm Nancy Grace, this is Crime Stories. Thank you for
0:34
Speaker 1: being with us. I almost said the weight is over.
0:38
Speaker 1: But was anyone actually waiting for this movie. It's been
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Speaker 1: almost four years after a gun held by Alec Baldwin,
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Speaker 1: loaded with live AMMO, was shot, killing an extremely talented cinematographer,
0:56
Speaker 1: Helena Hutchins on the set, and now that movie, after
1:02
Speaker 1: so many court actions, has made it to theaters. I'm
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Speaker 1: not a film a critic. The reviews had been mediocre
1:12
Speaker 1: and O the word is it's very hard to watch
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Speaker 1: the movie because all you can think about is Lena Hutchins.
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Speaker 1: You know a lot of many, many films had been
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Speaker 1: shelved by studios for reasons much less serious than this.
1:30
Speaker 1: But an average movie that resulted in the shooting death
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Speaker 1: of a young mom will now be in cinemas for
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Speaker 1: everyone to view. What happened on that set.
1:43
Speaker 2: Tragedy on the film set of a new Alec Baldwin
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Speaker 2: movie and what police are calling a misfire of a
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Speaker 2: prop gun in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Sheriff's office
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Speaker 2: there has just confirmed it was Baldwin who fired the
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Speaker 2: prop gun that killed a forty two world female director
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Speaker 2: of photography Helena Hutchins. The film's director, Joel Souza, was
2:07
Speaker 2: also hurt. This incident happened on the side of the
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Speaker 2: Western Rust. Now detectives are investigating what type of projectile
2:15
Speaker 2: discharged from this gun?
2:17
Speaker 1: You were just hearing our friend Christine Johnson was CBS
2:20
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
2:32
Speaker 1: was safe, that it was loaded with a blank. So
2:34
Speaker 1: how do we have a woman, dad, another film person injured?
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Speaker 1: With me an all star panel to make sense of
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Speaker 1: it all? If we can? With me? Dominic Romano lawyer
2:45
Speaker 1: joining us out of New York at Romano Law dot
2:48
Speaker 1: Com is specialty entertainment law, and I can tell you
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Speaker 1: somebody's going to need a lawyer. Doctor Sherry Schwartz forensic
2:55
Speaker 1: psychologists joining us. Karen L. Smith, forensic expert, host of
2:59
Speaker 1: Shattered Soul's podcast, at Meerbones Forensics dot Com. Paul Zeke
3:04
Speaker 1: joining US special guest, former police commander and author of
3:08
Speaker 1: Stop Him From Killing Them on Amazon, and he has
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Speaker 1: lots of experience using firearms with blanks during live action
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Speaker 1: movie scenes like Terminator Salvation, Doctor Michelle Dupre forensic pathologists,
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Speaker 1: former medical examiner, author of Homicide Investigation Field Guide, and
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Speaker 1: a former police detective. But first to Alexis Terreschuk, Crime
3:34
Speaker 1: online dot com investigative reporter joining us from Hollywood, Alexis
3:39
Speaker 1: is what is getting folded into the story, right 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 hot headedness to put it euphemistically. If he thought
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Speaker 1: it was a blank and it should have been a blind,
4:00
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.
4:14
Speaker 3: They were on a set in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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Speaker 3: It's a western style movie. So they were sitting in
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Speaker 3: a church at an old church scene, and Alex Baldwin
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Speaker 3: was sitting in one of the pewes and he was
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Speaker 3: practicing what's called a cross draw and so that would
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Speaker 3: be where the person takes your left hand and grabs
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Speaker 3: the gun out of the holster on the opposite hip,
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Speaker 3: pulls it across to fire. He was practicing this move
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Speaker 3: standing the cinematographer, which is the person that makes the
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Speaker 3: movie beautiful.
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Speaker 4: This is the person that.
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Speaker 3: Films the scene. She was standing in front of him,
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Speaker 3: with the assistant director stand lembard, with the director standing
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Speaker 3: right behind her. He was looking over her shoulder to
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Speaker 3: see what it would look like when Alex.
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Speaker 1: Pulled the gun out.
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Speaker 3: He pulled it out of the side, points it out
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Speaker 3: at her to show them, pulls the trigger, and it
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Speaker 3: fires a live round into her, hits her in the
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Speaker 3: stomach and actually goes through her and grazes the director
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Speaker 3: sitting standing right behind her.
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Speaker 1: Hush has pronounced dead at an Albuquerque hospital after being
5:15
Speaker 1: rushed to the emergency room. You know what, I always
5:19
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 5: We did watch the location of your emergency at banda
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Speaker 5: creek grant. Right now, we've got to people shot on accidentally.
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Speaker 4: She said someone was shot.
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Speaker 5: Two people accidentally shot on movie steps and and the
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Speaker 5: creek grant. I wondered, often I do with the medical
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Speaker 5: DECI who are you calling?
6:00
Speaker 6: Clear the road?
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Speaker 3: Don't hire any emergency Fanasa three grand people accidentally shot
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Speaker 3: on a gourby steps.
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Speaker 5: Five top gun. We need help immediately, Fananasy three grants come?
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Speaker 5: They almost phone or okay, what is your name man Mitchell?
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Speaker 5: That Mitchell wants the phone where you're calling from?
6:29
Speaker 2: Five up?
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Speaker 7: Don't hang up?
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Speaker 5: Okay, hold on just one second. Sounds like somebody else
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Speaker 5: is calling calling better miss. Everybody should be we can
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Speaker 5: help us. Director in our camera managed camera woman 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
7:15
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 5: So was it loaded with a real bullet or I
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Speaker 5: cannot start you up? Okay, we have two injuries to
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Speaker 5: come and movie done us. Okay, we're getting.
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Speaker 8: Out there already.
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Speaker 5: Just down up on listening thing. Okay, I see that
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Speaker 5: yelled at me at lunch out in the value vision
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Speaker 5: can and yell at me. He's a subtructed gun. He's
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Speaker 5: responsible for how many No? No, no, I'm super hardy
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Speaker 5: as true that.
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Speaker 6: I know of.
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Speaker 5: I was hearing you were a hurtant and it went
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Speaker 5: off and I ran out. We all ran out. There
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Speaker 5: were bubles over the ID and the camera woman and
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Speaker 5: the direct and the directors were clearing the road to
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Speaker 5: come back. We're back on the web. We're back in
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Speaker 5: the town. If you called there back in the western town.
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Speaker 5: Is there any serious bleeding?
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Speaker 8: I don't know.
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Speaker 5: I ran out of the building, but I still have
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Speaker 5: to go through these Okay, are they completely.
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Speaker 1: Alert on the I'm here a lot of discussion in
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Speaker 1: the background. You hear this speaker talking to somebody else
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Speaker 1: about someone yelling at her and luch about script revision,
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Speaker 1: and she says she's supposed to shut the gun. He's
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Speaker 1: responsible for what happened. No, No, I'm a script supervisor
9:08
Speaker 1: Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. The late arrival of the
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Speaker 1: movie Rust is the capstone of a horrible, horrible fact scenario.
9:26
Speaker 1: There was an outpouring of grief when Helena Hutchins was
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Speaker 1: shot dead, leaving behind a little boy and now a widower.
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Speaker 1: Then came years of trials against Baldwin and the armorer
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Speaker 1: responsible for the weapons and the props on the set,
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Speaker 1: Hannah Gata's Red. It resulted in Gatara's read getting a
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Speaker 1: slap on the wrist, eighteen months behind bars in Alex
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Speaker 1: Baldwin's case being thrown out of court. Wow, just when
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Speaker 1: you think it's over. The is featured on one hundred
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Speaker 1: screens around the country. What happened to Helena Hutchins? Paul'sake,
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Speaker 1: Thank you for being with us? What went wrong? Obviously
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Speaker 1: there was a live bullet and what should have been
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Speaker 1: a prop gun, But what happened?
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Speaker 6: Nancy? The only explanation for this is a systemic breakdown
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Speaker 6: and systems that are in place to ensure that live
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Speaker 6: 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 6: Well, absolutely, somebody did not do their job and catastrophically
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Speaker 6: did not do that. There's no reason whatsoever for live
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Speaker 6: ammunition to be on the set of any set. Because
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Speaker 6: these weapons are capable of firing live rounds. They're not
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Speaker 6: really prop guns. They're deadly weapons being used as props.
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Speaker 1: Okay, hold on right there, I want to make that distinction.
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Speaker 1: You're absolute 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.
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Speaker 6: Is that right exactly? You're talking about? Say it prop nice? Correct,
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Speaker 6: It has a flat edge on it, it's incapable of
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Speaker 6: cutting you. These are things that are not deemed to
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Speaker 6: be dangerous. A prop gun is simply as utilized on set.
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Speaker 6: Our weapons that are capable of firing live ammunition, and
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Speaker 6: therefore accidentally live ammunition could be mixed with blank rounds.
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Speaker 6: You know, given time, this is just a disaster waiting
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Speaker 6: to happen. They need to move to true prop guns
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Speaker 6: that are incapable of chambering live ammunition. Until that happens,
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Speaker 6: this has a very strong chance repeating itself.
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Speaker 1: Well, okay, tell me this, Paul Zake, guys with me.
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Speaker 1: Paul Zike. He is a former police commander. He's an
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Speaker 1: author screen actors gil and has experience using blanks during
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Speaker 1: live action movie scenes where we all think they're shooting
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Speaker 1: real guns. If you suspend your disbelief in movies like
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Speaker 1: his Terminator Salvation, those aren't real guns. So why are
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Speaker 1: they using a real gun to start with? Paul Zike
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Speaker 1: And I mean to me, having been forced to handle
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Speaker 1: so many guns and so many homicides, what moron wouldn't
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Speaker 1: make sure that there were blanks in the gun.
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Speaker 6: It's hard to imagine that during the loading of the
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Speaker 6: weapon that that was not viewed very strictly as a
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Speaker 6: weapon is loaded. And also there's a chain of custody
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Speaker 6: issue here on the scene of Terminator Salvation.
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Speaker 9: As we would go out and we would conduct the
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Speaker 9: battle scene if you will, in the middle of the night,
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Speaker 9: we would be handed directly from the armor, fully automatic
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Speaker 9: weapons and magatizines, fully loaded with blanks, and we would
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Speaker 9: head straight out to where the scene was to be shot,
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Speaker 9: and then we would engage in the scene, you know,
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Speaker 9: five ten minutes later, hand the weapons straight back to
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Speaker 9: the armor, all the ammunition back to the armor, all.
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Speaker 6: The magazines back to the armor, and we would not
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Speaker 6: be able to touch those weapons again until the next scene.
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Speaker 6: So from a chain of custody standpoint, I went directly
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Speaker 6: from the armor directly to my hand, my you know,
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Speaker 6: the co actor's hands that were with me, and that
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Speaker 6: was maintained very strictly pulled on.
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Speaker 1: Paul, I've got to soak in everything you're saying, because
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Speaker 1: Dominic Romano a high profile lawyer joining us out of
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Speaker 1: New York's specialty entertainment law. And that's why Dominic's joining
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Speaker 1: us today. Dominic hold on. When you heard Paul's like, say,
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Speaker 1: China custody, I immediately thought of a serial murderer that
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Speaker 1: I prosecuted on one murder. We could get them on
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Speaker 1: one and ended up I would say, three weeks before trial.
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Speaker 1: I was just looking at the evidence and I noticed
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Speaker 1: that the bag that contained The evidence wasn't signed. It
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Speaker 1: had never been signed by the homicide cop that picked
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Speaker 1: it up from It was DNA in There was blood
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Speaker 1: from where it had been taken and carried to the
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Speaker 1: crime lab. It wasn't written on the back. Did anybody
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Speaker 1: tamper with it? No, he just didn't put his initials.
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Speaker 1: I'm like, Oh, dear Lord in Heaven, the chain is broken.
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Speaker 1: This could be attacked at trial. I had to go
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Speaker 1: back out to the jail, stand there and look at
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Speaker 1: this killer while he pulled his blood again. Then I
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Speaker 1: carried it with my investigator myself back to the crime
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Speaker 1: lab to have it retested. Praise the Lord in Heaven.
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Speaker 1: It was his DNA. Long story short, that's chain of custody.
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Speaker 1: Your case can be lost. You can lose a serial
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Speaker 1: killer because somebody didn't keep the chain to preserve the
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Speaker 1: integrity of the trial. That's what I thought when Paul
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Speaker 1: Zaike scept chain of custody. But did you also hear
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Speaker 1: him say dominic romano he handed it back to the
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Speaker 1: It sounds like he was saying armor or armory. But
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Speaker 1: I've been reading about this case. It's an armor er,
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Speaker 1: armor er who is the person in charge of all
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Speaker 1: the weapons, and.
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Speaker 10: I think Paul is absolutely right. Look, no one should
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Speaker 10: ever be killed by a gun on a film set period.
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Speaker 10: Those are the words of Brandon Lee's sister. Brandon Lee
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Speaker 10: shot on a film set in the early nineteen nineties.
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Speaker 10: This should not happen. There are established protocols, chains of
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Speaker 10: commend I mean, there appears to be some serious gross
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Speaker 10: negligence on that set to allow that to have that.
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Speaker 10: That is the appearance, and I don't know what evidence
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Speaker 10: can come out to rebut.
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Speaker 1: That presumption alive round in well, as Paul Zyke has
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Speaker 1: corrected me, it's not a prop gun. They were using
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Speaker 1: real guns. Hey, let me ask you a question, Paul's ike.
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Speaker 1: Explain the difference and what a blank looks like as
16:08
Speaker 1: opposed to a live round a bullet. We're saying live rounds,
16:12
Speaker 1: we're talking about a bullet. What's the difference. Can't you
16:15
Speaker 1: just look at them and.
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Speaker 6: You can see the difference In most cases, absolutely, it's
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Speaker 6: very clear. You can see the difference. In some types
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Speaker 6: of calibers, say two two three, if you will, that's
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Speaker 6: what an AR fifteen would shoot. The blanks are kind
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Speaker 6: of crimped at the end to almost look like there's
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Speaker 6: a bullet on the end of them. But any sort
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Speaker 6: of trained professional whatsoever, when you're handling a blank, you
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Speaker 6: know it's a blank. When it's a bullet, you know
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Speaker 6: it's a bullet. The blank does not have a lead
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Speaker 6: projectile or a steel projectile at the end of the round,
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Speaker 6: So at the end it's either flat or it's slightly
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Speaker 6: crimped to hold in the gunpowder, which you know, the
16:58
Speaker 6: firearm usually needs the gun powder to correctly function the
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Speaker 6: weapon and cycle the weapon, and it's one of the
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Speaker 6: reasons why blanks are used.
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Speaker 1: Okay, Paul Zyke, I really respect you, but you're gonna
17:10
Speaker 1: have to dumb me down for me, okay, because I
17:13
Speaker 1: would have to put you through intensive training before you
17:16
Speaker 1: took the stand because a lot of people do not
17:19
Speaker 1: know what you just said. Just think about it and
17:22
Speaker 1: think you there's a way you can say it in
17:24
Speaker 1: more simple terms. What's the difference between a blank and
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Speaker 1: a lie bullet when you look at it? Speak English
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Speaker 1: man in the meantime. Wait a minute, you mentioned Brandon Lee,
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Speaker 1: and you're absolutely right. We pulled sound of other cases
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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
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Speaker 1: our cut forty four? Let's follow up on what Paul
17:48
Speaker 1: Zyke said about Brandon Lee.
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Speaker 11: That's a bully compound that killed Brandon Lee. Some believe
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Speaker 11: a piece of a croplyd without gunpowder, and it may
17:56
Speaker 11: have been left accidentally in the gun. Blank was fired
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Speaker 11: at Brand and in some field let's shot out the properly,
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Speaker 11: mortally wounding him.
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Speaker 4: Though it was an accident waiting to happen.
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Speaker 11: The Crow crewmember we spoke but says that there were
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Speaker 11: many opportunities for an accident to happen.
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Speaker 1: Are the working conditions.
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Speaker 7: On the set of The Crow particularly bad? Threely long hours,
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Speaker 7: eighteen hour days back to back at times pushing ninety
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Speaker 7: one hundred hours a week, six day weeks is way
18:23
Speaker 7: too much. Do you think that that over work, that
18:27
Speaker 7: exhaustion might have resulted in this accident? Stage your conscience
18:31
Speaker 7: olive them were definitely not called. It could have been
18:33
Speaker 7: prevented with better management.
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Speaker 11: The publicist for the movie The Crow denies that the
18:40
Speaker 11: working conditions were insane.
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Speaker 12: Certainly everyone was very tired and exhausted from the shoe,
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Speaker 12: but these are professionals and they're used to working conditions
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Speaker 12: like this.
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Speaker 1: Okay, guys, you were hearing our friends and inside Edition,
18:50
Speaker 1: and I want to follow up on what we're just
18:52
Speaker 1: hearing with Alexis Tereschuk. I played that sound for a reason, Alexis,
18:57
Speaker 1: because on the Alec Baldwin said of rust, there apparently
19:02
Speaker 1: were problems with working conditions. A group of the crew
19:07
Speaker 1: had walked out I think the night before the claiming
19:11
Speaker 1: that they had bad hotels. They were an hour away
19:14
Speaker 1: from a hotel or motel and if they worked late
19:17
Speaker 1: into the night, they have to drive through I guess
19:19
Speaker 1: the desert and a lot of them were actually sleeping
19:22
Speaker 1: in their cars overnight. That's just some of the complaints
19:26
Speaker 1: I've heard. But what are the other complaints, if any
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Speaker 1: on the Alec Baldwin movie set.
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Speaker 3: Well, there have been complaints that things were not safe quote.
19:37
Speaker 4: But one of the the person is.
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Speaker 3: Being directly blamed for a lot of the unfaked is
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Speaker 3: when you were listening to the nine one one calling
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Speaker 3: you said you heard the woman saying that he was
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Speaker 3: yelling at me things like that. This is the assistant
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Speaker 3: director that they're talking about, and this is the assistant director,
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Speaker 3: David Hall who handed the gun to Baldwin and said,
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Speaker 3: this is a cold gun. So what the people on
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Speaker 3: the set were saying is that Halls was not a
20:01
Speaker 3: responcable person. He was very angry. He was making the
20:05
Speaker 3: job very difficult for everybody to do, and they didn't
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Speaker 3: trust him.
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Speaker 1: Wait a minute, you're saying, David Halls was an assistant director. Yeah, okay,
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Speaker 1: Well what about the honorer? Is she the one responsible
20:16
Speaker 1: for all the weapons and the blanks or the bullets? Guys,
20:21
Speaker 1: take another Listen to our cut forty three. This is
20:24
Speaker 1: about practically the same thing happening before. Listen.
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Speaker 11: It was here at the Carrol Coast Studios in Wilmington,
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Speaker 11: North Carolina, that actor Brandon Lee was filming The Crow.
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Speaker 1: Ironically, the film.
20:36
Speaker 11: Is about a man who dies and comes back to
20:39
Speaker 11: life to advanish his death. Shortly after midnight last Tuesday,
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Speaker 11: Brandon Lee was preparing to film a routine action scene
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Speaker 11: the script for him to get shot at as he
20:48
Speaker 11: walks through door carrying a bag of groceries. Michael Massey,
20:52
Speaker 11: the actor doing the shooting, is reportedly devastated by Lee's
20:56
Speaker 11: death and remains in seclusion.
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Speaker 1: The gunny was using supposed to be loaded with blanks.
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Speaker 4: From the camera's role. Brandon Lee was performing for the
21:05
Speaker 4: last time.
21:06
Speaker 1: Not only can you drive to a theater and see Russ,
21:09
Speaker 1: you can pay about fifteen dollars for an at home purchase. Okay,
21:15
Speaker 1: would you want to why you and Karen Smith?
21:18
Speaker 13: Well, we deal a lot with forensics in physics. When
21:21
Speaker 13: we do a reconstruction, we use snippets of time and
21:24
Speaker 13: sometimes that can be split seconds, and this includes trajectories
21:27
Speaker 13: of projectiles, and.
21:29
Speaker 8: This trajectory can generally be explained by the reporting. Alec
21:33
Speaker 8: Baldwin was reported to be sitting at a church pew
21:35
Speaker 8: to align a camera angle when the gun was fired.
21:38
Speaker 8: Alena Hutchins then collapsed on the floor and Joel Susa
21:41
Speaker 8: was struck in the clavicles. That's an upward.
21:44
Speaker 13: Trajectory, which means both Hutchins and Susa were standing up
21:47
Speaker 13: when the event occurred. The projectile that perforated Helena's body
21:52
Speaker 13: and subsequently struck Joel.
21:53
Speaker 8: Now, in order for that to happen, the kinetic energy,
21:57
Speaker 8: which is energy.
21:58
Speaker 13: As the result of motion, would be very high. We're
22:01
Speaker 13: dealing with mass or the amount of matter in an
22:04
Speaker 13: object and energy dispersion.
22:06
Speaker 8: Guns carry a high volume of energy. In a small space,
22:10
Speaker 8: and that from.
22:10
Speaker 13: My experience, it tells me that it was something other.
22:13
Speaker 8: Than just the paper or elastic wadding from a blank round.
22:17
Speaker 8: That needs to be.
22:18
Speaker 13: Confirmed by the emmy and the investigators. But there are
22:21
Speaker 13: reports of live ammunition bullets being on the set and
22:25
Speaker 13: that particular gun allegedly being used for target practice that morning.
22:31
Speaker 13: There's a lot of questions that needs to be answered
22:33
Speaker 13: by the investigators and them.
22:35
Speaker 1: Again for the set being used as target practice. Paul Zeike,
22:40
Speaker 1: that shouldn't be that you've got crew members out shooting bottles.
22:44
Speaker 1: I think that that's coming out with live bullets and
22:48
Speaker 1: use that same gun for a sane and a church
22:53
Speaker 1: full of people.
22:54
Speaker 6: And Nancy, I just want to clarify the prior point,
22:56
Speaker 6: so very simply, a blank is a is a shellcasing
23:00
Speaker 6: with gunpowder in it with no bullet. A bullet is
23:04
Speaker 6: the same exact thing with more gunpowder and a live
23:08
Speaker 6: bullet at the end of it that is made to
23:11
Speaker 6: travel through the barrel and exit the weapon. Back to
23:15
Speaker 6: what you were saying, that's the cardinal rule that's been broken,
23:17
Speaker 6: whether you're whether you're involved in police training or you're
23:20
Speaker 6: involved in a movie set keeping live ammunition away from
23:26
Speaker 6: weapons that fire live ammunition, and keeping weapons at fire
23:30
Speaker 6: blanks away from those instances. And when you mix those
23:33
Speaker 6: two together, the odds of somebody having a spare live
23:37
Speaker 6: round in one of their pockets or you name it
23:40
Speaker 6: is super high. And it sounds very sloppy, and it
23:45
Speaker 6: just just opens the door for terrible things to happen.
23:49
Speaker 6: And that's where the systemic breakdown and that controlled environment.
23:54
Speaker 1: I'm Jolliet Paul Zyke. You're right. Super sloppy is one
23:57
Speaker 1: way to put it. Gross negligence or unintentional murder is
24:02
Speaker 1: another way to put it. I think I hear Dominic
24:04
Speaker 1: Ramano jumping in go ahead.
24:05
Speaker 10: Yeah, basically it's a catastrophic miscalculation. I think two people
24:09
Speaker 10: here should be folks. We should focus on one is
24:15
Speaker 10: the armor like this is only According to reports, her
24:18
Speaker 10: second movie with jaris Read and the assistant director Dave
24:21
Speaker 10: Hall's you mentioned before. According to reports, he was fired
24:25
Speaker 10: from a twenty nineteen production of Freedom's Past. I first
24:28
Speaker 10: member suffered a minor injury.
24:30
Speaker 1: WHOA why why white white? You got me drinking from
24:33
Speaker 1: the fire hydrant, which is not a bad thing. It's
24:35
Speaker 1: too much at once old on. Right in the world,
24:38
Speaker 1: would you have somebody that was fired off another similar
24:41
Speaker 1: job handling your weapon? Okay? Is that what you just said? Dominic?
24:46
Speaker 10: Okay?
24:47
Speaker 1: Almost so almost.
24:48
Speaker 10: The armorer is twenty four years old. The person handling
24:52
Speaker 10: the weapons, it's only her second film. She was just
24:55
Speaker 10: in a podcast last month where she said, you know,
24:58
Speaker 10: she's a bit nervous about her but it went well.
25:01
Speaker 10: While there's apparently a famous armor okay, so we have
25:03
Speaker 10: that an experienced armor number two, we have the assistant director,
25:07
Speaker 10: one of the ad dve Holes. Apparently, according to a report,
25:11
Speaker 10: he was fired from the twenty nineteen production. The movie
25:14
Speaker 10: was Freedom passed after crew members suffered guess what a
25:18
Speaker 10: minor injury when a gun unexpectedly.
25:21
Speaker 1: Discharged dominate romano. The words similar transactions are jumping to mind.
25:28
Speaker 1: I mean, this solidifies my thought that this is not
25:33
Speaker 1: an accident, because an accident is when you totally don't
25:37
Speaker 1: see it coming. It's just like out of the blue.
25:40
Speaker 1: But if this guy, if it's correct, the ad had
25:43
Speaker 1: a previous incident where somebody was shot on a set.
25:47
Speaker 1: Even if it was a minor injury, then you should
25:50
Speaker 1: have seen you either new or should have known. Would
25:52
Speaker 1: you agree with that dominate Romano.
25:54
Speaker 10: There going to be some serious questions to be asked,
25:59
Speaker 10: and there have to be answers, and we don't have
26:04
Speaker 10: good answers. Someone is either going to be involved in
26:08
Speaker 10: a very expensive lawsuit or, depending on what they knew
26:12
Speaker 10: and when they knew it and how careless they were,
26:15
Speaker 10: probably facing some time. The other issue you alluded to
26:18
Speaker 10: earlier is cost cutting. It's rampant in the industry right now,
26:23
Speaker 10: and the production company's decision not to book the crew
26:28
Speaker 10: hotel rooms near the actual set, but to have them
26:32
Speaker 10: travel an hour in each direction to get to and
26:35
Speaker 10: from their accommodation, to have long hours where people walked
26:40
Speaker 10: off the set earlier that day in protest. So this
26:44
Speaker 10: is a combination of what turned out to be a
26:47
Speaker 10: lethal combination at catastrophic calculation on the part of the
26:51
Speaker 10: production company.
26:52
Speaker 1: Well, you just said a mouthful, all in a good way,
26:55
Speaker 1: betraying the armor or being an experienced ad having a
26:59
Speaker 1: prior similar transaction, and budget cuts problems amongst the crew.
27:04
Speaker 1: Take a listen to our cut six that are from
27:07
Speaker 1: our friends at News Nation.
27:08
Speaker 12: Now let's start with the people responsible for handling a gun.
27:12
Speaker 12: There are no ubiquitous rules across all film sets, but
27:15
Speaker 12: generally there are some guidelines that they follow and here
27:17
Speaker 12: into a budget. Budget usually plays a big role. In
27:20
Speaker 12: many sets, there are no fewer than three people responsible for.
27:24
Speaker 6: Monitoring a weapon.
27:25
Speaker 12: Prop Mastercums in charge of all cropts, is often supported
27:28
Speaker 12: by a safety officer and a SUN coordinator, and depending
27:31
Speaker 12: on the state, you may also need to bring in
27:33
Speaker 12: an armorer whose only job is handling weapons. An armorer
27:37
Speaker 12: is required by New Mexico state law.
27:44
Speaker 1: Crime Stories with Nancy Grace because many critics believe the
27:53
Speaker 1: tragedy of Helena's shooting death overpowers anything that might be
27:59
Speaker 1: good about movie. What happened? What really happened that day
28:04
Speaker 1: on the set of Rust, Doctor Dupree, I'm sure you,
28:09
Speaker 1: like myself, have had to handle weapons in front of jurys,
28:14
Speaker 1: and I learned this from watching a pro try cases.
28:19
Speaker 1: I would always pick the gun up, holding it face
28:23
Speaker 1: down with a barrel pointing to the ground, so the
28:27
Speaker 1: jury or anyone else would not be alarmed. What you
28:30
Speaker 1: don't want to do is scare your jury. I would
28:33
Speaker 1: walk in front of the jury holding the weapon nose down,
28:37
Speaker 1: open the chamber, let them see me check it, hold
28:41
Speaker 1: it up like I was examining it through, you know,
28:45
Speaker 1: at my eye level, so they could see that it
28:49
Speaker 1: was empty, and then shut it and then give it
28:52
Speaker 1: to the witness without fail. Even if it was a
28:56
Speaker 1: weapon that I knew was inoperable. That was soop. Why
29:04
Speaker 1: would that not occur on a movie set? But describe
29:08
Speaker 1: how you're supposed to handle weapons exactly, Nancy.
29:11
Speaker 4: You described it perfectly. That is exactly what you should do.
29:14
Speaker 4: And if you're giving a weapon to someone else, normally
29:17
Speaker 4: you have the chamber open so that they can also see,
29:20
Speaker 4: and then you both check it and know that it's
29:23
Speaker 4: empty or that the blanks.
29:24
Speaker 1: Are in it. Tell me what you can discern about
29:28
Speaker 1: what Karen Smith, forensics expert, just told us about the injuries.
29:33
Speaker 1: What happened, Nancy.
29:35
Speaker 4: Even though these are quote prop guns or blanks, they
29:38
Speaker 4: can still obviously do devastating damage the wadding or whatever
29:42
Speaker 4: they are filled with, even in a blank.
29:44
Speaker 1: But this was not a blank.
29:46
Speaker 4: This is an actual projectile.
29:48
Speaker 1: And as we know, you mean a bullet speak English,
29:52
Speaker 1: a bullet.
29:52
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, this is a bullet and the caliber of
29:56
Speaker 4: that bullet of the gun is what is going to
29:59
Speaker 4: determine how how much damage is done. As she explained,
30:03
Speaker 4: the higher the caliber, the more energy in that bullet,
30:07
Speaker 4: and so the more damage done to the physical bodies.
30:09
Speaker 4: And of course the location where that bullet enters the
30:13
Speaker 4: body in this case was devastating.
30:16
Speaker 1: You know, another issue to doctor Sherry Schwartz. I've been
30:18
Speaker 1: on a lot of TV sets, obviously in movie sets
30:21
Speaker 1: for you know, cameos or some legal issue. And I
30:27
Speaker 1: got to tell you, doctor Sherry Schwartz, a movie set
30:30
Speaker 1: takes on a whole It's like you're in a different world.
30:34
Speaker 1: Like when you go to the movies and you sit
30:36
Speaker 1: down and it goes dark, your mind takes you there. Well,
30:40
Speaker 1: you're on a movie set. I've never been on a
30:43
Speaker 1: single movie set that went on time. You go till
30:46
Speaker 1: one or two o'clock in the morning, it's pitch dark outside.
30:50
Speaker 1: You keep going until you get the shot or you
30:53
Speaker 1: finish the scene, or whatever it's called in movie world.
30:57
Speaker 1: I think that there is a suspended fear you think
31:02
Speaker 1: you're at a movie set, like when you go to
31:04
Speaker 1: Disneyland or when you're on vacation on a cruise ship.
31:08
Speaker 1: You suspend your normal thinking. It doesn't seem real and
31:13
Speaker 1: you're not thinking, Wow, there's a gun I could get
31:16
Speaker 1: shot because it's quote just a movie, it's not real.
31:22
Speaker 1: How do we, let me just say, suspend our disbelief,
31:26
Speaker 1: suspend rational rules of functioning when you're on a movie
31:31
Speaker 1: set or in a movie, you know, like in movies
31:33
Speaker 1: where there's some nut with a gun and you hear
31:36
Speaker 1: a sound, but you don't think it's real because you're
31:39
Speaker 1: in a movie. What happens in the human mind, doctor Sherry.
31:43
Speaker 14: Well, when you don't think that something is actually real,
31:48
Speaker 14: then you would not calculate accurately what the potential risks are, right,
31:54
Speaker 14: And so there is this gun on the set, but
31:58
Speaker 14: everybody thinks, oh, it's just make believe. We're setting this
32:00
Speaker 14: up to film it. Nobody's actually going to get hurt.
32:04
Speaker 14: And so what happens mentally is that you underestimate what
32:09
Speaker 14: the potential risks are. And what happened here is an
32:12
Speaker 14: egregious underestimation.
32:15
Speaker 8: Right, So for the rest of us, that's to make believes.
32:17
Speaker 14: Maybe even for the actor, they know that they're just
32:20
Speaker 14: playing a role, and everybody around them might know they're
32:22
Speaker 14: playing a role. But there are people on the set
32:25
Speaker 14: who are responsible for that gun and for taking that
32:29
Speaker 14: proper care and knowing what the potential risks are.
32:33
Speaker 1: Do you, Alexis Treesha Crime online dot Com investigative reporter,
32:37
Speaker 1: you have heard Dominant Romano Paul's like, well, everyone on
32:40
Speaker 1: the panel weighing in. But apparently there were a lot
32:43
Speaker 1: of problems and a lot of disgruntled crew members. I
32:48
Speaker 1: understand that one of the motels they had set them
32:50
Speaker 1: up to stay overnight was at a place for the homeless,
32:55
Speaker 1: and there were drug addicts there. They were afraid to
33:00
Speaker 1: stay there. What was going on on the set, Well, it.
33:03
Speaker 3: Seems like what they were trying to do was make
33:05
Speaker 3: this film as cheaply as possible. Understandable, but they were
33:09
Speaker 3: putting people's lives at risk. It was fiftyse hotels were
33:12
Speaker 3: fifty miles away, so after working fourteen hour days, the
33:16
Speaker 3: crew was having to drive over an hour to get
33:18
Speaker 3: to their hotel. Then they would have to be back
33:20
Speaker 3: within like six hours, so they would get almost no
33:23
Speaker 3: sleep at all. But they were also saying that things
33:25
Speaker 3: were just not safe. There had been an incident a
33:29
Speaker 3: few days earlier that one of the prop guns again
33:32
Speaker 3: prop done real gun, had been accidentally fired and so
33:36
Speaker 3: the crew has been complaining to the producer saying this
33:39
Speaker 3: is not a safe working environment, and they walked off
33:44
Speaker 3: the set.
33:44
Speaker 4: And so Hollywood is.
33:46
Speaker 3: Very much a union business, but the producers hired non
33:52
Speaker 3: union people to replace them. These nine union people, though,
33:55
Speaker 3: are not the people. That's not the armor, and it's
33:57
Speaker 3: not the assistant director, and everybody hasn't talk there at
34:00
Speaker 3: a line of protocol. You have so many steps in
34:05
Speaker 3: the line of defense. So when this gun got to
34:07
Speaker 3: Alex Baldwin, at least two other people were responsible for
34:12
Speaker 3: saying that it wasn't loaded.
34:14
Speaker 1: I mean, didn't somebody even scream out cold gun. I
34:18
Speaker 1: mean they have to yell it out, you know what
34:21
Speaker 1: you were just saying. I know so many times for
34:24
Speaker 1: different shoots. I don't know who he is that carries
34:28
Speaker 1: that comes over and they have to do it a
34:31
Speaker 1: certain way. They have to say a certain thing, and
34:34
Speaker 1: they say it really loudly. I don't know why, but
34:37
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's a reason for it, just like they
34:40
Speaker 1: would yell out cold gun and everybody would hear it.
34:44
Speaker 1: But I guess they yelled it out without checking alexis.
34:47
Speaker 3: And there are reports that yes, so there were three
34:50
Speaker 3: guns that were set up and they were put on
34:52
Speaker 3: a table outside the church set.
34:54
Speaker 1: And this is because of COVID.
34:56
Speaker 3: Nineteen protocols, so not a lot of people are in
34:59
Speaker 3: the an inclosed set. They're not there three guns. So
35:02
Speaker 3: the assistant director picked it up. Dave Halls, as the
35:06
Speaker 3: other guest said, you know, has a history of a
35:09
Speaker 3: lot of accidents on sets, and handed it to Bodlin
35:12
Speaker 3: and he is the one that yelled out, cold gun.
35:15
Speaker 3: There's no nobody had said there's so many people have
35:18
Speaker 3: spoken to the police on the set, so many of
35:21
Speaker 3: the other crew members, and they said they didn't know
35:24
Speaker 3: whether it actually was.
35:26
Speaker 1: Empty or not.
35:27
Speaker 3: And these guns were used at lunch. This is a
35:30
Speaker 3: post lunch break, so they broke for lunch at twelve thirty.
35:32
Speaker 3: They come back after lunch. During that lunchtime, there are
35:36
Speaker 3: reports that those crew members were using this gun and
35:39
Speaker 3: other guns to shoot beer bottles out in the desert
35:43
Speaker 3: area and using it as target practice. So there could
35:46
Speaker 3: have been alive and there said there was lots of
35:48
Speaker 3: live ammunition. Nobody was told they couldn't bring live ammunition
35:52
Speaker 3: on sets.
35:53
Speaker 1: That's another thing that you live round on set.
35:56
Speaker 3: That's the big problem here.
35:57
Speaker 1: And I think I would seeing is that Paul Japan,
36:00
Speaker 1: I'd like to jump in there.
36:02
Speaker 6: It's simply a breakdown of the security of the scene.
36:06
Speaker 6: The only people there that our arms should be security personnel.
36:10
Speaker 6: And you know, in my years, my decade of fighting
36:13
Speaker 6: to keep workplaces safe and to stop stalking offenders from
36:18
Speaker 6: killing victims, I can tell you one thing, and that
36:21
Speaker 6: is nobody thinks the unthinkable is going to happen. It's
36:25
Speaker 6: a matter of just human thinking. They think that, well,
36:28
Speaker 6: that happened to somebody else, that didn't happen to me.
36:30
Speaker 6: And because this is somewhat of a rare occurrence on
36:33
Speaker 6: a set, people got laxed.
36:36
Speaker 9: They got lackadaisical about fundamental when it comes to shooting
36:41
Speaker 9: a scene such as this.
36:42
Speaker 11: And just like at any.
36:44
Speaker 6: Workplace, this is a workplace out in the middle of
36:46
Speaker 6: the desert, just like it would be in an office building.
36:50
Speaker 6: Those protocols broke down and people at work, attempting to
36:53
Speaker 6: do the right thing for the right reasons, had a catastrophic,
36:57
Speaker 6: devastating thing happened. Because we as human beings think, well,
37:02
Speaker 6: if it hasn't happened, it won't happen. And that's just
37:04
Speaker 6: not the reality of life when it comes to dangerous events.
37:07
Speaker 1: The movie Rust now in cinemas across the country. MENI
37:12
Speaker 1: Illegal eagles still scratching their heads over why a judge
37:15
Speaker 1: throughout Alec Baldwin's case. Nancy Gray Soney, Goodbye Friend,