October 24, 2025 • 40 mins
Actor Alec Baldwin driving with his brother Stephen crash into a tree. Baldwin posted on Instagram that a "big garbage truck the size of a whale" cut him off.
He says to avoid a collision, he crashed his wife's car into a "big, fat tree," crushing his wife's car. There were no injuries.
Video from the truck company shows a different story. It puts Baldwin in the headlines again after two people were shot on the set of his movie "Rust."
Director of photography Halyna Hutchins died, and director Joel Souza was wounded. Reports say first assistant director David Halls picked up one of three prop guns set up by armorer Hannah Gutierrez and yelled, “cold gun.”
"Cold gun" is industry slang meaning the gun does not contain live rounds. Halls gave the gun to Baldwin, who used it to rehearse a scene.
According to the search warrant, Baldwin aimed the weapon at the camera when he fired, striking Hutchins and Souza.
Joining Nancy Grace today:
- Paul Szych – Former Police Commander; Author: “StopHimFromKillingThem” on Amazon Kindle; Twitter: @WorkplaceThreat; Screen Actors Guild-Eligible Actor
- Domenic Romano – NY Corporate Lawyer and Entertainment Attorney, Romano Law
- Dr. Shari Schwartz – Forensic Psychologist (Specializing in Capital Mitigation and Victim Advocacy); Author: “Criminal Behavior” and “Where Law and Psychology Intersect: Issues in Legal Psychology;” X: @TrialDoc”
- Karen L. Smith – Forensic Expert, Lecturer at the University of Florida, Host of ‘Shattered Souls’ Podcast; Twitter: @KarensForensic
- Dr. Michelle DuPre – Former Forensic Pathologist, Medical Examiner and Detective: Lexington County Sheriff’s Department, Author: “Homicide Investigation Field Guide” & “Investigating Child Abuse Field Guide;” Forensic Consultant
- Alexis Tereszcuk - CrimeOnline.com Investigative Reporter, Writer/Fact Checker, Lead Stories, X: @swimmie2009
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace Friday Night Special. That's right,
It's Friday Night and it's special. Does the name Alec
Baldwin ring a bell? Well, he's back in the Last Days.
(00:20):
Alec Baldwin has a mystery car crash and of course
find someone else to blame. What is the truth behind
movie superstar Alec Baldwin's quote, Well, car crash. I'm Nancy Grace,
this is Crime Stories. I want to thank you for
(00:42):
being with us. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories.
I want to thank you for being with us. Hampton's
police State. Alec Baldwin insists he was not to blame
for ramming his Range Rover into a fixed object, a tree.
(01:03):
New footage now emerging seemingly contradicts Baldwin's version of what
happened in the crash. Now, Baldwin claims he slammed his
wife's SUV into a tree. He says it happens after
a I guess this is a trash truck. A National
(01:26):
Waste Services truck cut him off and sent him careening
to the side of the road. Now, new footage obtained
shot from inside the truck. The trash truck or dump
truck shows it exiting unimpeded. Okay, according to this footage,
(01:56):
we understand Baldwin's car then emerges to the right the
vehicle and shoots off the road and smashes into a tree.
Huh ole at Baldwin's range. River seemingly shows up in
the shot of that I guess dash cam they've got
(02:18):
well after the truck completes the turn out onto the
street the quote disputed maneuver. So based on that video,
it seems that the dump truck had nothing to do
with Baldwin's SUV slamming into a tree. I'd like to
(02:40):
report nobody's hurt and Baldwin did not make a complete
ass of himself this time for once. Now there are
reports there was no sign at all the truck forced
Baldwin out of his lane, and there was no obstruction
on the road that required Baldwin to swerve off the road.
(03:00):
The significance of this is that he seemingly is blaming
either his suv or the dump truck, just like he
blamed the self firing gun on the set of the
(03:20):
Rust movie, where he, according to ballistics experts, pulled the
trigger and shot Helena Hutchins dead. Now, have I ever
believed he did it all purpose? No, I don't think that.
I think it was reckless and negligent that he fired
a gun pointed directly at someone. Yes, he likely you know,
(03:46):
I go out on a limb. He clearly thought it
was full of blanks. But he still pulled the trigger,
fired the gun, and it killed Helena Hutchins. He Baldwin kline,
the gun went off by itself. Okay, that's not true.
(04:06):
Hey lied that said. This is what we know of
the facts of Helena Hutson's shooting, dip tragedy.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
On the film set of a new Alec Baldwin movie
and what police are calling a misfire of a prop
gun in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Sheriff's office there
has just confirmed it was Baldwin who fired the prop
gun that killed a forty two year old female director
of stotography, Helena Hutchins. The film's director Juels Susa was
(04:38):
also hurt. This incident happened on the set of The
Western Rust. Now detectives are investigating what type of projectile
discharged from this gun.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
You were just hearing our friend Christine Johnson was CBS
what really happened. According to reports, the assistant yelled out
cold gun just before the shooting, which means the gun
was safe, that it was loaded with a blank. So
how do we have a woman, dad, another film person
(05:10):
injured with me and all star panel to make sense
of it all? If we can? With me? Dominic Romano
lawyer joining us out of New York at Romano Law
dot Com is specialty entertainment law, and I can tell
you if somebody's going to need a lawyer. Doctor Sherry
Schwartz forensic psychologists joining us. Karen L. Smith, forensic expert,
host of Shattered Soul's podcast at Beerbonesforensics dot com. Paul
(05:34):
Zeke joining us special guest, former police commander and author
of Stop Him From Killing Them on Amazon, and he
has lots of experience using firearms with blanks during live
action movie scenes like Terminator Salvation. Doctor Michelle dupre forensic pathologists,
(05:54):
former medical examiner, author of Homicide Investigation Field Guide, and
a former police detective. But first to Alexis Terreschuk, crime
online dot com investigative reporter joining us from Hollywood. Alexis
what is getting folded into the story, right or wrong?
Is Alec Baldwin's history, his reputation for let me just
(06:20):
say hot headedness to put it ephemistically. If he thought
it was a blank and it should have been a blank,
then history aside it was an accident. But how can
it really be an accident when somebody loaded this prop
gun with real bullets? Just start at the beginning.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
They were on a set in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
It's a Western style movie. So they were sitting in
a church at an old church team and Alex Baldwen
was sitting in one of the pews and he was
practicing what's called a cross draw, and so that would
be where the person take your left hand and rabs
the gun out of the holster on your opposite hip,
pulls it across to fire. He was practicing this move
(07:06):
standing the cinematographer, which is the person that makes the
movie beautiful. This is the person that films the scene.
She was standing in front of him, with the assistant
director stands lembard with the director standing right behind her.
He was looking over her shoulder to see what it
would look like when Alex pulled the gun out. He
pulled it out of the side points it at her
(07:28):
to show them, pulls the trigger and it fires a
lot round.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Into her, hits.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
Her in the stomach and actually believe goes.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Through her and grazes the director sitting standing right behind her.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Hush has pronounced dead at an Albuquerque hospital after being
rushed to the emergency room. You know what, I always
love playing nine to one one calls for a jury
because it takes you back to what's really happening. Not
a description, not someone recounting what happened, but you're hearing
what really happened. Take a listen to the beginning of
(08:00):
that nine one one call.
Speaker 5 (08:02):
I was only going one watch the location of your emergency.
We need a met we needed butic Financa free grants
right now we touch the people shot on the movie accidentally,
he said, someone with shot. Two people accidentally with gunshots
are on movie steps and as the Creek grants wonder,
I'll connect you with medical set. Who are you calling?
Speaker 6 (08:27):
Where the road?
Speaker 5 (08:32):
Don't hiring for emergency fantasy plan people accidentally shot on
a movie step live top gun. We need out the
media like Finanza free grants, come on. They almost if
we were going, Okay, what is your name?
Speaker 4 (08:50):
Mitchell?
Speaker 5 (08:52):
Mitchell wants upon where you're calling from.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Five up, don't hang up?
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Okay, hold on, just one stuff?
Speaker 5 (09:00):
Accident for somebody else is calling calling better mass? Everybody
should be can help our director in our cameraman as
a camera woman.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Now you hear repeatedly the word accident accidentally throughout that.
But is it an accident? Very often when you have,
for instance, a dui crash, people go, well, it was
an accident. But was it because the driver chooses to
go to a bar to order drinks, to drink, to
(09:41):
become legally intoxicated, to then get the car keys, walk
to the car, get in the car, crank up, reverse
and drive out onto the roads. That sounds pretty deliberate.
So is it an accident? Is it gross negligence? Well,
take a listen to more of that nine to one
one call.
Speaker 7 (10:00):
Was it loaded with a real hole?
Speaker 5 (10:01):
Or I don't I cannot start you up? Okay, we
have two injuries from the movie done. Josh were out
there already the dam upon any single Okay, I see
that yelled at me at lunch.
Speaker 6 (10:17):
Could ask him about the vision.
Speaker 5 (10:19):
You can ye and yell at me. He's a suggested gun.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
He's responsible.
Speaker 6 (10:27):
I have to danger.
Speaker 5 (10:28):
How many no, no, no, no, I'm super hard.
Speaker 6 (10:31):
I ran how many people angers?
Speaker 3 (10:33):
True that I know of.
Speaker 5 (10:35):
I was seeing we were hurting and it went off
and I ran out. We all ran out. There were
but doubles over the id and the camera woman and
the director and the director were clearing the road. Try
to come back. We're back on their way. Were back
in the town. I called, We're back in the western town.
Speaker 7 (10:54):
Is there any serious bleeding?
Speaker 4 (10:56):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (10:57):
I ran out of the building. But y nice, I
have to go through vehicle paint.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
Are they.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Crime stories with Nancy Grace? Here's the thing. Just tell
the truth. I thought there were blanks in the gun.
I fired it. I shot her. It was an accident.
I'm sorry. That would have been the truth. Or the
(11:33):
road was wet. I swerved off the side of it
and I crashed the darn SUV into the tree. Nobody
was hurt. Nobody's getting sued. That would be the truth.
Why blame the gun and lie? Why blame what did
he say? He blamed a quote? Well, call are okay?
(12:03):
Whal car crash? Why blame the driver of a dump truck?
Just you know, own up to it. Man, nobody's hurt,
nobody's dead, nobody's dismembered. Just why why, which leads me
back to the shooting of Helena Hutchins. Paul's like, thank
(12:25):
you for being with us. What went wrong? Obviously there
was a live bullet and what should have been a
prop gun.
Speaker 6 (12:31):
But what happened, Nancy? The only explanation for this is
a systemic breakdown in systems that are in place to
ensure that live ammunition is not present on the set.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Okay, now that was a lot of words, Paul's I
think you're saying somebody didn't do their job.
Speaker 6 (12:50):
Well, absolutely, somebody did not do their job and catastrophically
did not do that. There's no reason whatsoever for live
ammunition to be on the set of any set. Because
these weapons are capable of firing live rounds. They're not
really prop guns. They're deadly weapons being used as props.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Okay, hold on right there, I want to make that distinction.
You're absolutely right when look, I'm a trial lawyer, I'm
a legal expert. You're the expert in this world. When
I say prompt gun, I mean they're using it as
a prop. But you're making a very fine subtle but
important distinction. A prompt gun is a fake gun. I
(13:32):
don't think it even can shoot? Is that right.
Speaker 6 (13:35):
Exactly you're talking about? And say it pop knife? Correct?
It has a flat edge on it. It's incapable of cutting you.
These are things that are not deemed to be dangerous.
A prop gun is simply as utilized on set. Are
weapons that are capable of firing live ammunition and therefore
accidentally live ammunition could be mixed with blank rounds. You know,
(13:58):
given time, this is just a disaster waiting to happen.
They need to move to true guns that are incapable
of chambering live ammunition. Until that happens, this has a
very strong chance of repeating itself.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Well, okay, tell me this. Paul Zaike, guys with me.
Paul Zike. He is a former police commander. He's an
author screen actors gil and has experience using blanks during
live action movie scenes where we all think they're shooting
real guns. If you suspend your disbelief in movies like
His Terminator Salvation, those aren't real guns. So why are
(14:35):
they using a real gun? To start with? Paul Zike
and I mean to me, having been forced to handle
so many guns and so many homicides. What moron wouldn't
make sure that there were blanks in the gun.
Speaker 6 (14:51):
It's hard to imagine that during the loading of the
weapon that that was not viewed very strictly as a
weapon is loaded. And also there's a chain of custody
issue here on the scene of Terminator Salvation. As we
would go out and we would conduct the battle scene,
if you will, in the middle of the night, we
would be handed directly from the armor fully automatic weapons
(15:15):
and magazines, fully loaded with blanks, and we would head
straight out to where the scene was to be shot,
and then we would engage in the scene, you know,
five ten minutes later, hand the weapons straight back to
the armor, all the ammunition back to the armor, all
the magazines back to the armor, and we would not
be able to touch those weapons again until the next scene.
(15:36):
So from a chain of custody standpoint, it went directly
from the armor directly to my hand, my you know,
the co actor's hands that were with me, and that
was maintained very strictly.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Hold on, Paul, I've got to soak in everything you're saying,
because Dominate Romano a high profile lawyer joining us out
of New York's specialty entertainment law. And that's why Dominate's
joining us today. Dominate hold on. When you heard Paul's
like say, chain of custody, I immediately thought of a
serial murderer that I prosecuted on one murder. We could
(16:08):
get him on one and ended up I would say
three weeks before trial. I was just looking at the
evidence and I noticed that the bag that contained the
evidence wasn't signed. It had never been signed by the
homicide cop that picked it up from It was DNA,
and there was blood from where it had been taken
(16:30):
and carried to the crime lab. It wasn't written on
the back. Did anybody tamper with it? No, he just
didn't put his initials. I'm like, oh, dear Lord in Heaven,
the chain is broken. This could be attacked at trial.
I had to go back out to the jail stand
there and look at this killer while he pulled his
blood again. Then I carried it with my investigator myself
(16:52):
back to the crime lab to have it retested. Praise
the Lord in Heaven. It was his DNA. Long story short,
that's chain of custody. Your case can be lost. You
can lose a serial killer because somebody didn't keep the
chain to preserve the integrity of the trial. That's what
I thought when Paul zai, except chain of custody. But
(17:12):
did you also hear him say dominic romano he handed
it back to the It sounded like he was saying
armor or armory. But I've been reading about this case.
It's an arm er, armor er who is the person
in charge of all the weapons.
Speaker 8 (17:28):
I think Paul is absolutely right looking no one should
ever be killed by a gun on a film set period.
Those are the words of Brandon Lee's sister. Brandon Lee
shot on a film set in the early nineteen nineties.
Speaker 6 (17:42):
This should not happen.
Speaker 8 (17:43):
There are established protocols, chains of command. I mean, there
appears to be some serious gross negligence on that set
to allow that to have that. That is the appearance,
and I don't know what evidence can come out to
rebut that presumption.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Five round in well, as Paul's ike has corrected me,
it's not a prop gun. They were using real guns. Hey,
let me ask you a question, Paul's Ike, explain the
difference and what a blank looks like as opposed to
a live round a bullet. We're saying live rounds, we're
talking about a bullet. What's the difference. Can't you just
(18:21):
look at them and you can see the difference in.
Speaker 6 (18:23):
Most cases, absolutely, it's very clear. You can see the
difference in some types of calibers, say two two three,
if you will, that's what an AR fifteen would shoot.
The blanks are kind of crypt at the end to
almost look like there's a bullet on the end of them.
But any sort of trained professional whatsoever, when you're handling
(18:45):
a blank, you know it's a blank. When it's a bullet,
you know it's a bullet. The blank does not have
a lead projectile or a steel projectile at the end
of the round, So at the end it's either flat
or it's slightly crimped to hold in the gunpowder, which
the firearm usually needs the gunpowder to correctly function the
(19:07):
weapon and cycle the weapon. And it's one of the
reasons why blanks are used.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Okay, Paul Zike, I really respect you, but you're gonna
have to dumb me down for me, okay, because I
would have to put you through intensive training before you
take the stand because a lot of people do not
know what you just said. Just think about it and
think if there's a way you can say it in
more simple terms. What's the difference between a blank and
a lie bullet when you look at it? Speak English Man.
(19:35):
In the meantime, Wait a minute. You mentioned Brandon Lee,
and you're absolutely right. We pulled sound of other cases
almost identical to this. This is not the first time
it's happened, believe it or not, Tyler, could you roll
our cut forty four? Let's follow up on what Paul
Zike said about Brandon Lee.
Speaker 9 (19:53):
That's a bully coun that killed Brandon Lee. Some believe
a piece of a croplyd without gunpowder and it may
have been left accidentally in the gun blank was fired
at Brandon some fiel let's shot out the properly, mortally
wounding him.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
There was an accident waiting to happen.
Speaker 9 (20:08):
The Crow crewmember we spoke but says that there were
many opportunities for an accident to happen. Are the working
conditions on the set of the Crow particularly bad?
Speaker 10 (20:17):
Threely long hours, eighteen hour days back to back at times,
pushing ninety one hundred.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Hours a week and six day weeks way too much?
Speaker 9 (20:26):
Do you think that that over work, that exhaustion might
have resulted in this accident.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Sage, your cautious.
Speaker 8 (20:33):
Olivan were definitely not called.
Speaker 6 (20:35):
It could have been prevented.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
With better management. The publicist for.
Speaker 9 (20:40):
The movie The Crow denies that the working conditions were unsane.
Speaker 11 (20:44):
Certainly everyone was very tired and exhausted from the shoe,
but these are professionals and they're used to working conditions
like this.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Okay, guys, you were hearing our friends and inside Edition,
and I want to follow up on what we're just
hearing with Alexis est Chuck. I played that sound for
a reason, Alexis, because on the Alec Baldwin set of Rust,
there apparently were problems with working conditions. A group of
the crew had walked out I think the night before
(21:12):
the claiming that they had bad hotels. They were an
hour away from a hotel or motel and if they
worked late into the night they have to drive through
I guess the desert, and a lot of them were
actually sleeping in their cars overnight. That's just some of
the complaints I've heard. But what are the other complaints,
if any, on the Alec Baldwin movie set.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
Well, there have been complaints that things were not safe.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Quote.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
One of the the person is being directly blamed for
a lot of the unfaked is when you were listening
to the nine one one call and you said you
heard the woman saying that he was yelling at me
things like that. This is the assistant director that they're
talking about. And this is the assistant director David Hall
who handed the gun to Baldwin and said this is
a cold gun. So what the people on that we're
(22:00):
saying is that Halls was not a responcable person. He
was very angry. He was making the job very difficult
for everybody to do, and they didn't trust him.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Wait a minute, you're saying David Halls was an assistant director. Yeah, okay,
Well what about the honorer? Is she the one responsible
for all the weapons and the blanks or the bullets? Guys,
take another listen to our cut forty three. This is
about practically the same thing happening before. Listen.
Speaker 9 (22:29):
It was here at the Carrol Coast Studios in Wilmington,
North Carolina, that actor Brandon Lee was filming The Crow. Ironically,
the film.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Is about a man who.
Speaker 9 (22:37):
Dies and comes back to life to advanish his death
shortly after midnight last Tuesday. Brandon Lee was preparing to
film a routine action scene.
Speaker 10 (22:46):
The script for him to get shot as he walks
through door carrying a bag of groceries. Michael Massey, the
actor doing the shooting, is reportedly devastated by Lee's death
and remains in seclusion.
Speaker 9 (22:58):
The Gunny was using was supposed to be loaded with
blanks from the camera's role. Brandon Lee was performing for
the last time.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
The first episodes of a reality show starring Alec Baldwin,
his wife, and their seven children are hitting the airwaves now.
According to a string of PR specialists, no one can
imagine any advisor would have recommended the ball once agree
to a reality series in the very best of times,
(23:28):
let alone after the shooting death of cinematographer Helena Hutchins Way,
you and Teren Smith, well, we.
Speaker 4 (23:37):
Deal a lot with forensics. In physics.
Speaker 6 (23:39):
When we do a.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
Reconstruction, we use snippets of time and sometimes that can
be split seconds, and this includes trajectories of projectiles, and
this trajectory can generally be explained by the reporting. Alec
Baldwin was reported to be sitting at a church pew
to align a camera angle. When the gun was fired,
Alena Hutchins then collapsed on the floor and Juels Susa
was struck and the clavicles. That's an upward trajectory, which means.
Speaker 12 (24:03):
Both Hutchins and thus we're standing up when the event occurred.
The projectile that perforated Helena's body and subsequently structurals. Now,
in order for that to happen, the kinetic energy, which
is energy as the result of motion, would be very high.
We're dealing with mass or the amount.
Speaker 4 (24:21):
Of matter in an object and energy dispersion.
Speaker 12 (24:24):
Guns carry a high volume of energy in a small space,
and that from my experience, it tells me that it
was something other than just the paper or elastic wadding
from a blank round. That needs to be confirmed by
the EMMY.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
And the investigator's But there are reports of live ammunition
bullets being on the set and that particular gun allegedly
being used for target practice that morning. There's a lot
of questions that needs to be answered by the investigators
and theme.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Again for the set being used as target practice. Paul Zi,
that shouldn't be that you've got crew members out shooting bottles.
I think that that's coming out with live bullets, and
you use that same gun for a saye and a
church full of people, and Nancy, I.
Speaker 6 (25:11):
Just want to clarify the prior point, so very simply,
a blank is a shellcasing with gunpowder in it, with
no bullet. A bullet is the same exact thing with
more gunpowder and a live bullet at the end of
it that is made to travel through the barrel and
exit the weapon. Back to what you were saying, that
(25:32):
the cardinal rule that's been broken, whether you're whether you're
involved in police training or you're involved in a movie set,
keeping live ammunition away from weapons that fire live ammunition
and keeping weapons at fire blanks away from those instances.
And when you mix those two together, the odds of
somebody having a spare live round in one of their
(25:53):
pockets or you name it is super high, and it
sounds very sloppy, and it just just opens the door
for terrible things that happen. And that's where the systemic
breakdown and that controlled environment.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
I'm telling of Paul's like, You're right, super sloppy is
one way to put it. Gross negligence or unintentional murder
is another way to put it. I think I hear
Dominant Ramano jumping in. Go ahead.
Speaker 8 (26:20):
Yeah, basically it's a catastrophic miscalculation. I think two people
here should be folks. We should focus on one is
the armor like this is only according to reports or
second movie with jars Read and the assistant director Dave Hauls.
Speaker 6 (26:36):
You mentioned before.
Speaker 8 (26:37):
According to reports, he was fired from a twenty nineteen
production of Freedom's Past a minor injury.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Well, Whitney, White, White, you got me drinking from the
fire hydrant, which is not a bad thing. It's too
much at once. Hold on in the world, would you
have somebody that was fired off another similar job handling
your weapon? Okay? Is that what you just said? Dominant?
Speaker 6 (27:00):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Almost so almost. The armorer is twenty.
Speaker 8 (27:04):
Four years old, the person handling the weapons, it's only
her second film. She was just in a podcast last
month where she said, you know, she's a bit nervous
about her film, but it went well her while there
is apparently a famous armor okay, so we have that
an experienced armor. Number two, we have the assistant director
known as the ad Dve Holes. Apparently, according to a report,
(27:24):
he was fired from its twenty nineteen production The movie
was freedom passed after crew members suffered guess what, a
minor injury when a gun unexpectedly discharged.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Dominic Ramano, there were similar transactions are jumping to mind.
I mean, this solidifies my thought that this is not
an accident, because an accent when you totally don't see
it coming, it's just like out of the blue. But
if this guy, if it's correct, the ad had a
previous incident, for somebody was shot on a set, and
(28:00):
if it was a minor injury, then you should have
seen either new or should have known. Would you agree
with that, Dominic Romano?
Speaker 8 (28:07):
They're going to be some serious questions to be asked
and there have to be answers, and if we don't
have good answers, someone is either going to be involved
in a very expensive lawsuit or depending on what they
knew and when they knew it and how careless they were,
probably facing some time. The other issue you alluded to
(28:30):
earlier is, you know, cost cutting. It's rampant in the
industry right now, and the production company's decision not to
book to crew hotel rooms near the actual set, but
to have them travel an hour in each direction to
get to and from their accommodation to have long hours
(28:50):
where people walked off the set earlier that day in protest.
Speaker 6 (28:54):
So this is a.
Speaker 8 (28:56):
Combination of what turned out to be a lethal combination
catastrophic calculation on the part of the production company.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Well you just said a mouthful, all in a good way,
between the armorer being an experience, the ad having a
prior similar transaction, and budget cuts problems amongst the crew.
Take a listen to our cut six that from our
friends at News Nation. Now let's start.
Speaker 11 (29:20):
With the people responsible for handling a gun. There are
no ubiquorous rules across all film sets, but generally there
are some guidelines that they follow, and here into a
budget project usually plays a big role. By many sets,
there are no fewer than three people responsible for monitoring
a weapon. Prop Mastercums in charge of all cross is
often supported by a safety officer and a sub coordinator,
(29:41):
and depending on the state, you may also need to
bring in an armorer whose only job is handling weapons.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Crime stories with Nancy Grace in the Last Days, Hampton
detectives find no criminality in Alec Baldwin's car crash striking
a fixed object, but couldn't just stop there Baldwin had
(30:13):
to blame the driver of a dump truck for him
Baldwin veering off the road and hitting a tree. Baldwin,
who killed a cinematographer Helena Hutchins on the set of
a Western movie, says he quotes felt bad for crashing
his wife's car. Okay, but just keep telling the truth.
(30:37):
You don't have to lie about it. And for once,
Baldwin was not throwing some sort of a tantrum. He
actually managed to keep his pieholes shut. What happened the
day of the crash and the Hamptons we may never know.
According to footage obtained from inside the dump truck, the
(31:00):
dump truck or trash truck had nothing to do with
bottom of veering off the side of the road. Okay,
no harm, no foul, nobody's hurt. The significance of this
is that he came up with a lie seemingly.
Speaker 12 (31:17):
Just like.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
The lie according to Manny he told on the set
of Rust about the death of a young mom, Doctor Dupree,
I'm sure you, like myself, have had to handle weapons
in front of jury's and I learned this from watching
a pro trycases. I would always pick the gun up,
(31:43):
holding it face down with a barrel pointing to the
ground so the jury or anyone else would not be alarmed.
What you don't want to do is scare your jury.
I would walk in front of the jury holding the weapon,
nose down, open the chain, let them see me check it,
hold it up like I was examining it through you know,
(32:07):
my eye level, so they could see that it was empty,
and then shut it and then give it to the
witness without fail. Even if it was a weapon that
I knew was inoperable, that was sp Why would that
not occur on a movie set? But describe how you're
(32:29):
supposed to handle weapons exactly.
Speaker 4 (32:32):
Antsy, You described it perfectly.
Speaker 7 (32:33):
That is exactly what you should do. And if you're
giving a weapon to someone else, normally you have the
chamber open so that they can also see and then.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
You both check it.
Speaker 7 (32:42):
And know that it's empty or that the blanks are
in it.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Tell me what you can discern about what Karen Smith,
forensics expert, just told us about the injuries. What happened, Nancy.
Speaker 7 (32:55):
Even though these are quote prop guns or blanks, they
can still obviously devastating damage the wadding or whatever they
are filled with. Even in a blank. But this was
not a blink. This was an actual projectile.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
And as we know, you mean a bullet speak English,
a bullet.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
Yes, yes, this is a bullet.
Speaker 7 (33:15):
And the caliber of that bullet of the gun is
what is going to determine how much damage is done.
As she explained, the higher the caliber, the more energy
in that bullet, and so the more damage done to
the physical body. And of course the location where that
bullet enters the body in this case was devastating.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
You know, another issue to doctor Sherry Schwartz. I've been
on a lot of TV sets, obviously, and movie sets
for you know, cameos or some legal issue. And I
got to tell you, doctor Sherry Schwartz, a movie set
takes on a whole. It's like you're in a different world.
Like when you go to the movies and you sit
down and it goes dark, your mind takes you there. Well,
(33:59):
you're on a movie set. I've never been on a
single movie set that went on time. You go till
one or two o'clock in the morning, it's pitch dark outside.
You keep going until you get the shot or you
finish this scene or whatever it's called in movie world.
I think that there is a suspended fear. You think
(34:21):
you're at a movie set, like when you go to
Disneyland or when you're on vacation on a cruise ship.
You suspend your normal thinking it doesn't seem real and
you're not thinking, wow, there's a gun I could get
shot because it's quote just a movie. It's not real.
How do we let me just say, suspend our disbelief,
(34:44):
suspend rational rules of functioning when you're on a movie
set or in a movie. You know, like in a
movie is where there's some nut with a gun and
you hear a sound, but you don't think it's real
because you're in a movie. What happens in the human mind, Sherry, Well.
Speaker 13 (35:01):
When you don't think that something is actually real, then
you would not calculate accurately what the potential risks are, right,
And so there is this gun on the set, but
everybody thinks, oh, it's just make believe. We're setting this
up to film it. Nobody's actually going to get hurt.
(35:22):
And so what happens mentally is that you underestimate what
the potential risks are. And what happened here is an
egregious underestimation, right, so for the rest of us, it's
to make believes. Maybe even for the actor, they know
that they're just playing a role, and everybody around them
might know they're playing a role. But there are people
on the set who are responsible for that gun and
(35:45):
for taking that proper care and knowing what the potential
risks are.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Do you, Alexis treshat Crime online dot Com investigative reporter,
you have heard Dominant Romano Paul's like, well, everyone on
the panel weighing in, But apparently there were a lot
of problems and a lot of disgruntled crew members. I
understand that one of the motels they had set them
up to stay overnight was at a place for the homeless,
(36:11):
and there were drug addicts there. They were afraid to
stay there. What was going on on the set, well, it.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
Seems like what they were trying to do was make
this film cheaply a possible understandable, but they were putting
people's lives at risk.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
It was fifties.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Hotels were fifty miles away, so after working fourteen hour days,
the crew was having to drive over an hour to
get to their hotel. Then they would have to be
back within like six hours, so they would get almost
no sleep at all. But they were also saying that
things were just not safe. There had been an incident
a few days earlier that one of the prop guns
(36:47):
again prop real gun, had been accidentally fired, and so
the crew had been complaining to the producer, saying this
is not a safe working environment, and they walked off
the set. So Hollywood is very much a union of business,
but the producers hired non union people to replace them.
(37:08):
These nine union people, though, are not the people. That's
not the armor and it's not the assistant director, and
everybody's been talking there at the line of protocol.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
You have so many steps in.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
The line of defense, so that when this gun got
to Alex Baldwin, at least two other people were responsible
for saying that it wasn't loaded.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
I mean, didn't somebody even scream out cold gun? I
mean they have to yell it out, you know what
you were just saying. I know so many times for
different shoots. I don't know who he is that carries
that comes over and they have to do it a
certain way, they have to say a certain thing, and
they say it really loudly. I don't know why, but
(37:51):
I'm sure there's a reason for it, just like they
would yell out cold gun and everybody would hear it.
But I guess they yelled it out without banking Alexis.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
And there are reports that yes, So there were three
guns that were set up and they were put on
a table outside the church set. And it's because of
COVID nineteen protocols, so not a lot of people are
in the if it's an inclosed set, they're not there
three guns. So the assistant director picked it up. Dave Halls,
as the other guy said, you know, has a history
(38:21):
of a lot of accidents on sets, and handed it
to Bodlin and he is the one that yelled out
cold gun. There's no nobody had said there's so many
people have spoken to the police on the set, so
many of the other crew members, and they said they
didn't know whether it actually was empty or not. And
these guns were used at lunch. This is a post
(38:43):
lunch break, so they broke for lunch at twelve thirty.
They come back after lunch. During that lunchtime, there are
reports that those crew members were using this gun and
other guns to shoot beer bottles out in the desert
area and using it as target practice, so there could
have been alive and then said there were lots of
live ammunition. Nobody was told they couldn't bring live ammunition
(39:04):
on set. That's another thing that.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
You live around on set.
Speaker 3 (39:08):
That's a big problem here, and I think.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
I'd like to jump in there.
Speaker 6 (39:13):
It's it's it's simply a breakdown of the security of
the scene. The only people there that our arms should
be security personnel. And you know, in my years, my
decade of fighting to keep workplaces safe and to stop
stalking offenders from killing victims, I can tell you one thing,
and that is nobody thinks the unthinkable is going to happen.
(39:36):
It's a matter of just human thinking. They think that, well,
that happened to somebody else, that didn't happen to me.
And because this is somewhat of a rare occurrence on
a set, people got laxed, They got lackadaisical about fundamental
when it comes to shooting a scene such as this.
And just like at any workplace, this is a workplace
(39:57):
out in the middle of the desert, just like it
would be in an office building. Those protocols broke down
in people at work attempting to do the right thing,
for the right reasons. Had a catastrophic, devastating thing happened,
because we as human beings think, well, if it hasn't happened,
it won't happen. And that's just not the reality of
life when it comes to dangerous events.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
I mean, just like you said, the gun went off
on its own when he shot Helena Hutchins dead. Now
he slams into a tree and he blames a mystery
dump truck. M video reveals otherwise. Nancy Grace Sonia, Goodbye.
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace Friday Night Special. That's right,
It's Friday Night and it's special. Does the name Alec
Baldwin ring a bell? Well, he's back in the Last Days.
(00:20):
Alec Baldwin has a mystery car crash and of course
find someone else to blame. What is the truth behind
movie superstar Alec Baldwin's quote, Well, car crash. I'm Nancy Grace,
this is Crime Stories. I want to thank you for
(00:42):
being with us. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories.
I want to thank you for being with us. Hampton's
police State. Alec Baldwin insists he was not to blame
for ramming his Range Rover into a fixed object, a tree.
(01:03):
New footage now emerging seemingly contradicts Baldwin's version of what
happened in the crash. Now, Baldwin claims he slammed his
wife's SUV into a tree. He says it happens after
a I guess this is a trash truck. A National
(01:26):
Waste Services truck cut him off and sent him careening
to the side of the road. Now, new footage obtained
shot from inside the truck. The trash truck or dump
truck shows it exiting unimpeded. Okay, according to this footage,
(01:56):
we understand Baldwin's car then emerges to the right the
vehicle and shoots off the road and smashes into a tree.
Huh ole at Baldwin's range. River seemingly shows up in
the shot of that I guess dash cam they've got
(02:18):
well after the truck completes the turn out onto the
street the quote disputed maneuver. So based on that video,
it seems that the dump truck had nothing to do
with Baldwin's SUV slamming into a tree. I'd like to
(02:40):
report nobody's hurt and Baldwin did not make a complete
ass of himself this time for once. Now there are
reports there was no sign at all the truck forced
Baldwin out of his lane, and there was no obstruction
on the road that required Baldwin to swerve off the road.
(03:00):
The significance of this is that he seemingly is blaming
either his suv or the dump truck, just like he
blamed the self firing gun on the set of the
(03:20):
Rust movie, where he, according to ballistics experts, pulled the
trigger and shot Helena Hutchins dead. Now, have I ever
believed he did it all purpose? No, I don't think that.
I think it was reckless and negligent that he fired
a gun pointed directly at someone. Yes, he likely you know,
(03:46):
I go out on a limb. He clearly thought it
was full of blanks. But he still pulled the trigger,
fired the gun, and it killed Helena Hutchins. He Baldwin kline,
the gun went off by itself. Okay, that's not true.
(04:06):
Hey lied that said. This is what we know of
the facts of Helena Hutson's shooting, dip tragedy.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
On the film set of a new Alec Baldwin movie
and what police are calling a misfire of a prop
gun in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Sheriff's office there
has just confirmed it was Baldwin who fired the prop
gun that killed a forty two year old female director
of stotography, Helena Hutchins. The film's director Juels Susa was
(04:38):
also hurt. This incident happened on the set of The
Western Rust. Now detectives are investigating what type of projectile
discharged from this gun.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
You were just hearing our friend Christine Johnson was CBS
what really happened. According to reports, the assistant yelled out
cold gun just before the shooting, which means the gun
was safe, that it was loaded with a blank. So
how do we have a woman, dad, another film person
(05:10):
injured with me and all star panel to make sense
of it all? If we can? With me? Dominic Romano
lawyer joining us out of New York at Romano Law
dot Com is specialty entertainment law, and I can tell
you if somebody's going to need a lawyer. Doctor Sherry
Schwartz forensic psychologists joining us. Karen L. Smith, forensic expert,
host of Shattered Soul's podcast at Beerbonesforensics dot com. Paul
(05:34):
Zeke joining us special guest, former police commander and author
of Stop Him From Killing Them on Amazon, and he
has lots of experience using firearms with blanks during live
action movie scenes like Terminator Salvation. Doctor Michelle dupre forensic pathologists,
(05:54):
former medical examiner, author of Homicide Investigation Field Guide, and
a former police detective. But first to Alexis Terreschuk, crime
online dot com investigative reporter joining us from Hollywood. Alexis
what is getting folded into the story, right or wrong?
Is Alec Baldwin's history, his reputation for let me just
(06:20):
say hot headedness to put it ephemistically. If he thought
it was a blank and it should have been a blank,
then history aside it was an accident. But how can
it really be an accident when somebody loaded this prop
gun with real bullets? Just start at the beginning.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
They were on a set in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
It's a Western style movie. So they were sitting in
a church at an old church team and Alex Baldwen
was sitting in one of the pews and he was
practicing what's called a cross draw, and so that would
be where the person take your left hand and rabs
the gun out of the holster on your opposite hip,
pulls it across to fire. He was practicing this move
(07:06):
standing the cinematographer, which is the person that makes the
movie beautiful. This is the person that films the scene.
She was standing in front of him, with the assistant
director stands lembard with the director standing right behind her.
He was looking over her shoulder to see what it
would look like when Alex pulled the gun out. He
pulled it out of the side points it at her
(07:28):
to show them, pulls the trigger and it fires a
lot round.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Into her, hits.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
Her in the stomach and actually believe goes.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Through her and grazes the director sitting standing right behind her.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Hush has pronounced dead at an Albuquerque hospital after being
rushed to the emergency room. You know what, I always
love playing nine to one one calls for a jury
because it takes you back to what's really happening. Not
a description, not someone recounting what happened, but you're hearing
what really happened. Take a listen to the beginning of
(08:00):
that nine one one call.
Speaker 5 (08:02):
I was only going one watch the location of your emergency.
We need a met we needed butic Financa free grants
right now we touch the people shot on the movie accidentally,
he said, someone with shot. Two people accidentally with gunshots
are on movie steps and as the Creek grants wonder,
I'll connect you with medical set. Who are you calling?
Speaker 6 (08:27):
Where the road?
Speaker 5 (08:32):
Don't hiring for emergency fantasy plan people accidentally shot on
a movie step live top gun. We need out the
media like Finanza free grants, come on. They almost if
we were going, Okay, what is your name?
Speaker 4 (08:50):
Mitchell?
Speaker 5 (08:52):
Mitchell wants upon where you're calling from.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Five up, don't hang up?
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Okay, hold on, just one stuff?
Speaker 5 (09:00):
Accident for somebody else is calling calling better mass? Everybody
should be can help our director in our cameraman as
a camera woman.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Now you hear repeatedly the word accident accidentally throughout that.
But is it an accident? Very often when you have,
for instance, a dui crash, people go, well, it was
an accident. But was it because the driver chooses to
go to a bar to order drinks, to drink, to
(09:41):
become legally intoxicated, to then get the car keys, walk
to the car, get in the car, crank up, reverse
and drive out onto the roads. That sounds pretty deliberate.
So is it an accident? Is it gross negligence? Well,
take a listen to more of that nine to one
one call.
Speaker 7 (10:00):
Was it loaded with a real hole?
Speaker 5 (10:01):
Or I don't I cannot start you up? Okay, we
have two injuries from the movie done. Josh were out
there already the dam upon any single Okay, I see
that yelled at me at lunch.
Speaker 6 (10:17):
Could ask him about the vision.
Speaker 5 (10:19):
You can ye and yell at me. He's a suggested gun.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
He's responsible.
Speaker 6 (10:27):
I have to danger.
Speaker 5 (10:28):
How many no, no, no, no, I'm super hard.
Speaker 6 (10:31):
I ran how many people angers?
Speaker 3 (10:33):
True that I know of.
Speaker 5 (10:35):
I was seeing we were hurting and it went off
and I ran out. We all ran out. There were
but doubles over the id and the camera woman and
the director and the director were clearing the road. Try
to come back. We're back on their way. Were back
in the town. I called, We're back in the western town.
Speaker 7 (10:54):
Is there any serious bleeding?
Speaker 4 (10:56):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (10:57):
I ran out of the building. But y nice, I
have to go through vehicle paint.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
Are they.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Crime stories with Nancy Grace? Here's the thing. Just tell
the truth. I thought there were blanks in the gun.
I fired it. I shot her. It was an accident.
I'm sorry. That would have been the truth. Or the
(11:33):
road was wet. I swerved off the side of it
and I crashed the darn SUV into the tree. Nobody
was hurt. Nobody's getting sued. That would be the truth.
Why blame the gun and lie? Why blame what did
he say? He blamed a quote? Well, call are okay?
(12:03):
Whal car crash? Why blame the driver of a dump truck?
Just you know, own up to it. Man, nobody's hurt,
nobody's dead, nobody's dismembered. Just why why, which leads me
back to the shooting of Helena Hutchins. Paul's like, thank
(12:25):
you for being with us. What went wrong? Obviously there
was a live bullet and what should have been a
prop gun.
Speaker 6 (12:31):
But what happened, Nancy? The only explanation for this is
a systemic breakdown in systems that are in place to
ensure that live ammunition is not present on the set.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Okay, now that was a lot of words, Paul's I
think you're saying somebody didn't do their job.
Speaker 6 (12:50):
Well, absolutely, somebody did not do their job and catastrophically
did not do that. There's no reason whatsoever for live
ammunition to be on the set of any set. Because
these weapons are capable of firing live rounds. They're not
really prop guns. They're deadly weapons being used as props.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Okay, hold on right there, I want to make that distinction.
You're absolutely right when look, I'm a trial lawyer, I'm
a legal expert. You're the expert in this world. When
I say prompt gun, I mean they're using it as
a prop. But you're making a very fine subtle but
important distinction. A prompt gun is a fake gun. I
(13:32):
don't think it even can shoot? Is that right.
Speaker 6 (13:35):
Exactly you're talking about? And say it pop knife? Correct?
It has a flat edge on it. It's incapable of cutting you.
These are things that are not deemed to be dangerous.
A prop gun is simply as utilized on set. Are
weapons that are capable of firing live ammunition and therefore
accidentally live ammunition could be mixed with blank rounds. You know,
(13:58):
given time, this is just a disaster waiting to happen.
They need to move to true guns that are incapable
of chambering live ammunition. Until that happens, this has a
very strong chance of repeating itself.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Well, okay, tell me this. Paul Zaike, guys with me.
Paul Zike. He is a former police commander. He's an
author screen actors gil and has experience using blanks during
live action movie scenes where we all think they're shooting
real guns. If you suspend your disbelief in movies like
His Terminator Salvation, those aren't real guns. So why are
(14:35):
they using a real gun? To start with? Paul Zike
and I mean to me, having been forced to handle
so many guns and so many homicides. What moron wouldn't
make sure that there were blanks in the gun.
Speaker 6 (14:51):
It's hard to imagine that during the loading of the
weapon that that was not viewed very strictly as a
weapon is loaded. And also there's a chain of custody
issue here on the scene of Terminator Salvation. As we
would go out and we would conduct the battle scene,
if you will, in the middle of the night, we
would be handed directly from the armor fully automatic weapons
(15:15):
and magazines, fully loaded with blanks, and we would head
straight out to where the scene was to be shot,
and then we would engage in the scene, you know,
five ten minutes later, hand the weapons straight back to
the armor, all the ammunition back to the armor, all
the magazines back to the armor, and we would not
be able to touch those weapons again until the next scene.
(15:36):
So from a chain of custody standpoint, it went directly
from the armor directly to my hand, my you know,
the co actor's hands that were with me, and that
was maintained very strictly.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Hold on, Paul, I've got to soak in everything you're saying,
because Dominate Romano a high profile lawyer joining us out
of New York's specialty entertainment law. And that's why Dominate's
joining us today. Dominate hold on. When you heard Paul's
like say, chain of custody, I immediately thought of a
serial murderer that I prosecuted on one murder. We could
(16:08):
get him on one and ended up I would say
three weeks before trial. I was just looking at the
evidence and I noticed that the bag that contained the
evidence wasn't signed. It had never been signed by the
homicide cop that picked it up from It was DNA,
and there was blood from where it had been taken
(16:30):
and carried to the crime lab. It wasn't written on
the back. Did anybody tamper with it? No, he just
didn't put his initials. I'm like, oh, dear Lord in Heaven,
the chain is broken. This could be attacked at trial.
I had to go back out to the jail stand
there and look at this killer while he pulled his
blood again. Then I carried it with my investigator myself
(16:52):
back to the crime lab to have it retested. Praise
the Lord in Heaven. It was his DNA. Long story short,
that's chain of custody. Your case can be lost. You
can lose a serial killer because somebody didn't keep the
chain to preserve the integrity of the trial. That's what
I thought when Paul zai, except chain of custody. But
(17:12):
did you also hear him say dominic romano he handed
it back to the It sounded like he was saying
armor or armory. But I've been reading about this case.
It's an arm er, armor er who is the person
in charge of all the weapons.
Speaker 8 (17:28):
I think Paul is absolutely right looking no one should
ever be killed by a gun on a film set period.
Those are the words of Brandon Lee's sister. Brandon Lee
shot on a film set in the early nineteen nineties.
Speaker 6 (17:42):
This should not happen.
Speaker 8 (17:43):
There are established protocols, chains of command. I mean, there
appears to be some serious gross negligence on that set
to allow that to have that. That is the appearance,
and I don't know what evidence can come out to
rebut that presumption.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Five round in well, as Paul's ike has corrected me,
it's not a prop gun. They were using real guns. Hey,
let me ask you a question, Paul's Ike, explain the
difference and what a blank looks like as opposed to
a live round a bullet. We're saying live rounds, we're
talking about a bullet. What's the difference. Can't you just
(18:21):
look at them and you can see the difference in.
Speaker 6 (18:23):
Most cases, absolutely, it's very clear. You can see the
difference in some types of calibers, say two two three,
if you will, that's what an AR fifteen would shoot.
The blanks are kind of crypt at the end to
almost look like there's a bullet on the end of them.
But any sort of trained professional whatsoever, when you're handling
(18:45):
a blank, you know it's a blank. When it's a bullet,
you know it's a bullet. The blank does not have
a lead projectile or a steel projectile at the end
of the round, So at the end it's either flat
or it's slightly crimped to hold in the gunpowder, which
the firearm usually needs the gunpowder to correctly function the
(19:07):
weapon and cycle the weapon. And it's one of the
reasons why blanks are used.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Okay, Paul Zike, I really respect you, but you're gonna
have to dumb me down for me, okay, because I
would have to put you through intensive training before you
take the stand because a lot of people do not
know what you just said. Just think about it and
think if there's a way you can say it in
more simple terms. What's the difference between a blank and
a lie bullet when you look at it? Speak English Man.
(19:35):
In the meantime, Wait a minute. You mentioned Brandon Lee,
and you're absolutely right. We pulled sound of other cases
almost identical to this. This is not the first time
it's happened, believe it or not, Tyler, could you roll
our cut forty four? Let's follow up on what Paul
Zike said about Brandon Lee.
Speaker 9 (19:53):
That's a bully coun that killed Brandon Lee. Some believe
a piece of a croplyd without gunpowder and it may
have been left accidentally in the gun blank was fired
at Brandon some fiel let's shot out the properly, mortally
wounding him.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
There was an accident waiting to happen.
Speaker 9 (20:08):
The Crow crewmember we spoke but says that there were
many opportunities for an accident to happen. Are the working
conditions on the set of the Crow particularly bad?
Speaker 10 (20:17):
Threely long hours, eighteen hour days back to back at times,
pushing ninety one hundred.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Hours a week and six day weeks way too much?
Speaker 9 (20:26):
Do you think that that over work, that exhaustion might
have resulted in this accident.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Sage, your cautious.
Speaker 8 (20:33):
Olivan were definitely not called.
Speaker 6 (20:35):
It could have been prevented.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
With better management. The publicist for.
Speaker 9 (20:40):
The movie The Crow denies that the working conditions were unsane.
Speaker 11 (20:44):
Certainly everyone was very tired and exhausted from the shoe,
but these are professionals and they're used to working conditions
like this.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Okay, guys, you were hearing our friends and inside Edition,
and I want to follow up on what we're just
hearing with Alexis est Chuck. I played that sound for
a reason, Alexis, because on the Alec Baldwin set of Rust,
there apparently were problems with working conditions. A group of
the crew had walked out I think the night before
(21:12):
the claiming that they had bad hotels. They were an
hour away from a hotel or motel and if they
worked late into the night they have to drive through
I guess the desert, and a lot of them were
actually sleeping in their cars overnight. That's just some of
the complaints I've heard. But what are the other complaints,
if any, on the Alec Baldwin movie set.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
Well, there have been complaints that things were not safe.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Quote.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
One of the the person is being directly blamed for
a lot of the unfaked is when you were listening
to the nine one one call and you said you
heard the woman saying that he was yelling at me
things like that. This is the assistant director that they're
talking about. And this is the assistant director David Hall
who handed the gun to Baldwin and said this is
a cold gun. So what the people on that we're
(22:00):
saying is that Halls was not a responcable person. He
was very angry. He was making the job very difficult
for everybody to do, and they didn't trust him.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Wait a minute, you're saying David Halls was an assistant director. Yeah, okay,
Well what about the honorer? Is she the one responsible
for all the weapons and the blanks or the bullets? Guys,
take another listen to our cut forty three. This is
about practically the same thing happening before. Listen.
Speaker 9 (22:29):
It was here at the Carrol Coast Studios in Wilmington,
North Carolina, that actor Brandon Lee was filming The Crow. Ironically,
the film.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Is about a man who.
Speaker 9 (22:37):
Dies and comes back to life to advanish his death
shortly after midnight last Tuesday. Brandon Lee was preparing to
film a routine action scene.
Speaker 10 (22:46):
The script for him to get shot as he walks
through door carrying a bag of groceries. Michael Massey, the
actor doing the shooting, is reportedly devastated by Lee's death
and remains in seclusion.
Speaker 9 (22:58):
The Gunny was using was supposed to be loaded with
blanks from the camera's role. Brandon Lee was performing for
the last time.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
The first episodes of a reality show starring Alec Baldwin,
his wife, and their seven children are hitting the airwaves now.
According to a string of PR specialists, no one can
imagine any advisor would have recommended the ball once agree
to a reality series in the very best of times,
(23:28):
let alone after the shooting death of cinematographer Helena Hutchins Way,
you and Teren Smith, well, we.
Speaker 4 (23:37):
Deal a lot with forensics. In physics.
Speaker 6 (23:39):
When we do a.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
Reconstruction, we use snippets of time and sometimes that can
be split seconds, and this includes trajectories of projectiles, and
this trajectory can generally be explained by the reporting. Alec
Baldwin was reported to be sitting at a church pew
to align a camera angle. When the gun was fired,
Alena Hutchins then collapsed on the floor and Juels Susa
was struck and the clavicles. That's an upward trajectory, which means.
Speaker 12 (24:03):
Both Hutchins and thus we're standing up when the event occurred.
The projectile that perforated Helena's body and subsequently structurals. Now,
in order for that to happen, the kinetic energy, which
is energy as the result of motion, would be very high.
We're dealing with mass or the amount.
Speaker 4 (24:21):
Of matter in an object and energy dispersion.
Speaker 12 (24:24):
Guns carry a high volume of energy in a small space,
and that from my experience, it tells me that it
was something other than just the paper or elastic wadding
from a blank round. That needs to be confirmed by
the EMMY.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
And the investigator's But there are reports of live ammunition
bullets being on the set and that particular gun allegedly
being used for target practice that morning. There's a lot
of questions that needs to be answered by the investigators
and theme.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Again for the set being used as target practice. Paul Zi,
that shouldn't be that you've got crew members out shooting bottles.
I think that that's coming out with live bullets, and
you use that same gun for a saye and a
church full of people, and Nancy, I.
Speaker 6 (25:11):
Just want to clarify the prior point, so very simply,
a blank is a shellcasing with gunpowder in it, with
no bullet. A bullet is the same exact thing with
more gunpowder and a live bullet at the end of
it that is made to travel through the barrel and
exit the weapon. Back to what you were saying, that
(25:32):
the cardinal rule that's been broken, whether you're whether you're
involved in police training or you're involved in a movie set,
keeping live ammunition away from weapons that fire live ammunition
and keeping weapons at fire blanks away from those instances.
And when you mix those two together, the odds of
somebody having a spare live round in one of their
(25:53):
pockets or you name it is super high, and it
sounds very sloppy, and it just just opens the door
for terrible things that happen. And that's where the systemic
breakdown and that controlled environment.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
I'm telling of Paul's like, You're right, super sloppy is
one way to put it. Gross negligence or unintentional murder
is another way to put it. I think I hear
Dominant Ramano jumping in. Go ahead.
Speaker 8 (26:20):
Yeah, basically it's a catastrophic miscalculation. I think two people
here should be folks. We should focus on one is
the armor like this is only according to reports or
second movie with jars Read and the assistant director Dave Hauls.
Speaker 6 (26:36):
You mentioned before.
Speaker 8 (26:37):
According to reports, he was fired from a twenty nineteen
production of Freedom's Past a minor injury.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Well, Whitney, White, White, you got me drinking from the
fire hydrant, which is not a bad thing. It's too
much at once. Hold on in the world, would you
have somebody that was fired off another similar job handling
your weapon? Okay? Is that what you just said? Dominant?
Speaker 6 (27:00):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Almost so almost. The armorer is twenty.
Speaker 8 (27:04):
Four years old, the person handling the weapons, it's only
her second film. She was just in a podcast last
month where she said, you know, she's a bit nervous
about her film, but it went well her while there
is apparently a famous armor okay, so we have that
an experienced armor. Number two, we have the assistant director
known as the ad Dve Holes. Apparently, according to a report,
(27:24):
he was fired from its twenty nineteen production The movie
was freedom passed after crew members suffered guess what, a
minor injury when a gun unexpectedly discharged.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Dominic Ramano, there were similar transactions are jumping to mind.
I mean, this solidifies my thought that this is not
an accident, because an accent when you totally don't see
it coming, it's just like out of the blue. But
if this guy, if it's correct, the ad had a
previous incident, for somebody was shot on a set, and
(28:00):
if it was a minor injury, then you should have
seen either new or should have known. Would you agree
with that, Dominic Romano?
Speaker 8 (28:07):
They're going to be some serious questions to be asked
and there have to be answers, and if we don't
have good answers, someone is either going to be involved
in a very expensive lawsuit or depending on what they
knew and when they knew it and how careless they were,
probably facing some time. The other issue you alluded to
(28:30):
earlier is, you know, cost cutting. It's rampant in the
industry right now, and the production company's decision not to
book to crew hotel rooms near the actual set, but
to have them travel an hour in each direction to
get to and from their accommodation to have long hours
(28:50):
where people walked off the set earlier that day in protest.
Speaker 6 (28:54):
So this is a.
Speaker 8 (28:56):
Combination of what turned out to be a lethal combination
catastrophic calculation on the part of the production company.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Well you just said a mouthful, all in a good way,
between the armorer being an experience, the ad having a
prior similar transaction, and budget cuts problems amongst the crew.
Take a listen to our cut six that from our
friends at News Nation. Now let's start.
Speaker 11 (29:20):
With the people responsible for handling a gun. There are
no ubiquorous rules across all film sets, but generally there
are some guidelines that they follow, and here into a
budget project usually plays a big role. By many sets,
there are no fewer than three people responsible for monitoring
a weapon. Prop Mastercums in charge of all cross is
often supported by a safety officer and a sub coordinator,
(29:41):
and depending on the state, you may also need to
bring in an armorer whose only job is handling weapons.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Crime stories with Nancy Grace in the Last Days, Hampton
detectives find no criminality in Alec Baldwin's car crash striking
a fixed object, but couldn't just stop there Baldwin had
(30:13):
to blame the driver of a dump truck for him
Baldwin veering off the road and hitting a tree. Baldwin,
who killed a cinematographer Helena Hutchins on the set of
a Western movie, says he quotes felt bad for crashing
his wife's car. Okay, but just keep telling the truth.
(30:37):
You don't have to lie about it. And for once,
Baldwin was not throwing some sort of a tantrum. He
actually managed to keep his pieholes shut. What happened the
day of the crash and the Hamptons we may never know.
According to footage obtained from inside the dump truck, the
(31:00):
dump truck or trash truck had nothing to do with
bottom of veering off the side of the road. Okay,
no harm, no foul, nobody's hurt. The significance of this
is that he came up with a lie seemingly.
Speaker 12 (31:17):
Just like.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
The lie according to Manny he told on the set
of Rust about the death of a young mom, Doctor Dupree,
I'm sure you, like myself, have had to handle weapons
in front of jury's and I learned this from watching
a pro trycases. I would always pick the gun up,
(31:43):
holding it face down with a barrel pointing to the
ground so the jury or anyone else would not be alarmed.
What you don't want to do is scare your jury.
I would walk in front of the jury holding the weapon,
nose down, open the chain, let them see me check it,
hold it up like I was examining it through you know,
(32:07):
my eye level, so they could see that it was empty,
and then shut it and then give it to the
witness without fail. Even if it was a weapon that
I knew was inoperable, that was sp Why would that
not occur on a movie set? But describe how you're
(32:29):
supposed to handle weapons exactly.
Speaker 4 (32:32):
Antsy, You described it perfectly.
Speaker 7 (32:33):
That is exactly what you should do. And if you're
giving a weapon to someone else, normally you have the
chamber open so that they can also see and then.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
You both check it.
Speaker 7 (32:42):
And know that it's empty or that the blanks are
in it.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Tell me what you can discern about what Karen Smith,
forensics expert, just told us about the injuries. What happened, Nancy.
Speaker 7 (32:55):
Even though these are quote prop guns or blanks, they
can still obviously devastating damage the wadding or whatever they
are filled with. Even in a blank. But this was
not a blink. This was an actual projectile.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
And as we know, you mean a bullet speak English,
a bullet.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
Yes, yes, this is a bullet.
Speaker 7 (33:15):
And the caliber of that bullet of the gun is
what is going to determine how much damage is done.
As she explained, the higher the caliber, the more energy
in that bullet, and so the more damage done to
the physical body. And of course the location where that
bullet enters the body in this case was devastating.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
You know, another issue to doctor Sherry Schwartz. I've been
on a lot of TV sets, obviously, and movie sets
for you know, cameos or some legal issue. And I
got to tell you, doctor Sherry Schwartz, a movie set
takes on a whole. It's like you're in a different world.
Like when you go to the movies and you sit
down and it goes dark, your mind takes you there. Well,
(33:59):
you're on a movie set. I've never been on a
single movie set that went on time. You go till
one or two o'clock in the morning, it's pitch dark outside.
You keep going until you get the shot or you
finish this scene or whatever it's called in movie world.
I think that there is a suspended fear. You think
(34:21):
you're at a movie set, like when you go to
Disneyland or when you're on vacation on a cruise ship.
You suspend your normal thinking it doesn't seem real and
you're not thinking, wow, there's a gun I could get
shot because it's quote just a movie. It's not real.
How do we let me just say, suspend our disbelief,
(34:44):
suspend rational rules of functioning when you're on a movie
set or in a movie. You know, like in a
movie is where there's some nut with a gun and
you hear a sound, but you don't think it's real
because you're in a movie. What happens in the human mind, Sherry, Well.
Speaker 13 (35:01):
When you don't think that something is actually real, then
you would not calculate accurately what the potential risks are, right,
And so there is this gun on the set, but
everybody thinks, oh, it's just make believe. We're setting this
up to film it. Nobody's actually going to get hurt.
(35:22):
And so what happens mentally is that you underestimate what
the potential risks are. And what happened here is an
egregious underestimation, right, so for the rest of us, it's
to make believes. Maybe even for the actor, they know
that they're just playing a role, and everybody around them
might know they're playing a role. But there are people
on the set who are responsible for that gun and
(35:45):
for taking that proper care and knowing what the potential
risks are.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Do you, Alexis treshat Crime online dot Com investigative reporter,
you have heard Dominant Romano Paul's like, well, everyone on
the panel weighing in, But apparently there were a lot
of problems and a lot of disgruntled crew members. I
understand that one of the motels they had set them
up to stay overnight was at a place for the homeless,
(36:11):
and there were drug addicts there. They were afraid to
stay there. What was going on on the set, well, it.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
Seems like what they were trying to do was make
this film cheaply a possible understandable, but they were putting
people's lives at risk.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
It was fifties.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Hotels were fifty miles away, so after working fourteen hour days,
the crew was having to drive over an hour to
get to their hotel. Then they would have to be
back within like six hours, so they would get almost
no sleep at all. But they were also saying that
things were just not safe. There had been an incident
a few days earlier that one of the prop guns
(36:47):
again prop real gun, had been accidentally fired, and so
the crew had been complaining to the producer, saying this
is not a safe working environment, and they walked off
the set. So Hollywood is very much a union of business,
but the producers hired non union people to replace them.
(37:08):
These nine union people, though, are not the people. That's
not the armor and it's not the assistant director, and
everybody's been talking there at the line of protocol.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
You have so many steps in.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
The line of defense, so that when this gun got
to Alex Baldwin, at least two other people were responsible
for saying that it wasn't loaded.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
I mean, didn't somebody even scream out cold gun? I
mean they have to yell it out, you know what
you were just saying. I know so many times for
different shoots. I don't know who he is that carries
that comes over and they have to do it a
certain way, they have to say a certain thing, and
they say it really loudly. I don't know why, but
(37:51):
I'm sure there's a reason for it, just like they
would yell out cold gun and everybody would hear it.
But I guess they yelled it out without banking Alexis.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
And there are reports that yes, So there were three
guns that were set up and they were put on
a table outside the church set. And it's because of
COVID nineteen protocols, so not a lot of people are
in the if it's an inclosed set, they're not there
three guns. So the assistant director picked it up. Dave Halls,
as the other guy said, you know, has a history
(38:21):
of a lot of accidents on sets, and handed it
to Bodlin and he is the one that yelled out
cold gun. There's no nobody had said there's so many
people have spoken to the police on the set, so
many of the other crew members, and they said they
didn't know whether it actually was empty or not. And
these guns were used at lunch. This is a post
(38:43):
lunch break, so they broke for lunch at twelve thirty.
They come back after lunch. During that lunchtime, there are
reports that those crew members were using this gun and
other guns to shoot beer bottles out in the desert
area and using it as target practice, so there could
have been alive and then said there were lots of
live ammunition. Nobody was told they couldn't bring live ammunition
(39:04):
on set. That's another thing that.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
You live around on set.
Speaker 3 (39:08):
That's a big problem here, and I think.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
I'd like to jump in there.
Speaker 6 (39:13):
It's it's it's simply a breakdown of the security of
the scene. The only people there that our arms should
be security personnel. And you know, in my years, my
decade of fighting to keep workplaces safe and to stop
stalking offenders from killing victims, I can tell you one thing,
and that is nobody thinks the unthinkable is going to happen.
(39:36):
It's a matter of just human thinking. They think that, well,
that happened to somebody else, that didn't happen to me.
And because this is somewhat of a rare occurrence on
a set, people got laxed, They got lackadaisical about fundamental
when it comes to shooting a scene such as this.
And just like at any workplace, this is a workplace
(39:57):
out in the middle of the desert, just like it
would be in an office building. Those protocols broke down
in people at work attempting to do the right thing,
for the right reasons. Had a catastrophic, devastating thing happened,
because we as human beings think, well, if it hasn't happened,
it won't happen. And that's just not the reality of
life when it comes to dangerous events.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
I mean, just like you said, the gun went off
on its own when he shot Helena Hutchins dead. Now
he slams into a tree and he blames a mystery
dump truck. M video reveals otherwise. Nancy Grace Sonia, Goodbye.
Host
Nancy Grace
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