July 31, 2024 • 33 mins
In October 2021 Alec Baldwin was rehearsing a scene for the Western movie "Rust" on the film's set in New Mexico when a gun he was holding discharged with live ammo. Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was killed and director Joel Souza was injured.
Guest Bio and Links:
Aphrodite Jones is a New York Times best-selling author who dissects bizarre murder cases and brings readers into the heart of crime. She also hosts the hit TV show True Crime with Aphrodite Jones, which is on Investigation Discovery and available on Amazon Prime. Listeners can learn more about Aphrodite at her website: aphroditejones.com/, or on X @Aphrodite_Jones
In this episode of Zone 7, Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum, sits down with Aphrodite Jones to dissect the Alec Baldwin incident on the set of "Rust." Aphrodite covers the lack of safety measures, the negligence involved, and the fallout from the tragic shooting. They also provide a detailed account of how live ammunition ended up on set, the role of various crew members, and the broader implications for Hollywood.
Show Notes:
- (0:00) Welcome back to Zone 7 with Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum
- (0:10) Sheryl welcomes Aphrodite Jones back to Zone 7 to discuss the Alec Baldwin case
- (1:30) Overview of the Alec Baldwin case
- (5:00) Historical context of film set safety
- (7:30) Detailed breakdown of the incident
- (11:00) Legal ramifications and trials
- (18:00) Discussion on the responsibilities of producers and directors on set
- (19:30) The role of the armorer and mishandlings on the "Rust" set
- (25:30) Aphrodite's reflections on the human aspects of the tragedy
- (29:00) Discussion of drugs and alcohol used during filming
- (33:30) Tune in to part II to conclude the Alec Baldwin set discussion
- Thanks for listening to another episode! If you love the show and want to help grow the show, please head over to Itunes and leave a rating and review!
---
Sheryl “Mac” McCollum is an Emmy Award winning CSI, a writer for CrimeOnLine, Forensic and Crime Scene Expert for Crime Stories with Nancy Grace, and a CSI for a metro Atlanta Police Department. She is the co-author of the textbook., Cold Case: Pathways to Justice. Sheryl is also the founder and director of the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute, a collaboration between universities and colleges that brings researchers, practitioners, students and the criminal justice community together to advance techniques in solving cold cases and assist families and law enforcement with solvability factors for unsolved homicides, missing persons, and kidnapping cases.
Social Links:
- Email: coldcase2004@gmail.com
- Twitter: @ColdCaseTips
- Facebook: @sheryl.mccollum
- Instagram: @officialzone7podcast
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Y'all can't help but love an adorer. She's an author, reporter,
TV producer, true crime legend. She's hosted her own show,
True Crime with Aphrodite Jones. She has covered trials high
profile like Scott Peterson, Michael Jackson, BTK, Dennis Raider, and
(00:29):
Honey when she's not writing movie scripts and doing fabulous
parties and crime con and different things. Always stunning for Lawless.
I've never seen her look even half, not completely put together.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Come on now, Cheryl, not sure the truth?
Speaker 1 (00:47):
That is absolutely the truth. You're one of the main
reasons this ain't video, it's voice only. I ain't gonna
be compared to you looking crazy.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Who love you, Cheryl?
Speaker 1 (00:57):
I love you, and listen, we are not going to
waste any time because you and I have got to
talk about a case that when I first heard about it,
it took me a second because I'm like, how how
did this even happen? There should be so many layers
of protection for everybody on a movie set, y'all. Of
(01:18):
course we're gonna talk about Alec Baldwin and some other folks,
but that's how everybody knows this case, and you know, Aphrodity,
here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna let you tell
us where we're gonna start, and I'm gonna follow you.
I'm gonna let you drive this train. Because there's so
many lawsuits and people. Everybody's sueing everybody, and some people
(01:40):
get in charge, some people not getting charge, some people
making deals. You almost need to flow charte. So you
just you just take it away, all right.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
So first I want to say that in the history
of filmmaking, there has never been a live round of
ammunition on a set. I have talked to everybody on
my Hollywood people. I've talked to prop masters. I mean,
I've been around the Rosie here just to see. One
of my friends, who who has his own studio, talked
about the fact that he and he had his wife
(02:12):
was his first wife was murdered. This is a guy
who carries a gun in general. Okay. He told me
that the other time there was ever a real live
AMMA on any set was when he not on set.
But even within the scope of where krinbya set was
where he had a separate building, where he had a
completely separate situation where he kept his own guns. It
(02:35):
wasn't a part of the set. It wasn't part of
what the props were going to be with them, So
that was that's what I've heard around the block. Now
come to this case and let's talk about how these
bullets got onto that set. We have never had anybody
shot on a set before because there's never been live ammo.
We had two deaths based on Black's being pulled okay,
(02:59):
which have a violent discharge of their own and can
cause harm and did in two cases. But I mean,
what were you thinking as a cop how this happened
or why this happened?
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Listen. I was so stunned about it because my idea
of Hollywood, none of it's real. That's not really. The
Empire state building, that's not really. A bomb, that's not really.
Even the love scenes ain't real. So how in the world,
because you know, you think, okay, you know, the car
(03:33):
jumping the bridge and explosions and people getting shot, it's
never real. You know, they've got the blood bags, they've
got all this stuff to make it look that way.
And to me, here's one of the first things that
did cross my mind when I first heard it. I
was like, how is this possible? There's no way, there's
(03:54):
no possible way that anybody took a live round to
a movie set. The next thing I thought about is
in my job. My police department is right next to
the airport in Atlanta, as you know, has become like
Hollywood of the South. They're making movies all over Atlanta.
Now we have actually had prop people come into my
(04:18):
police department where they call me as the evidence person
and the crime scene investigator because they want to self
confiscate weapons. They want to just give them to us
because they don't want to get on an airplane with
them and they don't need them any longer. But even
that shocked me that these weapons are real. I thought
everything was like three D or plastic or made to
(04:41):
look I had no idea. I had no idea for.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
The most part. You know, a lot of that is
to make it look. But as time has evolved and
with the HD, and you know that with realism being
so important to filmmakers on and always has been. In
terms of prop masters, you know, you see something from
the City Extige in the seventies. Every single thing is
in puri you know, down to the chewing gum, down
(05:05):
to the bowls that they eat out of in a
seventies set, you know, you get that old pirate stuff
coming up. They're very, very particular about keeping things as
real as possible. Now when it comes to weapons, they
do use real weapons on sets, but they are only
filled with dummies and occasionally with blanks when they have
to actually do the scene rather than rehearse it, so
(05:27):
that there's some smoke that comes out of the gun,
but in no circumstance ken that kills someone on There
were two instances I had referred to. One was a
young man who took the gun to his head in
a Russian roulette scene and it had a blank in it.
He didn't know that and it killed him. And the
(05:48):
other was Bruce Lee's son who also was killed in
a freakish way by a blank. That's it in the
whole history of Hollywood filmmaking. So again, not live bullets. Yes,
real gun, but not live bullets. So how did this
bullet get there? And I have a story that I
want to tell about that that I learned in watching
(06:10):
the Alec Baldwin trial. How familiar are you with Belle Reid.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
I know about him and I know that's how she
got in the business, but I don't know enough about
him to you know, tell a story.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Yeah, so let me. I'm gonna give a little backdrop here.
So fell Read has been in the business for sixty
years and he is a legend in that field with
all with propmaster and then became, you know, an armorer.
I mean, this man could twirl a gun around sixteen
ways from Sunday and I knew what he's doing, knows
(06:42):
what he's doing best of the business. It just so
happens that bell Read was working with another gentleman who
I'm just going to call a concerned citizen, and let's say,
by the name of Troy Teskey. I don't knows you've
heard that name in the trial, But Troy Tesky and
(07:06):
Phil Reid were down in Texas working on the set
of eighteen eighty three. You know what I'm talking about,
the prequel to Yellow Sculling. Yep, right, So that's a
big Western it's back in time, it's eighteen eighty three.
There's lots of guns, lots of action with guns. And
what they decided to do the filmmakers wanted to get
(07:28):
certain people of the cast together and have them learn
about real guns and shoot real guns and shoot real
bullets and take lessons in it so that they could
quote bond with each other, but also so that they
would have know what it's like, so that when they
go to act the scene they know how to perhaps
react to the gun or you know, what the violence
of it is. So that's where the bullets were. The
(07:53):
bullets were, at least from what I can detern here
piece together. The man Troit Teskey has said publicly that
about the fact that they built this, they went to
a separate area of the of the property and created
a you know, a shooting race that was entirely safe
(08:14):
with the with the backstop and everything needed to be.
And there were a few cast members there and they
did the practice round shooting real ammunition. They had the lessons,
they did what they did, and when it was over,
the Tesky, this man holds film reads ammunition for him
at his warehouse in Albuquerque. So that's been the way
(08:38):
they've done things. Like you say, Atlanta is the Hollywood
of the South, well, Texas in that area, you know, Montana,
Arizona kind of the the what the Hollywood of the Midwest, Okay,
And so he's got his ammo there with his buddy
for many years now that and munition gets driven to Albuquerque,
(09:03):
and then somehow another the person who goes to get
the ammunition who has driven it is somebody evolved in
the set of Rust. Okay, obviously how did he get there?
So there's another character in this story whose name is
Seth Kenny, and Seth Kenny is the person who went
(09:27):
to retrieve the ammunition. He actually had his assistant go
and get it, and she was on the phone with
her directing her what to do. And he got that ammunition.
She brought it to him and his prop warehouse, and
he never really checked it, and he says he did.
He testifies that he did, but obviously he did not
(09:48):
because live bullets wound up on the set of Rust.
Why am I saying this? Why it's important is that
first of all, no one could have figured out how
that happened. And it's only recently that we did tre
this out when it was Baldwin's trial was on in
the first few days. This person, Troy Tesky, is the
one who brought a bag of ammunition to Hanniguichier's Read's trial.
(10:14):
He believed he was going to be called as a witness.
He brought a bag of ammunition that matched the bullets
that were found at the scene and the bullet that
killed Helena. Hutchins that that bullet the man the bullet
and other six other bullets al tonal six bullets on
(10:34):
set matched these bullets precisely. So he was shocked because
he had come to the prosecutor, the special prosecutor Morrisey,
and said, look, I have bullets. They match. I'm going
to bring them in. I want you to test them,
and she ignored them for a year, didn't want anything
to do with it. So when he gets to the trial,
(10:55):
he realizes he's not going to be called as a witnesses,
that the preliminary is not going to be called. They
don't hear about him. He now watches the trial. He's
got the bullets in his storage, in his car or wherever,
and he walks into the Santa Fe Police department and
hands over it says, I have evidence I want to
give to you here. It is just like people here
you guns. This guy handed over a bag of bullets
(11:17):
and we heard testimony and this is where the trial went.
Arrived for Alec Baldwin from the CSI officer who accepted
those bullets. Yep, I saw that video, okay, And that's
where this thing fell apart with Alec Baldwin, because now
you have this woman testifying that, yes, I was handed
(11:38):
bullets and what did you do with the bullets? Well,
I filed them. I put a document and I documented there.
What do you mean documented? And it turns out we
discover she was told by somebody higher up to document
this and file it under a separate case, not under
the rust case. Right. So now come to find out
(12:02):
when the when the offense attorneys hear this, they realized
she's hiding others. This is something should have been tested. Certainly,
the defense needed to test it. This could have explained
and would explained most likely how the bullets got on set,
because one of the things that the prosecutor was alleging
in the in the gutieris Read case was that she
brought those bullets onto the set. Not just that she
(12:25):
was negligent in the way that things were handled, but
that she brought them on the set. Well, it looks
to me like Seth Kenny is the one who was
negligent there in terms of those bullets getting to the set.
And if if you might recall or might've seen in
commentary Seth Kenny was helping the law enforcement when they
were looking at things, trying to explain to them what
(12:47):
prop guns were like, what prop bullets were like, but
dummies were like. He had so much involvement there which
he had no business and involvement that it was like
he protests too much, if you understand I'm saying, I believe,
truly believed that he was busy trying to point fingers
at anyone he could, this prop master, Jeff Kenny, in
(13:07):
order that he wasn't the one who brought the bullets
there or got the bullets there. I think I think
it's been proven, at least to my satisfaction, that this
is how they got there. They got there through sept
Kenny's negligence and not testing those bullets, by having those
bullets come from a set from Texas which belonged to
THELL Reid. It's ironic that those were fell Reads bullets, right,
(13:32):
because it's his daughter who winds up in prison because
of those bullets. And I think the reason that Karen
Lawressey didn't want to analyze or tall or have anything
to do with the bullets is because She knew that
Troy Tesky was a friend of thell Read's, so she
(13:52):
probably thought this could be a setup. Again, this is
me just you know, coming up with my own theories here.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
I'm not.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
I'm just guessing here. I know that she was aware
that Phil Reid was friends with the person who handed
in those bullets, tro Tesky. Bottom line boom. She hid
the most important evidence, the bullets that could and did
match actually was discovered, the bullet that killed Helena Hutchins.
(14:25):
There's no justice here. She's out for blood. She's out
for making a name for herself as well, I might add,
I mean, whoever heard of Karrie Morrissey before she was
appointed as a special prosecutor. Here, she's going to be
on TV. It's going to be her O. J. Simpson moment,
you know, I mean, the whole world is watching. This
(14:45):
has never happened in the universe before. Here's an a
list actor Alec Bull, who knew mean you say his name,
there's no question he's in a lister. And he's also
somebody known for problems with you know, violence, and you know,
for that crazy voicemail he left for his daughter calling
her page and all this other stuff. I mean, I'm
(15:06):
not saying that he was beating people up, but he's
certainly gone after some paparazzi. In essence, though, what I
want to say is this, she called Alec Baldwin an
arrogant ahole. Okay, we found that out. We also found
out she called them other curse words. She hated her,
(15:29):
and she wanted to get him. And as soon as
it turned out that the FBI was able to establish
that the gun that was used on set had to
have a trigger pulled in order to fire, she went
back after Alec Baldwin. Now because you know, I had
been dropped. And then you know, he was cleared or
so called, and then later on he was indicted again
(15:50):
by this special prosecutor. So you know, I want to
ask you something. Did you ever think that Alec Baldwin
did not pull the trigger?
Speaker 1 (16:05):
I never once thought he didn't pull the trigger. He
had to have pulled the trigger.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
And that's that's what I think, And every expert I
have looked to watch searched out says the same thing.
I can't imagine how you would have the gun cock
back like that and with your finger on the trigger.
And there are photographs of him, by the way, with
his finger is listen on that trigger.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Here's the deal, the number one rule when you're teaching
a young person or a rookie or anybody, you never
point that gun in another person. Ever, you don't do it.
And again in Hollywood, there's a way that it looks
like they're maybe standing in front of each other, but
you can do that camera angle where they're not. Really,
(16:49):
there's no reason for this to have ever happened. I
don't care who you are, whether your grandpa taught you
to shoot, or a drill sergeant in the army, or
somebody get a police academy. That statement came out of
their mouth. Don't ever point it at another person. And
my dad even told us there's no such thing as
an unloaded gun. You don't ever act like it's unloaded.
(17:10):
You don't treat it like it's unloaded. It's always loaded.
So with that said, he should have never pointed that
weapon at Miss Hutchins.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Absolutely, But again now here you have the special prosecutor
who obviously thinks that way, you know, and now we
find out, oh no, he had to have pulled the trigger.
So she goes after him. Now under the auspices that
now it is being tried as only an actor, not
as an actor or producer. They didn't find that out
until the judge made that were ruling right before the
(17:42):
trial started. That was a big hit against the prosecution
because had Ellen Baldwin been tried as a producer, Tiger
stam because I know Hollywood Land pretty well. I've had
three books mating two movies and etc. When the a
star gets a producer credit on a film then not
really producing the film. They're just getting extra money and
(18:03):
having the name on as a producer. They're not literally producing.
Producers are in back rooms and you know, in sound
rooms and rooms with equipment. They're putting stuff together. They're
putting budgets together and all of that prior to the
you know, prior to the set rolling and all of that.
They're not He was not We know in Hollywood that
(18:23):
you're not actually producing. But he still had the title
of producer, So technically I don't care if he's notelf producing.
He is listed as a producer on that on that
film as well as the Store, and in the role
of producer very different than an actor handling a gun.
(18:45):
And I'll tell you why because producers are responsible for
the budget. And this goes directly to Alec Baldswin, even
though he's not a producer, so called Alec than was
making a vanity film. This is all about. He's sixty
six or sixty four years old and he wants to,
(19:06):
you know, be the cowboy again. He wants to be
in the scene. He wants to be the star. And
this is going to be great. But it's going to
be a five million dollar film and it's going to
be done on a shoe string. And he who do
you think was going to collect the most money out
of that whole budget? Alec Bawl, He dos that you that?
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Yep, let me ask you this because I'm so grateful
that you have that you know, insight, you know, because
of your books being made to movies and working with
different actors and producers. The one thing that stood out
to me when when everything was really coming out is
the first assistant director. Now again I don't know much
(19:43):
about Hollywood. I know a director says action cut tape, whatever.
What does the first assistant director do? And the reason
I'm asking is we were told that David Halls is
one that handed him the gun and first hollered out
cold gun, which means no live, Amma.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
It is not unheard of that an assis director will
hand somebody abrop and even a gun. It's not that
is not unheard of. However, the protocol is that the
armorer is supposed to be in the room, that the
armorer is the one to be handling the gun in
all circumstances. So this those two again the sloppiness of
(20:26):
the set, and what I was getting at was that
the there was a there was a fast, quick and
dirty sense of this is going to get done in
this film, and it didn't matter rules, regulations, didn't matter
about safety. And I say this because there was a
situation on the set of Rest where the crew was
(20:46):
being mistreated and they felt that this that that the
UH set was unsafe, that the safe circumstances was unsafe.
Why do I say this, First of all, somebody who
wrote a text saying that two guns had gone off
to the two guns had gone off prop guns at
some point and they have felt that things were unsafe.
(21:07):
This is not on set. It's in and around the set, okay,
behind the scenes. That text is there, that email is there.
We saw it early on before the trial started. There's
another issue here. The crew, a Union crew on this
set were from Albuquerque. Now Santa Fe is about fifty
miles from Albuquerque, I know it well, well know both
(21:29):
cities well. They were originally contracted to do twelve to
thirteen hour days and be housed in a hotel in
Santa Fe. However, when the films actually started rolling, that
crew were told, oh no, we're not putting you up
in a hotel. You got to drive back and forth
from Albuquerque. And it turned out one crew member was
(21:51):
sleeping in his car. Because if you work a twelve
hour day, think of it. You're working from six in
the morning till six at night, maybe seven. Now you
go to drive fifty two miles I was home, and
then turn around at five o'clock in the morning the
next day and drive fifty two miles back. It's completely
unsafe if you're doing this for weeks on end. And
the crew was demanding, not only making complaints about unsafe
(22:18):
things going on on the set, but also saying, we
can't do this anymore. This isn't what we've bargained for,
this isn't right. We're not being treated right. So then
you walked off to the set Cheryl that morning October
twenty first, okay, twenty twenty one, then walked off the
set because of the unsafe practices.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
That's insane. And see, here's the thing that keeps going
through my mind. In order for mister Holls to have
a prop there to grab and again, y'all, I don't
know nothing about movies, but I've heard people say that,
like when they're working with dogs, there's only certain times
a day. You've got to make sure they're not in
(23:01):
the outdoor heat. You got to make sure they have
food and water. You've got to make sure they've got
plenty of time to rest, and you know, be walked
and that sort of thing. The same for children, I've
heard all this stuff. They've got to still go to school,
they've got to do these things. You can't overwork them.
They are allowed to have a parent there whatever. And
as far as like even a dog handler, I thought
(23:22):
they had to be right there with the animal, Well
they do, okay, but there's not somebody there with a
freaking gun.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Well that's just it. So there you have it. Okay.
So now going back to the chronology, here, the crew
walks off the set and is replaced by a non
union crew the same day that this shooting happens. So
you have people that aren't really familiar with anybody that
you know who knows what's going You have footage that
(23:53):
the Special Prosecutor aired when we started watching the trials,
showing out falling in other areas, pointing the gun, using
it as a pointer. I don't know if you saw
that footage. Did you watch part of that trial as
it was going off, yes, right, and it looks you know,
he's mister cowboy, mister tea, mister macho, but with an
(24:14):
actual gun in his hand. And like you said, as
an officer of the walk, you do not to the fence.
I mean, if it's not plastic, you better know if
be playing with it.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Yep, I'm telling you. My dad was so strict about it.
He even said, like even the little guns that shoot
the little the little things that have the plastic thing
that you shoot it sticks to the wall, little suction
cup thing. But he even said, even that gun, if
you look down in the barrel, the spring could come
out and destroy your eye. Like you just don't fool
(24:46):
with a gun of any kind if it's got a
barrel and a trigger. Forget it, you don't point it
at anybody. And again, no such thing as at beging unloaded.
So to me, you know, you hear about how Guitaris
Gutiras and you think, okay, well she is gonna file
(25:07):
a lawsuit herself against the AMMO people.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Well no she doesn't. Yeah, but okay, so there's a
whole entanglement. You're right about all that's going on around here,
with civil suits and liability and all of that.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Oh, Entanglement's a good word, sugar, because it's a mess.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
It is. What I find interesting is neither of them
took responsibility for what happened in any way. In other words,
there was no Yeah, they were sorry and they were shaken.
But you know, I don't know if you've noticed, but
Alec Baldwin, he was on the phone. You see that
(25:44):
iconic picture of him hunched over in the desert there,
you know, And we find out he's talking to his wife.
His concern while Helena Hutchins is in the hospital, she
was brought, she was helicoptered out, she died in the hospital,
she was still alive. His concern is Wayne's family. Now
(26:06):
it's throwing plans for his family to come out and
see him, and next thing you know, he's planning a
vacation and lands somewhere I don't know, Maine, New Hampshire,
wrever the hell he went to run away from it all.
He had no concern about her. Now to me, that
is the most horrifying thing about all of this. Yes,
it was an accident. Clearly it was an accident. I mean,
(26:29):
nobody ever thought there was going to be a real
bullet in any gun on any set, because there never
has been one. But still he pulled the trigger, and
you know, his commentary is that actually the cinematographer was
asking him to point the trigger at her. Now, there's
(26:50):
other people who testified to this. So this cinematographer is young.
She was new ish. I mean she was, you know,
getting her career built up. Her husband was there on
set as well. She apparently wandered a particular scene where
you're looking down the barrel of the gun, and that's
why she had Baldwin pointing the gun at her, which
her face is next to the camera. I don't get it.
(27:13):
I mean, that sounds crazy to me that she would
direct him that way. But you know, there's no calling
for what art says. You know, people in the arts
don't understand the law. They don't understand bullets and guns necessarily, right.
So she clearly didn't get that.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Memo right, because even with a dummy, something's coming out
of the barrel of that gun, and it could destroy
your camera. It could still injure you.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Going back to Baldwin, as a producer, he cheaped out
on his crew. He also cheaped out on who he
hired as armorer. Okay, because this young woman, what was
twenty four years old. She had only worked on one
movie prior to Russ And it turns out that on
(28:02):
the set she was working on a Nicholas Cage movie,
also in the Midwest, and it was called The Old Way,
she apparently fired off a gun with a blank near him,
and Nicholas Cage went nuts because she's he said, she
blew his ears out because you know the fired Why
why do we wear those those ear sets in gun range?
(28:26):
Its sure, because the sound of it can blow your
ear jones out.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
I mean, this whole thing so unnecessary, one hundred preventable,
should have never happened, like you said, even starting in Texas,
it shouldn't have happened exactly.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
No.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
And I heard they were practicing on the set of
Russ too, that they were bonding and shooting live m
o knocking cans over.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
I think those were blanks. I did hear that in
the beginning they called it plinking clink. I heard that.
I did you hear anything about it coming up in
trial or in Guteers's trial. However, when you hear things
like that, you really start to wonder, like, how much
of a old Wild West was this for these people
(29:12):
on this set? You know, Let's have a good time,
is what I'm thinking. And then there's a lot of
drinking that was going on. I want to get to that.
So so, but let me go back to the fact
that this young woman good Cheers read was not only
not only was she inexperienced all right. Not only did
she only work on one movie set where she pulled
(29:33):
a trigger out of a blank and practically blew Nicholas
Cage's ear drums out, but also she had a habit
of kind of posing with guns and being very on
the fly with guns. She went into one of the
restaurants in New Mexico with a gun on her that
she had was illegal. The prosecutor started to charge her
(29:54):
with that because she wasn't helping in any way to
try to, you know, expedite situation or she was. And
here's the thing, this is what gets me, Cheryl. She
was drinking all throughout that filming all lots. And not
(30:14):
only was she drinking, she was smoking. And she has
a text the night before, uh the killing, where she's saying,
I don't need that stuff anyway, I'll just be smoking.
I'm smoking tonight. Now there's there are many people who
have corroborated the fact that she smoked pot, but not
(30:35):
only that. On the day after the killing, on the
twenty first of October, Okay, twenty twenty one, Hannah gutirs
Read has an acquaintance who comes over. People are staying
with her because she's scared, because she's freaked out, because
she's freaked out because somebody got hurt killed, and she
(30:56):
has people staying with her. But they need to go
out and get some cigarettes or whatever they need to
do it. And so they call over another member of
the crew who is the craft services person. And this
person tested by a Gutierris's trial and her last name
is Smith. I can't. The first name doesn't come to
me now, but Miss Smith testified, No, I was some
(31:17):
friends with her, but I was an acquaintance and they
asked me to come over, you know. In the same
they're saying it an inn in Santa Fe to just
sit with her and be with her, you know, while
they went Ransomarrand so while she's there, Hannah gutierists read says,
can you hold something for me? Sure? What is it?
(31:37):
She hands to Miss Smith to the Craft Services person
a baggie with another baggy inside the baggy, and in
that smaller baggie is a white powder substance. And it
just so happens that this Craft Services crew member is
a recovering addict who hasn't touched anything like that in decades.
(31:59):
But she agreed to hold it because here's this young
woman falling apart at the scene is that she's clearly
she's drinking, she's who knows what, And she takes a
strawholder for you, and she propably goes and throws it
in the garbage can when she leaves because she can't
have it around her. This the Craft Services one because
it's temptation and Hannah Guziers later comes after her and says,
(32:21):
where's my stuff? There's text with it. I mean, you
can't make this stuff up.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Nope. My question is, on a movie set, if there
is a death, do the insurance company or anybody require
any drug testing?
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Good question. I can't answer it. I can't imagine on
those are things that haven't never happened. Really, we have
never seen something like this before where there is a
death with a bullet on a set, and so, you know,
it's hard to say, but I know one thing. She
sure didn't want the cops to find anything when they
were to become maybe search your room, which so the
(33:00):
reason why when she was there and she got more scared,
she handed this off. She handed off the bag with
white powder. The no one could test it. It was
thrown away. But the woman who testified, the food services
woman did say whether when the prosecutor asked her, let's
say it was a packet of sugar, because he wanted
to know what the amount of it was right by,
her answer was, oh, no, it wasn't sugar. I know
(33:22):
it wasn't sugar. I know what cocaine looks like. And
then it turns out when he described how much was
in there, She said, would have been like five or
six packets sugar, like it wasn't a little bit
Y'all can't help but love an adorer. She's an author, reporter,
TV producer, true crime legend. She's hosted her own show,
True Crime with Aphrodite Jones. She has covered trials high
profile like Scott Peterson, Michael Jackson, BTK, Dennis Raider, and
(00:29):
Honey when she's not writing movie scripts and doing fabulous
parties and crime con and different things. Always stunning for Lawless.
I've never seen her look even half, not completely put together.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Come on now, Cheryl, not sure the truth?
Speaker 1 (00:47):
That is absolutely the truth. You're one of the main
reasons this ain't video, it's voice only. I ain't gonna
be compared to you looking crazy.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Who love you, Cheryl?
Speaker 1 (00:57):
I love you, and listen, we are not going to
waste any time because you and I have got to
talk about a case that when I first heard about it,
it took me a second because I'm like, how how
did this even happen? There should be so many layers
of protection for everybody on a movie set, y'all. Of
(01:18):
course we're gonna talk about Alec Baldwin and some other folks,
but that's how everybody knows this case, and you know, Aphrodity,
here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna let you tell
us where we're gonna start, and I'm gonna follow you.
I'm gonna let you drive this train. Because there's so
many lawsuits and people. Everybody's sueing everybody, and some people
(01:40):
get in charge, some people not getting charge, some people
making deals. You almost need to flow charte. So you
just you just take it away, all right.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
So first I want to say that in the history
of filmmaking, there has never been a live round of
ammunition on a set. I have talked to everybody on
my Hollywood people. I've talked to prop masters. I mean,
I've been around the Rosie here just to see. One
of my friends, who who has his own studio, talked
about the fact that he and he had his wife
(02:12):
was his first wife was murdered. This is a guy
who carries a gun in general. Okay. He told me
that the other time there was ever a real live
AMMA on any set was when he not on set.
But even within the scope of where krinbya set was
where he had a separate building, where he had a
completely separate situation where he kept his own guns. It
(02:35):
wasn't a part of the set. It wasn't part of
what the props were going to be with them, So
that was that's what I've heard around the block. Now
come to this case and let's talk about how these
bullets got onto that set. We have never had anybody
shot on a set before because there's never been live ammo.
We had two deaths based on Black's being pulled okay,
(02:59):
which have a violent discharge of their own and can
cause harm and did in two cases. But I mean,
what were you thinking as a cop how this happened
or why this happened?
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Listen. I was so stunned about it because my idea
of Hollywood, none of it's real. That's not really. The
Empire state building, that's not really. A bomb, that's not really.
Even the love scenes ain't real. So how in the world,
because you know, you think, okay, you know, the car
(03:33):
jumping the bridge and explosions and people getting shot, it's
never real. You know, they've got the blood bags, they've
got all this stuff to make it look that way.
And to me, here's one of the first things that
did cross my mind when I first heard it. I
was like, how is this possible? There's no way, there's
(03:54):
no possible way that anybody took a live round to
a movie set. The next thing I thought about is
in my job. My police department is right next to
the airport in Atlanta, as you know, has become like
Hollywood of the South. They're making movies all over Atlanta.
Now we have actually had prop people come into my
(04:18):
police department where they call me as the evidence person
and the crime scene investigator because they want to self
confiscate weapons. They want to just give them to us
because they don't want to get on an airplane with
them and they don't need them any longer. But even
that shocked me that these weapons are real. I thought
everything was like three D or plastic or made to
(04:41):
look I had no idea. I had no idea for.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
The most part. You know, a lot of that is
to make it look. But as time has evolved and
with the HD, and you know that with realism being
so important to filmmakers on and always has been. In
terms of prop masters, you know, you see something from
the City Extige in the seventies. Every single thing is
in puri you know, down to the chewing gum, down
(05:05):
to the bowls that they eat out of in a
seventies set, you know, you get that old pirate stuff
coming up. They're very, very particular about keeping things as
real as possible. Now when it comes to weapons, they
do use real weapons on sets, but they are only
filled with dummies and occasionally with blanks when they have
to actually do the scene rather than rehearse it, so
(05:27):
that there's some smoke that comes out of the gun,
but in no circumstance ken that kills someone on There
were two instances I had referred to. One was a
young man who took the gun to his head in
a Russian roulette scene and it had a blank in it.
He didn't know that and it killed him. And the
(05:48):
other was Bruce Lee's son who also was killed in
a freakish way by a blank. That's it in the
whole history of Hollywood filmmaking. So again, not live bullets. Yes,
real gun, but not live bullets. So how did this
bullet get there? And I have a story that I
want to tell about that that I learned in watching
(06:10):
the Alec Baldwin trial. How familiar are you with Belle Reid.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
I know about him and I know that's how she
got in the business, but I don't know enough about
him to you know, tell a story.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Yeah, so let me. I'm gonna give a little backdrop here.
So fell Read has been in the business for sixty
years and he is a legend in that field with
all with propmaster and then became, you know, an armorer.
I mean, this man could twirl a gun around sixteen
ways from Sunday and I knew what he's doing, knows
(06:42):
what he's doing best of the business. It just so
happens that bell Read was working with another gentleman who
I'm just going to call a concerned citizen, and let's say,
by the name of Troy Teskey. I don't knows you've
heard that name in the trial, But Troy Tesky and
(07:06):
Phil Reid were down in Texas working on the set
of eighteen eighty three. You know what I'm talking about,
the prequel to Yellow Sculling. Yep, right, So that's a
big Western it's back in time, it's eighteen eighty three.
There's lots of guns, lots of action with guns. And
what they decided to do the filmmakers wanted to get
(07:28):
certain people of the cast together and have them learn
about real guns and shoot real guns and shoot real
bullets and take lessons in it so that they could
quote bond with each other, but also so that they
would have know what it's like, so that when they
go to act the scene they know how to perhaps
react to the gun or you know, what the violence
of it is. So that's where the bullets were. The
(07:53):
bullets were, at least from what I can detern here
piece together. The man Troit Teskey has said publicly that
about the fact that they built this, they went to
a separate area of the of the property and created
a you know, a shooting race that was entirely safe
(08:14):
with the with the backstop and everything needed to be.
And there were a few cast members there and they
did the practice round shooting real ammunition. They had the lessons,
they did what they did, and when it was over,
the Tesky, this man holds film reads ammunition for him
at his warehouse in Albuquerque. So that's been the way
(08:38):
they've done things. Like you say, Atlanta is the Hollywood
of the South, well, Texas in that area, you know, Montana,
Arizona kind of the the what the Hollywood of the Midwest, Okay,
And so he's got his ammo there with his buddy
for many years now that and munition gets driven to Albuquerque,
(09:03):
and then somehow another the person who goes to get
the ammunition who has driven it is somebody evolved in
the set of Rust. Okay, obviously how did he get there?
So there's another character in this story whose name is
Seth Kenny, and Seth Kenny is the person who went
(09:27):
to retrieve the ammunition. He actually had his assistant go
and get it, and she was on the phone with
her directing her what to do. And he got that ammunition.
She brought it to him and his prop warehouse, and
he never really checked it, and he says he did.
He testifies that he did, but obviously he did not
(09:48):
because live bullets wound up on the set of Rust.
Why am I saying this? Why it's important is that
first of all, no one could have figured out how
that happened. And it's only recently that we did tre
this out when it was Baldwin's trial was on in
the first few days. This person, Troy Tesky, is the
one who brought a bag of ammunition to Hanniguichier's Read's trial.
(10:14):
He believed he was going to be called as a witness.
He brought a bag of ammunition that matched the bullets
that were found at the scene and the bullet that
killed Helena. Hutchins that that bullet the man the bullet
and other six other bullets al tonal six bullets on
(10:34):
set matched these bullets precisely. So he was shocked because
he had come to the prosecutor, the special prosecutor Morrisey,
and said, look, I have bullets. They match. I'm going
to bring them in. I want you to test them,
and she ignored them for a year, didn't want anything
to do with it. So when he gets to the trial,
(10:55):
he realizes he's not going to be called as a witnesses,
that the preliminary is not going to be called. They
don't hear about him. He now watches the trial. He's
got the bullets in his storage, in his car or wherever,
and he walks into the Santa Fe Police department and
hands over it says, I have evidence I want to
give to you here. It is just like people here
you guns. This guy handed over a bag of bullets
(11:17):
and we heard testimony and this is where the trial went.
Arrived for Alec Baldwin from the CSI officer who accepted
those bullets. Yep, I saw that video, okay, And that's
where this thing fell apart with Alec Baldwin, because now
you have this woman testifying that, yes, I was handed
(11:38):
bullets and what did you do with the bullets? Well,
I filed them. I put a document and I documented there.
What do you mean documented? And it turns out we
discover she was told by somebody higher up to document
this and file it under a separate case, not under
the rust case. Right. So now come to find out
(12:02):
when the when the offense attorneys hear this, they realized
she's hiding others. This is something should have been tested. Certainly,
the defense needed to test it. This could have explained
and would explained most likely how the bullets got on set,
because one of the things that the prosecutor was alleging
in the in the gutieris Read case was that she
brought those bullets onto the set. Not just that she
(12:25):
was negligent in the way that things were handled, but
that she brought them on the set. Well, it looks
to me like Seth Kenny is the one who was
negligent there in terms of those bullets getting to the set.
And if if you might recall or might've seen in
commentary Seth Kenny was helping the law enforcement when they
were looking at things, trying to explain to them what
(12:47):
prop guns were like, what prop bullets were like, but
dummies were like. He had so much involvement there which
he had no business and involvement that it was like
he protests too much, if you understand I'm saying, I believe,
truly believed that he was busy trying to point fingers
at anyone he could, this prop master, Jeff Kenny, in
(13:07):
order that he wasn't the one who brought the bullets
there or got the bullets there. I think I think
it's been proven, at least to my satisfaction, that this
is how they got there. They got there through sept
Kenny's negligence and not testing those bullets, by having those
bullets come from a set from Texas which belonged to
THELL Reid. It's ironic that those were fell Reads bullets, right,
(13:32):
because it's his daughter who winds up in prison because
of those bullets. And I think the reason that Karen
Lawressey didn't want to analyze or tall or have anything
to do with the bullets is because She knew that
Troy Tesky was a friend of thell Read's, so she
(13:52):
probably thought this could be a setup. Again, this is
me just you know, coming up with my own theories here.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
I'm not.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
I'm just guessing here. I know that she was aware
that Phil Reid was friends with the person who handed
in those bullets, tro Tesky. Bottom line boom. She hid
the most important evidence, the bullets that could and did
match actually was discovered, the bullet that killed Helena Hutchins.
(14:25):
There's no justice here. She's out for blood. She's out
for making a name for herself as well, I might add,
I mean, whoever heard of Karrie Morrissey before she was
appointed as a special prosecutor. Here, she's going to be
on TV. It's going to be her O. J. Simpson moment,
you know, I mean, the whole world is watching. This
(14:45):
has never happened in the universe before. Here's an a
list actor Alec Bull, who knew mean you say his name,
there's no question he's in a lister. And he's also
somebody known for problems with you know, violence, and you know,
for that crazy voicemail he left for his daughter calling
her page and all this other stuff. I mean, I'm
(15:06):
not saying that he was beating people up, but he's
certainly gone after some paparazzi. In essence, though, what I
want to say is this, she called Alec Baldwin an
arrogant ahole. Okay, we found that out. We also found
out she called them other curse words. She hated her,
(15:29):
and she wanted to get him. And as soon as
it turned out that the FBI was able to establish
that the gun that was used on set had to
have a trigger pulled in order to fire, she went
back after Alec Baldwin. Now because you know, I had
been dropped. And then you know, he was cleared or
so called, and then later on he was indicted again
(15:50):
by this special prosecutor. So you know, I want to
ask you something. Did you ever think that Alec Baldwin
did not pull the trigger?
Speaker 1 (16:05):
I never once thought he didn't pull the trigger. He
had to have pulled the trigger.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
And that's that's what I think, And every expert I
have looked to watch searched out says the same thing.
I can't imagine how you would have the gun cock
back like that and with your finger on the trigger.
And there are photographs of him, by the way, with
his finger is listen on that trigger.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Here's the deal, the number one rule when you're teaching
a young person or a rookie or anybody, you never
point that gun in another person. Ever, you don't do it.
And again in Hollywood, there's a way that it looks
like they're maybe standing in front of each other, but
you can do that camera angle where they're not. Really,
(16:49):
there's no reason for this to have ever happened. I
don't care who you are, whether your grandpa taught you
to shoot, or a drill sergeant in the army, or
somebody get a police academy. That statement came out of
their mouth. Don't ever point it at another person. And
my dad even told us there's no such thing as
an unloaded gun. You don't ever act like it's unloaded.
(17:10):
You don't treat it like it's unloaded. It's always loaded.
So with that said, he should have never pointed that
weapon at Miss Hutchins.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Absolutely, But again now here you have the special prosecutor
who obviously thinks that way, you know, and now we
find out, oh no, he had to have pulled the trigger.
So she goes after him. Now under the auspices that
now it is being tried as only an actor, not
as an actor or producer. They didn't find that out
until the judge made that were ruling right before the
(17:42):
trial started. That was a big hit against the prosecution
because had Ellen Baldwin been tried as a producer, Tiger
stam because I know Hollywood Land pretty well. I've had
three books mating two movies and etc. When the a
star gets a producer credit on a film then not
really producing the film. They're just getting extra money and
(18:03):
having the name on as a producer. They're not literally producing.
Producers are in back rooms and you know, in sound
rooms and rooms with equipment. They're putting stuff together. They're
putting budgets together and all of that prior to the
you know, prior to the set rolling and all of that.
They're not He was not We know in Hollywood that
(18:23):
you're not actually producing. But he still had the title
of producer, So technically I don't care if he's notelf producing.
He is listed as a producer on that on that
film as well as the Store, and in the role
of producer very different than an actor handling a gun.
(18:45):
And I'll tell you why because producers are responsible for
the budget. And this goes directly to Alec Baldswin, even
though he's not a producer, so called Alec than was
making a vanity film. This is all about. He's sixty
six or sixty four years old and he wants to,
(19:06):
you know, be the cowboy again. He wants to be
in the scene. He wants to be the star. And
this is going to be great. But it's going to
be a five million dollar film and it's going to
be done on a shoe string. And he who do
you think was going to collect the most money out
of that whole budget? Alec Bawl, He dos that you that?
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Yep, let me ask you this because I'm so grateful
that you have that you know, insight, you know, because
of your books being made to movies and working with
different actors and producers. The one thing that stood out
to me when when everything was really coming out is
the first assistant director. Now again I don't know much
(19:43):
about Hollywood. I know a director says action cut tape, whatever.
What does the first assistant director do? And the reason
I'm asking is we were told that David Halls is
one that handed him the gun and first hollered out
cold gun, which means no live, Amma.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
It is not unheard of that an assis director will
hand somebody abrop and even a gun. It's not that
is not unheard of. However, the protocol is that the
armorer is supposed to be in the room, that the
armorer is the one to be handling the gun in
all circumstances. So this those two again the sloppiness of
(20:26):
the set, and what I was getting at was that
the there was a there was a fast, quick and
dirty sense of this is going to get done in
this film, and it didn't matter rules, regulations, didn't matter
about safety. And I say this because there was a
situation on the set of Rest where the crew was
(20:46):
being mistreated and they felt that this that that the
UH set was unsafe, that the safe circumstances was unsafe.
Why do I say this, First of all, somebody who
wrote a text saying that two guns had gone off
to the two guns had gone off prop guns at
some point and they have felt that things were unsafe.
(21:07):
This is not on set. It's in and around the set, okay,
behind the scenes. That text is there, that email is there.
We saw it early on before the trial started. There's
another issue here. The crew, a Union crew on this
set were from Albuquerque. Now Santa Fe is about fifty
miles from Albuquerque, I know it well, well know both
(21:29):
cities well. They were originally contracted to do twelve to
thirteen hour days and be housed in a hotel in
Santa Fe. However, when the films actually started rolling, that
crew were told, oh no, we're not putting you up
in a hotel. You got to drive back and forth
from Albuquerque. And it turned out one crew member was
(21:51):
sleeping in his car. Because if you work a twelve
hour day, think of it. You're working from six in
the morning till six at night, maybe seven. Now you
go to drive fifty two miles I was home, and
then turn around at five o'clock in the morning the
next day and drive fifty two miles back. It's completely
unsafe if you're doing this for weeks on end. And
the crew was demanding, not only making complaints about unsafe
(22:18):
things going on on the set, but also saying, we
can't do this anymore. This isn't what we've bargained for,
this isn't right. We're not being treated right. So then
you walked off to the set Cheryl that morning October
twenty first, okay, twenty twenty one, then walked off the
set because of the unsafe practices.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
That's insane. And see, here's the thing that keeps going
through my mind. In order for mister Holls to have
a prop there to grab and again, y'all, I don't
know nothing about movies, but I've heard people say that,
like when they're working with dogs, there's only certain times
a day. You've got to make sure they're not in
(23:01):
the outdoor heat. You got to make sure they have
food and water. You've got to make sure they've got
plenty of time to rest, and you know, be walked
and that sort of thing. The same for children, I've
heard all this stuff. They've got to still go to school,
they've got to do these things. You can't overwork them.
They are allowed to have a parent there whatever. And
as far as like even a dog handler, I thought
(23:22):
they had to be right there with the animal, Well
they do, okay, but there's not somebody there with a
freaking gun.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Well that's just it. So there you have it. Okay.
So now going back to the chronology, here, the crew
walks off the set and is replaced by a non
union crew the same day that this shooting happens. So
you have people that aren't really familiar with anybody that
you know who knows what's going You have footage that
(23:53):
the Special Prosecutor aired when we started watching the trials,
showing out falling in other areas, pointing the gun, using
it as a pointer. I don't know if you saw
that footage. Did you watch part of that trial as
it was going off, yes, right, and it looks you know,
he's mister cowboy, mister tea, mister macho, but with an
(24:14):
actual gun in his hand. And like you said, as
an officer of the walk, you do not to the fence.
I mean, if it's not plastic, you better know if
be playing with it.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Yep, I'm telling you. My dad was so strict about it.
He even said, like even the little guns that shoot
the little the little things that have the plastic thing
that you shoot it sticks to the wall, little suction
cup thing. But he even said, even that gun, if
you look down in the barrel, the spring could come
out and destroy your eye. Like you just don't fool
(24:46):
with a gun of any kind if it's got a
barrel and a trigger. Forget it, you don't point it
at anybody. And again, no such thing as at beging unloaded.
So to me, you know, you hear about how Guitaris
Gutiras and you think, okay, well she is gonna file
(25:07):
a lawsuit herself against the AMMO people.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Well no she doesn't. Yeah, but okay, so there's a
whole entanglement. You're right about all that's going on around here,
with civil suits and liability and all of that.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Oh, Entanglement's a good word, sugar, because it's a mess.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
It is. What I find interesting is neither of them
took responsibility for what happened in any way. In other words,
there was no Yeah, they were sorry and they were shaken.
But you know, I don't know if you've noticed, but
Alec Baldwin, he was on the phone. You see that
(25:44):
iconic picture of him hunched over in the desert there,
you know, And we find out he's talking to his wife.
His concern while Helena Hutchins is in the hospital, she
was brought, she was helicoptered out, she died in the hospital,
she was still alive. His concern is Wayne's family. Now
(26:06):
it's throwing plans for his family to come out and
see him, and next thing you know, he's planning a
vacation and lands somewhere I don't know, Maine, New Hampshire,
wrever the hell he went to run away from it all.
He had no concern about her. Now to me, that
is the most horrifying thing about all of this. Yes,
it was an accident. Clearly it was an accident. I mean,
(26:29):
nobody ever thought there was going to be a real
bullet in any gun on any set, because there never
has been one. But still he pulled the trigger, and
you know, his commentary is that actually the cinematographer was
asking him to point the trigger at her. Now, there's
(26:50):
other people who testified to this. So this cinematographer is young.
She was new ish. I mean she was, you know,
getting her career built up. Her husband was there on
set as well. She apparently wandered a particular scene where
you're looking down the barrel of the gun, and that's
why she had Baldwin pointing the gun at her, which
her face is next to the camera. I don't get it.
(27:13):
I mean, that sounds crazy to me that she would
direct him that way. But you know, there's no calling
for what art says. You know, people in the arts
don't understand the law. They don't understand bullets and guns necessarily, right.
So she clearly didn't get that.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Memo right, because even with a dummy, something's coming out
of the barrel of that gun, and it could destroy
your camera. It could still injure you.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Going back to Baldwin, as a producer, he cheaped out
on his crew. He also cheaped out on who he
hired as armorer. Okay, because this young woman, what was
twenty four years old. She had only worked on one
movie prior to Russ And it turns out that on
(28:02):
the set she was working on a Nicholas Cage movie,
also in the Midwest, and it was called The Old Way,
she apparently fired off a gun with a blank near him,
and Nicholas Cage went nuts because she's he said, she
blew his ears out because you know the fired Why
why do we wear those those ear sets in gun range?
(28:26):
Its sure, because the sound of it can blow your
ear jones out.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
I mean, this whole thing so unnecessary, one hundred preventable,
should have never happened, like you said, even starting in Texas,
it shouldn't have happened exactly.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
No.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
And I heard they were practicing on the set of
Russ too, that they were bonding and shooting live m
o knocking cans over.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
I think those were blanks. I did hear that in
the beginning they called it plinking clink. I heard that.
I did you hear anything about it coming up in
trial or in Guteers's trial. However, when you hear things
like that, you really start to wonder, like, how much
of a old Wild West was this for these people
(29:12):
on this set? You know, Let's have a good time,
is what I'm thinking. And then there's a lot of
drinking that was going on. I want to get to that.
So so, but let me go back to the fact
that this young woman good Cheers read was not only
not only was she inexperienced all right. Not only did
she only work on one movie set where she pulled
(29:33):
a trigger out of a blank and practically blew Nicholas
Cage's ear drums out, but also she had a habit
of kind of posing with guns and being very on
the fly with guns. She went into one of the
restaurants in New Mexico with a gun on her that
she had was illegal. The prosecutor started to charge her
(29:54):
with that because she wasn't helping in any way to
try to, you know, expedite situation or she was. And
here's the thing, this is what gets me, Cheryl. She
was drinking all throughout that filming all lots. And not
(30:14):
only was she drinking, she was smoking. And she has
a text the night before, uh the killing, where she's saying,
I don't need that stuff anyway, I'll just be smoking.
I'm smoking tonight. Now there's there are many people who
have corroborated the fact that she smoked pot, but not
(30:35):
only that. On the day after the killing, on the
twenty first of October, Okay, twenty twenty one, Hannah gutirs
Read has an acquaintance who comes over. People are staying
with her because she's scared, because she's freaked out, because
she's freaked out because somebody got hurt killed, and she
(30:56):
has people staying with her. But they need to go
out and get some cigarettes or whatever they need to
do it. And so they call over another member of
the crew who is the craft services person. And this
person tested by a Gutierris's trial and her last name
is Smith. I can't. The first name doesn't come to
me now, but Miss Smith testified, No, I was some
(31:17):
friends with her, but I was an acquaintance and they
asked me to come over, you know. In the same
they're saying it an inn in Santa Fe to just
sit with her and be with her, you know, while
they went Ransomarrand so while she's there, Hannah gutierists read says,
can you hold something for me? Sure? What is it?
(31:37):
She hands to Miss Smith to the Craft Services person
a baggie with another baggy inside the baggy, and in
that smaller baggie is a white powder substance. And it
just so happens that this Craft Services crew member is
a recovering addict who hasn't touched anything like that in decades.
(31:59):
But she agreed to hold it because here's this young
woman falling apart at the scene is that she's clearly
she's drinking, she's who knows what, And she takes a
strawholder for you, and she propably goes and throws it
in the garbage can when she leaves because she can't
have it around her. This the Craft Services one because
it's temptation and Hannah Guziers later comes after her and says,
(32:21):
where's my stuff? There's text with it. I mean, you
can't make this stuff up.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Nope. My question is, on a movie set, if there
is a death, do the insurance company or anybody require
any drug testing?
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Good question. I can't answer it. I can't imagine on
those are things that haven't never happened. Really, we have
never seen something like this before where there is a
death with a bullet on a set, and so, you know,
it's hard to say, but I know one thing. She
sure didn't want the cops to find anything when they
were to become maybe search your room, which so the
(33:00):
reason why when she was there and she got more scared,
she handed this off. She handed off the bag with
white powder. The no one could test it. It was
thrown away. But the woman who testified, the food services
woman did say whether when the prosecutor asked her, let's
say it was a packet of sugar, because he wanted
to know what the amount of it was right by,
her answer was, oh, no, it wasn't sugar. I know
(33:22):
it wasn't sugar. I know what cocaine looks like. And
then it turns out when he described how much was
in there, She said, would have been like five or
six packets sugar, like it wasn't a little bit
Host
Sheryl McCollum
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!