Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Ex-Cop Who Dropped Bombshell That Ended Alec Baldwin's 'Rust' Trial Breaks Silence

Episode Date: September 7, 2024

Actor Alec Baldwin's involuntary manslaughter trial ended in a mistrial last July after the judge determined the state withheld evidence from Baldwin that could have helped his defense. That evidence was a batch of rounds turned over to the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office by retired police officer Troy Teske. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy talks with Teske about the evidence and why he believes "Rust" armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed should be set free in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: If you’ve ever been injured in an accident, you can check out Morgan & Morgan. You can submit a claim in 8 clicks or less without having to leave your couch. To start your claim, visit: https://www.forthepeople.com/YouTubeTakeoverHost:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5CRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. If this conduct does not rise to the level of bad faith, it certainly comes so near to bad faith as to show signs of scorching. Alec Baldwin's trial for the shooting death of Russ cinematographer Helena Hutchins ended in spectacular fashion with a mistrial. Now the man who is a major part of that is breaking his silence on why he believes the film's armorer should be released from prison. I would like to see it dismissed, just like the Baldwin trial. Retired police officer Troy Teske is here to talk about his role in the case. Plus, the special prosecutor now wants the judge to reconsider her decision to toss Alec Baldwin's

case. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. There have been some big developments in the Rust case since Judge Mary Marlowe-Summer declared a mistrial in Alec Baldwin's involuntary manslaughter trial that was back in July. The special prosecutor, Carrie Morrissey, is now asking Judge Marlo Sommer to reconsider her decision to dismiss Baldwin's case with prejudice. If you followed the Russ case, you probably can't forget how Alec Baldwin's trial imploded in July. I'd never seen anything like it. Judge Marlo Summer dismissed the involuntary manslaughter case against Baldwin with prejudice after she determined the prosecution failed to disclose it had received a batch of bullets that could have helped Baldwin with his defense. The state's discovery violation has injected a needless and curable delay into the instant jury

trial. Dismissal with prejudice is warranted to ensure the integrity of the judicial system and the efficient administration of justice. Your motion to dismiss with prejudice is granted. Now, Baldwin faced that involuntary manslaughter charge in the death of filmmaker Helena Hutchins on the set of Rust back in October of 2021. Special Prosecutor Morrissey wants the judge to order Alec Baldwin's attorneys to disclose when they found out about that ammunition that wasn't turned over to Baldwin's attorneys and that, of course, led to the mistrial. The film's armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, meanwhile, is serving an 18-month sentence for Hutchinson's death, but her lawyer is asking for a new trial. More on that in a bit.

That batch of bullets that Judge Marlo Summer said prosecutors should have disclosed to the state came from Troy Teske. He's a retired police officer and friend of Hannah Gutierrez-Reed's father, legendary Hollywood armorer Thel Reed. Teske said he had the bullets in Arizona since before the rush shooting in 2021, but law enforcement never collected them from him despite knowing about the rounds. Teske stores Thel Reed's ammunition for him. This is all a little bit confusing, so you have to follow along. Teske told me about how he discussed this in a pre-trial interview with special prosecutor Kerry Morrissey when it came up during the Alec Baldwin trial.

In our pretrial conference, we had it on Zoom and I was sitting right here talking to her and she asked me all those questions. There were a bunch of questions, but that was one of the questions is we got into the ammo, ammunition. So do you have live ammunition that is from the same batch that Seth Kinney had in his possession? And I said, well, I have some left. It's been two years and way back on November 1st of 2021, Detective Hancock said that she was going to issue a warrant, have the police department come and pick it up. I don't think she got that specific, but I said, well, we're going to have to do this

through a warrant. And that's how you would maintain the, when you have your evidence then then that's how you would maintain the quality evidence by by having the police department pick it up and then the police department send it to their sheriff's office and that was never done and so she said well but what happened to the ammo and i said well it sel and i decided we you know nobody seemed to want it so we went out and shot up a bunch of our rounds because we had about two or three hundred rounds ourselves in our batch our portion of the batch so we were out target practicing and and uh and just using it so then finally i got we got towards the end of the batch,

and I had about 19 rounds left. And I thought, well, I better keep those rounds just in case somebody wants them again. Because she, in that interview, which was just a few months before Hannah's trial, she said, do you have that ammo? Oh, you shot it up? You're destroying evidence. And I said, well, I'm not sure it's evidence if you don't pick it up, if you forget about it for several years. So nobody seemed to want it.

I cover so many terribly sad cases here on Crime Fix, and I'm able to do that because of sponsors like Morgan & Morgan, and they're sponsoring today's Law & Crime YouTube takeover. If you've seen our videos, you know the world. It can be a very scary place, and it's definitely not always safe. So if you're ever hurt, you may need a lawyer to help you. Morgan & Morgan has more than 1,000 attorneys that you may want in your corner. It's America's largest injury law firm, and for good reason. The firm wins a lot. Just in the last few months, Morgan & Morgan has secured several multimillion-dollar verdicts

that were considerably higher than the highest insurance company offer. From submitting a claim to uploading documents to signing contracts, all of this can be done from your smartphone in eight clicks or less. So if you're ever hurt, you can easily start a claim at ForThePeople.com slash YouTube takeover. Now, some of these rounds appear to be the same ammunition as the round that killed Helena Hutchins, their Starline Brass.45 caliber rounds with a nickel primer. Teske turned the batch of rounds, and it was a mix of ammo, into the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office at the end of Hannah Gutierrez-Reed's

trial in March. Part of that interaction was captured by body cameras. I'm a witness. I was called here as a witness to the bus trial. And I live in Arizona, so it's a long way. I wanted to... What happened to the trial? At the last minute, he said, okay, I want you to testify. wanted to um and then they didn't want the others okay that's fair that's fair are you guys uh yeah i don't care what you do with it. I just don't want to have it. And there are 45 cartridges. They're from the set? No.

Okay. No. You want to know the details? Now, you're going to hear more from Troy Teske in a bit. And you might be asking, why does any of this matter? Well, the defense for both Baldwin and Hannah Gutierrez-Reed always questioned how the live rounds got on the set of Rust. The prosecution says that Hannah Gutierrez-Reed brought the live rounds on set. These are photographs from Hannah Gutierrez's cell phone extraction, and they show spot on match for the live rounds found on the set of Rust.

The defense for both Alec Baldwin and Hannah Gutierrez-Reed always questioned whether the live ammunition could have made its way to the set from Seth Kenney, the owner of PDQ Props. Did you provide props and ammunition to the set of the movie Rust? I did. Kenny had been with Hannah Gutierrez Reid's father, Fel Reid, at a cowboy training camp for the Yellowstone 1883 movie in Texas earlier in 2021. And where did those live, who provided those live rounds? Did you provide them? Did Fel provide them?

Fel provided the live rounds and we met in Albuquerque. At that point, he loaded up his luggage and everything he needed for a couple of months. When you say you met in Albuquerque, how did he get to Albuquerque? He and Hannah, his daughter, drove out together. We met in Albuquerque, prepped her out for the Nick Cage movie. And just for the record, where did they drive from? They both drove from Bullhead City, Arizona. Thank you. So they came to Albuquerque and did they have the live ammunition with them? They did. And where did y'all go from there? She loaded up and left to Livingston, Montana to work the Nick Cage movie, and Thale and

I loaded up the Sprinter with everything we needed, and we headed straight to Texas. And did you take that live ammunition with you to Texas? We did. And did the actors get to have their training camp? They did. And was there any ammunition left over? There was. Where did it go? It stayed in Texas for an undetermined amount of time. I could never figure out when it came back to my shop. So the defense teams have always questioned, could the live.45 caliber rounds from the cowboy training camp have ended up on the set of rust via Seth Kenny's prop house. Troy Teske believes it's possible. He stores Thalreed's ammunition for him, as I mentioned. Had it in my possession prior to 1883, when Yellowstone 1883. I had that

ammunition and it came in a batch and about half the batch Thel and I poured into this ammo can and I had the second half of that batch. And so it was

way back in October. Well, it was prior to October, maybe September, that we had it. It may have been before that, maybe a couple months before that of 2021. So that was before everything went to the 1883 training camp that Thel was going to use it at. So I've had that for a long, long time. Now, during that explosive hearing in July, during Alec Baldwin's trial, Seth Kenney testified about what he provided to the set of rust. How certain are you that you didn't provide any live rounds to the set of Rust? I have provided blanks and dummy rounds and guns to over a thousand different productions. And on average, it's five to ten guns per episode, per feature film. And each gun would typically have about ten dummy rounds with it. So that's between 50 and 100,000 dummy rounds.

And I have never spent more time with a single box of dummy rounds than the rounds that came from 1883, the dummy rounds that went to Ross. So there was never a question in my mind that I provided the live ammunition to Ross. Baldwin's defense team then cross-examined Kenny about his claim that the dummy rounds he supplied to Rust did not contain live ammunition. And you're telling this court that of all the dummy rounds, and all the productions, and all the years, these 50 were the ones that you checked the most? They required the most time because of the antiquing and because, again, some of them had a muddy rattle. So there was no point in providing a dummy round that had a muddy rattle to set

that's the last thing you want to have happen. And so each one had to ring clearly with the number two lead shot inside of it. And of all the dummy rounds on all the sets, these ones had a muddy rattle. No, the ones that were excluded had a muddy rattle. Now, Teske and others have suggested the sheriff's office didn't properly investigate other possible suspects who could have been responsible for the ammunition ending up on the set. Alec Baldwin's lawyers maintained and contended that Seth Kenney was just way too helpful. He was way too involved in all of this. What are your feelings about that? Well, I look at it from from the investigation standpoint and my thought is

there are suspects in this in this scene in this whole production there are suspects that had live ammo and um one of them was Sarah Zachary. Another one was Nicole Montoya, I think it's Nicole Montoya. And she, and then there's Seth. And then there's Hannah. So there are about four people who, if I were doing the investigation, would have been suspects. And Seth was one of those people. And he seemed like one of the most important suspects because I knew that he had hot live rounds that he could have somehow put into the, into the set. Teske and even Hannah Gutierrez-Reed's lawyer at one point

suggested that Seth Kenney may have tried to sabotage Hannah Gutierrez-Reed. A week before the shooting, just about a week before, it would take a couple of days. I think we had a couple of conversations where he called me and, and he was, he was frustrated because he said, I can't work with Hannah. I cannot work with Hannah anymore. I don't want her on any sets anymore. I'd like to see her out of Hollywood. And I thought, wow, why are you so angry? And he just said, well, she was very inappropriate with Sarah Zachary, which is her boss, and said that she was calling her horrible names and disrespecting her. And he said that she was a good Christian woman and she didn't

deserve that kind of behavior. But he seemed very, very angry with Hannah. Special Prosecutor Morrissey wrote in her new motion, There is absolutely no evidence that live ammunition was planted on the set of rust by a saboteur or provided by Mr. Kenney or Ms. Zachary. All suggestions that the live ammunition was planted by a saboteur or provided by anyone other than Ms. Gutierrez is rank speculation. Kenney testified that the Sheriff's office seized Thel Reed's live ammo from the 1883 cowboy camp a month after the shooting on the set of Rust.

What happened to the ammunition that was in this can that you brought back from Texas? It sat in that bin in the bathroom. And ultimately, when did it leave PDQ? Under what circumstances? Oh, when the sheriff's department executed a search warrant on my business. They took all of it? Yes. They weren't entitled to all of it, but I just said take all of it.

The warrant specified it had to be Starline Brass, and I just told them take it all. So everything that you brought back from Texas is in the custody of the sheriff's department? Correct. Did you have reason to believe that Mr. Reed and Mr. Teske wanted to blame the introduction of the live rounds to the set of rust on you? To varying degrees, yes. Now, Special Prosecutor Morrissey, you may recall, testified at that hearing in July as well. She said she didn't believe that the.45 caliber live rounds from the set of rust came from the same batch as the cowboy camp. But she also said she hadn't seen the batch

that Troy Teske turned in prior to that day. They never went to Texas. They never came to New Mexico. That's what all of the evidence indicated. So I understood that Detective Hancock had communication with Mr. Teske about trying to get those rounds, and Detective Hancock was unable to get those rounds from Mr. Teske. I did not find that particularly concerning because those rounds had never left Arizona. The filming of Rust was in the state of New Mexico. And the rounds that were taken from PDQ went from Arizona to Texas to Albuquerque. So ammunition that

is in the state of Arizona that has never left Arizona did not strike me that it had significant evidentiary value. Then, I will say I believe I actually saw a photo of it at that point in time, I was able to look at the ammunition myself and it was visibly dissimilar than the rounds from the set of rust. We then cut to November of 2023. Mr. Bowles has put Mr. Teske on a witness list for the Hannah Gutierrez case rounds that were Thelreid's live rounds that had never left the state of Arizona. I think he indicated during the pretrial interview that they were from the same batch that was sourced from Joe Swanson. And I then said we should get those from you. I had a conversation with Detective Hancock after that pre trial interview about how we could get the rounds from Mr. Teske and we were trying to figure out if we could send a local law enforcement agency to pick them up.

Of course, Troy Teske says there was never any follow up. It never happened. Now he and Hannah Gutierrez Reid's father are hopeful she'll get a new trial. Ultimately, Hannah is the person responsible for all of the firearms and the ammunition on the set, correct? Well, when it gets to her, it goes to the property master first. Yeah. And for her training and stuff, yeah. But the stuff about the live rounds, she never had those. She never had them for me.

She never asked, but she never had those. She's never been arrested for anything in her life. Never. Now they got her in his life. Never. Now they got her in there for manslaughter. It's ludicrous. It's crazy. Hannah Gutierrez-Reed has pleaded guilty to a charge related to her bringing a gun into a bar. A hearing on her motion for a new trial is scheduled for later this month.

Teske said he's hopeful about Hannah Gutierrez-Reed's request to be released because of what happened in the Baldwin trial. So because those similarities of those trials are both the same, there was information, discovery violations by prosecution with two types of evidence. And because of those, because of those, then you have the Brady violations you know the Brady violations that that in in um in the end forced the judge to dismiss the case so I would like to see and dismiss the case with prejudice that means that Baldwin can be charged again for this. And I would like to see her case be resolved with that. And it should have happened, in my opinion, it should have happened the next day or the next few days. But instead, they put her back in the prison and she's been sitting there for a month and she's got another month. The special prosecutor, of course, is opposing Hannah Gutierrez Reid's request for a new trial,

despite conceding that she didn't turn over a final firearms report before her trial. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Ann Janette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.