Hidden True Crime - The Truth about Rust: What Hannah Knew [Alec Baldwin's Armorer Convicted in 'Rust' Film Shooting Trial]

Episode Date: July 9, 2024

Lauren Matthias is in New Mexico, preparing to cover the Alec Baldwin Trial. In March, 2024, Hidden True Crime covered the trial and verdict of Armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed who was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in her role in the death of Halyna Hutchins on the set of Alec Baldwin's "Rust" movie set. We felt it was time to revisit this important episode originally recorded in March, 2024 before New Mexico v Alec Baldwin begins this week in Santa Fe. DREAM Night Drink: Make a good night's sleep a focus in 2024. Click https://shopbeam.com/hiddentruecrime and use code TRUECRIME to get up to 35% off Beam’s clinically tested nighttime blend, Dream. DR. JOHN MATTHIAS is a licensed clinical and forensic psychologist with 30 years’ experience in both clinical and forensic work. He serves as an expert witness for the federal government and has consulted on numerous high-profile cases for District Attorney’s offices and defense attorneys in several states. Dr. Matthias graduated with honors in philosophy from Princeton University, and he won the prestigious McCosh Thesis prize while there. In high school he graduated valedictorian from a large public high school in Chicago where he was chosen to participate in a ground-breaking valedictory study that continues to this day. LAUREN MATTHIAS spent a decade working as an anchor and reporter. She has reported for News Nation and now produces the Hidden True Crime Podcast along with her husband Dr. John Matthias, a forensic psychologist. HIDDEN: A TRUE CRIME PODCAST is: CRIMINAL PSYCHOLOGY REINVENTED. Join us on a journey into the darkest recesses of the human mind and the unconscious motivations that drive human behaviors in order to understand the world and ourselves. SUPPORT: https://www.patreon.com/hiddentruecrime  Our Sponsors:* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Armoire and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.armoire.style* Check out Effecty and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.effecty.com* Check out Happy Mammoth and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://happymammoth.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/hidden-a-true-crime-podcast1836/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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okay I just want to get out of here and never shut my face in this industry every like the only

female armor in the game and I just I just my ones over career Have you studied armory or did you go to classes or how did you get into it?

My dad's the best one of those rumors. I mean, I'm trying to me in a failure. Hello, Hidden Gems. Happy Hidden Hour. I'm so glad to be here with all of you and with my husband, Dr. John Matthias. As we go live from different rooms in our house, people are always like, why are you doing a split screen? I'm like, because we can see each other better. It just works for us.

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agreed. We'll share more soon. So we are talking one of the biggest trials of 2024 has just happened and it won't be the last of this case that we see different people will be going to trial for the killing

that happened on the set of the film Russ and this one was with the armor. The armorer What is her? Yep, armorer. I did get it right. For some reason I said that, I said, that didn't sound right, was found guilty?

Right. So Hannah Gutierrez, Reed, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter this past week, and we were streaming the trial, so we were interested in it. One of the things that's of interest to me is the fact that this is a involuntary manslaughter charge, which means that there was no intent to kill. Essentially, involuntary manslaughter means no intention. to kill or murder. And that differs from almost every crime we talk about in the sense that most of the cases we cover involve some premeditation and intention to kill. And so that's one of the

big distinctions between, say, murder one. Murder in the first degree is premeditation. Murder in the second degree is typically not premeditation, maybe more impulsivity. It depends on the situation. And states have different types of charges for different types of murders. But involuntary manslaughter is essentially a killing without the intent to harm someone. And so she was convicted of that. And I think involuntary manslaughter to me is interesting in the sense that, you know, when somebody's convicted of premeditated murder, we're pretty clear about who to blame. Right. We point the finger at, you know, Ted Bundy and say, yeah, that guy's evil or whatever. We say, you know, he's evil, he's to blame.

And we feel pretty secure that we know who committed the murders. We know they had intent. And we know it was premeditated and there's someone to blame. But in a case like this, in the case is involuntary manslaughter, I think it's really complicated in the sense. And sometimes blame is much harder to assign. This issue of blame is an interesting one in this case. And that's something we're going to talk about.

A lot of times tragedy and Greek tragedy in particular gets into this question. of blame a lot. So something I want to look at in this case and assess what that means. So there's this issue of blame, I think, is of interest in involuntary manslaughter in particular, but also one of the things that in following this trial, I've noticed is nobody's talked about the psychological components of this crime. And there's psychological components to every crime, even this crime, I think, and I think those are going to be of interest. Hopefully we can add our unique spin, we can add our hidden spin by bringing out what we think is hidden here and bringing in some of the psychological motives. As many of our gems know, I like to pick out

little bits and pieces here and there that turn out to be extremely diagnostic and useful in terms of interpreting various crimes. And we're going to do that with this case too. I'll pick out some nuggets that I think really, really kind of point us in the direction of more psychological components of this crime. This case has really been a conundrum. Even as I watched the trial with many of our gems, there are a lot of questions about who was to blame. And it's so tragic.

Let's just have a moment for the victim. Helena Hutchins, a young mother, an incredibly talented cinematographer, award-winning, married, family. It should have never happened. And I think the one thing that everybody agrees on is that this was an absolute tragedy. And I think we're all angered over it rightfully so. But I think it gets really complicated when, you know, we want to be able to solve it.

We want to be able to blame somebody and to have justice for Helena. And I think that's where it gets a little bit complicated and where this case is unique, who is to blame, and of course, Alec Baldwin will be going to trial later this year, the star and producer. I know I'm kind of repeating what you said, but I just want to say I agree. This is such

an important case when it comes to psychology and a unique case that I don't know if we've ever tackled something like this before, so thank you for taking this on, John. Yeah, we haven't tackled a crime like this. And let me just say, so on this issue of blame,

you know, blame is interesting to me, because obviously it has a psychological component, but typically blame, I think, has a lot to do with loss and pain, that when we blame other people, a lot of times we're losing something. I mean, in this case, obviously the Hutchins family lost someone they loved dearly, and that's a massive loss. But sometimes blame is about other subtler forms of loss, like loss of face, loss of social status. A lot of times pain has to do with loss and pain. It's a way in some, I think in some sense, it's a way to kind of try to mend those losses, even though oftentimes we can never completely mend them. And I think also blame is an attempt oftentimes to give voice to

our injuries, you know, something when we're injured or when we're, you know, something goes awry. We tend to blame that in those circumstances because it gives voice to our anger too. So I think a lot of times blame is about anger. And I think all of those things exist in this particular situation. Yeah, well said. So I don't want to cover the details of the trial. It was a fairly long trial and people have gotten into that. I want to pull out some threads that make sense for us and the psychological elements of this crime. But let's start with, so if we're thinking about blame, let's start with, I think there were two elements of this crime that really were very dammed. for Hannah Gutierrez Reed.

The first was, you know, one of the big questions was that they were trying to answer was where did the live rounds come from? And so one of the people that supplied ammunition, his company, I forget the name of his company now, I think it was like PMG or something, but Seth Kenny was his name. And he has a company that supplies ammunition for movie sets, in particular blanks and or dummy rounds, which means that they're not harmful. So that was one of the things the defense tried to argue was that Seth Kenny, that somehow these live rounds ended up on the set,

the movie set, because his company was negligent, and his company somehow let some live rounds slip and make it onto the set. And that seemed somewhat dubious that they analyzed the live rounds and they looked at the ammunition that Seth Kenny's company held and they didn't match. And Seth Kenny kind of said, by the way,

way that things shifted, that it appeared to him because there was a civil suit filed against him that the blame was starting to shift at some point after the shooting occurred in October of 2021. It was, the blame was starting to shift to him a little bit in his company. But we also learned that Hannah had been the armorer, the lead armorer on another movie prior to this movie. It was a movie with Nicholas Cage called The Old Way. I haven't seen it, but it's a Western apparently and involved a lot of guns.

And we learned that some of the ammunition, she had some of that ammunition in boxes, and she just brought it onto the set. I don't know if that was an attempt to cut costs. I'm not quite sure the reasons. So there was that. And then we learned that there's a show 1883, which is the prequel to the show Yellowstone. And it was filmed in Texas primarily. and that ammunition from that particular show was also making its way up to New Mexico and onto the set of Rust.

So you have all these loose ends out there where Hannah apparently is accessing all this ammunition that's not being tightly controlled. It's making its way onto the set. It doesn't appear that Seth Kenny and his company supplied the live rounds because they're not consistent with the ammunition. that his company supplies. So that was pretty damning because it certainly seemed to suggest that Hannah probably inadvertently brought some live rounds with her onto the set.

Yeah. I don't know. It's not clear if she knew that. That was one important element because it obviously trying to figure out where those live rounds came from would have a lot to do with culpability and blame. Absolutely.

And then the second element was that Hannah, she acknowledged this in her police interview, but they talked about this too. And the prompt master, her name was Sarah Zachary, talked about this. She said that, and this is consistent with what Hannah said in her post-shooting interview, Hannah said that she loaded the gun before lunch, she put it in the safe, she took it out, she handled the gun, she didn't check it again, and she didn't go to the church, but she took it out. She delivered it apparently to the church or Alec Baldwin. So according to these sources, she would have been the last person to have the gun to Alec Baldwin. There was some initial dispute about, so Dave Halls, who was another assistant director,

there was a lot of dispute about whether Dave Halls handled the gun, whether, so Hannah claims that she gave it to him. Alec Baldwin initially said that he gave the gun to Dave Halls and then he said he didn't later. He changed the story and said that Hannah gave it to him, even though Hannah apparently didn't stay in the church. There's some ambiguity in here, but you have those two pieces of evidence show that more than likely Hannah had access to a lot of ammunition that wasn't necessarily categorized or control that she brought onto the set. Some of those could have been live rounds. And then secondly, if there is a chain of custody about handling firearms on sets, that Hannah seems to have been responsible for loading the gun and getting it to Alec Baldwin.

And also, as they pointed out in the trial, the armorer, so I learned a lot about armorers. I didn't even know that was a job in Hollywood. But, you know, and I learned a lot about movie making too, I guess. It's not something I'm very familiar with. I know. I learned a lot about movie sets watching this trial. So the lead armorer, you know, maybe there's some assistant earners. I don't know.

but the lead armorer is responsible for the safety of the people on the set and the crew. And ultimately, as they pointed out, during the trial of the buck stops with her in this case. So she acknowledged that she thought she had checked the chamber, but it was unclear. She believed that she loaded it before lunch and checked it then. So I think she was supposedly very surprised that a live round went off. in the church during rehearsal. But those two elements about where the live round came from, I think those were particularly damning.

I mean, there was a lot more evidence, but those two in particular, I think, were the most damning. Were the most damning. So I don't know, I don't know, I don't know if the jury ever got past those elements of this particular situation. I didn't. I didn't get past them. Yeah.

But, you know, so let's think about, I want to think about, and this will take us a little bit into the psychology here, but I want to think about the different avenues through which this could have happened. So the first one is that during her interview immediately after or fairly soon after the shooting, Hannah Gutier's Reed tells police, she gives her theory of the crime and she says she thought it might have been quote a bad round. unquote. In other words, you know, I don't know enough about ammunition to really weigh in on this, but they asked her if live rounds ever end up on movie sets and she says, absolutely not. That was a question I had. I think when you think about Alec Baldwin's role in this, for example, you have to think that most actors and actresses on movie sets are probably used to the fact that you're not going to have live rounds in guns. Yeah, right. Right? Because it would be highly atypical, I think, and even according to Hannah in her interview,

to have a live round, any type of live ammunition on a movie set because of the risks. Right. So, but she says maybe it was a bad round. And let's take that seriously for a moment and think about it. So what that means is that apparently there's blanks and there's dummy rounds. Blanks actually have some gunpowder and make it, you know, they discharge. Dummy rounds are purely for apparently cosmetic. They don't discharge.

So I take it a bad round would mean that a blank is not a blank. It's a live round. And maybe by looking at those different bullets, you can't make a distinction because it's defective. Maybe they put too much whatever they put in a bullet. Maybe they put too much something, gunpowder. I don't know what they put in bullets. But whatever happened during the manufacturing process, I guess it's, and again, I don't know, they didn't really run with this theory, but I'm giving half.

of the benefit here. Let's just say for the sake of argument that one bullet was a bad round. Okay. And she couldn't look at that bullet. She could not look at that bullet and make a distinction between that bullet and a dummy round. Okay. So that would mean essentially that theory case would mean that this was a pure accident, right? If it was a bad round, then there's no armorer that could have made that distinction because the bad round would look like every other round. Okay. But I throw this out there because she says this. And because this would be an argument for how this is completely an accident,

it has to do with some defect in the manufacturing process, right? And essentially she's suggesting that maybe the live round was disguised as a blank or a dummy round. And so that would obviously present problems for any armorer because they wouldn't catch that. So that would make this completely accidental, completely random. Okay. But I'm waiting for your butt. Right. There's a big but here. But I think this line of argument wasn't pursued because it's extremely unlikely.

My guess is that when you make ammunition, you're controlling the manufacturing process pretty tightly. Absolutely. Right? Because think about that. If you start dumping, you know, bad rounds that are supposed to be dummy rounds into bullets, you're going to kill a lot of people inadvertently. Yeah.

Right. So, but she says that. that. And it's an interesting theory of the case because it does suggest the possibility, if there's any truth to it, I don't think it's accurate, but if there is that this was purely an accident that could not have been controlled or caught, right? So that's one theory. That's one way to look at it. The next way to look at it would be, okay, so we know after the live round went off, Hannah went back and checked the chamber of the gun and all the rest, there were six bullets in there. The remaining five were all dummies, which means that there

was one live round placed in the gun. It happened of all the the bullets that were in there that could have gone off at that time, the live one did, unfortunately, tragically. And also, tragically, it happened to hit two people killing one of them, right? And so. So tragic. The police then investigated, they closed off the movie set. They investigated. They investigated. They investigated. They They found there were seven, there were six other live rounds on the set. So there were a total seven. So in addition to the one in the gun, there were six other ones. So.

So bad. Oof. Right. And so what that means, I think, is that you have to imagine, I'm imagining there's hundreds of bullets on the set, hundreds of maybe less than that. But let's say for the sake of argument, there's probably hundreds of different dummy rounds and blanks that could have been used. Seven of those were live.

So it appears that one of these live rounds ended up inadvertently in that gun, which would suggest it was, again, it was an accident, but it was an accident that would have been unlike a bad round. That was an accident that would have been preventable. Absolutely. That was an accident that would have had to do with mismanagement of the ammunition. It would have had to do with the fact that she's bringing ammunition that's not organized or, or can't be. categorized and controlled onto the movie set without other people knowing about it, right? There's a lack of, so let's call that a management issue. There's a lack of managing the set and managing the ammunition.

And somehow of these hundreds of possible bullets that could go into that gun, one of them ends up. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the internet. and then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where ORA comes in.

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but an accident nevertheless. As in nobody purposely, nobody purposely wanted to see her die, but it was preventable. An accident doesn't mean it wasn't preventable. But nobody plotted this and planned this. What's one financial lesson you learned the hard way? I'll go first.

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by using code hidden true crime at checkout. That's true diagnostic, T-R-U-D-I-G-N-O-S-T-I-C-I-C-E-N-S-T-I-C. Just use code hidden true crime to save 20% off. Plus, if you subscribe, you'll get an additional 20% off. Discover your true age today. Right, exactly, exactly. So those would be kind of the first two. So I think that the jury mainly convicts on the second one. They see it as an accident, but an accident that could have been prevented,

an accident that had to do with the negligence of Hannah, and that she invited this into the, right, just by bringing live rounds, onto a movie set. You're creating, you know, your risk of problems is going up enormously. So I think that's how the jury sees this. That's what the prosecution was going for. So they're, they're kind of aiming for the second idea that this is mismanagement. Maybe there's some element of nepotism here because Thel Reed is her father. Thel probably gets her this job or her first job on the old way. And, you know, there's a question here of experience, Perhaps. We'll get into that in a little bit. But let's consider the one that I think is the most interesting. So this is going to take us more to the psychological components of this particular situation. I'm going to read in December of 2021, Thel Reed, Thel Reed, Thel is spelled T-H-E-L-L-L. Thel Reed is Hannah's father. He's a famous armorer, well-known armor who's been in Hollywood for many years.

And stepdad technically, the stepfather, but still he was in court. It was very sad watching him. Yes. It was sad. Yeah, I agree. Thel Reed and his attorney and Hannah's attorney, Jason Bowles, they gave an interview to ABC. They gave an exclusive interview to ABC News. Jason Bowles, during that interview, had this to say.

And again, this is over two years ago. This is what Jason Bowles, who's Hannah's lawyer. And let me just say, by the way, this is not. going to age well. Jason Bowles in December of 2021 says, quote, sabotage is the most likely possibility, probability. Somebody wanted to cause a safety incident on set. Nobody wanted anybody to be killed. So you have Hannah's attorney throwing out a theory of this case and his theory of this case is it's sabotage. And, you know, of course, as a forensic psychologist, I find that fascinating because I immediately

go to this idea of self-sabotage that I think there's something to his idea. I think if I had to make an argument here about what happened, I think the argument I would put forth is that this was a form of self-sabotage. And if we think about that, oh, so let's talk about self-sabotage. for a minute. Let me, before I do that, I want to think about, so there's this guy named William Swan, and he has this idea that he calls self-verification theory. Self-verification theory is based upon the idea that we all have kind of perceptions of

ourselves, that we try to verify constantly. And when we deviate too much from those self-perceptions, it causes us anxiety. It causes us feelings of insecurity. It causes us stress, uncomfortably. feelings. So in other words, we kind of have this set point of how we see ourselves. And we have kind of this set point of how we feel safe about who we are, our identities. Yeah. And so self-sabotage really is a version of self-verification theory in my mind. Self-sabotage is really in many ways about self-preservation. Just so you know, I'm very excited about this. I have so many questions

about self-sabotage. Sorry, keep going. I interrupted you just to say I'm excited. So getting back to self-verification, when we start to deviate too much from how we feel about ourselves and how we perceive ourselves, a lot of times we might engage in destructive behavior to kind of go back to that comfort zone, to go back to that area of safety, or to confirm negative self-perceptions. So someone, for example, with, say, a lower sense of self-worth, when they start having more success, they might sabotage because they're not comfortable with that. So I think you have someone here in Hannah who, well, maybe this would be a good time to play the, can you play the little video clip?

So just to introduce this, this is the immediate interview with Hannah Gutier's Reed right after the incident and like almost as quickly after the incident as possible. And it's a fascinating moment. And I think this really provides some insight into this case and her and this idea of self-sabotage. So if you could just play that quickly. Absolutely. Let's watch this. Thank you.

Thank you to Law and Crime for this video tonight. I just kind of wish that many of my coworkers could stop seeing me because I already feel super bad. I don't worry about it. Okay. I just wanted to f*** out of here and never show my face in this industry. like the only female armor in the game and I just have you studied armory or did you go to classes or how did you get into it?

I guess the best one of the best armors in the entire world and trained me in a failure. Wow. That's a little hard to hear. So I'm actually going to, I'm going to read to reiterate what she said there. And this was right after. This is right after. This is right after.

This is right after. So this is raw. This is unfiltered. Here's what she says. So she said it there in the video clip, but I'm going to read it because it's so critical for this analysis of this particular crime. She says, quote, I just wish that my coworkers could stop seeing me because I already feel super bad and I don't want to go back and I just want to stay here and never show my face in this industry ever again. I'm the only female armor in the game and I just messed up my career. that's what she says.

And then they ask about her training, and she also says this. So the interviewer says, did you go to school for this? How did you learn this? And here's what she says. She says, quote, my dad is one of the best armorers in the entire world. And he trained me. And I'm an effing failure. Wow.

That's raw. That's really raw. If you want to know how she fills. Yeah. Right. And so let me try to tie this in. So I talked about the sabotage issue. Let's start tying this into this idea of sabotage.

So in order to do that, I want to back up just a little bit. I'm going to give a couple of quotes from Thel, her father, stepfather, about what he said. So Fell was in that interview from December of 2021 with his lawyer, Jason Bowles. And here's what Thel said. First of all, Thel says he's not worried about her getting charged or having to spend any time in jail or prison because he's. He's confident that she did the right things. But here's what Thel says. He says, quote, referring to Hannah, of course.

He says, quote, she didn't need any more training. She's got me. There's another thing that Thel said during that interview. She knows what to do. She does the job as good as I do now. So I think people that have been with us a while, they'll probably know what I'm thinking about those quotes. She didn't need any more training.

She's got me. Obviously, there's hints of. of narcissism in that particular quote. He's saying he's the best. She doesn't need more training. She's had all the training in the world. She's had me as an example. And then you have Hannah saying,

my dad is one of the best armors in the entire world. Not in Hollywood, not right, not the universe, in the galaxy. In the galaxy. He's the best armor in the entire galaxy. So I'm going to get back to this idea of sabotage in a minute, but I think what you're seeing here is her father is a bit of an eagle ideal. He's an aspiration. He represents something that she wants to be. She sees him as the best in the world. And he clearly has very high expectations for his daughter. He wants her to get into business. He probably wants her to take over for him. And, you know, we actually talked about this last. week with Tim Ballard. It's the same dynamic. Do you remember that? Tim Bowers' mother had these ridiculously, even by Tim Ballard's account, she had unrealistic expectations. Here you're seeing the same thing. You're seeing Hannah probably feeling like she has to live up to this ideal that

she can't. And because she can't, she feels like a failure. So she says in this quote that you saw, She says, she calls herself a failure. She says, I'm an effing failure. She calls herself a failure. But the important point to realize here is she feels this way before. She feels like a failure before that gun goes off. She probably feels like she can't live up to her father's expectations. She probably has some elements of imposter syndrome.

She's probably seeking love through. And again, this is just like Tim Ballard. She's probably seeking love through achievement. and through this job, and that's the way she's going to obtain her father's validation and approval. She probably fears rejection from her father. And again, her father's this larger than life figure. She probably fears some type of rejection from her father if she can't live up to these enormous expectations. And again, she's calling her dad the best armorer in the world.

So she's telling us about how high these expectations are. In those little moments, those little snippets in that interview, she's giving us such a huge glimpse into what's going on here. She believes it. Yeah, she really does believe that she can't live up. Wow. I saw that Krista said, this is why we love you, John. This is why I love you, babe.

Yes. She's telling us exactly how she feels. And more than that, this is going to be speculation. But I suspect it's more than living up to this ideal that her father is kind of setting for her. it's more than living up to her father's fame and perfectionism. And her father knows all these famous actors, right? This is what she hears about night and day, I'm sure. The problem here isn't necessarily setting those expectations so high.

The problem here is that she can't discuss and process it. She can't deal with the emotions. She can't deal with the anxiety and the stress around it. She probably can't tell her dad, hey, look, dad, I don't know if I can meet those expectations. I can't do this. She's not allowed to say that to him. Yeah, exactly. And the evidence for that, by the way,

if you want evidence for her inability to process her emotions and stress and anxiety, you can see it through the fact that she's doing drugs on and off the set of this movie. My guess is, by the way, that the drugs are not just, obviously, I don't think this is someone who's just bringing drugs onto this movie and doing them there because it's so stressful. I think this is someone who's probably got a drug problem.

Whenever I see that, I always think that this is someone who's probably self-medicating because they really can't regulate their emotions, especially negative emotions, right? And this is the perfect type of setup for that, a famous father with high expectations, that she knows she can't live up to those expectations, she can't process any of that with her dad or anybody probably. She feels like an imposter. She feels like a failure. and hence you can see.

So now I'm setting the stage for potentially why this is a type of self-sabotage. Yeah. This is her second job. So here's why. So this is her second job as elite armorer, meaning that she doesn't have a lot of experience and she's got all these like high expectations. She mentioned she's the first female armorer in the business. She's the first female lead armorer.

Again, like think about the pressure. Think about the anxiety and the expectations to go along with that. and how her dad. Right. I'm going to say, who's bringing it up to her. I'm sure her dad, you're going to be the first female.

You are it. Right, exactly. Her dad, her dad probably presses that point. Right. He probably makes that point to her a lot. Like, I'm so proud of you.

You're the first female armor. You're going to change the work. Right. Like, you're going to set a precedent here. You're going to show us, you know, you're going to show us how this done.

You don't have to be a male to do this job. So you have those elements. Right. And then you have, and I think this is probably the final straw, but you have this very high-stress environment. So Hannah says during the interview with the detectives, this is not the one immediately after, but this is in the police station.

She says, quote, everyone is pissed off at everyone all the time. I mean, it's a film set. I'll be honest, it sounds a little bit like a broadcast station too. But the final straw is that you've got this really high. high stress environment with you have a demanding and a veteran actor and producer and Alec Baldwin. You know, he's been around a long time in Hollywood. He's famous.

I don't know. I've never met the guy. I can imagine that, you know, he's probably got a reasonably low budget. He's trying to get this thing done. They're saying that he's hurrying production. He's probably cutting some costs by bringing Hannah on. You know, Thel is probably twice as much or maybe more 10 times. I don't know.

but he's probably trying to cut some corners. And so when Hannah says, look, I've got some ammunition from the old way and some other movie sets, why don't I bring that on? We'll save some money that whoever's in charge of approving those types of things probably goes along with it because the guy at the top is Alec Baldwin. It's his movie. And as they show during the trial, they had clips of Alec Baldwin. You could see that he was demanding.

You could see that he was probably creating a fairly stressful environment. environment. Right. And so into this whole situation with all the pressure from her dad being the first female armorer, this high stress environment, doing drugs, doing drugs on the set, off the set everywhere. And as Michelle just pointed out, you know, I'm sure drugs in Hollywood are quite prevalent. I'm sure they're prevalent on movie sets. But if I had to guess, this is not a drug problem that develops the minute she steps onto the set of Russ. This is a drug problem that she's had previously because of all the things I just talked about. Right.

So I think with these expectations and with this movie, you're starting to push her outside of her comfort zone. You're starting to push her in an arena where she's looking at the possibility of succeeding and doing well. And right, and she's not comfortable with that. She's moved from Nicholas Cage to Alec Baldwin. Right. I'd say that's moving up.

And I think she, in those statements she made, I think she kind of recognizes that. She says, I'm the only female armor in the game and I just messed up my career. I think, I think she knows that if she pulls off, if she pulls off this movie with, with Alec Baldwin, that her career is going to be fast-tracked. But more than that, I think you probably have a situation on set because the stress was so high and because the expectations were so high that I think that inadvertently, introducing a live round into that gun may have been her unconscious attempt to sabotage the movie itself. In other words, I think she felt like she wanted a slow production down,

slower stop production, which if you fire a live round, they would have done that immediately. I think she felt like the whole thing was out of control. They showed, you know, during the trial, they showed these pictures of everyone walking around with guns and guns were pointed upwards and The way they described it in the trial was this was a sloppy set. But, I mean, it was more than a sloppy set. It was a set that was totally out of control. And I think what Hannah wanted to do, I think, I believe, if this was a form of sabotage or self-sabotage, I believe what you wanted to do was slow down the process, try to get control of the process,

try to get control of Alec Baldwin so that she can feel safe again and maybe she could exert some control. And she couldn't say it. So she's self-sabotished. She couldn't say it. She couldn't say it. She was dealing, again, she's dealing with a veteran actor. He's also the producer. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day.

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support. Other companies might sell just credit monitoring, or just a VPN. And ORA gives you all of it together at the same price competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today at ORA.com slash remove. Protect yourself now at aura.com slash remove. He doesn't have experience talking to her father about her emotions. I think that, you know, that there was a gun expert, Brian Carpenter, who testified and he said, he basically said, as the lead armorer, I don't care who you're dealing with.

I don't care how famous they are. it's your job to set the tone and to make the set safe. But she can't do that. Which is like the one thing that she needed training in. Isn't that ironic? Her step that says she needed no more training, but that was the one thing that she lacked, the one thing you need training in.

Well, actually, so you bring up a good issue. So if you ask me what really happened here, I would say in addition to everything I just expressed, I would say essentially you hired. So the issue is not Hannah Gutier's Reeds' knowledge and skill set. The issue is Hannah Gutier's reads lack of experience, her lack of emotional intelligence, and most importantly, her lack of leadership qualities, leadership abilities. I think that if Hannah, the problem here is not that Thel Reed didn't train his daughter well enough.

The problem is he didn't train his daughter well. enough in emotional intelligence, meaning she didn't have the assertiveness and the emotional wherewithal to stand up to a famous actor or to people on this set and to really get control of this environment. That's the tragedy here is, I mean, the bottom line is she's in over her head. I don't think she ever should have been hired. I think that people may have wanted to cut some cost because she's probably less experienced and probably cheaper as a result. People thought she probably had the knowledge and skills because of her father who trained her. But it turns out like in so many organizations, and I'm sure most of our gens have experienced this,

that it's not about knowledge and skills. It's about relationships and leadership qualities and emotional intelligence and the ability to communicate with other human beings in a compassionate, empathic way. and to, it's okay for her to set boundaries and it's okay for her to set limits. But I think she struggles with that. So I think what you're seeing here is a movie set because of Hannah's, potentially Hannah's psychological issues and because of her father and his expectations and because maybe some of this propensity to self-sabotage,

I think this is how you get, this is how you increase the risk. You have a set, a movie set that's completely out of control. It's got live rounds on it. And unfortunately, that's how you get to this tragedy. You are so right. Even if you put all of that aside, there's still an element of absolute chance and randomness here in the sense that the odds of her putting a live round in that chamber were so remote. the odds of that gun discharging and hitting two people, I think that they had to be so remote.

I think what she thought, and again, I'm not saying this is conscious, but I think what she thought is if a live round goes off, that the production will be halted, she can get control of the set, she can exert control, and she can make it work.

Right? But so many random elements had to come together to make this happen. And I think that that's where this really is. as a tragedy. And that's where I think this, where assigning blame becomes really, really difficult. Yeah, I agree. I think when it comes to assigning blame,

I think we're all very, very curious about Alec Baldwin, but you don't need to go there yet. What else do you have to say before that? But we are going to talk about Alec. I do have questions about Alec. We've got another Alec

head into trial, everybody. This time with the right spelling. my opinion. But before we go there, I would just want to share our sponsor. So what else do you want to say? Just a final thought too on this issue of sabotage that maybe I didn't really stress this, but I think another important element is that in some sense, I think she probably felt like my guess is her dad got her this position. And in that sense, there's some element of nepotism, right, that she probably feels like she didn't earn this. She probably feels like she didn't deserve this job. And some sense, before she even walks on the set, she's already questioning her ability

and she's questioning whether she's going to fail. And so I think so much of this is a setup for failure, but that doesn't help. It doesn't help that she didn't really earn this. She didn't really work for, I mean, she has knowledge, but the job was given to her because of her dad, let's face it. So there's, you've got this element of nepotism kind of lingering in the background too. Yeah. That didn't help. No, welcome to Hollywood too, where you get your kid's jobs. Yeah.

No one else can make it. But once you're in, I mean, and that's kind of a problem too. Like once you're in, you're in. And so you help those around you and those that are not in the scene. Good luck getting in it. Right. Hollywood's one of the toughest nuts to crack. Of course, with broadcasting, I'll say it's really hard.

hard to get in, but what you're in, you try to leave and you can't. They just keep you. And I guess it's not nepotism exists. It's not just Hollywood. Nepotism exists in politics. It exists everywhere. So maybe that's just part of life. But it doesn't help Hannah's self-esteem to know that she's receiving a job because of her father, right? It doesn't, it's not boosting her already flagging self-esteem when she walks on that movie set. Yeah. It's such a tragedy as I would say no one wins.

A lot of people have been writing saying that they, you know, some of them feel no empathy for Hannah. This is all her fault. Other people saying that they were surprised. They felt empathy for her during the trial. I have questions about the way she acted when her verdict was read. She was, she was emotionless. Like she, I wouldn't even call it Chad Davel.

Chad Davel doesn't blink and seems to not have a soul as he sits there. You think he's a wax figure? that wasn't what I felt with Hannah as the verdict was being read. And John and I watched the verdict together. We were on the hidden true crime trial channel together watching the verdict come down with all of you. And she did not flinch. She was, I didn't see any emotions with her, but I was curious what your thoughts were about that. I did ask you.

I said, what do you think? What's going on? And do you remember what you told me or your thoughts are on that? I kind of mentioned that I think. she might have had some substance abuse problems before this movie, obviously. And that's consistent with someone who is self-medicating because they can't deal with emotions. Her lack of affect, her lack of emotions would be very consistent with someone who's self-medicating through drugs. And someone that maybe isn't allowed to fill emotions or has been forcing to not fill them.

My guess is she grew up in a home where she wasn't really, as I said earlier, the issue is not necessarily living up to an unrealistic ideal. the issue is not being able to process it, not being able to communicate about it. And so I think going into this trial, there was this huge expectation that she was going to get acquitted. And her dad said, her dad, as I mentioned, the interview from 2021, her dad basically said, gee, I'm not worried, she's going to get acquitted. She didn't do anything wrong. Right?

There's this, again, there's this kind of arrogance behind this. There's this lack of humility. And, you know, that in 2021, he's telling you that, outcome without knowing the evidence. This is someone who's not open to different ideas and feelings and right perspectives. And I don't know, Thel, maybe I'm wrong about that, but just based on that interview, and I understand he's trying to advocate for his daughter, but just based on that interview, you know, there's certainly some degree of close-mindedness and hubris going on there.

Yeah, and when the verdict was read, he showed more emotion than she did, but you had to wonder why. Was it because of his ego or was it for his daughter? You know, I questioned that. I think he believed she was going to get acquitted. I think they all did. So I, to me, it kind of. So it was shock, baby? It was shock and surprise.

To me, it looked like shock. I think she was numb. I think she just, she couldn't believe it. I think she thought she would get acquitted. She was numb. She was numb. and he was shocked. That was a hard verdict to watch for me.

And again, I'm not saying that she, you know, I actually thought the verdict was fair and right and just. So, but it is just really, it's hard to watch.

And she's young and knowing that she's had these problems, you wonder what time and pine bars is going to do to her. I mean, there's so many things. It's just, again,

the whole thing is just sad. Yeah. We have a sponsor for tonight, Dream Beam, our favorite. I'm going to play a quick, thing from our sponsor, but don't go away everyone because I have so many

questions about Alec Baldwin. Someone even brought up that voicemail. Yes, I know exactly what you guys referring to, the voicemail where he was getting mad at his daughter years ago. We saw a lot of damning evidence against him at trial. I didn't really understand

why he might be held accountable until this trial. I think this trial's going to set a precedent for a lot of the things at his trial, and his guilt, John has a lot of opinions on Alec Baldwin. And so stay with us. We'll be right back.

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Anyway, back to True Crime. Back to True Crime. An Alec Baldwin. It's not every day we're going to combine those two subjects. Yes, we love Dream, and we are so grateful to have a wonderful sponsor that we love. So you can find out more about Dream in the description of this video. Thank you to our wonderful sponsor.

Alec Baldwin. Alec Baldwin. He has been charged and he will be going to trial later this year, which we will be watching intently. Again, you can also hit subscribe on our trial channel. That's also in the description of this video because

we are definitely going to be glued to our television when Alec Baldwin is on trial for this shooting. You're not going to head out to New Mexico for that? I think I maybe you will. You're right. I'll be glued to the in the courtroom. You'll be glued to the courtroom. Did my husband just say he's sending

me away? Are you deploying me? Yeah, I don't know. I guess I'm going to New Mexico. My husband said jump by jump. Okay. Into an airplane. We're not that efficient. We're not that efficient where that would be planned so far out. I think most of the time it's just kind of day by day for us. But I think it could be a reasonable idea. We've covered this half of it. Let's finish it. But yeah, we'll talk about it. So first Chad Daybell. And then on to Alec Baldwin. And then when is when is Tupac?

Tupac's in Vegas. When is his trial? Or July. I thought it was June. I planned to be there too. Yeah. Was it June? Tupac and June. John's helping keep track. Tupac in June. And then Alec Baldwin and July. I think my thoughts on Alec Baldwin are I know there's issues around pulling the trigger and all that, but he pulled the trigger.

Okay. In my opinion. Okay, go ahead. Well, yeah. But I think that you'd have to think that this verdict benefits him. Hannah's verdict. Right. Hannah's guilty verdict has to help him in the sense that it demonstrates that a jury believed that she was culpable, that she had control of the gun.

She had control of, you know, loading the bullets in the chamber. And as I said earlier, I think my guess is that every actor you probably talk to that's done Westerns or had guns around a set, they probably just, anticipate that there's going to be blanks or dummy rounds in the gun. I can't imagine if an actor even had the suspicion that there was a live round in a gun, it would change everything on a movie set. So certainly I don't think there was any intent. I think he definitely had to believe an act as if there were dummy rounds in that gun. So in that sense, I think he must have been absolutely stunned when the gun discharged and people were.

injured and killed. But I don't think, I think the central issue, it's probably going to go back to the trigger. I think everyone was stunned. I think everyone was stunned, but it still doesn't dismiss. It doesn't mean, again, involuntary manslaughter is killing that's not intentional. And so he clearly didn't have intent unless there's something really nefarious going on on that movie set. But they spent a lot of time, by the way, in the first interview with Hannah, for those who haven't seen the entire interview. They didn't play all of it, obviously, but they spent a lot of time asking her if anyone would have motive to harm Alina. So that was interesting. You know, they were pursuing that path that maybe, maybe there was something really nefarious going on

on that movie set. But, well, we did see some scenes that were very concerning with, Alec, or are you going to get back, you're going to get to that. I'll just lean back here and let you. But I mean, the problem with those scenes is, that he believes that the gun isn't, you know, the gun isn't harmful. I mean, you see an actor who is swinging around guns recklessly. And I mean, there's a lot of things he's not doing right, for sure. Absolutely. You see an actor who's trying to control the movie set, in some ways, maybe trying to do the armorer's job, right?

Let's explain that he wasn't just the actor in a film. He was the producer, and he co-wrote. the film. That's important to add to this. He wasn't just someone that was cast for this film. He had a lot of responsibility when it came to this, this film and the movie set. Go ahead. So my guess is the prosecution is going to argue that because he pulled the trigger that I don't know how this works in Hollywood, but I think you can pull the trigger of a gun with the expectation that there's a dummy round or a blank in it, and that's not going to create any harm. I think that's where it gets confusing.

The question is, is it sufficient for Alec Baldwin to have pulled the trigger on that gun without knowing that he would harm other people? Is that sufficient to convict him? I don't know. That's the question. What about the way he ran the film? I mean, so many people had left and walked off because of safety issues. Isn't it his job to create a safer environment?

environment as producer. And this is what you and I have talked about behind the scene, but I'm bringing up. I'm outing you is he's Alec Baldwin. Yeah. Right. And if he says jump, jump. Yeah.

I mean, there's no doubt it was a stressful set. It seems to have been a chaotic stressful set that the camera crew, here's a little tidbit that Hannah says that the entire camera crew quit the day before the shooting. So he had to deal with that issue. Throw in the dynamic of Hannah being in her early 20s and Alec Baldwin being a famous, much older male who's demanding that we saw on the trial

and saying we need to load these faster. We need to do this, you know, quicker. Go, go, go. He's not saying let's slow down and be safer. He's saying, go now. And you have this power difference, this age difference. True, but ultimately, you know, as the gun expert said, ultimately the armorer is hired to ensure the safety of the crew and the numbers of the movie. And even if you have a famous act, I mean, don't get me wrong, it's complicated.

Part of the issue here clearly is that Hannah doesn't have the assertiveness or the leadership capabilities to stand up to someone like Alec Baldwin. But do you blame him? Yes. But do you blame him for that? I don't know. He hired her. He's paying her to, yeah, I don't know. Well, you know, we convict people and give them harsher sentencing in the United States

when they're in a position of power for many crimes. Catherine states that she feels AB, Alec Baldwin had agreed a responsibility than Hannah. She was a little girl and she was being used as a party. And to clarify, she wasn't a little girl, but she was a young woman. And she was 24. 27 right now. 27 right now. And that's something.

When someone is in a position of power, we hold them to a higher degree of responsibility in this country. And our justice system does that. I'm just, I'm throwing some points out. No, I don't disagree with your points. I think that I get that. And I mean,

you could even go so far as to argue that he hired her because he could push her around. Not only was she cheaper, but he could. He could push her around. the set. Let's be honest. Buying cannabis shouldn't be complicated, sketchy, or low quality. That's why I want to tell you about mood.com. That's M-O-O-O-D.com. Mood ships federally legal cannabis straight to your door. No medical card, no hassle. And here's the kicker. The quality

is better than anything you'll find at your local dispensary. Yeah, I said it. Whether you're into edibles, concentrates, flour, or just looking to explore, you'll find it all at mood. And it's just the variety that makes them stand out. Every product is sourced from small American-owned family farms that care deeply about what they grow. It's cannabis you can trust, delivered discreetly, and ready to elevate your mood. And because you're a listener, you get 20% off your first order. Just head to mood.com. That's M-O-O-D.com to get started. I think he could do what he wanted, but ultimately, though, for me at least, it still goes back to that first question that the prosecution was asking, and that is, how did those live rounds get on that set?

Because Hannah herself says in her police interview, no movie has live rounds on it. But this movie set did. It had seven live rounds. How did they get there? If you rule out the company that was supplying the ammunition, I guess one of the other cast members could have brought it on or one of the crew. I don't, but, but Hannah's acknowledging she's bringing ammunition from other movies onto the set. I think that's the question you have to answer though, because no matter how sloppy Alec Baldwin is and no matter how much he's pointing guns around recklessly, he still doesn't have the expectation that his gun is going to have a live round that's going to kill someone. Yeah, I want to agree with you, except that he lied about pulling the trigger. Well, I say lied. I need to be journalistic. I assume, I speculate he lied.

Maybe he didn't know he did. Well, I think, I don't think what do you mean about the trigger? I don't think he thought through the implications of what he was saying. And I think there was probably, when he said that, there was probably a lot of guilt. He had the gun that killed someone. I don't think that was something he ever would have anticipated. What about the responsibility of hiring Hannah? Where is that responsibility like?

24-year-old, inexperienced, armor on a set where he's been in any films with guns. And he's got to know that people are going to listen to him and respect him. I think he demands that. Again, the thing I mentioned earlier, the voicemails to his daughter years ago. We'll never forget when those were released. Right. The last comment here just quickly.

But right, to me, it's still, I don't know. I don't know how they're going to argue that case with him. But I think if I was his defense attorney, I would, you got, it has to go back to how did those live rounds get on set? Yeah, you're right. Because if I'm an actor, if I'm an actor and you tell me, hey, you know, guess what? There's, I don't know, 10 live rounds that are out there that could be put in your guns. I'm never going to fire that gun until you shut down production and figure out a way to

categorize all the ammunition and separate live rounds from dummy rounds or what blanks. I can't imagine any actor would still proceed. If they believe there was a live round anywhere, they wouldn't, they certainly wouldn't engage in it. I would guess they wouldn't engage in a shooting scene. Yeah. So in other words, you know, people, I've seen comments and it's true, people are saying he's a known bully. He can be aggressive. He called his daughter a little pig in a voicemail years ago.

She has since, I'll point out forgiven him and said it's fine and they're close. But when you hear it, it's a tough one. But despite all those things, when it comes to what the jury will think or what his defense attorney, will say the live rounds on set are going to be perhaps maybe the only thing that could convict him or could what's the prosecution going to argue though? Maybe that's the question, not what the defense, but what's the prosecution going to argue? I think the prosecution is going to say he had the gun, he pulled the trigger, and even though it wasn't intentional and even though he didn't know there was a live round in it, he should be

held responsible for his behavior. Even if he didn't know, he should be held responsible because he did pull the trigger. I think maybe that's their argument. I don't know. But I think it certainly helps him. Reckless note. It certainly helps him with this conviction because it does point more blame at Hannah for sure. Yeah. I like that, Michelle, as in like an argument for the prosecution. And why was Hannah hired? Because she was inexpensive. Yeah. She was inexperienced. I think the prosecution, that's, he wasn't just an actor that pulled the trigger. He was responsible of so much going on. on that set. And he was in a position of power. But should he have known, I mean, I'll grant you all that. Should he have known that there were live rounds on the set? I'm sure that even if he,

if he learned that, he would have never picked up a gun. He never would have picked up a gun. He would have shut down that set in a heartbeat to get control of it. You know, the Brian Carpenter, who was the gun expert, he basically said the same thing. He said, I understand that there were some big personalities on this set. I understand it was total chaos. It was sloppy. It was a disaster. But he said ultimately, the armorer is the one responsible.

Right. For taking control of the ammunition, knowing if there's live ammunition, and if there is ensuring that all safety standards are met. So I don't know if that means disposing of live ammunition. I assume that if you had a live ammunition on a movie set, at the very least, you'd quarantine it or you would separate it. You would find a way that, you know, my guess is you'd probably would dispose of it.

But I don't really know how they do that. Yeah. And I agree with you too. I agree with you too. I just think it is an important conversation to have. And I think that goes back to this whole thing about everyone agreeing that this is an absolute preventable tragedy. So it goes back to who's to blame and who we want to blame.

Somebody just said Dave Halls was in charge of safety. That's true. But Dave Halls was convicted. Dave Hall's acknowledged that he didn't, he's already been convicted. He took a deal. He's already acknowledged that he was negligent in terms of checking the gun a final time before it was handed to Alec Baldwin. And thus, he did take a plea deal and didn't he just get probation? Because sorry if you were, I think that's the case.

I don't remember what he. Because he chose to took the plea deal. He pleaded guilty. Yeah. Yeah. It is just so sad. It brings up so many important issues to. to tackle and discuss and talk about.

But I think like this conversation John and I are having, there are no clear cut answers. And I think that's one reason with such an interesting case and trial to discuss. Six months on Dave Hall's got six months on supervised probation. That's right. Not that. There you go. So yeah, that's right.

Thank you. It wouldn't make sense to supervise them because what are the risks? I like what Diana saying here too. David took the high row. and Alec threw him under the bus trying to restore his own reputation. I know. I know,

but so we can really dislike how Alec has handled this, but that still doesn't mean he'll get a conviction. Yeah, I don't. I mean, obviously, I think the best defense for him is going to be to continue to blame Hannah,

especially since she's been convicted. And Dave. And Dave, right, Hannah and Dave and just, you know, point the finger. And if I put myself in his shoes, just to have a live round on him,

movie set is got to be startling. I don't know. I have empathy for him in the sense that if I were in his shoes and I shot that bullet, I would feel so bad. I would have so much guilt, right? I don't think I would respond the way he responded, but I would certainly, and I'd have a lot of anger over like, what the hell is a live round doing on my movie set? Yeah. That would be my first, I think my first question would be, how did that get here? You know, I don't know how long he's been he's been an actor for 40 years plus. I wonder, has he ever been on a movie set with a live round that's been discharged? I know they said that were that were accidental.

The guns were going off accidentally all over the place on this movie set, but not with live rounds. Yeah. Sleuth Mom. Thank you for being here tonight. Sleuth Mom does a lot of great work for missing children. Check out her channel if you have a chance. But Sleuth's mom just asked a question.

Do you think guilty or not guilty? at the end of the trial based of what we know at the moment. Now, I'm not clear of Sleuth mom is, is she asking Alec, I assume? Alec, or is she asking if I agree with the verdict? On Hannah. Since we're talking about Alec, I'm going to guess that she means Alec. You know, juries are tough. I don't know.

That's a tough one. As far as Hannah goes, I think the prosecution did a better job than the defense. I think the verdict was guilty because the prosecution was much more compelling. Julie, Dr. Matthias, if I say point this at Lauren, it's just dummy rounds. Would you check first? I think the job would never even be in that situation. That's the difference. Point what?

A gun or a pen? So this is my only weapon at home is a pen and it's loaded with ink, which is, I hope, harmless. But yeah, I mean, I wouldn't point a gun at someone, first of all, but I'm not an actor. I'm not on a movie set where I'm asked to point a gun for a living. So it's a, you know, it's a complicated question. I'm sure Alec Baldwin has been on a lot of movies with a lot of guns. And it was his job to use the gun on set.

The pen is mightier than the pistol. Yes, indeed. Well, it used to be. I don't know if it is these days, but it used to be. I agree with that. Yeah, yeah. So those saying it's very clear, I don't like Alec Baldwin. The irony is I actually really enjoy Alec Baldwin in films.

I do. I'll be honest, I attempted to get a hold of his. brother recently since his brother went to school with Long Island Beach Rex Ehrman. Right. We reached out to Billy. And I doubt he'll... We reached out to Billy Baldwin,

but he never got back to us. So maybe we should... I don't know why. Maybe we should reach out to Ale and see if he'll do an interview. Yeah, I doubt it. But I actually think he's a great actor. So I want to

hold people in, I do believe in holding people in power more responsible and find them accountable. And I have to point out the things we've heard about Alec and how he functions, you know, in his Hollywood world. Yeah. So I do kind of want to end with some thoughts about a book. It was written by actually an author that I took a class with him, took a fiction writing, class with him as an undergrad. The book is called The Sweet Hair After. It's written by Russell Banks. It was written in 1991. That's how I know the book because I actually, Russell Banks was a

professor of mine for a semester and he's a really excellent writer, nice guy. So the book is about a small town, I mean a very small town in Vermont and a bunch of children, all the same children take this bus to school every day. And it's a snowy day. There's ice on the road. The bus driver loses control of the bus. It careens off the highway, off the road, onto the ice. The bus sinks.

And a number of the children die. They drown in this accident. And after the accident, a lawyer played by Ian Holm. And there's a movie, by the way, based on the book in, I think the movies like 1990. Ian Holm plays the lawyer. A lawyer comes into town and tries to get some large settlements based on the accident. And I watched the movie again

just because I was interested in this idea of blame and culpability and involuntary manslaughter. And so the lawyer, his name is Mitchell Stevens, Mitchell Stevens says in the book and the movie, He says essentially, this is a quote, he says, quote, there's no such thing as an accident. Someone must pay. Someone must be blamed. He also says, Mitchell Stevens, the lawyer says, my job is to give voice to people's anger,

not to their grief. And so the movie raises all these questions about, so the bus driver says that it was ice, that the bus hits a patch of black ice and creamed off the road. But the lawyer is floating the ice. idea that the bus is defective, that the guardrail that the bus went through was too weak to hold the bus, that the county didn't do their job because the road was icy, so they didn't de-ice it, that maybe the bus driver was speeding, so maybe the bus driver should be held culpable. And one of the students who survives the accident actually says that a dog came out on the road

causing the driver who was speeding to swerve and go off the road. And the reason I bring this up is because I think there's parallels here in the sense that, you know, again, getting back to this idea of blame, you know, but for me, a lot of times blame is about loss and it's about pain. And it's a way that oftentimes I think we try to mend our losses or to kind of reverse or thwart our pain if we can. And the reality is that as tragic as it is, and I feel so badly, for her family, but, you know, Helena Hutchins, she's not going to be brought back. And so I think that part of the tragedy here is you're seeing all the different ways people react to irreverical loss and tragedy.

And I think there's this natural tendency for human beings to kind of, when they're injured in particular, to vent their anger and to find ways, find ways to seek justice. And oftentimes that's where the law comes in. That's where lawyers come in. And so in this story by Russell Banks, the sweetheart after, you know, the lawyer is actually quite destructive to this town. The lawyer makes everything worse.

There's a character in there who says, essentially, we all know this was an accident. Sometimes accidents just happen. Sometimes buses hit ice and they go off the road, right? And yet that doesn't really satisfy our sense of justice. And the tragedy here, I think, this notion that there can never be an accident that someone has to pay and someone has to be blamed. And because no matter what happens here, whether Hannah goes to prison for 18 months,

which seems somewhat likely, or whether Alec Baldwin goes to prison for 18 months, it's not going to bring Helena back. And I'm not saying, I'm not saying that they shouldn't do time. I just, I don't know. It's complicated. You know, as, people pointed out, Hannah was caught in a very difficult situation. She never should have been hired to work on Ross. Never should have been hired. She was in over her head. But here she is paying the price. And I'm not saying that she shouldn't. I don't have the answer. I'm just, I'm just saying that sometimes blame gets very complicated and sometimes figuring out the exact reasons why an accident happens can never be fully known. How did that live round get in that chamber,

at that time, right? Was it, it's a little bit like the bus going off the road. It would be really hard to argue that any of that was intentional. Yeah. And so, you know, the whole thing I think is a tragedy all around. And it's sad. And I feel so badly. I feel so badly for Helena.

That's why it's so sad. Hannah Hutchins family. But I also feel bad in a way. I feel bad for Hannah. You know, she's a 27-year-old who was doing the best she could. She got in over her head. none of it should have happened. And some of it was just random.

Seven live rounds on that set, hundreds of dummy rounds. One of them ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time, shot by an actor. He could have shot it at the ceiling. He could have shot it not in a person, right? So I don't know.

It's complicated and it's sad. And a part of my question here is when you have these types of tragedies, must it always be the case that someone has to pay? Must it always be the case that someone should be blamed? I don't know. Again, I don't know. I think this trial points out kind of the complexity of that issue

and maybe, you know, kind of satisfies our need for justice and closure. And if any of those things are ever possible, I don't think they are here. But if they are, maybe that's what this is about. I hope the other thing that this case is about, though, too, is to improve safety on future threats, to hold Hollywood and the industry accountable because they lost one of their owns and an incredible one because of reckless behavior

because of the thing that did not need to happen. And she paid the ultimate price, Plena Hudgens in her entire family and everyone that loved her, and the industry paid a price losing her. Yeah. And if there's anything that I hope comes out of this for justice, for Helena, it's that sweeping changes come over the Hollywood industry and that this will

never, ever happen again. But a lot of times those types of, and again, I'm not, a lot of times those types of changes happen through civil lawsuits and not necessarily criminal. Which is happening to? This is criminal, right. There are civil suits, but here there's criminal and civil. And again, did criminal charges make sense? here? I mean, obviously the state of New Mexico thought so, but it's complicated.

Yeah. You know what, though? I also think, though, that we don't see a lot of civil cases. I think the world needed to see this for sweeping change. It still doesn't mean we know what her sentence is or anything like that. I think it was important that they were, that the industry be held responsible by a lot of us. Yeah, I don't disagree. I mean, again, those live rounds, making it on the set are really troubling. Yeah. And someone else is pointing out, too, we could also blame gun loss. I mean, there's just so many things to blame.

I think that was kind of the book I referenced the sweetheart after. I think that was really one of the points is that you can assign blame in every way possible, but it's not really going to solve the problem. It's going to might make people feel better for a moment. But I agree this is different in the sense that there were. issues here about the movie business and the culture of movie sets, right, and the way business is done and accountability on movie sets. So, yeah, all of that, I believe, needs to change. Yeah. But you're right. It's just, it's just sad. Yeah. Very sad. All the way around. I mean,

for Hannah, you're looking at someone who I would imagine is never going to work in Hollywood again. I don't imagine that life is going to get much better for her after this. I think maybe that's the problem too is justice. We always hope for rehabilitation, really. In the end, the best situation for justice in our prison systems is that someone's improves and becomes a better person, but your fear is that's not necessarily going to happen in this case. Again, I don't know for sure, but I can't imagine that with this type of tragedy that she that she's going to get another job in Hollywood

in terms of like Hannah's self-esteem. I don't imagine that's going to improve either. But I don't know. You know, I mean, maybe she'll reevaluate everything and come out of this stronger. I hope that's the case, but it's possible that the opposite is true that she could fall into a deep depression

and things could get. I don't know. I don't know. You know, nobody wins here. Anything is possible. Maybe she'll get counseling in prison and maybe it'll be good for her to, get away from her family and her parents and re-evaluate her life. You never know.

Right. But we hope for the best. Thank you. Thank you, John, for sharing what you have. And for taking the lead, I am going to be taking a much needed vacation in a couple days, just for a few days, very brief, but needed. And so I just want to thank all of you for being with us. And during that time, you can go check out the trials being streamed at our hidden true

crime trials. Again, the descriptions in the video. You can check out our podcast. Many of you might be interested in revisiting our podcast on Spotify and Apple. We're posting many episodes over there, even revisiting some older ones, and as well as Patreon. Patreon.com slash into crime. We have Dr. John's book club, which maybe you can mention when the next one's going to be, John. It's just to you guys know what that entails. It entails you getting on a Zoom video with John where you can ask him questions, talk to him and have an incredible discussion for a couple of hours once a month. And then we also have bonus episodes on Patreon, episodes that you've never heard. I think we have over 100 bonus episodes now in our Patreon collection at patreon.com slash YouTube Crime.

Babe, when is the next book club? Next book club is going to be April 3rd. That's a Wednesday, 6 p.m. Pacific Time. I just posted the book the other day. It is going to be a book called Decoding Madness by Richard. Littieri. He is a well-known and quite knowledgeable forensic psychologist. And in the book, he talks about some of the cases he's dealt with. And he talks about the criminal mind. I think he has a very interesting take on the criminal mind. So that's the book we're reading. That'll be April 3rd,

24, 6 p.m. Pacific Time Decoding Madness. All right. Thank you, everyone. Have a wonderful night. And then just an incredible thank you, as always, to our amazing moderators that I never think enough because they don't want the thanks. But I can help myself. They're amazing. They're amazing. And thanks for jumping in and helping me today. Thanks, guys. Good night.

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