"THE GUN THAT KILLED HOLLYWOOD'S TRUST: Six Live Rounds, Three Misfires, and an Armorer Who Didn't Shake the Bullets"

0:03 Callaroga Shark Media. Good morning, I'm Read Carter, and welcome to Celebrity Trials. For the next two days, we're diving into a case that changed Hollywood forever, A case where a movie star pulled the trigger on what should have been a prop gun and killed a rising cinematographer. A case that exposed the dirty secret of low budget filmmaking, that safety is the first thing sacrificed when money gets tight. October twenty first, twenty twenty one, the Bonanza Creek Ranch in New Mexico, Alec Baldwin points a Cult forty five revolver at a camera and pulls the trigger. The gun fires.

0:45 Helena Hutchins bleeds out in a helicopter thirty minutes later. Today we're breaking down how six people in a church turned into one dead, one wounded, and an entire industry asking how the hell did a live bullet end up in a prop gun. Tomorrow will explore the legal circus that followed, including the shocking moment a judge throughout Baldwin's case because prosecutors hid bullets in the wrong evidence box. Spoiler alert. When you're prosecuting someone for hiding evidence, maybe don't hide evidence yourself. But first let's talk about the woman who should still be alive. The cinematographer Helena Hutchins forty two years old, born in Ukraine on a Soviet military base. Started as a journalist, moved to Los Angeles, graduated from the American Film Institute, shot over thirty films, Rising star. She had a husband, Matthew, a nine year old son, andros She was on the verge of breaking through.

1:51 Everyone who worked with her said the same thing. She had it that indefinable quality that separates the working professionals from the artists. She could make a six million dollar budget look like sixty million. Rust was supposed to be another step up the ladder, a western starring and produced by Alec Baldwin. Not a blockbuster, but a respectable project with a legitimate star, the kind of film that gets you noticed by the people who matter. Instead, it became the film that killed her. On October twenty first, twenty twenty one, Helena posted what would be her last Instagram photo. She's on a horse at Golden Hour the New Mexico Sun, painting everything amber and beautiful. The caption one of the perks of shooting a Western is you get to ride horses on your day off. Six hours later, she'd be dead.

2:45 The morning of October twenty first, twenty twenty one, call time six thirty am. Except they're already behind schedule, way behind. The camera crew six people who actually knew what they were doing had walked off the job that morning, packed up and left. Why because they hadn't been paid properly, because they were promised hotel rooms in Santa Fe, thirty miles away, and instead were being forced to drive an hour each way from Albuquerque. Because there had already been three accidental gun discharges on set, three in twelve days. Yeah, you heard that right. Baldwin's stunt double had accidentally fired two blanks when told the gun was cold. The prop master had shot herself in the foot with a blank.

3:31 This was not a safe set. This was a disaster waiting to happen. The producers scrambled to bring in a non union camera crew, scabs, if we're being honest, people desperate enough for the work that they'd cross a picket line of safety concerns. Meanwhile, the armorer, the person responsible for every weapon on set, was a twenty four year old named Hannah Gutierrez red. This was only her second film as head armorer. The first was The Old Way with Nicholas Cage, where crew members said she was careless with weapons. One crew member said she once handed a gun to an eleven year old actor without checking at first. Why would anyone hire an inexperienced armorer with a bad reputation money? She was cheap, and on a production where the camera crew was walking off over pay disputes, cheap was the only qualification that mattered. The church scene, one thirty pm. They're rehearsing in a church, not a real church, a movie church built decades ago for westerns. Baldwin is dressed in full costume, dirty coat, leather vest, old timey pants.

4:44 He's playing Harlan Rust, an outlaw trying to save his grandson from a death sentence. The scene they're rehearsing, rust sits in a pew, sees lawman approaching, draws his gun in a cross draw, pulling from the holster on his left hip with his right hand, and points it at the camera. They've just come back from lunch. Dave Halls, the assistant director goes outside to a cart where three guns are waiting. The armorer Gutierra's Reid had prepped them earlier, or so she said. Here's where everything goes wrong. Halls grabs one of the guns. He's supposed to check it. That's literally his job to verify the armorer's work. He later admitted he should have checked all six chambers. He checked three. Maybe he saw what he thought were three dummy rounds, bullets that look real but have no gunpowder, just a B B rattling around inside so you can hear their fake. He walks back into the church, cold gun.

5:42 He yells the two words that are supposed to mean this weapon is safe, the two words that everyone on set relies on to mean you won't die today. He hands the gun to Baldwin. The shot. Baldwin is sitting in the pew. Helena Hutchins is behind the camera with Joe Susa, the director. She's telling Baldwin where to aim. Right here, she says, pointing to her armpit area. She wants to see how the shot will look. Baldwin draws the gun. He's practicing the move draw cock point, draw cock point. According to Baldwin, he pulls the hammer back and releases it without pulling the trigger. The gun fires.

6:22 According to the FBI, that's physically impossible. Their testing showed the gun could not fire without the trigger being pulled. They literally broke the gun trying to make it fire without a trigger pull Either way, the gun fires. Joel Susa hears what sounded like a whip and then a loud pop. The bullet goes through Helena's chest, exits her back, and lodges in Susa's shoulder. Helena says, that was no good. That was no good at all. Then she collapses. The aftermath chaos, complete chaos. Script supervisor Mami Mitchell calls nine to one one. We've had two people accidentally shot on a movie set by a prop gun. We need help immediately, the nine to one to one operator. Was it loaded with a real bullet? Mitchell, I don't know. I can't tell you that someone's performing CPR on Helena. She's conscious but fading blood everywhere. They're in the middle of nowhere.

7:19 The Bonanza Creek ranch is an hour from Albuquerque, thirty minutes from Santa Fe. Baldwin is in shock. He keeps saying, what happened, what happened. He's covered in Helena's blood. The medics arrive. They load Helena into a helicopter. She's airlifted to University of New Mexico Hospital. At three point thirty seven PM, less than two hours after the shot. She's pronounced dead. Joel Souza survives. The bullet is removed from his shoulder. He's released from the hospital. The next day. Baldwin changes out of his costume and hands over his bloody clothes to the police. The gun is secured, the church becomes a crime scene. Back in a moment, Welcome back to celebrity trials. I'm Reed Carter, and we're examining the rust shooting that killed Helena Hutchins the gun. Let's talk about how a live bullet ended up in a prop gun. This is the million dollar question. Actually it's the one hundred and thirty seven thousand dollars question. That's what New Mexico OSHA fined the production for safety violations that led to an avoidable death. The prosecution's theory, Hannah Gutieras Reed brought live rounds onto the set, maybe by accident, maybe through negligence, but she brought them. She mixed them up with dummy rounds, she loaded them into guns she didn't check properly. She was sloppy, careless, overwhelmed, and in

8:53 way over her head. Gutiera's reed was juggling two jobs, armorer and props assistant. That's insane. The armorer's job is to maintain complete control over every weapon, every round of ammunition, every blank, every dummy. The props assistant handles everything else, coffee cups, newspapers, furniture. You can't do both. It's like asking the pilot to also be the flight attendant. But remember cheap. This production was cheap. They could hire one person for two jobs, or two people for two jobs. Guess which one costs less. The defense theory someone else brought the live rounds. Maybe it was sabotage. Maybe someone was using the guns for target practice after hours. That happened on other sets. The investigators never properly investigated. They rushed to judgment. They needed someone to blame, and the twenty four year old armorer was an easy target. Here's what we know for sure. Six live rounds were found on set six. One in the gun that killed Helena, five more, or in a box of ammunition in a gun belt just lying around. How do you not notice live rounds. They're heavier than blanks. They look different. Any competent armorer can tell the difference by sight, by weight, by sound. You shake a dummy round, it rattles. You shake a live round, it's solid. But Gutiera's read didn't shake them. She later admitted that she said she didn't need to shake every round. Every time she trusted her suppliers,

10:25 she trusted her process. Her process killed someone. Within hours of the shooting. Text messages start flying. Gutierra's read texts the prop master, I just want to go home. The prop master text back, don't talk to anyone about anything. Gutierra's read texts her mentor. I was so sure there were no live rounds on set that night. According to prosecutors, she does something incredibly stupid. She gives a small bag of cocaine to someone else, gets rid of it because nothing says I'm innocent, like ditching drugs after someone dies on your watch. Dave Halls, the assistant director who handed Baldwin the gun. He lawyers up immediately. Smart move. He'll eventually plead no contest to negligent use of a deadly weapon.

11:16 Six months of unsupervised probation, no jail time. The man who yelled cold gun when the gun was hot gets to walk Baldwin. He goes on ABC News with George Stephanopoulos, sits down for an hour long interview, says he didn't pull the trigger, says the gun just went off, says he's heartbroken. He also says something that will haunt him. I feel someone is responsible for what happened, and I can't say who that is. But it's not me, really, Alc, you pointed the gun, you pulled the trigger, or released the hammer, or whatever version you're selling today. You were also the producer who hired the inexperienced armorer, who pushed for faster and cheaper, who created the conditions where safety became optional. But it's not you. The victims. Matthew Hutchins lost his wife, Andros Hutchins lost his mother. He was nine.

12:14 He's thirteen now, four years without his mom, four years of birthdays, Christmases, school plays, soccer games, motherless. The film industry lost a rising talent. Female cinematographers are rare. Good ones are rarer. Great ones are unicorns. Helena was on her way to being great. We'll never see what she would have shot. What stories she would have told with light and shadow, What young filmmakers she would have mentored, What barriers she would have broken, All because someone couldn't be bothered to check if a gun was actually cold the culture. Here's what nobody wants to talk about. This was inevitable. Hollywood has been playing with real guns for a century. They use blanks, which are still dangerous. Brandon Lee died from a blank in nineteen ninety three filming The Crow. They use dummy rounds which look real but aren't, and sometimes, apparently they use real bullets. Why why does Hollywood need real guns at all? Because it looks cool, because audiences can tell the difference between a real gun and a fake one, because the weight of a real weapon changes how an actor moves, how they hold it, how they respect it. Except Alec Baldwin didn't respect it.

13:29 He pointed a real gun at a real person and pulled the trigger during a rehearsal, not during filming, during rehearsal, when the cameras weren't even rolling. The first rule of gun safety never point a gun at anything you don't intend to destroy. The second rule, treat every gun as if it's loaded. The third rule keep your finger off the trigger until you're ready to shoot. Baldwin violated all three and then claimed he wasn't responsible. Tomorrow will dive into the prosecutions. How the armorer got eighteen months in prison, How Baldwin's case fell apart when prosecutors hid evidence, How the judge said eight words that made Baldwin sob with relief.

14:14 Your motion to dismiss with prejudice is granted. But today remember this. Helena Hutchins died because of a series of choices. The choice to hire an inexperienced armorer, the choice to make her do two jobs, the choice to ignore previous misfires, the choice to rush through safety checks, the choice to point a gun at a human being, the choice to pull the trigger. Every one of those choices was made to save time or money, and they cost a woman her life. The movie was called Rust. It was about an outlaw trying to save his grandson. Instead, it became about an industry that killed a mother to save a few bucks. I'm read Carter, and this is celebrity trials.

15:00 Point a gun at anything you don't intend to destroy,