The Santa County Sheriff’s Office on Monday launched a massive investigation into the fatal shooting on the set of the movie “Rust.” The release adds significantly to the public record of events leading up to the October 21 death of cinematographer Helena Hutchins.
But it doesn’t answer one key question: Where did the live tour come from?
Movies often use real guns, but never real bullets. But in “Rust,” a live round made its way to the .45 Colt, which Alec Baldwin fired while preparing for a shooting inside a church on the Bonanza Creek farm. Investigators later found seven other suspected live rounds on the set, mixed between mock rounds.
diet. Alexandria Hancock was tasked with figuring out how they got there. On November 9, she interviewed 24-year-old filmmaker Hannah Gutierrez Reid, who came with her attorney. The interview was recorded on Hancock’s body camera.
“Why is there live ammunition on the set?” Hancock asked.
“I have no idea,” Gutierrez Reid said.
Rounds on the set were a mixture of calibers and manufacturers — BHA, S&B, Winchester and Starline Brass.
Hancock reviewed a series of crime scene photos, showing Gutierrez Reid where each of the suspected live ammunition was found. (They “suspect” they are alive because the crime lab has yet to confirm this.) One of them was in an ammo box with a bunch of dummy shots. Two people were sitting on a carriage. One of them was in Bandolier Baldwin. All of them – in addition to the tour that killed Hutchins – were Starline Brass.
But this did not make any sense. Starline Brass is the preferred choice for movie sets.
“This company does not produce live ammunition,” Hancock said.
Gutierrez surprised Reid.
“So… what the fuck is this?” She said, throwing both hands in the air. “This is madness.”
The Starline Brass live rounds had the same branding – two stars with a bow in between – as the dummy rounds it had in the actors’ arms. Her job was to tell the difference. The life of the crew depends on it.
“So like what do you say?” Gutierrez Reed said. “Somehow, that person who should not have been able to shoot, was able to shoot?”
Her lawyer jumped in, speculating that someone had turned a doll into a live tour.
“Oh my gosh,” Gutierrez Reid said, dropping her pen.
When I started to sink, I was visibly nervous. Her eyes widened, and she seemed to be overwhelmed with emotion.
“Take a deep breath,” Hancock said.
Although they were of the same brand, the live tours looked a little different than the dolls. The dummies had a gold-tone base, while the primer on the live rounds was silver. The dummy round may also vibrate when shaken – the BB is placed inside – and the live round will not.
When she carried Baldwin’s pistol, Gutierrez-Reed said she pulled four bullets out of her pocket without a primer. Two more pulled out of a box. She said she checked them all to make sure they were dolls.
But one of the rounds was live. He had a silver primer.
“That didn’t hold on to you when you loaded that gun?” Hancock asked. “The rest weren’t the same color?”
“No,” Gutierrez Reid said.
Gutierrez Reid admitted that she had only been working as a weapons manufacturer for a few months, and had no formal training. There is no formal certification process for film armorers.
She told the detective that she learned the trade from her father, veteran gunsmith Thiel Reed. But there was still a lot that you don’t know.
At the beginning of the interview, Hancock showed her the industry-wide safety handouts that are usually distributed to the crew whenever firearms are used on the set.
“I’ve definitely never seen anything like this,” she said, adding that she had actually never seen it before. “Maybe it got lost in the email.”
Hancock was puzzled by Gutierrez Reid’s mixing up of some different types of bullets. Gutierrez-Reed said she usually focuses on separating dolls that had primaries from those that didn’t. But she did not pay attention to the various manufacturers. She seemed unfamiliar with Starline Brass, and did not know – until the detective told her – that the company does not do live tours.
When asked what she thought happened, Gutierrez-Reed said, “At this point it kind of looks like it got mixed up somehow.”
In January, Gutierrez Reid sued Seth Kinney, who supplied most of the guns and ammunition used in “Rust,” alleging that he negligently mixed live ammunition and dummies, leading to the tragedy.
Kenny denied that live shots came from him, saying that he performs rattle tests on every round before charging them. But in a phone call with Hancock on October 29, he said he believed he knew where the live ammunition came from. He didn’t want to name the guy, preferring to call him “that other guy.” But he was later identified as Joe Swanson, who runs Motion Picture Blanks, a supplier of blank tours to the film industry.
Kenny said that two years earlier, Swanson had made some “reloaded” rounds — that is, handcrafted live rounds — using Starline Brass components. When he heard that the fatal bullet came from the cover of Starline Brass, Kenny was sure it must have come from Swanson.
But how, Hancock wondered, would they have transitioned from Swanson to a dummy ammo pack — two years later — on the set of Rust?
She said, “Obviously the question is, ‘Where did these come from?'” “
Kenny said it would be hard to know exactly.
“I mixed things up,” he said. “That’s my thinking. You mixed things straight up, and you didn’t do what you were supposed to do. You have to assume that everything comes alive. All the Western Belts coming in there will survive. Because you can’t trust anyone.”
On November 17 – about a week after the interview with Gutierrez Reid – Hancock spoke to her father. Thiel Reed, 78, thought he could help connect the dots. Last August, Reed and Kenny traveled to Texas to work on “1883,” the first in Yellowstone, the hit Western series on Paramount.
Reed brought a pack of ammo along with some reloaded rounds, which he got from Swanson. Plan to use the rounds for live firearms training with actors. Reed said the use of live ammunition helped the actors get a feel for the gun being fired, so they knew how to bounce during the scene.
After production ended, he said, Kenny ended up with a pack of ammunition and about 200-300 rounds reloaded. Red said he wanted it back. When he came to Albuquerque, three days after shooting “Rust,” he asked Kenny to return the reloaded rounds. Kenny refused. “He asked me to cross it off,” Reid said.
“Do you think Seth still has this?” Hancock asked.
“I doubt the way he talks,” Reid replied.
Two weeks later, police searched Kenny’s company, PDQ Arm and Prop, and confiscated “miscellaneous” .45 caliber ammunition and a box of ammunition. According to Gutierrez Reed’s lawsuit, the ammunition could have been Reed’s, but the reloaded rounds were missing. Kenny has yet to respond to the lawsuit.
If police speak with Swanson, it will not be reflected in the documents released on Monday.
He’s not talking to anyone,” said a woman who answered the phone in his office on Wednesday.
The captured rounds on the “Rust” group were sent to the FBI’s laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, for ballistics analysis. The sheriff’s office is also awaiting DNA and fingerprint analysis, which may be able to clarify who touched the live rounds. It is not clear how long it will take to obtain these results – or whether the exact chain of events will be established with certainty.
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