29\. The Twilight Zone Deaths - Part Two
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Hello everyone and welcome back to the second half of our two-part episode covering the tragic deaths that occurred on the set of Twilight Zone the movie in 1982. Now if you don't know you're listening to the podcast Binge and on here we do little mini series with different themes. If you haven't listened to part one you need to go back and listen to that before you get into this episode.

So the deaths on the set of The Twilight Zone claimed the lives of actor Vic Morrow and two young children, Micah Din Lee and Renee Shin-Yi Chen, who were working illegally in violation of labor laws and being paid under the table.

The man in the director's chair was John Landis, who seemed either oblivious to, indifferent to, or in denial of the very real dangers he was exposing his cast and crew members to. We're picking up our story right in the hours right after the incident, which occurred at 2.30 in the morning on July 23rd, 1982.

Ed Mori, the Warner Brothers executive in charge of the Twilight Zone, the movie production, got the phone call at three in the morning. Vic Morrow and two child actors were dead in a helicopter accident that occurred on set at Indian Dunes.

Maury slammed down the phone and called the studio heads right away. These were among the first people to learn about what they all instantly recognized would become front page across the country news by morning. And a huge problem for Warners this was. Everyone was suddenly mobilizing to cover their butts, including John Landis, who phoned his lawyer before the sun even came up.

Landis's lawyer was a guy named Joel Bear, and he was an entertainment attorney whose expertise was in negotiating deals. So he was a business guy, and he recognized that Landis would need to talk to litigation attorneys and criminal defense attorneys in the event criminal charges were filed against him.

So Bear got moving right away. He secured all the files and documentation related to the Twilight Zone production from Landis' office. And then he phoned numerous attorneys, including a criminal lawyer named Harland Braun. Now, criminal lawyer Harland Braun agreed that now was a good time to get ahead of any potential criminal investigation and waste no time in shaping a defense.

So he immediately got to work to start crafting potential narratives that would protect his client.

Meanwhile, everyone close to the production at the executive level knew what a disaster this could potentially be for the studio. Because it was two child actors being worked illegally after dark without permits, dead in an on-set accident. This could spell the end of Warner Brothers. If the studio lost its license to work with child actors, it would have to move out of California entirely.

Early that morning, senior Warner's VP Mark Rosenberg called a meeting with president of production Bob Shapiro and a handful of others. There was this collective feeling, probably very similar to what John Landis was feeling immediately after the accident, this feeling of wishing there was some way to press rewind, to undo what had irrevocably happened.

But life doesn't come equipped with a rewind button or a backspace key. So the personnel at Warner Brothers that morning made a sober decision to distance themselves from the situation. After all, it was an independent production, technically.

It was Landis' set, and he and George Fulsey Jr. seemingly tried to keep everyone outside the set in the dark about what was going on about the child actors. In the meantime, Warner suspended production of Twilight Zone the movie indefinitely. Next week's start date for the Joe Dante segment was put on hold until further notice.

Everyone was putting all of their energy into crafting their statements and responses to the press, which would inevitably swarm their gates as soon as word spread.

The vice president of publicity, Rob Friedman, prepared a statement pledging that Warners would cooperate with every agency investigating the accident. But this was an empty promise. Warners ended up totally stonewalling the National Transportation Safety Board and other agencies, as well as production personnel who did cooperate with the investigations.

For example, the on-set photographer, Morgan Renard, had surrendered all of his photos of the crash to Warner Brothers with the expectation that they'd be passed along to investigators. But guess what? Those photos disappeared, supposedly having been misplaced or lost. Vic Morrow's funeral took place on Sunday, July 25th, two days after the accident.

John Landis and associate producer George Fulsey Jr. somehow thought it would be a good idea to show up at not just Morrow's funeral, but also the funerals for Micah and Renee.

Dan Allingham, the unit production manager, had called up the Twilight Zone crew and insisted they also attend to put up a united front, you know, even though the crew was far from united. Some who had been on set that evening quietly fumed, believing that John Landis was responsible for the three deaths and had no business showing up to the funerals. But Landis and Fulci weren't content just to show up.

They also decided to each deliver eulogies at Vic Morrow's funeral. Some of Morrow's friends were appalled to learn about this. It was a private closed service memorial, an intimate affair with about 150 close friends and family members of Vic Morrow. Landis and Folsey were neither close friends nor family members. They had known Morrow for all of a month before his death.

Fulci's eulogy was sterile and rambling. He talked about how he was quote, "bitterly disappointed that Mara was not a registered stock or commodities broker because he knew the market inside and out," and went on to talk about how they had compared notes on their holdings, and then he awkwardly segued from this into Vic's gifts as an actor.

And then, Fulci wedged in some subtle self-patting on the back when he talked about how Mauro, quote, "often told me how happy he was to be playing this part in our movie." He told mourners that Mauro felt that it was one of the best parts he had ever played. "If there is one consolation in this terrible situation," Fulci said, "it's that the film is finished. There's nothing more to be shot to make the film work.

"Thank God, because his performance must not be lost. It's Vic's last gift to us." This speech didn't sit well with a lot of those in attendance. And then John Landis' eulogy was even more off-putting. Disheveled in appearance with long, uncombed hair, Landis took the podium and, in a cracking voice seemingly fraught with emotion, he began speaking:

I met Vic for the first time in my office one month ago. Having always admired his acting, I was delighted to learn that Vic's performances were the result of a keen intelligence and deep emotions. Just before the last take, Vic took me aside to thank me for this opportunity. He knew how wonderful his performance was and wanted me to know how happy he was with this work.

At this point, Landis then paused to fart. It's literally true. You can see it. We'll put it in the YouTube video and maybe even put the audio in. He did at least say excuse me before continuing this self-serving and totally inappropriate eulogy. John Landis, who directed Vic Morrow in this last film, gave a brief emotional eulogy. Tragedy strikes in a instant, but smoke isn't worth it.

"Tragedy strikes in an instant," he went on to say, "but film is immortal. Perhaps we can take some solace in the knowledge that through his work in stage, television, and film, Vic lives forever." As he returned to his seat, tensions among the mourners were high. Landis was accompanied at the funeral by his wife, Deborah Nadoleman, who had also been the Twilight Zone movie's costume designer and had fitted Mara with the clothing in which he died.

People seated around Landis and his wife at the memorial heard her at one point chuckling at some snarky remark Landis had whispered to her. Their disrespect at the funeral did not go unnoticed. And then the funerals for Renee and Micah were both on Tuesday, July 27th.

Renee's funeral was in Glendale. Media personnel and journalists swarmed the area so aggressively that one of Renee's relatives was almost knocked into the open grave. Landis, still unkempt, dodging reporters and TV cameramen, showed up to the funerals with his wife and his entourage, seemingly so distraught that his wife and peers had to prop him up while he walked.

Donna Schumann, a production secretary on the film, publicly confronted Landis and his entourage while she gave an impromptu press conference right outside the chapel, while inside, Renee Chen's parents said goodbye to their only child. Afterward, Landis and his Hollywood entourage made their way over to attend Micah's funeral.

Meanwhile, multiple investigations were underway by the National Transportation Safety Board, the California State Department of Labor Standards, the California Occupational Health and Safety Commission, and the Federal Aviation Administration.

Safety engineers with the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration talked to dozens of eyewitnesses over the course of the week following the accident, taking statements from each. Helicopter pilot Dorsey Wingo gave a statement claiming that no detailed explanation was given to the pilot as to the locations of the firebombs.

According to first assistant director Ellie Cohn, he saw no diagrams of the locations for the firebombs and claimed that none of the firemen, stunt coordinators, or special effects men would have stopped the scene even if they thought it was unsafe. Quote, "...there is a pressure on these persons to get the job done, regardless of safety, especially in times of low employment in the movie industry."

Cameraman Steve Leidecker said in his statement, "It appeared the pilot was upset after the 11:30 p.m. shot and had lost his usual cool and thoroughness. The director would not explain what was happening in the scene when asked unless it was pried out of him. John Landis intimidated people and treated them like toys."

Multiple witnesses were also in agreement that there was little advanced knowledge of what their roles would be or what would be needed. It was just very disorganized. Five different cameras had been rolling at the time of the accident. So the deaths of Vic Morrow, Micah, and Renee were caught on 35 millimeter motion picture film from multiple angles. And I will say, I watched the footage and I

Nothing can prepare you for what it's like to know the background of this story. Know that there were multiple people who ignored safety measures, that the entire crew was almost uncomfortable with what was happening, and then watch a helicopter slice through a grown man running with two children. Dorsey Wingo, the helicopter's pilot, when it crashed, said he never would have accepted the gig if he'd known how dangerous the set was going to be.

Wingo was asked to view the footage to help the investigators gain a better understanding of what went down, but he refused. He couldn't bring himself to see two people being beheaded and another one crushed to death. But then he thought about it and changed his mind, agreeing to sit down with investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board and view the footage.

Colleen Logan, with the California State Department of Labor Standards, believed felony charges should be brought against Landis and what they saw as his co-conspirators. At the very least, under the labor code, working the children without the required onset certified teacher social worker and working them at two in the morning was a misdemeanor. This was the kind of violation that was practically unheard of with major studios like Warner Brothers.

The remains of the helicopter were taken possession of by the National Transportation Safety Board, which eventually viewed the footage of the accident.

Watching the footage, it was clear that the explosions were way too close to the helicopter. As the scene began, the helicopter was hovering over the village set and appeared to be almost totally engulfed by the fireballs surrounding it, which reached heights of 30 feet above the village, higher than the 24 feet above ground where the helicopter hovered.

At 24 feet, the helicopter had been flying significantly lower than it had been during the earlier rehearsal. If you remember, Landis was yelling, lower, lower.

The chopper then began to turn and a fourth explosion went off, narrowly missing an onboard cameraman, but engulfing the tail in a fireball that reached a height of 100 feet. It was so hot that it peeled off a piece of skin off the chopper's tail rudder, and then a piece of debris knocked the aircraft out of control. The tail rotor shattered and flew off.

The chopper lurched into a wild circle, rotated to the right, and came crashing down toward the river. Mauro was in the river at that moment, carrying the two children northward toward the cameras, with floodlights trained on all three of them, when he suddenly stumbled, losing his grip on Renee, trying to grab her and keep her above water.

Because of this, he was unable to maneuver out of the way of the helicopter blades as the aircraft came down sideways with its rotor still spinning. Two of the five cameras captured the accident in visible detail. All of the action unfolded without sound because the audio that had been recorded on set had gone mysteriously missing, which made it impossible to corroborate eyewitnesses' claims of who said what on set that night.

though at least six witnesses were in agreement that Landis had given the directive for the helicopter to fly lower. The National Transportation Safety Board had samples of materials from the crash site and parts of the helicopter. They sent it to a forensic laboratory for examination under an electron microscope. Microprobe analysis was then done to determine if debris from the explosion could be found in the damaged tail rotor section of the helicopter. They're basically just...

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The results of this analysis were then handed over to the National Transportation Safety Board, and based on the report, it was determined that the broken rotor blade of the chopper contained foreign material whose composition was identical to that of the fire fuel painted onto the huts on the village set to make them more flammable.

A professor of engineering at UCLA analyzed the lab's report and concluded that a piece of debris from one of the huts sent up into the air by the explosion had struck the helicopter's tail rotor and damaged the helicopter, causing the crash. And in the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration's report on the accident, they cited 36 violations.

And the named violators were John Landis and his production company, Western Helicopters, Warner Brothers, and Burbank Studios. The total amount of the fines that were levied was over $62,000. In September of 1982, the chief of Cal OSHA testified before a California Legislature Committee. And the result was that safety protocols in the entertainment industry underwent a major overhaul.

And then in December, Cal OSHA closed its investigation, handing over its materials to the Los Angeles County District Attorney, recommending criminal prosecution for either violations of the California Labor Code, manslaughter, or both.

The parents of Renee Chen filed a $200 million wrongful death suit against Warner Brothers, John Landis, and others. Who, by the way, never paid the families their $500 a piece for the second night of filming. Yeah.

And the daughters of Vic Morrow, Carrie and Jennifer, filed a wrongful death suit against Warner Brothers, and in their suit, they alleged that alcohol and drugs may have played a role in the crash because of some rumors that had been going around and because three empty beer cans were found in the crashed helicopter after the accident.

Meanwhile, Warner Bros. eventually made the decision to complete Twilight Zone, the movie. Joe Dante, Steven Spielberg, and George Miller filmed their respective segments, though everyone working on the film at this point felt a degree of uneasiness. By all accounts, Spielberg's heart was no longer in the project.

In fact, he scrapped the initial storyline he was going to produce and instead chose a schmaltzy remake of one of the original series' more sentimental episodes. It's a segment called Kick the Can about the elderly residents of a retirement home who briefly get to become children again, and Spielberg did use live children in scenes that took place at night, and for the record, he used day for night for those scenes and was in compliance with child labor laws.

George Miller reportedly was so disillusioned with the production that he had stepped away as soon as he wrapped his segment, having nothing to do with post-production. And during the editing, Spielberg advised Landis that his sequence was too long, but Landis disagreed and refused to cut it. Spielberg was already disillusioned and disgusted with Landis over the helicopter accident that claimed three lives, and Landis' uncooperativeness in the editing suite, as well as his

After all the trouble he'd already brought to the production, this was the final straw and proved to be the death knell for their friendship.

Once the movie was finished and the studio ran test screenings, test audiences felt uneasy about the John Landis segment. Even though the scene that Morrow and the two children died shooting was cut from the movie, I mean, you still know that that's what happened. Some viewers were shocked there was no dedication or even mention of Vic Morrow, Renee, or Micah on screen, as there often is when someone closely involved in a movie dies before it's released to theaters.

And while the Los Angeles District Attorney continued to weigh whether or not to file charges,

John Landis just kept right on working. Even though one of Landis' projects had fallen through due to the accident and his now tarnished reputation, his friend, Jeffrey Katzenberg over at Paramount, gave Landis a script to consider directing, a comedy script called Black and White. Landis ends up taking the job with Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd signing on to star in the film. Production for that film began in December 1982 and wrapped in March of the following year.

The film, which was eventually retitled Trading Places, opened on June 8th, 1983, and although it opened third at the box office, it charted for 17 straight weeks, eventually earning over $90 million, becoming the fourth highest grossing film of the year. So Landis was continuing to work and showed no signs of stopping. In fact, in October of 1983, Landis directed one of the most famous music videos of all time,

Michael Jackson's Thriller, which he co-produced with George Fulsey Jr., who was also being investigated for his role in the Twilight Zone accident. This is insane! On both sets, Landis always appeared to be in high spirits and no less brash and bold than before the Twilight Zone affair.

Landis' wife, Deborah, would later say, in praise of her husband's apparent resilience, quote, "'Less of a man would have been crushed like a bug after that accident.'"

And even though Landis remained busier than ever through the summer of 1983, his legal woes were just getting started. On June 16th, 1983, an LA County grand jury voted to indict Landis, as well as associated producer George Fulcey Jr., unit production manager Dan Allingham, special effects coordinator Paul Stewart, and helicopter pilot Dorsey Wingo.

Each was charged with involuntary manslaughter and Landis, Allingham, and Folsey were also charged with violations of the labor code. The five defendants were ordered to report for arraignments on June 24th, 1983. The same day, Twilight Zone, the movie, premiered nationwide.

Twilight Zone the movie opened to mixed reviews from critics and lukewarm box office, though it did end up turning a profit, grossing $29 million against its $10 million budget. Critics judged John Landis' segments, along with Spielberg's, as the movie's two weakest. Meanwhile, the criminal charges against John Landis were historic.

They marked the first time in history that a movie director had been criminally charged in the making of a film. All five defendants pled not guilty on all charges and released on their own recognizance. Landis and others agreed to pay $5,000 fines levied by the California State Department of Labor standards for allowing children to work without proper permits. This much they admitted to.

as though admitting to this would make their denying responsibility for the deaths more credible. And it was proven beyond reason that the children had been worked illegally, and multiple parties knew about it. Like, for example, when the studio production manager at Warner's, a man named James Henderling, was clued into the illegal use of child actors upon receiving a check requisition from Twilight Zone Productions in the amount of $2,000 payable to George Fulsey Jr.,

There were two signature lines. Executive producer Frank Marshall's name appeared on one. The other was blank for Henderling to co-sign. $2,000, which would be exactly enough money to pay two child extras $500 a piece to work for two nights. Henderling immediately suspected that the purpose of this money was to hire the child extras, and he didn't like it.

He had brought his concerns to Ed Morey, the vice president of production, who told him that Warners couldn't be party to that kind of arrangement. However, Henderling's suspicion was just a suspicion, Morey said, and a producer was entitled to $2,000 in petty cash if he requested it.

So, he told Henderling, go ahead and sign the check. And he did. So even people outside of the set who had suspicions turned a blind eye to it. But Landis' defense was denying that there was any special danger to children because Morrow, an adult, was killed in the same spot.

His defense began claiming that the prosecution was concealing the real cause of the crash, alleging that debris hitting the tail rotor was a false theory, the old misinformation argument. And Landis, as well as his lawyer Harland Braun, were not shy in giving statements to the press.

dismissing the charges as ridiculous, discrediting the parents of the two children who died, and placing the blame on the need to place blame, like it's some folly of human nature. Bryan argued that to convict Landis and the others would be an indictment on the entire movie industry because, he claimed, directors rely on the experts and sometimes experts can't foresee all dangers on a movie set.

So like he was at once saying that the accident was blameless, but just in case it wasn't blameless, you can blame the special effects guys and the experts that Landis was relying on.

With Landis' indictment, Braun alleged that the grand jury was railroaded into their decision by the DA's office. He argued that Landis played no role in positioning the helicopter. That was on the pilot, not the director, which disputed pretrial testimony from half a dozen crew members that said he was saying to go lower.

But that would set the tone for much of the proceedings going forward. Braun casting doubt on the truthfulness of experts, survivors, witnesses, and anyone else who ended up being a witness for the prosecution.

Braun was also disputing the National Transportation Safety Board's conclusion that flying debris caused the crash, and that Landis and Folsi were responsible, arguing that their report was designed to cover up the board's incompetence. Braun intended to illustrate that it was improper special effects explosives and intense heat that caused the crash and not debris.

which, despite Braun trying to turn the indictments into a story of some overzealous need to place blame, was seemingly placing the blame on the guys who set off the explosives. During the preliminary pretrial hearings, the actual footage of the accident was shown in court on videotape.

When the footage was being played, Landis hung down his head, appearing unable to look. Harold Schumann, the friend of George Folsey's who helped find the two children needed for the scene, testified that he had warned that children would not have permits, would be working at night, there would be explosives on set, but not close to children, and there wouldn't be any danger.

But Mark Chen, Renee Chen's father, disputed this. He testified that nothing was mentioned about helicopters or explosives and that he would have never allowed his child to participate had he known this. His wife, speaking through an interpreter, testified that Renee was frightened by the scene and she was then assured by George Folsey himself that there was no real danger to her.

Which Landis later rebuted, more or less calling Renee's parents liars. And Micah Lee's parents too, because they claimed they also were not warned of any danger. After the first blast, Daniel Lee testified that he had been horrified and was screaming, and after the second blast, he fell down on the ground. He was so worried for his son, he said, and he wouldn't have allowed him to be there had he known this was what the shoot was going to be like.

There was a roster of 60 witnesses in the defense and leading it was production secretary Donna Schumann, who was one of the first on the production team to openly turn against Landis. According to the testimony of Marcy Lieroff, the casting director, Folsey Jr. told her they wouldn't tell anyone what they'd be doing.

One fire safety officer who worked on the movie testified that he was never told two children were working in a scene with two helicopters and explosives and would not have allowed if he had known. Among the others testifying for the prosecution were second assistant director Anderson House.

who recalled suggesting to Landis that he used doubles or dummies, but how in response, production manager Dan Allingham relayed that Landis insisted on using actual children because if you remember from the previous episode, Landis wanted a shot that included everything. A multi-cam setup with a tight angle on Mauro and the two children, as well as wide shots, and the only way the shot would work was with actual children.

John Gamble, who was the chopper pilot, who was considered before ultimately Dorsey was hired, testified that he had told the producers that it was dangerous for the chopper to be in a hover around explosions. That he had suggested ways to make the shot less dangerous for the chopper to be in a forward momentum and that afterward the producers never contacted him again.

Assistant cameraman Randall Robinson took the witness stand during the pretrial hearings and recalled how alarmed he had been by earlier shots involving the helicopter and the explosion and how when he voiced his surprise at how intense the blast had been, Landis promised him it was just a warm up for what was to come.

Makeup artist Melanie Levitt testified that Landis was the one who yelled, "Lower! Lower! Fire! Fire!" Cueing the pyrotechnics after ordering the helicopter to descend to dangerous proximity from the blasts. And in a tragic irony, the last line of dialogue delivered by Mara was, "I'll keep you safe, kids. I promise nothing will hurt you. I swear to God."

Meanwhile, as the hearings dragged on into 1984, studio ads promoting Landis for Best Director for Trading Places began appearing in the trade papers, much to the disgust of many close to the Twilight Zone proceedings.

Attorneys for the defense headed by Harland Braun, it was now growing into a team, kept claiming that debris did not cause the accident, but they refused to outright say what the real cause was, apparently holding it back until I guess they felt they could find some expert to testify on their behalf.

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Let's get back into the episode. Warner executive Ed Morey also testified, claiming that he asked Allingham about children when he read the script but admitted that he never followed up. Kevin Quibble, a special effects tech who worked on the film, was granted immunity in order to testify on behalf of the prosecution.

But for whatever reason, he got cold feet and later backed down from his earlier testimony, claiming he couldn't recall details about the accident and about the shoot.

The two other special effects technicians, Jerry Williams and James Camomile, who detonated the blast that would later be blamed for drowning the chopper, they testified that they thought the scene was safe at the time they detonated the explosives. Camomile said he'd been wearing a welder's mask to protect his face and was focused on the actors on the ground and not on the chopper above, so he didn't know what its position was.

The film's art director Richard Sawyer testified being surprised and feeling uneasy when special effects coordinator Paul Stewart said he wasn't sure if there were explosives beneath the mock Vietnamese huts or not because he had previously had a discussion with Stewart that no bombs would be placed on or beneath any of the huts for safety reasons but now he's saying he doesn't know. At

At this point, Harland Braun and the defense began formally arguing that the real cause of the crash was the heat from the fireball, not flying debris, but the intense heat.

They found an expert to testify to this effect, essentially disputing the findings of the National Transportation Safety Board. He testified that it was intense heat that caused the skin of the rotor blade to peel off and that no one involved with the production could have foreseen this. And therefore, this was an unavoidable, unforeseeable accident with no one to blame. And just to be clear, while the skin of the helicopter tail did peel off,

And no one disputed this. Multiple experts already identified debris as the cause of the crash.

So two distinct types of damage occurred. The defense knew this, and they were laying the groundwork for reasonable doubt by saying, no, it was this other damage that caused the crash, and this, unlike the flying debris, couldn't have been foreseen. If no one knows about heat delamination, the defense argued, how can you protect yourself against it? It's like an unknown danger.

You don't put people in jail, you don't prosecute people criminally for not making plans for danger that the federal government has been unable to establish and it's the first time it's occurred in the history of aviation. Witness for Dorsey Wingo's defense also testified that delamination of tail rotor blade is what caused the rear assembly to detach from aircraft causing it to lose control.

The National Transportation Safety Board, meanwhile, maintained that Landis and Wingo shared responsibility for the crash. Their conclusion was that Landis shouldn't have drawn the aircraft so close to the explosives and Wingo shouldn't have complied. And so once again, the actual cause of the crash, as determined by the NTSB, which had nothing at stake here, while Landis and his co-defendants had a lot at stake,

was flying debris from one detonation that dented the tail rotor, which tore itself apart, crashing the chopper. And the prosecution agreed with the board and asserted that either way, the chopper never should have been positioned that close to special effects explosives that had both debris and heat contained within them. And they were warned about this.

As a result of this accident, the board began recommending the same stringent requirements for helicopters involved in movie work as they did for airplanes, including filing explicit flight plans and manuals with the Federal Aviation Administration before stunts.

After hearing both sides during the preliminary hearings, the judge ruled that the crime of involuntary manslaughter had indeed been committed, alleging that Paul Stewart knowingly engaged in dangerous activities, Dorsey Wingo was compliant as the pilot of the helicopter, and that John Landis in his quote,

quest for cinema verite, or in other words, realism, put the explosives and special effects before the safety of his actors, including children. So the district attorney was given the green light to proceed with a trial, and John Landis faced up to six years in prison if convicted. Meanwhile, Fossey and Allingham's charges were conspiracy and child endangerment.

Throughout the hearings, Landis often talked to the press, presenting himself as the real victim. He often would appear to be smirking while talking about the tragedy, and sometimes he'd suddenly lower his head and his voice would crack in what appears, at least to me, to be a feigned display of emotion. All

All the while, prosecutors were trying to track down executive producer Frank Marshall, the guy who signed the petty cash checks so the child actors could be paid under the table, the guy who whisked himself off the set 20 minutes after the accident. They wanted to subpoena Marshall to testify, but every time they reached out to his reps, Marshall was out of the country or unavailable.

and would remain that way throughout the trial until he returned to the States in 1989 to direct the movie Arachnophobia. So Marshall managed to completely escape being involved on any level, and refused to comment up until 1990 when he simply stated that what had happened was an accident and left it at that.

The trial began more than four years after the tragedy, with prosecutor Leah Perwin D'Agostino delivering her opening statements on September 3rd, 1986.

She walked the jury through the secretive, illegal hiring of two young children, and she stressed that it was kept secret, not because John Landis wanted to shoot at night, but because that what's called an authorized teacher welfare worker was required on set, and Landis, Folsey, and Allingham knew that such a worker would never permit children to work around explosives and a hovering helicopter.

So they knew in advance they would be placing children in danger and they took steps to prevent this from being known.

She also promised to show that pilot Dorsey Wingo was also aware in advance of the hazards on set and went ahead with his work regardless, and that Paul Stewart complied with Landis' insistence that explosive mortars be placed directly under the huts, despite Stewart having been previously alerted that this was very dangerous.

The jury was also warned that they'd be seeing the film footage of the actual accident and they would be seeing real deaths in vivid high resolution detail. The attorney who delivered the defense's opening statement was James Neal who argued that what had happened was essentially an act of God and that the appearance of danger on the set which they would see in the film footage was just a carefully crafted Hollywood illusion beset by unforeseen events and

And he said it was the careless act of one individual that cost three people their lives that night. And that individual, he said, was James Camomile, the special effects technician who actually detonated the explosions. Camomile was the perfect patsy because he had not been charged and he had been granted immunity by the prosecution in order to testify.

The defense, in their statement, asserted that Camomile detonated two explosions simultaneously without checking for the location of the helicopter, which was his own error, and that one of those blasts misfired, converging with the other blast to create a much larger fireball than anyone planned or anticipated, generating heat so intense that it peeled away part of the tail rotor's skin and caused the crash.

It sounded plausible, even if it was in direct contradiction again with what the findings of the National Transportation Safety Board and the experts they consulted with. And attorney Neal tried to spin Landis's orders for the helicopter to fly lower as a concern for safety rather than concern for his shot.

As Nail had claimed, the lower a chopper flies, the safer it is the event of an engine failure. The trial would ultimately drag on for 10 months. After each day of testimony, lawyers from both sides would give statements to the press that amounted to an escalating war of words between the two sides.

On one side was Leah, a tough, talking, flamboyant litigator whose history of convictions had earned her the fearsome nickname of Dragon Lady, a name she was proud of. On the other side was a slippery, slimy Harland Braun, who also didn't mince words in taking potshots at Leah's character and mental health. "'I think she's dishonest and a sick woman,' he said."

She's totally obsessed with her own persona and turning this case into a media bid for her. "We can't believe that this crazy woman is hanging in there," he said months later. "That's what we call her, among other things. We think that she's somewhat deranged." These attacks didn't bother Leah, who told a news reporter, "I must be doing something right to elicit all this incredible hostility on his part." The defense accused Leah of just trying to win the case for the money and glory.

Leah countered that her husband had plenty of money. In fact, for Leah, becoming an attorney was something of an afterthought, a late-in-life career change after having worked for years as a nightclub manager and then a theatrical agent. It was an ad she saw in TV Guide of all places that convinced her to become a lawyer.

Among her quirks were wearing a lucky gold brooch and carrying a half dozen lucky blue pens and keeping a voodoo doll in her office whenever she needed something to vent her aggressions on.

Midway through the trial, the jury was supposed to be brought out to the Indian Dunes location to view a reenactment of the helicopter's flight path on the evening of the explosion. But the judge wasn't convinced this simulation was needed, and when attorneys for both sides, the defendants and the judge arrived at the scene, the judge had the reenactment performed and decided the jury didn't need to see it in person. So they were shown pictures and diagrams afterward.

The jury was also taken to the Samuel Goldwyn Theater, which was operated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, to view the actual 35mm footage of the accident. This was a theater typically used to screen Hollywood movies for the press and for Academy Awards voters. But because courtrooms weren't equipped with 35mm projectors, this space was used to screen the footage for the jury, with John Landis and his wife also present.

John Landis did in fact testify in his own defense and basically just acted the whole way through, pretended to cry, admitted that he had hired the kids, but said he had no idea this accident could have happened. On Friday, May 29th, 1987, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty for all five defendants.

They agreed with the defense that the deaths were the result of an unforeseeable accident and many of the jurors stated that they were ready to acquit from day one. After the verdict was read, John Landis' wife, Deborah, climbed over the jury box to hug one of the jurors. Prosecutor Leah would later suggest that the jury was starstruck and influenced by the presence of famous friends of John Landis who came to court.

Although one juror who wasn't starstruck voted to acquit simply because he felt the proof wasn't sufficient. He did state that he believed Landis was probably guilty and lying on the stand. After his acquittal, John Landis actually invited every single juror, telling them to bring whoever they wanted to the premiere of his next movie. And many found this unethical.

But what's most remarkable about John Landis' career is how it didn't appear to be hurt at all by what happened on the set of Twilight Zone. Throughout the years leading up to his trial and acquittal, he never stopped directing major Hollywood films. From 1985 through 1987, he directed Into the Night, Spies Like Us, Three Amigos, and a segment for another multi-director anthology film called Amazon Woman on the Moon.

Post-trial, he directed Coming to America, starring Eddie Murphy, which ended up being the highest-grossing film of John Lannis' career.

Although relations between Landis and Murphy, who worked with each other before on Trading Places, were not rosy on the set of Coming to America, according to interviews Eddie Murphy gave later on. After this, Landis' career took on the shape of a long downward slide. He directed another music video for Michael Jackson for Black and White, which coincidentally had been the working title for Trading Places, if you remember, and

And that music video was met with controversy due to Michael Jackson mimicking masturbation in a sequence that was later cut from the video. And over a decade later, Landis would sue Michael Jackson for revenue he claimed Jackson owed him. And of his five movies John Landis then made between 1991 and 1998, four of them were box office failures. Only Beverly Hills Cop 3 and it's surprising Eddie Murphy worked with him a third time

Only that made money, but it was the least profitable of the three Beverly Hills Cops movies and it was savagely panned by critics. Another movie, Oscar with Sylvester Stallone, was a box office flop. Innocent Blood, a horror comedy that attempted and failed to recapture the success of An American Werewolf in London, was a flop. The Stupids, starring Tom Arnold, was a flop. And finally, Blues Brothers 2000, a sequel to the 1980 hit, was

was also a critical and commercial flop. And it took that many failures for John Landis' career to finally get sucked into the drain. Why did Landis keep getting so many chances? What kind of dirt did he have on people? So that's it for this week. Next week, we'll be back with a new story, taking a look at another tragic death in Hollywood in the 1980s. That's next week. And until then, go listen to Murder With My Husband. I'll see ya.