The Mammoth Book of Celebrity Murders (12 page)

As the shocked audience sat in stunned silence D’Agostino took the opportunity to ram home the facts of what they had just seen. “The jurors are not supposed to make up their minds
until they have heard all of the evidence, but they can’t not see what they have just seen. They’ve just seen three people killed. And for what? A lousy movie.”

D’Agostino had made a perfectly good point and in the process had pulled at the heartstrings of all of the jurors – no one can deal easily with the death of a child – and the
members of the jury were swept away with the graphic nature of the evidence they had seen.

Back in the courtroom Shyan-Huei Chen took the stand and added to the concept of a cover-up when she reported the details of a conversation she had on the night Folsey visited her in the
trailer, when he had said, “If the fire department people come over and ask what you are doing here, just tell them you are friends helping us. Don’t mention anything about
money.”

Chen poured more petrol on the flames when she described the moments just before the crash. She explained that Landis was standing behind her with his bullhorn. As the helicopter came into view,
ready to enter the scene, Landis was shouting, “Lower, lower.” The words now sounded more like an instruction to cause death than a directorial instruction intended to improve the
scene.

Harland Braun, now acting for Folsey, had a difficult task – he now needed to cross-examine Chen. Gently enquiring about the conversations she had held with Folsey the week before the
filming, he was able to draw out some small admission that maybe she couldn’t remember the full details of their discussions, therefore Folsey maybe had pointed out some of the dangers. A
hollow win for Braun but at least something.

When D’Agostino cross-examined George Hull, the chief fire safety officer for the location shoot, he too claimed he had been kept in the dark about the details of the special effects. He
claimed he did not realize the explosions were going to be so huge, or that the helicopter would fly just 24 feet above the river. And in a final swipe at the defendants he claimed he did not know
that real actors would be used in the final scene, and that he had never been on a film set before where children had been used in the same scene with special effects explosives.

The jury saw 71 witnesses take the stand in as many days; one juror claimed that it was overkill. Many did not like the aggressive manner in which D’Agostino cross-examined the witnesses.
When Camomile took the stand, although D’Agostino adopted a more relaxed style of questioning; he was clearly under stress and had suffered much anxiety since the deaths. Camomile’s
cross-examination by Neal proved an even bigger ordeal for him. Neal wanted the blame for the crash pinned on Camomile and pursued him mercilessly. He asked why Camomile had not looked for the
helicopter before setting the explosives off. “You were not looking at the helicopter, were you?” Camomile was resigned. “I don’t believe so,” he responded in a
whisper. Neal was on a roll now, he had Camomile almost admitting guilt. “Isn’t it a fact that the special effects man on the firing board is supposed to look at the set before setting
off any of the special effects to determine at that particular point whether it is safe or not?” Camomile answered in the affirmative, appearing to concede at least some of the responsibility
for the accident. But Camomile was immune from prosecution; anything that was pinned on him wouldn’t matter, though it would serve to draw the responsibility away from Landis. The danger
would be that in a world where someone must pay for a mistake, if it couldn’t be the person responsible then it would have to be somebody else, and that someone might turn out to be John
Landis.

The defence eventually called Landis to the stand. Looking more like a college professor in his tweed jacket he sat upright and looked carefully at his lawyer. After Neal had painted Landis as a
perfect family man, he moved gently into the details of the film. Landis confirmed without exception that he had chosen to break the labour laws. He had done so because he didn’t think he
would get the waiver, he regretted it now but at the time it seemed to be just a technicality. He said he explained this to the children’s parents and they all understood the deal. When asked
if anyone had suggested there was anything dangerous about the action scene they were going to shoot he said, “Absolutely not.”

Neal was trying to establish that if Landis had never been asked to consider any level of danger then he should not be found criminally responsible. Landis also denied joking with members of the
crew in respect of losing the helicopter, claiming that the scene had been planned in great detail.

Landis often had tears in his eyes, especially when talking of the children, but the hard-hitting D’Agostino tried to suggest that he was merely acting in order to curry sympathy from the
jurors. In a bout of questioning which left the jurors wondering what was happening, D’Agostino pursued Landis for a gruelling twenty minutes on how actors could conjure up tears, before
deciding the attack was not yielding any beneficial results.

When Dorcey Wingo, the helicopter pilot took the stand he looked visibly drawn and stressed – he had been under the care of a psychiatrist since the accident and had been diagnosed with
post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition often associated with soldiers who experience the trauma of battle. After an initial introduction Wingo’s lawyer, Eugene Trope, sought to present
the pilot’s experience. Wingo had clocked up hundreds of flying hours; he had been a helicopter pilot in Vietnam and when he returned had flown as a firefighter, attacking forest fires and
carrying out rescues for hikers who were stranded. He had expected that flying for the movie business would be easy by comparison to his most recent flying history. When Trope began enquiring about
the work on
The Twilight Zone
his questions were well thought out and calculated to draw the finger of blame away from his client. Wingo claimed that Dan Allingham often used the phrase
“Safety first”, and confirmed that on the night of the accident he and others had indulged in several safety meetings. He claimed to have told Paul Stewart, the man in charge of the
special effects, “The helicopter and the special effects cannot occupy the same airspace at the same time,” and that as the pilot he should have the last word before anything went
ahead, especially if Stewart was planning to throw any debris into the air. Wingo also affirmed that he thought Stewart, the expert, would certainly know a lot more about pyrotechnics than he
would, so ultimately he would have to take his word for it when it came down to the explosive details.

When Strope enquired about the accident itself Wingo lost his composure, the stress of recalling the night and the three deaths clear for all to see. When D’Agostino took the floor she was
once again less considerate of the witness’s feelings. Without delay she suggested that Wingo was looking to protect both himself and John Landis. Asking if the two had become close Wingo
rather pompously responded, “Propinquity has set in, yes.” D’Agostino ridiculed the word by repeating it slowly as if trying to fathom its meaning.

Pursuing Wingo further she homed in on the one opportunity he might have had to prevent the accident, namely the 11.30 p.m. shoot during which the explosions had already caused a stir.
D’Agostino asked, “Didn’t you feel it was absolutely mandatory that you express your dissatisfaction to Landis or Stewart?”

“No,” Wingo responded.

And in an opportunity not to be missed D’Agostino quickly came back with, “You hadn’t developed propinquity by then?” Nervous laughter quickly passed through the
courtroom.

Wingo later appeared to lay some of the blame at Vic Morrow’s door when he suggested that the actor had let himself and the children down by not running from the scene. When cross-examined
by D’Agostino, Wingo claimed to have had a discussion with Morrow before the scene during which Wingo had advised Morrow to keep his eye on the helicopter. The cross-examination became heated
when D’Agostino asked how on earth he thought the actor would be able to keep his balance in the river, hold the two children and keep looking up for the helicopter. Flustered and now under
more pressure Wingo explained how he had told Morrow to listen for changes in the helicopter’s engine sounds, saying it was a plan of what to do if he was forced to bring down the helicopter.
After both parties had become somewhat angry D’Agostino asked him directly if he thought Morrow was to blame. Staring back defiantly at D’Agostino and clearly searching for the right
words, Wingo said, “I am saying it is extremely – it distresses me to the max that he never looked up after having had that conversation with him.”

Following an afternoon recess it was D’Agostino and Wingo who were back on centre stage, she still looking to challenge Wingo’s view of what Morrow should have done. Eventually it
all boiled down to the few seconds between the helicopter faltering and when it finally fell into the river. Asked where he thought Morrow might be able to run to with the children, Wingo
responded, “Away from the helicopter. He had over five seconds between the time that the sound of the helicopter changed and it impacted. I would hope to god he could have used those five
seconds to his advantage and the children’s.”

The debate continued when D’Agostino repeatedly pressed Wingo on what might have reasonably been expected of Morrow; he was an actor not an aviator, so could he have been expected to
recognize the change in the pitch of the engine?

As Wingo fluffed his way through the answer D’Agostino changed tack and suggested that Wingo had the same five seconds as Morrow. The beleaguered Wingo flatly refused to agree that his
five seconds were the same – as far as he was concerned he was in a crashing helicopter and one that could not be flown.

After such a fast-paced onslaught Wingo was naturally tiring of the unrelenting questions when D’Agostino caught him off-guard with a particularly pertinent question. “How did you
brief the children on what to do for this flight, sir?”

Without delay, Wingo flatly answered, “I never talked to the children.” D’Agostino let the words linger in the air.

When Wingo left the stand the defence called a technical witness, one who was prepared to discuss the highly technical nature of delamination and the fact that when it happens due to excess heat
the helicopter usually crashed. Under cross-examination D’Agostino simply refused to accept the delamination theory, pressing home her view that it was flying debris which had caused the
crash. It was in these subtle differences that the lawyers hoped to make their case. If the defence could show delamination had caused the accident then they could also claim that no one should
have expected it to happen and if no one knew about the possibility then the prosecution could not attach blame. The Judge though had already instructed the jury that the precise cause of the
accident need not be foreseeable for a manslaughter conviction.

The media had since given up examining the detail of this long-running court battle; they now simply described the daily battle of the lawyers and more importantly what D’Agostino was
wearing or doing, her heavy duty attacks often making more news than the progress of the trial. Many media commentators were now basing their prognosis for the defendants on a feel for who seemed
to be winning the war of words. Mostly this appeared to be the tough D’Agostino. With the Judge instructing that unforeseeable events did not make for an adequate excuse, even the Judge
seemed to be indicating his view of who was to blame.

In keeping with her commanding performances D’Agostino’s closing statements were equally tough talking. She had prepared well and was keen to have this last opportunity to quash any
lingering sympathy the jurors might have with the defendants.

She began with, “There is no motion picture that was ever made, or that will ever be made, that is worth risking one human life for, much less three. The utterly senseless, needless loss
of three lives for a motion picture is what makes what these defendants did so barbaric.”

With this backdrop D’Agostino went on to describe the defendants’ defence as lacking any true credibility, saying that they had based their whole situation on three main defences,
“The SODDI – some other dude did it. The red herring defence – confuse the facts with technicalities. And the BEE defence – blame everyone else.”

But the comedic attack on the defence’s arguments quickly disappeared when D’Agostino turned hard again in ramming home the facts regarding the children’s employment. Landis
and the others had known it was illegal to work the children after curfew. They had wilfully chosen to bypass the rules because they anticipated the welfare-teacher officer would have stopped the
children working with the explosives, and they knew this would happen because to anyone with sense the explosives presented a clear danger to life.

After what seemed an eternity of powerful arguments it was Landis’ attorney who stood to make the first of the closing statements for the defence. By contrast James Sanders’ words
lacked the hard-hitting appeal that D’Agostino had managed to deliver. Sanders’ style was one of the quiet man asking for nothing more than a consideration of what he was about to
impart. In his view the most important consideration the jury had to make was whether they genuinely thought Landis believed the scene presented an obvious danger and therefore had acted in a
reckless manner.

James Neal followed Sanders and used his time to attack Camomile once more, asking how he could have failed to carry out the proper checks when he was using the highest level of explosive device
allowed by the state of California.

Arnold Klein, closing for Paul Stewart, reasserted his view that Stewart had done all he could to prepare for the scene properly; he could not though be held responsible for the actions of
Camomile.

Eugene Trope, closing for Dorcey Wingo, made a simple statement. No pilot wants to die, therefore the jury must assume that he flew with safety in mind and was caught by debris which was the
result of a badly organized special-effects explosion.