Death on the Set of the Twilight Zone Movie

Summary

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Crimes of the Times — "Death on the Set of the Twilight Zone Movie"

Host: Christopher Goffard (L.A. Times Studios)
Date: November 11, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode examines the infamous 1982 on-set tragedy during the filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie, where actor Vic Morrow and two child actors, Myca Dinh Le (age 7) and Renee Chen (age 6), were killed by a crashing helicopter. Host Christopher Goffard, together with key witness and lead investigator Thomas Budds, guides listeners through the accident, subsequent criminal trial against director John Landis, and the long-term impact on Hollywood safety.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Night of the Accident

• Thomas Budds' Arrival:
  • Former LA County Sheriff’s Sergeant Thomas Budds described arriving early morning at the Indian Dunes set.
  • The site appeared as a scorched mock Vietnamese village, with remnants of the overturned helicopter and evidence of massive pyrotechnic use.

    “I had been informed that it was the final shoot for the film ... they had picked up some body parts and put them in a garbage bag.”
    — Thomas Budds [01:34]

• Initial Impressions:
  • At first, the crash seemed like an industrial accident rather than a crime.

    “It smelled like gasoline. It was permeated with the smell of gasoline … it didn't seem like anything nefarious.”
    — Thomas Budds [02:14]

2. Red Flags and Early Warnings

• Prior Dangerous Incident:
  • Hours before the fatal shot, a similar explosion singed the face of a crew member inside the same helicopter.

    “That didn't seem right right from the start.”
    — Thomas Budds [03:02]

• Decision to Pursue Manslaughter Charges:
  • The pattern of ignored risks led Budds to consider criminal charges.

    “Had that not happened, I wouldn't have probably considered manslaughter charges at all.”
    — Thomas Budds [03:15]

3. Directorial Choices and Safety Violations

• Landis’ Pursuit of Realism:
  • Director John Landis insisted on real children for authenticity, violating child labor laws.

    “It was just unconscionable that they would go forward with that for cinema verite.”
    — Thomas Budds [04:35]

• Working Conditions:
  • Children placed near dangerous materials; a failure to ensure safety protocols.

    “It would have only taken a spark to ignite the gasoline and kill the kids.”
    — Christopher Goffard [11:50]

4. The Accident: What Happened

• Scene Details:
  • Morrow, carrying the two children, was caught beneath a low-hovering 3-ton helicopter as explosions were set off nearby.
  • A fireball engulfed the helicopter’s tail rotor (effect man not looking up), causing it to spin out and crash.

    “Standing on the embankment, I mean, the helicopter's coming down and kills their children right in front of them … they were screaming, this isn't supposed to be like this.”
    — Thomas Budds [09:31]

5. Aftermath and Initiation of Legal Case

• Investigation and Pushback:
  • Budds compiled a “murder book” and pressed for criminal charges despite resistance from the DA’s office.

    “You got two dead kids and a famous movie actor. Maybe you want to take a closer look at this.”
    — Thomas Budds [12:26]

• Case Taken to Grand Jury:

  “If you don't want to file this thing...let's just take it to the grand jury. You're off the hook.”
  — Thomas Budds [12:54]

6. The Trial of John Landis and Co-Defendants (Summer 1986-87)

• Charges and Legal Arguments:
  • Landis and four others (production, effects, pilot) faced involuntary manslaughter.
  • Prosecution (Lea d'Agostino) painted Landis as negligent and tyrannical.

    “He had ignored common sense and sacrificed safety in service of ‘a lousy motion picture.’”
    — Christopher Goffard [15:29]

  • Defense argued the tragedy was unforeseen and not criminally negligent.

    “Not one of these gentlemen intended to hurt anyone ... not one of these gentlemen is guilty of criminal negligence.”
    — James Neal, Defense [16:36]

• Memorable Court Moments:
  • Parents’ wrenching testimony; Mark Chen and Daniel Lee articulate their shock and devastation.

    “No, he replied. He said he had agreed to let Renee do the picture so that she would have a lot of memories when she grew up.”
    — Christopher Goffard narrating Mark Chen [17:41]

  • Lack of empathy perceived from jury as mother testifies.

    “I just couldn't understand that these people had showed no sympathy to this woman … I was just trying to get justice for those children.”
    — Thomas Budds [18:14]

7. Verdict and Immediate Impact

• Acquittal:
  • After a ten-month trial, the jury acquitted all five defendants.

    “You don't prosecute people for unforeseeable accidents.”
    — Jury Forewoman [20:52]

  • Budds’ dismay at the outcome, blaming celebrity influence on the jury.

    “I was very, very disappointed in the acquittals. We felt we had a really ironclad case.”
    — Thomas Budds [21:39]

• Landis' Reaction Post-Trial:
  • Landis denied dishonesty, called the accident “felt very strongly”; compared outcome to a Frank Capra movie.
  • Some jurors invited to Landis’ film premiere, raising ethical eyebrows.

    “I wonder if he invited the parents of the children, because they were part of the case too.”
    — Harland Braun, Defense Attorney [22:46]

8. Cultural and Industry Fallout

• Tightening of Set Safety:
  • Directors Guild reprimanded Landis, industry safety rules strengthened.

    “In the end, the case forced Hollywood to tighten security protocols on set.”
    — Christopher Goffard [27:15]

• Moral vs. Legal Responsibility:
  • Film critic Stephen Farber underscores moral accountability for directors, even when legal guilt is unproven.

    “How many technical crew people are going to challenge that person and try to overrule them?”
    — Stephen Farber [23:16]

  • Outspoken condemnation from other filmmakers, like Brian De Palma and William Friedkin.

    “I would never have attempted a shot with two children and a helicopter flying that low.”
    — William Friedkin, quoted by Stephen Farber [25:26]

• Landis’ Legacy and Symbolism:
  • Anecdotes of crew openly reading Farber’s book on set to confront Landis.

    “Landis became frustrated and began yelling at the teamster with the book. The teamster did not flinch. Instead, he asked, ‘Can you sign it?’”
    — Christopher Goffard [27:50]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Filmmaking Culture:

  “It became real apparent that there was this big deal going on in Hollywood at the time to see who was going to be the heir apparent to Steven Spielberg.”
  — Thomas Budds [07:10]

• On Parental Trust and Hollywood’s Image:

  “They saw the movie E.T... they thought it’s all imaginary… they had no idea obviously how the Hollywood industry works.”
  — Thomas Budds [08:33]

• On Jury Behavior:

  “The jurors didn’t seem to be paying attention. They were looking out in the audience at all the celebrities coming in. I just thought, this is really... This is really something.”
  — Thomas Budds [18:14]

• On the Limits of the Law:

  “If you have a case that’s non-intentional harm, it’s always an uphill battle to prove criminal responsibility.”
  — Stephen Farber [22:46]

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Arrival at Accident Scene — 00:07 – 02:33
• Early Red Flags & Manslaughter Considerations — 03:02 – 04:14
• Casting and Safety Violations — 04:14 – 08:56
• Accident Details — 08:56 – 09:43
• Investigation and DA Reluctance — 11:50 – 13:38
• Trial Proceedings & Testimony — 15:05 – 21:39
• Verdict, Reactions, and Industry Impact — 21:39 – 27:15

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Conclusion

This episode goes beyond sensational headlines to detail the tragic Twilight Zone accident, the flawed power dynamics on film sets, and the challenges of securing justice for preventable on-set deaths. It spotlights an era’s industry attitudes, the limitations of the legal system, and the seismic effect the disaster had on Hollywood safety protocols—against a backdrop of lasting moral questions about accountability in the pursuit of cinematic spectacle.

Transcript

[Christopher Goffard]

This is an LA Times Studios podcast.

[Thomas Budds]

I was assigned by myself to go out to Indian Dunes that night and I questioned what was going on with the circumstances of how the deaths occurred. And they said it was involved the movie filming and there were pyrotechnics and helicopter involved.

[Christopher Goffard]

This is Thomas Budds, a former sergeant with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. He's describing the night in summer 1982 when he was summoned to Indian Dunes, about 35 miles north of downtown LA. It was a popular location for film and TV shoots, and set designers had repurposed it as a wartime Vietnamese village for for a segment of Twilight, the movie. At 2:20am on July 23, a plummeting helicopter had killed three people, the actor Vic Morrow and two children he had been carrying across the water while special effects detonated around him. Sergeant Buds arrived soon after. It was not yet dawn. He stepped carefully around the toppled chopper, its big blade sideways in the mud of the Santa Clara River. He examined the charred remains of the mocked up village. He noticed there were huge scorch marks on the cliff behind the set.

[Thomas Budds]

When I got there, a lot of the people on the set had left. I had been informed that it was the final shoot for the film and that there were probably 250 people that had been at the scene. I knew my work was going to be cut out for me with a lot of interviews. The people on the set took me over to the spit of land that the helicopter landed on and they had picked up some body parts and put them in a garbage bag.

[Christopher Goffard]

Some of the parts were missing, however, and he ordered that the river be drained.

[Thomas Budds]

It smelled like gasoline. It was permeated with the smell of gasoline. And right at the beginning there, it didn't seem like anything nefarious. Initially, it looked like this was another industrial accident type situation.

[Christopher Goffard]

Buds got a list of the people who'd been on set and began educating himself in the language of film production. He learned what a best boy does and what a script supervisor does. He needed to know who was responsible for what. He learned that at 11:30pm on the 22nd, in a nearly identical precursor to the fatal flight, a fireball had singed the face of a production manager riding in the helicopter.

[Thomas Budds]

You know, that didn't seem right right from the start.

[Christopher Goffard]

Buds thought it should have been an indication that the explosions were too big. It should have put them on notice the 11:30 shot.

[Thomas Budds]

Had that not happened, I wouldn't have probably considered manslaughter charges at all. I would have figured it would have been a civil suit. So I had put together a murder book, we call it.

[Christopher Goffard]

Buds, carried the book into the district attorney's office to face a room full of prosecutors to make his case for manslaughter charges.

[Thomas Budds]

They had several of their super DAs that handle long term type prosecutions to evaluate what I was going to tell them. So anyway, I concentrated really on the 11:30 shot, all the danger that it proposed and that there had been no mitigating meeting before they went to the final shot and that in the final shot they added explosives, bigger explosives, and brought the helicopter in lower than it had been at the 11:30 shot.

[Christopher Goffard]

The director John Landis had insisted on the presence of real children in the scene rather than dummies. Even though he knew the presence of kids at that hour violated labor laws. He wanted actual kids in the arms of a real actor. As the helicopter hovered overhead and explosions went off around them.

[Thomas Budds]

It was just unconscionable that they would go forward with that for cinema verite. It's just there were a lot of different ways that it could have been shot, but they chose to go reality.

[Christopher Goffard]

And reality struck today on Crimes of the times, the story of how a fatal on set accident turned into a criminal case that changed filmmaking and of the detective who made the case happen. I'm Christopher Goffard. During one of the most severe windstorms Southern California experienced in more than a decade, the Palisades and Eaton fires ignited, leaving heartbreaking losses in our communities. Now as we build back, we're building stronger, cleaner and more resilient in communities most vulnerable to dangerous weather conditions and wildfires. Southern California Edison is placing power lines underground, hardening the electric system by installing wires with protective coating and adding advanced technology to help keep communities safe. So when Southern California faces the next storm, the next most severe event copied helicopters structures adjacent here at Pike Road. We'll be ready. Learn [e-mail] disasterrecovery the actor Vic Morrow, one of the three victims in the Twilight Zone set disaster, had performed as a surly delinquent in Blackboard Jungle, a tough soldier in the TV drama Combat and a volatile baseball coach in the Bad News Bears. In July 1982, the 53 year old actor was playing a bigot dreamed up by writer director John Landis for a segment of Twilight, the movie. Landis, 31 years old, was an A list talent. He had a reputation as a gleeful impresario of envelope pushing stunts. Sheriff's detective Thomas Buds asked questions of the people around Landis. He developed the impression of a director who believed himself in competition for spectacular spectacle with Steven Spielberg, who was co producing the Twilight Zone movie but would not be implicated in the case.

[Thomas Budds]

It became real apparent that there was this big deal going on in Hollywood at the time to see who was going to be the heir apparent to Steven Spielberg.

[Christopher Goffard]

Landis liked to brag about all the cars he had demolished filming the Blues Brothers a few years earlier.

[Thomas Budds]

Talking to the people on the set, I don't know how all directors direct, but he was tyrannical as the words they were using. It's not my words, it's their descriptions. He wanted things done certain ways and if he couldn't do it, he would find somebody else to do it.

[Christopher Goffard]

For the climactic scene of his Twilight Zone segment, Landis had dropped Morrow's character into the Vietnam war to enact what was intended as a redemption scene. He was supposed to be a hero rescuing two children from a village as it erupted in flames. He was supposed to say, I'll keep you safe, kids. And so in the last seconds of his life, Morrow was struggling through knee deep water with a child in each arm. The children were 7 year old Micah Dinh Lee and 6 year old Renee Chin. They had never acted before. Their parents were receiving a few hundred dollars for their work. They had been dazzled by Spielberg's blockbuster E.T. which had just come out.

[Thomas Budds]

Well, it was kind of heart wrenching. They saw the movie E.T. you know, and they thought it's all imaginary. It's Hollywood, it's imaginary. Of course they want their kids put in there. They had no idea obviously how the Hollywood industry works. It was like E.T. it's all just magical. And they were very happy and excited.

[Christopher Goffard]

About 24ft above Morrow and the children hovered 3 tons of noisy metal. A combat style Huey uh, 1B helicopter. As a special effects man fired gasoline and sawdust mortars skyward, Moros stumbled in the water, righted himself and slogged on. The effects man was not looking up when he shot off the fireball that engulfed the tail rotor, sending the helicopter into an uncontrollable spin.

[Thomas Budds]

And then standing on the embankment, I mean, the helicopter's coming down and kills their children right in front of them. They said, you know, they were screaming, this isn't supposed to be like this. It's not supposed to be like this.

[Christopher Goffard]

The falling helicopter crushed and killed rene while a 44 foot main rotor blade decapitated Morrow and Micah. In the footage shown over and over on tv, a curtain of water mercifully blocked a fatal split second from the camera's view. John Landis had been standing nearby in waiters when it happened. He appeared at Morrow's funeral. He struggled to speak. He spoke of art. The director said, tragedy strikes in an instant, but film is immortal. Perhaps we can take some solace in the knowledge that through his work and stage, television and film, Vic lives forever. One of Vic Morrow's friends, Rick Jason, gave a reporter his opinion of the disaster. It's just an outlandish freak and I don't think you can draw a conclusion from it. But Sergeant Budds, who was the only detective on the case, was drawing a firm conclusion as he conducted a hundreds of interviews in the months that followed. He spoke to camera operators and assistants, makeup artists and hairstylists. And in Bud's mind, a picture formed of an arrogant, overbearing director who was cavalier about risk and whose subordinates were fearful of second guessing him. Buds told me that the account of cameraman Steve Lydecker was pivotal in his decision to recommend charges. Lydecker said Landis ignored his warning about the dangers of the special effects. We may lose the helicopter. The cameraman recalled Landis joking.

[Thomas Budds]

I knew there were typically a black powder explosive device, sawdust permeated with 10 to 15 gallons of gasoline in these pots and they were wired to a board that the technician would touch and it would ignite the black powder and the soaked sawdust would go up and it would make a spectacular fireball.

[Christopher Goffard]

And Buds thought there were other signs of recklessness during the filming. At 9:30 the night before the crash, the two children had been placed in a hut unaccompanied, near big drums of gasoline. Buds told me that it would have only taken a spark to, to ignite the gasoline and kill the kids. When he brought the case to the LA County District Attorney's office, prosecutors started firing questions at him, assessing the strengths of the case, probing for weaknesses. He got the feeling they did not want to pursue the case.

[Thomas Budds]

Yeah, I got kind of frustrated because it was, you have to understand, I've been working this case alone now for couple of months and I've been dealing with the parents and I try not to get too emotionally involved. But you know, you got two dead kids and a famous movie actor. Maybe, maybe you want to take a closer look at this. Finally I just said, you know, this has gone on now for about a half an hour. I've done several grand juries with you guys if you don't want to file this thing, because that's the feeling I'm getting let's just take it to the grand jury. You're off the hook. Let them indict them and then we'll take it right to trial. And they said yes, that was it. So I was pretty confident that in trial we were going to be doing pretty good.

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[Christopher Goffard]

Between the fatal crash in summer 1982 and the beginning of his trial in summer 1986, John Landis remained an in demand artist. He directed the hit screwball comedy Trading Places and Michael Jackson's comic horror thriller video Twilight Zone. The movie came out with the helicopter scene omitted. Then Landis took his seat in a downtown LA courtroom as the first Hollywood director to face criminal charges for a death on set. The possible penalty was six years in prison. He faced charges of involuntary manslaughter along with four others, his production manager, his associate producer, his special effects coordinator and the helicopter pilot. The prosecutor, the fiery and theatrical Lea d', Agostino, called Landis, quote, a tyrannical dictator. She said he had ignored common sense and sacrificed safety in service of, quote, a lousy motion picture. There was a seven man team of aggressive defense attorneys. Among them was James Neal, who had prosecuted the Watergate co conspirators, and Jimmy Hoffa. He told the Twilight Zone jurors quote, not one of these gentlemen intended to hurt anyone. Not one of these gentlemen thought the scene as planned and rehearsed was dangerous. Not one of these gentlemen is guilty of criminal negligence. He called the crash unforeseen and unforeseeable. If the helicopter had crashed a few feet away, he pointed out, Landis himself would be dead. He and other defense attorneys directed blame to the effects man, James Camomile, who had been given immunity for his testimony and admitted that he had not looked up when he shot off the fatal fireball. Celebrities occasionally visited the courtroom, including Dan Aykroyd, a Blues Brothers and Trading Places star. The most wrenching words came from the parents of the dead children, who said they had been misled about the danger. The prosecutor asked Mark Chen, who had lost his only child, whether Landis or anyone else had informed him that his daughter Renee was. Would be filmed with explosives in close proximity or with a helicopter 24ft overhead. No, he replied. He said he had agreed to let Renee do the picture so that she would have a lot of memories when she grew up. Michael Lee's father, Daniel Lee, who had been on the Indian dune set, said he heard someone ordering the helicopter to descend as the special effects went off. Lower. Lower. Having lived through the Vietnam War as a child, he said he was so startled by the onset explosions that he dropped to the ground. Buds told me he was dismayed to see the jury's reaction to the testimony of one of the parents.

[Thomas Budds]

The little petite Chinese woman dressed in a little white dress is taking the stand because her daughter had been killed right in front of her. The jurors didn't seem to be paying attention. They were looking out in the audience at all the celebrities coming in. I just thought, this is really. This is really something. And I had just lost my own son. Three, three and a half drowned. And I just couldn't understand that these people had showed no sympathy to this woman. I was sitting there with my own broken heart when the. When the mom took the stand, I really. I was just trying to get justice for those children. I figured Vic Morrow, he had his. He had made a choice as an adult. But those kids and their parents didn't know what it was all about. And that was a grand shame.

[Christopher Goffard]

Jurors piled into a bus for a trip to the crash site and to the Academy Theater in Beverly Hills, where they watched the crash from six angles. One reporter called it a glamorous setting for a grim task. When defense attorneys presented their case, co defendant Dorsey Wingo, who had Piloted the down chopper, stunned the courtroom when he seemed to suggest that Morrow bore some responsibility for the tragedy. Five seconds had elapsed between the helicopter's loss of control and the crash. Wingo testified, quote, it distresses me to the max that he never looked up. The prosecutor derided his remarks as blaming the dead man. Landis took the stand in his own defense and quickly conceded that he had flouted the rules in hiring the children. He said, we decided to break the law. We decided wrongly to violate the labor code. Landis called it a technical violation. The director denied joking to the cameraman that they might lose the helicopter. He denied that the parents were in the dark about the nature of the scene. He had told them personally, he said. He denied ever being warned that the filming of the fatal scene was dangerous. He denied any recollection of having ordered the helicopter to go lower. Lower. At times, the director appeared to choke up. The prosecutor mocked him, saying, would you like some Kleenex, sir? Later, talking to reporters, she called Landis testimony a calculated performance worthy of an Oscar. She said, the whole world is lying according to John Landis, except John Landis. I find that somewhat incredible and I'm assuming that the jurors will too. She was badly mistaken about the jurors. After 10 months of trial and nine days of deliberations, all five defendants were acquitted. On May 29, 1987, the jury forewoman echoed the defense's main point, saying, quote, you don't prosecute people for unforeseeable accidents. Thomas Budds, who is now in his late 70s and living in Tennessee, thinks the jury was dazzled by the celebrities who swarmed around Landis.

[Thomas Budds]

I was very, very disappointed in the. In the acquittals. We felt we had a really ironclad case.

[Christopher Goffard]

John Landis would not talk to me for this story. He told a reporter afterward that the prosecutor was, quote, grotesque and her case completely dishonest. He said, I feel that accident very strongly. Adding that he was grateful for the jurors wisdom. He compared the outcome to a Frank Capra movie. A year after his acquittal, jurors received invitations along with their families to a special preview of Landis new movie, the Eddie Murphy comedy Coming to America. Harland Braun, the acerbic attorney who represented one of the director's co defendants at trial, did not like how it looked. I wonder if he invited the parents of the children because they were part of the case too, he said. In the aftermath of the deaths, the Directors Guild of America reprimanded Landis and Titan safety procedures.

[Stephen Farber]

If you have a case that's non intentional harm, it's always an uphill battle to prove criminal responsibility.

[Christopher Goffard]

This is Stephen Farber, co author with Mark Green of Outrageous Art Ego and the Twilight Zone Case. He told me a number of filmmakers signed a public letter in support of Landis. Challenging the idea that directors were responsible for accidents on their sets.

[Stephen Farber]

I think the main point of it was that the film directors were dependent on the advice of so called experts, you know, special effects coordinators and so forth. So that it wasn't really their decision if the special effects person or the helicopter pilot told the director that this was safe to do, that they didn't. The director didn't have the expertise to overrule them. But that was to me, kind of an irrelevant issue. Because if you have a very forceful, overbearing director like John Landis, how many technical crew people are going to challenge that person and try to overrule them?

[Christopher Goffard]

Farber's book argues that whatever the legal outcome, Landis bore moral responsibility for the tragedy. Farber interviewed a number of filmmakers who were highly critical of Landis.

[Stephen Farber]

Brian De Palma, very outspoken critic of Landis. And he had done elaborate stunts, you know, with helicopters and explosions. And he pulled no punches. I mean, he just felt that what Landis did was way out of line.

[Christopher Goffard]

Another big name director to denounce Landis behavior was William Friedkin, who made the French Connection and the Exorcist. Farber read to me a section from his book recounting his interview with him.

[Stephen Farber]

Quote, if you take the credit a John Doe film, you're saying to the world, I am responsible for everything that you see, for everything that went on in front of the camera and behind the camera. I think that John Landis was responsible, and I think I would have been responsible if, God forbid, that had happened to me. That doesn't mean it was a criminal act. Then he goes on. I would never have attempted a shot with two children and a helicopter flying that low. How I would have used dummies for the shot. And if I wanted close ups of the children, I would shoot them later with a wind machine, simulating the wind from the helicopter.

[Christopher Goffard]

The length of the trial ensured that the terrible footage was constantly on the nightly news. It replayed endlessly. Morrow struggling through the water with a child under each arm, stumbling, righting himself, carrying them to the spot where they would all die. Behind the curtain of water at Universal Studios, where Landis was sometimes spotted walking to his Office in the 1990s, tram guides were forbidden from mentioning his name. In the decades after the trial, when Landis gave interviews, he spoke in a booming, jovial voice and conveyed the impression of a man whose outsized self confidence remained undimmed. When you were watching the trial, did you get a sense of John Landis suffering? Was he a man in torment or was he a man who was able to compartmentalize all this?

[Stephen Farber]

We talked a lot during the trial and he was very jovial a lot of the time and I can't really speculate on his psychology, but I think there are people who just have the ability to put any bad things out of mind and just focus on the positive.

[Christopher Goffard]

In the end, the case forced Hollywood to tighten security protocols on set. But did Landis escape accountability? Farber thinks the case ultimately hurt Landis viability as a big time director. It made him easier not to hire when he stopped creating hits and his reputation followed him everywhere. Drew McQueenie, a screenwriter, told me that he once saw a local teamster reading Farber's book in Conspicuous View of Landis during a TV shoot in Vancouver. For a lot of crew workers, the director had become a symbol of all the filmmakers who had ordered them to do things on set they knew they weren't supposed to do. McQueenie told me that Landis became frustrated and began yelling at the teamster with the book. The teamster did not flinch. Instead he asked, can you sign it? From LA Times Studios, this is Crimes of the Times. To read more about these cases, check out Crimes of the [e-mail] we also have a link to our video episodes in the show. Notes this episode was written and reported by me, your host, Christopher Goffer. Our senior producers are Mary Knoff and Jonathan Shifflet. At StudioPhonic, Executive Editor is Stuart Leavenworth. Associate producer is Jordan Patterson. Our camera operator is Peter Grayson, our director of post production is Patrick Stewart and our senior sound recording engineer is Nick Norton with additional engineering by Jordan Patterson. Destin Leigh is our senior coordinating producer. Special thanks to LA Times Studios President Anna mczanian, President and Chief Operating Officer of the Los Angeles Times, Chris Argenteri and Executive Editor of the Los Angeles Times, Terry Tang. Crimes of the Times is executive produced and co created by Darius, Derek Shahn and me, Christopher Goffer.

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