The manslaughter trials are over, the criminal investigations closed. But the central mystery of who brought live ammunition to the set of “Rust” is no more solved now than it was the day cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was accidentally shot to death by Alec Baldwin on Oct. 21, 2021.
The answer, after two and a half years of scrutiny and two trials with witness testimony, may just be the most obvious one: The armorer did it.
That was New Mexico prosecutors’ going theory, laid bare in their February opening statements against Hannah Gutierrez-Reed. Though they asserted she introduced live rounds from her personal stash and then failed for days to detect them as they spread throughout the set supply, there was no burden on the state to prove that — and prosecutors largely scored their conviction by highlighting Gutierrez-Reed’s negligence and sloppy work.