Smear Charged : ‘Twilight’ Prosecutors Renew Feud

The feud between the present and former prosecutors in the “Twilight Zone” manslaughter trial flared anew Wednesday with the release of an interoffice memo in which the former prosecutor complained that he was being smeared and asked his superiors to put a stop to it.

In his scathing memo dated last Friday, Deputy Dist. Atty. Gary P. Kesselman also said his successor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Lea Purwin D’Agostino, tried to pressure him, through threats, to testify in support of an important witness.

Kesselman wrote that D’Agostino made statements he considered “threats and an attempt to pressure me into testifying . . . to support the witness Donna Schuman’s testimony.”

Since the start of the six-week-old, controversy-racked trial, Kesselman and D’Agostino have been involved in a running battle over the credibility of testimony by Schuman, a production secretary on the “Twilight Zone” film.

Information Withheld

Schuman has testified that Kesselman had told her he planned to deliberately withhold information from the defense, a charge Kesselman vehemently denies. D’Agostino has sided with Schuman, saying Schuman also told her Kesselman had planned to withhold evidence.

Kesselman, who withdrew from the case in late 1985 for personal reasons, noted in his memo to Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Gilbert I. Garcetti that he had complied with Garcetti’s instructions not to talk publicly about the matter. He said he had followed those orders but now “I must also be assured that during my ‘silence’ the efforts to smear me and impugn my integrity will cease and desist.” Kesselman’s private attorney, Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., said Wednesday that the references to a smear were directed at D’Agostino.

Garcetti, the No. 2 man in the district attorney’s office, denied ordering Kesselman to remain silent. In response to the memo, he defended D’Agostino, adding that he did not know of any attempt to impugn Kesselman’s integrity.

D’Agostino refused comment on the memo, citing a new gag order imposed by Superior Court Judge Roger W. Boren on Wednesday prohibiting discussion of testimony that has not been presented to the jury.

The Kesselman memo was distributed to reporters by defense attorneys as soon as it was turned over to them Wednesday by the prosecution as evidence in the case. D’Agostino, at Garcetti’s direction, had asked Boren to suppress the portions containing the allegations against her, but the judge declared he had no authority to do so.

The memo’s release came on a day when D’Agostino was admonished by Boren for failing to disclose to defense attorneys and the judge information that could possibly damage her case.

Boren declared that D’Agostino had been “perhaps . . . less than candid” in not telling the court about a missing report from a firefighter present on the film set where three actors were killed in a 1982 helicopter accident.

The firefighter, Richard Ebentheuer, disclosed for the first time in testimony Wednesday that his report had stated that before the filming of the fatal scene, he had warned a colleague that the scene appeared dangerous--yet he and his colleagues took no action to warn the film makers.

D’Agostino, who denied that Boren’s comments were a rebuke, said she did not tell the court about Ebentheuer’s statements because she had forgot about them.

Film director John Landis and four associates face involuntary manslaughter charges in the 1982 deaths of actor Vic Morrow and two child actors, killed when a helicopter crashed on them during the filming of a Vietnam battle scene involving special effects explosives. The prosecution has accused individual defendants of gross negligence and child endangerment.

Wednesday’s fireworks began after defense attorneys cross-examined Ebentheuer without the jury present. The firefighter, now retired, said he had told George Hull, the head fire safety officer on the film set, that he thought the scene would prove dangerous.

“I said I thought that we should talk to somebody about it,” Ebentheuer recalled. “He told me if I wanted to I could.”

Ebentheuer added that he never mentioned his concerns to the film makers but that after the tragedy, he included the information in a report to DeWitt Morgan, the fire inspector who had granted a fire safety permit to the film makers. At the time, Ebentheuer testified, Morgan “stated to me he felt that my report should not be let out.”

Ebentheuer said he related that information to D’Agostino last week, before Morgan’s own appearance on the witness stand. In Morgan’s three days on the stand, D’Agostino did not ask the inspector, who wrote his own report on the accident, about Ebentheuer’s claims.

A county fire official, Gordon S. Pearson, said outside of court Wednesday that Ebentheuer’s report is now either missing or was purged from their file on the “Twilight Zone” case.

After Ebentheuer’s disclosures, Boren denied a defense motion for dismissal of the case. But he added that D’Agostino should not fail to disclose such information again, and he dismissed the jury until Monday to allow time for attorneys to question Morgan about the matter.