SUIT IS FILED TO HALT BIRD-ANDERSON TV FILM

A federal lawsuit has been filed seeking to halt the airing of a CBS television movie depicting the steamy, love-and-murder scandal of a former Emporia minister and his church secretary.

Robert Hecht, a Topeka lawyer who represents the Rev. Thomas Bird, said Sunday the suit was filed in Los Angeles federal court on behalf of Bird and a film production company he identified as Fair-Dinkum. (Fair-Dinkum is owned by Henry Winkler, who has a competing network deal involving the murder case).

Interscope Communications is in Emporia to film a television docudrama tentatively titled “Broken Commandments.” The film, which CBS hopes to air early next year, involves the 1983 murders of Sandra Bird and Martin Anderson.

Emporia pastor Thomas Bird was convicted of first-degree murder in his wife’s death and of criminal solicitation to kill Anderson. Lorna Anderson Eldridge, a former church secretary at Bird’s Faith Lutheran Church, pleaded guilty in August, 1985, to soliciting to have her husband killed.

Bird and Eldridge, who married a Hutchinson man in 1985, are serving prison terms.

Hecht said Sunday that the suit seeks to prevent the distribution of material that inaccurately portrays Bird’s involvement in the deaths of his wife and Martin Anderson.

Hecht said he obtained a copy of part of the script showing that producers plan to portray incidents that never occurred.

“It is filled not only with inaccuracies but with a substantial number of false, totally fabricated incidents which could not be the result of any inference at all from public records or law enforcement records,” Hecht said in an interview with UPI.

For example, he said, the film shows Bird beating his wife to death on a bridge near Emporia where her wrecked car was found July 17, 1983.

In the script, Sandra Bird is depicted pleading for mercy, despite the fact that there is no evidence placing Thomas Bird at the scene of the wreck, Hecht said.

“They (film producers) have been asked several times to delete such fabrications and they have indicated they have no interest in doing so,” he said.

Bird’s father, the Rev. Thomas Bird of Hardy, Ark., is helping his son fight the airing of TV movies they think are based more on fiction than fact.

Dick Clark Productions Inc. and Henry Winkler Productions Inc. have also obtained movie rights from key figures involved in the intrigue. Clark’s deal is with NBC, Winkler’s with ABC.

The elder Bird told the Kansas City Times in a story published Saturday that he is concerned how Hollywood interpretations of the facts will affect his son’s children, now living with Sandra Bird’s brother in Little Rock, Ark.

“We feel they built up a sexual relationship that is very repulsive,” Thomas Bird told the newspaper. “They have no grounds except statements made by that secretary (Lorna Eldridge).”

All three production companies began work on the project after the Los Angeles Times quoted Eldridge in a jailhouse interview as saying Tom Bird, her purported lover, killed her husband along a Geary County road in November 1983.

No one has been charged with killing Martin Anderson, but investigators recently disclosed they plan to file charges early next year. They said they are waiting for the holiday period to end and for the start of a new budget year.

Geary County Sheriff William Deppish said he supports the lawsuit because the airing of TV movies could jeopardize pending criminal investigations.