‘Twilight Zone’ Trial : Heat Triggered Copter Crash, Expert Testifies

Heat from a special-effects explosion, rather than debris, led to the helicopter crash that killed three actors on the “Twilight Zone” film set, a metallurgy expert called by the defense testified Monday.

But the prosecutor in the long-running involuntary manslaughter trial maintained outside court later that the testimony of Gary Fowler is “irrelevant.”

Director John Landis and four film-making associates are accused of criminal negligence stemming from the 1982 accident, in which a helicopter plummeted from the sky and struck actor Vic Morrow and two child actors after its tail rotor was engulfed in the fireball of the special-effects explosion.

Fowler, who specializes in the analysis of aircraft failures, told the Los Angeles Superior Court jury that the fireball caused portions of the helicopter’s tail rotor to separate, in a process known as “heat delamination.” Fowler added that he knows of no previous instances in which helicopters have crashed due to similar circumstances.

Defense attorney Harland Braun said outside court that Fowler’s testimony helped prove that the accident was unforeseeable, because there was no historical basis for believing that the heat of the special-effects explosion would down the aircraft.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Lea Purwin D’Agostino, who did not call her own science experts, said that if anything, Fowler assisted the prosecution when he agreed during cross-examination that the crash occured because the helicopter was too close to the fireball.

Last week, Judge Roger W. Boren told the attorneys that he will instruct the jury that to convict the defendants, “what is required to be reasonably foreseeable is the death of the victims, not the precise manner in which the deaths occured.”

Braun, while again blasting the judge for his stand, said he still hopes that Boren will change his mind.

“The judge has given a half-baked reason a week ago, and I’m supposed to accept that that’s the beginning and end of the judicial thinking in the matter?” the defense attorney said. “I think it’s absurd. And I think that you cannot hold a citizen to take precautions against an unknown danger.”

Braun noted, however, that Boren appeared inattentive during Fowler’s testimony. “The judge was asleep during Fowler’s testimony,” said Braun outside court. “He wasn’t paying attention.”

In his two-hour appearance, Fowler said that the thin metal skin of the rotor peeled away when the fireball’s heat caused a breakdown of an adhesive substance.

“That delamination set up aerodynamic force that led to the fracture and failure,” said Fowler, adding that he found no evidence that debris caused the accident.

During a preliminary hearing, the prosecution maintained that debris was the cause, but during the trial, D’Agostino has shied away from such a conclusion.