FAST FORWARD : A Second Look at Some of the People Who Made News in 1991 : Aftermath: The drama surrounding siege at a Utah hospital continues. TV movies and lawsuits are in the works, and the gunman could receive the death penalty.

A newspaper story about a human calamity has a beginning, middle and end for readers, but there is no easy closure for those whose misfortunes provide fodder for such accounts.

It has been more than three months since Richard Worthington, armed with a pair of guns and a bomb, burst into a Utah hospital maternity ward intending to kill the doctor who had performed a tubal ligation on his wife. Although his wife signed the proper releases, Worthington, the father of eight, convinced himself that Dr. Glade Curtis had tricked his wife into sterilization. He sought revenge, he said, because he believed he had one more baby in heaven waiting to be born. In court documents, his wife paints a picture of a deeply depressed man who she feared had become suicidal over not being able to have more children.

Eighteen hours after he stormed Alta View Hospital in Sandy, Utah, near midnight Sept. 20, a nurse was dead, a baby had entered the world and Worthington was under arrest.

The horrifying events ended in the early evening of Sept. 21. But it was just the beginning of a saga that would sunder two families, generate good will and bad blood among hospital colleagues and create a Hollywood feeding frenzy.

The family tragedy was compounded almost immediately when, hours after Worthington surrendered to police, his 16-year-old son, Aaron, nearly died when his motorcycle collided with a car. He was in a coma for almost two months.

Then, at the end of October, Richard Worthington’s wife, Karen, divorced him on grounds of mental cruelty. Their assets were transferred to her, causing prosecutors to suspect that the divorce was a ploy to allow a newly indigent Worthington to be represented by a public defender.

David Roth, the widower of slain nurse Karla Roth, a mother of four, would be further devastated when his minor stepchildren were removed from his custody and taken to Arizona by their father. In the first week of November, Roth filed suit against Karen Worthington, alleging that she provided her husband with the guns he took to the hospital and, in fact, knew he planned to kill her doctor. She has denied culpability.

On the same day that an in-depth account of the siege at Alta View was published in The Times, movie producers boarded planes for Salt Lake City. They courted and cajoled, flattered and, in some cases, offended the story’s principals.

Margie Wyler, one of two surviving nurses held by Worthington and the one who helped deliver the baby born during the incident, was the object of intense competition among several producers. Unlike the other nurse, Susan Wooley, who had seen Worthington shoot Roth and declined interview requests, Wyler coped with the trauma by talking. She had been interviewed by Bryant Gumbel and sought after by Larry King (whom she turned down because she doesn’t like his show). Her volubility aroused the interest of the TV movie troops.

In the end, Wyler, a 38-year-old mother of 11, signed with producer Steve Krantz, who, in conjunction with Unistar Productions, sold the movie to NBC. But there were some lingering bad feelings about the way some of Krantz’s associates went about their business.

“It was a real high-pressure, duress-type situation,” said Wyler’s husband, Dale, who was reluctant to discuss the experience. “They said, ‘You gotta sign this real quick--otherwise you will lose your rights to sign at all.’ It has been quite an eye-opener, and we are sure a lot wiser to what is going on now.”

Wyler said his wife also was told by a deputy county attorney that selling her story rights might ruin the prosecution’s case against Worthington and that he would seek an injunction from the court preventing her from doing just that.

“We found out later the chances of that occurring were probably nonexistent,” said Dale Wyler. “But he made Margie feel like two cents.”

Bud Ellett, chief Salt Lake County prosecutor, said movie deals do indeed make it hard to find impartial jurors: “We asked the witnesses to consider that it may jeopardize the case somewhat, but that’s all we can do.”

Although there was an outpouring of help and support--including group and individual counseling sessions for all involved in the drama--Wyler also has been the object of anger on the part of colleagues who, she believes, may think she is exploiting a tragedy.

For instance, when Unistar producer Gloria Morrison toured the maternity ward of Alta View with Wyler, she heard an angry colleague of Wyler’s hiss that no movie people were allowed in the facility. And Dale Wyler said that when Karen Worthington made arrangements to meet Margie and Morrison at Alta View, Worthington was intercepted by staff and told she was not welcome on the premises.

Krantz’s production company also has secured the rights to Karen Worthington’s story. She was contacted by a number of producers, one of whom said later that she seemed giddy with the attention. “Can we get Kate Jackson to play me?” Worthington, slim and brown-haired, reportedly asked.

In the meantime, a second producer, Mark Sennet, in conjunction with Citadel Entertainment, has secured the rights to the stories of some of the four others held hostage, including the woman who gave birth during the siege, Christan Downey, and the father of her baby, Adam Cisneros. Salt Lake City Police Sgt. Don Bell, who negotiated with Richard Worthington during the final hours, also signed up. Citadel has sold the movie to CBS.

Krantz said it is not unheard of for two networks to air different versions of the same true stories.

“There are lots of different ways of looking at a sentence,” he said. “You can look at the subject or the predicate or the meaning of the thing. Here in this situation, where you have a real-life story, there are several different ways of looking at it. We believe that we have the rights of the principal characters, and we are telling the story as it happened, with the proper importance given to the proper principals.”

As for which movie will air first, no one knows. Scripts for both are still being written.

Movie producers were not the only ones motivated to action. The Times’ article, said David Roth’s lawyer, prompted his client to sue Karen Worthington. In the Oct. 6 story, Margie Wyler was quoted repeating a phone conversation she had had with Karen Worthington shortly after Roth was killed. According to Wyler, Karen Worthington apologized for her husband’s actions, saying she had known 45 minutes earlier that he was on way to the hospital and should have called the police.

“We are alleging that (Karen Worthington) was negligent and through her negligence contributed to the death of Karla Roth and is liable in a wrongful-death case for damages,” said Roth’s attorney, Colin King. “People say, ‘Why are you suing her? What can you get?’ Among other things, obviously, this kind of movie money. We see it as blood money.”

Karla Roth’s four children also are plaintiffs in the civil action. David Roth was with relatives in Montana for the holidays, said his lawyer, and not available to comment on the suit.

In response to the Roth lawsuit, Karen Worthington admitted in court papers that her husband was upset about her inability to have more children and that earlier this year he “was becoming increasingly depressed, and did talk on occasion about the tubal ligation.” She said he “never discussed any hostile attitude toward Dr. Curtis or Alta View Hospital.”

In fact, said Karen Worthington, she feared her husband was suicidal, not homicidal. She had removed from their home “as many of the firearms” as she could, leaving them with neighbors, she said.

On the day that Worthington stormed Alta View, she said, her husband demanded “over and over” that she give his guns back. He got out a gun that his wife had not hidden--the .357 magnum that he took to the hospital--pointed it at his stomach and told her “it was stupid to move the guns, that if he had wanted to kill himself, all he had to do was pull the trigger on the handgun.”

Distraught, Karen Worthington walked into one of their bathrooms to calm down, whereupon her husband kicked the door off the hinges. “At that time,” according to the court papers, “Karen Worthington made arrangements to have the guns returned.”

Later, he left the house. He returned with ice cream bars for his children, then announced he was going to his gym to work out. Because she did not know her husband was on his way to the hospital, she claims in the court papers, she did not call the police, Curtis or the hospital.

Karen Worthington’s sister, Debbie, who is married to Richard Worthington’s brother, Craig, said her sister was upset by the lawsuits but that she is “doing well.” She has not discussed the movie deal with her family, said Debbie Worthington. Her children, who range from toddlers to teen-agers, are not faring so well, she said. “The little kids still don’t quite comprehend what is going on. The older kids are having a hard time.”

The bright spot for the Worthingtons has been the recovery of son Aaron, who was dubbed “the miracle boy” by hospital staff. He was not expected to live, said Debbie Worthington, who added that although his speech is somewhat slow, his left eye remains closed and he has trouble using his left arm, his personality is intact.

For David Roth, his baby daughter Charlee and his stepchildren, however, there have been neither bright spots nor happy endings.

In March, Richard Worthington is scheduled to stand trial on charges of aggravated murder, attempted capital homicide, nine counts of aggravated kidnaping and delivery of an infernal machine (the dynamite bomb). A jury will be asked to consider the death penalty.