SAN FERNANDO : TV Movie Re-Creates Death of Officer

For a few hours on a stretch of Chatsworth Drive, it was Christmas Eve, 1980, all over again. That was the day San Fernando lost a police officer in the line of duty.

A chalk outline drawn on the sidewalk by an office building adorned with Christmas decorations represented the spot where Officer Dennis Webb lay mortally wounded from six gunshots minutes after stopping a robbery suspect.

A Los Angeles-based production company, Overruled Co., re-created the crime scene for a television movie based on the shooting death of Webb and the two young men who separately confessed to the slaying. One of them, William Mothershed, a former honor student from Sylmar High School, was eventually convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

“It’s a psychological story about the why of it,” said Peggy Griffin, the film’s associate producer. “Why did they both confess? Ultimately, which one really did it?”

This filming of several scenes in San Fernando depicting the shooting and its aftermath drew curious bystanders as well as some of the Police Department’s 34 officers, some of whom knew Webb. The five-year veteran, who was actually killed on Huntington Street, became the department’s second officer to die in the line of duty.

“I think it’s good that the public knows how dangerous it can be out there for an officer,” said Detective Fred Villanueva, a 26-year veteran who was on hand to provide traffic control. “You have to be on alert at all times.”

A bike-patrol officer who wheeled by the set Wednesday said he hopes the movie does not exploit a tragedy that remains sensitive for some officers in the close-knit department.

“I hope the movie gets made the way it should be made and not just dramatized for ratings,” Officer Jeff Eley said.

Within months of the shooting, Robert Berndt, a 26-year-old former security guard who at one time was confined to a mental hospital, confessed to the killing, but he was dropped as a suspect after Mothershed, 19, confessed.

The production company finished filming segments of “Confessions: Mothershed or Berndt” in San Fernando yesterday. The NBC Movie of the Week, starring James Earl Jones, Jason Bateman, James Wilder and Melinda Dillon, will air in the fall, Griffin said.