‘Rust’ Ricochet: Film’s Ammo Provider Questions New Bullet Evidence That Derailed Trial (Exclusive)

From the moment law enforcement arrived at the New Mexico set where the Rust shooting occurred, how exactly the live rounds got there was a key focus of the investigation. The prosecution, for years, maintained that they likely came from armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who was convicted in March for involuntary manslaughter. 

But when a so-called good Samaritan came forward with evidence of a contradictory theory that led to the abrupt dismissal of the criminal case against Alec Baldwin, a familiar name again resurfaced: Seth Kenney, owner of a props and arms supplier that furnished the Rust production with ammunition and weapons. Testimony from a crime scene technician revealed that new ballistics evidence emerged of rounds which may have come from the same source as the bullet that struck cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

Baldwin’s lawyers said this ammunition implicates Kenney in the introduction of live rounds to the set and was deliberately hidden from them.

The good Samaritan — later revealed to be retired Arizona police officer Troy Teske, a friend of Gutierrez-Reed’s father, the longtime Hollywood armorer Thell Reed — brought a sample of the ammunition to the sheriff’s office. At least one of these rounds appeared to have a Starline brass casing that matched the live bullet that killed Hutchins. That batch, Baldwin attorney Alex Spiro said, came from Kenney and Reed and was used by castmembers on the Paramount+ Western 1883 for a so-called “cowboy training camp” run by the duo in which live ammunition was used for shooting practice. Teske came into possession of it through Reed, who stored some of his arms at the former law enforcement officer’s home. Kenney also brought some of those rounds back to PDQ Arm and Prop in New Mexico.

Marissa Poppell, the crime scene technician, said that she had been made aware of the new evidence’s relationship to the case by Teske. Spiro followed up: “He told you you had been duped by Seth Kenney, didn’t he?”  

Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Kenney says he suspects foul play. “Troy Teske had been recorded in November 2021 stating that he did not have any .45 Colt ammunition with nickel primers, a potential match to Rust,” he explains. “His years-late submission of ammunition to the sheriff’s office was only a small portion of the 100 rounds he previously was recorded as saying he had in his possession, but now in 2024, include three rounds that have nickel primers, and may match the Rust ammunition.”

Kenney’s PDQ Arm and Prop supplied prop weapons and ammunition to productions. His involvement in the entertainment industry goes back at least a decade. He was a weapons consultant on Man Down, a 2015 film starring Shia LaBeouf. During this time, he worked for The Hand Prop Room managing the Los Angeles prop rental house’s arsenal. He was sued in 2016 by his former employer in a since-dismissed suit alleging he stole weapons, obtained firearms under its license for personal use and tried to poach clients to start his own business.

Kenney provided roughly 30 guns of assorted types and ammunition to the Rust production, mostly .44-.40 and .38-.40 rounds, according to a 551-page investigative report released by the Santa Fe Court Sheriff’s Office in November 2021. He said he only provided one box of .45 Long Colt ammunition, which is the format used to load the revolver that killed Hutchins when it discharged. He’s adamantly maintained that the ammunition he provided wasn’t used by Gutierrez-Reed to load the gun Baldwin discharged, noting that it didn’t match a description of the box the armorer drew from the day of the shooting provided to investigators by Rust props assistant Sarah Zachry.

Available records provide a view of Kenney’s actions and thinking following the deadly accident. Zachry called Kenney in the immediate aftermath, at which time he avowed the rounds weren’t his own. Before Hutchins was pronounced dead, he made a call to Teske, a judge and retired Arizona police officer who is close to Gutierrez-Reed’s father, explaining to him that she “had messed up,” according to a lawsuit from Gutierrez-Reed against Kenney that’s been dismissed.  

In the following days, Kenney insisted to Zachry that he repeatedly checks rounds before sending them out, including rattle-testing dummies, and later told investigators that he believed he knew where the bullet in question may have originated — his own ammo supplier, Joe Swanson, who didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Reed had roughly 300 live .45 Colt rounds and brought some, with Kenney, for shooting practice on 1883, the Paramount+ Western, just prior to production starting for Rust, while leaving the rest in Teske’s garage. After the training camp, Kenney took the ammunition that was left over with him to his New Mexico arms and prop house.

In a 2021 call to Cpl. Alexandria Hancock, the lead investigator in the case, Kenney expressed that the deadly round at the center of the Rust case could’ve originated from this batch of ammunition. Indeed, Kenney acknowledged that both he and Swanson were “worried this was the case” and that “it was hard to believe it came from anywhere else,” according to the sheriff’s report.

Reed separately informed the sheriff’s office that Kenney kept the ammo container and the rest of the live rounds after the 1883 training was over. But law enforcement only executed a search warrant on PDQ Arm & Prop four weeks after Hutchins’ death, at which point the container was discovered without any rounds sporting Starline brass casings. “There is no explanation as to where the remainder of the live rounds went or what Seth did with them,” stated Gutierrez-Reed’s lawsuit. The sheriff’s report, which features a catalog of evidence that underwent testing, indicates that neither DNA nor fingerprint analysis was performed on the live rounds found on set, essentially making it impossible to trace their origin.

The disclosure of the rounds brought by Teske, and whether they truly match those found on the Rust set, has been disputed. Special prosecutor Kari Morrissey said the ammunition in the possession of Teske and Kenney used for shooting practice in 1883 was ruled out as the sources of those found on the Rust set after the ex-police officer sent Kenney a picture of the rounds he was holding for Reed, which Morrissey examined. “When you look at that photograph… you can tell these are not similar to the live rounds that were found on set of Rust,” Morrissey testified during the Baldwin trial. She said she did her due diligence to inspect those rounds, pointing to the seizure of ammunition from PDQ Arm and Props. “Not only is it not a match when you look at it, it’s not a match when you send it to the FBI, and you ask them to conduct chemical testing,” the special prosecutor explained.

The day Baldwin’s case was dismissed, Morrissey put Poppell on the stand to defend her decision not to turn over the evidence to the defense. “And they can see for themselves that it does not match the live ammunition from the set of Rust, correct?” she asked the crime technician. “And that is obvious, just when you look at it, is it not?” to which Poppell agreed.

But when Sommer examined the ammunition Teske brought in open court with the prosecution and defense surrounding her, some of them appeared to resemble those found on set after the shooting.

Kenney was the first to be called to testify after the revelation. He confirmed that he gave a box of .45 Colt dummy rounds with Starline brass casings and nickel primers to Zachry, who introduced it onto the set of Rust, though he adamantly maintained he wasn’t the source of the live ammunition.

“Just days after the shooting death, Hannah and Thell Reed accessed the prop truck and removed a trove of potential evidence, including a dozen-plus gun belts, before the sheriff’s department gained and executed a search warrant,” Kenney tells THR. “Mr. Teske is a close friend to the Reed family. It is therefore no surprise that he may have come into possession of potentially matching Rust ammunition from the set.”

It was later revealed that Poppell lied about the Teske-supplied ammunition not matching the rounds found on the Rust set in testimony from Hancock, who agreed with Baldwin’s lawyer that the crime scene technician’s assertion was “completely false.” Morrissey said that she “didn’t realize that there were rounds that looked like that.”

Morrisey explained the first time she learned that Teske had ammunition that looked similar to the rounds uncovered on the Rust set — all belonging to Reed — was in open court the day the court dismissed Baldwin’s case.

“It is highly suspect that Mr. Teske provided photos of rounds in November 2021 and January 2024 of rounds that are completely dissimilar to the live rounds found on the set of Rust, confirmed in writing in November 2021 that he was unable to locate any rounds with [nickel] primers and then on March 6, 2024, he dropped off rounds similar to those from Rust,” she wrote in a filing opposing a new trial for Gutierrez-Reed.

In court, Kenney questioned whether he was being made a scapegoat by Reed, Gutierrez-Reed’s father, and Teske, a longtime friend of the veteran armorer.

He testified, “It seemed palpable they were trying to point the finger at me.”