‘It Blew Up. It Was Hilarious to Watch’ : ‘Rust’ Good Samaritan on How Alec Baldwin Trial Unraveled

Troy Teske didn’t expect much when he walked into the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office in March to turn over some bullets.

But a few months later, he would become a critical supporting player in the Alec Baldwin trial — the “Good Samaritan” whose evidence would unravel the case.

“It blew up. It was hilarious to watch,” says Teske, a retired cop from Bullhead City, Az., in his first interview about the case.

Baldwin was accused of negligently shooting cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of “Rust.” In a dramatic scene at Baldwin’s manslaughter trial in July, Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer examined Teske’s bullets in open court, finding three that matched the live bullets found on set, including the fatal round.

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The bullets were legally significant because they had not been shared with the defense. That was enough for the judge to dismiss the case, finding that Baldwin had been deprived of a fair trial. But they also offered a tantalizing clue. Ever since Hutchins’ death, the central mystery was how live bullets got on a film set.

The Teske rounds supported the theory that the bullets came through Seth Kenney, the prop supplier who provided guns, dummies and blank ammunition to “Rust.” Kenney denies responsibility, and the prosecution and investigators also discounted that theory, pointing instead to armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed, who is now serving an 18-month sentence for her part in Hutchins’ death.

Teske is a friend of Gutierrez Reed’s father, the legendary film armorer Thell Reed. They would go shooting together, and Reed left his bullets at Teske’s house for safekeeping. Two months before the “Rust” incident, Reed and Kenney took some of those bullets to Taylor Sheridan’s ranch in Texas, where they held a livefire training camp for the actors on the “Yellowstone” prequel “1883.” Afterward, Kenney brought the remainder back with him to Albuquerque.

Reed believed they went from there to the “Rust” set, mingled among similar-looking dummies. But after the shooting, detectives found Kenney’s remaining live ammo did not match the “Rust” bullets — debunking that theory.

Teske still had some bullets from the same batch, and expected investigators to seize them as well. But they never did.

“Thell and I went out and shot up a whole bunch of it,” he says. “I finally -

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thought, ‘I’m down to about 19 rounds, or 18 — I’d better hang on to these and turn them in later.’”

He brought them to Gutierrez Reed’s trial in March, believing he would testify for the defense. But the defense lawyer did not call him to the stand, and told him to take the bullets to the Sheriff’s Office.

“He didn’t want to have anything to do with it either,” Teske says. “That was very suspicious.”

While staying at a Santa Fe hotel, Teske took out the rounds and noticed that three of them had Starline Brass casings and silver primers — which he knew matched the live rounds on “Rust.” But by that point, he figured no one would care.

“I thought maybe they would destroy the evidence,” Teske says. “When I turned it in, I wanted proof that I turned it in.”

Alexandria Hancock, the lead detective on the case, testified at Baldwin’s trial that she tried to contact Teske later, but that he did not return her calls. Therefore, she logged his bullets under a new file — making them inaccessible to Baldwin’s defense team.

Teske says that account was false. “She never once called me,” he says. “I can’t believe they put it under another case number.”

Baldwin’s lawyers found out about the bullets anyway — possibly from Gutierrez Reed’s lawyer — and raised the issue at trial. Prosecutor Kari Morrissey and a crime scene technician claimed they did not match the “Rust” bullets — only to be proven wrong when the judge asked to see them.

“Everybody was lying about it,” Teske says.

Teske says he is bothered that Baldwin walked free but Gutierrez Reed did not — even though evidence was hidden in her trial as well.

“She’s trying to survive in prison,” he says. “A whole bunch of people are always trying to fight her. They call her ‘Hollywood.’ They don’t like her.”

As for how the bullets got on set, it’s still unclear exactly who is to blame.

“All the evidence is gone — there’s no proving anything right now,” Teske says. “I’m pretty much over it — I’m done thinking about it.”

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