The producer of the video-taped production has a mini-cam on his shoulder and is focused on the entrance to the jewelry store. It’s July, 1986, in central Alabama, and the mercury is in the 90s and is climbing.

A team of university students are taping a Crime Stoppers re-enactment for television. This scene is one of several the crew will shoot in connection with a recent string of jewelry store robberies.

They’ve finished the interior shots. A man with a stocking mask enters the store, pulls a sawed-off shotgun, and forces the manager and a clerk down on the floor.

The robber smashes showcases, dumps ring trays into a plastic bag, then scoops up bracelets and necklaces. Within minutes he’s out of the store yelling, "Don’t call police or you’re dead!"

The film crew finishes that scene in two takes. Now they’re outside shooting the "getaway" scene. Somebody yells, "Camera...and...action."

The masked robber runs from the store and heads for the wooded area at the end of the shopping center. As he runs past the drug store, somebody inside sees him and comes outside. At that same instant the jewelry store manager runs outside yelling, "I’ve been robbed-stop thief!"

Did I mention that the guy coming out of the drug store is the shopping center security guard? He hears the victim’s plea and shouts one of his own: "Stop or I’ll shoot."

Of course the actor/thief does what he’s supposed to and keeps right on keeping on. The security guard draws his .38-caliber revolver and fires two rounds. POW! POW!

The actor falls in the parking lot-only he’s not acting. He’s dead-really dead. And that’s a wrap.

The security cop tells investigators, "Nobody ever told me they were making a movie-I thought it really was a robbery."

A coroner’s jury decides there was no "criminal intent" in the shooting. On a civil level, well, the lawyers are still messing around with that.