LOS ANGELES -- Director Steven Spielberg and two associates have been accused of being involved in illegally hiring two child actors who were killed on the set of the 'Twilight Zone' movie, prosecutors said Thursday.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Gilbert Garcetti said the allegations that Spielberg may have had a role in hiring the two youngsters to work at night without the required work permits were made by attorney Harland Braun.
Until recently, Braun had represented director John Landis, who is charged with involuntary manslaughter in connection with a July 1982 helicopter crash on the 'Twilight Zone' set that killed actor Vic Morrow and the two children,Renee Chen, 6, and Myca Dinh Lee, 7.
Braun apparently raised the allegations during a recent meeting with prosecutors in which he said Landis and two of his four co-defendants were willing to plead guilty to a charge of conspiring to employ Chen and Lee without a work permit if all other charges, including the manslaughter counts, were dismissed.
Braun said prosecutors rejected the proposed plea bargain.
Garcetti said that in response to Braun's allegations, the District Attorney's Office sent him a letter asking if he could substantiate his accusations against Spielberg and associates Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy.
Garcetti said his office has no 'information to substantiate those allegations. That's why we asked him ... to substantiate what he claims is fact, and we have not received anything since this letter went out.'
Garcetti emphasized that the letter to Braun does not constitute an investigation into the allegations and no formal probe has been launched.
Spielberg, the director of such box-office smashes as 'Raiders of the Lost Ark,' 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' and 'Jaws,' produced the 'Twilight Zone' movie along with Landis, said Robert Friedman, a spokesman for Warner Bros.
Marshall was the film's executive producer and Kennedy was the assistant producer of a Spielberg segment in the movie, Friedman said.
Friedman, speaking on Spielberg's behalf, declined to comment on the allegations.
