Director: Zachary Stauffer Producer: Jason Paladino, Zachary Stauffer
Description:
Lt. Wes Van Dorn, a 29-year-old United States Naval Academy graduate and the married father of two young sons, died when the helicopter he was piloting crashed off the coast of Virginia during a 2014 training exercise. Motivated by her grief, his wife Nicole sought an explanation for the cause of the disaster. Her efforts spurred an investigation that uncovered a long history of negligence and institutional failings around the 53E helicopter—the model Van Dorn was piloting when he was killed, and the deadliest aircraft in the US military. Through incisive reporting and interviews with Van Dorn’s colleagues and family, Who Killed Lt. Van Dorn? is at once a poignant picture of one family's tragedy, as well as a revelatory inquiry into the murky inner-workings of the American defense establishment.
Biography:
Zachary Stauffer is a staff producer at UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program and its primary director of photography. Who Killed Lt. Van Dorn? is his first feature documentary. Since 2009, he has been involved with all of the IRP’s work for PBS Frontline, films that explored organized crime, death investigation, college sports, and sexual assault, including the DuPont award-winning Rape In The Fields. He has also served as a director of photography on independent documentaries and projects distributed in the US and internationally. His short documentary, A Day Late In Oakland, about the murder of Oakland journalist Chauncey Bailey, was nominated for two IDA Awards, screened at film festivals across the country, and broadcast on KQED in San Francisco.
