Animation questions (Dateline NBC creating 2 CGI graphic versions of the aircraft landing)
Shane Bishop - Dateline NBC
email correspondence with Shane Bishop regarding creating 2 CGI graphic versions of the aircraft landing
May 23, 2018 {ID: 6102} {Class: Other | Sub-Class: Media}

This email correspondence with Shane Bishop, a Dateline NBC producer, is dated May 23, 2018. Before their two-hour documentary "At the bottom of the lake" aired on October 12, 2018, this was one of the emails between Shane and I to explain the two controversial versions of the aircraft landing—Sheriff Dupont's version and mine.

Dupont believed the aircraft never flipped over, I had over five minutes to help Dianne with her seat-belt, but instead grabbed her non-existent purse with the money and exited the aircraft, leaving her to drown. What actually happened—and is backed by photographs and evidence collected by the authorities in Montana—was the aircraft flipped over when the wheels jack-knifed into the water, I was catapulted through the front windshield because I wasn’t wearing a seat-belt, and within twenty seconds the plane sank, leaving no time to get to Dianne.

Dateline initially intended to show both versions as this email attests, but in the end they only televised my version because they couldn’t explain what Dupont had been embellishing for twenty-four years. The aircraft recovery photos showed indisputable damage to the aircraft tail-fin because it flipped over, and the broken outward front windshield that was caused by my body being catapulted through it. But instead of accounting for such obvious clues, Dupont ignored them, along with other photos and details found in the investigation reports, and instead made up his own version of the landing.