Murder suspect stars in local Indie film

GRANTS PASS, Ore. –“That’s part of the accusations… that really is part of the nightmare… is that we knowingly cast this person to take advantage of the situation. And I can say, none of us wanted this,” said Matthew Spickard filmmaker of “From the Dark.”

For two Grants Pass filmmakers, the saying “life imitates art” has turned into a nightmare.

Spickard and Justin Adams say they cast a local actress who, as it turns out, has a lot more in common with her character than they thought.

“You could feel that she is in a really dangerous position and she just handled it exactly how we wanted,” said Adams, filmmaker of “From the Dark.”

Aisling Tucker Moore-Reed, a Jacksonville writer who goes by the pen name ‘Tucker Reed,’ was out on bail when the movie was being filmed.

She was charged with two counts of manslaughter in the death of her uncle, Shane Patrick Moore, in July of 2016.

It wasn’t until the last day of the shoot in July of 2018, that the men say Reed’s past was revealed.

“We got the story that painted her as a hero basically and we bought it for too long,” said Adams.

Months later, a grand jury added a murder charge after investigators found a video recording on Reed’s cell phone which ended with Reed pulling the trigger killing her uncle.

“Once we saw the video, it was like the entire story that we got was completely fabricated,” said Adams.

All the more disturbing, the two say, is why Reed would want to star in this film.

“There is a scene where she shoots someone. There’s also this thing about manslaughter and stuff like that… it felt like she knew the character more than we did, in the end,” said Adams.

Sharing their story today, the two say they feel betrayed.

Not just by what Reed kept from them, but by how this impacts their film’s future.

“It’s just… it’s a tragedy,” said Adams.

“That we had frauded people. That we had [held] out on a release of the movie because we’re trying to protect a murderer is their words,” said Spickard.

Although they say they’ve been told countless times that any publicity is good publicity, they disagree.

“None of us walked in to try to do a movie and bank off this terrible, terrible thing,” said Adams.

Reed’s mother told NBC5 News shortly after the shooting that her brother threatened to kill Reed and was physically assaulting her when he was shot.

The filmmakers don’t have a date for when the film will be released.

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