Dead Man's Line

Dead Man's Line (2018)

The true story of Tony Kiritsis

On the morning of February 8, 1977, Tony Kiritsis walked into an office on East Market Street and wired a shotgun to mortgage broker Richard Hall’s head. After making a 40-minute 911 call that ran the emotional gamut from polite respect to seething rants and tearful breakdowns, Kiritsis then paraded Hall along the streets of downtown Indianapolis followed by a cadre of police and media who were unable to do anything other than watch the event unfold. Kiritsis went on to hold Hall captive for three days as SWAT snipers, the bomb squad, and FBI looked for a way to disarm him without Hall being shot. The crisis culminated in a shocking press conference broadcast live on TV

Date of release
2018-02-08
TMDB
7.3 / 10 (9)
Runtime
1h 48m
Genres
Documentary
Director
Alan Berry, Mark Enochs

Casting

Interesting facts

Dead Man's Line is a 2018 American true crime documentary film directed by Alan Berry and produced by Berry and Mark Enochs. The film chronicles the 1977 Indianapolis hostage crisis involving Tony Kiritsis, a 63-hour standoff that drew national attention. Using archival news footage, crime-scene recordings, and interviews with detectives, journalists, and negotiators, the film reconstructs how the event unfolded and examines its impact on law enforcement and media coverage. The documentary later served as a basis for Gus Van Sant's 2025 feature film Dead Man's Wire.

Production

In an interview with ForenSeek, directors Alan Berry and Mark Enochs described how they became interested in revisiting the Kiritsis case and the challenges of sourcing archival footage from local Indianapolis television stations. They noted that the project originated as an attempt to preserve a forgotten part of state history while exploring how the 1977 event reshaped media coverage of violent crime.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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