this is "nightline." >> tonight "rust" aftermath. how alec baldwin reacted. >> sorry, sorry. >> just relax. >> i'm scared. >> what all this could mean for the criminal investigation. plus, reprieve. the texas mother saved from death days before her execution. >> melissa, slow. >> her family's emotional reaction. >> yes, yes. >> how celebrities like kim kardashian could have swayed the case. what could have convinced the appeals court to spare her life. then covid chaos. behind the scenes of the trump

administration's pandemic response, with dr. deborah birx. why she says she often felt like an outcast. >> i was asked to sit outside the oval while they were discussing -- yeah. >> what she was thinking during that infamous disinfectant press conference. and what she says the u.s. is still doing wrong. and twitter sale. the world's richest man buys the popular platform. what could change under elon musk. and will trump be back? >> announcer: "nightline" will be right back.

thanks for joining us. tonight we are now able to see what first responders saw when they answered that 911 call from the "rust" movie set. one officer going up to alec baldwin, asking if he was involved. >> were you in the room when the lady -- >> i was holding the gun, yeah. >> the other trying to calm the armorer hannah gutierrez reed. >> sorry, sorry. >> just relax. >> i'm scared. >> the tapes include alec baldwin's first interview with police. >> um we're just going to go over the rights to you. >> the question, am i being charged with something? >> we're just -- >> the investigation is not expected to wrap up for several

more months. we'll have much more on "nightline" tomorrow. but we turn now to our other top story. the texas mom on death row. today granted a stay of execution just days before she was scheduled to die. abc's maria villarreal on the case and what happens now. >> stay of execution granted. >> yes, yes. >> reporter: for the first time in nearly 15 years, hope feels real for melissa lucio and her family. the texas court of criminal appeals issuing a stay on her execution just 48 hours where she was set to face death by lethal injection. our affiliate krgb was with the family. lucio was convicted of capital murder in 2008 in the death of her 2-year-old daughter mariah. prosecutors alleging she physically abused her daughter. if executed, she would have been the first hispanic woman put to death by the state of texas in

the modern era. but a wave of attention seems to have helped turn the tied. outcry from advocacy groups and celebrities like kim kardashian to a bipartisan group of lawmakers asking for melissa' life to be spared. >> free melissa lucio. >> reporter: i think it's safe to say the case was mismanaged and crucial pieces of evidence were never presented in court. the current d.a. says he welcomes the scrutiny. >> the case is the weakest case that i think i've ever worked on. she is someone who i believe was wrongly convicted for something that wasn't even a crime to begin with. >> reporter: for john lucio, melissa is more than just a name splashed across the headlines. she was his rock, his protector, his mother. > she was my advocate. she was my lawyer. the love, my mother, i see any mother out here that loves her

children. >> reporter: theirs was a large family, 12 kids often struggling with poverty and homelessness. but john's memories of his mother were always fond. in february 2007, their lives were changed forever when paramedics arrived to their home. her 2-year-old daughter mariah found unresponse i. lucio told police the toddler fell asleep and she never woke up. admitting she fell down the staircase two days prior, but didn't seem hurt. >> mariah had an accident, a fall, a great fall. but before that fall, she had already been having a lot of these accidents. >> reporter: melissa was taken into custody for suspected child abuse and subsequent murder. an autopsy later revealed bruises all over mariah's body. >> are you a cold blooded killer? >> no. >> or were you a frustrated mother who took it out? we already know what happened. we already know what happened. >> reporter: during the

interrogation which lasted several hours melissa denied killing mariah more than 100 times. detailing that night during an interview for the 2020 documentary, the state of texas vs. melissa. >> i kept telling them that i hadn't -- that i hadn't hurt my daughter, and they were very vulgar. very, very rough. very persistent. they wanted me to admit to something that i was not capable of doing to my child. and the interrogation continued for maybe six, six, seven hours until 3:00 in the morning. >> reporter: but eventually she confessed. melissa's family and friends had petitioned for melissa's release for years. do you believe that your mom killed mariah? he a not at all, ma'am, not at all. my mother -- i don't even think she would kill a fly. >> reporter: the innocence project would also later take up

melissa's case, reexamining key pieces of evidence. >> never at any time was there an allegation among any of the children or a suspicion among child protective services that melissa was abusive to her children. she struggled with substance abuse. she was the victim of childhood sexual abuse and domestic violence as an adult. and that trauma history impacted her ability to provide. but never once was there suspicion of abuse. >> reporter: and in new medical examination of the case concluded the injuries are consistent with a traumatic fall, which is what the family insists happened. >> the medical examiner ignored evidence that mariah had a blood coagulation disorder that causes profound bruising in the body. they said all the bruising and injuries to mariah had to be the result of intentional abuse and that testimony was just false.

>> reporter: the case also marred by a questionable district attorney. armando villa lobos who accepted bribes to influence decisions in other crimes including racketeering and extortion. the assistant united states attorney who prosecuted him has said that all of his cases should be reexamined. >> you need to tell us right now what exactly happened. >> reporter: even the confession, the backbone of the prosecution's case coming into question. >> the police used tactics that especially, when they are applied to a woman like melissa, who is a trauma victim, who suffers from posttraumatic stress disorder as a result of the domestic violence and sexual abuse that she endured, they're designed to get someone to admit guilt. and that's exactly what they did. >> reporter: and the documentary also including interviews with eyewitnesses. mariah's sibling who says he saw her fall down the stairs. >> and did you see her fall or

did somebody tell you that that's what had happened to her? >> i saw. >> reporter: none of her children were called to testify in court. and her new legal team asserts that melissa's new defense team didn't present crucial evidence. >> i didn't feel like any of the children would be helpful. there was children saying that their sister had fallen down the stairs. that children did not have much discipline, if any, growing up. and i doubt seriously whether they would come across in a courtroom without getting up and running around the courtroom thinking this is great. >> the jury never heard why melissa falsely admitted to things that she didn't do during the police interrogation, because they never got to hear the whole story of her experiences as a survivor of violence. >> reporter: all of this cited in her clemency petition. and now even those who voted to convict melissa are speaking out against her execution.

did melissa lucio get a fair trial? >> not at all. >> reporter: johnny, a member of the jury back in 2008, is one of five jurors supporting melissa's clemency petition. >> we got it wrong. we need to learn that the criminal justice system fails sometimes. and we certainly failed. >> reporter: melissa's case has gone through multiple appeals. and more than half of the federal judges that heard her case agreed crucial evidence was excluded from the original trial. but a little-known law restricted actions the federal court could take. that was not presented to the - jury. that would have made melissa's case a truthful statement that she said that her baby fell. they left it out. they told us, ignore it.

>> reporter: her legal team exhausted all appeals, with no hope left. but for texas governor greg abbott to grant melissa clemency, until now. >> there are procedures to get back into court where there's new evidence of innocence or where the science has changed since trial, and where like here, the state used false evidence to obtain a criminal conviction or withheld exculpatory favorable evidence. >> reporter: with this latest news, melissa' case will get a new hearing, where new evidence can be presented. it's no fairytale ending. melissa will wait the process out in solitary confinement on death row, but in a place where second chances don't often come around. life itself is enough. >> my mother is a big believer in god. her prayer had been persistent like that widow in the bible and her prayers have been answered. >> i just want to say thank you

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♪ almost overnight, dr. deborah birx went from relative object security to household name. one of the leaders of president trump's covid task force, and one of the few women in the room. now that she's left government,

she's speaking out. dr. birx recently sat down with abc's chief medical correspondent dr. jen ashton. >> i was trying to make an invisible virus visible. >> it was the early days of the pandemic. and while much of the country was going about their lives, dr. deborah birx says she knew it was only a matter of time until sars-cov-2 would upend life as we knew it. >> we did not ready the country for the tidal wave that was coming. >> soon she became a household name. one of the most visible leaders in her role as president trump's coronavirus task force coordinator. do you remember the first time you spoke to president trump? >> i really only wanted to convey one message, that this is not the flu. because i really felt that that was a significant disservice. >> and do you think you were able to convey that? >> i made that point, but i'm not sure how that was received. >> the aids i am you knowledge

gist and 29 year veteran was by the president's side during the crucial days of the pandemic. some of those moments turned controversial. >> i see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute. is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning? >> i just wanted it to be the twilight zone and all go away. it was so off-topic, so sensational. i didn't know what to do. >> did it ever cross your mind to stand up and say, let me clarify that? >> that would have been the logical and important thing to do. i was paralyzed in that moment because it was so unexpected. >> that behind the scenes insight is one of many she chronicles in her new book "silent invasion" a memoir of her time in trump's white house.

did he overall in your opinion listen to the physicians and scientists that had both the credentials and the official position to advise him? >> i think in those early weeks of march, yes. i'm often criticized more saying that the president understood the data in graphs. he did in that moment. but i think he wanted a different future for the united states, and i think he wanted the virus to go away. and when the doctors' group couldn't deliver that for him in the time line that he wanted, he sought out advice from others. >> birx joined the team in march 2020, and writes that she frequently felt like an outcast. >> i was asked to sit outside the oval while they were discussing -- >> alone? >> yeah. there's a couch in the hallway, and so i would sit out there in case there was a question that came up before the press briefing, but ordinarily i wouldn't be engaged in the oval

office discussions before the briefing. >> birx says she felt her gender sometimes played a role inside the white house. you were often the only woman in the room. how bad was it? >> usually people say to me, you're being too direct. you're being too pushy. they'll often use the b word. i could hear people in the hallway saying, she's overreacting. because when you go in and there's 3,000 deaths and you tell the president of the united states that within the next eight weekends, we're going to see 100,000 to 240,000 lives lost, that's a very difficult thing to comprehend. >> do you think that those numbers would have been heard differently coming from a man? >> well, certainly if i go by the briefings, men were listened to differently. >> but birx said she had unexpected allies inside the administration. even as she contradicted what the president was saying.

you talk about the fact that vice president pence was always, always an ally of yours. >> i said to him, i just want to be clear. i am saying exactly the opposite of what the president is saying, because the data is telling me that we are going to have a very deadly fall. and he looked at me and he said, you need to do what you need to do. >> trump's son-in-law and senior adviser jared kushner became another close confidant. >> i had only seen him on tv. so when i got to the white house and realized that he was concerned and helped me get to solutions. >> but as she tried to work on those solutions, she grew concerned about safety protocols in the white house. then in october 2020, the president was hospitalized with covid, though she was not part of his personal medical team. do you think he was sicker than

the american public were led to believe? >> the fact that he was moved to walter reed told me that this was quite serious. >> and that his oxygenation levels had dropped to what number? >> well, mark meadows said it was in the 80s. >> which, to be clear is? >> being in the 80s isn't compatible with life for long periods of time. >> birx left the white house after she was replaced by the biden administration, and now has some criticisms, particularly regarding vaccines. >> i do believe that they put too many eggs in the vaccine basket. i think we made the vaccine sound like they created armour and invincibility and they didn't. >> and as we enter pandemic year three, the woman who helped guide the nation at the beginning is looking to the future using lessons from her past. when you put your head on your pillow at night, clear conscience or regrets or both? >> both.

you can't live life without seeing your own mistakes and failures and not fixing them. >> our thanks to dr. jen. dr. birx's new book, silent invasion, is out tomorrow. up next, a look inside the big deal. elon musk is officially buying twitter. ♪ we could walk forever ♪ ( ♪♪ ) ♪ walking on ♪ ♪ walking on the moon ♪ ♪ some ♪ ♪ may say ♪ ♪ i'm wishing my days away ♪ ♪ no way ♪ ♪ walking on the moon ♪ we gave zzzquil pure zzzs restorative herbal sleep. to people who were tired of being tired. i've never slept like this before. i've never woken up like this before.

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and finally tonight, twitter has agreed to elon musk's offer to buy the social media platform for $44 billion. the world's richest man, the

tesla and spacex founder, tweeting after the announcement, free speech is the bed rock of a functioning democracy. he's made clear he doesn't believe in censorship on the platform, so we'll all have to wait and see if he allows former president trump back on. musk has mentioned adding more transparency to twitter's platform and getting rid of spam bot. and that's "nightline." you can watch all of our full episodes on hulu. we'll see you the same time here tomorrow. thanks for staying up with us. good night, america.