So what was the claimed impropriety that got the DA’s office to scrape off 30 years of rust and start the wheels grinding? A backroom chat in 1977 between prosecutor Wells—not the prosecutor assigned to the case—and Judge Laurence Rittenband, during which the judge asked how he could get out of the deal that’d been made for no additional time and send Polanski back to prison. Supposedly, Wells told him how…

Wells denies he ever had the backroom chat with Judge Rittenband. “No. It never happened,” he said flatly. “All that happened was I brought the newspaper with the picture of Polanski at Oktoberfest [in 1977, before his 42-day evaluation] into court and handed it to the bailiff. I told the bailiff, ‘Here, give this to the judge.’ Did I know it would tick him off? Yeah. It ticked me off. Polanski was thumbing his nose at everyone.”

But didn’t Wells say in the documentary that he’d privately told the judge how he could legally send Polanski back to prison?

“I lied. I know I shouldn’t have done it, but I did. The director of the documentary told me it would never air in the States. I thought it made a better story if I said I’d told the judge what to do,” Wells said.