Joseph Bosco and 10 Myths About the O.J. Simpson Case

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1 Joseph Bosco and 10 Myths About the O.J. Simpson Case Michael T. Griffith Rights Reserved Joseph Bosco's book A Problem of Evidence: How the Prosecution Freed O.J. Simpson (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1996) is one of the best books ever written on the criminal trial of O.J. Simpson in 1995, the Trial of the Century, in which O.J. was accused of brutally stabbing his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman on June 12, 1994, on the front patio of Nicole's house. Bosco's book debunks many common myths about the O.J. Simpson case, myths that continue to be repeated on TV, in newspapers and magazines, and on the Internet. We shall consider what Bosco's book says about 10 of these myths. Bosco was an investigative journalist who was granted a seat at the murder trial. Unlike most journalists who have written about the trial, Bosco sat through all the testimony and all the proceedings that occurred when the jury was not in the courtroom. Bosco lived in Los Angeles and had good sources in the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). In doing the research for his book, Bosco interviewed several of the key players in the trial, including prosecutors with the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office, LAPD police officers and detectives, and members of the defense team. Here are the 10 myths that we will examine: 1. O.J. was acquitted because he could afford to hire an army of high-powered lawyers and investigators who had far more resources than the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office (LADA) had available. 2. The jurors were ignorant and racist and either ignored or did not understand the overwhelming evidence that pointed to O.J.'s guilt. 3. O.J. put his murder clothes in a bag that was seen but never found. He either disposed of the bag at the Los Angeles airport or his good friend Robert Kardashian disposed of the bag for him. 4. A credible witness named Jill Shively saw O.J. driving a few blocks from the murder scene with his car's headlights turned off just after the murders, but the prosecution decided not to call her as a witness when they learned that she had sold her story to a tabloid TV show. The prosecution threw away their star witness. 5. There was no opportunity for any police officer or detective to plant evidence against O.J., and there is no evidence that any of the evidence or that there was more than one killer. 1

2 6. O.J. looked like he was in a dark mood at the dance recital a few hours before the murders, and his anger grew and grew that night until he reached the point of a murderous rage. 7. O.J. was madly jealous and furious over losing Nicole. He stalked her for months before the murders. When he felt he was going to lose her and could no longer control and abuse her, he killed her. 8. O.J. could not explain the cuts on his fingers when he was interviewed by LAPD detectives the day after the murders. 9. O.J. made his guilt obvious when he fled in the Bronco and caused the famous Bronco chase. He was going to leave the country or kill himself. 10. When O.J. famously tried on the gloves from the crime scenes during the trial, they would have fit him if he had not been wearing latex gloves. Myth #1: O.J. was acquitted because he could afford to hire an army of high-powered lawyers and investigators who had far more resources than the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office (LADA) had available. Bosco: While it became a self-serving hymn of faith that poor little Marcia and Chris [prosecutors Marcia Clark and Chris Darden] were outmanned by a nefarious gang of silkstocking guns for hire, the truth is that the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office has some 925 deputy district attorneys with the kind of open-ended financing behind them that is available only to very big government in a cause where the taxpayers are in solid support. While only about a dozen were ever seen in court, some 25 deputy DAs worked in some fashion on the Simpson case. They had the logistical support of dozens of investigators and hundreds of police officers; they also had the support the California Department of Justice and, in this case, the FBI. Also, large private firms donated goods and services to the prosecution effort. It is complete myth that O.J. Simpson outspent the State and therefore bought injustice. (pp ) Myth #2: The jurors were ignorant and racist and either ignored or did not understand the overwhelming evidence that O.J. was guilty. 2

3 Bosco: Seriously, what did folks expect the jury to think about hanky-panky with evidence when John Meraz, the tow-truck driver who was all over the Bronco at Viertels Two Yard [where the Bronco was impounded], said with emphasis: I didn't see any blood? He didn't hesitate. He said it definitively, and he was never shaken away from it during a buzzsaw attack by Marcia [Clark]. (p. 163) This was a punching bag that punched back! exclaims Peter Bozanich, one of the most experienced and respected prosecutors in the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office.... I think in the end, Bozanich continues, the jury found us to be wanting so many times they could no longer trust the evidence. I mean, a three-hour acquittal is not a reasonable-doubt case. It's 'Get this thing out of here!' This was a debacle. It couldn't have gone any worse. Could not have gone any worse. And it still amazes me that the country holds the jury responsible for what I think was a reasonable verdict given what the prosecution looked like. Yes, it was a total, humiliating defeat. Not a soul did the prosecution convince enough even to hang the jury [i.e., to get a hung jury and thus a new trial] and it must never be overlooked that there were three non-african Americans on the jury, two of them white upper-middleclass females, perfect prosecution jurors. (pp ) COMMENT: Meraz was not the only person who got inside the Bronco just days after the murders and saw no blood in the vehicle. William Blasini was a car-parts buyer who got inside the Bronco to look for blood while it was at the impound lot. Based on news reports, he expected to find lots of blood, but he saw none. Myth #3: O.J. put his murder clothes in a bag that was seen but never found. He either disposed of the bag at the Los Angeles airport or his good friend Robert Kardashian disposed of the bag for him. Bosco: Pat McKenna [an experienced private investigator who worked for the defense team] on the luggage, the limo, and the airport: 3

4 When [limo driver Allan] Park rings the buzzer this was always the signal from Dale Saint John [the owner of the Town and Country limo service and O.J.'s regular driver O.J. figures it's Dale at the gate, because that's who's always driving him. What Dale always did is, once he rang the buzzer, he knew he was notifying O.J. I interviewed Dale, and this is what he told us early in the case:... 'I'd ring the buzzer; that lets O.J. know I'm there, and then I'd let myself in the gate,' which anybody can do. It's not a secure compound there. You can just push the button and let yourself in. You can even push the gate open with your hand. Then Saint John would drive up and load the [golf] clubs and stuff in. He'd always load the car. Now, the clubs are down on the little two benches that sit by his front door. There's one bag there, too, the Louis Vuittron bag; it's gonna be checked luggage. What he's still got upstairs is his suit bag and his leather over-the-shoulder thing. So O.J.'s assuming Dale's already come in, so he starts to get ready. He comes down O.J. always said early on, 'I was waving to the guy.' You know, Park said there was a dark figure going into the house? That's O.J. in a bathrobe! O.J. thought it was Dale out there, and he thought the guy heard him when he said, 'Hey, Dale, come on in.' He went back into the house. O.J. never until the last minute decided what clothes he was going to wear at the golf tournament for Hertz. He is either wearing all black or all yellow, you know, because of the Hertz colors. So he was undecided what he was going to wear. When he decides on the all-black outfit, he realizes his black golf shoes are in the Bentley. Remember he'd played golf that morning and had driven the Bentley. He goes out to get them and he figures it's Dale he's still in his robe; he's not even dressed yet. He gets his shoes out of the car and goes back into the house. He puts his shoes which is actually this so-called 'other bag' that they all thought was missing, which never was 'missing' and they knew it he puts his shoes and some tees and some balls in that little black bag, which he just throws there. He puts it down on the ground. He doesn't put it in the golf bag yet, because he's going back inside. Then it goes into the trunk of the car. Now, when he gets to the airport, Park goes to get the cart from the skycap to put the clubs and stuff on. O.J. is now in the trunk. He puts his black leather bag on the trash can. He takes the black bag with his shoes and everything in it and puts it within the golf bag, because it's getting checked. See, the golf bag is within another bag made especially for traveling, the kind that's not just for your clubs it's a big bag with handles on it. So he just opens it up to drop in the shoes and stuff; it doesn't really go inside a golf bag; it goes inside the bag that is holding the golf bag. That's what people never understood. He wasn't stuffing anything in a trash can like Chris Darden wanted everybody in the world to believe. I went out and interviewed those people. They said, 'Are you crazy? That guy didn't hide anything in the trash can.' I talked to the head of Airport Security, the woman who runs the whole airport, and she said, 'We checked every trash bag, not only in the airport; we went to the dump; we went everywhere.' Plus they have all those surveillance cameras from the airport; they've got him all the way through. Why didn't they [the prosecution] bring all that out? You know why? O.J. ain't hiding nothing! He's strolling into the airport. And walking onto the plane. We didn't get them all. 4

5 But the security lady told me they had them all. They've got him coming through the magnometer, everything, all the way through. It's on the video. He didn't hide anything. (pp ) Once and for all, perhaps we can be done with the constant buzzing about Robert Kardashian and the infamous luggage bag. Millions upon millions of people believe that Kardashian pulled a fast one and skipped away from Rockingham [O.J.'s house] with that luggage and the bloody clothes and knife. What I want to know is where were all those folks when the video showing Robert Kardashian trying to bring the bag up the driveway in order to leave it was played in court? The jury saw it. In the video, clearly, Kardashian was turned back by the very large Los Angeles police officer Don Thompson, whose orders were to keep everybody and everything civilian out of the crime scene. Sheesh, he was trying to return the bag. It's a video-fact. But what I really don't understand is why anybody would believe that a murderer who had successfully secreted bloody evidence out of Los Angeles and into Chicago would then bring it back into the spotlight of the media world? (p. 86) COMMENT: The prosecution claimed that O.J. did not respond to Allan Park immediately because he had just re-entered his house after having returned from Nicole's house and needed time to wash off the blood, change clothes, and compose himself. McKenna's account answers the prosecution's often-asked question, Why didn't O.J. respond the first several times Allan Park rang the buzzer at the gate? He did not respond immediately because he did not know that the driver was not his regular driver and therefore he did not think he needed to respond. McKenna spent hours interviewing O.J., and his account is based on what O.J. told him and on what the regular driver confirmed in an interview. Further evidence that O.J. was already home when Park arrived is the fact that when Park drove through the gate and parked near the front door, he saw two bags near the front door and another one near the garage (preliminary hearing transcript, July 5, 1994, pp. 0032, 52). 5

6 If, as the prosecution claimed, O.J. entered his house only moments before he responded to Park on the intercom, and if he was busy changing out of his bloody clothes and washing off when Kato Kaelin opened the gate for Park, who placed those two bags by the front door? (Kato was living in O.J.'s house at the time.) Myth #4: A credible witness named Jill Shively saw O.J. driving a few blocks from the murder scene with his car's headlights turned off soon after the murders, but the prosecution decided not to call her as a witness when they learned that she had sold her story to a tabloid TV show. Bosco: Peter Bozanich [a leading prosecutor in the LA District Attorney's Office] tells a story about those grand-jury days: You remember Jill Shively? She said she saw O.J. in the Bronco driving away from the crime scene. The prosecution said she wouldn't be called because she had sold her story to Hard Copy [a tabloid TV show]? That's not true; that's not what happened. What actually happened was the day that Shively testified before the grand jury and said she saw Simpson there, I was out to dinner with my wife [Pam Ferrero, prosecutor in the Menendez trials] and we came home and there were a couple messages on the answer machine. There was a lunatic, or what sounded like a lunatic, on the answer machine saying, 'Pam! Pam! You've gotta call me. That witch! That doggone witch!' and everything else. I'm going, 'Who in the heck is that?' She said, 'Brian Patrick Clarke.' I said, 'Who's that?' She said, 'He was my former brother-in-law'.... So she gets on the phone and calls Brian, and Brian says, 'Jill is not a jogger he had seen her on Hard Copy--'she's two hundred pounds. She couldn't find her way to Brentwood [Nicole's neighborhood]. She's a liar.... She's got lawsuits going every place and she is not telling the truth. She has sued me; I've sued her. I've recovered...' and blah, blah, blah.... So I went the next day and went to [Bill] Hodgman and Marcia [Clark] [two of the prosecutors], and I said, 'Your star witness is a piece of garbage. You'd better check her out.... They checked her out. And they went to the grand jury that day and said, 'Never mind.' That's when the grand jury apparently went south. So all that stuff about not using her because she sold her story is not true she did sell her story, but that was an excuse. (pp. 8-9) COMMENT: The prosecutors also said that another reason they disregarded Shively's story was that she had lied to them about talking with others about her account. But there was another reason that Shively's story was a problem for the prosecution: it destroyed their timeline for the crime. Shively insisted that she saw O.J. in his Bronco at an intersection a few blocks from the crime scene between 10:48 and 10:50. She explained that she was certain she left her house at 10:45 because she was trying to make it to a store that closed at 11:00 (grand jury transcript, June 21, 1994, pp ). At some point the prosecution must have realized that there was no way they could get O.J. from the intersection at San Vicente and Bundy at 10:48 to 10:50 back to his house in time 6

7 to allegedly slam into Kato's air conditioner between 10:40 and 10:45. It was simply impossible. Kato later much later, when he testified in the civil trial changed his story and put the time of the thumps at 10:51-10:52, because the plaintiff attorneys realized that his original time frame for the thumps ruled out O.J. as the killer, with or without Shively's story. There is just no credible way to establish a plausible timeline that includes O.J. as the killer if Shively saw him at the intersection of Bundy and San Vicente at 10:48 to 10:50. There were other problems with Shively's story. She claimed that in the encounter O.J. nearly ran into her car and another car with his Bronco, that he glared at her, that he yelled at the driver of the other car, and that he was driving with his headlights off. A logical jury might find this very unlikely behavior for a man who presumably would have been doing all he could to avoid being seen or noticed. Driving around with your headlights off would be a good way to get pulled over by a policeman. And, if you happened to have a near-collision with two other cars just a few blocks from the murder scene, you certainly would not want to glare at one of the drivers, much less take the time to yell at the other driver. Given these facts, it is not surprising that the plaintiff lawyers in the civil trial, like the prosecutors in the criminal trial, decided not to use Jill Shively's story and not to call her as a witness. Yet, even 20-plus years later, we continue to see uninformed pundits write stories that argue that Shively's account proves that O.J. is guilty and that her story might have convicted O.J. if the prosecutors had used her as a witness (see, for example, Who Is Jill Shively? She Could've Been a Key Witness In OJ Simpson's Trial, Romper, February 16, 2016, by Mara Flanagan). The producers of the recent FX mini-series The People vs. O.J. Simpson treated Shively's story as credible and suggested that the only reason the prosecutors did not use her as a witness was that she had agreed to sell her story to a tabloid TV show. Myth #5: There was no opportunity for any police officer or detective to plant evidence against O.J., and there is no evidence that any of the evidence was planted or that there was more than one killer. Bosco: One needs only to read Joe Domanick's highly acclaimed book LAPD: To Protect and to Serve, a twentieth-century history of the Los Angeles Police Department, to wonder why anyone would find it preposterous, or just out of the ordinary, for an LAPD officer to plant or manufacture evidence in any kind of case, high profile or misdemeanor nobody. The Los Angeles Police Department, while often the cinematic model for the world, is always rated at the bottom in national police studies. Its Scientific Investigation Division (SID) isn't even accredited by the lax quasi-official law enforcement professional association in that field. In a study done by the FBI, and reported in a national network TV documentary, the LAPD's crime lab was ranked dead last. (Dr. Henry Lee's in Connecticut was first.) (p. 23) The set of keys that Ron [Goldman] obviously had in his hand when he was confronted by the killer(s) the bloody keys that are in the crime-scene photos only inches away from the watch cap, the Bundy glove, and the envelope were given back to Andrea Scott, whose car Ron had borrowed that night, still bloody, the blood untested, according to the prosecution. Through 7

8 more than one source, I have reason to believe the State did type the blood, but then chose to deny it. It would be of some interest to know whose blood that was, or what mixture. The easy assumption is that the blood would have to be Ron's, an assumption likely to be wrong. If Ron did not use them in any way to defend himself, as the prosecution avows, because there are no corresponding wounds on O.J., then how did they get bloody. If the keys were dropped immediately after he was attacked, as the prosecution says, then, since Ron had no initial wounds with bleeding that could have logically found its way to his fingers all but instantly, the blood would have to come from either O.J. or Nicole, the only other persons bleeding at the crime scene, according to the State. It is difficult to picture a scenario whereby the blood on the keys could be Nicole's; the only other choice would be O.J.'s, but if that were so, the prosecution would have surely used the keys as evidence. (pp ) Phil Vannatter and Tom Lange, two of the LAPD's most experienced homicide detectives, supposedly took no extemporaneous notes at the crime scenes and during the early days of the investigation. In distinguished careers of more than two decades apiece, neither detective had ever neglected this aspect of basic homicide investigation before. It is also contrary to the norm throughout law enforcement. This reporter, furthermore, has personally never experienced nor heard of a murder investigation wherein the homicide case officer in charge did not make notes of his initial observations of the crime scene.... Of course, during the trial much was said about Detective Vannatter leaving downtown headquarters with O.J. Simpson's whole blood sample but, instead of walking a few hundred yards and booking it into evidence at Parker Technical Center, driving twenty-two miles to the Rockingham scene [O.J.'s house], where he says he handed it over to criminalist Dennis Fung. (Barry Scheck's cross-examination of Fung brought out ad nauseum that we have to take Vannatter, Fung, and Andrea Mazzola's word that the transfer of the blood vial actually took place, because on news video, the gray envelope was not in the hands of Fung or Mazzola when they twice brought evidence out to their van before leaving Rockingham.) Such a thing, all agreed, was totally contrary to LAPD's written rules and procedures, to say nothing about simple logic.... Forget the baloney being peddled by Vannatter's high-visibility apologist, Vincent Bugliosi, that since Vannatter didn't know the reference number to book it under, it would've messed up Dennis Fung's numbering system. If that was reasonable, why has nothing like this never happened before? Everyone from the police chief on down has said that it was against procedure and precedent. (pp ) Why is there a crucial blood drop on the back gate of the Bundy scene in photographs taken weeks after the murder that does not appear in photos taken the morning after the crime? Why does that blood drop have a much more concentrated level of DNA than samples collected the morning of the murders when they were fresh and far less exposed to the elements? Why did this stain contain the highest level of EDTA, a blood preservative added to whole-blood samples...? (p. 78) How is it possible for criminalists with the experience of Greg Matheson, Collin Yamauchi, and Dennis Fung, as well as pathologist Michael Baden, to miss seeing a bloodstain the size of a half-dollar on the socks? While much of the serological [blood] evidence was sent directly to either the California 8

9 Department of Justice's Crime Lab or to Cellmark for processing and testing, the Bundy blood-trail drops, the Rockingham glove, the socks, and O.J.'s reference sample the most questionable evidentiary elements of the case were processed by the LAPD SID. What are we to make of that? (p. 81) Things started going wrong early. The problems and peculiarities in the relationship between the LAPD and the Coroner's Office regarding this case started from the very beginning. We know that for a fact. Let's go to the audiotape: Detective Ron Phillips and Coroner's Investigator Paul Willis. First call 6:49 A.M., June 13. Phillips: I got a homicide that we want to let you know about.... The press is going to be crawling on us like ants when they find out what's going on. Willis: Okay.... What...? Phillips: We're kind of not following procedure.... Willis: Okay.... The second call to the coroner was made by Phillips at 8:08 A.M. It was almost ten hours after the discovery of the bodies before medical examiners of the Coroner's Office would arrive at the Bundy crime scene. Perhaps this needs a little amplification. This is a big case and we're going to go a bit off the book, all right? The professional courtesy reply: Sure. (pp ) What is to be made of the two dark, dense striation bloodstains (linear, straight-edged bloodstains from some type of instrument or tooled object) on the second step, just to the right of the beginning arc of Nicole's descending blood pool? What activity, unlike any other suggested by the rest of the crime scene, caused these blood stripes? The trail of blood drops across Nicole's back that are clearly visible in the crime-scene photographs but were then lost forever when a blanket from inside her condo was placed 9

10 over the body are much closer together than the drops that accompany the Bruno Magli shoe imprints down the walk.... Whose blood was dripping steadily from a laterally moving source above and parallel to Nicole's back? If it was O.J.'s, from what wound? If this is from the finger cut on his left hand, the only place we know he was bleeding, the blood would more likely have been deposited in some form of a primary swipe or smear pattern in her and shoulder areas, according to the prosecution's theory of a lone assassin grabbing an incapacitated Nicole with his left hand and applying the coup de grace slit to her throat with his right. These drops of blood also do not appear to match the other blood trails the prosecution maintains were made by the killer, neither the trail leading up the driveway at Rockingham, nor the trail inside the foyer of O.J.'s house.... What are we to make of Nicole's blood being deposited on Ron's shoes in a pattern that indicates he was upright on feet while she was bleeding from a spot above his shoes? Apparently there are also direct deposits of blood on Ron's shoes that are a mixture of his and Nicole's blood. In other words, were they both on their feet, bleeding in some fashion at the same time, as these particular bloodstains would indicate? If so, wouldn't that suggest more than one assailant dispatching the victims more or less simultaneously? (pp ) The single most compelling suggestion that O.J. Simpson did not stab anyone is also the most rudimentary. In the opinion of Dr. Lee, it is beyond probability that a lone perpetrator of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman would have extensive physical damage upon his own person if he'd been involved in the terribly violent, very physical act of murdering the victims in the fashion in which they were killed. In the some six thousand homicides he's investigated in his career, Dr. Lee has never seen a situation where there was this much evidence of violent struggle, with two full-grown victims, and so little evidence of trauma to the alleged lone perpetrator. (p. 118) It had to be two people. Had to be, Pat [McKenna] says with a total conviction unusual for one in his profession. Listen to this. [Robert] Heidstra hears the 'Hey! Hey! Hey!' which is Goldman getting killed, I think. From there he hears a gate slam. That gate is the middle gate. The only one that can make that clang is the middle gate. As a matter of fact, I've still got it on tape; we were doing experiments and I had a tape record and I was slamming that gate to tape the sound. I played it for Heidstra to see if that was the sound, and it was. But, anyway, Heidstra hears the gate slam and then hears men 'arguing.' Now, I gotta think Goldman ain't arguing anymore. It's gotta be these guys running away. If it's one killer slamming the gate, there would be no more arguing. Who'd be arguing? (pp ) At Rockingham, Dr. Lee is dubious about the notion of anyone jumping O.J.'s back fence.... Nor, Dr. Lee explains, was there evidence of anyone or anything remotely intrusive passing that way. Consequently, the evidence suggests that the Rockingham glove was placed there by someone, not dropped in the activity of climbing or scampering. Common sense says that if the glove was discarded while stumbling through a bed of leaves, the chances of at least part of one solitary leaf being over any part of the glove would be all but a statistical dead cinch, but 10

11 there isn't anything. No matter how long you stare at the photo, the glove is sitting there atop everything.... The relative scarcity of blood found in the Bronco poses another problem all told, less volume than one drop of blood widely scattered. If O.J. was the killer, then he did not drive the Bronco wearing the murder clothes. (p. 150) Vannatter gets this phone tip about O.J. buying a knife at Ross Cutlery, Pat McKenna begins his account of what really happened regarding one of the most publicized events from the first weeks of the case. He goes and talks to Camacho [Jose Camacho, the Ross Cutlery employee who sold O.J. a knife].... So Vannatter's asking him [Camacho], asking him. He doesn't know which one. Vannatter goes to Golden [Dr. Irwin Golden, who did the autopsies of Ron and Nicole] and says, 'Look at the wounds. Here's the kind of knives that were in this one tray [at Ross Cutlery] but Camacho couldn't identify which one.' Golden says, 'These wounds would've been caused by this knife or this one.' They were the big knives. But guess what O.J. bought? He bought a little tiny knife that can't make these kinds of wounds. We had Henry Lee examine it. It still had the price tag on it. It was in pristine condition. But they [the LAPD and the prosecution] don't know this yet. So Vannatter goes back and he's muscling Camacho to pick the big knife, which Camacho does in the prelim [preliminary hearing]. He picks the big knife. That's Vannatter he doesn't care what's true or not. He's muscling it to fit what he thinks is his case. Things like that really ticked me off, because Vannatter, the whole crew, was doing stuff like that. (p. 154) According to a very good source, the same day in late September 1994 that Collin Yamauchi packed up the socks to be sent to the California Department of Justice for DNA testing, the Scientific Investigation Division criminalist also checked out three whole-blood reference samples from the serology lab and brought them into the evidence processing room. These were Ron's, Nicole's, and O.J.'s. Allegedly, that was the day there was a vacuum-effect spillage of blood from O.J.'s reference vial when the stopper cap was removed. Mr. Yamauchi testified that blood got on his gloves. But why? Forget the accident. What purpose, at that point in the investigation, could warrant having reference blood samples and other physical evidence out and exposed at the same time? This is highly irregular, scientifically risky, procedurally unnecessary, and as yet unexplained. (pp ) Willie Ford, an LAPD photographer, testified that he did not see any socks on the carpet in the middle of O.J.'s bedroom when he videotaped the Rockingham search.... He said he'd been told to shoot everything. Johnnie Cochran, with the video tape freeze-framed on the screen... asked this unbiased cop witness a question. Any socks? No. 11

12 Indeed, through direct examination, cross-examination, and redirect and recross by Johnnie and Chris [Darden], Officer Ford answered that question repeatedly enough for Judge Ito to say to counsel, By my count he's said he didn't see the socks ten times now. Herb MacDonell's work on the socks and his bleed-through explanation were impressive. Particularly the microphotography showing those weird, neat blood balls within the fibers of the sock fabric, along with the scientific explanation of what chemical shape meant: When blood dries on a surface, its structure, seen under a high-powered microscope, consists of perfect little balls. If the blood is deposited on a surface from contact with the dried residue of blood from another surface, then what you see in the microscope are crystalized flakes. The jury was convinced that a bleed-through process was the most likely occurrence.... However, since it isn't O.J.'s blood on the socks, but Nicole's, the only way O.J. could be responsible for the saturation of this secondary transfer bloodstain of the sock, which had soaked through to the other side of the sock, was if he had taken them off with his fingers dripping in his wife's blood. A bleed-through with a foot and ankle in the sock cannot occur. The police say that O.J. took his socks off in his bedroom at Rockingham. But how could his fingers still be that wet with Nicole's blood? Of course, the State maintains that the halfdollar-sized bloodstain got on the sock at the crime scene by making direct contact with a direct source of Nicole's blood. Yet how could the blood still be wet enough in O.J.'s bedroom to soak through to the other side, particularly since it was not wet enough to stain the bedroom rug? Number One, O.J.'s a neatnik, okay? Pat McKenna says, his Irish ire ratcheting up a notch or two. O.J. said, 'Look, when I get cleaned up I throw all my stuff in the hamper. There were no socks laying out there. There were no suspenders on the bed. I threw my stuff in the hamper. And Gigi [O.J.'s maid] can testify to that.' In testimony, McKenna continues, Lange said, 'Yeah, we went through the hamper.' I mean, these dumb clucks, what they should've done was throw a bunch of stuff all over the room. Not just a pair of socks. Those socks had to fly from Bundy to Rockingham, because how did they get there bloody with nothing else? No other blood from the crime scene. No blood, no DNA going up the stairs with the white carpet, the white walls. No blood except a huge molecular-weight DNA drop of Nicole's blood right there for the whole world to see it. O.J. was going nuts about the socks before it ever became an issue in the case. It was when we were going over pictures that were given to us in discovery. It's early in discovery. The sock hadn't been brought up in court yet. He's going, 'Wait a minute! I never put those socks here!' Because, he said, 'I know I throw everything in the hamper. Then, when I took a shower to get ready to go to Chicago like I always do whenever I travel the towels that I'm done with, I keep all in one nice little spot and Gigi takes care of it. And sure enough, Gigi said, 'All the time when he's left town he's never left clothes laying around.' Of course, the DA will say, 'He was in a hurry.' That's such a preposterous piece of logic, too. Because if he was in a hurry, how come he only dropped one glove and left socks 12

13 out? Where is the murder weapon? Where's all the rest of the bloody clothes? I mean, where's all the stuff, okay? Total nonsense. (pp ) With his theme of sloppy, contaminating procedures by the LAPD crime lab, Gerdes [medical scientist Dr. John Gerdes] cast as much reasonable doubt on the absolute exactitude of DNA inclusion identification as did Dr. Bruce Weir's I'm embarrassed error in arithmetic when he testified for the prosecution using inclusion statistics such as one in thirty-five billion.... Of course, this was the wrong jury to hear Dr. Robin Cotton of Cellmark Laboratories, testifying for the prosecution, say that the lab's database, from which the astronomical inclusion statistics for the Simpson case were extrapolated, came from only 240 African Americans in Detroit! But it got worse. On the sixth day of Dr. Cotton's testimony, Peter Neufeld got her to disclose that some of the data collected by the Red Cross and used for comparisons in the Simpson case included tests on only two other blacks.... Terence Speed, professor of statistics and former chairman of the math department at the University of California at Berkeley, in some great courtroom tit-for-tat with prosecutor Woody Clarke, gave what legitimacy was still needed for reasonable doubt in the entire DNA presentation. Professor Speed, an extremely prestigious mathematician who had served with Bruce Weir, the prosecution's expert, on other scientific matters, said flat-out that his colleague Dr. Weir was scientifically incorrect in the sum and substance of his mindboggling testimony. He explained that the issue of the true error rates of genetic labwork was one of the most important scientific debates of our times. And he went on to say that the bulk of recognized scientists working in the field consider Bruce Weir to be a forensic DNA statistics maverick. Dr. Speed was not allowed to tell the jury [because of a ruling by Judge Ito] that he and Dr. Henry Lee, in addition to twenty-five top DNA scientists in the United States, had signed a letter protesting Dr. Weir's inclusion theories as published in the journal Science. (pp ) It is often said by the vast majority of white Americans that even if Mark Fuhrman was a racist rogue cop, there is nothing but rank supposition to suggest that he did anything improper at the crime scenes in the Simpson case. Indeed, it is said that it was impossible for Fuhrman to have planted the glove; he was never really inside the Bundy crime scene before seven o'clock 13

14 that morning, well after he'd found and shown the Rockingham glove to Vannatter, Lange, and Phillips. Plus, how could he have picked up the glove at Bundy and hidden it without anyone, other cops, that is, seeing him? That is all very strange in view of the public testimony of Mark Fuhrman himself and the LAPD crime-scene photographer Rolf Rokhar. Since Fuhrman was no longer a credible witness, Mr. Rokhar had the most revealing testimony on the issue of the Rockingham glove. It somehow went right past almost all of the press and public, but the jury got it. Cops were milling around out on the street and sidewalk waiting for the arrival of Lange and Vannatter to begin processing the Bundy crime scene. Mr. Rokhar said he was taking the perimeter shots... when Detective Mark Fuhrman came and got him. Fuhrman brought him into the middle of the crime scene, and told him to take one specific, posed photo a picture of Fuhrman pointing to the glove. Now, within only inches of that glove are many other pieces of evidence, such as the cap, keys, envelope, etc. But Mark Fuhrman did not ask him to photograph any of those items only the glove and only with him pointing at it. Mr. Rokhar says that no other police officer was inside the crime scene at the time.... Mr. Rokhar's testimony to the above, even coming so late in the trial and going without any notice by the pundits, remains quite likely the most damning evidence of police misconduct in the Simpson case. (pp ) Pat McKenna, who was responsible for the defense locating Laura Hart McKinney and her audiotapes, did a great deal of work on the Fuhrman issue.... Now mind you, there's two hours between the time Fuhrman is on the scene and Vannatter and Lange show up. That gave Fuhrman plenty of time to make a couple trips to Rockingham for Rosa Lopez [a maid who lived next door] to hear him going up and down the driveway. Not only does Pat McKenna believe that Fuhrman left Bundy and went to Rockingham before Lange and Vannatter arrived at the murder scene, he believes that Detective Brad Roberts was with him: I swear that's who went up to Rockingham with Fuhrman, because Rosa hears voices, men's voices, plural. Now, it's either Fuhrman and Phillips or Fuhrman and Roberts. And I've gotta believe it was Roberts who ran up there with him because Phillips was hanging around Bundy. 14

15 I always felt he stuck it [the glove] in the Bronco, Pat continues. Every cop has a slim jim but O.J. never said the Bronco was locked. He didn't even know if he locked the thing. He says he almost never locks it. It could've been wide open when Fuhrman got there.... I think he stuck it in the Bronco first trip up. Which would make him come back and point at the glove [the glove left at Bundy] before the second trip back. To prove McKenna's theory, the defense asked for the records of the flurry of cell-phone activity among Phillips, Roberts, and Fuhrman during the time in question. What we finally got were sanitized phone records. We wanted to know what all those blacked-out calls were. Who else were they calling? We wanna know.... A question comes to mind: If Fuhrman and Phillips and Roberts are together at Bundy, why would there be any telephone communication among them at that time? (pp ) COMMENT: The defense was able to establish that the photo showing Fuhrman pointing at the glove at Bundy was taken at least two hours earlier than Fuhrman, Vannatter, and Lange claimed it was taken. The three detectives claimed the photo was taken sometime after 7:00 that morning, about an hour after Fuhrman had supposedly found the matching glove at O.J.'s house. However, the defense proved that Rokhar took the photo at around 4:40, over an hour before Fuhrman supposedly found the Rockingham glove, and before Fuhrman said he had even arrived at O.J.'s house. This suggests that Fuhrman, and perhaps his partner, went to O.J.'s house earlier that morning, which would explain why Rosa Parks, the nextdoor maid, heard unfamiliar male voices on O.J.'s property hours before Fuhrman, Lange, and Vannatter arrived at the house. A major problem with the Rockingham glove is that Detective Fuhrman swore that the blood on the glove was moist when he found it. This is a physical impossibility. After being outside for seven hours from the approximate time of the murders to the time Fuhrman claimed he found the glove the blood on the glove would have been bone dry by the time Fuhrman arrived. Experiments have confirmed this fact. The glove blood was still moist because Fuhrman had picked up the glove at Nicole's house and put it in a blue plastic bag, according to a highly placed source in the LAPD who spoke with best-selling investigative journalist Stephen Singular early in the investigation. The source gave this information to Singular before photographic evidence surfaced that showed a blue plastic bag lying on the ground a few feet from the Rockingham glove (Stephen Singular, Legacy of Deception: An Investigation of Mark Fuhrman and Racism in the LAPD, 15

16 Smashwords Edition, 2016, pp ; this is an updated version of the original edition published by Newstar Press in 1995). The fact that the glove blood was still moist when Fuhrman showed the glove to Detectives Lange and Vannatter minutes after he claimed he found it is strong evidence that the glove was planted. Dr. Henry Lee, one of the foremost forensic experts in the world: The blood on that glove was still wet, seven hours after it was allegedly used during the crimes. This violates scientific fact because the blood should have been dry by then. (Henry Lee and Jerry Labriola, Famous Crimes Revisited: From Sacco-Vanzetti to O.J. Simpson, Southington, CT: Strong Books, 2001, p. 242) To support their lone-killer theory, the prosecution was compelled to claim that the killer attacked and quickly knocked out Nicole shortly before Ron Goldman arrived, that the killer surprised Goldman when he arrived, that the killer then attacked and killed Goldman, and that the killer then went back over to Nicole and slit her throat. As seen above, Bosco discusses some of the problems with this scenario. There is also the fact that there was lipstick on Goldman's cheek, which suggests that Nicole kissed him when he arrived and that the two of them were together on the front porch before the attack began (Donald Freed and Raymond Briggs, Killing Time: The First Full Investigation Into the Unsolved Murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, New York: Macmillan, 1996, p. 131). It should also be mentioned that Nicole had some defensive wounds on her hands and that one of her tight-fitting rings was worked off its finger and fell to the ground. This suggests that she put up a fight and that it took more than just a few seconds to knock her out. The prosecution's case would have imploded early in the trial if Judge Ito had not taken the unethical and arguably illegal step of alerting the prosecutors that the Ross Cutlery knife could not be the murder weapon. Before the trial began, there were numerous stories in the media, fueled and encouraged by the prosecution, that O.J. had bought the murder weapon at Ross Cutlery six weeks before the murders. At the preliminary hearing, the prosecution suggested that the knife that O.J. bought at Ross Cutlery was the murder weapon. The store owner and the clerk falsely testified that the clerk had sold a large knife to O.J. (the clerk promptly sold his story to a tabloid newspaper). The coroner testified that the large knife could have caused the wounds. The prosecution did not know that the defense had located the knife, that the knife was very small, that the knife was brand new and unused, and that forensic testing arranged by the defense proved that the knife had not been used in an attack. Amazingly, some journalists still suggest that the Ross Cutlery knife was the murder weapon (see, for example, Gregg Jarrett's recent article on Foxnews.com). Regarding the DNA evidence from the five Bundy blood drops and the blood on the Rockingham glove, Professor William Thompson discusses evidence that O.J.'s DNA got in that blood by cross-contamination in the LAPD crime lab: LAPD criminalist Collin Yamauchi admitted that he spilled some of Simpson's blood from a reference vial while working in the evidence processing room and that shortly thereafter he handled the Rockingham glove and the cotton swatches containing the blood from the Bundy drops. The defense proposed that some of Simpson's blood 16

17 was inadvertently transferred to these evidentiary samples, perhaps on Yamauchi's gloves or instruments.... LAPD criminalists collected the blood drops by swabbing them with wet cotton swatches. The swatches were then put in plastic bags and left several hours in a hot truck. The prosecution's experts all acknowledged that DNA degrades rapidly when blood samples are left in a moist, warm environment, that degradation can render the DNA originally in a sample untypeable, and that subsequent contamination of such a sample by a second person's DNA can cause it falsely to match the second person on a DNA test.... The quantity of DNA found on the evidentiary items was small enough to be consistent with such an inadvertent transfer. On the glove, the allele matching Simpson was found in samples from the wrist notch, in an area where Yamauchi wrote his initials, and nowhere else. In the blood swatches, the quantity of DNA consistent with Simpson declined in the order in which Yamauchi handled them -- that is, the first sample he handled had the most DNA, and the later samples contained much less DNA.... Defense expert Dr. John Gerdes, who reviewed DNA test results at the LAPD laboratory during the year prior to the Simpson case, found a history of serious contamination problems that he attributed largely to cross-contamination of DNA due to poor sample handling procedures. Dr. Gerdes also found startling evidence of cross-contamination in the DNA test results of the Simpson case itself: it appeared that the reference vials containing the blood of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were contaminated with the DNA of O.J. Simpson! Extra alleles consistent with O.J. Simpson's appeared when the victims' blood was typed both at the LAPD laboratory and at two other laboratories to which the same vials were later sent. (William C. Thompson, Proving the Case: The Science of DNA: DNA Evidence in the O.J. Simpson Trial, University of Colorado Law Review, Fall 1996, pp. 3-4, emphasis added) LAPD criminalist Dennis Fung testified before the grand jury that he had personally taken O.J.'s blood vial from Detective Vannatter on June 13 at O.J.'s house and that he had then placed the blood vial in the evidence van. But during the criminal trial the defense confronted Fung with a news video that showed that Fung left O.J.'s house with nothing in his hands. Fung then changed his story and claimed that he put the vial in a garbage bag and that his assistant, Andrea Mazzola, carried the bag out of the house. However, Mazzola testified that she knew nothing about the blood vial being placed in the garbage bag and that she never saw Vannatter hand the vial to Fung. Under further cross-examination, Fung claimed that he did not tell Mazzola that he had put the vial in the garbage bag. These facts suggest that Vannatter kept the blood vial with him overnight. As for Vannatter's claim that he could not book O.J.'s blood vial at the Parker Center because it would have disrupted Fung's evidence numbering, this remains a specious, dubious story. Vannatter surely knew that reference numbers could be changed later, if necessary. In fact, the reference numbers for two evidence items were changed after they 17

18 were collected. Vannatter also surely knew that he could have contacted Fung by phone or pager and asked him what reference number he wanted assigned to the blood vial. The 1.5 cc's of blood that were later found to be inexplicably missing from O.J.'s blood vial contained more than enough DNA to account for all of the O.J. DNA that the LAPD claimed they found in blood at the Bundy crime scene, in the Bronco, at O.J.'s house, and on the Rockingham glove. The total amount of O.J.'s blood that the LAPD said they collected was about 15 drops of blood. The 1.5 cc's of blood missing from O.J.'s blood vial would have constituted between 15 and 30 drops of blood, depending on how one measures a drop. The few drops that were found on O.J.'s driveway make no sense for the case against O.J. According to the prosecution, when O.J. returned from supposedly committing the double murder, he went from his Bronco to the pathway behind his house (by somehow climbing over the fence), slammed into the air conditioner behind Kato Kaelin's room, and then emerged from the far side of his garage where one end of the pathway ends. But the driveway blood drops do not follow any such path: They go nowhere near the back fence or the far side of the garage but go from the Rockingham gate and proceed toward the front door of the house, which is consistent with O.J.'s claim that he suffered a minor cut from the car-phone mount in his Bronco while reaching for his car phone and then walked back into his house. The blood that the LAPD belatedly claimed to find on Nicole's back gate clearly appears to have been planted. None of the crime-scene photos taken of the back gate on June 13 show the blood stain that the LAPD claimed they found on the gate on July 3. Fung admitted that he did not remember seeing any blood on the back gate and did not recall ever being told about it this would explain why no close-up photographs were taken of that part of the gate on June 13. When Mazzola was asked in the civil trial if she had seen the back-gate blood stain, she made the incredible claim that she did not even know there was a back gate! Testing revealed that the back-gate blood, though it had supposedly sat exposed to the elements for three weeks, had vastly higher concentrations of DNA than any of the blood that was collected less than 24 hours after the murders. The prosecution had no credible explanation for how that blood could have been in pristine condition after that amount of time. 18

19 In addition, as Bosco mentions, the back-gate blood was found to contain EDTA, a preservative put in blood vials to prevent blood from coagulating. Contrary to the myth that the prosecution floated, tests have proven that EDTA does not occur naturally in human blood in an amount even close to the amount that was found in the back-gate blood (and in the sock blood). These facts provide powerful evidence that the back-gate blood was taken from a blood vial and placed on the gate shortly before it was collected on July 3. The three loud thumps that Kato heard at 10:40-10:45 have always caused problems for the case against O.J. Kato said the thumps were so strong that they caused the wall to shake. The prosecution assumed the thumps were caused by O.J., but they could never give a plausible explanation for why O.J. would have gone down the narrow pathway behind his house when he could have easily used another route to get inside his house without being seen. The prosecutors felt compelled to assume that O.J. somehow made the three thumps because the Rockingham glove was found near the air conditioning unit attached to Kato's room. Two LADA prosecutors, Peter Bozanich and Lucienne Coleman, told Bosco that they voiced the suspicion to the Simpson prosecutors that some of the evidence against O.J. seemed too pat, too convenient-- almost too perfect, doesn't fit, doesn't work --and that it might have been planted (pp. 1, ). Defenders of the prosecution argue that planting evidence against O.J. would have required a massive police conspiracy involving numerous detectives, police officers, and others. In the recent FX mini-series The People vs. O.J. Simpson, the character of Marcia Clark mocks the suggestion that evidence was planted by conjuring up a huge, complex conspiracy that even her skeptical listeners find hard to accept. No one has ever suggested that an enormous conspiracy occurred. Framing O.J. would have taken only a handful of detectives and perhaps a few other police personnel willing to look the other way. Prosecution defenders also contend that Detective Fuhrman would not have dared to plant evidence before he knew if O.J. had an alibi. However, Fuhrman interrogated Kato Kaelin at around 6:00 AM and thus could have learned that O.J. might not have had an alibi. Even if Fuhrman, Lange, and Vannatter had discovered at, say, 7:00 that morning, that O.J. had a strong alibi. Fuhrman could have simply gone back to the glove, picked it up, and discarded it later, and no one but he, Lange, and Vannatter would have known about it. Even if they had not learned that O.J. had an alibi until two days later, any planted evidence that had been reported to the public could have been dismissed as mistaken and coincidence. Given the fact that Fuhrman, Lange, and Vannatter clearly lied about why they went to O.J.'s house in the first place, and given the fact that Vannatter brazenly lied in the search warrant affidavits, why should it be hard to believe that these men would have covered up an abortive attempt to frame O.J.? We should also keep in mind that sources inside the LAPD were telling journalists, such as Bosco and Singular, that evidence was being planted, tampered with, and suppressed. Prosecutor Chris Darden later revealed that a reliable source warned him that a lady in the crime lab was helping the defense team because her supervisor had told her to place some of O.J.'s blood onto a clean swatch (Singular interviewed the woman). 19

20 In the Rampart, Dalton, and Rodney King cases, LAPD officers were caught planting evidence, suppressing evidence, and/or filing false reports, among other crimes, and the city of Los Angeles was forced to pay millions of dollars in response to lawsuits that stemmed from those incidents. And then there are the famous McKinney interviews with Detective Fuhrman, in which Fuhrman admitted, on tape, that he had planted evidence to frame minorities and that he detested the very sight of interracial couples. Myth #6: O.J. looked like he was in a dark mood at the dance recital a few hours before the murders, and his anger grew and grew that night until he reached the point of a murderous rage. Bosco: The prosecution spent a good deal of time with what were called demeanor witnesses. These were primarily Brown family members and friends who testified about O.J. Simpson's behavior at his daughter's dance recital that evening, with Kato and Allan Park to fill in some of the blanks. For the jury, there were a couple of problems right off the bat. One, and perhaps the most damaging, is the video of O.J. outside the hall after the recital. Denise Brown and Candace Garvey could say all they wanted about how sullen and foreboding O.J.'s manner was inside the hall, trying to paint word pictures in the jurors' minds, but with the video, no painting is necessary. I don't know what it looked like on the TV screens around America, but in that little courtroom, on that big screen, what the jurors saw was the familiar, congenial, nice O.J. smiling, hugging, and kissing the very people who were coming up to the stand denouncing him. The jury also saw O.J. grimace in pain, slightly but unquestionably, when [his young son] Justin jumps into his arms and wants to be lifted high. Like it or not, it's there. O.J.'s arthritis is a factor; it is real.... So what did the jury get from the defense to offset the naturally subjective demeanor testimony of family and friends of Nicole? Wayne Stanfield, the pilot of the American Airlines Flight 688 [that O.J. took to Chicago that night], testified that after a flight attendant came into the cockpit and said O.J. Simpson was 20

21 aboard, he went into the cabin to meet him. He got his autograph. There was nothing unusual about O.J., he said; O.J. was relaxed and alert. When asked if he had seen a cut or bandage on Simpson's hands, the pilot replied, My only impression was that his hands were much larger than I expected. He had seen no wound or dressing.... Michael Gladden and Michael Norris, two couriers who chatted with O.J. at Los Angeles International Airport before his flight to Chicago, appeared to be solid, objective witnesses to what they saw and heard. Again O.J. signed autographs and made small talk. Neither saw any cuts to O.J.'s hands, but both were similarly impressed by how big his hands were. Howard Bingham, a noted sports photographer... was also on Flight 688 to Chicago. He had known O.J. professionally for years. He seemed like the same old O.J., he told the jury.... Stephen Vallerie, also on Flight 688, testified that O.J. looked absolutely normal. He said he noticed O.J.'s hands because he was looking for a championship ring. He did not see any injury to Simpson's hands. (pp ) COMMENT: The dance recital video proved to be a major blow to the prosecution's story about O.J.'s behavior at the dance recital on the night of the murders. In the video, we see O.J. acting nothing like the angry and brooding person that the prosecution described. We see Nicole's parents and her older sister Denise interacting with O.J. in a friendly and affectionate manner. In fact, Mrs. Brown and Denise each kiss O.J. Perhaps this is why the prosecutors tried to conceal the video's existence. When the prosecutors decided they had to give a copy of the video to the defense team, they claimed the video had been misplaced. Incredibly, they also claimed that the video was not material evidence and that therefore they had not been obligated to turn it over. Even for Judge Ito, this was too much, and, with the jury excused from the courtroom, he scolded prosecutor Cheri Lewis and noted the contrast between the prosecution's claim about O.J.'s demeanor at the dance recital and what the video showed: THE COURT: Ms. Lewis, how can you say it's not material evidence, where the prosecution's theory is that there was this tension and anger expressed by the defendant on the date in question at the dance recital and that he was glaring at people and was in another emotional state of mind, and yet we see him greeting the Browns or saying goodbye to the Brown family and smiling and greeting his children. That is directly contradictory to the testimony of the prosecution witness, so how can you say that that wasn't material? (Criminal trial transcript, April 4, 1995, p. 27) The first time Kato Kaelin testified, he made it clear that when he talked with O.J. about two hours after the dance recital that night, O.J. did not appear to be upset or angry, much less in a dark rage. Kato last spoke with O.J. at around 9:35, about an hour before the murders. During his grand jury testimony, Kato was asked repeatedly about O.J.'s demeanor, and each time he said O.J. did not look upset or angry, just tired. One continues to encounter the myth that when Detective Ron Phillips called O.J. in Chicago and told him that his ex-wife was dead, O.J. did not ask how she died. This myth is repeated 21

22 in the recent FX mini-series The People vs. O.J. Simpson. In point of fact, when the defense cross-examined Phillips, he admitted that O.J. asked, What do you mean, she's been killed? Furthermore, according to O.J.'s daughter, Arnelle, when she spoke with her father right after Phillips did, he was shocked, very upset, sad, confused. Myth #7: O.J. was madly jealous and furious over losing Nicole. When he felt he was going to lose her and could no longer control and abuse her, he killed her. Bosco: No matter how controversial and sensitive the issue is in American society, it must be said that not only was domestic violence as a prosecutorial tool in the Trial of the Century used badly but in the end, as an issue in the murder case, it was also irrelevant. The documented incidents of violence the State chose to present to the jury occurred almost five years previously, plus the method and level of violence were different in the extreme. Never has there been the suggestion that O.J. used an object other than his person in any prior act of violence on a human being. No evidence suggests an escalating factor in the incidents of domestic violence that were documented. Indeed, we know from police reports, a 911 tape, and Kato's statements as an eyewitness that during the 1993 incident at Nicole's Gretna Green house, O.J. tore up some French doors as he ranted and raved about his ex-wife's promiscuity but never came close enough to Nicole, who was talking to a police 911 dispatcher, to touch her. He didn't even attempt to take the phone from her hand or say something mitigating to the dispatcher or hang the phone up. The evidence further indicates that after the 1989 incident of documented, relatively severe physical abuse, when O.J. pled no contest and was sentenced, physical acts of violence ceased totally. This may have been due, one would think, to O.J.'s agreeing to the nullification of their prenuptial agreement if he ever struck Nicole again, a very expensive consequence. Set against studies of domestic violence that strongly indicate that chronic batterers cannot stop so easily of their own free will, O.J. does not appear to fit the empirical model. Indeed, that was what Dr. Lenore Walker, who pioneered the legal defense of Battered Wife Syndrome it was she who coined the phrase was prepared to testify to after some forty hours of interviews with O.J. after his arrest.... Also, while Judge Ito ruled it inadmissible, there is an interesting letter Nicole wrote to O.J. in March 1993, a little over a year before the murders. In the letter, she pleaded for a reconciliation of their marriage and asked to be let back into his life. Exactly, who, then, was obsessed with whom? In the sixteen hours of tapes Kato made with his erstwhile biographer, Marc Eliot, Kato himself speaks often of being confused by the extremely contradictory behavior of Nicole toward her ex-husband. While she enjoyed her newfound freedom, she couldn't reconcile herself to not having O.J. in her life intimately and socially. (pp ) For a man compulsively obsessed with his ex-wife, O.J. Simpson had a strange way of displaying it the day of the murders. Here is a man almost fifty years old ringing up three young models Paula Barbieri, Gretchen Stockdale, and... Traci Adell in one day.... Then, minutes after a phone call to one of the three swimsuit playthings, this man who has never attacked anyone with a weapon in his life becomes clinically depressed enough over yet another final breakup of his marriage to suddenly carve up his ex and her boy-toy suitor? (p. 82) 22

23 COMMENT: In April 1992, as he was about to ring Nicole's doorbell, O.J. saw Nicole and Mezzaluna restaurant manager Keith Zlomsowitch engaged in sexual activity on the living room sofa. If O.J. was insanely jealous, why did he not explode into a murderous rage and at least beat up Zlomsowitch? Instead, he showed tremendous restraint and did not interrupt them. The next day he confronted Nicole and Zlomsowitch about what he had seen and expressed concern that the kids could have come downstairs during their romantic activity. O.J. called three girls on the day of the murders to try to get dates with them, which is not exactly the behavior one would expect from a man who was supposedly obsessed with his ex-wife and building up to a murderous rage. At 7:35 PM, about three hours before the murders, he left a voic with one of the girls, Gretchen Stockdale, and said the following: Uh, hey, Gretchen, sweetheart. It s Orenthal James who is finally at a place in his life where he is totally, totally unattached with everybody. Ha ha. In any event, I got a Sunday evening, uh, I d love [pauses].... I guess, I guess I m catching a red-eye [late-night airline flight] to Chicago but I ll be back Monday night. (Gerald Uelman, Lessons from the Trial: The People v. O.J. Simpson, Kansas City, MO: Andrews and McMeel, 1996, p. 59) As Gerald Uelman, a former dean at the Santa Clara University School of Law, noted, It does not sound like a person distraught by jealousy who is on the verge of homicide (Lessons from the Trial, p. 59). At the civil trial, the plaintiff attorneys presented additional evidence evidence that was not presented at the criminal trial that O.J. abused Nicole in the months leading up to the murders. Rather than delve into the questionable nature of this evidence, I pose the following questions: If things were truly this bad between O.J. and Nicole, why did they and the kids go on a vacation together to Mexico at the end of March and early part of April, barely two months before the murders? Why did Nicole get O.J. tickets to their daughter's dance recital on the night of the murders? Why did she go over to his house for a pizza party three weeks before the murders? Why did she snuggle up to him during that party? When Nicole developed pneumonia in May, just a few weeks before the murders, why did O.J. go to her house to care for her? Why was O.J. on such friendly, affectionate terms with Nicole's family after the dance recital? Moreover, when would O.J. have had the time and opportunity to abuse and/or stalk Nicole in the months leading up to the murders? Most books on the case fail to mention that O.J. was out of town numerous times in the months before the murders. Since January of that year, he had traveled all over the country to attend charity functions, celebrity events, and business events. He spent several weeks in Puerto Rico shooting scenes for the movie Frogman. He also went on some short vacation trips. Kato noted in his grand jury testimony that O.J. left town a lot and that he saw O.J. more in the two weeks before the murders than he did in the previous six months. Kato added that he only saw O.J. occasionally during the two weeks before the murders, about every three days. So before those two weeks, Kato saw him even less frequently, because he left town a lot (grand jury transcript, June 20, 1994, volume 1, pp ). 23

24 O.J. was only in LA when the murders occurred because he had flown from New York on June 10 so he could attend his daughter s dance recital on June 12. After he arrived in LA on June 10, he did not see Nicole until he saw her at the dance recital on the night of June 12. Myth #8: O.J. could not explain the cuts on his fingers when he was interviewed by LAPD detectives the day after the murders. Bosco: One of the most effective aspects of Dr. Baden's testimony was that Brian Kelberg... let him tell O.J.'s story of how he cut his hand, thus eliminating an important reason for O.J. to testify. As Dr. Baden recounted this conversation, before his trip to Chicago, O.J. had cut his hand on some sharp part of the car-phone bracket in the Bronco. In his Chicago hotel room, he cut his hand again, this time on a water glass he backhanded and shattered after getting the call from police with news of the murders. O.J. maintained that this was when he received the fairly deep, jagged, fishhook-shaped cut just above the middle knuckle of the middle finger of his left hand. But still the prosecution chose not to introduce O.J.'s thirty-two-minute statement taken by Vannatter and Lange on June 13, in which he says he does not remember exactly when or how his hand was cut while in LA, just that he knew he cut it while running around to get packed for the Chicago trip. According to many, most particularly one Vincent Bugliosi, O.J.'s statement was dead-to-rights inculpatory [incriminating]. Not surprisingly, Pat McKenna disagrees. Here's what no one ever realizes. When O.J. is being talked to by Vannatter before they go on tape he's got the bandage on from the cut he got in Chicago, and they're talking about it. He tells them about that. Then he starts talking about around the fingernails, where these little cuts are. He remembers nicking himself at the house, because he says he was getting a paper towel. He'd seen that his finger was bleeding and he was looking for a paper towel; Kato was looking for a flashlight because of the thumps on his wall. O.J. says that what Vannatter and Lange were pointing to was not the bandaged cut but the cuts here at the fingernails. He says, 'Yeah, I don't know where I did this. I think I did this at Rockingham.' He doesn't really remember, but he knows he did the one with the bandage in Chicago because he was bleeding all over the place [in the hotel room] and he got a bandage from the front-desk girl. But then, when they go on tape, they only talk about the cut with the bandage, and he's assuming they're still talking about the little cuts. He's telling them, 'I think I did this at Rockingham.' So they pulled a Mutt and Jeff on him, and he didn't realize it. He's trying to cooperate. 24

25 I thought that statement was great. When you listen to the tape, and you know what's going on, you know that they think he's the guy, so they're trying to set traps for him and this guy is trying to be as cooperative as possible. (pp ) COMMENT: When Detectives Lange and Vannatter examined O.J.'s hands the day after the murders, they only saw two relatively small cuts, both of which were on his left hand. They said they saw a half-inch cut on his left middle finger and a quarter-inch cut on his left ring finger. They had a nurse clean the cuts, but they only had a photo taken of the cut on the left middle finger. The nurse only saw two cuts as well. Two days later, on June 15, Dr. Robert Huizenga examined O.J. and found a couple of additional cuts on his hands. One of the additional cuts was a small cut close to the half-inch cut on the left middle finger. The other additional cut was an extremely small, barely visible cut on O.J.'s right palm Dr. Huizenga said it looked like a paper cut. As for the two cuts that Lange and Vannatter saw, Dr. Huizenga described the cut on the left ring finger as very superficial and said the half-inch cut on the left middle finger looked more like a glass cut than a knife cut. Interestingly, when Lange and Vannatter heard that Dr. Huizenga had found two additional cuts on O.J.'s hands, they insisted that those cuts were not present when they examined O.J. two days earlier. Dan Moldea, co-author of Lange and Vannatter's book Evidence Dismissed, argues that the additional cuts that Dr. Huizenga noticed must have occurred after the LAPD's examination on June 13 (Lange, Vannatter, and Moldea, Evidence Dismissed: The Inside Story of the Police Investigation of O.J. Simpson, New York: Pocket Books, 1997, p. 248, original emphasis). The key point is that when Lange and Vannatter and a nurse examined O.J.'s hands the day after the murders, they only saw two cuts, both on his left hand, and that no one who saw O.J. at the LA airport, on his flight to Chicago, or at the Chicago airport saw any cuts on his hands (one of those witnesses made it a point to look at his hands because he was looking to see if O.J. was wearing a championship ring). Myth #9: O.J. made his guilt obvious when he fled in the Bronco and caused the famous Bronco chase. He was going to leave the country or kill himself. Bosco: It is time again to answer one of the most persistent questions of the Simpson case, one that has an answer that no one seems to hear. Or remember. The pundits who were not in Department 103 [the courtroom where the trial was held] every day (particularly that loudmouth Vincent Bugliosi, who did paid, continuing commentary on the trail he didn't attend for Hard Copy) always harp on why the prosecution didn't introduce any aspects of the slow speed chase of June 17, 1994, before the jury. So let me go through the paces: As regards the Bronco, it was not introduced into evidence that almost $9,000 in cash was in the car (the money was actually found in A.C.'s [A.C. Cowlings'] pocket, but it belonged to O.J.). Nor was it introduced that O.J. had his passport with him. Or that a dime-store fake beard was in the car. Or that when originally spotted, the Bronco was heading south toward Mexico. Nor was the so-called suicide note discussed. Nor even the fact that O.J. was 25

26 considered a fleeing armed fugitive at the time. Why were these aspects not brought before the jury? The answer is that, very early on, a tacit understanding was reached by both sides that each would voluntarily stay away from the Bronco chase and the events of June 17 in front of the jury. Why? Because it was a wash, hurting both sides, with perhaps the prosecution having more to lose. If the prosecution had introduced any of the seemingly incriminating evidence, they would have to live with the defense's cell-phone records, which prove that many of the calls O.J. placed while in that Bronco were indeed made from the area of Nicole's grave site. (For some time, O.J. and A.C. were parked in an orange grove across the cemetery because there was a press horde waiting for him at Nicole's grave.) The defense would also introduce tapes the police made of O.J.'s cell-phone calls, most of them with a dramatic O.J. Simpson telling everybody that he was being framed. The jury would have heard him talk with his mother over and over, something that would be more poignant than inculpatory. The defense also would have put folks on the stand to testify that compulsive O.J. never went anywhere without his passport, and that O.J. and Nicole always carried very large sums of money ($10,000 was the average for O.J.). The reason the cash was with him in the Bronco, Simpson insiders say, is that he wanted his children Jason and Arnelle to have immediate cash available upon his suicide or arrest; indeed, that is why he gave the sum to A.C. to hold. (pp ) COMMENT: When you study the messages that O.J. left behind just before the Bronco episode, his statements are exactly what one would expect from a person who believed he was being framed and who feared he had no chance of beating the frame-up. He insisted that he had nothing to do with the murders. He implied that it would be better for his kids if he ended his own life rather than have them see their father falsely convicted and executed or imprisoned for murdering their mother. When push came to shove, however, O.J. could not bring himself to commit suicide. He just could not do it. So he decided to turn himself in and vigorously fight the charges. If, as some researchers believe, O.J. was considering leaving the country, this would not prove guilt. A person who believed they were being framed for murder might well think about leaving the country. The final messages that O.J. left behind can be read as statements made by someone who was thinking about leaving the country and who would not see his family for a very long time, if ever. Chris Darden and others continue to repeat the story that O.J. confessed his guilt to Rosey Grier when Grier visited him in jail shortly before the criminal trial began. Rosey Grier never made this claim. The claim came from a jail guard who said he overhead O.J. yell at Grier, I didn't mean to do it! When asked about the guard's claim, Grier said that O.J. never even raised his voice to him during their visits. In addition, the guard's story contradicts the accounts of dozens of family members, friends, defense attorneys, and defense investigators who have reported that O.J. adamantly and fervently proclaimed his innocence to them. Another persistent myth is that O.J. failed the polygraph test that his lead attorney arranged 26

27 for him to take two days after the murders, on June 14. Some of the former prosecutors who repeat this claim should know better. They rarely mention that the very next day, O.J. volunteered, in writing, to take a polygraph for the LAPD. F. Lee Bailey, one of O.J.'s attorneys who had experience with polygraph exams, ordered the June 14 polygraph test halted soon after it began because it was apparent that O.J. was simply too emotional for the test to yield accurate results. Therefore, even though O.J. wanted to continue with the test, the test was stopped. The test never should have been done so soon after the murders in the first place. Most veteran polygraph examiners will advise that you cannot test someone about the murder of a loved one just two days after the murder. Polygraph experts will also confirm that it is impossible to get valid results from an incomplete test, a fact that renowned polygrapher Edward Gelb acknowledged in a nationally televised interview in Those who continue to claim that O.J. failed the June 14 polygraph rarely mention that the results of a voice stress analysis (VSA) lie-detector test done on one of O.J.'s TV interviews-without his knowledge or consent--indicated that he was telling the truth when he said he was innocent (Freed and Briggs, Killing Time, p. 243). (The VSA expert was so biased and so surprised by the results that even though the VSA readings indicated truthfulness, he declared that somehow O.J. must have been trained to not allow his voice to reveal stress while lying.) And, it is worth repeating that the day after the incomplete June 14 polygraph, O.J. volunteered to take a polygraph for the LAPD. Myth #10: When O.J. famously tried on the gloves from the crimes scenes during the trial, they would have fit him if he had not been wearing latex gloves. Bosco: My eyes stayed glued to O.J. and the gloves from the moment I realized the prosecution was actually going to be stupid enough to make him try them on. The look on his face as he suddenly, in a fraction of a heart-beat, realized the gloves were too small, went from great apprehension to great relief. Only then did he begin to overact. But regardless, from a distance of about five feet, to this courtroom observer, the gloves did not fit. Why they did not fit I do not know, but at that moment, those gloves did not fit O.J. Simpson's hand. (p. 167) COMMENT: Professor Alan Dershowitz, a professor of law at Harvard University, was a member of the Simpson defense team and was in the courtroom when prosecutor Chris Darden requested Judge Ito to have O.J. try on the gloves. His eyewitness account is worth consideration: I happened to be in the courtroom that day, sitting only a few feet away from where Simpson tried on the gloves. I saw every second of the drama. It was crystal clear to everyone within close view that the gloves simply did not fit.... The prosecutors did, of course, try to explain away what the jurors had seen namely, that the gloves did not fit. There was much speculation about the latex gloves mentioned in The New York Times. I have firsthand information about this issue. 27

28 During the recess following the glove demonstration, several of the defense lawyers went into Simpson's holding cell with him. With approval, we took the gloves with us.... I asked Simpson to try on the leather gloves without the latex gloves, because I anticipated that the prosecution would ask him to do exactly that. He tried them on in the cell and they did not fit any better. (Reasonable Doubts: The Criminal Justice System and the O.J. Simpson Case, New York: Touchstone, 1996, pp ) In 2008, Mike Gilbert, one of O.J.'s former sports agents, came out with a trashy tabloid book, How I Helped O.J. Get Away with Murder, in which he claimed that the gloves did not fit because, on his advice, O.J. had stopped taking his arthritis medicine, which made his hands swell. This claim was made and refuted during the trial. The defense produced O.J.'s jailhouse medical records to show that he never stopped taking his arthritis medicine, and the medical doctor at the jail confirmed this. Incredibly, and sadly, ESPN took Gilbert's trashy tale seriously and included Gilbert in a segment on the gloves in their 2016 documentary O.J.: Made in America. Anyone can look at pre-trial pictures of O.J.'s hands, look at pictures of the gloves, and see that, at best, they would have been an extremely tight fit on O.J.'s hands. People who saw O.J.'s hands before the trial sometimes commented on how large they were. He was known for having large hands during his NFL career; they helped him secure the ball tightly. The undersized gloves raise another issue: If O.J. was the killer and wore those gloves, and if he was able to subdue both Nicole and Ron in around a minute, how and why would both of the gloves have come off his hands? Leaving aside the strong eyewitness testimony that O.J. had no visible cuts on his hands during his flight to Chicago that night, and assuming for the sake of argument that the two cuts that Lange and Vannatter saw on his left hand the next day occurred during the murders, why are there no cuts on the left glove that correspond to the location of the two cuts on his left hand? Which one of the two victims caused those two cuts? How did they cause them? If they were made with the left glove off, how did it come off? We are supposed to believe that Goldman somehow took off one or both of O.J.'s gloves but never landed a punch on him (even though Goldman's knuckles were bruised). The prosecutors could not admit that Goldman had struck his attacker(s) very hard even once or twice, much less several times, because O.J. had no bruises on his face, neck, arms, or chest when he was examined three days after the murders, and Lange and Vannatter saw no bruises on his face or neck when they interviewed him the day after the murders. 28

29 Speaking of clothing that did not fit, the knit cap (sometimes also called a ski cap) that was found near the bodies at Nicole's house was far too small for O.J.'s head (Freed and Briggs, Killing Time, p. 130). The knit cap never made any sense anyway. The prosecution claimed that O.J. wore the cap to disguise himself, but his face would have still been plainly visible with the cap on his head. Wearing a knit cap in mid-june in Southern California would have looked odd; wearing one that was too small would have looked downright goofy. The prosecution ignored the fact that an identical knit cap was found inside Nicole's house. The two caps might have belonged to the children, Sydney and Justin (if so, the cap found near the bodies would have been expected to contain pieces of African-American hair). Someone might have gone inside the house, taken one of the caps, and placed it near the bodies, between the time of the murders and the time the cap was photographed. Conclusion Well, if O.J. didn't kill Ron and Nicole, who did?! This is a frequently asked question. O.J.'s lawyers were fond of answering this question by saying one or more of the three and a half million other people in Los Angeles at the time. The record is clear that the LAPD considered O.J. the one and only suspect almost as soon as the bodies were discovered. The LAPD ignored evidence that pointed away from O.J. and that pointed toward drugs and organized crime. One detective who began to investigate leads that pointed to a drug connection was told to abandon his investigation, and the leads were never pursued. A full presentation of the evidence of an underworld connection to the murders is beyond the scope of this article, but here are a few items that suggest such a connection: In the months leading up to the murders, Nicole and Ron Goldman were more than just casual acquaintances, and they were running in dangerous circles. She and Goldman were hanging around people associated with drugs and organized crime. The Mezzaluna restaurant where Goldman worked and where Nicole dined was known as a place where drugs could be obtained, especially cocaine. Two other friends of Ron Goldman's were murdered between July 1993 and September They were Brett Cantor and Michael Nigg. Cantor owned the Dragonfly nightclub, where Ron and Nicole, and Faye Resnick, were frequently seen. Cantor was stabbed to death and Nigg was shot. Figure the odds that in a 26-month period, three friends of John Doe would be murdered and that John Doe himself would be murdered during the same time period. 29