This page grows out of an e-mail exchange I had with Chris Springer, author of If O.J. Didn't... and Solving the Simpson Murder Mystery http://scribblguy.50megs.com/furman.htm . Charlie, who did research for his last book and posted regularly on the Iago Discussion Board, put us in touch. His idea was to do something simple to get around the tendency of most people to balk at reading 700-page books like ours. The simplest thing I could think of was to use animations that could be studied and independently checked for accuracy.
Key elements of the case used against O.J. Simpson can be set in motion and thereby tested against the physical limitations of time and space and the logical consequences of any scenario you can imagine. To get the most out of the animations you should read the relevant text, check everything you don't think is correct against the transcripts and play with the buttons where available to pose questions and answer them. You will find that some questions that have been subject to debate can be answered definitively just by checking the clock and noting how fast or slow the symbols representing people would have to move to "cheat the clock."
For more details on specific items of controversy see High Points.
Size and Stride Parked Cars Blood Drops Blood Trails Kato's Walk Dog Walkers 1
Dog Walkers 2 1989 Incident Over the Wall Marcia's Story 1 Marcia's Story 2
* Fuhrman's Story * Two Witnesses Police Squad Jack the Ripper Rockingham hookup
These animations were designed as analytical tools for sifting through
conflicting testimony and getting a
clear
picture of who and what was where at a given time and what was possible,
probable and certain in those circumstances. They are taken from drawings of the Bundy and Rockingham
crime scenes, videos, photos, depositions, criminal and civil trial testimony,
books and television interviews of the people involved. This source data
includes the rare combination of Size and Stride shared by O.J.
Simpson and Mark Fuhrman. Both shared the rare combination of being over 6'
tall, wearing size 12 shoes and leaving shoe impression with their toes pointed
straight ahead. Wherever possible, time, space objects, angles and
motion in all of the animations are drawn to scale.
None of the critical drawings in the O.J. criminal or civil trials were correctly configured or proportioned, thus giving a false impression of what was possible in all scenarios of O.J.'s guilt. You can see why this matters in Parked Cars with the Bronco’s 2-degree angle. The position in which Kato's Nissan and O.J.'s Bentley and Bronco were found on June 13 is a good indicator of how they got there. Kato and O.J. both liked to park in the same spot on Ashford where O.J. claimed his Bronco was parked before he parked it on Rockingham. The fact that Kato parked his Nissan where the police found it therefore lends credence to the contention that the Bronco began its final journey on the 12th from the opposite side of the Ashford driveway. The only question is whether O.J. drove it down the driveway to Rockingham and turned left to Bundy or right to park it on Rockingham as he said he did.
The width of the driveway, the angle of the driveway to the street and the exact position of the Bronco tell you that it got there from the driveway. Duplicating that precise parking position from driving north on Rockingham is virtually impossible without marking it first and getting outside help in hitting the marks. It requires a precise distance from the curb for the front and rear tire and a theoretical intersection point and a thorough understanding of why a one degree deviation either way would be inconsistent with a story about driving the Bronco from the driveway.
Draftsmen, engineers and professional scale model makers use theoretical intersections to plot angles and draw curves from point to point. A 2-degree angle combined with the distance from the curb corner and the Bronco wheel base are exactly what you get when you drive the Bronco from the driveway around the acute angle to the street. This turn creates a very small zone of compatibility with O.J.'s story. Getting the Bronco in that zone would be like landing an airplane on the deck of aircraft carrier, a task that requires expert knowledge and consummate skill. Additionally, the driver would have to park it with the intention of telling the driveway story to explain how it got there. Nobody in the O.J. case had the time or expertise to set the Bronco up just that way or to know why it matters. O.J. still doesn’t know.
Tiny drops of blood in the overhead views of Blood Drops and Blood Trails are shown thousands of times larger than they were to make their location easy for you to see. Their actual size is consistent with O.J. bleeding from a small cut and not consistent with the large blood drops identified as O.J.'s on Bundy. The FBI did not test the Bundy blood droops identified as O.J.'s for the blood preservative EDTA used to store blood taken directly from O.J. body after the murders and stored in the LAPD lab's purple-top test tubes. The absence of EDTA in the Rockingham blood drops (as opposed to the numerous blood drops that were not photographed or collected on the Rockingham driveway) are therefore exculpatory. A blood drop behind the Bronco is not shown in most animations because no photos were available to mark its location within six feet from side to side and two feet rear of the bumper.
Paths of travel reflect the tendency of everyone to move as closely as possible in straight lines from point to point veering only to avoid obstacles or approach distractions. You can therefore see why it is most likely that O.J. left two of the blood drops straddling the Rockingham gate line when he left the gate to walk the dog a little after 10:00 p.m. and he left the third drop after the limo entered the Ashford gates. It is impossible to make that triangular three-drop grouping of blood drops in one pass as two of them have to connect in a straight line.
The blood drop nearest the Bentley could have been deposited coming or going between the Bronco and the house depending on the exact location of the Bentley and the limo. These vehicle locations could be off in the animations by eight inches for the Bentley and two feet for the limo. There are enough photos of the Bronco, the street and the driveway to plot its distance from the theoretical intersection to within two inches and from the curb to the tires to within a half inch.
The clock gives you a close approximation of the time intervals pegged to recorded times on phone records where specific events took place. Movement in space requires synchronization of time. You can therefore judge where people have to be relative to each other when one or more of them are in motion allowing for all variations of pace just by seeing how fast they would have to move for their testimony to add up. The clock allows you to work backward from the recorded time that Park first saw Kato to the time Kato must have left his bungalow and forward to the time it took Kato to reach the garage. Dan Petrocelli walked off the distance between Kato's bungalow and the spot on the north path where Park first saw Kato and timed it. The time he got (30 seconds) is identical to the time shown in the Kato's Walk animation.
Kato Kaelin's testimony about when he saw Allen
Park and O.J. Simpson adds up.
Furthermore, it's consistent from the grand jury
to the civil trial. Allan Park's testimony shifts a bit each time to be more consistent
with Marcia Clark's interpretation of what he saw and when he saw it. His first grand jury
statement on June 21 of seeing O.J. “just seconds” after he saw Kato adds up
because it could mean anywhere between two and fifty nine seconds.
Fifteen or twenty seconds
agrees with O.J.'s and Kato's testimony of when they first saw Park. This
liberal interpretation of "seconds" is compatible with Park perceiving an
extremely short amount of elapsed time relative to the half hour he waited to
see any sign of life on the estate. It also agrees with Park's testimony in the
criminal trial about his phone conversation with Dale St. John except that
Marcia inserted something into his grand jury testimony that guided his recall
to a strict impression of elapsed seconds relative to something that meant
nothing to him on June 12.
You'll see what adding "just seconds" does to the interval between Park's first sighting of Kato and when he first saw O.J. in Kato's Walk. Just fifteen or twenty seconds confirms O.J.'s story of coming from the house, dropping off some bags and going right back in. Two or three seconds creates a conflict between the testimony of Park and Kato -- Two Witnesses to the same event. View Kato's Walk and Two Witness alternately to see how they compare in different views. The two cars in Kato's Walk driving up and down Rockingham are shown only to indicate traffic. Rockingham, like Bundy, was a major thoroughfare so some Rockingham traffic was normal. Any proposed scenario of what happened on the night of June 12, 1994 must therefore take this fact into account. The length of Kato's hair in Two Witnesses reflects the way he wore it on the night of the murders. It is also an illustration of how easily Allan Park's memory of details he thought he witnessed on June 12, 1994 were influenced by what he saw or heard later. He testified in the preliminary hearing that Kato had had medium length hair. When he testified in the criminal trial on March 28, 1995 he said that the "white male" he saw on June 12 had shoulder-length hair. That's how Kato wore his hair in March, 1995.
Here you get a
practical lesson in why it is objectionable for attorneys to ask witnesses leading questions.
In the grand jury Park
repeats "seconds" when Assistant D.A. Marcia Clark again asks him
for the second time when he saw O.J. relative
to when he saw Kato.
This time Marcia immediately suggests, "Almost simultaneous?"
Park immediately changes the interval to, "Almost, if not
simultaneously." The "almost simultaneous" sighting that Marcia injected
into Park's testimony leaves no way to fit in the sequence of events he described
to the grand jury, the preliminary hearing and the criminal trial.
Park said he saw Kato on the north path. Kato stopped, waved at him and "looked toward the driveway area". Meanwhile, Park was having a conversation with his boss Dale St. John, which Park said lasted "10 to 30 seconds" after he saw O.J. This testimony comes from the way Marcia phrased the question after she put Kato-O.J. together in time. She was then able to ask him how long he talked to his boss after he saw O.J. enter the house. When Park said, "You know, somebody is home," he was clearly talking about Kato. It is not clear that he was talking about O.J. It is clear that he was talking about O.J. at the end of the call when St. John said, "Take him to the airport. I'll see you tomorrow."
Maria's story is that Park saw O.J. coming from the south path after making the thumps on Kato's wall and dropping the bloody glove. There are many ways to interpret that story. All of them fit within two extremes and none of them fit all of Park's Marcia-assisted testimony.
Marcia's Story 1 shows what happens when you factor in the content of the call. It becomes obvious in visual terms that if Park had seen O.J. within two or three seconds after he saw Kato, Kato would have also seen O.J. within two or three seconds of when Park said he did. But if Kato did not see O.J. at then, which Marcia never argued he did, they would have crossed paths later on the driveway somewhere between the northwest entrance of the house and the south path.
Marcia's Story 2 shows the opposite extreme. This is what happens if you make Park's sighting of Kato and O.J. almost simultaneous with O.J. coming from the south path.
Any variation of people motion between Marcia's Story 1 and 2 gives you the same result. O.J. and Kato would have seen each other. According to Park's first statement of seeing O.J. and Kato, seconds apart, Kato gave no indication of seeing O.J., if the interval between Park saying, "You know, somebody is home" and his boss saying, "Take him to the airport. I'll see you tomorrow," they didn't. Their conversation intervening conversation could have been longer or shorter than twenty seconds, depending on what else was said that Park didn't recall. Between ten and twenty seconds puts Kato where Park might have last seen him before he saw O.J. if he was looking toward the garage, which he was, but not where he first saw him. He wasn't even sure the person he saw going into the house was a man or woman until Detectives Tippin and Carr told him on June 15 that he saw O.J.
Marcia told Park that he saw O.J. coming from the south path after dropping a bloody glove behind Kato's bungalow. The idea of O.J. dropping the glove on the south path then trying to sneak into his front door doesn't add up. He would have had to go past the south path entrance to his house through the empty maid's room to do it. Then he would have had to go past the kitchen entrance near the two big trees. In this scenario the blood drops on the driveway make no sense at all.
Two Witnesses shows you what the scene looked like from Allan Park's point of view if you accept the idea that he saw O.J. going into the house two after he spotted Kato. You will see that Park's view was obscured by the bars of the Ashford gates but Kato's was not. If Park saw O.J. almost immediately after he saw Kato it would have been impossible for Kato not to have seen O.J. In each of Park's appearance on the witness stand O.J. appears out of nowhere on his walkway leading to his front door and walks right inside. He could have gone right inside only if the door was open. An open door agrees with O.J.'s story of coming out of that door to drop off some bags. By the same token, much has been made of Park not seeing O.J. come out of the house as O.J. claims he did although Park did not recall seeing Kato go to the south path, either. Yet, his own testimony confirms that Kato did not stand in the same place before he opened the Ashford gates. He said that after he saw O.J. enter the house he got out of the limo and talked to O.J. on the speaker phone. He got back into the vehicle and waited for 30 seconds or more for the gates to open. O.J. did not buzz him in; Kato did. Park only recalls Kato standing where he first saw him stop before he opened the gates.
Fuhrman's Story takes some of the absurdities out of Marcia's story but...
Dog Walkers 1 gives you the dog walking time and rout that Steven Schwab and Robert Heidstra took routinely. Dog Walkers 2 gives you the time and rout they took on the evening of the murders with Schwab leaving five minutes later than usual and Heidstra leaving 15 minutes later. Note where they would have been if they had followed their usual routines and the killings were planned around 10:30 to take them into account. To execute a plan to kill Ron and Nicole with a minimum of risk to the active killer, there has to be a spot on Bundy Drive where a lookout could see anyone coming from the north or the south without being observed in connection with what what was going to happen in Nicole's courtyard. A location that matches these requirements does exist on the Bundy-Gorham curve. To see what a lookout posted there would have seen click on views 4 and 15 just south of the inside curve.
One all-important thing overlooked in Officer John Edwards’
report of the 1989 New Years Day “beating incident” is the sequence
of events.
He heard someone in the 9-1-1 room mention a black man while the operator he was talking to, Sharyn Gilbert, told him that she heard a woman being beaten. He was therefore acting on
the assumption that a black man was beating a woman. Gilbert actually heard the line open followed by three minutes of
silence. Then she heard a woman scream, a slap and a grunt. The line went dead. The 911
procedure Gilbert followed required her to make an “incident” report before
anyone could be dispatched to the scene. The incident she heard sounded like a woman being
beaten so that’s what she called it and that’s what she told Edwards she heard. The comment about a black man involved an unrelated emergency in
another part of greater Los Angeles. Edwards didn’t know that. He arrived at 360
North Rockingham expecting to find a situation where a black man had beaten a woman or was
still at it.
It was a real emergency for John Edwards and he responded accordingly in his LAPD uniform driving his LAPD black and white squad car. He passed the Rockingham gate before he realized he was at the estate and turned onto Ashford. He parked in front of the driveway because he thought the gates opened out, went to the intercom box and pressed the button. You can see what happened next in the 1989 Incident animation. Keep in mind that the animation is compressed into one minute. The actual time between Edward’s arrival and Nicole’s appearance was probably longer, with more words being exchanged between Edwards and Michelle. If Nicole called 9-1-1, ask yourself why she didn't go to Edwards in his LAPD uniform with the black and white squad car in her line of sight as soon as he got out of the car.
Everyone assumed that Nicole called 911 when O.J. was beating her or she feared that he was going to. However, the caller didn’t give a name or say why she was calling. No one said anything for three minutes. Nobody knows who screamed, who got slapped or who hung up the phone. The injuries on Nicole’s face, arm and neck are not entirely consistent with Nicole’s story of taking a beating from O.J. They are entirely consistent with O.J.’s story of wrestling her out of the bedroom and Nicole getting into a scratching, slapping, punching, hair-pulling fight with Michelle – and hiding from the police.
If Michelle made the call, the following sequence of events make sense: Michelle calls 9-1-1 fearful that the younger, bigger, stronger Nicole is going to attack her. She doesn’t give her name or say what is happening because nothing has happened yet. She is fearful of being beaten if she doesn’t call for help and fearful of losing her job if she does or if she even gives her name. She doesn’t want to get O.J. involved with the police so she just keeps the line open and hopes that Nicole doesn’t get into her bungalow.
Nicole does get in. Michelle screams. Nicole slaps her, sees the phone off the hook and hangs up. The women fight. The fight continues outside where Nicole falls and gets her white pants muddy from the recent rain. Nicole is drunk so Michelle gets the better of her. Michelle tells her that she called the cops. Nicole is now worried that she did and that she could be arrested and do some serious time for assault.
This is where the 1989 Incident animation begins. Looking at the event from overhead it’s easy to see that Nicole was not hiding from O.J. She was in sight of the house where O.J. was but out of site of Edwards and his partner in the patrol car. She stayed quiet and concealed until Edwards told Michelle what he expected to see. Then he saw her hiding in the bushes. If she was afraid of being arrested she now had a way out and a way of getting O.J. at the same time.
The sequence of events also tells you which of the stories told
by Phillips, Lange, Vannatter and Fuhrman of the events leading to
Fuhrman going
Over
the Wall and discovering the glove has to be true. It’s in the line of
travel to Michelle’s bungalow with Phillips first, Lange second, Fuhrman third and
Vannatter pulling up the rear.
Uniformed cops stationed by the Rockingham gates are not shown everywhere they went and when they went there because their movements cannot be plotted. Fuhrman's partner Brad Roberts cannot be shown because nobody can show where he was.
The Rockingham hookup animation shows what the sequence of events were according to the available videos and testimony of Detective Vannatter and Officer Thompson. A video shot of O.J. with his traveling bag still hanging from his shoulder in the playhouse area means that Roberts could only have taken the bag there before O.J. was handcuffed. --Jasper