William Wasz
(Mint green) Writer / Aspiring filmmaker / Career criminal / Father of two / Served 10 years in prison on charges related to his role in documenting conspiracy evidence in the O.J. Simpson murder case / Died of drug overdose with no witnesses on March 14, 2005
Relationship to:
L.A. District Attorney (legal – convicted felon, potential witness): Bill Wasz’s criminal career landed him in trouble with the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office on more than one occasion However, it wasn’t until the June 12, 1994 murders of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson that the district attorney’s interest in him took on national significance because of his prior links to principles in the O.J. murder trial. He was arrested in late January of ’94 in a stolen Toyota SUV belonging to O.J.’s girlfriend Paula Barbieri. A pocket-sized notebook recovered from the vehicle, which Wasz wrecked in a wild police chase, contained notations in his handwriting of Nicole’s scheduled activities on January 6th and 7th. On a separate page it contained the names and private telephone numbers of O.J. Simpson, Paula Barbieri and O.J.’s friend Robert Kardasian.
Gil Garcetti (legal –indirect): As the L.A. County Prosecutor, Gill Garcetti oversaw Assistant District Attorney Bill Hodgeman and Marcia Clark in their inquires concerning Wasz’s notebook. Garcetti accepted their finding that Wasz forged the entries in his notebook notwithstanding the fact that he was in prison and the notebook had been in police custody since his January 31 arrest.
Bill Hodgeman (legal – direct): See Gil Garcetti and Andrew Luster
Marcia Clark (legal – direct): See Gil Garcetti
Bill Pavelic (legal – direct): Pavelic, working as an unlicensed private investigator for the O.J. Simpson criminal defense team examined the Wasz notebook and also dismissed it as a fraud. Thus, the prosecution and the defense dismissed any knowledge that Wasz might have had concerning a plan to kill Nicole. Shortly after Wasz’s release from prison in 2004, he posted on the Peking Duck Internet website that Pavelic would soon be eating prison food. He did not explain the comment.
Anthony Pellicano (personal – uncertain): In a 1998 prison interview with David Bresnahan, Wasz said that he met private investigator Anthony Pellicano in 1988. In October 2004, Mario Nitrini began a Peking Duck correspondence with Wasz. The following month on Wasz’s own website, he told Nitrini that he (Wasz) and Pellicano were following Nicole at the same time. When Pellicano went to federal prison, Wasz urged Nitrini to write to Pellicano and “help him.” He said that Pellicano would be “a very valuable friend one day.” Wasz did not explain the comment.
California Department of Justice (legal – institutional): In early March 2005 Wasz told website operator Jasper Garrison that a documentary he was producing based on his book about his experience in the California prison system would expose corruption at the highest levels of state government. He said that his documentary would name names and provide convincing evidence to support his allegations. Wasz told Garrison that key people within the California Department of Justice and Corrections encouraged drug trafficking within the prison system as a method of inmate control and increased recidivism. He said that increasing the recidivism rate was to spread wealth and political power to individuals, special interest groups (specifically the prison guard union) and communities that benefit from high prison populations. California has the third highest prison population in the world, surpassed only by China and the rest of the United States.
Dan Lungren served as Governor Pete Wilson’s attorney general from 1991 to 1999. Wilson’s predecessor George Deukmejian (’83 – ’91) laid down the architecture of high prison populations by his appointment of 1,000 judges and over half of the State Supreme Court Justices in place as of March 2005. Deukmejian was Governor Jerry Brown’s attorney general from 1979 to 1983. Wasz did not mention Lungren, Wilson or Deukmejian by name.
Jim Garrison (coincidental – strategic): In 1968 Johnny Carson invited New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison on his show and ridiculed him for his prosecution of local businessmen he said were involved in a conspiracy with U.S. government officials to assassinate President John F. Kennedy. This incident was portrayed in Oliver Stone’s 1991 movie JFK with Kevin Costner as Jim Garrison. Jim Garrison’s son Jasper was also portrayed in the movie.
Mario Nitrini (personal – Friendly to hostile): See Anthony Pellicano. Town and Country limo driver Rocky Bateman approached Nitrini to follow Nicole a month before Wasz took the job. Bateman told Nitrini that O.J. wanted him to do it. After the Bundy murders, Nitrini, a professional musician, began his own investigation that resulted in a savage physical assault by two LAPD officers and eventually let him to Wasz and Garrison. Nitrini informed Garrison of Wasz’s invitation. Both agreed that it looked like a set-up for Garrison to be murdered. Nitrini insisted that Garrison had to answer. He did. He made a counter offer for Wasz to meet him in Detroit. He set a March 11 date to force the issue. Wasz could not avoid the meeting without being exposed as the con man and liar Garrison said he was. Only after Wasz’s death did Nitrini, who lived in Southern California, learn that Wasz also sent him an e-mail invitation to meet in person.
Suge Knight (mutual acquaintances): Nitrini told Garrison that he thought their first live conversation would be acrimonious. Garrison said that despite how he felt about Wasz at the moment he would come away liking him just because Wasz was a masterful con man and no one is immune to a con master’s charm. Garrison did end up liking Bill Wasz a few minutes into their first phone conversation in which Wasz told Garrison about an amicable encounter he had with two hip hop artists Garrison didn’t know and a fight he had with Death Row Records founder Suge Night. The fight story rang true to Garrison because of details matching his experience in similar violent encounters. Following Wasz’s death, Garrison received a document that had all the salient features and many details of Wasz’s Suge Night story but the fight in this Wasz story wasn’t with Night.
Larry Longo (professional and personal – client and alleged friend): See Johnny Carson, Joseph Bosco and Elizabeth Luster. Little information about William Wasz’s book or his finances as head of Elizabeth Luster’s Association for Fair and Legal Justice foundation is available without the filter of Larry Longo’s involvement. Wasz told Garrison that he started with only fifty thousand dollars but within six months it was worth millions. Larry Longo told Garrison that the foundation was broke.
As an LADA prosecutor for 27 years, Larry Longo knew all of the prosecutors in the O.J. case, including Bill Hodgeman who took a special interest in Wasz’s Kardashian story. Gil Garcetti forced Longo out of the D.A.’s office because of an apparent conflict of interest involving him, Suge Night – whom he prosecuted – a house Longo owned where Knight’s Death Row associates lived and a Death Row contract with his daughter Gina.
On March 9, two days before the scheduled meeting between Wasz and Garrison, Wasz called Garrison. He told him that unknown persons were subjecting him to physical harassment and that the Beverly Hills Police had made it obvious that they were following him. He told Garrison that he had to appear in court the next morning on an 11-year-old arrest warrant that shouldn’t have been in the system and his lawyer was tracking down who was behind the police harassment and the arrest. During their phone conversation Wasz received another call. Garrison could hear Wasz laughing and joking about mutual friends with “car trouble” in Mexico. Following a long pause, Wasz said something that to Garrison sounded like surprise and concern. He ended the call with the other party and told Garrison that his lawyer told him who was behind the harassment and the obsolete arrest warrant. He said that he would call back.
While Garrison was waiting for the callback, Mario Nitrini called Garrison and Garrison told him what had happened. A few minutes later Wasz called Garrison again and said Larry Longo told him that the man behind the harassment and the arrest warrant was Mark Fuhrman. Three days later, on March 12, Wasz left a message in Garrison’s telephone voice mail telling him that he had “climbed out of hell” but he was “in the clear…for now.” He said he would get back with Garrison. In the early morning hours of March 14, he died of an apparent drug overdose. Larry Longo’s son Frank found the body two days later.
Larry Longo denied that he told Wasz anything about Fuhrman. According to Joseph Bosco, Larry Longo said that Wasz got that information from an anonyms e-mail and he (Wasz) suspected that it came from someone associated with “Garrison.” He said that the e-mail no longer existed.
Garrison called the Longo’s law office to clear up discrepancies in information they gave out about the source of Fuhrman’s link to Wasz’s arrest warrant and to purchase a copy of Wasz’s book, We Only Kill Our Friends. Larry Longo told Garrison directly that Wasz got story about Fuhrman in a telephone voice mail that no longer existed. Over a thousand copies of Wasz’s book were in Larry Longo’s physical possession but there was no way to order it. According to Joseph Bosco, Longo said that the book could not be marketed because the process required the author to promote it. Longo told Garrison directly that he couldn’t sell it for legal reasons because Wasz’s daughter would not cooperate. He said that the story of Wasz’s death received no media attention out of respect for the family’s wishes to keep it quiet. Bosco also passed on this information to Garrison and everyone who visited the Iago Discussion Board on Garrison’s website.
Elizabeth Luster (business): See Andrew Luster and Larry Longo. Wasz told Garrison that Elizabeth Luster was a big financial backer of his book We Only Kill Our Friends. He told Garrison that he didn’t understand Elizabeth Luster. He said that she donated millions of dollars to charities but, “…when she made fifteen bucks on a stock deal she was ecstatic.” Garrison doubted everything Wasz told him about the Lusters. He had no independent confirmation either way. Larry Longo did not mention Elizabeth Luster to Garrison, although Wasz told him that Elizabeth and Larry worked closely with him on the book. He didn’t mention Frank or Gina Longo, either, although Frank discovered the body by all accounts and Larry Longo told Garrison that Wasz had dinner with him and Gina in a restaurant a few hours before he died.
O.J. Simpson (circumstantial – anecdotal and apocryphal): Wasz’s notebook links him to Nicole Simpson, Robert Kardashian, O.J. Simpson and Paula Barbieri months before the murders because their names were in the notebook and the notebook came out of Barbieri’s SUV that Wasz stole. However, Wasz did not tell anyone the stories linking these people together until O.J.’s preliminary trial for murder was underway. He told Robbery/Homicide Det. Richard Crotsley that O.J.’s friend Robert Kardashian hired him to follow Nicole in December ’93. Later, he told Det. Burt Luper and Luper’s partner Cliff LeFall the same story. Luper put Joseph Bosco in contact with Wasz who elaborated on his Kardashian/O.J. story for a Time Magazine article* commission by James Willwerth, co-author of American Tragedy with Lawrence Schiller.
Wasz claimed that he sold cocaine directly to O.J. and O.J. was present and reacted angrily when he turned over a roll of film showing Nicole with Marcus Allen. He also claimed that O.J. admitted to him that he was on the murder scene and accidentally stepped in the blood but did not murder Nicole and Ron Goldman. He told Garrison that he believed O.J. did commit the murders up to the point where he received the call from Larry Longo on March 9 telling him that Mark Fuhrman was behind his March 8 arrest.
Nicole Simpson (business – personal): See Anthony Pellicano, Mario Nitrini, O.J. Simpson and Faye Resnick. Several months prior to Nicole’s death, someone representing himself as a credible agent for O.J. Simpson established a trail of witnesses and circumstantial evidence linking him to an obsessive preoccupation with Nicole’s activities. Heading the list is Town and Country Limo Service driver Rocky Bateman who told Mario Nitrini in November ’93 that Nicole was plotting with her friends to steal O.J.’s money using samples of his blood and that O.J. wanted her followed. Nitrini declined. Wasz accepted. Any possible connection between Bateman and Wasz was severed by Bateman’s disappearance before Det. Ron Ito interviewed him and Ito’s refusal to acknowledge anything Nitrini told him about Bateman, O.J. and Nicole.
Kris Jenner (unconfirmed): See Faye Resnick.
Faye Resnick (personal – unconfirmed): During Garrison’s, first phone conversation with Wasz, he challenged Wasz’s “proof” that he had a business relationship with Robert Kardashian. He said that Wasz’s documented calls to Kardashian’s private number didn’t prove that he spoke to Kardashian and that he could have gotten all of the numbers in his notebook from anyone with access to Kardashian’s phone. When Garrison said that he could have talked to Kris Jenner (Kardasian’s ex-wife and the mother of his children) Wasz laughed off the possibility without comment. But when Garrison mentioned Jenner’s close friend Faye Resnick Wasz reacted angrily but unresponsively saying, “She’s just a slut.” Garrison then asked Wasz how he knew Faye Resnick. He replied that he met her at a party in Nicole’s Gretna Green condo.
James Willwerth (professional): See O.J. Simpson. *Willwerth did not publish the story about Bill Wasz that he commissioned Joseph Bosco to write despite the fact that his magazine put substantial investigative resources behind the project. Furthermore, a mystery remains as to why he asked Bosco to do it. Willwerth visited Wasz in prison when he was secretly working with Lawrence Schiller for Robert Kardashian to write American Tragedy. Schiller’s contribution to the book looks at the O.J. criminal trial from Kardashian’s perspective and doesn’t come down decisively on the side of guilt or innocence. Willwerth looks at the civil trial from the perspective of Dan Petrocelli and comes down decisively on the side of O.J.’s guilt.
Wasz told Jasper Garrison that when the deputies brought him into court for sentencing after the Bundy murders, he saw copies of the Time edition with O.J.’s photographically darkened face on the cover prominently displayed in the waiting room. He said the judge had a copy and the prosecutor had one. No one mentioned his connections to O.J., Nicole, Paula Barbieri or Robert Kardashian. No one ever explained why the magazines were present in the courtroom or why they were placed where he could not avoid seeing them.