Wrong. As 1980 closes, his personal and professional lives have "failure" written all over them. He has two ex-wives, no money and no future. The "big bust" that would have made him sought after by book publishers, movie producers, big-name talk show hosts and news anchors has not materialized. He enters the depths of depression. His job has, in effect, given him a license to "get" anyone he wants, as long as nobody knows or cares who they are. He wants out—with pay.

The year before, O.J. Simpson, who was appearing daily in TV ads for Hertz rent-a-car running through airports, starred in a movie called Goldie and the Boxer. O.J. was the boxer. A little white girl was Goldie. Fuhrman had a tough time getting the image of the black football star and the little white girl out of his mind. Whenever he saw O.J. on television he thought about him with the young white girl. When he saw a little girl like the one who played Goldie, he thought about her with him. How could  he help it then? How can he help it now? The Jews who run Hollywood won't let him forget!

Fuhrman’s efforts to get a psychological disability retirement convinces his psychiatrists that: 1) He has faked his disability in order to rip off the system. 2) He had done enough homework on the subject of stress-related psychological disorders to believe that he can fool the experts. 3) He should not be allowed to carry a gun.

He finds out all he can about the star, right down to the clothes he wears and where he buys them. He spends extra time in airports. He learns that O.J.s "child bride" (with brown hair like the little girl in Airplane! dyed blond like the girl who played Goldie) was born in Germany. He learns that her mother was a pure Aryan, born and raised in Germany. He learns all about Nicole's and O.J.'s friends Al Cowlings, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Marcus Allen, who are as open about their relations with white women as O.J. is. Cowlings is dating Nicole’s sister, Denise.

Fuhrman's focus of action is narrowed by a movie called Guilty Conscience, a meeting with a screenwriter named Laura Hart, and a test of power between the LAPD’s Lt. Peggy York and the Police Protective League. Through the intervention of his union representative, he gets his way. By joining a gang/narcotics unit, he had hoped to find O.J. mixed up in cocaine trafficking. He does not succeed with that, but the job helps him to make some key contacts in the police serology lab and to recruit covert operatives with no known links to him or the Police Protective League—junkies.

Evidence is stored at police headquarters in downtown LA where security is a joke. This is why he can tell Laura Hart that he can create the evidence he needs after his arrests. He can’t do all of that right now, but he’s working on it. Soon, there won’t be any locked doors he can’t open.

He sees opportunity in striking up a friendship with a black cop called Ron Shipp who has a background in psychology and is known as a buddy of Simpson. Shipp is married, but tells his friends about the other women in his life. White women. Fuhrman toys with the idea of murdering O.J. and setting up Shipp, Nicole, and Denise for the fall. He, of course, would crack the case and become a media sensation. He’s open to whatever he can use to make a name for himself and to destroy O.J. Simpson as a man and a symbol. He doesn’t want to make him a martyr. That’s the problem with killing him outright. He has to find another way.

After arranging to meet O.J. and Nicole on a phantom domestic dispute call, he gets Nicole to use 911 in the future without having to say a word about it. The standard North American emergency number is written in bold letters on the rear quarter of his police car. All he has to do is take a pointed look at the rear quarter of his police squad car when O.J. isn't paying attention to him. Nicole is nobody's fool. She now has a sure way to keep O.J. in line. For Fuhrman it’s a great way to establish a motive for her and Shipp to kill O.J. The only question is, how many calls to 911 will it take to establish a pattern of spouse abuse?

In 1986, he expresses his feelings about mixed couples to Kathleen Bell in the most violent, racist terms when she casually mentions O.J.'s close friend, Marcus Allen. Not only did she tell him that her white girlfriend, Andrea Terry, was attracted to men like Allen, she thought that Fuhrman and Allen looked enough alike that Terry would like Fuhrman, too. That’s what made him so angry, the thought that anyone, especially a white woman, could think that he and a black man looked anything alike.

Still playing with ideas about O.J. and Nicole in 1987, he goes to Robbery Detective School with Ron Phillips and learns how the pros open locked doors with and without keys. Being a detective also gives him greater access to the evidence room and contacts in the lab through which he can learn all he needs to know about the lab’s personnel, its practices and its facilities. Now when he tells Laura Hart about the ease with which he can make evidence say whatever he wants it to, the evidence that he can do it is indisputable. The only safeguard against tampering by detectives is a key to a locked door in the police station, which any robbery detective would have to know how to circumvent.

His hopes of making it big in the movies through the producers Laura Hart has introduced him to are dashed in 1988 when he sees a caricature of himself in The Naked Gun paired with a nigger, America’s nigger, O.J. Simpson! He'd had every reason to believe that Frank Drebin, who seemed to bear no resemblance to him when he was created in 1982, had been permanently retired the same year. Now, after Laura Heart has paraded him in front of all those Jew producers he sees something in the character he hadn't seen before. He's sure that there's a connection. He feels humiliated and betrayed. He is no longer just thinking about murder, he’s thinking about Kathleen Bell and Markus Allen. He’s thinking about body doubles, the niggers on death row and the Jews who should be there. And he’s making real plans to get even.

On the first day of 1989, Nicole gets drunk at a party. She misinterprets a remark made by Marcus Allen’s wife to mean that O.J. bought an expensive gift for another woman. She knows that he is cheating on her but she could never prove it. Now that she thinks she has proof and O.J. is lying about it, she physically attacks him in their bedroom and accuses him of having sex with Michelle, their maid. During the scuffle, she bumps her head. O.J. grabs her in a headlock and forces her out of the bedroom shouting and cursing at her as he always does when he is extremely angry. She goes to the maid’s quarters from inside the house, cursing her and threatening her with great bodily harm.

From this point on her hatred of O.J.'s housekeeper will be barely restrained until she loses her temper again shortly before her death. It will begin with an argument in the backyard. Michelle will leave. Nicole will follow. With no further words between them, Nicole will punch her hard on the side of her face. That will be the first time she physically assaults the tiny woman when she's not her usual pleasant self. It will not be the first time she tried. The first time is now, on New Year's Day, 1989.

Michelle calls 911 while Nicole tries without success to enter her room. The line stays open as Nicole disappears and Michelle waits, hoping that she won’t have to follow through on the call and no one will learn that she made it. But Nicole has come out of the house and around to the side where she has used her master key to get in. Michelle screams in surprise and fear as Nicole swings at her but misses. She slaps Nicole as hard as she can. The blow lands on the side of Nicole's neck. Nicole snatches the phone from Michelle's hand and hangs it up as Michelle grabs her by the hair from behind. O.J. comes in, pushes Michelle aside and tussles with Nicole on Michelle's bed, ranting all the while. He forces her outside, takes her master key to keep her from getting back into Michelle's room and goes back to the main house. He locks her outside in her bra and sweatpants and returns in a huff to his own room unaware that anyone has called 911.

O.J. is as furious at Nicole's violent behavior as she is with his philandering. She's wrong about the specifics but right about his cheating in general. And now he won't let her in the house. And it's cold and damp. And she has already fallen down in the mud behind the garage outside of Michelle's door. She is so angry and frustrated she doesn't know which way to turn. What more can go wrong to start the new year?

Nicole sees a police car on Rockingham and hides in the bushes by the Ashford gate, afraid that they have come to get her for assaulting her weaker, smaller maid. To her horror, the police car turns the corner on Ashford and pulls up to the intercom post on the driveway. From her concealed position, she can see two uniformed officers. The male driver gets out of the car, rings the intercom and waits forever, in Nicole's mind, for a reply. Will it be O.J. or Michelle? Will they team up against her again? Did O.J. call some of his cop friends? Was there someone on the line when she got to the phone? What did they hear?

Cold and frightened, Nicole stays out of sight until Michelle answers the intercom. Officer Edwards identifies himself and asks what the problem is. This is the moment she's been dreading. Where can she go half-clothed if Michelle buzzes him in? Nowhere.

Michelle tells Edwards that there are no problems. He answers by telling her that a woman called 911 and said that she was being beaten. He says that he isn't going to leave until he speeks to her.

That's it! Nicole's way out, and her chance to hit back the way she'd tried to do with the calls she had actually made to 911. She realizes that she must have some marks on her body that match the officer's idea of what had happened and Michelle didn't. Only then does she come out of hiding, open the gate and fall into the officer's arms. No one ever asks her why she remained hidden and silent for so long with the police only a few feet away. No one asks why she didn’t open the gate and seek their protection immediately if she was in imminent fear of being killed by her husband.

No one wants to hear O.J.’s or the maid’s version of what happened, or why Michelle came outside, pleaded with Nicole to stop what she was doing and tried to pull her out of the police car by her arm. Nicole’s physical appearance and her cries of, "He’s going to kill me!" are as far as anyone can see or hear or think.

Fuhrman studies the case and figures out the real story with Nicole’s confidential confession to Ron Shipp to confirm it. The confession is only frosting on the cake. Time talks. Space talks. O.J. always talked loudly and continuously when he was extremely angry with Nicole the way he was doing when he came out of the house and saw Nicole with the police.

The time between the squad car's arrival and Nicole's emergence from hiding tells Fuhrman that she wasn't waiting there for the police. With O.J. nowhere in sight and a closed door between him and Nicole, she would have dashed for the gate immediately if O.J. had just thrown her out. But if he had beaten her, thrown her out and closed himself in behind the door she couldn't have seen him as a threat to her life when the police arrived. And if O.J. had been the one who slapped her when the emergency line was open, where was all of his shouting and cursing during the slapping and the three minutes of silence that preceded it?

Nicole's story is a poor match for the evidence, and Edwards' assumptions about the 911 call are demonstrably false. Yet, the department is following through on the complaint as though there was no rational question of O.J.'s guilt. The only thing anyone wants to know is whether the wife-beating incident is isolated to that one time or part of a pattern. Fuhrman has thus seen what will happen if Nicole's words and the condition of her body say the perpetrator was O.J. no matter what anyone or anything else might have to say. He knows that photos of her with mud on her pants and a bruise on her head will be interpreted according to the officer’s verbal description of a cut lip, a black eye and swollen face.

By paying attention to details that everyone else dismissed and reserving judgment until he was sure he had all the facts, Fuhrman knows more about what really happened than anyone, including O.J. or Nicole. He knows that Michelle’s handprint was on Nicole’s neck, Michelle pulled her hair and Michelle left the bruise on her right arm when she was trying to pull her from the police car. No one has bothered to add up all of the facts, just the obvious ones. He knows that nothing was as it appeared because of a compounding of assumptions beginning with the 911 call that made Nicole look like the victim of a violent crime perpetrated by O.J. Simpson. Even his best friend believes from the evidence he's seen that O.J. must have hit her. Plus, she did say that O.J. was going to kill her.

Change of plans. Nicole is going to die violently. The obvious killer is going to be O.J. Simpson, the wife beater.

Nobody is going to take the word of a rich black man and a lowly Filipino maid in Brentwood over the word of a white police officer and a white, female victim—especially a dead one. Everyone is going to "see" what he tells them is there whether the photographs confirm it or not. That pattern has been set. He knows what to expect. Everybody is going to see "Nordberg" as the killer, which will also kill The Naked Gun. And everyone is going to think, Othello in a blue knit cap.

Visions of Laurence Olivier and Ronald Coleman in blackface race across Fuhrman’s mind. He sees Shelly Winters in Night of the Hunter and the cake-cutting scene in The Naked Gun. Each vision pulls another behind it in tandem, like convicts linked by a single chain. He sees the long-bladed knife and the glove holding it. He sees the Swiss Army knife connection to a very unusual shoe. He sees Anthony Hopkins from Guilty Conscience on an airplane falsely accused of murder, Swoosie Kurtz following Blythe Danner into a shoe store, and "Nordberg’s" shoes on "Drebin’s" feet. He sees a letter addressed to the district attorney telling him to assume the husband's guilt in case the wife is murdered. It’s all there. Now all he has to do is put it together with only the tiniest bit of editing to fit the existing facts and circumstances. 

Fuhrman writes a letter to the Brentwood city attorney that results in Simpson’s arrest and public branding as a batterer. That letter gives every 911 call attributed to Nicole, without testimony or evidence that O.J. touched her, the same weight as the call she was assumed to have made in ’89. He knows that she didn’t make that call. He’s the only one who bothered to look at all of the evidence before deciding how it had to fit together. He now knows how little it will take for the appearance of truth to overwhelm the real thing. The ’85 incident he writes about in his letter to the city attorney can be seen as an example of spouse abuse only through the prism of what everyone thinks O.J. did to Nicole on New Year’s Day. By that standard, a loud shouting match with the right spin on it would have sufficed.

Fuhrman conducts a dress rehearsal of the killing with the murder in Brentwood of the young nightclub owner and promoter Brett Cantor. He knows that O.J. has a large collection of knives. From the autopsy report he learns that he need only choose a knife that come close to one in O.J.'s collection to incriminate him once that knife is found and stolen, and discovered sometime later with the victim's blood on it. But he sees no way for the so-called elite Robbery-Homicide unit not to be called when he kills Nicole and, therefore, no sure-fire way of being everywhere he has to be during the search when he has to be there.

He repeatedly tries to get into the unit but is repeatedly turned down. To insure that O.J. ends up on death row, Nicole is going to have to die an especially horrible death and there is going to have to be a second victim. That shouldn't be hard, with Marcus Allen, Keith Zlomsowitch and all the other men in her life who could be enticed to meet with her at the right time and place depending on O.J.'s schedule. Fuhrman has to play that card as it falls. But, if all else fails, he can always kill Nicole and Ron Shipp.

Another promising candidate for the second victim, the one whose death should put O.J. on death row, is Brett Cantor's buddy, Ron Goldman. With a little encouragement from Faye Resnick, he thinks it can be arranged. Goldman's death would make it two Jews down and one to go, one Jew for each of the producers of Airplane! and The Naked Gun. Fuhrman's only regret is that he has to settle for symbols rather than the actual men he wants so badly to see dead. Still, a Jew is a Jew, and any dead one with some connection to Hollywood and each other will have to suffice.

The Goldmans and Browns begin civil action to find O.J. responsible for killing Ron and Nicole.

Fuhrman pleads no contest to the charge of perjury. He is fined $200. Many people are angry with him for giving the black jury an excuse to free O.J. Others are more outraged by the defense team for even suggesting that Fuhrman might have been racially motivated to frame O.J. Simpson for a crime that O.J. "obviously" committed.

No black people are permitted to sit on the jury for final judgment. The judge rules that the defense cannot call Mark Fuhrman to the stand or argue that their client was framed.  O.J. loses the civil suit.

The standard of proof set down in the civil trial had become the media’s license to be openly contemptuous of anyone who expressed doubt of O.J.’s guilt. It made it easier for them to forgive Fuhrman’s sins and to be increasingly supportive of him as the celebrity he had always wanted to be. If he was the man I thought he was, the implications for African-American men—to start with—were chilling. If I could see it coming, so could he. Here was a pattern for image assassination that anyone with his foresight could see, and anyone with his ruthlessness could follow. If this was the path of the future, my trilogy wasn’t fiction; it was a sneak preview.

Most people assume they know my motive for accusing Fuhrman, an ex-Marine and Vietnam vet, of being a racist butcher of defenseless human beings. Those who know that my first nonfiction book was dedicated to Dennis Hammond, a Marine murdered in captivity by the Viet Cong, should know better. "Smartfellows" is a tribute to him, a name he coined that stands more for tolerance than it does for smarts. I’ve spent decades of my life and tens of thousands of dollars to fight the "racist murderer" image of Vietnam vets which has been falsely applied to men like Dennis and me for 30 years. Few things are as important to me as changing that image, of getting the history books right, no matter how unpopular the verdict.

Through Mark Fuhrman’s study of psychology and the history of Nazi Germany it’s likely that he ran across Stanley Milgram’s classic study on obedience to authority. You may know of it from a 1976 made-for-TV movie, starring William Shatner, called The Tenth Level.

Dr. Milgram, of Yale University, conducted his study from 1960 to 1963 to learn the mechanism by which the men in Himmler’s SS Special Group were able to function as they had in Hitler’s "final solution." To test his hypothesis that a universal force was at work, he devised an ingenious experiment involving one test subject at a time and two covert helpers.

The volunteers walked into a controlled environment where circumstantial evidence, common knowledge and common-sense assumptions were used to deceive them. They were told by an actor in a white lab coat that they were there to study the affects of negative reinforcement on learning. Another of Milgram’s confederates showed up in the guise of another volunteer.

The phony scientist told the real subject and the fake one that one of them would play the role of teacher to the other, who would act as the student. Milgram fixed the drawing to decide who would play which role so that his assistant would always be the student. The ringer’s job was to pretend to be shocked when his incorrect answers to the teacher’s questions prompted them to depressed a fake shock lever on a machine. The real test was to see how far the real subject would go in obeying the instructions of the fake scientist.

A prestigious university’s name lent credibility to what the test subjects were told about the study. The small room was partitioned so that the subject and the "scientist" were together. The "student," strapped in a chair with electrodes attached to his body and wires running to the fake shock machine on the teacher’s table, could be seen in a separate chamber through a window.

The shock box measured about a foot high, a foot deep, and two feet across. It had 30 settings grouped into ten levels of severity, ranging from 15 to 450 volts, with 30 corresponding levers to administer the shocks. It had lights, needle-gages, and it buzzed when the levers were depressed. "Before the test began," the subjects were wired to the machine with special paste between the electrode and the skin, supposedly "to help conduct electricity" and "to prevent burns." Then they were given a 45-volt jolt, supposedly to let them know how it felt. The real purpose was to convince them that the wires running to the student carried an electric current capable of inflicting severe pain.

To reinforce that idea, the first level of pain, which went up to 45 volts, was labeled "Slight Shock." The second level was "Moderate Shock." Third was "Strong Shock," fourth, "Very Strong Shock," fifth, "Intense Shock," sixth, "Extreme Intensity Shock," seven, "Danger." Milgram’s colleagues—all experts—predicted that only the rare, severely disturbed individual, would get this far. In fact, everyone in the study reached this level—meaning you and I, in their place, would almost certainly have tortured a man up to that point. The eighth level was labeled "Severe Shock." The last two had triple X’s instead of names. 65 % of the subjects went all the way to the top of the tenth level.

To get a good feel for what went on in the study, you have to keep in mind the feedback the teachers were getting from the student and the scientist. While the student showed every sign of suffering at the level indicated on the shock box, the authority figure assured the teachers that it was okay to continue shocking him. He told them to proceed even when the student complained of heart trouble and alternately begged and demanded to be released. The teachers were usually able to subordinate their own rising level of distress to accomplishing the task at hand for two reasons: 1) Trust in the integrity of the institution, and 2) A sense of duty to everyone else involved.

These were honorable men and women volunteering their time and risking possible pain and injury to themselves for the betterment of mankind. As far as they knew, they were taking the same risks coming into the study as the man who ended up in the torture chamber. The scientist reminded them of that forcefully when they balked, and gentle assurance that it was all right to continue didn’t work.

In the end, they did suffer for the betterment of mankind. They felt that they had, indeed, been a part of an important study when they were debriefed. Milgram was called on the carpet for the questionable ethics of making them endure the mental agony of thinking they were inflicting physical agony on someone else. Paradoxically, his experiment proved that none of the subjects went beyond delivering a level of shock that they felt personally responsible for. That was the common denominator he was looking for in all cruel acts of conformity, from joining a lynch mob for the purpose of murdering one or two men, to joining a "special group" to murder millions. He called it the "agentic state," a state of mind which exempts people from the responsibly of their own actions by seeing themselves as mere agents for a higher authority.

Think what higher authority means to any of us in any context. It means acknowledging the right or the sheer power of someone or something to dictate our actions. It means fear of physical or psychological punishment if we fail to go along with the program. We all have limits on the extent to which we will do what we are expected to, but the pressure to conform is strong enough to keep most of us in line most of the time. Milgram’s "agentic state" concept takes all the mystery out of why good people in great numbers—especially volunteers—do horrible things; they do it for what they believe to be a good cause.

Mark Fuhrman would have appreciated the extent to which Milgram’s most famous study owed its success to lies, misdirection and impressive-looking props. These were the tools of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda. But Goebbels didn’t invent them. Shakespeare’s villains, Richard III, Lady MacBeth, and Iago, used them all. Magicians before and after them made those techniques for creating persuasive illusions their stock in trade... You see a machine in the Psychology Department of Yale. People you trust tell you that it generates shocks. It flashes and buzzes; it gives you a shock. What do you believe?

All of the blood evidence against O.J. begins with Mark Fuhrman’s strange theory that the killer was bleeding from his left hand. Not so strange when O.J. was found to have a cut on his left hand. Take a good look at Fuhrman’s right hand. Do any of these other key pointers to O.J.’s guilt within an 8" radius of that hand make more sense as evidence that got there by accident or design?

Aaronson, Ellen—Walked past 875 South Bundy with Danny Mandel between 10:28-10:30 on the evening or June 12, without seeing the open gate, Nicole’s body, her blood or the bloody paw prints of her dog. They never heard the dog bark. That narrowed the window of opportunity too much for O.J. to have gotten rid of some evidence and done everything consistent with all of the other evidence found at Rockingham by Detective Mark Fuhrman and his partner Brad Roberts. In the civil case, the plaintiffs had to accept the timing of the murders bracketed by the testimony of Aaronson, Mandel and others because there was no credible way around it.

Abrams, Dan—Reporter/commentator for Court TV. During the criminal trial against O.J. Simpson, Abrams established himself as a national, five-star expert on the case. In the civil trial, Abrams reported that photos of O.J. wearing Bruno Magli shoes supposedly taken by a young photographer named E. J. Flammer, were "proof that O.J. Simpson is a killer." The admission of the plaintiffs’ former FBI experts under cross-examination that the photos could have been faked, did not prompt Abrams to retract his earlier statement. He had spoken the minds of the vast majority of his colleagues who have since referred to the Flammer photos as proof of O.J.’s guilt, and used them to ridicule anyone who disagrees.

Abudrahn, Michelle—O.J. Simpson’s Filipino housekeeper. She left O.J.’s employ in April, 1994 when Nicole struck her hard enough to knock her down and leave her face red and swollen. The genesis of the assault may have gone back to 1989 when Nicole told police, responding to an anonymous 911 call, that O.J. beat her with his fists, kicked her and pulled her hair. Michelle Abudrahn sided with O.J. in saying that nothing like that happened. Nicole allowed others to assume that she called 911 (see Edwards, John) but never said so herself. In O.J.’s first public comment about the episode shortly after it happened, he told an interviewer that the maid called 911 as an "overreaction" to something she heard. Evidence suggests that she did make the call, that she left the line open rather than report a problem because she was afraid that she might have been overreacting. Evidence suggests that she was the one who was heard screaming on the 911 tape, and that she was the one who slapped Nicole first—in 1989.

Adlen, Andrew—Buyer of cars auctioned and impounded by police. A business competitor (see Balasini, William) identified him as a fellow witness to the accessibility of O.J.’s Bronco in a "restricted" area of Viertel’s garage on June 21, and the lack of blood inside. Mr. Adlen was not called to testify by either side.

Akita—A breed of dog. An Akitas, Kato, and a Chow, Chachi, were owned jointly by Nicole and O.J. When the Simpsons separated, Kato went with Nicole; Chachi went with O.J. Both Nicole and O.J. frequently picked up the dog in the other’s care, O.J. transporting them mostly in his Bronco (probable source of Bronco fibers on Bundy)Kato had a habit of running off whenever the gate was opened. He was outside of the gate when the killing started. O.J. said that he took Chachi out for a walk around 10:00. The blood drop pattern at the Rockingham gate matches his account. He didn’t know when or how he was cut.

While pointing out the relationship of the blood drop on Bundy to the left of the left shoeprint, Fuhrman theorized it was the killer’s blood, and that the Akita had bitten the killer.

Alibi—A conflict in time, place or circumstance that makes it impossible for someone to have committed a crime. O.J. could not have committed the murders he was charged with. Mark Fuhrman could have. An innocent person need not have a perfect alibi. But to frame him, the people doing the framing have to know that he does not have one.

The defense team’s failure to consider the possibility that O.J. was set up by a small group of conspirators well in advance of the murders left them vulnerable to the prosecution’s argument that a police conspiracy was impossible. The sheer size of such a conspiracy, after the fact, along with the belief that none of the officers involved could have known whether or not O.J. had an alibi, gave the police an alibi.

Attorney’s for the defense and prosecution argued that O.J.’s Bronco was crucial to the question of whether or not he could have committed the murders. If the defense could show that it was in the same place before during and after the murder O.J. would have an alibi; if the prosecution could show that it wasn’t, he wouldn’t.

Neither side was able to prove its contention. However, the slight angle to the curb at which the Bronco was parked gave rise to Det. Mark Fuhrman’s theory that the driver parked it in great haste after returning from Bundy. He testified during the preliminary hearing that the back stuck out as much as "a foot" farther than the front, an angle of 10 degrees or more. The actual angle was 2 degrees, which amounts to an error too great to have been arrived at accidentally by a trained observer. Though O.J. pointed out the sharp turn he had to make to go from his drive to the street, his defense team did not match the angle that would have resulted from that turn to the angel found by police. That angle, together with the pattern of blood drops on his driveway gave him an airtight alibi.

Mark Fuhrman’s partner, Brad Roberts, characterized the droplets of blood on O.J.’s driveway as going into the compound. They couldn’t have been. The width of the gate, where it was hinged, and the width of O.J.’s body could only have meant that he left his blood on the driveway on his way out. Roberts was the only detective to get close enough to them to see whether they showed a tell-tale spread of finger-like projections from the droplets in the direction of travel. The photos didn’t show it, and the criminalists didn’t say it. The pattern itself, however, could not have been made by a man with a cut on the left side of his body as large as O.J. had when he returned from Chicago. The size of the droplets could have been made only by someone with a superficial cut, which O.J. said he had before he left for Chicago.

Allport, Dr. Gordon W.—Author of The Nature of Prejudice. Allport literally wrote the book on prejudice, from its biological, historical and cultural origins to its various manifestations and implications in predicting human behavior. Many people unfamiliar with Allport’s work believe that a white racist like Mark Fuhrman is incapable of having a black friend like Ron Shipp. Those who are familiar with Allport’s work know that allowing for exceptions to the rule is an essential component of prejudice. It is the only way to maintain the illusion of rational judgment about stereotypes or to see oneself as fair-minded in the face of obvious cases in which the rule does not apply. Allport showed how stubborn stereotypes were, partly because of how natural it is for human beings to see complete and inaccurate images when presented with partial or contradictory facts. Such facts are replete in the O.J. Simpson murder case. Only someone familiar with Allport’s work could have gotten others to "see" O.J. as a spouse-abuser and a murderer if the available evidence did not support those assertions. Without the involvement of Mark Fuhrman and Ron Shipp, the available evidence would not support that assertion. One of the difficulties in pinning Fuhrman down as the killer was in showing that he knew enough about Allport to make practical use of his discoveries. He studied enough psychology to think that he could fool the experts on the police force in 1982 and ’83. It’s difficult to see how he could have done that without knowing about Allport. The fact that he chose to put a picture in his first book that showed Marcia Clark holding a copy of The Nature of Prejudice speaks for itself.

Alonzo, Rosa Elvia—Nicole’s housekeeper. Ms. Alonzo told police that a key ring with many keys that Nicole kept on a hook in her kitchen disappeared between June 5 and June 6, 1994 (see Keys).

Allen, Marcus—Friend of O.J. Simpson and Al Cowlings. The three black men were known to socialized together in the company of white women throughout the ‘80s. Allen eventually married his blond girlfriend at O.J.’s house. Before they met in 1988, Allen would often go out with O.J. and Nicole. Kathleen Bell’s casual mention of Allen to Mark Fuhrman in 1986 is what triggered his enraged diatribe about his practice of harassing mixed couples and his fantasies of committing genocide.

Ameli, Dr. Jennifer—Clinical psychologist specializing in intimate relationships and drug abuse. Both Nicole and Ron Goldman were under her care at the time of their deaths. Ameli’s office was broken into and bugged, files were stolen and she was subjected to anonymous threats to keep her mouth shut about her knowledge of the murder victims. All she could say about one man who approached her from behind and threatened her was that he was tall.

Baden, Dr. Michael—One of the world’s leading forensic pathologists. He offered his services to the prosecution as well as the defense. The prosecution turned him down. Hired by the defense for his technical ability as well as his pristine reputation for integrity, he was ridiculed by the vast majority of media commentators for saying that Goldman could have stayed on his feet for as long as five or ten minutes after his throat was slit. Either estimate makes it impossible for O.J. to have committed the crime.

Bailey, F. Lee—Famous defense attorney and polygraph expert. Two days after the murders, he stopped O.J. from completing a polygraph test as soon as he discovered he was taking one. The reason he gave was the same one Mark Fuhrman used for waiting over a year to take his: To get a reliable reading the person being tested has to be as stress-free as possible. During Simpson’s criminal trial, Bailey maneuvered Fuhrman into committing perjury under cross-examination by asking him if he’d used the n-word or referred to any black person by that name in the past ten years. But he ruled out Fuhrman as a murder suspect because he was convinced that Fuhrman found the bloody right-hand glove at Bundy after he was called in on the case, and planted it at Rockingham to stay involved in the case.

Baker, Phillip—Attorney for O.J. Simpson. His questioning of Denise Brown uncovered a vital link between her, Ron Shipp and Faye Resnick, whom she said she didn’t know. He asked her if Shipp and Resnick were passengers in her car when she was stopped in LA for drunk driving. Her Attorney, John Kelley, told her not to answer; leaving a strong impression that any answer she gave would be incriminating. The only incriminating truthful answer she could have given would have been, yes; her only incriminating false answer would have been, no. The only logical conclusion being, she lied about her relationship with Faye Resnick and Ron Shipp, the most damaging witness against Simpson other than Mark Fuhrman and herself.

Baker, Robert—O.J.’s lead attorney in the civil trial, father of Phillip Baker. Under state legislation fashioned specifically for the Simpson case, Baker was forced to contend with devastating hearsay evidence purported to have been said or written by Nicole. Under the rulings of the presiding judge, he was not allowed to call Mark Fuhrman or to suggest that Fuhrman had anything to do with planting evidence. He was able to show how and why photos of O.J. Simpson wearing shoes identified as the killer’s could have been faked. But, by all published accounts, he showed no enthusiasm for his own argument and some writers claimed he was angry with O.J. for lying to him. Transcripts do show tension between Baker and O.J. when O.J. insisted on answering questions against his attorney’s advice. However, that advice made sense only if one assumed that he would hurt himself by answering them. He didn’t.

Barbiari, Paula—O.J. Simpson’s former girlfriend. On the morning of June 12, 1994, Barbiari left a message on Simpson’s answering machine telling him that their relationship was over. The prosecution argued that her message set off a slow-burning fuse in Simpson, which exploded that night in the rage killing of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. They offered no proof of that scenario, their only evidence being the mood some witnesses said he was in at his daughter’s dance recital before the killing. However, a video taken without the knowledge of O.J. or any of those witnesses, showed the opposite of what they said.

Baur, Maria—Former housekeeper for O.J. and Nicole. Her husband Rolf was Nicole’s cousin, brought over from Germany by O.J. and Nicole. During her four years with Nicole and O.J. at Rockingham from 1980 to 1984, she witnessed no displays of temper by O.J., saw no bruises on Nicole and testified that her family didn’t believe her stories of O.J.’s physical abuse. She saw no evidence of it.

Baur, Rolf—Former groundskeeper for O.J. and Nicole. He lived with the Browns from the time he was 9-years-old. He worked with his wife at Rockingham for 3 years without seeing evidence that O.J. abused Nicole. He did tell investigators of seeing a picture "long before" that showed her "beaten up." He said that it was taken by her father. He didn’t say who beat her up, if anyone (see Brown, Denise) and Nicole never mentioned it to him, his wife, the police or her divorce lawyer.

Bell, Kathleen—Witness for the defense. She met Fuhrman at a Marine recruiting station in Redondo Beach in the summer of ’86. He was wearing a sweatsuit. Noting how tall he was, she wanted to fix him up with her girlfriend, Andrea Terry, who was 6’ tall. She told Fuhrman that her friend liked men who fit his general description. Terry was white, but color was not important to Bell, who gave Marcus Allen as an example (could be where he got the idea that he might be able to impersonate O.J.) of the kind of man she was talking about.

Horrified at his violent, racist reaction, she avoided him and the places she saw his pea-green and white International Harvester Scout. When she was visiting Hennessey’s Tavern in Redondo Beach with Andrea Terry, she saw Fuhrman at a table with another woman. Bell pointed him out to Terry as the reason she wanted to leave.

After saying that he did not recall meeting Bell, Fuhrman claimed that she sought him out at Hennessey’s after the alleged incident at the recruiting station, to introduce Terry to him. He then pointed out the logical inconsistency in his version of events between the two stories. Marcia Clark used that argument as the basis for calling Bell a liar, until the language and content of the McKinny tapes lent credibility to Bell’s version of what happened. Clark never apologized to Bell.

Berris, Kenneth—Chicago Policeman. He searched the room where O.J. was staying when he got the call from Detective Ron Phillips that his ex-wife had been murdered. O.J. almost certainly cut himself on purpose in that room to make it appear that he could not have left his blood at his home. Whether he actually did it by accident, as he claimed, as a panic reaction to details of the murder he wasn’t supposed to be told, or as a calculated attempt to hide evidence of his guilt, there is no doubt that he cut himself in Chicago. But when prosecutors learned that the blood drops on O.J.’s driveway came from a superficial cut (see Chapter 30: Blood Trails), and no one could testify to seeing a cut of any kind on his hand before he left, they had a problem. They were forced to argue that O.J. did not cut himself in Chicago at all. Though the bedding where the blood appeared in photos was shipped back to LA, the prosecution still used Berris’ testimony that he saw a ballpoint pen on the bed, to suggest that the red stain was red ink.

Blasier, Robert—DNA expert, defense attorney for O.J. Simpson in his criminal and civil trial. Coached Johnnie Cochran and Bob Shapiro on questions related to blood and fiber evidence. He was first to propose the theory that Mark Fuhrman found the bloody glove on Bundy and planted it on Rockingham.

Blasini, William—General manager of vehicle purchasing for a large, self-service automobile recycling center. On Tuesday, June 21, he visited Virtels garage where O.J.’s Bronco was taken on June 13. He went there as part of his routine practice of buying cars from police auctions and impounds. He’d been involved in the business for 15 years and had seen hundreds of vehicles with bloodstains inside of them. He had heard about the killings and expected to see a great deal of blood on the seats, doors, instrument panel, console and carpet. He looked for blood. Andrew Adlen, the competing buyer who was with him, also looked for blood. They discussed the absence of blood. They noticed that a section of the carpet had been cut out, but they saw no blood anywhere.

Two other people, a man who stole some receipts and a police officer who investigated the theft, also reported that they saw no blood when they were inside of the vehicle. When Marcia Clark confronted them with photos supposedly taken on the 14th of June and the 1st of August with clear indications of blood on the door, the instrument panel and the console, they conceded that they might not have noticed it. The photos did not change Blasini’s mind.

Bodziak, William—FBI footwear expert. Of all the shoes in the FBI’s extensive library, the ones that left their clear, size-12 imprint on the murder scene at Bundy were not among them. Agent Bodziak took weeks to track down the imprint and identify it as a Silga sole pattern used on rare and expensive Italian dressy/casual shoes (or boots) called Bruno Magli Lorenzos. They had soft-leather, high-quarter tops and distinctive rubber treads. Bodziak discovered that they were sold in the United States exclusively though Bloomingdale’s in 1991 and ‘92.

Bodziak was one of two FBI experts called by the prosecution to rebut the testimony of defense expert Henry Lee that a less distinct set of imprints with simple, parallel lines might also be shoeprints—the shoeprints of a smaller man with a smaller foot. When you hear that only one set of bloody shoeprints was discovered at the crime scene, you are listing to the opinions of William Bodziak (shoe expert) and Douglas Deedrick (fiber expert). Bodziak consulted his library on the second set of possible shoeprints. When he found no match, he did no further research before concluding that there were no shoes in the world that matched. He went so far as to say that Lee had misidentified a concrete impression as a surface imprint.

Bowers, Jarvis—An African-American choke hold victim of Mark Fuhrman. In 1984, when Fuhrman’s medical retirement claim was denied, his superiors assigned him to a predominately white area. There, he stopped Bowers for jaywalking, put him in a coke hold and threatened to kill him. This story was not uncovered by any of the official investigators who were supposed to be looking for evidence of Fuhrman’s abuse of power even though Bowers made an official complaint. Jeffrey Toobin reported it in his best-selling anti-O.J. book, The Run of His Life. His wife, who knew Bowers personally and professionally, told the story to him.

Brockbank, Susan—LAPD criminalist. She testified that a patch of carpet the criminalist cut from the Bronco to test for blood, was stored inside of the same battered, cardboard box as all the evidence its fibers was found on. That includes the carpet fibers found on the gloves, the knit cap and Ron Goldman’s shirt.

Brown, Denise—Older sister of Nicole Brown Simpson. She was with Nicole’s party at the Mezzaluna restaurant where her mother’s glasses disappeared shortly before the murders. Of the four adults living in her parents’ home when police called there at 6:20 a.m. to inform the family that Nicole was dead, Denise was the one who reacted first when her father answered the phone and got the horrible new. For some unexplained reason, she was up and listening in on another extension. She was the one who screamed, "O.J. did it!" the instant her father got the news. No one thought to ask her why she behaved as though she were expecting an important call before she learned of her sister’s death.

According to Joe Bosco, she was the only person who reported seeing O.J. wearing Bruno Magli Lorenzos.

She cashed in big on her sister’s murder by accusing O.J. of a pattern of abuse against Nicole typical of men who have gone on to kill their wives or ex-wives. The textbook case of spouse-abuse she presented to authorities was the one Ron Shipp taught in the police academy, the one he taught Nicole and the one Faye Resnick wrote about in her best-selling books. The similarities in the tone and language of their reports are striking. They are supported mostly by Nicole’s initial statement to police about the ‘89 incident, when she was drunk, angry, and under the false impression that O.J. had given an expensive set of earrings to another woman. They contrast strikingly with reports of others who knew them well and had nothing to gain by what they said. Those people said that Nicole was the one who did the hitting.

The only photos purporting to show Nicole battered by O.J., other than the ones taken by Officer Edwards on the 1st of January, 1989, is the one Denise said she took and her cousin Rolph Baur said that her father took. The prosecution tried to imply that it was what Nicole really looked like as a result of being beaten by O.J. in 1989, but the photographic paper showed that it couldn’t have been taken later than 1979. In this one, Nicole appeared to have been battered badly enough to require hospitalization and reconstructive surgery. O.J. said that she was wearing makeup for a part in a movie. The date on the photographic paper corresponded to the date of the movie. Still, no one questioned how it ended up with "Nicole’s" month-old will in a safe deposit box supposedly secured by Nicole shortly before her death

Brown, Dominique—Denise’s younger sister. She lived with Denise in New York before O.J. married Nicole and put her through college. Dominique had no stories to tell of Nicole being threatened or abused by O.J. However, before 1996, she was the only person other than Denise who reported having seen O.J. in Bruno Magli shoes. According to Tom Lange and Phil Vannatter’s book, Evidence Dismissed, she "made the right choice" by picking a pair of low-quarter Bruno Maglis that she said she saw him wear the Easter before the murders. Though it was reported in the book that she made the right choice (see Bruno Magli Lorenzos), that report was in error. She did not point to Bruno Magli Lorenzos. She did, however, recognize the Bruno Magli logo and took off one of her shoes to show Det. Lange that she was wearing a pair of Bruno Maglis that Nicole had purchased for herself in New York.

Brown, Juditha—Nicole’s mother, a German national who became an American citizen when she married Louis Brown. Her stories of Nicole living in fear of O.J. first surfaced after the murders—and after the family was advised that they had one year from the date of Nicole’s death to sue O.J. Simpson for wrongful death. She forgot exculpatory information about O.J.’s relationship with Nicole, and remembered incriminating facts incompletely or out of context. Her stories changed to conform to those told by her oldest daughter, the police, the prosecutors and the media. By the time the civil case came around, she had changed completely from a mother who doubted that her former son-in-law was guilty, despite the evidence against him, to one who had been certain of his guilt from the start.

In regard to Nicole’s credibility, she once said, "Nicole could convince anyone of anything." Her own credibility was damaged beyond hope of repair when Robert Baker caught her gently in a significant contradiction. She told the jury that O.J. did not deny, being involved in Nicole’s death when she asked him if he had anything to do with it. She quoted him as saying, "I loved your daughter," and nothing more. But in a taped statement she made in her first television interview she quoted him as saying, "No, I loved your daughter."

Brown, Louis—Nicole’s Father. He accepted everything O.J. gave him, which included his successful business and wealthy life-style, without complaint about the older man’s treatment of his daughter. He accepted money from the public, complaining about the extra cost of taking care of Nicole’s children without acknowledging the fact that O.J., while he was in jail, was sending him $10,000 a month. He tried to sell pictures of Nicole in the nude and rights to her alleged diary. He referred to her children, in their presence, as "niggers." He answered the phone when police called to inform the family of Nicole’s violent death.

The will that Nicole supposedly left in a safe deposit box (no one at the bank ever testified to seeing and talking to her in person about the box) left nearly three-quarters of a million dollars to her father. Louis Brown also authenticated the diary Nicole supposedly wrote that paints a picture of O.J. as the Devil himself and helped win the plaintiffs a multi-million dollar wrongful death settlement.

Brown, Tanya—Nicole’s youngest sister. Although convinced of O.J.’s guilt, Tanya did not describe O.J. in the menacing way her mother or her older sister did. She called him, "A wonderful guy."

Buffalo Bills Report—The newsletter for the Buffalo Bills football team fan club. E. J. Flammer was working for the Buffalo Bills Report when he took the 30 photos showing O.J. in the murderer’s shoes. One reason Dan Abrams was so impressed with Flammer’s photos, was the assertion of Bills’ PR director Denny Lynch that one was printed in the Report ten months before the murders. No subscriber to the newsletter ever came forward with his or her own copy of it. That never became an issue for the media, whose purchase of them for an undisclosed, amount of money, gave them a proprietary interest in promoting their authenticity.

The photos were admitted into evidence only after the photo expert for the defense made fundamental errors in fraud-detection that could easily be rebutted. That, in turn, caused the photos to come in so late that it was impossible for the defense to mount a counter-attack as dramatic as the introduction of the photos. Still, Bob and Phillip Baker managed to show that all of the requirements for fake photos were met in the professional qualifications and motivations of the people involved. The plaintiffs did not produce a single witness other than Flammer and Scull to testify to having seen any of them before the murders.

Cale, Charles—The spokesman for a group of O.J.’s Rockingham neighbors who wanted him out of the neighborhood. He testified in the criminal trial that he was walking his dog past the Rockingham estate during the time Marcia Clark said it was missing. He said under direct that he had a clear view of Rockingham and did not see the Bronco. He said under cross that he also had a clear view of Ashford where Kato’s Nissan was parked. He said that he didn’t see the Nissan, either. He was not prosecuted for perjury or called as a witness in the civil trial.

California State Court of Appeals—When Laura Hart McKinny’s tapes of Mark Fuhrman proved that he lied under oath, O.J.’s defense asked Judge Ito to instruct the jury as to why the detective was not called back to testify. Ito agreed with the defense and the prosecution appealed his decision. The Appeals Court agreed with the prosecution and issued the judge a public rebuke. The higher court was so concerned about Fuhrman’s rights in this regard that it issued a special order for Ito not to tell the jury why he was dismissed prematurely. By affirming Mark Fuhrman’s right against self-incrimination for perjury, the Court of Appeals allowed to stand, his incriminating testimony against Simpson. Most of that testimony and the fruit of his efforts regarding that testimony still stands in the popular culture as "proof of O.J.’s guilt."

Cantor, Brett—Nightclub owner, promoter, West LA murder victim. Nicole and Faye Resnick were frequent visitors to his Dragonfly club. Ron Goldman worked for him briefly and also partied at the Dragonfly with Nicole and Faye. Someone killed him at home in a manner similar to Ron, with multiple stabbing and slashing wounds. Like Nicole, he was nearly decapitated.

These similarities could be written off as meaningless coincidence except for the fact that they fit a requirement for a military-style assassination. It’s not likely that anyone trained in military operations would carry out a life or death mission without detailed planning that included extensive intelligence gathering, dry runs, and a "dress rehearsal."

The bloody assault on Cantor occurred five months before a man who was following Nicole and keeping a detailed log of her daily activities got arrested for steeling Paula Barbiari’s white sports utility vehicle (see Wasz, William). Because of his father’s standing as a well-known agent in the entertainment business, the Robbery/Homicide Division was called in to investigate. His murder was never solved. It also provided a preview of the legal apparatus that would be called into action in any high-profile murder in Brentwood.

Casio—A character in Shakespeare’s Othello. Iago, who was jealous of Casio for passing him over as General Othello’s second in command, set him up to make Othello believe that he was having an affair with Othello’s wife, Desdemona. Iago contrived to have him and Desdemona murdered. The attack on Casio was botched and he survived (see Rodrigo).

Chain of custody—A procedure for safeguarding the integrity of evidence from collection to testing. American military servicemen in Vietnam were given urine tests to determine if they were using illegal drugs. The troops who were taking those drugs regularly beat the test by substituting drug-free samples from other servicemen for their own. By 1975 when Mark Fuhrman served aboard ship in Vietnam as a military policeman, this simple substitution trick was well known to military police in all branches of the service. Blood evidence in the O.J. Simpson case was subject to the same false identification for the same reason: there was no procedure in place to insure that the samples being tested had an unbroken connection to the source.

Clark, Marcia—Deputy DA for Los Angeles County. The week before the murders, she headed a department of her own, but took a substantial cut in pay and power to work for Bill Hodgman of the Major Crimes Unit of the LA County DA’s Office. Like its elite Robbery/Homicide counterpart in the LAPD, the Major Crimes Unit of the LADA Office was where all high-profile cases in Los Angeles ended up. Clark had a reputation for bending over backwards to help police and to prosecute men accused of spouse-abuse. She was particularly well known for helping police clean up illegal searches, taking calls at any time or any place to assist a detective in need of remedial action.

The DA’s office had many deputy DA’s who would not have approached the case against O.J. with her single-minded interest in equating a "search for truth" with her search for evidence of his guilt. None of them belonged to the Major Crimes Unit. It would have been easy for a detective to insure that Marcia Clark would be called in on the case at the very beginning, and that a like-minded team would be assembled around her. He needed only to understand the system and to bend a few rules on search and seizure.

Cocaine—The illegal drug thought by many to be the cause of the South Bundy murders. At one time or another, O.J., Nicole, Denise, Faye Resnick, Ron Goldman, Ron Shipp and Keith Zlomawitz were all subjects of police investigations involving cocaine. William Wasz, the man who stole Paula Barbiari’s car and made a detailed log of Nicole’s daily activities, was a crack addict. Mark Fuhrman worked in a gang/narcotics unit from 1885-’87 where he made numerous arrests for crimes involving cocaine, and may have had O.J. under surveillance for drug trafficking in ‘85. Michelle Kestler, head of the LAPD’s Scientific Investigation Division (SID) had a background in illegal drugs, including cocaine. She set up the lab security procedures primarily to guard against the theft of narcotics. Her only safeguard against evidence tampering by police was a standard lock on an ordinary door and a limited number of authorized keys.

Aspects of the murders consistent with a drug hit were seized upon by the defense as evidence that drug lords committed the murders. Their investigation of Faye Resnick focused on her possible connection to vicious drug dealers. No attempts were made to link her to Mark Fuhrman or Brad Roberts. No attempt was made to determine if there was a direct link between Kestler and Fuhrman or Fuhrman and Yamauchi (see Yamauchi), the lab technician who prepared the blood samples for analysis by outside laboratories.

Cochran, Johnnie L. Jr.—O.J.’s lead defense attorney, Court TV talk show host, and first cousin of Ron Shipp. The record is clear that he acted not only brilliantly but also honorably in defense of O.J. Simpson. The idea that he performed cynically, rests on the belief that he knew O.J. was guilty, and used the charge of racism as an emotional smokescreen to hide the truth (see Race Card).

Cochran was excoriated by some Jewish commentators and organizations for his equation of Mark Fuhrman to the ambitious Adolph Hitler before the Jewish Holocaust. He was further criticized for asking the "black jury" to "send a message" that "genocidal racists" like Fuhrman would not be tolerated in positions of power in America. There is, however, evidence that Fuhrman did pattern himself after Hitler, and did identify with the notion of Aryan superiority and racial purity. There is evidence that Nicole’s "German blood" had much to do with his obsession with the father of her children. There is evidence that Fuhrman did study Hitler’s principles of mass mind control, and did aspire to a position of political influence in America.

In his book, Journey to Justice, Cochran apologized for his remarks.

Colby, Carl—Neighbor of Nicole when she lived on Gretna Green in 1993. Called as a stalking witness against O.J., Colby revealed under cross-examination that he didn’t recognize O.J. Simpson when he saw him around Nicole’s house. He called 911 because the man he saw was black. Colby didn’t think a black man belonged in the neighborhood. He found out that the man was O.J. when Nicole told him that he was there because she was worried about someone following her (see Wasz, William), and asked O.J., among others, to look out for her and the kids.

Coleman, Lucienne—Deputy DA, former friend of Marcia Clark. She believed that O.J.’s defense team was making false charges of racism and evidence planting against Mark Fuhrman until she checked it out. She, and two other deputy DA’s, found that he openly admired the ideas and symbols of Nazi Germany. Coleman and the other deputy DA’s investigating Fuhrman learned from several officers that his statements to them a few years before the murders suggested that he’d had an intimate relationship with Nicole. At the very least, his knowledge of her breast implant surgery showed a special interest in her that predated her death, and, by implication, a special interest in O.J. Simpson. When she reported her findings to Marcia Clark and her boss Bill Hodgman, Clark screamed at her and kicked her out of the office. Hodgman "did not recall" the incident.

Cowlings, Allen C.—O.J. Simpson’s best friend and a trusted friend of Nicole. He drove O.J. in the so-called "low-speed chase," pleading with him not to take his own life. His candid answers to police, prosecutors, judges and juries, which didn’t always help O.J., made him a credible witness.

He took Nicole to St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica on the evening of the ‘89 incident when she complained of a headache. Seeing the bruise on her head, which had risen to a large bump, he was worried that she might have suffered a concussion. He and O.J. had been friends since childhood, and he had never known O.J. to do what Nicole said he did. However, the bump on her head, the dirt on her pants, her trip to the police station, her complaint of a headache and her angry insistence that she was "going to get O.J. for what he did" to her, convinced him that O.J. must have hit her.

It angered him, and he advised her "to go all the way." He did not know that Nicole had gone after Michelle in a jealous rage after confronting O.J. with what she thought was proof of his infidelity. Therefore, it could not have occurred to him that "what O.J. did to her," how he had hurt her and what she was so angry about, was something other than him hitting her. The doctor who examined her, stitched no cut or torn skin, applied no dressings, prescribed no medication. Nicole was left with no scars or injuries Cowlings saw no blood, no black eye, no cut lip. He saw no marks on her body that were inconsistent with O.J.’s story of a rough, angry wrestling match between a strong, determined woman and a bigger, stronger man.

Darden Christopher—Deputy DA. He was seen by many African-Americans as a token chosen because of his color to diffuse the issue of racial prejudice in the prosecution’s handling of the case. Darden, whose job it had been for awhile to prosecute bad cops, was extremely reluctant to accept any evidence that pointed to race as a motive for police misconduct. As a prosecutor in the case against O.J. Simpson he accepted all of the charges of spouse-abuse made against him with little or no evidence. He viciously attacked Rosa Lopez and Robert Heidstra with questions designed only to call attention to their limited education and lower socio-economic status. For his success in taking advantage of their fear of him and their poor command of the language, he was rewarded by expert commentator opinion that he "discredited" Rosa Lopez and got Robert Heidstra to admit he saw "a white Bronco" driving away from Bundy.

The fact that Ms. Lopez held her own against Darden when she got a competent interpreter, did not make a big impression with the press. The fact that Heidstra did not say he saw a white Bronco, and the vehicle he did see was heading away from O.J.’s Rockingham estate, was similarly played down or ignored. What did get attention was Darden’s attempt to get Heidstra to say he heard "a black man" arguing with a younger man at the crime scene and his plea to keep Fuhrman’s use of the n-word away from the jurors. He is best remembered for his disastrous glove demonstration, which allowed Johnnie Cochran to argue, "If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit."

Deedrick, Douglas—FBI hair and fiber expert. Testified that hair in the knit cap found at the murder scene and in both bloody gloves was consistent with O.J. Simpson’s. His most damaging testimony, however, concerned parallel line imprints on the envelope on Bundy that defense expert Henry Lee identified as being a possible shoeprint. According to Deedrick, the pattern of lines in question were most likely left by Ron Goldman’s trousers. He was the second FBI agent (see Bodziak, William) to claim that Dr. Lee erred in seeing possible evidence of two people involved in the killing.

Desdemona—The wife falsely accused of infidelity in Shakespeare’s play, Othello. As part of the setup to make Othello believe that she was having an affair with Casio, Iago planted the idea in Othello’s mind that he had good reason to be jealous. To convince him, he planted subtle suggestions that innocent behavior on the part of Casio and Desdemona was actually guilty behavior. To cap it off, Iago used a duplicate of a distinctive handkerchief Othello had given to Desdemona and she had lost, to give to Casio. He then maneuvered Othello into secretly observing Casio with the handkerchief. The sight was so upsetting to Othello that it triggered an epileptic seizure. But he still wasn’t convinced until Iago persuaded him to ask Desdemona if she still had handkerchief, knowing that she would lie about it to protect herself from Othello’s anger. She did. Her lie is what sealed her doom, by convincing Othello that she was a liar and Iago must have been telling the truth.

Dietz, Park—FBI profiler and forensic psychiatrist. Using only the prosecution’s idea of evidence that O.J. beat Nicole, Dietz lent the credibility of his association with the FBI as well as Harvard and Johns Hopkins, to characterize Simpson as a spouse-abuser. He said that O.J. would have continued to abuse Nicole with no reliable data that he ever did. Even at that, he could not find a pattern of escalation that matched the profile of a would-be killer. His expert testimony was allowed despite the fact that he never examined Simpson himself (see Walker, Dr. Lenore).

Douroux, Bernie—Driver of the truck that towed O.J.’s Bronco to the impound garage (see Viertels). By the time he hooked up the Bronco, the sun was up and the news was out that the Bronco might have been involved in a bloody homicide. He had a clear view of the vehicle’s interior under the best possible lighting conditions. He testified that he saw now blood in the Bronco.

Dream Evidence—(See Ron Shipp). In Shakespeare’s play, Othello, the villain, Iago, tells the tittle character of his wife’s infidelity by way of a dream Casio supposedly divulged to him while he was asleep.

Dunne, Dominick—Staff writer for Vanity Fair magazine. He wrote a best-selling book in the ‘80s about a murder in Connecticut, which was tied to the Kennedy family. As an author commissioned to write a book about the Brentwood murders, he was granted a permanent seat in Judge Ito’s courtroom. A frequent talk show guest, his opinions, together with fellow permanent seat-holder, Jeffrey Toobin, and talk-show host, Geraldo Revera, form a large body of what most people believe about O.J. Simpson. Dunne sat with the Goldman’s during the criminal trial and became friends with Mark Fuhrman, whose second book is about the murder in Connecticut that made Dunne a best-selling writer. He called Fuhrman’s first book about the murder that forever linked Fuhrman’s name to O.J. Simpson’s downfall, "...wonderful."

EDTA—The chemical used in purple-top test tubes to keep blood from clotting. When Nurse Thano Peratis drew O.J. Simpson’s blood directly from his body, he put it in a purple-top test tube and shook it up to allow the EDTA blood preservative coating the sides to mix with the blood. O.J.’s defense team reasoned that a simple, straightforward way of determining whether or not his blood was planted in incriminating places, was to see if blood collected in those places on untreated cloth swatches contained EDTA.

The prosecutors leaped to accept the challenge, announcing that they were confident no EDTA would be found. Deputy DA Rockney Harmon was on loan to the LA County prosecutors from Alameda for his expertise in DNA. He wrote to Agent Roger Martz of the FBI crime lab requesting that he test samples of evidence "to refute defense charges" that blood from Nicole’s reference vial as well as O.J.’s had been planted. They refused to send Martz samples of the Bundy blood drops identified as O.J.’s because they said they didn’t have enough to go around. When the results came back positive from the samples they did send, they refused to accept them or call experts to support their reasons for not accepting them. They argued, instead, that it would take too much time and prove nothing.

The defense then called Martz as well as its own expert witness, Dr. Fredric Reiders, the world’s leading expert on EDTA. Martz confirmed the presence of EDTA but said that the amount could have occurred naturally in O.J.’s blood. Reiders said that anyone with that amount of EDTA in his blood would bleed to death from a minor cut because the blood would not clog. Since O.J. had flown all the way to Chicago with a minor cut, and all the way back to LA with a major one, the blood in question could not have come directly from his body if Reiders was correct.

Edwards, John—One of two LAPD officers who responded to the infamous 911 call at Rockingham in 1989 (see Abudrahn, Michelle and Gilbert, Sharyn). Edwards and his partner, rookie trainee Patricia Milewski, were patrolling near the Simpson estate when they got a call from emergency operator Sharyn Gilbert. Gilbert told the officers that she had heard screams on an open line and that a woman was being beaten. She did not tell them that the woman being beaten had made the call or that only one woman was involved. Gilbert and Edwards assumed these things, which seemed apparent from the information they had to work with. Edwards and Milewski then heard something over their radio about "...a black male," not knowing that an operator next to Gilbert was describing another emergency.

The officers hurried to 360 N. Rockingham under the assumption that a woman being physically assaulted by a black man had somehow managed to call 911, and they were going to her rescue.

The patrol car went past the Rockingham gate and pulled into the drive on Ashford. Only after Edwards told the maid on the intercom what he thought was going on, did Nicole emerge from the bushes and fall into his arms with a story to tell that matched his impression. He then saw O.J. Simpson, a black male, enraged and outraged that the police would want to treat his idea of a minor incident like a criminal act. Edwards saw a man who couldn’t see anything wrong with beating his wife. He saw all the evidence of a battered wife—including a black eye that didn’t show up on any of the photos he took of her face, and a one inch cut on her lip that didn’t show up on the photos, didn’t bleed, and left no scar.

Nicole had a bruise on the underside of her right arm. Though O.J. couldn’t explain it, he took responsibility for it, assuming that it must have happened during their tussle. He was not present when Michelle went to the right, rear door of the police car and tried to pull Nicole out by her right arm. More than likely, that bruise, which Edwards did not report, happened then, in the excitement of the moment when Michelle applied more pressure to the arm than anyone realized.

A bruise on Nicole’s collar was consistent with O.J.’s story of grabbing her in a headlock and shoving her out of their bedroom. The imprint of someone’s fingers that Edwards said he saw on the side of Nicole’s neck, was consistent with the slapping sound recorded off of Gilbert’s emergency line. The fact that it didn’t show up in any photos or require any treatment was consistent with a blow that didn’t have much power behind it—like the slap of a small woman. The story Nicole told of O.J. pulling her hair is more consistent with what a woman would do to another woman in a fight—except for the story that Mark Fuhrman told in the McKinny tapes. In that incident, which supposedly happened in 1978, he boasted of grabbing a criminal suspect’s girlfriend by her hair and flinging her down a flight of stairs.

Entrenching Tool—A spade-like tool with a short handle and sharp, folding blade used by soldiers as a spade or a pick to dig holes in the ground. It can also be used as a weapon in hand-to-hand combat. It was one of the many weapons falsely reported to have been found, with blood on it, around O.J. Simpson’s home or his hotel in Chicago. The cumulative affect of such reports was to reinforce the idea that O.J. Simpson was a murderer, notwithstanding later demonstrations that the reports had no basis in fact. Reports not given the attention of the entrenching tool as a demonstrable error, have been repeated so often as true that few people have bothered to track down their source (see Blood Trail, Blue/Black Fibers).

Envelope—The envelope containing Juditha Brown’s prescription glasses. The known size of the envelope and its position next to Mark Fuhrman’s shoe in the full-size photograph of him pointing to the bloody glove at Bundy makes it possible to calculate his shoe size precisely. Juditha Brown thought that she had left her glasses behind at Mezzaluna’s. They could just as easily have been stolen by someone at the table and put next to the curb outside where they could be found later as an excuse for Ron to show up "unexpectedly" at Bundy (see Brown, Denise).

FBI—Federal Bureau of Investigation. Before the O.J. Simpson trial, almost everyone in the country saw the FBI’s lab facilities and experts in charge as the world’s best at finding and analyzing the relevant facts. The mere invocation of FBI credentials was enough to create the universal expectation that the truth would be sought with the most sophisticated equipment and the highest standards of professional conduct anywhere in the world. The man most responsible for that reputation in the FBI lab was Dr. Henry Lee, who established and oversaw the polices and practices which made that universal perception a reality for many years.

During the O.J. Simpson criminal trial, the prosecution, in an official letter, called upon the FBI to prove that their evidence against the accused was precisely what it appeared to be. Despite all reason and all evidence to the contrary, that is what every expert representative of the FBI did in both trials and in a polygraph test taken by Mark Fuhrman at the behest of his publishers. In all, six FBI agents or former agents offered testimony against Simpson. A former polygraph expert for the FBI (see Minor, Paul) lent his credentials to the publishers of Mark Fuhrman’s first book by testing Fuhrman without independent witnesses and declaring that he told the truth. Henry Lee and Fredric Whitehurst, the only experts associated with the FBI to offer testimony for the defense, were either restricted in their ability to examine evidence or prohibited from testifying.

Ferrell, Mike—The detective assigned to investigate Nicole’s ‘89 battering complaint against O.J. Though Nicole declined to press charges against O.J., California law required the police to arrest the accused if the alleged victim appeared to be injured. If they had independent verification of the charge, they were required by law to bring charges of their own. Ferrell had three witnesses, two who said that there was no battery on the day of the incident, and all three who agreed the next day that it wasn’t as bad as it had appeared. He had physical evidence that could have been read either way until you took a cold, hard looked at it both ways.

To show the city attorney that this was truly a case of a spouse-abuser’s latest assault, as opposed to one drunken fight that got out of hand, he asked other officers who had responded to previous 911 calls at Rockingham if they had seen anything like it. His only response came in Mark Fuhrman’s letter describing his version of the ‘85 incident with O.J., Nicole, and the baseball bat. That was the basis upon which O.J. pled "No contest" to the complaint Nicole made against him on New Years Day 1989 but refused to bring charges the next day . There was no record of a 911 call made from Rockingham in ‘85, no statement by Nicole that she made one (she called Westec), and no other police officer, including Fuhrman’s partner, told Ferrall a similar story.

Fenjves, Pablo—Neighbor of Nicole Brown Simpson. He heard a dog’s "plaintive wail" at 10:15 or 10:20 on the night of the murders. Ignoring all evidence that the dog was silent until 15-20 minutes later, Marcia Clark used Fenjves’ estimate of the time he heard the dog, based on his impression of when a news program began and ended, to mark when the killings at Bundy began. Without that extra time, O.J. could not have committed the crime. He could not have left all of the evidence that was left at Rockingham, cleaned up or disposed of all the evidence that wasn’t found anywhere, and been clean, dressed and ready to go to the airport when he was seen by the limo driver at 10:54. The plaintiffs in the civil trial made up for the time problem by assuming the killing was over in seconds, that Kato Kaelin’s estimate of when he heard the thumps were off by five or ten minutes, and "someone" cleaned up after O.J. It worked. O.J. lost.

Ferrara, Rachel—Friend of Kato Kaelin. Kaelin was talking to her on the telephone when he heard and felt three hard thumps no later than 10:45. Both Kaelin and Ferrara estimated that the thumps occurred ten or fifteen minutes after they checked the time at 10:30. Ferrara estimated that the call ended at 10:50. If she was correct, it would have been impossible for O.J. to have committed the crime.

Fischman, Cora and Ron—Close friends of O.J. and Nicole. Cora was Nicole’s jogging partner and confidante. She attended the children’s dance recital with Nicole, Denise, Dominique, O.J. and her husband Ron. She reported nothing strange in O.J.’s behavior at the recital. She recalled (incorrectly) that he was wearing loafers without socks. She talked her husband into taking a picture of O.J. with Sydney. That picture, which Denise did not learn about until the trial, is the only thing that stands in the way of the shoes he wore to the recital being falsely, but convincingly identified as Bruno Magli Lorenzos. They fit the general description of the killer’s Lorenzos, but Ron Fischman’s picture proved that they were a different brand.

The police, the FBI and the prosecutors assumed that O.J. left the clear imprints of "his" Bruno Maglis in blood because he wasn’t thinking about them. Nevertheless, the killer had to be thinking about the shoes he wore to the recital to come so close to what they looked like. O.J. had no way of knowing whether the photo Ron Fischman took of him three hours before the killing would include the shoes. In any case, he had no reason to take them off and put on a pair that might look the same to eyewitnesses like Cora and Denise.

On the weekend before Nicole was murdered, Cora was with her when Nicole discovered that two identical keys to her house and gate were missing. Cora could not remember whether Nicole kept one key or two on a ring attached to a chain on her gate when they went running. But she did recall Nicole saying that she thought O.J. had them, then changing her mind and deciding that Faye had them. The keys the maid said were missing around that time were on a ring with many keys (see Keys).

Flammer, E. J.—Freelance photographer. He was one of two 20-year-old photographers (see Scull, Harry) who claimed to have taken photos of O.J. Simpson wearing Bruno Magli Lorenzos at a Bills/Dolphins game on September 26, 1993. Both men hired the same agent to sell their photos to the media (see McCelroy, Rob). E.J. Flammer came forward with his photos in the last week of December 1996, after the defense’s only photo expert made errors that proved he didn’t know how the photos were faked.

Flammer, Ed—The Father of E. J. He arranged for his son to take the ‘93 photos as part of a special celebration he organized for O.J. He was one of the five men in the group photo, which showed O.J. wearing the Bruno Maglis. Two of the remaining four were close friends of his. The other two were the public relations director and assistant director for the Buffalo Bills (see Lynch, Denny and Munson, Bill), the only people with the resources to insure that no other photos where taken that day of O.J.’s shoes.

Fuhrman, Mark—First detective on the Bundy murder scene, responsible for making Rockingham a murder scene as well. His negative influence on O.J. Simpson’s life went back to a minor intrusion in the last quarter of 1985, that he turned into a "pattern of abuse" in the first month of 1989. With only three years of experience as a homicide detective and being off call for that night, he was, nevertheless, the first one called by his boss Ron Phillips who misrepresented himself in the criminal trial as being Fuhrman’s partner. Fuhrman’s real partner was Brad Roberts, who had less experience as a homicide detective than Fuhrman did. Between them, they found, highlighted, or interpreted every scrap of evidence linking Simpson to the Bundy crime scene (note: the blue/black fibers said by Marcia Clark to have come from a blue/black sweatsuit, do not link O.J. to the murder scene). If O.J. didn’t murder the people he was accused of murdering, Fuhrman and Roberts, with only two or three other active plotters, were the only ones who could have.

Fujisaki, Hiroshi—The judge in the civil case. He ruled consistently in favor of the plaintiffs. He allowed hearsay evidence attributed to Nicole by way of a phone call and written documents to be presented against O.J. without authentication that they were what they were reported to be. He allowed the Flammer photographs to be presented late in the case as evidence that O.J. wore the Bruno Magli Lorenzos during a football game on October 26, 1993 without giving the defense adequate time to prepare an aggressive defense. He denied the defense the opportunity to question Mark Fuhrman or to argue that he had anything to do with the evidence against Simpson. He denied the defense the opportunity to challenge Faye Resnick’s drug habit, and therefore her credibility. He denied them the opportunity to argue that O.J. was framed.

Fung, Dennis—LAPD criminalist. He supervised the collection of evidence at Bundy and Rockingham beginning with Rockingham. He got there at 7:00 a.m. when it was light enough to see the blood drops on the driveway but not light enough to see their direction. That question was answered for him immediately by Mark Fuhrman and his partner Brad Roberts who told the cop by the gate and everyone entering the property to watch out for the blood drops going up the driveway.

When Roberts, began to lay down markers for the location of O.J.’s blood drops, Fung stopped him. His poor record keeping made him vulnerable to attack on several fronts by defense attorney Barry Scheck in the vital areas of chain of custody, compromise and contamination of evidence. By not counting and recording the number of swatches used to collect blood samples, for instance, he made it possible for blood samples to be switched before testing. Samples collected by his subordinate, Andrea Mazzola, showed clear signs of being switched.

In the basement of O.J.’s home, Fung ran across a dark sweatsuit. According to Marcia Clark, he looked it over, had it photographed in his hands and put it back because he said it obviously hadn’t been worn that night. Clark said in an interview with WHYY’s Terry Gross, that she was furious when she found out about what he did with the sweatsuit, suggesting that it was the one O.J. had worn to Bundy to kill Ron and Nicole. But the fibers on Ron’s shirt were blue/black, like Officer Riske’s uniform, not gray/black like the one he was given a week before after a photo shoot (see Gardner, Leslie). No gray/black fibers where found on the bodies, in the Bronco or the Bentley. No blue/black fibers were found in the Bronco or the Bentley.

Garcetti, Gil—LA County Prosecutor. He came out early and often against O.J. Simpson, releasing damaging information to the press that often turned out to be misleading or wrong. He never pursued clues that pointed to anyone other than O.J. and attacked anyone who did. His appointment of Marcia Clark as one of the lead deputy prosecutors insured that O.J. and only O.J. would be investigated on the basis of evidence found our interpreted mostly by Mark Fuhrman and Brad Roberts. He took special pains to protect Fuhrman and Roberts from scrutiny and insured, through lack of vigorous investigation and prosecution, that Fuhrman would get the lightest possible punishment for perjury—a suspended sentence and a $200 dollar fine.

Gardiner, Leslie—wardrobe custodian for Playboy Videos. The weekend before the murders, she outfitted O.J. with a dark-colored sweatsuit for a video ad. It was shot, in part, on the driveway of his Rockingham estate. When the shoot was over, Gardner gave O.J. the sweatsuit (see Fung, Dennis).

During Marcia Clark’s questioning of Allan Park and Kato Kaelin, she tried to leave the jury with the impression that O.J. was wearing a dark sweatsuit when he killed Ron and Nicole. She was convinced that O.J. had worn a dark blue sweatsuit to account for the blue/black fibers found on Ron Goldman’s shirt and that he lied about not owning one. The photographs of O.J. wearing a dark sweatsuit gave the jury the image of him that she wanted them to have. She tried to leave the impression that Kato had seen him wearing it shortly before the murders when they went to McDonald’s together, and Park saw him wearing it shortly after the murders. Park could say only that he saw a 6’ black man in dark clothes entering the house from the direction of the driveway. Kaelin could say only that he wasn’t sure, but he "believed" O.J. was wearing sweats. O.J. had been wearing sweats on the driveway one week earlier, the gray/black sweatsuit that Leslie Gardner gave him to wear for the Playboy ad.

Garvey, Candace—A close friend of Faye Resnick and Nicole. She testified that O.J. was in a dark, sinister mood at the Paul Revere Middle School dance recital shortly before the killings. She also said that Nicole told her that O.J. was going to kill her (see Fischman, Cora).

Gates, Daryl—Former Los Angeles Police Commissioner. Gates was the Chief of Police during the time that Mark Fuhrman spoke nostalgically on the McKinney taps about the number of "niggers" who where killed by the infamous choke hold (sometimes spelled chokehold). The number of African-Americans killed by police on Gates’ watch did go up dramatically, largely because of the choke. He explained it by looking not at the cops who applied the choke hold, but at the black victims. He said that perhaps "the veins or arteries do not open up as fast as they do on normal people." Fuhrman admired him greatly.

The admiration was mutual. As one of Fuhrman’s staunchest supporters, Gates attended a celebration in Fuhrman’s honor and wrote a ringing endorsement of him as a police officer that appeared on the jacket of Fuhrman’s first book (see Toobin, Jeffrey).

Gerchas, Mary Ann—Jewelry store owner. She said on the television news magazine Hard Copy, that she saw four men, two white and two Hispanic, running from the murder scene. But by the time Johnnie Cochran said in his opening statement what she was going to testify to, Marcia Clark had discovered that she used different names and different Social Security numbers and worshiped O.J. Simpson. Clark claimed to have witnesses willing to testify that Gerchas made up her story of the fleeing men. However, none of those witnesses were ever named and many people were convinced of the drug hit theory partly because of her story.

Gerdes, Dr. John—Defense expert on DNA use and misuse. Gerdes, whose expertise in DNA typing had life-and-death application in the medical field, made no secret of his distrust of DNA analysis for forensic purposes. His said that the test used to identify O.J.’s blood in various incriminating places was so sensitive that special equipment and strict procedures were required to prevent contamination. He studied the LAPD lab at Piper Tech in which blood samples were analyzed, and testified that the facility and the standards of practice in force were incapable of producing trustworthy results.

GIGO—An acronym for Garbage In Garbage Out. Zero ten times or ten billion time is still zero. GIGO is another way of saying the same thing about blood evidence in the O.J. Simpson case that was analyzed by Cellmark Labs, the California Justice Department labs and the FBI. All of it went through the LAPD serology lab first. There, missing blood from O.J.’s reference vial, a broken chain of custody, unauthorized access to all of the evidence and other irregularities reduced the scientific certainty of the initial test results to zero. Reports on the socks, the gloves, etc., that narrowed the chances of whose blood it was to 1 in several billion left open the one question that would have given them the meaning they appeared to have: how did it get there?

Gilbert, Sharyn—The 911 operator who recorded the open-line call from Rockingham on New Years Day, 1989. No one said a word during the three taped minutes of the call. All she heard was three minutes of silence, which she noted as "unknown trouble," followed by a woman screaming, which she noted as such. Seconds later she heard someone being slapped, and a female grunting as though she had been slapped. The line went dead before she heard anything else. But she’d heard enough to make her believe that a woman was being beaten, which is what she entered on her log and passed on to any police units in the area who could respond.

She did not know who had called. She did not know that two women were involved and, therefore, could not have imagined one of them striking the other. Between her interpretation of what was happening and the responding officer’s (see Edwards, John), an image was born of a man beating a woman and the victim calling 911 to report it. That’s the story Nicole overheard before she ran to the officer with her own story that matched his preconception but didn’t match the marks on her face or body. Edwards "saw" the black eye and cut lip that matched her story and Gilbert’s, but he took Polaroid pictures that didn’t.

Golden, Dr. Irwin—Deputy LA Medical Examiner. His autopsy report on the bodies of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson left room for interpretations that were helpful to the defense. For that reason alone, it was to the DA’s advantage to discredit him if they wanted to successfully prosecute O.J. Simpson. They were helped by the defense when Bob Shapiro, coached by Dr. Michael Baden, embarrassed Golden during the preliminary hearing. He forced him to admit that he did not make potentially crucial tests involving Nicole’s stomach contents and a German Stiletto like the one that O.J. purchased from Ross Cutlery.

Baden went out of his way to express his respect for Golden and to say that the errors he made were not as bad as the prosecution claimed they were. Mark Fuhrman used his report to show why he thought that the murder weapon was a Swiss Army knife. He did not comment on the bruise on Ron’s head noted by Golden that was consistent with the butt of a Swiss Army knife and the bruise on Nicole’s head that was consistent with the butt of a German Stiletto.

Goldman, Ronald—Aspiring actor, waiter, murder victim. Different people portrayed his relationship with Nicole in different ways for different reasons. But, for the purpose of learning whether or not he was the victim of bad timing on his part or precise timing on the part of his killer, it is essential to know whether or not the killer could have anticipated his visit. With Faye Resnick’s help, there would have been no guesswork involved.

Goldman, Fred—Ron Goldman’s father. He made not attempt to hide his certainty of O.J.’s guilt from the beginning of the criminal trial. When he learned about Mark Fuhrman’s nazi ideals he exploded in rage—at O.J.’s attorneys. Not once did he consider the possibility that a nazi may have murdered his son partly because he was Jewish. He accepted the n-word image of O.J. that Fuhrman was greatly responsible for painting. His problem with Fuhrman was that he might have given the jury a reason to acquit O.J. He never questioned Fuhrman’s evidence against O.J., how he came by it, or why so much of it was associated with him in one way or another.

Goldman, Kimberly—Ron Goldman’s sister. She attended every session of court during O.J.’s criminal trial. By her presence and her outspoken belief in O.J.’s guilt, she was able to frame the legal contest in terms of O.J.’s legal rights vs. justice for the Goldman’s.

Gonzales, Danial—LAPD K-9 Corps officer, friend of Mark Fuhrman. He and his partner, Officer Aston, arrived on the murder scene before Vannatter and Lange. Gonzales filed a report at an unspecified time afterward claiming to have seen blood in the Bronco when Fuhrman asked him to move it. Bob Shapiro’s private investigator Bill Pavlic found his business card in Nicole’s desk drawer. No explanation for that was ever uncovered.

Gretna Green—A residential street one block east of Bundy. Nicole moved to her Gretna Green residence after her separation from O.J. in 1992. She lived there until January of 1994 when she moved to Bundy. For a military-style kill to work (see Cantor, Brett) as indicated by the bruise on Nicole’s skull and other features of the crime scene, the killer would have required detailed intelligence on where she live and what she did. This was the kind of information William Wasz recorded in his log when she was living on Gretna Green. To frame O.J. for a killing planned for January, the killer would also have required a vehicle that could be traced to O.J. The sports utility vehicle that Wasz stole from Paula Barbiari answered that requirement. Wasz’s arrest and Nicole’s move to Bundy, no more than a minute away from her condo on Gretna Green would have altered the timing of the attack but not the overall plan.

Guarin, Josephine (Gigi)—The housekeeper for O.J. who replaced Michelle. She testified that she took care of O.J.’s clothes and never saw Bruno Magli Lorenzos in his closet or a dark blue sweatsuit like the one described by Marcia Clark. She also testified that there was no hint of anything sinister in O.J.’s voice when she called a few hours before the murders to ask him if it was all right for her to spend the rest of the day with her family. She said that he was his normal self and described that as the up-beat personality most American’s were used to seeing on television. "O.J.," she said, "was O.J."

Heidstra, Robert—Defense witness. While walking his dogs along his usual route at 10:35, on June 12, he heard Nicole’s Akita begin to bark "hysterically." Five minutes later, as he walked though the alley behind Nicole’s condo to protect his dogs from the Akita that seemed to be out on the street, he heard another dog begin to bark. That was followed immediately by a clear voice shouting, "Hey! Hey! Hey!" which Simpson’s youngest daughter also heard. That was followed by an argument that lasted 20 seconds or so between two men, one of whom had a voice that Heidstra described as "deeper" and "older-sounding." He didn’t recognize either voice, nor could he tell what they were saying to each other because the dogs were making too much noise.

When he was out of the alley five or six minutes later on the street that crossed Bundy, he saw a light-colored sports utility vehicle he couldn’t identify by name. It came from the direction of the alley and turned south down Bundy in the opposite direction from O.J.’s Rockingham estate.

As a detailer who sometimes did work for O.J.’s next door neighbors, he was familiar with O.J.’s white Bronco and recognized his voice from hearing him in person as well as in the media. Because of all the other evidence in the case, he was convinced that O.J. must have been the killer. That may have influenced how he recalled what he saw and heard on the 12th. According to Chris Darden, he told someone that the older, deeper voice sounded like a black man. He denied under oath that he ever told anyone that, and no one could get him to say he heard O.J. or saw a white Bronco even though other evidence convinced him of O.J.’s guilt.

Harmon, Rockne (see EDTA).

Hitler, Adolph—Leader of the German National Socialist Party; Nazis. Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930’s grew out of his understanding of group psychology, his success as a writer, his ability as a public speaker, and his willingness to kill without hesitation or remorse. He was guided by racist ideas and he advocated genocide as a means of solving racial problems. Johnnie Cochran was severely criticized for comparing Fuhrman to Hitler (see Lindner, Charles) in his closing statements even though Fuhrman did the same thing himself on the McKinney tapes. Media pundits accused Cochran of "jury nullification" for calling upon the jury to reject everything about the case that flowed from Fuhrman’s involvement. However, a good argument can be made for the idea that Fuhrman studied Hitler and patterned himself after him. Hitler’s "great lie," for example—his observation that people were more likely to believe a big lie than a small one—is exactly what the killer would have had to understand and rely on for a successful frame-up that was far less than perfect. O.J. was framed. And the frame-up was far less than perfect.

Hodge, Roderick—Defense witness, victim of Mark Fuhrman’s harassment. He testified that Fuhrman took him into custody on a phony drug charge, subjected him to humiliation and said, "I told you I was going to get you, nigger." Without the McKinny tapes, testimony like his was all that the defense had to counter Fuhrman’s denial of having used the n-word within the ten years prior to the Simpson murder trial. To discredit him, media pundits routinely alluded to drug charges made against him. They routinely failed to point out the fact that he was never convicted of those charges, or that they were made by Mark Fuhrman.

Hodgman, William—Lead deputy DA in the O.J. Simpson case. Although Hodgman was the titular head of the prosecution team, not once did he demonstrate that he was in charge. For all practical purposes, he surrendered that role to Marcia Clark on day one of the murder investigation by deferring to her on all critical decisions about how to proceed. The unrealistic timeline destroyed by the defense was hers. The decision to portray Mark Fuhrman as a good cop unfairly accused of racism was also her decision. Hodgman allowed her to proceed in the preparation of the case on the assumption that everything Fuhrman told her on the 13th of June was true. When Hodgman became too ill to continue in his position of lead prosecutor and Marcia Clark took official charge of the case, no one noticed the difference.

Ito, Judge Lance—Presiding Judge in the O.J. Simpson murder case, husband of LAPD Captain Margaret York. Both the prosecution and the defense railed against his rulings at times, but the two that counted most went to the prosecution. 1) He ruled that the evidence found at Rockingham could be use against O.J. although he observed that lead detective Vannatter showed, "a reckless disregard for the truth" in obtaining the search warrant. 2) He ruled that only the most innocuous portions of the McKinney taps where Fuhrman used the n-word could be played for the jury.

In his one key ruling for the defense, where he said that he would tell the jury why Fuhrman was not being recalled to the witness stand, the appeals court made a special ruling that reversed him. They decided that Fuhrman’s perjury was a separate issue that should be decided in a separate forum, just as the prosecution argued.

When O.J. Simpson was found not guilty Judge Lace Ito and his wife Captain Margaret York both broke down and wept.

Jenner, Kris—Prosecution witness, former wife of Robert Kardashian, friend of Nicole and Faye Resnick. She introduced Nicole to Faye and accepted the stores Fay told about O.J. except for the ones she knew from personal experience were wrong. She was at the dance recital the evening of the murders and testified that O.J. had a menacing look in his eyes that was unusual and frightening. O.J. said that she was Nicole’s friend, not his, and she didn’t see him often enough to know what was unusual in his demeanor and what wasn’t. Her characterization of O.J.’s mood that night was similar to that of Denise Brown and Kardashian’s first cousin Cynthia Shahian. Other eyewitnesses, a photograph and videotape said otherwise.

Kaelin, Brian (Kato)—Timeline, demeanor and physical appearance witness for the prosecution. Much of Marcia Clark’s case rested on the clothes the killer was presumed to have worn, the timing of O.J.’s cut finger, and whether or not he had an alibi for the time of the killing. Kato’s testimony was important for all of these reasons. She needed him to say that O.J. was in a dark, brooding mood, that he was wearing a dark blue sweatsuit, and that he heard the thumps before he saw O.J. When Kato refused to characterize Simpson’s mood in terms consistent with a man who was about to commit murder, Marcia Clark had him declared a hostile witness.

He testified that he did not see a cut on O.J.’s finger when he road with him to McDonald’s, or when he left for LAX in the limo. He said that he didn’t remember what O.J. was wearing. When pressed, he said that he thought he was wearing dark sweats. O.J. was wearing dark sweats—for a commercial—one week earlier. But they were dark gray, not dark blue.

Returning from McDonald’s at 9:35 or 9:40, he was the last person to see O.J. before the murders. Mark Fuhrman and Marcia Clark interpreted the thumps he heard on his wall at 10:40 or 10:45 as O.J. returning from the murder scene, hopping the fence, and banging into the wall. Marcia Clark did not call the witnesses who put the start time of the murders 20 minutes ahead of the time she favored and the ones who put the end time at five minutes or more too late. That was the only way for her to argue that Kato heard O.J. outside when he claimed to be inside.

Kardasian, Robert—Attorney, friend of O.J. Simpson, cousin of Cynthia Shahian, former husband of Kris Jenner. He stayed by O.J.’s side from the beginning to the end of the criminal trial but had great misgivings about some of the blood evidence he couldn’t explain. Oddly enough, he was one of the few people who could accept O.J.’s improbable story of cutting himself before he left for Chicago without knowing exactly when or how he did it. The story O.J. told Vannatter and Lange of cutting himself all the time rang true to Kardasian for one very good reason. He had noticed that O.J. frequently had small cuts on his hands and fingers that he paid little attention to. He knew that they were "no big deal."

Kestler, Michelle—LAPD Crime Lab Director. With her background in narcotics, she set up security for the lab primarily to guard against unauthorized access to illegal drugs. Consequently, LAPD detectives had virtually free access to all of the evidence in the case. A lens in Juditha Brown’s glasses with a bloody fingerprint on it was, in fact, stolen, and several unauthorized people were able to get inside of the Bronco without Kestler’s knowledge and without being noted on the official log. The cards placed next to bloodstained portions of the Bronco’s interior showed dates that were out of phase with eyewitness reports of seeing no blood there before or after the dates were inscribed. There was, however, no witness to seeing the Bronco’s interior without the bloodstains after Kestler’s personal inspection of the vehicle and her completion of the form noting precisely what she found and when she found it.

At every stage of the defense team’s examination of physical evidence, she denied them access to it or limited their ability to examine it so drastically that they were unable to obtain definitive results. It was her decision not to test the blood drops identified as O.J.’s on Bundy for the chemical preservative (see EDTA) that would tell whether or not it had been switched with the blood taken out of O.J.’s arm the day after the killings.

She personally took part in supervising, handling, and cataloging items of evidence and noted that there was no apparent blood on the socks that Fuhrman and Roberts found in O.J.’s bedroom. She did not allow Dr. Baden or Dr. Wolfe to handle the socks before the DNA tests came back positive for Nicole’s blood. She later testified that she didn’t look for blood on the socks at that time and couldn’t have seen it anyway because of poor lighting and their dark color. Dr. Henry Lee showed the jury how easy it was to see blood on the sheer, black socks in poor light by holding them up to whatever light there was. Lee complained of Kestler’s department giving him junk equipment to use and only a fraction of the time necessary to study the crime scenes properly.

Keys—The date that Nicole’s housekeeper discovered that Nicole’s keys were missing together with the fact that Nicole searched Faye Resnick’s purse to find them is significant. So is the fact that Nicole helped to get Faye into a drug rehabilitation facility two days later. Nicole was definitely worried about Faye and what Faye might have done with her keys. It never occurred to Nicole that Faye might have given them to someone else. In the last half of April, O.J. was known to have used a set of her keys to get in and out of her house without disturbing anyone when he was helping her through her illness. Two sets of keys were missing from Nicole’s house: a set of two keys that Nicole showed no concern about when she thought that O.J. had them, and a missing set with many keys which was stolen the weekend before she was murdered. According to Cora Fischman, Fay Resnick and Denise Brown not only lied about who Nicole was afraid might have taken her keys, they told the same lie.

King, Larry—Television and radio interviewer for CNN. At one time or another he interviewed nearly every principle in the case and several of the reporters who were granted permanent seats in the court by Judge Ito. The judge invited him into his chambers for a private conversation. Mark Fuhrman’s appearance with him as well as with Dianne Sawyer, Oprah Winfrey and Geraldo Revera to promote his first book, insured that it would become a best-seller. In an interview with defense investigator, Pat McKenna, King was told that the defense had much more evidence of O.J.’s innocence than they could present in court. But when King asked him if he thought that O.J. was set up by the killer, he said, "No. I don’t think so."

Knife—A single murder weapon traceable to O.J. Simpson. From the early hours of the investigation when the murder weapon appeared to be a knife, police searched everywhere they thought that O.J. might have lost, hidden or disposed of it. When the coroner’s examination showed that a diagonal stab wound through Ron Goldman’s neck and a part of his right ear was made by a thin, sharp blade in a single thrust, the police looked for a knife that matched the wound. They found a German Stiletto. The Stiletto’s blade matched the sharp force wound in Ron’s neck and the brass heel matched the blunt force wound on Nicole’s head. When the lead detectives found out that O.J. bought such a knife five weeks earlier, they were sure they had made the connection between him and the bodies until O.J.’s Stiletto turned up in his home unused. That presented a fatal flaw in the prosecution’s case.

As a public figure, it was highly unlikely that he could have purchased a similar knife without anyone knowing about it, or that he would have unless he planned to kill Nicole in cold blood. But if that were true, the call from Paula Barbiari that was supposed to have driven him to murder could no longer have been used as a motive, the rare shoeprints and multiple stab wounds no longer made sense, and Ron’s appearance could not have been a surprise.

The question that now had to be answered was this: If the knife thought to be the murder weapon can’t be traced to O.J. what knife consistent with the wounds on the bodies can be?

In Murder in Brentwood, Fuhrman answered the logical objections to the Stiletto by arguing that O.J. used a Swiss Army knife. He demonstrated convincingly that he was correct in some instances, and possibly correct in other instances. But the stab wound through Ron’s neck and the bruise on Nicole’s head could have been made only with the Stiletto. Fuhrman and Roberts searched O.J.’s house on two separate occasions for a knife that could have been used in the killings. The best they could come up with was a fuzzy photo of a box on O.J.’s bathtub that they claimed had an indentation for a large Swiss Army knife.

Lakshmanan (See Sathyavagiswaran, Dr. Lakshmanan)

Lange, Det. Tom—A lead detective from the LAPD’s elite Robbery/Homicide Division. When asked by Johnnie Cochran if he ever considered a suspect other than O.J. Simpson, he responded that he didn’t. He said that there was no need to because the evidence pointed so clearly to Simpson. In the book he co-authored with Det. Phil Vannatter, he made it clear that the only work they did on the case after viewing the Bundy crime scenes and hearing what Fuhrman had to say about them was to make a case against Simpson. Neither he nor Vannatter saw critical evidence Fuhrman said in his book that he and Roberts saw and pointed out to other detectives. Neither of them read his notes.

Lee, Dr. Henry—Chief criminalist for the State of Connecticut, laboratory director for the Connecticut State Police forensic laboratory, independent consultant, world’s leading forensic scientist. He testified that the Rockingham blood drops were consistent with a superficial cut and the Bundy blood drops were consistent with a major one. That determination was consistent with O.J.’s alibi and ruled out the possibility that Fuhrman and Roberts were right about the blood trail they told everyone led from Bundy to Rockingham. He determined that a second bloody imprint was consistent with a second set of shoeprints smaller than the Bruno Maglis. That strengthens the case for two men on the murder scene, a tall one like Fuhrman who left many distinct shoeprints on purpose, and a shorter man like Roberts who left a few less distinctive ones by mistake (see Akita).

Lewis, Cheri—Deputy prosecutor, defender of Mark Fuhrman. When the McKinny tapes showed the nazi side of Fuhrman that Kathleen Bell reported to the defense, Lewis argued successfully that the O.J. Simpson case was not the forum in which to address the matter.

Lindner, Charles—Defense team consultant. As the son of Jewish Holocaust survivors who lost their entire family, Liner was struck by the obvious parallels between Adolph Hitler before he came to power and Mark Fuhrman. It was his idea to use that comparison in the summation Johnnie Cochran gave for which he received so much criticism from prominent Jews and Jewish organizations (see Cochran, Johnnie).

Lopez, Rosa—Housekeeper for O.J.’s next door neighbors. From the very start, she was a victim of her status as a maid and her lack of proficiency with the English language. She was ignored by all of the police except Mark Fuhrman and Brad Roberts who didn’t report their talk with her. She was browbeaten and demeaned by the prosecution. She was ill served by her first interpreter. Bill Pavelic, one of the detectives working for Simpson’s defense team, paraphrased what she said to him about when she saw O.J.’s Bronco parked on Rockingham and passed it on to Johnnie Cochran. He told Cochran that he had a witness who would say that she saw the Bronco at 10:15, the time Marcia Clark was trying to say the killing began at Bundy. Cochran made that a part of his opening statement. He later found out from Pat McKenna that Pavlic had arrived at the time by assuming that the actions she described before seeing the Bronco took five times longer than they actually did.

Luper, Det. Bert—Robbery/Homicide detective in charge of searching O.J.’s house. Though he was officially in charge of the search on the 13th, Mark Fuhrman and Brad Roberts were invariably first to enter the rooms where incriminating evidence was discovered and pointed out to other officers. During O.J.’s criminal trial, Luper left the impression that he was the one who discovered the socks on the rug in O.J.’s bedroom without actually saying so. But in Fuhrman’s book about the case, Fuhrman indicated that he and Roberts were there first. What Luper did say in court was consistent with that much of Fuhrman’s story. Luper also admitted to removing an XL Aris Isotoner Light glove from a drawer in O.J.’s room and absentmindedly leaving it in another room. He had discovered one black pair and a single brown glove. The missing glove was never recovered or accounted for.

Lynch, Denny—Public Relations director for the Buffalo Bills Football Club. He was one of the men in the 1993 photo of O.J. wearing Bruno Magli Lorenzos. Near the end of the civil trial, he began to shop around for buyers of one photo he said appeared in the Buffalo Bills newsletter he published. He had several copies of the newsletter dated 1993. However, no one else produced a single copy or testified to having seen one prior to 1996—not one member of the Buffalo Bills fan club who wasn’t directly associated with Lynch or the agent for the boys who said they took the photos on the same day. The only way the photos could have been faked is for someone with access to every single photo that could have been taken in Rich Stadium that day to be in on it. No one was better situated to get that information than Denny Lynch.

MacDonell, Herbert—Defense blood spatter expert. His expertise in blood spatter interpretation was internationally recognized as being unsurpassed by anyone in the world. As was the case with Michael Baden and Henry Lee, that reputation was worth more to him than anything he could hope to gain by slanting his findings in favor of the defense. That’s what made his testimony so important for the defense. Apart from Dennis Fung who explained how direction of travel was determined by blood drops left at a crime scene, the only blood pattern experts in the trial testified for the defense. Dr. Lee confirmed what Fung said about direction, which strongly suggested that the blood drops next to the size 12 shoeprints at Bundy that showed no direction were deliberately deposited from a stationary position.

MacDonell’s analysis of the blood found on the socks also indicated that it was deliberately deposited. On the macroscopic level, he showed that the blood that soaked through the inner and outer wall of one side of a sock and the inner wall of the opposite side could not have gotten on all three surfaces with a foot inside. One a microscopic level he was able to prove that the blood was planted because of tell-tale beading that could have occurred only if the sock had been laid out on a hard, flat surface and the blood swiped on.

Mandel, Danny—Defense timeline witness (see Aaronson, Ellen).

Martz, Roger—FBI defense expert (see EDTA).

Matheson, Greg—SID Chief Chemist. As Michelle Kestler’s second in command, he ran the day-to-day operation of the lab. He and supervisor Dennis Fung assisted Kestler in cataloging items of evidence which included the socks. None of them saw blood on the socks. During his direct examination, he described security precautions at Piper Tech, where most of the lab work was done, in such a way that unauthorized access to evidence would have seemed impossible. He failed to mention the fact that all of the blood evidence in the Simpson case was taken to Parker Center for further processing before it was sent out to independent testing facilities. There, the only security was a locked door to a room that was often unoccupied.

The processing room at Parker Center had no surveillance cameras or guards stationed on the premises to keep an eye on the evidence. There were no precautions in either building to keep lab personnel from tampering with evidence or allowing others to do so at their individual discretion. Indeed, lead detectives were given unfettered access to any evidence they wanted. As the first lead detective in the case and an ongoing assistant of Lange and Vannatter, it’s not clear whether Fuhrman would have been given that access officially. No one asked, and no one volunteered an answer. Unofficially, anything was possible with little or no inside help. Fuhrman did indicate that he knew people in that lab. The only one he said he didn’t know was Dennis Fung.

Mazzola, Andrea—Rookie criminalist. She collected most of the blood evidence at Bundy and Rockingham. Her supervisor, Dennis Fung, got into trouble on the witness stand by indicating that he was the one who collected the evidence. He explained that he put his name on the form that documented the evidence collection process because he was in charge. However, the name of the person who did the actual work was important because of its role in establishing a chain of custody that would minimize the possibility of tampering. As it was, she did not count the cloth swatches she transferred the blood onto, then wrapped in a paper bundle, which went into a plastic bag before going into a coin envelope. She testified that she put her initials on the coin envelopes she used on Bundy for the blood drops next to the shoeprints. That’s the way she submitted them to Fung who was told by Greg Matheson to turn them over to Collin Yamauchi. The samples he got back from the unsecured room at Parker Center tested positive for O.J. Simpson’s blood. The coin envelopes containing the cloth swatches with the blood on them did not have Andrea Mazola’s initials on them.

McCelroy, Rob—Professional photographer, one time agent for Harry Scull and E.J. Flammer. In addition to being friends and budding professional photographers, who took photos purporting to show that O.J. lied about owning the infamous Bruno Magli Lorenzos, Scull and Flammer had something else in common. Both young men hired Rob McCelroy to sell their photos to the media.

Scull, who was not signed in that day to take photos in the stadium, accepted $2,500 out of the $15,000 McCelroy got in the spring of ‘96 for his one indistinct photo that could not be proven to show O.J. wearing Bruno Maglis. A few days shy of January, 1997, Flammer hired McCelroy to represent him in the sale of his photos for an undisclosed amount of money.

Between Scull, Flammer, McCelroy, Lynch and Munson, all of the requirements for fakes that the best experts in the world would not be able to detect with the most sophisticated equipment were met. The odds of all of those necessary elements coming together by chance were astronomical and well beyond O.J.’s ability to predict when he said the photos were fakes.

McKenna, Pat—Private investigator hired by F. Lee Bailey. On more than one occasion, he found that Bill Pavelic, the PI hired before him by attorney Robert Shapiro, filed reports that were less than accurate or complete (see Lopez, Rosa). But his conviction that Fuhrman found the bloody glove when he was called to Bundy and planted it to stay on the case stopped him from investigating Fuhrman as a murder suspect (see King, Larry).

McKinny, Laura Hart—University professor, screenwriter. In the spring of 1985, Mark Fuhrman approached her at an outdoor cafe in California and struck up a conversation. He showed an interest in her work as a writer. She showed her interest in him as a cop. For the next nine years they collaborated on a screenplay about officers in the LAPD for which Fuhrman was supposed to provide his insights as a street-wise cop.

She tape-recorded her conversations with him over that time in which he made liberal use of the n-word. But the most damaging parts of the tapes which Judge Ito did not allow the jury to hear (see Lewis, Cheri) were not a matter of language, but of content. He boasted on those tapes of his love for violence against minorities, his genius at lying on the witness stand, his predilection for planting evidence and his run-in with Judge Ito’s wife, Peggy York of Internal Affairs. McKinny introduced him to Hollywood producers from time to time. One of those producers, who chose to remain anonymous, told Pat McKenna about the tapes, which resulted in Fuhrman’s conviction for perjury.

McNally, John—Private investigator. He worked out the timeline for the defense that made it impossible for O.J. to have committed the murders and left the evidence behind that incriminated him. But like the other PI’s working for the defense, he never suspected Fuhrman of the murders and never followed up on his connections to Faye Resnick, William Wasz, or Denise Brown. Nor did he or his fellow PI’s follow up on Fuhrman’s connections to Brad Roberts, the Police Protective League or the Scientific Investigation Division. He never investigated Fuhrman and Roberts as murder suspects. Nobody on the defense team did.

Meraz, John—Tow truck driver. He took receipts from the Bronco. Though he entered the Bronco after photos were supposedly taken showing blood on the instrument panel, the door and the console, he saw no blood. He was clearly surprised to see the dates on the photos that were shown to him by Marcia Clark.

Mezzaluna—A restaurant less than a half mile from Nicole’s condo. Ron Goldman worked there as a waiter. Keith Zlomsowitch, the man O.J. saw in a sexual encounter with Nicole, was the manager. Nicole ate her last meal there. Her mother lost the glasses that were found in the gutter outside, put in a size 10 envelope, and taken by Ron to Nicole’s home.

Moore, Terri—911 operator. She recorded the ‘93 call that Nicole made and Marcia Clark used in court together with the photo of Nicole with the bruise on her head that was taken after the ‘89 incident. In that recording, O.J. could be clearly heard arguing in the background (see Heidstra, Robert), but he made no threats and never got within ten feet of her. What the tape did indicate was the sound of O.J.’s voice when he was extremely angry. Even when his words were unclear, his voice was distinctively and unmistakably his. The "deeper, older-sounding voice" that Robert Heidstra and Sydney Simpson heard arguing on the killing ground was not one that either of them was familiar with. Neither of them had ever heard Brad Roberts. The prosecution never called him to the stand.

Mulldorfer, Det. Kelly—LAPD detective. She investigated the unauthorized removal of credit card receipts from O.J.’s Bronco. She went inside of the vehicle just as John Meraz had done and saw no blood. She also found no record of entry by any of the people who where known to have entered the vehicle without authorization.

Munchausen by proxy—The heroic response of people to a crisis situation that they created for the purpose of getting special attention and respect. Firefighters who start apartment fires to rescue trapped tenants, nurses and doctors who put patients at risk to save them, etc., are two examples. A homicide detective who commits a murder in order to solve it is another. For a homicide detective like Mark Fuhrman, Munchausen by proxy would have been a powerful motive for murdering someone and framing someone who could put him in the national spotlight.

Munson, Bill—Assistant Public Relations Director for the Buffalo Bills Football Club. He was one of the men who posed with O.J. in a picture taken in 1993 that showed O.J. wearing the Bruno Magli Lorenzos that O.J. swore he never owned. O.J. said that the photos were faked. They were. They could not have been without Munson’s knowledge and consent (see Lynch, Denny).

N-word—A euphemism for the ethnic slur "nigger." Although Mark Fuhrman was put in legal jeopardy for denying his use of the n-word, the damage to O.J.’s "colorless" image came from n-word stereotype of him painted by the mainstream media. Time magazine was called on its alteration of O.J.’s mug-shot to make him appear darker than he was—a deliberate accentuation of his color within the context of his white ex-wife’s murder in an apparent crime of passion. However, all of the major television networks accepted without question the motive that prosecutors attributed to O.J. for the murder that rested entirely on that image. The idea was that O.J. was so obsessed with white women in general that being rejected by two white women was more than he could stand.

The n-word was commonly used to describe that kind of African-American male. By the same token, the image was sufficient to call up the word. It was the cornerstone for D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, a racist history of Reconstruction that made heroes out of the Ku Klux Klan, and villains or fools of African-Americans in general.

Naked Gun, The—A trio of films co-starring O.J. Simpson. In addition to the knit cap and dark brown leather glove in the famous Rolph Rokahr photograph of Fuhrman pointing to the glove, The Naked Gun series had scores of parallels between the murders and theories, practices and discoveries of Mark Fuhrman.

Neufeld, Peter—Defense attorney, DNA expert. Judge Ito made his personal dislike for him apparent in the rulings he made that hindered Neufeld’s ability to demonstrate when and how evidence could have been planted. His questioning of Michelle Kestler was interrupted with so many objections that he could not conduct an entirely coherent examination.

Ney, Nancy—Hotline counselor at the Sojourn Counseling Center for battered women. Because her testimony was hearsay, she was not allowed to appear as a witness in O.J.’s criminal trial. The State of California then passed a special law to admit her testimony into evidence in the civil trial without so much as attempting to recover telephone records to show whiter or not the murder victim-to-be could have made the call.

Ney testified that on June 7, 1994, she answered a call from a woman who said that her name was Nicole. The woman, who sounded distraught to Ney, did not give her last name or the name of her ex-husband who she said had stalked and beaten her and was threatening to kill her. But she said more than enough about herself, where she lived, the age and sex of her children and the celebrity status of her ex-husband to narrow the range of possibilities to Nicole and O.J. Simpson. Her account of what her ex was doing to make her fear for her life at that time was repeated only in the tales told after her death by Faye Resnick and Denise Brown.

Two days before the call, Faye Resnick checked into a drug rehabilitation clinic with her cellular phone. One day before the call, Nicole noticed that her keys were missing. She searched Resnick’s belongings to find them after considering and rejecting the idea that O.J. might have taken them. She came up empty, but apparently felt secure enough with O.J. on the loose and Resnick locked away not to change her locks. She gave no indication of being aware of the call. She told none of her friends (see Shahian, Cynthia) or relatives about it or about any incident on the 5th, 6th or 7th that corresponded to what the woman, supposedly in imminent fear for her life, told Nancy Ney on the 7th. The shelter did not record its emergency calls, and the woman who called herself Nicole gave Ney no number where she could be reached for help—or conformation.

Another suspicious thing about the call to the shelter that supposedly came from Nicole Brown Simpson, is the fact that it didn’t go 911. Nicole had never called the hotline number before and would have had to look up the number. Furthermore, she showed no hesitance in calling 911 where O.J. was involved and evoking "his record" to get instant response. That’s precisely what happened in 1993, the first and only time the public heard her speaking to a 911 operator. "His record" was the one established after the ‘89 incident by Mark Fuhrman’s letter to the city attorney that forced O.J. to plead no contest to a charge of misdemeanor spousal abuse. Part of his punishment was to pay a token amount to the Sojourn Counseling Center in Santa Monica.

In short, the only logical connection between Nicole Brown Simpson and Nancy Ney’s shelter for battered women is Mark Fuhrman’s report to the city attorney. The only useful purpose it could serve would be to reinforce the image of O.J. as a stalker and a batterer. The only obvious beneficiaries of that reinforcement who were involved with Nicole before her death were Fay Resnick, Denise Brown, Ron Shipp and Mark Fuhrman. If Nicole truly feared that O.J. would try to kill her, she knew a least one unforgettable cop who could and would stand against him. He was the cop who gave O.J. his record of spouse abuse when Nicole refused to press charges and boasted of being her "private cop." He was a big guy who simply showed up one day four years earlier when O.J. was being rowdy and she called Westec to put him in check. His name was Mark Fuhrman.

Nigg, Michael—A Mezzaluna waiter, aspiring actor, friend of Ron Goldman, murder victim. He was shot it the head in an announced robbery attempt where no money was taken, his companion was not injured and his assailants got away. Though rumors abounded that his death was linked to federal investigations of Mezzaluna as a place where illegal drugs were bought and sold, there is scant evidence to support them. By the same token, there is no reason to discount the possibility that it might have been linked to the murder of his friends, Bret Cantor and Ronald Goldman.

If, as evidence suggests, Fuhrman were so upset with Jim Abrams and the Zucker brothers for the characters they created in The Naked Gun that he would murder a Jew in symbolic revenge, one wouldn’t be enough. He would have to kill three of them who were linked in some way to each other and, no matter how tangentially, to O.J. Simpson and the entertainment business. Brett Canter on July 30, 1993 fills the bill for the first one. Ron Goldman in Brentwood on June 12, 1994 would be two. Michael Nigg on September 9, 1995 makes three. He was killed in Hollywood.

Nolan, Det. Thomas—West L.A. Detective. The last detective called to the murder scene by the West L.A. homicide coordinator Ron Phillips, he was one of six detectives under Phillips’ direct command. Though his detectives worked in pairs and Nolan was one of four detectives on call for that night, Phillips testified that he could not contact the other three. He notified Fuhrman and Roberts who weren’t on call, then called Nolan over a half hour later, too late for him to do any significant work on the case.

Occam's Razor—A scientific rule of thumb that gives preference to simple answers over complicated ones when  two or more theories compete. Taken at face value the evidence of O.J.'s guilt makes him the most likely killer. When that theory is contrasted to the defense theory of a drug hit and a spontaneous police cover-up, it looks even better. But in both theories so many complex mental gymnastics have to be applied to account for details that don't fit that neither theory holds up well next to one in which O.J. was framed by the killer. The problem with that theory has to do with the huge number of unlikely personal characteristics and network of witting and unwitting accomplices the killer would have to have.  Mark Fuhrman had every one of them.

Othello—The title character in William Shakespeare’s story about love, jealousy and murder. One of the first things Mark Fuhrman did when he arrived at Rockingham with Phillips, Lange and Vannatter was to shine a light on a package that said "Orenthal Enterprises." The subtle reference to Othello was not missed by anyone familiar with Shakespeare’s immortal play. In Mark Fuhrman’s book, Murder in Brentwood, he makes a point of referring to the movie Ghosts, which he found in O.J.’s VCR. Jealousy had nothing to do with Ghosts. But Ghosts did have something to do with The Naked Gun. In Fuhrman’s book, he characterized that movie about greed, betrayal and undying love as though he were talking about Othello, "a story about love, jealousy and murder."

Park, Allan—Aspiring actor, limousine driver. Marcia Clark used his testimony that he did not see O.J.’s Bronco when he arrived at Rockingham and that his persistent ringing for ten minutes meant that O.J. was not at home. She used his observation of O.J. in dark clothes walking into his house from his driveway as proof that Park saw him returning from Bundy after the murders. Those observations where called into question when he reported seeing Arnelle’s SAAB that wasn’t there and not seeing the Bronco when it was there. He said that O.J. told him he overslept. O.J. denied that he told him that. Kato confirmed it. He was the one who asked O.J. if he had overslept.

Peratis, Thano—The nurse who took a sample of O.J.’s blood at Parker Center. He was too ill to appear in person at the criminal trial, but he made a sworn statement that he took 8 cc’s of blood. The only way for O.J.’s attorneys to make a credible claim that someone planted his blood was to show that a sufficient amount was missing. Less than one cc would have been enough. When the defense learned that one and a half cc’s were missing and couldn’t be accounted for by normal handling or even Collin Yamauchi’s spill, Parasite changed his story to say that he had overestimated the amount of blood he extracted by the amount that was missing. The problem with his adjusted recollection, apart from the timing, was his long experience with the purple-top test tube the blood went into and the fact that it was clearly marked. Without knowing for sure how much blood they started with the police and prosecutors had no way of knowing with any degree of scientific certainty where all of it ended up (see GIGO).

Pavelic, William—Private investigator for Robert Shapiro, former police detective. As a man of proven integrity, one of the reasons he left the LAPD was because of all the lying and evidence planting that went on in the department as a matter of routine. He did a tremendous amount of work up front to get a general picture of what happened at Bundy and Rockingham on the 12th and 13th of June, and what evidence might favor the defense. He accepted Fuhrman’s damaging "bleeding killer theory" as true without knowing the source, and was criticized unfairly by Pat McKenna and Joe Bosco for sometimes handling evidence as uncritically as the prosecution did to make things look better for his team. But given the sheer volume of work he had to do and the time he had to do it, the small number of errors he made were well within the scope of what anyone could reasonably expect from the most honest and accomplished of investigators anywhere.

He found discrepancies in the crime scene log and the search warrant request that omitted Fuhrman’s arrival at Bundy until after the blood glove was fond and his digging may have forced the police against their wishes to admit who found it. More than anyone else, he sorted through the jungle of information and misinformation that gave O.J. Simpson a fighting chance to win by showing how much of that information led back to Fuhrman. His investigation of Fuhrman in connection with another case (see Britton, Joseph) uncovered his racist record, his proclivity for planting evidence and all of the material involved in his suit against the LAPD to win a disability pension after only 5 years on the job.

Phillips, Det. Ronald—West L.A. homicide coordinator, Mark Fuhrman’s friend and supervisor. Fuhrman could not have planned and carried out the murder/frame-up plot that eventually won him fame and fortune without knowing that he would be the first detective on the crime scene (see Primacy Effect). All things being equal, it was not likely that Fuhrman would have been in that position with only three years as a homicide detective and ten cases that he’d investigated in that time. Lange and Vannatter, by contrast, had conducted hundreds of investigations. Ron Phillips’ friendship with Fuhrman meant that all things were not equal. His testimony and the testimony of the man who informed him of the murders made it clear that Fuhrman was his first choice all the way, even though he wasn’t on call for that night.

What Phillips did not make clear was who Fuhrman’s partner was. He gave the impression that he was Fuhrman’s partner and that Brad Roberts, the man that Fuhrman said was his "regular partner" was called only because he couldn’t get in touch with other detectives. He also suggested that Roberts would team up with Tom Nolan. That was not true. Roberts was not only Fuhrman’s regular partner, he was his partner in the investigation.

Pilnak, Denise—Neighbor of Nicole. Her preoccupation with the correct time, the recorded time she called her mother relative to the time that she heard the dog bark, plus the corroborating testimony of others, made her the most credible timeline witness for either side.

Police Protective League—The LAPD union that represented Mark Fuhrman and for whom Mark Fuhrman served as an elected representative. Charges by black officers that it was "A bastion of white supremacy" carried little weight in the media even though Fuhrman’s alibi rested on his attendance at a Protective League seminar and BAR-B-Q 150 miles away. He said that he left "before 8:00 p.m.," but he didn’t say how much earlier than 8:00. No evidence was sought or produced by the prosecution or the defense to show that he was even there on the evening of the murders (see Pavlic, William).

For Fuhrman to have expressed his racist ideas as openly as several people said he did in front of other police officers, he had to have well-placed friends in the department who did not object. As an elected PPL union representative he not only had friends in the department who were willing to tolerate the way he expressed himself, he had a winning percentage of members who voted for him to speak for them. Neither the prosecution nor the defense bothered to see which members of the LAPD he represented or what their role was in the Simpson case.

Polygraph—A machine for detecting minute physiological responses to stress. For most people, knowledge of guilt plus fear of being caught by the machine is enough to trigger the physical changes that a skilled polygraph operator can interpret as a lie. However a valid reading requires that the subject be as stress-free as possible. The timing of the polygraph test given to O.J. (2 days after the killing) vs. the ones given to Fuhrman (one year after his perjury conviction) made a comparison of the two invalid.

Posers, Samuel—Manager of Bloomingdale’s shoe department in New York City. Nicole and Faye Resnick both shopped at that Bloomingdale’s store during the time someone bought a pair of size 12, Bruno Magli Lorenzos. Denise Brown shopped there when she lived in New York with her sister Dominique. The closest the prosecution came to tying O.J. to the killer’s shoes was Poser’s memory of O.J. looking at shoes similar to them when the Bruno Magli Lorenzos were in stock. He remembered not recommending them. He did not recall what O.J. bought but the shoes O.J. wore to his daughter’s dance recital were similar in style. He didn’t know the brand name. But they were not close enough in his mind that he would confuse them. He called the Lorenzos "Ugly ass shoes" that he would never wear (see Flammer, E.J).

Prenuptial Agreement—The legal agreement Nicole signed before her marriage to O.J. To leave the marriage with half of O.J.’s wealth, he had to abandon the agreement. The charges of spouse abuse that she was able to make with the record of 911 calls attributed to her between 1985 and 1989 gave her the clout to do that. Mark Fuhrman made his presence felt on both ends of that record (see Ney, Nancy).

Primacy Effect—The tendency to believe the first plausible answer to a question we see or hear. Like any bias, it is hardly ever recognized as such by the people caught in its gravitational pull and it is very difficult to break free. When news of the Bundy murders were first reported, it came with all of the information necessary for most people to logically conclude that O.J. Simpson committed the crime in a jealous rage. What we couldn’t know was the importance of the information that was missing. Once the prosecution accepted the idea that all of the evidence linked to O.J. in the first 8 hours of the investigation proved his guilt, no mount of evidence to the contrary was likely to change it. Their "search for truth" consisted entirely of seeking to patch up the holes in their case.

By the same token, a minority of people who were not persuaded by the early evidence against Simpson for whatever reason or lack of reason, accepted O.J.’s first thought of a drug hit gone bad and a police conspiracy to frame him. The result was a collection of clues that worked for the defense as long as they weren’t rigorously examined. Once that mode of thought was set it was impossible for the defense team to break out of it. Fuhrman became nothing more than a racist cop who lucked into the case, found, hid and planted a bloody glove to ruin a famous black man and promote himself.

The influence of the Primacy Effect can be offset by the Latency Effect, which gives the greatest amount weight to the last thing we hear. In California, the prosecution presents its case first—and last. California prosecutors have an extremely high rate of convictions.

Purdy, Andy—LAPD officer intimidated by Mark Fuhrman (see Coleman, Lucien). Mark Fuhrman openly harassed him for marrying a Jew. When someone broke into his locker and painted swastikas inside, the incident was investigated by Internal Affairs. The investigators found Fuhrman’s fingerprints inside. Purdy was a good friend of Deputy DA Lucien Coleman when he told her that Mark Fuhrman was capable of doing everything the defense accused him of, including planting evidence. He kept a log of Fuhrman’s racist activities until Coleman asked him to repeat his story to Bill Hodgman and Marcia Clark. He destroyed the log and told her that he would perjure himself rather than tell anyone in authority what he knew about Fuhrman.

Race Card—A pejorative term for introducing evidence of Mark Fuhrman’s racism. Common wisdom among white, mainstream media journalists and pundits led by the New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin held that Fuhrman’s racial attitudes had nothing to do with his work as a detective. Assuming that was true, the defense was using race as an emotional smokescreen to hide irrefutable evidence of Simpson’s guilt. "Assuming" is the key word.

The "race card" idea rested on a racist assumption. It made the racist assumption that the majority of blacks on the jury would not be capable of rational thought and would stop listening to real evidence against a black defendant if a white cop was accused of racism. It made the racist assumption that the minority of whites would feel the pressure of their minority status on the jury and the collective racial guilt of their majority status in the country and act accordingly. Therefore, when O.J.’s attorneys made an issue of Fuhrman’s racial attitudes and his behavior based on those attitudes, they were accused of "playing the race card." The term was never applied to Jeffrey Toobin, Marcia Clark, Christopher Darden or Mark Fuhrman.

In Toobin’s best-selling book, The Run of His Life, he appropriates blatant examples of white racism from the records of Mark Fuhrman and the LAPD to make a subtle racist point. He uses them only to show how O.J.’s defense team used race inappropriately, cynically and unethically to create irrational feelings about the true evidence of O.J.’s guilt. No kidding. That’s exactly what he did, and he did it consistently throughout the entire book.

When Christopher Darden tried unsuccessfully to make earwitness Robert Heidstra say that he heard a black man arguing on the killing ground, Johnnie Cochran angrily objected. Cochran called Darden’s question "racist," insisting that it was impossible to determine a man’s race by his voice. The way Toobin saw that exchange through his "impartial blue eyes," Cochran had to be acting in bad faith because of the obvious differences in speech patterns between most whites and most blacks under most conditions. If the dogs hadn’t been barking so loudly and incessantly, if Heidstra had been able to discern the speech patterns of the two men he heard arguing, and if O.J. Simpson had been I.M. Nobody, Toobin might have had a point. But Heidstra had already said that he couldn’t make out a word of what the man with the deeper, older-sounding voice was saying and he knew O.J.’s voice. If he told anyone outside of court that he thought the voice sounded like a black man’s it was most likely because he was convinced by other evidence that O.J. had to be guilty. But he could not say that under oath because it wasn’t what he knew he heard.

The issue was not whether the killer sounded like "a black man," but whether he sounded like O.J. Simpson. Darden is the one who was playing the race card and Cochran called him on it.

One of the things that made O.J. nearly unique prior to the killings was his "colorless" status in America. That is to say, his name had become so much bigger in the collective American consciousness that his color did not color most people’s opinion of him in any way, not even with respect to his choice of women. O.J. was simply O.J. He could have and do anything within reason that the land of the free and the home of the brave had to offer.

Then came the murders and the accusations of stalking and the Othello analogy and Time Magazine’s doctoring of O.J.’s mug shot to make him darker than he was. O.J. was no longer colorless to the vast majority of white Americans. The motive for murder attributed to him by the prosecution and accepted overwhelmingly by whites rested on a Jim Crow stereotype of "the black man’s" lust for white women (see Walker, Dr. Lenore). When Cochran challenged Darden’s question about "a black man’s voice" that’s what he was reacting to, the new image of the formerly colorless O.J., not as a black man, but as the black man who made Jim Crow seem like a reasonable idea.

Racism—The theory and practice of race-based decision making. Prior to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, Americans debated the question of racial discrimination in terms of racial prejudice and whether or not it was justified in some cases. The word racist, as it has been used since then, grew out of that debate to describe the phenomenon in terms of other ethnocentric "isms" like colonialism and imperialism. In the ’60s and ’70s most people understood it to mean what "prejudice" meant to them in ’40s and ’50s without the question of whether it was ever justified. Television took care of that subtle but important shift in perception with nightly images of white people in the Jim Crow South that have become stereotypes of cruel, mindless and ridiculous bigots—racists. The n-word now had a white counterpart, the r-word.

Words with that kind of bite can cause terrible pain and leave lasting scars. Nobody wanted to be called a racist, and to apply that label without ironclad proof that it was accurately descriptive was a risky proposition for all but the most strident and unprincipled demagogues. It was all right to think that black people were morally, emotionally and intellectually inferior to whites as long as the language used to say it didn’t include the n-word (see Toobin, Jeffrey).

Reichardt, Christian—Chiropractor, Faye Resnick’s former boyfriend. He was the one who insisted that Faye Resnick commit herself to a drug rehab center. He told Ian Bowater (the chief investigator for Killing Time’s Donald Freed and Raymond Briggs) that she had a major drug habit which made her completely unreliable. Before talking to him, Chris Darden assumed that every negative thing she said about O.J.’s treatment of Nicole was true. Then the prosecution did enough checking to learn that nothing she said could be relied on without corroboration. They chose not to call Resnick to testify against O.J. They attacked Reichardt nevertheless for his testimony that O.J. sounded up-beat and normal when he talked to him on the phone shortly before O.J. went to McDonald’s with Kato Kaelin.

Reiders, Fredric—EDTA expert (see EDTA).

Resnick, Faye—Former housemate of Nicole Brown Simpson. She set up the fatal meeting between Nicole and Ron. She called Nicole shortly before she was killed. She also struck it rich before O.J.’s trial and made a fast friend of Geraldo Revera with a book that portrayed O.J. as an insanely jealous, two-faced monster.

Although California law did not require the prosecution to show a motive for the savage slaying of O.J.’s former wife and her young, male friend, public opinion demanded it. Denise Brown’s shouts of, "O.J. did it!" and Ron Shipp’s anonymous contribution to a book that had O.J. virtually confessing to the crime helped. They meshed with Mark Fuhrman’s report on his experience with the couple, his interpretation of the blood evidence at Bundy, his partner’s interpretation of the blood evidence at Rockingham, and O.J.’s cut finger. But Resnick’s portrait of O.J. was the model that the prosecution used to establish a motive for the murders. It was what Marcia Clark was looking for after talking to Fuhrman in O.J.’s backyard on the 13th to show the escalating pattern of violence typical of spouse-abusers who go on to murder the woman they abused (see Walker, Dr. Lenore).

For the prosecution of O.J. Simpson it was as important to play down Faye Resnick’s cocaine addiction as it was to play down Mark Fuhrman’s racism. To find the truth it was important to determine whether or not there was a connection between Resnick the narcotics addict and Fuhrman the former narcotics cop. Neither the prosecution nor the defense pursued the matter. The judge in the civil case ruled those subjects out of order.

Richards, Jerry—A former photo analyst for the FBI. He testified in the civil trial that photographs of Simpson wearing Bruno Magli shoes appeared authentic. He said he saw no signs of alteration or substitution of the negatives. He acknowledged under cross-examination that someone with the motivation, time, equipment and expertise could have faked the photographs. The men representing the photos as genuine had all of these characteristics between them (see Lynch, Denny or McCelroy, Rob).

Riske, Robert—LAPD patrol officer. He was the first police officer on the murder scene. Although he took special care not to disturb anything, he couldn’t be sure if Goldman was dead until he bent over him and touched his eyeballs. Riske’s uniform was dark blue, possibly made up of blue/black cotton fibers. To this day, no one has checked.

Experts for the prosecution said that blue/black cotton fibers were found on Ron’s shirt. Marcia Clark argued that they came from the sweatsuit O.J. wore the night of the killing—although O.J. denied owning such a sweatsuit, none was found and no blue/black fibers were ever found in his home, in his Bentley or in his Bronco. They were, however, found on his socks, but not on the rug where Mark Fuhrman and Brad Roberts said they found the socks.

Rivera, Geraldo—Television journalist, commentator and talk show host. Early in the investigation of O.J. Simpson, Geraldo Revera took the position that it was an open-and-shut case of O.J.’s guilt. He turned his nightly legal talk show into a campaign against Simpson and a thinly veiled attack on the intelligence and integrity of African-Americans in general as reflected in their overwhelming approval of the criminal jury’s not guilty verdict. His interviews with Faye Resnick and Mark Fuhrman and his endorsement of their books, helped to give both of them the credibility they needed to become wealthy, best-selling authors.

Rokahr, Rolf—LAPD photographer. He took the picture of Mark Fuhrman pointing to the bloody glove on Bundy. The controversy surrounding that picture includes the question of when it was taken, who asked for it to be taken and why Fuhrman, of all the detectives on the scene, came to be associated with both bloody gloves. By establishing the time that the picture was taken, the defense sought to demonstrate that Fuhrman knew he would find the matching glove at Rockingham because he put it there a few minutes earlier. They theorized that he found both gloves at Bundy and slipped away undetected to Rockingham with one of them in a plastic bag. They further theorized that he smeared blood from the glove inside the Bronco, planted it behind Kato Kaelin’s bungalow, and returned to Bundy without anyone realizing he’d left.

The problem with that theory was the fact that four of the defense’s own witnesses testified that they saw no blood on the Bronco or in it the day it was impounded or for weeks thereafter. There are several good reasons to believe them and no good reason not to. The timing of Rokahr’s photo did show that Fuhrman, in all probability, had prior knowledge of the glove he would find a short while later at Rockingham. The question is, how could he have known?

Ross Cutlery—The knife shop in LA where O.J. purchased a German Stiletto. During a portion of the movie Frogmen that was shot in Los Angeles five weeks before the killing, O.J. walked across the street to Ross Cutlery and purchased a German Stiletto knife in full view of dozens of witnesses. He paid for it with a $100 bill and waited to have it sharpened before taking it with him. Marcia Clark and the two lead detectives reacted to news of the purchase with certainty that they knew what the murder weapon was and that it was only a matter of time before they found it. They did not know that another detective had already found and returned the unused knife with the price tag and factory oil still on it. Early in the preliminary hearing, Delbert Wong, a former judge, was appointed by the court to retrieve the knife. He gave it to Robert Shapiro who handed it to Judge Ito in a large brown envelope. The contents of the envelope were the subject of speculation for months.

Rubin, Richard—Former purchasing executive for Isotoner gloves. He testified that the bloody gloves worn by the killer were Aris Isotoner Lights distinguishable by a unique stitching pattern. To explain why the gloves did not fit O.J. Simpson, he said that they could have shrunk by as much as 15% because they were wet. Tests made by the defense refuted that claim. The prosecution chose not to make tests of its own.

Saint John, Dale—Owner of Town and Country Limousine, O.J.’s regular driver, Allan Park’s boss. Park’s calls to him were crucial in establishing with telephone records when Park and Kato first saw each other. That, in turn, set up a number of scenarios in which it was more or less likely that O.J. made the thumps that Kato heard against his wall. St. John was an important witness for the plaintiffs in the civil trial, rebutting O.J.’s claim that he didn’t open the gate for Park because he was afraid the dog would get out. St. John said that O.J. had never left him waiting because of the dog and that he had never seen the dog run out of the gate. What he didn’t say was that O.J. rarely buzzed him in. When he went out of town, the maid usually stayed behind. The maid usually buzzed him in.

San Diego Freeway—The rout Allan Park drove from Torrance north to Rockingham in Brentwood. Torrance lies next to Redondo Beach where Mark Fuhrman lived. Town and Country was right on the border. The San Diego Freeway is what Fuhrman and Park had in common on the 12th of June for a quick drive to Brentwood from nearly the same starting point. It’s the rout Mark Fuhrman took from his home in Redondo Beach to the police station less than a mile from the murder scene.

Sathyavagiswaran, Dr. Lakshmanan: LA County Chief Medical Examiner. He was called in to testify in place of Dr. Irwin Golden, the deputy medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Ron and Nicole. He was on the stand for nine days, eight of which were taken up in direct examination by the prosecution’s Brian Kelberg. In all that time neither the prosecution nor the defense brought up the possibility that one killer could have used a different knife in each hand. Kelberg fashioned his questions to show that there was only one killer using one knife anticipating that the defense would try to show that there were two knives and therefore two killers.

Dr. Sathyavagiswaran commented on every note made by Dr. Golden about every wound found on each body. He explained that the same knife could have made wounds that appeared to have been made by different knives and that a single-edged knife could have made wounds that appeared to be made by a double-edged knife. He did not attempt to explain the multiple angles of entry on the left and right side of Goldman’s body except to say that they could have come from the front or the rear. He confirmed Dr. Golden’s estimate of how long the knife was by way of the probe he used to measure the path of one of the stab wounds on the left side of Ron’s neck and a portion of his right ear.

Savage, Tracie—Television news reporter for KNBC,Channel 4 in Los Angeles. Savage reported the correct results of DNA testing on socks collected from O.J.'s bedroom rug before the tests were made. She said that they tested positive for Nicole's blood. Her report was an exclusive. She made it before the jury was selected. She never revealed her source.

Scheck, Barry—New York defense attorney specializing in DNA. Scheck, Blasier and Neufeld made their reputation on using DNA evidence to clear their clients. Contrary to the widespread notion that Scheck tried to get the jury to discount the DNA evidence against O.J., his biggest problem was getting anyone to understand it. Reporters, commentators and his fellow attorneys all had trouble following him. But, going back over the videotapes of his technical presentations and stopping them where a lack of experience in the area makes it difficult to follow in real time, his explanations are perfectly coherent.

In his questioning of Dennis Fung, Andrea Mazzola and Collin Yamauchi he uncovered gross irregularities in the collection, documentation, security and analysis of blood evidence. He showed not only the weaknesses in the system that made unintentional contamination possible he showed how easy it would have been to access and tamper with other key pieces of evidence. He went farther than that by showing that the evidence was surreptitiously accessed and tampered with. It was during his questioning of Dr. Henry Lee that Lee demonstrated how easy it was to tell whether blood drops at a crime scene came from a stationary source or one in motion.

Shahian, Cynthia (Cici)—Prosecution witness, friend of Nicole Brown Simpson, Faye Resnick and Denise Brown (see Girls, The). Robert Kardashian’s first cousin. She worked for the publisher of Dove Press, the company that published Faye Resnick’s O.J. book and looked at publishing Mark Fuhrman’s until the release of the McKinny tapes made him damaged goods. Shahian testified that Nicole showed her the letter O.J. wrote threatening to report her to the IRS if she persisted in her claim to the IRS that she resided at Rockingham a year and a half after she’d moved out. The prosecution used that instance of Nicole’s willingness to commit fraud at O.J.’s expense and her reaction to his reaction as evidence of O.J.’s abuse leading to murder. The day Nicole showed Shahian the letter, was the same day that Nicole supposedly called a battered women’s shelter (see Ney, Nancy) to say that O.J. was stalking her and threatening to kill her. Nicole never told anyone, including Cynthia Shahian that she made the call.

Shipp, Ronald—Prosecution witness, former LAPD Academy instructor in spouse abuse, Johnnie Cochran’s first cousin, friend of Mark Fuhrman, Denise Brown, Faye Resnick and O.J. Simpson. He testified that O.J. told him in private that he’d had dreams of killing Nicole. Other witnesses said that he was never alone with O.J. at the time and place he said the conversation took place. While it was widely reported that the police allowed O.J. to get away with beating Nicole because of all the cops he entertained in his home, Shipp was the one who invited cops he wanted to impress to O.J.’s home, mostly to play tennis. Shipp’s last job in the LAPD, before he left the force with a substance abuse problem in 1989, was as an expert in forgery. He "counseled" Nicole on spouse abuse and told stores similar to hers about O.J.’s abuse of her. His first-hand accounts of O.J.’s "alter-ego" matches those of Mark Fuhrman, Faye Resnick, Denise Brown, John Edwards and whoever wrote the diary allegedly written by Nicole.

Sims, Gary—Director of the California Dept. of Justice Lab. The high level of professionalism he demonstrated made him an excellent witness for the prosecution and the defense. Through his testimony the prosecution was able to prove beyond any doubt O.J. Simpson’s DNA was found in various incriminating places. But his lab also discovered wet transfer stains on blood sample wrappings that should have been dry and a small fraction of the amount of O.J.’s DNA in each sample. These were on the swatches supposedly taken from the blood drops on Bundy next to the bloody shoeprints. Whereas on drop of blood contains about 14, 000 nanograms of DNA the ones identified as O.J.’s next to the shoeprints all had less than 40. The defense was therefore able to raise a legitimate question of how O.J.’s DNA ended up where it did in the lab. Berry Sheck was able to show that the LAPD lab’s Collin Yamaguchi processed the blood evidence he sent to the DOJ is ways that permitted cross-contamination and increased the likelihood that it would happen (see Yamauchi and GIGO). Sims confirmed the fact a sufficiently degraded sample of anyone’s blood will show no DNA whatsoever but test positive for a sample of whatever DNA comes in contact with it, but doubted that it happened in Simpson case. He did admit that the broken chain of custody from collection to testing made it impossible to tell where the tested samples had originated.

Tanner, Stewart—Mezzaluna waiter, friend of Ron Goldman. He testified that he and Goldman had planned to meet after work at another bar about eight miles south of Mezzaluna’s. Most investigators took that as corroboration of the idea that Ron would not have gone to see Nicole that night if Juditha Brown hadn’t left her glasses at the restaurant because he had other plans. The westbound direction in which Goldman parked his borrowed car said otherwise. In addition, Tanner said under cross-examination that the plans were not firm. The three-way involving Faye Resnick, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman was firm; only Faye didn’t make it.

Terry, Andrea (see Bell, Kathleen).

Time Magazine (see n-word).

Toobin, Jeffrey—Journalist, author. Like Dominick Dunne, he was one of the few people granted a permanent seat in Judge Ito’s courtroom. He was there to write about the trial for the New Yorker with the understanding that he would write a book. O.J.’s attorney, Robert Shapiro, fed him information about Mark Fuhrman’s racism. He was reluctant to follow up on the tip until his wife told him of a black man she knew who had a run-in with Fuhrman (see Bowers, Jarvis). He got some criticism for his reports on Fuhrman, but more than made up for it with his best-selling book The Run of His Life: The people vs. O.J. Simpson and his media appearances to promote it.

Many African-Americans who followed his work saw him as being as racist as Fuhrman in his zeal to make O.J. Simpson appear to be a murderer. His book is, in fact, loaded with inaccuracies, half-truths and racist assumptions about O.J. and the juror’s who found him innocent (see n-word). His attack on the first jury’s "candlepower" set the standard for how the media in general would regard anyone who expressed doubt of O.J.’s guilt.

Vannatter, Det. Philip—One of two lead detectives from the elite Robbery/Homicide Division. He wrote the search warrant that Judge Ito said showed "a reckless disregard for the truth." Among other false statements he knowingly made was the contention that Simpson left for Chicago on an unscheduled flight. In the criminal trial, he told Robert Shapiro that O.J. was no more a suspect than Shapiro was, when he entered his property without a warrant by allowing Mark Fuhrman to climb the wall and let him and the other detectives in. Fuhrman’s name was not mentioned in the warrant. Vannatter claimed to have discovered the blood drops on Rockingham. However, in the civil trial, Officer Thompson testified that Mark Fuhrman pointed out the blood drops to him. Fuhrman said in his book that his partner Brad Roberts discovered them. Thompson’s testimony suggests that it was Fuhrman or Roberts.

As Tom Lange’s partner, he co-authored the book Evidence Dismissed: The Inside Story of the Police Investigation of O.J. Simpson. The title of the book says it all. From the moment Vannatter and Lange saw the bodies at 875 South Bundy their actions demonstrated an interest in collecting and correlating only that evidence that implicated Simpson. They dismissed all other evidence with any excuse that would allow them to do so. The interview they had with O.J. was designed not to gather information, but to catch him in a lie.

They treated every apparent inconsistency as an attempt to deceive them. And they never bothered to check O.J.’s explanation for the angle at which the Bronco was parked as a result of driving around the sharp angle of his driveway. If they had, they would have seen that it matched the geometry of the location, the proportions of the Bronco and the width of the driveway far better than Mark Fuhrman’s theory of a wild flight from Bundy.

During Johnnie Cochran’s summation, he separated Vannatter from Lange when he labeled Vannatter and Fuhrman "the twin devils of deception." Vannatter did, in fact, lie about O.J.’s Chicago flight. And, for reasons even he can’t explain, he checked out O.J.’s vial of blood from the lab and carried it with him to Rockingham. In the end, it was fortunate for the prosecution and ultimately for the plaintiffs that he did because it kept the defense from seeing the exculpatory blood trail that O.J. left at Rockingham for what it was. They argued, instead, that Vannatter planted it. The prosecution showed that he couldn’t have. But the important thing from the standpoint of another detective gaining access to the blood was how easily Vannatter was able to get soul possession of it to do whatever he chose to do. No one who made that mistake with Fuhrman would be likely to admit it.

Viertel’s—The garage where O.J.’s impounded Bronco was stored. Everyone familiar with Viertel’s knew that it was not a secure facility. That was one of the problems with the blood found inside of the Bronco. To rule out the possibility that the blood was planted, the prosecution had to show that the vehicle was inaccessible to anyone who may have wanted to do it. The defense showed that it was easily accessible to anyone. Photos picturing a card with a June 14 date next to the blood-smeared console and instrument panel were used to impeach the defense witness who said he didn’t see any blood on the 15th. It can as easily be said that two people (see Mulldorfer, Det. Kelly, and Meraz, John) who entered the Bronco after that without seeing blood impeached the integrity of the photo.

Walker, Dr. Lenore—Spouse abuse expert. Her work on spouse abuse led her to coin the phrase, "battered woman’s syndrome" and made her the world’s leading authority in the field. She examined O.J., assuming that he had beaten Nicole on New Years Day, 1989 and wasn’t man enough to admit it. Still, she found no pattern of escalating violence in his relationship with Nicole which was typical of abusers who go on to kill the object of their abuse. She also found his promiscuousness incompatible with the profile of a stalker. Stalkers are intensely monogamous. Like the other leaders in their fields of expertise who didn’t see the evidence of guilt that the prosecution and the press wanted them to, her findings were also dismissed.

Wasz, William—Crack addict, stalker, car thief. As part of the case that the prosecution tried to make to show stalking behavior on O.J.’s part, William Colby was called to testify to seeing O.J. creeping around outside of Nicole’s home on Gretna Green in 1993. On cross-examination he admitted to calling 911 only because the man he saw was black and in Colby’s opinion, "didn’t look like he belonged in the neighborhood." Only later did he discover who the man was and why he was there. Nicole had told friends and her former husband that she thought she was being stalked and that she feared for herself and her children. Subsequent to her death, Denise Brown, Ron Shipp, and Faye Resnick named O.J. as the stalker she feared.

The murder also brought to light a car theft that proved to be tied to the real stalker, William Wasz. He was arrested and jailed for stealing Paula Barbiari’s white sports utility vehicle in January of ’94. He was still in jail when the murders occurred and his attorney turned over to police a detailed log of Nicole’s activities found in Wasz’s possession after his arrest. When prosecutors could not connect Wasz to O.J., they lost interest in him. Neither the prosecution nor the defense attempted to see if there was a connection between Wasz and other cocaine addicts close to Nicole like Denise Brown, Ron Shipp and Faye Resnick. No one looked for a connection between him and a former narcotics cop named Mark Fuhrman or his partner Brad Roberts.

Whitehurst, Fredric—FBI special agent. After the testimony of Agent Roger Martz, he came forward to say that Martz routinely slanted his laboratory test results in favor of the prosecution. Rockney Harman, the deputy prosecutor who asked Martz to prove that there was no EDTA in the samples he was sent, ridiculed Whitehurst as a fanatic. He said that with no direct knowledge of the EDTA testing procedure that he was calling into question he had no standing to say anything about Agent Martz. O.J.’s attorneys argued that if Whitehurst knew how Martz used the prestige of the FBI lab to help the prosecution as a general rule, he didn’t have to know the specifics of his finding in the O.J. case to know that they were suspect. They argued that the jurors should be allowed to hear his testimony and decide for themselves whether it was relevant to the case at hand. Judge Ito ruled that the prosecution had the better argument and the jury was not allowed to hear his testimony.

After the civil trial ended in a popular verdict against O.J., largely because of the blood evidence presumed to be valid, Martz lost his job. Investigators found that he manipulated key evidence in favor of the prosecution in the Word Trade Center bombing case.

Wolf, Dr. Barbara—Forensic pathologist. Michelle Kestler allowed her to look at the socks that were supposed to have Nicole’s blood on them but she did not allow her to hold them up to the light to see for herself. She was not allowed to handle them at all until the blood tests came back positive. She did see a fingerprint in blood on a lens in Juditha Brown’s glasses. The lens disappeared. The fingerprint was never identified.

Wood, Judge William—North Carolina judge. He listened to the McKinny taps and ruled that they should not be handed over to the defense in the O.J. Simpson case because the probative value was outweighed by the prejudicial effect. Indeed, he ruled that the tapes had no value in the Simpson case. He was the first to argue that Mark Fuhrman was merely playing a role on the tapes. He was the first to argue that Fuhrman’s violent, racist statements and boasts of being able to plant evidence against black men, to lie effectively under oath and get away with it was mere puffery. He was overruled by the North Carolina Court of Appeals. But Marcia Clark took up his argument and, for the most part, Judge Ito accepted it, allowing the jury to here only Fuhrman’s irrelevant references to the n-word.

Yamauchi, Collin—NYPD lab technician. Chief Chemist Greg Matheson gave him the job of making the initial identification of the blood evidence taken from Rockingham and Bundy. Most writers who mentioned his part in the case stressed his statement that he thought O.J. was in Chicago at the time of the murders. But to other observers, he behaved in court and in the lab as though he was convinced of O.J.’s guilt before he started his tests and was just going through the motions. He processed the evidence six times faster than his counterpart at the California Department of Justice; he did not change gloves between sample testing; he kept different samples on his workbench at the same time; he allowed some of O.J.’s blood to spill down the outside of the test tube. The spilled blood gave the defense a chance to argue that it was the source of his blood found on the glove. It gave the prosecution a chance for the jurors to infer an innocent explanation for some of the missing blood.

York, Cpt. Margaret—LAPD Internal Affairs Director, Judge Lance Ito’s wife. Before the McKinney tapes came to light where he made insulting, sexist statements about her as a police lieutenant, she made a signed statement that she knew little more about Fuhrman than his name. However, as his watch commander at LA West, where he was assigned in 1984 when his medical retirement was denied, she had to know him better than that. It was her job to know about his violent racism that he said was getting out of hand when he applied for the medical. Credible witnesses to shouting matches that she had with him over a crude racist demonstration contradicted her sworn statement.

Fuhrman boasted of one confrontation he had with her about her authority to give him an assignment he didn’t want. He said in his first book that he challenged her directly, called in his delegate to the Police Protective League, and won. Fuhrman said that she didn’t dare to challenge him again. The record bears him out on that score.

It also gives a rare insight into the power of Police Protective League delegates to put their members where they wanted them irrespective of their official rank in the LAPD. As a delegate to the PPL, Fuhrman may, therefore, have been able to arrange the posting of Ron Phillips to the job that assured Fuhrman’s leading role in the O.J. Simpson murder investigation.

Zlomsowitch, Keith—Manager of the Brentwood Mezzaluna restaurant. He was the man O.J. saw Nicole having sex with on her living room couch. In an interview with Larry King, he said that he was intimidated by O.J. who approached him the following day about what he had seen through the window. Like Faye Resnick, he was one of the people the prosecutors relied on to paint a picture of O.J. as an insanely jealous stalker. They made it sound as though O.J. had been creeping around Nicole’s house and peeking in her window through a tiny crack in the drapes when he saw her and Zlomsowitch having sex. According to O.J., he saw them because the curtains were not drawn and anyone walking past the house could have seen them—that’s what he was upset about.

The prosecutors decided not to put him on the witness stand when they found out more about him and his connection to the cocaine subculture that Nicole, Ron and Faye had apparently been a part of. They were afraid that he would not hold up well under cross-examination because the restaurant he managed in Brentwood was under local and federal investigation for illegal drug trafficking. He was also the manager of a Mezzaluna restaurant in Colorado, which was also under police surveillance for drug trafficking.

Furthermore, he confirmed what O.J. said about their only discussion of the ’92 incident. O.J. shook his hand and told him to be more discrete. That, in turn, is indirect conformation of what O.J. said he was so upset about on the 911 call taped in ’93. He was afraid that she was again associating with undesirable characters, that she was not being discrete in her sexual relations with Zlomsowitch and his associates, and it would have a harmful affect on the children.

It was Nicole who asked O.J. to keep an eye on the house in the latter part of ’93 because she feared that she was being stalked. She may have gotten that impression from the man who was indeed stalking her, or from the narcotics agents who were watching her, Faye and Keith Zlomsowitch. She expressed no such fears about being stalked around the time O.J. witnessed the sex scene with her and Zlomsowitch in ’92.

Is possible that Nicole staged the ’92 sex scene to make O.J. jealous? Considering the sexually explicit conversation that she and Faye had about other men in the presence of Christian Reichardt and O.J., it’s not out of the question. If O.J. could have been provoked into striking her after the ’89 incident, the prenuptial agreement she made with him would have been voided and half of his thirty or forty million dollars would have been hers.

Is it possible that Fuhrman was telling the truth when he boasted to fellow officers of having an affair with Nicole around the time of Nicole’s window scene with Zlomsowitch? Could he have been expecting a million-dollar payoff from her after her divorce for advising her to call 911 whenever she and O.J. got into a heated argument? Could the window scene have been his idea? Such an arrangement would have to be a secret, in which case Zlomsowitch would not have known that he was being set up, too. We can do no more than speculate about that.

Mark Fuhrman got what he wanted by adopting the role of Iago in Brentwood.

Bad movies are often bad copies of good ones. But the good ones—the very best ones—tell us something worth knowing about the real world: Take, for example, the story involving an ex-football player who made it big in another line of work. His adult daughter from his first marriage lived with him in a rich, white neighborhood in West LA. His second wife was a much younger woman, a beautiful blond that he slapped around. Well, that’s what she said. Then one of them ended up as the victim and the other the accused in one of the most talked-about murder cases of the century.

Who can forget that night in mid-June shortly after 10:00 P.M.when the tall, handsome, star of film and television killed a man in a small confined area, a man who found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Who can forget that big tank of a vehicle he drove recklessly through a stoplight, almost colliding with another vehicle after he murdered the woman he said he loved? Who can forget the dark blue outfit he wore, the hat he forgot, the shoeprints he left, the fact that he couldn't stop sweating, or the trail of his own blood dripping so conspicuously from his left side? Who can forget his obsession with the blond that drove him to kill her or those incriminating documents she put in her safe deposit box?

Yeah, who can forget Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwick in Double Indemnity? What a great flick!