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Chapter
1: A NATIONAL IQ TEST
"THAT JURY DIDN’T
HAVE THE CANDLEPOWER TO WEIGH ALL THE COMPLEX SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE AND COME TO A SENSIBLE
CONCLUSION." —Jeffrey Toobin, legal analyst for ABC and best-selling author,
explaining why the predominantly black jury in the criminal case found O.J. Simpson not
guilty of murder
The rest of this chapter
represents a time capsule of how things looked to my cyberspace friends and me in the
first quarter of 1997. Back then, our guess that O.J. was innocent was only a guess and
our suspicion that Mark Fuhrman might be the killer was only a suspicion. All I knew for
sure was, two young, healthy people had been murdered, that the evidence pointed to more
than one man, and that the evidence not in dispute pointed only to Fuhrman.
As reflected in the ethnic makeup of the jury that acquitted Simpson, a
hefty majority of black Americans and a substantial minority of white ones would have
voted the way the first jury did. Nationally respected commentators like Jeffrey Toobin
and Vincent Bugliosi made no bones about their conviction that low intelligence was the
common denominator among true believers in O.J. Simpson’s innocence. Their conviction
became an unchallenged national standard, which applied to all "true believers"
and still applies to black people in general.
That is the racial issue that divided America—that arrogant
contempt for the intelligence, the maturity or the integrity of the black jurors in the
criminal trial and the "non-blacks" who agreed with them. In this case, the
victims were white, the accused was black and his chief accuser bore a strong attitudinal
resemblance to a Nazi Brown-Shirt. Nevertheless, race was not supposed to matter, because
the accused was rich and famous and any prejudice that may have existed redounded in his
favor. If you thought that the evidence of guilt against the world-famous African-American
might have had something to do with the ambitions of a local nazi who "found"
most of it or led others to see it his way, you failed the Toobin/Bugliosi national IQ
test.
This book started as an answer to that charge. In the process of
putting it together, I made some startling discoveries about Marcia Clark, Ron Shipp, Brad
Roberts, Faye Resnick, Denise Brown, and the Rockingham crime scene that changed
everything. I no longer suspect that Mark Fuhrman murdered Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman,
I know he did.
March 14, 1997:
A brutal murderer walks among us. He’s a big, good-looking,
athletic man who slashed two people to death and presented a false face of wronged
innocence to the world. He is a proven liar. Everyone has seen his face. We all know his
name. We use it with contempt. But contempt is not enough. We want to see him punished for
what he did. Most of us are so sure of the evidence against him that we can’t
understand why everyone doesn’t agree with us. His name, of course, is O.J.
Simpson—or Mark Fuhrman.
The foregoing paragraph is an obvious oversimplification of the facts.
No one but the killer and his accomplices, if any, knows what happened and who did it.
Many of us believe we know, and for the sake of argument, we won’t quibble about
facts we can fill in for ourselves. The object here is to weigh the best of both sides in
the OJG (O.J. Guilty) vs. OJI (O.J. Innocent) debate, and see where the greater weight of
credibility falls.
In all the official documents, in all the hours of network news
coverage, expert commentary, live courtroom action and dramatic reenactments, one crucial
element has been missing. That missing element is the true voice of the people most
interested in the case talking directly to each other as history unfolded. Everyone has an
opinion on O.J. Simpson. Moreover, everyone has an opinion on the character and the
"candle-power" of the people on the other side.
The last words are yet to be written about the double homicide at 875
South Bundy. The record won’t be complete without a
microcosm of the best-informed opinions on the case in North America. The people who
watched the case most closely and came together in the Court TV Discussion Group from
throughout the continent may be that microcosm.
The OJG’s were invited to join in this project, to present their
own case in their own way. They declined. Their real names as well as their e-mail aliases
have been changed to preserve their anonymity. We, the OJI’s represented here, can
only assure you that we did not go out of our way to make them look bad. They look the way
they look in their cyberspace personas because that was how they chose to present
themselves to us.
Remember how scary it was when you
were a kid and you first saw the dark forest scene in the Wizard of Oz? Sure you
do.... "Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Lions and tigers and bears!"
That’s what it was like when I first entered the Court TV Discussion Group. The
ferocious beasts in this forest were OJG’s who attacked the only things of value that
you brought with you into their domain, your confidence and your self-esteem.
The OJG opinion leaders were two Americans and a Canadian. Lion and
Tiger, my names for the two Americans, were the most prolific, and the ones to whom other
OJG’s referred most often. Lion seemed to be the most knowledgeable, Tiger the most
articulate, and Bear the least interested in anything but socializing with Lion and Tiger
and ridiculing people who didn’t agree with them.
Lion could and did quote chapter and verse from any official or
unofficial document that supported her position. When she didn’t site her source, she
made it sound as though it was common knowledge. Tiger was a DNA expert, the author of 15
books and an all-around sharp cookie who tended to underestimate everyone else and lash
out angrily when she got caught. Bear, probably the brightest of the OJG’s, took
nothing and no one seriously on the OJI side of the debate, and made frequent errors in
judgment because of it. Unlike Lion and Tiger, Bear never noticed her mistakes. Most of
the other OJG’s in our group towed the party line and got stomped on hard by other
OJG’s when they voiced doubts about any significant element in the case against
Simpson.
In the real world, OJG’s can feel comfortable, not only in their
conclusion that O.J. Simpson is guilty of murder, but in the knowledge that most people,
on all levels of influence, agree with them. In the real world, where the ideas and the
feelings of the majority have real consequences for real people in the minority,
OJG’s outnumber OJI’s by more than 2 to 1. In the real world, the OJG’s are
in charge.
Hold that thought; the OJG’s are in charge....
Conventional wisdom has it that the jurors in the civil trial looked at
evidence, not color, and got it right because the evidence screams, "O.J. Simpson is
a murderer!" To an OJG, the mere question of Fuhrman’s racial attitude has
always been an irrelevant distraction. They ask rhetorically, "If O.J. was the
murderer, did it matter that Fuhrman may have been a racist?" Some even accept the
fact that some evidence against Simpson was planted and say, "They framed the right
guy," because they don’t see how all of it could have been planted. For
OJI’s, the question of race was one thing that made O.J.’s guilt questionable.
Since it was Fuhrman, more than anyone else, who made the evidentiary case against
Simpson, we wanted to know, "If Fuhrman was a racist, how can we be sure that O.J.
was a murderer?"
Fuhrman’s first book has become the vehicle for remaking his image
in the national media, and tying up loose ends that had made thinking people a tad uneasy
from the start. For this OJI, it became the petard upon which Fuhrman would hoist himself.
So, who am I and the other OJI’s featured in this book? What kind
of people would swim against the tide of popular opinion as strong as that which existed
in the gloom and anger of O.J.’s acquittal, and the celebration of his official
public branding as a murderer? What makes us so different?
C R O W E
Editor’s note: When I
first logged on to the Court TV Discussion Group, it took awhile for me to get my
bearings, learn the language and find my way around. In the process, I found analysts of
the case with as much on the ball as anyone paid by the networks to offer their
commentary. The ones I read and admired most were Hargrove, Jamal and Crowe. When the CTV
group was shut down in February ’97, an e-mail discussion group set up by a
remarkable woman named Chameleon, took its place. I’m sorry to say Hargrove and Jamal
chose not to get involved. I’m glad to say Crowe did. If she hadn’t, the Bundy
murder mystery may never have been solved, and this book wouldn’t exist.
I was born Patricia Leona Crowe in Sudbury in Northern Ontario on July 6, 1941. I am
the second of four daughters. My father worked in the nickel mine until his death of a
heart attack at the age of 46. My mother was of French-Canadian descent. I moved to
Southern Ontario in 1958 when I married John at the age of 16. We’ve been married now
for almost 39 years. I have two children, a daughter, Sue, who has three kids she is
raising on her own, and a son, Mike, who is not married.
In some ways, I guess, I am a loner. A lot of people have let me down over the years,
so I tend to keep to myself. It’s not that I don’t like people, I do; it’s
just that I’m a little wary. I purchased my computer about a year ago. It’s a
great way to communicate with people without actually having to be face to face. It’s
a great way to pass the time or learn something new. I haven’t had much formal
education but I’ve always been curious and read a lot about a lot of different
things.
I began watching the O.J. trial on a Detroit television station. Their coverage was not
very good. They started late and quit early and had commercials every time something got
interesting. Living in the country, cable was not an option so we bought a dish so I could
watch Court TV. I watched every day and could not believe what was happening. It took
awhile to understand what the prosecution was doing.
At first I thought it was wonderful to have a female prosecutor on such an important
case. That was just at first, until I saw what was going on. It still makes me angry when
someone like Christopher Darden says that Johnnie Cochran ruled the courtroom. I saw
Marsha Clark plead with Judge Ito like she was a little kid and he was her daddy. Please
Daddy don’t punish us! Please Daddy don’t rule against us! What a farce.
That’s when it started to dawn on me that O.J. Simpson was probably not guilty. If
they had to use the tactics they were using—to use the words of a world-renowned
forensic expert— "Something wrong."
Then, when I saw the evidence come in, I was still waiting for the mountain the
prosecution said it had. All I saw was a molehill, and not a very big one at that. It
makes me very angry when people say that the jury in the criminal trial were stupid, etc.
I’m not black. I’m not a celebrity hunter. I’m not a football fan. I’m
a middle-aged white Canadian lady who knows now that O.J. is innocent. If the people who
believe O.J. Simpson guilty would answer all of the questions I have to my satisfaction, I
would be prepared to change my mind, but until then I will continue to believe him not
guilty.
HHHANA
Editor’s note: The Court
TV Discussion Group had many branches of interest called "threads," which
different people explored. That may be why I didn’t see enough of Hhhana’s posts
to count her with Hargrove, Jamal and Crowe. She is, as you will see, a standout in any
crowd of outstanding minds—and hearts. She was the second to comment on my MFG (Mark
Fuhrman Guilty) scenario and to offer MFG scenarios of her own that helped all of us to
sharpen our thinking in pursuit of the truth. Few people have what it takes to ask
questions and insist on answers that could prove they are wrong as easily as they could
prove they are right. Hhhana is one of those people. I like to think that I am, too, but
without her on my side, I couldn’t say how long I would have lasted against the
OJG’s.
I don’t think my name is important; the people who would recognize it will
probably never read this. As for the rest, they call me Hhhana. I was born in Virginia to
loving parents. I have an older sister. My family was well-respected in the small
community where I lived. My dad retired from the Navy after 28 years to become a
successful business owner. My mom was raised to be a rich man’s wife and was busy in
social, community, and church functions.
Life was good.
My father, my best friend, died suddenly and unexpectedly when I was seven years old
and life changed. My mother was locked away for over a year. We knew why, but didn’t
talk about it. We hid in the basement because she thought some enemy was coming to kill
us; hid in the yard, the three of us armed with knives, because the enemies were pumping
poison gas into our home to kill us. The only thing I knew at the age of eight was that
Daddy was dead and Mama was crazy.
Life was no longer good.
My sister, three years older than me and an adult at eleven, shielded me and protected
me through these hard times. I thank her, and God has blessed her.
I grew up with a burning curiosity about the things people do and why they do them.
Watching my Mother go from a pleasant, loving woman to an empty shell with the huge
frightened eyes of a trapped animal twice a year for the rest of her life was my
motivation for any achievement which could possibly be attributed to me. It is for this
reason only, I would even be tempted to share it.
College was not there for me. We were poor and I had to work. Later with a divorce and
two small children of my own I launched into college with a hunger for knowledge that to
me seemed unmatched. I worked to support the children and in part time attendance spent
the next sixteen years pursuing what now has grown into a Master’s Degree in
Psychology. I spent ten years working in and around psychiatry, partly for my mother, who
is now at peace; partly for my patients, people I believe I helped; and in large part, a
way of repentance for myself.
I now live in North Carolina with Joe, the wonderful man who was ready to love me
unconditionally. In thirteen years of marriage we have never wasted even one second in
argument. It’s been a long road.
Life is good once again.
I am an OJI, part of a caring group of intelligent people who can look past the rage
and see the truth, not only about O.J., but also about the state in which we now find our
country.
Courtrooms are places where wrongfully accused people hope for justice. Some find it.
On the other hand, there are those who are not expected to find justice. O.J. Simpson
found vindication in the "not guilty" verdict, thereby breaking the unwritten
rule. The firestorm of passion his victory ignited in many has spawned a racial
controversy in the nation unseen since the early days of the civil rights movement. The
Court TV Discussion Group quickly became a battleground; intelligence and heart on one
side vs. intelligence only on the other side. You will have to judge which side is which.
PETLADY
Editor’s note: Of all the
people on the CTV threads, Petlady came across as the most fair-minded on either side of
the OJG/OJI line. I didn’t even know she was an OJI until the e-mail group got
started and I heard from her directly. No matter how much effort you put into developing
an idea you wanted to sell to the group, if it didn’t get past her, it probably
needed more work. She did have one weakness that the OJG’s exploited to the max. She
hated harsh words like "racist," that some of us thought were accurate
descriptions of what some OJG’s wrote at times, and scolded us for using them. The
OJG’s were like travelers on the moors bitten by a wolf, and the O.J. case was like
the full moon that transformed them into snarling beasts. Once the subject changed, so did
they. If you judge them entirely by what you see here, you’d be wrong. More than the
rest of us, Peggy understood that "there but for the grace of God go you and I."
If there is only one great lesson we can draw from this vital contest of ideas about
O.J.’s guilt or innocence, that has to be it.
My name is Margaret Ann Richardson, but everyone knows me as Peggy. I wholeheartedly
believe O.J. is innocent. I lean to the theory that Mark Fuhrman probably is responsible
in concert with someone else.
I was born in Georgetown Hospital in Washington, D. C. on February 13, 1931. I have
taken courses at the University of Oklahoma in Legal Research, and Advanced Legal
Research. I read just about everything I can get my hands on. In high school I took an IQ
test with a score of 140 that they said at the time was extremely high. I don’t know
what score I could achieve if I took the same test now. I am the mother of three children
and the stepmother of six, grandmother of 18 (at last count) and great-grandmother of 1
(whom I have never seen). I’m a retired legal secretary-assistant.
I don’t know whether I can describe my disposition or not. I have been told people
do not like me until they get to know me. They say I am aloof. I have lots of
acquaintances but very few close friends. I am a loner by nature. I can lose myself in a
book, or a game like "Lights Out" or "Rubik’s Cube" for hours.
This is where my husband and I differ. He can talk to anybody, and likes to be around
people. He is the extrovert and I am the introvert. I think we balance each other out.
This computer is the greatest thing to happen to me because I can research everything and
I can communicate with people without being around people. Does that sound strange?
I love animals of all kinds and shapes except snakes and spiders. There was a little
mouse in the house this winter that would come out from under the fridge and grab some
food out of the dog food bowl and scurry back under the fridge. It was cute, but the cats
became aware of it and that was the end. I have five cats and five dogs and a tendency to
bring home anything I find by the side of the road, which drives Jack up the wall for a
day or so. But then he becomes involved with them and they get to stay.
I can’t handle stupidity in adults. Children can be taught, but adults ought to
know better. I also can’t handle rudeness or crudeness. I guess I am at the age where
life is so precious and each day is so important and I know there isn’t enough time
left for me to learn all I would like to know, or do all I would like to do that I have a
tendency to tune out the negative. I enjoy a good discussion, but once I get something in
my head, until it is proved to my satisfaction to be wrong, it stays there. I like to hear
anybody’s opinions, but I won’t be reduced to pettiness.
As I said, I was born and raised in the East—Washington, D. C., Maryland, Virginia
and Kentucky. I came to Oklahoma when I was 16, then moved to California, married and had
two children. I came back to Oklahoma when I was about 22 or 23, and have been here ever
since. I love Oklahoma, especially the mid-eastern part where I now live. I love the
country, being near a lake in the mountains, or what we call mountains. Actually,
they’re more like foothills when you compare them with real mountains.
I have been married 3 times before Jack. I always say I had to kiss a lot of frogs
before I found my prince.
When I was younger I was very naive and believed everything anyone told me. God, I was
gullible. But through trial and error, and a lot of hurt, I learned. Now, I just stand
back and take in the whole situation and form my own opinions. I am a recovering
alcoholic, dry for 11 years and enjoying each and every day, one day at a time.
TRILLE
Editor’s note:
Trille’s real name is Christine Armas. Though I hate to admit it, I allowed Tiger to
define this brave and gifted woman for me before I learned that I’d been had. Only
after I came within an eyelash of joining the cyberspace equivalent of a lynch mob for a
verbal outrage she had supposedly committed against the group did I read the primary
document for myself. Her words had been taken out of context and rephrased to mean the
exact opposite of what she said. It happened routinely. Why? Because she wrote in bold
type, replied to the OJG’s in kind, never minced words, and said "crazy
things" like, "O.J. COULDN’T HAVE DONE IT, YOU DUMMIES!" Why was she
so emphatic? Because she has a strong sense of justice and she’d done her homework
better than the rest of us. She said what she did because she knew it was true. You are
going to read some rough exchanges between Trille and Tiger, so rough you may believe that
the two of them could never be friends. If I could show you a true representative sample
of what Tiger is like when the subject is not O.J., you’d understand how unnatural it
is for them to be anything other than friends—which they are today.
I remember when I first came back to this country. I was actually born here, but my
mother took me to Denmark when I was a baby and I didn’t speak any English when I
came back in 1954. You have no idea how bad it was. People talk about how beautiful
Washington, DC was and is. Bullshit. Even then, it was awful and racist.
There were no blacks in my schools in Montgomery County just outside DC. An incident
happened after the schools were integrated, say, 1958 or ’59. This girl was so
popular; she was the class princess for some kind of stupid dance or some other function,
and everyone thought she was wonderful. Her name was Sally. Sally sat right behind John
T., the only black kid in our class. We had maybe 5 black kids in the entire school, and
she didn’t want to sit behind him—so she moved my desk so I would sit behind
him.
I threw my whole notebook at her, and papers went flying all over the class.
Well, I was taken to the principal and a big to-do was made out of what I did, but they
never called my mother, and they never did anything, and they dropped the whole thing like
a hot potato. Now, I don’t want to make myself better than I am, and to this day, I
remember being mad at Sally also because I was treated very badly, sort of like the
blacks. I was despised, sort of like here by Tiger and Lion and Rhino, it sure brings back
memories, but I don’t know if my motives were totally "pure." Was I mad
just at her racism, or was I mad because she thought I was "fit" to sit behind
John T.!? To this day, I don’t really know. One thing is for sure; that must have
been awful for John T. and all the other black kids.
I met one of the black kids from high school at our 20th reunion. Joe High was the only
black man at the reunion. I recognized him, but asked him if he was Joe High. He said, who
else could he be, that he was the only black kid to graduate from B.C.C; that is, Bethesda
Chevy Chase, class of 1963. He apparently had heard about the incident I mentioned because
he brought it up. I still don’t know exactly what I was thinking, but is it fair to
put kids in that kind of a situation? Is it fair for the black kids to suffer that kind of
indignity and for someone like me who was, to the white kids’ thinking, sort of
black—that is white but different...lesser, sort of like the blacks?
People describe those times as the "good old days."
My ass! Those were the bad, horrible old days.
I will never forget what I saw when my father and I drove from Washington to Florida in
the fall of ’54. What I saw in the South during that trip is burned in my mind, the
poverty, the indignity, the horror of the separatism, the mindset of the people. I thought
that all that "hippie movement" would do away with this racism, the ’60s
and all that movement to equal rights, the Peace Corps, etc. When I heard the hollering of
the people at that courthouse in Santa Monica, I knew that nothing had changed.
TROOPER
That’s me, the chief cook
and bottle washer of this project. Today is my birthday. It’s also the birthday of
the CIA, but don’t hold that against me. I believe that a truly just cause has to be
fought in the open where all can see and judge for themselves. No one can be right all the
time about everything. And you can’t always know if you’re right or wrong if you
don’t share what you think.
My name is Jasper Garrison. I’m a divorced father of 2 great kids and grandfather
of 4. I was born on July 26, 1946, in Ypsilanti, Michigan. I was raised in Detroit with my
older brother George, who now supervises Detroit Police homicide detectives, and my
cousin, Sara, who is now a secretary with Ford Motor Co. My parents, John Arthur and Ora
Juanita Garrison, were born and raised on farms in South Carolina with 11 other siblings.
Both knew what it was to pick cotton and to push a plow behind a mule. Still, my mother
completed high school and my father earned a college degree. They met during World War II
in Detroit, where they came as refugees from the Jim Crow South.
Despite his education, imagination and drive, my father was denied employment equal to
his qualifications in the Detroit metropolitan area’s racially segregated economy.
One look, and the men in charge "knew" he couldn’t cut it. He was one of
many conscientious people on the Ford assembly line in the 1950’s and ’60s who
took issue with management indifference to quality and worked secretly to build better
cars whenever possible. To earn extra money, he cut hair and painted houses.
He died suddenly of high blood pressure on Father’s Day, 1966. He was 51. My
mother died bravely and defiantly of cancer at 57, a week before Mother’s Day. By all
rights, I should have died in Vietnam on Good Friday, 1971, when I was 24.
When I was in high school, I joined the Army Reserves on the condition that I would
begin basic training after my graduation in the spring of ’64. At that age, big
names, big titles and expensive suits impressed me. High-ranking officers in the Reserves
were the men who wore the expensive suits in civilian life as high-ranking executives for
major corporations. As a 17-year-old private, I trembled before the superior intellect of
these men with the oak leaves or eagles on their collars. The only man in the 70th
Training Division with a star, was like a god.
All of that changed two years later when I found myself, an acting buck sergeant, in a
strategy meeting at Ft. Leonard Wood, MO, with the highest echelon of officers in the
division. They had to have done much to get where they were, but they had only the
fuzziest notion of how to arrive at where they wanted to go next. If it wasn’t in a
manual, they couldn’t do it. If it was in a manual, they asked me where to find it.
When it became clear that I knew more about what was going on than any of them did, I was
never again impressed by symbols of authority alone.
IQ scores say something about performance, if only that those with exceedingly high
ones did exceedingly well one day on a battery of tests that some people revere. Like the
other OJI’s without a college degree to speak for my "candle power," I do
have an unwieldy IQ. Without it and the help of my friends, I would not have been allowed
to show what I could do in the field of automotive design, because African-Americans were
judged on sight to be unqualified. In 1989, the head of an experimental interior studio
allowed me to create and apply a lead-time reduction process which is now used in product
development worldwide. If you’ve ever seen an ’86 Taurus, a ’93 Probe or a
’94 Mustang, you’ve seen some of my exterior work.
That’s enough about me. Now, if I can only get people to take a cold, hard look at
a racist cop named Fuhrman, and his IQ, and his friends, and his accomplishments....
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