"HE WHO STEALS MY GOOD NAME ROBS ME OF THAT WHICH NOT ENRICHES HIM, BUT MAKES ME POOR INDEED." —William Shakespeare’s Iago telling Othello the opposite of what he thinks so he can enrich himself by robbing Othello of his good name

What do we know about the double homicide in Brentwood on June 12, 1994? How does our knowledge of the crime, the victims, the killer, the first lead detective, and the accused celebrity match up?

We know this about the crime: Ron Lyle Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson were slashed and stabbed to death in the front yard of Nicole’s condo at 875 South Bundy, Brentwood, CA. Ron had been tortured. Nicole had been nearly decapitated. The front gate was open. Blood ran down the walk. Nicole’s pet dog, Kato, joined later by the dog across the street, barked almost continuously for 20 minutes. Someone left behind clear shoeprints in blood of rare, expensive, size 12 Italian shoes sold only in 1991 and ’92 and rarely if ever worn before. The toes of the shoeprints pointed straight forward. Someone left blood-drops next to the left shoeprints, a dark blue knit cap identical to the one O.J. wore in The Naked Gun, a bloody left-hand glove with three blood-drops near the opening, and a partial fingerprint in blood on the lens of a pair of glasses.

Another set of bloody imprints consistent with common, inexpensive tennis shoes was found on the walkway, on Ron Goldman’s pants, and on the envelope that Ron brought the glasses in. Nicole’s dog left bloody paw prints heading south for 60 feet on the pavement. Ron parked a borrowed car on Dorothy near the alley, walked east to Bundy, then north to Nicole’s front gate. A couple walking south past the gate at 10:29, give or take a minute, did not see him or the bloody pawprints, nor did they see or hear the dog. There were two human earwitnesses to the crime and one human eyewitness to the probable getaway.

The dogs, according to what Mark Fuhrman said in his book, don’t count as witnesses. He said that the barking could have started long before or long after the killing was over and no one can be sure of when they heard it or what it meant...

COCHRAN: You heard this Akita start to bark?

HEIDSTRA: Oh, yeah, hysterically panicking.

COCHRAN: And you heard that at about 10:35?

HEIDSTRA: 10:35, right.

COCHRAN: Prior to that had you heard that Akita dog barking that night?

HEIDSTRA: No, not at all.

Later on, Heidstra says, "Well, I—the Akita never stopped barking. It was hysterical, barking all the time and never stopped until I reached the middle of the alley." That would imply a brief pause in the barking around 10:40, too brief to take special note of, but noticeable enough to index to the timing of what he heard next. More about that later.

Without Heidstra’s testimony, Kato’s barking might have said nothing about the time of the killing. The killer had to know that with his testimony, it gives the killing time both a start and a middle. It made time speak. Mark Fuhrman tried to slap a gag on it by tossing out the significance of when the barking began and ended. He went further.

In his criticism of Marcia Clark’s timeline, Fuhrman said, "Marcia insisted on nailing down details she had no way of proving. When you are building a timeline for a murder, you have to remain flexible. People are often wrong or contradictory in estimating time. Their watches or clocks are set differently, and their memory can be hazy. Even a coroner cannot determine the precise time of death....Marcia had enough evidence and enough witnesses to place the murders at some point between 10:00 and 10:45...."

That brings us back to guilty knowledge. 10:00 P.M. happens to be 3 minutes earlier than the time frozen on Nicole’s broken watch. The 10:30 time of the unidentified woman’s call to the Wilshire police station about the bodies pushes the end time back to the first half of the hour. 10:45 is the latest Kato could have heard the thumps. 10:45 is also the earliest the killer could have left Bundy. But note how "flexible" Fuhrman is willing to be with the timeline and why.

Under normal circumstances, one person’s guess about the time would have been as good as another’s. A killer/homicide detective would not have been concerned about conflicts in different people’s estimates of time. My brother, the homicide detective, laughed when I suggested that the time of the murders could be bracketed to within a minute of any given standard (like phone company time). He didn’t want to hear it. This was his territory. Years of experience told him that precise calculations of when someone got killed happen only in the moves. His immediate and inflexible reaction told me that as long as Fuhrman could establish a credible sequence of events in a wide enough time range, he knew in advance that he could sell the experts an otherwise unconvincing story.

Proof of Fuhrman’s sound judgment on that score lies in the fact that adult earwitnesses whose combined testimony prove O.J. could not have done what he was accused of, all believe him to be guilty. That’s all, as in, every single one, including Pilnak, Kaelin, Park and Heidstra. All the other evidence is what convinced them.

This is what the killer was banking on: As I sit here at my computer, the time on the monitor tells me that it’s 6:47 A.M. My wristwatch says 7:44 and my VCR clock says 7:42. Without looking at any of those time indicator, I would have guessed 7:40 because the last time I looked at my watch before I thought of writing this down, it was 7:35...or 6...or 7. A telephone time check tells me that my watch is 23 seconds fast.

Within that spread of 1 hour, 7 minutes and 23 seconds, I may not have known at first which time indicator was closest to the standard, but I could have systematically eliminated the ones that were farthest removed until the only deviation was 23 seconds. Then I’d adjust for the 23 seconds and the estimated time it took to check my watch after checking my monitor and I’d know to within 2 seconds when I looked at the time on all 3 devices. That’s the essence of what we’re going to do with measures of time recalled by 8 people from the night of June 12, 1994. We’re going to have a continuous 20 minute line of sound to help us.

To learn who killed Ron and Nicole, we can’t be as flexible about time as Fuhrman wants us to be. Either O.J. was at home when the killings were in progress or he wasn’t. The question is, could he have been at Bundy, a mere two miles away, slashing and stabbing two people to death? The answer is, no way in hell.

Remember the drive time exercise? Here is what happens on both ends of that drive:

Few of the reported times that Kato, the dog, started barking agree with each other. Why the barking started and why it persisted was not known until the bodies were found. Before then, it was just a bothersome noise that disturbed the peace and quiet of the neighborhood for 20 minutes or more. But, as Freed and Briggs illustrated in their book, Killing Time, that was enough to make it a reliable marker by which various scenarios can be tested.

Taking their "clock" approach a step further, we can narrow the possibilities considerably with the constant barking in or out of play when other events were reported to have happened. If we can line up an overlapping sequence of time markers and independent observers of the same event, the various times we get will either confirm or contradict the previous ones. If we can construct a long enough string of conformation, unbroken by the constant barking, we can come reasonably close to the final minute of tranquillity at 875 South Bundy.

This is not a process of choosing which witnesses you think are more credible than others. It’s a process of eliminating variables based on the observations of all eye, ear and nose witnesses with a stable reference point from which to begin (I looked at my watch because...I was listening to my car radio when I heard...I know it takes this much time to get to that point because...). If you want the truth, you can’t monkey with the minutes the way the prosecution did to get a desirable result, or assume, as the defense did, that the majority of witnesses who support your timeline are more likely to be right. You have to examine the whole, unbroken string of observations and recollections as it grows from one confirmed time to the next and see what you have in the end.

Stay with me on this; doing it is easier than explaining it.

No string of witnesses can confirm a death struggle interval that includes 10:03, the time Fuhrman gravitates toward and the time frozen on Nicole’s broken wristwatch. Since the crystal of the watch had been shattered, we can trust that Nicole did not wear it around the house or leave her house wearing it in that condition. Therefore, if the dogs’ barking is a good indication of when the killing began—which we now know it is—those who reported hearing it after 10:03, all contradict the time of the attack indicated by the broken watch.

Could she have set it that far ahead for some reason? No. Candles around the bath had been lit, the water drawn and scented. The temperature had to be just right if she intended to get in after she answered the buzzer to admit Ron Goldman. All of which indicates she was expecting someone at a specific time with whom she planned to share a romantic bath. Her hair on Goldman’s clothes and lipstick on his cheek indicate physical contact. That, in turn, combined with Cora Fischman’s testimony about Nicole’s plans for the night, says that she was expecting Ron within a few minutes of when he arrived. For that, she needed a ready reference to the correct time—her wristwatch.

Could the violent shock that broke the crystal and stopped the watch have set it that far back? No. It had to have been set back manually after her incapacitation or death. The fact that she wore her watch on her left wrist meant that she had to be sitting up or lying on her right side when it was reset. The blood and dirt on the outside of her right leg suggests that she had been lying on that side before she was found on the opposite side with the face of her watch smashed against the brick walkway.

No one sets the time of a meeting between the five-minute marks, so Nicole probably expected Ron at 10:15, 10:20, 10:25 or 10:30. The killing and the barking probably started within seconds of when Nicole let Ron inside the gate. The constant barking, therefore, rules out the 10:15 start time estimated by Pablo Fenjves and Eva Stein because an unbroken string of six reliable witnesses refutes it.

What makes them reliable is the same thing that rules out the 10:20 and 10:25 start time.

Judy Telendar and Francesca Harmon drove past the crime scene at 10:24 and 10:25, respectively, without seeing or hearing anything amiss. Phone company records and computer logs kept by Denise Pilnak, an obsessive timekeeper whom Telendar was visiting, prove that she could not have left Pilnak’s house earlier than 10:21. Ellen Aaronson and Danny Mandel confirmed Telendar and Harman’s observation. They walked past 875 South Bundy together at 10:28 (her estimate) or 10:30 (his estimate) without smelling the massive quantity of blood, without seeing the bodies, without hearing the dogs or seeing the Akita or its bloody paw prints. All of which refutes Mark Storfore’s recollection of having heard the barking dog at 10:28. If he didn’t hear it at 10:28 (Aaronson’s time) he couldn’t have heard it at 10:30 (Mandel’s time) or 10:31 (Aaronson or Mandel’s time) which was not long enough for the couple to stroll out of earshot of the barking dog.

Denise Pilnak confirmed the couple’s observation, since she heard Kato break the long quiet of the night with barking that began at 10:34 or 10:35. If Ron was expected at 10:30—which he most likely was—he was late.

Mark Fuhrman’s assertion that, "The dog’s barking is not very strong evidence to establish the time of the murders," is refuted by Robert Heidstra and Sydney Simpson. At 10:35, Heidstra took a detour through the alley east of Bundy to protect his dogs from Kato, the Akita, he heard in front barking "hysterically" as he neared the street. That’s how he wound up in back of Nicole’s condo west of Bundy around 10:40.

COCHRAN: What happens at that point?

HEIDSTRA: Well, I stood there listening to the commotion of the dog, the Akita.

COCHRAN: All right.

HEIDSTRA: For a minute or so, more than a minute, and I heard also another dog started to bark, a little black dog that the lady has in the alley [the alley east of Bundy]. The dog started to bark.

COCHRAN: A second dog starts barking?

HEIDSTRA: Oh, yeah. Crazy, too.

Then he heard a man cry, "Hey! Hey! Hey!" (not hey, hey, hey!) followed by a heated argument with another man that lasted 15-20 seconds. The dogs were barking too loud for Heidstra to make out what they were saying, but when they finished, he heard the middle gate slam. Sydney Simpson, who did not recognize either voice, heard the same men’s voices that Heidstra did. And the little black dog? What did he see just before the "Hey! Hey! Hey!" at 10:40? How about a second man entering the gate?

Probable start time for killings rounded to the nearest minute, 10:34.

Heidstra’s estimates of time up to that point can be trusted based on how long it always took him to walk his dogs to the spot where he heard the frantic barking, plus the supporting testimony of Denise Pilnak. He had seen no cars in the alley, but he did see 2 vehicles that could have been involved in the crime speeding south on Bundy at 10:45 or later.

While Dr. Lakshmanan testified that the struggle could have been as brief as a minute and a half, his expertise in this area was admittedly limited. But the most highly regarded experts in the country, Dr. Michael Baden and Dr. Henry Lee, agreed that the death struggle took much longer than the prosecution theorized. That’s because the time between the deep slash to Goldman’s throat and the deep stab to his chest was no less than five minutes, based on the condition of the wounds. Baden said that a struggle of ten minutes or more was possible.

Ten minutes of fighting? Ten minutes of fighting with a severed jugular vein? If two crackpots with nothing to lose had said something like that you could brush it off. If one of the most respected pathologists in the world says it, and the most respected forensic scientist in the world agrees, it’s a whole new ball game. Still, we don’t have to take their word for it if strong enough evidence for a short struggle says they’re wrong.

The best support for a short struggle which might have allowed O.J. time to get back to Rockingham and do everything necessary to be ready to leave for Chicago, is common experience and common sense. As Marcia Clark and Geraldo Revera have often pointed out, 2 minutes can be a long time in a contest of extreme physical exertion. The example they use of a single, two-minute round in a boxing match makes the point. You know how much can happen in one round. Moreover, anyone who has tried his hand at boxing, as I have, can tell you how unlikely an intense, continuous five or six-minute fight would have been, let alone one that lasted 10 minutes. With one contestant wielding a 6.6" blade (as opposed to a 3.5" blade) a fierce battle lasting more than three minutes is highly improbable.

What could account for such a collision of reason with the experts’ reading of evidence?

A false assumption. The contest may have ended in two minutes or less while a feckless struggle continued for as long as the killer wanted it to, with Ron too dazed from the blow on his head to ever offer any real resistance. Once the killer had him under control, he could have done anything with him or to him at his leisure until he was forced to stop. How long it took him to inflict the "control cuts" to the throat that guided his young, male, victim nowhere, depended on what else he had to do before he escaped.

The cap was most likely donated by Faye Resnick. To set O.J. up, the cap and the rare Italian shoeprints would have been more than enough. Therefore, it would not have been in the plan to leave the glove behind until O.J. cut himself and the killer needed a way to show how it could have happened at Bundy. The glove had to come off for the cut finger to work without a corresponding cut in the glove. The cap supplied a reason for the glove to come off. The control cuts on Ron, the abandoned cap and glove and the time fixed on Nicole’s watch, meant that there was more for the killer to do than fight.

One was a white, 35-year-old woman named Nicole with two children fathered by O.J. Simpson. The other was a Jewish, 25-year-old man named Ron. Ron was such a frequent visitor that one of Nicole’s neighbors thought they were married. According to Fay Resnick and Cora Fischman, they had not yet had sex with each other. They had agreed to plans made by Resnick five days earlier to have 3-way sex that evening, but Faye was in rehab, leaving just the two of them. The maid had the night off.

They were involved with Faye Resnick and Brett Cantor in seeking large sums of money. Cantor, a young nightclub owner and promoter, suffered multiple stab wounds and was nearly decapitated in Fuhrman’s west side territory the year before, around the time Phillips became the West LA Homicide Coordinator.

They had a close relationship with Keith Zlomsowitch, who was under police surveillance in Brentwood and Denver for his possible role in managing the Mezzaluna restaurants in both cities as fronts for drug trafficking.

They were under the care of the same clinical psychologist, Dr. Jennifer Ameli, a drug treatment specialist, who was later harassed and put under electronic surveillance by a group of unidentified men.

Shortly before moving to Bundy from Gretna Green (a block away) in January, ’94, Nicole feared that she was being stalked and asked O.J., among others, to watch out for her and the kids. She wasn’t imagining things. After her murder, police found a detailed log of her daily activities in the possession of a crack-smoking ex-con named William Wasz, who was already in prison for stealing Paula Barbieri’s white Toyota SUV in January.

In addition to the hard smash to Nicole’s head that was only apparent when her hair was shaved to the scalp, she had an abrasion on the right side of her forehead like the one in pictures taken of her after the ’89 incident with O.J.

Ron also received a pounding blow to his head.

30 minutes before her death, Nicole was seen by a neighbor embracing a mystery man who drove away in a white Bronco (possible source of some blue/black fibers unexplored).

The coroner did not note the 10:03 time on Nicole’s broken watch and the glass from the crystal was not collected. The face of the watch appeared in an autopsy photo. The autopsy started at 7:30 A.M. and ended shortly before 9:30 P.M. on June 14, 1994.

Though one witness who did not appear in court claims to have heard a woman scream at 10:35, no one else has confirmed it. In any event, we know that the killer silenced his victims immediately.

The three superficial cuts of no measurable depth to Nicole’s hands, could mean that they were simulated defensive wounds administered by the killer to mislead the experts. They could have been administered when she was unconscious or too dazed to put up a vigorous defense. The half-inch scratch on the back of her left hand could have happened when the crystal of her watch was shattered. If it was a setup, which Dr. Baden was not asked to speculate about, more than one interpretation may be valid.

1). The killer wore size 12 shoes. Shoeprints, not listed in the FBI files, belonged to the active killer (could not have avoided stepping in blood).

2). The killer was probably over 6’ tall (most men with size 12 shoes are).

3). The killer had a partner with a deeper, "older" voice (Heidstra heard them arguing) who was not as tall (smaller shoeprints).

4). The killer was in full control of his actions (watch hand set back, duplication of Nicole’s ’89 abrasion, multiple control cuts to Ron’s throat, and blunt force injury to Nicole’s brain tissue had to have been inflicted by a man who knew what he was doing every second).

5). The killer wanted to torture Ron Goldman and create massive blood loss (choice of weapons, severity of cuts, length of struggle, testimony of Lakshmanan, Baden and Lee).

6). The killer had ready access to the murder weapons, a German Stiletto and a Swiss Army knife (wounds consistent with both; they didn’t materialize out of nowhere).

7). The killer chose his weapons carefully. The long-bladed knife he used is ideal for close-quarter combat against two opponents. Its long tapered point and super-keen edge combines the best features of a straight razor and a dagger. The very sight of it is intimidating enough to give the user a strong psychological advantage in a fight. That is one reason such blades have always been popular with street gangs. The heavy handle and rounded brass heel gives it the added feature of a short, metal club.

All three pathologists who testified under oath in the criminal trial, agreed that he probably used a knife with a "brain basher" heel like the one displayed in Lance Ito’s court. The one Mark Fuhrman drew in his book doesn’t look as though it could have been used to deliver a blow that would leave a round, 1" x 1" bruise. That’s because the heel of the Stiletto in his drawing is tilted ever-so-slightly away from you and contrasted with the Swiss Army knife whose plastic handle looks heavier in pen and ink than the Stiletto’s brass heel. You have to see it in someone’s hand, with the heel tilted toward you, to appreciate what it can do. Though some of Goldman’s wounds were probably made with a Swiss Army knife (the egg-shaped bruise on his scalp is consistent with the use of that knife’s heel and the bruise around the deep stab wound in his chest is consistent with the blade) a cut would not necessarily have stopped Nicole where she stood; a hard smash on the head would have. The weapon Ron was hit with may have had enough force behind it to stun and disorient Ron for a critical few seconds, but it would not necessarily have put him down.

8) The killer dressed purposefully for the occasion. He came to Bundy in June with winter gloves and 2 or 3-year-old virgin dress shoes similar to the ones O.J. wore to his daughter’s dance recital. He left behind a left-hand glove and a small Naked Gun cap.

9) The killer was not bothered by the sight or smell of massive blood loss (self-evident).

10) The killer was not afraid of being seen outdoors in the act of butchering two people. He could have started in the house or taken his act inside at any time. He chose to begin the attack outdoors and stay there torturing Ron, instead. That suggests that the front gate had been closed and the dog was outside. It suggests that someone else came and went by the front gate while the active killer came and went through the middle gate.

11) The killer wanted the bodies to be found where they were photographed. There was no other reason to leave the gate wide open for a perfect view of Nicole’s body from the street. Her body could not have been better positioned for a photograph than if it had been posed by someone with a trained eye for composition.

12) The killer enjoyed the experience. At the moment in a contest of life and death when you know you have won, your sense of power and well-being is exquisite. This is why some men kept volunteering for tour after tour of duty in Vietnam. It’s why some Roman gladiators who could have won their freedom turned it down. It is a high that can easily override your better judgment and make you take foolish risks just to keep it going. The killer had no practical reason to risk detection by keeping Ron on his feet for over five minutes. A "combat high" would go a long way toward explaining why he did.

13). The killer wanted to leave behind evidence of a single killer who wore rare and expensive Italian shoes, identified after a 3 month search by FBI Agent William Bodziak as Bruno Magli Lorenzos. Consider all the blood on the ground that the killer walked in. Now consider the "Hey! Hey! Hey!" that Robert Heidstra and Sydney Simpson heard a man say in a "clear voice," followed by two men arguing for 15 or 20 seconds. The victim of a stunning blow to the head cannot say anything in a "clear voice" much less put up an argument of any kind. That's why the stun technique is used to initiate a silent kill.

If you are the one with the knife and you’re wearing the only shoes that are supposed to leave bloody shoeprints, what then? What would you say to a partner who is breaking in on you unexpectedly, and screwing up your planning by not watching his step? Think of what you would say to a fellow worker who was about to walk on a floor that was still wet with varnish. "Hey! Hey! Hey!" sounds right to me.

14). The killer had specialized fighting skills. As an Army trainer fighting with pugil sticks, I always defeated two opponents with relative ease. Like anything that seems difficult or impossible when you don't know the trick, it's nowhere near as hard as it sounds when you do know the trick. The confined space and the blunt force injury to Nicole’s head, told me that a single active killer knew the same trick I did. You initiate the attack as swiftly and violently as you can and use your opponents’ concern for each other against both of them. You have complete freedom of action; they don’t.

Two knife-wielding men in that small arena at the same time would have been as dangerous to each other as they would have been to the victims. One skilled assassin with a knife in each hand is another story. The Swiss Army knife could have been one of those knives. I have good reasons to believe it was. A trained knife-fighter would use both the knife and his free hand as weapons (the knife in one hand makes the other hand a more effective weapon). Since there were no hand-inflicted injuries on either body, the perpetrator either didn’t know that or chose to use his other hand in a different way. The bruise on Ron’s skull and around the deep wound to his chest fit the Swiss Army knife too well to be a coincidence.

15). The killer was in no hurry to leave. He dragged things out, walked slowly away through a puddle of blood, doubled back, walked in more blood and left again. His feet would have been bloody enough without the extra time it took to do that.

16). The killer wasn’t worried about the dog. Even a man riding a combat high would have taken the dog into account if it represented a true danger to his mission. The dog was not hit, kicked or cut. He broke the cadence of his frantic barking only for an instant before the second dog started barking. He did no growling, snarling, yipping or in any other way show signs of being actively involved in the struggle. If he did any "plaintive wailing" he started a half-hour later than Pablo Fenjves remembered.

Robert Heidstra took his dogs through the alley because the Akita sounded excited and close to the street. But neither the killer nor his partner did anything to show that the dog was ever a problem. All of which says Kato was locked outside of the fence and either intimidated by the man who got past him during the struggle (when the little dog started barking) or fooled into thinking he was coming to the rescue.

17). The killer drove a light-colored sports utility vehicle not readily identifiable as a Jeep, a Blazer or a Bronco.

18). The killer was the spearhead of a team effort, planned and executed like a military operation, complete with intelligence gathering, recon missions, rehearsals, listening posts and logistical support. Someone had to be looking out for him at Bundy and Rockingham, and monitoring calls to 911. The conspirators would have required mobile communication devices, police scanners and, possibly, other covert observation and listening devices.

The only person who could have pulled all of this together would have to have had military training and surveillance experience. A working relationship with a para-military group like the LAPD or organized crime would have been helpful. He could have been a leader of his own little hate group like a faction of the Police Protective League. He could have been a death squad member or a hit man for the mob. He could have been a lot of things. He had to be a man with helpful contacts in the LAPD as well as "the streets" where petty criminals and crack-heads like William Wasz could be had by the dozen for a threat and a promise.

Wasz was not charged with stalking Nicole. His part in her murder, for which a record of her habits and the theft of certain items would have been essential to frame O.J., was never investigated. He could do things like that for the killer because there was no known link between them. Faye Resnick and Denise Brown could also have done those things for the same reason. Ron Shipp could have done so, too, had it not been for the clever cross-examination of Carl Douglas that linked Shipp to Fuhrman.

1). Killer: Wore size 12 shoes with Silga soles identified by FBI as Bruno Magli Lorenzos.

O.J. : Wore size 12 shoes. Did not know brand names of dress shoes. When FBI agent Bodziak identified the dominant set of imprints on the killing ground, he reported his findings to Lange and Vannatter. They knew how much the Brand X high tops O.J. had worn to the recital resembled the killer’s Lorenzos. Nevertheless, they made no attempt to see if the people who attended the recital could tell them apart.

Instead, Lange showed Dominique Brown, who was at the recital, a photo of Bruno Magli shoes in various styles, including one pair of Lorenzos. He then asked her if she’d ever seen O.J. with any of them on his feet. Naturally, she picked the Lorenzos, the closest to O.J.’s Brand X, which is what anyone who didn’t know the difference would have picked. She told Lange that she had seen O.J. in them around Easter of that year. She did not tell him they were Bruno Maglis, just that she recognized them.

Then, the logo on another style of shoes in the picture caught her eye. It was the same as the logo on the Bruno Magli pumps she had on. She showed it to Lange and told him that her dead sister Nicole bought them for herself in New York. Lange did not ask Dominique how she knew about the purchase, and made no inquiries about a possible impostor when he learned that the only store in New York that sold them, did not sell them to Nicole. The fact that Faye Resnick accompanied Nicole to New York frequently, did not play a part in the investigation.

Denise Brown also said that she’d seen O.J. in the Lorenzos. However, the entire Brown family searched every photo they could find of their much-photographed former in-law and came up empty. Then there’s the question of how Denise and Dominique could have seen O.J. in Bruno Maglis when his housekeepers never laid eyes on them in the two or three years since they were purchased.

The only other reference to O.J. in those shoes comes with too many peculiar circumstances associated with big money after O.J.’s arrest to trust their authenticity. Photos of O.J. in the shoes were supposedly taken at Rich Stadium in Buffalo, New York on September 26, 1993 by Harry Scull and E. J. Flammer. That’s 6 months before Dominique said she saw him in them and nearly 9 months before he was supposed to have worn them on the killing ground. Yet, no bystanders, no amateur photographers, no one featured in the pictures with O.J., other than Denny Lynch, was asked or volunteered to corroborate the authenticity of the photos.

The five men in the picture with O.J. were Denny Lynch, the Buffalo Bills’ PR man who told the plaintiffs but not the prosecutors about the photos, E. J. Flammer’s father, who arranged for his son to take the pictures, and three of Lynch and Flammer’s friends. None of the other men produced copies of the newsletter or testified to having them or even seeing them in ’93. The only known copies supposedly taken from the negatives in ’93 ended up in the hands of only four men; Lynch, Scull, Flammer and, Rob McCelroy, the agent for Scull and Flammer.

McCelroy was another freelance Buffalo photographer. Somehow he got $17,000 for the "Scull" photo from the National Enquirer, and paid Scull $2,500 without a peep of protest. Scull testified that McCelroy got the same amount he did—as though 50 % was a reasonable cut for an agent. The quality, quantity and timing of Flammer’s photo "discovery" made his pictures worth a fortune to Flammer. He obviously didn’t need an agent to sell his photos to the networks when he did for six or seven figures.

So, why would Flammer hire McCelroy, a fellow photographer, as his agent after that deal he made with Scull?

How is this for a not-so-wild guess: Because McCelroy’s friend, Harry Scull, wasn’t even at Rich Stadium that day, because all the photos were digitally remastered by experts to create new negatives, and because McCelroy did far more than act as an agent.

Every time O.J. left home, he was as likely as not to be photographed. If no amateur photographer on Earth snapped a shot of him in the killer’s shoes in nine months time, let alone two or three years, what are the odds that he wore them? How could the only surviving copies of a Buffalo Bills newsletter that supposedly went to hundreds of fans in ’93, all end up in the hands of Denny Lynch—the only man who could have known whether it was printed in September of ’93 or December of ’96? Why didn’t Lynch or Flammer contact the LAPD or LADA early in the criminal trial, instead of the media and Harry Scull’s lawyer late in the civil trial? What are the odds that those who stood to make a mint by saying they saw O.J. in the murderer’s shoes would be the only ones who truly did? How could O.J. have known that all of those improbabilities would apply to the photos before he labeled them fakes?

The more you study the shoes that allegedly left the bloody imprints, the more they look like deliberate approximations of Brand X—the footwear equivalent of a light-colored International Scout. Only an impromptu photo of O.J. and his daughter at the recital with a clear view of the Italian high tops he was actually wearing, stood in the way of total reliance on eyewitness testimony. The importance of that cannot be overstated. The testimony by itself would have matched the Lorenzos—missing shoes that O.J. could not have accounted for.

2). Killer: Over 6’ tall.

O.J. : 6’ 2".

3). Killer: Had partner with deeper, "older" voice.

O.J: Was accused of acting alone and leaving evidence that implicated only him.

4). Killer: In full control of his actions.

O.J. : Would have to have gone berserk and remained lucid at the same time.

5). Killer: Wanted to create terror and massive blood loss.

O.J. : No verifiable history of interest in causing terror or bloodshed.

6). Killer: Had ready access to murder weapons.

O.J. : Neither weapon was ever traced to him, though similar knives were known to have been in his possession. The only one that could have produced all of the wounds on the bodies still had the price tag on the handle and the oil on the blade that was used to sharpen it in the store. That one was purchased in California five weeks before the killings.

The second one may never have made it out of New England—if O.J. ever had it. On June 9 at a Forschner Group warehouse in Shelton, Connecticut, O.J. was handed several knives and watches in boxes of various sizes to give away. A list of exactly which knives he had was available to Lange and Vannatter, who referred to it only in the most general terms. O.J. gave the limo driver who was taking him to Long Island, the first choice of knives or watches to keep for himself. Not surprisingly after the murders, their memories of a knife O.J. allegedly took out of a box, waved menacingly, and commented about killing someone with, differs greatly.

Assuming the driver was correct, only one knife out of the 10 O.J. had in the limo could have matched any of the stab wounds on either body. However, the only Swiss Army knife box of that size reported by anyone, was reported by Mark Fuhrman and Brad Roberts. The only photo was distant, blurred and as out of place on O.J.’s bathtub as his socks were on the rug—also found by Fuhrman and Roberts. Detective Burt Luper called it a knickknack box, too small to have contained a deadly weapon. He said that he found it on O.J.’s dresser.

7). Killer: Chose weapon carefully in anticipation of a double kill.

O.J. : Couldn’t have known Ron was coming or armed himself in advance to be ready for him with a knife that could incapacitate as surely as it could kill. If he was prone to hitting Nicole and angry enough to hit her one time with something hard enough to cause brain damage, he had no reason to stop hitting her with it, no reason to change weapons.

8). Killer: Dressed purposefully for the occasion.

O.J. : At one time or another, O.J. was filmed, taped or photographed wearing something close to everything he supposedly wore to Bundy as a disguise. That disguise includes a sweatsuit and shoes that his housekeeper never saw in his closet. Moreover, there is no evidence that the blue/back fibers on Ron’s shirt came from the killer’s clothes or that the killer intended them to be identified as O.J.’s. That was Marcia Clark’s idea. O.J. could not have stored, worn or removed the clothes without shedding fibersfrom it in his Bronco, his Bentley and his house, where none were found. For all we know, the blue/black fibers on Ron’s shirt came from Marcus Allen, or the closet or drawer that Ron got the shirt from. They could have come from the killer or a uniformed police officer, or the killer in a police officer's uniform or sweatsuit, but they could not have come from O.J.

9). Killer: Not bothered by the sight or smell of blood.

O.J. : Had no experience with that kind of human bloodshed. Hard to see how he could have stayed cool with all eyes on him from LA to Chicago.

10). Killer: Not afraid of being seen.

O.J. : Could not have disguised who he was even if his body had been covered from head to toe. Height, build, gait and relationship to Nicole would have made it impossible for neighbors not to identify him, no matter how hard he tried to conceal who he was.

11). Killer: Wanted bodies found where they fell.

O.J. : No advantage in having Nicole’s body left where it was with the gate open.

12). Killer: Enjoyed what he was doing.

O.J. : No history of taking pleasure in torture and death.

13). Killer: Wanted to leave evidence of single killer and size 12 Bruno Maglis.

O.J. : Nothing to gain. Did not know brand names of dress shoes.

14). Killer: Specialized combat training.

O.J. : Had Navy SEAL advisers for a part in a television series. Not drilled in actual combat techniques. Not physically capable of the lateral movement necessary to do it. Not taught the stun technique for silent kills used on Ron and Nicole.

15). Killer: No hurry to get away.

O.J. : Had a plane to catch. Would have had a lot of tidying up to do in a short time.

16). Killer: No fear of dog’s bite or bark.

O.J. : Would have had every reason to fear dog’s bark. Had no way to hide who he was from anyone who may have seen him while investigating the barking dog.

17). Killer: Drove light-colored SUV not identifiable as a Jeep, a Blazer or a Bronco.

O.J. Drove a white Bronco.

18). Killer: Team effort; thorough knowledge of police procedures, military operations, surveillance tools and techniques.

O.J. : Had no such team, equipment or expertise.

19). Killer: Walked with toes pointed straight ahead.

1). Killer: Size 12 shoes.

MF: Size 12 shoes.

2). Killer: Over 6’ tall.

MF: 6’ 3".

3). Killer: Had partner with deeper, "older" voice.

MF: Had partner (Brad Roberts) with deeper, "older" voice.

4). Killer: In full control of his actions.

MF: Marital artist. Showed on cross-examination how cool he could be under pressure. To set O.J. up for murders that he, himself, was committing, he would have to have been in charge of his actions. One mistake could have meant a death sentence.

5). Killer: Wanted to create terror, pain and massive blood loss.

MF: Had long history of taking pleasure in the fear and suffering of others. Painted swastikas in the locker of a fellow cop who married a Jew. Told mass murder and torture stories with relish. Loved blood sports. Had long history of fascination with blood. Without the blood, there would have been no "Bruno Mali" shoes to link to O.J., no bloody glove for him to find, no TV talk show tours, no best-selling book, no downfall of a rich, popular, African-American man too popular with too many white women for a healthy racist society.

6). Killer: Had ready access to murder weapons.

MF: A former narcotics cop could have tapped men like William Wasz (the crack-smoking thief who stole Paula Barbiari’s car and stalked Nicole) to handle jobs like that at "the drop of a hat."

7). Killer: Chose weapon carefully in anticipation of a double kill.

MF: To kill Nicole, the Swiss Army knife would have been enough. But to take out Nicole and Ron silently at the same time would have required something with physical and psychological punch. The German Stiletto was perfect for the job. Mark Fuhrman had the background one would have to have to know how and when to use both ends of it and to use them effectively as two kinds of weapons, the butt to incapacitate, the blade to kill. Would not have procured a Swiss Army knife with a 3.5" blade without a specific goal. With that in mind, consider that on July 30, 1993 Brett Canter was murdered in the identical fashion as Ron and Nicole. That is, Cantor’s body combined the stabbing and slashing characteristics of Ron’s body and Nicole’s with a weapon or weapons that could have been the same.

8). Killer: Dressed purposefully for the occasion.

MF: Knowing what homicide detectives look for and how trace and fiber evidence was processed in the lab, he would have known what to wear to create whatever impression of the killer he desired without concern for exculpatory inconstancies. Trace and fiber evidence was, in fact, processed that way in the lab and presented that way in court.

9). Killer: Not bothered by the sight or smell of blood.

MF: As a Marine, he never got off the ship in Vietnam. As a homicide cop, he certainly saw a great deal of blood and gore. But not only was he comfortable with the cold blood of murder victims, he reveled in the hot blood of the kill. Enjoyed blood sports where stalking his prey was half the fun and knives were used for skinning and gutting large animals. Went bear hunting while working on his second book.

10). Killer: Not afraid of being seen.

MF: With his hands and face covered, he could have passed for O.J. Simpson.

11). Killer: Wanted bodies found where they fell.

MF: Nicole’s body was found—short dress, grisly wound and all—in a perfect pose for a "tasteful" picture in Fuhrman’s best-selling book. Ron’s body was conveniently out of sight.

12) Killer: Enjoyed what he was doing.

MF: Boasted of beating people bloody. Told police psychiatrist, Dr. David Gottlieb, about "fond memories" in the Marines of "killing and beating up people without remorse." He didn’t say that he did any of his killing in Vietnam.

13) Killer: Wanted to leave evidence of single killer and size 12 Bruno Maglis.

MF: Required evidence of single killer with size 12 Italian shoes to implicate O.J.

14). Killer: Specialized combat training.

MF: Between his military and martial arts training, few men would have been better qualified to do everything that was done to Ron and Nicole without suffering visible injuries.

15). Killer: No hurry to get away.

MF: By breaking Nicole’s watch and setting the time back to 10:03, he would have had no reason to rush if he knew that he could not be seen and thought that he could not be heard. The closed fence and a police scanner/mobile phone network would have given him a fail-safe early warning system whenever officers were dispatched. If Nicole’s neighbors hadn’t let the dog bark for so long, the prosecutors may have gone with the time on the watch. They did, in fact, ignore everyone who could testify about the barking dog so they could pin their timeline on the one who heard a dog’s "plaintive wail" at 10:15 or 10:20.

No one seems to have noticed how badly things went wrong with Park’s failure to notice the Bronco. It forced Fuhrman into incorporating the "missing Bronco" into his otherwise credible story. Marcia Clark’s argument that O.J. was able to return from Bundy without his Bronco being seen by Park locked everyone on her side into having to argue that it was not there before the limo pulled around the corner. The stick that supposedly came with it said that it had to be if O.J. had time after the killings to accidentally pick it up south of Bundy. The stick said that the killing had to have started around 10:00 when Nicole’s watch stopped. The stick, the watch, the three thumps and the Rockingham glove are all linked to the same sequence of events that include the murders at 875 South Bundy. They would have all lent credibility to each other if it hadn’t been for the prosecution’s decision to tie the start of the attack, rather than the end, to the testimony of Pablo Fenjves and Allan Park.

It’s doubtful that O.J.’s regular driver, expected at 10:40-10:45, would have missed seeing the Bronco, which was usually parked on Ashford. And there is no necessity for the Bronco, the stick and the glove to have been left where they were found at the same time or by the same person, only that they appear to have been left there at the same time by the same person. As unreliable as witnesses are about time, all MF had to be concerned about was the apparent sequence of events which included the stick that "proved" O.J. had been in the Bundy area and returned before the limousine came to get him.

16) Killer: No fear of dog’s bite or bark.

MF: Met by friendly Akita at Rockingham when he went over the fence to let the other detectives in. If he was not afraid of being bitten by one Akita, he had no reason to be afraid of being bitten by the other. As Fuhrman observed in his book, the dog’s barking could have helped to establish an end time if the prosecution had interpreted it the way Pablo Fenjves did. What he recalled, was the sound a faithful pet would have made when the violence was over, like the dog that witnessed the St. Valentine’s Day massacre. The more people who heard the sound Nicole’s dog made, the more likely it was that someone would have heard it the way Fenjves did.

17) Killer: Drove light-colored SUV not identifiable as a Jeep, a Blazer or a Bronco.

MF: Drove a pea-green and white International Harvester Scout, a light-colored sports utility vehicle not readily identifiable as a Jeep, a Blazer or a Bronco.

18) Killer: Team effort, knowledge of police procedures, military operations, surveillance tools and techniques.

MF: Worked as a member of military or quasi-military teams continuously since 1970. Served for 19 years as a Los Angeles police officer in various capacities, from patrolman, like the first officers on the Bundy murder scene, to homicide detective from 1991 through ’93. Served in a West LA gang/narcotics unit from 1985 (when he first met O.J., Nicole and Ron Shipp) to 1987. Had access to every piece of equipment necessary to communicate with conspirators and to monitor all of the victims’ movements and conversations, including O.J.’s conversation with the limo driver in Connecticut on Thursday, the 9th.

19). Killer: Walked with toes pointed straight ahead

MF: Walked naturally with his toes pointed straight ahead.

Ron Shipp fits the killer’s profile in several respects, not enough to have done everything required, but more than enough to have taken the fall for Fuhrman if the O.J. frame-up was seen for what it was. You also have to wonder about Fuhrman’s involvement as a delegate in the Police Protection League. This was a position with a considerable amount of behind-the-scenes influence in a union called a "bastion of white supremacy" by a group of black LAPD officers.

The Protective League came to Fuhrman’s aid in ’85 when he had his first run-in with Peggy York, who was then a lieutenant. He challenged her authority and won, through the intervention of a Protective League delegate. Whatever power the League had over her, it was enough to make her perjure herself in a murder case rather than tell what she knew about Mark Fuhrman when she became Captain York of Internal Affairs.

You have to wonder what that organization had to say about Ron Phillips getting the job of West LA Homicide Coordinator. You have to wonder why it happened just in time to guarantee that Fuhrman, with only 3 years as a homicide detective, would chart the course in the murder investigation of O.J. Simpson. You have to wonder about the people who chose Fuhrman to represent them at the Protection League seminar in La Quinta, California, from the morning of June 10, 1994 to the evening of June 12...or was that the evening of June 11? When was the last time you heard of a weekend seminar lasting past noon on the final day?

I have allowed for the possibility that he was telling the truth about being in La Quinta on the evening of the 12th with other Protective League delegates. Even so, his alibi stinks.