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Rokahr (related links: Change Forerunners)
The best approach to fact finding in any arena of inquiry from how to fix a leaky faucet to how to nab a killer must be inherently resistant to bias. An adversarial process is not it. A case in point is how defense attorney Peter Neufeld used 4:10 a.m. as the time Rolf Rokahr took the Fuhrman point finger photos. Neufeld based that time on the 2:48 time Rokahr said he was called to the murder scene and how long Rokahr estimated that it took him to do different things before then. Neufeld did this to show that the photos could not have been taken after Fuhrman found the glove on Rockingham and returned to Bundy “sometime after 7:00.” No one checked whether it was even possible for Rokahr’s starting time to be correct although he was consistently inconsistent with his estimates of time and duration. He varied in some places by more than two hours and independently verifiable time checks by other witnesses that should have intersected with his didn’t. The controversy of the coins grows out of the unsettled questions of who took photos of them in back of Nicole Simpson’s condo and when relative to when Rokahr took the Fuhrman pointing finger photo in front. You can answer this question with a few key witnesses and the demonstrable fact that Phillips and Fuhrman arrived on Bundy at 2:10 and left at 5:00 with detectives Vannatter and Lange. Robert Riske, LAPD patrol officer http://walraven.org/simpson/feb09.html questioned by Marcia Clark about when he let the photographer into the crime scene: A: UMM, IN THE BACK, IT WAS PROBABLY 10 OR 15 MINUTES AFTER I HAD BEEN RELIEVED BY THE DETECTIVES [2:20 or 2:25]. AND IN THE FRONT, IT WAS WHEN IT WAS STARTING TO GET DAYLIGHT [Conflict: If Riske let Rokahr into the crime scene within fifteen minutes of 2:30 either way, Rokahr could not have gotten the call at 2:48 to come to the scene. He was already there and it was still dark]. ... I BELIEVE THE PHOTOGRAPHER BEAT THE DETECTIVES THERE AND I WAS IN THE BACK PROBABLY 20 MINUTES WHEN HE CAME BACK AND STARTED TAKING PICTURES. Q: OKAY. AND TO YOUR KNOWLEDGE, HAD HE TAKEN PICTURES IN THE FRONT YET, IF YOU KNOW? A: I REALLY DON'T KNOW. Q: AFTER HE TOOK -- DID YOU SHOW HIM WHERE TO TAKE PICTURES IN THE BACK? A: I SHOWED HIM SOME BLOOD, TOLD HIM ABOUT THE ICE CREAM ON THE BANISTER AND THAT'S ABOUT IT. Q: DID YOU SHOW HIM THE CHANGE AND THE BLOOD DROPS ON THE REAR DRIVEWAY? A: YES, SO HE WOULDN'T STEP IN IT. Lt. Frank Spangler, supervisor of detectives. http://walraven.org/simpson/mar16.html Nobody asked anyone what pictures Rokahr took in the back. Riske showed the coins to Fuhrman and Phillips in a continuous tour of the courtyard and the driveway when they arrived at 2:10. Philips showed Spangler the evidence in back of the condo, including the coins, when he arrived around 2:30. Riske, who went in the house with Fuhrman, had no time to show Rokahr anything until shortly after 2:30 as Riske left through the rear. Riske recalled Spangler coming into the kitchen with Phillips while Fuhrman was there but Spangler testified, referring to Fuhrman, that he “never saw him in the house.” They could have missed each other only if Fuhrman left by the side door as Spangler came in from the rear. http://www.wagnerandson.com/images/elevat'n.jpg
Rolf Dieter Rokahr, photographer http://walraven.org/simpson/sep05.html Rokahr could not recall when he got to Bundy. His estimate ranged from midnight to 3:20 MR. NEUFELD: And approximately what time did you arrive at that location? MR. ROKAHR: We received a call at 0248 and I probably arrived around 0320. MR. NEUFELD: Sir, did you have an opportunity to review the logs of Bundy to--well, I'm sorry. Withdrawn. When you first arrived at 875 Bundy, did you immediately go see the log-in police officer? MR. ROKAHR: I could not find him where I had parked. MR. NEUFELD: And where was that that you had parked? MR. ROKAHR: I parked right on the very corner of I believe it's Bundy and Dorothy and I had to walk in back of the--the actual location to find someone who had the log. MR. NEUFELD: And when you found someone who had the log, they logged you in so to speak? MR. ROKAHR: They logged me in, yes, sir. MR. NEUFELD: And have you at any time reviewed that log prior to your testifying today? MR. ROKAHR: I have never seen that log. MR. NEUFELD: When you spoke with me yesterday, did you tell me that the time that you had arrived at 875 Bundy was approximately 3:10 in the morning? MR. ROKAHR: Could be 3:10, could be 3:20. I'm not sure. Couldn’t have been 3:10 or 3:20 according to Riske’s testimony in the murder trial and the unrebutted testimony in the civil trial that he was in a police car with a print specialist from 2:55 to somewhere around 6:30.
Sandra Claiborne, forensic print specialist http://walraven.org/simpson/jan14-97.html questioned by plaintiffs’ attorney Peter Gelblum in the civil case: Q. Now, what did you do between the time you arrived around 3:00 a.m. and around 7 a.m. when you started printing the door? [she estimated
from memory that she arrived around 3:00 and the log said 2:55] There is no place in that sequence of events with the four detectives leaving Bundy at 5:00 a.m. for Rokahr to have arrived on Bundy later than 2:55 and started working after 6:40. Claiborne had to be talking about the work he started doing when she was present. The only detective she could have seen getting Rokahr out of the car around the time she estimated was Tom Lange, who estimated that he left Rockingham for Bundy at 6:40. Although the actual time was not recorded, no account of any other detective returning to Bundy after 5:00 comes close to Claiborne’s and Lange’s. Even Fuhrman estimated that he and Phillips arrived on Bundy after 7:00 when Rokahr had finished doing whatever “the detective” directed him to do. Here again, the sequence of events by all overlapping accounts of what Rokahr did and when he did it brackets the time that he could have done it between 2:30 and 2:55. Claiborne didn’t know how long she sat with Rokahr but we know that he drove a police car to Bundy and she knew she was with him in a police car continuously until a detective (she said that she never saw Fuhrman) came and got him. She knew that she started her work at 7:00 and that she used that time to estimate when Rokahr got out of the car to do his. The sequence was the same as usual with them because of the nature of their jobs; he took the pictures and when he was finished, she dusted for prints. The attorneys working against O.J. focused on selling Fuhrman, Vannatter and Riske’s story that Rokahr took the shots of Fuhrman pointing to the Bundy glove after he found the Rockingham glove. O.J.’s attorneys focused so intently on those photos and the 4:10 time they calculated he took them that they failed to use what he said about related photos that he had to have taken earlier. Rokahr had no independent recollection of when he started working and there was no independently verifiable record of when he did anything. If there was, the attorneys for one side or the other would have presented it. Rokahr was, however, clear and consistent on the sequence of his activities. He testified that after he took Fuhrman photos, “Detective Fuhrman asked me to come around I believe it's Dorothy Street to the back of the house to show me what we have as far as a crime scene is concerned and as far as evidence is concerned.” There was little opportunity for Fuhrman to show Rokahr evidence in front of the condo and then lead him around Dorothy to the evidence in back without Susan Claiborne knowing it. The sequence gives you a time rage inside of 2:30 and 2:55. You don’t get the whole story of the glove photos without the coin photos and who took them. Is it conceivable that Rokahr did not photograph the blood drop and coins when either Riske or Fuhrman pointed them out to him? What happened to those pictures? It should be an easy question to answer, which, in turn would be the best answer to how many dimes and pennies Tom Lange actually saw on the driveway. The fact that Lange could not recall who took the coin photos presented as evidence in court strongly suggests that it was important to the people who knew the answer to concealed it. With a professional police photographer on the scene who developed his own photos there is no legitimate excuse for the quality of the coin photos shown in court. Fuhrman made sure that he was inseparable from the cap, the glove, the heel print, the envelope, the bodies, the blood and where they appeared in Rokahr’s courtyard photos. He then led Rokahr to unspecified “evidence” in the back of the condo. Yet, he complained in Murder in Brentwood that no picture of the fingerprint he said that he and Brad Roberts saw on the lock of the back gate was ever taken. He wove a tale of O.J. leaving the cap and glove in the courtyard in a panic, running to the back of the house, and while reaching for his keys, turned his pocket inside out dropping coins in the alley. In the alley? How could Mr. Details have confused a driveway with an alley? How could he have not recalled how many “coins” he saw in what denominations, heads up and heads down? How could he have not made sure that his observations were documented by the man who took the photos of him pointing to the glove? Then again, wasn’t he the detective that “mistook” the knit cap for a ski mask and a Thai menu for double pizza menus? Yes, he was. If these erroneous details didn’t mean a lot to Fuhrman they wouldn’t matter. But they do mean a lot to him. They mean a lot to how he portrayed himself in his books and his movie with the names of more Presidents and the invocation of more 22’s than are likely to have appeared in any movie before or since. And that matters considerably. –Jasper
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