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From: Jasper
Date: 9/23/00
Time: 8:19:56 PM
Maggie,
That's how I read the evidence. The barking she heard at midnight tells me that at least one of the men was a stranger. I think both of them were. And I think that they were the men Heidstra heard arguing at Bundy. We talked before at length about the significance of Chachi's barking. When we get the archives back up we can go over it.
Anyhow, the detectives didn't even arrive at Rockingham (officially) until after 5:00. Fuhrman and Roberts talked to Rosa Lopez about two hours later. They took no notes and did not bother to ask her about what she might have seen or heard the night before. She volunteered to tell Fuhrman.
A AND THEN I SAID -- AND THEN HE SAID, "WHY?" "BECAUSE LAST NIGHT, VERY LATE, I HEARD VOICES. I HEARD MEN THAT WERE TALKING IN THE BACK OF THE YARD."
Q YOU TOLD THIS DETECTIVE THAT?
A YES, SIR.
Q ALL RIGHT.
AND WHEN YOU TOLD HIM THAT, WHAT DID HE SAY, IF ANYTHING?
A AND HE ASKED ME IF I HAD HEARD A WOMAN SCREAMING OR SCREAMS OF A WOMAN AND VOICES, WOMEN VOICES.
Q AND WHAT DID YOU SAY, IF ANYTHING?
A I SAY -- I SAID NO, THEY WERE MEN….
I didn't notice this before, but if the interpretation of her words is correct, she's saying that Fuhrman suggested that she might have heard TWO women. What two women? Assuming that John was right about him being tuckered out and therefore not too sharp with his questions, the idea of two women talking and one woman screaming had to have come from somewhere and served some purpose?
Sorry John, but it doesn't sound like a spaced-out question to me. It sounds like a clear-headed, carefully calculated test of Rosa's susceptibility to suggestion. That is consistent with what he'd been doing all morning long with his bleeding killer theory, his killer jumping the fence and banging into Kato's wall theory, his blood going INTO the driveway "observation", and his gross exaggeration of the angle at which the Bronco was parked. Most of the time it worked. If at any point it hadn't he could always claim a "fatigue-induced" honest mistake. All of that is too consistent, well coordinated and useful to the real killer to be accidental.
Rosa was a valuable witness. Regardless of whether Fuhrman or Roberts were mentally prepared to question her on the 13th the learned enough to know that she should have been questioned later - unless they did learn what they wanted to know. Could she identify them or their voices? The answer was no. Ergo, nothing more to discuss. --Jasper