From: Jasper
Date: 9/3/00
Time: 1:41:06 PM
Remote Name: 209.18.31.197
Pat,
I forgot to ask you about James Willwerth. What do you think of him?
I was not at all impressed with his work in American Tragedy on the civil trial. For the most part, Schiller seemed to be as objective as he could be in chronicling the public and private facts of the criminal trial. Willwerth did a hatched job on O.J. in his report on the civil trial. He wrote it from the plaintiffs' point of view with the built-in assumption that O.J. was guilty. He described the photos of O.J. in the Lorenzos as undeniable proof of his guilt. He obviously knew nothing or cared nothing about the requirements of faking the photos and that all of the people associated with them met all of those requirements (Iago, Chapter 36).
Joe Bosco wrote A Problem of Evidence believing that O.J. was guilty of murder and the prosecution was guilty of lying, cheating and mishandling the evidence so badly that they failed to show HOW he did it. What I liked about Bosco was the fact that I had no idea he believed in his heart of hearts that O.J. had something to do with the killings until late in the book when he came out and said so. He didn't slant his presentation of the pertinent facts to fit his conclusion and he didn't pretend to be impartial. You can't ask any more than that. The thing I worry about with Joe is his search for the truth began with the idea that O.J. was behind the killings and he filtered out of consideration "little things" that pointed to Mark Fuhrman and Brad Roberts. He missed the implications of the sequence of events at Bundy altogether.
Oh, I forgot to put that in the e-mail. I can do it here.
First page of Chapter 7, Time…
Page 57-58, paragraph 3: "…Mr. Heidstra told police that while walking his do on the easement behind Nicole's condo on the night of the murders he heard a slamming of a metal gate, a loudly barking dog, a young man's voice yelling , "Hey! Hey! Hey!" and then an "older black man's voice" hollering back in angry words he could not distinguish."
Check the transcripts. You will see that the first thing that got Heidstra's attention was a barking dog ON THE STREET, a dog barking "hysterically" that he recognized by sound as Nicole's Akita. The fact that the dog was out front and seemed to Heidstra to be on the street made him alter his normal route down Bundy and go down the alley instead. When he got to the gate behind Nicole's condo about five minutes later [Kato the white Akita barking hysterically for five minutes straight), he heard another dog begin to bark. He recognized that dog by its bark as being a little black one belonging to the woman across the street from Nicole. Right after he herd the second dog he herd a young, clear voice cry, "Hey! Hey! Hey!" and a man with a "deeper, older-sounding voice" arguing back angrily. The question of the older man's race was injected by Chris Darden. Darden got his version of what Heidstra said to someone Heidstra talked to (hearsay). Heidstra denied under oath that he said that. If he couldn't' distinguish the man's words he couldn't have distinguished his color no matter what he said or thought in hindsight. What he said under oath is all he could honestly swear to.
Anyhow, this is what the sequence of events (among other things) tells me: The killer launched his attack with the Akita locked outside of the gate. The dog started barking immediately. Five minutes later - four minutes longer than the killing should have taken, the killer's lookout slipped past Kato (Kato thought he was coming to help) and the other dog, seeing the stranger began to bark along with the Akita. The killer who was wearing the size-12 Bruno Magli Lorenzos that were supposed to leave the only pair of bloody shoeprints is the one who hollered "Hey! Hey! Hey!" (what do you say when somebody is about to lean on wet paint - or step in wet blood?) His partner who was angry about the time is the one with the deeper, older-sounding voice. The gate slammed (McKenna confirmed that it was the middle gate) after the 15 or 20 seconds of arguing.
Bosco pointed out the fact that Henry Lee had discovered shoeprints of a man with a smaller foot than the man in the Bruno Maglis. For the most part the blood from Nicole's throat wound covered them up. Nicole's body was carefully posed. Mark Fuhrman's partner Brad Roberts had a smaller foot and a deeper, older-sounding voice. -Jasper