From: Jasper
Date: 7/28/01
Time: 1:06:49 PM
Remote User:
Miss Marple
A lot of things aren't quite right about Fuhrman's notes. These are what he calls his "rough notes." There're are no misspellings and few technical imperfections of any kind. Even the one place where he used an arrow to insert a line about the "wht Ferrari/blk Cherokee" appears to be contrived to make the notes appear to be a little rougher.
Fuhrman explained in court that the order in which he listed various items was dictated mainly by the order in which Officer Riske relayed his observations and the things he noticed during Riske's walkthrough - but not necessarily. He said that the order in which he made the notes base on his own observations appeared at the end because that's when he made them. Again, he said that they were rough notes, intended get the relevant information down own paper while it was fresh in his mind and prioritized at a later time. He said that he was just finishing up the rough notes when he got the word that RHD was taking over the case so he never got around to making his "final" notes.
He had over twenty minutes to work on his "final" notes before Vannatter arrived on the scene. During that time he said that he stood on a corner with Phillips and other officers waiting to be relieved.
Any way you slice it, the order of items in his notes don't add up. As you said, the glove and the knit cap should have appeared higher on the list. No matter when he stopped relaying Riske's observations and started listing his own, there is no way they should have appeared dead last. And what of the bloody fingerprint? How do you bury an item like that in 16 other notes? How do you leave out who found it (Fuhrman said that Brad Roberts saw it first) and how do you fail to mention it to the man you gave your notes to, if nobody else?
Charlie wrote a long time ago (Kari recently mentioned it) that these notes were meant to be displayed. But they were also meant to be hidden in plain sight until the right time came to claim them.
When you get a chance, take a close look at where the handwriting starts on the first page. You see #21464 (the 6 looks like it was written twice on top of itself and the 4 looks like it could be a 6). That was the only indication of who wrote the notes. His name was not on the page because the number was written at the very top edge of the paper.
Another thing you'll want to pay attention to is the LAST item of evidence noted on the page. That item is "one glove." …What a coincidence! -Jasper