From: Jasper
Date: 5/3/02
Time: 1:09:44 PM
Jean,
One of the things that concerned Schwab enough to flag down the cop car was the fact that the dog had an expensive collar and no tags at all. If it had ever crossed his mind that the blood on the dog's paws was human blood he would have made a point of telling the cop about it. The big thing for him was the fact that he recognized the "stray" Akita as being an expensive dog with an expensive collar and no tags…
I believed for a while that Karpf might have seen the leash that he thought he saw. Now I'm certain that he never even thought about it until he was asked about it in court. Then he assumed that it must have been there if the Akita belonged to someone in the neighborhood. By that time, he knew that the Akita belonged to Nicole (and O.J. and their kids). It was a logical assumption that could have easily attached itself to his memory of the event. When he encountered the dog, he had never seen it before and is attention was undoubtedly focused on its size, its posture and its teeth.
Don't know why I never thought of this before, but the leash and both tags had to be missing and the collar had to remain for a frame-up to work. If the tags where attached to the leash they would have gone with the leash. If they were attached to the collar the missing tags and the attached collar would have indicated that the tags were deliberately removed.
The Akita barking on top of the bodies would have frightened anybody away before they got close enough to look at the tag. But the first person who found the dog away from the bodies would have found the bodies right away. The attached collar guaranteed that the dog would eventually be tracked to the murder scene but not until the perpetrators were long gone.
For a frame-up to work the dog had to remain alive.
Just look at the impression the killer/frame-up artist had to leave of O.J. killing in a sudden rage. He kills his ex and the man he thinks could be her lover. That makes sense. He then flees in such a panic that he leaves an unprecedented trail of incriminating evidence straight from Bundy to the front gate of his house, to the front door of his house and to the guesthouse behind two gates on the sought path of the main house. He leaves all of this evidence behind because he is in a panic and he isn't thinking straight. That also makes sense…sort of. But before he leaves he kills his own dog (as well as Nicole's and their kids') to cover up his crime. That makes no sense at all.
So, here we have a situation where the killer can't kill the dog and can't let him interfere with the killings in progress and the framing to follow but he can use him to cover the sounds of the attack. Solution: Lookout with master key to Nicole's gates kidnaps dog (maybe leads him away with a toy or some goodies) and muzzles him. Lookout keeps dog in car, removes tags, then releases dog when Ron walks through gate and gate locks behind him. --Jasper