From: Jasper
Date: Saturday, April 14, 2007
Time: 12:32:50 AM
Solitairea1, …That 1997 “Reuters” interview with “Nolan” sounds like horse pucky. Was he interviewed in person or by phone? If in person, who put the reporter in touch with him? Was it an LAPD switchboard operator? Was it the West L.A. desk sergeant? Was it his supervisor Ron Phillips? Where did they meet? If by phone, did Nolan call the reporter or did the reporter call him? ………… In short, is there any independent way of verifying that “Tom Nolan” really was who Phillips, Fuhrman and Roberts said he was? If there is, I never found it. ……….. The problem was complicated for me when I wrote Iago in Brentwood by the fact that I hadn’t heard of the Reuters interview with Nolan and could find nothing about him except what Phillips said in court. Another complication was that Sawyer said in her interview wit Roberts that, “He is the only person in this debate who is still with the LAPD.” I see now that she was talking about the debate on that program between Fuhrman and Roberts on one side and Vannatter and Lange on the other side. Nolan was not part of that debate. Moreover, Fuhrman never mentioned him in his book – which was sitting on a table between Fuhrman and Sawyer hot off the press along with a Swiss Army knife, a German Stiletto and a photo of O.J.’s bathtub. ………..I thought that Fuhrman mentioned Nolan in his “startling new evidence” interview with Dianne Sawyer on 20/20 in March 1997. But when I reviewed my tape of the interview Roberts was the only witness he named to the bloody fingerprint being on the Bundy back gate. Roberts didn’t mention Nolan, either. Fuhrman’s mention of Nolan has to be in an interview that Fuhrman did later with someone else. I’ll have to look for it. ……….. In any event, I’m sure that in the interview where Fuhrman did mention Nolan he said that Brad Roberts had to remind him Nolan was even on the case because he was there so briefly. He said it as though he didn’t know the guy and never saw him again. How can that be true if they worked in the same building and Phillips had Nolan on his list of detectives to call after he called Fuhrman and Roberts? ………. That brings us to the question of why Lt. Spangler, Phillips’ boss and the supervisor of ALL West LA detectives, never mentioned him. I could not conceive of a scenario in which the supervisor of all West LA detectives wouldn’t know who Nolan was. Which led me to believe that a trainee detective named Tom Nolan was who Phillips said he was and Spangler simply had no reason to mention him because Nolan’s roll in the investigation was negligible and never came up in his questioning. ……… Now I see in the context of questioning Tom Nolan’s existence that there was a way around Spangler in putting him or someone playing the part of Nolan, on the case to hide Roberts as Fuhrman’s partner. Spangler had no reason to know or care who he was on June 13, 1994. He wasn’t a detective – not even a detective in training as you or I would think of it – because he hadn’t been to detective school yet. –Jasper