From: rovaan
Date: Saturday, May 05, 2007
Time: 12:41:19 AM
"Reuter / Arthur Spiegelman NEW YORK (Reuter) 2/28/97- Third detective says he saw fingerprint at Simpson murder scene- A second Los Angeles police officer has backed detective Mark Fuhrman's claim that a bloody fingerprint was discovered at the scene where Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman were murdered. Fuhrman, one of the most controversial figures in the Simpson case, says in his new book ``Murder in Brentwood'' that the fingerprint was found at the scene but police bungling destroyed what could have been one of the most important clues in the case. His claim has been disputed by the two chief detectives in the case, Tom Lange and Philip Vannater, and backed up by Brad Roberts, his partner at the time of the investigation. On Thursday, West Los Angeles forgery squad detective Tom Nolan said he also saw the fingerprint on the lock of the back gate at the South Bundy home where Mrs. Simpson, the former wife of football Hall of Fame member O.J. Simpson, and Goldman were murdered June 13, 1994. At the time Nolan was a member of the area's homicide squad, which for a brief period that day had control of the scene. In a telephone interview with Reuters, Nolan said, ``When I got there Mark asked me to go through the crime scene with him and pointed out various items of evidence. It appeared to be a clear print in blood. It looked like a retrievable piece of evidence and that's the name of the tune.'' He added, ``I then left the scene and the next day I was off to two weeks of detective school.'' He said he assumed, like Fuhrman did, that the print was retrieved and ``was surprised that it never materialized.'' Since his book came out two weeks ago, Fuhrman has been sparring with Vannater and Lange over his allegation that they missed the fingerprint evidence that was clearly mentioned in 2 1/2 pages of crime scene notes that he turned over to them. Vannater has said that no such print ``was seen by anybody else'' and mocked Fuhrman's claim that it was in his notes, saying that if a print was discovered a police officer would have gone to great lengths to make sure it was noticed. Lange has said, ``He (Fuhrman) is trying to crawl out of a hole and he's trying to step on us to do it.'' He was referring to the two years of accusations that were hurled at Fuhrman by attorneys for Simpson who painted the former detective as a racist and charge that he planted a bloody glove at Simpson's estate to implicate the former football star as the murderer. Simpson was found not guilty at his criminal trial of the murders but was held liable for the killings in a civil trial this year and ordered to pay more than $33 million. Fuhrman, in an interview with Reuters, said he had forgotten that Nolan was at the scene and that the detective had contacted his old partner, Roberts, to remind him. Fuhrman also said that his fingerprint discovery was mentioned at Simpson's criminal trial but the reference went unnoticed by the press covering the case. He said his notes were displayed on a large screen and he went through them verbally with prosecutor Marcia Clark. He added that since the fingerprint was lost, no one wanted to make a big deal of it. He said he was shocked that Vannater and Lange had not read his crime scene notes and that he had to leave the murder scene quickly to get to Simpson's estate and therefore was not able to do a walkthrough of the crime scene with the new detectives on the case."