[ Home | Contents | Search | Post | Next | Previous | Up ]
From: Jasper
Date: 4/24/02
Time: 4:24:05 AM
Rovaan,
I also went to a map sight (MapBlast) and got similar information. Their quickest route from LAX to 873 Bundy in Brentwood was the 405 north to the Santa Monica Freeway, east on Santa Monica to Bundy and north on Bundy to Dorothy. But if you look at the map you can see for yourself that the only routs you can pretty much rule out are the ones going east or west on Dorothy for a block or more.
The dog in Karpf's headlights was never a problem with me. I never thought that Kato stood in the street long enough to make it more likely than not that he would have to dodge vehicular traffic going north or south - even light traffic. The pawprints were on the sidewalk and Mrs. Tistaert saw the dog pacing back and fourth on the sidewalk between the streetlight in front of 873 Bundy and the one a few yards south of 875. Even if Karpf had picked up the dog in his headlights, loose dogs were so rare in the neighborhood that he would most likely assume that its owner was nearby and pay it no attention.
Then there's the question of defining "continuous" barking. Does "continuous" mean two or three barks per second for a half-hour or an hour and a half straight? I don't think so. How about many long chains of barking interrupted by a few seconds of quite now and then? I believe that's more like it. If a neighborhood dog actually barks for five or six minutes strait then pauses for three five or six seconds would you say that the dog ever stopped? Only if the barking stopped for more than a minute or two at a stretch.
I think that's what Heidstra meant when he said the barking was slowing down when he got to his apartment - the pauses were getting longer. If that's true, Karpf may well have heard no barking when reached the corner of Bundy and Dorothy. He may have disregarded a few barks he heard here and there as the kind of thing one normally hears.
The barking would not have been "constant" to Karpf until he had been exposed to it long enough to make an impression. It made an impression on Heidstra and Pilnak when it started because the night had been so quiet until then. Karpf didn't have that long quiet time as a frame of reference.
Again, everything points to Karpf being at the corner of Bundy and Dorothy at 10:47 (on the second half of the same minute that Heidstra turned east again to continue home) or a minute later. The time that Schwab found the dog squeezes him into that tight temporal space, unless there is something drastically wrong with Schwab's estimate of when he found the dog. He had about half as far to go to get to his house
There is NOTHING wrong with Schwab's estimate. The cop he saw in the middle of the block provided a time marker that the defense could have used if it would have helped move the clock forward by as much as five or ten minutes. I don't even think that his name came up. The only thing we know about him is his color, which would have made him easy to track down if anyone was interested. Nobody was. The prosecution had established that O.J. may have had time to commit the killings. The defenses established that maybe he didn't. Everybody was happy. --Jasper