From: Jasper
Date: 13 May 2009
Time: 11:17:11 PM
Rovaan – Challenging basic assumptions is an essential part of what a serious investigator has to do from time to time. You can’t reverse engineer an event correctly from physical evidence and statements that could bear on it if any essential element in that reconstruction is incorrect. The extent to which photos of the evidence are missing, contradictory or out of sync with the laws of physics is one problem. The extent to which pertinent testimony is missing, contradictory or out of sync with the laws of physics is another problem. .............All of these points of uncertainty require making TENTATIVE assumptions to move forward. You have to ask a hypothetical question (assuming x is true, what must follow / assuming y is true, what must follow?) Proposing a scenario in which Rachel left the blood drops on Bundy as opposed to O.J. or someone trying to frame him is something I never thought of. I’m thinking about it now. ............ The first thing I did with the Rachel hypothesis is what I do with all of them – I took it seriously. There is always something in a theory that matches some evidence and testimony. If you don’t take it seriously you can’t see where it leads – and the process of following where it leads always tells you something of value. ............. All of us who have tried to figure out where Rachel fit into the last hours of life for Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman were ultimately frustrated by unanswered questions. I ran into them again in this exercise when I was trying to determine what Rachel’s parents did to indicate whether or not her father picked her up early because she was injured. I didn’t get very far before I saw some things that did not add up to Rachel leaving the blood trail. But that wasn’t the most important thing. The most important thing is where the Rachel hypothesis leads. ................As you discovered, it leads to the defense investigator who did everything that Fuhrman, Roberts and Phillips couldn’t do to confuse key questions of who did what and when – Bill Pavelic. –Jasper