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From: Jasper
Date: 2/13/02
Time: 9:00:14 PM
Charlie,
This is so frustrating.
There has to be some truth in McKinna's story OR Lange's report OR the AP story about McKinna and Lange's report…but where is it? Maybe it would help to know if McKinna's story or Jill Shively's came first. It might also help to know who, specifically, Shively contacted.
Both stories were reported to someone in the LAPD on June 14. Both of them reported seeing a light-colored SUV near Bundy driving erratically with its lights out (assuming the lights out part of Lange's report was accurate). Shively said that it was definitely a Bronco, that it was going north on Bundy and she recognize O.J. as the driver.
The thing that made Shively's story unacceptable to the prosecution was not the fact that she sold it to Hard Copy and lied about it. It was the inconsistency of her story with the one Marcia Clark was trying to sell -- not to mention one big inconsistency in the Shively story itself.
According to Marcia, O.J. was wearing a long-sleeve sweatshirt. Shively said that she saw O.J.'s bare arm. Marcia was trying to argue that the killing was over before 10:30 and O.J. returned to Rockingham at 10:40 or 10:45 in time to make the thumps on Kato's wall. Shively said that she left home at exactly 10:45 and arrived at the intersection near Nicole's condo where she saw O.J. between 10:48 and 10:50. She said that she was sure of the time because she traveled the rout frequently and she wanted to get to the store before 1l o'clock, which she did with exactly 8 minutes to spare. That put the time of the alleged incident closer to 10:50 - far too late for O.J. to have driven to Rockingham, made the thumps and been seen by Allan Park on the driveway four steps away from his front door at 10:52.
Now that's bad enough, but if you read Shively's testimony before the grand jury carefully you'll notice that she can't seem to make up her mind about whether the Bronco nearly hit her or she nearly hit the Bronco. If you've ever come close to hitting someone with your car or have someone hit you, you are highly unlikely to be uncertain about the hitter and the hittee. Shively's story was demonstrable BS and she was later proven to be a liar and a swindler in another case.
McKinna, on the other hand, made no apparent attempt to cash in on his story. He avoided the press and distrusted the police. We don't know the details of his story (details that we can trust) other than the description of a light colored SUV driving erratically with its lights out. We don't know which direction the vehicle was headed in, what street it was on or how the 10:35 time of the sighting was arrived at.
I have a sneaking suspicion that McKinna's story came first and Roberts had something to do with the part of Shively's story about the erratic driving and the lights being off. Lange didn't interview McKinna until a month after Roberts did and it seems unlikely that two different detectives would have been assigned to follow up on reports about a "white Bronco" near Bundy that came in on the same day. If two different detectives were assigned to the witnesses, doesn't it seem likely that they would have conferred at some point?
Any way you look at it, it comes back to Roberts - to what he did and didn't do with the information he got from McKinna.
And what about Robert Heidstra? Who did he try unsuccessfully to talk to initially about the SUV he saw going SOUTH on Bundy at 10:45? Is it possible that Heidstra, McKinna and Shively all talked to the same detective? Is it possible that McKinna said 10:45 instead of 10:35? Could he have said that the vehicle he saw was going South on Bundy? Isn't it absurd that we don't know the answers for sure? --Jasper