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From: Jasper
Date: 6/27/03
Time: 1:46:41 AM
Remote User:
Rose,
Thank you. You have answered all of my questions including the one about the context. I could never have done what you did without being accused of bias.
The key point for me is that Eliot did not quote Kato on this point from the tapes. He merely wrote his impression of what Kato told him. No telling how much of it came from reviewing the tape as he wrote and edited and how much from his memory and imagination. I therefore have to take what Eliot wrote about Kato with a heavy grain of salt. Now I remember why I didn’t get the book in the first place. I thought that Kato’s testimony was a much better source. Thanks to you and Miss Marple, I know it. However, Elliot’s book wasn’t a total waste. We wouldn't be focusing on this point if it was.
I have read the detectives’ testimony as well as the relevant texts from Murder in Brentwood and Evidence Dismissed several times. The fact that Eliot wrote the book from hours of taped conversation with Kato gives more weight to Vannatter and Lange’s story about being in the room with Fuhrman when he made his intoxication test. It also takes some of the fuzz out of the fact that their recollection of who asked about unusual occurrences the night before doesn’t square with Fuhrman’s. It’s clear from reading every version of the story, that Kato and Fuhrman were alone when the question of the thumps arose.
Charlie was right in thinking that Fuhrman might have subtly guided Kato into telling him about the thumps. The answer is in HOW he did it.
Kato’s first concern was that the detectives where there to tell him that O.J.’s plane had crashed. They asked him his name, what car he drove, if he lived there and if anyone else lived there – routine questions. When he told them about Arnelle all of them except Fuhrman moved to her room. That’s when Fuhrman began looking around Kato’s bungalow and asking DETAILED questions about the night before.
Fuhrman wanted to know EVERYTHING that Kato did. In Murder in Brentwood (page 30) Fuhrman says. “While I looked around the room I asked him his name, where he was last night and other routine questions (nonsense – those questions had already been asked and answered). Then Fuhrman says (page 31), “I kept asking questions in no particular logical order…” I’d always wondered why he said this until now, when I see the logic of asking DETAILED questions. Sooner or later you get a detailed chronology.
There was no need to ask if anything unusual happened the previous night. By doggedly probing for a detailed chronology of Kato’s actions, the thumps had to come out. –Jasper