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From: Jasper
Date: 7/30/03
Time: 10:58:44 AM
Remote Name: 68.73.55.245
Kari,
What you say about a restraining is just the point. Had such an order existed it would have been police business and Commander Bushey would have had access to it 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Because no such order existed, Bushey had no official way of learning about a joint custody arrangement between 12:30 a.m. (actually it was somewhere between 12:17 and 12:30) when Sgt. Rossi called him and 2:30 when he first spoke to Phillips.
Bushey must have been doing something in those two hours besides arranging for RHD to take over the case. Given the fact that the kids were at the police station, it seems to me, that he would have called around to see if he could find someone with personal knowledge of their custody status. When he learned that someone on the murder scene knew enough about Nicole to positively identify her body, it seems to me that he would have asked Phillips if that person knew if O.J. had joint custody of the kids. It would have been a practical matter of expediency and public relations.
All things considered, I think that Bushey told the truth about not wanting O.J. to hear about the murder by way of the media as John Balushi’s family had heard about his death. That incident had been a public relations disaster for the LAPD and at Bushey’s level of command, public relations would have been as big a concern to him as anything else. He wasn’t on the scene and therefore didn’t see any of the little clues that pointed to O.J. as a murder suspect.
Remember, Bushey didn’t order Vannatter, Lange, Phillips and Fuhrman to make a personal death notification to O.J. When he gave that order to Phillips, Vannatter and Lange weren’t even on the scene. He had just turned the investigation over to them and the death notification was not part of the investigation. It became a part of the investigation only because Phillips delayed making the notification until Vannatter and Lange arrived and he and Fuhrman found an excuse to accompany them to Rockingham.
I think you are right about Bushey trying to hide something on the witness stand. Like all of the other cops involved in the early part of the investigation, he tied to hide any influence that Fuhrman might have had on his actions. When he made his “joint custody” statement he simply didn’t think though the implications. Miss Marple was the first person to do that. –Jasper.