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From: Jasper
Date: 8/30/03
Time: 12:15:29 PM
Remote Name: 68.73.199.101
Charlie,
I don’t think the defense believed it was necessary to ask Ellen Aaronson and Danny Mandel (the blind date couple that walked past the condo at 10:30) whether they smelled anything. It was enough for them to establish that the couple had a good fix on the time and that they didn’t see or hear anything amiss at that time.
It seem that the detectives (LAPD and private) should have asked the couple that question. However, judging by the negative response I got when I introduced the issue on the boards I can see how they might have ignored it because its importance is so hard to sell to people who haven’t experienced it. You will recall that some people flat out refused to believe that large quantities of blood could produce a detectible odor at close proximity and nothing I said could change their minds.
In Iago, I speculated that Elsie Tistaert’s dog across the street might have seen someone going onto Nicole’s property that cause it to start barking. However, I used Clifford Linedecker’s erroneous account (O.J. A to Z, page 110) of which ally Heidstra was in to make my guess. When you pointed out that I had Heidstra in the wrong alley I realized that Tistaert’s dog didn’t start barking because of anything it detected across the street. He started barking because of Heidstra’s appearance right next to him. I didn’t think that Tistaert’s dog would react to the odor of the blood from fifty or sixty feet away.
Bundy is a petty wide street and Schwas was on the opposite side of the condo when he passed by with his dog and the Akita. Even bloodhounds, who can make fine distinctions in odors from miles away, don’t necessarily react to a particular scent in a clearly decipherable way unless they are prepped to do so. The spilled blood might have been outside of the dog’s olfactory range or he could have reacted without Schwab noticing.
A lot of things were going on with Schwab in the 800 block of Bundy. We know that his dog didn’t bark but we don’t know whether it reacted to the smell of blood because Schwab’s attention was divided between the cop he flagged down and the Akita’s odd behavior directed toward the walkways of the houses on his side of the street. While Schwab was talking to the cop or looking toward the east where the Akita was doing its thing, his dog could have been staring straight at the walkway to Nicole’s condo. –Jasper