Chapter 16 Thar She Blows
Fans of The Naked Gun (88) may
have thought that the scene with Frank Drebin commenting on Jane Spencers "full
set of curves" and hair "the color of gold in old paintings" was good. But
they would not have gotten the most out of it You may know Charlotte Zucker as the bank receptionist in Ghost (90), the movie that Mark Fuhrman said he found in O.J.s VCR, and as the sperm bank nurse in The Naked Gun 33 1/3 (94). But you can get the most out of her scene in The Naked Gun only if you saw the scene it came from in Telefon (77) and Angela Lansbury (a.k.a. Mrs. Fletcher) as Army Sgt. Raymond Shaws incestuous mother and Soviet controller in The Manchurian Candidate. Fuhrman was a sergeant in the Marines. The Charles Bronson connection to Leslie Nielsen as Frank Drebin
in Police The general buzzes in a steward named Demitri and asks him to bring a
tea setting In The Naked Gun, Ludwig says to a foreign agent,
"Tell me, Mr. Pahpshmir, in Although Leslie Nielsen is not in that scene and Ricardo Montalbans hair looks more like Charles Bronsons than the generals, youd have to stretch pretty far not to see the link between The Naked Gun and Telefon. When you see so many of the same elements in two screenplays, it doesnt matter that some of them are in different places; you know where the idea in the more recent screenplay came from. To the extent that Mark Fuhrman borrowed from those screenplays in his conduct of the investigation at Bundy and Rockingham and in his accounts of what he, the killer and his victims did, you can see where he got his ideas, too. Of all the people involved in the Simpson case Mark Fuhrman is the only one who can be traced to so many characters and scenarios that first appeared on screen or television. Once you have a lineup of actors, characters and scenes that appear repeatedly in connection with something he said or did you can predict with a high degree of accuracy what youre going to see in a given context. But you have to have your information in the right order to do it. I saw Telefon on TV before and after the Bundy murders but I saw nothing special about it until In the Heat of Passion showed me how important the name Charlie Bronson was in association with the name Lee. I had always seen Telefon strictly as a variation of The Manchurian Candidate and I frankly couldnt recall a thing about it that made it worth looking at again. But the more I saw how important Angela Lansbury was as Jessica Fletcher, the more I realized how important she was as Sgt. Raymond Shaws mother in The Manchurian Candidate. That realization led me down entirely different paths, which converged in the incest component of Lee and Charlie’s relationship In the Heat of Passion. I didnt expect that it would take me to The Naked Gun. Charles Bronson appears with a star named Lee in three note-worthy
films as far as Fuhrman and O.J. are concerned. He is in Telefon with Lee Remick, The
Dirty Angie Dickinson appears with O.J. in her TV series Policewoman.
Andrew Stevens mother appears with Jim Brown in Slaughter and Shannon Tweed,
his leading lady in Night Eyes 3, appears with O.J. in 1st & Ten.
When I saw that Hasels case against Johnson is totally bogus but it ends
up getting a lot of people killed, including Hasel. You get the idea that Hasels
sexual proclivities might be like Nicoles when he surprises Adams with a forced kiss
on the mouth. You knew Believe it or not, all of this is leading to the bubble gum with adult teeth impression that Fuhrman said he found beneath some foliage in a planter near Nicoles back gate. This is the area where the money was also found. As it was with his other discoveries that were absent from photos or appeared in a way that did not make sense, the bubble gum appears in the movies and in a way that does make sense to Mark Fuhrman. Once I saw what the KGB officer meant to Jim Abrams and the Zucker
brothers in The Naked Gun I could see what he meant to Fuhrman. I rewound the Telefon With the KGB agent firmly established as the man O.J.s actions are patterned after when he kicks through the door in The Naked Gun, all thats missing from the items at Ron Goldmans feet are the glasses and the blood. There are no older womans glasses in that scene. There is an older woman. She has hidden her son so well and lied so adroitly about not knowing where he is that the KGB give up their search convinced that he has fled. His name, by the way, is Nicolai. He wears glasses. As the general and the colonel pull away in their chauffeur-driven
limo, you see Donald Pleasence as Nicolai Dalchimsky looking at them through
an upstairs Fuhrman said that the rear stuck out as far as a foot from the front. If you spin an arc in an overhead view with the point of your compass on the right-center of the right front tire and the lead on the right-center of the right rear tire, youll find that a full circle gives you one inch per degree. O.J.s rear tire was off line from the front by two degrees. Thats two inches, which means Fuhrman was off in his estimate by ten inches. He wore size 12 shoes (12 inches from toe to heel) so, just standing there, he had to know that the angle was nowhere near as great as that. But you need at least that much of an angle to explain the foot-long stick that was lying on the parkway toward the front of the vehicle. Fuhrman theorized that the stick was inadvertently picked up under
O.J.s Bronco and slung forward when the truck came to a sudden stop. Based on his
analysis of The interesting thing here is that the action takes place in Washington DC, which sits on a line about 65 degrees southeast of Detroit. The place where Fuhrman said the stick on the Rockingham parkway came from sits on a line about 65 degrees southeast of Rockingham. If you scaled down a map of the United States to superimpose Washington and Detroit over the area where Fuhrman said the stick originated and where he said it ended up youd get an extremely close match. Allowing for a deviation of as much as five degrees (thats plus or minus 2½ degrees), the odds against that "coincidence" alone are 70 to 1. You cant get a closer measurement because there is no record of precisely where Fuhrman found the match for the stick and every map is a little different. You still cant get around the alignment of South Bundy and North Rockingham and DC and Detroit. Other major cities that fall on or near that line are Pittsburgh (Diary of a Hit Man), Akron (Telefon and Needful Things), and Cleveland (Major League). All of them play a big part in movies or TV shows linked to Fuhrman. In "Murder According to Maggie" a scene that has to be rewritten because of Burt Rogers arrest involves Dana and Andy in a Cleveland sex clinic. Akron, Ohio is where Mark Peters, the third "Manchurian
Candidate" in Telefon, gets activated. The American that he has been
conditioned to think he is was born In CIA: Code Name Alexa, O.J. is an LAPD detective named Nick. Thats worth noting here for two reasons: First, because Nordberg is an LAPD detective in The Naked Gun series and Peter Lupus is Norberg who found the matches in the fourth episode of Police Squad! Secondly, in Kiss Me Deadly a mechanic named Nick dies under a car on the same kind of board as the one Nicolas lies on in Telefon which is like the one that takes Nordberg from DC to Detroit in The Naked Gun 2 ½. You see variations on the wood-caught-under-the-fleeing-vehicle theme in too many films and TV shows to count. But some of them have too many other things in common with Fuhrmans story of the stick not to count. In addition to the three I just mentioned you have to count the pilot episode of Moonlighting and In the Heat of Passion. In all but one of these cases the driver or the man under the vehicle is a murderer, a murder victim, or both. The exception is O.J. He was framed. Charlie Bronson in In The Heat of Passion, is framed and murdered. You may be able to think of something to justify accepting Fuhrmans story of the traveling sick and the traveling O.J. without respect to when, where, and how often that theme appears in the real world vs. the movies. I cant, not when its appearance in the movies includes murder, a lost glove, a dark blue knit cap and a line of flight on a Naked Gun 2½ compass heading of 65 degrees north by northwest. North by Northwest (59) has more links to the Bundy
murders than youd think unless you saw Kiss Me Deadly, Telefon and The
Naked Gun 2 ½ first. Leo G. Carroll heads an intelligence agency headquartered
in Washington D.C. He and his Anticipating his getaway plans aboard a train to Chicago, James Mason,
the brains "Anybody got a match?" is a Lauren Bacall line in To Have and Have Not almost as famous as "You know how to whistle " It is her first line. Bogart tosses her a box of stick matches. Later that evening Bacall as Marie Browning uses her cigarette and a French navel officers match to seduce him. When he strikes a match at a barroom table, unaware of her presence, she catches his hand and pulls the match to the end of her cigarette. You can almost see a fishing pole in Maries hand and a hook in the sailors mouth as she walks away and he leaps out of his seat to follow her. Youd have to have a mind as agile as a block of cheese not to see the connection between Lauren Bacalls Marie Browning and Alfred Hitchcocks direction of Eva Marie Saint in the dining car with Cary Grant. Sure, sometimes "a cigar is just a cigar," a cigarette is just a cigarette and a match is just a match . Sometimes they arent. From the instant I saw Peter Lupus as Norberg with the matchbook he
found at the sight of the exploded car, I had a nagging feeling that it was connected in
more Now whom else can you think of off the top of your head with initials as distinctive as Richard O. Thornhill (ROT)? I can think of two: O.J. and M.F. Matches mean nothing to O.J. They mean everything that matters to Fuhrmans case against O.J. and to his reputation as a great detective. According to M.F., O.J. lost a glove on South Bundy during a life/death struggle and M.F. found the match for the glove on North Rockingham. He found the fence that matched the stick and the socks with the blood that matched Nicoles. His story of his affair with Nicole and what she told him about O.J.s "escalating violence" toward her matched the profile of men who had gone on to commit murder. Look at the film and TV matches in this book, the first Smoking Gun and Iago to various aspects of Fuhrmans stories and to photos of him shooting hoops, testifying in court or posing on Bundy and Rockingham. How many matches do we have there? Too many. And we have a long way to go before were finished. Consider the name "North," as in Alan North, the original Ed
Hocking, in Police Squad! or in the title of the movie North by Northwest.
You know Fuhrmans story of the pizza menu on Nicoles coffee table and you may
recall the real pizza connection between South Bundy and North Rockingham (where she gave
a pizza One of the weapons rumored to have been used to kill Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman and found near the OHare Plaza Hotel where O.J. was staying in Chicago was an Army entrenching tool. Marie uses an entrenching tool to dig up a detonator like the one Lana Cassales uses in the "Revenge and Remorse/The Guilty Alibi" episode of Police Squad! You could say that her job was to blow something up. But when you put the words "blow" and "job" that close together with a character who bears any resemblance to Eva Mari Saint in North by Northwest (blond, female secret agent named Marie) you get something else. You get the same thing that Bonnie Britton gives you as Lana Cassales threatening to "blow the whole neighborhood ." Lana is the assassin in Police Squad! who plants the matchbook on the curb by the car she blew up to frame her ex-husband. Eva Marie Saint is on the dining car of a Chicago-bound train with frame-up victim Cary Grant when she blows out the match. Ive said enough about Ulysses Simpson Grant in previous chapters for you to see O.J. or Nicole in the name Grant without me having to draw the connections every time it comes up. On the other hand, Eva Marie Saints match-blowing scene with Cary Grant in North by Northwest always reminds me of Nicoles relationship with actor Grant Cramer and Fuhrmans misidentification of the blue knit cap as a ski mask. Nicole began an affair with Grant Cramer when she and Faye Resnick met him and Kato Kaelin on a 1992 Christmas skiing trip in Colorado. In January of that year she met Keith Zlomsowitch in his Colorado restaurant. So, clearly, there is a connection between Fuhrmans "ski" mask, Nicoles trips to Colorado and a "dining car." Goldman worked as a waiter for the bar that Keith Zlomsowitch managed in Brentwood. Nicole was a smoker so there were undoubtedly some matches involved, too. If there is something else about Cary Grants matchbook and Nicoles skiing trips to Colorado at the beginning and end of 92 that makes you think of O.J. it could be a couple of things. Fuhrmans story of finding the second glove begins with his questioning of Kato Kaelin (think, blond guy with Nicolas the Colorado assassin in Telefon). When he learns about the thumps on the wall near a window-mounted air conditioner, he goes out to investigate. In Iago, I argue that the thumps were made by Ron Shipp partly as an excuse for Fuhrman to go to the spot where his partner Brad Roberts dropped it for him to find. Cary Grant as Roger O. Thornhill tried to get Eve Kendalls attention in North by Northwest by throwing coins at her window. He finally succeeded by getting into the house and dropping his (ROT) matchbook (the matching glove) where she would find it. Remember that Roger O. Thornhill was mistaken for the fictitious George
Kaplan and that Mark Fuhrman named the boxer (bloody leather gloves) George Foreman
as his number one athlete. All of which lends itself to the discovery of the killers
wallet in The Naked Gun 2 ½ (it is a matchbook in
Remember the four coins on South Bundy (two Lincolns and two
Roosevelts)? According to Fuhrman, O.J. threw the knife he used to kill Ron and Nicole out of a window in the same alley where he said he found the wood that matched the stick. This is all very interesting considering the stylized womans torso on a pedestal next to Valerian as he stands there in his leather gloves reaching for his knife. A week before Christmas in 1990 Nicole purchased leather gloves in a New York City department store that matched the one on Bundy and the one that Fuhrman found the match for on Rockingham. Watch closely as characters in Death Hunt, Telefon, The Naked Gun series, North by Northwest, Murder, She Wrote and The Twilight Zone converge. This, I promise, will finally bring us to Fuhrmans discovery of the bubble gum. It will take us there by way of Nicoles preference for performing oral sex and Fuhrmans choice of the word "cocksucker" as his flagship of dirty words on the Laura Hart McKinney tapes. Remember Andrew Stevens as Constable Adams in Death Hunt?
Adam Williams is the sailor that Inger Stevens as Nan Adams the buyer
for a Rod Serling adapted his teleplay from a radioplay by Lucille Fletcher. A sailor in Blow Out (81) unknowingly sets up a prostitute to be murdered in a Philadelphia train stations bathroom stall (remember Lee Adams and Charlie Bronson in In the Heat of Passion. Tim Choate as Luke Phillips is Jessica Fletchers
scary-looking fan in the On top of all the movie links to Fuhrman that
brought us to this point,
the money is what makes Fuhrmans discovery of the large piece of bubble gum
on Bundy Youll never guess where the wad of bubble gum in the ten-dollar wad of money hits before it hits the floor. Then again, maybe you will because Alexander Hamilton was the first Treasury Secretary of the United States and all paper money printed by the U.S. government is green. Every denomination bears the signature of the Secretary of the Treasury, so the ten is uniquely suited to represent every American bill in circulation. In the movies incriminating items left by the killer or made to look that way include: $50 bills, a wallet, a piece of cloth folded to look like an envelope, a matchbook, a cigarette lighter, and a bronze fireplace poker. You can see at once how the bills, the wallet and the cloth folded to look like an envelope relate to money. But when you think about symbols or expressions of large sums of money you can also see where fire come in. Having "money to burn" is an old expression that means so much of it that a large amount by normal standards could go up in flames without being noticed. The classic expression of having that kind of money is the guy who lights cigars with $50 or $100 bills. The bigger the bill the greater the wealth. China Blue using the ten to dispose of her bubble gum tells you that shes better off financially than most people are (like Nicole after her divorce from O.J.). What she did with the ten could have been the same as taking a match to it depending on whether on not someone could extract the gum without damaging the bill. The Treasury Department incinerates millions of dollars in damaged bills every day. And dont forget the other evidence in the Fuhrman collection: a gun (Fuhrmans third Bundy note possible gunshot wound), a knife (Fuhrman says he found the box that the knife came out of) a golf ball marker (O.J. flew to Chicago to play golf). There are lots of gloves, some bloody (Fuhrman posed for a picture with one and found the other). There are blood trails. There is a sliver of wood, a comb, and a hat. The forensic significance of the cap on Bundy is the same as the comb
in the movies. Its the hair that comes out. Its the reason Ed Lauters
loss hair is The first five suicide assassins in Telefon have something about them that can be used to create a composite picture of Nicole Brown Simpson. The mechanic gives us a Nicolas in Colorado in January with a blond-haired guy like Kato Kaelin. The second assassin is a pilot in need of a lot of money for his business (Nicole was looking for a lot of money to go into business with Faye and Ron). His helicopter is blown out of the sky by a Navy petty officer played by an actor named Lou Brown (Nicoles father was Lou Brown). The third has the name of the only person who could have killed Nicole Simpson if it wasnt O.J. (Mark) as well as the name of the actor playing Norberg who finds the book of matches in Police Squad! (Peter), a role later assumed by O.J. The fourth is a Catholic priest in West LA. Nicole was a Catholic parishioner in West LA. Marie Wills, the middle-aged mother of two was number five. And what about Fuhrmans 89 letter that describes O.J. like a pimp and Nicole like a whore? Have we seen the last of that? Not by a long shot.
Contact the author: Jasper Garrison
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