Murder in Brentwood (22 page)

And the defense, not surprisingly, tore it up. They called several witnesses to refute the prosecution’s timeline. Francesca Harman said she drove past Nicole’s house at 10:20 P.M. and neither saw nor heard anything. Danny Mandel and Ellen Aaronson were walking past the Bundy residence at 10:25 that evening; they said they saw and heard nothing. Denise Pilnak, one of Nicole’s neighbors, testified that the area was completely still at 10:21 and she didn’t hear the dog barking until 10:35. Robert Heidstra testified that at 10:40 P.M., he heard a male voice yelling, “Hey, hey, hey.”

The prosecution attacked the defense’s timeline witnesses, sometimes obnoxiously. Marcia Clark speculated that Mandel and Aaronson had been drinking heavily, and Chris Darden badgered Harman about listening to her car radio and watching the road, not the sidewalk. Treating these people as hostile! witnesses only made the prosecutions case appear more tenuous, even desperate. Why didn’t they use them as prosecution witnesses to establish a more workable timeline?

Another piece of evidence the prosecution refused to introduce was Vannatter and Lange’s interrogation of Simpson, weak though it may have been. His contradictory statements, his lack of an alibi, and his confusion or refusal to explain his movements or actions about events the night of the murders, in particular the cut on his finger, were never introduced in the trial. The suspect’s statements indicated at least confusion, if not guilt. But not only did Marcia not use the interview, she also fought hard to keep it entirely excluded from the trial. I understand the legal issues involved: You cannot cross-examine a statement, so it’s not the same as putting a witness on the stand. I also understand that the prosecution did not want his statement to stand as an unanswered denial of the charges. But Marcia’s often hysterical efforts to keep any mention of the interview out of the trial only made the jury suspect that the prosecution had something to hide.

Vince Bugliosi later said that with a legal pad and a hundred hours to prepare, he could have convicted Simpson on the transcript of that interview alone. Why did Marcia fight so hard to suppress it? Instead, she spent significant chunks of time arguing irrelevant and distracting details.

The defense took full advantage of Marcia’s ability to focus on the unimportant. A good example of this was the heated controversy over the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream cup found on the rear steps of the Bundy residence. A great deal of testimony and countless hours of investigation were spent on this insignificant piece of evidence, including a drawn-out debate on what flavor the ice cream was (while early speculation had inaccurately identified it as Chunky Monkey, the ice cream in question was eventually determined to be Rainforest Crunch).

If the ice cream cup was so important, why wasn’t it even checked for fingerprints? It seems strange it was not, since you’d print something in question to eliminate it as something the suspect might have touched. Because it wasn’t printed, it became an issue that the defense was able to exploit, and the prosecution spent a lot of time trying to explain. My explanation of the ice cream is simple: Nicole came home with two small children. She put the ice cream down on the stair railing to pick up one of the kids, and she never returned to pick it up.

Not only did the prosecution allow the case to get bogged down in unnecessary details, but they ignored important ones. During one of the many sessions in Chen’s office, I asked if we had a weather report for the night of the murders and the morning after. We needed ambient temperature, barometric pressure, marine layer, time of sunrise and sunset, and moon conditions. These conditions would give us a clearer picture of nighttime visibility and moisture in the air around the time of the murders and the crucial hours immediately following. If the jury, judge, defense, and prosecution were going to do a walkthrough of the crime scene, it would be helpful if we could replicate the weather and light conditions as closely as possible. This should have already been taken care of by Vannatter and Lange, as they were working an outdoor crime scene, and even if you note the weather conditions yourself-which I don’t believe they did-you still have to get the weather report to corroborate your own findings.

Cheri saw my point and ordered a weather report. But what she came up with was not anything that a juror could understand. Instead, it was filled with meteorological jargon that even an experienced detective who had often worked with weather reports could not make any sense of. I told Cheri we needed something in layman’s terms. There is no doubt Cheri pursued the request, but I never saw or heard any reference to weather in the trial.

Later on in the trial, the defense brought up questions about the degradation of evidence and the stickiness of the Rockingham glove. These claims, that the glove appeared moist because I planted it, could have been successfully countered by a clear and accurate weather report. In early summer, the coastal regions and west side of Los Angeles are often enveloped in a moist marine layer, known as “June gloom.” But without a weather report, we didn’t know the exact conditions. And the defense s questions merely caught the prosecution off guard. Once again, instead of doing things right from the beginning, the prosecution was simply waiting for holes to spring open in the dike, and then hoping they had enough spare fingers to plug them. Many of the problems the prosecution faced in this case wouldn’t have happened, or would not have become disasters, if the case had been adequately prepared and organized.

In addition to evidence missed entirely, there was also evidence apparently mishandled, which the defense exploited fully. Barry Scheck’s cross-examination of Dennis Fung, which began on April 4 and ended April 13, was tough, but his questions were mostly pertinent. Fung should have collected traces from all the blood drops that we found at the scene and were mentioned in my notes. He especially should have checked out the blood drops on the rear gate at Bundy. By returning two weeks later to collect evidence he should have gotten the first day, Fung undermined his own professional reputation, brought important evidence into question, and opened the entire investigation to valid questions about the gathering and storage of evidence. These were catastrophic errors that would have been avoided had Fung followed proper procedure, and Scheck quite properly subjected him to harsh questioning.

But while the defense could challenge the techniques by which certain evidence was collected and treated, they couldn’t question the validity of the DNA test results. Yes, there was contamination of scenes and degradation of evidence. But no matter how amateurish the mistakes of Robbery/Homicide and SID, there is no way they would have resulted in false positives linking the blood evidence to the suspects or victims.

I’m not an expert, but I know enough about DNA to understand what it can and cannot prove. DNA testing is identity specific. You arc not looking lo sec whether something is present, you’re looking to identify what you already know is there. If the samples collected by SID were so contaminated, they would have produced inconclusive results, not false positives. The fact that they produced positive identification of Simpson from imperfect samples is only a stronger indication of his guilt.

DNA is called a “genetic fingerprint,” and that is an accurate analogy. Everybody has unique fingerprints, and everyone has unique DNA. DNA testing identifies the unique genetic markers to identify a specific individual. While laypersons generally consider fingerprints to be the best form of physical evidence, DNA is even more conclusive than fingerprints. Prints are more tangible, in part because we can see them, while DNA is complex and molecular. It’s difficult to comprehend what DNA is, or even imagine it. You can’t take a human cell and examine it as easily as seeing the ridges and loops of your own fingerprint.

It’s interesting that Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld have made a career out of getting wrongfully convicted felons released from prison on DNA evidence. Their Innocence Project frees convicts whose convictions have been overturned based on DNA testing. It’s much easier putting someone into prison than it is getting them out. Many prisoners appeal convictions, but very few ever get a retrial, much less an overturned conviction. When Scheck and Neufeld are trying to free prisoners, they believe that DNA offers positive and conclusive proof. But in the Simpson trial, they did nothing but question the collection and handling of DNA evidence, not its scientific reliability.

Before he was hired by Simpson, Scheck said: “If O.J. Simpson is not the murderer, then DNA will tell us who the real killer is.” But when all the DNA evidence pointed to his client, his argument quickly shifted.

The odds of the blood found at both scenes not being O.J.’s are beyond astronomical. But some of the hair and fiber evidence was subject to challenge because of contamination. There were many human errors throughout the investigation, too many. Unfortunately, these errors were used by the defense to build a theory of racial conspiracy by an LAPD that was incompetent in gathering evidence while at the same time incredibly lucky, well-organized, and highly intelligent in planting it.

The prosecution locked itself into the theory that the Bundy murders were a case of escalating domestic abuse. This strategy was fraught with problems, not the least of which was that the jury didn’t seem too concerned about a black man beating his white wife. As Marcia kept compiling evidence documenting Simpson’s abuse of Nicole, it became obvious that this angle was going to be the motive for the murders of Nicole and Ron, even though the facts did not absolutely fit this theory.

I had personal knowledge of Simpson’s spousal abuse from a call I answered at the Rockingham estate back in 1985. Four years after being called to Rockingham on the domestic violence call, I was asked by Mike Farrell, a West LA detective who was handling the 1989 Simpson abuse case, to write a report on what I saw:

During the fall or winter of 1985 I responded to a 415 family dispute at 360 North Rockingham. Upon arrival I observed two persons in front of the estate, a black male pacing on the driveway and a white female sitting on a vehicle crying. I inquired if the persons I observed were the residents, at which time the black male stated, “Yeah, I own this, I’m O.J. Simpson!” My attention turned to the female who was sobbing and asked her if she was alright but before she could speak the black male (Simpson) interrupted saying, “she’s my wife, she’s okay!” During my conversation with the female I noted that she was sitting in front of a shattered windshield, (Mercedes-Benz, I believe) and I asked, “who broke the windshield?” with the female responding, “he did (pointing to Simpson)... He hit the windshield with a baseball bat!” Upon hearing the female’s statement, Simpson exclaimed, “I broke the windshield... it’s mine... there’s no trouble here.” I turned to the female and asked if she would like to make a report and she stated, “no.”

It seems odd to remember such an event, but it is not every day that you respond to a celebrity’s home for a family dispute. For this reason this incident was indelibly pressed in my memory.

In that incident I saw an agitated Simpson, a sobbing Nicole, and a vandalized Mercedes Benz. Yet I didn’t think that the Bundy murder case was the result of domestic violence. In fact, this was no more a case of domestic violence escalating into murder than it was a case of vandalism escalating into murder.

The prosecution characterized the Bundy murders as a domestic-violence case involving murder, not a murder case involving domestic violence. But how do you have domestic violence when the couple no longer lives together, no longer dates, and shares nothing but the custody of two children? What we do have is stalking, obsession, harassment, control, ego, and eventually murder. By forcing the case into a domestic violence theory, the prosecution was unable to draw a credible picture of what really happened that night.

What pushed Simpson from his usual behavior into a brutal murder? I always thought, and still do, that he believed Nicole had a lover, whether she did or not, and whether it was Ron Goldman or not.

Cheri Lewis and I talked about the possibility that Ron and Nicole were lovers. Whether they were overt or covert about it, they did appear to be more than just friends.

I had pertinent information on this subject. While talking to friends of mine in Brentwood, I heard them mention Ron Goldman. One lady, who wishes to remain anonymous, seemed to know Ron fairly well as a friend, and she related the following conversation to me:

The lady asked Ron, “How are things going?”

“Great,” Ron responded. “I’ve been seeing a thirty-five-year-old woman who has two kids. She has a white Ferrari. She’s really nice.”

The lady asked, “Isn’t sex with an older woman great?”

Ron replied, “Yeah, it’s great!”

I took this conversation down as a statement over two years ago. The statement was typed on an LAPD statement sheet and given to Lange and Vannatter. I have not seen it since. I assumed that it went into the homicide book, but I did not hear any mention of it after giving it to Robbery/Homicide. And the question of Ron and Nicole’s relationship was never brought up during the trial.

Imagine my surprise when I read the following in Lawrence Schiller’s book:

“An LAPD source told Pavelic that they had interviewed a beauty salon attendant who said that Ron was straight and dating an older woman with two kids, presumably Nicole.”

If any other LAPD officer had talked to my source, I would have been notified. That leads me to assume that Bill Pavelic got the information straight from the homicide book, which the defense received on discovery and passed along to the former policeman to look at very closely. One thing he neglects to mention is that the LAPD source is none other than the infamous Mark Fuhrman.

I always believed that Ron and Nicole were lovers. The atmosphere of Nicole’s home, the candles and soft music, seemed more than a coincidence. A love triangle was a stronger motive for murder than the ongoing domestic problems that Nicole and Simpson had for years.