Murder in Brentwood (7 page)

Another crucial source of evidence mishandled was Simpson’s Bronco. From the moment I saw what appeared to be blood stains on the door, it was apparent that this vehicle contained important evidence. It should have been treated with extreme care, following standard procedures.

As I related in the previous chapter, when Vannatter put me in charge of the Rockingham scene, one of my first actions was to order the Bronco impounded. But Vannatter cancelled the impound and simply had two officers guard the vehicle. Because of Vannatter s decision, the Bronco sat outside for several hours with countless people around it.

The decision to leave the Bronco on a public street bothered me then and still does. Did Vannatter think he didn’t have probable cause to impound the Bronco prior to having the search warrant? That seems very odd, considering the fact that Vannatter eventually testified that he looked inside and saw blood in the Bronco. Just how much probable cause did he think he needed to impound a vehicle which he thought was connected to a crime?

When the Bronco was finally impounded, it was taken not to Parker Center, but to a contract impound lot. There, the worst that could happen did. A tow lot employee went inside the Bronco and took a receipt from the glove box for a souvenir.

The defense now could rightly argue that the evidence inside the Bronco was compromised, but it was still a stretch to call it contaminated. However, it once again looked as if we were careless or had mishandled evidence. And once again, the defense had reason to cast suspicion on the actions of the LAPD officers and their support staff.

One of the most important responsibilities of detectives at a murder scene is the handling of the bodies. They shouldn’t be moved until all evidence around them is collected or secured, and any forensic tests at the crime scene should be delayed until it is certain they will not interfere with the proper collection of evidence. While the defense argued that Vannatter and Lange should have given the medical examiner earlier access to the bodies, in this case they did the right thing. But that’s not to say the detectives were flawless in their handling of the bodies.

When I read the autopsy reports during the trial, I was surprised to learn that Lange and Vannatter didn’t have Nicole checked for semen. They reasoned that since her panties weren’t torn, the possibility of rape was almost nonexistent. That may be true, but consensual sex was still possible.

Simpson reportedly had consensual sex with Nicole many times during their separation and divorce. Ron Goldman was also rumored to have been sexually involved with Nicole. Wouldn’t it have been useful to know if Nicole had sexual intercourse just prior to her murder?

I cannot imagine not trying to acquire every piece of forensic evidence possibly available at a murder scene. It would be far better to have it, or try to obtain it, than to be criticized by the defense for not even attempting to retrieve it. The detectives simply had to request the sample be taken, and we would have been covered.

Another mistake was Tom Lange’s decision to cover Nicole’s corpse with a cotton blanket from her house. Simpson had no doubt slept over at the house occasionally. So, even though it was later argued that the blanket had been laundered the day before the murder, it was still a mistake to allow even the possibility of hair and fiber contamination.

Then there is the issue of Simpson’s blood sample. After Vannatter got a blood sample from Simpson on the afternoon of June 13, he carried it to the Rockingham scene instead of booking it as evidence. He claimed that he wanted to give the sample to Dennis Fung, so the criminalist could put it in with the other evidence. But Vannatter could just as easily have put the blood vial in an evidence envelope and stowed it in an evidence locker. When Fung returned to the station, Vannatter could have given him the blood. There was no reason for Vannatter to carry the blood back to the crime scenes, and doing so only opened him to criticism. His actions showed a lack of presence of mind, and frankly I agree with the defense for questioning them. Vannatter should have realized that in such a high-profile case his every movement would be dissected in court. If both he and Lange had simply stayed at their respective crime scenes, many of the problems eventually exploited by the defense would have been avoided.

Every crime scene is different, and the process of evidence collection changes with the conditions of each particular scene. The Bundy residence was the most challenging type of crime scene: outside, and without much room for us to move around the bodies. In any outdoor crime scene, you have to worry about wind, rain, and other factors that could degrade or destroy evidence. The entire block should have been sealed off until we had gathered every piece of evidence that we could possibly find, but we did not.

Still, these errors were minor compared to a truly tragic error by which the prosecution lost a single piece of evidence that could have put the case away that morning.

Hindsight is always 20/20, and it would not be fair to say that the Bundy crime scene would have been better served by Phillips, Roberts, and myself. But this much is certain: Had we remained in charge of the case, Brad and I would never have gone to Rockingham, Mislead, we would have stayed at Bundy and investigated the scene completely and without pause.

Remember, at the Bundy scene, Brad and I had found a bloody latent fingerprint on the north walkway gate. We both saw the print as we shined our flashlights on the other blood evidence on the gate. The print was formed in blood on the brass-plated doorknob turnstile. We both commented that it appeared to be several points in quality and very clear.

Once my preliminary walk-through of the Bundy crime scene was complete, I carefully wrote my observations, including the print on the gate, in clear, neat notes. I had a meticulous system for taking notes at crime scenes. During the first walkthrough, I noted every obvious point of evidentiary value and gave each of those items a number. As the investigation proceeded, I would make more extensive notes concerning each numbered item and use the originally assigned number to connect these notes forever to my initial observation. This system is immensely important for prioritizing evidence collection.

When the case was reassigned, I gave my notes to Ron Phillips and told him there was a fingerprint on the gate. Then Brad and I walked out to the street and waited for the RHD detectives to arrive. We felt we had done a good job and the case was just about over.

When I was turning over the Bundy crime scene to Robbery/Homicide, it never occurred to me to lead two veteran homicide detectives by the hand and show them the bloody fingerprint. It would have been an insult for me to emphasize a single piece of evidence to senior detectives. The fingerprint was clearly described right there in my notes, and I had no reason to think they wouldn’t read my notes before walking through the scene, since doing so is standard procedure. The importance of the fingerprint was obvious. Brad and I agreed completely that whoever walked down that path left bloody shoeprints, blood drops to the left side of his body, and a bloody fingerprint on the gate. The suspect just about signed his name in blood before he escaped.

Whose blood was it? At least some of it belonged to the suspect, because there was enough blood to suggest that the suspect was bleeding. A blood smudge beneath the fingerprint indicated that the suspect transferred blood, most probably from his hand or finger, onto the gate. And as he swung his hand up to open the gate, he cast droplets of blood there as well. But if we were lucky, the blood stain would include blood from the victims. By linking the victims’ blood to the suspects blood and identifying the suspect, the fingerprint could have closed the case.

Later, after Simpson was arrested, it would have been virtually impossible for him to claim that the print was left there at some prior date. The print was in blood. Simpson told Lange and Vannatter that he cut himself the night of June 12, 1994. But he also claimed he had not been at Nicole’s Bundy town-home for a week. Eleven hours after Brad and I observed the print, Simpson made these statements and locked himself to that story forever.

Standing on the street discussing the case while waiting for the RHD detectives to arrive, Brad and I felt absolutely confident that with a bloody fingerprint this case was all but solved. Sure, there might be questions or challenges. Whoever left the print might have pressed a finger into blood already there, leaving a latent print behind. But that would mean this person had been at the murder scene at some point after the murders and before the first officer arrived at approximately 12:15 A.M.

A defense attorney might argue that the print had been made by one of the first uniformed officers at the scene accidentally touching the gate. But the blood would have been drying for at least an hour and a half.

My observation of a bloody fingerprint and its recording in my contemporaneous notes also showed something else, the significance of which I had no way of knowing at that time. I had no idea whose print it was. This makes the defense’s later that I planted a bloody glove at Simpson’s Rockingham estate completely absurd. Why would I plant a glove to implicate Simpson if I already knew we had a fingerprint at the crime scene, but I didn’t know whose fingerprint it was?

Other than an eyewitness report or a confession, you can’t get a more powerful single piece of evidence than a fresh bloody fingerprint at a crime scene. Had the bloody fingerprint been properly handled and analyzed, it alone could have put the case away. But there was only superficial mention of the fingerprint at the trial. What happened to this crucial piece of evidence? Somehow, the fingerprint was lost, and so, eventually, was the case.

While Dennis Fung was at Rockingham testing the blood on the Bronco door, latent print specialists from SID were at Bundy, eager for something to do. Instead of having the latent print specialists wait until Fung returned to secure all the blood evidence, Lange had them dust the exterior and interior of Bundy for prints. Left to themselves, latent print specialists would not be concentrating on the blood evidence. In fact, they would avoid anything with the obvious indication of blood, knowing full well that their fingerprint dust would most probably contaminate that evidence. But with a fingerprint on the rear gate, the SID personnel should have been directed to photograph and inspect it.

If Lange merely told latent print specialists to print the area but did not actually supervise what they were doing, his police-work was sloppy. This might seem like a petty charge, but after all, fingerprint people are not detectives. They do not have experience with how a crime might progress, what a suspect might touch, how a crime scene might develop, or what might have taken place.

During Lange’s criminal trial testimony, he stated that he showed Fung the gate and ordered him to take blood samples from it. Lange further testified that he never checked the evidence report to make sure that this was done, and only became aware on July 3 that it hadn’t been done. At that time he observed the same blood he had asked Fung to recover.

Later in court the defense attorneys disclosed that a photograph with Fung pointing to blood on the rear gate was not taken until July 3, when he returned to get the blood he had missed. If the blood was still on the gate two weeks after the murder, the fingerprint might also have still been intact. But someone who was not specifically looking for the fingerprint probably would not have found it. At some point, the fingerprint was destroyed.

The coins found in the rear alley might also have put a bleeding O.J. Simpson at the murder scene on the night of June 12. I have been unable to find out whether those coins were ever fingerprinted, but during Lange’s testimony, his orders as to which items should be dusted for prints did not specifically include the coins.

Sometimes, important evidence can look mundane or even insignificant. Around the first of August, Ron Phillips got a call from Captain Gartland of Robbery/Homicide. Gartland explained that because it was late on a Friday afternoon, he had no one to go investigate the discovery of yet another piece of blood evidence at the Bundy scene. Nicole’s friend Ron Fischman had been over at the townhome doing some chores when he saw another blood drop which hadn’t been noticed before. Gartland asked us to see if the blood was indeed there, and to recover it if possible. Of course, we agreed and went over to Bundy. There it was, a drop of blood on the step of the north walkway, leading toward the alley gate. Ron got on the cell phone and called a criminalist and a photographer to recover the blood drop.

While we were waiting, I looked around. The planter to the side of the walkway was covered with leaves, yet I saw a flash of color among the fallen foliage. I began poking through the leaves with a pen and saw a very large piece of bubble gum with visible teeth impressions of adult molars.

“Look what I found,” I said.

“Oh, no,” Ron groaned. “Don’t do this any more. Why do you have to keep finding stuff?”

So it wasn’t exactly a bloody glove, but this piece of gum could tell us something.

“What do you expect RHD to do with it?” he asked.

“They can get a search warrant or court order, take dental impressions of O.J. Simpson, and see if they match this gum. Check it for DNA.”

The piece of gum was covered with leaves, which meant it had been there a while, anywhere between the last time the gardener visited and the night of the murders, after which the gardener had obviously not returned. If the gardener came toward the end of the week, that would close the time frame even more tightly.

Maybe it was the killer’s gum. Or maybe there was a harmless explanation for that piece of gum being there. Wouldn’t it have been nice to know either way?

The implications for the prosecution were obvious. If the gum was Simpson’s, it places him at Bundy within a week of the murders, contradicting his statement to Vannatter and Lange that he hadn’t been there for a week. For the defense, the implications were even more apparent. Could this be a different suspect? Why wasn’t the gum found during the initial investigation? Why would Fuhrman, who’s supposed to be trying to frame O.J., come up with a piece of evidence that might point to someone else?