Tom Nolan Chronology

This page was prepared over several months through the combined research efforts of Solitaria1, Rovaan, Lollie and Jasper from every known source of information on West LA "Detective" Tom Nolan. Any further information to make our knowledge on this subject more complete is welcome.

June 13, 1994: Sukru Boztepe and his wife Benita Rasmussen give statements to a detective at the West L.A. Police station about an abandoned dog leading them to the bodies of Ron Goldman and Nicole Simpson. They do not note the detective’s name. The detective who signed the report was Mark Fuhrman’s partner Brad Roberts. Detective Roberts and another detective that Boztepe and Rasmussen could not name drove the couple home on Montana St. around 5:00 a.m. where Roberts banged on the door of their building complex neighbor Steven Schwab, who found the dog on Bundy. Schwab does not get the names of the detectives, either. However, according to Ron Phillips’ testimony that he called three detectives in his West L.A Homicide unit to the scene and the presence of Phillips and Fuhrman elsewhere, the man with Roberts had to be Tom Nolan.

The first public mention of Nolan comes in Ron Phillips’ February 15, 1995 criminal trial testimony where he claims that he called Fuhrman, Roberts and four trainee detectives. He said that the first two trainees were not available and he did not recall who the fourth one was. His phone records showed that he called a fifth number before he reached Nolan and told him to meet Roberts at the station OR on the crime scene. He said it was a wrong number. He said that he believed he called Nolan on his cell pone en route to the police station to meet Fuhrman. He mentions Nolan again on the 16 and the 17th, each time only with regard to “West L.A. detectives” he called in on the case. He testified that he sent detectives (plural) FROM BUNDY to interview ONE witness before RHD detectives arrived to take over the case from West L.A. He did not name the detectives or THE witness. The only detectives he could have sent were Roberts and Nolan.

No record was presented in court of Tom Nolan ever being on Bundy. There is no record that he ever signed in or out of that location. The only mention of him being there was in Fuhrman’s March 10, 1995 testimony where he included Nolan in a crowd of detectives, lieutenants and uniformed officers standing at the corner of Bundy and Dorothy waiting for RHD detectives to arrive. Boztepe testified that he was at the police station when he was first approached by A detective and that detectives (plural) drove him and his wife home. Schwab said that two detectives he could not name were with Boztepe and Rasmussen when he answered his door at 5:00 AM. The West LA Police Station is therefore where Nolan’s first appearance on the case can be traced but only by a process of elimination.

The Montana St. housing complex where Boztepe and Schwab lived is the last place Nolan was seen no later than 5:10 a.m. Roberts was next seen two miles away on Rockingham without Nolan at 6:20. This happed about five minutes after Fuhrman announced that he found the bloody glove.

Around the first of February, 1997, pre-publication publicity for Murder in Brentwood begins  with excerpts in the Globe. One excerpt is from a chapter where Fuhrman's claim that he saw a clear fingerprint in blood on Nicole's back gate. No mention of Nolan in the excerpts.

On February 16, 1997, the book is published. No mention of Nolan anywhere  in the book.

On February 19, 1997 Dianne Sawyer interviews Fuhrman and Roberts on ABC’s Primetime Live 20/20. Roberts verified that he saw the fingerprint. Neither of them mentioned Nolan.

Later that night on MSNBC’s Geraldo, Fuhrman says that Roberts helped him with the book and reminded him that Tom Nolan saw the fingerprint in blood on Nicole’s back gate.

On February 28, 1997 Arthur Spiegelman reports from New York in a Routers wire service article that he interviewed "Detective Tom Nolan" of the West LA "forgery squad" by telephone. Spiegelman quotes "Nolan" as saying, "When I got there Mark asked me to go through the crime scene with him and pointed out various items of evidence. It appeared to be a clear print in blood. It looked like a retrievable piece of evidence and that's the name of the tune." The man calling himself Tom Nolan then told Spiegelman that he went to detective school THE NEXT DAY.

A police officer named Tom Nolan was with the LAPD on June 13, 1994. He was not a detective at that time but he was a forgery detective at West LA when Spiegelman conducted his "Tom Nolan" interview by phone in '97. It is apparent that this real person lent his name to the story that Phillips, Fuhrman and Roberts told of him being on Bundy with Fuhrman before RHD detectives arrived to take over the case. However, his account of Fuhrman showing him the fingerprint on the back gate was out of sync with any sequence of events involving Fuhrman and Roberts previously reported by anyone else, including Fuhrman, Roberts or Phillips.

Indeed, Phillips testified that he paired Nolan with Roberts. The only independent testimony (Boztepe's and Schwab's) given in the case where anyone could have been Nolan was mentioned did pair him with Roberts -- but not on Bundy. The prosecution went to great pains to show that Fuhrman could not have found a second bloody glove on Bundy, as the defense tried to argue he did, with overlapping testimony of officers who followed Fuhrman's every move from the moment he arrived on Bundy with Phillip. There was no Tom Nolan or anyone who could have been Tom Nolan in any of that testimony.

Another problem with the fingerprint story that Forgery Detective Tom Nolan told Spiegelman in 1997 was the absence of Brad Roberts.

In Murder in Brentwood (page 16) Fuhrman says he was inside the house writing his preliminary notes. "At that point my partner Brad Roberts came into the house from the garage. I gave him a general briefing before walking him through the scene." Pages 17 and 18: "...We were carefully scanning the gate with our flashlights when we were both shocked by the sight of a bloody fingerprint on the brass deadbolt lock." Fuhrman writes about the quality of the fingerprint and says he wrote those observations in his notes "...As we [Fuhrman and Roberts] walked onto the rear driveway, I pointed out the coins and the blood drops on the ground nearby." Fuhrman then recounts his conversation with Roberts about the coins and the blood drops [nothing more about the bloody fingerprint]. "Brad walked around to join Phillips in front of the house while I went back in the house to complete my notes."

This is the only point in the sequence of events following the discovery of the bloody fingerprint that Nolan could have arrived and seen it. But with Fuhrman in the house only Roberts could have shown it to him. Thus the question arises, how likely is it that this Tom Nolan would have told the story he did about Fuhrman showing him the fingerprint if he knew the real story of "his" partnership with Roberts? When you know that story, you know that the "detective" with Roberts had to be somebody else.  –Jasper