Details, According to Fuhrman

The sequence of big things that came to the attention of Robbery/Homicide detectives on June 13, 1994 about the double homicide in Brentwood made O.J. Simpson the only plausible suspect. But if, as Fuhrman says, “Focusing on detail is what being a detective is all about,” to “put yourself in the suspect’s mind,” the details in Fuhrman’s words and actions are what you need to focus on to put yourself in the mind of another plausible suspect, Mark Fuhrman.  

Regardless of how long it takes homicide detectives to complete an investigation, the information they gather in the first 48 hours drastically skews the likely that they will solve the crime. The reasons for this time limit are not confined to perishable evidence being overlooked, lost or disposed of by the killer. They have just as much to do with the investigators' first impressions and the sequence of information they are exposed to that reinforce them.  

That’s why Fuhrman says on the last page in chapter 1 of A Simple Act of Murder: November 22, 1963, “When you focus on the evidence, a great deal of information of the JFK assassination becomes peripheral. Too many researchers have tried to solve this case backward, by first identifying a suspect and then coming up with a scenario in which that person is responsible for the assassination. That’s not the way murders are solved. Instead, a homicide detective starts at the crime scene and moves out from there, listen to the evidence ( link 1 / link 2 ) and following where it leads.”   

Note that Fuhrman is not talking about details here. On the first page of chapter 10, he says, “Sometimes one piece of evidence is enough to solve a murder. The bloody glove I found behind the guest cottage on O.J. Simpson’s Rockingham estate, which contained the blood of both victims as well as that of Simpson himself, is one example. Account for that evidence, and you solve the case. In the JFK assassination, the Magic Bullet proves either that Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy and Governor Connally or that he was framed by a larger conspiracy.”   

The Rockingham glove did contain the blood of both victims as well as O.J.’s. It also contained one limb hair consistent with a black person. The glove connected O.J.’s house to the killer but it did not put O.J.’s hand in the glove until the lining was tested. The glove with everything it contained, when, where, by whom it was found and who had access to it before it was tested goes a long way to proving that either O.J. committed the murders or he was framed in a conspiracy. Where does that evidence lead? 

The evidentiary value of the Rockingham glove was compromised by the sequence of events preceding the identification of O.J.’s blood type in the SID lab the next day. Fuhrman was the first lead investigator on Bundy where the bodies were found by a couple who were led to the scene by Nicole’s dog. Brad Roberts questioned the couple and the man who found the dog. Fuhrman posed in pictures on Bundy that showed a portion of both bodies, an envelope, a blue knit cap, a clearly defined heel print in blood and a bloody, left-hand, leather glove.

When Fuhrman was behind the “guest cottage” where he said he found the bloody, brown, right-hand, leather glove, Roberts’ whereabouts were unaccounted for. Minutes later, Roberts drove up alone in a police car and said that he saw blood inside the Bronco. He then said that he saw blood drops on the driveway going into the Rockingham gate. Vannatter said that he saw blood drops going out of the gate. He declared Rockingham a crime scene. Without a warrant he could not legally order a search of the house but declaring it a crime scene meant that the police could walk through the house and note anything in plain view. Fuhrman and Roberts went into O.J.’s bedroom where dark socks were laying on a light-colored rug – and a black leather glove in O.J.’s closet vanished. 

The missing black glove had to have many Negroid limb hairs in the lining. The Bundy glove, which had to be worn or carried to the scene when the murders were committed, had none. Nor did it have O.J.’s blood in it or on it. The Rockingham glove had it all.  As hard as it is to see with the evidence in and on it staring you in the face, the one piece of evidence sufficient to solve the case is in the wide view photo of Fuhrman pointing to the Bundy glove before the Rockingham glove was discovered.  

That photo shows every item of evidence or symbolic representation of them ultimately used in the prosecution of O.J. Simpson, including the yet-to-be discovered Rockingham glove with the blood in the notch that would be identified in the lab as O.J.’s blood type and later as O.J.’s DNA. It represents what happened on Bundy before Fuhrman, Phillips and Roberts arrived as detectives, what happened when they were on Bundy and what was going to happen on Rockingham when they were there “helping” the detectives who relieved them. The photo did not show one of Nicole’s rings, Ron’s pager, his keys or the  ankh necklace – the items that were not linked to O.J. Simpson.   

You have to untangle the chain of evidence in the pointing finger photo with the true sequence of events represented in it to separate the big things from the details. The big things are what guided the detectives who replaced Phillips, Fuhrman and Roberts. You need to examine the details thoroughly to do detective work that none of the LAPD detectives ever got around to doing.  They would have had to question obvious evidence they encountered at every turn to give any weight to the details and then take a giant leap in imagination – not logic – to go where those details led.  

The logic of trying to fit the details into the obvious would have forced them to imagine conspiracy scenarios from movies like Deadline at Dawn, The Big Clock, China Moon and Striking Distance with the killer leading the investigation. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But that’s what happens when you straighten out the timeline with a sequence of events that conforms to the laws of physics and focus on the details. 

By choosing Nicole as a victim and killing her with a maxim loss of blood, the killer insured that O.J. and blood were firmly connected in the minds of Robbery/Homicide detectives Phil Vannatter and Tom Lange before they saw her body. Put yourself in their place having been told when they got the call about the double homicide that one of the victims might be O.J. Simpson’s ex-wife.  Regardless of who the female victim proved to be, there is no way they could have driven over 30 miles from their homes to the murder scene without thinking “O.J. Simpson”. Before they got within sight of the bodies they would have smelled the blood and recognized what it was.  

They didn’t have to think of O.J. as a suspect at this point to influence how they would see him as their investigation unfolded. He was enshrined in the NFL Hall of Fame. He did color commentary for Monday Night Football. He appeared in running-through-the-airport commercials for Hertz. He stared in HBO’s 1^st & Ten and The Naked Gun movie series. They knew how tall he was. They knew he was pigeon-toed. They could “see him” behind their eyelids on the murder scene whether they wanted to or not.  

The female victim was younger than O.J. and the male victim was younger than the female. Their visible wounds screamed “RAGE KILLING!” That’s an immediate indication that the killer had a strong emotional attachment to one or both of the victims, which is hardly a leap to a conclusion. It’s a high statistical probability that homicide detectives would be incompetent to ignore. The only other category of killers that fits the classic signs of a rage killing is the psychopathic stranger. What were the odds that a psychopathic stranger would fit the obvious physical characteristics of O.J. Simpson? 

The killer left enough clear, heel-to-toe shoeprints for Vannatter and Lange to measure his shoe size on sight. Standing 6’ 2” like O.J., Vannatter, Lange or Phillips were likely to have worn shoes the same size. Fuhrman was an inch taller but he defiantly wore shoes that matched the shoeprints. The detectives could therefore measure the shoeprints with their own shoes on sight. They could approximate the height of the killer by the stride pattern and they could tell that the man who wore those shoes was pigeon-toed. Those are all minority traits pointing to O.J., the man who was already on their minds because of where the bodies were found and the possible identity of the female victim. 

The blue knit cap had to call up images of O.J. in The Naked Gun for anyone who saw the movie or the trailers. The glove was part of the picture of O.J. doing football color commentary on the sidelines in winter. Then came the positive identification of Nicole’s body followed by news that one of the West L.A. detectives had been to O.J.’s home 2 ½ miles north of the murder scene a few years earlier on a 415 – a family dispute call. 

On to Rockingham were Fuhrman and Lange noted that the Ford Bronco in front of the house north of the driveway was not parked parallel to the curb. Fuhrman concluded that it was parked “in haste” and studied it closely. He found a red spot above the door handle and a package in the storage compartment with the names “Cathy” and “Orenthal Enterprises” in direct view. Vannatter recognized Orenthal as O.J.’s first name. Orenthal Productions was his movie production company. Lange called the Brown’s home. Lou Brown answered. But as soon as Vannatter told him what happened to Nicole, Denise screamed that O.J. did it. The Rockingham glove discovery came next, then the blood inside the Bronco, the blood trail on the driveway, and the socks on the rug.  

Before sunset, the detectives had O.J. at the police station with a gashed finger on his left hand and a highly unlikely story of how he got it considering the other circumstantial blood evidence against him that went way beyond coincidence.

Testing of all the blood, hair and fiber evidence wouldn’t be completed for two months but everything necessary for O.J.’s arrest was in the prosecution’s hands, in the tabloids and over the airwaves within 48 hours. The public was given O.J.’s age (46), Nicole’s age (35), the age of the male victim (25) and a composite story of O.J. threatening Nicole with a baseball bat in 1985 and beating her in 1989. O.J.’s alibi was described as changing several times. His Bronco was described as being parked in haste with blood on it and in it. He was reported to have failed a lie detector test. The blood drops on Rockingham were identified as O.J.’s blood type and described as going into his driveway from the Bronco.  

How could any reasonable human being not picture O.J. driving from Bundy, parking the bloody Bronco in panic on Rockingham and running up his driveway with blood dripping from his cut finger?  It couldn’t be done logically in 48 hours unless you heard the story of the people at the airport and on O.J.’s plane who looked at his hands and saw no cut.  

Either O.J. left his home in the limo that took him to the airport on the night of the murders with a cut on his finger large enough to be consistent with the blood drops identified as his on Bundy or he didn’t. Focusing on that detail opens up the question of when everything that was eventually identified with O.J.’s DNA in it or on it ended up in the test samples.  It raises questions of who brought those items to the attention of Vannatter and Lange and who had access to the samples before they were tested.  

LAPD Officer Robert Riske was on Bundy for two hours before Phillips and Fuhrman joined him at 2:10. He gave them a tour of the scene pointing out evidence he observed including the cap and glove. The photographer for the LAPD, Rolf Rokahr, arrived on Bundy and started taking routine “background” shots of the property without supervision around the time Fuhrman was in the house with Brad Roberts finishing his notes. The glove was in item # 17 of his notes  

When Fuhrman completed his notes, he said that he went to the corner of Bundy and Dorothy and stood around with other officers waiting for the RHD detectives to take over. Rokahr’s mechanically numbered photo log, his foggy memory, the clear logic of the situation from a lead investigator’s point of view, and the sequence of events Rokahr described leading to the Fuhrman pointing finger photos say otherwise. Those photos had to have been taken before Vannatter and Lange arrived at 4:05 and 4:25 respectively. They had to have known it or they would have told Rokahr to photograph the evidence in them. But if they knew that day that Fuhrman’s body was in the photos blocking other evidence they would have had Rokahr photograph the evidence again – without Fuhrman. 

“Without Fuhrman,” everything and everyone within his scope of influence relative to the course of the investigation falls into orphaned fragments or collapses into a black hole.  

Without Fuhrman’s 1989 “pattern of abuse” letter to the city attorney, you don’t get a 415 police code or a bogus year of 1985 in place of the real year  of 1984. Without Fuhrman, you don’t get a murder hypothesis that begins, “...sometime after 10:00 [22:00], Nicole...” (Nicole’s Swiss Army watch was stopped at 10:03). Without Fuhrman, the Swiss Army Watch code  numbers 1:05 (1:17), 2:10 (2:22) and 7:26 on a 36 hour clock) mean nothing. Jack Webb’s character Joe Friday means nothing. Neither does the “To Serve Man” episode of the The Twilight Zone.  

Without Fuhrman you don’t get a fingerprint on a brass lock, bubblegum with adult molar impressions, cobblestone, a story that makes the parking angle of the Bronco extreme or explains where the splinted piece of wood with the nail in it next to the Bronco came from. You don’t get a Sherlock Holmes-like demonstration of logic about a hole in the wood that tracks to a rusty nail used in an old, white, picket fence. You don’t get a “pizza” menu (it was a Thai menu), a Swiss Army knife box or a detailed pen and ink drawing of both murder weapons, a Swiss Army knife and a German Stiletto.