Brad Roberts

http://smartfellowspress.com/brad_roberts_Part_1.htm    http://smartfellowspress.com/brad_roberts_2.htm

 

 

(Mint green)  Full name: Bradford Harold Roberts. Retired LAPD detective. Owner of a deep sea fishing yacht called Hatt Squad. His background prior to June 13, 1994 is too carefully hidden to have happened by chance. Most of what was known about him before 2007 came from the O.J. criminal trial, videos taken at Bundy and Rockingham on June 13, 1994 and what his West L.A. Homicide partner Mark Fuhrman wrote about him in Murder in Brentwood and said about him in TV interviews.           

 

 

Relationship to:

 

Department of Defense (military service): See Brad Roberts 2. Top Secret security clearance as an airman with the U.S. Air Force Security Service (USAFSS) stationed in Rimbach Germany in the early 1970s  

 

Air Force Intelligence (military service – see Department of Defense): Airman Roberts served in an elite intelligence gathering unit in Rimbach German whose members were selected from the top one half of one percent of all Air Force enlisted recruits. This unit’s existence was not disclosed until 2001 and none of its members were publicly identified until a former member put up a website listing many of them, including Roberts, in 2003.

 

Amy Intelligence (military service): The USAFSS enlisted personnel worked together with members of an Army intelligence unit with an Amy major above them in the military chain of command.

 

Navy Intelligence (military service): Although there was no direct link between Navy Intelligence and Roberts’ duties in Air Force Intelligence, the work of all military intelligence units was funneled to the Department of Defense. Roberts’ LAPD partner Mark Fuhrman served aboard a Navy ship during the Vietnam Wars as a Marine MP. That ship (the U.S.S. New Orleans) was involved in sensitive combat and manned space capsule recovery operations. No one could have served aboard that ship at that time without having a high level security clearance. High level security clearance alone gives Fuhrman and Roberts protection from scrutiny at the highest levels of government on any issue even remotely connected to covert government intelligence gathering operations.

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Mark Fuhrman (social and professional): Roberts became Fuhrman’s West L.A. Homicide detective partner between July and August 1993 when Fuhrman’s former partner Ron Phillips accepted the newly created position of West L.A. Homicide Coordinator. According to both Fuhrman and Roberts, they were close friends. No available record shows how far back that friendship goes or the circumstances under which they met. Fuhrman praised Roberts on a February 1997 Geraldo show for helping him to write his Murder in Brentwood book and for reminding him that Tom Nolan saw the fingerprint in blood that he and Roberts said they saw on Nicole Simpson’s back gate

 

Ron Phillips (social and professional – see Mark Fuhrman): Det. II Mark Fuhrman became the senior partner of West L.A. homicide detectives when Det. III Ron Phillips assumed the position of West L.A. Homicide Coordinator and Det. I Roberts took his place as Fuhrman’s partner. Phillips called Fuhrman at 1:05 a.m. and Fuhrman’s partner Roberts at 1:18 a.m. on June 13, 1994 to start the police investigation of the double homicide at 875 S. Bundy Dr. in Brentwood. However, in O.J.’s criminal trial, he confused the issue of who was partnered with whom by first saying that he and Fuhrman were partners and strongly implying that Roberts was partnered with “Det. Tom Nolan.”

 

Tom Nolan (professional):  West L.A. Officer Tom Noland did not begin detective school until June 14, 1994. His brief presence on the case with Roberts on June 13 served only to hide where Roberts was and what he was doing when Fuhrman announce that he found the second bloody glove on Rockingham. In a telephone interview with writer/cartoonist Art Spiegelman in March, 1997, Nolan, who was then a West L.A. Fraud detective, said that he saw the fingerprint in blood on Nicole Simpson’s back gate that Fuhrman and Roberts claimed they saw.

 

Ron Shipp (indirect): If O.J. Simpson did not make the noise Kato Kaelin heard that called Mark Fuhrman’s attention to the south path where Fuhrman reported finding the glove, the person who meets all of the unique qualifications for doing it was Shipp. If Fuhrman did not plant the glove, the only person who could have done was Fuhrman’s partner Brad Roberts.

 

Johnnie Cochran (professional): O.J.’s lead attorney for the murder trial, Johnnie Cochran, used Roberts’ reports on his interviews with the man who found Nicole’s dog and the couple who were led by the dog to the bodies to confuse the murder timeline. Cochran did not know that Fuhrman and Roberts were partners until well into his questioning of Phillips. By then, the defense was firmly committed to a scenario in which Fuhrman, in his capacity of LAPD detective, found the second bloody glove on Bundy and planted it on Rockingham.

 

Cochran used Roberts' report on his interview with Steven Schwab at 5:00 a.m. on June 13 to suggest that Nicole might have been alive after 11:00 on June 12 because Schwab initially told Roberts that he found Nicole's Akita with blood on its paws at 11:30. Instead of calling Schwab from the police station and telling him he was coming, he got Schwab out of bed by pounding on his door (as Phillips did with Kato Kaelin), telling him that the dog he found on Bundy had something to do with a murder. Then Roberts asked him when he found the dog. Initially, Schwab gave at lest three different times spanning an hour. Roberts chose 11:30 to put in his report. Later Schwab retraced his steps while walking his dog on the night of the murders and arrived at 10:55 as the time he found the Akita based on the the time he checked his watch before finding the dog and the time he got home. He contacted the West L.A. police station  to correct what he told Roberts on morning of the 13th but his correction was never noted.

 

Cochran was thus able to use Roberts' report to imply that O.J. might have had an airtight alibi because the murders could have occurred when he had witnesses that he was on Rockingham or on his way to the airport.. Coupled with Juditha Brown's initial statement that she last talked to Nicole at 11:00, Roberts' report was intended to give the jury reasonable doubt about when the murders occurred.

 

Bill Pavelic (professional – mutual affiliations): As the lead investigator for O.J. Simpson’s murder trial defense team, Bill Pavelic distinguished himself for his investigation of Robert’s partner, Mark Fuhrman. What he did, in effect, was to convince the defense team that Fuhrman had and alibi (not true), that Phillips was Fuhrman’s partner on the 13th (not true) and Det. Tom Nolan was partnered with Roberts. Nolan was not a detective at that time and Roberts was partnered, as always, with Fuhrman.

 

Paul Barresi (indirect) Barresi and Roberts served in the United States Air Force during the Vietnam War. There are no available records to show whether or not they ever crossed paths. However, Roberts and Barresi did have ties to Bill Pavelic by way of Pavelic’s “investigation” of Fuhrman, which had to include Roberts, and Pavelic’s association with Barresi in false criminal charges made against Mario Nitrini. The common denominators with Roberts, Pavelic and Barresi are Fuhrman’s private investigator as well as Barresi’s former partner Anthony Pellicano and Bill Wasz.

 

Margaret York (professional) LAPD Captain Margaret York, the wife of Judge Lace Ito who presided over the O.J. murder trial, was head of LAPD’s Internal Affairs unit when Det. Mark Fuhrman was being investigated for police misconduct. In her capacity as head of Internal Affairs she could not have investigated Fuhrman thoroughly without also investigating Roberts. At the very least, she had to know that Fuhrman and Roberts were partners during the murder investigation of O.J. Simpson when O.J.’s defense team was given the false impression by Fuhrman, Phillips and Pavelic that Roberts’ partner was Tom Nolan. She revealed no information about Roberts.

 

Lance Ito   (professional – see Margaret York)

 

Anthony Pellicano (professional - mutual affiliations) As Mark Fuhrman’s private investigator when O.J.’s defense team was charging Fuhrman with planting the Rockingham glove, Anthony Pellicano had to learn as much about Roberts whereabouts at the time in question as he did about Fuhrman. That means he had to know that Fuhrman could not have planted the glove but Roberts could have and both of them had to be directly involved in the murders to be in possession of the glove.

 

Pellicano was at movie producer Don Simpson's home when the body of Simpson's live-in friend Stephan Ammerman was found, dead of an apparent drug overdose. Pellicano was Don Simpson's private investigator and he was on the scene when Roberts arrived to lead the LAPD investigation. 

 

Pellicano denied accusations by a former associate that he followed Nicole Simpson. There is no evidence that he did. However, there is evidence that Bill Wasz followed Nicole and that Pellicano and Wasz corresponded after Pellicano was imprisoned on a dubious illegal weapons charge. There is also evidence that Wasz attempted to get Mario Nitrini, who was asked to follow Nicole but declined to do so, to correspond with Pellicano while he was in prison. When Wasz died under suspicious circumstances, Nitrini charged that he was murdered.

 

The Roberts connection to Wasz’s death is in the erroneous naming of West Valley on the coroner’s investigation report as the police station the patrol officers on the scene were dispatched from. The officers were from West L.A. where Ron Phillips was in charge of homicide investigations and decided that there would be no investigation. Roberts, at that time, was in charge of homicide investigations at the West Valley station.

 

Don Simpson (professional - mutual affiliations):

 

Stephan Ammerman (professional - mutual affiliations):

 

William Wasz (circumstantial): When the Body of William Wasz was found in his West L.A. apartment by Frank Longo and the apartment manager, two West L.A. patrol officers, a coroner’s office investigator and her assistant were dispatched to the scene. The coroner’s investigator listed the last names of the officers on her investigation report with the correct West L.A. Address on Butler Street where Ron Phillips was in charge of assigning detectives to investigate suspicious deaths. However the police station named on the report was not West L.A.; it was West Valley where Roberts was the supervisor of Homicide detectives. Brad Roberts’ friend and former homicide supervisor Ron Phillips determined that no detectives would investigate Bill Wasz’s death.

 

Ron Ito (inferential) According to Tom Lange and Phil Vannatter’s book Evidence Dismissed, RHD Det. Ron Ito and his partner Richard Crotsley “handled literally hundreds of ‘clues’.” The quotation marks were put around “clues” because their job was to track down allegations, rumors and evidence that were not expected to yield productive results. This assignment brought them in contact with Bill Wasz and Mario Nitrini because of allegations they made involving key figures in the Bundy murders connected to O.J. Simpson and Mark Fuhrman. Nitrini went to Ito with his allegations about Rocky Bateman, who was replaced as O.J.’s limo driver at the last minute, but denied that their conversation ever took place (Nitrini recorded it). Marcia Clark made Ito responsible for tracking down the rumors surrounding Mark Fuhrman, which could not be done without learning his true relationship with Brad Roberts.

 

Richard Crotsley (inferential): Det. III Richard Crotsley was the first LAPD detective to hear Bill Wasz’s Kardashian story. As Ron Ito’s senior partner, Crotsley held a dominant position in what they did as a team. Crotsley and Ito are the only known LAPD investigators used by Assistant District Attorneys Marcia Clark and Bill Hodgeman. Neither Hodgman nor Clark ever gave a reasonable explanation for not calling Brad Roberts as a prosecution witness (see Ron Ito/ last sentence).

 

Marcia Clark/Bill Hodgman (professional / See Ron Ito and Richard Crotsley): On page 343 of Marcia Clark’s book Without a Doubt, she wrote this about Roberts: “There was nothing he could offer our case, except to attest to his buddy’s being a straight-up guy. Just what we needed for this jury – a character reference from another white cop.” She said nothing about Roberts spending five days in jail for lying to a police officer about his involvement in an illegal drag racing accident and conspiring with other LAPD cops to lie about it when he was a rookie LAPD cop. Hodgeman never said anything about Roberts although he and Clark were with Roberts and Fuhrman during the June 13 and the June 28 searches of the Rockingham estate. Both of them knew that Roberts, was Fuhrman’s partner on June 13, not Phillips. Yet, in the July preliminary hearing, both of them allowed Fuhrman to testify falsely that Phillips was Fuhrman’s partner on June 13.

 

Rosa Lopez (professional) Rosa Lopez, the housekeeper for O.J.’s next door neighbors testified in O.J.’s murder trial that Mark Fuhrman, who gave his name and identified himself as a policeman along with a man who told her he “was another policeman” spoke to her at her door. The other man was Roberts. There in no indication in the transcripts that Roberts showed her his badge or told her his name. She testified that she told Fuhrman about vices and noises she heard the night before and Fuhrman told her that other officers would be by to speak with her. No other officers spoke with her about what she told Fuhrman. http://walraven.org/simpson/feb27.html (search “another person”) Neither the defense nor the prosecution attempted to identify Roberts as the man with Fuhrman and neither Fuhrman nor Roberts wrote a report about speaking with Lopez.

 

Al Cowlings (professional): In Mark Fuhrman’s Murder in Brentwood, he writes that he and Brad Roberts were on Rockingham as “shooters” (page 82) at the end of the so called slow speed Bronco chase with Cowlings at the wheel: “I was considered one of the best pistol shots in the department and Brad wasn’t far behind, if at all. We were to be the shooters positioned on either side of the driveway.”

 

Faye Resnick (circumstantial): Faye Resnick was the only potential witness in the case to testify (in a deposition) that the keys missing from Nicole’s apartment had a “little bear” on the key ring. Phil Vannatter claimed that he looked in O.J.’s travel back when he was first handcuffed on the afternoon of June 13, 1994 and found nothing incriminating. When the bag was retrieved from Al Cowlings Bronco following the “slow speed chase” three days later, Vannatter’s partner Tom Lange recovered a key ring with a Smoky the Bear medallion on the key ring. When O.J. was being handcuffed on Rockingham on the 13th, Roberts took the bag from O.J. Vannatter got the bag from Roberts.

 

O.J. Simpson (professional): Robert’s was Fuhrman’s partner on the June 13 search of O.J.’s Rockingham estate. He claimed that he found a dark blue sweat suit in O.J.’s washing machine, the socks on O.J.’s bedroom rug, and the empty Swiss Army knife box on the rim of O.J.’s bathtub. He discovered and marked a blood trail running up the left side of O.J.’s driveway (the markers he put down were promptly removed by the criminalist Dennis Fung). Roberts was the first to say that he saw blood inside of the Bronco. He was with Fuhrman when a black leather glove disappeared from O.J.’s bedroom closet. Roberts was not with Tom Nolan and his whereabouts were not accounted for during the 20 minutes that Fuhrman said he was by himself on the south path before he announced finding the bloody brown glove matching the one on Bundy.

 

Nicole Simpson (professional): Roberts and Fuhrman were alone in Nicole’s condo when Fuhrman said he finalized his Bundy notes. On Prime Time Live with Dianne Sawyer in February, 1997, Roberts claimed that he saw the fingerprint in blood on Nicole’s back gate and pointed it out to Fuhrman.

 

Ron Goldman (professional - indirect): Prior to the arrival of Phil Vannatter on Bundy, Mark Fuhrman and Brad Roberts were the only to active detectives on the scene to investigate the double homicide of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman. His indirect relationship to the Ron Goldman is though this friend and supervisor Ron Phillips. Phillips kept the Goldmans informed on progress in the investigation of Ron’s death throughout O.J.’s 1995 murder trial although he, Fuhrman and Roberts had been officially off the case since the early morning hours of June 12, 1994.

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Kato Kaelin (coincidental): Kato interpreted the three thumps he heard on his wall next to where Fuhrman found the bloody brown glove as either an earthquake or a prowler. Although Fuhrman could not have planted that glove, Roberts could have. Roberts birthday is April 18, the anniversary date of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. He appeared in a photo with two other men aboard the deep sea fishing yacht Prowler.

 

Phil Vannatter (professional and coincidental/ see Faye Resnick/ Rockingham hook-up): According to Mark Fuhrman and his publicist Lisa Nichols, Roberts wrote a letter to Marcia Clark complaining that Vannatter took credit for his (Roberts’) discoveries on Rockingham. They alleged that Vannatter intercepted the letter and buried it over the protests of Ron Phillips.  Vannatter and Roberts share the same April 18, San Francisco earthquake birthday. Roberts was away from Bundy when Vannatter’s partner On June 13, 1994, Tom Lange was on Bundy and he was absent from Rockingham when Lange was on Rockingham.

 

Bert Luper (professional): Although Bert Luper was in charge of the Rockingham search on June 13, 1994, Fuhrman and Roberts claimed to have found evidence incriminating O.J. that Luper gave no indication of being aware of until the 1997 publication of Murder in Brentwood. In O.J.’s criminal trial Luper gave the impression that he found the socks on O.J.’s bedroom rug. He did not disclose on the witness stand that he entered the bedroom after Fuhrman and Roberts searched it. He found one black leather glove in the bedroom closet. O.J. later complained that one of his black leather gloves was missing. Luper knew nothing of the dark sweat suit that Roberts claimed to have found in O.J.’s washing machine, the blood that Roberts claimed was on a light switch in the maid’s room or the “large” Swiss Army knife box on the rim of O.J.’s bathtub. Luper said that he did see the box but described it as a knickknack box.

 

Ennis Cosby (professional): When comedian Bill Cosby’s son Ennis was shot to death on January 16, 1997, Brad Roberts of West L.A. and Bert Luper of Robbery/Homicide were on the scene together. According to Luper’s friend Joseph Bosco who was also a friend of William Wasz, they came close to having a fist fight for unknown reasons right next to the body.  

 

Robert C. Hurd (professional): In March, 1994 Fuhrman and Roberts investigated the bludgeoning death of a man found in the trunk of a car left in a West L.A. alley. The victim was retired Army Sergeant Major (E-9) Robert Charles Hurd Jr. of Henderson, Nevada, a suburb of Las Vegas. As the only active homicide detectives assigned to West L. A. Fuhrman and Roberts got the assignment of investigating his death. They traveled to Henderson and determined that Hurd was beaten to death with a hammer in his home, his body was put in a car trunk, and the car was driven to where it was found in West L.A. His killer was never found.

 

Billie Fuhrman (circumstantial): Billie Fuhrman lived in Henderson when her detective son Mark Fuhrman and his partner Brad Roberts investigated the murder of Robert Hurd.

 

Frank Spangler (professional): The commanding officer of all detectives at the West L.A. Police Station was Lt. Frank Spangler.

 

From his trial testimony on March 16, 1995: http://walraven.org/simpson/mar16.html “...I have, counting detective Phillips, a four-man homicide unit, and the -- I don't have the resources to adequately investigate a crime that was of this magnitude. I mean, I have something like 38 detectives in my entire division.”

 

Counting Phillips, Fuhrman and Roberts, Spangler’s homicide unite was short by one detective on June 13, 1994. He testified to seeing Phillips, Fuhrman and Roberts on Bundy but nowhere did the name Nolan, the “detective” Phillips said he told to meet Roberts on the scene or at the station, ever come up.

 

--Jasper