The Gloves

O.J. wore gloves exactly like the bloody gloves found on Bundy and Rockingham.

False. In Iago I said that O.J. had clean gloves in his home just like the killer's bloody ones. I was wrong. That's what they looked like but that's not what they were.

The gloves in question were brown, extra large, Isotoner Aris Leather Lights sold exclusively by Bloomindales from 1982 to 1993. A trained eye could   identify the style first hand by the cashmere lining, the super thin leather, the V on the palm and Brossier stitching. However, they came in two shades of Brown and three sizes of extra large so a photo of the killer's gloves before they were used in the attack on Ron and Nicole would be difficult to detect from a photo.

Brenda Vemich testified about the gloves in the criminal trial on June 15, 1995. She was the buyer for Bloomindales who identified the December 18, 1990 sales receipt with Nicole's name and credit card number on it. Neither the size nor the color of the gloves was indicated on the receipt. Nevertheless, this is as close as the prosecution ever got to tying O.J. to the killer's gloves.

O.J. did own brown, extra large leather gloves but, like the killer's shoes, they were only look-alikes. They could not be identified as Isotoner Aris Leather Lights.

When Chris Darden's infamous glove fit demonstration backfired and the jurors saw close up that the killer's gloves did not fit O.J.'s hands Darden argued that the gloves did fit but O.J. put on a show that made them seem smaller than they were. He then argued that they didn't fit because they shrank.

To prove his second point, Darden conducted another demonstration with new Aris Lights that did fit. Thee months later when the prosecution had many tapes and photos that showed O.J. wearing leather gloves he recalled Richard Rubin, an expert witness from Isotoner. Rubin testified that wet Aris Leather Lights could have shrunk by as much as 15 percent.

A crucial point the defense missed was that Rubin stated later in his September 12 testimony that a combination of excessive wetness followed immediately by excessive heat would cause the most shrinking. The temperature in Brentwood on the night of the murders was in the mid-60s.

As a football color commentator for network television O.J. was taped and photographed many times with his hand in a brown leather glove wrapped around a microphone. Football fans at various stadiums also took photos of O.J. wearing leather gloves. On July 6 the prosecution sent eight of them to Rubin who replied in a FedExed message that five of them looked like Aris Lights to him. Two of the pictures appeared to show the wrist part of a black leather glove resting on the upper part of O.J.'s palm.

These black glove photos were supposed to show that O.J. normally wore gloves that did not fit his hand.  Two other pictures showed O.J. wearing brown leather gloves that seemed to have a perfect fit. In his September 12 appearance on the witness stand Rubin said on direct examination that he thought they were the same style as the killer's gloves. He could not say they were the same gloves.

On cross examination, even Rubin's identification of the "unique" Aris Light style he said he could detect from the photos came into question. O.J.'s attorney Robert Blasier confronted Rubin with documents that proved the Brossier stitching he relied up on for his opinion because he couldn't see the palm or gauge the thickness of the leather or  the color, meant nothing.

The Brossier stitch gets it's name from a machine that hasn't been produced since 1940. Still, there were numerous glove manufactures that used them. Blazer used Rubin's own testimony about what made the Brossier stitch unique to showed that a newer machine in wide distribution could produce identical results. Blazer forced Rubin to admit that he was an expert only on Isotoner gloves and didn't have a clue what hundreds of smaller glove manufactures were doing. The gloves that O.J. had on in the tapes and photos could have been made by any of them.

All reasonable doubt about the slant in Rubin's testimony evaporated when Robert Blazer read aloud a statement that Rubin made in his FedExed reply to the prosecution in July -- prior to the opening of the defense case. Rubin wrote:

"...If you should have any questions, please feel free to contact me at anytime. Please thank everyone for their hospitality during my visit. Maybe I can make it to the victory party !!"

In a P.S., Rubin asked for business cards from everyone on the prosecution team. --Jasper