No one came forward to claim that he or she witnessed the murder of Ron Goldman and Nicole Simpson at 875 S. Bundy Drive in Brentwood CA on the evening of June 12, 1994. The prosecution's case as well as the plaintiffs' case was therefore made up exclusively of circumstantial evidence, not all of which made its way into the criminal or civil trial of O.J. Simpson.

The prosecutors' task was to tie the hard evidence of the crime to the circumstances surrounding the defendant in such a way that reasonable people had to agree the defendant was guilty. To do that, they had to show that the defendant, O.J. Simpson had the means and opportunity to commit the crime. California law did not require them to prove motive but because there were no direct evidence of O.J.'s guilt they had to show that he had one as part of their circumstantial case.

To prove that O.J. had the opportunity, the prosecutors had to establish a timeline that would give him that opportunity. It had to allow him time to drive two and a half miles from his residence on Rockingham to the murder scene on Bundy, time to commit the murders, time to drive back home and time to rid himself of the unrecovered murder weapon and clothes. For all of this to have happened, the timeline had to be as wide and flexible as possible with witnesses on Rockingham and Bundy to support it.

After reviewing the evidence in the first four days of the investigation, the prosecutors decided that O.J. did have the opportunity to commit the murders, to get rid of some evidence, to leave other evidence behind and to clean himself up for his scheduled trip to Chicago.

The prosecutors did this by setting the start of the murders at a time when three witnesses said they heard Nicole's dog begin to bark in an unusual way. One of their witnesses described it as "a plaintive wail" that he heard between 10:15 and 10:20.

The prosecutors set the time of O.J.'s return to Bundy at 10:45, the latest time O.J.'s houseguest Kato Kaelin estimated that he heard three loud thumps on his wall next to where Mark Fuhrman said he found one of the killer's bloody leather gloves. Kato testified that he last saw O.J. at 9:35 or 9:40. Kato was the last person to see or talk to O.J. until the limo driver Allan Park saw him walking to his front door at 10:54.

Pablo Fenjves, Eva Stein and Mark Storfer said that they heard the barking begin before 10:25. Steven Schwab said that he discovered the dog with blood on its paws on the corner of Bundy and Dorothy at 10:55. Those were the prosecution's timeline witnesses at Bundy. Allan Park and Kato Kaelin were the prosecution's timeline witnesses at Rockingham.

The defense had six timeline witnesses at Bundy: Ellen Aaronson, Danny Mandel, Francesca Harmon, Judy Telender, Denise Pilnak and Robert Heidstra. All of them testified that they heard no barking before 10:24. Heidstra and Pilnak testified that they heard the barking start between 10:33 and 10:35.

The prosecution produced several witnesses to link O.J. to the killer's missing clothes and weapon and to the evidence found on Bundy and Rockingham but none of them could establish a direct link. Even the witnesses who claimed to have seen blood in the Bronco on the 13^th were countered by witness who claimed that it wasn't there. In the end, the prosecution could produce expert witnesses to testify that O.J.'s blood was found on Bundy and Rockingham but in each case there were gross anomalies in the collection, documentation, testing and security of that evidence. There were no independent witness to when and how that evidence appeared on the crime scenes or in the lab. --Jasper