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From: Jasper
Date: 10/13/03
Time: 4:10:00 PM
Remote Name: 68.77.161.13
Charlie,
I would be the last person to defend Fuhrman on his word alone. The man tells big lies but only when the lies serve him. When the truth serves him, he tells the truth.
Fuhrman told the truth about his confrontations with Peggy York. He told the truth about giving Marcia “the tour” at Rockingham and having a discussion with her in O.J.’s backyard. He told the truth about Ron Phillips calling him to the murder scene. He told the truth about two bodies in the courtyard. He told the truth about Brad Roberts laying down blood drop markers on the Rockingham driveway. He told the truth about showing Vannatter the glove that he claimed he found on the south path.
All of these things are independently verifiable. Even an inveterate liar can’t lie about everything. He needs some verifiable facts to make the lies effective.
In Fuhrman’s Murder in Spokane, he had no incentive to lie about the things I believe he got right. I’m sure he got all of the names and dates as right as he could get them along with some of the documents he produced to support his conclusion that the Spokane Police dropped the ball and the killer controlled the investigation (more about that later). If you read what he said about Marcia Clark and the LAPD’s Robbery/Homicide Division in Murder in Brentwood you will see that he got enough things right about them to have convicted O.J. Simpson for the Bundy murders. Ditto with his assessment of the Greenwich Police. If they hadn’t botched the case so badly from the start, they probably would have been able to convict somebody.
Fuhrman uses “suspect” as a synonym for “perpetrator,” so I know that none of this has to do with the guilt or innocence of the suspect. It has to do with basic procedures that lead to an arrest and a conviction. In the Spokane serial murders the police eventually got the right guy. No question about it. Robert Yates did it. Fuhrman’s criticism, which I agree with, is about why the authorities took so long to get him
The serial killer task force had enough evidence early in the investigation to KNOW who the killer was but they fed all of that information into a computer expecting the computer to put it all together for them. They didn’t move on it, they didn’t even know what they had until the computer told them who the guy was who matched all the evidence. They could have done it themselves much faster by sharing the key evidence they had with each other and analyzing it systematically without the computer. I saw the same thing with computers at Ford so I knew from firsthand experience what he was talking about.
All of Furman’s books are about projecting an image of himself as “the great detective” who could solve murder cases established institutions of law enforcement couldn’t. He is Sherlock Homes of 221 B Baker Street. The authorities are Inspector Lestroud of Scotland Yard. Fuhrman had to lie a lot in his first book to create that image. He had to lie less in his second book. In his third book he didn’t have to lie at all. –Jasper