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From: Jasper
Date: 4/29/03
Time: 11:00:54 AM
Remote Name: 68.73.56.69
Charlie,
I got the same impression that you did about Cochran’s questioning of Phillips. At the time, I had no idea was he was driving at but I could see that he was making Phillips squirm.
A lot of what Cochran did with Phillips was undecipherable to me until the testimony of Lange and Fuhrman and the tiptoeing and toe stubbing of Marcia Clark following his testimony put it into perspective. It was all about putting Fuhrman front and center in the investigation.
Both of us realized long ago that Vannatter and Marcia tried to hide Fuhrman from day one. Marcia also made a calculated attempt to hide Roberts and to relegate Phillips to a miner role. Fuhrman’s discovery of the Rockingham glove and all the events he took the lead in that preceded his glove discovery made it impossible for Marcia to hide Fuhrman for the preliminary hearing and the criminal trial. Some of the things that Fuhrman testified to during the preliminary hearing made it impossible to keep Phillips out of the criminal trial. If the prosecution hadn’t called him the defense would have.
Too many things in Fuhrman’s testimony didn’t add up. Pavelic’s association with Fuhrman and Phillips on the Johnnie Carson moonlighting job may have been the biggest thing that Phillips worried about. There was no telling how much Pavelic knew about the relationship between Phillips and Fuhrman. In addition, Fuhrman’s name came up in a context that implied Phillips was his partner when Rossi testified that he called Phillips to report the murders and asked him which of them should call Fuhrman.
Now Phillips was in the position of having to testify in a way that was consistent with Fuhrman’s preliminary trial testimony and Rossi’s criminal trial testimony as well as whatever Pavelic might have told the defense about the moonlighting job. Pavelic certainly had the answer to who asked him to take the job. That doesn’t mean that he had the answer to who asked Fuhrman and Phillips. It could have been Ron Shipp, although I doubt that he had contacts close enough to the Tonight Show learn about it first-hand.
The practice was so pervasive that I’m not sure that it mattered who Phillips and Fuhrman mutual friend happened to be. It could just as easily be that somebody from the show called somebody he or she knew in the LAPD and word of mouth spread the message to anyone in the LAPD who was interested. To me, the important fact was that Fuhrman and Phillips worked as “partners” AWAY FROM the LAPD and not IN it. --Jasper