[Welcome] | [ Discussions | TOC | Search | Post | Reply ]
Category: Category 0
From: Jasper
Date: 10/20/02
Time: 3:49:08 PM
Remote Name: 66.72.164.42
Miss Marple,
You hit some key points right on the head. The working LAPD detectives and patrolmen operated in pairs. Two men. Partners. That means transportation AND communication.
From Phillips testimony we learn that he and Fuhrman met at the local police station a few blocks from Bundy on Butler to pick up a "unit." A unit, as Phillips called it, is a police car equipped with all of the things a detective might need including an evidence collection kit. The important thing is that Phillips and Fuhrman were not partners because Philips was not a working detective. He had the title of detective but he also had the tile of Homicide Coordinator for West LA. That was his function, to coordinate the activities of West LA Homicide detectives, not to investigate. The car was assigned to him, not Fuhrman. As you said, Roberts picked up the Fuhrman/Roberts car. Philips told Roberts to pick up Nolan.
So, what we've got here is Phillips in his own police car driving Fuhrman to Bundy and Roberts in the Fuhrman/Roberts police car driving Nolan to Bundy, unless Nolan drove his own car to Bundy. Who was Nolan's partner? Why didn't he or she ever make it to Bundy in their "unit"?
The last question is easy to answer. Phillips never contacted Nolan's partner. Nolan was the last detective he called. He testified that he couldn't get in touch with the other detectives, which makes no sense because Fuhrman was not on call that night. If he wasn't on call, neither was his partner Brad Roberts. Yet, Phillips testified that he called Fuhrman first then Roberts, then "three other detectives who where not available, and then I notified Tom Nolan" (Iago page 456-457).
Not available? How can that be? At least two detectives had to be on the duty roster for that night. Partners. If Phillips called Nolan last, he couldn't have been one of them.
Phillips said that he called Nolan on his cell phone en route to the West LA police station. That was too late for Nolan to get in on the ground floor of the investigation or to stay involved once the female victim was positively identified. The murdered ex-wife of O.J. Simpson made it a high profile case and a high profile case meant that RHD was certain to take over from West LA at that point. Phillips had to know all of this before he called Nolan. He had to know that Nolan would not need a car because his partner wasn't coming and he wouldn't be with Roberts for long.
You noted that "Lots of comings and goings, explains the activity on the cell phone records that were mostly blacked out." It certainly does. It does not explain why Fuhrman made a point of saying that he used Phillips cell phone. If Phillips was to coordinate and facilitate the activities of his detectives doesn't it make sense that they would have cell phones, too?
You're right about Fuhrman's alleged trip to Bundy with Phillips and Rokahr after finding the glove on Rockingham. Amazingly, neither the defense nor the prosecution asked Rokahr if he EVER went to Rockingham. All of the questions about Rokahr's Fuhrman photos centered on the time and the order in which he took them. Rokahr describes an unbroken sequence of events on Bundy that includes photos he took before and after the Fuhrman pictures. The latest time that those photos could have been taken was before the detectives left for Rockingham.
Miss Marple, your observation about the cars - about who went where with whom and when - cleans the photo issue up nicely. Lange would have been the logical one to compare the gloves. It explains the one-hour difference in Fuhrman's version of when he went to Bundy to compare the gloves and the RHD detectives'. It didn't happen. -Jasper