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Staged Photos
Four Murder in Brentwood photos should strike anyone who studies them and knows the basic rules of artistic composition as being contrived.
The first photo of
the four is the long shot of Nicole’s
All of these aspects of the photo combine to produce the visual equivalent of overkill that appears in every aspect of the Bundy murders and Fuhrman’s role in the investigation.
The problem with all of these things appearing in the first photo is that the position of Nicole’s body and the position of the gate set up a shot that any competent photographer would have taken. This could happen only under the most unlikely of naturally occurring conditions or if the killer took advantage of the natural setting to pose the body just right and open the gate all the way. These actions by the killer are what produce the inevitable “camera-friendly” result. But the killer would have to have the eye of an artist to know it.
People rarely fall dead on their sides as you frequently see with actors and stunt doubles in movies. The photo exists only because Nicole’s legs were bent, her feet were under a fence, her body was left in the ideal configuration and the gate was left open all the way. It’s the way a movie director would pose an actor, a stunt double or a mannequin to set up a sequence of events like those that brought Mark Fuhrman to the murder scene on June 13, 1994 and the sequence of events that followed his arrival.
The only person who could so much as conceive of contriving that shot had to be a photographer or an artist. He had to know everyone who could have taken the shot and he had to have plans for making personal use of it as an integral part of the crime.
Fuhrman was an artist. As the first lead detective on the Bundy murder scene, he directed the shots that LAPD photographer Rolf Rokahr took. Rokahr was the first photographer on the scene. Fuhrman worked with Rokahr on previous cases. Fuhrman did use that photo in Murder in Brentwood. It was the first full page photo in the middle photo section of the book. However, these facts do not show Fuhrman’s intent to use that photo for a book before he or Rokahr arrived on the scene in their official capacities. You need more. You get more. And Mark Fuhrman gives it to you.
Rokahr also took
the two photos of Fuhrman
The rest was automatic – except for the part where Fuhrman got most of his body into one photo and a piece of his body into the other one.
The awkward
kneeling shot with Fuhrman’s right knee forward and right arm
extended http://www.baseballlibrary.com/baseballlibrary/ballplayers/R/Robinson_Frank.stm
The items at the foot of Ron Goldman’s body are configured item for item with those at the foot of Anne Chapman in Jack the Ripper with Michael Caine. In that movie, Michael Caine is Fredric George Aberline the lead detective. He wears dark brown leather gloves. So does the Ripper. The legal precedent Fuhrman used to enter O.J. Simpson’s estate on Rockingham without a search warrant – where he found the second dark brown leather glove – was People vs. Cain. He included that item in his book along with a page reference in the index.
In Murder in Brentwood, Fuhrman wrote that his top athlete was boxer George (bloody gloves) Foreman. In the movie Goldie and the Boxer, O.J. Simpson is Joe the boxer.
The fourth
contrived photograph in Murder in Brentwood is on the last
page of the photo section.
The dry purple delphiniums, the poem and the paper it was written on, the rendered larkspur on the paper, the larkspur on the ground and the doll obey the aesthetic rules of composition used in the other photos. The large, clear, dark, neat and even cursive writing serves the practical function of being readable at a distance while contributing to the composition’s overall aesthetic effect. The formation of the letters is the cursive penmanship equivalent of Fuhrman’s printing in his Bundy notes. The photo is not cropped to standard proportions as you see in every other photo. It is cropped to fill the whole page of a hardcover book as it does in the hardcover version of Murder in Brentwood, making it the largest picture in the book.
The unidentified knee in blue jeans does not obey the basic rules of artistic composition. It’s like a gigantic blue arrow with a rounded tip pointing unnecessarily to the poem. No professional photographer would have snapped that picture with the knee where it is without showing more of the person it was attached to. Yet, every other element in the picture is positioned with professional attention to general appearance and relevant detail. The knee is an irrelevant detail. Cropping most of the person out of the photo to fit the proportions of the book page does not answer the question of why the knee remained in the printed photo. It could have been cropped out without changing the photo’s proportions or removing any significant feature. The knee must therefore serve a practical function, as the wide open gate does in the first photo and Fuhrman’s body and hand do in the other two staged photos.
Indeed, the first photo sets you up to see the outside corner of the gate were the purple flowers and the Mothers poem will appear in a context that is difficult to distinguish from the inside corner of the killing cage where Fuhrman is pointing. The second photo tells you who the hand in the third photo belongs to. It gives you Fuhrman’s bent knee without actually showing the knee. In the middle of the photo section are two of Fuhrman’s pen and ink renderings of Ron Goldman’s wounds. The red values in his drawing are the same as the red values in the “flower” on the Mother’s poem between the first and second line. You are thus given all of the subtle visual clues to lead you step by step to the impression that it’s Fuhrman’s knee in the last photo.
You are left with the impression that Fuhrman went back to the scene as a civilian (blue jeans) and left the flowers and the poem where the photo shows them in a simple act of compassion. The words missing from that photo because the lower right of the paper that the poem is written on is curled under after “Adam and Ali” precisely where it counts would have changed everything. Those words are, “…and their mom.”
In other parts of the book Fuhrman writes about a murder case where he was moved by compassion to embrace the victim’s grieving niece. He writes about his two young children, a boy and a girl, without giving their names. He contrasts himself as a good father to O.J. as a bad father of a young boy and girl who played golf on his daughter’s birthday. The Mothers poem photo leaves the impression that the names on the bottom of the poem are his children and that he signed their names to the poem as a father of a young boy and girl who empathized with the loss suffered by Nicole’s children. The doll makes the connection between the poem's author and the children emphatic.
Fuhrman writes about the movie Ghost and links it inaccurately to his love triangle theory of why O.J. killed the mother of his two young children along with Ron Goldman. The shapes drawn in blood in Fuhrman’s pointing finger photo are a heart and a triangle http://www.smartfellowspress.com/smokinggun/smokinggun2/drawn_in_blood.htm . The Mothers poem gives you a “Mother’s spirit” (ghost), two hearts and the names of two children, a boy and a girl. The turned-in corner on the bottom left of the paper gives you a triangle on the left corner of the pavement slab beneath it. The doll gives you a mirror image of Nicole’s body, the fatal wound to her throat and the blood flowing from it. If that photo was staged, Fuhrman is the only person we know who could have staged it.
Enter Lauren Cohen, the woman who identified herself on an Internet discussion board as the person who wrote the poem in the Murder in Brentwood photo. She referred to the photo in the book with a specific reference on the paper that the poem was written on to verify that she was a neighbor of Nicole with two small children who knew Nicole and Nicole’s children.
Lauren Cohen did not indicate in her posts whether the poem in Fuhrman’s book is her original work or a copy. She does not say where the flowers came from or whether she had anything to do with Fuhrman or Fuhrman’s writing partner Stephen Weeks putting that picture in the book. Answers to the only questions that count must therefore be found in other photos of the Mothers poem taken at different times by different photographers.
A logical place to begin searching for the origin of the Mothers poem photo in Fuhrman’s book is the archives of the company he credits with taking the photo. Fuhrman credits Reuters-Corbis-Bettmann with that photo and three other photos in Murder in Brentwood.
It is not as simple as one might think to confirm or refute that source.
Corbis acquired Bettmann’s photo archives in 1995, which means all of Bettmann’s photos are in the Corbis archives. Reuters exclusive photos do not apply because Reuters was not named as the exclusive source. The absence of the photo in question from the Corbis archives can therefore be explained by inadvertent mislabeling of the source by Regnery Publishing or by Reuter, Corbis or Bettmann misplacing the original. Whatever the reason that it is not in the Corbis archives the fact remains that it is not there. The fact that Stephen Weeks worked for Reuters might or might not mean anything, depending on whether he was working for Reuters and Regnery when the photo was taken.
This we know: There are two photos in the Corbis archives that show the poem and the purple delphiniums against the gate on Nicole’s bloody walkway. Neither of them is the one in Murder in Brentwood. The purple flowers are in another place. The paper that the poem is written on is in an impossible condition. Although the writing on the paper is too small or too fuzzy to read and compare the handwriting, the margins are different. The only thing that tells us what was written on the paper comes from a June 15 article in U.S.A. Today: “A bunch of carnations was left on the walkway. And a note wrapped around a bouquet of purple flowers read: “Mothers hold their children’s hands for a short while- their hearts forever. God bless you both and may your mother’s spirit reside in your heart forever.
The note, meant for Nicole’s children, was signed “Adam and Ali and their mom.”
There was no corresponding photo in the article. However, someone with a trusted link to the writer must have gotten a close look at the paper. The first few lines above the ribbon are from an old Irish saying, so not all of it had to be read to know what it said. The second part is Lauren Cohen’s. It is possible to squeeze in “& their mom” on the bottom of Fuhrman’s photo where the paper is curled under, but it would be a very tight squeeze.
One Corbis archive
photo shows the paper that the poem is written on wrapped completely
around the flowers and tied securely around the upper third
Fuhrman’s photo appears to have been taken at night because of the bright artificial light source. This appearance is deceiving. The moisture bands on the paper and the slightly curled edges imply that the paper was wrapped, tied and left overnight to collect dew before it was unwrapped and photographed. The words show knowledge of what Lauren Cohen wrote and the style in which she wrote it. It shows knowledge that her poem was wrapped around the delphiniums, that it was tied and that it collected dew.
This knowledge could be obtained only with Fuhrman’s direct access to Cohen and her poem before and after it was wrapped and photographed. The deviations from her original in Fuhrman improved version are what you would expect if they were duplicated from memory. It would have taken time to prepare, to write and to include the larkspur between the first two lines on the left – just behind the roll of the paper in the first Corbis photo. Imperfections on the paper in Fuhrman’s photo have to be deliberate because they appear only where they do not interfere with the readability of the poem. They give the impression that the larkspur on the page is as real as the one on the ground below the name Adam.
You can see that old artist’s trick in “The Last Leaf” segment of O. Henry’s Full House (1952) with Gregory Ratoff as Behrman the artist. The larkspur in Fuhrman's poem falls between the lines outside a courtyard. The ivy leaf in the movie falls between the vines inside a courtyard. O. Henry, the writer, was born William Sidney Porter. He changed the spelling of his middle name to Sydney (as in O.J.'s daughter Sydney) in his 20s. In All about Eve, Ratoff is a stage play producer. Fuhrman the artist, the writer and the teleplay producer was born in 1952. Home run champ Henry Aaron shares his birthday.
If you want an “O” link to Henry, here it is http://www.answers.com/topic/sadaharu-oh . If your don't know what baseball has to do with Fuhrman and Nicole click on High Points/ Baseball Bat Incident. Note Fuhrman's reader-friendly improvement from his original. Then go here for ivy and baseball photo connections to O.J. and Fuhrman at Rockingham.
The sec
A Court TV photo shows the same objects on the bloody walkway as the second Corbis photo at a slightly different angle and without the man in shorts. The image of the items by the gate is too small to to read anything on the paper but there are enough context clues in the photo to bracket the time when the photo could have been taken.
An L
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body
lying front forward on her side. The body is framed by graphic
elements ideally suited to draw shocking attention to her black
dress, her exposed skin and the blood pooled around her head. This
location is where you would draw a horizontal line to establish your
“horizon” for a perspective drawing. The vertical elements you would
want to create to direct your viewers’ eyes to the body are exactly
where they need to be. You have the white mailbox post, the
light-colored partition, and the white gate post on the left of the
body were the gate post visually intersects Nicole’s legs. On the
right of the body you have the white railing of the stairs and the
white edge of the open gate. You see the pale, blood-splotched
walkway framed on both sides by a jungle of dark green vegetation.
The dark vertical lines of the walkway and the dark stains on the
steps also take your eyes straight to the body. 
pointing
to the 
comes
straight out of a 1968 movie called The Power with George
Hamilton’s character reaching for a peace of paper. Even his pants
are the same color as Fuhrman’s were in the pointing finger photo.
The name on the paper in The Power is Adam Hart. The first
name of the homicide detective in charge of the case is Mark. The
movie was adapted from a novel by Frank M. Robison. He authored
a novel called The Glass Inferno, which was made
into the 1974 movie The Towering Inferno with O.J. Simpson.
For more of what the name Frank Robinson means to Fuhrman and his
links to the bloody gloves you need to study the "Disgraced Cop"
headline scene in his movie and know a few things about baseball's
Baltimore Orioles
It’s
the one on the outside of Nicole’s front gate featuring a close-up
of the Mothers poem, the Mexican worry doll and the
unidentified knee in blue jeans. It shares the composition rules of
the other three but with O.J. Simpson’s presences accounted for
elsewhere and no explanation for how it came into existence or why
it appears in the book. It therefore implies nothing about O.J.
while saying much about Fuhrman. 
of
the paper with a ribbon roughly one half inch wide. The horizontal
moisture line in Fuhrman photo is too far down to have been made, as
the slightly curled vertical edges suggest, by moisture collected
with the morning dew under the ribbon There are no other
identifiable flowers in the Corbis archive photo, only an
unidentified white object below the paper on the same tile. It is
not the Mexican worry doll. The walkway is bloody. There are no
carnations. The wrapped delphiniums and the absences of the
carnations thus mark this photo as the first in the series. The
light and shadows indicate that this photo was taken in sunlight on
the 14th between 9 and 11 a.m. 
.A. Times
photo showing the walkway washed down on the afternoon of the 14th brackets
the time when Fuhrman’s photo could have been taken – after the last
Corbis photo and before the L.A. Times wash down photo. This
photo has no objects by the gate, only bouquets of flowers and cards
well away from the gate. The direction of the water flow shows that
the direction of the blood flow in Fuhrman’s pointing finger photos
is as contrived as the Mothers poem in his self-promoting
Murder in Brentwood book. –Jasper