Murder in Brentwood (16 page)

Not only did the prosecution have impeachment material on the defense’s witnesses, they also had plenty of credibility witnesses ready to testify on my behalf. None of these were used, either. The defense was allowed to slander and defame me and turn the trial into a racially charged sideshow.

My ex-wife Janet told a reporter, “There’s no way I would have married somebody with that agenda. I’m very sensitive to that [racial] issue. I teach kids of all ethnic groups. I don’t even like [racist] jokes.”

Danette Myers is a black district attorney and very close friend of mine. She was ready, at the drop of a hat, to do anything for me. Gil Garcetti repeatedly refused to give Danette permission to be interviewed by the media. He also kept her from testifying at the trial, claiming she had a conflict of interest. Danette knew me personally and professionally. She became close to my wife, played with my kids, and visited my home. We shared stories, secrets, and lunches. We tried cases together, and once in a while I’d protect her from the irate family or friends of a suspect she had put away. She is still my good friend. In one of her few statements to the press, Danette said: “Mark saw a lot of negative stuff, and maybe it got to him. But the person I know isn’t a racist.”

Patricia Foy is a black woman, the victim of a robbery, who chased the white man who had just robbed her. I solved the case by catching the man who did it and told her, “You were incredibly brave, but incredibly foolish to chase him. You could have ended up dead.” When interviewed on CNN by Art Harris, Patricia said, “He’s not a racist. They’re just trying to hang something on him so they can cover up for the defense, that’s all they’re doing.”

Harris also interviewed Connie Law, a black female whose uncle was bludgeoned lo death with a hammer and dumped in Los Angeles. The victim, a retired Army master sergeant, was a resident of Las Vegas, so Brad and I went out there to investigate. The investigation began at the victims home, which we searched with Las Vegas Metro homicide after obtaining a search warrant. We discovered evidence that the victim was killed in his own home, put in the trunk of his car, driven to Los Angeles, and dumped in an alley. Las Vegas police took over the case, as he was killed in that city, with the investigation focusing on three suspects, none of whom have at this writing been charged.

At the end of the investigation, Connie Law and several concerned members of the family arrived at the victim’s home. They asked what we had found and we described our findings with as much delicacy as possible. Connie was standing next to me. Overcome with emotion, she began crying. None of the family seemed to come to her side, so I placed my arm around her to comfort her. I can’t remember what I said to her, but I felt her sorrow.

Connie later told Harris, “As far as O.J. Simpson goes, I think he’s innocent. As far as Mark Fuhrman goes, I think he’s a great detective. He was great with us. He didn’t show any signs of racism toward me or my family.”

Many ex-partners, black, Hispanic, and white, came to my defense. Bob Alaniz, a Hispanic police sergeant, stood up for me on Geraldo. I talk with Bob on a regular basis, and he has visited me in Idaho with his daughter Lori, where I even got Bob on a horse.

Carlton Brown, a black detective whom I trained and worked with in West Los Angeles Robbery, also stood up for me. He told Parade magazine, “I never heard Mark refer to anybody in racist terms. I’d absolutely count on Mark to save my life.”

Carlton was one of the guys I played basketball with early every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning. One time, Mark Brown, a black news anchor from Channel 7, showed up at the gym with a camera crew. Mark was a nice guy, so we allowed him to film the game.

Carlton went to the University of Arizona on a basketball scholarship. The man can play hoop. Meanwhile, I’m just a second string player with a decent touch in the corner. I can’t go left effectively, and my foot speed is very slow. But I still love the game.

As the game started I was matched up against Carlton. From the first time I held the ball I was faking him, shooting over him, and driving around him. I was looking hot, but I always knew that Carlton pulled back to let me shine.

Walking to pick up my sweatshirt, Mark Brown smiled and said, “You got a pretty nice jump shot.” I told him, “If the Lakers want to talk to me, I’ll be in the office until five.”

We both smiled, shook hands, and went our separate ways. The piece showed that night on the news, but as everyone can probably guess, the Lakers never called.

But stories like the early morning basketball games are good news, and most of the media aren’t very interested in that. For every tidbit of truth about me, the media served up a five-course meal of slander and distortion.

While the defense brought up race at every opportunity, I still had to work in Los Angeles handling murders. One case was cited by Vince Bugliosi in his book Outrage as an example of my work and racial ethics, but because it is still an open case, he was not privy to all the details. I can now share the full story here.

Between my testimony in the preliminary hearing and the Superior Court trial, Brad Roberts and I were trying to solve the murder of Shawn Stewart, a white man. At first, all the evidence-including witness reports, a vehicle description, tentative identification, and a reported nickname-seemed to point to a black man, Aarick Harris. I obtained a search warrant for his residence, but found nothing except verification of his nickname, “Bo,” embroidered on a hat. Harris then called me at the West LA station and said that he heard I was looking for him.

I talked Harris into coming to the station for an interview. When he arrived, he waived his rights and agreed to talk to Brad and me. As the lead detective, I set the pace and direction of the interview. After the first hour or so of the interrogation, Brad and I stepped out into the hall. I immediately told Brad that I didn’t have the right feeling about this guy. Brad agreed. The interrogation became more direct and accusatory. I watched Harris closely, trying to key into his body language. Alter a long session Brad and I once again stepped outside the interrogation room for a discussion. We didn’t think Harris actually shot Stewart, but he definitely knew who did.

I had sufficient evidence to file a case on Harris and hold him for trial. But my gut feeling was that he wasn’t guilty. If the crime had been anything but murder, I could have simply continued investigating leaving Harris at large. But if my gut was wrong and someone was hurt or killed by Harris, the burden would be on my shoulders. I booked Harris and filed the case. I could have just let the court system either convict or clear Harris, but this was my case, and I planned to see it through. We needed an informant, so I began circulating the rumor around the neighborhood that I wasn’t so sure Harris committed the murder.

Within a few days, I received a call from an informant who claimed to have seen someone murder Shawn Stewart, and it wasn’t Aarick Harris. Brad and I worked very hard to verify the Informant’s story and even gave them a polygraph. This person was telling the truth.

But before releasing Harris, I needed to obtain a continuance on the preliminary hearing to try and apprehend the true murderer. To accomplish this I needed to have Harris’s attorney agree to a one week delay. But his attorney, a seemingly inexperienced black female, was trying to play hardball. She demanded either a preliminary hearing or a dismissal. I tried to explain that I was working to clear Harris, but she wouldn’t listen.

After overhearing my conversation with Harris’s attorney, Ron Phillips interceded, telling the lawyer, “Listen to me. This detective is trying to clear your client, and to tell you the truth, I don’t see many detectives working this hard on cases to arrest suspects, let alone let them go. Give him the continuance or we’ll just go through the preliminary hearing and then try and clear him, but he’ll be in jail a lot longer than one week. We are done talking to you. Goodbye.”

Harris’s attorney was in shock. Her mouth hung open, but she didn’t know what to say. I looked at Ron and said, “You took the words right out of my mouth.” She walked out of the station and straight to the court house. We got the continuance.

I knew of the actual suspect; I’d come in contact with him during a separate murder investigation. Brad and I spent a day gathering intelligence information on him and calling state parole. The next day we did a parole search of his residence and arrested him. Unfortunately, we did not find the gun. The case now pivoted on getting a confession, or at least conflicting statements. The suspect would give up nothing.

Although we had an eyewitness, I had given my word that the witness would not be identified. I wouldn’t even give the name to the district attorney. The only people who knew the eyewitness’s name were Ron, Brad, and me. There are probably many people, even policemen, who think detectives should burn an informant for a murder case. I do not. My word to suspects, informants, and citizens has got to be held as sacred as the oath I took when I became a policeman. In twenty years, I never violated the trust of any person on the street. There exists a mutual respect between street policemen and suspects. Even though we are on opposing sides, we understand the value of a man’s word.

I was able to set Aarick Harris free; however, I was never able to bring Shawn Stewart’s killer to justice.

If I were a racist, why would I work so hard to free a black man whose guilt seemed obvious to so many others? Why would I work harder than even his own defense attorney to get him off? The Shawn Stewart murder is only one of countless other cases throughout my career that shows it’s impossible to be a racist and a good cop at the same time. And I was a good cop, at least when people let me do my job.

I didn’t want to admit it, but once the allegations began, my professional life was over. The trial, the media, and even my own department paralyzed my effectiveness as a detective. I loved being a detective probably only second to loving my family, but I knew it was over. I miss policework more than anyone can imagine. I had to leave the force, and several cases I was working on, including the Shawn Stewart murder, remained unsolved.

Racism is the scarlet letter of today’s society. A criminal suspect like O.J. Simpson gets presumption of innocence in the court and in the media. But a person who is charged with racism is considered guilty until proven innocent. Since you can’t prove a negative, it’s almost impossible to convince people that you aren’t a racist. Therefore, the charge often sticks. Even for those who refute it, the stigma remains.

For the rest of my life, and even after I am gone, there will be people who believe that I am the horrible person they have heard about through the media. Because they don’t know me, or because they refuse to listen, they will think the worst of me.

I can live with that; I don’t have any choice. The tragedy is that beneath all the accusations and rhetoric, the world’s real racism continues to fester. And in this murder trial, the side issue of race diverted attention from the question of whether O.J. Simpson killed two people.

Chapter 11

LIVING IN A FISHBOWL

Not one of the talking heads on television had one good thing to say about Mark Fuhrman.

VINCENT BUGLIOSI

THOUGH THE ALLEGATIONS against me were all either weak or untrue, the controversy continued. My situation only became more complicated and more difficult. I wasn’t desperate or without hope, but I realized that as the trial progressed, the attention and the controversy would only increase.

With the media constantly hounding me at the station, at crime scenes, and everywhere else I went, my detective work was compromised. The media harassed me on the phone, hid outside the station to take my photo, and even tried to follow me in vehicles. Desk officers would call upstairs to warn me that the media had arrived and that I ought to go out by the back of the station.

Although I had previously planned to retire after my twenty years and move out to the country anyway, I now decided to move up the timetable. My retirement would still commence August 4, 1995. But I wanted to get my family out of Los Angeles, away from the media attention, and out of possible harm before that time. In November 1994, we started planning to move.

My family and I were living in Redondo Beach in a house three blocks away from the ocean. We had lived there for seven years, and I spent that whole time renovating our house. We had great neighbors and close friends. And I loved my job. But I had always planned eventually to work in the private sector. I wanted to go into security consulting, or work as a bodyguard, or an insurance investigator. Our two young children were getting close to school age, and we didn’t want to send them to the schools in Southern California or have them grow up in the city.

Having grown up in western Washington State, I wanted to move back to the Northwest. But we decided we wanted to live in a town that was slightly larger than my hometown of Eatonville, and I didn’t want to go back to the place where I spent the majority of my youth. We wanted to live in a small town in a rural environment, close to nature but with some culture. A friend of mine recommended Sandpoint, Idaho. \

We finally put our house on the market in October 1994. I went ahead alone to check out Sandpoint, and it was all that I had hoped. Visiting the town with a good friend of mine from Spokane, I met with a realtor named Rose Chaney. She turned out to be the wife of the mayor, Ron Chaney, and we quickly developed a friendship that continues today. Rose showed me around the area, and I loved it on sight.

By January 1995, we had sold the house in Redondo Beach and bought a house in a nice neighborhood in Sandpoint for less than the price of a one-bedroom condo in Los Angeles. I prepared to move my family to Idaho.

By this time I had already testified in the preliminary hearing. Stories about my supposed racism had been out for months, and the media was engaged in a nonstop feeding frenzy, particularly since I refused to talk to them. In Redondo Beach, the phone had never stopped ringing; reporters camped out in front of our house or left their cards at our door. As long as it was only me they were bothering, I could deal with it. But when the media started bothering my family, I wouldn’t put up with it. I thought that moving out to Sandpoint would end the media harassment of my family. I was wrong.