Murder in Brentwood (25 page)

After seeing the limo driver and his own injury, Simpson does not know what to do. But he realizes that if he walks into the front door, the limo driver will think he is returning from being out. This will ruin whatever alibi he might come up with. Simpson turns toward the garage and runs down the narrow path which goes behind the bungalows. He knows the path will ultimately lead him around to the pool area where he can enter his home through the patio door. Running down the dark path, he collides with an air conditioner braced at about chest height. Simpson hits the air conditioner with force and spins clockwise, striking the wall.

It is approximately 10:40 P.M. On the other side of the wall Kato Kaelin is talking on the phone with his friend Rachel Ferrara when he hears loud thumps. Kato sees a picture on his wall shake, and tells Rachel he thinks it might be an earthquake. When no further noises or movements occur, Kato continues talking with his friend. They stay on the phone for another ten minutes.

Frantic and stunned by his collision, Simpson remembers that his single house key opens all the outside doors to the main house, including the maid’s service entrance just off of the walkway where he now is standing. Perhaps Simpson pulls the glove from his right hand and reaches for his keys. In any event, he drops the glove on the ground.

Running back to the service entrance, Simpson fumbles with the key before he finally enters the house. The first thing he does is reach for the light switch in the bathroom, leaving a bloodstain. Once the light comes on, he is momentarily blinded. Then Simpson sees himself in the mirror. He is looking into the face of a murderer.

Remembering the cut on his left hand, Simpson grabs a small gauze bandage to stop the bleeding. Tearing open the bandage wrapper, he remembers the glove he dropped back along the pathway. As he goes back outside, Simpson takes the bandage from its wrapper and covers the cut on his finger. Then he discards the wrapper across the cyclone fence.

Simpson’s eyes are not yet accustomed to the darkness and panic gnaws at his mind. Inside the house, the phone is ringing. No doubt the limo driver saw him. He’s got to get cleaned up and catch his flight. There’s no time to get the glove now. Simpson runs back toward the driveway and walks into his front door, trying to take control of a situation that has already gone sideways countless times and in countless ways. Allan Park sees him enter the house. It is approximately 10:55 P.M.

After stopping to take his shoes off in the foyer, Simpson rushes up the stairs and finally answers the phone. Allan Park says he is downstairs waiting to take him to the airport. Simpson explains that he overslept and just got out of the shower. It is now 10:56 P.M.

Simpson finishes stripping his clothes off as he approaches his bath. First he takes off his socks, leaving them at the foot of his bed. Then he removes the rest of his clothing. The cool water of a shower can’t stop his body from sweating. He is not in control.

After he hangs up the phone, Kato walks outside to investigate the noises he heard against his wall. He goes to the entrance of the path, but it is dark and the flashlight he has taken is dim. He is afraid to go any farther. Instead, he comes around to the front of the residence, where he sees the limo and Allan Park. He opens the front gate for the limo to enter the estate grounds.

As Kato comes back to the house, he sees Simpson just inside the front door, sweating and agitated. Kato tries to tell Simpson about the noises he heard, but Simpson rudely silences his permanent houseguest, instructing him not to call the police or Westec. Unknown to Simpson, the gauze bandage on his sliced finger is saturated and he is dripping blood on the foyer of his house.

Luggage in hand and still sweating uncontrollably, Simpson goes out of his front door, leaving yet another blood drop on his brick walkway. It is now 11:02 P.M. He allows the limo driver to pack his luggage in the car, except for one small black bag, which only he handles. Then he gets in the back seat of the car.

There he opens the windows and complains of the heat. Yet it is a cool evening-the temperature is 60 degrees.

As Allan Park drives him to the airport, Simpson’s mind is racing. Will he will be caught? What will happen to his career and reputation? What will his fans think of him?

One thing that does not enter his mind is remorse over the fact that he just killed two people, one of them the mother of his children.

This is one possible scenario of the events on June 13, 1994. My hypothesis is not definitive or absolute. However, from the evidence at both the Bundy and Rockingham scenes, we can deduce certain points that seem almost irrefutable.

The case will remain open in the mind of the public, and there will always be speculation. But the speculation will not address who committed the crime, because any honest reading of the evidence points to only one man. Instead, there will be questions of how he did it and why. Some of the questions we will never be able to answer. Others we can at least try.

From the first moments at the Bundy scene, I felt that at least one of the victims was not the target of the suspect. The victims did not match and were obviously not walking together. Early in the investigation the cause of death was not known, but the eventual conclusion that both victims were killed with a knife seemed to confirm my theory. One victim was a surprise to Simpson.

I don’t think Simpson planned to murder Ron Goldman. If he wanted to kill Ron, he wouldn’t have done it at his ex-wife’s house. Also, Simpson had no idea that Ron was about to arrive at Nicole’s to return eyeglasses her mother had left at the restaurant where he worked. Ron was just at the wrong place at the wrong time.

In fact, I’m not sure Simpson planned to kill Nicole either. Would he plan to murder Nicole at her home, leaving the body for their children to find? Even Simpson could not be that cold-blooded. And even if he were, I could not imagine a worse place for him to kill his ex-wife than her home. The neighbors knew Simpson and knew that he drove a white Bronco. Why would Simpson plan a murder and then park his vehicle behind the house? For that matter, why use the Bronco at all?

The other problem is the location of Nicole’s body. It would seem that the victim dictated the location, not the reverse. Having walked onto the front landing several feet and leaving the door open, it seemed that Nicole was not just responding to a knock at the door or the ring of a doorbell. She saw or heard something or someone outside. This conclusion is bolstered by the fact that she probably held a takeout menu in her right hand when she opened the door. If she had calmly gone to answer the door, she probably would have put the menu down first.

Perhaps Simpson went to Nicole’s home to threaten or scare her, not to kill her. But the fact is, we will probably never know what was going on in Simpson’s mind the night of the murders. Only one thing appears absolutely certain-he killed Ron and Nicole.

Chapter 17 MARCIA’S CASE

You may not like me for bringing this case. I’m not winning any popularity contests for doing so.

MARCIA CLARK TO THE JURY

FOR MONTHS I KEPT EXPECTING to hear whose fingerprint was on the rear gate at Bundy. Even if I did not read about it in the news, I figured that at least Ron, Brad, and I would hear about it, as Lange or Vannatter told us about almost every other scientific discovery relating to the evidence. The arrest of Simpson, the preliminary hearing, and the second search warrant came and went. Still, no news about the print.

In January 1995, as the prosecution was well into preparation for the trial, I was discussing the case with Marcia Clark and asked her about the print. She looked somewhat taken aback and acted as if she didn’t know what fingerprint I was talking about. I didn’t know why she reacted that way, since we had gone over my notes in detail during the preliminary hearing. I reminded her about my notes and the observation of the bloody fingerprint. I saw the hesitation in her face as she told me: The print was never photographed or lifted.

“How could they fuck up a crucial piece of evidence like that?” I exclaimed. “It was right there in my notes.”

Marcia looked at me with sympathy and said, “Mark, they didn’t read your notes.”

Shocked would be a mild way of describing my feelings. I ranted and raved for a few minutes. When I calmed down, Marcia consoled me, “I wish you and Ron had kept the case, [the crime scenes] would have come out completely different.”

I left her office disgusted. The words, “They didn’t read your notes,” echo in my mind every time I think about the Simpson case.

I hope everyone reading this can understand the professional frustration I have felt for two years over this one issue. I have not spoken about it except to Ron Phillips and Brad Roberts, with whom I’ve discussed it at length.

I saw Phillips give my notes to Vannatter when he arrived early in the morning of June 13, 1994, and watched Vannatter place them in his notebook without reading a word. Had either Vannatter or Lange, upon taking over the Bundy crime scene, read my notes, they would have checked out the fingerprint and ordered SID personnel to recover it. Had the print been properly photographed and tested, this case could have been a wrap. The print was no doubt Simpson’s, and it would have irrefutably connected him to the scene with his own blood, and possibly that of the two victims. The mention of this print in my notes and its implications were easily seen by the prosecution. But at every point in the trial, they glossed over my notes and any reference to the print. True, if the print was gone, there was not much point in dwelling on it. But the way the prosecution avoided the issue was typical of the way the case was handled and how it was lost.

In the beginning, I had confidence we were all working together. It was only gradually that I realized the prosecutors were compounding the mistakes made at the crime scenes, either by trying to cover them up or ignoring them instead of addressing them directly. This was characteristic of the way the case was handled. Intimidated by the celebrity client and his celebrity defense team, acutely self-conscious because of media scrutiny, and eager to propel their own careers, the lead prosecutors, particularly Marcia Clark and Chris Darden, blew the case.

The one thing I kept noticing about the “O.J. room,” the prosecution team’s headquarters, was the lack of organization

and leadership. Marcia Clark had an

[“They didn’t read your notes” echoes in my mind every time I think about the Simpson case.]

office elsewhere on the opposite side of the Criminal Courts building, away from the other attorneys. When somebody needed to see her it was like asking for an audience instead of just working together.

I spent many hours in Marcia’s office, watching her smoke cigarettes, a five-foot poster of Jim Morrison looming behind her desk. Marcia was very surprised to discover that I knew who Jim Morrison was, and that I was a big Doors fan myself. She laughed when I told her that the only rock concert I had ever been to was the Doors in 1969. We told each other what our favorite songs were, but, thank God, neither one of us started singing.

I probably spoke to Marcia on every important issue relating to the case and my personal struggles. Marcia had a quick laugh and seemed optimistic most of the time. I believed she regarded me with respect and confidence, two things that would have gone a long way in the Simpson trial if she had maintained her courage. But she didn’t.

Marcia was outgoing with everyone, and she liked the power this case offered her, as I’m sure many prosecutors would have. In retrospect, I can see that she thought the mountain of evidence would bury any doubt of Simpson’s guilt. In fact, she was counting on it.

Every time testimony suggested careless, preventable mistakes were made by Vannatter, Lange, or the criminalists at the crime scene, Marcia always said the same thing to me: “I wish you and Ron would have kept this case.”

At the beginning of March 1995, just days before I took the stand, Marcia asked how I was going to answer the question concerning the fingerprint on the gate at the Bundy scene.

This seemed rather silly to me, but I answered her anyway:

“I saw a bloody fingerprint, several points in quality, on the gate turnstile knob.”

Marcia seemed uneasy about my response and said, “Since you are not a fingerprint expert, you can’t say that it was a fingerprint for sure, can you?”

“Well, I’ve got ten, I’ve seen hundreds, and I’ve lifted quite a few,” I replied.

Marcia nodded. Then she said, “But not being an expert you would not be changing your testimony by saying, ‘possible fingerprint,’ would you?”

“No, I wouldn’t,” I replied. “But why don’t we have Roberts testify? He saw it, too.”

“I don’t think we need Roberts,” Marcia said curtly.

Later on, when the defense was hammering Dennis Fung for not collecting the extra blood drops from Bundy until nearly three weeks after the murders, I explained to Marcia that Brad Roberts and I had seen those drops of blood on the gate and I had written those observations in my notes. Why not have Brad and me testify to the drops being there on June 13? I thought this would go far to dispel the planted blood theory at Bundy. Again, her answer was: “No, we don’t need Brad to testify.”

Now I began to wonder why Marcia seemed intent on keeping Brad Roberts off the stand. Why were we throwing away the testimony of one of the first detectives on the scene, and someone who could corroborate most of the evidence we found? I hoped Marcia had a damned good reason to keep Brad out of the trial, but I couldn’t think of one.

Another incident made me even more curious. While Cheri, Marcia, and I were speaking of other case matters, Marcia answered her phone and stated talking about the black socks in Simpson’s bedroom. I knew that the defense had tried to claim that the socks had been planted. Their argument stemmed from a video made at Simpson’s Rockingham estate on June 13; the socks were not visible on the tape. Yet, because they had both Simpson’s and Nicole’s blood on them, these socks were another piece of extremely incriminating evidence.