Murder in Brentwood (36 page)

“Well, what the hell are you doing on this property?” my friend asked.

The media called the sheriff. When he arrived, they could not have been too happy when they saw the sheriff walk up laughing. He shook my friends hand and joked about the media people, who were upset that they weren’t getting the respect they are accustomed to.

The community here is filled with mature people who treat everybody equally. They have a laid-back, live-and-let-live attitude. There is no status system up here. I drive around in a 1970 Ford pickup truck. If I drove that truck around Los Angeles, everyone would laugh at me, including my friends.

What you are here in Sandpoint is not what someone says you are, but who you prove yourself to be. The people of Sandpoint do not have an agenda; they did not prejudge me. Instead, they gave me a chance to show who I really am, and many of them embraced me.

Sandpoint is a unique place. Situated fifty-five miles south of Canada at the base of the Selkirk and Cabinet mountain ranges, Sandpoint sits on a lake that is forty-three miles long and it offers spectacular natural beauty and a town with most of the amenities of a big city without any of the hassles. I am an outdoorsman, and the hunting and fishing opportunities afforded by the area are about the best you can find in the lower forty-eight states. Lake Fend Oreille holds the record for the largest trout (over thirty-seven pounds), and the game includes elk, mountain lion, bear, and deer.

But there is more in Sandpoint than just limiting and fishing. The town is filled with great restaurants, coffee shops, boutiques, and bookstores. There is a theater that attracts performing artists and musicians from all across the country. A local community theater group has shows all year long. Annual events include a winter festival, and art and music festivals. Several prominent artists live in the area.

When the media was hounding me about the Simpson trial, the only thing I would ever talk about was Sandpoint. I wanted them to know how great the people here were. But the media was not interested in hearing good news about good people, so they persisted in painting their distorted portrait of the town I now call

[Eventually, I will have to explain all this to my kids.]

home. While the media portrayed Sandpoint as a haven of hatred and anger, they would have done better looking into their own backyard. Then they might have found what they were looking for.

I liked Sandpoint from the first time I visited. In Los Angeles, you can live in a neighborhood for years and never even know your neighbors. In Sandpoint, already we have made friends I know I will have for the rest of my life.

While there are many Idaho natives, many others are newcomers like us. They have already made their bones and they do not come here with a chip on their shoulders or feeling they have something to prove. A lot of them escaped from big cities and came to Sandpoint to get away from the rat race while still being able to enjoy a civilized existence. They are retired, or semi-retired, or have professions that don’t require them to go to an office every day. Out here they live a good life, enjoying the outdoors and taking an active part in their community. Sandpoint is a resort town, and in the summer there are a lot of tourists and season-long visitors. Many visitors fall in love with Sandpoint immediately and want to move here.

One of the main reasons we chose Sandpoint is that it is a great place to raise kids. My son and daughter go to good schools and enjoy other activities. They love living in Sandpoint.

My kids are growing up in a healthy environment without all the poisons of city life. We have lots of animals on the farm- horses, goats, and sheep. The kids raise their own rabbits and chickens and sell the eggs. At the last county fair, my daughter won a blue ribbon for her eggs and my son won a blue ribbon for his rabbit named Cookie. Winning blue ribbons at the ages of 5 ½ and 3 ½ might have spoiled them a little for future county fairs. They’re going to have to learn you don’t win every time.

For Christmas, I bought my wife a horse and trailer. She owned a horse before, but this had been her dream for years. Her horse is bigger and healthier than my old nag, but then, marriage is based on concessions. And I would rather hunt or fish than ride. Last summer I caught a twelve-pound rainbow trout that I had to throw back-it was too small.

We don’t watch the news and hardly watch television at all, so we are a bit out of touch. When the Simpson story undergoes one of its periodic mini-crises, we don’t usually notice, and our neighbors also ignore it. But friends keep us posted, usually by phone.

Now that the case is over, it is being chewed up and spit out by the media. Defense attorneys like to take rational facts and turn them into a bowl of Jello, especially when there is a camera or tape recorder pointed at them. The law should be a fairly accurate science. Laws are written, and once certain criteria are met, there is either a violation or not. The factual finding of evidence should be a lot simpler than the criminal justice system makes it. Either the fingerprint belongs to the suspect or it does not.

But defense attorneys never say die. They stumble over any admission of guilt or error the same way Home Improvement’s Tim Allen trips over the words “I am wrong.” Criminal defense attorneys (redundant?), including many who had nothing to do with the Simpson case, decided that I planted the glove. Nothing, not even a video of Simpson committing the murders in slow-motion, would convince them otherwise. It would be comical if it were not so tragic. I try not to think about the trial, but it never goes away.

One day I was out hunting with a friend, Casey Foster, when he spotted a nice mature whitetail deer, a four- or five-point buck. Casey shot him in the shoulder, but the deer ran away. From my read of the blood trail, Casey had shot him in the left shoulder, but the blood was to the right side of the deer tracks, which meant the bullet went through the left shoulder and out the other side. There was only a little bit of blood to track with. The deer was not bleeding very badly, and we started tracking him down deep ravines and drainages; sometimes a small speck of blood was all we had to go on.

After a few hours we sat down to rest. Casey looked at me and said, “I know exactly how you found the evidence in the Simpson case, because I’ve never seen someone track a deer like that. I wouldn’t want you on my trail.”

Now Casey, Jeff, and my other friends say that the worst is behind us. I am on probation for the next three years, and unless I get a pardon, I will be a convicted felon for the rest of my life. Meanwhile, LAPD Internal Affairs, the U.S. Department of Justice, the LA County Public Defenders Office, and the State Attorney General’s Office have all conducted exhaustive investigations of my police career. Not one of these investigations have uncovered a single incident of racial bias, evidence planting, or suspect complaints. If they had found a scintilla of evidence linking me to any illegal activities, you would have heard all about it on the evening news. But because they couldn’t find anything, they’re not saying anything. And they’re never going to make a public announcement exonerating me.

One investigation by the LAPD came to the conclusion that I was “lying and exaggerating” on the screenplay tapes. That means I was telling the truth when I said they’re fictional, but the department isn’t about to admit that. Unfortunately, they’re caught in a double-bind. Either I’m innocent, and they have ruined the career and reputation of a good cop (which they can’t admit because they wanted so badly to prove I’m supposedly a racist and a rogue); or, I’m guilty of everything they say I’m (for which they still haven’t found any evidence), and somehow this awful person was promoted three times. Whichever way they play it, the LAPD looks bad. They should just leave me alone, but they can’t. Now the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating the LAPD, and I’ll be interested to see how that turns out.

Johnnie Cochran made millions of dollars suing the LAPD for wrongful arrests and civil rights violations. As a result of the trial, I was portrayed as a racist cop who was supposed to have planted evidence, harassed and beat suspects, and used racial epithets. Over the years I made thousands of arrests and had contacts with tens of thousands of suspects. That should make me a good target for a Cochran-style lawsuit-if I am what my accusers say I am. Yet not one lawsuit has been brought against me since the trial.

My personal and professional reputation is damaged beyond repair. Few people seem to realize that I’m not the rogue cop they wanted me to be. Ill have to live with this my entire life. I think about it all the time. I spend hours asking myself, what if... ?

Of course, I’m not alone. From the beginning of the trial, I’ve received letters, now totaling in the hundreds. The letters of support are incredibly touching, there are no words to describe the commitment these people have. I’m not sure I’m that good a person. It amazes me that these people can take the time, expense, and effort to write. I find it difficult just to write a check and pop it in a return envelope. These folks write me letters that are several pages long.

The writers want to do something. They can’t do anything about the defense attorneys or the district attorney’s office or the criminal justice system. And they want to do something positive, so they send photos of themselves and their family, of their husbands and sons who have died in service. They have sent T-shirts, hats, flowers, Marine Corps statues, a Cross pen with my name engraved on it, candy, fruit, and cookies. When I had a legal defense fund, some donated money that they probably couldn’t afford to give.

The letters come from all over the world. They are written by people from all walks of life. I get letters from folks in big cities and small rural towns. Letters from blue-collar workers, white-collar professionals, owners of small businesses, corporate executives, retired people, mothers, widows, and attorneys who want to apologize for people in their own profession. I have received many letters from black people, from black church groups, from entire classrooms full of kids. But despite the broad range of backgrounds, these letter writers share at least one thing in common: A feeling of disgust that a working man like me was screwed for doing his job.

Some of the letters are angry. I get a lot of mail complaining about F. Lee Bailey. They cannot believe that someone would try to set a double murderer free on my back. If I showed Bailey the letters I got about him, maybe he’d change his style. Or maybe not.

Many of the people who write see themselves in me. They see a regular guy who got the shaft because he wasn’t rich or famous or well-connected, because a bunch of people screwed up and someone had to take the fall. Cops in particular understand that it could have been any one of them. I just happened to answer the call and do my job the best I knew how.

Most of my correspondents are not Simpson case groupies, just people who believe that an injustice has been done. They realized that the trial was a national crime drama, a one-season television special. And they also understand that this media event involved real people, not actors. They knew that as absurd and unrealistic as it sometimes seemed, the script wasn’t made up. They realized that those of us who were involved in the case, particularly those of us who did not have any choice in the matter, would have to live through all of it. They had sympathy and spoke from the heart.

I read every letter that is sent to me. Unfortunately, there is no possible way I could respond to them all. It would be a full-time job for two or three people to answer the countless letters I have received. But I enjoy reading them, and many of them make me smile. It is good to know that there is somebody out there who believes in Mark Fuhrman.

One letter said so much in so few words that I reprint it here in full:

I watched your interview with Diane Sawyer of ABC Primetime. Z just wanted to drop you a note to let you know that I was impressed with your forthrightness and integrity. It takes a man of strong character to admit his wrongs, ask for forgiveness, and to move on to a better place of beingness. I applaud this mast manly of acts and do forgive you for your error. Hopefully, this will lead to your recovery.

You see, I am a black man. The courage it took for you to face me, (all other black men and women), should not go unnoticed nor unacknowledged. It is also a form of courage on my part to pardon you, but what else can a man do. You lead the way, in this instance, I’ll follow your lead.

God bless you, and may you find peace in your life. Move on. You’ve done your duty. Peace.

The trial and its aftermath have completely turned my life upside down. But there is hope, and that is what keeps me going. I have been confronted with challenges my whole adult life, and I have learned to never give up, to always keep fighting. When I was a cop out on the street, I lived under stress that kicked the hell out of me, and I learned how to beat it. But the stress of this trial and all the sideshows is different. It gnaws at me every day, and I have had to learn to live with it. For the past two years, I have had a knot in my stomach. I am not sure my body would be able to function if the stress ever went away. Three years ago I was just another detective. Now I am a

public figure, which means that anyone can say whatever they want to about me. They have taken away my career, my life, and my privacy. But I cannot lose my faith in myself, in who I am, and what I have done with my life. I have always believed that I could make a difference. Despite all that happened, I still believe this.

The whole ordeal has taken an incredible toll on my wife. She is a private and reserved person, and living under the scrutiny of the national media for the past two years has been very difficult. She knows the real me-which only makes what she had to go through even worse. I wish there could be some closure for her, but I do not know if that will ever happen.

We could build a house so far up in the woods that nobody could ever get to us. We could move out of the country entirely. But I am not sure that would change things, and I do not know if there ever will be an end to this, wherever we go or whatever we do. I cannot stop thinking about it. I only hope my wife and kids can. That does not mean I cannot be happy, but it is never going to be the same.