Outrage (56 page)

Peace and love.

O.J.

BLOOD
EVIDENCE

One of the myths the defense has sought to propagate in the Simpson case, even after the trial, is that there was very little of Simpson’s blood found in his car and on his Rockingham estate. But the record proves the falsity of this allegation. Even excluding the inevitable blood drops that were not discovered, and the blood found on the glove and socks, as well as the fact that the
LAPD
criminalists did not collect blood from all of the blood drops and stains (collecting “representative samples” is typical), forty-one blood drops and stains were collected.

Dennis Fung told me that thirty were collected from the Bronco (Fung said there were “easily another twenty lighter blood stains we did not collect inside the Bronco”), most of which were Simpson’s blood, some that of the two victims. All the other blood (driveway, home) was Simpson’s. There was one blood drop behind the Bronco on the street (Rockingham), one on the driveway just inside the Rockingham gate, three more on the driveway leading to the front door of Simpson’s residence (there were three other blood drops on the driveway which were not collected), five on the floor of the foyer (the
LAPD
criminalists found and collected three, and Dr. Lee saw three others, one of which was believed to be a splatter from one of the three the
LAPD
had collected), and one on the bathroom floor. Not all of these samples of blood were subjected to
DNA
tests. A total of forty-five samples of blood from all places and sources (including Bundy) were tested for
DNA
.

Where the defense and their supporters have deliberately misled the public the most in this area is on the alleged small amount of blood in the Bronco, asserting on radio and television and telling anyone else who will listen that “less than one drop of blood was found in the Bronco.” They claim that Gary Sims, the prosecution’s own witness who is a forensic chemist for the California Department of Justice in Berkeley, specifically acknowledged this from the witness stand. But Sims acknowledged no such thing. No testimony quantifying all of the blood spots and stains found inside the Bronco was ever elicited at the trial. Sims
was
asked this question on cross-examination by Barry Scheck on September 13, 1995: “Would you agree that combining all of those [five bloodstains] together,
all that from the console
, the amount of
DNA
would not exceed 100 nanograms [less than 1 drop of blood]?” Sims: “Well, it might slightly exceed that, but it is around that ballpark.” The quantification estimate, then, only dealt with the blood found on the
console
of the Bronco.

Another myth the defense has tried to sell is that the killer would have been, as Cochran argued to the jury, “covered with blood,” and therefore there should have been much more blood in the Bronco, etc., if Simpson were the killer. But this argument doesn’t hold up. The killer’s bloody shoe prints had already faded out by the time he reached the alleyway at Bundy. And when a person is stabbed or cut in the front of his or her body, the blood of the victim is only likely to get on the assailant if the assailant is in front of the victim, an artery as opposed to a vein is severed or punctured (veins, such as the jugular vein of Ron Goldman which was severed, do not spurt blood; only arteries do), and there is no clothing covering the body in the vicinity of the wound. None of the stabbings of the two victims in this case met all three of these requirements. Both of Nicole’s carotid arteries were, indeed, severed, and since there was no clothing covering her neck there may have been spurting of blood. But the slash wound to Nicole’s neck that severed the arteries was from left to right, and it was the consensus of Dr. Lak, which Dr. Baden did not dispute, that the killer was behind Nicole when he slashed her throat. There
were
“two perforating, one-half inch wounds” to Goldman’s aorta, but the aorta is an artery that doesn’t spurt its blood because it is sealed off within the body. Moreover, because of the paucity of blood in the aorta region of Goldman’s body, Dr. Lak concluded that the two stab wounds to the aorta were among the last to Goldman, when little blood would have remained. And, of course, even if there had been spurting of blood from these two wounds to the aorta, clothing covers this area of the body. Most stab wounds to the body merely cause internal bleeding and bleeding on the surface of the skin. Although in killing the two victims, the killer would likely have gotten some blood on him, particularly since it is believed there was a brief struggle with Ron Goldman, it is equally unlikely he was “covered with blood.”

Additionally, as Marcia Clark pointed out in her summation, under no circumstances would the killer be likely to “get any blood on his back, which is where he is going to be in contact with the seat [of the Bronco, leaving blood].” Finally, let’s not forget that besides the two blood spots on the exterior of the driver’s door to the Bronco (right above the door handle and on the panel of the door at the bottom), 28 other blood spots and stains were collected from inside the Bronco (including from the steering wheel, instrument panel, center console, right front edge of the driver’s seat, interior of driver’s door, interior of driver’s side wall, carpet on passenger side, etc.), not just one or two.

B
arry Scheck’s main theory, the crown jewel in his tiara of nonsense upon which he based most of his cross-contamination argument, was that Collin Yamauchi, the
LAPD
criminalist who conducted initial
DNA
tests at the
LAPD
crime lab on the evidence blood, testified on cross-examination that in opening up the vial of Simpson’s reference blood on June 14, 1994, a small amount of the blood got on the latex glove on his left hand. But Yamauchi testified that he immediately discarded both his left and right gloves in a nearby receptacle and put on a new pair. Moreover, at the time this happened, all of the swatches of evidence blood were on top of a table ten to fifteen feet away, and the swatches of blood were inside paper bindles (wrappers) which were themselves enclosed within coin envelopes. So, as Marcia Clark argued, unless there is such a thing as “flying
DNA
,” which even the defense didn’t contend, cross-contamination could not have taken place.

Yamauchi explained to me that “when you take the rubber cap off the vial—it’s like a cork in a bottle—nine times out of ten you get a little blood on the paper Kimwipe that’s surrounding the cap, and sometimes it soaks through to your glove.” He said that’s what happened in this case. When I asked Yamauchi to estimate the size of the blood deposit on his glove, he said it was just “a tiny dot of blood, about one-eighth of an inch in diameter.” Now listen to Scheck’s argument on this point in his summation to the jury: “We now know there was a
spillage
of blood there. Now, that is extraordinarily significant. Because there’s plenty of high molecular weight
DNA
in the smallest drop if you get it on your gloves or if you don’t change the gloves.
And frankly, I think there’s no reason to believe he did
[note that there would have been no way for Scheck to even know about the blood getting on Yamauchi’s glove if Yamauchi had not been honest enough to tell him, yet Scheck distrusts Yamauchi when Yamauchi told him he changed his gloves, which is automatic, routine behavior for criminalists in such situations], and the evidence samples
could
have then become contaminated.”

The question is, why wasn’t the fact that Yamauchi got blood on his left glove brought out by the prosecution? Instead, it came out on cross-examination. And other than Yamauchi’s testimony that he got “a little blood” on his glove, the prosecutor never asked Yamauchi just how little. “Little” can mean a lot of things. “One-eighth of an inch in diameter” would have been a lot better for the prosecution in the jury’s eyes. If the prosecution had matter-of-factly brought out all of this on
direct examination
, I doubt very much that Scheck would have been able to make this completely insignificant incident the centerpiece of his cross-contamination argument.

T
he degradation of the
LAPD
blood samples from the five blood drops at the Bundy murder scene is believed to have occurred when the cotton swatches which soaked up the blood were placed inside sealed plastic bags and left to sit for hours (at Bundy and later at Simpson’s Rockingham estate) on a hot summer day (June 13, 1994) inside the stifling interior of the
LAPD
crime scene truck. The truck’s refrigeration unit was continually breaking down, and was therefore not used to store the blood. Heat and moisture (the swatches absorb distilled water before they are used) within the sealed plastic bags, alone, cause
DNA
degradation, and also produce a fertile environment for the growth of bacteria, which is a further, main cause of degradation.

The defense argued that the
lack
of significant degradation of the three stains of blood on the back gate, and the fact that they weren’t collected on June 13, 1994 (the day after the murders) meant they must have been planted by the
LAPD
conspirators closer to the time they were collected on July 3, 1994. Unlike the five blood drops, when the three stains were collected by
LAPD
criminalist Dennis Fung on July 3, they were immediately brought downtown and refrigerated.

The main reason for the lack of degradation of the back gate blood is that
DNA
would break down much faster on the terra cotta walkway at Bundy where the blood drops were found than on the far less absorbent paint of the rear gate. Although blood of the victims on the front gate, also on top of paint,
had
degraded, the probable explanation is that that blood
was
collected on June 13, and together with the swatches from the five blood drops, was stored for hours in the hot interior of the crime truck.

As far as the defense argument that the fact that Fung collected the blood on July 3 proves it was not there at the time of the murders on June 12, several
LAPD
officers, including Lange, Phillips, Vannatter, Riske, and Riske’s partner, Officer Terrazas, saw the blood on the gate when they arrived at the murder scene in the early-morning hours of the 13th, and Lange testified he even told Fung to collect it. But the crime scene was awash in blood, Fung was very busy, and he himself never saw the blood there, nor can he recall Lange’s directing his attention to it. A perfectly normal and common slipup. Moreover, an
LAPD
photograph taken on June 13, 1994, of the inside of the gate does show one of the three stains which turned out to be Simpson’s blood. The photo did not pick up the second stain on the inside of the gate, and no photo of the outside of the gate, where the third stain was, was taken. It should be additionally noted that by the evening of June 16, which was over two weeks
before
samples from the three bloodstains on the gate were collected on July 3 by Fung, Collin Yamauchi’s preliminary
DNA
testing of the Bundy blood drops leading away from the victims’ bodies showed them to be consistent with Simpson’s blood. So there was no need for the
LAPD
to plant any of Simpson’s blood on the gate.

M
any have wondered why only one drop of blood was found in Simpson’s bathroom (on the floor between the sink and the shower), and why no blood was found in the area of Simpson’s estate where the bloody glove was found. A phenolphthalein test, called a “presumptive” test for blood, was conducted on three locations at Simpson’s Rockingham estate. In this test, distilled water is applied to a cotton swab and the swab is then applied to the area of interest. A drop of phenolphthalein, a reactive chemical, is then put on the swab. If the swab turns pink, it’s called a “false positive” and no further tests are conducted. However, if it doesn’t, then a drop of hydrogen peroxide is put on the swab to interact with the phenolphthalein. If the swab then turns pink immediately, this is positive for blood, although it doesn’t distinguish between human and animal blood.

The
LAPD
criminalist who was in charge of collecting evidence at the crime scene and at Rockingham, Dennis Fung, conducted a phenolphthalein test on the drain area of the shower in Simpson’s bathroom, as well as on the lip of the drain circle in the washbasin, because these are, of course, areas blood would flow through if one was washing blood off.
In both Simpson’s shower and washbasin, there was a positive reaction for blood.
Unless Simpson gave an animal of his (He had a dog, a chow) a shower, and also bathed the animal in the washbasin a day before the murders or just after the murders before he left for Chicago, and unless the animal was also bleeding at the time, the phenolphthalein test was evidence that Simpson washed the blood off himself right after the murders (which common sense already told us).

Andrea Mazzola, Fung’s assistant
LAPD
criminalist, also conducted a phenolphthalein test on a long, thick wire hanging over the narrow walkway or path running alongside the rear of the guest rooms at the Simpson estate between the air conditioner (jutting out from the outside wall of Kato Kaelin’s room, the area from which Kaelin heard three loud thumps on the night of the murders) and where the bloody glove was found. She applied the swab to that area of the wire one would have to move aside with one’s hands to proceed, and it too came up positive for blood. In none of the above three areas was there any visual amount of blood to collect for further conventional serology and/or
DNA
tests.

It should also be noted that defense forensic expert Henry Lee saw a red stain on the air conditioner itself during his examination of the area. He ran a presumptive test using ortholotuidine, another reactive chemical agent like phenolphthalein, and the report he prepared, a copy of which was provided to the prosecution, showed that the stain produced a positive for blood.