The Search for Justice (7 page)

Additionally, his friends were growing concerned about his emotional state. I had arranged that after he was examined by Huizenga,
he would then be seen by Dr. Saul Faerstein, a noted forensic psychiatrist whose professional services are often used by the
U.S. attorney ’s office. Nicole ’s funeral was to be held the next day, there was a wake and a family gathering to attend
that evening, and as the hour grew near, O.J. understandably grew more and more depressed.

Where does a man turn when he is faced with two terrible realities: one, the violent death of an ex-spouse; and two, the fact
that he is considered the prime suspect in the murder? He ’d had no time to grieve, let alone be alert enough to focus on
the details that were necessary to both prepare for a court fight and deal with his other obligations, which were significant.
His overwhelming concern for his children—the adult ones, Jason and Arnelle, who had dearly loved Nicole, and the little ones,
Sydney and Justin, who had lost her—had O.J. in complete turmoil. The questions about what was going to happen to him, what
was going to happen to his kids, and what the future had in store for him were all coming up now on a minute-to-minute basis.
For years he had provided financial support to his large extended family, supporting his mother, helping his two sisters,
and being significantly responsible for the Browns, the parents as well as Nicole ’s sisters. How would he be able to maintain
that? He wasn ’t sleeping, and in addition to being exhausted, he seemed to be sinking further into shock by the hour.

In fact, while we were at Dr. Huizenga ’s office, I received a
call from the L.A.P.D. “We ’ve just had a very, very distressing report that O.J. has committed suicide.”

“That ’s very interesting,” I answered, “because I ’m here with his doctor, and we just took his blood pressure. Oh, Dr. Huizenga,”
I said, loud enough for them to hear, “was he dead or alive when you took his blood pressure?” So much for that rumor.

In the process of the examination, Huizenga found a swollen lymph node in O.J. ’s armpit, which gave him reason for concern.
He ran some tests and said he wanted a follow-up exam within the next two days. O.J. then left with Bob Kardashian for his
first appointment with Dr. Faerstein.

In the meantime, Bill Pavelic was trying to find out who Ron Goldman was and where he fit into the mystery. Was he a boyfriend?
Was he a bystander? Aside from Nicole ’s close friend and Brentwood neighbor Cora Fischman (who cooperated both on the phone
and in person), the women who comprised the core of Nicole ’s group—Faye Resnick, Robin Greer, Candace Garvey (Steve Garvey
’s wife), Cynthia “CiCi” Shahian (Kardashian ’s cousin), and Kris Jenner—all simply refused to talk to us. They were in shock,
of course, and grieving the death of their friend. And because of their own suspicions, they ’d quickly closed ranks against
anyone having to do with O.J. Their hostility was tangible.

There was some tension among these women that O.J. told the police had existed before Nicole ’s death. “They ’ve got some
things going on right now…. Something ’s happening because one of the girlfriends is having a big problem with her husband.
Everybody was beefing with everybody.”

We heard through the grapevine that Cora Fischman had become somewhat paranoid, saying to a friend of hers, “If the murderer
’s not O.J., then we ’re all in trouble, because we know too much.” When I interviewed Cora, we discovered that Faye Resnick
had been staying with Nicole on Bundy, that there had been a drug intervention on the part of Faye ’s concerned friends, and
Resnick had gone into a drug-rehabilitation program
—her third—just four days before the murders. In addition, we knew that Ron Goldman had arrived at Nicole ’s carrying an envelope
that, although it was found to contain her mother ’s glasses left behind at the restaurant, might have been interpreted by
an observer as containing something else, possibly drugs.

So initially it appeared that we might have a reasonable basis for exploring a narcotics angle. Bill Pavelic was looking into
the record of 911 calls in the area on the night of the murders; there had been reports of prowlers, and we couldn ’t dismiss
the likelihood that if they were borne out, they could have some connection to the crime. At the very least, we had an obligation
to investigate further, if only to rule out the possibility. Ultimately, our investigation was to discover much information
about Nicole that was of an intimate and possibly inflammatory nature. It was relevant to the case and we chose not to use
it as part of the defense. I choose not to use it now.

O.J. ’s life, in fact, was completely opposite of what many people believed. Hardly the party-going, run-around single guy,
he preferred to be with girlfriend Paula Barbieri and his close friends most evenings, heading to bed surprisingly between
eight and nine every night so that he could play his beloved golf at five in the morning.

Nicole, however, liked her tequila now and then, liked to go out with the girls once in a while, dancing at the Roxy, a Hollywood
celebrity hangout, or Bar One or the Renaissance in Santa Monica. But they were divorced, and she was a young, attractive
woman of comfortable means. A few nights out, in the scheme of things, and in the world they lived in, didn ’t mean anything
particularly negative. Although they had been divorced at the time of her death, there had been attempts at reconciliation,
the first at his instigation and the second at hers, in 1993, when O.J. agreed to give it another year. In mid-May on 1994,
they finally agreed that they would go their separate ways while doing what was best for their children.

In addition to the press coverage we ’d seen already, with everyone from attorneys to entertainment reporters issuing television
commentary every night, the tabloid coverage had begun. O.J. ’s house on Rockingham looked like a round-the-clock film shoot,
with sound trucks, lights, photographers, and reporters, not to mention casual onlookers, tree-climbers, fence-scalers, and
autograph hunters. Someone would later take long-lens shots of the children at the funeral. Film crews and reporters were
becoming the nearly constant companions of everyone having to do with the case.

I live in a gated community, so at least they weren ’t camped on my doorstep, but as soon as I drove out through the gate,
it was like a military action forming behind me. Keno Jenkins, my longtime driver and security person, has a black Isuzu Trooper
identical to mine. At times, just to get to court or my office, I would have our housekeeper drive one car while Keno drove
the other, and I would be down on the floor in the back of one of them. Once through the gate, they would each turn in separate
directions, to try to throw off the press parade as they played “Find Shapiro.” We all got a kick out of it the first couple
of times we pulled it off, but very quickly it became tedious and a waste of time.

On Wednesday evening, June 15, I went with O.J. and Bob Kardashian to Laguna Hills for the small, private wake for Nicole
at the funeral home; the funeral itself would be held the next day at St. Martin of Tours Catholic Church in Brentwood.

O.J. was distraught and tearful the entire time he was at the wake. People were coming up and hugging him, talking with him,
sitting with him, sharing private moments and memories. The casket was open—it would be closed for the funeral the next day—and
he kept drifting toward it. After the service, mourners had been invited back to a quiet reception at the Brown home. As we
were leaving, O.J. said he wanted to spend some time alone with Nicole. I stood outside the door and watched as he went up,
knelt down next to the casket, and spent the next fifteen minutes quietly talking to her.

The Browns live in a lovely home in the upscale Laguna community of Monarch Bay, adjacent to the beach. Juditha and Louis
(who with O.J. ’s backing had secured a Hertz franchise at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Beach) were gracious and welcoming to
their guests, in spite of what they were going through. After I paid my condolences, I continued to talk with Juditha.

Even when his marriage to Nicole was troubled and then ultimately failed, O.J. had maintained a very close relationship with
Juditha, and she had always been his friend and ally. “I ’m so glad O.J. has you on his side,” she said to me. “The children
need their father.”

I asked her, and Nicole ’s sisters Denise and Tanya as well, about the last time any of them had talked to Nicole. I was trying
to narrow down the time of her death. “I talked to her shortly before 11:00 that night,” said her mother.

“How do you know that for sure?” I asked.

“Because when we got home from Los Angeles, I looked at the clock,” Juditha said. “I had to call her about leaving my glasses
at Mezzaluna, but I didn ’t want to call her too late. I remember that it was just a few minutes before 11:00.”

With that information, and knowing that Allan Park had picked up O.J. at Rockingham a few minutes after 11:00, it seemed to
me that it was clear that the murders on Bundy had taken place while O.J. was verifiably at home on Rockingham.

I kept checking back with Juditha, to make certain that
she
was certain. Later I was criticized for questioning her and the family so intensely the night before they had to bury their
daughter and sister. However, the Browns wanted to answer these questions as much as I needed to ask them. Everybody wanted
to find out who had committed these murders.

Much later, it turned out that Juditha was mistaken. We were confident that the phone records would verify her version, but
when we saw them during the preliminary hearing, they indicated that the call had actually been made at about 9:45
P.M
., not 10:45. So she was off by an hour. But it would be a while
before I would know that. We ’d heard that the district attorney ’s office had some damning evidence: blood, gloves, maybe
a hat. That ’s okay, I thought. We have the phone call.

Nicole ’s funeral was held on Thursday morning at St. Martin of Tours Catholic Church in Brentwood, and O.J. of course attended
with his children, the Brown and Simpson families, and his close friends. But my place that day, I had decided, was at my
office. One of the first calls I made was to Gerald Uelmen, the retiring dean of the law school at the University of Santa
Clara.

Gerry, although he began his career as a successful prosecutor, first came to public attention in 197, defending Daniel Ells-berg
in the Pentagon Papers case, and his encyclopedic knowledge of the law had been invaluable on the Christian Brando case; in
fact, he ’d successfully argued a motion to prevent Christian ’s early interview with the police from being used against him
in that trial. Gerry has been rightly called a “scholar of the state ’s and nation ’s higher courts,” and I was glad to hear
that he, too, was willing to join our team.

I tracked down Alan Dershowitz in Israel and asked him, and later his brother Nathan, to come in as consultants on motions
and possible appellate issues, which they agreed to do. The Dershowitzes, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Alan is
a professor at Harvard Law School, had also worked on the Brando case with me, but I had known Alan as a colleague and valued
his constitutional knowledge for years before that, often calling him for advice and feedback. Because of his expertise on
appeals (which by definition are preceded by a conviction), we nicknamed Alan the “God Forbid!” lawyer. Passionate to a fault
about the Constitution, the appellate process, and his advocacy of his clients, Alan has more brains—and, at times, less common
sense—than almost anyone I know. Sometimes his passion leads him to take positions that are painful to watch.

One afternoon a few months into the trial, I got a call from Larry King. “You should come over to the studio tonight,
Bob,” he said. “Alan Dershowitz is in town, and he ’s gonna be on the show, arguing about police brutality with the head of
the Police Protective League.”

I immediately tracked Alan down and tried to caution him about the need for discretion, that we should avoid slamming the
police while O.J. ’s case was making headlines every day. “Please tone it down,” I asked him. “The lawyers on the team need
to be a little more circumspect these days, especially about the L.A.P.D.”

Alan assured me he understood. That night, however, I winced as he spoke on Larry ’s show of police conspiracies, “testi-
lying
,” and the way cops are “trained to lie at the police academy.”

Clearly, Alan Dershowitz is the man you want on your side where appellate and Constitutional issues are in question, and he
was a boon to this case. As the case evolved, he would be the one player who was always on good terms with everyone on the
defense team. He wasn ’t afraid to stand up to O.J. when he was angry, calm him down when things got rough, and play peacemaker
when the occasion warranted. And given the opinions and egos on the defense team on any given day, the occasion warranted
quite often.