The prosecution took one point in time brought forward by a neighbor near Bundy, the wailing dog heard by one witness (but not by others) at 10:15 pm. That time was never corroborated by any other witness or forensic evidence.
It was chosen to support the theory that OJ came to Bundy shortly after 10 pm, completed the crime, left the scene, changed clothes, got rid of the knife, shoes, and bloody clothes on the way to Rockingham, accidentally dropped the bloody glove behind Kato Kaelin’s guest apartment at 10:45, went back around to the front of the mansion where the limo driver saw him entering the mansion at 10:55 pm.
However, Nicole’s body was not found until 11:55 pm and Ron’s at 12:17 am when the police arrived in response to a 9-1-1 call.
The coroner was not called in until 9 am. So he was not in a good position to be able to determine when the deaths occurred and could only estimate they happened somewhere between 9 and 12 the night before.
Phone records in police custody showed that Nicole was talking to her mother about lost eye glasses at 9:40 pm and that Nicole then called Mezzaluna at 9:42 and asked Ron to see if he could find them.
According to friends, Ron had already clocked out for the day and was having a drink in the bar. After getting Nicole’s call, he left at 9:50, went home to change, which his friends said would take about a half hour. He borrowed a car, drove to Bundy, and probably arrived about 10:30. His timeline might not run so late if he rushed and did not take time to do his normal careful grooming. He could have shown up as early as a little after 10. No one who knew him actually saw him after he left Mezzaluna. A defense witness heard someone yelling “Hey, Hey, Hey!” at Bundy around 10:35. That might have been Ron intervening in whatever was happening with Nicole about then.
Experts testifying for the defense estimated that, based on the wounds, it would have taken 8 to 15 minutes for the victims to lose enough blood to expire, though they would have been unconscious before that. Other experts, looking at the defensive wounds noted in the autopsies, estimated that the fight lasted as much as ten minutes.
Based on the defense’s best estimate, the start of the fight would have been about 10:35, proceeded violently based on the defensive wounds, bruises, and abrasions until the two victims collapsed somewhere between 10:42 and 10:50. If Ron was fastidious before going to see his friend Nicole, he would not have arrived before 10:30 when a defense witness heard arguing and shouting from Bundy and then about 10:47 pm saw a white SUV racing away from there.
That car was going south and not north so getting back to Rockingham would have taken longer. That means the bumps heard by Kaelin occurred before the crime ended and OJ, were he the driver, would have had no time to change out of the bloody clothes and into what the limo driver saw entering the mansion at 10:54. In any case, OJ would have had to change, shower, and get down to the limo by 11:02. And OJ was considered as careful about his appearance as anyone in the narcissistic milieu of Los Angeles.
The police came upon the scene at Bundy at 12:17. Inside they saw bathwater that had been drawn and was cooling, candles lit in the bathroom around the tub, and a melting dish of ice cream. None of these was examined and tested for rate of change, something that might have helped the police determine an estimated time of death.
The prosecution was stuck having to build its case on less than circumstantial evidence related to the time of death. Their choice of time had to do more with what they felt fit in Kaelin’s thumps on the wall (backed up by the bloody glove found there by Detective Fuhrman) and with OJ’s leaving for Chicago rather than any direct witnesses’ testimony or scientific evidence.
The jury had no clear narrative about the actual time of death from the prosecution. The defense's narrative was stronger to explain what happened.
It’s the details that can lead to reasonable doubt or to conviction. And this one detail was never nailed down by Marcia Clark or Chris Darden.
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