The People V. . . . The White Bronco

You probably caught the detail in Episode Two that there were actually two white Broncos.  OJ got his as a perk from Hertz for whom he did TV ads and his friend Al Cowling bought one because he liked OJ's.  The slow chase on the 17th of June was in Cowling's while OJ's was sitting in a police lot.  If Marcia Clark was concerned about evidence in the Bronco, that concern did not get to those where OJ's Bronco sat unlocked and vulnerable to theft and contamination.

Each of the two Broncos had what the prosecution considered important evidence.  

Cowling's Bronco contained a number of things that were considered proof that OJ was really trying to flee the country: nearly a thousand dollars in cash, passports, and a fake beard.  The prosecution did not explain why Cowling made no effort to head for LAX or for Mexico.  The defense's view was that OJ faced possible death at the hands of snipers that had been in the trees around his home when he arrived back from Chicago and took along those items as an alternative to his suicide gun, probably at Cowling's urging.  Whatever else we can understand about this evidence, OJ was upset, depressed, and not thinking clearly.  But finally he turned himself in.

OJ's Bronco has a more extensive story.  There are four things to note.

One, as we saw in Episode One, the limo driver who came to take OJ to LAX for his flight to Chicago on the night of the murders did not notice the Bronco at the Rockingham gate to OJ's mansion.  If it wasn't there at the time that OJ was seen by the driver going into the house, 10:54 pm, where was it?  And who moved it to where it was found the next morning when the detectives arrived around 5 am?  But what if it was there and the limo driver just did not notice, as the defense claimed and had a witness who saw it parked by the curb at the time the limo arrived?  And if the Bronco came up to the Rockingham gate, about sixty feet from where the driver was, a moment before he saw the "large Black man" go into the main entrance of the mansion, how is it that the driver did not hear that noisy engine on that quiet street that late evening, noisy enough to have been heard from a block away under that circumstance?  (Broncos were built as competition with the Jeep and was intentionally noisy.)

Two, OJ left a bloody mess in his kitchen the night of the 12th.  He said he was rushing around at the last minute and discovered he did not have his cell phone.  He had left it in the Bronco so around five to 11, he rushed out to the Bronco, unlocked it, reached hastily for the cell and jammed his finger, pulled it out, closed and locked the Bronco, and rushed back inside only to discover his left hand was bleed profusely.  Having taken Nsaids for his arthritis, his blood was thinner and he bled a lot.  He tried to clean the blood up the best he could and stop the bleeding.  He had Kato Kaelin and the driver load his two bags into the limo, and he was still fifteen minutes late leaving for the airport.  He left the bloody mess in the kitchen for his maid to clean the next day.  But he was unaware that he had left a trail of blood drops from the Rockingham gate through the front door.

Three, on the 13th, when the detectives were trying to get someone in the mansion to open the gate for them, Detective Fuhrman examined the Bronco.  He noticed some drops of blood on the door.  With that as a concern that there might be more victims inside the mansion but with no warrant, Vannatter authorized Fuhrman to climb the wall and get them in to search for victims.  Fuhrman had been to Rockingham officially at least one time some years earlier in response to a domestic dispute.  Unofficially, he was probably among the officers who took advantage of the pool and tennis courts and maybe OJ's largesse.  Because Vannatter knew Fuhrman was familiar with Rockingham, he had invited him to lead the way from Bundy.  While Vannatter and Lange went to find and talk with OJ's daughter Arnelle, Fuhrman explored the grounds, found the glove on the walkway, and then returned to the Bronco.  Since it was locked, he looked inside the Bronco using his flashlight and thought he saw some more blood inside.  He then went and got the other detectives to tell them about the glove and the Bronco.  For some reason a little later, Fuhrman wanted to have the hood popped so unlocking the door, he asked his friend who had been holding and petting the bloody Akita at the Bundy crime scene to climb in and pull the hood latch.

Four, OJ's Bronco was finally impounded two days later.  Two days after that, while sitting in the police lot, several items were stolen from it.  The Bronco was finally examined for evidence two months after the impounding.

Too bad the Broncos can't talk either.