The People V. . . . Fuhrman timeline

The series about the Simpson case has shown the kind of self-centeredness of Detective Fuhrman that makes him an unlikeable character.  Narcissism is not just a problem for OJ.

Fuhrman talks a lot about the case in his book MURDER IN BRENTWOOD.  His book is so full of himself it is almost laughable.  His arrogance and lack of professionalism are obvious in his description of what he did that early morning.  First, he makes himself at home on the couch in the Bundy condo after he has toured the crime scene.  Second, his critique of Vannatter and Lange for their failures to do their duties is gratuitous, because third, Fuhrman’s description of his own actions which show he was as inept as they had been when he was left in charge for periods of time at Rockingham and Bundy.

He is just the kind of person who would find a way to become the center of attention in any circumstance.  So he was in his element when the call came that the ex-wife of OJ Simpson had just been murdered.

The moment he learned that he was being replaced as lead detective, he looked for a way to be so important to the case that he would be in the middle of it anyway.  Here is what I think he did, based on his own book, which Jeffery Toobin accepted as fact for THE RUN OF HIS LIFE.  

The following was also how the defense understood Detective Fuhrman’s role.  We may see that in Episode Nine or Ten of AMERICAN CRIME STORY.

I am following the LAPD timeline from the previous blog posting, put together in the order gleaned from the series writers of the TV show and the specific times provided from the book KILLING TIME by Freed and Briggs.

Because Rockingham and Bundy were five minutes apart, Fuhrman would be able to leave and return with hardly anyone noticing.  With so many officers around, he would not be missed, especially if he usually operated in seclusion, like the inside of the condo to make notes.  He figured that by taking one of the pieces of evidence from Bundy and depositing it somewhere else, and then being the one to find it, he could take back the attention he enjoyed.  Before joining his partner and his captain on the corner, he picked up one of the gloves and put it into an evidence bag.  The glove would still be wet with blood two or three hours after the likely time of death.  He figured that OJ would be the prime suspect.  Significant others, even divorced ones like OJ, usually did it.  

As they stood there waiting for Vannatter and Lange, about 3:30 or so, he probably excused himself to go to the bathroom, climbed into his car and drove over to Rockingham.  He may even have taken his partner.  Chachi, the watchdog, would be no bother.   He and the dog were buddies from many previous visits.  Parking further down Rockingham, walking up to the estate, and then climbing the wall, he would check out likely spots to put the glove.  The foot traffic around these mansions at 3:30 in the morning would be less than around the Bundy site with all its condos.  According to his book, Fuhrman went along the unused walkway next to the garage.  He ran into a problem, he wrote: cobwebs.  He turned that into a verbal drama in his book, making it scary because he could not see that far in front of him, and making it brave, because he soldiered through it with his gun at the ready and the flashlight showing the way.  He went the length of the walkway and got no brilliant ideas about where to plant the glove.  

When he returned to where a street light shown on Rockingham, he realized his jacket was full of cobwebs and that he’d have a devil of a time explaining them.  Still hanging on to the evidence bag with the glove in it, he knew he had to somehow get back to Rockingham and see if anyone there could say something that would give him an idea where to plant it.  

Rosa Lopez testified to hearing a loud argument somewhere around 3 am and it could have been Fuhrman and his partner arguing over the cobwebs on the jacket, not leaving the evidence, and how to get back to drop it later.  

Fuhrman could also have had along his dog-handling friend who still had blood on his uniform from the dog at Bundy.  He might have had him climb into the Bronco at this point.  Or the friend may have been among the officers who followed the four detectives when they came to Rockingham around sunrise.   

Upon returning to Bundy by 4 am, Fuhrman left the jacket in the car and rejoined the captain at the corner to wait for the detectives from downtown.  Vannatter showed up just after that and Lange arrived about 4:30.  It is unlikely Fuhrman told them of his plan.  Really all he had to do was have his partner tell them that he was familiar with OJ’s home and they’d likely let him lead them there.  To show his humility, he pretended to need to be reminded and got directions from another officer.  He and his partner then led the way, arriving a little after 5 am.  The two lead detectives, like Fuhrman, believed in the theory about estranged partners usually being the killers so they were ready to presume OJ was guilty and would be looking for any sign that pointed in his direction.

When they arrived at the estate, Fuhrman struck gold.  Kato Kaelin had this weird story about bumps on his back wall at about 10:40 or so.  That left Fuhrman with the problem of how to get the glove back there.  He decided to see if anyone was awake next door, since it was daylight.  The housekeeper, Rosa Lopez, talked about hearing the argument around 3 am.  He asked if he could check the back yard that abutted the Simpson estate and got permission.  In his book, he spoke about going into the yard to have a look.  

I think it was then that he took the still wet glove from the plastic evidence bad and slipped it over the fence just below Kaelin’s air conditioner.

He then was in a position to get the other detectives and lead them to the glove.  

That confirmed Vannatter’s belief that OJ was the culprit.  But he knew it would take more evidence than just that so he got extra blood from OJ when he interviewed him that afternoon.  Vannatter would have had plenty of time to leaves drops of OJ's blood at the Bundy crime scene before returning to Rockingham by 4 pm.  And he probably did take samples of blood from the autopsies of Nicole and Ron, which he and Lange witnessed the next morning.  With the three vials of blood, Vannatter was in a position to spread it wherever it would do the investigation the most good, mainly the Bronco and the back gate at Bundy which were not examined until weeks after the crime.

Fuhrman wasn’t finished.  While Vannatter and Lange were interviewing OJ downtown, Fuhrman was in charge at Rockingham.  He had plenty of time to hunt up something innocuous like socks.  So he drives back to Bundy, looks around as if he is “detecting,” dips the two socks into a bloody spot and returns to Rockingham, plants the socks on the floor of OJ’s bedroom where the photographer later photographs them.

This narrative of how things could have happened explains how it is that the glove got where it did, how the socks were not in the first photo of OJ’s bedroom and were there on the floor late that afternoon when another photo was taken, and how the socks had parallel blood spots, as if they had been side-by-side and flat when the blood soaked into them.  The press would not have understood any of Fuhrman’s coming and going, if he were even noticed, as part of the framing of OJ.

After all, it was not the press who noticed Lange’s keeping OJ’s shoes overnight nor Vannatter’s ignorance of the street lingo surrounding the Colombian cartel.  It was the defense’s investigators.

Please understand that this telling does not prove OJ was innocent.  It just shows how the LAPD could have easily “enhanced” their case against their chief suspect.  We have yet to explore OJ’s alibi and the actual murders themselves.

The People V. . . . Episode Six

The focus of this episode is three fold, Detective Fuhrman’s racism, the competence of the detectives in the case, and the stresses on Marcia Clark.  First, let me respond to what was shown as Clark’s experiences as a woman prosecutor in a high profile case.  

The producers of the series were offering that as one of the reasons the DA’s office failed to get a conviction.  They even made up the dance scene and apparent serious relationship that they presumed grew up between Clark and Chris Darden.  I saw none of that in the books about the case.  But the writers of this series were going for drama and the touch of romance suited their purposes.

However, the stresses were very real.  Tough as Clark was, she still changed her hair style and clothes in response to media criticism.  And her divorce situation was used against her in the media.  

The jury saw none of that, though of course they noticed changes in her hair and clothes.  They were almost as much in prison as OJ was during the trial, with little contact with the rest of the world and no contact with newspapers, radio, or television at the time.  I have yet to see anyone from the jury remark about Marcia Clark’s appearance or stress.  

The series writers did an interesting juxtaposition on Clark and Detective Fuhrman.  Near the episode’s beginning, Clark was stopped by security, despite her notoriety as the lead DA on the trial.  She was made to go back through the metal detector with the rest of the folks trying to get a seat in the court room.  Near the end of the episode, Fuhrman and two aides were ignored by security as they marched past the metal detector and into the court room.  I do not recall that ever in any of the books but it sure was dramatic.  I don’t think the writers liked Fuhrman.

Second, the writers did show some flaws in the approach of the detectives to the case.  In Vannatter’s book about the trial, he said he connected OJ to the crime the moment he saw the drops of blood on the drive from the Bronco to OJ’s house.  But at trial, he finally admitted OJ was the chief suspect from the beginning after having testified in court that at the beginning he was still reserving judgment on whom the killer might be.  Lange, upon cross examination by Johnny Cochran, admitted that he took OJ’s shoes home overnight before turning them in as evidence, something he admitted he had never done in any other case.  

The defense took a similar hit when Rosa Lopez, the maid of the home next door to Rockingham, did not appear to be free of Cochran’s direct influence in discussing when she saw the Bronco at the Rockingham gate.  In my reading, I found that Lopez was the second person Fuhrman spoke with at Rockingham the morning after the murders.  After Vannatter and Lange went to find OJ’s older daughter and then make the call to Chicago, Fuhrman listened to Kato Kaelin’s rendition of the three thumps against his room’s back wall.  Fuhrman went next door and spoke at length with Lopez. Then he went through her back yard to where he could see the air conditioner on Kaelin’s back wall.  She told him that she had heard men’s voices coming from OJ’s property.  They were in a heated argument for a few minutes.  She thought it was around two or three in the morning.  None of that got into the series’ telling of the trial so far.  I add it because her testimony, manipulated by Cochran or not, may have had an impact on the jury as they sought to figure out what happened at Rockingham that night.

Third, this episode brings a crucial point according to the writers of the series.  The “N…” word is spoken in court and the defense gets Fuhrman to claim he never used that word, ever.  The writers see the line of questioning by lawyer F. Lee Bailey, as a “dog whistle.”  African Americans on the jury would see Fuhrman as a liar if he said he never used it or as a condemnation of him if he admitted using it.  It was a tactic with no real substance, as the writers seem to presume.  What they forgot is the very point that Cochran made in his argument with Darden during the pre-trial phase: African Americans have heard that word so many times they were mature enough to look past it to see if its user is honest about it or not.

Most of you will remember where that all went and we can look forward to it in a future episode.  I’m guessing it will be in the last episode because it seems to be the linchpin to the myth of why the mostly African American jury exonerated OJ. – As you watch the remaining episodes, check out that jury.  There are three Anglos and one Hispanic.  May I suggest that at least the one white man was not likely to be affected by Fuhrman’s racism.  “So what else is new?” he would likely tell you and say it was other things, evidence, that led him to decide “not guilty.”  

Finally, you noticed that Clark brought out a poster with several pictures on it, including the bloody gloves.  She had Fuhrman point to the picture of the glove as the one he found at Rockingham.  For cinematic reasons, you will not see that poster again.  But in the trial, that poster and all the others that Clark felt told her story best were set up in front of the jury to ponder for most of the eight months of the trial.  The evidence for OJ’s innocence or guilt were right in front of their noses that whole time.  Unfortunately, you probably won’t get to see the posters again in this series.  So we will have to see what else the writers say that the jury heard that led them to free OJ.  Good drama ends with a surprise, a plausible surprise.  It will be interesting how the writers pull that off, given everyone knows how the trial ended.

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.