His Name Is Ron (51 page)

“The children were upstairs, asleep in their bedrooms, unharmed….

“Ron Goldman went there at the very last minute, when he was asked by Nicole, right before ten o'clock, to drop off a pair of glasses.

“Nobody knew Ron Goldman was going to Nicole's condominium on his way to meet some friends….

“So it is very clear that Nicole Brown Simpson was the target of this attack. By someone who knew she would be home and someone who knew where she lived.

“It's not a gunshot killing. We're talking about a killing by a knife, up close, by a person—obviously from these wounds—in a state of rage….

“And all these signs, ladies and gentlemen, point directly to a person who knew Nicole, knew where to find her, and had no reason to go to her house that night except to confront her, and had no reason to expect Ron Goldman, who showed up unexpectedly.

“There's no such person other than O. J. Simpson, ladies and gentlemen.”

Dan turned to a systematic review of the evidence. He placed a three-ring binder on the podium, holding an outline of the points he planned to cover. Each time he finished a point, he flipped a page over with a loud, almost popping flourish, as if to say: That's one more piece of the damning, compelling,
complete
trail of physical material that has been before the public for two and one half years and proves conclusively that the defendant and the killer are one and the same.

Dan assured the jury that the defense, in its closing argument, would once again cry “Contamination!” and “Conspiracy!” He predicted, “You're going to hear all that stuff, okay. None of it is true….

“But I'll tell you one thing. They can't make that argument, even that lame argument … about these shoe prints.

“They can't argue that the shoe prints are planted…. This is one of the single most crucial pieces of evidence in this case….

“If that photo is real, O. J. Simpson is the killer. That's it. It's the end of the ball game.”

During the lunch break, one reporter—a veteran who had been covering criminal cases for years—commented to me, “It's the finest closing argument I've ever witnessed.”

I thought: Everything that Dan laid out so passionately was so incredibly clear. There was a volume of evidence, all pointing to one person. It was unbelievable to hear all of that condensed into a three-hour period.

But Dan was not satisfied. “I've got more to do,” he declared. With a sandwich in one hand, he spent much of the break going over his notes, discussing with his associates what he wanted to cover during the afternoon session.

Throughout the afternoon Dan pounded away. What was at the Bundy crime scene? Ron's blood, Nicole's blood, the defendant's blood, Bruno Magli shoe prints, an Aris Isotoner glove, a watch cap, hair from the defendant, and fibers from his car. What was in the defendant's Bronco? Ron's blood, Nicole's blood, the defendant's blood, and more shoe prints. What was at the defendant's Rockingham estate? Ron's blood, Nicole's blood, the defendant's blood, a matching Aris Isotoner glove with blood, hair, and fibers all over it, and a pair of bloody socks.

It was exhilarating. These were the words I longed to shout from the rooftops. The killer's mask of affability was ripped from his face, exposing him for the lying, vicious, egomaniac we knew him to be.

Kim thought: I know we've got all the facts on our side in this case, but Dan's making it sound so sensible, so reasonable. This is amazing.

Several times during the presentation I caught myself trying to read the faces of the jurors. Each time I lectured myself: Cut this out. You've done this before and it didn't work.

Dan mused, “You know when someone leaves their blood at the scene of a murder, that's usually the end of the ball game, and that person did it.

“Now, if Mr. Simpson did it, as we believe the proof shows, and if he left blood there, which we believe the proof shows, then one would expect there to be some injury to Mr. Simpson, something cut, something abraded, gouged, whatever, but someplace where that blood came from.

“And, in fact, when Mr. Simpson returned from Chicago the next day and went down to talk to the police, he had cuts or marks or gouges, whatever you want to call them, but he had injuries. Where? Left hand. Left hand. That's where the blood was dropped, to the left of various shoe prints. He had injuries to his left hand.

“Do you know what kind of an extraordinary coincidence it would be for O. J. Simpson's ex-wife to be murdered by a killer who bled from the left hand and he has a cut on the left hand and he didn't do it? And he got that cut that night, at the time she's being murdered.

“So when he came back from Chicago, he had a big problem.”

In sum, Dan said, “It all points to him and no one else. Nobody else. Just him. Just him. Because he did it.”

Afterward, in our war room at the Doubletree, Kim said to Dan, “I love it when you use words like ‘liar.' You told it like it is.”

There was much discussion about the killer's reaction to Dan's closing. He had spent most of the day with his head down, scribbling notes. Even when Dan pointed at him and called him a liar and a killer, he had little response. Instead, it was the little, inconsequential things, that seemed to irritate him. For example, at one point Dan declared that the defendant had played one of the most violent of all sports. The killer's head shot up and he mouthed the words, “Football's not violent!”

It was very strange. We would never be able to get inside the mind of this man. But it was a place we did not want to go.

That evening at home we were consumed with conflicting passions. We were in awe of what Dan had accomplished in the courtroom. There were pieces of evidence that we had almost forgotten, but Dan did not miss an iota of it.

All indications were that our plaintiffs' team would finish its presentation in the morning. We had no idea how long the defense would take for its closing statement, but what could Baker and his associates possibly say?

I quipped, “I see only two possibilities. One, he could say, ‘Everybody's lying.' Two, he could say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, this is a Heisman trophy winner. How can you imagine that he could do such a thing?' ”

*   *   *

On Wednesday morning, Dan summarized. “In the end, it all comes down to this: There's blood, there's hair, there's fibers, there's cuts, there's sweatsuits, there's hats, there's no alibi, there's plenty of time, and there's motive.

“And that's on our side of the scale.

“What's on his side?

“His word that he didn't do it, his credibility, his truth telling.”

Dan reminded the jurors of an instruction they would receive: “ ‘A witness willfully false in one part of his or her testimony is to be distrusted in others'…. What that means is that if you believe O. J. Simpson lied to you on just one important point … you can reject his entire testimony.”

Suddenly Dan said, “Can you bring out the board, Joe?” His assistant, Joe Lester, displayed a huge chart on an easel, depicting fifty-seven witnesses and documents that contradicted the defendant's sworn testimony:

Either:
Simpson Is Lying

Or:
All of These Witnesses and Documents Are Lying, Mistaken, or Faked

Nicole Brown Simpson

Writings by Nicole Brown Simpson

India Allen

Albert Aguillera

Mark Day

John Edwards

Sharyn Gilbert

Al Cowlings

Lenore Walker

Medical records from 1989 beating

Photographs of Nicole's face after 1989 beating

Frank Olson

Robert Lerner

Donna Estes

Jackie Cooper

Nancy Ney

GTE telephone records

Paula Barbieri

Craig Baumgarten

Ronald Fischman

Juditha Brown

Kato Kaelin

Allan Park

Charles Cale

Dale St. John

Gigi Guarin

Robert Riske

Michael Terrazas

David Rossi

Donald Thompson

Ron Phillips

Tom Lange

Daniel Gonzales

Leslie Gardiner

Frank Spangler

Richard Aston

Thano Peratis

Willie Ford

Angelica Guzman

Dennis Fung

Andrea Mazzolla

Collin Yamauchi

Jim Merrill

Raymond Kilduff

Mark Partridge

Skip Taft

Michael Baden

Photograph of left hand on June 13

Phillip Vannatter

Robert Kardashian

Kelly Mulldorfer

Harry Scull

Photograph of Simpson taken by Harry Scull

E. J. Flammer

30 photographs of Simpson, taken by E. J. Flammer

Buffalo Bills Report
, 11/93

Orenthal James Simpson

“For him to be innocent and for him to be believed,” Dan declared, waving his hand at the chart, “you have to disbelieve all of them…. All these people, all these writings, all these photographs, they either have to
be fraudulent, lying, altered, mistaken. Bottom line, they all have to be wrong, and only he is right….

“These photos all have to be false; police all have to be liars, mistaken about everything they did.

“Medical records of Nicole's '89 beating, wrong.

“People who witnessed domestic violence incidents, wrong.

“GTE telephone records showing he picked up the message, wrong….

“His lawyer, Skip Taft, who saw the cut on his fourth finger the day when he came back from Chicago, wrong.

“His lawyer friend of, what, twenty, thirty years, Robert Kardashian, wrong. Lied. He lied. He lied when he said Simpson asked him to get the golf clubs. That was a lie.”

Dan was on a roll.

“And Orenthal James Simpson, I guess he's got to be a liar, too, because he told us how mistaken he was when he told the police all those things that he now wants to recant. … I was wrong. I was assuming.

“When he said he was driving over to Paula's after the recital. I was wrong, that wasn't Sunday, that was Saturday.

“When he said he picked up Paula's message. Oh, I was wrong about that, too, I didn't pick it up.

“So I guess he's a liar.”

Without missing a beat, Dan requested, “Can you bring out the next board?” Joe set up a huge display showing all thirty-one color photographs of the killer wearing Bruno Magli shoes. In the center of the board was a plastic pocket holding a copy of the
Buffalo Bills Report
from November 1993.

Dan said, “This is just a good illustration of how a liar gets trapped in his lies.” He reminded the jury of the killer's statement during his deposition that he would never wear those “ugly-ass” shoes. Then, a few months later, the Harry Scull photograph surfaced. The defendant's only option was to claim that the photo was fake. But suddenly he was confronted with thirty additional photos.

“Understand something,” Dan said, “he took this witness stand in his own defense, with his whole case riding on this one point…. Did his lawyer ask him a single question about these photographs …?

“No. I had to ask him…. And maybe for the first time in his life, I guess he realized he was out of room to run.”

Dan paraphrased the killer's response: “Yeah, I was there…. Those are my clothes, not my shoes.”

Gesturing to Joe, Dan said, “Can you reach that for me.”

Joe pulled the four-page
Buffalo Bills Report
from its plastic pocket and handed it over. Turning to page 3, Dan displayed for the jurors a large photograph of the killer wearing Bruno Magli shoes. It was frame 7-A of the Flammer photos. “Well, wait a minute,” Dan said. “This came out in the newspaper, November 1993.” That was eight months prior to the murders. Dan asked caustically, “How could this be a fake?”

We had never seen anything like this—either in real life or in courtroom dramas. The room was stone-cold silent.

I knew that Dan was nearing the end of his presentation, and I had a gut sense of what was coming next.

“We're going to talk very, very briefly about my client, Fred Goldman, my client's loss, the loss of his son,” Dan said. “There can never be true justice for Fred Goldman…. True justice would be to see Ron Goldman walk through those doors right now—”

Hearing those words, Kim broke down. She had a vision of Ron, striding into the courtroom, his eyes shining with pride and appreciation for what all of us—his family and these dedicated professionals—were doing for him. She had an overwhelming desire to go to the cemetery and share this with him.

Dan was now talking about both Ron and Nicole. “There's nothing I can do,” he said. “There's nothing you can do; there's nothing this good judge can do; and there's nothing that man”—Dan pointed at the killer—“can do to bring these people back.

“All you have in your power to do is to bring about some small measure of justice by recognizing the incalculable loss my client has suffered, and to require the man who is responsible for this to pay for this, to pay for the loss he caused this man….

“I think we would agree … there isn't any loss greater than a parent losing a child.”

Glancing toward Baker and his son, Philip, Dan said, “We don't have to look beyond this courtroom. In fact, we don't have to look beyond counsel's table to see the love and the pride that a father has for his grown man—for his grown child, his grown son. You've seen that right here in this courtroom.

“And that is the love and pride that Fred Goldman will have only in memory. In memory, in his heart, and his soul.

“He will never see the beaming look of satisfaction on Ron's face as Ron might have ushered him through his restaurant.

“He will never sit down with Ron at a Fourth of July barbecue or Passover Seder, or a birthday party.

“He will never share the joy of running off to the hospital to see his grandchild, perhaps his first grandchild, a baby that Ron wanted to name Dakota, if you remember.