The Mammoth Book of New Csi (31 page)
In preparation for what appeared to be an assignation, Nicole had run a bath and lit burning candles just before her murder. Prosecutor Chris Darden maintained that Simpson spied on his ex-wife, saw Nicole lighting candles, realized that she had a date and killed her in a jealous rage.
Karen Lee Crawford, the manager of the Mezzaluna restaurant where Nicole ate that night, testified that Nicole’s mother phoned the restaurant at 9.37 p.m., asking about a pair of glasses her daughter had lost. Karen found them and put them in an envelope. When waiter Ron Goldman left at the end of his shift at 9.50 p.m., he said he would drop them off at Nicole’s home.
Nicole’s neighbour, Pablo Fenives, testified that he had heard a dog barking and the “plaintive wail” of a dog at around ten to fifteen minutes after the beginning of the 10 o’clock news. Another neighbour, Eva Stein testified that she heard a loud and persistent barking at around 10.15 p.m. that prevented her from sleeping. Neighbour Steven Schwab testified that, while he was walking his dog in the area near Nicole’s house at around 10.30 p.m., he noticed the Akita trailing its leash. The animal was agitated and had blood on its paws. However, a quick examination showed it was uninjured. Schwab took the dog to his friend Sukru Boztepe, who let the dog into his home and noticed it was agitated. Boztepe took the Akita for a walk at around 11 p.m. He testified that the dog tugged on its leash and led him to Nicole’s dead body. He then flagged down a passing patrol car.
The first police officer on the crime scene, Robert Riske, said he found a woman lying face down in a pool of blood on the walkway that led to her house. She was barefoot and wearing a black dress. Goldman’s body was lying on its side beside a tree. Beside him was his bleeper and a white envelope, which contained Nicole’s glasses. Riske also testified that there was a dark-blue knit ski cap and a black leather glove on the ground near the bodies.
Detective Tom Lange testified that the bottom of Nicole’s feet were clean, which indicated she had probably been killed first, before any blood had flowed. This vital piece of crime scene evidence implied that Simpson had set out to kill Nicole, while Goldman inadvertently stumbled upon the killing, forcing Simpson to turn on him, too. In cross-examining, Defence Attorney Johnnie Cochran proposed two alternative hypotheses as to what had happened at the murder scene. He suggested that one, or more, drug dealers had come to the house looking for Nicole’s house guest, Faye Resnick, an admitted cocaine user. Or that the “assassin, or assassins” had followed Goldman to the house to kill him.
But it was the DNA evidence found at the crime scene and Simpson’s home that the prosecution thought would convict him. Socks found in Simpson’s bedroom had over twenty bloodstains on them. DNA analysis showed the blood to be that of Nicole. The odds against it being hers were approximately one in 9.7 billion, rising to one in 21 billion when compiling results of testing done at the separate DNA laboratories.
However, the bloodstains showed a similar pattern on both sides of the socks. Dr Henry Lee of the Connecticut State Police Forensic Science Laboratory, called by the defence, testified that the only way such a pattern could appear was if the socks were lying flat. The blood would have to be wet at the time, and it was estimated that if Simpson had killed Nicole and splashed blood on his socks, it would have dried by the time he got home. The defence also contended that the chemical preservative ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid, or EDTA, was found in the stain. The victims’ blood samples were stored at the LAPD laboratory in tubes that contained EDTA, implying that the stains were planted.
DNA analysis of the blood found in and on Simpson’s Bronco and where it was parked in his driveway showed traces of Simpson’s blood and that of both of the victims. Strands of African-American hair were found on Goldman’s shirt and in the knitted cap found at the crime scene, along with fibres from the carpet of Simpson’s Bronco. Dark-blue cotton fibres were also found on Goldman, and the prosecution presented a witness who said Simpson wore a similarly coloured sweatsuit that night. The matching sweatsuit itself was never found. The defence also pointed out that the hair could have come from any African-American – about 10 per cent of the population of Los Angeles is black. The hair appeared to have no dandruff, while Simpson’s hair did. As to the fibres, the defence contended that the whole crime scene had been contaminated when a detective unfurled a blanket from Nicole’s home to cover her body.
Bloody footprints leading from the crime scene were identified by FBI shoe expert William Bodziak as having been an exclusive type of Italian Bruno Magli shoes, size twelve. A similar impression was left on the floor of the Bronco. Only 299 pairs in that size had been sold in the United States. They were on sale in Bloomingdale’s where Simpson sometimes shopped and twelve was Simpson’s shoe size. The defence claimed that there was no proof that Simpson had ever bought such shoes. After the trial, the
National Enquirer
published a photograph that appeared to show Simpson wearing a pair of these shoes taken by a freelance photographer in 1993. While Simpson’s defence team claimed the photograph was faked, other similar photographs were circulated. But no such shoes were ever found. DNA taken from bloody footprints at the scene of the crime and spots found in the driveway of the Rockingham estate also matched Simpson’s, the prosecution contended.
The defence had its own team of DNA experts who contested this and the cross-examination of the police criminalist Dennis Fung, who had gathered the evidence, lasted eight days. He admitted to “having missed a few drops of blood on a fence near the bodies”. On the stand he said that he “returned several weeks afterwards to collect them”.
Most of the blood samples from the crime scene were collected on 13 June 1994, immediately after the discovery of the murders, but the three bloodstains on the rear gate of Nicole’s house were not collected until 3 July. The defence maintained that these stains were not collected the day after the crime because they were not there at that time. A photograph taken the day after the crime shows no blood in the area of the rear gate where the largest and most prominent stain was later found.
“Where is it, Mr Fung?” asked defence attorney Barry Scheck.
Fung had no answer. The implication was that it had been planted.
Further, Fung admitted that he had not used rubber gloves when collecting some of the evidence. Also, when he collected Simpson’s socks from his bedroom he did not notice the bloodstain, though it was the size of a quarter and he was looking for blood in Simpson’s home at the time. The socks were examined twice more at the crime laboratory and no blood was found. It was over six weeks later that the bloodstain was noticed. If Nicole’s blood had been planted on the sock, her blood and that of Goldman and Simpson could have been planted elsewhere, the defence reasoned.
Why had Fung and his assistant been at both sites, introducing the possibility of contamination? A crime scene photograph showed an ungloved hand holding the blood-spattered envelope containing Nicole’s glasses. Fung also admitted to placing blood samples into plastic bags. Fung claimed this was purely a temporary measure and admitted that doing so could foster bacteria growth, which, in turn, could distort test results.
LAPD Detective Philip Vannatter testified that he saw photographs of press personnel leaning on Simpson’s Bronco before evidence was collected. It also transpired that Andrea Mazzola, Dennis Fung’s assistant who collected much of the evidence, was a trainee. She was working without supervision and was captured on camera dropping several bloody swabs and wiping tweezers with dirty hands. She had also carried a vial containing blood collected from Simpson in the pocket of her lab coat for nearly a day, increasing the chances of contamination. Samples of blood taken from the crime scene were handled by a technician wearing gloves already flecked by the sample of blood Simpson had given. And the LA County District Attorney’s Office and the Medical Examiner’s Office could not explain why 1.5 ml of the original 8 ml of blood taken from Simpson were missing.
LAPD criminologist Collin Yamauchi admitted that he spilled some of Simpson’s blood from a reference vial while working in the evidence processing room. Shortly afterwards, he handled the glove from the Rockingham Avenue estate and the cotton swatches containing the blood from outside Nicole’s house. He was wearing the same gloves at the time. The defence contended that some of Simpson’s blood was inadvertently transferred via Yamauchi’s gloves or instruments, contaminating the evidence.
DNA of the person who left the blood drops – possibly the true perpetrator – could not be detected, the defence argued, because it was degraded and destroyed due to mishandling of the samples from outside Nicole’s townhouse. LAPD crime scene investigators collected the blood drops by swabbing them with wet cotton swatches. The swabs were then put in plastic bags and left in a hot truck for several hours. The prosecution’s expert witnesses all acknowledged that DNA degrades rapidly when blood samples are left in a moist, warm environment. This degradation can make the DNA untypeable and that subsequent contamination of the sample by a second person’s DNA can produce a false match. The quantity of DNA found in the samples was consistent with such contamination. And at the crime laboratory, the swabs were put into bundles before they had been left to dry, leading to contamination, the defence said.
Detective Vannatter, who led the investigation, also had access to Simpson’s blood, the defence pointed out. Thano Peratis, the nurse who took Simpson’s blood, put the tube in an unsealed envelope and passed it to Vannatter. Instead of booking it as evidence straightaway, he took it with him across town to the Rockingham estate, where he handed it to Dennis Fung a couple of hours later. Clearly, he was in sole possession of the blood tube long enough to have planted DNA evidence.
Dr Robin Cotton of Cellmark Diagnostics, one of the companies that tested the DNA, was on the stand for six days. It was revealed that Cellmark had made two errors in DNA tests in 1988 and 1989 – finding DNA in mock crime scenes where none was present – though no further mistakes had been made since. In fact, one of the testing companies consulted by the defence had also made a similar mistake in 1988. But, generally, it was shown that the prosecution’s handling of the DNA evidence was lax, undermining its credibility. Vials of the victims’ blood used for reference sent to other laboratories for further tests were found to be contaminated with Simpson’s DNA.
The prosecution said that they had made DNA samples available for the defence to do their own testing, but they had not done so. It also pointed out that substrate controls – test samples taken from unstained areas adjacent to the blood drops – were negative. That is, they contained no detectable DNA. The defence pointed out that the substrate controls were not tested in parallel with the crime scene samples and, consequently, did not pick up the cross-contamination.
According to the DNA tests, blood from both Simpson and the victims was found on the black leather glove at the scene of the crime, though no other drops of blood were found near the glove. Fibres from the carpet of the Bronco were also found on it. A matching glove was found outside the guest house on Simpson’s estate near where Kato Kaelin had heard the thumps on the night of the murders. This glove, too, according to the prosecution, carried the DNA of O. J. Simpson, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, along with a long strand of blonde hair similar to that of Nicole. Hair consistent with that of Goldman was also found. The type of glove was Aris Light, size XL. Nicole had bought Simpson two pairs of gloves of this type from Bloomingdale’s back in 1990, before they divorced. A photograph was produced showing Simpson wearing the same type of gloves.
In court, Cochran asked Simpson to try on the leather glove found at the scene of the crime. It was plainly too tight. However, it had to fit over a latex glove worn to prevent the evidence being further contaminated. Assistant prosecutor Christopher Darden said that Simpson “has arthritis and we looked at the medication he takes and some of it is anti-inflammatory and we are told he has not taken the stuff for a day and it caused swelling in the joints and inflammation in his hands”. The prosecution also claimed that the glove had shrunk because it had been soaked in blood, then repeatedly frozen and unfrozen in the lab. But the defence adopted the slogan: “If it don’t fit, you must acquit.”
At least two of the jury were not impressed by this demonstration. One said: “Those gloves fit. He wasn’t putting them on right . . . I do believe the gloves fit. I have no doubt about that. The glove demo didn’t impress me at all. Not one iota.”
Prosecutors contended that the presence of Simpson’s blood at the crime scene came from a cut on the middle finger of his left hand. Police noted his wounds on the day of the murder, believing that they had been incurred during the attack on Ronald Goldman. But no cuts were found on the gloves and both prosecution and defence witnesses, including Kato Kaelin, testified that they had not seen cuts or wounds of any kind on Simpson’s hands in the hours after the murders had taken place. The defence contended that Simpson had cut himself later, first while retrieving a mobile phone from the Bronco and again on a glass in a Chicago hotel, which he broke on hearing of the death of his ex-wife.
The glove on Simpson’s Rockingham Avenue estate had been found by LAPD detective Mark Fuhrman. He also found the drops of blood in the driveway there. However, Fuhrman had a chequered career with the LAPD. In 1983, he had made a disability claim for work-related stress. He told Dr Ira Brent that he blacked out, became a wild man and beat-up suspects. The following year, Fuhrman stopped a young African-American male for jaywalking, put him in a choke hold and threatened to kill him. It happened in front of a movie theatre in a predominately white area. There were several witnesses. Fuhrman was fined a day’s pay.
It was put to Fuhrman that he was a racist. On the stand, he denied that he was racist or had used the word “nigger” to describe black people in the previous ten years. Later, the defence played audio tapes made by screenwriter Laura McKinny, who had interviewed Fuhrman for a screenplay she was developing about the police. In them Fuhrman used the word forty-one times. This destroyed Fuhrman’s credibility as a witness. Later, he was indicted for perjury and pleaded
nolo contendere
– “no contest”. The LAPD already had a reputation for racism. Riots followed the acquittal of four white cops who had been caught on video beating black motorist Rodney King just two years earlier.