The Run of His Life: The People v. O. J. Simpson (15 page)

Shapiro had a very busy first week, organizing his initial efforts with Simpson’s medical and legal well-being in mind. Simpson told Shapiro that he was innocent, but lawyers are used to hearing this sort of thing from clients, especially at the beginning of a case. The first thing Shapiro did was arrange for Simpson to take a polygraph examination, which is something many criminal defense lawyers do. These tests are generally inadmissible in court, but lawyers often use them to force their clients to come clean, face reality, and make the best deal they can. Shapiro called his friend F. Lee Bailey, who is a national authority on polygraphs, for a recommendation on which expert to use. Bailey suggested Edward Gelb, who ran a firm called Intercept out of a set of nondescript offices on Wilshire Boulevard. (Bailey knew Gelb because they had hosted a short-lived television series together in 1983. Called
Lie Detector
, the program showcased Gelb and Bailey examining UFO sighters and other fringe figures to determine whether they were telling the truth.)

Gelb was out of town, so the test was administered by his top deputy, Dennis Nellany. Simpson took what is known as a “zone of comparison” polygraph examination, which measured three of his physiological responses to questions—heart rate, breathing, and the electrical sensitivity of his skin. Lie detectors do not, strictly speaking, detect lies. Rather, the examiner interprets the subject’s responses on a sliding scale in which negative numbers indicated deception and positive numbers, truthfulness. According to the test Nellany administered, any score higher than plus-6 meant that Simpson was telling the truth; any number lower than minus-6 meant he was lying. A score between plus-6 and minus-6 would be ambiguous.

Simpson scored a minus-24—total failure. The score was so catastrophic that some people around Simpson tried to attribute it to
his distressed emotional state at the time of the examination. Bailey in particular tried to say that Simpson was so upset that the result should not be seen as dispositive. Nellany, however, regarded the polygraph as conclusive evidence of Simpson’s guilt in the murders, and he reported that view to Shapiro.

Shapiro weighed his options—which included an insanity defense. To that end, he called in another expert on Wednesday, June 15, one who could serve two purposes. As a respected psychiatrist with a private practice in Beverly Hills, Saul Faerstein could examine O.J. and prescribe medication. But Faerstein also had a national reputation as an expert witness in the field of forensic psychiatry. Shapiro thus viewed him as a hedge in case Simpson wanted to raise a diminished-capacity defense to the murders.

Faerstein went to the house on Rockingham and joined Simpson on the couch in the living room. Simpson talked and talked—about himself. The press was out to get him now; his image would never recover; it was all so unfair. What struck Faerstein most were the gaps in Simpson’s narrative—there was no sadness for the loss of the mother of his children, no concern for his children’s future, no empathy for Nicole. Simpson worried only about himself. His reactions were inconsistent with what Faerstein would expect from an unjustly accused man, yet Simpson was obviously not insane in any legal sense. So, as with Nellany’s examination, Faerstein’s report offered Shapiro no help in constructing a defense. Faerstein returned to see Simpson many times over the next two months to continue his course of psychiatric treatment. Like Shapiro, Faerstein was convinced early on of Simpson’s guilt in the murders.

On that same Wednesday, June 15, which was also the day of the viewing of Nicole’s body at a funeral home, Shapiro asked an internist, Robert Huizenga, to give O.J. a detailed physical examination. Shapiro wanted Huizenga to check on Simpson’s medical condition, but he also asked the doctor to document with photographs any bruises or abrasions on Simpson’s body at that point, which was less than three days after the killings; his lack of any major injuries would become a central part of his defense at trial. Also in those first two days on the job, Shapiro had recruited two of the nation’s leading forensic experts to Simpson’s team—Henry Lee, the chief police scientist for the state of Connecticut, and
Michael Baden, the former chief medical examiner of New York City. By Thursday, June 16, both Lee and Baden had arrived in Los Angeles. In spite of all the activity, Shapiro found the time to make a characteristic gesture. On the night of June 16, he took Baden to a glamorous Hollywood screening of the Jack Nicholson movie
Wolf
, which was opening the next day.

Detective Lange’s call on Friday morning, June 17, presented Shapiro with a dilemma. What he could have done—indeed, should have done—was simple: make a direct effort to locate Simpson and then take him in to Parker Center, and thereby make the 11:00
A.M.
deadline with ease. But the situation was more complicated than Lange knew when he made the call, for Simpson was not at home at Brentwood, as the police investigating his case had assumed. On Thursday, June 16, following Nicole’s funeral earlier in the day, Simpson had participated in an elaborate ruse to convince the vast media encampment outside his home that he had in fact returned to Rockingham. The person who was actually hustled into the property with a jacket over his head was his old friend Al “A.C.” Cowlings. Simpson had been taken to his friend Robert Kardashian’s home in Encino, in the San Fernando Valley. Remarkably, this operation was engineered by an off-duty LAPD sergeant, Dennis Sebenick, who was moonlighting as a security guard for the murder suspect. Sebenick did not, of course, apprise his colleagues on the force of the whereabouts of their prey. This kind of solicitude typified Simpson’s relationship with the LAPD.

Shapiro, therefore, had to retrieve Simpson from Encino, which was slightly farther from downtown than Brentwood. In his years of dealing with celebrity clients, Shapiro had learned the value of deference. He did not, for example, telephone ahead to Kardashian’s place and tell O.J. to get ready to leave. Defending his actions later, Shapiro said that he had acted this gingerly because he feared Simpson might harm himself if he were dealt with more harshly. Shapiro also knew that Simpson’s friends had just orchestrated Howard Weitzman’s departure in part because they thought he had been insufficiently zealous in protecting Simpson’s interests. Shapiro did not want to meet the same fate. If the choice was between offending the LAPD or his client, Shapiro would take his chances with the cops. While still at home, Shapiro called Faerstein,
the psychiatrist, and asked him to meet him at Kardashian’s house; together they would break the news to O.J.

At 9:30
A.M.
, Shapiro arrived at Kardashian’s vast white villa, a garish affair resembling a Teheran bordello, all marble and mirrors. Simpson, who had been sedated, was still in the first-floor bedroom he was using during his stay. His girlfriend Paula Barbieri was with him; she had been at his side for much of the week. (After Simpson’s criminal trial, in a deposition in the victims’ civil case against O.J., Barbieri testified that she had left a telephone message breaking off her relationship with Simpson on the morning of the murders, June 12. But her actions the following week seem inconsistent with the notion that she was trying to end their affair.)

Shapiro and Kardashian woke O.J. and told him that they would be taking him to Parker Center to surrender. Again, they did not force him to leave. Instead, they explained that Doctors Huizenga and Faerstein were on their way to examine him before they had to leave for jail. Within moments, the house was buzzing with people. First Faerstein arrived, followed by Huizenga, who was accompanied by an entourage of assistants. Then came Henry Lee and Michael Baden. Kardashian’s girlfriend, Denice Shakarian Halicki, who also lived at the house, suggested that Al Cowlings be called, and he was summoned to join the group as well. Huizenga wanted to evaluate some swollen lymph nodes he had noticed in his initial examination of Simpson, particularly because O.J. had a family history of cancer. (Later tests showed no malignancy.) In addition—incredibly—Huizenga took the time to do some additional examinations to bolster Simpson’s defense, taking more photographs to demonstrate that Simpson had no significant wounds. Granted the privilege of being allowed to surrender, Simpson was missing his deadline so that he could, in effect, conduct his defense.

Shapiro was on the phone every fifteen minutes to the LAPD—stroking, consoling, explaining that these things take time and that Simpson would be on his way shortly. Patiently, but with some indignation, Shapiro gave a series of increasingly high-level officers the same message: “I have always had a good relationship with the police department. I’ve always kept my word. You have to trust me here. I will be there when I say I can be there.” After all, Shapiro
told the cops, what difference did it make if Simpson surrendered at 11:00
A.M.
or 1:00
P.M.
?

Simpson, too, had his demands. In the hour or so after Shapiro’s arrival, the entire group gathered in a large second-floor study just off the master bedroom. When Huizenga finished taking blood and hair samples there, O.J. said he wanted to take a shower, then talk to his mother and his children. Simpson, Barbieri, and Cowlings went back down to O.J.’s bedroom on the first floor. When he arrived, Faerstein had wanted to keep a close eye on Simpson to make sure he wouldn’t harm himself. But he had no qualms about Cowlings monitoring O.J.; the psychiatrist assumed that Cowlings, too, would make sure Simpson remained safe.

Finally, Vannatter and Lange grew fed up waiting for the lawyer to drive the defendant to Parker Center. They had been reaching Shapiro on his cellular phone, so they did not even know where he and Simpson were. (Marcia Clark, who was beginning the grand-jury proceedings against Simpson that day, took a break from those labors to have her own indignant conversation with Shapiro.) At around noon, the detectives said they would wait no longer for Simpson to surrender. They wanted to send a squad car to pick him up. As always, the LAPD was concerned about the media. A news conference had been scheduled for noon, and now that had to be put off. It was just after noon when Shapiro put Faerstein on the phone with an LAPD commander, in an effort to explain the reasons for the delay.

“There is a warrant for this man’s arrest,” the commander said, “and we have to come get him. Now, where are you?”

Faerstein stalled. “I don’t think I’m at liberty to tell you where we are.”

“I don’t think you understand, Doctor. There are laws relating to aiding and abetting fugitives. Now, you tell me where you are—”

“Just a minute,” Faerstein said, and then handed the phone to Shapiro, who finally agreed to provide Kardashian’s address. Ever the negotiator, Shapiro secured the commander’s promise that Shapiro and Faerstein could accompany Simpson on his trip downtown.

Moments later, at about 12:10
P.M.
, a squad car arrived at Kardashian’s, and a police helicopter began circling overhead. Shapiro
and Faerstein answered the door. Even then, after all the delays, the lawyer had another request. Shapiro and his professional colleagues—Faerstein, Huizenga, Lee, Baden, and Kardashian—had been gathered upstairs. O.J. was in a back bedroom talking with Barbieri and Cowlings. Shapiro asked the officers if Faerstein, the psychiatrist, could break the news to O.J. that the police had arrived. (Simpson had not even been told that the police were coming to get him.) The officers, who at that point had every right to barge in and take Simpson away, agreed. Faerstein walked back to the bedroom where O.J. and A.C. were talking. A moment later Faerstein returned, alone. “He must be somewhere else,” Faerstein told the officers.

One at a time, the people in the house fanned out. A few walked upstairs. With each passing second, the pace of everyone’s steps increased. O.J. wasn’t upstairs. Chests constricted. There was a brief ray of hope when they realized they had not checked the garage. Maybe O.J. went to get something out of the trunk of his car. But there was no one in the garage. Panic. They talked to Otto “Keno” Jenkins, Bob Shapiro’s chauffeur. He hadn’t seen O.J. And then the realization dawned on them that no one had seen Barbieri or Cowlings, either.

“No one leaves,” one officer said when he realized what had happened. “This is a crime scene.”

As he had done when the officers came for him in 1989 for beating Nicole, so he did when they came for him in 1994 for killing her: O.J. Simpson disappeared.

The LAPD’s considerable press apparatus had put out the word early in the morning: There would be an announcement regarding the Simpson case at noon. Reporters drifted in to Parker Center over the course of the morning and then learned that the briefing had been delayed. This was no great surprise, because most such events start late. Then there was a bomb scare at police headquarters, and the media people were told they could vacate the building if they wanted. No one left—media machismo. At 1:53
P.M.
, the reporters got the two-minute warning: The briefing was about to begin.

Commander David Gascon was the chief spokesman for the LAPD. With his neat black hair, obligatory mustache, and tight-fitting uniform, Gascon cut a typical figure for the department he represented. He was also fairly relaxed and approachable, and he had a good rapport with most of the reporters who covered the LAPD. They noticed, when he stepped to the podium, that he looked … different. He seemed shaken, and his voice quavered slightly.