But Fung blew it. As we got deeper into the questioning, I learned to my dismay that he had not tested all the drains at Rockingham, only those that had appeared to be in “recent use.” When you do presumptive tests for blood, you should always be aware that the results can be impeached in court, because they can sometimes also give a positive result for things like rust and vegetable matter. Fung’s failure to test all the drains would play right into the defense’s hands. I could already hear opposing counsel crossing him: “Oh, you mean you didn’t test the other drains? So you don’t know whether they, too, might have given a positive result, do you, Mr. Fung? And if they had, you might have concluded that the positive result you got in my client’s bathroom was nothing more than rust, isn’t that so? Or would you try to tell this jury, Mr. Fung, that blood had been washed down every sink in that house?”
Fung had failed to obey the criminalist’s first commandment: be thorough. His tendency to test selectively would later cripple our efforts to get important blood evidence into the record. And his demeanor on the stand wouldn’t give a jury the confidence that he could change a lightbulb, let alone supervise a forensic investigation.
After he left the stand, I called my people and said, “This guy’s a fucking disaster.”
Here’s the bottom line: Fung and his colleague, Andrea Mazzola, a trainee with only four months’ experience, should have been supervised as they went over both crime scenes. Tom and Phil should have returned to oversee that search. When I’d spoken to them mid-afternoon after they’d interviewed Simpson, they’d assured me they were on their way back out to Rockingham. They didn’t make it back there until after five. Too late. By that time Fung and Mazzola were packing up and heading home.
We’d be doing damage control on that sloppy search for a long time to come. We still are.
At the outset, I had assumed we would be offering the cops’ taped interview with Simpson into evidence. But there was more foot-dragging by the LAPD. Not until the week the grand jury hearing began in earnest did I finally get the cops to fork over the cassette tape of that interrogation.
In the privacy of my office, I slipped the tape into my player, grabbed a legal pad, and pulled my knees up into my oversized leatherette chair to listen to what I assumed was at least a two-hour interview. It was a shock, therefore, when after thirty-two minutes, I heard Lange say, “We’re ready to terminate this at 14:07,” and then heard nothing but the white fuzz of unrecorded tape. I didn’t get it-Simpson had spent three full hours at the station. What could they have been doing all that time?
I was even more disturbed by what was on the tape. Phil and Tom both sounded exhausted-that was understandable. They’d been up since three the morning of June 13. But that was no reason to allow a potential suspect in a double murder to set the program for the interview.
Any Monday-morning quarterback can now see that Simpson lied to Tom and Phil all through that interview. Of course, some of the lies weren’t apparent to them at the time. For instance, Simpson claimed that he’d been invited to dinner with the Brown family after the recital, which Nicole’s mother would later deny. Tom and Phil couldn’t have known that yet. But on other, more elemental points, like where and when he’d parked the Bronco, there was plenty they could have done.
Lange: “What time did you last park the Bronco?”
“Eight something,” replied the suspect. “Maybe seven, eight o’clock. Eight, nine o’clock. I don’t know, right in that-right in that area.”
The follow-up should have come hard and fast: “Well, what the hell was it? Seven, seven-thirty, eight, or nine? You knew you had a flight to catch, so shouldn’t you have been aware of the time? What time did you park? What did you do then?”
And what about Simpson’s apparent lack of concern after Kato told him that he’d heard thumps on the wall? Kato was so worried that he’d taken a dim flashlight and searched the grounds for an intruder. And yet Simpson seemed strangely unconcerned-he was more intent upon finding a Band-Aid for the cut on his finger. On that one Vannatter and Lange should have dug deep: “Did you check it out? Did you call your security people to check it out? Why not? Wasn’t your daughter Arnelle staying at Rockingham? Weren’t you concerned for her safety?”
Such pointed questions would have highlighted Simpson’s evasiveness. Instead, the detectives responded to Simpson’s tentative statements by saying “I understand,” or simply “Yeah,” or “Okay,” or a mumbled “Mmnh-hm.” On some fundamental level, I think, Tom and Phil wanted to hear a plausible explanation that would eliminate Simpson from suspicion.
Just when they got a big opening, they’d move on to something else. For instance, when they ask Simpson if he would take a lie-detector test, he vacillates:
“I’m sure I’ll eventually do it,” he says, “but it’s like, hey, I’ve got some weird thoughts now. And I’ve had weird thoughts-you know, when you’ve been with a person for seventeen years, you think everything. And I don’t-” He stopped himself.
And what do Lange and Vannatter say? “I understand.” Not once but twice. And then they drop the subject!
Why didn’t they swoop down on that? “What sort of weird thoughts? Thoughts of hurting Nicole? Did you ever share those thoughts with anyone?”
I’d seen plenty of people whose family members had been murdered. An innocent man who’s just learned about the death of his children’s mother-when the children were asleep in the house-would most likely be stunned, distraught, even hysterical. And he wouldn’t hesitate to take a polygraph. He’d be demanding, “How can I help you catch this monster?”
But the O. J. Simpson who emerged from that police interview struck me as cold and detached-fundamentally unaffected by the news of his ex-wife’s murder.
Simpson chuckles as he shoots the shit about his relationship with his girlfriend, Paula Barbieri. He volunteers a story from after his last breakup with Nicole. She had returned an expensive diamond bracelet he’d given her as a birthday present. Simpson then presented it to Paula and pretended he’d bought it for her. Scamming one woman immediately after his breakup with another, who, at that moment, was lying on a cold metal coroner’s table! I couldn’t believe the way he told Vannatter and Lange about that. “I get into a funny place here on all this, all right?” he says. Wink-wink nudge-nudge. “Yeah,” they chime back. You could practically hear the towels snapping in the men’s locker room.
That jocular, almost flippant tone pervaded the entire interview. Simpson tells them about how an endorsement deal gets him Bugle Boy Jeans for free-“I got a hundred pair,” he brags. He also tells them his preference in sneakers-“Reebok, that’s all I wear.” He even gives a little rap, referring to himself in the third person, about how he rushes for a plane, just like in the Hertz commercial-“I was doing my little crazy what-I-do. I mean, I do it everywhere. Everybody who has ever picked me up says that O.J’s a whirlwind at the end, he’s running, he’s grabbing things.”
In defense of Phil and Tom, I do know there’s something to be said for developing rapport with your suspect to get him talking. It’s just that at some point, push has to come to shove. And during this interview the shove came way too late and way too gently.