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“On Sunday Afternoon, June 26th [1994], Shapiro, Kardashian, Pavelic and Drs. Baden and Lee played sleuth during their official visit to Rockingham. Kato Kaelin was someone they thought long and hard about.
Kato, after all, hand volunteered the strange story about crashes and thumps in the night that made the picture on his wall shake. Would police have searched the back alley if he hadn't said that?
And who, after all, was this strange man living rent-free on Simpson's estate? He looked unstable. They knew he handsome kind of relationship with Nicole. Was he her lover?
Equally important, Kardashian told them about the path through the tennis court gate to neighbor Eric Watts's backyard. O.J. wouldn't come around to this side of the house, Kardashian explained. When it's dark, O.J. gets scared. He would never climb the fence. He had an easier route.
Inside Kato's apartment, they banged hard on the wall. The picture didn't move. Kardashian led half the team to the back walkway. He and others rammed into the wall like football players. Again, the picture stayed motionless.
Only one other theoretician (Dick Wagner, who also believes OJ, while having been at Bundy, did not commit the murders)tries to deal with this passage and its implications. All the rest simply ignore it and resort to the impossible "OJ rammed into the air conditioner" story ala Marcia Clark.
Now, when I used the word "impossible" in the last paragraph, I meant this is exactly the same way as "A perpetual motion machine is impossible." THIS EXPLANATION FOR KAELIN'S THUMPS VIOLATES THE LAWS OF PHYSICS.
For one of the laws of physics is: "The angle of reflection equals the angle of inflection." That is, if you draw a perpedicular line to a flat surface through the point where an object bounced off that surface (and this applies to light beams as well as tennis balls -- it applie to everything) You will INVARIABLY find (in the absence of some outside force acting on the object)that the angle between the perpendicular line and the incoming path line of the object exactly equals the angle between that perpendicular line and the outgoing path line of the object.
So, what would REALLY have happened of "OJ" (or anyone else) had rammed into the side of the air conditioner? There are only two possibilities. EITHER that person would have bounced straight back a couple of feet and ended up standing, dazed, in front of the air conditioner, OR, more likely, he would have ended up flat on his back with the lower half of his body under the air conditioner.
Now, either way, all this would explain would be ONE thumps. Kaelin consistently described the sounds he heard as three equally spaced, equally timed thumps, (see the videotape of the preliminary hearing and the passage from his civil trial testimony above), AND a moving picture AND at first mistaking it for an earthquake.
I wish I had the space and time to reproduce some of the explanation and some of the replies to my observation I have received or read in the internet group devoted to this case 'alt.fan.oj-simpson'. But I need to report one or two just to illustrate what lengths people will go in tying logic into pretzels in order to preserve OJ-guilty scnenarios.
One of the most infamous is derived from a school of theories that maintains that maybe the thumps had nothing to do with the murders after all. The most infamous one was the '30 pound cat' theory -- that a very heavy stray cat jumped on Kaelin's air conditioner.
Another, more rational, suggested that the thumps were caused by a "water hammer". I had to mull that one over for awhile.
Now, the primary trouble with all these suggestions of an 'independent cause' of the thumps is that, for any of these explanations to be correct, IT WOULD HAVE HAD TO HAVE BEEN THE FIRST TIME ANY OF THESE 'INDEPENDENT CAUSES' CAUSED THUMPS. Because, if it wasn't, then Kaelin or OJ would have known what they were. If it had been a water hammer, OJ long ago would have said something like, " You mean the plumbing is acting up again? I thought I'd had that fixed."
So we can safely exclude all the 'independent cause for the thumps' explanations.
One correspondent, responding directly to me, suggested that, in his state of panic, OJ resorted to broken-filed running as he did when pursued on the football field, and hit the air conditioner from a 45 degree angle. Now, the 'only' trouble with that is that the spot where the airconditioner is is four feet wide, and it is just as impossible to do broken-field running in a space four feet wide as it it to bounce off a flat surfact at a 45 degree angle after hitting it at a 90 degree angle. I have been astounded about what people would publish without so much as ten seconds of self-criticism or checking.
OTHER EVIDENCE REFUTING THE OJ-GUILTY THEORIES.
After the alleged collision with the air conditioner/roll over against the guestroom wall, both the "over the fence" and "OJ runs east on the path" overlap. All except Fuhrman (noted above) then maintain that "OJ" ran west and back out of the path, up the driveway, and to the front door, where Allan Park saw him at the mechanically (telephone records) time of 11:55. This description of "OJ"s actions totally ignore five significant pieces of evidence:
1. THE UNDISTURBED LEAF LAYER UNDER THE ROCKINGHAM GLOVE. This is documented by both testimony of the detectives AND crime scene photos of the glove as it was found, before it was ever touched.
You would think that it would be obvious that anyone this undisturbed quality of the leaf layer would immediately refute any assertion that someone had fallen on that layer hours before (on a windless night)
And yet this point is simply disregarded as if it didn't exist, in spite of the testimony and photos.
2. THE TWO CLOSED GATES.
Kaelin has consitently testified, and told his ghost writer, Marc Eliott, that two gates on the south pth at Rockingham were CLOSED at 11:00 when he he says went part of the way down the south path the check out the thumps.
One of these gates was the westernmost gate near the front of the garage; it was broken off its hinges so that it had to be lifted and shifted to open and shut it. the other was at the west end of the guest house.
It is ironic that Kaelin was the only source of this information, for this piece of testimony ALONE is enough to negate all the 'Guilty-OJ-running-on-the-south-path" theories.
For what this means -- though it was a point too subtle to occur to Kaelin at the time -- is that NO ONE COULD HAVE BEEN ON THE SOUTH PATH THAT NIGHT, and especially not some fugitive murderer running in a panic and knocking himself senseles on an air conditioner.
For the only way they could have been closed is that someone who had just been down the path had closed them behind him.
Now, the guest house gate is in pitch dark. This means that "OJ" would have had to have stopped, turned around and groped in the pitch dark, found the gate by touch and closed it. With the westmost gate by the garage, he would had had to do much the same, except he would first have to find itwhere it was laying and precisely put it on it's hinges without being able to see them.
Does that sound like a man in a hurry to you? A man in a panic to get inside his house without being seen? A man who had just ben stunned by colliding with an air conditioner at a full run?
DIDN'T HAPPEN. Kaelin found them closed because they had been closed for a long time.
3. THE DRIVEWAY BLOOD TRAIL, AND THE "MAGIC FINGER CUT"
Animations about the blood spots on Bundy, by Jasper Garrison
These animations come with their own explanations and show the various version of the infamous "blood trail" at Rockingham. Marcia Clark and other OJ theorists would have you believe that this is the last part of a "blood trail" starting at the murder scene at Bundy. Now the trouble is:
Notice that the blood drops follow the driveway from the Bronco/Rockingham gate to the front door. THERE WERE NO BLOOD DROPS ON THE SOUTH PATH.
From Philip Vanatter's criminal trial testimony of March 21, 1995. Please note as you read, what this testimony also says about the allegations that "OJ" went over the fence and/or rammed into the air conditioner:
: BY MR. SHAPIRO: IS IT -- IS IT -- DID -- IS IT YOUR OPINION THAT THE PERSON WHO DID THE KILLING WAS BLEEDING AT THE TIME HE CAME OR SHE CAME TO ROCKINGHAM?
A: YES.Q: I TAKE IT THEN THERE WAS A THOROUGH SEARCH FOR BLOOD FROM THE AREA OF ROCKINGHAM -- FROM ROCKINGHAM TO THE AREA WHERE THE GLOVE WAS FOUND? A: YES, THAT'S CORRECT.Q: HOW MUCH BLOOD WAS FOUND THERE?A: NONE. NONE THAT I AM AWARE OF.Q: I TAKE IT A THOROUGH SEARCH WAS DONE OF THE ADJACENT PROPERTY FOR BLOOD; IS THAT CORRECT?A: THE AREA WAS SEARCHED, YES.Q: FOR BLOOD?A: WELL, SEARCHED FOR ANY TYPE OF EVIDENCE.Q: WAS IT SEARCHED FOR BLOOD?A: YES, SIR, THAT WOULD INCLUDE ANY TYPE OF EVIDENCE.Q: HOW MUCH BLOOD WAS FOUND THERE?A: NONE.Q: I TAKE IT A THOROUGH SEARCH OF THE FENCE WAS UNDERTAKEN IF SOMEBODY CLIMBED THE FENCE FOR BLOOD?A: YES.Q: HOW MUCH BLOOD WAS FOUND THERE?A: NONE.Q: I TAKE IT A THOROUGH SEARCH WAS DONE OF THE WALLS?A: THAT'S CORRECT, YES.Q: HOW MUCH BLOOD WAS FOUND THERE?A: NONE.
Now, you wuld be astounded at some of the, frankly, kneeslapping explanations for why THERE WAS NO EVIDENCE THAT OJ (OR ANYONE ELSE, EXCEPT KAELIN) WENT DOWN THE SOUTH PATH THAT NIGHT.
Most notable -- perhps 'infamous' is a better word -- is Bob August, who simply ignores the fact that no blood was found by literally saying "Blood drops were there, but the police just didn't find it." similar to his assertion that the foliage would show no sign of a large man passing through it, in spite of the fact that the most expereienced forensic scientist in the world went looking for it, and, not finding it, made mention of it.
He also asserts that "OJ"s finger would simply stopped bleeding when he went onto the path and started bleeding again at the exact point where it stopped, so as to create an illusion of an unbroken trail of blood from the Rockingham gate to the front door.
The truth? OJ cut himself on something in the Bronco earlier in the night and bled from his car to his front door earlier in the evening.
Others (Fuhrman, Wagner) have suggested that "OJ" avoided bleeding on the south path by (Fuhrman) putting his left hand in his pants, or (Dick Wagner) putting it in his mouth.
Okay, dear reader, let's see YOU run blind with your left hand in your pocket, or in your mouth, and se how fast you can run.
Moreover, let's see you manhandle a broken gate WITH ONE HAND and balance it on broken hinges so that it stays upright. And, oh yes, don't forget to do it in the pitch dark. Can't do it, you say? Well, that's what Mark Fuhrman and Dick Wagner say OJ Simpson did.
4. THE TWO AVAILABLE DOORS.
Even those who hold to the "guilty-OJ-On-the South Path" theories do not dispute the existence of two doors along the south path -- one a side door to the garage and the other the 'maid's entrance' referred to by Fuhrman -- but then proceed to indulge in the usual logic-pretzeling to fit the 'wicked-stepsister's-foot'of their theories into the 'glass slipper' of the facts. To wit:
To explain why "OJ" didn't use the side door of the garage, they claim that objects sere stacked inside the garage blocking the door.
Trouble is, that door opened OUTWARD, so that nothing on the inside would block its opening. Moreover, the actual testimony and documentation for the objects behind the door is extremely dubious; it is unclear whether those objects were behind the door on the murder night or were put there later. Moreover, even the documented objects in front of the door were not large or heavy enough to block a man who was physically capable of what "OJ" had supposedly done earlier that night; they would have been more of a 'speed bump' than a barricade.
Some of the explanations for why "OJ" didn't use the maid's entrance actually make sense. One is, that it was locked from the inside with a slide-bolt, which, at least, was possible. Another is that it was locked by the regular lock and "OJ" had forgotten his key.
Those who hold to that aspect of the theory want you to believe that (1) "OJ" was a very rare individual in that he didn't keep his own house key -- which was a master key to all the locks at Rockingham -- on the same ring with his car key (and other personal keys), such that he forgot the house master key while still having his Bronco key, and (2) he nevertheless remembered , or was lucky enough to forget, to leave the front door UNLOCKED.
What they miss in saying that latter is that, if such was indeed the case, "OJ" HAD NO REASON TO BE GOING BACK ON THE SOUTH PATH IN THE FIRST PLACE. THERE WAS NO WAY FOR HIM TO GET IN THE HOUSE, ANYWAY.
One reply to that rather obvious objection is that "OJ" was headed to the back patio door, which he had ALSO conveniently forgotten to lock.(The OJ-guilty crowd would have us believe in not only "OJ"s magic finger cut, but his highly convenient forgetting to lock certain doors.)
The answer to THAT is : Okay, then why didn't he just CONTINUE around the guest house and go in the back? (We know that no one did because Fuhrman made a special point to note that the spider webs in back of the guest house were still intact the next morning.) It was easy enough to get past the airconditioner and down the rest of the path and around the guest house. (Fuhrman did exactly this the next morning and reported no great effort in doing so.)
And so we see that every single variation of the "Guilty-OJ-on-the-south-path" or "Over-the-fence" fails to describe or explain the creation of the evidence or testimony about it in such a way as to be a believable or even possible solution to the case.
5. THE RELATIVELY CLEANNESS AND WET CONDITION OF THE GLOVE.
This point has already been dealt with Vannatter testimony cited above. But I want to add a few other things from what Fuhrman wrote in his book "Murder in Brentwood".
He, like Vannatter, noted the wet and glistening appearance of the glove, and the undisturbed leaf layer beneath it. But Fuhrman also notes that there was no dust, dropped leaves, OR INSECTS.
Those who cling to "south path" theories in the very jaws of common sense and evidence often explain the wetness and glistening of the blood on the glove by saying it had been sitting out in cool, damp air all night and so had not dried.
There is no way to conclusively refute this argument. One would need to have hour-by-hour temperature and humidity readings from a spot within a few hundred yards of Rockingham that night, and then put a blood soaked leather glove into a chamber where these conditions could be recreated.
Unfortunately no such nearby weather observations were made; the nearest such weather observation station was Santa Monica Community College, and the distance between SMCC and Rockingham is such that there could have been significant differences in atmospheric conditions.
However, Fuhrman's observation about there not being any insects on the glove is of utmost importance, for it means -- and what Fuhrman is 'actually' saying -- is that THAT GLOVE HAD NOT BEEN SITTING ON THE GROUND VERY LONG, AND CERTAINLY NOT FOR EIGHT OR NINE HOURS. For it is simply not possible for a blood-soaked item to sit unprotected on the ground in Brentwood on a summer night without attract a whole bunch of insects to it.
BOB AUGUST VARIATION:
In all fairness, the best thing to do is let BA speak for himself:
This is a link to his site.
However, I can save you a little bit of time.
All OJ case theoreticians have to explain what is usually called "the missing evidence": the Bruno-Maglis shoes, the knife, and the 'blue/black sweats'.
I explain it by noting that Kaelin had ample time from about 1:30 a.m. that night to 5:30 the next morning to dispose of it.
Another fact of evidence was the presence of wet laundry in the washing machine, in spite of the testimony by Arnelle and Gigi the maid that neither of them had done laundry that weekend and Gigi testified that there was no laundry in the machine on Friday when she left.
I explain it by suggesting that Kaelin did the laundry for reasons of his own, but was caught short by Arnelle getting home before he could finish it.
The standard way for those who believe OJ is guilty to get around these problems is to theorize an accomplice. Just as "patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel", I have found that inventing an accomplice is the last refuge of an OJ case groupie stuck with an embarrassing fact.
Petrocelli, at least as August describes him, says that "OJ" had an accomplice BEFORE the fact of them crime, so that this accomplice was also a co-conspirator and the murders were planned.
But there is one simple question that simply explodes all such 'co-conspirator' theories, to wit: IF HE HAD AN ACCOMPLICE BEFORE THE FACT, WHY WOULDN'T HE HAVE USED THAT PERSON AS AN ALIBI WITNESS? This rather simple and obvious objection seems to never occur to those who, in desperation to 'convict' OJ, come up with these lame-ass theories; it certainly never occurred to Petrocelli.
Bob August: Arnelle as accomplice after the fact.(?)
Petrocelli never specifically named an accomplice -- possible because he was afraid, being famous and at least modestly rich, of being sued for libel.
August, being an obscure person, and probably not rich enough to go after in court, specifically names Arnelle Simpson as the one who cleaned up after her father.
He maintains that "OJ" phoned her cell phone from the airport gate, at about the same time he called Kaelin, told her of the bloody material and instructed her to launder some of it and dispose of all of it so that it would never be found.
Okay: first, consider how this alleged second phone call from the airport gate (there is do dispute about his call to Kaelin to give him the code and turn on the burglar alarm) is in opposition to the first.
That is, by calling Kaelin to turn on the alarm, he was putting an unnecessary obstacle in the path of Arnelle, who he wanted to enter the house later. Sure, Arnelle knew the code herself and could get past the alarm -- but why even bother with it? And a few minutes of thought would have allowed "OJ" to notice that, by calling Kaelin and giving him the code, he risked putting a 'glitch' in his alibi if Kaelin should turn on the alarm, only to have Arnelle turn it off and forget to turn it on again.
Which is what August says happened!
Mr. August says Arnelle received her father's call from the airport about 11:30. After what must have been one of the weirdest calls of her life (How often has someone called YOU and asked you to clean up anything in the middle of the night?) she then stayed out till 12:30 or 1:00. (According to Kaelin, in Eliott's book, she came home even later than that.), went to her room, stayed in it until 4:00 a.m., then came out, went to the front door, turned off the alarm, and went in and -- while leaving the lights off -- picked up the later-to-be-missing evidence and proceeded to launder the bloody seat suit. For some reason or another she then manages to get rid of the knife and shoes, but forgets the sweat suit in the washing machine.
Now, dear reader, if you are going to believe that, I have this little bridge in Brooklyn I want you to look at; I can get you a great deal on it.....
First, why in the hell wait till 4:00 a.m. to start the coverup task? Because her father told her to? And why the hell would he do THAT? The cops could have discovered the bodies at any second and be over to Rockingham minutes later. You've just banged into an airconditioner a few minutes before in a total panic, and yet you are going NOW to tell your daughter/accomplice to go ahead, complete her date, go home, and WAIT THREE HOURS before doing the cleanup?
Moreover, you are going to order her to do a load of laundry before throwing the stuff away?
Knowing full well that Kaelin was in his room within earshot of the washing machine?
Look, friends, I have had just a few friends I loved enough that, if they asked me to take bloody items out of their house in the middle of the night and throw them away, I would have done it.
But there is no GODdamned way, no FUCKING way I would ever stop and launder some of the stuff before doing so, especially if I knew there was someone else in the house.
Now, if YOU would, or if you would believe ANYONE would do that, then I want you to stop reading my webpage right now, and get the hell off it. Because only the most stupid and intellectually blind 10% of the human race could ever believe such total fucking bullshit. I don't want you on my side even if I've persuaded you, because you would only be an embarrasment to me.
I count Bob August as part of that 10%. In fact, since he was the one that came up with this totally bizarre and impossible idea in the first place, I would have to put him the the most stupid and blind 1%.
On top of those already disgusting qualities, Bob August is also one of the most arrogant, self-righteous, and self-deluded individuals to have ever been born. In fact, if arrogance, self-righteousness and self-delusion were college courses, Bob August would be a tenured professor in all of them.
Forgive me for this off-topic rant. If you knew this son-of-a-bitch for a few months you'd see where I'm coming from.
Did Arnelle Simpson"lie"?
No, but her testimony was mistaken. There can simply be no doubt that Arnelle, the four detectives, and Kaelin entered the main house for the first time that morning by going through the rear patio door, rather than the front door, and that the burglar alarm was not set at the time.
However, in order for a false statement to be a "lie" there must be a conscious effort to deceive others.
Among other things, this means when you accuse someone of lying, you are duty-bound to explain such things as that person's motive for lying, what other lies could he/she have told instead of the one alleged in order to accomplish his/her deception, and how much did the supposed liar try to conceal his/her lie.
The accusation against Arnelle fails on two of the three points. Accepting, for sake of argument, that Arnelle was her father's accomplice, then she would have had a motive. However, if she was attempting to conceal the fact that she'd been in the house on the murder night, and subsequently forgot to turn the alarm back on, she had a much more "accessible" set of lies to use: To wit, she got hungry in the middle of the night and went into the kitchen for a snack, or invented some other bit of personal business.
More importantly, however, is the fact that -- if you grant that Arnelle WAS lying -- then she knew there were five people close at hand that would quickly contradict her,
So, then, what is the logical reason for the discrepancy between her testimony and that of the detectives and Kaelin? Simple human failing. Arnelle had been living at Rockingham for years. In that time, she went from her room and into the main house through the front door hundreds of times, and she entered the main house through the rear patio door hundreds of times. She had just been rousted out of bed after about five hours sleep and been confronted by plainclothes detectives wanting to know where her father was. In other words, she was under great stress (minutes later she collapsed in hysteria when told of the murders). She simply misremembered and confused a past time when she went in through the front door with the day after the murders when she, in fact, entered through the patio door.
So, why didn't the alarm go off?
How about: BECAUSE KAELIN NEVER TURNED IT ON, DUMMY; HE JUST LIED AND SAID HE DID. You have to remember that the ONLY evidence that Kaelin turned on the alarm is Kaelin's own word.
Dick Wagner: "OJ" was there, but didn't do it/Kaelin helped in cover up/the Jill Shively incident.
I count Dick Wagner among my friends, and we have corresponded publicly and privately with him for a few years now, though we have never met. He knows what I think about his website and his theory. So, though some of the things I am about to say about his research will sound harsh; Dick has already heard them a thousand times
I once said to Dick: "Knowing that a man who has done your kind of research has come up with your theory is like finding out that Einstein believed in Santa Claus."
As with August, the best source for what a person says is the person himself. I have already provided a number of links to his site above.
Dick has the advantage of living in the LA area and so has easy access to such things and the murder scene neighborhoods and the records at the LA county courthouse. He also own a modest-sized piece of property of his own and so can do experiments such as splashing red latex paint ("blood") around and throwing a cap onto an agapanthus plant again and again until it dies.
He has the disadvantage of also having access to Jill Shively.
If you read his website extensively, it may not even occur to you that what you are reading is NOT (at least not exactly) his theory of how OJ did or didn't do the murders.
No, rather his site is really dedicated to another purpose: explaining how the murders happened AND how "OJ" got to San Vicente and Bundy and was seen by Jill Shively.
Dick's own research leads him to believe that Ron Goldman arrived at Bundy at about 10:09. (Actually one of his failings is that he thinks he can recreate events down to a margin of six seconds (one tenth of a minute) I read his research methodology and agree with him; this also meshes with the first of the dog barking and Marcia Clark's timeline of the murders. (I believe Vannater did just about the same thing Dick did in retracing Goldman's steps and came to the same conclusion, but I don't feel like trying to chase down the place I read it)--
On June 14, 2002, Dick published a revised version of his theory and psted it on his web site and copied that to the newsgroup alt.fan.oj-simpson. The original version of the webpage your reading contained a summation of Dick's theory. But it is both quicker and more honest to let him speak for himself:
DICK WAGNER'S THEORY OF THE CRIME IN HIS OWN WORDS
You may want to flip back and forth between that page and this as you read Wagner. First, did you see that part about "OJ" stopping at his office? That particular part of his theory is entirely new. He put it in because he has done an almost 'microscopic' analysis of the timelines of several of the Bundy area witnesses and discovered that he couldn't get Shively's time of the incident into any of them. And that is in spite of the fact that he recently talked to Shively and got her to alter her own time estimate of the near-accident.
Second, sometimes the only thing you can say to someone is : REAL PEOPLE DON'T DO THINGS THAT WAY, DAMN IT!!!
Dick always disregards this criticism by saying words to the effect of: "Well, maybe that's not the way YOU would do it or I would do it, but it might be the way PROFESSIONAL HITMEN would do it." Third, as you can see, DW's theory is yet another version of the "OJ on the south path" school of theories which I have already thoroughly trashed. Fourth, as with all the rest of the OJ theorists (except me), he invents an accomplice to get out of a tight spot.
This time, it's Kaelin that Dick taps.
Now, if things had indeed happened the way Dick says, then:
1. Kaelin would have known the source of the thumps.
2. He would have known that "OJ" had been involved in something he wanted to conceil, meaning something illegal, though not necessarily murder. Further, by agreeing to do what "OJ" asks, he should know that he is making himself liable for criminal charges of his own.
BUT:
3. He nevertheless tells Fuhrman about the thumps the next morning. And:
4. Instead of coming clean and purging himself of liability for murder, he chooses to keep his secret.
Now, dear reader, would YOU do something like that? Do you know anyone who would do that for you? Do you really believe Kaelin would have, and did?
I will spend no more time on Dick Wagner's theory.
THE CIVIL TRIAL:
Of all the myths connected to the Simpson/Goldman murders, perhaps the most ironic are the ones about the criminal and civil trials. The myth of the criminal trial was that it was a reverse-racist "rush to judgment" by a jury that nullified the evidence, or simply disregarded it, and voted its verdict not based on the evidence but to "score points against Whitey".
The civil trial, on the other hand, is commonly pictured as nonbiased jurors taking their time to examine and understand the evidence.
These are ironic because the evidence is that there has been a "role reversal" of the truth in these myths.
That is, it was the CRIMINAL trial which had the best-informed members, deciding the truth without bias or racism, and that it was the CIVIL jury that was the subject and willing participant in a racist railroading of an innocent man, who were fed totally fabricated and invalid evidence, who accepted and believed such ...total bullshit...uncritically, and who acted on impure motives to, in effect, legally lynch O.J.
I will present just three pieces of evidence to back up the above statement, though I could easily present more.
TOTALLY BULLSHIT EVIDENCE WAS ADMITTED AGAINST OJ.
This was done and was possible because, first, California state judges -- as opposed to the Federal bence -- are elected to office. What this meant in the social context of the civil trial is that since (White) public opinion demanded the destruction of OJ, no judge at ANY level of the judiciary could make a decision favorable to OJ without being voted off the bench.
Fujiyama, the civil trial judge, had it even better: this was his last case. He retired immediately afterward. He didn't even risk the small humiliation of being overturned. He was, therefore, perfectly free to make the most outrageous errors against OJ without the slightest fear of so much as a professional rebuke.
Consider now some of the evidence Fujiyama allowed into the case against OJ.
See Boziak's testimony for yourself
Now, this is one textbook classis case of junk "science" being touted by a so-called "expert" to bamboozle a jury. For one thing, Bodziak's legal -- if not personally felt -- hostility to OJ is beyond all doubt. Thee are few better reasons to doubt a "scientist's" objectivity than knowing that he was a key witness for the losing side in a criminal trial. Here's what Bodziak REALLY said: 1. This was not a standardized scientific test; I made it up ad hoc just for the pictures in this case.
2. It was never subject to peer review or peer reproduction.
3. It was not "double-blinded", that is, Bodziak knew what shoes he was looking at and what results he wanted to come up with.
4. Can anyone honestly believe that there was the slightest chance that Bodziak would NOT conclude that the shoes OJ wore in the pictures were Bruno-Maglis?
Now, in criminal trials, where there is a higher standard for test of this type; in California such a test would require a "Kelly-Frye" hearing. BODZIAK'S TEST WOULD NOT HAVE PASSED SUCH A HEARING.
Oh, yes, the civil trial standard is lower. However, this is what is known as a "technicality" -- the favorite target of those who condemn OJ's criminal trial verdict. It was up to a judge who was tranparently biased (not excluding jurors who had openly admitted bias is proof of that)and beyond accountability to decide whether to admit that testimony or not. Surprisingly enough, he allowed it.
Now consider the testimony of Nancy Ney, a telephone counselor for Sojourn House, a shelter and source of advice and help for battered women.
Read Ney's testimony for yourself.
(You will probably want to use the "find on page" feature of the "edit" menu to get to Ney's testimony quickly.)
Now, here we have someone testifying about two week old memories about an anonymous phone call, with notes made retroactively (after being exposed to the media barrage) so as to somehow prove not only the state of mind of this "Nicole" but the state of mind of her unnamed husband! You might as well admit the testimony of a psychic who claimed to have had a seance with Nicole!
Deena Mullen, "Juror #5"
Ms. Mullen was on the civil trial jury. After it's conclusion, she made a deal with HBO to produce and star in her autobiographical one act play.
Five minutes before the conclusion of the play she quotes herself talking to another juror and says Ron Goldman died looking at a young woman who had her head cut off. While Nicole was NOT decapitated, I consider that part of her statement allowable dramatic license. No, what is astounding about that statment is that it reveals that Mullen didn't understand the evidence. What's more, she is describing a time just shortly before the jury arrives at it's verdict. Nowehere in this passage does she mention that any of her fellow jurors corrected her mistake or even made mention of it. And the mistake? Well, if there is one thing we can know for certain about the crime it's that GOLDMAN DIED BEFORE NICOLE'S THROAT WAS CUT. That's because there were none of Goldman's bootprints in the blood pool, and none of Nicole's blood on his boot soles. There is also no doubt that Roldman had put up a fierce, though brief struglle. If Nicole's throat had been cut before Goldman died, then one side effect of Goldman's fight would have been to splatter small droplets all over the murder scene, and no such small droplets were found. And yet here we have a person who had been listening to the evidence for months and deliberating with fellow jurors even longer making a goof that would have caused her to fluck "OJ 101". And the fact that there was no apparent reation from any other juror does not speak well for the rest of the panel.
TWO CORRUPTED PIECES OF EVIDENCE: THE SOCKS AND THE BACK GATE BLOOD
I conclude with comments about two "loose ends": OJ and Nicole's blood on the socks and OJ's blood on the back gate found some three weeks after the rest of the blood evidence. While there is no evidence that anyone connected with the LAPD planted evidence prior to OJ's arrest and indictment (though Kaelin did.), I can not help but to conclude the these two items were. Shirley Baker specifically mentions seeing Rolf Brown -- a distant Brown cousin -- hose down the Bundy crime scene after the cops released it. She also mentions that the back gate was covered with fingerprint powder. Considering that this later collected blood was in plain sight, I regard it as inconceivable that Rolf Brown missed it.
And isn't it rather suspicious that the cops missed it in the first go-round?
But, more importntly, THERE WAS NO 'CHAIN OF CUSTODY' for this blood. In those three weeks between the original inspection and the collection of the back gate blood, thousand of looky-loos were around that property.
ITO ERRED IN LETTING THAT BLOOD INTO EVIDENCE.
Exactly the same can be said about the bloody socks said to have been collected from OJ's bedroom. Never mind objections as to the EDTA content and the fact that they are not shown in a police video when they should have been.
It is, rather, the Traci Savage leak -- where the results of DNA tests were revealed before the tests were even known -- that makes this evidence too corrupt to be admissible.
Finally, if you want to use the socks and the belated back gate blood as evidence against OJ, all I can do is challenge you to come up with your own timline/scenario of the crime whcih explains how those items of evendence were incidentally created and placed the way they were found.
“On Sunday Afternoon, June 26th [1994], Shapiro, Kardashian, Pavelic and Drs. Baden and Lee played sleuth during their official visit to Rockingham. Kato Kaelin was someone they thought long and hard about.
Kato, after all, hand volunteered the strange story about crashes and thumps in the night that made the picture on his wall shake. Would police have searched the back alley if he hadn't said that?
And who, after all, was this strange man living rent-free on Simpson's estate? He looked unstable. They knew he handsome kind of relationship with Nicole. Was he her lover?
Equally important, Kardashian told them about the path through the tennis court gate to neighbor Eric Watts's backyard. O.J. wouldn't come around to this side of the house, Kardashian explained. When it's dark, O.J. gets scared. He would never climb the fence. He had an easier route.
Inside Kato's apartment, they banged hard on the wall. The picture didn't move. Kardashian led half the team to the back walkway. He and others rammed into the wall like football players. Again, the picture stayed motionless.
Only one other theoretician (Dick Wagner, who also believes OJ, while having been at Bundy, did not commit the murders)tries to deal with this passage and its implications. All the rest simply ignore it and resort to the impossible "OJ rammed into the air conditioner" story ala Marcia Clark.
Now, when I used the word "impossible" in the last paragraph, I meant this is exactly the same way as "A perpetual motion machine is impossible." THIS EXPLANATION FOR KAELIN'S THUMPS VIOLATES THE LAWS OF PHYSICS.
For one of the laws of physics is: "The angle of reflection equals the angle of inflection." That is, if you draw a perpedicular line to a flat surface through the point where an object bounced off that surface (and this applies to light beams as well as tennis balls -- it applie to everything) You will INVARIABLY find (in the absence of some outside force acting on the object)that the angle between the perpendicular line and the incoming path line of the object exactly equals the angle between that perpendicular line and the outgoing path line of the object.
So, what would REALLY have happened of "OJ" (or anyone else) had rammed into the side of the air conditioner? There are only two possibilities. EITHER that person would have bounced straight back a couple of feet and ended up standing, dazed, in front of the air conditioner, OR, more likely, he would have ended up flat on his back with the lower half of his body under the air conditioner.
Now, either way, all this would explain would be ONE thumps. Kaelin consistently described the sounds he heard as three equally spaced, equally timed thumps, (see the videotape of the preliminary hearing and the passage from his civil trial testimony above), AND a moving picture AND at first mistaking it for an earthquake.
I wish I had the space and time to reproduce some of the explanation and some of the replies to my observation I have received or read in the internet group devoted to this case 'alt.fan.oj-simpson'. But I need to report one or two just to illustrate what lengths people will go in tying logic into pretzels in order to preserve OJ-guilty scnenarios.
One of the most infamous is derived from a school of theories that maintains that maybe the thumps had nothing to do with the murders after all. The most infamous one was the '30 pound cat' theory -- that a very heavy stray cat jumped on Kaelin's air conditioner.
Another, more rational, suggested that the thumps were caused by a "water hammer". I had to mull that one over for awhile.
Now, the primary trouble with all these suggestions of an 'independent cause' of the thumps is that, for any of these explanations to be correct, IT WOULD HAVE HAD TO HAVE BEEN THE FIRST TIME ANY OF THESE 'INDEPENDENT CAUSES' CAUSED THUMPS. Because, if it wasn't, then Kaelin or OJ would have known what they were. If it had been a water hammer, OJ long ago would have said something like, " You mean the plumbing is acting up again? I thought I'd had that fixed."
So we can safely exclude all the 'independent cause for the thumps' explanations.
One correspondent, responding directly to me, suggested that, in his state of panic, OJ resorted to broken-filed running as he did when pursued on the football field, and hit the air conditioner from a 45 degree angle. Now, the 'only' trouble with that is that the spot where the airconditioner is is four feet wide, and it is just as impossible to do broken-field running in a space four feet wide as it it to bounce off a flat surfact at a 45 degree angle after hitting it at a 90 degree angle. I have been astounded about what people would publish without so much as ten seconds of self-criticism or checking.
OTHER EVIDENCE REFUTING THE OJ-GUILTY THEORIES.
After the alleged collision with the air conditioner/roll over against the guestroom wall, both the "over the fence" and "OJ runs east on the path" overlap. All except Fuhrman (noted above) then maintain that "OJ" ran west and back out of the path, up the driveway, and to the front door, where Allan Park saw him at the mechanically (telephone records) time of 11:55. This description of "OJ"s actions totally ignore five significant pieces of evidence:
1. THE UNDISTURBED LEAF LAYER UNDER THE ROCKINGHAM GLOVE. This is documented by both testimony of the detectives AND crime scene photos of the glove as it was found, before it was ever touched.
You would think that it would be obvious that anyone this undisturbed quality of the leaf layer would immediately refute any assertion that someone had fallen on that layer hours before (on a windless night)
And yet this point is simply disregarded as if it didn't exist, in spite of the testimony and photos.
2. THE TWO CLOSED GATES.
Kaelin has consitently testified, and told his ghost writer, Marc Eliott, that two gates on the south pth at Rockingham were CLOSED at 11:00 when he he says went part of the way down the south path the check out the thumps.
One of these gates was the westernmost gate near the front of the garage; it was broken off its hinges so that it had to be lifted and shifted to open and shut it. the other was at the west end of the guest house.
It is ironic that Kaelin was the only source of this information, for this piece of testimony ALONE is enough to negate all the 'Guilty-OJ-running-on-the-south-path" theories.
For what this means -- though it was a point too subtle to occur to Kaelin at the time -- is that NO ONE COULD HAVE BEEN ON THE SOUTH PATH THAT NIGHT, and especially not some fugitive murderer running in a panic and knocking himself senseles on an air conditioner.
For the only way they could have been closed is that someone who had just been down the path had closed them behind him.
Now, the guest house gate is in pitch dark. This means that "OJ" would have had to have stopped, turned around and groped in the pitch dark, found the gate by touch and closed it. With the westmost gate by the garage, he would had had to do much the same, except he would first have to find itwhere it was laying and precisely put it on it's hinges without being able to see them.
Does that sound like a man in a hurry to you? A man in a panic to get inside his house without being seen? A man who had just ben stunned by colliding with an air conditioner at a full run?
DIDN'T HAPPEN. Kaelin found them closed because they had been closed for a long time.
3. THE DRIVEWAY BLOOD TRAIL, AND THE "MAGIC FINGER CUT"
Animations about the blood spots on Bundy, by Jasper Garrison
These animations come with their own explanations and show the various version of the infamous "blood trail" at Rockingham. Marcia Clark and other OJ theorists would have you believe that this is the last part of a "blood trail" starting at the murder scene at Bundy. Now the trouble is:
Notice that the blood drops follow the driveway from the Bronco/Rockingham gate to the front door. THERE WERE NO BLOOD DROPS ON THE SOUTH PATH.
From Philip Vanatter's criminal trial testimony of March 21, 1995. Please note as you read, what this testimony also says about the allegations that "OJ" went over the fence and/or rammed into the air conditioner:
: BY MR. SHAPIRO: IS IT -- IS IT -- DID -- IS IT YOUR OPINION THAT THE PERSON WHO DID THE KILLING WAS BLEEDING AT THE TIME HE CAME OR SHE CAME TO ROCKINGHAM?
A: YES.Q: I TAKE IT THEN THERE WAS A THOROUGH SEARCH FOR BLOOD FROM THE AREA OF ROCKINGHAM -- FROM ROCKINGHAM TO THE AREA WHERE THE GLOVE WAS FOUND? A: YES, THAT'S CORRECT.Q: HOW MUCH BLOOD WAS FOUND THERE?A: NONE. NONE THAT I AM AWARE OF.Q: I TAKE IT A THOROUGH SEARCH WAS DONE OF THE ADJACENT PROPERTY FOR BLOOD; IS THAT CORRECT?A: THE AREA WAS SEARCHED, YES.Q: FOR BLOOD?A: WELL, SEARCHED FOR ANY TYPE OF EVIDENCE.Q: WAS IT SEARCHED FOR BLOOD?A: YES, SIR, THAT WOULD INCLUDE ANY TYPE OF EVIDENCE.Q: HOW MUCH BLOOD WAS FOUND THERE?A: NONE.Q: I TAKE IT A THOROUGH SEARCH OF THE FENCE WAS UNDERTAKEN IF SOMEBODY CLIMBED THE FENCE FOR BLOOD?A: YES.Q: HOW MUCH BLOOD WAS FOUND THERE?A: NONE.Q: I TAKE IT A THOROUGH SEARCH WAS DONE OF THE WALLS?A: THAT'S CORRECT, YES.Q: HOW MUCH BLOOD WAS FOUND THERE?A: NONE.
Now, you wuld be astounded at some of the, frankly, kneeslapping explanations for why THERE WAS NO EVIDENCE THAT OJ (OR ANYONE ELSE, EXCEPT KAELIN) WENT DOWN THE SOUTH PATH THAT NIGHT.
Most notable -- perhps 'infamous' is a better word -- is Bob August, who simply ignores the fact that no blood was found by literally saying "Blood drops were there, but the police just didn't find it." similar to his assertion that the foliage would show no sign of a large man passing through it, in spite of the fact that the most expereienced forensic scientist in the world went looking for it, and, not finding it, made mention of it.
He also asserts that "OJ"s finger would simply stopped bleeding when he went onto the path and started bleeding again at the exact point where it stopped, so as to create an illusion of an unbroken trail of blood from the Rockingham gate to the front door.
The truth? OJ cut himself on something in the Bronco earlier in the night and bled from his car to his front door earlier in the evening.
Others (Fuhrman, Wagner) have suggested that "OJ" avoided bleeding on the south path by (Fuhrman) putting his left hand in his pants, or (Dick Wagner) putting it in his mouth.
Okay, dear reader, let's see YOU run blind with your left hand in your pocket, or in your mouth, and se how fast you can run.
Moreover, let's see you manhandle a broken gate WITH ONE HAND and balance it on broken hinges so that it stays upright. And, oh yes, don't forget to do it in the pitch dark. Can't do it, you say? Well, that's what Mark Fuhrman and Dick Wagner say OJ Simpson did.
4. THE TWO AVAILABLE DOORS.
Even those who hold to the "guilty-OJ-On-the South Path" theories do not dispute the existence of two doors along the south path -- one a side door to the garage and the other the 'maid's entrance' referred to by Fuhrman -- but then proceed to indulge in the usual logic-pretzeling to fit the 'wicked-stepsister's-foot'of their theories into the 'glass slipper' of the facts. To wit:
To explain why "OJ" didn't use the side door of the garage, they claim that objects sere stacked inside the garage blocking the door.
Trouble is, that door opened OUTWARD, so that nothing on the inside would block its opening. Moreover, the actual testimony and documentation for the objects behind the door is extremely dubious; it is unclear whether those objects were behind the door on the murder night or were put there later. Moreover, even the documented objects in front of the door were not large or heavy enough to block a man who was physically capable of what "OJ" had supposedly done earlier that night; they would have been more of a 'speed bump' than a barricade.
Some of the explanations for why "OJ" didn't use the maid's entrance actually make sense. One is, that it was locked from the inside with a slide-bolt, which, at least, was possible. Another is that it was locked by the regular lock and "OJ" had forgotten his key.
Those who hold to that aspect of the theory want you to believe that (1) "OJ" was a very rare individual in that he didn't keep his own house key -- which was a master key to all the locks at Rockingham -- on the same ring with his car key (and other personal keys), such that he forgot the house master key while still having his Bronco key, and (2) he nevertheless remembered , or was lucky enough to forget, to leave the front door UNLOCKED.
What they miss in saying that latter is that, if such was indeed the case, "OJ" HAD NO REASON TO BE GOING BACK ON THE SOUTH PATH IN THE FIRST PLACE. THERE WAS NO WAY FOR HIM TO GET IN THE HOUSE, ANYWAY.
One reply to that rather obvious objection is that "OJ" was headed to the back patio door, which he had ALSO conveniently forgotten to lock.(The OJ-guilty crowd would have us believe in not only "OJ"s magic finger cut, but his highly convenient forgetting to lock certain doors.)
The answer to THAT is : Okay, then why didn't he just CONTINUE around the guest house and go in the back? (We know that no one did because Fuhrman made a special point to note that the spider webs in back of the guest house were still intact the next morning.) It was easy enough to get past the airconditioner and down the rest of the path and around the guest house. (Fuhrman did exactly this the next morning and reported no great effort in doing so.)
And so we see that every single variation of the "Guilty-OJ-on-the-south-path" or "Over-the-fence" fails to describe or explain the creation of the evidence or testimony about it in such a way as to be a believable or even possible solution to the case.
5. THE RELATIVELY CLEANNESS AND WET CONDITION OF THE GLOVE.
This point has already been dealt with Vannatter testimony cited above. But I want to add a few other things from what Fuhrman wrote in his book "Murder in Brentwood".
He, like Vannatter, noted the wet and glistening appearance of the glove, and the undisturbed leaf layer beneath it. But Fuhrman also notes that there was no dust, dropped leaves, OR INSECTS.
Those who cling to "south path" theories in the very jaws of common sense and evidence often explain the wetness and glistening of the blood on the glove by saying it had been sitting out in cool, damp air all night and so had not dried.
There is no way to conclusively refute this argument. One would need to have hour-by-hour temperature and humidity readings from a spot within a few hundred yards of Rockingham that night, and then put a blood soaked leather glove into a chamber where these conditions could be recreated.
Unfortunately no such nearby weather observations were made; the nearest such weather observation station was Santa Monica Community College, and the distance between SMCC and Rockingham is such that there could have been significant differences in atmospheric conditions.
However, Fuhrman's observation about there not being any insects on the glove is of utmost importance, for it means -- and what Fuhrman is 'actually' saying -- is that THAT GLOVE HAD NOT BEEN SITTING ON THE GROUND VERY LONG, AND CERTAINLY NOT FOR EIGHT OR NINE HOURS. For it is simply not possible for a blood-soaked item to sit unprotected on the ground in Brentwood on a summer night without attract a whole bunch of insects to it.
BOB AUGUST VARIATION:
In all fairness, the best thing to do is let BA speak for himself:
This is a link to his site.
However, I can save you a little bit of time.
All OJ case theoreticians have to explain what is usually called "the missing evidence": the Bruno-Maglis shoes, the knife, and the 'blue/black sweats'.
I explain it by noting that Kaelin had ample time from about 1:30 a.m. that night to 5:30 the next morning to dispose of it.
Another fact of evidence was the presence of wet laundry in the washing machine, in spite of the testimony by Arnelle and Gigi the maid that neither of them had done laundry that weekend and Gigi testified that there was no laundry in the machine on Friday when she left.
I explain it by suggesting that Kaelin did the laundry for reasons of his own, but was caught short by Arnelle getting home before he could finish it.
The standard way for those who believe OJ is guilty to get around these problems is to theorize an accomplice. Just as "patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel", I have found that inventing an accomplice is the last refuge of an OJ case groupie stuck with an embarrassing fact.
Petrocelli, at least as August describes him, says that "OJ" had an accomplice BEFORE the fact of them crime, so that this accomplice was also a co-conspirator and the murders were planned.
But there is one simple question that simply explodes all such 'co-conspirator' theories, to wit: IF HE HAD AN ACCOMPLICE BEFORE THE FACT, WHY WOULDN'T HE HAVE USED THAT PERSON AS AN ALIBI WITNESS? This rather simple and obvious objection seems to never occur to those who, in desperation to 'convict' OJ, come up with these lame-ass theories; it certainly never occurred to Petrocelli.
Bob August: Arnelle as accomplice after the fact.(?)
Petrocelli never specifically named an accomplice -- possible because he was afraid, being famous and at least modestly rich, of being sued for libel.
August, being an obscure person, and probably not rich enough to go after in court, specifically names Arnelle Simpson as the one who cleaned up after her father.
He maintains that "OJ" phoned her cell phone from the airport gate, at about the same time he called Kaelin, told her of the bloody material and instructed her to launder some of it and dispose of all of it so that it would never be found.
Okay: first, consider how this alleged second phone call from the airport gate (there is do dispute about his call to Kaelin to give him the code and turn on the burglar alarm) is in opposition to the first.
That is, by calling Kaelin to turn on the alarm, he was putting an unnecessary obstacle in the path of Arnelle, who he wanted to enter the house later. Sure, Arnelle knew the code herself and could get past the alarm -- but why even bother with it? And a few minutes of thought would have allowed "OJ" to notice that, by calling Kaelin and giving him the code, he risked putting a 'glitch' in his alibi if Kaelin should turn on the alarm, only to have Arnelle turn it off and forget to turn it on again.
Which is what August says happened!
Mr. August says Arnelle received her father's call from the airport about 11:30. After what must have been one of the weirdest calls of her life (How often has someone called YOU and asked you to clean up anything in the middle of the night?) she then stayed out till 12:30 or 1:00. (According to Kaelin, in Eliott's book, she came home even later than that.), went to her room, stayed in it until 4:00 a.m., then came out, went to the front door, turned off the alarm, and went in and -- while leaving the lights off -- picked up the later-to-be-missing evidence and proceeded to launder the bloody seat suit. For some reason or another she then manages to get rid of the knife and shoes, but forgets the sweat suit in the washing machine.
Now, dear reader, if you are going to believe that, I have this little bridge in Brooklyn I want you to look at; I can get you a great deal on it.....
First, why in the hell wait till 4:00 a.m. to start the coverup task? Because her father told her to? And why the hell would he do THAT? The cops could have discovered the bodies at any second and be over to Rockingham minutes later. You've just banged into an airconditioner a few minutes before in a total panic, and yet you are going NOW to tell your daughter/accomplice to go ahead, complete her date, go home, and WAIT THREE HOURS before doing the cleanup?
Moreover, you are going to order her to do a load of laundry before throwing the stuff away?
Knowing full well that Kaelin was in his room within earshot of the washing machine?
Look, friends, I have had just a few friends I loved enough that, if they asked me to take bloody items out of their house in the middle of the night and throw them away, I would have done it.
But there is no GODdamned way, no FUCKING way I would ever stop and launder some of the stuff before doing so, especially if I knew there was someone else in the house.
Now, if YOU would, or if you would believe ANYONE would do that, then I want you to stop reading my webpage right now, and get the hell off it. Because only the most stupid and intellectually blind 10% of the human race could ever believe such total fucking bullshit. I don't want you on my side even if I've persuaded you, because you would only be an embarrasment to me.
I count Bob August as part of that 10%. In fact, since he was the one that came up with this totally bizarre and impossible idea in the first place, I would have to put him the the most stupid and blind 1%.
On top of those already disgusting qualities, Bob August is also one of the most arrogant, self-righteous, and self-deluded individuals to have ever been born. In fact, if arrogance, self-righteousness and self-delusion were college courses, Bob August would be a tenured professor in all of them.
Forgive me for this off-topic rant. If you knew this son-of-a-bitch for a few months you'd see where I'm coming from.
Did Arnelle Simpson"lie"?
No, but her testimony was mistaken. There can simply be no doubt that Arnelle, the four detectives, and Kaelin entered the main house for the first time that morning by going through the rear patio door, rather than the front door, and that the burglar alarm was not set at the time.
However, in order for a false statement to be a "lie" there must be a conscious effort to deceive others.
Among other things, this means when you accuse someone of lying, you are duty-bound to explain such things as that person's motive for lying, what other lies could he/she have told instead of the one alleged in order to accomplish his/her deception, and how much did the supposed liar try to conceal his/her lie.
The accusation against Arnelle fails on two of the three points. Accepting, for sake of argument, that Arnelle was her father's accomplice, then she would have had a motive. However, if she was attempting to conceal the fact that she'd been in the house on the murder night, and subsequently forgot to turn the alarm back on, she had a much more "accessible" set of lies to use: To wit, she got hungry in the middle of the night and went into the kitchen for a snack, or invented some other bit of personal business.
More importantly, however, is the fact that -- if you grant that Arnelle WAS lying -- then she knew there were five people close at hand that would quickly contradict her,
So, then, what is the logical reason for the discrepancy between her testimony and that of the detectives and Kaelin? Simple human failing. Arnelle had been living at Rockingham for years. In that time, she went from her room and into the main house through the front door hundreds of times, and she entered the main house through the rear patio door hundreds of times. She had just been rousted out of bed after about five hours sleep and been confronted by plainclothes detectives wanting to know where her father was. In other words, she was under great stress (minutes later she collapsed in hysteria when told of the murders). She simply misremembered and confused a past time when she went in through the front door with the day after the murders when she, in fact, entered through the patio door.
So, why didn't the alarm go off?
How about: BECAUSE KAELIN NEVER TURNED IT ON, DUMMY; HE JUST LIED AND SAID HE DID. You have to remember that the ONLY evidence that Kaelin turned on the alarm is Kaelin's own word.
Dick Wagner: "OJ" was there, but didn't do it/Kaelin helped in cover up/the Jill Shively incident.
I count Dick Wagner among my friends, and we have corresponded publicly and privately with him for a few years now, though we have never met. He knows what I think about his website and his theory. So, though some of the things I am about to say about his research will sound harsh; Dick has already heard them a thousand times
I once said to Dick: "Knowing that a man who has done your kind of research has come up with your theory is like finding out that Einstein believed in Santa Claus."
As with August, the best source for what a person says is the person himself. I have already provided a number of links to his site above.
Dick has the advantage of living in the LA area and so has easy access to such things and the murder scene neighborhoods and the records at the LA county courthouse. He also own a modest-sized piece of property of his own and so can do experiments such as splashing red latex paint ("blood") around and throwing a cap onto an agapanthus plant again and again until it dies.
He has the disadvantage of also having access to Jill Shively.
If you read his website extensively, it may not even occur to you that what you are reading is NOT (at least not exactly) his theory of how OJ did or didn't do the murders.
No, rather his site is really dedicated to another purpose: explaining how the murders happened AND how "OJ" got to San Vicente and Bundy and was seen by Jill Shively.
Dick's own research leads him to believe that Ron Goldman arrived at Bundy at about 10:09. (Actually one of his failings is that he thinks he can recreate events down to a margin of six seconds (one tenth of a minute) I read his research methodology and agree with him; this also meshes with the first of the dog barking and Marcia Clark's timeline of the murders. (I believe Vannater did just about the same thing Dick did in retracing Goldman's steps and came to the same conclusion, but I don't feel like trying to chase down the place I read it)--
On June 14, 2002, Dick published a revised version of his theory and psted it on his web site and copied that to the newsgroup alt.fan.oj-simpson. The original version of the webpage your reading contained a summation of Dick's theory. But it is both quicker and more honest to let him speak for himself:
DICK WAGNER'S THEORY OF THE CRIME IN HIS OWN WORDS
You may want to flip back and forth between that page and this as you read Wagner. First, did you see that part about "OJ" stopping at his office? That particular part of his theory is entirely new. He put it in because he has done an almost 'microscopic' analysis of the timelines of several of the Bundy area witnesses and discovered that he couldn't get Shively's time of the incident into any of them. And that is in spite of the fact that he recently talked to Shively and got her to alter her own time estimate of the near-accident.
Second, sometimes the only thing you can say to someone is : REAL PEOPLE DON'T DO THINGS THAT WAY, DAMN IT!!!
Dick always disregards this criticism by saying words to the effect of: "Well, maybe that's not the way YOU would do it or I would do it, but it might be the way PROFESSIONAL HITMEN would do it." Third, as you can see, DW's theory is yet another version of the "OJ on the south path" school of theories which I have already thoroughly trashed. Fourth, as with all the rest of the OJ theorists (except me), he invents an accomplice to get out of a tight spot.
This time, it's Kaelin that Dick taps.
Now, if things had indeed happened the way Dick says, then:
1. Kaelin would have known the source of the thumps.
2. He would have known that "OJ" had been involved in something he wanted to conceil, meaning something illegal, though not necessarily murder. Further, by agreeing to do what "OJ" asks, he should know that he is making himself liable for criminal charges of his own.
BUT:
3. He nevertheless tells Fuhrman about the thumps the next morning. And:
4. Instead of coming clean and purging himself of liability for murder, he chooses to keep his secret.
Now, dear reader, would YOU do something like that? Do you know anyone who would do that for you? Do you really believe Kaelin would have, and did?
I will spend no more time on Dick Wagner's theory.
THE CIVIL TRIAL:
Of all the myths connected to the Simpson/Goldman murders, perhaps the most ironic are the ones about the criminal and civil trials. The myth of the criminal trial was that it was a reverse-racist "rush to judgment" by a jury that nullified the evidence, or simply disregarded it, and voted its verdict not based on the evidence but to "score points against Whitey".
The civil trial, on the other hand, is commonly pictured as nonbiased jurors taking their time to examine and understand the evidence.
These are ironic because the evidence is that there has been a "role reversal" of the truth in these myths.
That is, it was the CRIMINAL trial which had the best-informed members, deciding the truth without bias or racism, and that it was the CIVIL jury that was the subject and willing participant in a racist railroading of an innocent man, who were fed totally fabricated and invalid evidence, who accepted and believed such ...total bullshit...uncritically, and who acted on impure motives to, in effect, legally lynch O.J.
I will present just three pieces of evidence to back up the above statement, though I could easily present more.
TOTALLY BULLSHIT EVIDENCE WAS ADMITTED AGAINST OJ.
This was done and was possible because, first, California state judges -- as opposed to the Federal bence -- are elected to office. What this meant in the social context of the civil trial is that since (White) public opinion demanded the destruction of OJ, no judge at ANY level of the judiciary could make a decision favorable to OJ without being voted off the bench.
Fujiyama, the civil trial judge, had it even better: this was his last case. He retired immediately afterward. He didn't even risk the small humiliation of being overturned. He was, therefore, perfectly free to make the most outrageous errors against OJ without the slightest fear of so much as a professional rebuke.
Consider now some of the evidence Fujiyama allowed into the case against OJ.
See Boziak's testimony for yourself
Now, this is one textbook classis case of junk "science" being touted by a so-called "expert" to bamboozle a jury. For one thing, Bodziak's legal -- if not personally felt -- hostility to OJ is beyond all doubt. Thee are few better reasons to doubt a "scientist's" objectivity than knowing that he was a key witness for the losing side in a criminal trial. Here's what Bodziak REALLY said: 1. This was not a standardized scientific test; I made it up ad hoc just for the pictures in this case.
2. It was never subject to peer review or peer reproduction.
3. It was not "double-blinded", that is, Bodziak knew what shoes he was looking at and what results he wanted to come up with.
4. Can anyone honestly believe that there was the slightest chance that Bodziak would NOT conclude that the shoes OJ wore in the pictures were Bruno-Maglis?
Now, in criminal trials, where there is a higher standard for test of this type; in California such a test would require a "Kelly-Frye" hearing. BODZIAK'S TEST WOULD NOT HAVE PASSED SUCH A HEARING.
Oh, yes, the civil trial standard is lower. However, this is what is known as a "technicality" -- the favorite target of those who condemn OJ's criminal trial verdict. It was up to a judge who was tranparently biased (not excluding jurors who had openly admitted bias is proof of that)and beyond accountability to decide whether to admit that testimony or not. Surprisingly enough, he allowed it.
Now consider the testimony of Nancy Ney, a telephone counselor for Sojourn House, a shelter and source of advice and help for battered women.
Read Ney's testimony for yourself.
(You will probably want to use the "find on page" feature of the "edit" menu to get to Ney's testimony quickly.)
Now, here we have someone testifying about two week old memories about an anonymous phone call, with notes made retroactively (after being exposed to the media barrage) so as to somehow prove not only the state of mind of this "Nicole" but the state of mind of her unnamed husband! You might as well admit the testimony of a psychic who claimed to have had a seance with Nicole!
Deena Mullen, "Juror #5"
Ms. Mullen was on the civil trial jury. After it's conclusion, she made a deal with HBO to produce and star in her autobiographical one act play.
Five minutes before the conclusion of the play she quotes herself talking to another juror and says Ron Goldman died looking at a young woman who had her head cut off. While Nicole was NOT decapitated, I consider that part of her statement allowable dramatic license. No, what is astounding about that statment is that it reveals that Mullen didn't understand the evidence. What's more, she is describing a time just shortly before the jury arrives at it's verdict. Nowehere in this passage does she mention that any of her fellow jurors corrected her mistake or even made mention of it. And the mistake? Well, if there is one thing we can know for certain about the crime it's that GOLDMAN DIED BEFORE NICOLE'S THROAT WAS CUT. That's because there were none of Goldman's bootprints in the blood pool, and none of Nicole's blood on his boot soles. There is also no doubt that Roldman had put up a fierce, though brief struglle. If Nicole's throat had been cut before Goldman died, then one side effect of Goldman's fight would have been to splatter small droplets all over the murder scene, and no such small droplets were found. And yet here we have a person who had been listening to the evidence for months and deliberating with fellow jurors even longer making a goof that would have caused her to fluck "OJ 101". And the fact that there was no apparent reation from any other juror does not speak well for the rest of the panel.
TWO CORRUPTED PIECES OF EVIDENCE: THE SOCKS AND THE BACK GATE BLOOD
I conclude with comments about two "loose ends": OJ and Nicole's blood on the socks and OJ's blood on the back gate found some three weeks after the rest of the blood evidence. While there is no evidence that anyone connected with the LAPD planted evidence prior to OJ's arrest and indictment (though Kaelin did.), I can not help but to conclude the these two items were. Shirley Baker specifically mentions seeing Rolf Brown -- a distant Brown cousin -- hose down the Bundy crime scene after the cops released it. She also mentions that the back gate was covered with fingerprint powder. Considering that this later collected blood was in plain sight, I regard it as inconceivable that Rolf Brown missed it.
And isn't it rather suspicious that the cops missed it in the first go-round?
But, more importntly, THERE WAS NO 'CHAIN OF CUSTODY' for this blood. In those three weeks between the original inspection and the collection of the back gate blood, thousand of looky-loos were around that property.
ITO ERRED IN LETTING THAT BLOOD INTO EVIDENCE.
Exactly the same can be said about the bloody socks said to have been collected from OJ's bedroom. Never mind objections as to the EDTA content and the fact that they are not shown in a police video when they should have been.
It is, rather, the Traci Savage leak -- where the results of DNA tests were revealed before the tests were even known -- that makes this evidence too corrupt to be admissible.
Finally, if you want to use the socks and the belated back gate blood as evidence against OJ, all I can do is challenge you to come up with your own timline/scenario of the crime whcih explains how those items of evendence were incidentally created and placed the way they were found.
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