Bill Pavelic Speaking Out | William Bill Pavelic

ALIBI WITNESS COACHED?

2008-07-05T01:24:00.000-07:00

Daily News (New York)
March 1, 1995, Wednesday
BYLINE: By MICHELLE CARUSO in Los Angeles and JERE HESTER in New York
SECTION: News Pg. 8
LENGTH: 523 words

The credibility of O.J. Simpson's alibi witness crumbled yesterday as prosecutors charged her testimony was "coached" by the defense.
The latest challenge to Rosa Lopez came after the defense turned over an eight-month-old interview tape a recording that prosecutors said contains "many glaring inconsistencies" with her testimony.
"I have never heard a witness basically coached and told what to say through every bend and turn," said prosecutor Marcia Clark, after listening to the 15-minute tape in Judge Lance Ito's chambers.
The maid, who worked next door to Simpson, has reported seeing the football legend's white Ford Bronco outside his home about the time his ex-wife and her pal were slain on June 12.
But the tape highlighted contradictions in Lopez' statements, including:
She made no mention of seeing the Bronco around the time of the slayings on the July 29 tape and she reported hearing Simpson's voice at 10 p.m., Clark said.
She made no mention of her friend Sylvia Guerra on the tape, in an Aug. 18 statement or on the stand Monday.
But in a July 29 defense report purportedly based on the taped interview Lopez said that Guerra came over for coffee around 9 p.m., stayed for 10 or 15 minutes and made a remark about seeing Simpson's Bronco parked outside.
In the July 29 report, Lopez said she saw Simpson and a passenger drive away in his black Bentley between 8:30 and 9 p.m. In her Aug. 18 statement and on the witness stand she put the time at 9 p.m.
In another wrinkle, Lopez' testimony Monday that she saw the Bronco shortly after 10 p.m. leaves Simpson with a far from airtight alibi.
The defense's opening statement alleged that Lopez saw the vehicle at 10:15 p.m. the time prosecutors claim Simpson killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.
Lopez' hazier account could give the football legend time to make the six-minute drive to Nicole's condo.
The jury has not heard Lopez' account and Ito delayed resumption of her testimony until tomorrow to give prosecutors time to prepare their cross-examination.
The judge has ordered her testimony to be video-taped for future use because of fears the media-wary maid will flee to El Salvador.
A tearful Lopez pleaded with the judge to let her return to her homeland but reluctantly agreed to appear tomorrow.
"This is not my fault to work close to Mr. Simpson, to have seen and to have heard," she said through a translator.
Simpson lawyer Johnnie Cochran insisted that the tape doesn't punch holes in Lopez' credibility. "We think she is entirely consistent," he said.
And he angrily denied prosecution contentions that he concealed the tape. Simpson private eye Bill Pavelic claimed yesterday that he didn't tell defense attorneys that he had tape-recorded the interview until Monday.
Meanwhile, newly released transcripts of an in-chambers hearing indicated that Ito might dismiss a juror as soon as today for misconduct.
The "problem" juror is a 46-year-old black man who has worn items bearing the San Francisco 49ers logo the team with which Simpson ended his career.
He would be the fourth juror bounced.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Simpson's legal 'dream team' frays at seams

2008-06-29T23:33:00.000-07:00

USA TODAY
January 17, 1995, Tuesday, FINAL EDITION
BYLINE: Gale Holland
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 3A
LENGTH: 407 words
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES

Fierce in-fighting on O.J. Simpson's legal force could force the ouster of one of his marquee-name lawyers, but the team is deep enough to take a loss.
"Even a great baseball team has fights," says civil and criminal lawyer Leo Terrell. "The prosecution still has a very tough case to prove, and that's because of O.J.'s dream team."
Lawyers Robert Shapiro and F. Lee Bailey appear to be in a power struggle - and one of them may not survive.
A clash of egos among the legal talents was to be expected. But the public airing is an embarrassing distraction as the team prepares to lay out its case for the jury Thursday.
Says Loyola University law professor Stanley Goldman, "They're either going to have to kiss and make up, or one of them is going to have to go."
The feud had been simmering for months.
Shapiro says it erupted over news leaks denigrating his role in the case. An internal investigation by former Los Angeles police detective Bill Pavelic traced the leaks to Bailey and his associates, he says.
Shapiro reacted bitterly to the reports, which he described as "very painful." Shapiro and Bailey have a quarter-century of history together.
Shapiro began his climb as a celebrity lawyer representing Bailey in a 1982 drunken-driving case, and he regarded him as a mentor.
Bailey's also a courtroom legend, but his work has been eclipsed of late by others.
But in recent days, it was Shapiro who appeared to slip into the background. Last week, Shapiro sat wordless next to Simpson for three days while Bailey grilled a prosecution domestic violence expert.
"Bailey may be playing more of a role than Shapiro thinks he should be doing," Goldman says.
Eventually, Shapiro threw Bailey out of his Century City offices, took his name off his legal stationery and has refused to drive with him or have his photograph taken with him.
Any change in the chemistry of the team would enhance the growing power of lawyer Johnnie Cochran.
Shapiro said Cochran, who is writing the opening statement, would rule on his request to dump Bailey. Most experts put their money on Shapiro to remain, but Goldman points out Simpson is in charge.
"O.J. can fire any of them he wants, and Bailey's got too much trial experience to pass over," Goldman says.
"It must be infuriating for O.J. Simpson to see important members of his team feuding in public," UCLA law professor Peter Arenella says. "His life is on the line."

LOAD-DATE: January 18, 1995
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO, b/w, Sam Mircovich
THE NATION; See related story; 01A

O.J. defense reveals it withheld audiotape State has witness to contradict alibi

2008-06-26T03:00:00.000-07:00

The State Journal-Register (Springfield, IL)
February 28, 1995, Sunday, EARLY AND CITY EDITIONS
BYLINE: MATT KRASNOWSKI and NORMA MEYER Copley News Service
SECTION: NEWS, Pg. 1
LENGTH: 792 words
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES

A key witness for O.J. Simpson testified Monday she saw his Bronco at home about the time his ex-wife was killed, as a defense investigator stunned the court by revealing the existence of an audiotape that the defense said didn't exist.

Speaking before a video camera and to an empty jury box, Rosa Lopez, the former maid of Simpson's neighbor, said she saw the Bronco while walking her employer's dog shortly after 10 p.m. on June 12. She said she recalled seeing Simpson's car parked slightly askew from the curve.
"Were you able to see any cars parked out on Rockingham there?" defense lawyer Johnnie Cochran Jr. asked.
"Si. Yes," said Lopez, who spoke through a Spanish interpreter.
"And what car did you see parked out there?" he inquired.
"El Bronco," she replied.
After Lopez was excused for the day, a defense investigator jolted the courtroom by acknowledging he had tape-recorded an undisclosed interview with Lopez last July. Hours earlier, defense attorney Carl Douglas repeatedly told Superior Court Judge Lance Ito that no interviews were recorded. Prosecutors contend the statement made no mention of the Bronco.
In another dramatic development, prosecutors produced a surprise witness, a housekeeper named Sylvia Guerra, who they claim can contradict Lopez's account. Lopez and Guerra were ordered back to court today.
Under questioning by Cochran, Lopez said her employers were in Europe on June 12 and her main task that day was taking care of their golden retriever. She said she walked the dog at 8:15 p.m. and "shortly after" 10 p.m.
The time is critical for Simpson's defense because prosecutors contend his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman, were killed around 10:15 p.m. about two miles away.
Lopez said she wasn't wearing a watch on the night, but checked her bedroom clock every time she left her room to go outside. Prosecutors are expected to seize on that point today in their cross-examination. Lopez in court didn't have her glasses and could not read a monitor less than two feet away. She had to borrow two different pairs of spectacles, one from defense lawyer F. Lee Bailey and another from her own attorney.
The former maid, however, appeared to have a detailed recollection of the events nine months ago. She testified that about 9 p.m., she saw Simpson drive off in his black Bentley with a blonde-haired person.
Simpson house guest Brian "Kato" Kaelin has said he and the Hall of Famer went to get hamburgers at McDonalds about that time.
About 9:30 p.m., Lopez said she heard footsteps coming from Simpson's driveway, became frightened that it was a burglar and closed her drapes. "I was really afraid," Lopez said. "I looked out and duckeddown." After midnight, she said she heard men's voices and Simpson's black Akita dog howling and barking.
"It barked and cried," she said, adding she did not fall asleep until 2 a.m.
Testimony during Simpson's preliminary hearing indicated he had left his home in a limousine for a flight to Chicago about 11 p.m.
The next morning, Lopez said Detective Mark Fuhrman came to her door and she told him what she heard. She said Fuhrman told her police would get back to her.
"I'm still waiting for them," Lopez said.
The defense contends Fuhrman, who is expected to take the stand later this week, is a racist who planted the bloody glove at Simpson's estate to frame
Earlier Monday, Douglas told Ito there were no notes or taped interviews of Lopez to give prosecutors, after revealing the defense failed to turn over a July 28 statement with her as required under evidence laws. Deputy District Attorney Marcia Clark told the judge that the July 28 interview varied considerably from an Aug. 18 statement Lopez made in which the Bronco was mentioned.
As the battle over the undisclosed interview heated up, prosecutors asked that defense investigator Bill Pavelic, who interviewed Lopez, be brought into court and put under oath. Under questioning by Ito, Bill Pavelic said he believed he had some notes about his conversations with Lopez.
"Do you have any tape recordings of any statements?" Ito asked.
"I tape recorded the first statement, which was the July statement,"Bill Pavelic said. Gasps filled the room.
"Tomorrow morning, I'm going to order you to come to court with those items, Ito said.
"I shall do my best to get those items,"Bill Pavelic said.
"No, don't do your best, have them here tomorrow," an irked Ito said.
Before the revelation, Clark suggested the defense attorneys should be disbarred for failing to turn over the statement. She asked Ito to punish the defense in a number of ways, including admonishing jurors that Simpson's attorneys had committed misconduct.
LOAD-DATE: March 1, 1995
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
TYPE: NEWS

A guide to key players in the Peterson case

2008-06-17T03:13:00.000-07:00

The Daily Review (Hayward, CA)
October 29, 2003 Wednesday
SECTION: LOCAL & REGIONAL NEWS
LENGTH: 311 words

DR. HENRY LEE: Forensic authority who has testified in more than 1,000 legal proceedings, including for the defense in the O.J. Simpson double-murder case. Also consulted in JonBenet Ramsey murder and President Kennedy's assassination.
DR. CYRIL WECHT: Nationally recognized forensic expert who examined remains of Modesto's Chandra Levy; coroner of Allegheny County, Pa., which includes Pittsburgh.
BILL PAVELIC: Private investigator and former veteran Los Angeles police detective. Previously worked on O.J. Simpson's defense team.
GARY ERMOIAN: Local private investigator retained when Modesto police began focusing on Scott Peterson. Authorities secretly monitored part of one of his calls to Peterson.
FOR THE PROSECUTION
STEVE JACOBSON: Investigator with the Stanislaus County district attorney's office and former police officer. Supervised wiretaps on Peterson's phones.
JON BUEHLER: Modesto police detective. Amber Frey, Peterson's girlfriend, reported to Buehler after telephone conversations with Peterson, which continued at least a month after Frey went public with their romance.
CRAIG GROGAN: Modesto police detective and lead investigator in the Peterson case. Previously named in a federal lawsuit filed by the family of 11-year-old Alberto Sepulveda, who was killed by another officer during a raid.
AL BROCCHINI: Modesto police detective. Helped escort Peterson from San Diego to Modesto after his arrest in April. Defense lawyers say Brocchini mishandled a hair found in Peterson's boat.
JAMES BRAZELTON: Stanislaus County district attorney since 1996 and a prosecutor since 1985. Previously worked as a policeman and in private practice.
JOHN GOOLD: Chief deputy district attorney since 1999 and former Bay Area policeman. Often serves as a spokesman for the Peterson prosecutors.
SCRIPPS-MCCLATCHY
WESTERN SERVICE
LOAD-DATE: October 29, 2003
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

4-HOUR SIEGE FAILS TO TURN UP THEFT SUSPECT BUT A PHONE CALL DOES

2008-06-12T02:07:00.000-07:00

240 of 244 DOCUMENTS
Los Angeles Times
October 31, 1986, Friday, Home Edition
BYLINE: By MICHAEL SEILER and EDWARD J. BOYER, Times Staff Writers
SECTION: Metro; Part 2; Page 6; Column 1; Metro Desk

LENGTH: 413 words

Los Angeles police laid siege for four hours at an Echo Park drugstore Thursday -- only to find when they finally entered after dark that there was no sign of a supposed holdup man believed to have been holding five people hostage.
What heavily armed Special Weapons and Tactics team officers discovered were the owner's wife, a clerk and two customers hiding in a storage room.
Later, a suspect was taken into custody at a home in the area.
Police said the incident began shortly before 3 p.m., when a woman employee at Taylor's Pharmacy, 1700 W. Temple St., ran outside to report that the man who had robbed the place of narcotics two days earlier was paying a return visit.
8 People Rescued
The SWAT team responded, eventually rescuing eight people who did not dare walk down the stairs from a physical rehabilitation center on the second floor, because the stairs went right past the drugstore doorway.
The Glendale Boulevard off-ramp of the Hollywood Freeway and streets for blocks around the pharmacy were closed to traffic.
Hundreds of spectators gathered.
While marksmen trained rifles on the store, police negotiators tried to make contact by telephone, but someone kept hanging up on them.
It turned out that one of the people hiding in the storage room was simply trying to plug in a portable phone and did not have much luck.
At last, owner Shelton Lee, 45, wearied of the bathroom in which he had taken refuge, emerged at about 7 p.m.
Then the officers went in.
"No suspect at the location," Capt. Ron Banks reported. "Apparently before we were able to secure the building, the suspect left."
Late Thursday, police booked James J. Drake, 40, for investigation of robbery in the incident.

Received Call From Neighbor
Officers said they were called to Drake's home on Kensington Road in Echo Park by a neighbor. Drake's mother had sought help from the neighbor after her son began acting irrationally, police said.
"He was sweating and talking excitedly -- symptoms of recent drug use," Detective Bill Pavelic said. "We called him from next door and talked him into surrendering."
Drake was taken to Queen of Angels Hospital for treatment of a possible drug overdose. The victims were taken to the hospital and they were able to identify Drake, officers said.
Detectives said it appeared that the man who entered the pharmacy Thursday afternoon had stolen some drugs.

Times staff writer Nieson Himmel contributed to this article.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo, Members of Los Angeles Police Swat team climbed atop an Echo Park drugstore in which it was believed that an armed man was holding five hostages, above. Lower photo shows LAPD officer watching building from across the street during long police siege. Robert Gabirel; Boris Yaro / Los Angeles Times
Copyright 1986 The Times Mirror Company; Los Angeles Times
All Rights Reserved

CROSS-EXAMINATION OF DEFENSE WITNESS ROSA LOPEZ CONTINUES

2008-06-05T02:16:00.000-07:00

CBS News Transcripts
March 03, 1995, Friday
SHOW: CBS EVENING NEWS (6:30 PM ET)
ANCHORS: DAN RATHER
BYLINE: BILL WHITAKER
LENGTH: 520 words
DAN RATHER, anchor:
At the O.J. Simpson double murder trial today, state attorney Chris Darden pressed his cross-examination of defense witness Rosa Lopez, trying again to question very closely her credibility. With time the key to Simpson's alibi, Darden tried to show that Lopez's recollection of time is not very good. Correspondent Bill Whitaker is covering the Simpson trial.
BILL WHITAKER reporting:
Prosecutor Christopher Darden suggests Rosa Lopez is lying about seeing Simpson's Bronco the night of the murders. With the jury out of the courtroom, Darden played a key interview tape in which he claims defense investigator Bill Pavelic actually feeds Lopez her answers from a piece of paper.
Mr. BILL PAVELIC (Simpson's Attorney): (from tape) ...how long after that did you take the dog for a walk?
Ms. ROSA LOPEZ (Simpson's Neighbor's Housekeeper): I took the dog 10--10:20.
Mr. CHRISTOPHER DARDEN (Prosecution): Did Mr. Bill Pavelic show you a time written on a piece of paper at that point?
Ms. LOPEZ: (Through Translator) No, sir.
WHITAKER: Still, Lopez stuck to her basic story; that some time after 10 that night, around the time prosecutors say the murders were committed, she saw Simpson's Bronco parked outside his house when she went to walk the dog. But under pointed questioning, she says she never meant to state an exact time in the Pavelic interview.
Mr. DARDEN: OK, and when you said 10:15 or 10:20, you said that knowing that you did not know the exact time.
Ms. LOPEZ: (Through Translator) Yes, because I never gave the exact time, sir.
WHITAKER: Then, as Darden hammered away, Lopez admitted she never even left the front yard that night, and contends she walked the dog into the bushes between Simpson's house and the one where she worked, the only spot from which she could have seen the Bronco.
Mr. DARDEN: Were you in the ivy?
Ms. LOPEZ: (Through Translator) Yes, sir.
Mr. DARDEN: Now isn't it true that you never walk into that ivy?
Ms. LOPEZ: (Through Translator) I have to--I have to walk there, sir.
WHITAKER: Lopez admits she remembers little else about that day, but she's certain about the Bronco, and just as certain controversial detective Mark Fuhrman interviewed her the next day.
Mr. DARDEN: And you're telling the truth.
Ms. LOPEZ: (Through Translator) Yes, sir.
Mr. DARDEN: One hundred percent.
Ms. LOPEZ: (Speaks Spanish)
WHITAKER: Defense attorney Johnnie Cochran then set about trying to rehabilitate Simpson's main alibi witness. Lopez told him her answers only seemed evasive in translation.
Ms. LOPEZ: (Through Translator) We speak different dialects, sir. And when I'm saying, 'I don't remember,' I am saying, 'No.'
WHITAKER: Now prosecutors have charged that Lopez was bribed for her testimony. Under questioning by defense attorney Johnnie Cochran, Lopez flatly denied that charge. But the woman who had hoped to be off the stand in a day, instead has undergone a week of grueling questioning. And right now, she's still on the stand. Dan.
RATHER: Bill Pavelic Whitaker in Los Angeles, thanks.
LOAD-DATE: March 03, 1995, Friday
LANGUAGE: English
TYPE: Newscast

Jackson says it is a lie

2008-05-30T01:46:00.000-07:00

MX (Melbourne, Australia)
November 25, 2003 Tuesday
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 426 words
SPEAKS OUT
Michael Jackson has spoken for the first time about the child abuse allegations against him , claiming they are a "big lie".
The singer, who was arrested and granted bail last week, told his fans on a new website his name will be cleared in court.
Jackson, 45, wrote on the site created to deal with the case: "The charges recently directed at me are terribly serious. They are, however, predicated on a big lie. This will be shown in court and we will be able to put this horrible time behind us."
Jackson faces claims of committing multiple lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14. He is expected to be formally charged next week and a trial date has been set for January 9.
If found guilty he could face more than 10 years in prison.
The boy in question is believed to be 12-year-old cancer sufferer Gavin Arvizo. It has been reported that police discovered love letters and poems the singer addressed to him.
Jackson was freed on $4 million bail and is now filming a pop video.
Jackson's defence team has been busy since the King of Pop's arrest, hiring private investigator Zvonko Bill Pavelic to dig up dirt on witnesses for the prosecution.
Bill Pavelic, a former LAPD detective, was also a crucial and controversial behind-the-scenes operator in the O. J. Simpson trial.
To my fans, friends and family:
As you know, the charges recently directed at me are terribly serious.They are, however, predicated on a big lie. This will be shown in court, and we will be able to put this horrible time behind us.
Because the charges are so serious, I hope you all will understand,on the advice of my attorneys, I will be limited in what I can sayabout the situation. There will be times when I cannot comment atall. No doubt, this will be frustrating for all of us.
For that reason, I have set up this website to serve as a source of official communications on my case. Any statement that does notappear on this website must be considered unauthorised.
You are right to be sceptical of some of the individuals who arebeing identified in the mass media as my friends, spokespeopleand attorneys. With few exceptions, most of them are simplyfilling a desperate void in our culture that equates visibility withinsight. We will not engage in speculation. We will not provide
running commentary on every new development or allegation du jour. We intend to try our case in the courtroom, not in the public
or the media.
I thank you all for your support and
understanding.
God bless you,
Michael Jackson.
LOAD-DATE: November 25, 2003
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
JOURNAL-CODE: MEL

Hotline shut down as 'tips' plummet

2008-05-29T22:15:00.000-07:00

Hamilton Spectator (Ontario, Canada)
August 25, 1994 Thursday Final Edition
SOURCE: FROM ASSOCIATED PRESS
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A8
LENGTH: 320 words
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES
Calls to a hot line created for tipsters with possible leads in the O.J. Simpson murder case have dropped off so precipitously in recent weeks that his attorneys have decided for now to pull the plug on the highly publicized effort, members of Mr. Simpson's defence camp said yesterday.
"Like anything, the initial impact was the biggest," said Robert Shapiro, one of Mr. Simpson's attorneys. "Since then, it's worn off some."
In its first week of operation, the toll-free number generated thousands of calls -- Mr. Simpson's attorneys say they logged more than 250,000 tips within days, a rush so intense that they were forced to install extra lines to capture the recorded comments deluging the hot line.
Many of the calls came from people sympathetic to the football star charged with murdering Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman. Others sought to cash in on Mr. Simpson's offer of a $500,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the "real killer or killers."
But in the weeks since that first burst of phone calls, members of Mr. Simpson's team say the quantity and quality of calls have tapered off dramatically. In recent weeks, tantalizing tips mostly have been replaced by wackier offerings and meddlesome wanna-be investigators, Mr. Simpson's representatives say.
"Initially, it was a very good idea," said Bill Pavelic, an investigative consultant working with the Simpson team who recommended that the hot line be shut down. "We got a lot of good leads. But the calls lately have not been as good. We get people who want to tell us how to do things, not people who have information."
Because of that, the service was temporarily disconnected, and Mr. Shapiro said Mr. Simpson's attorneys expect to decide later this week whether to leave it off permanently. Tuesday, callers to the number got a recorded message saying that the number was "temporarily out of service."

LOAD-DATE: October 13, 2002
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Shapiro
TYPE: News

DRIVER'S RECORD TRACED AFTER 4 DIE

2008-05-28T23:21:00.000-07:00

Los Angeles Times
July 8, 1987, Wednesday, Home Edition
BYLINE: By TERRY PRISTIN and CRAIG QUINTANA, Times Staff Writers
SECTION: Metro; Part 2; Page 1; Column 2; Metro Desk
LENGTH: 907 words
A former mental patient arrested last week after a traffic collision in which four people died had been released from a county psychiatric ward only two days earlier, having been confined because of reckless driving, authorities said Tuesday.
The suspect, David Columbus Hasson, 33, who was booked on suspicion of murder, was hospitalized June 17 after his father and a friend told police that "he had been driving up and down the street trying to hit people," Los Angeles Police Detective Bill Pavelic said.
Hasson, who according to records has a history of mental problems dating to 1975, was released from Augustus F. Hawkins Mental Health Center on July 1, although he could have been held at least four more days, Deputy Dist. Atty. David H. Guthman said.
The district attorney's office is to decide today whether to file murder charges against Hasson.
Criticizing hospital officials for not trying to keep Hasson confined through legal proceedings, Guthman, who heads the district attorney's mental health section, asked: "Why didn't the hospital bring that case to me seeking to extend civil commitment? . . . What I have always said to the hospitals is, 'Why don't you pass the buck to me, and let me make the decision?' "
Hasson's case is the second in two weeks in which county health officials have been accused of prematurely releasing a dangerous patient.
Last week, Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner attacked County-USC Medical Center officials for "irresponsible actions" in releasing AIDS patient Joseph Edward Markowski after being told he was selling contaminated blood.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors ordered Department of Health Services Director Robert C. Gates on Tuesday to look into why Markowski, who has been charged with four counts of attempted murder, was not detained at the county hospital.
As in the Markowski case, county health officials have declined to comment on the Hasson matter, citing restrictions because of confidentiality.
Last Friday, while driving north on Hoover Street, Hasson's car sped through an intersection at Gage Avenue and collided with another car, cutting it in half and killing a man and three children who were returning from a holiday barbecue with friends, police said.
Hasson, who witnesses said was driving between 60 and 70 m.p.h., came to a stop after two other vehicles were struck, investigators said.
The victims were identified as Michael Magee, 25, of South-Central Los Angeles; Sheneke Magee, 2; Duwane Magee, 11 months; and Ryan Wagner, 3. Lydia Tucker, 20, Magee's fiance and the mother of the children, was critically injured and remains in intensive care at Daniel Freeman Memorial Hospital in Inglewood.
Hospital spokeswoman Christie Ciraulo said Tucker is "awake and fairly alert" but may be paralyzed as a result of spinal injuries.
Hasson is being held without bail in the jail ward at County-USC Medical Center, where he is being treated for internal injuries.

'Acting Strangely'
Pavelic of the Police Department's mental evaluation unit said Hasson was admitted to Augustus F. Hawkins Medical Center on June 17 after his father and a friend complained that he was "acting strangely."
He was carrying dead animals around with him, "driving erratically" and "playing the role of a traffic officer" by stopping cars, Pavelic said.
After 72 hours of observation, hospital staff asked that he be held for 14 days, saying he was gravely disabled. According to customary practice, a probable-cause hearing was held before a mental health referee to determine if the hospital could keep Hasson.
Hasson was described as a manic depressive "with psychotic features" who was hearing voices and carried a dead cat in his car while "'driving up and down the street attempting to hit people," Guthman said, reading from the referee's records.
A hospital psychiatrist, Dr. Greta Johnson, testified, however, that Hasson was not a danger to others, according to Guthman.
As a result of the hearing, the hospital was permitted to confine Hasson until July 5, if it deemed necessary.
Why he was released four days early could not be learned.
Johnson said she was not allowed to comment on the case.

Comment Declined
William Delgardo, spokesman for the mental health center, which is part of Martin Luther King Jr. General Hospital, declined comment, citing confidentiality restrictions.
County health officials did not respond to a request made through spokesman Steven C. Stewart that it discuss its general policies.
Pavelic said Los Angeles police had 11 previous encounters with Hasson, dating back to 1975, but he said the records describing these are not available.
According to court records, Hasson was confined in mental hospitals at least 10 times between September, 1980, and April, 1983, Guthman said.
Meanwhile, relatives of the accident victims expressed outrage Tuesday over Hasson's release.
"They let him go when they knew he couldn't be ready to hit the streets," said Michael Magee's mother, Jacqueline. "Who let him have a car knowing what he was capable of doing? Somebody should have done something to have avoided this."
"Someone just called me and said that this man was a psycho and out to kill people, and the hospital just let him out on the street," said Mack Magee, Michael Magee's father.
The victim's brother, William, said: "Something has to be done to change things to keep people like him in."
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
Copyright 1987 The Times Mirror Company; Los Angeles Times

JUST COLOR HANKS UNIMPRESSED: STAR REFUSES ROLE AS CHIEF EXEC

2008-05-02T00:25:00.000-07:00

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock, AR)
September 04, 1996, Wednesday
BYLINE: ERIC E. HARRISON, Democrat-Gazette Critic at Large
SECTION: STYLE; Pg. 3F
LENGTH: 660 words
If elected, I will not serve: Tom Hanks has turned down the lead role in "Primary Colors," the film version of the best seller written anonymously by Newsweek's Joe Klein. Director Mike Nichols hoped to cast Hanks as the Clinton-esque candidate and Emma Thompson as his hard-charging wife. But the actor, reportedly a chum of the president's, has bolted. No word yet on a second choice.
School daze: Comedian Dennis Miller on education: "Our culture has gon e from the 'G.E. College Bowl' to the guy on 'Wheel of Fortune' who asks, 'Is there an F, as in Pharaoh?' "
Speaking of game shows, it must be really hard to play "Wheel of Fortune" in Poland (and no, this is not a Polish joke, so simmer down). Imagine: "I'd like to buy a vowel, Pat." "Sorry," Pat replies, "there aren't any."
Culture vulture: In the September issue of GQ, a piece by Joe Queenan called "How Bad Can It Be?" delineates the different levels of American popular culture. Queenan decides to go outside his "elite, effete" tastes, which include Elvis Costello, Igor Stravinsky, Tom McGuane and Henry James, and plunges into "the culture of the masses," which includes Michael Bolton, "Cats," Dean Koontz and the movies of Chris Farley and Adam Sandler: "Until I saw 'Billy Madison' and 'Tommy Boy,' I'd always thought that the three scariest words in the English language were 'starring Dan Aykroyd.' " Queenan also describes John Tesh's recent CD as sounding "so much like dentist's-office music that I inexplicably found myself flossing in the middle of the day." That's pretty bad.
No sex, please, we're British: In Britain, 60 percent of the women sur veyed in an opinion poll said they would rather go out to a restaurant for dinner than stay home and have sex. Here's a little tip, folks: Even if you're British, it's possible to do both. And on the same night, too.
Not just no, but ... Remember the May offer of Hal Lipset and five oth er private detectives to investigate O.J. Simpson's claims that the murderers of his late wife were in San Francisco?
About a week after the offer was made, Lipset says, he received a fax from Simpson's investigator, Zvonko Bill Pavelic, too strongly worded for a gentleman to read aloud.
"He could have just said he discussed this with his client and thanks, but no thanks, but his letter was very mean," Lipset notes.
P.S.: Philip Vannatter and Tom Lange, lead detectives in the Simpson case, have signed with Pocket Books to write their version of the whole saga.
Tie food: Venture Initiative of Dallas offers Tie Cuisine, a selection of 100 silk ties in patterns that mimic common food stains.
"For years, men everywhere have struggled with the universal fashion problem: spillage," says the brochure. Patterns on the ties match the "drops that spot their best tie just as they're about to make a remarkable point during a meal."
The ties, $ 15, are available in Chinese Food, Wine, Club Sandwich, Buffalo Wings, Cordials, Salad and Dessert. Previous offerings have included Tacos and Quesadillas, Pasta, Pizza, Barbecue Ribs and Soup du Jour. Perfect for folks like us, who only wear ties to keep food off our shirts.
Son of a you-know-what: Rottweilers are the most popular dogs in Russi a.
"It's the Mafia's favorite breed," Anatoly Glebov says, by way of an advertisement for his $ 350 puppies. "She's a killing machine, and she'll fight to the end. A terrifying dog. She'll guard your house, your car, your family. And she's very good with children."
Short stuff: Carol Burnett will play Jamie's (Helen Hunt) mom in an episo de of NBC's "Mad About You," to be taped this month for broadcast later in the season ... Diane Sawyer has scored a coup: She'll interview the Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, on Nov. 13; it'll be Fergie's first TV chat since leaving the royal family.
Partially compiled from Democrat-Gazette wire services.
LOAD-DATE: September 05, 1996
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

INVESTIGATOR HIRED BY O.J. DESCRIBED AS BITTER EX-COP

2008-02-19T00:28:00.000-08:00

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

July 22, 1994, Friday , FINAL

INVESTIGATOR HIRED BY O.J. DESCRIBED AS BITTER EX-COP

SOURCE: P-I News Services

SECTION: NEWS LENGTH: MEDIUM: Pg. B1

LENGTH: 666 words

DATELINE: LOS ANGELES

A top investigator for O.J. Simpson has been portrayed in court papers as a bitter ex-cop with a vendetta against a former Los Angeles Police Department colleague assigned to the Simpson case.

Zvonko "Bill" Pavelic gave up a generous pension package when he quit the department 18 months ago after nearly 20 years on the force. He contends he was forced out because he had complained about racism and corruption in the department.

"I was sick and tired of watching innocent people get framed, especially members of minority groups, and that includes African Americans and Mexicans," Pavelic told The Associated Press. "I was disturbed about officer-involved shootings, and how they covered up the incidents."
Pavelic was hired to review the police investigation in the case, looking for mistakes, violations of LAPD policy and skeletons in investigators' closets.

Simpson, 47, is charged with murder in the June 12 stabbings of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson, 35, and Ron Goldman, 25. He faces arraignment today .

Court papers describe Pavelic as angry, bitter and paranoid.
"Bill Pavelic thought there was a big conspiracy among the supervisors at Southwest Detectives and command staff officers of LAPD who were 'out to get him,' " prosecutors wrote in a case in which the defense was considering calling Pavelic as a witness.
In recent days, the Simpson camp has leaked unflattering details about Detective Mark Fuhrman, who testified at a preliminary hearing that he found a bloody glove at Simpson's estate.
The defense reportedly was going to argue that Fuhrman planted the glove. However, an internal police investigation has concluded that scenario is virtually impossible, police sources told the Los Angeles Times.
Many of Fuhrman's defenders suspect Pavelic was responsible for revealing details to the media of a 1983 lawsuit that portrays Fuhrman as racist and violent.
A review of his personnel file suggests, however, that Pavelic enjoyed a successful career. He strongly defended his reputation, pointing to 175 commendations.
But his career apparently took a turn for the worse in his latter years, when he started openly criticizing command staff, including former Chief Daryl Gates.
Pavelic retired in 1992 on a service-related disability pension of half pay, claiming his working conditions aggravated his health.
On Wednesday, the defense launched a toll-free tip line and a $500,000 reward for "the real killer."
Simpson's lead defense attorney, Robert Shapiro, said hot-line operators were receiving 100 calls a minute. Earlier, an AT&T operator had said technical difficulties were blocking some calls.
"This is done totally outside our office. . . . This is totally O.J.'s thing," Shapiro said yesterday, adding that a message on the hot line had been changed to delete a referral to Shapiro's office for legal representation.
Meanwhile, officials said yesterday that a notebook detailing Nicole Simpson's activities last winter was found in the car of O.J. Simpson's girlfriend and has been turned over to Los Angeles police.
Police in Newport Beach, 40 miles south of Los Angeles, said the notebook was recovered from Paula Barbieri's car Jan. 31 after the vehicle had been stolen and used in four armed robberies.
Newport Beach police spokesman Sgt. Andy Gonis said the notebook was handed over on July 12 to the lawyer of William Wasz, who stole the car, and was now in the hands of Los Angeles police.
Wasz's lawyer, John Stewart, told CNN that the notebook contained a detailed schedule of Nicole Simpson's movements.
"I found the contents very, very interesting as it relates to possible scenarios relative to O.J. Simpson (and) . . . the ongoing prosecution of O.J.," he said.
TV coverage
ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC plan live coverage of O.J. Simpson's arraignment on murder charges today in Los Angeles. The court session also can be seen on Court TV. It is scheduled to begin at 10:30 a.m. PDT.
- The Associated Press
sdh/md

LOAD-DATE: November 24, 1998

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

About Bill Pavelic on “AMERICAN TRAGEDY” BY LARRY SHILLER

2007-09-04T02:11:00.000-07:00

Bill Pavelic Speaking Out and Exposing Racism and Racist Cops

2007-08-30T02:57:00.000-07:00

In 1991, Bill Pavelic established himself as the foremost insider critic of racism and corruption in the LAPD.
Bill Pavelic has been the subject of many articles nationally and internationally for speaking out against and exposing racism that he personally witnessed as a LAPD Detective.
On June 30, 1992, Bill Pavelic sent the following letter to the Los Angeles Sentinel concerning the institutionalized racism, corruption, and sexism, of the LAPD under Chief Daryl Gates’ leadership.
To: Los Angeles Sentinel Opinion Section
As a 19 year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department, I am elated that Chief Gates was forced into retirement. His corrupt managerial style, coupled with his inflammatory and intemperate public comments, have done irreparable damage to the City of Los Angeles and its police department.
Daryl Gates and his close associates are suffering from a disease called megalomania……an exaggerated belief in their own greatness and that of the organization. In order to maintain a mythical status of being “the best law enforcement agency in the world” the LAPD management developed a bunker mentality and consciously impeded and retarded investigations or inquiries which reflected poorly on the organization. The “us against them” mentality required faulty analysis which was oftentimes based on pseudo reasoning, clever fallacies and distorted or manufactured evidence.
The disciplinary system under the leadership of Daryl Gates lacked consistency, uniformity and equality and sent a deplorable signal to others on the force, that it is OK to falsify official investigations, violate the LAPD manual, discredit the Code of Ethics and be dishonest as long as you are a member of management or have friends at the top who will protect you even when prima facie evidence of a crime is clearly evident.
Chief Gates has failed to hold accountable personnel under his control who were acting under the color of law and were exercising illegal direction under the guise of official authority. In no sphere of public life is this practice more repugnant than in law enforcement. Chief Gates, who morally bankrupt the Los Angeles Police Department, forgot, or never knew, that true leadership can be gained only by an intolerance of wrong doing…and…unless we all abide by the highest standards among ourselves, we have no business enforcing the law upon others.
Chief Gates used the Internal Affairs Division to intimidate those officers who dared to speak out against Los Angeles Police Department’s institutionalized racism, corruption, sexism, mismanagement, promotional cronyism and other sensitive issues. If the Internal Affairs Division didn’t get these “disloyal” police officers, like the Russian KGB, the organization could always count on the Medical Liaison Unit to send these officers to the Department shrink…to certify them as functionally crazy.
Under the leadership of Chief Williams, respect for individual dignity will once again become an integral part of the Los Angeles Police Department’s philosophy…a philosophy that will be based on the principles of professionalism, reverence for the law and harmony between the police and the community it serves.
Respectfully,
Bill Pavelic, Southwest Division

Millionaire Cleared in Rape Case Calls Experience 'Devastating'

2007-08-16T05:12:00.000-07:00

City News Service
July 27, 2001 Friday

BYLINE: By TERRI VERMEULEN KEITH, City News Service

LENGTH: 811 words

DATELINE: LOS ANGELES

A millionaire businessman acquitted of charges that he sexually assaulted nine women, seven of whom allegedly were drugged, said today that the allegations have been "a devastating experience."

"The nightmare is over, absolutely. I'm looking forward to just relaxing and going back to work, and salvaging a lot of the money that I've lost and just looking forward to a new life and getting married and having a family," John Gordon Jones said at a downtown news conference.

Jones spent more than two years in county jail without bail until a Long Beach Superior Court jury acquitted him yesterday of 29 charges, including kidnapping, rape of an unconscious person, rape by use of drugs and sexual battery.

The 46-year-old owner of Worldtech Computer in Encino, which he had helped to run from jail, maintained that he had been "wrongfully accused."

"They falsified documents, they hid documents. There was prosecutorial misconduct that was just to an unbelievable, devastating state," the businessman said.

"Well, what happened is the District Attorney's Office wanted to have a GHB date rape case, and they wanted to go ahead and prosecute me no matter what the truth was.

"They went ahead and they got these women to go ahead and say false allegations against me, with blackouts that never existed, by lying. When these women wanted to back out, I believe that they forced them to go ahead with their stories," Jones said.

One of Jones' lawyers, Milton Grimes, said his client is "thinking very seriously of suing the county for false imprisonment because of the incompetent investigation in this case."

"Nine different women caused this man, this man here, to sit in jail wrongfully for 793 days over two years with wrongful allegations," Grimes said.

On behalf of the district attorney, Sandi Gibbons said her "office will not be commenting on such silly allegations that aren't true anyway."

The woman whose allegations launched the case against Jones claimed he had date-raped her and that she got home after spending the night with him and believed she had been drugged, Grimes said.

"Well, when she was tested the next day, it turned out that she had snorted a considerable amount of cocaine, which would definitely inhibit or prohibit or keep anyone from being knocked out, so this is the young lady that started this avalanche going," the defense lawyer said.

He noted that the jurors cleared his client after taking a field trip to Jones' home.

"Once the jury went out to the residence of Mr. Jones and viewed it, they had no doubt of his innocence because the descriptions of some of the women were that they were locked in bedrooms that turned out to have no locks on the doors," Grimes said.

Another of Jones' lawyers, Richard Sherman, said his client became the "poster boy for date rape."

"He was a rich man, he was a prominent man in the business community and they took him into custody. They never investigated the allegations of the first victim, the alleged victim. Had they done that, they would have realized that he didn't do that and that she was not telling ... a true story," Sherman said.

Jones said he learned that "county jail is very rough," and that he was jumped and beaten up while on the county jail bus.

"It has been a devastating experience with tremendous loss of income. And it took a lot of praying and a man like Milton Grimes and (private investigator and former LAPD detective) Bill Pavelic and Mr. Sherman to prove my innocence," he said.

Jones and his lawyers said they believed the case was motivated by his wealth and the prospect that the women might get hefty legal judgments in civil lawsuits if he had been convicted.

The women "started coming forward" with the allegations after the District Attorney's Office went to the media in December 1998 and "asked are there any victims out there who have been victimized by the alleged millionaire limousine rapist?" Grimes said.

"I don't think there'd be any charges if I didn't have any money, there would have been no charges, absolutely not," Jones said.

Jones, who had faced the possibility of consecutive life prison sentences if convicted, said he spent his first night of freedom in more than two years at a gathering with his mom and some of his friends.

"It's like starting all over again, really. Just driving the car was amazing," he said, adding that he plans to go back to work next Monday at his company, which sells laser jet cartridges and office products nationwide. "Basically, I'm just happy to be free."

The case against two other people indicted along with Jones in April 1999 on a much smaller number of charges is under review given the jury's verdict in Jones' case, according to the District Attorney's Office.

Pina Marie Colapinto and Lawrence Elliott are awaiting trial next month in downtown Los Angeles.

LOAD-DATE: July 28, 2001

OJ SIMPSON IS INNOCENT. kAELIN IS THE TRUE MURDERER

2007-08-14T01:49:00.000-07:00

Page 115:
“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.

More on Bill Pavelic visit
http://robertshapirobillpavelic.motime.com/

About Bill Pavelic on “AMERICAN TRAGEDY” BY LARRY SHILLER

2007-08-08T05:44:00.000-07:00

“...Bill Pavelic was especially proud of his street sense. He had been one of the few (LAPD) Caucasian cops; he liked to tell friends, who understood how things really worked in the black community. He got so deep into it that he saw things, he was certain, through nonwhite eyes. He discovered that African-Americans and dark-skinned immigrants of all backgrounds had a lot to fear from the LAPD. When the department couldn't prove something, some cops had no problem framing people who couldn't fight back. Pavelic complained loudly, and soon enough he was seen as disloyal. Before long, he was out...”

"...I know (LAPD) Robbery-Homicide Division. I've actually seen them frame innocent people. You can't take anything for granted..."

“...Pavelic studied the LAPD's crime-scene logs. He called friends at LAPD to see what else he could learn. He put in twenty-hour days, and finally what happened in the early hours of June 13 started to come together...”

“...Pavelic got a call from an officer on another matter. As they spoke, he realized that the cop was connected to the Simpson investigation. He said the department thought there was more than one killer. The wounds suggested each victim was murdered with a different weapon. Goldman's injuries indicated he had fought fiercely before he died...”

“...Pavelic felt that there was no private investigator in town better at living inside the collective mind of the LAPD than himself. He was an expert on the department's rules and procedures. He'd been on the force for eighteen years, won hundreds of medals, commendations, favorable incident reports...”

“...It was Pavelic who gave them their first real hope, however elusive: He saw corruption in the police casework...”

“...Under any circumstances, Pavelic would have looked for it. His career with the LAPD had ended in angry protest. In 1984, Pavelic had testified against fellow officers who killed a fleeing suspect. One cop was fired, another suspended for six months. Pavelic assumed he was stigmatized forever. But by 1990, he'd made it to supervising detective in the Southwest Division. Then he got in trouble again.

His men were investigating a date rape at USC when their bosses began showing a heavy-handed interest. Pavelic, his partner, and their immediate supervisor eventually concluded that then-chief Daryl Gates and a deputy chief were listening to the suspect's father, a prominent lawyer with influence inside the department.

Pavelic and his men protested publicly. And Bill raised similar charges again before a "people's tribunal" when activist groups held hearings on the LAPD after the Rodney King beating. Pavelic told the crowd that lying and covering up were the norm in the department. That earned him a desk job. In 1992, he and the brass reached an accommodation. He took a disability pension for asthma and chest pains. He told one doctor he'd rather spend time in a gulag than go back to work...”

“...When Shapiro called, Zvonko "Bill" Pavelic was in his basement office at home in Glendale, cut off from everything. Pavelic finished his investigations that way. He isolated himself with his computer and his tapes from mid-morning till midnight or later. He allowed himself only one break, for dinner with Maria and the kids. He was proud of his tight, loyal family. That was one reason he worked at home in the big house that Maria kept so well...”

“...Robert Shapiro called just before eleven P.M. They'd worked together three years. Pavelic liked the lawyer's style-intellectual, highly organized, well prepared. Shapiro's particular genius, he thought, was laying a foundation so solid that the case was a winner no matter who presented it. They had won every case they'd worked on...”

“...Would Pavelic like to join the defense team in the Simpson case? Shapiro asked. "Are you available?" Naturally Pavelic said yes. He apologized because he couldn't make Shapiro’s first meeting the next day. But he shifted into gear mentally while he was still talking. He'd need Maria to clip newspapers. He knew he had to identify the documents already being generated in the case. The prosecution's discovery file would undoubtedly be voluminous..."

“...Bill Pavelic met Robert Shapiro at his office in Century City. Elegantly appointed with original art, Baccarat and Lalique crystal. Polished and expensive, like its occupant. Then they moved to a conference room. Their forty-five-minute meeting ranged over the entire case. Nothing would be easy, Shapiro said. An arrest might be coming soon. He needed the investigator to do what he did best, run parallel with the police detectives and figure out how they saw things; then, as soon as possible, move their own investigation ahead of them. As always, the first days were the most important...”

“...His one experience with O.J. Simpson was part of his police history. When Simpson was one of the runners carrying the Olympic torch before the 1984 games in Los Angeles. Pavelic was assigned to protect VIPs. He and Simpson had talked briefly in the special seating section. Around that time, the International Olympic Committee's Life President, Lord Killenin, nearly died choking on his food. Pavelic had saved his life and he thought Simpson might remember the incident...”

“... He put his background to work as a private investigator and learned to make his computer think like a cop. That was why he was so concerned with early discovery material. If you took the documents, the crime reports, the logs, the affidavits and connected them to each piece of evidence, then considered how each cop might view it, then you could make a pretty good guess where the department was going with the case. You could see who'd like one thing, who favored another. Sometimes you could see their destination and arrive there ahead of them...”
“...As an ex-cop, he drew on his knowledge of what the police do at a crime scene. They don't always go by the book. They cut corners-some officers more than others-but their reports make them sound like Boy Scouts. Pavelic knew how to read between the lines of police verbiage and find the hidden stories in the photographs the D.A. had turned over...”

“..Pavelic knew that Robbery-Homicide, the elite corps of detectives from LAPD, would be assigned the case when it became known that Simpson's ex-wife was involved...”

“...As a private investigator, Pavelic was particularly good at following law enforcement paper trails. He was immediately suspicious of the lack of specifics in the Bundy and Rockingham reports. Pavelic's red alert signals flashed as he studied Phil Vannatter's affidavit for the Rockingham search warrant.

No indication who found the bloody glove. Nothing about going into Kato Kaelin's room. Very little information about the murders at Bundy. Nothing about climbing the wall. Vannatter's affidavit said they learned, after talking to Arnelle and Kato, that Simpson had left on an "unexpected" trip to Chicago. More important, the information about Arnelle and Kato was a handwritten addition to the typed affidavit. Had the judge or someone else asked a question during the hearing that prompted Vannatter's addendum? Bill knew they'd called Cathy Randa and learned from her that Simpson's trip was a planned business trip. The detective had misrepresented the facts about the departure in order to obtain the search warrant. O.J.'s departure was not "unexpected." Vannatter knew that. Pavelic knew then that Vannatter had been forced into a further material omission, the omission of the fact that they had scaled the wall at Rockingham before obtaining the search warrant. He also noticed that the affidavit said that Simpson took the flight "in the early morning hours of June 13, 1994." That expanded the window available for the killings. The cops further "observed" the glove on the back walkway "during the securing of the residence." Whether intentional or not, the language suggested that the LAPD investigators had assumed at once they had a crime scene.

Vannatter wrote that "scientific investigation" confirmed that human blood was found on the Bronco. Pavelic knew that at the time he wrote the affidavit, only a routine presumptive test had been done.

Detective Vannatter had more than twenty years on the force, but his affidavit was amateurish. Why had he omitted so many damaging details? Pavelic suspected that the LAPD was rearranging things and embellishing information. Vannatter and Lange, for example, had failed to log themselves out of Bundy when they went to Rockingham. The police logs showed them signing out at ten A.M. as if they'd never left Nicole's condo.

He also noticed that the criminalists didn't list how many samples of each bloodstain were taken. A deliberate omission? No doubt in Pavelic's mind.

A few days before the preliminary hearing, Shapiro received a twenty nine-page memo outlining every mistake Pavelic saw...”
“...The week before, only two days after the Bronco chase, Pavelic had put together a memo for Shapiro asking for sixty-eight pieces of LAPD paperwork, ranging from communication tapes and follow-up investigative reports to the watch commander's daily reports. He also requested the table of contents for the murder books, which contained virtually everything the detectives had...”

“...Earlier in the week, when Mark Fuhrman said he had found the glove, Pavelic was stunned. This was the guy who found the glove? That night Pavelic went to his computer. By now he had a program in place that tracked every individual involved in the case: what evidence each person looked at, what reports each one filed...”

He couldn't find a single LAPD report identifying Fuhrman as the cop who found the glove. Not even the search warrant affidavit. As far as you could see in the paperwork, Fuhrman hadn't noticed the blood on and in the Bronco. He hadn't gone over the wall, hadn't interrogated Kato Kaelin. In fact, he hadn't been at Rockingham that morning.
The Bundy crime-scene log listed Fuhrman arriving at 2:10 A.M., leaving at ten A.M. Period. At Rockingham, he was logged in at 5:l5 the following afternoon and left at 7:10 P.M.

If the logs were to be believed, Fuhrman had never left Bundy to go to Rockingham with Vannatter, Lange, and Phillips. He hadn't returned to point at the Bundy glove while a police photographer snapped a picture. He didn't take a Polaroid of the Bundy glove to Rockingham so Vannatter could make a comparison. The man who wasn't there.

Pavelic started to put the facts together. Robert Deutsch, a lawyer Pavelic knew, called him that night. "Bill, do you realize who this Fuhrman is?" "I guess I don't." Fuhrman had been part of the Britton case, which Deutsch and Pavelic had worked together. A black man armed with a knife had robbed and brutally beaten people at automatic teller machines on L.A.'s West Side in 1988. Fuhrman was part of a CRASH Unit stakeout team that spotted Joseph Britton threatening someone with a knife at an ATM. Britton ran. He claimed he tossed the knife over a hedge before the cops chased him down. The CRASH team said Britton waved the knife at them.

They shot him six times. Most of the bullets came from Mark Fuhrman's gun. Britton claimed that Fuhrman walked back to the hedge to get the knife and dropped it beside him. "Are you still alive, nigger?" he sneered at the wounded man. Britton went to prison and sued the LAPD for using excessive force. Fuhrman was that cop. Once reminded of the connection, Pavelic remembered that the Britton incident was just one item in a hefty dossier.

Years earlier, Pavelic had checked out everyone on the CRASH team and found pure gold under Fuhrman's name. The detective had filed for a disability pension in September 1981. He wanted out because of stress. The records said that a department psychiatrist had given him a temporary medical leave a month before he filed. The detective complained that he was getting angrier and angrier at "low-class" people, notably Latino and black gang members-angry enough to kill someone. In one of the interview summaries, a doctor reported that Fuhrman used the word "nigger."

Pavelic knew that in April 1982 the Workers Compensation Appeals Board had judged Fuhrman temporarily disabled and given him time off. But a year later the Board of Pension Commissioners looked at a thick stack of contradictory psychiatric reports and concluded Fuhrman should go back to work.

"I'm going to need the pension reports and Fuhrman's psychological profiles," Bill told his friend. Deutsch was happy to send them to Shapiro.

Some therapists wrote that Fuhrman shouldn't carry a gun. Others felt he was exaggerating the street trouble he saw in hopes of bailing out of a job he didn't like with a golden parachute. The LAPD had an unusually large number of officers applying for stress pensions in those days. It was getting expensive. The force wasn't about to let anyone out easily. Fuhrman appealed the Pension Board judgment to Superior Court. That put his psychiatric evaluations on the public record.

Bill also began hearing from LAPD friends who had watched the preliminary hearings. "Please be advised that several LAPD police officers and detectives have contacted me and are eager to help O.J.," he wrote in a memo to Shapiro. "If there is one common denominator in these phone calls, it is that Mark Fuhrman is a pathological liar."

Of course, nothing is ever simple in an investigator's life. Pavelic began to suspect that the LAPD was sending him disinformation. Anything to make the defense waste time and money.

A letter signed "Blue" from a writer claiming to be a black LAPD lieutenant advised O.J. to hire Johnnie Cochran, and concluded: “All stops are being pulled in your case. Strings are being pulled across the country. The L.A.P.D. and the D.A. do not want to lose your case, so beware. I know for a fact that lies are being blended into your case."

Bill Pavelic Speaking Out and Exposing Racism and Racist Cops

2007-08-03T01:21:00.000-07:00