If you are here, you are probably interested in the OJ Simpson murder case, which happened June 13th, 1994. Over the years a number of different theories have been put forth about who actually committed the murder. My goal is to set some facts straight. This first post will deal with what I believe are some of the most common misconceptions about the case that still exist. So let's be clear: I think he did it. But I am also open in the comments to respectful debate and discussion. In upcoming posts I will provide my reasons for coming to these conclusions, and will explore popular issues within the case that people still argue about to do this day. So here we go!
CLAIM ONE: What about those gloves? If they don't fit, you must acquit!
The problem here is that there is a very good reason for them not fitting. Watch the video of Simpson putting the gloves on - he is wearing latex gloves underneath them, and there is also the possibility that the moist weather or blood had shrunken the gloves. More importantly, when the prosecution had him try on fresh gloves later in the trial (same size and model), they DID fit! And let's not forget something hugely important here: Nicole Brown Simpson had a pair of Aris Lights purchased on her American Express Card in December of 1990. Do you think it is just a coincidence that the killer had used the same model of luxury gloves that Nicole had purchased just a few years before? I don't.
CLAIM TWO: Mark Fuhrman pleaded the 5th on the stand when asked if he planted evidence! Why would he do that?!
Because he pleaded the 5th to EVERY question asked. He got busted lying about the n-word and was completely shutting down. He blew his role in the case. In that situation he was told by his lawyer he couldn't pick and choose his answers. According to former L.A. District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi, "a witness can't pick and choose, an answer to one question being a waiver of the witness's right under the 5th refuse to answer any others connected to the transaction or incident about which he testified." Essentially, if you plead the 5th to one question, you have to do it for the others. If he had been asked if he was a great cop, he would have pleaded the 5th to that too. But think about how ridiculous this claim is in the first place. If Fuhrman did plant evidence, then why wouldn't he just lie when on the stand about doing it if his motive was to absolve himself? If he went through the process of framing an innocent man as the defense team alleged, then what would be the purpose in pleading the 5th? Why would he be worried about self incrimination if he had much bigger things to worry about?
CLAIM THREE: I heard that there was a blood preservative called EDTA in the sock and gate blood samples. That means it was planted, right?
EDTA was not found in those samples. It boils down to two testimonies, an FBI agent (Roger Martz) and a defense team DNA specialist (Fredric Rieders). Martz did the original DNA testing (3 different LC-MS tests) on his own blood and the sock and gate samples. He testified to finding "no detectable" (this is important) amounts. Rieders, who did no DNA testing himself but relied on Martz's testing, claimed that he did find EDTA. This is not just a he-said-she-said argument, though. If you look carefully at the trial testimony, it is clear that Martz is correct on the issue. In order for the compound to be identified, a triple ion ratio needs to be observed. Martz claimed to have found two ions consistent with the compound, but the 132 was missing. Rieders claimed to have found the 132, but made no mention of the ion itself or its ratio in his initial report to the court, and when asked to identify it during the trial, he pointed to noise on the spectrogram (there should have been a peak signal far greater than what was seen). As if this wasn't enough, Rieders acknowledged that the EDTA levels found were in the individual parts per million or less. This is a BIG RED FLAG! Had vial levels been used on the sock or gate, they would have been in the thousands of parts per million or more. But what of those parts per million? Doesn't that mean he found some EDTA? No, because LC-MS testing could not identify amounts that small, which is why Martz had hedged his numbers up. To quote the man directly: "I'm not even convinced that what was found in my blood and in the sock and in the gate was EDTA. I was not able to prove that. If it is, it's still in the parts per million at the most." I will continue with this issue in a later claim.
CLAIM FOUR: I heard witnesses didn't see that OJ had cuts on his fingers when he was at the airport on his way to Chicago, so he didn't have cuts then and he got the cut in Chicago on a broken glass in his hotel room. Therefore he wasn't bleeding before the crime took place.
The problem is that on two separate occasions, OJ said otherwise. In his first police interview, he told detectives that he cut his finger and was bleeding at his house before heading out to his Bronco and then Chicago. He then told his physician, Michael Baden, the same thing a few days later. When it came to the civil trial, he then changed his story. Also note that OJ's personal physician, Robert Huizenga, examined him and found 3 cuts and 7 abrasions shortly after the murder. Did he do all of that in Chicago too? It seems very, very unlikely.
CLAIM FIVE: Wasn't there a missing 1.5 cc's of blood from OJ's vial that Vannatter had?
No. The police nurse, Thano Peratis, claimed to have taken "around" 8 cc's of blood, but upon further inspection, the defense noted that only 6.5 cc's was in the tube. So this must mean that the small amount was stolen and used on the gate and sock, right? Not so fast. When Peratis learned of the defense team's theory, he called the prosecution because he thought it was ridiculous. Peratis subsequently testified that it was an approximation, and later clarified that it was closer to 6-6.5 cc's when he compared the vial amount to a water sample he prepared. So is he lying? He called the prosecution, not the other way around. If he were lying, why would he do that? Peratis was clear that in the thirty years of doing his job, nobody had ever made an issue of the exact amount of blood drawn, and that's why he was estimating his number. But again, the fact that the EDTA theory has been discredited proves this allegation was useless in in the first place.
CLAIM SIX: Nicole had blood underneath her fingernail that didn't belong to her!
Nope. It is based on an early claim by the defense team during the trial. Essentially, preliminary serology tests looked different because there was an inconsistent EAP enzyme type (BA can degrade to B, however). When more accurate DNA testing was done (PCR testing), it was totally consistent with Nicole. You'll notice that after this was mentioned during the criminal trial, the defense didn't even dispute the findings...then Barry Scheck repeated the earlier testimony during an interview with Charlie Rose, while forgetting to mention the later PCR findings.
CLAIM SEVEN: Some DNA samples had content that was too high, therefore they must have been planted!
Some had high levels, some didn't. Item 48 (one of the Bundy drops) actually had significantly less DNA than Item 6 (one of the drops found at Rockingham) even though they were collected the same day. Regardless, there are a slew of reasons that suggest that just because a sample is high in DNA content doesn't mean it was planted. During the trial, forensic scientist Gary Sims clearly explained that the amounts of DNA aren't really significant because they could be greatly attributed to the collection and drying process, and not the necessarily the "age" of the blood.
CLAIM EIGHT: I heard Stephen Singular, writer of Legacy of Deception, say that there was no blood in the Bronco, and that Kelly Muldorfer, a cop, testified to this.
Here's what Singular said: "A police officer testified that they were in the Bronco three or four days after it had been impounded, let's emphasize this, and saw no blood whatsoever....that is a factual observation by a police officer." Why does he not mention the rest of Mulldorfer's testimony...you know, the part where she said she was getting the credit receipts out of the glove compartment and wasn't there to look for evidence in the Bronco? She was very clear that she was neither looking for blood or evidence; she had one reason to be in the Bronco for a few moments - to get those credit slips. And it's funny...Singular emphasizes that this was A FACTUAL OBSERVATION BY A POLICE OFFICER...yet the factual observations of Fung and Mazzola, who both collected blood samples prior to Mulldorfer ever going in there, are curiously omitted. Want even more proof? During the criminal trial there were photos taken of the blood in the Bronco both before and after Mulldorfer went in! (quote source: Porkins Policy Radio with Stephen Singular, April, 2016)
CLAIM NINE: Those Bruno Magli shoe photos! The "ugly ass shoes" that Simpson claims to have never owned. Those pictures were altered, right?
All 31 one of them? Taken by two different photographers...including the one that was published in a Buffalo Bills Newsletter BEFORE the murders happened? I have a better chance of winning the Powerball Lottery....five times in a row. That or the OJ conspirators are more sophisticated than the Illuminati. Want to know another bit of great trivia regarding the shoes? F. Lee Bailey acknowledged in an interview that while the murder model of Bruno Magli shoes were never found (likely disposed of by the killer), they did retrieve a pair of Bruno Magli slippers from Simpson's Rockingham house! The same luxury brand. Again, Simpson must be the unluckiest guy in the world if he's actually innocent.
CLAIM TEN: Contamination! There was contamination in the glove samples!
CLAIM NINE: Those Bruno Magli shoe photos! The "ugly ass shoes" that Simpson claims to have never owned. Those pictures were altered, right?
All 31 one of them? Taken by two different photographers...including the one that was published in a Buffalo Bills Newsletter BEFORE the murders happened? I have a better chance of winning the Powerball Lottery....five times in a row. That or the OJ conspirators are more sophisticated than the Illuminati. Want to know another bit of great trivia regarding the shoes? F. Lee Bailey acknowledged in an interview that while the murder model of Bruno Magli shoes were never found (likely disposed of by the killer), they did retrieve a pair of Bruno Magli slippers from Simpson's Rockingham house! The same luxury brand. Again, Simpson must be the unluckiest guy in the world if he's actually innocent.
CLAIM TEN: Contamination! There was contamination in the glove samples!
I ask that anybody who thinks this glove contamination theory is possible just look carefully at what the defense team suggested. They said that when Collin Yamauchi was opening Simpson's reference vial, some of the blood spilled out and was dispersed in the air as an aerosol. No, seriously! The aerosol then contaminated the Bundy blood drop swatches and the Rockingham glove. And then in a miraculous coincidence, the next day, the same type of handling caused Nicole and Ron's blood to end up in the Bronco samples. I have a better chance of becoming an astronaut than of this happening. And despite all of John Gerdes' testimony during the criminal trial, not once did he actually find an example of mistyping due to contamination. Not one single contamination signature in the data presented. Gerdes himself didn't even look at the serological results that would have provided evidence against his contamination theory; he only looked at the PCR data. I wonder why.
CLAIM ELEVEN: Why in the hell did Vannatter carry that blood vial with him to Rockingham instead of booking it?!
Vannatter, Fung and Tom Lange all explained very clearly why it was done, and it makes a hell of a lot of sense. Vannatter took the vial to Fung directly because he didn't have a divisional record number (DR) before inventorying it. Fung was clear that had Vannatter taken it to the Parker Center, it would have disrupted his numbering system. And the argument of Vannatter planting the blood at Rockingham makes VERY little sense for a super obvious reason. The defense team claimed that the planted blood was on the socks and back gate, and that those blood samples didn't appear until two weeks after the original evidence collecting. So if that were the case, that means that Vannatter didn't plant the blood that day....he would have had to have done it (the socks at least) at the station lab and the gate weeks later. So why would he bring the vial blood to the scene the morning of the crime?! Once again, the defense team's theory makes no sense, but it sure as hell confused a bunch of naive jurors.
CLAIM TWELVE: What about Henry Lee's "Something wrong" comment about the blood? He is a very respected forensic specialist.
Indeed he is. But what is Lee actually referring to? He was commenting that the number of swatches and the number of wet transfers didn't match up...as if in some miraculous way that would mean the blood was planted. It's more defense team nonsense - just take two seconds to actually think about what he was saying there. For example, look at Item 47 and 42 (OJ and Nicole's blood, respectively). If wet transfer is significant for 47, then why is it significant for 42? Like...why would they plant Nicole's blood around her own dead body? It makes no sense. Bottom line: the incomplete drying process of swatches is really not "something wrong."
CLAIM THIRTEEN: I dunno Mitch, I still think Fuhrman might have planted that glove.
Let's run with the Fuhrman planting the glove theory for a moment. Let's say that he picked up the glove at Bundy (despite over a dozen officers not seeing two gloves there, even though they arrived before Fuhrman). So he secretly kept it on him, dipped some of the victims' blood in the Bronco, and then planted it behind Kato's bungalow. How did he get OJ's blood on it? Did he secretly collude with Vannatter and Fung (whom he had never even met before until that night!) to have them plant OJ's blood on it later at the lab? And then, in an amazing coincidence, it just so turns out that that very same exact glove model was purchased on Nicole's American Express Card just two years earlier! It's too silly to believe.
CLAIM FOURTEEN: Wait! Andrea Mazzola said she initialed the blood bindles, but then we see that they weren't signed! So this means there was a cover-up, right?
Except that she DID sign several and had sealed them for booking which ended up being PCR matches for OJ Simpson. So...these evil masterminds who wanted to frame Simpson switched out SOME of the samples, while leaving the signed ones in. Again, the defense team's theory makes no sense. What would be the purpose of doing this if the goal were to frame him?
CLAIM FIFTEEN: Don't you find it curious that a drug addict like Nicole was killed like that?
If only you find it curious that her autopsy showed absolutely zero illegal drugs in her system.
CLAIM SIXTEEN: Ever hear of William Dear and his theory that OJ's son Jason did it? Did you read his book?
Oh I've read it. I've always found Dear's theory incredibly far-fetched. OJ had far more motive than Jason, plus an incredibly violent history with Nicole where Jason had a positive relationship with her. Dear speculated that Jason murdered Nicole because she had canceled a dinner reservation at his restaurant and he had a "rage disorder". My money is on the guy who physically beat the shit out of the victim and told her he would kill her. The same guy who, when learning of his impending arrest, gathered up a gun, a passport, a disguise, and thousands of dollars and fled from the police in a ridiculous Bronco chase.
CLAIM SEVENTEEN: Back to the EDTA claim! Didn't Martz actually say that the blood was consistent with EDTA...and then later he said he didn't find the compound at all! What gives?
A compound being consistent with other compounds is NOT a positive identification, and Martz specifically said this during the trial. A lot of people think that Martz was saying his samples were consistent with EDTA because they had the 293 and 160 ion (but not the 132). But that's like saying: Does it have cheese? Does it have meat? Then it's consistent with being a sandwich. But really it's a pizza right in front of you. There are numerous chemicals that had the 293 and 160 ions (steroid-type chemicals were the ones discussed during the trial).
CLAIM EIGHTEEN: But Fredric Reiders said if anyone had that much EDTA in their blood, they would bleed to death!
It doesn't matter and here's why: both Martz and Rieders recognized that the limitations of LC/MS technology allowed for EDTA in the single digit parts per million - detecting for less wasn't really possible. So in all likelihood, there was no EDTA in the first place; it was impossible to know for sure. But remember - Martz wasn't testing necessarily for EDTA, he was testing to see if the EDTA matched vial levels, and they absolutely did not. Those are very different things!
CLAIM NINETEEN: OJ's socks weren't in that home video before the evidence was collected! That must mean they were planted.
This is a ridiculous theory pimped by the defense. The socks were collected the afternoon of the murder before Willie Ford videotaped it. The defense ran with this theory initially because the timer on the video camera was inaccurate. Once Ford took the stand, they had egg on their face because he acknowledged that he entered the room after Fung had already collected the evidence in there. In addition, a defense team witness, Bert Luper, actually testified to seeing the sock on the floor the morning after the crime. Their own witness acknowledged this during the trial! Yet people still roll with this theory, oddly...
CLAIM TWENTY: Didn't the socks have some problem with soaked-through blood stains on them, or something that looked like they were planted?
No. The defense team tried to argue that there was only one way for the blood to get on the third side of the sock, but this is very silly. The blood could have been transferred by either Nicole's own hand at the crime scene, or by Simpson's own hand when he pinched surface 2 next to surface 3 when he took the sock off. Or maybe when the socks were dropped on the floor, surface 2 was left in contact with surface 3. Or another explanation could be that in the course of the phenolphthalein test, the blood on the sock was rewetted with a swab and the manipulation of the swab over the sock caused the transfer of small amounts of blood. The list goes on. I would recommend Rod Englert's book "Blood Secrets". He was a part of the DOJ when they analyzed the socks. He was very clear that the stains were medium-velocity impact stains and it would be incredibly difficult to plant those stains the way the defense team suggested. Those stains were also consistent with the splash marks on Ron Goldman's pant cuffs (meaning they occurred when OJ was stepping through the puddles of blood and it was splashing on the socks). He is a blood splatter expert, analyzed the socks, and felt that the defense team's planting theory was ludicrous. Now if you combine that with the fact that there was no detectable EDTA on those socks, it means they came from one source: the crime scene itself.
CLAIM ELEVEN: Why in the hell did Vannatter carry that blood vial with him to Rockingham instead of booking it?!
Vannatter, Fung and Tom Lange all explained very clearly why it was done, and it makes a hell of a lot of sense. Vannatter took the vial to Fung directly because he didn't have a divisional record number (DR) before inventorying it. Fung was clear that had Vannatter taken it to the Parker Center, it would have disrupted his numbering system. And the argument of Vannatter planting the blood at Rockingham makes VERY little sense for a super obvious reason. The defense team claimed that the planted blood was on the socks and back gate, and that those blood samples didn't appear until two weeks after the original evidence collecting. So if that were the case, that means that Vannatter didn't plant the blood that day....he would have had to have done it (the socks at least) at the station lab and the gate weeks later. So why would he bring the vial blood to the scene the morning of the crime?! Once again, the defense team's theory makes no sense, but it sure as hell confused a bunch of naive jurors.
CLAIM TWELVE: What about Henry Lee's "Something wrong" comment about the blood? He is a very respected forensic specialist.
Indeed he is. But what is Lee actually referring to? He was commenting that the number of swatches and the number of wet transfers didn't match up...as if in some miraculous way that would mean the blood was planted. It's more defense team nonsense - just take two seconds to actually think about what he was saying there. For example, look at Item 47 and 42 (OJ and Nicole's blood, respectively). If wet transfer is significant for 47, then why is it significant for 42? Like...why would they plant Nicole's blood around her own dead body? It makes no sense. Bottom line: the incomplete drying process of swatches is really not "something wrong."
CLAIM THIRTEEN: I dunno Mitch, I still think Fuhrman might have planted that glove.
Let's run with the Fuhrman planting the glove theory for a moment. Let's say that he picked up the glove at Bundy (despite over a dozen officers not seeing two gloves there, even though they arrived before Fuhrman). So he secretly kept it on him, dipped some of the victims' blood in the Bronco, and then planted it behind Kato's bungalow. How did he get OJ's blood on it? Did he secretly collude with Vannatter and Fung (whom he had never even met before until that night!) to have them plant OJ's blood on it later at the lab? And then, in an amazing coincidence, it just so turns out that that very same exact glove model was purchased on Nicole's American Express Card just two years earlier! It's too silly to believe.
CLAIM FOURTEEN: Wait! Andrea Mazzola said she initialed the blood bindles, but then we see that they weren't signed! So this means there was a cover-up, right?
Except that she DID sign several and had sealed them for booking which ended up being PCR matches for OJ Simpson. So...these evil masterminds who wanted to frame Simpson switched out SOME of the samples, while leaving the signed ones in. Again, the defense team's theory makes no sense. What would be the purpose of doing this if the goal were to frame him?
CLAIM FIFTEEN: Don't you find it curious that a drug addict like Nicole was killed like that?
If only you find it curious that her autopsy showed absolutely zero illegal drugs in her system.
CLAIM SIXTEEN: Ever hear of William Dear and his theory that OJ's son Jason did it? Did you read his book?
Oh I've read it. I've always found Dear's theory incredibly far-fetched. OJ had far more motive than Jason, plus an incredibly violent history with Nicole where Jason had a positive relationship with her. Dear speculated that Jason murdered Nicole because she had canceled a dinner reservation at his restaurant and he had a "rage disorder". My money is on the guy who physically beat the shit out of the victim and told her he would kill her. The same guy who, when learning of his impending arrest, gathered up a gun, a passport, a disguise, and thousands of dollars and fled from the police in a ridiculous Bronco chase.
CLAIM SEVENTEEN: Back to the EDTA claim! Didn't Martz actually say that the blood was consistent with EDTA...and then later he said he didn't find the compound at all! What gives?
A compound being consistent with other compounds is NOT a positive identification, and Martz specifically said this during the trial. A lot of people think that Martz was saying his samples were consistent with EDTA because they had the 293 and 160 ion (but not the 132). But that's like saying: Does it have cheese? Does it have meat? Then it's consistent with being a sandwich. But really it's a pizza right in front of you. There are numerous chemicals that had the 293 and 160 ions (steroid-type chemicals were the ones discussed during the trial).
CLAIM EIGHTEEN: But Fredric Reiders said if anyone had that much EDTA in their blood, they would bleed to death!
It doesn't matter and here's why: both Martz and Rieders recognized that the limitations of LC/MS technology allowed for EDTA in the single digit parts per million - detecting for less wasn't really possible. So in all likelihood, there was no EDTA in the first place; it was impossible to know for sure. But remember - Martz wasn't testing necessarily for EDTA, he was testing to see if the EDTA matched vial levels, and they absolutely did not. Those are very different things!
CLAIM NINETEEN: OJ's socks weren't in that home video before the evidence was collected! That must mean they were planted.
This is a ridiculous theory pimped by the defense. The socks were collected the afternoon of the murder before Willie Ford videotaped it. The defense ran with this theory initially because the timer on the video camera was inaccurate. Once Ford took the stand, they had egg on their face because he acknowledged that he entered the room after Fung had already collected the evidence in there. In addition, a defense team witness, Bert Luper, actually testified to seeing the sock on the floor the morning after the crime. Their own witness acknowledged this during the trial! Yet people still roll with this theory, oddly...
CLAIM TWENTY: Didn't the socks have some problem with soaked-through blood stains on them, or something that looked like they were planted?
No. The defense team tried to argue that there was only one way for the blood to get on the third side of the sock, but this is very silly. The blood could have been transferred by either Nicole's own hand at the crime scene, or by Simpson's own hand when he pinched surface 2 next to surface 3 when he took the sock off. Or maybe when the socks were dropped on the floor, surface 2 was left in contact with surface 3. Or another explanation could be that in the course of the phenolphthalein test, the blood on the sock was rewetted with a swab and the manipulation of the swab over the sock caused the transfer of small amounts of blood. The list goes on. I would recommend Rod Englert's book "Blood Secrets". He was a part of the DOJ when they analyzed the socks. He was very clear that the stains were medium-velocity impact stains and it would be incredibly difficult to plant those stains the way the defense team suggested. Those stains were also consistent with the splash marks on Ron Goldman's pant cuffs (meaning they occurred when OJ was stepping through the puddles of blood and it was splashing on the socks). He is a blood splatter expert, analyzed the socks, and felt that the defense team's planting theory was ludicrous. Now if you combine that with the fact that there was no detectable EDTA on those socks, it means they came from one source: the crime scene itself.
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