Problems with Stephen Singular's "Legacy of Deception"

Author Stephen Singular is often cited by those who support the OJ-didn’t-do-it narrative as someone who has proved that the police tampered with evidence. I disagree with him on a number of issues, and believe that his popular book “Legacy of Deception” contains serious mistakes. Singular is very important in his role in pushing the EDTA theory, which I have long thought is an incredibly misguided claim. I was re-reading his book today and something stuck out at me. Singular makes the argument that Martz, who did the only EDTA testing for the trial, at first claimed to have found EDTA and then “changed his mind and said he’d definitely detected no EDTA on the back gate or on the socks.”

But this isn’t what actually happened. Martz never admitted to identifying EDTA early in the trial. What he said was that he had found the 293 parent ion and 160 daughter ion for the compound in his tests. He then said this is consistent with the presence of EDTA, but that it warrants “further testing” and responded like EDTA (note: three different ions were needed for identification with this particular test, not just two). And later in his testimony, Martz clarified:

“When something is consistent with something else, it is not a positive identification.It could be something else. With preliminary tests that you do in the laboratory, there is a lot of chemicals that could be consistent, but in order to identify something, you have to have something unique associated with that chemical before you can positively identify it and that is what a mass spectrum does.”

Of course, Singular did not put this quote in his book. So, is this a semantic flip-flop from Martz’s prior testimony? No, because Martz actually explained the difference to Blasier prior to his testimony (meaning the defense team knew he wasn’t identifying the compound, but was acknowledging that two of the three ions needed were consistent). I have a hard time understanding why Singular would believe that this is “changing his mind.” Because other than the obvious difference between consistency and identification, in late February or early March before his testimony Martz had already provided the prosecution with his report that concluded that he couldn’t identify EDTA! Martz was, for a lack of a better word, “consistent” on this issue from the beginning, and Singular is wrong to suggest the he had reversed his opinion. 

I heard OJ's blood was drawn by the police, but then 1.5 cc's was missing. Is this true? Could it have been used to plant evidence against Simpson?

No. The police nurse, Thano Peratis, claimed to have taken "approximately" 8 cc's of blood in his grand jury testimony, 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? This was the defense team's argument.

But it is complete nonsense.  When Peratis learned of the defense team's theory, he called the prosecution because he thought it was so 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? Did the prosecution have him change his testimony?  He called the prosecution, not the other way around. If he were lying, why would he do that? There is not one single bit of proof that Peratis was encouraged to change his testimony, though some have suggested this.

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 as he always did (Peratis typically drew blood for DUI suspects more than anything).  But again, the fact that the EDTA theory has been discredited proves this theory was pointless in in the first place.  

In an interview with former Los Angeles D.A. Vincent Bugliosi, Peratis said the whole process "is very imprecise, and none of us ever measure or check, because this is the first time in over thirty years working at the dispensary that anyone had made an issue of how much blood I had withdrawn.  It just never came back up before."  

And the testimony during the civil trial:

MR. MEDVENE) And is it accurate that you don't and haven't measured how much blood you draw when you do -- presently use the syringe?

PERATIS: We never measure blood.

(moments later)

MEDVENE: Why did you say the amount that you said?

PERATIS:  Up to this time, I think that anyone that would draw blood, if they were asked that question, think of 8 cc's as about the amount that we draw. And that is about the first thing they think. And that was the first thing that came out of my mouth. The correct answer at that time should have been, "I don't know how much I drew."

So if Peratis says that in over 30 years of taking blood nobody had made an issue of how much he took, and that "none of us ever check," then why suddenly for the Simpson case would he draw exactly 8.0 cc's?  In all likelihood, he just wouldn't.  The defense team was reaching.  Hard.

Was EDTA in the sock and gate blood samples as the defense team alleged?

One common talking point for those who believe in the police-planting theory is that EDTA, a blood preservative, was found in the gate and sock samples.  Therefore, they insist, the blood was planted.  But does this argument hold up?

It does not.  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 among the three identified ions. Martz claimed to have found two ions consistent with the compound (the 293 and the 160 in this case), but the 132 ion could not be identified (note: consistency is not a positive identification, and Martz made this very clear during his testimony).  Rieders claimed to have found the 132 ion, 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 a small amount of noise on the spectrogram where there should have been a peak signal far greater than what was seen.   Let's be very clear here: Martz did not flip-flop in his testimony as the defense suggested; he was consistent, despite what writers like Stephen Singular and Brian Heiss have argued.  Martz's initial report to the prosecution before he got on the stand also indicated that he found no detectable levels of EDTA, so it makes zero sense that he would change his testimony when on the stand.

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.

Look at it this way: Martz wasn't doing a comprehensive test to see if EDTA existed at all.  He was doing a test to see if the EDTA matched police-vial levels. And it didn't...in three different tests.  He used his own blood for control and variable samples.  The sock and gate sample EDTA amounts matched his blood samples that were not combined with police EDTA.  That is, the EDTA was identified in the parts per million OR LESS.  Had they been preserved with EDTA, they would have likely been at 2,000 PPM or more.

When this point is brought up, supporters of the theory suggest that Martz had nefariously deleted his data regarding the issue.  This doesn't support the defense team's arguments for two reasons: 

1) Rieders' entire argument rested on Martz's analysis, so if Martz was wrong, then Reiders' argument in  support of EDTA actually existing would also be called into serious question. 

2) The Department of Justice, who investigated these claims, claimed to find no evidence that Martz was misleading or acted improperly in this case (source: https://fas.org/irp/agency/doj/oig/fbilab1/07simpso.htm).

Is there additional, convincing testimony from the civil trial?  Yes, take a look at Dr. Terry Lee's testimony.   Lee was the exceptionally qualified chemist who analyzed Dr. Martz's EDTA tests and both testimonies of Reiders and Martz from the criminal trial.  He was adamant: EDTA did not come from those test tubes.  And the subsequent testimony of Brad Popovich (same source link), explains why Dr. Gerdes contamination theory falls short, as well. It's an interesting, though quite technical, explanation.

Anything else? Yes. I believe that it is very relevant that when the defense sent two blood swatches (Items 47 and 50, the Bundy walkway drops) to Dr. Kevin Ballard for EDTA testing, which he apparently conducted according to Rockne Harmon, the defense team never called him to the stand, despite Ballard being in court during this particular testimony.  I think it's very clear what this indicates.

Are there any issues I have with the prosecution regarding the EDTA? Sort of.  In the OJ: Made in America documentary, Marcia Clark suggests that everybody has a little bit of EDTA in their bodies because of the food we eat or the substance being in household products. That may or may not be true, but I find it irrelevant because it is important to remember that Martz's test was not looking for EDTA in such small amounts.  He was looking to see if the amounts matched police vials.  And of course they didn't.