The O.J. Simpson Trial: Marcia Clark Part 1
Sarah: I cannot count the number of times I have left my house just spattered with my own blood, because I was in a hurry to get in an Uber, and I didn't want my rating to get too low.
Mike: Welcome to Your Wrong About the podcast, where the perm of misconception meets the flat iron of hindsight.
Sarah: Oh my God.
Mike: Right.
Sarah: Wow.
Mike: I had a month to make that.
Sarah: The perm of misconception. That sounds like something in the Neverending Story.
Mike: I am Michael Hobbes. I'm a reporter for the Huffington Post.
Sarah: I am Sarah Marshall and I'm a woman sitting in a closet talking about OJ Simpson, asking a boy to love her.
Mike: If you want to support the show, we are on Patreon at patreon.com/yourewrongabout, and it appears by the time we have this out, that we will be selling merch. If you want more details, just go to our Twitter page and we will put something on there. It is Twitter/your wrong about, I'm pretty sure.
Sarah: And yeah, thank you for coming on this ride with us, this is episode four in our series on the OJ Simpson trial. We're four hours into our telethon and we're about to go all the way. Mike, how do you feel?
Mike: Very good, I am extremely excited to talk about Marcia Clark and about this period of investigating OJ, during and after the Bronco chase.
Sarah: Yeah. I want to start by talking about who Marcia Clark is right now versus who she was maybe four years ago in the American mind. Cause she is someone who has gone through a really interesting rehabilitation of image very recently. What is your experience of that?
Mike: She was one of these women that was in the wave of recapturing nineties women who really got treated terribly, right? Tonya and Lorena Bobbitt and Marcia Clark was one of the main people that we've now returned to and been like, we were really mean to this lady who seemed to have been doing her best.
Sarah: Yeah. Did you like have a sense of who Marcia Clark was before her image got rehabilitated in 2016 with the Ryan Murphy Show about the OJ Simpson trial?
Mike: I really didn't. I don't actually think that I had such a negative view of her at the time. I think I just thought that she was incompetent.
Sarah: Because you were an 11-year-old boy, and you were not communicating in the language of misogyny that was being spoken so fluently around you maybe.
Mike: I think I was, but I just think that it didn't attach itself to her for whatever reason.
Sarah: Maybe for millennials like Marcia Clark and the same way that so many other women who had jobs in public inspired this kind of vitriol among their contemporaries that maybe kids at the time didn't get, because many of us were used to have working mothers. So, we were like, oh, look, it's mom.
Mike: So what do you think are the big contrast between her four years ago and her now?
Sarah: First of all, I'll tell you my first impression of Marcia Clark, which is that I started researching the OJ Simpson trial for the first time, five years ago, and got to the part where Marcia Clark, a prosecutor introduced. And I was like, oh, there is the prosecutor is a woman, that is neat. I had, no, I had no memory of her. I had no sense of her being someone who was attached to the case, I had no sense of her as a legendary figure.
I remember when I read Jeffrey Toobin's, The Run of His Life, which is the first book I ever read about the OJ Simpson trial, and which really opened my eyes to so much of the complexity that we've had forgotten since. The sense that I got about Marcia Clark and the thing that probably immediately made me really like her and started my attachment to her as a figure in this story that has grown and blossomed to this day in which I must be open about upfront, I guess really like Marcia Clark.
And I think the first thing I liked about her was that she was the one person who was taking all this seriously and that she was trying, let me actually read you a quote. So, Marcia Clark has a memoir called, Without A Doubt, co-written with Teresa Carpenter. In it, she says that one of the things she likes about court is that there are clearly delineated rules of combat, rules that follow reason, which to me says a lot.
This idea that she is drawn to work as a trial lawyer and she's like later on in her career promoted out of prosecuting and given an office job and hates it and asked to be put back in litigation. But what she's saying is that one of the things that she loves about it is that there are rules.
There are clear rules, and they are rules that are oriented toward logic and toward finding the truth. We are going to hear the phrase search for truth a lot in the next several hours of the show. So, get ready, but that's what she believes trials are for and what trials are capable of and that she believes that the law is able to actually bring about justice. You get the sense that she is operating from sincerity and from also a belief and, we are all coming here to honor reason basically. And that is not what this trial did.
Mike: I know I was just going to say it sounds so naive now, especially knowing what we know about the OJ Simpson trial and then knowing what we know about the legal system generally. The idea that it's this pure thing, and everybody follows the rules and all anybody wants is to find the truth. It just like hopeless somehow. It's so very like trust the system thinking.
Sarah: It is not as if she went into this trial as a newly as what she calls a baby DA, she's 40 years old at the time that her involvement in this case begins, she's been a prosecutor for over a decade at this point. She's also been in high profile media cases before, she tried a case that was featured prominently on Court TV. So she already even knows what it's like to be working with kind of celebrity concerns and to have cameras on her all the time. So, this is really new for her, which I find interesting too. It's not as if she's like young or green, she's a woman in her sexual prime, but she's not young as a lawyer.
Mike: I knew you were going to bring that in somehow.
Sarah: I don't want to leave any door open to the fact that to the idea that I'm less than complimentary about Marcia Clark's age, because I guess feeling 1995 was a really, it was enough.
Mike: Yeah.
Sarah: Because of course he's like facing off F. Lee Bailey who is 62 years old and looks like he's 80 because of the kind of life that he's been drinking his way through. But she is the one who has to have thousands of words written about her undereye bags.
Mike: Totally, totally. And the fucking haircut thing, which I'm still mad about.
Sarah: Let's talk about that, too. What do you know about like Marcia Clark's appearance? I bet you can tell me in great detail about what she looked like at various times.
Mike: Can I admit something?
Sarah: Yeah.
Mike: I know I'm supposed to avoid spoilers, but the other day I was looking for a photo to include in this post, and it was from an interview with Marcia Clark like a year ago or something. And it was her talking about the infamous make-over, where she began, I always mix them up, but she began the case with a perm and then she straightened it out later. Or was it the other way around?
Sarah: She began with a perm.
Mike: Okay. She began with the perm and then she had a “make-over”, and then she had the straight hair. And so of course this was built up at the time as oh, the cameras are on her and she is trying to gussy it up and she's trying to look more professional, but, but, but. So in this interview that I cheated and read, and I promise I won't do it again.
Sarah: Where is this interview that you cheated and read?
Mike: It is in Vulture.
Sarah: Okay.
Mike: They're asking her about the haircut, and she says, “That was a media creation. In the very beginning of the case, before opening statements, our press person said ‘You did a haircut, it looks messy’. And I did, it was kind of scraggly, so I got my hair cut.” That was it and after that point, the media goes crazy with this shit. It is just so weird. “There came that point in the trial when my perm grew out, I didn't have the time to go out and get permed again. That particular morning, I looked at myself and said, just blow it out and stop trying, you can't keep it up, you're never going to have time to go back to the hairdresser now. And I have straight hair, so I blew it out. Thus began the media parade about the make-over. How could I have had a makeover and still look like that I just don't understand.”
Sarah: Oh, Marcia.
Mike: It is just so relatable to me about the way that people make those decisions. You have to assume that people who are in the public eye do everything very deliberately. And there is always some level of calculation behind everything they are doing, but oftentimes she's a person. She doesn't have time in the morning, she doesn't want to deal with her hair. So she's like fuck it.
Sarah: Don’t you think the public’s combined demeanor is a little bit like, OJ the toddler, right? Where it's like, why would you do this to me? Why this thing affects me? And it's like a woman in Glendale straightens her hair and that affects your life somehow. And you have to talk about it for days. What is that? Maybe also, in addition to that, she is trying what, no one will stop calling the trial of the century.
Imagine that you're prosecuting someone for murder and you're on television. All day, every day and there is this weird thing where it's like the directness of the consequences of your work are what make it so that you don't have the time or wherewithal to be like, thinking about eyeliner. But also, that's what has brought them to the kind of prominence that makes people want to tell you what to wear.
Mike: Right. It is also I think allowed people to blame her because they are like if she didn't want people to comment on her makeover, she wouldn't have had one. She's putting it into the public eye.
Sarah: If she'd wanted the jury to listen to her, she would have had a different hairstyle that would have made all of the centuries of systemic racism just melt away. Show me that hairdo.
Mike: What have you been coming across in your readings about the social construction of Marcia Clark in 1994?
Sarah: I feel like the person who I have spent the most time reading on the subject of Marcia Clark's appearances, Marcia herself at this point. Because I have really been enjoying going straight to the source because wouldn’t it be nice, and maybe this is it for me. But wouldn't it be nice if we lived in a world where Marcia Clark didn't have to be this very Liz lemonish person, actually, who's like trying to be the rational center of this mess that is spinning out of control and as just everyday showing up and is here's the evidence.
We have so much evidence cause just doing this, be our guest of evidence, right? Just like any kind of evidence practically that you could ask for, people who are doing legal commentary on this at the time, often the remark that you hear is it's very weird to have a murder trial with this much evidence in it.
Marcia Clark has won a case previously on a single drop of blood. She has worked with that degree of matter before. She's like just showing up with this reasonable case that I imagine any lawyer would feel like they would have no trouble arguing in good faith and that there shouldn't be, it shouldn't be complicated.
And every step that she tries to take, falls out from under her. And I don't disagree with the reasons that many of those steps fell out from under her, but they still did. And she still believed in what she was doing. And she also, from the very beginning was furious about what happened to Nicole.
Mike: So there's always good stories of almost like radicalization when you realize the institution that you're a part of does not have the same mission as you or is not of the nature that you've been assuming it was. To put all that trust in the law and then realize how easily it can be gained and how money is so central to warping it in this way that if any of your defendants, some random kids stealing a car, if he could afford five high priced lawyers, he would probably manage to get off too.
Sarah: Right. Here's the thing too, here's what I also want to like, keep in the mix here. As we go forward say this kid has all this money, he gets F. Lee Bailey and he gets off, to me that would be very justified. To me, that's not like a reason why the system is invalid, but what we also can state, I think with some security at this time is that the legal system we have is not known for handing out proportional sentences, especially for property crimes.
And so, if that kid was going to get maybe 25 years in prison for a nonviolent offense, then it's if the choice is between a disproportionate sentence and an acquittal, then I don't see how it disproportionate sentence is just simply because it is a sentence.
And because it validates that a crime happened, like that's not justice. The phrase is beyond a reasonable doubt. It's not a preponderance of evidence, that's civil trials. You use a preponderance of evidence when you are going to be separating someone from their money, not their freedom. We shouldn't live in a society where we think it's terrible when someone doesn't go to prison. I know that this is a complicated area, and in this case, I believe that Marcia was on a righteous quest to put him in prison. But also my righteous quest isn't putting people in prison.
I feel many ways about this all at once. My one of the other things I really believe about the OJ Simpson trial is that people tend to regard it as unfair because it was so unfamiliar to us. As a trial that was unusually fair, where the defendant had a chance and where there was significant evidence against the defendant and where a lot of the public was poisoned against him through a lot of high-profile media coverage, and where there was still the possibility of a reasonable doubt as that jury was sequestered. That is actually what you're supposed to have.
Mike: So how does Marcia get involved in this case? Take us back to the Bronco chase, I want to know what happens.
Sarah: We're going back pre-Bronco chase. We might not even get to the Bronco chase at the end of this episode. I feel like the Bronco chase might be a looming horizon for us. And this whole thing could be, not really but wouldn’t it be great, if this was like a Tristram Shandy type podcast series and I finally got to use my English degree.
Mike: I keep thinking about inception where the third level down an hour is like one minute in time on the first level.
Sarah: And that's what it's like in Sarah time.
Mike: We go in, we do another two-hour podcast and we're like, and we've covered one day of the OJ Simpson trial.
Sarah: Yeah. That's my dream.
Mike: So, this is awesome, so rewind us. Where are we rewinding to?
Sarah: Okay. Speaking of inception time and Sarah time, and you're wrong about time. Let's talk about Marsha standard time.
Mike: Okay.
Sarah: It's June 13th, 1994.
Mike: Okay. The day after the murder.
Sarah: The day after the murders, but Marcia doesn't know that yet. All Marcia knows is that she is a 40-year-old prosecutor in, as we've already mentioned, her sexual prime with two young boys who she's taking care of.
Mike: Wait, two young sons that she's taken care of. You said “sexual prime”, and then you said “two young boys”, right in a row.
Sarah: Oh God, two young sons who she's taking care of. And three days prior, she has filed for divorce from her husband, Gordon. Marcia and her husband have been separated for about six months. Gordon moved out of what she calls their ‘dilapidated tract home’ in January. And it is only at the urging of her friend, Lynn, that Marcia has finally bitten the bullet and filed for divorce. Who does that sound like?
Mike: Nicole?
Sarah: Yeah. So December 1993 is when she asks her husband Gordon to leave. And it is also at this time that she asks for her old job as a prosecutor, after she has been given a promotion and a desk job, but this is like a turning point for her. She's like I can't go on with this marriage anymore, I can't go on with this job anymore. And I'm just going to plunge into the abyss basically, because one of the things she also writes about in her memoirs is that she had a first husband who she met when she was quite young and then went straight from her first husband to Gordon.
And she writes, “I'd spent most of my life with a man under the same roof. I was constantly terrified.” And I remember reading this for the first time and being surprised and then surprised that I was surprised which isn’t always an interesting thing, because I was like, oh I didn't think Marcia Clark was scared of stuff.
I thought she was like very tough and brave and a grown up. And wasn't having the experience of being like a vulnerable, new single mom, new single person who was really going through a lot of what Nicole was going through at the same time, just in different neighborhoods at the same city of fuck, like I have to call a repair person. I don't know what to do about the plumbing. I don't know how to get the mold out of my bedroom wall. I don't know how to take care of my house. I'm afraid to be living on my own. I've never, I didn't plan to do this.
Mike: Is he hinting that there was abuse in the marriage? Why was she scared?
Sarah: No, she doesn't say that. In this passage, she is saying she was terrified, I think because she's used to having a man around just generally. And then also because this is like just a brand-new life. I think you could see this as physical and or existential terror. And what she says about her marriage to Gordon is quote, “I will not go into particulars because they are no one's business, but our own,” so it's not our business.
Mike: That's fair.
Sarah: But it is June 13th, Marcia drives into work. She's running on what her friends call Marcia standard time, which means she's always a little bit late, but this is like a quiet day. And she writes, “I had no court appearances, no witness interviews, a short skirt day, no need for a believe me suit.”
Mike: That's great wording.
Sarah: Yeah. So she goes into her office and she notices that her desk is like almost clean, which is just imagine, I just like to think about this detail, imagine that you're looking at your inbox, and you're like, wow, I've only got 13 emails in here and it just feels like things are in order. And I filed for divorce against Gordon, and I just feel like I'm getting, things have been crazy, but I'm getting my life under control. Things are calming down, just like savor this moment with Marcia because it will not ever come again. So Marcia's desk is almost clean and the phone rings and it's a detective named Philip Vannatter.
Mike: Okay.
Sarah: And he says, according to Marcia, she gets herself kind of private eye dialogue, which I don't always totally by happened word for word. But I like it, so Vannatter calls, he says, “Marcia, do you have a minute? She says, I got two man, what's up.” This is like Marcia’s first line of dialogue in her own book. Isn’t that great, I love her.
Mike: Hard-boiled, she's hard-boiled.
Sarah: She is hard-boiled, she is, she sits around reading mystery novels in her spare time. And then post-trial, she writes mystery novels, and she smokes like a character in a nineties movie, who's being established as a rebel, so she smokes. So Phil Vannatter is on the phone and she and Phil have a connection. He is in the LAPD's robbery homicide division, and they had worked together on a murder case two years before. This is the one where the evidence was a single drop of blood, and they convicted the defendant based on the DNA from the single drop of blood.
Mike: Foreshadowing.
Sarah: She says they're buds basically. And then he is getting close to retirement, so they probably won't work on another case together again. Phil says to Marcia on this morning, I got this double, I need to run it by you. And Marcia explains that this is a common practice for a detective to call the DA to see if they have the material for a search warrant. And so, he says, OJ Simpson, do you know who this guy is? What do you think Marcia's reaction is based on the reaction of every other woman we have seen on this show so far?
Mike: Does she know him from the Hertz commercials?
Sarah: She says, wasn't he in Naked Gun or something?
Mike: Ah, okay.
Sarah: I really love the fact that in this case where celebrity is so important and where people have this idea where they have such a pre-existing image of OJ Simpson in their head, that they cannot wrap their mind around him committing a murder. That the person who is prosecuting this trial is like, who, what, who's OJ Simpson, was he Nordberg? So Vannatter gives her the rundown. Basically, he says that OJ Simpson's ex-wife, who Marcia Clark always identifies as ‘Nicole Brown’. She always identifies OJ Simpson as ‘Simpson’, she never calls him ‘OJ’. She doesn't like that other people do that all the time. And her book is dedicated to Ron Goldman and to Nicole Brown.
So she takes this all very seriously. But anyway, Vannatter at the time says there are two bodies, Simpson's ex-wife Nicole Brown and an unidentified male companion. And Vannatter gives Marcia the basics, which are in her words, that there is a lot of blood. In fact, a trail of blood leading away from the bodies, cause of death not immediately apparent.
He tells her there is a blue knit ski cap found at the murder scene. There was a brown leather glove found at the scene and then after investigating this scene, Phil and his partner have gone to OJ Simpson's house to notify him of his wife's death. When no one answers and they can't get in and they notice what looks like blood on a white Bronco outside, they decided to send the youngest and fittest detective among them over a wall and into the property. And that detectives name is Mark Fuhrman.
Mike: Okay.
Sarah: But I want to know what you think of that.
Mike: It just seems so fucking obvious that he did it, but why are we even talking about this, like genuinely, I feel in all of the coverage, especially at the time, there was so much hemming and hawing and back and forth. And the sheer tsunami of evidence that OJ did this crime, I feel like completely got lost.
Sarah: I mean, literally a tsunami.
Mike: It's unbelievable.
Sarah: Because of the violence of the murders, the amount of blood is extraordinary. And later, Marcia goes to Nicole's house to look at the crime scene and is not let in because there is already a lot of tourists and who's to say she's not one of them.
Mike: Unbelievable.
Sarah: So says the cop on duty.
Mike: A normal tourist activity, visiting a crime scene, super chill.
Sarah: And she is staring in through this fence, trying to get a look and what she sees is basically this river of blood.
Mike: Oh God.
Sarah: The thing that stands out to her too, is that there are these paw prints that have walked through.
Mike: Oh fuck.
Sarah: Through the blood and then down the walkway.
Mike: Is that Kato, is that the dog?
Sarah: That's Kato.
Mike: Oh my God.
Sarah: Do you know the story of Kato?
Mike: What's the story of the dog? There is the story of the dog, I didn't even know there was a story of the dog.
Sarah: Yeah. Oh yeah. The dog, let me show you, because I bought an Annie Leibovitz portfolio and an issue of the New Yorker from 1995 of some of the principles and the OJ Simpson trial and the first portrait is of Kato the dog.
Mike: Really?
Sarah: Yeah. Let me send it to you.
Mike: Okay. Oh, wow.
Sarah: Doesn't he look like a good boy?
Mike: Yeah. He's like a German shepherd in the front and like a zebra in the back. He has weird stripes going on.
Sarah: He's an Akita.
Mike: Wait, what?
Sarah: He's an Akita.
Mike: That's what he is. Oh, I've never heard of that brand of dog. It's an extremely attractive dog.
Sarah: So after the murders, there is a fair amount of commentary on the fact that Kato displayed subpar.
Mike: Oh, like he should have protected her, and he didn't? People are blaming the dog?
Sarah: Yeah.
Mike: What?
Sarah: Yeah.
Mike: That seems like a weird take, but like whatever you got to fill the newspaper every day.
Sarah: Do you?
Mike: You got 36 inches to fill, got to put something.
Sarah: Do you have to fill it with blaming dogs on things?
Mike: Was it the dog, oh my God.
Sarah: I guess akitas are known for being pretty protective, they can be pretty aggressive. And one of the people that Dominick Dunne interviews says I was just at an Akita event and all of us agreed that OJ had to be the killer because there's no way that a stranger could have been lurking around the house or invading the house and Kato wouldn't have barked at him, it had to be OJ, or they would have heard Kato barking sooner.
Mike: I mean, sure, I don't know. That's another one of those internet sleuth details where it's we really don't know very much, and we're trying to read significance into the details we can know. But I don't know, you don't know their dog, maybe the dog barks a lot, maybe he almost barks never. And there is much better evidence at OJ did it. So again, it is like on the list of good evidence, it is one thousand and thirty second on the list when it's like the trail of blood, it's pretty good evidence. And the long history of domestic abuse is also very good evidence, we don't need to go to dog breeds.
Sarah: That's true. At the same time, the first time I read that I was like, huh that is persuasive. There are details that make a scenario makes sense to you suddenly or make something easier to visualize. And I was like, yeah, but Kato, the dog ends up being the one who leads people to the crime scene.
He's the reason the crime scene is first discovered. And the way this happens is that the night of June 12th, a guy named Steve Schwab is walking his dog around Brentwood and he later proves a very reliable witness. Because he can place the time that he discovers Kato the dog right after he had been watching The Dick Van Dyke Show between 10 and 10:30, because he always walked his dog right after that so that he could get back home, I think at 11. So he can watch the next show that he wants to see. He has like his little evening routine scheduled around reruns.
Mike: Okay. Interesting.
Sarah: And he happens to pass a white Akita barking at a house, which he kind of pauses and looks at and he goes up to the dog and looks at it. And as he is looking at the collar and getting a closer look at the dog, he notices that there's blood on all of his paws.
Mike: Oh my God.
Sarah: So he can't figure out where he lives and he ends up walking home, and the Akita follows him back to his house where he gets home at 11, as he planned, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show is on. Which just it is funny to me that the first details of this, like the first the public encountered this case were just like so mundane, right? It's just like this guy who structured his evening around his TV shows, and this feels so familiar, right? You are just like, I'm going to watch my one show and then I'm going to walk my dog and then I'm going to watch The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Because you know, I guess I feel things like this reminds you that this is real life. This is not entertainment. It is entertainment, it became entertainment. We can't say that it wasn't that. This is all part of the real world that we all live in that we watch these shows in.
Mike: Can I ask a logistical question?
Sarah: Yeah.
Mike: I'm just thinking I am sick to my stomach thinking about the last minutes of Nicole and Ron's lives. Is there a reason people didn't hear screaming or something? Are these like just big houses, far away from each other?
Sarah: I don't think that they're super far away from each other. It's in more of a cramped area of Brentwood than the one OJ lives in. The crime scene is at the end of a long walkway and there is a lot of kind of trees and foliage, so it makes it hard to see from the sidewalk. One of the reasons that Nicole was able to afford the Bundy condo was because it had been on the market for a long time before she bought it, because people really didn't like how much traffic noise especially you got because it was on a pretty busy road. I think that was a big part of it. People heard other stuff. There's a witness who later testifies that he was out, when he heard coming from Nicole's house, a man's voice saying “Hey, hey, hey”, which Ron Goldman's family talked about knowing that was exactly what Ron would say, coming across a situation, whatever he found.
Mike: It's just terrible to think about.
Sarah: There might not have been time for screaming or there might not have been very much, I don't know. I'm glad that you feel really horrible too now.
Mike: Yeah, I know. This is how you felt for months now. It was just such a bummer to think about.
Sarah: Yeah. I used to just drive around, listening to Jump for my Love really sadly. I know other people do that too. I think you have to start by thinking of this as not this fascinating murder, this puzzle for us to solve because this is how we like to regard our murders. But as like a woman's life that almost happened, and a young man's life that kind of ended before it was beginning. And just like this thing that didn't need to take place, it didn't have to happen. There were just so many moments when things could have changed and just the resources were never available to the right people at the right time.
Mike: Who called 911 finally, or who discovered the bodies?
Sarah: So, this is a funny story, it is slightly funny. It's going to feel funnier because this has been so sad. So, Steven Schwab, the unsuspecting dog walker comes home and tell us his wife, Linda, that a dog followed him home. And points to this majestic white dog that standing outside with blood on his paws.
And so their neighbor, Sukru Boztepe comes home at that time, and Sukru and his wife Bettina decide to take the dog out for a walk to see if they can maybe wind him down or find his house. They take him for a walk out in the direction of where Steven found him, and the dog keeps getting more nervous and pulling them more and more.
And around midnight, the dog stops in front of 875 Bundy Drive. The house is dark enough that they would not have noticed anything if the dog hadn't been pulling them toward it. But they lean in and look, and see what looks at the time, Nicole lying down and blood all around her.
Mike: So, she's like visible, almost visible from the street, if you like come up to the house.
Sarah: If you concentrate, because there's a long walkway and Nicole is at the bottom of her front steps. So Sukru and Bettina, after seeing this, go to a neighbor of Nicole's and knock on her door. And the person who lives there, an old lady named Elsie, calls the police because she fears someone is knocking on her door. That is weird.
Mike Oh right, okay.
Sarah: She calls 911 and reports an attempted burglary. And so Officer Robert Riske picks up the call. He comes to Elsie’s house and figures out what's going on. And then he is the one who Sukru and Bettina take to Nicole's house.
Mike: And then he calls the cavalry, I assume.
Sarah: And he, Officer Riske calls the cavalry.
Mike: Okay.
Sarah: So, after all of that, because at the time that this happens, Marcia Clark is sleeping soundly, or maybe she has insomnia and is reading a detective novel, but in any case, she does not know what's happening. In any case, it is the following day that Marcia gets the call from Vannatter telling her here's what we found at OJ’s house so far. Can we get a warrant?
Mike: Okay. So then in the call, they had gone over to the house, they saw the trail of blood, they couldn't get in. So Mark Fuhrman jumps the fence.
Sarah: Well and what they say later on is that they come to the house of the ex-husband of the victim. They see a trail of blood and so they say that they send Fuhrman over the wall based on the understanding that they might be protecting whoever lives there from a possible assailant. Which my sense of that is yeah and also you have reason to suspect that OJ Simpson is a possible victim or a possible assailant, right?
Mike: Yeah. Those are the options, I guess.
Sarah: And it's after mark Fuhrman jumps over the wall that he finds the glove, that is a partner to the glove that was found at the crime scene at Nicole's house.
Mike: Wait, so they find one bloody glove at her house and one bloody glove at OJ’s house.
Sarah: Yeah.
Mike: That's like how good the evidence of the bloody glove is, that is how open and shut it is.
Sarah: Yeah. I feel like I wouldn't call anything open and shut at this point, but it's a little puzzle you would give third graders about this is what detective Simmons does at a crime scene. The assailant cut themselves and blood all over the place. Yeah, and the fact that there is one glove at the crime scene and one glove at OJ’s house, I honestly wonder if you could leave more evidence if you tried.
Mike: Right, which is cut up his driver's license and left little shards of it lying in like a Hansel and Gretel trail from one murder location to house.
Sarah: Yeah. It's like the kind of evidence you would have in a game of clue, but Mark Fuhrman found the glove and Mark Fuhrman is a complicated guy and this will come up. And so, getting back to Marcia’s call, so Vannatter tells her about the evidence he's do you think this is enough for a warrant? Which I'm pretty sure he knows the answer to.
Mike: Yeah. It seems good, seems strong.
Sarah: And Marcia like yeah, we've both done this before. So, Marcia is like, I can go out to Rockingham and supervise the cops that are serving the warrant, if you like. And he's like yeah, that sounds good, and I'll call you after I type it up. And then he writes and it's like the warrant signed, and we're all done and everything's great. And Marcia is like, oh, you weren't going to read it to me before you submitted it or keep me in the loop or anything. And she is like, okay, that's feels weird, but I'm not going to bring it up because I have a history of friction with the cops.
And let's not make this difficult from the start. Let's be on the same team, let's just play along and then everything will work itself out. And she is like oh, Phil, by the way do you have a really good criminalist on this right? And he is like yeah, we have a guy, the guy we have is okay.
Mike: Is he talking about Mark Fuhrman or somebody else?
Sarah: No. The criminalist is the person who gathers evidence at the crime scene.
Mike: Oh, okay.
Sarah: So that is obviously one of the most exacting jobs. If you don't collect the evidence in the correct manner and store it in the correct manner and, collect and test all of the relevant evidence from a crime scene and not miss anything and not inadvertently destroy anything. That's what you need in a criminalist.
Mike: Yeah. You need somebody with a lot of color coded post-it notes and very good binders to keep all this stuff in.
Sarah: Yeah. You need a fiend for binders, you need a binder fiend. This is not what Marcia Clark is going to get. And Marcia talks about the fact that during a previous case, she had actually been so dissatisfied by some of the forensic work that the LAPD did, that she went to the Sheriff's department instead. And they had to basically redo the LAPD's work on her case. Police departments do not seem to like it when that kind of thing happens.
Mike: It is also so interesting of that there's all these people in criminal investigations that nobody makes TV shows about. You don't have the climax of a CSI episode being that somebody put a piece of evidence in the wrong binder and a bullet casing went missing and they can't try the case now.
Sarah: Not yet because I'm not in charge of TV yet. It'll be over for all you bitches once that happens.
Mike: Yeah. I also think of I do not know people who clean up crime scenes, crime scene photographers are really important.
Sarah: That's some good foreshadowing, Mike.
Mike: Oh, wait, is it?
Sarah: Oh yeah. We're going to be looking at lots and lots of crime scene photographs, don't worry. We're going to be talking about, could this be green and yellow leaves? Could it, could it?
Mike: Oh my God.
Sarah: We are.
Mike: You know I love logistics and I just love all those logistics involved in this case.
Sarah: You're going to love the Barry Scheck episode. That's going to be the sweet spot of all this for you.
Mike: I just want all the project management, just give me all the productivity.
Sarah: This is why you are going to fall in love with Marcia Clark, because she is at the end of the day, a constantly disappointed project manager.
Mike: I've never felt for someone on the show so deeply.
Sarah: And it is not even that her standards are that high. She is talking to Vannatter and she's like, why don't we get Doreen Music, she's a criminalist we had on this other case we did together where we had to win it based on a single drop of blood. She had a great on that, why don't we use her on this? And he's like no, we've already put someone on it, and I heard he was okay. And Marcia writes, okay was not terribly reassuring. What is his name, I asked? Vannatter says it’s a guy named Dennis Fung.
Mike: Which rings a very faint bell for me.
Sarah: That is because Barry Scheck said his name probably 500 times in the kind of cadence of, “Where is it, Mr. Fung?”
Mike: Does she know that he is bad, or she just doesn't know who he is at all?
Sarah: Well Marcia knows that Phil Vannatter says he is quote, okay, which is do you really want to hear that about anyone who's working on a case that you might also be working on? If I were like, Mike, I found someone to make tote bags for us, you were like, oh, are they good? And I'd be like they're okay. It doesn't feel great.
Mike: Does she make a thing out of it at the time or is she just oh man, let's hope this isn't as bad as it sounds?
Sarah: No, because of course Marcia again like you can see how this is all, everything that we are going to see is going to grow out of a very old structure, where the DA's office doesn't totally trust the cops that they're working with. Marcia is known as being difficult, essentially, because she, I guess wants like people who are better than okay to do her forensics. And so, her attitude, the same way that like, when you go to Thanksgiving with like your family, who in order to avoid outright conflict with, your just like grit your teeth.
Mike: And sometimes it's easier to just eat the dry turkey.
Sarah: Right. Marcia is like sitting there eating the dry turkey and she is like if I play along and don't make this difficult for you now, then you'll come through for me later, which again, that's not a healthy dynamic. If this were a relationship between two people, you'd be like, I don't know Marcia.
Mike: A constant theme for our show. I don't know this isn't great.
Sarah: So, Marcia, after she gets off the phone with Phil and learns about Dennis Fung the criminalist, goes to OJ Simpson’s house in Brentwood. And I'll read the scene. She writes, “There is a cruiser parked up ahead where uniformed officer directed traffic, a few civilians milled around, outside an iron security gate. Some of them have the nervous unfed look of reporters. I slipped unnoticed past the press and through the gate where I got my first look at the larger tutor style house over hung with old eucalyptus trees. The manicured ground seemed to glow an unnatural shade of green and the mid-day light, in one corner of the lawns to the child's Playhouse. OJ Simpson might be a has-been I thought, but he must still be bringing in serious bucks to manage the upkeep on this place.”
I love that is where her mind goes, to me that really shows that she is a relentlessly practical person. She shows up at OJ Simpson's house, everyone else is this is an American tragedy. OJ Simpson, the great football star and she is like this is an expensive lawn.
Mike: She's like what is a lawn maintenance schedule for this home?
Sarah: Yeah, because she's a practical thinker. She thinks about things in terms of functional logistics.
Mike: Is this also when she does the description of Nicole that you read to us a couple episodes back?
Sarah: Yes, this is.
Mike: So this is where she “ meets Nicole”.
Sarah: Yeah. This is also where Marcia finds out that OJ has a framed photo of him and Nicole underneath his box spring.
Mike: What? That is weird. What is the photo of?
Sarah: It is of Nicole and OJ dressed up for some kind of formal event. He's in late middle-age and he's keeping a photo of his ex-wife and himself underneath his bed because that's what time does to us.
Mike: So she's like basically wandering around OJ house just sort of looking at stuff.
Sarah: ‘Wandering’ is kind of an apt description, because she gets there and she's like, “Where is everybody?” So, another robbery homicide guy, Burt Luper, is there and she is like where are Tom and Phil? Tom Lange and Phil Vannatter. He is like, OJ showed up at the house and Tom and Phil took him to Parker Center to question him.
Mike: Okay so that's where OJ is.
Sarah: That's where OJ is. Marcia is like, okay, that is a good use of their time. Anyway, not for me to micromanage, I'm sure that the detectives are doing their job. She's wondering when someone's going to show up and show her around, and that's when she notices some guys approaching who quote had the unmistakable swagger of detectives. Once again, Mark Fuhrman is entering the story and of him she writes, “He was a real straight arrow, hair closely trimmed, sheet pressed a little more neatly than the others.” The main thing she mentioned about Mark Fuhrman is that he is not one for small talk. She calls him politely condescending.
Mike: Sick burn Marcia.
Sarah: So Mark Fuhrman is the one who gives her a grand tour of Rockingham. First Fuhrman takes her to the spot where he found the glove, which is on the path that runs behind the guest house where Kato Kaelin has been staying.
And when the cops first got to OJ’s house, they woke up Kato and interviewed him, and first thought that he was on something because he was super woozy and disoriented. Which like, they woke him up at six in the morning, I feel like I would probably seem pretty disoriented then, but maybe he's super disoriented. He tells them that he was on the phone with a friend the night before and he heard thumps coming from the wall. Hard enough that a picture that was on the wall was like shaken, and thought for a second that they were having another earthquake. And what Fuhrman tells Marcia is that he thinks that's the sound of the killer, basically hitting that wall or that air conditioner, and dropping the glove as a result.
Mike: Hitting it with the car or with his hand?
Sarah: No, with his body. Like he's running and it's dark, and he like runs into the air conditioner or he jumps over, vaults over a wall to get back onto the property. And the thumps happen that way. There's a couple of different scenarios for this, but basically that whatever impact happens, however, it was made causes the second glove to basically fall out of the killer's hand or something.
Mike: The theory is that OJ went over there, committed the murders, and then rushed back.
Sarah: Yeah. So, the car is parked at a weird angle, it looks like it was just like parked in a hurry. So, Mark Fuhrman tells Marcia that he thinks the killer basically ran into the air conditioner and then drop the glove without realizing and Marcia asked, did you pick it up? He's like no, I didn't pick up a piece of evidence. I'm a real detective.
Mike: That's his politely condescending way.
Sarah: I think one of the sad parts of this case too, is that Mark Fuhrman actually from the standpoint of noticing things and gathering evidence and giving a shit about details and like assessing a situation, he does, in the kind of purely deductive realm seem to have been a pretty good detective.
He actually seems to have been better at his job than a lot of the other people here. Because Fuhrman was the first detective assigned to the case very briefly. They gave it to him and then they were like, actually we're giving it to robbery homicide. So, you're cool because, go back to the bench. So he was on it very briefly. The other thing that Marcia points out though, is that Fuhrman also seems to be totally star struck by OJ Simpson.
This is what she says, “As we walked the lawn that sloped north toward Ashford, we came to a bronze statue of a man in football uniform, he was holding a helmet. Fuhrman stopped in front of it. He got that when he won the Heisman trophy, he said as if it was something I should know. I sneaked to look at Fuhrman out of the corner of my eye, he was staring at that statue with unguarded awe.”
Mike: Oh my God, it is just so weird. It's the dumbest shit.
Sarah: How so?
Mike: The guy has a statue of himself in his own house.
Sarah: Yeah. And also one that his son from his first marriage attacked with a bat at one point.
Mike: I know Mark Fuhrman is not every man, but I am just thinking of all the men that accuse women of being frivolous for being into fashion or like the royal family or whatever. It's oh, so why do you revere OJ Simpson? Oh, because he can pick up a ball and run it across a line faster than the other boys can run it across a line.
Sarah: And also avoid other boys who were trying to tackle him and stuff, yeah.
Mike: Yeah. Women's hobbies are really silly there, buddy. Literally everyone's interests are stupid. You should, we should all just admit it, my interests are stupid, yours are.
Sarah: That's why they're fun, we can't all be interested in serious things all the time.
Mike: Makeup is frivolous, sports is frivolous, it is fine.
Sarah: And that Mark Fuhrman based on his taped statements, is quite racist even he is like wow. It's the fastest boy.
Mike: I know, it is so ahhh.
Sarah: Ahhh, so this is the Marcia Clark story, this is it. This is the world she is in. And everyone is like, why is Marcia doing her makeup that way? And it's yes, if only Marcia could master whatever you want her to do with foundation, this trial would swing her way. The detectives would be competent, and celebrity wouldn't be the one force more powerful than racism.
And she wouldn't be locked in a weird bureaucracy where she has to not really mention to their faces, the terrible behavior of the detectives that she's working with because she has to maintain a good relationship with them. If only she wore lighter colors, all that would go away. Okay, so Marcia goes back to the office. She wants to hear how the cases going, she wants to know if they've arrested him. How has the interview gone? What are they figuring out at the crime scene? She's like waiting for the detectives to call her and her boss, David Kahn is like, why don't you give them a call? And she says he was right, why sit here like some Deb waiting for a prom date?
“I rang Parker Center”, which I love, this is her prom date. She is waiting for these detectives get to get back to her. And they're like, oh yeah, we interviewed him, and we taped it, don't worry about that. And she's, so where are you holding him?
Mike: Oh, no, wait. So, this is where we now intersect with Paula that like, they let him go, right, eventually.
Sarah: They let him go and they interview him for slightly over half an hour.
Mike: Oh, what! Wait, there's blood on the, there is a trail of blood. What?
Sarah: Do you want to hear some of the interview?
Mike: Yes, please, extremely.
Sarah: The other amazing thing OJ did by the way, is that he already has a lawyer at this point. He's not lawyer less he's already has a lawyer on hand, but he decides that he wants to talk to police by himself without counsel.
Mike: What?
Sarah: Just, why not? This is just my guess, but my guess here is that he's like I'm OJ Simpson, I can get out of this. I can talk my way through it and they kind of let him.
Mike: Oh God.
Sarah: And so, when Marsha gets the tape of this, the way she describes it is that she, sits down in her oversize leatherette chair, and she like gets ready to paruse the evidence and, settles in to listen to this long interrogation where they are going to catch him and is inconsistent.
Mike: Yeah. She's lit candles, she's got Madonna’s Erotica on, she's in the tub.
Sarah: Exactly, she is in her happy place, and they pleasantly chat with him for half an hour. And they are like, “Go call your girlfriend”, I guess.
Mike: I want to hear these excerpts from the interview. I'm like already mad, I am pre-med thinking about this interview.
Sarah: How do you think Marcia feels?
Mike: Oh my God, I know.
Sarah: Let me read a little bit of this to you. “So Vannatter, ‘We're investigating obviously the death of your ex-wife and another man’, Lange says, ‘Someone told us that’. Vannatter says, ‘Yeah, and we're going to need to talk to you about that’.”
Mike: It's like an internet date.
Sarah: It is like when you catch your child flagrantly masturbating, and I'm embarrassed, I don't want you to feel bad, but like I know what you're doing. So, then Vannatter says, “Yeah and we're going to need to talk to you about that. Are you divorced from her now? OJ says, yes. And Vannatter says, what was your relationship with her? OJ says, we tried to get back together, and it just didn't work. And I think we both knew it wasn't working and probably three weeks ago we said it just wasn't working and we went our separate ways.” What would you respond to that with?
Mike: I guess you would ask him if he had any reason to be angry with her, like trying to feel out if he had a motive.
Sarah: This is with all of my background knowledge, but I noticed, he says probably three weeks ago or so we said it just wasn't working and we went our separate ways. My first impulse is to be like, oh, so was it totally mutual? You both totally agreed. Because like how often do totally mutual breakups happen. It's a conspicuously friction-free thing to describe. Yeah, so OJ says, “She came back about a year and four months ago about us trying to get back together and we gave it a shot and probably three weeks ago or so we said it just wasn't working and we went our separate ways.” And Vannatter says, “Okay, the two children are yours.” Just like alright, great.
Mike: That is like me on this podcast, just okay.
Sarah: Yeah. Imagine him saying, like okay, I don't want to talk about Michael Bolton. Okay, the two children are yours. OJ says yes. Vannatter says, “How was your separation? And OJ says for me, it was big problems. I loved her; I didn't want us to separate. And Vannatter says, aha, I understand she made a couple of crime reports or something.” I don't think that vagueness is because he doesn't know what he's talking about. I think again, it's oh, so this is embarrassing.
Mike: This also implies that he knows that there are reports of domestic abuse.
Sarah: Yeah. It certainly seems that he does. Well, let me read you the next exchange. OJ says, “Ah, we had a big fight about six years ago on new year's, she made a report. I didn't make a report. And then we had an altercation about a year ago maybe.” This is the 1993, 911 call where he is kicking her door in. “It wasn't a physical argument, I kicked her door or something, Vannatter says, and she made a police report on those two occasions and OJ says, umm hmm and I stayed right there until the police came. Lange says, were you arrested at one time for something? And OJ says, no. I mean five years ago we had a big fight, six years ago, I don't know. I know I ended up doing community service.”
The way he talks about this. It is if you like spoke French as a child, but you haven't since then you're like, oh, it's through the misty haze of time, I vaguely remember. I see myself doing community service, but it just feels like he has an integrated it as part of what he sees is his actual past.
Mike: Yeah. But he hasn't thought much about it or see, he doesn't see it at significant.
Sarah: I wonder if they are domestic abuse illiterate to the degree that they don't see a connection between the previous charges and the possibility of him having committed the murder.
Mike: Yeah. That is what I'm wondering too.
Sarah: Seeing it as the equivalent of a burglary charge or something that like he's got priors. Maybe that is just not super relevant, I don't know. He says, after the recital was the last time, he saw Nicole and her family. And he claims that Nicole's mom invited him to dinner, but he said, “No”, I have never heard anyone else say that happened, so that's interesting. I would find it interesting if even in a police interrogation, he's lying about something irrelevant. That just seems to be about his pride. It is like oh no, Nicole's mom totally wanted me to come to dinner.
Mike: It's like he can't not lie, it's fascinating.
Sarah: Vannatter says, “Where did he go from there OJ? OJ says, ah, home for a while, got my car for a while tried to find my girlfriend for a while, came back to the house.” It's like a little poem. “So, what time do you think you got back home, actually, physically got home? 7 something, Vannatter says 7 something and then you left and.” And again, it's so you're leaving it was 7 something. And you're like, oh, 7 something. Yeah, yes. It is mystifying because this is not their first-time being cops. They know what they are doing and then he left and OJ says, “Yeah, I'm trying to think. Did I leave? You know I'm always, I had to run and get my daughter some flowers, I was actually doing the recital, so I rushed to get her some flowers.” So now he's suddenly talking about before the recital, he's switched to a different period of time.
“And I came home and then I called Paula as I was going to her house and Paula wasn't home. Vannatter, Paula is your girlfriend? Simpson, ‘Girlfriend, yeah’.”
Mike: Although she had actually broken up with him by voicemail that morning, so even that's a little exaggeration too.
Sarah: Yeah. He's like yeah, my girlfriend, that's the ticket. My girlfriend who broke up with me and fled to Las Vegas to be with Michael Bolton, all girlfriends do. “Vannatter, so you didn't see her last night,” about Paula. OJ says, “No, we'd been to a big affair the night before and then I came back home, I was basically at home.” And then they asked him if he was scheduled to play golf today, says yes in Chicago, he was playing with Hertz clients. This is essentially a lot of his work at this point in his life involves like playing golf in some way.
Mike: Interesting. Just like glad-handing various corporate people.
Sarah: And then Vannatter says, “What time did you leave last night, leave the house? OJ, ‘The limo was supposed to be there at 10:45, normally they get there a little earlier. I was rushing around somewhere between there and 11’. Vannatter, ‘So approximately 10:45 to 11’. Simpson, ‘11 o'clock, yeah, somewhere in that area’.”
I find it so interesting that they put no effort into establishing timeframe during this conversation.
Mike: I know and also the fact that essentially his alibi for this whole thing is like I was at home by myself watching Turner Classic Movies, is that the whole alibi?
Sarah: Even if they have like very incomplete information. Even if we are as charitable as possible about what they do and do not know, they know that the time between 9:00 and 11:00 PM is extremely important. And they are just like, okay, next question.
Mike: That's like a pretty long period of time that he hasn't accounted for.
Sarah: Or where he is basically given himself these like areas of strategic wiggle room. All of these are basically holes that he and his lawyers are going to be able to squirm through later. And they are not challenging him on any of them and they're not sealing them. They're letting them stay there on the record.
Mike: Unbelievable.
Sarah: Imagine Marcia sitting there in her chair.
Mike: I'm imagining her with a glass of red wine, just like angrily smoking a cigarette and the camera's zooming in slowly as she is listening to them.
Sarah: That would be riveting. So OJ says of calling Paula, he says, “I called her a couple of times, and she wasn't there, and I left a message and then I checked my messages and there were no new messages. She wasn't there and she may have to leave town. Then I came back and ended up sitting with Kato.”
Mike: So he hung out with Kato at the time. Is that his alibi?
Sarah: He did. He came home and he hung around with Kato.
Mike: Okay.
Sarah: So OJ says, he went out and got a burger with Kato and, but he came home kind of leisurely and got ready to go. This is like a rare moment of the cops, like seizing on something, because Lange says, “You weren't in a hurry when you came back with the Bronco and OJ says no. And Lange says, the reason I asked you the cars were parked at a funny angle, stuck out in the street and OJ says, well it is parked because when I was hustling at the end of the day to get all my stuff and I was getting my phone and everything off it, when I just pulled it out of the gate there, it is like it is a tight turn. Lange, so you had it inside the compound then. Simpson, yeah. Lange, oh, okay.”
The word okay is said 27 times in this transcript and only three of those times are OJ. Vannatter says, “how did you get the injury on your hand?” This is important because when they bring him in for questioning, they do notice that he has a cut on one of his fingers.
Mike: Oh my God, again, the evidence.
Sarah: To move forward in time a little bit and quote from Marsha, she will later say in court, “The bloody glove that was found at the crime scene is left-handed, that's a very important fact. And then she says they were bloody shoe prints, leaving the crime scene and to the left of those shoe prints were blood drops.”
So, Marcia says, “That shows us that the killer was injured somewhere on his left side. The blood on the driver's door handle of the Ford Bronco would logically be opened with the left hand. And it is no coincidence that we just happened to find the blood spot on the driver's door handle. Now on the day the defendant turned from Chicago, Detective Vannatter makes the observation that he saw the left-handed bloody glove left at the crime scene that clearly came off during the struggle, which is what allowed him to get the cut that left the blood drops to the left of the footprints. Vannatter sees the blood drops on the driver's hand door. He sees the defendant with a bandage around his middle left finger, and then he takes him down to Parker Center where he sees again that he has a swollen finger on the left hand with a cut that was stressed and treated at Parker Center, no coincidence.”
So, he literally, he comes into this questioning without his lawyer with a cut on his left hand, which the police already can observe corresponds with evidence that they found at the crime scene. And the police are the ones who dress his wound for him. Vannatter says, “How did you get the injury on your hand? And OJ says, I don't know. The first time when I was in Chicago and all, but at the house, I was just running around.”
Mike: Not convincing.
Sarah: Well it is also so like there's a second time. What, like you injured your hand twice now. I guess, you don't remember getting a deep cut on your hand or like you do remember, but it was two different times somehow. Vannatter says, “How did you do it in Chicago? OJ says I broke a glass, one of you guys who just called me, and I was in the bathroom, and I guess went bonkers for a little bit. Is that how you cut it? It was cut before, but I think I just opened it again, I'm not sure.” So it's okay. So what he's saying is that he cut it the first time at the house getting ready to leave, and then he recut it when he broke a glass in Chicago.
Mike: Unbelievable.
Sarah: Lange, “so do you recall bleeding at all? Simpson, yeah, I knew I was bleeding, but it was no big deal, I bleed all the time. I play golf and stuff, so there's always something, nicks and stuff here and there.” Yes, OJ, you play golf, so you are always getting deep cuts on your hands.
Mike: The rough and tumble life of a golfer.
Sarah: They say, “When was the last time you were at Nicole's house? OJ says, I don't go in, I won't go in her house.” It's like oh, that's an interesting reaction from someone who had a mutual breakup.
Mike: Who had a mutual break.
Sarah: “I haven't been in her house in a week, maybe five days. I go to her house a lot. I mean I am always dropping the kids off, picking the kids up, fooling around with the dog, you know. Vannatter, how does that usually work? Do you drop them at the porch, or do you go in with them? Simpson, no, I don't go in the house. Vannatter says you haven't had any problems with her lately, have you OJ? OJ says, I always have problems with her. Our relationship has been a problem relationship. Vannatter, did you talk to her last night? Simpson, to ask to speak to my daughter, to congratulate my daughter and everything. Vannatter, but you didn't have a conversation with her? Simpson, no. Vannatter, what were you wearing last night OJ?”
Mike: Okay
Sarah: “What kind of shoes were you wearing? Tennis shoes. Tennis shoes, do you know what kind? Probably Reebok, that's all I wear.” And the fact that he's saying all he wears is Reebok and that they're not pressing him on that either is interesting because they're like, oh, you only wear one kind of shoe. And it is definitely not the kind of brand of shoe that was worn by the killer. If you go to a lot of black-tie functions and so on, you guys wear Reeboks every single day.
So, he's making small talk with them about, his whole life is on and off airplanes. It's always flying off somewhere to play golf, the hectic life of OJ Simpson. And then as the interview is winding down, they start getting to the point and Vannatter says, “OJ, we've got sort of a problem. We have got some blood on and in your car, we've got some blood at your house.”
Mike: Sorry to break this to you, pal.
Sarah: We got sort of a problem.
Mike: Tell us about the old little dittle dang blood we found in your little truckarino.
Sarah: OJ says, “Well take my blood test. And Lange says, well we'd like to do that. We've got, of course the cut on your finger that you weren't really clear on. Do you recall having that cut on your finger the last time you were at Nicole's house? OJ, no, it was last night.”
And they come back to the fact that they have been trying to reconcile until about three weeks ago. Vannatter, “Did you ever hit her OJ? OJ says, one night we had a fight and she hit me, and they never took my statement. They never wanted to hear my side and they never want to hear the housekeepers side.”
Mike: I'm the real victim, perfect.
Sarah: “Nicole was drunk. She did her thing. He started tearing up my house, I didn't punch her or anything, but I… and Vannatter says, ‘Slapped her a couple times?’ And OJ says, ‘No, no, I wrestled her is what I did, I didn't slap her at all. Nicole is a strong girl. She is one of the most conditioned women. Since that period of time, she's hit me a few times, but I've never touched her after that. And I'm telling you it's five, six years ago’.”
OJ is like not good at saying when something happened. You're like, OJ, when is the movie going to start?
Between 6:00 and 8:30, that is not helpful. And then Lange asked OJ about taking a polygraph test for them.
OJ says, “Should I talk about my thoughts on that? I'm sure eventually I'll do it, but he's like should I talk about my, yeah, okay, yes, I am doing it.”
Mike: Okay.
Sarah: Nicole's mom is quoted in Sheila Weller's book saying that, “If you were having a phone call with OJ, you could put the phone down for five minutes and come back and he would still be in mid soliloquy.”
Mike: I've been on dates like that, where you accidentally bring up barefoot running and then you get like a 35-minute-long monologue.
Sarah: One of the sad things about this interview is that it would suck if they had any suspect in a case where there was this much evidence and they put this little pressure on him, but you also get the sense that like it is harder for him not to talk than to talk.
He's should I talk about my thoughts on the polygraph? Well, I am, it's happening. It almost, it feels like watching someone just take a bike straight out of a string cheese. It's like, why would he do that? So, Lange says, “Understand the reason we're talking to you is because you are the ex-husband.” And OJ says, “I know I'm the number one target. And now you tell me I've got blood all over the place.”
Like it's their fault. Okay, this is almost over, we're getting there. Lange once again, confirms he gets OJ to say again, like he gives him a chance to go back on this.
“Let me get this straight. You've never physically been inside the house. And Simpson says, not in the last week and Lange says ever, and OJ says, oh, Christ, I've slept at the house many, many, many, times, I've done everything at the house, I'm just saying you're talking in the last week or so.”
Mike: Okay.
Sarah: And it's like I have never been inside the house and they're like, so you've never been in the house and he's not in the last week.
Mike: This is not like a criminal mastermind that we are interrogating here. This is not like a little verbal chess game.
Sarah: This is the last little bit of tape he says, “Oh, I'll tell you. I did see her one day. I don't know if this was the early part of last week, I went because my son had to go and get something. And he ran in, and she came to the gate and the dog ran out and her friend Faye and I went looking for the dog that may have been a week ago, I don't know. Lange to Vannatter, got a photographer coming? Vannatter, no, we're going to take him up there. Lange, we're ready to terminate this at 14:07.”
Mike: Crack work guys.
Sarah: So they have started this interview at 1:35 PM and ended it at 2:07.
Mike: Awesome. That's tough, you got him alone, we got him a lawyer. Why take up longer time than an episode of ER? Good stuff.
Sarah: So I mean what was the purpose of this? What did they learn?
Mike: What do you even say at this point? It's so obvious.
Sarah: You seem speechless.
Mike: I'm steiny.
Sarah: Tell me like, what comes to your head because I've been immersed in this for so long that these details are pretty familiar to me? I think I've lost some of my surprise.
Mike: It just that at this point they should arrest the guy. He doesn't have a strong alibi. He just broke up with his ex-wife, who he has a history of domestic abuse with.
Sarah: And who made a 911 call about him less than a year ago.
Mike: Exactly. There is one glove at the murder scene and the other fucking glove at his house. I just don't understand how they're not just like we got umm boys.
Sarah: The defense will later argue that the sheer quantity of evidence actually supports their claim, that OJ was framed. And it's you know what kind of people don't often leave this much evidence behind when they commit a murder. They can't have been confused about what any of this meant, but I feel like they knew what they had to do, but they just didn't do it.
Mike: What do you think explains this? Are they just dazzled by his celebrity? What is this?
Sarah: Marcia says they tell her that he's too famous to flee and she's like bull fucking shit. Who cares? It doesn't matter there's more stuff you can do beside fleeing. He could be intimidating witnesses, he could be tampering with evidence, he could be destroying evidence. What are you talking about?
Mike: Oh Marcia.
Sarah: And they talked to him for 30 minutes during which they don't really pin him down on much of anything and then he gets to go. And then there's four days between the police interview and him surrendering and being arrested where he has that time to basically be ironing things out with his lawyers to be potentially doing all this stuff Marcia talked about. He does seem to have spent a lot of time just like drugged, watching Turner classic movies, but yeah still.
Mike: Still. But so yeah contemporaneously is Marcia as mad about this then as we are now, is it obvious to her how bad this was?
Sarah: Michael, you know Marcia and her ways. Think about the fact that you and I are like very soft on crime people who also don't know how to be cops or lawyers. And we're like, oh, this is bad. Marcia is fucking livid.
Mike: So what does she do?
Sarah: Nothing. She has to maintain a good relationship with the cops.
Mike: Oh, so she can't go in there and bust heads.
Sarah: No, she has to be like, that was great. Okay, here is what Marcia says. You ready?
“I didn't get it. Simpson had spent three full hours at the station. What could they have been doing all that time?”
Mike: Oh, he was there for three hours.
Sarah: He was. “I was even more disturbed by what was on the tape. Phil and Tom both sounded exhausted, that was understandable. They've been up since three in the morning of June 13th, but that was no reason to allow a potential suspect in a double murder to set the program for the interview. Any Monday morning quarterback.” That's us. “Can now see that Simpson lied to Tom and Phil all through that interview. Of course, some of the lies weren't as apparent to them at the time, for instance, Simpson claim that he had been invited to dinner with the Brown family after the recital, Nicole's mother would later deny. Tom and Phil couldn't have known that yet, but on other more elemental points, like where, and when he'd parked the Bronco, there was plenty they could have done.”
Mike: Yeah.
Sarah: “Lange, ‘What time did you last park the Bronco?’ ‘Eight something’, replied the suspect, ‘Maybe seven, eight o'clock, eight, nine o'clock, I don't know, right in that area’. Marcia says the follow-up should've come hard and fast. ‘What the hell was it? Seven, seven-thirty, eight or nine? You knew you had a flight to catch, so shouldn't you have been aware of the time? What time did you park? What did you do then?’ On some fundamental level, I think Tom and Phil wanted to hear a plausible explanation that would eliminate some Simpson from suspicion. Just when they got a big opening, they'd move on to something else.”
And then Marcia sitting there listening to this very short interview and gets to the part where they're questioning him about the 1989 beating and asked so you slapped her a couple times. And he says, no, I wrestled her as all I did. And they say, oh, okay. And Marcia thinks to herself, Nicole is dead. His children have no mother, he's talking about the time he was arrested for beating her. And once again, he is whining about how he feels mistreated.
“As I sat listening to this crap, I thought this guy is going to deny everything all the way. He's never going to confess. There wasn't one shred of remorse there. Not enough real soul for him to need to unburden it by telling the truth. That interview was one of the worst bits of police work I'd ever seen. But I kept my thoughts to myself, I couldn't afford to alienate my chief investigators, besides it was spilt milk. Complaining about their inaptitude would not help me get through this case.”
Mike: So, she just swallows it, she has to.
Sarah: Yeah. You just have to, you have to say it's done, we can't go back and we're going to move forward and I'm going to maintain relations with my detectives.
Mike: And she has no power to affect things either. It is like she's watching this, like us watching a horror movie, right? She's like don't go into the basement. She is don't put these ding dongs on this case, we're going to fuck it up.
Sarah: And think about the fact that she already has a reputation for being difficult because of her like past insistence on having good forensic evidence. She already has a reputation for having standards.
Mike: Yeah. Speaking of the difference between Marcia four years ago and Marcia now, is that I think we're all much more poised to hear the word ‘difficult’ in a gendered way now. But it's like when we typically have women in professional positions who are considered difficult, it usually means yes, they are insisting on standards or actresses that are difficult because like they complained about rampant sexual harassment on the set. Just hearing that a woman is considered difficult, I just hear it so differently now than I used to.
Sarah: They didn't want to be sexually assaulted at work.
Mike: So she's aware of this dynamic from literally day one. She's seeing this celebrity blindness take over the entire police force already.
Sarah: Yeah. She knows what she has to work with. She's being given in mini form what this entire trial is going to be for her, which is that she doesn't have trustworthy allies in the LAPD. Everything is political, she is looking at essentially like an app sampler of the next 15 months of life. And God bless Marcia because, she has had a day, she goes home to be with her two little kids. And the wall behind her bed basically gets damp and moldy in spring and fall. So she spends like spring and fall with respiratory infections.
This is so Erin Brockovich to me, she goes home to her public servant tract home in Glendale with her two little kids with her like swamp wall and finds like a spider the size of a pin ball, she says hanging out in her room. And she's just like, well I got a new case, I'm pretty excited.
And she writes, “I found to my surprise that I was in an indestructible, good mood. True, the cops had cut loose the suspect and a double homicide when they had a mountain of evidence to hold him. True, they were holding me at arm’s length, but you work with what you've got. The fact of the matter was I loved having a new case. A new case is like a secret lover. You think about it, plan for it. It infuses unrelated events with a sense of purpose. That's how it's supposed to feel, mind and heart engaged, neither tripping over the other. I hadn't been that happy in a long time.”
Mike: Oh, it's like the letters from Nicole talking about being happy with OJ. It's like looking at the footage from their wedding. It's everyone's so happy but you know it's going to end in this nightmare. It is like no Marcia.
Sarah: With Marcia it is interesting because I feel like she's observing the arc of this for the rest of her life. This case destroyed her. She didn't even clean out her desk after it ended like someone else had to do it for her. She could not go back to her office. She never got her desk cleaned; this was it for her. She was done. This was the end of her life as a trial lawyer.
Mike: Really?
Sarah: Maybe this is just me like over identifying with her and wanting her to be like me. But I feel like I see in her kind of the thing that we saw in Nancy Kerrigan when she skated at 1993 worlds and just fell a bunch and just like the footage of her in that competition. The camera zooms really close on her face as her scores are coming back and you can see her feeling like she let everybody down and I feel like Marcia feels like she either has to nail this or let everybody down.
I guess I almost wonder if having an experience where the entire world watched her fail and blamed her for, it was like the only thing that could make Marcia not blame herself all the time. What if, looking at the world blaming you and being like that is not totally true. I didn't screw everything up. Maybe everything isn't my fault. What do you think?
Mike: I feel like we struggle to separate the outcome from the process that they lost this case. It should have been a slam dunk and they lost it. That is an undeniable thing, but it's also, it's possible to be good at your job and still fail. And it's possible to be really bad at your job and so when.
Sarah: Mike, I do it every day.
Mike: And so, I think it's we look at the result and then we backfill whatever if she lost, she must've been in competent. She must not have cared enough, she must've bungled evidence, she must be in charge of all of the failures, right? All of the failures must be hers because she oversaw this big failure.
Sarah: Right. Marcia is the dictator of the entire legal system in this scenario where it was all under her control.
Mike: I'm sure that Marcia made mistakes and I'm sure that OJ’s team made mistakes too. Once the victory is locked in, then it's no, she must have sucked. And they must've been geniuses.
Sarah: Because we don't want to believe that we could be Marcia and we could all be Marcia at any time. We are all one terrible project management away from just tearing our hair out and the way that she was forced to. We promised you the Bronco chase in this episode, it's not happening. We've been recording for five hours and it's getting dark, and I was supposed to go outside today. So I'm very sorry.
Mike: Sometimes the flat iron of hindsight is slow.
Sarah: Yes. What are you excited to talk about next?
Mike: The Bronco chase. I'm going to keep saying that for like the next three episodes until we get to it.
Sarah: What if we never talk about got it? And we never got to it, and we just keep doing this podcast for the rest of our life.
Mike: Every episode we move more slowly toward the goal.
Sarah: Yeah. It's like that math problem about if you like cut your, the distance you travel in half, each time will you ever reach the Bronco chase, no.