Latest / Heroes Behind the Badge / Tom Lange — Lead OJ Simpson Detective on the Evidence the Jury Never Heard | Part 1

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Tom Lange — Lead OJ Simpson Detective on the Evidence the Jury Never Heard | Part 1 · Heroes Behind the Badge

0:00
Well, I'm figuring now we got a problem.
0:02
We could have another
0:03
crime scene here later.
0:06
She denied saying that, but she, that's
0:08
exactly what she said.
0:10
She didn't know.
0:20
Today, the lead homicide detective in the
0:22
OJ Simpson murder case tells
0:25
us what the jury never heard.
0:26
Detective Tom Lange was the lead homicide
0:30
investigator for the LAPD.
0:33
On the night of June 12th, 1994, he got a
0:36
call about a double on the west side.
0:38
What he found would become the most
0:39
watched criminal
0:40
trial in American history.
0:43
First of all, great.
0:44
Thank you very much for having me.
0:45
And I'm honored that you'd
0:46
even ask me to be out here.
0:50
Basically what we had, we
0:51
were on call, excuse me.
0:53
And Phil and I that particular night for
0:56
any homicide that would occur within the
0:59
city of Los Angeles at the time, we had
1:01
18 geographical units and 18 g-air
1:06
geographical areas, but our HD would have
1:09
only high profile cases.
1:11
Cases that took more time, serial killing
1:13
cases, not because we're any better, but
1:16
we perhaps had a little more experience
1:18
than most of the units and we had the
1:21
time and more importantly, the resources
1:23
to handle high profile cases.
1:27
I was spoken about 3 AM by Michael Oster,
1:30
John Rogers, who simply said,
1:34
we've got a double on the west side.
1:38
Here's the address.
1:39
Uh, see you there.
1:41
Everything.
1:42
Nothing is really
1:43
discussed until we get there.
1:45
It's just that you're
1:46
rolling on these things.
1:47
It's happened many times before.
1:49
Uh, we'll find out what's going on once
1:52
we get there, but there's not a lot of
1:54
conversation that goes off initially.
1:57
All he said was he was going to double on
1:59
the west side and here's the address.
2:02
So I had the Bundy address and as I hit
2:05
it down there, there's no traffic, which
2:06
was good, uh, I don't think in the double
2:09
on the west side was kind of unusual
2:11
because of crime rate in the Brentwood
2:15
area, the west LA areas, similar to the
2:18
loan compared to the rest of the city.
2:20
Uh, so it's kind of rare.
2:23
So I really didn't know what was going on
2:24
at the time, which is kind of the way we
2:26
want to keep it initially.
2:28
Once I got there, I noticed that the, uh,
2:32
tire scene, the entire Bundy block had
2:35
been blocked off by tape and the police
2:39
cars on either side,
2:41
north and south on Bundy.
2:43
There's an alley behind the location that
2:45
they've also been secured.
2:47
What we look for in a crime scene is, uh,
2:51
we want to expand it, uh, in a crime
2:54
scene, obviously in the bodies are there
2:57
and evidence is there.
2:58
That's not the first thing we look at.
3:00
We want to expand a crime scene out.
3:01
It's just as far as we can go because
3:04
what comes in goes out and we don't know
3:07
how far out this evidence could lead us.
3:10
So they've done a really good job
3:12
extending out the crime scene a couple of
3:14
blocks at all areas that had the rear,
3:16
uh, alley secured also.
3:20
Uh, when we got there again, there was
3:22
very few people, um, that Bundy was
3:26
completely closed down.
3:29
And I got there, I guess it was close to
3:31
four o'clock red or 4AM.
3:34
And the first problem I saw that we had
3:37
was it was Monday morning.
3:39
Monday is a major thoroughfare between.
3:42
Bundy Drive and, uh,
3:45
uh, going to going north for traffic.
3:48
People going to work in the morning and
3:50
usually starts about six 30 or seven.
3:52
We've been having a problem
3:53
regardless of this crime scene.
3:56
There was there, we had to
3:58
keep that street blocked off.
4:01
So we had to take
4:02
that into consideration.
4:04
Uh, and once we got
4:05
there, we did fight out.
4:06
It was a male and a female.
4:09
The female was told to be either OJ
4:12
Simpson's current wife or a strange wife.
4:16
We didn't know we knew they were not
4:17
living together at the time.
4:19
So it was some marital discussion, you
4:21
know, and I was that the other young man
4:24
had not been identified at the time.
4:28
Generally in a homicide scene, again, I
4:30
can say that really the body is enough,
4:32
the most important thing.
4:33
Why is there evidence of the crime scene?
4:36
Everything is evidence.
4:37
It sounds a little impersonal to say
4:39
that, but the bodies are in fact evidence
4:41
and it must be treated like evidence with
4:44
obvious certain respects.
4:47
When you arrived on the scene at Nicole's
4:50
home, uh, the site of the two murder
4:52
victims were the bodies
4:54
inside or outside them?
4:56
Yeah, both the bodies were outside the,
4:58
the home, uh, near the truck door.
5:01
Okay.
5:02
And at that point, go on and let us know
5:05
what your initial observations were and
5:08
your theories about
5:09
what might've happened.
5:12
Okay.
5:12
Well, very strong a little later, uh,
5:14
initially at a crime scene, you want to
5:16
make sure it's
5:16
secured as much as you can.
5:19
Again, the biggest problem we foresaw is
5:22
the fact that Bundy drive with the opened
5:24
up very shortly when the sun came up,
5:27
look, you lose the media.
5:28
Uh,
5:29
once we found out that, uh, Simpson's,
5:32
uh, white or strange white was involved.
5:34
Uh, this kind of, uh, through a wrench
5:38
into the end of the works, that of the
5:40
media was going to be showing up.
5:42
We had a commander on the scene who made
5:43
a decision, uh, as far as Simpson.
5:47
Now at this point, another officer had
5:49
arrived at the name of Mark Fuhrman.
5:50
I know you know who that is.
5:52
He had worked, he's not a homicide cop.
5:55
He was a detective that worked West LA.
5:56
He was familiar with Simpson.
5:59
He was familiar with a couple of radio
6:00
calls and he had handled when OJ and
6:04
Nicole had a couple of
6:05
arguments, he'd showed up.
6:07
And so he knew where we're rocking.
6:09
Am I was where Simpson's home was the
6:12
commander made a decision because of
6:15
everything we had going on in the
6:17
notoriety of the case that Fuhrman and
6:20
his partner, uh, Ron Phillips and myself
6:23
and my partner Phil
6:24
Vannatter would take a
6:26
take two cars and go up to Rocky game,
6:28
which is only a couple of miles away as
6:29
the crow flies, we got there.
6:34
We were in contact.
6:34
OJ Simpson explained to him what was
6:36
going on, but the problem that his wife
6:40
or ex wife was no longer living.
6:43
We also had two children.
6:44
Oh geez.
6:45
Kids, kids were sleeping upstairs.
6:47
By the time I had lied, they'd have been
6:48
removed to West LA station.
6:51
They were not there, but
6:52
they weren't out of concern.
6:54
He certainly should be notified that his
6:56
children were there and they should
6:58
pick them up or maybe a fort down to the
7:01
station or whatever.
7:04
So once we got there, we did, we leave
7:05
Fuhrman and Phillips with Simpson.
7:09
We tell him what was going on and we
7:11
would return and handle the
7:12
crime scene investigation,
7:15
this had to happen right away before the
7:17
sun came out before the track, I can have
7:20
anything else because we would have other
7:22
problems that would come off.
7:24
You know, they go out
7:25
from here a little bit more.
7:28
I'm confused though, because my
7:30
recollection, and
7:31
again, this is 32 years ago.
7:33
I may have forgotten some things, but I
7:36
thought OJ before any interview occurred
7:40
with or any communication really between
7:43
you or any other members of the LA police
7:45
department had already gotten in a limo
7:47
and going to the airport
7:49
and took off for Chicago.
7:50
Are you saying that there was actually a
7:52
conversation with him
7:53
before he left the city?
7:56
No, no, I haven't gotten to that point.
7:58
That's why I wonder if you want to
7:59
continue on with what
8:00
happened when we got to, to Rocky.
8:02
Yeah.
8:03
Okay.
8:03
So in other words, you've
8:05
been to the murder scene.
8:07
Uh, you've done your initial
8:08
observations,
8:09
collected evidence, et cetera.
8:11
And now you're going
8:13
over to where OJ lived.
8:14
Is that correct?
8:15
Yeah.
8:16
No, we haven't done
8:16
anything at the crime scene.
8:18
The crime scene like this is no
8:19
collection of evidence till a criminal is
8:22
shows up, uh, till everything gets noted,
8:25
documented photograph.
8:28
Uh, crime scene like this will take
8:30
hours, hours, but first things first type
8:34
of thing, this commander had in mind
8:36
other things to look at the big picture.
8:39
This is not a crime scene where we're
8:41
going to be left alone to our own devices
8:43
to handle if it was as great.
8:46
That's the best thing in the world.
8:48
To have a said cop that he's there all by
8:50
himself with all of his people, prints,
8:53
photo photographers, criminalists, got
8:56
all the time in the world.
8:57
Nobody's going to bother us.
8:59
That wasn't this case.
9:00
And we knew it was
9:00
going to get a lot worse.
9:02
That's why the four of us went up there
9:04
to remain with Simpson, assuming he was
9:07
there, we assumed he was there and the
9:10
other two would come back and continue
9:11
with the crime scene.
9:13
So getting back to rock again, the four
9:15
of us arrived up there in two cars, uh,
9:18
right about five, 10 AM, five 15 in the
9:21
morning, there's a phone right at the, at
9:24
the front of the house.
9:25
So there's an Asford gate with a huge
9:28
gate and there's a Rockingham gate on the
9:30
other side to the west of
9:33
the, uh, of the entrance.
9:34
And we're now talking about
9:36
the residents of OJ Simpson.
9:37
Is that correct?
9:38
When you say Rockingham?
9:40
Yeah.
9:40
Rocking 360 Rockingham.
9:42
Now we went up to like this heads about
9:45
two miles as the crow flies took us less
9:48
than five minutes to get up there.
9:50
No traffic.
9:52
The two cars pulled up, went up
9:54
Rockingham, North and Rockingham to the
9:57
Rockingham gate, the main gate to the
9:59
house, uh, which was
10:01
closed, uh, no access there.
10:04
So we went around the corner to the back
10:07
gate, which was the Asford gate.
10:09
Now the Ashford gate was very similar to
10:11
the Rockingham gate, but they had a phone
10:13
outside phone we could
10:15
call inside the residence.
10:17
So we stopped.
10:17
The first thing we're going to do is get
10:19
out of the phone, see if we can get
10:20
somebody inside,
10:22
hopefully Simpson is in there.
10:24
Uh, we saw two cars in the
10:25
driveway that were the lights on.
10:28
Uh, obviously to us at five 15 in the
10:31
morning, uh, there were people home,
10:34
probably sleeping when we do there was
10:36
someone inside because of
10:37
the cars and the lights on.
10:39
We figured there probably was.
10:41
Well, we got out of the phone and tried
10:42
to get in and no one would answer.
10:44
Once we did that, the Asford gate, uh,
10:48
was secured, but it wasn't locked.
10:52
There was a wall connects
10:53
on both sides of the gate.
10:54
The wall is not, it's
10:56
only like five feet high.
10:57
I believe it was 15 inches thick.
11:00
Very easy to get over the wall.
11:02
Once we had a problem with the gate, we
11:04
noticed it while it was not locked.
11:06
The latch was inside.
11:08
Fuhrman is standing by the wall.
11:10
So he says, well, I can just
11:11
jump over and open the gate.
11:13
He says, yeah, go ahead and do that.
11:15
So it took two seconds for Fuhrman to
11:17
crawl over that five foot
11:18
wall, get on the other side.
11:20
And he opened the gate
11:21
for us and we went in.
11:23
Now there's some concern at this time
11:26
about the lack of
11:27
response from inside the house.
11:31
Nobody's answering the phone again.
11:33
There's cars in the driveway.
11:34
There's lights on inside.
11:35
The porch light is on.
11:37
The four of us go to the front door,
11:38
knocking the door, no response, ring the
11:41
bell, no response, becoming more
11:43
concerned at this point.
11:45
You just left the
11:46
very bloody crime scene.
11:48
The estranged wife or the wife still away
11:51
from OJ and another man of
11:53
him brutally slaughtered.
11:55
This was not just a hit and run on the
11:57
assembly, but some tiny, there was some
11:59
kind of a fight from
12:01
the initial observation.
12:02
Now, very might at this time, we haven't
12:04
done any deep investigation at all of the
12:06
crime scene and no very
12:08
little about what's there.
12:09
I don't know nothing
12:10
about the evidence yet.
12:11
Again, the buyers are the last thing in a
12:13
crime scene and homicide investigator is
12:16
really concerned with going back to the
12:18
Rockingham house,
12:20
nobody's answering the front.
12:21
So we decided to go around the rear when
12:23
we go around the rear and we approach and
12:26
there's a rear door going
12:29
in the rear of the house.
12:30
We're not going to do it on the screen.
12:32
That's how screen that's kind of a glass
12:34
door on the outside.
12:36
We knocked down at no response.
12:38
There are three bungalows on attached to
12:43
the house on the side of the property
12:46
line, nobody's answering the house.
12:48
So we went to the bungalows.
12:50
The first bungalow, a young woman opens
12:52
the door as our nail.
12:53
So J's, uh,
12:56
daughter, we got quesadilla at the same
12:59
time, like what is it at the same time,
13:02
firmly goes next door and
13:03
knocks on another bungalow.
13:05
And it's Kato Kaelin
13:06
about the same time.
13:08
Both of them come to the front doors.
13:10
I'm talking to R and L firmness next
13:13
door, talking to, uh, Kato
13:16
Kaitlin, my partners behind me.
13:19
So obviously we've woken both of them up.
13:22
This is like I said, right about now,
13:24
five 20 in the morning and they're ready
13:26
to know what's going on.
13:27
All of a sudden there's four cops
13:29
knocking on their doors at five 20 in the
13:31
morning, they're very concerned.
13:33
Our nail is white eyed and she's half
13:36
asleep and she's what happened.
13:38
Is everything okay?
13:39
And what's going on?
13:41
Well, we don't want to hit her with
13:42
anything right away.
13:44
When I see if anybody's inside the house.
13:47
And so I said, uh, uh, after we've
13:50
identified ourselves, of course, I said,
13:53
listen, is your dad, is your dad home?
13:55
Simpson wasn't home, but what Lange found
13:58
would change everything.
14:00
You have a key to get in the house.
14:02
Can I get in there?
14:03
And she says, uh, well, yes.
14:06
And I'll see what's, what's going on.
14:07
What's, what's, what happened?
14:09
I said, I'll explain everything to you,
14:12
but I'd just like to see
14:12
if your dad's here for now.
14:14
Okay.
14:15
So she goes and she gets a key.
14:17
Meanwhile, that store.
14:19
Fuhrman is talking to Kato and we're not
14:22
aware of that conversation right now.
14:24
All my attention is
14:25
getting inside the house.
14:27
We possibly have another crime scene.
14:29
We've already already also been told as a
14:32
housekeeper who lives in there.
14:35
So I know it goes as she starts opening
14:37
doors and no, if you will, let
14:38
me, let me use the key myself.
14:40
I'm going to just check out everything.
14:43
She's starting a panic.
14:44
She really getting upset
14:45
and you can't blame her.
14:46
She really believes down my mind that her
14:48
dad is inside the house as I do.
14:52
Now I'm expecting possibility of fighting
14:54
another crime scene.
14:55
It's like we just left.
14:57
I unlocked the door and I go ahead.
14:59
And the first thing I go to the house
15:01
keepers, uh, bedroom.
15:04
Nobody's there.
15:05
Find out later the
15:06
housekeeper had that Sunday night off.
15:08
Uh, the bed is made no problems.
15:11
I walk around inside.
15:13
I yell a couple of things.
15:15
Uh, OJ, you're here.
15:16
No lights are on upstairs and looking
15:18
around and everything is fine.
15:19
I worked back out by this time.
15:22
Kater was come out and he's explained
15:24
that sets him the night before it got out
15:27
of played, it was heading for Chicago.
15:31
Great.
15:32
Now there's no problem here.
15:34
Fine.
15:35
Um, he's in Chicago.
15:36
So I finally have to test it.
15:38
Tell, uh, have to tell that, uh, Arnold,
15:41
that, uh, Nicole has been killed.
15:45
I didn't say how didn't
15:46
say why or anything else.
15:48
She starts screaming.
15:49
These are upset.
15:50
Kato's in shock.
15:53
I said, we're going to leave these two
15:54
detectives here with you.
15:56
And I'm going back and we're going to
15:57
come back just as soon as we can.
16:00
We have the kids in custody.
16:02
They're at the police station.
16:03
Uh, sometime we're going to try to hold
16:06
your dad, um, and see if he can come and
16:09
pick them up, we're going to get back and
16:11
talk to you just as soon as we can.
16:13
But for now, I'm going to ask you just to
16:15
stay here with these detectives.
16:18
Um, they will talk to you later and I'll
16:21
get back to you just as soon as I can
16:23
make some modifications and talk to your
16:25
dad, she's not a suspect at all.
16:28
Uh, he's been out of town and I don't
16:31
know the details about any of that,
16:32
except that it's not here.
16:34
So clearly it's not the indicators in
16:37
kind of a suspect that these couple of
16:39
thousand miles away.
16:41
So that strikes me though.
16:43
Correct me if I'm wrong again, but.
16:47
It seems odd perhaps based on what I see
16:50
on television, a little bit.
16:52
I know about law enforcement that, that
16:55
you would go to the home of the suspect
16:59
or the victims estranged or, or in this
17:02
case divorced husband to let them know
17:05
that their ex wife has been murdered.
17:09
I mean, wouldn't that normally happen
17:11
much later if at all?
17:13
I mean, normally I would think when you
17:15
see a murder victim, your first instinct
17:19
wouldn't be to go to her ex husband's
17:20
house to interview him to
17:22
see if he's okay or whatever.
17:25
Excellent point to it.
17:28
Agree.
17:28
You're correct.
17:30
Unless this is a high profile case,
17:32
unless the media is involved and unless
17:34
you have a commander or deputy chief at
17:36
the scene or is interested in imagery,
17:39
not necessarily your investigation.
17:42
This is one of those things that, uh, it
17:45
kind of brought you that you have to put
17:47
up with it, but it's part of the deal.
17:49
The brass is interested in imagery.
17:51
I'm interested in
17:52
investigating the murder.
17:54
This one I understood.
17:56
Plus we had the two
17:57
children, very young kids.
18:00
We had to consider that
18:01
this wasn't my choice.
18:05
It was a choice of the brass to do this.
18:08
Any high profile case,
18:10
you're going to have that problem.
18:11
We had the same problem when he was going
18:13
to turn himself in or we were
18:15
going to go out and arrest him.
18:16
The same, same problem occurred because
18:20
we don't like to do
18:21
things with the media.
18:22
We don't do perp walks.
18:23
Right.
18:24
The brass was the perp walks.
18:25
They liked the media.
18:26
They got a press media.
18:27
We don't tell me what happened when you
18:30
first, um, interviewed OJ about the
18:34
murders and your first conversation with
18:36
him, uh, and tell me when that occurred
18:39
and what he said and what your thoughts
18:41
were after the interview.
18:43
Okay.
18:44
Well, uh, contacted him
18:45
on the phone initially.
18:46
So I am assuming you're talking after
18:48
when he returned to LA.
18:50
Yes.
18:51
Okay.
18:51
Uh, he returned to LA.
18:53
He said, uh, he was going to be back in
18:55
the first light that he could.
18:57
And when he did return, he
18:58
was picked up at the airport.
18:59
We wanted to pick him up.
19:00
We know he insisted that, uh, uh, he
19:04
would come by with his attorney or the
19:06
friend by rocking him.
19:10
This point, I have to say this really
19:11
quick by the time he was on a plane
19:13
coming back while he wasn't necessarily a
19:16
suspect, uh, the glove had been found.
19:21
Rocky him had been
19:22
declared a crime scene again.
19:26
You have to make decisions sometimes in a
19:28
hurry, but you have to make
19:30
decisions one way or the other.
19:32
We're not going to sit and
19:32
wait for him to come back.
19:34
What's that glove was found.
19:35
That's a crime scene.
19:36
It was secured as such.
19:38
I made a decision that, uh, affirmative,
19:40
his partner would remain there at the
19:42
crime scene, Phil would go get a search
19:44
warrant to search for acting him.
19:47
I would return to Bundy and start
19:50
conducting that crime scene.
19:52
We would await symptoms arrival.
19:55
Then we would hook up back at Parker
19:56
center where we would interview him.
19:58
Once he got there, the glove was a key
20:01
piece of evidence, obviously.
20:03
And it became a very
20:04
controversial piece of evidence.
20:07
Tell us how the glove was found when it
20:09
was found and, uh, you know,
20:13
I'm still at the crime scene.
20:14
All four of us are, as I said, I'm
20:17
dealing with our nail.
20:19
Fuhrman is talking to Kato Kaelin.
20:21
Kato makes a statement.
20:22
And in fact, that he was
20:23
in bed the night before, uh,
20:27
when he heard a loud bay or something
20:30
outside of his wall, he's in his bed,
20:32
leaning against the outside wall and
20:35
there's an air
20:36
conditioning unit right outside there.
20:38
And he heard three faults on the wall.
20:40
And he couldn't understand.
20:41
He thought that had been an earthquake.
20:44
He's telling us the Fuhrman when he's in
20:46
his initial statements.
20:48
Fuhrman gets this information, uh, later
20:52
I'll several minutes later.
20:53
He says, okay, Kato hang on here.
20:56
We'll be back to see a little bit.
20:58
He goes outside and tells
21:00
his partner what Kato had said.
21:04
That there was just stopping noises and a
21:06
little shaking behind his bed.
21:08
As he was talking to his girlfriend on
21:10
the telephone, Fuhrman goes back around
21:13
just to see where made in
21:15
the noises were coming from.
21:17
Uh,
21:19
he walks back there.
21:20
There's a narrow corridor behind the
21:22
bungalows leading back to an area where
21:26
there's just a lot of junk, the, uh,
21:28
there's an old busted wheelbarrow and his
21:31
shovels, russet shovels and tires and
21:33
things where there's
21:35
just junk back there.
21:36
It's very dark back there.
21:39
So for it enters the gate is off.
21:41
It's leaning against the bungalow.
21:44
There's no lights, like I said, but he
21:45
starts walking back there towards the air
21:48
conditioning unit that juts out blocking
21:50
the passage to the, this
21:53
junk yard in the back area.
21:55
And then he looks in each season, he
21:57
looks on the ground as he's walking with
21:58
flashlight and he sees the glove right in
22:01
the middle of the war.
22:02
Wait near the air conditioning unit.
22:04
He looks at it and he had been at the
22:06
crime scene like an hour before I had, he
22:09
was related with the evidence.
22:10
It was there.
22:11
He was so familiar with the fact that
22:12
there was a left leather glove at the
22:15
crime scene between the two bodies.
22:17
They never saw a right glove while they
22:20
were there, but 15 officers who were
22:22
there before him never saw a right hand
22:25
glove at the crime scene.
22:27
So he was looking and he
22:28
sees this left hand glove there.
22:30
So we have two and two is four, four,
22:32
four is eight comes back out and he tells
22:34
his partner what's going on.
22:37
His partner finds me and he says, uh, for
22:41
him and find the glove.
22:41
He wants to show it to you.
22:43
And I said, what's going on?
22:45
He said, well, it looks like
22:46
the left glove from a Bundy.
22:49
Now he's partnered been like hour before
22:52
I had also, they have
22:53
more information than I do.
22:55
I wasn't aware of any of this evidence
22:56
until I find out about a
22:58
glove, the right angle here.
23:00
There's a left handed glove
23:01
back over at the crime scene.
23:05
So I go and I look at the glove and they
23:08
say, oh, so left handed
23:08
glove and everything else.
23:10
So I'm looking at this and for him and
23:14
his partner discussing everybody didn't
23:18
understand why there was only a right
23:19
left handed glove there.
23:22
Now they tell me that they were bloody
23:25
footwear impressions, leaving the scene
23:27
and alongside the bloody footwear
23:28
impressions, there was tailing the blood
23:30
alongside and in conjunction with the
23:35
direction and the, of the footwear
23:37
impressions indicating perhaps whoever
23:40
left the footwear impressions and blood,
23:42
the source was also the
23:44
left side of their body.
23:45
It was making these tailing of the blood
23:49
trail alongside the footwear impressions.
23:52
They were cooperating one another.
23:54
And in other words, bloody footwear
23:56
impressions were walking this way.
23:58
The blood was tailing on the same
23:59
directions, adjacent to
24:02
the footwear impressions.
24:04
All right.
24:05
Let me just ask.
24:06
I mean, obviously you've got a left
24:08
handed glove at the scene full of blood.
24:11
It obviously belonged to the murder.
24:15
And now you found the matching, what
24:17
seemed to be maybe the matching glove at
24:20
the residence of OJ Simpson.
24:22
Um, right away, I mean, in your head, are
24:25
you thinking, wow, maybe
24:26
OJ murdered Nicole and Ron?
24:31
Uh, yes and no.
24:32
Let's, a little light goes
24:33
on in the back of your mind.
24:34
You got a hundred
24:34
other things you're doing.
24:36
You don't jump to conclusions at all.
24:37
Again, we got to go by what we see at the
24:39
time when we see it and
24:40
take action at that time.
24:42
You can right away, the action taken here
24:44
would have to be, this is declared a
24:46
crime scene period, but you can't do
24:49
anything without a warrant under those
24:50
circumstances that's when
24:52
decisions had to be made.
24:54
So that decision was find the DMS and
24:56
another, another problem we had initially
24:59
is we needed to district attorney is
25:01
going to be high profile case.
25:03
We do this at the time.
25:05
We got to get a DA involved early on.
25:09
We had a little discussion,
25:10
Phil and I did about Marcia.
25:12
This is this all of this stuff I put into
25:14
a book and that's one of the reasons I
25:16
wrote the book because there are so many
25:18
little things that
25:19
happened at the same time.
25:20
It's difficult for me to throw them all
25:22
in here at the same time.
25:24
It's flighted, but I'll try to get around
25:25
a lot of these things.
25:27
The decision was made to
25:29
get our DA contact her.
25:32
It was Marcia Clark, get a warrant, Phil
25:34
would return and then when they conduct a
25:38
crime scene investigation at Rockingham.
25:41
I mean, well, I would return to Bundy and
25:42
do the same thing and that's what
25:44
happened, a waiting session coming back.
25:47
At what point or, or ever was a Kato
25:52
Kaelin considered a subject suspect?
25:56
Kato Kaelin never really wasn't suspect.
25:59
Uh, he was very cooperative.
26:02
You could tell with his demeanor that,
26:05
uh, I had a lot of experience talking to
26:08
people at this point, my career.
26:10
Right.
26:11
And this is not any kind of a suspect in
26:14
my mind, but of course, if there were any
26:16
evidence to show otherwise, he had been
26:18
treated as a suspect.
26:20
He and Arnel at this point are witnesses.
26:23
So it was just interesting and it was
26:24
just interesting and coincidental then
26:26
perhaps that the glove and the blood
26:28
trail, uh, was along the exterior of his
26:32
bungalow and that may have been the
26:35
explanation as to when he said he heard
26:37
the three thumps against his wall was
26:39
perhaps when that individual OJ Simpson
26:44
was going through that passageway.
26:46
Yes.
26:47
And no, there was no
26:48
blood trail back there.
26:49
Just the glove by itself.
26:51
Fuhrman did the right thing and following
26:53
up on what he heard from Kato Kaelin,
26:57
uh, it just makes sense.
27:00
It's so when you effective as a homicide
27:02
cop, you gotta be very nosy.
27:04
Okay.
27:05
You got to ask questions.
27:07
You got to follow up
27:07
at every little thing.
27:09
And this is what Fuhrman did.
27:10
And he did it properly.
27:12
I have a lot of problems with the way he
27:13
handled a lot of things, but in this
27:15
case, he did the right
27:16
thing and following up.
27:18
Now I want to, I want to back up and
27:20
clarify something because we all know
27:22
what you just told us about how OJ left
27:25
and went to Chicago in your investigative
27:29
steps, you clearly found out like through
27:33
the FAA and the flight logs or whatever
27:35
airline, perhaps he
27:36
flew, did he fly private?
27:37
Did he fly commercial
27:39
and when did he leave?
27:41
And what was the purpose of going to
27:43
Chicago or at least what he said the
27:45
purpose was and how soon did he get back?
27:48
Okay.
27:49
A flu commercial airlines, they've been
27:51
picked up by a limousine.
27:52
Now again, here's more important things
27:55
that occurred, uh, when he was picked up.
27:59
He was picked up a little after just
28:02
before 11 PM, perhaps.
28:06
I don't have the minutes.
28:07
It's probably been maybe about a quarter
28:09
to 11 or something like
28:10
this, uh, that evening.
28:13
Uh, he was running almost a little late.
28:16
Uh, the limo driver, a lot of things are
28:19
happening here at the same time.
28:21
You want me to go
28:21
into all of these things?
28:23
I can't, uh,
28:26
Simpson is waiting for the limo.
28:29
The limo shows up coming up.
28:32
Rockingham or the driver label Allan Park.
28:37
He later tells us he goes by the Rockingham
28:39
gate because it seems to be closed.
28:42
He turns around on the Ashford goes to
28:44
the Ashford gate goes to the phone like
28:47
we did the same phone.
28:50
And the night before, of course, he tries
28:52
to get something inside.
28:53
Nobody answers.
28:56
He realizes it now
28:58
it's about 20 of 20 to 11.
29:02
And he looks up and he sees someone
29:04
walking across the lawn
29:07
towards the front door.
29:10
From the Rockingham gate.
29:12
He says, you can't really recognize him.
29:14
The later I, he says, I
29:16
believe that's OJ Simpson.
29:17
This person enters
29:18
the front goes upstairs.
29:20
He gets back on the
29:21
phone and Simpson answers.
29:23
Simpson says something to the effect to
29:26
just get out of the shower.
29:28
Um, I'll be down at a couple of minutes.
29:32
You can come in the gate.
29:34
And again, like I said,
29:35
the gate wasn't locked.
29:37
She says, okay, fine.
29:38
I'll do that.
29:39
So Allan Park pulls the limo in
29:41
through the Ashford gate.
29:43
At this point, a couple of minutes later,
29:46
Cato comes out later.
29:50
Simpson comes out with some bags.
29:50
You got a golf club. And one bag has got
29:54
other smaller bags there.
29:56
He's just going for an
29:58
overnight trip to Chicago.
30:00
It's one of the
30:00
companies that he sponsors.
30:03
They're having a golf
30:04
tournament or something.
30:05
Then that effect is going
30:06
to play in the following day.
30:08
It's going to be staying at
30:09
night in a hotel in Chicago.
30:11
Reservations are then
30:12
made everything is planned.
30:14
The limo will take him to the airport.
30:15
He'll do his thing in Chicago. Come back the next day. They'll do was staying in Chicago.
30:18
Come back the next day.
30:20
There was a time, but before you go on,
30:23
um, I just want our audience to
30:25
understand the timeline here.
30:27
The murders occurred what,
30:29
approximately 9pm that night.
30:31
And now we're talking about OJ getting
30:32
into a limo at his house at 11pm.
30:35
Is that approximately correct?
30:37
No, no.
30:38
Oh, okay.
30:41
I'm going to say, and it there's a lot of
30:43
discussion on this too.
30:44
The murders occurred —
30:46
the DA says — about 10:15 PM.
30:48
I don't believe that's true at all for
30:50
other reasons we get into.
30:52
I'm going to say about 10 35.
30:54
Okay.
30:55
We went between Bundy and later on by the
30:58
investigation that we wanted to see how
31:00
long it would take on a Sunday night,
31:01
about 10 30 to get some Bundy to rock.
31:03
We did it three different ways.
31:06
Slow, fast red lights and siren very
31:09
slow, stopping for every lights and
31:11
everything else at no point to take us
31:13
forward four and a half minutes.
31:15
And on Sunday night at 10 35
31:16
to get from Bundy to right.
31:18
Yeah.
31:18
Four and a half minutes max.
31:20
This gives him plenty of time with, with
31:23
the level drivers, uh, 10 40, uh, beliefs
31:29
that that's what he kind of pulled up and
31:31
says, it wasn't there Simpson walking in
31:33
and putting everything at the limo,
31:35
getting in there, going to the airport.
31:38
Um, a lot of little things happening here
31:41
in the, in the end of them when the
31:43
loading up the car, one of them, uh, Kato
31:46
was trying to, to try to get all the, uh,
31:49
luggage and the golf clubs in the limo
31:50
because they might be running a little
31:52
late tail goes to grab this small duffel
31:56
bag and Simpson says, no, leave it alone
31:58
and I'll take care of that.
32:00
And which later on Kato tells us about,
32:03
he's a bit surprised about that, but they
32:05
load everything up and the
32:07
limo takes off at the airport.
32:11
Allan Park says they get to the airport.
32:13
They get there about 11
32:15
little after 11 o'clock.
32:17
As they pull up American airlines, the
32:19
second level at LAX, there's nobody
32:21
wrong, no traffic,
32:23
the limo pulls right up.
32:25
I'm being honest to them.
32:26
There's a small vehicle and M G M and M G
32:30
convertible part behind the limo.
32:33
There's a man in it.
32:35
He's waiting for his wife who happens to
32:37
work at airlines, the American airlines
32:39
counter, she gets off at 11.
32:41
She's running a little bit late.
32:42
He's picking her up from work.
32:44
The limo pulls in front of this.
32:47
He looks at the limo.
32:48
There's nothing else
32:49
around nor the traffic.
32:50
And he sees OJ Simpson jump out.
32:52
He looked at it and we saw, Oh, there's
32:54
OJ Simpson, a red cap comes out.
32:57
They start taking the luggage out.
32:58
The golf clubs out and the, the Island
33:02
park and the red cap, take the golf clubs
33:04
and everything else inside the, uh, the,
33:08
uh, terminal and he
33:10
looks at turns around.
33:11
He looks again, he's looking for his wife
33:13
and he's looking back over.
33:14
She's running a little late.
33:16
He turns back around and at the entrance,
33:19
there are two trash containers.
33:21
One on the left, one on the right.
33:23
There are about 44 inches high.
33:25
They're open on four answers.
33:27
The flat top on both.
33:29
He sees OJ Simpson standing next to the
33:31
one on the left of the opening and a
33:34
small duffel bag that is described later
33:37
by Kato Kaelin is on
33:39
top of the container.
33:41
Simpson is reaching into the bag,
33:43
removing some kind of objects and taking
33:46
them out and pushing them
33:47
into the trash container.
33:49
Now, very light.
33:50
The bodies have not been found.
33:52
Nobody's expected of anything there.
33:54
So the, the man waiting for his wife
33:56
and like a man, but that
33:58
was skipped to us, uh, Mr.
34:00
Jonas is watching Simpson do this.
34:02
And there's really
34:03
thinking anything of it.
34:04
He's just taking garbage.
34:06
Perhaps he had this bag and putting in
34:08
the trash container.
34:09
Simpson ships up the
34:11
bag after walks inside.
34:14
They go on.
34:14
I think a key piece of evidence that was
34:16
missing, uh, to convict OJ Simpson of the
34:21
crime was the, with a stabbing, you would
34:24
expect a lot of blood, a lot of blood on
34:27
the victims, but also a lot of blood on
34:30
the murder and no bloody clothes were
34:34
ever found to, um,
34:37
help convict OJ Simpson.
34:39
And so what you've just described is a
34:42
theory that OJ Simpson took his bloody
34:45
clothes, put them in that briefcase or
34:47
that duffel bag, and then put them in a
34:50
trash can at LAX and from what I remember
34:54
reading that the duffel bag was then
34:57
thrown away when he got to
34:59
Chicago in another trash can.
35:01
And I don't even know if that evidence
35:03
came out at the trial is that, but that's
35:06
a key piece of evidence.
35:08
Correct.
35:09
It is, uh,
35:11
there's three
35:12
typewritten pages of evidence.
35:13
It was never used.
35:14
This is another issue we get into.
35:17
However, that was one of them.
35:18
Yes.
35:18
That's very important.
35:20
That's just the bloody clothes, but the
35:22
shoes, whatever the bloody clothes —
35:24
the murder weapon was never found.
35:27
What did he put in the trash container?
35:30
Did you ever find out what he
35:31
put in the trash can at LAX?
35:33
We never did because I didn't find out
35:36
about it for nine months,
35:38
nine months during trial, Mr.
35:41
Jonas, after the bodies were discovered
35:44
and the news got all of this, it went out
35:47
over to all the news stations, skipped
35:49
you and us heard the mention that the
35:51
murders occurred about nine 40 or so.
35:55
And so G Simpson may
35:57
or may not be a suspect.
35:58
Well, he's sick at nine 40.
36:00
I saw him at the airport about 11 or so.
36:03
And, and, uh, they couldn't have done it.
36:05
So he calls it a fence and a fence says,
36:08
thank you very much.
36:09
We'll get right back to you.
36:10
They never did skip to us.
36:12
Nine months later is
36:13
watching the trial on TV.
36:15
He sees all this going down.
36:16
He calls me on the phone.
36:18
I have a lunch.
36:18
I just left the trial.
36:20
I said, where are you now?
36:22
He says, well, I haven't worked.
36:23
Can you get over to back to the airport
36:24
where you saw this and meet us there now?
36:28
He says, okay.
36:29
So he goes back there.
36:30
I grabbed a photographer, my partner.
36:32
We run out there.
36:33
He gives us a walkthrough.
36:35
There's no video
36:35
cameras or anything else.
36:37
Containers are still there.
36:39
Nine months later,
36:40
what are we going to find?
36:41
There's three pickups a day
36:42
going to two common dumps.
36:44
No way ever going to find
36:46
anything that was taken there.
36:49
This is using trial.
36:50
I never was
36:51
the statement about the duffel bag ended
36:53
up being tossed in Chicago.
36:56
How would, how was that found out?
36:59
I don't know.
36:59
I never heard that
37:00
because we never found the bag.
37:01
We went back to Chicago.
37:03
Got other evidence.
37:04
We were not that also wasn't
37:05
used broken drinking glasses.
37:08
That's another story.
37:09
We went back to your two days later.
37:11
I went back to with the, with Bill, I was
37:13
in the DA and another detective.
37:16
We searched the
37:16
grounds with the Chicago PD.
37:18
They were very cooperative.
37:20
They secured the, the hotel room where
37:23
Simpson was staying.
37:24
I found broken glass and blood in there.
37:27
Booked all that stuff was never used.
37:30
There was a reason that I booked that we
37:32
can get into because of the cut figure.
37:34
That was one of the elevators he gave to
37:36
get three elevators.
37:38
Uh, it was staged.
37:41
Nine months of evidence.
37:48
None of it would ever reach the jury.
37:50
When OJ Simpson returned from Chicago,
37:53
Tom Lange sat across from him and knew in
37:55
30 seconds what they were dealing with.
37:58
Join us for part two as we continue our
38:01
interview to understand what happened.