His Name Is Ron (12 page)

For her part, Kim really wanted to attend the preliminary hearing, but she did not want to miss the wedding in New York or the surgery in Chicago. She still thought she could “do it all.”

We wanted to keep a low profile and let the system proceed without our interference. We believed that Ron's death would be dealt with in a fair way; we were sure that justice would ultimately prevail. We were still too consumed by our loss to be aware of the immensity of what was happening around us.

As Patti and I walked into the nineteen-story Downtown Criminal Courts Building on West Temple Street in Los Angeles for the first day of the preliminary hearing, we saw a thick cluster of satellite dishes outside. Every network and every major L.A. TV station would broadcast the proceedings live, from gavel to gavel. Howard Rosenberg of the
Los Angeles
Times
commented, “Moses parting the Red Sea wouldn't get this coverage.…”

Vendors, like rodents, had multiplied overnight. Ron's now-famous photo ID was being hawked on T-shirts, trading cards, Pogs, mugs, and anything else that the entrepreneurial spirit could dream up. We saw placards proclaiming,
FREE O.J.!
We were offended and sickened by the display. Tragedy, it appeared, was good for business.

As she had promised, Susan Arguela met us at the courthouse and took us upstairs to the office of Patty Jo Fairbanks, the secretary for the prosecutors. Susan reminded us of the purpose of the preliminary hearing. The prosecution's task was simply to persuade the judge that there was a “strong suspicion” of Simpson's guilt.

As we waited for the proceedings to begin, we met the Brown family for the first time. I remember all of them being there—Juditha, Lou, Denise, Tanya, Dominique—we all hugged and expressed our sympathy. It was truly genuine and the pain was overwhelming. Some of them were wearing angel pins, replicas of one that Nicole frequently wore.

After a time, Susan took us to the elevators and guided us down and into the courtroom. The room was filled with reporters and excited spectators. Despite Susan's coaching, we were clueless as to how this was going to play out. This was a foreign world to us.

We were seated, awaiting the start of the proceedings, when a side door suddenly opened and we first laid eyes on the man accused of murdering Ron. To Patti, he seemed huge. “His hands are massive,” she commented. When he turned and faced the spectators, Patti noted a carefree, arrogant smirk on his face. Who do you think you are? she wondered. Fake it if you have to, but show some remorse, some sadness. Your wife is gone, the mother of your children. And you walk in here like you have the world by the tail? You're disgusting.

I had expected him to be wearing orange prison overalls or whatever prisoners normally wear. I thought that he would be restrained by handcuffs and shackles. Instead, here was a man in an expensively tailored suit, smiling at what he seemed to consider an adoring crowd, sauntering toward the defense table. Idly he tossed his arm around the shoulder of his defense attorney, Robert Shapiro. I felt an overwhelming revulsion. This man was accused of murdering my son. What did he have to smile about?

Much of the morning was squandered by legal bickering between Robert Shapiro and Assistant District Attorney Marcia Clark, but slowly we began to learn about the evidence. Police had found blood on the driver's-door handle of Simpson's white Ford Bronco, parked outside of his Rockingham
estate. Inside the Bronco, detectives found bloodstains on the driver's door, the instrument panel, the floor, the steering wheel, and the center console. In a search warrant affidavit, LAPD Detective Philip Vannatter stated, “Blood droplets were subsequently observed leading from the vehicle on the street to the front door of the residence.” Vannatter's affidavit confirmed that police recovered a leather glove “containing human blood” on the south side of the Rockingham house. The glove “closely resembled” the glove that was found at the crime scene, near Ron's feet. Inside the house, police found bloodstains in the foyer and a bathroom.

The defense fought to have all of this evidence suppressed. Shapiro filed a motion charging that when Detective Mark Fuhrman scaled the fence at Simpson's estate, he had had no search warrant and had compromised the defendant's privacy; therefore, all evidence found as a result of this action should be thrown out. Judge Kathleen Kennedy-Powell said that she would rule on the motion next week.

“This is crazy,” I said to Patti, who agreed. Evidence is evidence, we thought. Blood is blood.

So much of the day was consumed with procedural matters that very little was accomplished.

On Friday, the second day of the preliminary hearing, several of the witnesses' statements caused us to shudder, and we could sense that the prosecution was setting the stage for what we knew would be very difficult testimony to hear.

Pablo Fenjves, a neighbor of Nicole's, said that he heard the “plaintive wail” of a dog barking about 10:15 or 10:20 the night of the murders.

Steven Schwab, another neighbor of Nicole's, described how he came upon an agitated dog with bloody paws shortly before 11:00
P.M.

Sukru Boztepe, yet another neighbor, was the first to discover Nicole's body lying in front of her condominium. His wife, Bettina Rasmussen, testified that she saw the body for a moment, then turned away. “I never looked back again,” she said.

“They will never get over this as long as they live,” Patti whispered. “What a horrible and devastating experience.”

Kim, still in New York, was glued to the television screen, watching their testimony. Seeing and hearing the genuine emotion in their voices was very hard for her as well.

Kim quickly realized that her decision to go to New York with Joe was a terrible mistake. She was supposed to share in the enjoyment of a friend's
wedding, but her heart was back in L.A. She knew that she should be at the preliminary hearing and she wanted to be with us on Saturday. Saturday, July 2, would have been Ron's twenty-sixth birthday.

She cried constantly, making everyone around her uneasy. No one knew what to say to her, or how to bring her comfort.

They stayed at the home of Joe's mother, Janette, and Kim asked Joe to drive her from store to store, searching for the perfect candle that would burn for the entire twenty-four hours of Ron's birthday. They stayed up until midnight when, as they sat around the kitchen table, Kim solemnly lit the candle. Then she and Joe, together with his mother, wrote a few words of love and remembrance for Ron. Kim watched as the flickering flame burned.

The next day, as they were driving around New York with Rob, one of Joe's friends, they happened to pass a cemetery. Rob made an idle comment; he had read a newspaper story about grave robbers who were digging up bodies and stealing jewelry. Joe punched his friend in the arm and reminded him that the topic was not appropriate. Kim, in the backseat, was crying softly.

Back home, things were not much better. I was running some errands and Lauren was at a friend's house. Deciding to relax in the pool, Patti put on her bathing suit, grabbed a towel, and went into the backyard. She floated on a raft for only a few minutes before a panic attack struck. She had the sudden, eerie feeling that she was being watched, and she realized: I'm here all by myself. The whole world now knows who we are and where we live. Anybody could come over that privacy wall at any moment, with a camera or a knife. There are a lot of crazy people out there.

She did not see or hear anyone, but the fear was so real, so tangible, that she jumped out of the pool and raced back into the house.

Later, when she told me what had happened, I tried to calm her. “Relax, don't be silly,” I said, “you're perfectly safe here.” But my advice did not help. She simply could not shake the ominous feeling.

We decided that we were not up to traveling to Chicago. And as we talked further, we grew concerned about Kim. We wondered if she was under too much stress to undergo surgery right now. I phoned Kim in New York, and she agreed to postpone the operation. She and Joe would change their flight reservations and come directly home.

Prior to leaving New York, Kim spoke to her cousin Stacy in Chicago. Stacy told her that Sharon was planning to file a wrongful-death lawsuit against Simpson, asking for $1 million in damages.

“I went crazy, absolutely nuts,” Kim told me. “I called Sharon and
asked her what the hell was going on. She denied that she was going to file a suit and said that she didn't know a thing about it.”

Michael was relieved to be away from the chaos in L.A. and to have a chance to think about something else for a while, but even in Chicago the media were hungry. A reporter tracked him down, but the doorman at his father's apartment house ran interference, telling the newsman that he had the wrong Glass family.

As a retired defense attorney, Michael's father tried to get him to look at things from both perspectives. Although he felt, as Michael did, that Simpson was probably guilty, he kept reminding him that it was possible that prosecutors would not be able to convict him. Michael bristled at this negativity, but knew that his dad was trying to keep him from being devastated if the worst happened.

For the first time in his life, Michael found himself truly scared. He did not want to be outside after dark. Ominous strangers seemed to lurk around every corner. If this horrible thing could have happened to Ron, it could happen to anyone. It could happen to him. While still in Chicago he bought an expandable metal billy club to keep in his car for protection. He dubbed it his “O. J. Beater.”

In the midst of this chaos, I had a family to feed, a mortgage payment to make. My clients had problems, new projects and questions, and it was my job to deal with them. In the ghastly context of my life, these details were trivial, but attention to them was what put food on the table. The simple fact was that I could not afford to attend every courtroom hearing. Kim was on her way back from New York. She and Patti would attend the remaining sessions of the preliminary hearing; I would try to get some business done and slip into the courtroom if and when I could. In addition, nearly every TV station in L.A. was covering the hearing, so I would have plenty of opportunity to follow the course of events.

I could not keep my mind even remotely centered on my job. However, I quickly discovered that I was blessed with numerous clients who were unbelievably understanding. Many of them said, “We can talk on the phone if you can't make it over.” Some of them even offered to come to my office.

*   *   *

When the preliminary hearing resumed on July 5, Kim had her first chance to attend, her first opportunity to view the defendant in person.

The moment he entered the courtroom, Kim's body began to shake. She was petrified.

He sat down at the defense table and placed his huge hands in front of him. Like Patti, Kim could not believe how large he was. She stared at his back, willing him to look in her direction, but he would not.

Patti and Kim listened to an array of witnesses, who now appeared before the world for the very first time. Each would take his or her place in the lore of this bizarre case.

Limousine driver Allan Park testified that Simpson did not respond to his repeated buzzing. He said that just before 11:00
P.M.
, he saw a shadowy figure—“six feet, two hundred pounds, black, wearing dark clothes”—move across the driveway and into Simpson's house. Moments later, the buzzer was finally answered.

Simpson's houseguest, Brian “Kato” Kaelin, testified that he heard thumping sounds outside his window, where a bloodstained glove was later discovered.

Detective Mark Fuhrman told how he spotted what he believed to be blood on the driver's door of Simpson's white Ford Bronco. Only then did he jump the fence to enter Simpson's property, concerned that there might be more victims inside the home. Once inside the property, after talking to Kaelin, it was Fuhrman who found the bloody glove that matched the one left at the crime scene.

Detective Phil Vannatter also contended that Simpson, at that point, was not considered a suspect.

We respected the detectives' long and dedicated service to the community, but Patti said, “I think they made a mistake by insisting that Simpson was not a suspect. I don't pretend to know the ins and outs of the law, search warrants, procedures, that sort of thing, but I do know that when someone is killed, the spouse or the ex-spouse is automatically suspected, and it seemed a little disingenuous to deny it.”

We were scared. Would the judge rule that the search of Simpson's estate was illegal and, therefore, throw out the evidence? And if she did, would Simpson even be held over for trial?

But Judge Kennedy-Powell ruled that the detectives had reason to believe that an emergency situation existed when they scaled the wall of Simpson's estate. Thus the search was legal; the evidence could be used. We were tremendously relieved. “We just might get a fair trial,” Patti said.

Day after day the evidence continued to mount. Day after day Simpson appeared uglier and smaller.

Vannatter testified that Simpson had a cut on the knuckle of the middle finger of his left hand. Prosecutors introduced a photo taken after he returned from Chicago, showing the cut.

Vannatter's partner, Detective Tom Lange, testified about a trail of bloody shoe prints that led away from the bodies. The shoe prints did not match the high-topped athletic shoes that Ron was wearing, and Nicole was barefoot.

LAPD Crime Lab supervisor Gregory Matheson said that the trail of spots and shoe prints was made by human blood. Concentrating on one particular sample taken from the cobblestone path leading away from the murder scene, he presented the results of blood-typing tests.

Marcia Clark asked, “Could Nicole Simpson have left the blood drop at 875 South Bundy?”

“No,” Matheson responded.

“With respect to Ronald Goldman … could he have been a source of that blood drop on the trail?”