The weird thing about Kato’s trial appearance was that, despite all the pulled punches, his essential testimony would have been devastating to the defense if a thoughtful jury had listened. Take, for instance, his account of the trip to McDonald’s. Something about that whole business had struck me as phony from day one. Simpson comes to Kato’s room saying he needs to borrow five dollars to pay the skycap? All he’s got is hundred-dollar bills. In the next breath he’s saying that he’s going out to get something to eat. Common sense compels one to ask, “If he’s going out, can’t he get change himself?”
Kato then gives him a twenty but when it comes time to pay for the food at the drive-in window, Kato pays again. And Simpson gives him back all the change. By now, Simpson has had
two
opportunities to get change, but he bypassed them both. Why?
Because he intended all along to set Kato up as an alibi.
When Simpson went out back to the guest house to ask Kato for change, it was solely for the purpose of having Kato notice he was at home, and to give his McDonald’s outing as an explanation for his impending absence. But then Kato invited himself along and screwed up the plan. I had to chuckle privately at Simpson’s predicament. He thinks he’s home free when Kato—that perennial wad of gum stuck to the Bruno Magli loafer—crashes the dinner party. He can’t refuse to take Kato. That would look worse than not having spoken to him at all.
“You invited yourself to go with him?” I had asked Kaelin while still on direct. “He seemed real excited to have you come?”
Kaelin paused for a moment. “Wouldn’t you?”
Laughter rippled through the courtroom. But Kato had succeeded in sidestepping an important point. The moment was lost. I could have choked the little creep.
The fact is, Kato’s tagging along uninvited tightened the schedule that Simpson had given himself for committing murder. That explained why Simpson ate his burger while driving instead of taking it into the house, as Kato had. It would also explain why, when they returned to Rockingham and Kato began walking toward the front door, Simpson hung back at the Bentley. When Kato finally got the hint that Simpson had no intention of spending any more time with him, he returned to his room in the guest quarters.
Before he lost sight of Simpson standing by the Bentley, watching him, Kato noticed that he was wearing “blue, dark blue or black” sweats. I had him describe those clothes in some detail. The reason would become apparent later: they were the source of the blue-black fibers that our FBI expert, Doug Deedrick, found on Ron Goldman’s shirt, the Rockingham glove, and Simpson’s bloody socks.
Simpson’s setup had backfired.
Not only did Kato fail to give him an alibi, but he was the one who established conclusively that Simpson’s whereabouts were unknown from approximately 9:36 P.M. until 10:53 P.M
.(precise times established through phone records). No two ways about it. O. J. Simpson had a window of seventy-two to seventy-seven minutes to commit murder.
All in all, Kato’s testimony gave lie to nearly every single one of the defense theories.
Defense Theory Number 1: The cops went over to Simpson’s house because they considered Simpson a suspect.
Kato: They interrogated me. They examined my eyes, searched my room, checked the bottoms of my shoes for blood. They treated me like a suspect. I never saw any of the detectives search the house or the grounds.
(In other words, even after jumping the fence at Rockingham, the cops had their options open. They weren’t doing any of the things they should have been doing if they’d already concluded that Simpson was the murderer; instead, they treated the houseguest as a suspect.)
Defense Theory Number 2: The cops planted Simpson’s blood at Rockingham.
Kato: I saw blood in the foyer of Rockingham at seven-thirty A.M., after the cops woke me.
(That was before Simpson even left Chicago. Which meant they didn’t even have his blood to plant when Kato saw those drops—nor would they for another eight hours, when Simpson yielded a blood sample.)
Defense Theory Number 3: Mark Fuhrman planted a glove on the south pathway.
Kato: I heard the thumps on the wall between ten-forty and ten-forty-five.
(Someone was bumping behind Kato’s room a good six hours or so before Mark Fuhrman even arrived at Rockingham and found the glove there on the other side of Kato’s wall.)
Defense Theory Number 4: Fuhrman got into the Bronco and smeared the bloody glove around the console and tracked blood onto the floormat.
Kato: Detective Vannatter asked me if I knew where to find a key to the Bronco. I looked but never could find one.
(How could Fuhrman have done this dirty work? The Bronco was locked and the cops couldn’t get into it until it was hauled to the impound lot.)
When you look at that testimony—given by a witness desperate to assist the defense!—you can see that it confirmed to the jury that the detectives—not only Fuhrman, but Vannatter and Lange as well—told them the truth on every major point. There was, indeed, no conspiracy. To persist in believing the space-invader theories, you would have to reject Kato’s testimony out of hand.
But, of course, a jury hell-bent on acquittal could do just that.
CAR TAPE.
Monday, March 27. Coming up, Allan Park. That’s gonna be a knock-down-drag-out. Johnnie’s gonna take that witness, unfortunately. Kinda wouldn’t mind seeing Bailey at work again. He did good cross on Fuhrman. Boy, was that a painful time
.
If ever there was an antidote to the despicable, mendacious opportunism of Kato Kaelin, it could be found in our limo-driver witness, Allan Park. Even the Dream Team, I learned later, privately referred to him as Young Abe Lincoln.
Early on in the investigation, Allan had gotten burned by the defense. On June 14 he’d spoken to Bob Shapiro, telling him what had happened at Rockingham two nights earlier. Unbeknownst to Park, Shapiro was taping their phone conversation. We didn’t learn about this until we made a discovery request to the defense at the preliminary hearing in July. Shapiro had to turn over the tape. I should point out that it’s illegal in the state of California to tape a phone conversation without the knowledge of both parties.
Shapiro had inadvertently left the tape running after the interview with Park was finished. The last thing Allan had told him was that on the way to the airport, Simpson had complained repeatedly of being hot, even though the night was cool and there was air-conditioning on in the limo. After Allan hung up, Shapiro turned to Skip Taft and said, “Hmm, does he always run hot after a shower?”
I just looked at the tape recorder. “No, you dolt,” I said, out loud. “He always runs hot after murdering two people.”
Allan did not find the taping episode amusing, to say the least. After that, he brought his mother with him whenever he was called in on case-related business. This was not as strange as it sounds, since his mother was a criminal defense attorney. After some initial wariness, Mrs. Park, a small, direct woman with very large eyes, warmed to me. By the time the case came to trial, we’d all gotten pretty close. She confided in me that Lee Bailey had called Allan to try to persuade him to participate in an “experiment.” They wanted him literally to recreate his trip to Rockingham. To drive the limo up to the gate and listen for car sounds to see if he could have heard a Bronco. Then they’d have someone walk where Allan said he saw Simpson, and they’d ask him to describe what he saw. Mrs. Park told Bailey that she wouldn’t mind as long as the prosecution could be present to observe the “experiment” as well. After that, they’d gotten hinky on her, setting up meetings, canceling at the last minute. When she asked if they’d notified us about this outing, they evaded the question. Finally, she put the kibosh on the whole idea.
During one of our office interviews, Allan, his mother, and I ended up going through a blow-by-blow description of the evening of June 12, beginning with his boss giving him the assignment to pick up Simpson. He’d used the cell phone in the limo, which meant we could use the phone records to confirm the timing of each event. When we got to the point where Allan was driving up Rockingham, I asked him how he was able to locate Simpson’s house.
“I was looking at addresses,” he replied.
At that point his mother jumped in.
“You mean on the curb? The numbers on the curb?” she asked.
She and I just looked at each other.
“So did you see Simpson’s address on the Rockingham curb?” I asked.
“Yes, I saw it,” Allan replied slowly. “I remember I had to stop and back up to make sure. It was painted on the curb: 360.”
When the police arrived at Rockingham in the early-morning hours of the thirteenth, the Bronco had been parked a few feet north of the street number. If Allan saw the address painted on the curb, he couldn’t have missed noticing the Bronco if it had, indeed, been parked there.
“Do you remember what time it was when you first pulled up to Rockingham and saw the address on the curb?”
“I looked at the clock, just to make sure I was on time, and I was early. It was ten-twenty-two.”
Man, oh man
, I thought.
Is Johnnie going to go crazy over this one
.
Again, at about 10:35, Allan decided to drive over to the Rockingham gate to see if that entrance would be easier to pull into than the Ashford gate. He drove down Rockingham and pulled parallel to the gate to look inside. In that position, he would have been right next to the Bronco if it had been there.
“Was it?”
“No.”
The Bronco was not there at 10:22. It was not there at 10:35. So much for Rosa Lopez.
The rest of Allan’s times dovetailed perfectly with Kato’s testimony. Kato said he’d left his guest cottage a couple of minutes after hearing the “thumps.” He was spotted by Park around 10:53 or 10:54. This was only seconds before Allan saw the six-foot, two-hundred-pound black person dressed in dark clothing stride quickly into the house. (Working backward from Park’s cell-phone records, we managed to establish that Kato had heard the thumps at about 10:51 or 10:52.) Then, the lights went on and O. J. Simpson answered the buzzer. “I overslept,” he said. “I just got out of the shower. I’ll be down in a minute.”
The one-two punch of Kaelin and Park pretty much clinched it. If you believed their accounts, you would have no choice but to conclude that O. J. Simpson was lying about his whereabouts on the night of the murders. And if he was lying, you’d have to ask yourself why.
When I called Allan to the witness stand on Tuesday, March 28, he laid out the facts with the sturdy decency that was his hallmark. He was simply a citizen coming forward with evidence about a crime. No book deal, no TV shows. He wouldn’t surmise anything. He gave precisely what he’d heard and seen. Nothing more; nothing less.
At one point I asked Simpson to stand. “Can you tell us if that appears to be the size of the person you saw enter the front entrance of the house at Rockingham?” I asked Park, pointing to Simpson. Johnnie objected, but Lance overruled him.
Simpson, who’d been fidgeting nervously, now stooped, trying to make himself less imposing.
“Yes, around the size,” Allan answered.
To me that was the defining moment of the case. If you believe Allan Park, you have Simpson walking into his house and then answering the intercom. It all unravels from there. He was not at home asleep. He was lying to Park. And he was lying because he was covering up the fact that he had just returned from murdering Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.
I felt great about Allan’s testimony. The only place he tripped up was in his recollection of the number of cars in the driveway when he’d pulled in. There were two, he thought. One was the Bentley. The other, parked right behind it, was a small dark car, possibly a Saab. I knew he was wrong about that. Arnelle’s car was a black Saab, but it hadn’t been there at eleven o’clock, because she’d been out at the movies with friends. She didn’t return until about 1:30 A.M. Photos taken later on the thirteenth showed her car parked behind the Bentley. Perhaps Allan had seen those photos so many times he’d come to believe that he’d seen the car that night, upon his arrival.
It was an inconsequential point. Even Johnnie, who mounted a spirited assault upon Allan during cross, chuckled when he came to this one. The issue of the second car was so meaningless that no one even mentioned it during closing arguments. Yet Park’s recollection of a second car would come back to haunt us in ways we could never have imagined.
My streak of witnesses ended strongly with James Williams, the skycap from LAX. The direct was short and sweet. James, who’d checked Simpson’s bags through to Chicago, never saw the small, dark bag that both Kato and Park had seen lying on the lawn at Rockingham.
Is there a trash can anywhere near the stand where you work?” I asked him.
“Yes, just to the left of it,” he replied.
The implication I’d wanted to produce, of course, was that Simpson could have disposed of the knife—and perhaps the black bag—right then and there. And in doing so, I’d laid a trap for the defense. On cross-examination Carl Douglas tumbled right into it. In fact, he made the worst error that a lawyer can ever make on cross: asking a question he doesn’t have the answer to.
“Mr. Williams,” he said with a sneer. “You don’t recall ever seeing Mr. Simpson anywhere near that trash can on June the twelfth, do you, sir?”
“Yes,” James replied ingenuously. “He was standing near the trash can.”
I had to put my hand against my face to keep the jury from seeing how hard I was laughing.
I had to get away from this case. I also needed to get away from my life. The pressures were killing me.
During the frenzy surrounding Mark Fuhrman’s testimony, I was constantly getting beeped, finding myself called in to the civil courthouse for my own case. Even though the civil court was virtually across the street from the CCB, I couldn’t just walk there—dozens of reporters would follow. Instead, Lieutenant Gary Schram and his men would escort me to the underground parking lot of the CCB, where they’d put me in a car and drive through a connecting tunnel to the underground lot of the civil courthouse. There, they would turn me over to sheriff’s deputies. The deputies would then take me up in the service elevator and through a labyrinth of corridors to the courtroom.