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Module 5 – O.J. Simpson

Ayres, D. B., Jr. (1994, July 2). The simpson case: The preliminary hearing. The New York 

Times. 

https://www.nytimes.com/1994/07/02/us/simpson-case…

oody-dog-attack-simpson-alibi.html

Forensics at the OJ Simpson Trial. (2017). http://www.crimemuseum.org/crime-library/forensic-…

Linder. D. O. (n.d.). The Trial of O.J. Simpson: The Incriminating Evidence. Famous Trials.com 

https://famous-trials.com/simpson/1857-evidence 

Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner (1994, June 14) Brown-Simpson,  

         Nicole (Autopsy Report 94-05136). http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cas45.htm.

Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner (1994, June 14) Goldman,   

       Ronald (Autopsy Report 94-05135). www.lectlaw.com/files/cas47.htm

Schiro, G. (n.d.). Protecting the Crime Scene. 

https://www.crime-scene-investigator.net/evidenc1….

Spitz, W.U. & Diaz, F.J. (Eds.). (2020). Spitz and fisher’s medicolegal investigation of death: 

Guidelines for the application of pathology to crime investigation (5th ed.). Charles C.

Thomas

This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.

Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.

Testimony about a dog’s plaintive wails and bloodied paws helped prosecutors today as they tried to demonstrate that O. J. Simpson had enough time to kill his former wife and a friend of hers on the night of June 12.

On the second day of a preliminary hearing that will determine whether the murder case against Mr. Simpson is strong enough to take to trial, the prosecution called on four neighbors of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, to testify about the dog, an Akita that wandered around their neighborhood, barking forlornly, until it led two of them to her front gate, where her body was discovered in a pool of blood.

The witnesses said that the dog was first heard howling shortly after 10 P.M. and that it was found roaming the neighborhood not long thereafter. The apparent aim of the prosecutors in eliciting this testimony was to pinpoint the hour of the slayings as earlier than originally supposed.

If it was earlier, it would tend to weaken Mr. Simpson’s alibi: that at 11 P.M., roughly the time that the killings have widely been assumed to have occurred, he was at his own home, about two miles from Mrs. Simpson’s, awaiting a limousine that took him to Los Angeles International Airport for an 11:45 flight to Chicago.

At no point since he was taken into custody two weeks ago have either Mr. Simpson or his lawyers spoken publicly of his activities from late afternoon the day of the killings until just before the limousine picked him up at his home.

Although the witnesses did not so testify, the dog that they described today apparently belonged to Mrs. Simpson. Friends of hers have said she owned an Akita that was found loose in the neighborhood on the night of the killings. And early in their investigation of the slayings, detectives said they had found an animal’s paw prints in some of the blood spilled at Mrs. Simpson’s house. For a time today, the attack on Mr. Simpson’s alibi was all but lost in the sheer gore described by two of the witnesses and reflected in large color photographs of the crime scene.

“There was a lot of blood, and I just turned around,” said Sukru Boztepe, who with his wife had followed the dog and was apparently the first person to come upon the scene. “I told my wife, ‘There’s a dead person there, and we should call 911.’ “

Mr. Boztepe’s wife, Bettina Rasmussen, described the blood as “coming down like a river” as it flowed down a walkway outside Mrs. Simpson’s town house.

Asked about the sight by a prosecutor, she said: “I only looked for half a second. I never looked back again.”

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Defendant Seemingly Shaken

For sheer drama, however, nothing topped the reaction of Mr. Simpson, as well as the families of the victims, to the death-scene pictures.

When the photographs of the bloodied body of his former wife were briefly posted at one point this morning on a courtroom display board, Mr. Simpson appeared to recoil slightly. Then he took a deep breath and looked away.

At the same moment, members of the families of Mrs. Simpson and the other victim, Ronald L. Goldman, avoided looking and hid their faces, several softly weeping. They had been forewarned by a hand signal from prosecutors that the pictures were going to be posted.

Although the hearing has been nationally televised, at no point today did TV cameras capture any of the photographs. Each time the photos were posted or shown to a witness, they were positioned so that they were turned away from the cameras.

Through much of the day, Mr. Simpson was slightly more animated than during earlier court appearances. In fact, he occasionally took notes on papers spread before him on the defense table. At other times, he leaned over and conferred with his chief lawyer, Robert L. Shapiro.

Once, he glanced back and to his right at Mrs. Simpson’s family, an ever-so-slight smile of recognition creasing his face. Family members quickly turned away, then leaned together to whisper.

An Unusual Sound

The first of the witnesses who testified about the dog was Pablo Fenjves, a resident of the condominium complex where Mrs. Simpson lived. He said that he first heard the dog barking about 10:15 P.M. and that it was still barking when he turned out the light to go to sleep at 11.

Asked whether the bark of a dog was a usual sound in his neighborhood so late, Mr. Fenjves replied, “Certainly not at that length.”

The next witness, Steven Schwab, also from Mrs. Simpson’s neighborhood, testified that he came upon a barking dog around 10:55 P.M. while walking his own dog.

“It was unusual to see a dog loose in the neighborhood at night,” Mr. Schwab said. “It was barking at the house on the corner. It was looking down a path and barking.”

Mr. Schwab said he then caught the dog, which continued to bark periodically, and checked it over, finding its white coat to be unusually dirty.

“I looked, and there was blood on the paws,” he continued. “The dog followed us. It was very strange. It would bark at each house. It stayed very close to us.”

Mr. Schwab said he eventually led the dog to his home and, after unsuccessfully trying to get city animal shelter workers to pick it up, turned it over to a neighbor, Mr. Boztepe, for safekeeping.

When Mr. Boztepe picked up the story on the witness stand today, he testified that he had planned to keep the dog overnight and turn it over to shelter workers the next morning. But before he could go to sleep for the night, he said, he decided to take the dog for a final walk, around midnight.

He testified that he put the dog on a leash and that once on the street the animal began tugging harder and harder, pulling him along. Then, Mr. Boztepe said, the dog stopped.

“It was a path to a house,” he continued. “I turned right and looked. I saw a body. It was a woman, lying down, face turned to me.”

The prosecution then presented a photograph, holding it before Mr. Boztepe and asking him if he could identify the scene.

“This is exactly what I saw,” he replied, his eyes lingering on the picture for a moment.

Defense Seeks Discrepancies

In cross-examination, Mr. Shapiro and another defense lawyer, Gerald Uelmen, succeeded in pointing out some discrepancies, mostly differences between what the witnesses said on the stand today and what police investigators had quoted them as saying in the early hours of the investigation.

But for the most part, the witnesses stuck with major details of their testimony, attributing the discrepancies to sloppy police work or to misstatements they had made after a traumatic night of hardly any sleep.

Early today, Mr. Shapiro moved unsuccessfully to strike the testimony of Thursday’s leading prosecution witness, Jose Camacho.

Mr. Camacho, a clerk at a Los Angeles cutlery store, testified that on May 3 he sold Mr. Simpson a 15-inch knife, after having it sharpened at Mr. Simpson’s request.

Investigators apparently have not yet recovered the murder weapon in the Simpson-Goldman slayings. But they have said the victims’ wounds suggest that a knife about 15 inches long was used.

Mr. Shapiro argued that Mr. Camacho’s testimony should be excluded because the prosecution, in remarks to newspaper reporters, had itself raised doubts about his credibility.

Mr. Camacho, who testified that he had sold his story to the weekly tabloid National Enquirer for $12,500, contended that he had been warned by some prosecutors not to talk to the press but had been told by a senior secretary in the District Attorney’s Office that he could give interviews if he chose.

In speaking with reporters, one of the lead prosecutors, Marcia Clark, later denied that Mr. Camacho had been told he could give interviews.

Judge Kathleen Kennedy-Powell rejected the motion to strike the Camacho testimony, saying it was not up to the court to pass on the accuracy of press reports.