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.
I had a new lawyer, Judy Forman. She was not only a decent person she would become one of my closest friends and confidantes but also one tough cookie. Judy was trying to make sure that certain issues presented in the divorce case were kept confidential.
Chris knew the stress I was under and he offered to go with me to family court. I always declined. I didn’t want to burden him with my problems. He had his own share of sorrow. His brother, Michael, was dying of AIDs. As I listened to Chris describe Michael’s skull-like face and impossibly shrunken body, I knew this deathwatch was sheer agony for him. I vowed to myself that I wouldn’t ask for help unless I was desperate.
As the custody case progressed, though, desperate was exactly what I became. Gordon’s lawyers were demanding to take my deposition. That process could run on for days, during which time I would be subjected to intense personal questioning, about my private life… everything. Depositions in custody matters are harrowing under the most ordinary circumstances. These were not ordinary.
I was under the worst pressure I’d ever experienced. I was in the middle of this incredible trial. I was exhausted. One afternoon the thought of doing the deposition simply overwhelmed me. I sat at my desk staring dumbly at the documents in front of me, unable to focus.
I looked up to see Chris standing at the door. His expression was concerned. He knew what was going down.
“I’ll go with you,” he said quietly.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No, I’m not. I’ll go with you. You know I got your back, G.”
Chris did go with me. I can’t tell you what went down at the deposition. The custody case file has been sealed at my request, in the interests of protecting my children. It severely limits what I myself can say. But I can tell you this. Being able to exchange supportive glances with my compadre and joke with him during the breaks made a huge difference to me. I’ll never forget it.
Come the last week in March, Chris was taking a trip to the Bay Area to visit his family. He also wanted to spend some time with his teenaged daughter, Jenee. It was sweet to hear him talk about her. He was a tender, doting father. Of course, San Francisco was my old stamping ground; I said wistfully that I missed the place.
“Wanna join me?” he asked.
It was a weekend when the boys would be with their father. So 1 thought about it. The Bay. Long walks. Irish coffees. A world that had nothing to do with this craziness.
“I sure as hell would.”
We made the five-hour drive in Chris’s Toyota Camry. I was so paranoid about being spotted that when we stopped at a gas station, I pulled the hood of my parka over my face. But the farther north we got, the more relaxed I felt. We could talk for once without running the risk of being overheard. We vented about Fuhrman, Johnnie, Ito, the goddamned media. TFC, TFC, This Fucking Case.
“When this is over,” I told him, “I’m gonna take about a year off and do nothing but read murder mysteries and play with my kids.”
“Man, I’ll tell you what,” he replied. “When this case is over, I’m gonna take about a year off and do nothing but kick it in my crib, drink beer, and watch the games.”
Is it me, or do men seem to lack imagination?
That weekend I was in a state of absolute euphoria. Chris and I checked into the Fairmont-taking separate rooms, for those of you keeping score. He introduced me to his family. One night his sisters and I went out to a place near the wharf. People recognized us-hell, all that airtime had made us the two most recognizable civil servants in the country-but they kept their distance. I felt lighter, more hopeful than I had in months. It seemed possible that someday life might return to normal.