On the trip home I remained enveloped in this euphoria, until we stopped at a fast-food joint. I ran inside to pick up a quick dinner. I hadn’t been standing in line but a few seconds when I felt it. People were staring. We must be getting close to L.A. I fumbled for my wallet, grabbed the bags, and ran back to the car.
The weekend had been an illusion. Nothing had changed. I was still a featured player in a freak show. There was nothing I could do to keep back the tears.
Chris, who was about to pull out of the lot, caught me in a sidelong glance and said, “Hey, what’s up with you?”
Last he knew, we were having a pretty good time.
“I can’t face it,” I whispered, tears now streaming freely down my cheeks. “I want it all to be over.”
“Yeah, me too,” Chris said quietly. “But look at the bright side. People all over the world are naming their baby girls Marcia. Marcia, Marcia, Marcia. They’ll probably come out with Marcia dolls. They’ll argue with everyone and accuse them of wearing gloves in size small.”
A few seconds into this riff I was doubled over with laughter and coming back with my own ideas for a Chris doll. It would say “Mmm, ummm, hummm” after everything and get held in contempt.
We laughed the rest of the way home. Once again, Chris had snatched me back from the brink of despair.
There’s been a lot of speculation about whether Chris and I were lovers. And if there’s any one of you out there with lingering curiosity on this point, I’m truly sorry. The question is irrelevant. Fact of the matter is, Chris Darden and I were closer than lovers. And unless you’ve been through what we went through, you can’t possibly know what that means.
The Big Picture
CAR TAPE. April 18. I haven’t been talking much because my life is so painful I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to pretend it’s not there. Everything seems like it’s getting a lot crazier on my personal front… Thank God… I can sit down and let others stand up and talk to the witnesses. The problem is that I still have to be there to prompt and give ideas and kind of guide things. So I’ve never really got my hand out of it. It would sure be nice to get out of court for a week or so and just kind of chill out. But I can see now that’s probably never gonna happen. I’ve got to be there. I have the big picture… me and Chris are really the only ones who do.
By early April, we’d penetrated to the very heart of our case. The physical evidence.
Now, normally I love that stuff, and if I’d had my way-plus eight spare months to prepare-I would have handled it all myself. But here, that simply wasn’t possible. I’d had to delegate. So I kept the hair and trace evidence for myself, and gave the glove, which was a pretty straightforward assignment, to Chris. Then I’d divided the remainder of the science witnesses among Rockne Harmon, Woody Clarke, Brian Kelberg, and Hank Goldberg. Rock and Woody got DNA. Brian, the coroner. Hank caught the criminalists, including Dennis Fung.
Talk about drawing the short straw. What was it with that guy Fung?
Dennis’s scattered performance before the grand jury boded ill, but I had no idea how bad things really were until a few days after the preliminary hearings. Back in August I was holed up in my office, poring over the photos of Rockingham. I spend a lot of time looking at police photos. Every time you return to them, you see something else. Kind of an Antonioni thing.
I was studying a picture of Dennis crouched near the laundry hamper in Simpson’s master bathroom. He was holding something dark in his hand. I looked closer. Could it be? It had to be. Jesus! It was the dark sweatshirt Kato had described Simpson wearing when they drove to McDonald’s! Why hadn’t anyone told me about this? Those sweats had to be tested for blood immediately. Unless, of course, they were never seized.
Please, God.
Tom Lange was in the War Room with Patti Jo. I sent for him and handed him the photo.
“Look at this carefully and tell me what you see in the hamper.”
“Dark sweats,” he replied. He looked like he might have to sit down.
“Is it possible they were taken and Fung forgot to write it up? Maybe there was one brown bag that had been overlooked in the booking process.
“I know there was nothing seized that wasn’t booked,” he said with grim finality.
“I want to see Fung right fucking now,” I snapped. Tom got him over in just one phone call.
Dennis strolled in wearing jeans, sneakers, and a windbreaker.
“Do have a seat,” I told him.
I like to get my bad news as soon as possible.
“Do you remember going through Simpson’s hamper when you were at Rockingham on June thirteenth?”
“I think so,” Dennis replied in his usual fog of distraction.
I handed him the eight-by-ten.
“Tell me if you collected the clothing you’re holding in that picture.”
“I know I didn’t book any clothing out of the bathroom,” he replied. “Why?” But I could see awareness dawning.
“You must have known that clothing in the hamper was likely to have been worn recently by the defendant. In a knife killing there’s bound to be some trace evidence, if not the blood of the victims. So why didn’t you take the sweats?”
I was pissed off. But I was also truly curious.
“Well, I looked to see if there was blood on them. I figured if they’d been used in the murder the blood would be big and obvious. I didn’t see any, so I put them back.” He shrugged dejectedly.
“But if the killer stood behind his victims,” I pressed, “he might get only a fine spray on him, if that. You can’t see a fine spray of blood on black clothing. Not in normal light.”
You shouldn’t have to tell a criminalist this.
Dennis passed his hand over his face and stared at the ground. He’d screwed up big-time. What could I say? There was no use belaboring the point or making Dennis feel any worse. The damage was done.
The hard, ugly fact was that Fung’s oversights would hobble us at every turn.
On his first pass at Bundy on June 13, Fung hadn’t picked up the bloodstains on the rear gate. This, after Tom Lange had specifically instructed him to do so. Fung’s property reports from that date show that he’d collected a stain from the rear driveway, then gone up front to collect a stain from the front gate, then returned to the rear driveway to collect another stain. The guy was painfully disorganized. He didn’t get around to picking up the stains from the rear gate until three weeks later.
Same with the Bronco. For reasons known only to Fung, he’d taken only a “representative sample” of the blood smears from inside the vehicle on June 14, which meant he hadn’t collected all of the blood on the console. That blood would be a devastating blow to the defense: DNA results from that stain showed Ron Goldman’s blood mixed with that of the defendant. There could be no innocent explanation for this except the truth: that Simpson had tracked the blood of his victims into the Bronco.
During a re-exam of the Bronco on September 1 we ended up collecting a considerable amount of blood that Dennis left behind on the first sweep. (Ironically, that re-exam was done at the request of the defense. Had it not been for their demand to see the Bronco, Ron Goldman’s blood might never have been found.)
Both of Fung’s oversights-the rear gate and the Bronco console-left us vulnerable. They gave the defense an opening to argue that blood on both the console and the rear gate had been “planted,” presumably using blood drawn from Simpson the day he was questioned by police. Both of these charges were easily refuted. We had in our possession police photos taken of the Bronco on both the morning of June 14 and again on September 1. They showed stains on the console in exactly the same places. Ron Goldman’s blood had been there during the first sweep; but because of Fung, it had been left behind.