Bill Pavelic | William Bill Pavelic | Zvonko Bill Pavelic

Daily News (New York)

March 4, 1995, Saturday

BYLINE: By MICHELLE CARUSO in Los Angeles and LAURIE C. MERRILL in New York

Prosecutors in the O.J. Simpson case wrapped up their blistering cross-examination of Rosa Lopez yesterday leaving the credibility of the star alibi witness in tatters.
Even defense attorney Robert Shapiro conceded that there were problems with the testimony of the former maid of Simpson’s Brentwood, Calif., neighbors.
“To date she has been very consistent on some issues, and on some others she has clearly been inconsistent,” he said.
Yesterday afternoon, defense attorney Johnnie Cochran tried to salvage some of the damage wrought by prosecutor Chris Darden, asking Lopez if he ever coached her or gave her hand signals which she denied.
Lopez, who says she saw Simpson’s Bronco parked outside his mansion around the time prosecutors charge he was murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, also denied trying to sell her story to the National En-qurier, The Globe or the Star.
In response to Cochran’s question, Lopez said she was not offered money by a lawyer or Simpson’s assistant.
But in earlier cross-examination, Darden asked about a taped interview in which another maid, Sylvia Guerra, said that Lopez was offered $ 5,000 to tes-tify on Simpson’s behalf.
“You’ve heard the tape of Sylvia’s interview with detectives in which she says you told her the lawyers were going to give you $ 5,000 for testifying, and that she could also get $ 5,000. . . . Is Sylvia lying?” Darden asked.
“One hundred per cent,” Lopez said.
“And you’re telling the truth?” Darden said.
“One hundred per cent,” Lopez said.
Darden also grilled Lopez on whether she had the proper vantage point to see the Bronco when she was out walking a dog. He suggested the only place in the neighbor’s yard to see where the Bronco was parked was a patch of ivy in the front.
“Have you ever told any one you believe there are snakes and rats in that ivy and you wouldn’t want to go in there?” Darden asked.
“At night, sir, in the back, yes sir, because it was very ugly . . . I never said that about the front,” Lopez responded.
Darden also sought to prove that Lopez had been led on in her interview with Simpson gumshoe Zvonko (Bill) Pavelic.
On the tape played yesterday, Lopez said at first she “took the dog [out for a walk] at 10.” There is a pregnant pause while papers are shuffled, then Lopez says, “I took the dog at 10:20 . . . I took the dog at 10:15.”
Lopez also gave different dates of birth a difference of seven years on her driver’s license and on her application for unemployment insurance, according to a court transcript released yesterday.

ABC NEWS

March 2, 1995

HIGHLIGHT: The balanced budget amendment failed to pass in the Senate by a mar-gin of one vote.

GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL: On this vote, the yeas are 65; the nays are 35.
 
PETER JENNINGS, ABC News: [voice-over] For want of a single vote, the balanced budget amendment has not passed in the Senate; the exhibition baseball season begins for want of a crowd; and murder in Moscow - when a leading journalist is assassinated, the whole country is forced to pay attention.
 
ANNOUNCER: From ABC, this is World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.
 
PETER JENNINGS: Good evening.  We begin on Capitol Hill tonight with politics, posturing and the balanced budget amendment.  Try as they might, the Republicans failed to swing over that one last vote today and the proposed constitutional amendment to balance the federal budget was defeated.  The Democrats proclaimed they had successfully protected the Social Security system from being raided; the Republicans said it was the American people who have lost.  It was, in short, a banner day for rhetoric.
 
In Washington, ABC’s John Cochran.
 
JOHN COCHRAN, ABC News: [voice-over] Militant to the end, freshman Republicans who said they came to Washington to cut government spending, staged an 11th hour photo op, warning Democrats to vote for the balanced budget amendment or else.
 
Rep. JOE SCARBOROUGH, (R), Florida: They need to get with the program or else they’re going to learn the hard way the lessons that their colleagues learned in the revolution of 1994 - Get on board or go back home.
 
Sen. FRED THOMPSON, (R), Tennessee: I hope they take their furniture and their belongings and their Rolodexes with them, because they’re not coming back.
 
JOHN COCHRAN: [voice-over] But senior citizens against the amendment staged a counter-photo op, complete with a birthday cake marking the 60th anniversary of Social Security and a warning that balancing the budget could lead to sharp cuts in Social Security benefits.
 
ARTHUR FLEMING, Save Our Social Security Coalition: We want Congress to cele-brate Social Security, not raid it.
 
JOHN COCHRAN: [voice-over] As the showdown finally arrived, everyone knew that with only 14 Democrats voting for the amendment, it would pass only if every Re-publican voted yes.  But one - Hatfield of Oregon - stood alone.
 
SENATOR: Mr. Hatfield - no.
 
JOHN COCHRAN: [voice-over] Even as the amendment was going down to defeat, Re-publicans were handing out old campaign commercials of Democrats who had prom-ised to vote for a balanced budget amendment.
 
ANNOUNCER: [Republican National Committee] Remember this Tom Daschle TV ad?  When he wanted our vote, he promised us he supported-
 
ANNOUNCER: [Daschle campaign commercial] The constitutional amendment to balance the budget.
 
JOHN COCHRAN: [voice-over] Daschle says he changed his mind because he believes the new Republican-controlled Congress would go after Social Security funds.  But it wasn’t Social Security that Republican presidential candidates were going after today, it was Bill Clinton.
 
Sen. BOB DOLE, Majority Leader: He has abdicated his responsibility on reducing the deficit.  And now he’s taken on 80 percent of the American people who want a balanced budget amendment.
 
Sen. PHIL GRAMM, (R), Texas: One way or another, we are not going to let Bill Clinton and the Democrats continue this spending spree.
 
JOHN COCHRAN: [voice-over] The President’s response had a little something for both conservatives and liberals.
 
Pres. BILL CLINTON: I believe we can reduce the deficit without compromising our commitment to education and to our children and without undermining our commit-ment to our seniors and Social Security and basic Medicare needs.
 
JOHN COCHRAN: So now the real fight begins - the fight not over an amendment that wouldn’t even take effect for several years, but over how deeply government programs should be cut this year.
 
John Cochran, ABC News, Capitol Hill.
 
PETER JENNINGS: One thing you can be sure of, the issue of Social Security and whether the benefits for future generations are in jeopardy is not going to go away.  And the rhetoric and the reality are sometimes quite different.
 
[voice-over] There is not, as popular imagination has it, some special Social Security bank account accumulating cash as the taxpayer contributes.  It is all part of the general government account from which the government borrows regu-larly to pay down the budget deficit.  The so-called surplus that’s been build-ing in Social Security for the last 10 years is nothing more than government IOU’s - pieces of paper.  Without the Social Security allocation, politicians would have to make even tougher decisions to balance the federal budget.  And very few want to do that.
 
[on camera] Let’s stay in Washington for a moment.  Today, religion, protection and tax dollars were making news.  Over the past few years, many followers of Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam have gone into the security business.  They’ve been patrolling some of the country’s most dangerous public housing projects.  They have government contracts in six cities.  Today, members of Congress held a hearing about how those firms operate.
 
Here’s ABC’s Michele Norris.
 
MICHELE NORRIS, ABC News: [voice-over] The question is whether the Nation of Is-lam, with its all-black Muslim-led security patrols, discriminates or promotes religious bigotry.
 
Rep. PETER KING, (R), New York: It was Louis Farrakhan who denounced Jewry as a gutter religion; who said that Hitler was a very great man; who said he would grind Jews and break them into little bits; and who denounced the Pope as a ‘no good cracker.’
 
MICHELE NORRIS: [voice-over] But Nation of Islam leaders maintained that they were being singled out and that the hearing smacked of religious McCarthyism.
 
LEONARD FARRAKHAN MUHAMMAD, New Life Self Development Co.: The focus should not be on what you have spent on so-called Muslim affiliated security companies.  Where is the focus on the money that we’ve saved you and the lives that we’ve saved?  Does anybody care about that, Mr. Chairman?
 
MICHELE NORRIS: [voice-over] The group also said a federal review found no evi-dence of discrimination.
 
HENRY CISNEROS, Secretary, Housing and Urban Development: In fact, we’ve con-ducted over 1,000 interviews of residents and management and they illustrate that these security guards have been effective.
 
MICHELE NORRIS: [voice-over] So effective that in one case - the Flag House com-plex in Baltimore - security patrols are credited with reducing crime by almost 50 percent, even though they do not carry guns.
 
[on camera] Residents here say the Nation of Islam patrols have helped transform this housing project.  The sound of gunfire, which was once so common, is now rare.  And children are once again allowed to play outdoors.
 
DOROTHY SCOTT, President, Flag House Tenants Association: We do not want NOI taken from us because it’s the best security we’ve ever had.
 
MICHELE NORRIS: [voice-over] But even statements like that don’t satisfy some members of Congress, who are calling for a review by the Justice Department.
 
Michele Norris, ABC News, Baltimore.
 
PETER JENNINGS: In a moment, we’ll have some of the day’s other news.
 
[voice-over] At the O.J. Simpson trial, the prosecution has a chance to examine a key defense witness; a tale of two shelters - the debate over compassion and cost; and why the record of the year is music to the ear of a professor of lit-erature in Vermont.
 
[Commercial break]
 
PETER JENNINGS: At the O.J. Simpson trial today, it was the prosecution’s turn to question the woman who the defense says may provide Simpson with an alibi for the time of the murder.  The jury was not in court, but the testimony of Rosa Lopez was recorded on videotape for possible playback later in the trial.
 
Here’s ABC’s Bill Redeker.
 
BILL REDEKER, ABC News: [voice-over] Once again prosecutors caught Rosa Lopez in a series of contradictions.  Although she previously testified that she saw Simpson’s Ford Bronco parked outside his house at the time of the murders, today she said she wasn’t so sure.
 
CHRISTOPHER DARDEN, Deputy District Attorney: Do you have a hard time remember-ing times?
 
ROSA LOPEZ: [through interpreter] If I don’t have it written down, how can I re-member?
 
BILL REDEKER: [voice-over] Lopez admitted that the first time she told her story to defense investigator Bill Pavelic, who recorded it, she did not mention ex-actly when she saw the vehicle.  In her second interview with the investigator, she seemed to agree that Pavelic fed her the answers.
 
CHRISTOPHER DARDEN: Did Mr. Pavelic tell you that you saw the Bronco at 10:15 or 10:20?
 
ROSA LOPEZ: [through interpreter] All I said was that it was after 10:00.
 
BILL REDEKER: [voice-over] Lopez said she couldn’t recall the time, date or even the season in which she talked with Pavelic.
 
In another development, new information today surrounding the 911 call Nicole Simpson made in October of 1993.
 
NICOLE BROWN SIMPSON: [October 25, 1993] Well, my ex-husband, or my husband, just broke into my house and he’s ranting and raving.  Now he’s just walked out into the front yard.
 
BILL REDEKER: ABC News has obtained a transcript of a secret tape recording made by Officer Craig Lalley following that call, when he responded to Nicole Simp-son’s house.
 
[voice-over] In the early morning hours of October 25th, Lally and his partner first interviewed Nicole and then O.J. Simpson.  The interviews may be used by both the prosecution and the defense.
 
Nicole - ‘I just got frightened tonight when he gets this crazed.  He gets a very animalistic look in him.  All his veins pop out.  His eyes are black and just black - I mean cold, like an animal.  I mean, very, very weird.  And when I see it, it just scares me.’
 
Police then asked O.J. Simpson about scaring his ex-wife.
 
Simpson - ‘Even before we split, she beat me on so many times and all I did was cover my groins and my face and let her beat on me.  We had a fight on New Year’s when she started a fight six years ago.’
 
Simpson’s explanation about what happened during the 1989 spouse abuse case may explain why prosecutors have not called Officer Lally to testify.  Eventually, O.J. Simpson agrees to leave, but not before Nicole Simpson tells police, ‘I think he wouldn’t hit me again because he had to do community service.  I think if it happened once more, it would be the last time.’
 
Bill Redeker, ABC News, Los Angeles.
 
PETER JENNINGS: In Moscow, a murder that has moved the nation.  Everybody in Russia who has a television set knows Vladislav Listyev.  Last night he was shot to death.  It seems to have been another hit by organized crime.  The Russians are certainly paying close attention, and that includes the President, Boris Yeltsin.
 
Here’s ABC’s Gillian Findlay.
 
GILLIAN FINDLAY, ABC News: [voice-over] He was one of Russia’s most popular TV personalities - a bit of Phil Donahue, a bit of Larry King.  His murder last night, apparently by hit men, sent an entire nation into mourning.
 
At Vladislav Listyev’s home today, hundreds gathered to share their grief.  At the TV center where he worked, there were hundreds more.  And on TV, all four Russian channels suspended regular programming for 12 hours to pay tribute.
 
Even Boris Yeltsin was visibly shaken.  To a meeting of Listyev’s co-workers, he conceded the war on crime was being lost and said he would fire Moscow’s chief of police and head prosecutor.
 
BORIS YELTSIN, President of Russia: [through interpreter] I bow my head as one of the leaders guilty of failing to ensure proper measures against banditry, corruption, bribery and crime.
 
GILLIAN FINDLAY: [voice-over] Listyev’s death seems to have little to do with his journalism.  Two months ago, the TV anchor was appointed to head Russia’s newly privatized TV network.  In doing so, he vowed to crack down on corruption, saying the tradition of kickbacks for advertising would end.  It may have cost him his life.
 
Tonight, in a broadcast reminiscent of Listyev’s own programs, many of Russia’s top journalists and politicians gathered to condemn the wave of corruption they say Boris Yeltsin is allowing to strangle their nation.
 
ARTYOM BOROVIK, Journalist: [through interpreter] I hope the president is lis-tening to us.  He must answer to what’s happening in this country.
 
GILLIAN FINDLAY: [voice-over] Russia’s crime wave has claimed many victims, but none so well known as Vladislav Listyev.
 
[on camera] While many Russians still doubt their government’s commitment to prosecuting such crimes, there is some hope that Listyev’s popularity will in fact pressure Yeltsin into finally living up to his promise and dealing with or-ganized crime.
 
Gillian Findlay, ABC News, Moscow.
 
PETER JENNINGS: Still overseas, the most dominant figure in Italian politics since World War II has been indicted.  Giulio Andreotti is charged with having consorted with the Mafia during his seven terms as the Italian premier.  Prose-cutors say that the Mafia delivered votes for his party; in exchange, he deliv-ered lucrative government contracts to companies the Mafia ran.  Mr. Andreotti denies it.  The trial is set for September.
 
[voice-over] In Germany, police have captured the international bond trader who broke a British bank.  The story when we come back.
 
[Commercial break]
 
PETER JENNINGS: The international search for the young man who helped bring down the oldest British investment bank is over.  Nicholas Leeson is in the custody of German police.  Leeson lost more than $1 billion of the company’s money in risky trades from his base in Singapore.  And then he ran.
 
Here’s ABC’s Garrick Utley.
 
GARRICK UTLEY, ABC News: [voice-over] Nicholas Leeson surfaced in Frankfurt af-ter a 19-hour overnight flight from Asia, economy class.  He and his wife trav-eled under their own names and said they were on their way to London, the head-quarters of Barings Bank.
 
Tonight, Leeson is being held in this detention center.  Tomorrow, he faces a hearing on Singapore’s request to German authorities for his extradition for fraud and forgery.  His wife has been released.
 
For a week, the couple has been on the run.  Fleeing Singapore, they went first to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where they spent one night in a hotel.  Then they moved on to Kota Kinabalu on the island of Borneo, where they stayed in a luxury resort while Leeson presumably thought about what to do next.
 
Yesterday, after flying to Brunei, they continued on to Europe aboard this plane.  They paid $2,055 each, cash.  Why was Leeson heading back to Europe?
 
FENTON BRESLER, Attorney: It’s just my conjecture, in order to face our people in London within the organization or outside the organization who could help him to prove his innocence.
 
GARRICK UTLEY: [voice-over] And if not his innocence, perhaps that the manage-ment of Barings shared responsibility.  Last month, an internal report said that financial controls in the Singapore office were lax, but that was not corrected.  And in the past month, the bank sent hundreds of millions of dollars to Singa-pore to cover Leeson’s losing financial bets.
 
[on camera] No small depositors lost in this bank failure.  Other banks and big investors put their money in Barings, including the Royal Family.  It’s esti-mated that Queen Elizabeth may lose up to $800,000.
 
Garrick Utley, ABC News, London.
 
PETER JENNINGS: It has not been a good day at the baseball talks in Scottsdale, Arizona, for the past couple of days.  Reports coming out of the talks between owners and players had been guardedly optimistic, but today the owner of the Colorado Rockies- Colorado Rockies, said things are bogged down again and talks may even break off completely.
 
Meanwhile, eight more teams began their spring training games today with nary a familiar face in sight.  Here’s ABC’s Mark Potter.
 
MARK POTTER, ABC News: [voice-over] For just a moment at the New York Yankee stadium in Ft. Lauderdale, it actually looked and sounded like the traditional start of major league spring exhibition baseball.  But the Yankee lineup today revealed only one player with major league experience - pitcher Frank Eufemia, who left the majors 10 years ago.  Most are career or former minor leaguers.  So far, fans are not flocking to see them.
 
[on camera] Last year’s spring game opener here in Ft. Lauderdale between the Yankees and the Mets drew nearly 7,000 fans.  Today, fewer than 700 showed up by the start of the game.
 
[voice-over] Attendance at the Minnesota-Pittsburgh game in Bradenton, was also down by more than half from last year.
 
BASEBALL FAN: You don’t have the same caliber of people out there, but I love the game so I’m here.
 
MARK POTTER: [voice-over] Because of the strike, spring training fans will see an odd mix of aging former stars like 48-year-old Pedro Borbon, who rejoined the Cincinnati Reds after a 15-year absence, and newcomers like Steven Spurgeon, who was a singer until he joined the Minnesota Twins.
 
STEVEN SPURGEN: This is a gift from God to be here and play professional base-ball.  If there’s something difficult about being here, then I haven’t found it yet.
 
MARK POTTER: [voice-over] But there are difficulties.  The Players’ union met with minor leaguers this week and strongly argued that playing spring training games is strike breaking.  Nearly 40 minor leaguers have left spring training camps run by Montreal, Texas and the New York Yankees recently, aware that some-day they could be major leaguers covered by the union.
 
BOBBY MacDONALD, Yankee Minor League Player: I’ve got to stand behind the union and what they say to do.  And what they say to do is for me not to play in these exhibition games.
 
MARK POTTER: [voice-over] Which is why it could be a very long month before the start of the regular season in April.
 
Mark Potter, ABC News, Ft. Lauderdale.
 
PETER JENNINGS: A note about health.  Federal health officials said today that anyone with an active case of tuberculosis should not be allowed on commercial airlines.  They have confirmed the first cases of tuberculosis transmitted from one passenger to another last year.  It had nothing to do with the plane’s ven-tilation system; the passenger with TB was coughing and spread the bacteria to four other passengers nearby.
 
On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrials lost more than 14 points today to close at 3,979.  On the NASDAQ market, stocks gained nearly 2 points.
 
Back in just a moment.
 
[Commercial break]
 
PETER JENNINGS: [voice-over] In Washington today, at a Senate hearing on aging, the politicians heard from one of the country’s dedicated workers in the field of treating alcoholics and drug abusers.  Bob Cote, from an organization called Step 13 in Denver, told the committee that government help only helps the ad-dicted stay addicted.
 
BOB COTE: I don’t think taxpayers should be subsidizing addiction.  It’s misdi-rected funding.  It should go to those that really need the hand up.
 
PETER JENNINGS: We have reported on Mr. Cote’s widely admired program in the past.  But we were also reminded today of how the rhetoric of debate in Washing-ton these days is something not always supported by the research.  The other day, the Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich was comparing Step 13 to a govern-ment facility in Denver.  And we asked our Denver correspondent Tom Foreman to follow up.
 
TOM FOREMAN, ABC News: [voice-over] Step 13 is a widely-praised treatment pro-gram for hardcore alcoholics and drug abusers.  Private donors and the people who come here pay for the program - $320,000 a year.
 
Last week, in a speech, House Speaker Newt Gingrich praised Step 13 and compared it to the cost of a federally-funded facility in Denver.
 
Rep. NEWT GINGRICH, Speaker of the House: Would you like to guess what it costs?  A million?  Two million?  $8.8 million.  Guess which one saves more people?  The first one - 25 times as much money to ruin lives.
 
TOM FOREMAN: [voice-over] Gingrich was talking about Denver Cares.  And his of-fice admitted today he was wrong.
 
The budget for this 100-bed facility is not over $8 million, it is $3.2 million.  Only a third is federal money; the rest comes from local taxpayers.  But offi-cials at Denver Cares say he also missed the mark by even comparing two places with radically different missions.
 
RICHARD BERRY, Director, Denver Cares: Anyone that is a public inebriate really is a candidate for a stay here at Denver Cares.
 
TOM FOREMAN: [voice-over] Administrators say Denver Cares is a safety net, a last resort for addicts in deep trouble who might otherwise sleep, even die, on the streets.  And by law, all must be taken in.  Unlike Step 13, where people must assume personal responsibility and try to get better, many at Denver Cares are beyond improving or may not care.  Watching their medical condition is ex-pensive - $200 per bed, per night.  But without Denver Cares, many would wind up in nearby hospital beds, where the average cost is $800.
 
Dr. EDMUND CASPER, Denver Health and Hospitals: You either pay for it now or pay for it later.
 
TOM FOREMAN: And you think if you pay for it later-
 
Dr. EDMUND CASPER: It’s much more costly.
 
TOM FOREMAN: [voice-over] Denver Cares’ $3 million budget may deserve scrutiny.  Reformers may admire Step 13’s get-tough approach, but officials here say this time in the quest for reform, Washington got it wrong.
 
Tom Foreman, ABC News, Denver.
 
PETER JENNINGS: When we come back, the poet behind the song.
 
[Commercial break]
 
PETER JENNINGS: Finally from us this evening, the record of the year and the professor.  At the Grammy Awards last night, the record of the year was All I Want to Do by Sheryl Crow.  It was a popular victory, gratifying to lots of peo-ple, but none more so than a professor in Marlboro, Vermont.
 
Here’s ABC’s Beth Nissen.
 
BETH NISSEN, ABC News: [voice-over] Millions have found themselves singing the catchy chorus and listening to the offbeat lyrics.
 
SHERYL CROW: [singing] All I want to do is have a little fun before I die said the man next to me, out of nowhere.
 
BETH NISSEN: [voice-over] Sheryl Crow’s hit song is a frothy observation of life by beer buddies in an L.A. bar.  The slack, sly lyrics are based on a poem writ-ten by a professor of literature in rural Vermont.
 
Prof. WYN COOPER: The poem never really went anywhere.  I tried sending it to magazines; nobody wanted to publish it.
 
BETH NISSEN: [voice-over] So Professor Wyn Cooper published his own poetry col-lection.  Somehow, one of the 500 copies made its way to Sheryl Crow, who adapted Cooper’s poem Fun.
 
SHERYL CROW: [singing] I like a good beer buzz early in the morning.  Billy likes to peel the labels off his bottles of Bud.
 
BETH NISSEN: [voice-over] Cooper says he hopes the success of the song will in-spire other singers to use the work of poets; that poetry wil find it’s way into popular culture, measure by measure.
 
Prof. WYN COOPER: I think that there are a lot of good poets in this country right now writing very good poems and they have literally no audience.
 
BETH NISSEN: [voice-over] Cooper’s five-stanza poem has reached an epic audi-ence.  The song has sold more than one million copies.  Royalties have already earned the professor twice his $25,000 teaching salary.  But he says he intends to keep teaching and keeping writing verses until the end.
 
Beth Nissen, ABC News, New York.
 
PETER JENNINGS: That’s our report on World News Tonight.  Later this evening on Day One, searching for the endangered mountain gorillas in Rwanda.
 
I’m Peter Jennings.  Good night.
 
The preceding text has been professionally transcribed.  However, although the text has been checked against an audio track, in order to meet rigid distri-bution and transmission deadlines, it has not yet been proofread against video-tape.

“Guilty of Incompetence” is a hard hitting book, that will expose the facts instead of fiction, and take you behind the scenes to see how LAPD and LADA helped create the OJ Simpson “race card”, covered up the existence of suspect “Charlie”, mismanaged the investigation and botched the “Trial of the Century”.

Daily Oklahoman (Oklahoma City, OK)

January 5, 1997, Sunday CITY EDITION

Another Wave of O.J. Simpson Books Floods Book-stores

BYLINE: Ann DeFrange

SECTION: TRAVEL & ENTERTAINMENT; Pg. 4

The second surge of books following the O.J. Simpson murder trial includes four authors who have their own theories of Simpson’s guilt or innocence and variations on the phrase “They Framed a Guilty Man.”
Some parts are already outdated in the midst of the civil trial, but they won’t be the last Simpson books or the last word on the subject.
AMERICAN TRAGEDY: The Uncensored Story of the Simpson Defense by Lawrence Schiller and James Willwerth. Random House, $ 27.50.
Schiller’s credentials are among the most impressive of this group of Simpson reporters. A magazine writer, he collaborated with Norman Mailer on the Gary Gilmore and Lee Harvey Oswald books. But Schiller also assisted O.J. with the book he wrote from jail, and
collaborated with the defense on other projects. Schiller includes himself in the book in the third person.
Therefore, other writers have found a tainted note in his Nonetheless, this is a staggering achievement in research.
Furthermore, the readable narrative flows like a gripping novel.
Schiller has the inside stories and the drama behind the public scenes - yes, there were incidents that weren’t instantly publicized.
Told strictly from the view of the defense attorneys - the Dream Team - it unfolds day by day. Fascinating individuals, these lawyers were an amazing team.
Robert Shapiro started out as lead attorney and put the team together. But while the staff scrambled to build a defense, Shapiro autographed pictures to mail to fans and attended Hollywood parties. The other attorneys viewed him as rude to themselves, and
worst of all, Shapiro openly stated he didn’t believe in O.J.’s innocence. He pushed for a plea, kept proposing possible motive and modus operandus.
Unity on the team was elusive. There was jealousy, competition, power struggles even over who sat next to O.J. at the defense table, who got to address the jury and who was getting paid more.
They all held their own press conferences. They accused each other of leaking information.
Petty spats and professional standards drove the team to urge Cochran to take charge and encourage O.J. to fire Shapiro.
Bailey was the brilliant planner and, on good days, a masterful interrogator. On bad days, he drank.
Barry Scheck figured it all out, pulled it all together, explained the scientific evidence for the jury and the team - what was missing, what might have been tampered with, what was
mishandled by investigators.
Carl Douglas, says Schiller, was caught in a race situation and was used as a scapegoat for the famous lawyers.
Investigator Bill Pavelic suspected corruption among the police investigators and brought in the proof.
Robert Kardashian, who contributed much to Schiller’s interviews, describes Simpson’s suicide tendencies just before the Bronco ride and confirms the story that before the jury visited Rockingham, photos of white females were removed from Simpson’s bedroom and photocopies of black relatives and a Norman Rockwell were print put up.
His job was primarily to be O.J.’s friend. He took the most shifts sitting in the jail cell pampering the client, listening and consoling while O.J. made demands and raged and sobbed about his relationship with Nicole. Finally, a law firm staff member was assigned to this duty.
Schiller does an excellent job at following the stress as it built and the strategy as it worked.
THE RUN OF HIS LIFE: The People vs. O.J. Simpson by Jeffrey Toobin. Random House, $ 25.
Toobin covered the trial for The New Yorker magazine, and the tone of this book is a typical New Yorker style. As characters are introduced, Toobin contributes biographical and personality profiles; with the running narrative of the hearings are background and analysis of issues and environment.
His book is well written and good reading.
But Toobin strays far from the journalistic standards of objectivity. He firmly believes Simpson is guilty, and frequently notes as much. And EVERYONE connected with the case on either side, he points out, was a sleazebag.
The defense attorneys believed, from beginning to the end, that their client was a murderer, Toobin says. Thus: the “race card.”
They designed it and exploited it. They originated the conspiracy theory of planted evidence and framing, and the perception that Simpson himself was a victim.
Toobin contends that much of the trial, on both sides, was staged for “high drama.” But he agrees that the prosecution “botched” the case by merit of arrogance, ineptitude and being “drunk on virtue.”
He says that officials, from officers who investigated the crime to Judge Ito, were starstruck by celebrities, a condition which gave O.J. an advantage in the investigation and trial.
He does not agree with the common belief that O.J. contributed to the defense strategy, insisting O.J. isn’t intelligent enough for that. “Simpson’s attorneys manufactured this idea primarily as a gift to their client and as a way of remaining in his good graces.”
Most of his characterizations are negative.
He describes clever Shapiro out of his league in a homicide case, brilliant Cochran who understood the racial implications, wily Bailey who became a dangerous loose cannon, Shapiro besotted with the glamorous fame but torn about the role assigned him on the
team. The Bailey-Shapiro feud, he gathers, was waged between equally self-centered and self-promoting personalities. He rates Barry Scheck the best defense lawyer; Scheck constructed the plan of “undermining the integrity and competence of the LAPD,” of
convincing the jury “that the mountain of forensic evidence against his client means nothing.”
Marcia Clark dismissed a jury consultant, believing a jury of black women would relate to her and the domestic violence issue; in fact, they were hostile. A defense jury consultant correctly concluded black women would be O.J.’s best chance for acquittal.
He labels Christopher Darden impetuous and immature … sulking because he couldn’t compete with his idol, veteran Johnnie Ito, he says, “… conducted oral argument, as a sort of group therapy through collective stream of consciousness ….” He constantly delayed the trial and let the jury sit idly in hotel rooms because “in moments of stress for the judge, he simply He writes: “But in responding to the entreaties of their client - and to the needs of their own vanity - the defense lawyers forgot something very important: that their client was guilty. … And yet, incredibly, the prosecution’s arrogance and clumsiness during the course of the defense case managed even here to trump the folly of O.J. Simpson’s lawyers.”
Toobin believes the sheer volume of evidence against Simpson overwhelmed the “exhausted” jury, but he recaps the evidence to show a conspiracy was highly unlikely.
Toobin is a player in his own book, too; and his ego shines as big as those he criticizes. He claims his New Yorker articles had an influence on the proceedings, and he takes several digs at another author. His unflattering description of Lawrence Schiller’s physical appearance is petty. His conclusions on Schiller’s insider status with the defense is labeled as unethical and slimy.
A PROBLEM OF EVIDENCE: How the Prosecution Freed O.J. Simpson Joseph Bosco. Morrow, $ 24.
Four book authors had permanent, daily seats in the courtroom: Joe McGinnis, Dominick Dunne, Toobin and Bosco. They enjoyed a special status and formed a clique; some of their activities are described here.
Bosco may have been one of the more professional reporters in attendance. From his book, it is evident he listened, he hung around the fringes and the back doors, he interviewed the principals and he managed to cut through the complicated His personal opinions are significant in his account, but they appear to derive from observation rather than prejudice.
Bosco approaches some of the controversial questions and handles them with logic. On Kardashian and the luggage, he asks why a murderer would bring his bloody clothes back home? He notes it is unlikely Simpson could have committed the crime by himself, according to the evidence presented, and certainly without substantial injuries to his own person.
Investigator Pat McKenna, whom Bosco interviewed extensively, presents the case for two  assailants. McKenna also works out a scenario that has Mark Fuhrman planting evidence.”Interesting, isn’t it, that Detective Mark Fuhrman appears all over the latter years of the obviously sick relationship between O.J. and Nicole: two other narcissistic, totally self-absorbed, promiscuous, manipulative liars and emotional cheats who perpetually chose to live life in the passing lane of a two-lane highway. This was a bloody no accident’ waiting to happen.”
A veteran crime reporter, Bosco claims that Judge Ito stifled the media and First Amendment rights of the public to know what was going on in that courtroom. At the same time, Ito reveled in media attention to himself.
Ito was a law and order man, he labels him - married to a cop and prone to practice his cowboy quick draw with a loaded revolver in his office.
Bosco disdainfully makes much of Marcia Clark’s flirting, preening and giggling in the courtroom - even during delicate autopsy exhibits.
He says Clark was leaderless during the proceedings; her communication with her boss Gil Garcetti was through Garcetti’s press officer and also girlfriend. Garcetti viewed the case as a public relations problem, Bosco says.
In strong language, he names Mark Fuhrman “evil incarnate” and the controversial comparison with Hitler appropriate - both started out as “a thug in a uniform with a handful of nasty friends.”
He knocks a fellow writer, too - Vincent Bugliosi, who didn’t attend the trial but covered it for “Hard Copy.”
He introduces some characters not so familiar - a music promoter and a Mezzaluna waiter, friends of Nicole and Ron who were also murdered.
But he doubts the conspiracy theory as “… uncanny coincidences surrounding the Simpson case - of which the public knows very little - that when placed together have at least that tantalizing, beckoning aroma of CONSPIRACY irresistible to those so inclined.”
Bosco relates the difficulty the prosecution had in securing a coroner to testify on the stand; they were loath to “try to tidy up such shoddy work.” And he debunks some sympathy for the Brown family, who continued, into the trial, to live on Simpson’s
voluntary largesse.
He closes his book with a lapse in his objectivity. He comments that a criminal may have gotten away with a crime, but the more serious result was that an inept justice system let that happen.
The blame goes to Marcia Clark, the one responsible for the prosecution lying and cheating and, “in the zeal to win at any cost abused almost all of the tenets that are the fabric of their sworn oaths as advocates for the people.”
He is outraged that Clark told the jury she represented the victims and the victims’ loved ones, “the murdered pair crying out for justice … the grief-debilitated families ….” Bosco’s
“innards roiled and boiled.”
At the risk of being politically incorrect, he warns, a public prosecutor is bound to seek truth, “wherever or whatever it might be … truth can have no agenda, no side to be on …” not a “legal representative of the victims or their families seeking vengeance.”
He quotes assistant DA Peter Bozanich, who provided interviews, saying that, in the long run, the system worked, the jury followed instructions, there was a reasonable doubt.
Bosco’s book is the only one of these four with photographs, most of witnesses or trial figures in the courtroom.
KILLING TIME: The First Full Investigation by Donald Freed and Raymond P. Briggs. Macmillan, $ 24.95.
This duo of a historian-writer and a scientist re-open the case on the basis of the element of time on June 12, 1994, and who could have done what during that time frame.
They thoroughly - tediously, in fact - lay out evidence that didn’t get on the stand, stories that didn’t get investigated, questions that didn’t get answered, witnesses not interviewed, trails not followed. They contend significant scientific evidence wasn’t aired.
The theme throughout is “You be the jury,” but it’s obvious the authors favor a not-guilty verdict.
Witness accounts, phone records and location of principals are listed in charts and graphs to pose possibilities of people’s movements on that evening. Then, the authors reverse and act as their own devil’s advocates, postulating why the time line might not work.
The prosecution based its case on the estimated time of the murders and O.J.’s ability to travel to and from the crime scene within that frame. When evidence cast doubt on that theory, the prosecutors were inflexible, the authors say.
With time charts as guides, they study whether: - A possible second killer might have been Jason Simpson, son.
- The drug link and A.C. Cowlings’ Mafia connections staged the crime. Nicole was probably in deep debt to drug dealers, they say.
- O.J. may know that organized crime families committed the deed, but kept the code not to tell.
- A serial killer working in the neighborhood, stabbing may figure in the scene.
- Faye Resnick was the real target. It was well known she someone desperately.
- Mark Fuhrman had the time to plant evidence at Rockingham or Bundy.
In fact, they insist that Fuhrman and/or Resnick had bigger roles than the trial revealed.
But much of their information comes from a inside source called The Source and never otherwise identified. The information thus obtained is good, but less credible this way. Some theories are built on stories published in tabloid newspapers.
Calling O.J. once a “berserk Othello” and again a redeemed Agamemnon, the authors pose that the lifestyle of “the Simpson pack” in Brentwood was a classic and fated setting for murder.
These “beautiful people” indulged in conspicuous consumption, greed, sex, unremitting narcissism - and, fatefully, narcotics … impulse-ridden, addictive, violently or masochistically sexist, as ruthless opportunists ….”
Briggs plans to market a virtual reality version of the book.

USA TODAY

October 6, 1994, Thursday, FINAL EDITION

BYLINE: Gale Holland; Richard Price

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 3A

DATELINE: LOS ANGELES

O.J. Simpson’s defense team sustained another string of courtroom defeats Wednesday, the most critical a failed attempt to challenge the initial police search of the defendant’s estate.
But some analysts suggested his lawyers had only themselves to blame - that in their push for a speedy trial, they may have moved too hastily.
“They shot themselves in the foot,” said UCLA law professor Peter Arenella. Added ex-prosecutor Roger Cossack, on CNN, “Those who chase speedy justice some-times catch it.”
Their point is that the lawyers chose the unusual path of challenging the search in July during the preliminary hearing, at a stage when they lacked enough information for a full fight.
Arguing that police lied when they said they vaulted the estate wall to save lives, the lawyers said detectives saw Simpson as a suspect from the start. But they lost that challenge - and they can reopen the issue only if they offer new evidence not available at the time of the original ruling.
The defense did offer new evidence Wednesday: a letter from detective Mark Fuhrman establishing he had past knowledge of domestic violence between Simpson and his ex-wife; and phone records suggesting police may have vaulted the estate wall before they tried phoning the home instead of after, as they testified.
But Judge Lance Ito accepted the prosecution’s argument that the defense could have acquired the same evidence back at the preliminary hearing.
Example: When Fuhrman originally testified, he mentioned having been at Simp-son’s estate in 1985 - a reference to prior knowledge of trouble there.

Ito ruled defense lawyers could have pressed the matter then but didn’t.
The judge’s ruling did carry several asterisks, however.
Still to be determined is whether the defense could have known earlier about Fuhrman’s racist remarks in a 1980s lawsuit and about allegations he planted evidence in another case - significant to Simpson because it was Fuhrman who says he found a bloody glove at Simpson’s estate.
The prosecution says a Simpson team investigator, Bill Pavelic, knew about those issues from a previous case. The defense denies it.
Also, the defense is waiting for copies of police transmissions from the night of the murder. If fresh evidence emerges from those, the defense can chal-lenge the search again.
Despite the setback, some saw the defense effort Wednesday as a victory in questioning police honesty. “The jury pool’s been told to avoid publicity, but they’re out there listening,” said civil rights lawyer Leo Terrell.
Simpson, 47, has pleaded innocent to the June 12 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
Court resumes at 9 a.m. PT today with more battling over whether to toss out evidence seized from Simpson’s Bronco after it was impounded.
A police towing lot owner testified to an employee burglary of the Bronco, important because it could have compromised evidence but also because it led to the loss of a gasoline sales receipt showing Nicole drove the Bronco shortly be-fore her death.
That’s critical because preliminary DNA tests matched a bloody footprint on the Bronco’s carpeting to Nicole’s blood type, according to news leaks.
Also Wednesday, the defense filed a 107-page motion to exclude DNA evidence. Reasons: sloppy police handling of blood, lab errors and invalid statistics used to match minority blood types.

Daily Variety

November 10, 2000

American Tragedy

Byline: Phil Gallo

SECTION: Pg. 8

(Miniseries; CBS, Sun. Nov. 12, Wed. Nov. 15, 9 p.m.)
Filmed in Los Angeles by Lawrence Schiller Prods. in association with Fox Television Studios. Executive producers, Barry Levinson, Lawrence Schiller, Tom Fontana; producers, Lynn Raynor, Schiller; director, Schiller; writer, Norman Mailer, based on the book by Schiller, James Willwerth; director of photography, Bruce Surtees; production designer, Michael Baugh; editor, Peter Zinner, Katina Zinner; music, Bill Conti; casting, Judith Holstra. 4 hours.
Johnnie Cochran …. Ving Rhames
Bob Shapiro …. Ron Silver
Barry Scheck …. Bruno Kirby
Carl Douglas …. Darryl Alan Reed
Gerry Uelman …. Nicolas Pryor
Bob Kardashian …. Robert LuPone
Chris Darden …. Ruben Santiago-Hudson
Marcia Clark …. Diana LaMar
Shawn Chapman …. Sandra Prosper
Judge Ito …. Clyde Kusatsu
F. Lee Bailey …. Christopher Plummer
Alan Dershowitz …. Richard Cox
Jeanette Harris …. Sandra Thigpen
Jo-Ellan Dimitrius …. Cordelia Richards
Bill Hodgman …. Francis Guinan
Bill Pavelic …. Jeff Kober
Bill Blasier …. Peter Mackenzie
With: Raymond Forchion, Jim Lau, Barry Sigismondi, Charmaine Cruz, Larry Car-roll, Leah Sanders, Jean-Paul Vignon, Meeghan Holaway, Davenia McFadden, Bee-Be Smith, Amanda Rogers, Mary Grady, Judith Montgomery, David Margolick, Kate McNeil, Rick Shuman, Andre Rosey Brown, James Burke, Betsy C. Spear, Seth C. Abero, Robert Pike Daniel, Jennifer Echols, Cheryl Francis Harrington, Cee-Cee Harshaw, Jean-Carlos Felix, Mike
Walker, Ian Patrick Williams, Sylvia S. James.

First rule of thumb in courtroom dramas, most writing coaches would say, is to avoid courtroom scenes. They tend to make the action static and limit the drama that can better be explained through re-enactments and flashbacks that re-late to testimony. But this CBS mini is in the adept hands of Lawrence Schiller and writer Norman Mailer who manage to craft this story with an impeccable eye for detail and a flair for nuanced drama. Greatly
enhanced by Christopher Plummer’s Emmy-worthy turn as F. Lee Bailey, “American Tragedy” is about as good as TV gets in retelling a story where the entire audience already knows the ins, the outs and the outcome.

To a certain extent, the O.J. Simpson trial rewrote the book on how to set a compelling drama within the halls of justice; in its wake have been a series of well-received shows and films that rely on a newfound patience for and, possi-bly, a comprehension of law. Court dramas, particularly TV’s “Law & Order” and “The Practice” and the films “The Insider,” “Erin Brockovich” and “A Civil Ac-tion,” are of a considerably different tone than their
predecessors. “American Tragedy” follows a story arc not unlike that of “A Civil Action.”
Subtext of this tragedy is the battle of wits and ego as attorneys Johnnie Cochran (Ving Rhames) and Robert Shapiro (Ron Silver) evolve into publicity-craving grandstanders, hungry for positions of power in social and legal cir-cles. Shapiro starts strong and fades to the background as the story moves from the planning to the execution; Cochran grows from an aw-shucks innocent into a media-savvy bully, suggesting Shapiro gave him a stage to become a star.

Schiller stands alone as a director of screenplays based on his books, his last being the JonBenet Ramsey saga “Perfect Murder, Perfect Town.” In “American Tragedy” he takes part one to dissect the pretrial legal strategy from the first phone call placed to Shapiro up to the jurors’ tour of Simpson’s Brentwood es-tate. Part two starts with L.A. police detective Mark Fuhrman taking the stand and closes with the real Simpson mouthing
“thank you” to the jury as he stands between the superimposed fictional Cochran and Barry Scheck (Bruno Kirby).

Mini sheds little light on anything that might not have been known before, though viewers will certainly bring their own recollections to bear in judging show’s veracity. Where, for example, is Cochran donning the knit cap or Nicole Brown’s relatives or Kato Kaelin? Actual footage of the father of the murdered Ronald Goldman reminds that two people lost their lives, but the media barrage from the Goldmans and Browns that reverberated through Los Angeles seems, at most, to be background noise in these lawyers’ lives.
All views of Simpson are obscured by scenery or darkness, though his presence is felt constantly through the speaker phone. He advises his lawyers about their conduct, tactics and even diction, but mostly he exclaims “I didn’t do it” over and over and over.
The real trial brought this legal dream team into America’s homes for so long that the actors’ physical traits work for and against them. Plummer fully enve-lopes Bailey’s determination and the pride-swallowing he has to do as his tac-tics and advice are shot down by the two other big cheeses. As DNA expert Barry Scheck, Kirby benefits from a reasonably close resemblance and Kirby’s naturally squirrely acting style.

The two leads are problematic, though. Rhames is far bigger than the lean Cochran, and his presence is far more in-your-face intimidating than the real-life Cochran ever appeared to be. Cochran, from most accounts, was slick and calculated. In “American Tragedy,” he is driven by anger and blind ambition.
Silver’s Shapiro is all too familiar, his portrayal disturbingly similar to the way he played Alan Dershowitz in the pic “Reversal of Fortune” and the late concert promoter Bill Graham in the one-man stage show “Bill Graham Presents.” He handles pomposity and deviousness well — enough to make one wonder if his Shapiro portrayal isn’t the one that’s most dead-on.

Clyde Kusatsu makes for a fine Judge Ito, and Darryl Alan Reed admirably makes the most of the thankless role lawyer Carl Douglas played during the trial. Robert LuPone is constrained by the way Bob Kardashian is written — as an uncouth yes-man — and Ruben Santiago-Hudson has to play prosecutor Chris Darden as enemy to all. Diana LaMar’s Marcia Clark is effective but limited.
Technically, the pic is remarkably sharp as Schiller’s direction is clean and pointed. Editing by Peter and Katina Zinner is seamless, briskly moving the ac-tion on the first night and enhancing the collapse of the various relationships on the second. One well-done aspect is the marriage of new footage with actual cross-examination of witnesses such as Fuhrman.
Mini makes extensive use of downtown L.A. and Westside locales, from restau-rants to law offices to homes. It’s all as real as a 45 mph ride down the San Diego Freeway.

The Dallas Morning News

September 15, 1996, Sunday, Home Final Edition

Byline: David Walton

SECTION: SUNDAY READER; BOOKS; Pg. 8J

The run of his life

By Jeffrey Toobin (Random House, $ 25)
New Yorker reporter Jeffrey Toobin interviewed more than 200 people for this definitive account of the O.J. Simpson trial.  But the last word belongs to Mr. Toobin’s two young children, quoted in the afterword on their reaction to their father’s two-year immersion in this case.
“I think O.J. Simpson should be in time-out for a long time!”
says 4-year-old Ellen.  And Adam, aged 3: “No O.J., Daddy!” Fat chance.  Mr. Toobin’s is probably the best of the many “full” and “de-finitive” accounts now arriving in bookstores.  But the book phase of O.J. cov-erage, like the TV and tabloid phases that preceded it, looks to be tidal, and about as edifying.

Mr. Toobin’s book is literate, well-researched, penetrating and evenhanded, laying blame where it belongs, offering a reasonable perspective on this shabby and ultimately open-and-shut case.  Mr. Toobin examines the facts of the case, as opposed to the facts of the murders themselves, revealing who did what, why, and at what cost as the case worked its way through the legal system.  Not sur-prisingly, there’s plenty of blame to
lay, plenty of places to point a finger.

If you’ve been following this week’s news, you know that Mr. Toobin’s book offers several new revelations: that Mr. Simpson learned the verdict before it was announced in the courtroom, that he flunked a lie-detector test, that de-fense attorneys Johnnie Cochran and Robert Shapiro stated privately on several occasions that they believed their client was guilty.
The matter of The People vs.  O.J. Simpson, whatever else it may or may not be in the annals of jurisprudence, is a grand American spectacle, awful and re-vealing, stupefying and sad.  Mr. Toobin, second only perhaps to Vanity Fair columnist Dominick Dunne, understands “the crucible of the Simpson trial,” and how much the intense public scrutiny affected the behavior of all who came into it.
Mr.Toobin comes down particularly hard on Robert Shapiro, Marcia Clark and Lance Ito, but almost nobody is spared here.
Judge Ito, he says, suffered “from an undue eagerness to please, an unwill-ingness to offend - and a fatal lack of gravitas.”
“Proximity to murder can harden a conscience, and so it is with Lee Bailey,” he says in possibly his harshest condemnation.

“He is a consummately cynical man, with an eye only for the bottom line - le-gal and financial.  The guilt or innocence of his clients means little to him.”
Mr. Toobin’s portrait of Mr. Simpson himself, and “the banality, self-pity and narcissism that are the touchstones of his character,” is limited but mas-terly, written entirely from the outside, without benefit of any personal con-tact.
Unexpectedly, Rosa Lopez and Barry Scheck, who I thought were the most dubi-ous figures in the trial, come off sympathetically here.  Ms. Lopez, especially, emerges not as a buffoon, but as one of the trial’s most touching victims.
If you followed this trial on the nightly news, you know four-fifths of what’s in this book already.  What The Run of His Life offers, along with a com-pelling summation of the evidence of Mr. Simpson’s guilt, is its view into the culture of celebrity and power that shaped the trial, and its verdict.
E.L. Doctorow in The Book of Daniel portrays these high-profile trials as a collaborative event, rather than any adversarial struggle - something summed up memorably in the Rolling Stones line, “Judge and jury walked out hand in hand.”
Everyone in the O.J. case seems to have known and worked for everyone else.  Mark Fuhrman once worked for Judge Ito’s wife, and Mr. Fuhrman’s name first rang a bell for Shapiro investigator Bill Pavelic when Mr. Pavelic remembered the two of them once moonlighted as bodyguards for Johnny Carson.
Both Judge Ito and current District Attorney Gil Garcetti had been supervised by Johnny Cochran during Mr. Cochran’s stint with the prosecutor’s office.
Only Marcia Clark seems to have come into the case with a clear slate.
“Who’s that?” she said, when told the suspect in the case she was being handed was O.J. Simpson.

Oh, don’t you wish we could all say that now?
David Walton is a free-lance reviewer who lives in Pittsburgh.

Byline: By MICHELLE CARUSO in Los Angeles and JERE HESTER in New York

SECTION: News Pg. 8

The credibility of O.J. Simpson’s alibi witness crumbled yesterday as prose-cutors charged her testimony was “coached” by the defense.
The latest challenge to Rosa Lopez came after the defense turned over an eight-month-old interview tape a recording that prosecutors said contains “many glaring inconsistencies” with her testimony.
“I have never heard a witness basically coached and told what to say through every bend and turn,” said prosecutor Marcia Clark, after listening to the 15-minute tape in Judge Lance Ito’s chambers.
The maid, who worked next door to Simpson, has reported seeing the football legend’s white Ford Bronco outside his home about the time his ex-wife and her pal were slain on June 12.
But the tape highlighted contradictions in Lopez’ statements, including:
She made no mention of seeing the Bronco around the time of the slayings on the July 29 tape and she reported hearing Simpson’s voice at 10 p.m., Clark said.
She made no mention of her friend Sylvia Guerra on the tape, in an Aug. 18 statement or on the stand Monday.
But in a July 29 defense report purportedly based on the taped interview Lo-pez said that Guerra came over for coffee around 9 p.m., stayed for 10 or 15 minutes and made a remark about seeing Simpson’s Bronco parked outside.
In the July 29 report, Lopez said she saw Simpson and a passenger drive away in his black Bentley between 8:30 and 9 p.m. In her Aug. 18 statement and on the witness stand she put the time at 9 p.m.
In another wrinkle, Lopez’ testimony Monday that she saw the Bronco shortly after 10 p.m. leaves Simpson with a far from airtight alibi.
The defense’s opening statement alleged that Lopez saw the vehicle at 10:15 p.m. the time prosecutors claim Simpson killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.
Lopez’ hazier account could give the football legend time to make the six-minute drive to Nicole’s condo.
The jury has not heard Lopez’ account and Ito delayed resumption of her tes-timony until tomorrow to give prosecutors time to prepare their cross-examination.
The judge has ordered her testimony to be video-taped for future use because of fears the media-wary maid will flee to El Salvador.
A tearful Lopez pleaded with the judge to let her return to her homeland but reluctantly agreed to appear tomorrow.
“This is not my fault to work close to Mr. Simpson, to have seen and to have heard,” she said through a translator.
Simpson lawyer Johnnie Cochran insisted that the tape doesn’t punch holes in Lopez’ credibility. “We think she is entirely consistent,” he said.
And he angrily denied prosecution contentions that he concealed the tape. Simpson private eye Bill Pavelic claimed yesterday that he didn’t tell defense attorneys that he had tape-recorded the interview until Monday.
Meanwhile, newly released transcripts of an in-chambers hearing indicated that Ito might dismiss a juror as soon as today for misconduct.
The “problem” juror is a 46-year-old black man who has worn items bearing the San Francisco 49ers logo the team with which Simpson ended his career.
He would be the fourth juror bounced.

The Associated Press

July 1, 1987, Wednesday, PM cycle

SECTION: Domestic News

DATELINE: LOS ANGELES

An AIDS victim accused of attempted murder after selling his blood was de-tained and released five times in recent months despite efforts by authorities to confine him to a mental health unit, investigators say.
“He was a time bomb just ready to explode,” Detective Bill Pavelic of the po-lice department’s mental evaluation unit said Tuesday. “We’re very disappointed he was not held. … There’s something drastically wrong here.”
Joseph Edward Markowski, a 29-year-old drifter, was charged with attempted murder Monday by District Attorney Ira Reiner after police discovered he was carrying a receipt for a blood donation. Markowski pleaded innocent.
Markowski allegedly told authorities he sold his potentially deadly blood for $8 to $10 a pint and sold sex on the streets of West Hollywood months after he had been diagnosed as having AIDS.
“I know that AIDS can kill. But I was so hard up for money I didn’t give a damn,” Reiner quoted Markowski as telling authorities.
Activists of the Gay & Lesbian Community Services Center criticized Reiner’s actions, saying Markowski should have been treated better by society.
“It’s important to see this gentleman as a victim, a homeless person wander-ing the streets with no housing available,” said Eric E. Rofes, executive direc-tor of the center, at a Tuesday news conference.
Neither county officials nor psychiatrists who treated Markowski would dis-cuss the case or respond to police comments Tuesday.
According to Pavelic, Los Angeles police first discovered Markowski had ac-quired immune deficiency syndrome last Feb. 3, after detaining him for walking against traffic on Sunset Boulevard.
On May 3, officers responding to a call found Markowski “crying, breaking down emotionally and stating that he would kill himself,” the detective said.
On both occasions, Pavelic said, Markowski was sent to the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center psychiatric ward or another county facility, but

he was quickly released each time.
“We said that he had AIDS, that he was highly irrational, that he donated blood to various agencies and that he possibly had hepatitis,” Pavelic said.
The sheriff’s department picked up Markowski twice for similar incidents and sent him to a county hospital, with the same result, Pavelic said.

Sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Merlyn Poppleton refused to confirm the referrals, saying he was prohibited by law from discussing Markowski’s record.
Last week, police were called to a West Hollywood bank where Markowski alleg-edly grabbed a security guard’s gun and screamed “Kill me! Kill me! I have AIDS.”
Markowski was referred to County-USC and again was released. However, police found a blood donation receipt, prompting the investigation leading to attempted murder charges.
Rofes and others who spoke at the news conference Tuesday said the charges ignore that Markowski was sick, homeless and in need of social services.
“Why do people with AIDS have to wait so long to get any governmental assis-tance?” asked Rofes. “Who is going to keep these people off the streets and keep them in food and clothing?”
AIDS is caused by a virus that attacks the body’s immune system, leaving vic-tims susceptible to a variety of infections and cancers. It is spread through blood and other body fluids.
The county Board of Supervisors proposed Tuesday that the county health de-partment and district attorney be ordered to investigate plasma banks to deter-mine if they received blood from Markowski.
The board also proposed a review of the operations of Plasma Productions As-sociates, which bought Markowski’s blood, and similar plasma centers.
Officials of the companies have said a screening system and heat-treating process guarantee that the AIDS virus won’t enter the blood supply.

United Press International

September 3, 1987, Thursday, PM cycle

AIDS victim who sold blood aware of fatal effects, officer says

BYLINE: By AURELIO ROJAS

SECTION: Domestic News

DATELINE: LOS ANGELES

 A prostitute charged with attempted murder for selling his AIDS-tainted blood and denying to a sexual partner that he had the disease told investigators he was aware of its fatal effects, a police detective testified.
”I know that AIDS can kill, but I was so hard up for money that I didn’t give a damn about other people,” Detective Bill Pavelic quoted Joseph Markowski as telling him after his arrest June 25.
Markowski, 29, is charged with four counts of attempted murder and six other felonies for having sex with a man and for selling his own blood to a Los Ange-les plasma center June 22 for $9, then trying to do so again the day he was ar-rested.
”He stated that, ‘I’m aware that (blood bank) tests don’t always detect the AIDS virus, but when you have to survive you’ll do anything,”’ Pavelic testi-fied Wednesday on the third day of a preliminary hearing to determine if the transient should be ordered to stand trial.
Pavelic said Markowski was arrested June 23 at a bank where he tried to grab the gun of a security guard who tried to halt his bizarre behavior.
Markowski was released the next day from the mental ward at County-USC Medi-cal Center, where he had earlier been diagnosed as suffering from acquired im-mune deficiency syndrome. He was arrested a day later when he attempted to sell his blood at the same plasma center.
Pavelic said when Markowski was arrested, he told him, ”’I lost $10 because you guys didn’t let me sell my blood. I’m broke.”’
Markowski also is charged with attempted murder for having sex with Paris Shaerell, 44, without telling him he had AIDS.
Shaerell was cited for contempt of court and ordered held indefinitely in the county jail by Superior Court Judge Alban Niles Tuesday after he refused to tes-tify against Markowski.