Did  O.J.  Simpson  kill  his wife  or  was  it  someone  else  who  did  it

The white background behind the text of one of the paragraphs is merely an anomaly in the printing of this article. 

On November 28^th 2012, a TV show stated that it wasn’t O.J. Simpson who murdered his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson (hereinafter referred to as Brown) and her friend, Ron Goldman but instead it was serial killer, Glen Rogers who did the killing. Before I go into Roger’s so-called confession that he did it, let me take you back to the murders and O.J Simpson’s trial.

At 12:10 a.m., on June 13, 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were found murdered outside Brown's Bundy Drive condo in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles. Nicole had been stabbed multiple times in the head and neck with defense wounds on her hands. The wound through her neck was gaping, through which the larynx could be seen, and vertebra C3 was also cut. Ronald Goldman was also stabbed to death.

O.J. Simpson and Nicole Brown Simpson had been divorced two years earlier. Their relationship after that was strained, to say the least. Evidence found at the murder scene led the police investigators to suspect that O.J. Simpson was the murderer of his ex-wife and her friend.

Simpson’s lawyers convinced the Los Angeles Police Department to allow Simpson to turn himself in at 11 a.m., on June 17, 1994 even though the double murder charge would mean that he would get no bail and a possible death penalty verdict if convicted. Over 1,000 reporters waited for Simpson at the police station, but he failed to appear. At 2 p.m., the Los Angeles Police Department issued an all-points bulletin. Many of us then saw live video images of him driving slowly down a Los Angeles freeway with a multitude of police cars following him. The only reason why they didn’t apprehend him at that particular moment was that he was seen holding a handgun to his head. Later he drove onto the driveway of his large home and an hour or so later, he surrendered to the police. In the Bronco the police found $8,000 in cash, a change of clothing, a loaded .357 Magnum, his passport, family pictures, and a fake goatee and mustache.

His trial was in my opinion, one of the greatest farces in the annals of trials in the past. Before I get to the failings of the trial, let me tell you what convinced the police and everyone else except the jurors hearing the case that this former football hero really committed the murders.

On June 20^th, Simpson was arraigned and pleaded not guilty to both murders. As expected, the presiding judge ordered that Simpson be held without bail. The following day, a grand jury was called to determine whether to indict him for the two murders. Two days later, on June 23^rd, the grand jury was dismissed because of excessive media coverage, which might have influence the grand jury's neutrality.

I should add that in the United States, before a person can be brought to trial, a grand jury is convened comprising of ordinary citizens and the prosecutor then submits evidence as to why the accused should be tried for the crime. The crime has to be a felony and not simply a misdemeanor. The defence lawyer does not participate in these proceedings.

Now I will give you the evidence that implied that Simpson was the man who committed the murders.

1.            Jill Shively, a Brentwood resident testified at the grand jury hearing that she saw Simpson speeding away from the area of Nicole's house on the night of the murders, and that that Simpson’s Bronco almost collided with a Nissan at the intersection of Bundy and San Vicente Boulevard.

2.            Another grand jury witness, Jose Camacho, was a knife salesman at Ross Cutlery who claimed that he personally sold Simpson a 15-inch (380 mm) German-made knife three weeks before the murders that was identical to the make of the murder weapon.

Unfortunately, because these two twits were more interested in making money by previously talking to the media, they couldn’t be allowed to attend Simpson’s trial as witnesses for the prosecution.  Shively had talked to the television show Hard Copy for $5,000, and Camacho sold his story to the National Enquirer for $12,500

In October 1994, Judge Ito started interviewing 304 prospective jurors, each of whom had to fill out a 75-page questionnaire. On November 3^rd, 12 jurors were seated with 12 alternates. In 1995, the criminal trial of O.J. Simpson which began on January 24^th 1995 was televised for 134 days. Prosecutor Marcia Clark, a 40-year-old Deputy District Attorney, was designated as the lead prosecutor, which was to be her twenty-first murder trial during her 13 years with the D.A.'s office. Deputy District Attorney Christopher A. Darden, an African-American prosecutor widely experienced in murder trials, became Clark's co-counsel. Alan Dershowitz and Johnnie Cochran were Simpson’s lawyers. 

The prosecution had previously elected not to ask for the death penalty, and instead it sought a life sentence if Simpson was found guilty.

Even though the prosecution had no murder weapon to present to the jury and no witnesses to the murders, the prosecution felt they had a very strong case. Supported by DNA evidence, they fully expected a conviction. From the physical evidence collected, the prosecution speculated that Simpson drove to Nicole Brown's house on the evening of June 12^th with the intention of killing her. They speculated that Nicole, after putting her two children to bed and while getting ready to go to bed herself, opened the front door of her house after either responding to a knock on the front door or after hearing a noise outside, where Simpson then grabbed her before she could scream and began stabbing her with a knife. Forensic evidence from the Los Angeles County coroner suggested that Ron Goldman arrived at the front gate to the townhouse sometime during the assault where the assailant apparently attacked him and stabbed him repeatedly in the neck and chest with one hand while restraining him with an arm choke-hold. According to the prosecution's account, as Nicole Brown was found lying face down, the assailant, after finishing with Goldman, Simpson pulled his ex-wife’s head back using her hair, then placed put foot on her back and then slit her throat with the knife, severing her carotid artery. According to the prosecutor, Simpson left a trail of blood from the condo to the alley behind it.

3.            There was also testimony that three drops of Simpson's blood were found on the driveway near the gate to his house on Rockingham Drive. This could mean that while he was tabbing the two victims, he accidentally cut himself with the knife used to kill the two victims.

According to the prosecution, Simpson was last seen in public at 9:36 p.m., that evening when he returned to the front gate of his house with Brian ‘Kato’ Kaelin, a bit-part actor and family friend who lived with Nicole until he was given the use of a guest house on Simpson's estate. Simpson was not seen again until 10:54 p.m., an hour and 18 minutes later, when he came out of the front door of his house to a waiting limousine hired to take him to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to fly to a Hertz convention in Chicago. Both the defense and prosecution agreed that the murders took place between 10:15 and 10:40 p.m., with the prosecution saying that Simpson drove his white Bronco the five minutes needed for him to drive to and from the murder scene.

4.            The prosecution presented another witness in the area of Bundy Drive who saw a car similar to Simpson's Bronco speeding away from the area at 10:35 p.m.

5.            The limousine driver, Allan Park arrived at Simpson's estate at 10:24 pm. As he drove past the Rockingham gate, he did not see Simpson's white Bronco parked at the curb. Park testified that he had been looking for and had seen the house number, and the prosecution presented exhibits to show that the position in which the Bronco was found the next morning was right next to the house number at the curb (implying that Park would surely have noticed the Bronco if it had been there at that time. This means that at 10:24 p.m., Simpson had not returned to his house despite Simpson's version of events, that the Bronco had been parked in next to the curb outside his property for several hours.

6.            Deciding that the Rockingham entrance was too tight, Park returned to the Ashford gate and began to buzz the intercom at 10:40, p.m., but he didn’t get any response. If Simpson was home at that moment, he would have responded to the sound of the buzzer because he was expecting a limousine to come to his home and pick him up which in fact it did arrive at

7.     At approximately 10:50 p.m., Kato Kaelin (who was on the phone to Rachel Ferrara) heard three thumps against the outside wall of his guest house. Someone was passing by his window.

8.            At the same time that Park saw Kaelin come from the back of the property to the front, he saw a tall black man of Simpson's height and build enter the front door of the house from the driveway area, after which lights went on. It wasn’t Kaelin because he is white. Simpson finally answered Park's call, explaining that he had overslept and would be at the front gate soon.

The question that was on everyone’s mind was, “Was it Simpson that created the thumping noise when he passed by Kaelin’s window. If so, then why did he try to sneak into his house rather then enter through the front door which was closer to his car parked next to the street’s curb?”

Simpson's initial claim that he was asleep at the time of the murders was replaced by a series of different stories by his defence team. According to the defense lawyer Johnnie Cochran, Simpson had never left his house that night and that he was alone in his house packing to travel to Chicago. Cochran claims that Simpson went outside through the back door to hit a few golf balls into the children's sandbox in the front garden, one or more of which made the three loud thumps on the wall of Kaelin's bungalow behind Simpson’s house.

Cochran produced a potential alibi witness, Rosa Lopez, a neighbor's Spanish-speaking housekeeper who testified that she had seen Simpson's car parked outside his house at the time of the murders. But Lopez's testimony was pulled apart under intense cross examination by Marcia Clark, when Ms. Lopez was forced to admit that she could not be sure of the precise time she saw Simpson's white Bronco outside his house. Ms. Lopez was first interviewed in English, without an interpreter present. This could explain her confusion with respect to the time she thought she saw Simpson’s car sitting next to the curb.

9.           A dark leather glove was found at the crime scene and its match was found near Kato Kaelin's guest house behind Simpson's Rockingham Drive estate. Remember that Kaelin testified that he had heard thumps in the night in the same area around the guest house the night of the murder. Brown had previously bought Simpson two pairs of this type of glove in 1990. Both gloves, (the one at the murder scene and the other beside the guest house) according to the prosecution, contained DNA evidence from Goldman, along with the blood of Simpson and his now dead wife with the glove at Simpson's house also containing a long strand of blonde hair similar to his dead wife’s hair. I should point out that you can’t take DNA from a strand of hair unless the root of the hair is attached—which in this case, it wasn’t.

On May 16^th, Gary Sims, a California Department of Justice criminalist who helped establish the Department of Justice's DNA laboratory, testified that the glove found behind Simpson's house tested positive for a match of Goldman's blood. The prosecution argued that they had made the DNA evidence available to the defense for its own testing, and if the defense attorneys disagreed with the prosecution's tests, they could have conducted their own testing on the same samples. The defense had chosen not to accept the prosecution's offer.

That refusal in my opinion constituted an admission of the part of Simpson’s lawyers that they weren’t disputing the fact that the blood on the glove was that of Goldman.

Now considering the evidence with respect to the two gloves, it should be obvious to everyone that it was Simpson who accidently bumped into the air conditioner of the bungalow and as a result, he dropped his second glove with Goldman’s blood on it onto the ground and then snuck into his house by a rear door. The left-hand glove found at Nicole Brown's home and the right-hand glove found behind Simpson's home proved to be a match. The reason for entering the rear door was his car was not at that time at the front entrance to his property at that moment as he claimed it was but behind his house.  

During the trial, an extremely important event took place. One of the prosecutors asked Simpson to put on the glove. It was too small and Simpson couldn’t get his hand to fit into it. It was then that his lawyer said loudly, “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit!”

But the lawyer knew and so did the prosecutor that the glove had shrunk to such a point, it wouldn’t fit at all. “Why then,” you may ask, “did it shrink?”

The answer is easy to fathom. The glove had been soaked in blood (according to the prosecutors) from Simpson, Brown and Goldman, and frozen and unfrozen several times thereby resulting in the leather shrinking. The leather glove seemed too tight for Simpson to put on easily, especially over the latex gloves he wore underneath.

Defense attorney, Johnnie Cochran had goaded assistant prosecutor Christopher Darden into asking Simpson to put on the leather glove that was found at the scene of the crime. Thinking that the glove may fit Simpson’s hand, the damn fool fell for the trick and fell headlong into the hole that Cochran had dug for him. What amazes me is that the prosecutor didn’t see the latex glove and also didn’t explain to the jury that some leather shrinks when it becomes wet too often.

10.   The bloody shoe prints at the crime scene were identified by FBI shoe expert William Bodziak as having been made by a pair of extremely rare and expensive Bruno Magli shoes, of which it has been reported that only 299 pairs were sold in the United States. The large size 12 (305 mm) prints matched Simpson's shoe size.

Simpson’s defense attorneys had said the prosecution had no proof Simpson had ever bought such shoes however a photograph taken of Simpson in 1993 appeared to show him wearing the same pair of the shoes at a public event, which was later published in the National Enquirer.

11.        A few strands of African-American hair were found on Goldman's shirt. Simpson is an African-American.

12.   DNA analysis of blood found on a pair of Simpson's socks found in his bedroom was identified as Nicole Brown's blood. The blood had DNA characteristics matched by approximately only one in 9.7 billion, with odds rising to one out of 21 billion when compiling results of testing done at the two separate DNA laboratories. Both socks had about 20 stains of blood on the strands.     

In March 1995, Detective Fuhrman testified to driving over to Simpson's house to question him on the night of the two murders and, after getting no response after buzzing the intercom of the house which was actually empty at that particular moment, scaled one of the walls and found blood marks on the driveway of Simpson's home, as well as the black leather glove on the premises near the location of Kaelin's bungalow, which had the blood of both murder victims on it as well as Simpson's on it.

As you can well appreciate, the evidence of the blood on Simpson’s glove would be in itself, enough to convict him of the two murders. For that evidence to be accepted by the court as being sufficient enough to convict Simpson, the court had to be satisfied that it was discovered by a third person such as an investigating detective behind Simpson’s house, thereby satisfying the court that the glove with the blood of the victims and that of Simpson was really Simpson’s glove and not another glove belonging to someone else. In other words, the credibility of the detective had to be beyond dispute. Now here is where the case for the prosecution began to crumble like a stone building struck by a massive earthquake.

Detective Furman was a liar. I don’t mean he was lying about finding Simpson’s glove. There is no doubt in my mind that he really did find Simpson’s bloody glove behind Simpson’s home.

Fuhrman denied on the stand that he was racist or had used the word “nigger” to describe black people in the 10 years prior to his testimony. But a few months later, the defense played audio tapes of Fuhrman repeatedly using the word—41 times in total during an interview. In September, Fuhrman was called back to the witness stand by the defense to answer more questions about the discovery of the blood marks and leather glove that he supposedly found on Simpson's property hours after the murders took place. When questioned by attorney Gerald Uelmen, Fuhrman, with his lawyer standing by his side, pleaded the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination to avoid further questioning after his integrity was challenged at this point. By doing this, he flushed his integrity down the toilet all by himself. He was later charged with perjury for falsely claiming during the trial that he had not used the word “nigger” within ten years of the trial.

Guess what? The jury members were all black. They were so upset listening to the lies of Fuhrman, (who is white) they then presumed that he was lying about finding Simpson’s glove behind Simpson’s house and began to believe that Fuhrman hated blacks so much; he would even frame a famous black football player for a crime he may not have committed. They found Simpson not guilty of the two murders.

Simpson was acquitted of murder charges on October 3^rd 1995 and cannot be tried for the murders again in a criminal court. However in the civil trial as in the murder trial, the plaintiff still had to prove that Simpson murdered his ex-wife and her friend, with several key differences.

First, the standard of proof is lower. In a civil trial, the plaintiff in this case, the families of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman had to prove that Simpson committed the murders by a preponderance of the evidence; meaning the jury could decide for the plaintiffs if they determined that there was at least a 50.1 percent probability that Simpson was personally responsible for the two murders. The verdict of the jurors didn’t have to be unanimous. As it turned out, all of the 12  decided against Simpson and the families were awarded $8.5 million dollars.

They couldn’t seize his house as his lawyers had a lien on it to pay their bills. They couldn’t seize his pension as that is protected by law from seizure.

There is some good news however related to O.J. Simpson. He was sentenced to at least nine years and perhaps the rest of his life for an armed robbery in a hotel room, bringing a measure of satisfaction to those who believed the football star got away with murder more than a decade earlier. 

The 61-year-old Hall of Famer listened stone-faced, his wrists in shackles, as Judge Jackie Glass pronounced the sentence of 33 years behind bars with eligibility for parole after less than a third of that.

Simpson told the judge that he and five other men were simply trying to retrieve sports memorabilia and other mementos when he stormed a Las Vegas  hotel room occupied by two dealers on September 13, 2007. He insisted the items, which included his first wife’s wedding ring, had been stolen from him. But the judge emphasized that it was a violent confrontation in which at least one gun was drawn, and she said someone could have been shot. She said the evidence was overwhelming, with the planning, the confrontation itself and the aftermath all recorded on audio or videotape.

Now I will present to you the suggestion by some people that it wasn’t Simpson who committed the murders but instead it was Glen Rogers, a former carnival worker whom Florida jurors convicted in 1997 of killing a woman in a Tampa motel room. He is now 50, and he was also convicted of murder in California and sentenced to death in that state and he is also a suspect in five other homicides in Mississippi, Louisiana and Kentucky and possibly several other states. Most of his victims were women he had met in bars while drifting across the country. All of his victims were stabbed to death. With blazing blue eyes, a scraggly beard and long, blond hair, Rogers was arrested in November 1995, near Waco, Kentucky after a nationwide manhunt for the so-called ‘Cross-Country Killer’ and a 100 mph chase.

According to Roger’s family, he met Nicole Brown Simpson in 1994 in a bar when he was living in Southern California. A criminal profiler in a subsequent documentary says he received paintings by Rogers with clues possibly linking him to the 1994 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ronald Goldman. The profiler says that Rogers sent him a painting of the murder weapon used in the slayings. Everyone knew what the knife looked like.

Anthony Meoli, an Atlanta criminal profiler who has received more than 1,000 letters from Rogers and has interviewed him in prison said, “I believe that Glen believes he killed them.” Just because Rogers believes that he killed Brown and Goldman isn’t proof that he did.  Other family members also said Glen Rogers talked about meeting Simpson’s ex-wife. Again that isn’t proof that he killed her.

Meoli said Rogers told him that O.J. Simpson paid him to break into Nicole Brown Simpson’s house to steal a pair of $20,000 earrings. Other clues, Meoli said, that Rogers drove a white pickup for his construction job; a white pickup was also seen near the Simpson house on the day of the murders and that a second bloody footprint at the scene was never identified was that of Rogers.

Rogers’ family also said he sent his mother a gold angel pin with a diamond; Rogers later wrote to Meoli that he had sent it to his mother the day after the Simpson murders and implied that he stole it from Nicole Brown Simpson. “It’s something everyone missed,” Rogers wrote. Rogers’ mother wore the pin at his Florida murder trial.

But a district attorney who prosecuted Rogers and a detective who interviewed him in connection with an unsolved homicide, both say the convicted killer may be lying in a misguided effort to get off death row in Florida. It wouldn’t be the first time someone on death row in Florida tried that tactic. Bundy, a serial killer also tried to delay his execution by claiming to have murdered other victims the police didn’t know about.

Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Patrick Dixon who prosecuted Rogers for the September 1995 murder of a woman in the San Fernando Valley. He said that there was no mention in that trial of the Brown/Goldman killings, which occurred more than a year earlier. Further, Rogers’ brother, Clay who sat through the trial and testified in the penalty phase, never mentioned the O.J. Simpson case. Clay Rogers later wrote a book and nothing about the Brown/Goldman murders was in the book.

Also Glen Rogers’ modus operandi didn’t match that of the Simpson/Goldman killings other than that he stabbed his victims. Rogers met his victims in bars, wooed them and moved in with them. Then one morning, he would wake up and stab them to death.

Why would Rogers now claim responsibility for the murder in the high-profile Brown/Goldman case?  It is probably because he is  trying to get sent back to California where people on death row in that state aren’t executed until decades later whereas in Florida, the executions are done much sooner.

Based upon the aforementioned information I have presented to you with respect to O.J. Simpson, there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that O.J. Simpson was the person who murdered his ex-wife and her friend and not Glen Rogers.