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Another Wave of O.J. Simpson Books Floods Bookstores

Daily Oklahoman (Oklahoma City, OK)
January 5, 1997, Sunday CITY EDITION

BYLINE: Ann DeFrange
SECTION: TRAVEL & ENTERTAINMENT; Pg. 4
LENGTH: 2396 words

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Some parts are already outdated in the midst of the civil trial, but they won’t be the last Simpson books or the last word on the subject.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.

LOAD-DATE: March 18, 1998
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Lawrence Schiller