His Name Is Ron (22 page)

Patti sat, staring straight ahead. She made no eye contact with the jury. She risked only the briefest of glances at Judge Ito.

Marcia Clark produced the paper bag marked “People's 30” and asked, “First of all, do you recognize the shopping bag?”

“Yes, I do,” Patti answered.

“And was it your daughter, Kim Goldman, who placed the clothing inside this bag into the bag?”

Patti replied, “I didn't see her put them in there, but she told me that she put them—”

Cochran once more brought the proceedings to a halt by objecting to Patti's testimony as hearsay. It was a minor technical point about a nonsensical piece of “evidence,” but Judge Ito tolerated it and sided with the defense. Meanwhile, since objections were limited to the particular defense
lawyer who would handle cross-examination, Patti was now on notice that it was Johnnie Cochran who would confront her.

Marcia moved on, noting for the record, “I have removed from that bag a white envelope on which is written, ‘One piece of green paper with writing.' Taking out the piece of green paper with writing on it, I'm going to ask if you recognize what that is?”

“Yes,” Patti said. “It is my grocery list.” Patti thought she heard some laughter in the courtroom.

Marcia asked, “Can you tell us how it came to be inside the brown paper bag that you recognize?”

Patti explained. “When I get through grocery shopping, when I leave the supermarket, I always throw the list in my bag.”

“And so this is the shopping list that you made?”

“Yes, it is.”

Marcia was finished. Cochran commenced his normal ritual, rising, straightening his suit jacket, smiling at Judge Ito, and acknowledging the judge's returned greeting. He slithered over to the podium, wearing a fake, serpentine smile, as if he thought he could charm this particular witness.

Patti thought: I absolutely detest this man. I want to spit at him.

“Mrs. Goldman,” Cochran began, “as I understand your testimony, this was brought to court from your home?”

“Yes, it was.”

“So that I'm clear, Detectives Tippin and Carr did not bring that bag to court, you brought it along with your daughter, is that right?”

“Kim brought it. Kim Goldman brought it,” Patti clarified.

“Do you know who Detectives Tippin and Carr are?”

“I have never met them.”

Having established to his satisfaction that Patti's grocery list did not contain any racist statements and was apparently not a component of a conspiracy on the part of the LAPD detectives, Cochran smiled and said, “Thank you very kindly. Nothing further, Your Honor.”

Thus did the court waste its time and the taxpayers' resources, and further obscure the one and only critical question: Did Cochran's client murder Ron and Nicole?

We met Detective Mark Fuhrman in the D.A.'s office prior to the court session. We wished him good luck and were supportive of him, and he was very pleasant to us in return.

Calmly and confidently, over several days of testimony, Fuhrman confirmed
the accounts of Ron Phillips and Tom Lange, explaining their actions at the crime scene and then at the Brentwood estate. In unemotional tones he told of how he found the bloody glove at the defendant's house.

A few days later the cross-examination took an ominous turn when F. Lee Bailey asked Fuhrman if, at any time during the past ten years, he had ever used the infamous “N-word,” and Fuhrman denied that he had. Patti felt a huge knot in her stomach. It was difficult to believe that a police officer, in a high-pressure job, fighting gangs and all other forms of horror on the streets of Los Angeles, would never, ever have uttered the epithet, perhaps as a quote, in a tasteless joke, or in a moment of fear or anger. Patti thought: Does admitting using the word justify it? No. Is it a despicable slur? Yes. But just tell the truth, and be done with it.

I had to agree that Bailey's questioning of Fuhrman was one of the most offensive things I have ever heard or seen. He repeatedly asked Fuhrman about the N-word, and each time growled it so loudly that it literally bounced off the walls and echoed throughout the courtroom. He did it for one purpose and one purpose only: to garner a reaction from a predominantly black jury.

Kim thought that he was an effective witness, calm, unflappable, and truthful. But Patti's anger at Fuhrman began to fester. In the D.A.'s office she told Patty Jo, “Don't let him anywhere in my sight. I don't want to see him. I don't want to talk to him. Just keep him away from me.” She felt that he had done the case irreparable damage.

Over the dinner table she explained to the rest of us, “Even though I have never used that word in a derogatory manner, I certainly couldn't say, under oath, that it has never come out of my mouth. How many of us can? We may have read it aloud or quoted someone who said it. He's lying, and he's screwing up the case. He found a key piece of evidence and now everything will be tainted. No one will believe him. How dare he lie! How dare he jeopardize our case! Who in the hell does he think he is?”

When Judge Ito allowed the issue of race to come into this trial, he truly opened the floodgates. He had no legal reason to allow it. There was no connection whatsoever shown between a comment made ten years earlier and any kind of illegal behavior on the part of the police in general or Mark Fuhrman in particular. The defense simply argued that it showed that Fuhrman was not a very nice guy, ergo, he was capable of planting evidence. How Judge Ito could make that leap is beyond my comprehension. I think there needs to be a connection between common sense and the law.

*   *   *

There were only about a half-dozen black students in Michael's school and he had always gotten along well with them, just like he does with almost everybody else. Michael asked one of them, a boy named Billy, if he thought that the killer was guilty.

“Yes,” Billy replied without hesitation.

“Do you think he will be found guilty?”

“No.”

“Why not?” Michael asked.

“You know why,” Billy said, “because of the jury.” So there it was. Billy knew that a predominantly black jury would never convict this murderer because of the mistaken belief that such an action would set back the entire black community.

Michael wondered: Didn't they see that setting him free would set them back so much further? Shaking his head, Michael asked, “Do
you
think he should be found guilty?”

Billy would not answer.

The two boys never spoke to each other again.

The newspaper was delivered, the gardener tended the lawn, hummingbirds fed just outside the patio door. Lucy sought every opportunity to get loose in the backyard so that she could jump into the pool; Pitzel sought every opportunity to growl at her. Riley prowled and napped. It seemed that the world should have stopped. But it had not. It had simply tipped on its axis, throwing all of us off-balance.

One afternoon on her way home from the trial, Patti stopped at Vons, as usual, to pick up some last-minute dinner items. As she stood in the checkout line, she realized that a customer in front of her had recognized her. Very subtly, he began to turn all the tabloid covers facedown. We had gotten used to seeing the lies and innuendoes on the headlines of these rags, but Patti thought it was very thoughtful of this stranger to try to protect her. Some of the stores in our neighborhood took them off the shelves completely.

Friends and strangers told us that we were celebrities. Books and movies would be made out of this tragic story. We would always be recognized. Patti lost count of the number of times she said aloud, “Can you believe that we are in the middle of this monumental worldwide thing?” One day we were an average, quiet family from Chicago, minding our own business and the next—

The term “celebrity” was especially troubling to us, because we had no
choice in the matter. A true celebrity seeks fame and notoriety, and all this was simply thrust into our laps. There was nothing we could do to escape it.

Although Kim and Joe had discussed marriage, Kim wondered if the pressure she was feeling was tied to her fear of being alone. She came to the conclusion that neither of them was ready to make such a decision during this turbulent time, and she decided that although Joe was a wonderful man, he was not the one for her. Kim told Joe, “I'll always be grateful for having you in my life and for the support that you have given me.” They parted friends.

Kim's friend Jana was saddened by the news of the breakup. She told Kim that she had thought the romance had a “fairy-tale” quality and she remembered how well Ron and Joe had gotten along. “Ron thought he knew who his little sister would marry,” Jana said, “and now he never will.” Hearing this, Kim was saddened and wondered, for a time, if she had done the right thing.

But now it was over. Kim's cat Dakota came to live with us.

Michael's seventeenth birthday brought back memories of the previous year. Armed with a learner's permit, Michael had been driving around our neighborhood for several months and, of course, wanted to take his driver's test the very day he turned sixteen. Before Patti would allow him to take the test, she wanted him to prove that he could handle more difficult driving conditions. So Michael drove us south along the Ventura Freeway to Brentwood. We had met Ron at a Japanese restaurant for Michael's birthday dinner.

Now that he was a year older and holding a regular job at the deli, Michael was ready for a newer car, a Mitsubishi. As soon as he picked it up in Ventura, he drove straight to the Department of Motor Vehicles to order license plates that declared: RMBR RON.

Lauren was only able to attend the trial on a few occasions. One day she was with us as we sat in the courtroom waiting for the proceedings to begin. Robert Shapiro was talking to someone from the media. Lauren stared at him with bitterness in her eyes until someone said, “That little girl is giving you a dirty look.” Shapiro walked away.

Most of the time, however, Lauren viewed the trial from a distance. When she came home from school she switched on the TV to see what was happening. Her interest depended on which side was being covered. She despised the defense team, and did not care to hear what they had to say. If the events of the day were too offensive, she turned off the TV, retreated
to her room, and listened to her favorite CD, the Beastie Boys. Or she wrote in her journal.

Time is said to be the great healer, but in our experience that is an overrated concept. How does one heal a gaping wound in the soul when it is on full view for the entire world to see?

Patti was stretching herself to the limit: attending the trial every day; caring for me and the kids; juggling schedules; housekeeping, shopping, cooking; still dealing with her grief over losing Ron; and trying to live with the anger and frustration that the “Scheme Team” engendered. It seemed that her whole world had spun out of control. Patti needed to do something for Patti. “I need a change,” she announced. “I've had blond frosted hair forever. It's the time to live life as a redhead.”

I simply shook my head. “You look great the way you are.”

“I just want to do it,” Patti said. “I need to do it.”

Except for Kim, the rest of us voted against the idea, but that did not slow her down for a moment. Her stubborn streak had kicked in. Here was something about her life that she could control. She could change her hair color more easily than she could change other circumstances.

Once it was done, I thought she looked great. But Michael and Lauren were not at all pleased. They complained, “You don't look like our mom anymore. You look more like Kim's mom now.”

Lauren was in tears over it. Patti tried to assure her that she had always been, was now, and would always be
her
mother, but nothing she said made any difference. Lauren and Michael's reaction went deeper than a simple hair-color change. Whether they realized it at the time or not, it seemed they were saying, “You spend so much time with Kim—and now you look like her—what about us?”

On March 18, Patti, Kim, Lauren, Michael, and I all went to select the headstone for Ron's grave. Kim had said repeatedly that she wanted an inscription that would make her “feel” every time she visited him. For weeks she had searched for the right words. One day she came across a greeting card with a verse that touched that place in her heart. She bought the card, brought it home for us to read, and we all agreed that with a few personal changes, it would be perfect.

At the mortuary, we had a long and emotional discussion over whether we wanted Ron's picture on the headstone. Finally we decided against it.
Little decisions became monumental as we tried to pick the style of lettering we wanted and the layout of the design.

We decided to have the unveiling service on Memorial Day. On the day when the entire nation honored men and women who had lost their lives defending America, we would honor a man who had lost his life coming to the defense of a friend.

In court the parade continued. Phil Vannatter was the fourth and final detective to testify, and he appeared cool and unflappable. He supported the story of the other three detectives that they had not considered the defendant to be a suspect when they went to his Rockingham estate. Van-natter said that they had instructed Fuhrman to jump the wall and let them in, because they had found blood on the door of the defendant's Bronco and were concerned that there might be other victims. They did not consider that the defendant was a suspect, he said, until they discovered the bloody glove.

On cross-examination, Robert Shapiro attacked the story, claiming that the search of the Brentwood estate was illegal. The defense was building its characterization of Phil as being one of “the twin devils of deception,” once more diverting attention away from the murderer.

Kim knew that Phil Vannatter had twenty-five years of distinguished service behind him, and that had to count for something. Although she never actually discussed the issue of the search with the detectives, she thought that they were hedging their testimony a bit. She knew, as Patti had voiced earlier, that rightly or wrongly the ex-spouse of a murder victim is always a suspect. But she said, “Phil, whatever you choose to do, just know that we support you.”