His Name Is Ron (29 page)

Several of our friends and friends of Ron spoke, sharing their memories. And then, as the darkness of night enveloped us, it was my turn. Glancing toward Kim, I began:

Kim's a tough act to follow. I have been truly blessed. I had a great deal to be proud of, and I still do. I had a wonderful son who lived life to its fullest, who cared about other human beings, who cared about his family, who cared about everyone he came in touch with.

I have a daughter who blows me away. I don't know where she gets it. She is so incredibly special. I know Ron is as proud of her today as he was yesterday, and will be tomorrow.

I have been blessed with this lady in my life [looking at Patti] who, with Michael and Lauren and Kim and Brian, have made this year almost bearable and without them, I can't imagine doing it. And I have been blessed to have friends who are
unbelievably warm and gracious and kind and sensitive, and we owe them an enormous debt.

Colleen mentioned to me the other night that 26,000 or more people are dying every year by violence. Their faces, their names, their voices are never heard. We have a chance to speak because of the person who took my son and Nicole away, because of his notoriety, and it is for all those faceless people that most of us don't know that we light these candles ultimately tonight, so that perhaps people across this nation will see all of you wonderful people, and kind human beings that are in fact a majority of our world, and hopefully, all of us together will send a message that we will no longer tolerate crime and violence, and we will no longer tolerate this ravage in our society, and this taking away of brothers and sisters and mothers and daughters. Thank you all, from the bottom of my heart, for being here in these enormous numbers. It is amazing to me.

You owe yourselves an enormous amount of thanks. You are who this world is all about—not those vicious and violent human beings who prey on us.

As Loren began to play “Dust in the Wind,” cigarette lighters snapped and matches scratched. Flames flickered. Within minutes the faces of a thousand respectful, thoughtful, wonderful fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters radiated with a brilliance that dispelled the darkness that surrounded us all.

TWENTY-ONE

It was the dawning of a new era, when we began to realize to a far greater degree than before how much support and friendship and plain old human love was out there. Yes, the evil remained, but the good was fighting back.

This was symbolized for us as the crowd at the candlelight vigil began to disperse.

Kim stepped off the sandy platform of the amphitheater onto the grass. Suddenly she heard someone yell, “Kim, Kim!” She turned and looked up—way up—into the kind, smiling, ebony-hued face of a giant. He stood six feet five inches tall, and weighed about three hundred pounds. I am a six-footer, and I know Kim thinks of me as a big man, but to her I was diminutive next to this great big teddy bear of a person. He gave Kim a hug that swept her off her feet and into the air.

He introduced himself as Rosey Brown. He was a police officer in Inglewood who moonlighted as an actor. In addition to his size and his incredibly infectious, toothy grin, we were drawn to him by his baseball cap with big, shiny, orange letters that proclaimed: O. J.'S
GUILTY
.

Someone commented, “Nice cap.”

He smiled from ear to ear and said, “I always say if anyone has a problem with my hat, they can just come on over and try to take it off.”

Rosey said that he wanted to meet us and let us know that he supported us. Left unsaid was the notion that not all big, black “tough guy” types condone those who beat their wives—and worse.

Michael's eyes widened at the sight of the man, and he thought: I'm sure glad he's on our side!

And yet the horror continued. The day after the vigil we endured additional graphic testimony from Dr. Lakshmanan. In meticulous detail he described a stab wound to Ron's chest that went through one rib, punctured his right lung, and struck another rib. The coroner said, “You can expect death in a very short time after the injury.”

That comment knocked the wind out of me, and one of the younger women jurors had to rush from the courtroom. Judge Ito called for a break.

As I tried to compose myself, the killer shared a few words with his lawyers. When they laughed out loud, Kim tried to stare them down.

Kim asked Mark Arenas, our Victim-Witness Assistance advocate, if she would be allowed to swear during her victim's statement after the killer was found guilty. “Low-life scumbag just doesn't cover it,” she pointed out. Mark had assured her that she could say whatever she wished, and no one would wash her mouth out with soap.

Directly in front of Kim, Jonathan Fairtlough, who was in charge of all the prosecution's visual aids, flipped through an album. Kim suddenly caught a brief glimpse of one of the autopsy photos. She gasped, covered her mouth, and dropped her head.

Seeing Kim's discomfort, Phil Vannatter reached over the railing and held her hand.

She was thankful that her vision is so poor.

Both Patti and I had other commitments that made it impossible for us to attend court on June 15. And Mark had to attend a meeting, so Kim was there alone.

The witness was Richard Rubin, former vice president and general manager of Aris, the company that manufactures Isotoner gloves. Chris Darden asked him if a pair of extra-large gloves would fit the defendant's hands. Rubin responded, “At one point in time, those gloves would actually be large, I think, on Mr. Simpson's hand.”

When Chris asked for permission to have the killer try on a new pair of extra-large Aris Isotoner gloves, Judge Ito called for a sidebar. During this conference it was the judge himself who suggested “it would be more appropriate” for the defendant to try on the actual gloves in evidence.

Marcia objected, noting that the defendant would have to wear latex surgical gloves underneath, so as not to contaminate the evidence. “They're going to alter the fit,” she contended.

But Judge Ito ruled that the demonstration could proceed.

Kim thought that she was going to throw up. The railing that separated the spectators from the courtroom was about three feet high. She hung her arms over it and stared at Judge Ito. He stared back at her. Tears trickled down her cheeks and she hissed in a stage whisper, loud enough for those close by to hear, “He's going to lie. He's going to fake it.”

The courtroom grew eerily silent. The killer rose from his chair and sauntered toward the jury. He carefully picked up the pair of cashmerelined leather gloves and made a show of trying to push his latex-covered hand into one of the shrunken and wrinkled gloves. His lips pouted. He raised his eyebrows.

Kim could see that he was bending his fingers. “He's not putting his hand all the way through,” she cried.

The killer raised his hands and displayed them to the jury. He flexed his fingers to show how uncomfortable he was. He shoved his hands in Marcia's face. He turned back to the jury and muttered, “Too tight.”

“He's waived his right! He's talking to the jury,” Kim said.

As the killer returned to the defense table, he and his lawyers shared their smirking expressions with one another in full view of the jury. Winks and nods abounded. Cochran patted him on the back with an “atta boy, good job” look on his face. The killer leaned back in his chair, looking self-satisfied. He ripped off the latex gloves and tossed them idly onto the table.

Chris tried to counter the murderer's two-bit acting job by eliciting testimony from Rubin that the latex surgical gloves might have made the Isotoners fit snugly, but the damage was done.

Frustration and anger enshrouded Kim. Within a five-minute period, she felt as if ten pounds had dropped from her body.

She called Patti and me as soon as she could. Both of us had been listening to radio reports, but neither of us had seen the absurd piece of theater that the killer had staged.

When Michael watched the seemingly endless press coverage, he could not understand why everyone was making such a big deal about the killer's performance with the gloves. For one thing, he had worn latex gloves underneath. It was obvious that he was faking. “The gloves fit,” Michael said. “You stick out his hand and let me shove that glove on it and I guarantee you it will fit!”

*   *   *

FBI expert William J. Bodziak described an international hunt to identify the source of the trail of bloody shoe prints leading away from the murder scene. The prints, found along the walkway where the bodies were discovered, indicated that the killer had turned back at one point. A heel print on the back of Nicole's dress suggested that the killer had his foot on her when she was lying on the ground. This corresponded with previous testimony that the murderer stood over Nicole, pulled her hair, and raised her throat to deliver the final blow.

The pattern on the soles of the shoes was a rare one. Investigators finally matched them to an expensive, Italian-made brand known as Bruno Magli. The defendant could easily have afforded the $160 price tag.

The shoes were European size 46, which corresponds to size 12 in the United States. The defendant wears size 12 shoes.

It was all circumstantial evidence, for Bodziak had no way of knowing if the defendant actually owned a pair of size 12 Bruno Magli shoes. Bodziak told the court that only 299 pairs of the shoes had ever been distributed in the United States, but investigators had been unable to find a store or clerk who remembered selling such a pair to the defendant.

On cross-examination, F. Lee Bailey pooh-poohed the testimony, intimating that it shed little light on the case.

None of us, in fact, had any way of knowing how those bloody shoe prints might come back to haunt the killer.

California State Department of Justice analyst Gary Sims returned to the stand to present additional DNA results. He told the jury that only one person out of fifty-seven billion could have been the source of two particular bloodstains. Only one person out of fifty-seven billion could have left the blood found on a gate near the crime scene. Only one person out of fifty-seven billion could have left the blood on the socks found in the defendant's bedroom, the same ones that also contained stains from Nicole's blood.

That one person who matched the DNA pattern was seated on the left side of the courtroom, surrounded by his defense attorneys.

He was, indeed, special. He was one person out of fifty-seven billion!

July 2 was Ron's twenty-seventh birthday.

Michael and Lauren left for Chicago to visit their dad. We could tell
that they were a bit upset. Of all the days that they could fly to Chicago, why did it have to be this one?

Patti, Kim, and I went to the cemetery. We sat next to the headstone, tears streaming down our cheeks. For quite some time, we were silent.

Then I said, “I never know quite what to say when I'm here. What should I say to Ron? There is so much to say. Will he be able to hear me?”

Patti had no answers. Silently, she asked herself: If he knows what we are thinking, feeling, going through, fighting for, does he feel all of our pain as we constantly feel his?

Despite Judge Ito's comment “I would like to finish this case sometime this lifetime,” the two sides continued to wrangle, and wasted yet another week in contentious proceedings, often outside the presence of the jury, concerning the hair and fiber evidence. Finally FBI Special Agent Doug Deedrick, head of the hair and fiber unit of the Bureau's famed crime lab, was able to testify.

Deedrick declared that the blue knit cap found near Ron's feet bore numerous hairs that “exhibit the same microscopic characteristics” as the defendant's hair. Another hair resembling the defendant's was found on Ron's shirt. Thirty-five hair samples resembling Nicole's hair were found on Ron's clothing. A twelve-inch hair resembling Nicole's was found on the bloody glove discovered at the defendant's Rockingham estate. When Marcia asked whether the hair had been “naturally shed or forcibly removed,” Deedrick replied that it was “cut and torn.”

Fibers resembling those of Ron's shirt were found on both gloves—one at the crime scene and one at the defendant's home.

Reddish-beige carpet fibers resembling those from the defendant's 1994 Ford Bronco were found at the crime scene and on the Rockingham glove. Deedrick noted that these could not have come from A. C. Cowlings's similar Bronco, which has blue carpeting. But Judge Ito ruled that the prosecution had been late in apprising the defense that these very unusual fibers could only have come from Ford Broncos built in 1993 or 1994, and he barred Deedrick from making this critical point. Patti thought: This is crucial evidence, one more direct tie-in with the killer. Instead of allowing it, the judge slapped us in the face.

On July 6, after calling fifty-eight witnesses, Marcia declared, “The people rest.”

At a news conference, Gil Garcetti praised the job done by his team in presenting a “giant mountain of evidence.” He predicted that after the defense presented a perfunctory case, “the arrow is still going to point to only one person.”