The Run of His Life

by Jeffrey Toobin

  So Farrell asked around—and heard nothing. Both O.J. and Nicole had acknowledged that the police had come to the house eight times to stop O.J. from hurting Nicole, but at first Farrell couldn’t find a single cop who admitted to going to Rockingham. (O.J. had entertained about forty officers at his home at various times, and with their silence, the officers may have been repaying his hospitality.) Eventually, out of all the cops who had handled calls at the Simpson home, one spoke up. Yes, this officer said, he had been out to the house on a domestic-violence incident. Farrell asked him to write up the incident in a memo, and the officer wrote on January 18, 1989, “To whom it may concern”:

  During the fall or winter of 1985 I responded to a 415 family dispute at 360 North Rockingham. Upon arrival I observed two persons in front of the estate, a black male pacing on the driveway and a female wht sitting on a veh crying. I inquired if the persons I observed were the residents, at which time the male black stated, “Yeah, I own this, I’m O.J. Simpson!” My attention turned to the female who was sobbing and asked her if she was alright but before she could speak the male black (Simpson) interrupted saying, “she’s my wife, she’s okay!” During my conversation with the female I noted that she was sitting in front of a shattered windshield (Mercedes-Benz I believe) and I asked, “who broke the windshield?” with the female responding, “he did (pointing to Simpson)… He hit the windshield with a baseball bat!” Upon hearing the female’s statement, Simpson exclaimed, “I broke the windshield … it’s mine … there’s no trouble here.” I turned to the female and asked if she would like to make a report and she stated, “no.”

  It seems odd to remember such an event but it is not everyday that you respond to a celebrity’s home for a family dispute. For this reason this incident was indelibly pressed in my memory.

  The author of the letter was Mark Fuhrman. Farrell passed it to the prosecutors, and on January 30 they decided to bring a case against O.J. Simpson.

  As his lawyer, Simpson hired Howard Weitzman, a predictable choice given the latter’s reputation. Since winning an acquittal for John Z. DeLorean in a drug-possession case, Weitzman had run a well-publicized criminal and civil practice in Century City. Weitzman was also an active USC alumnus and big sports fan. In Simpson’s case, the lawyer quietly worked out a deal. First there would be several adjournments, which would diminish the already minimal media attention the incident had received. (The Los Angeles Times covered Simpson’s arrest with a 142-word story on page four of the sports section.) Weitzman arranged for Simpson to plead “no contest” to the charge—which is legally identical to “guilty” but sounds better in the press—in return for a sentence of probation and community service.

  Weitzman pushed hard for Simpson. The day after Simpson made his plea, Weitzman filed a brief asking that Simpson’s case be “diverted.” Diversion is a legal process that allows a defendant, if he is not subsequently arrested, to lose the stigma of a criminal record. In his brief Weitzman observed, “Mrs. Simpson has indicated she did not want criminal charges filed against her husband nor will she voluntarily appear as a witness against her husband on behalf of the State.” This case, Weitzman wrote, involved a “minor physical injury (nonetheless significant to Mrs. Simpson) inflicted by a first-time offender who could be helped to refrain from repeating the offense with the proper counseling.” The city attorney objected to a diversion, however, and Simpson did in fact have to plea to the misdemeanor. On May 24, 1989, he received a suspended sentence, twenty-four months of probation, and fines totaling $470. He was ordered to “perform 120 hours of community service through the Voluntary Action Bureau” and to receive counseling twice a week. (Weitzman persuaded the prosecutor, Rob Pingel, to excuse Simpson from the customary group counseling sessions for batterers and instead allow him to receive his counseling from a private psychologist, Burton Kittay.) Finally, Simpson was directed to pay $500 as “restitution,” to the Sojourn Counseling Center, a battered women’s shelter in Santa Monica. (This was the same center that Nicole would call on June 7, 1994, five days before her death, to complain that O.J. was stalking her.)

  Weitzman—and Simpson—did not cease playing the angles after the imposition of sentence. Simpson never reported to the Voluntary Action Bureau, which can assign convicts to such tasks as picking up trash by the highway or cleaning bedpans at hospitals. Instead, Simpson took it upon himself to select his own form of community service: organizing a fund-raiser for Camp Ronald McDonald, a children’s cancer charity, at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Laguna Beach, where O.J. and Nicole had a vacation home.

  When Simpson went back to court on September 1, 1989, to report on the progress of his probation, his form of community service was questioned by the judge. Simpson’s response—indeed, his behavior at the hearing, where no journalists were present—was a mixture of indignation and self-pity.

  “I want to know specifically what you did,” the judge, Ronald Schoenberg, asked the defendant.

  “Everything,” said Simpson. “I closed up my office at the beginning of June and moved my office to Laguna. I created this affair. I didn’t just work for them. I created this affair. When my lawyer informed me before the sentence that I would have to do community service … in the spirit of all of this, I went out on my own and created this event. I talked everyone into it from Coca-Cola to—I flew to Atlanta. I flew to New York and met with Hertz. I flew to Boston to meet with sponsors like Reebok. I went to Ritz-Carlton, spent time with them to get them to pick up some of the cost of the event.… I wrote personal letters and contacted corporate America to see if they would participate in this event.… We put on what I felt was the finest event they ever had in that area. At least that’s what the press said.”

  Judge Schoenberg finally cut off the monologue. “When you’re talking to other people, they’re interested in the results and what you did for them,” he began deferentially. “I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in the work that you did, the hours that you put in, and what you were doing. I know you’re used to talking to people that are interested in what results you achieved, and I’m not.”

  Simpson replied, “Well, I was told, Your Honor, that I had to put in time. I think I put in not only the time that was required of me but far beyond those hours.… I guess what I’m trying to say is I wasn’t trying to get a hundred hours into community service. I tried to do a good job, and it just so happened that I put in more than the hundred hours that I was sentenced to by the court.”

  The prosecutor, Rob Pingel, was frustrated—and obviously feeling snookered by how Simpson’s entire case had unfolded. He complained that by organizing the fund-raiser, Simpson had merely engaged in business as usual, rather than submitting to the customary kind of community service.

  After Weitzman stepped in to defend the worthiness of Simpson’s work, Judge Schoenberg asked a clever question, albeit with considerable solicitude. “There’s a question I’m afraid to ask, and that is this: If this whole case hadn’t come about, would Mr. Simpson have done the same thing for the charity?” Simpson replied, “Certainly not the hours that I put in.… I went into this full-time … hoping to influence the court.” Simpson added sarcastically, “I know that’s not a worthy charity, it seems, in this room.”

  The judge raised the prospect of Simpson doing a more conventional form of community service before being formally released from supervision. Weitzman informed the judge that this would not be possible: Simpson was moving to New York. “He’s moving Sunday,” Weitzman said. “Football season starts.” (Simpson was moving to NBC to cohost its pregame shows on Sundays.)

  Remembering that Simpson had also agreed to undergo counseling as part of his sentence, the judge asked, “What’s going to happen with the other condition about counseling?”

  “I mean, I’m sure there are counselors in New York,” Simpson answered. “I’ve gone to that religiously. I don’t know how often I can discuss one incident in my entire life, but I’ll continue to do that.”
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  “For whatever it’s worth, Your Honor,” Weitzman then said, “I think the counselor did indicate that he believes whatever problem existed doesn’t exist any longer. The counselor said, if necessary, he’d be willing to do it via telephone.…”

  Simpson apparently couldn’t help himself from adding, “Maybe I’m wrong in saying this, but I just don’t understand. At that point when we’re talking about counseling, I’m more than willing to do it, and I’ve been doing it religiously. It’s just, how long can I—I mean, I really have reached a point where I can write a book about all of this. I don’t even know what else to talk about. I come in. I sit down with him. We start talking about other things that are happening in my life at this point. I can’t talk about one incident. I mean, I just don’t know how long, sir, I can talk about one incident in my entire life.

  “I think I’ve been a great citizen. My wife has indicated we have a great marriage. We had one bad night in our life.”

  The judge allowed Simpson to be counseled by telephone. He never had to appear in court again. He wrote Nicole a series of apologetic letters reflecting his hope that they could continue their marriage. In an interview, later in 1989, with Roy Firestone on Up Close, a sports talk show on ESPN, Simpson described the incident by saying, “We had a fight. We were both guilty. No one was hurt. It was no big deal and we got on with our lives. It wasn’t that big of a deal.”

  Simpson’s probation expired uneventfully, and he had no more formal contact with the criminal justice system for almost five years—until, that is, June 13, 1994, the day after his ex-wife’s death, when he returned to his home in Brentwood and found that the police urgently wanted to speak with him.

  After the judge granted the search warrant, Vannatter returned to the Rockingham house shortly before noon on June 13. At that point, the detective gave an order to Donald Thompson, one of the uniformed patrol officers guarding the perimeter of Simpson’s property. Since the entire area was now considered a crime scene—and since Vannatter now had a warrant to search the house and the Bronco—he did not want Simpson or anyone else allowed inside. If Simpson arrives, Vannatter instructed Thompson, detain him and let me know he’s here. The precise words Vannatter used with regard to Simpson later became a point of some controversy. Thompson remembered that Vannatter said, “Hook him up”—that is, handcuff him. Vannatter recalled that he simply said Simpson should be detained until detectives could speak with him.

  Simpson had indeed caught the first available flight from Chicago to Los Angeles, and he made his way home at about 12:10 P.M. Curiously for a man who had been told only that his ex-wife had been killed, not necessarily murdered, Simpson had telephoned from his hotel room in Chicago to arrange for a criminal defense attorney to meet him upon his return home. That was Howard Weitzman, who had represented him so successfully in his abuse case. So Weitzman—as well as Simpson’s longtime secretary, Cathy Randa; his business lawyer, Skip Taft; and an old friend, Robert Kardashian—were waiting for Simpson on the sidewalk when he arrived at his house. Under the watchful eye of several news cameras, Simpson left his bags with Kardashian and hurried up to the front door. At that point, Weitzman, Randa, and Kardashian were not allowed on the property. Simpson was escorted to the front door by Detective Brad Roberts, Mark Fuhrman’s partner, who was assisting in the search of the house.

  According to Roberts’s written report, Simpson pointed to the cops milling around his property and asked him, “What’s all this?”

  “It relates to the phone call you got earlier about the death of your ex-wife.”

  “Yeah, so?” Simpson replied.

  “Well, I’m not the detective on the case,” Roberts explained, “but we came here because a blood trail led us here from the scene.”

  Simpson started hyperventilating. “Oh, man. Oh, man. Oh, man,” he muttered to himself.

  Acting according to his understanding of Vannatter’s instructions, Officer Thompson placed a hand on Simpson to slow him down as he approached the front door. He could have handcuffed him right there. But like Robert Riske, the first officer to see the bodies on Bundy, Donald Thompson was a media-savvy cop. (Of the dozens of Los Angeles law enforcement officials with roles in this case, Thompson was also the only African-American.) As a nine-year veteran, Thompson knew that informal LAPD protocol for dealing with celebrities dictated that he refrain from making a show for the cameras. Instead, he guided Simpson over to another part of the yard, where there was an elaborate play set that had been set up for Nicole and O.J.’s two children. There, in an area he thought was out of the cameras’ range, Thompson shackled Simpson’s hands behind his back. The officer later recalled that he applied the cuffs in this sheltered location “for the dignity of the defendant.”

  It almost worked. The swarm of photographers and camera operators who had shot Simpson as he walked up the driveway strained against the iron gate on Rockingham to get a better view. Ron Edwards’s sixth sense, honed over twenty-five years as a local news cameraman, told him to break away from the pack. By himself, Edwards quietly walked around the corner toward Ashford. There, the six-foot-four-inch Edwards stood on tiptoes so that he could point his KCOP camera over the six-foot-high brick wall surrounding the property. Thus, Edwards alone got a shot of Thompson handcuffing Simpson. After a moment, O.J. noticed the lone camera, and he sought to hide his manacled hands in the doorway of his children’s plastic playhouse.

  Vannatter—a beefy, slow-moving cop with a helmet of caramel-colored hair—ambled over to Simpson and Thompson. He allowed Weitzman to join them, and the lawyer immediately asked that the cuffs be removed. Vannatter agreed, and unlocked them himself. As he was working the key, the detective noticed something: a bandage on the middle finger of Simpson’s left hand. Vannatter thought this was important, because he knew there were drops of blood to the left side of the shoe prints leaving the murder scene.

  Vannatter told Simpson that they had some questions for him about the death of his ex-wife. Would he come down to police headquarters and talk?

  O.J. agreed without hesitation.

  Simpson got in the backseat of Vannatter and Lange’s car, and they made their way to Parker Center in downtown Los Angeles, about twenty miles from Brentwood. (The LAPD command center is named for former chief Bill Parker.) Weitzman and Taft followed in another car.

  Once everyone was reunited in the Robbery-Homicide Division reception area, Weitzman had a request. Could he speak to his client alone for a moment? The detectives gave Weitzman a conference room and told him to take as long as he wanted. Weitzman, Taft, and Simpson then conferred for about half an hour. When they emerged, Weitzman said that Simpson still wanted to talk to the officers but that he and Skip Taft did not want to be present. Weitzman’s only request was that the detectives tape-record whatever went on among them. So Vannatter and Lange and their tape recorder replaced Weitzman and Taft in the small room with Simpson.

  “We’re in an interview room in Parker Center,” Vannatter began. “The date is June 13th, 1994, and the time is 13:35 hours. And we’re here with O.J. Simpson. Is that Orenthal James Simpson?”

  “Orenthal James Simpson,” O.J. confirmed.

  Vannatter began by reading Simpson his constitutional rights, in the form of a Miranda warning. “Okay, do you wish to give up your right to remain silent and talk to us?” Vannatter then asked.

  “Ah, yes.”

  “Okay,” Vannatter continued. “And you give up your right to have an attorney present while you talk?”

  “Mmm-hmmm, yes,” Simpson replied.

  Vannatter began, “We’re investigating, obviously, the death of your ex-wife and another man … and we’re going to need to talk to you about that. Are you divorced from her now?”

  Simpson said they had been divorced for about two years.

  “What was your relationship with her?” Vannatter asked.

  “Well, we tried to get back together, and it just didn’t work. It wasn’t working, and so we
were going our separate ways.”

  Vannatter quickly changed the subject. “I understand that she made a couple of crime … crime reports or something?”

  “Ah, we have a big fight about six years ago on New Year’s, you know, she made a report. I didn’t make a report. And then we had an altercation about a year ago maybe. It wasn’t a physical argument. I kicked her door or something.”

  “Were you arrested at one time for something?” Lange asked.

  “No, I mean, five years ago we had a big fight, six years ago, I don’t know. I know I ended up doing community service.” (Later in the interview, Simpson explained the 1989 incident this way: “We had a fight, and she hit me. And they never took my statement, they never wanted to hear my side, and they never wanted to hear the housekeeper’s side. Nicole was drunk. She did her thing, she started tearing up my house, you know? And I didn’t punch her or anything, but I … wrestled her, is what I did. I didn’t slap her at all. I mean, Nicole’s a strong girl, one of the most conditioned women. Since that period of time, she’s hit me a few times, but I’ve never touched her after that.…”)

  “So you weren’t arrested?” Vannatter asked.

  “No, I was never really arrested.”

  After Vannatter asked how much sleep Simpson had had the previous night—the answer was very little—Lange said to his partner, “Phil, what do you think? We can maybe just recount last night.” Vannatter agreed. “Yeah, when was the last time you saw Nicole?”

  “We were leaving a dance recital. She took off and I was talking to her parents.” O.J. and Nicole’s daughter, Sydney, had performed on Sunday night at Paul Revere Middle School in Brentwood. “It ended at about six-thirty, quarter to seven, something like that, you know, in the ballpark, right in that area.… Her mother said something about me joining them for dinner, and I said no thanks.” Simpson added that he left the scene in his Bentley, and Vannatter asked him where he went from there.