00:00:00
He was crying over the coffin, kissed the coffin. He said, I'm sorry, Nick, I'm sorry.
00:00:08
I said, oh my God, he did it. He killed her. I just remembered screaming. Probably the scariest moment in my entire life.
00:00:19
It was physically painful. That was not justice. The murders took only minutes. All these years later, the shock has yet to fade.
00:00:34
It was a stunning time in American legal theater. You may think you know the story of the O.J. Simpson case, but there was a lot you probably haven't heard, haven't seen.
00:00:48
Did Nicole Brown Simpson actually predict her own death? What she said to us was that O.J. is going to kill me and he's going to get away with it.
00:00:57
What really went on in the jury room? Not guilty of the crime of murder. All people wanted to do was go home.
00:01:06
And in a frank interview, prosecutor Marsha Clark answers the most important question of all.
00:01:12
How did you not convict this guy? The O.J. Simpson case. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.
00:01:21
Here's Josh Mankiewicz. June 12, 1994, Brentwood, California. Two horrific murders that came to be defined by just three words.
00:01:37
The O.J. case. It was a very bloody scene, a very traumatic scene. Both victims had their throats slashed.
00:01:46
O.J., please surrender immediately. Suspect named Orenthal James Simpson. I have O.J. in the car.
00:01:54
We do have sufficient evidence to convict him. Absolutely 100% not guilty. How about that, Mr. Fung?
00:02:02
If it doesn't fit, you must acquit. Not guilty of the crime of murder. It was the story that wouldn't go away.
00:02:13
If you lived here, and by here we mean the United States, you had an opinion. You are people.
00:02:18
A nation made room in its collective consciousness for this collision of pop culture and legal drama.
00:02:26
More than a quarter century ago, it touched issues we still can't agree on today.
00:02:33
Race, money, privilege, fame, interracial marriage, and domestic violence. Back up, please. Get out of my way.
00:02:42
This became television's first reality show. The case consumed us and then divided us.
00:02:49
Even now, we are still fascinated. because there are still questions about what really happened that night in Brentwood
00:03:00
and why, despite a staggering amount of evidence, O.J. Simpson was acquitted. We'll provide some answers with interviews done over the years, rare footage, and haunting
00:03:16
memories, including a candid interview with Prosecutor Marsha Clark, who doesn't hold
00:03:21
back when discussing her unique perspective on the case, on everything from the infamous Bronco
00:03:27
chase... I'm thinking we look like the biggest idiots ever. ...to the trial of the century.
00:03:32
Every day we'd walk into court and something else was blowing up. I'm not guilty of the crime of
00:03:38
murder. And of course, the verdict. You blame yourself for this? You know, I always do. I do.
00:03:44
It was a cool late spring evening in Brentwood. Around midnight, a couple was walking a dog down a quiet section of South Bundy Drive
00:03:57
when something strange caught their attention. Then, at the entrance to a condominium numbered 875, they saw it.
00:04:09
A body in a river of blood. Police arrived and discovered a second victim. Investigators would soon follow, including veteran homicide detective Tom Lang.
00:04:22
This isn't a robbery. This isn't for sex. This is a rage killing. Nicole was nearly decapitated.
00:04:30
Nicole was 35-year-old Nicole Brown Simpson, the ex-wife of O.J. Simpson. Near the bodies was a bloody leather glove, an envelope with a pair of eyeglasses, and a blue-knit cap.
00:04:44
Cops later ID'd the male victim as 25-year-old Ronald Goldba. At this point, they didn't know much about him.
00:04:52
There's numerous wounds on the neck. Goldba put up a fight. Asleep inside the house were the Simpsons' two children, Sidney and Justin, who hadn't heard a thing.
00:05:03
They were taken to a nearby police station. We need next of kin to take care of these kids.
00:05:10
We need to find O.J. Simpson. As dawn broke in Brentwood, Lang and three other detectives were sent to Simpson's estate
00:05:17
on nearby Rockingham Avenue. One of them was Detective Mark Furman. Arriving detectives feared the worst,
00:05:26
that Simpson may have suffered the same fate as his ex-wife. We've just left the bloody crime scene.
00:05:34
Simpson in there is one of the victims. So, without a search warrant, Detective Fuhrman jumped the wall and let in the other cops.
00:05:44
In one of the estate's bungalows, detectives found Simpson's 25-year-old daughter, Arnell.
00:05:50
They learned her father was out of town on a business trip in Chicago. In the other bungalow detectives woke up a shaggy young man named Brian Cato Kalen Kalen had been living at Simpson house for five months
00:06:05
He'd come to L.A. to be an actor. And now he was about to star in the role of his life, answering questions about where
00:06:12
he'd last seen Simpson. I'd seen him earlier in the day and he was talking about women problems.
00:06:18
He needed someone to talk to and I was the only guy probably available. This wasn't normally the relationship you had with him?
00:06:24
Absolutely not. Later that evening, Kalen said Simpson came by his door to get change for a $100 bill
00:06:31
and also mentioned getting something to eat. So just after 9 p.m., they hopped in Simpson's Bentley and went to McDonald's.
00:06:40
Did Simpson ask Kalen to go with him to establish an alibi? I invited myself. He didn't ask me and I thought, oh, I was starving.
00:06:50
Kalen told detectives they got back around 9.40 p.m. He returned to his bungalow and didn't see Simpson again for approximately an hour and
00:06:58
a half. Then around 10.45 p.m., Kalen says he heard three strange sounds. It was a loud, it was a banging noise as if someone bumped into a wall.
00:07:11
Kalen came outside to check on the noise and saw limo driver Alan Park at the gate, waiting
00:07:17
to take Simpson to the airport. A few minutes later, Simpson came out of the house.
00:07:22
His luggage was loaded and the limo sped off. Kalen's story seemed to add up, so now it was Simpson the cops really wanted to talk
00:07:33
to. He was in his hotel in Chicago when detectives told him what had happened in L.A.
00:07:38
There were no details given except that Nicole was dead. He said, well, I'll be on the next plane back there.
00:07:46
Now came another phone call, the one Tom Lang dreaded, notifying Nicole's family.
00:07:52
You hear that phone ring, and I hear a scream from my mom's room that I had never heard before.
00:07:58
It was just awful. Awful, awful. Denise Brown, Nicole's older sister, remembers rushing to her mother's room.
00:08:07
She says, your sister's dead. And I said, oh my God, he did it. He killed her. He being O.J. Simpson, Denise's former brother-in-law.
00:08:20
Detective Lang was stunned at this sudden new lead. That was my first inkling that perhaps Simpson was involved in this.
00:08:30
Nicole's family, devastated in an instant, continued the grim task and called her best friend, Kris Jenner.
00:08:39
I was like, what? What do you mean Nicole died? It was devastating. I think I almost passed out.
00:08:46
It was just the worst feeling you could possibly imagine. Chris had known Nicole since 1978. They met through Chris's former husband
00:08:55
Robert Kardashian who was Simpson's best friend and attorney. Chris adored Simpson
00:09:01
too she said like a big brother. He was very charming a lot of fun to be around.
00:09:06
You could tell he was a the type of person who really enjoyed life. Chris and Nicole had become fast friends and the two couples were like family. Now all of
00:09:18
that was suddenly gone. Everyone's life changed. Nicole died and nothing would ever be the same.
00:09:28
The world had changed forever for Kris Jenner, for the Brown and Goldman families,
00:09:33
and for O.J. Simpson, who would soon be back home in L.A., where a trail of evidence led right to
00:09:41
his front door. Much of that evidence was blood, and this would be the first major trial where DNA
00:09:49
played a huge, although controversial, role. When we return, someone else's world was also
00:09:57
about to change. A deputy DA named Marsha Clark. He goes, you know who it is? O.J. Simpson. Who's
00:10:04
that? You're not a big football fan. No, I wasn't a big football fan, but I know who he is now.
00:10:11
In 1994, the City of Angels was about to get an education. Back then, most of us had never heard the name Kardashian.
00:10:35
Today's powerful bond between DNA evidence and criminal guilt didn't yet exist. And the name O.J. Simpson belonged to a friendly, recognizable sports star, actor, and corporate ambassador.
00:10:49
Someone the nation knew, trusted, and liked. From his naked gun movies to his NFL broadcasts, as his colleague Bob Costas remembers.
00:10:59
He was always the quintessential Hale fellow well met. He was outwardly as likable a person as you could ever want to encounter.
00:11:11
But on day two of this story, much of that history was in the process of being rewritten.
00:11:18
The Brentwood crime scene was now crawling with cops looking for clues and collecting evidence.
00:11:24
Blood was everywhere, and leading from it a trail of bloody shoe prints. Near the bodies was a bloody left-handed glove and a blue-knit cap.
00:11:34
And inside the walls of Simpson's Rockingham Estate, Detective Mark Furman went behind Cato Kalin's bungalow
00:11:41
and discovered a moist, bloody glove similar to the one at the crime scene. So we look at the glove
00:11:49
and it looks the same type. And it was a right-handed glove. Yeah, the same everything.
00:11:55
Detectives also found a trail of blood drops on Simpson driveway leading from the white Ford Bronco parked on the street Lange braced himself for what was to come
00:12:06
This is very sensitive now. It's a celebrity case. At midnight last night, a passerby observed the body, a female white body and a male white body.
00:12:15
By now, the news media had the first sketchy reports. Deputy District Attorney Marsha Clark was with the Special Trials Unit.
00:12:23
she was consulted about getting a search warrant for Rockingham by Tom Lang's partner,
00:12:29
Detective Phil Van Adder, who already considered Simpson a suspect. He goes, you know who it is? O.J. Simpson.
00:12:37
Who's that? Oh, wait. Oh, yeah, naked gun. Hurts? Commercial, right? You're not a big football fan.
00:12:44
No, I wasn't a big football fan. But I know who he is now. some 13 hours after the murders simpson returned to la from chicago a journey that took him from
00:12:57
household name to potential suspect you never thought of him as a killer no no to me he was
00:13:05
bigger than life and had a great personality he loved you know being oj simpson bad enough that
00:13:13
Simpson might be involved in the murder of her best friend. But now, Kris was further conflicted because her former husband, Robert Kardashian,
00:13:21
was Simpson's longtime personal attorney. Kardashian was also at Rockingham and was caught on camera carrying what appeared to be Simpson's garment bag.
00:13:33
Much has been speculated about what might have been in that bag. Could you conceive of him loving his friend so much that he would help him dispose of evidence?
00:13:45
Absolutely not. I guarantee you 150% that he had this character and integrity and Christian values and believed in the truth.
00:14:01
O.J., what can you say about this? Back up. Get out of the way. Step back here. You don't know anything, sir?
00:14:07
Detectives now wanted to bring in Simpson for questioning. His attorney, Howard Weitzman, said his client would fully cooperate.
00:14:15
He's shocked. He had nothing to do with this tragedy. After arriving at police headquarters, Simpson's lawyers met privately with him and then went to lunch,
00:14:26
leaving their client alone with two veteran homicide detectives, Phil Van Atter and Tom Lang.
00:14:33
I was flabbergasted. Unless he just thinks he's glib enough to say anything he wants and he's going to get around us.
00:14:40
Detectives and O.J. Simpson now settled into a small interrogation room for a critical interview that could make or break the case.
00:14:48
It would be the first and last time Simpson would tell his story to police. Coming up.
00:14:58
I know I'm the number one target. And now you're telling me I've got blood all over the place.
00:15:03
O.J. Simpson knows just how bad things look, and he's not the only one. Mr. Simpson, are you a son of a bitch?
00:15:10
When Dateline continues. Parker Center, in 1994, police headquarters in downtown L.A.
00:15:30
It's seen a lot of high-profile murder investigations and thousands of interrogations.
00:15:36
But on that June afternoon, perhaps none more pivotal than the talk detectives were about to have with O.J. Simpson.
00:15:44
Simpson didn't have to be there. He wasn't under arrest. And his attorneys weren't with him in the interview.
00:15:51
So they talked, tape rolled, and we have a copy of it. And we're here with O.J. Simpson. Is that Ornthal James?
00:16:00
Simpson was surprisingly calm for a man whose ex-wife had just been murdered. Very narcissistic, self-assured, has to be in charge at all times.
00:16:13
Cops were drawn to a cut on Simpson's left middle finger. And this is where Simpson's answers started becoming more vague.
00:16:21
How did you get the injury on your hand? I don't know. Not the first time. I know when I was in Chicago, I know how, but at the house I was just running around.
00:16:30
How did you do it in Chicago? I broke a glass. One of you guys had just called me, and I was in the bathroom, and I just kind of went bonkers for a little bit.
00:16:39
Is that how you cut it? It was cut before, but I think I just opened it again. I'm not sure.
00:16:45
Police had found a blood trail from the Bronco to his house. Now Simpson offered a few new details to help explain it.
00:16:54
Do you recall bleeding and all? Yeah, I mean, I was bleeding, but it was no big deal.
00:16:58
I bleed all the time. I mean, I play golf and stuff, so there's always something next and stuff here.
00:17:04
We don't know what direction this is going to take us, but there's enough that I want your blood, I want to document that finger,
00:17:10
I want your fingerprints. By now, Simpson appeared to be sensing trouble and attempted to straighten out his story.
00:17:18
I know I'm the number one target, and now you're telling me I got blood all over the place.
00:17:23
Is that your blood that's right there? If it's dripped, it's what I'd drip running around trying to leave.
00:17:29
Then, after just 32 minutes, detectives wrapped up their interview and whisked Simpson to a lab where he was printed,
00:17:37
his finger photographed, and most importantly, his blood drawn. If this guy is our suspect, his blood is going to convict him.
00:17:45
At the core of this case is blood, blood everywhere. And he's got the evidence that we want in his body.
00:17:53
Simpson, are you a suspect? For now Simpson was allowed to leave That may have been a measure of his celebrity or that police had suspicions they couldn yet back up
00:18:08
But back at Simpson's estate, more evidence was turning up, including a pair of bloody socks on his bedroom floor.
00:18:16
And at the crime scene itself, more blood drops were swabbed from the walkway leading to the alley,
00:18:22
suggesting the killer was bleeding as he fled. We have now videotapes showing the bodies of Simpson's ex-wife and an unidentified man as they were removed from a walkway in front of her west side condominium.
00:18:35
Monitoring all of this from her office at the criminal courts building was Deputy D.A. Marsha Clark, who had not yet been officially assigned the case.
00:18:44
Did you campaign to be put on this case? At that time, it was just another big case. That's what our unit did in special trials. We handled high profile murder cases. That was it.
00:18:55
It's a good case, so of course I wanted it. Did I want it for fame and fortune? Hell no.
00:19:01
All that day, Fred Goldman had been following the news reports about those murders in Brentwood.
00:19:06
He had no idea how much or in how many ways his life was about to change. Because when Fred got home, he and his wife received a phone call from the coroner's office.
00:19:18
And this individual said to me, did you hear on the news today that Nicole Brown was killed and your son was the other person?
00:19:30
That's all we found out over the phone. And two of us stood there crying our eyes out.
00:19:36
Through his shock, Fred knew he had to tell his daughter Kim, who sensed something was wrong the minute she heard his voice on the phone.
00:19:44
And he said, did you hear the news at all today? And I said, no, what's going on, Dad?
00:19:51
And then he just said that Ron had died and that Ron was killed. I don't really remember too much after that.
00:20:00
I just remembered screaming, and he told me to get home. Ron Goldman was just 25.
00:20:12
Handsome. Athletic. Popular. Love you very much and I'll see you soon. Bye. This rare footage was taken the year before his murder.
00:20:26
The Goldmans didn't know it, but this would be their last big celebration as a family.
00:20:32
In June of 1994, Ron had been working at Mezzaluna Restaurant where Nicole and her family had dined the night of the murder.
00:20:41
When Nicole's mother left her eyeglasses there, it was Ron who later brought them to Nicole's condo.
00:20:47
And the lives of two families were suddenly tied together forever in grief. I believe he walked into a crime in process.
00:20:59
And he had a chance to walk away and run, but he didn't. So he died trying to do the right thing.
00:21:08
And that's painful. As night descended on Brentwood, O.J. Simpson was back at his estate.
00:21:17
Cato Kalin says Simpson wanted to have a little chat to discuss the timing of their McDonald's meal.
00:21:25
It was a conversation, Kalin tells Dateline, that had Simpson suggesting a cover-up.
00:21:31
He had tried to tell me, you know where I was, Cato, you know I was in the kitchen at this time.
00:21:35
and he was trying to convince me about what I believe now is an alibi for him. He was trying to get you to agree that you had spent more time with him that last evening than you actually had.
00:21:48
Yeah, I think it was in the time frame that he was with me. I said, no, you weren't.
00:21:52
And inside I'm going, he's trying to make me say something that's not true. Kato Kalin was seeing another O.J. Simpson,
00:22:01
far different from the affable, glad-handing celebrity image that Simpson had so carefully cultivated and protected.
00:22:09
But Simpson also had a dark and violent side, one that had Nicole fearing for her life just weeks before her murder.
00:22:22
Coming up, did Nicole Brown Simpson predict her future? She said things are really bad between OJ and I,
00:22:30
and he's going to kill me, and he's going to get away with it. The funeral was just a mile from the crime scene.
00:22:53
This was a gathering of Nicole's family and friends, including the man police already suspected of her murder, her ex-husband.
00:23:02
That was a really tough day. How did Simpson react at the funeral? He was crying over the coffin, kissed the coffin.
00:23:14
He said, I'm sorry, Nick, I'm sorry. Close friend Chris Jenna remembers when Nicole met Simpson.
00:23:22
She was just 18. He was 29. They were just really happy together. He didn't want to live without her.
00:23:32
She was every bit as crazy about him, and in 1985 they married, the same year Simpson was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
00:23:42
But there would be trouble. Some parts of a star athlete's life remained a lure,
00:23:48
and Simpson saw other women. The two quarreled, and when that would happen, it would sometimes turn violent.
00:23:56
Nicole kept all of it a secret, writing about it. it in her diary. What kind of things were in those diaries? She had to go to the emergency
00:24:04
room. She had been beaten so badly that she, but she told the doctors that she fell off
00:24:09
her bicycle. On New Year's Day 1989, after an especially ugly incident, Nicole stopped
00:24:15
covering for her husband. She called both the police and her sister Denise. She says,
00:24:23
can you do me a favor and come over here and take pictures of me? And so I went over.
00:24:26
How'd she look? She had her face all scratched up. She had the black and blue all over her.
00:24:33
And she just said he went crazy. They divorced in 1992, but soon after, they tried getting back together.
00:24:41
I felt like they really loved each other, but it was tough for them to be together.
00:24:46
And she just always felt like he was cheating on her. Why would she go back to him?
00:24:50
She couldn't live with him, and she couldn't live without him. Nicole's sister Denise says things got worse.
00:24:58
Simpson stalked her. She says he's always there. He's always around. He won't leave me alone.
00:25:04
I'm a lady, where do you see? Yeah, can you send someone to my house? And just months before her murder,
00:25:09
Nicole was on the phone to 911, sounding at first more exasperated than frightened.
00:25:15
Well, my ex-husband or my husband just broke into my house, and he's ranting and raving.
00:25:21
Have you been drinking or anything? Nicole hung up, but called back 10 minutes later as things apparently escalated.
00:25:29
No charges were filed against Simpson. His all-American public image remained intact.
00:25:59
But privately, the last several months of Nicole's life with Simpson were a series of breakups and make-ups, says Kris Jenner.
00:26:07
In April 1994 came one last reconciliation. The two took a trip to Mexico, but things didn't work out.
00:26:17
Nicole returned home with her mind made up. She said she was done, and there was something different within Nicole that time.
00:26:26
But Simpson apparently wasn't ready to let go. According to Kris Jenner, he was devastated at being dumped and retaliated by threatening Nicole.
00:26:38
Just weeks before her death, says Kris, Nicole revealed something shocking. Things are really bad between OJ and I, and he's going to kill me, and he's going to get away with it.
00:26:51
And soon after, Kris Jenner was attending her best friend's funeral. And as the funeral was winding down, things were busy at the LAPD crime lab, where preliminary
00:27:04
results comparing Simpson's blood to the samples collected at the crime scene were now in.
00:27:11
And they matched. The bloody trail at Bundy, Rockingham, and inside the Bronco all came back to Simpson,
00:27:19
which meant... We wanted to go out and get them and bring them in and book them like we would anybody
00:27:23
else. Instead, a deal was struck with Simpson's recently hired defense attorney, Robert Shapiro.
00:27:30
To avoid all the media, Simpson would discreetly turn himself in at the jail in the back of Parker Center.
00:27:38
The deadline was Friday, June 17, 1994, 11 a.m. sharp. But O.J. Simpson never showed, as the nation was about to learn he had simply disappeared.
00:27:51
Coming up, O.J. Simpson could run, but he couldn't hide. This is A.C. I have O.J. in the car.
00:28:01
And Marsha Clark gets a preview of things to come. He has murdered two innocent people, slaughtered them.
00:28:08
And you're cheering his escape? When Dateline continues. Friday, June 17, 1994, would become a truly unforgettable day in Los Angeles and around
00:28:30
the world. That morning Simpson was preparing to turn himself in at police headquarters.
00:28:36
But then he suddenly vanished. O.J., wherever you are, for the sake of your family, for the sake of your children, please
00:28:50
surrender immediately. Simpson did leave behind what many felt was a suicide note, a note his
00:28:57
friend Robert Kardashian read on live TV. Everyone understand I have nothing to do with Nicole's
00:29:06
murder. I loved her. Don't feel sorry for me. I've had a great life. And no one seemed to know where
00:29:17
Simpson was. The Los Angeles Police Department right now is actively searching for Mr. Simpson.
00:29:27
O.J. Simpson is not at this location. There's nothing going on here. I have a petition to a suspect one and four, a double 187 in West LA Division.
00:29:38
Suspect named Orenthal James Simpson. Then around 6.30 p.m., some seven hours after he was supposed
00:29:46
to have turned himself in, a white Ford Bronco was spotted with Simpson in the back seat and his close friend Al Cowlings at the wheel And within a minute the Orange County sheriffs were on him And the number one lane at 40 miles per hour
00:30:06
What followed was a surreal low-speed chase, which, by the way, involved Al Cowling's Bronco, not Simpson's.
00:30:14
This is A.C. I have O.J. in the car. Okay, where are you? Ladies, I'm coming up the 5 freeway.
00:30:21
Okay. Right now we are okay, but you've got to tell the police that this is back off.
00:30:25
He's still alive, but he's got a gun to his head. 95 million Americans now tuned in to watch what was suddenly the best show on TV.
00:30:35
Here is Tom Brokaw. We are looking at live pictures of Interstate 5 in Los Angeles.
00:30:43
Until that moment, many viewers had settled in to watch the NBA Finals between the Knicks and the Rockets.
00:30:50
Now they would watch a split screen of the game and the chase. Bob Costas was hosting the pregame and halftime shows for NBC.
00:31:00
And then all of a sudden, this Greek tragedy becomes part of the mix. And it's going on concurrently.
00:31:09
Zero 10-4, in the number 2 lane, 25 miles per hour. This is a drama without a script.
00:31:16
Suspect is possibly armed, but use caution. It was a real gun. It was loaded. You could have used it.
00:31:22
And you can't take a chance with someone. Certainly you've been accused of murder.
00:31:27
There are pedestrians all over the roadway. Detective Tom Lang had Simpson's cell phone number and amazingly was able to reach him.
00:31:36
Dateline has obtained the actual recording of that conversation, which was not released at the time.
00:31:41
Jack, just let me get to my house. Okay, we're going to do this. I'm sweaty. I'll give you what I'll give you me. I'll give you my whole body.
00:31:49
Lang used every bit of police and pop psychology he knew to keep Simpson's hand on the phone and off the trigger.
00:31:57
Please, you're scaring everybody, though. You're scaring them. Just tell them I'm all sorry. You can tell them later on today and tomorrow that I was sorry.
00:32:05
I'm sorry that I did this to the police. Listen, I think you should tell them yourself. And I don't want to have to tell your kids that.
00:32:12
Your kids need you. I've already said goodbye to my kids. Marsha Clark, who by now had been assigned to prosecute Simpson for Nicole and Ron's murders,
00:32:22
was watching all of this, furious that he was still free. We looked like the biggest idiots ever.
00:32:29
And then I thought, this looks like flight to me. And that is consciousness of guilt in the law.
00:32:36
Kim Goldman was watching too, and worrying Simpson might not survive. I'm thinking we need to bring him to the court. He needs to have his day at trial.
00:32:46
If he's not guilty, then what's he running for? All I did was love Nicole. All I did was love her.
00:32:53
I understand. I love everybody. I tried to show everybody my whole life that I love everybody.
00:32:59
It was surreal. It was devastating. It was, you know, could this get any worse? I'm going to be taking the sunset for an off-ramp from the Northbound 405.
00:33:08
Well, maybe not worse, but certainly more weird, with crowds cheering on Simpson as if he were making a Heisman-like dash for the end zone.
00:33:22
But Marsha Clark, who was glued to the screen, wasn't cheering. She says she was seething.
00:33:31
I saw the people by the side of the road cheering, and I thought, oh my God, this is not good.
00:33:40
That's a little sample of what's to come. Exactly. He has murdered two innocent people, slaughtered them, and you're cheering his escape?
00:33:49
And it gave me a full-on view of what we were up against. Finally, after nearly 90 riveting minutes,
00:33:58
Possibly getting close to the house there. Simpson and Cowlings pulled into Rockingham.
00:34:04
Use your own discretion. You take him down if you have to. We don't know what the hell's going to happen.
00:34:09
You don't know if he's going to get out of the car and have a shootout with the police.
00:34:13
I couldn't have written off the possibility that he's going to kill himself. For nearly an hour, Simpson sat in the Bronco as police tried to coax him out.
00:34:23
Finally, he emerged and collapsed into the arms of several waiting officers. It was finally over.
00:34:34
Inside the Bronco was a loaded .357 Magnum and Simpson's travel bag containing his passport,
00:34:41
a fake goatee and mustache. Simpson was taken away and would soon be charged with two counts of first-degree murder.
00:34:50
O.J. Simpson is in custody. He's been transported here to Parker Center. Convicting him seemed almost certain, especially given all that blood evidence.
00:35:00
But District Attorney Gil Garcetti would soon make a crucial decision that would alter the course of this case long before it ever went to trial.
00:35:11
Coming up, they were called the Dream Team. We're ready to proceed to trial. But one of the team has another name for his fellow lawyers.
00:35:21
I call them the Nightmare Team. He once wore number 32. Now O.J. Simpson had a brand new number.
00:35:43
And for the next 15 months, a new home. A dingy cell at the L.A. County Jail, where he was being held without bail.
00:35:51
Simpson had visits from his family friends attorneys and even his former colleague Bob Costas I went to visit him He tried to convince me several times of his innocence Look Bob you know me
00:36:05
I'm a smart guy. Would I leave a glove behind? Would I do something like this? This doesn't make sense.
00:36:11
That doesn't make sense. But Simpson was facing a mountain of evidence. We're working the crime line.
00:36:17
As District Attorney Gil Garcetti confidently told NBC News back in 1995. No case that I am aware of in the history of this country has had so much DNA evidence,
00:36:30
but for the fact is where O.J. Simpson is what you would call in sports language a slam-dunk
00:36:37
winner. Then, D.A. Garcetti made a critical decision. He decided to move the case here to downtown Los Angeles from Santa Monica.
00:36:47
Downtown the jury pool would be mostly minority, and thought to be more sympathetic to a black
00:36:51
defendant. At the time, Garcetti claimed the change was made for a number of reasons, including
00:36:57
that the Santa Monica courthouse, which recently had sustained earthquake damage, couldn't
00:37:01
handle a long trial. Can you tell us anything at all at this point? But former detective Tom Lang believes that trade-off may have also involved a different
00:37:11
calculus, the hope that a conviction by a predominantly black jury would head off what
00:37:16
happened here in 1992. When rioting broke out after a mostly white jury acquitted LAPD officers in the beating of Rodney King.
00:37:29
Can we all get along? Can we get along? In hindsight, that decision to move the trial downtown may have been the first of many that, taken together, would influence how the case and the verdict played out.
00:37:43
The thinking was, if you have a minority jury convicting a minority defendant, everything is cool.
00:37:51
You're not going to have any problems. But Prosecutor Marsha Clark says there was no choice about where to try the case.
00:37:58
It was always going to be downtown. There was no discussion about it. And so people who say, oh, well, they gave up the mostly white jury pool of Santa Monica
00:38:07
and ended up in a mostly minority jury pool downtown, and it was all over at that point.
00:38:12
those people don't know what they're talking about. No, they really don't. I mean, they might be right in terms of
00:38:16
would we be better off with a white jury? Well, yes. I don't think there's any disputing that now, right?
00:38:22
But justice kind of demands that we try the case in front of the jury, you know, that we have
00:38:27
and we do our very best to convince them. Then another critical decision. This one made by Judge Lance Ito,
00:38:36
who ruled the trial could be televised. Do you have enough evidence to convict O.J. Simpson?
00:38:41
Of course we do. Publicly, Marcia Clark seemed highly confident in her case back then.
00:38:47
The fact that the case has been filed means that we do have sufficient evidence to convict him.
00:38:51
But privately, as Clark told us, she sensed trouble early on. Right off the bat, we've got a big pushback in the African-American community.
00:39:00
They don't like this case. They don't want to believe it. There was a sense of loyalty, of investment in protecting an African-American icon who had made it.
00:39:09
He was successful. He had made it. They did not want to see him taken down. Even though he'd done virtually nothing for the community he'd come from.
00:39:15
It was surprising. Virtually nothing. This was not exactly your civil rights firebrand.
00:39:20
And as he was quoted famously saying, I'm not black, I'm OJ. Still, Clark says she was convinced a strong case could be built primarily on the blood and DNA evidence.
00:39:32
There was a trail of evidence, literally, from Bundy that led all the way into his bedroom at Rockingham.
00:39:37
And that included the blood, the hairs, the fibers. It was a huge amount of evidence.
00:39:41
The question was, would it be enough to overcome the incendiary issue of race? How do you plead to couch one and two?
00:39:49
Absolutely, 100%. Race would soon become front and center in the case. Thanks to a new attorney, Simpson added to his team just before he was arraigned.
00:40:01
His name? Johnny L. Cochran, Jr. We're ready to proceed to trial. We want to see justice for O.J. Simpson, and we believe he'll be acquitted.
00:40:10
Cochran had been a thorn in the LAPD side for years, running a lucrative practice trying police misconduct cases.
00:40:19
From the outset, his strategy was simple. This was the kind of case where you attack the police and their credibility.
00:40:26
Especially in 1995. At that time, the only way to describe the situation between the black community and LAPD
00:40:35
was a state of open warfare. Connie Rice is a civil rights attorney who lives in Los Angeles.
00:40:42
The black community experienced LAPD as a hostile occupation force that viewed the black community
00:40:50
with racist contempt. So it was the perfect time for that defense to be raised. It was the perfect
00:40:54
time for that defense to be erased, that this is a black man being persecuted and he ought to be
00:41:01
let go. But O.J. Simpson? For years, he'd lived on L.A.'s mostly white west side. He spent much of
00:41:09
his time playing golf, dating white women, and seemed to have little to do with L.A.'s black
00:41:14
community. I'm not sure he knew how to get to South L.A. That's right. He didn't have to identify
00:41:20
with the black community. What the black community understood was that you're being targeted,
00:41:25
you're back with us. Cochran knew that, and helping him were several other legal superstars
00:41:32
like F. Lee Bailey, DNA expert Barry Sheck, and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz.
00:41:39
They were known as the Dream Team, but Dershowitz had his own name for them. I call them the Nightmare Team.
00:41:46
It was a terrible, terrible group. We didn't get along. There was a tremendous amount of dissension behind the scenes.
00:41:52
But somehow they managed to come together and pick a jury as Simpson attorney Carl Douglas revealed to Dateline We had done focus groups pre and it said clearly that African American women would be our
00:42:09
best jurors. They would know and understand how black men are treated by police. In the end,
00:42:17
and the panel that was picked included eight black women. We were so pleased because this was a jury that Johnny could speak to
00:42:27
and had spoken to for his entire career. Perhaps the most thrilled of all was Simpson himself.
00:42:37
OJ looked back on that jury and said, gee whiz, guys, if this jury convicts me, maybe I did do it.
00:42:47
Coming up, was O.J. Simpson getting rid of something at the airport the night of the murders?
00:42:53
He was pulling things out and dumping them in the trash can. And Cato Kalin in the biggest role of his life.
00:43:01
I don't think we're going for the same parts. I don't know. When Dateline continues.
00:43:17
Returning to our story, the O.J. Simpson trial was about to begin. After that surreal Bronco chase through L.A., you wouldn't think things could get much stranger.
00:43:29
But of course they would. A circus in a courtroom watched by millions. Here again is Josh Mankiewicz.
00:43:39
Day one of what was being called the trial of the century. It's no exaggeration to say it felt as if the whole world was watching.
00:43:49
We're very ready. We've been ready for a long time. Just prepare all weekend for this.
00:43:52
It was just six months after the murders of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. O.J. Simpson was facing the possibility of life in prison if convicted.
00:44:04
Now the two sides would finally square off. A team of tough but largely unknown L.A. County prosecutors,
00:44:11
armed with a seemingly airtight case rich in DNA evidence, pitted against some of the most famous defense lawyers in the land,
00:44:20
whose plan was simple, put the police and their investigation on trial. Presiding over all of this would be Judge Lance Ito,
00:44:30
a former prosecutor who'd been on the bench for six years. This blood drop that you see here, marked with the item number 112, matches the defendant.
00:44:39
The heart of the prosecution's case was all that blood and DNA evidence, which pointed squarely at O.J. Simpson.
00:44:47
But first, prosecutors detailed Simpson and Nicole's troubled, sometimes violent, relationship, which they said culminated in her murder.
00:44:56
And in that final and terrible act, Ronald Goldman, an innocent bystander, was viciously and senselessly murdered.
00:45:05
Later, Denise Brown gave the jury a chilling account of how Simpson brutalized Nicole right in front of her.
00:45:14
Picked her up, threw her against a wall. Picked her up, threw her out of the house.
00:45:23
Was it tough to go in there and recount what you had seen? Yeah, it was. I just lost my sister.
00:45:29
Yeah, everything was just right there. I mean, just so fresh. Prosecutors also focused on the timeline of the murders
00:45:37
To show that Simpson was alone and unaccounted for For at least an hour Enough time to kill Ron and Nicole
00:45:44
People call Mr. Kalen Kato Kalen took the stand to testify about that night he was with Simpson
00:45:50
But first came one of those Kato moments Did you think that your friendship with him, your acquaintanceship
00:45:56
Especially living on his property might send acting roles your way? I didn't think that
00:46:01
I don't think we're going for the same parts. I was just being me. It wasn't about the spotlight.
00:46:09
It was just how I am. Whose side was Cato Kaelin on? Oh, that's a great question.
00:46:17
He certainly wasn't on ours. He was on Cato's side. That would be my opinion. From the very start, he was very clearly withholding information.
00:46:27
And you didn't think he had anything to do with it? No. What he was doing was sticking his finger in the air, seeing which way the wind was blowing and saying,
00:46:34
you know what, Simpson's not going to get convicted and I'm going to be the one who is standing by his side and he'll take care of me.
00:46:40
Kalen told us he cooperated fully and answered everything Clark asked. And at trial, he did detail a critical sequence of events before and after the murders.
00:46:51
From the trip he and Simpson took to McDonald's to those three strange sounds he heard at 1045 p.m.
00:46:59
Sounds investigators believed Simpson made when returning home after killing Ron and Nicole.
00:47:06
Can you demonstrate for us how loud it was? Somewhat, yes. Go ahead. Yeah, go ahead.
00:47:17
And where did that noise seem to be coming from? From the back of the wall. Cato Kalin had come to Hollywood looking for fame.
00:47:24
What he found was something more powerful, longer lasting. and ultimately upsetting.
00:47:31
This is probably the scariest moment in my entire life, and also everything that you've ever done in your life
00:47:36
became out to the public. This is not what you wanted, I'm sure. I would never think in a billion years
00:47:44
that this was going to be my life. Kato Kalin wasn't alone. Another person's life had collided with O.J. Simpson's that night.
00:47:53
But this man was eager to testify. Skip Junis was at the LA airport the night of the
00:48:00
murders to pick up his wife who worked for American Airlines. It was 11.30 p.m., just an hour after Ron and Nicole had been killed.
00:48:09
A limousine pulled up and O.J. Simpson got out of the limousine. Junis says he had a clear view of Simpson, but Simpson, he says, never saw him.
00:48:21
He was carrying this little cheap gym bag. He only zipped it a few inches, just enough to get his hand in,
00:48:28
and was pulling things out and dumping them in the trash can. Back then, Junis didn't think too much of it,
00:48:36
as he watched Simpson empty that little black bag and then hustle inside. By the time police learned what Junis had seen,
00:48:44
it was too late for them to go through the trash. But Junis did draw a picture of the bag for detectives.
00:48:50
You think he was disposing of the evidence then? Sure, of course I do. That witness has evidence.
00:48:56
They have no reason to discount him or anything else. He's an entirely credible story.
00:49:01
So credible that Junis was subpoenaed to testify. But like a lot of the prosecution's case, things wouldn't go quite according to plan.
00:49:10
And the defense was just getting started. Coming up, if it doesn't fit. It was a stunning time.
00:49:21
one that will go down in the annals of history, I suggest. I did not want him to try on the evidence gloves.
00:49:28
Whose call was that? Good morning. Prosecutors had Cato Kalin on the witness stand again.
00:49:47
From morning shows to late night television, Judge Lance Ito's courtroom was now part of our popular culture.
00:49:57
It was OJ every day. Products, pundits, and a whole new class of TV shows talking about everything that happened that day in court.
00:50:09
But if the audience loved it, 12 jurors didn't see it because they were sequestered,
00:50:15
confined to this high-rise hotel a few blocks from the courthouse. Lon Cryer was one of the jurors who actually decided the case.
00:50:25
For 265 days, more than eight months, their lives were limited to a courtroom and a hotel room.
00:50:34
With no TV, no phone, no radios, no nothing. Isolated, bored, often lonely. There was nothing glamorous about being a juror on the trial of the century.
00:50:45
I think you'll be very happy with the entertainment that we'll provide for you this weekend.
00:50:53
There were occasional off-day outings around town. And there was one business trip when the jury was taken on a tour of the crime scene and Simpson's Rockingham Estate.
00:51:05
But what the jurors didn't know was that before that visit, defense attorney Carl Douglas had gone into Simpson's house for a little redecorating.
00:51:15
We wanted to make the Rockingham location look lived in and stand with all of its regalness so that the jurors would say, O.J. Simpson would not have risked all of this for this woman.
00:51:32
Photos of Simpson with white women were swapped out for pictures of him with black people.
00:51:38
A Norman Rockwell painting from Johnny Cochran's office and a bedside photo of Simpson's mother were placed in prominent view.
00:51:47
This is not tampering with evidence. This is not tampering with evidence, no. This is simply making his house presentable, like washing the floors.
00:51:55
Like putting the Bible out for everybody to see. Like putting flowers in to make the house more presentable.
00:52:00
If there is no objection, so be it. You wanted to win. If it's not called, I'm trying to get the optimum advantage to win.
00:52:10
They play hardball in the big leagues. This was the big leagues. And there was a lot more hardball to be played,
00:52:20
starting with that evidence cops had collected at the crime scene and at Simpson's estate.
00:52:26
The defense knew how to dismiss it, quickly and cleverly. with just four little words.
00:52:32
Garbage in, garbage out. Garbage in, garbage out. Became the strategy. If there was evidence that was contaminated or corrupted,
00:52:42
then the results and the conclusions could not be trusted. For example, a key blood sample that wasn't collected from the crime scene
00:52:51
until three weeks after the murder. Then defense DNA expert Barry Sheck pounced on the LAPD's Dennis Fung.
00:53:00
accusing him and a colleague of mishandling evidence. There. There. How about that, Mr. Fung?
00:53:08
The defense came in and just whittled in piece by piece, little by little. Many people who watched the trial said that the jury was bored by the lengthy DNA evidence.
00:53:21
Put yourself there. And you're sitting there. You're listening to this stuff over and over.
00:53:26
I'm not going to lie to you. It was somewhat boring. Boring and apparently not resonating with the jury, whose silent expression sent a loud message to Marsha Clark.
00:53:39
That trial was a nightmare for me every single day. I had had so many days of going back up to my office and feeling like, we're toast, it's over, there's no way.
00:53:48
Because remember, I'm watching the jury all day, every day. What was the bigger problem?
00:53:53
The defense suggesting that because of race that the DNA evidence had been tampered with or was DNA back then just too hard and too boring for the jury to understand It was the former It was definitely the race issue
00:54:06
So the DNA was not the problem. The problem was the jury didn't want to believe.
00:54:12
And so at the end of the day, you can't make someone believe something they don't want to believe.
00:54:18
But there was plenty of other evidence besides DNA that the prosecution never showed the jury.
00:54:23
like the police interview with Simpson or his emotional farewell note and the ensuing Bronco
00:54:30
chase. Those were critical lost opportunities, says Detective Tom Lang. I had a problem from day one
00:54:38
because of evidence that they didn't want to put on. And you'd say to prosecutors,
00:54:43
what are you doing? And they would say, don't worry, we have DNA evidence. They didn't say that. They obviously implied that. We kept getting evidence,
00:54:52
getting more and more evidence, and they weren't having anything to do with it. But Clark says she was concerned that the Bronco chase,
00:55:00
Simpson's police interview, and the so-called suicide note might play sympathetically to the jury.
00:55:07
I have to look for the most objective evidence I can. I can't go to them and say, this is what I think.
00:55:12
Because any of these kind of dicey moves, and that's a dicey move, the statement he gave the cops, the quote-unquote suicide note that he wrote.
00:55:20
So I had enough solid evidence without taking risks with evidence like that. Enough evidence that even eyewitness Skip Junis,
00:55:30
the man who said he spotted Simpson emptying his gym bag at the airport soon after the murders,
00:55:35
was never called to testify. And neither was Kris Jenner, who wanted to tell the jury how Nicole feared for her life.
00:55:44
Her knowing that she was going to be murdered, do you believe that she knew? She knew.
00:55:49
How do you know? She told me. What did she say to you? He's going to kill me and he's going to get away with it.
00:55:54
You couldn't put her on the stand because, what, that's hearsay? Yeah. Yeah. That wouldn't be hearsay.
00:56:00
Under the circumstances that Nicole was speaking to Kris Jenner, we couldn't get it in.
00:56:05
I would have been happy to put her on the stand, believe me. I think she would have been a great witness.
00:56:10
We've talked a lot about the evidence the prosecution could have brought into the case.
00:56:15
But there was something they probably should have left out. it would prove to be especially devastating to the case,
00:56:23
a self-inflicted wound from which prosecutors probably never recovered. The people would ask that Mr. Simpson step forward
00:56:31
and try on the glove recovered at Bundy as well as the glove recovered at Rockingham.
00:56:36
That's people 77. That was not my call. I did not want him to try on the evidence gloves.
00:56:42
I never did. Whose call was that? That was Chris's call. Chris was co-prosecutor Christopher Darden.
00:56:50
I was miserable from the moment that Chris said, no, I'm doing this. And I never expected anything good to come of it.
00:56:58
The only thing I could assume at that time was it's not the right gloves. Because they didn't fit.
00:57:06
It was a stunning time. One that will go down in the annals of history, I suggest.
00:57:13
as one of the dumbest moves ever by any prosecutor. Ever. You never try a demonstration
00:57:19
if you're not sure what's going to happen. The gloves at Rockingham and Bundy don't fit.
00:57:26
Do you understand that? Don't fit. And they can never make them fit. Bye. And the prosecution knew it, too.
00:57:34
Just a little too late. As Chris Darden told NBC News in 1996. They should have fit them.
00:57:40
Our glove expert said they would fit them. They were his gloves. He had his blood on them, the victim's blood on them.
00:57:47
It's something that because it did not come off perfectly, oh, yeah, I wish I hadn't done.
00:57:55
You say to Darden that night, I told you so? No. Darden said to me, I'm sorry. And I said, it's okay.
00:58:03
If that lost the case for us, we were never going to win anyway. Coming up, Detective Mark Furman is caught on tape
00:58:11
Putting the prosecution on the defense. It was mind-boggling. And those dramatic closing arguments.
00:58:20
If it doesn't fit, you must acquit. When Dateline continues. The 4th of July weekend of 1995 had just passed.
00:58:40
But the fireworks were only beginning in Johnny Cochran's office. That day, as usual, several anonymous tips had been phoned in.
00:58:51
Most were dead ends, but one caught the attention of defense investigator Pat McKenna.
00:58:57
Little did he realize then, but McKenna was about to become a key player in the most explosive and pivotal part of the case,
00:59:04
all because of one cryptic phone message, which read... read... Furman, tapes, N-word, things like that.
00:59:13
Detective Mark Furman, the handsome, confident cop who had discovered the bloody glove at Rockingham.
00:59:20
So McKenna followed up with the man who left the message about Furman, which led him to a woman named Laura Hart McKinney,
00:59:28
a screenwriter who'd consulted with Furman on a script about police work. And their conversations were recorded.
00:59:35
A few weeks later, the tapes arrived at Cochran's office. Johnny was very careful about those tapes, locking them in his safe where only he had the combination because it was just so explosive.
00:59:52
But anything I would have in his mouth for the first five or six sentences is a lie This is Mark Furman on the tape I heard it myself It is his voice and it is chilling It was mind what we heard
01:00:07
He used the N-word so much that became insignificant. Are you guys like, you know, hoisting champagne glasses when you listen to those tapes?
01:00:16
It was mana from heaven. But for the prosecution, the Furman tapes were pure hell.
01:00:25
It was horrifying. Horrifying. And listening to that tape, it was like having a sewer unload on your head.
01:00:33
Furman insisted the conversations were no more than the basis for a movie. Is this really what the reality of a democracy is, that we use a fictional screenplay to prosecute one man for doing too good of a job on a murder case and acquitting another? I just think it's absolutely absurd.
01:00:55
Absurd to Detective Furman, but it was live ammunition for Simpson's attorneys. The defense maintained that Furman was a racist cop,
01:01:04
who, in an effort to frame Simpson, planted the bloody glove at his estate. Undermined Furman, went their thinking,
01:01:12
and the entire LAPD investigation would be in doubt. Now Judge Ito made a controversial ruling that would greatly benefit Simpson's defense.
01:01:22
he allowed two excerpts from the Furman tapes to be presented before the jury. Furman, who had testified previously and denied using the N-word,
01:01:40
was then called back to court to answer for what he said on those tapes. All right, Detective Furman, would you resume the witness stand, please?
01:01:47
This time, Furman, accompanied by his lawyer, didn't have much to say, except...
01:01:55
I wish to assert my Fifth Amendment privilege. Three times, Furman invoked his constitutional right against self-incrimination
01:02:02
as the defense grilled him, saving their best question for last. Detective Furman, did you plant or manufacture any evidence in this case?
01:02:14
I assert my Fifth Amendment privilege. It was terrible. It was terrible. The glove demonstration to me paled into insignificance after that.
01:02:25
It's not good when you're handicapping a murder trial afterwards and you're comparing which part of your case was the biggest disaster.
01:02:33
Throughout the trial, it felt like one minefield after another. And every day we'd walk into court and something else was blowing up.
01:02:41
My client has already answered that. I was pissed. Pissed. When someone asks you that under those circumstances, no, hell no, I do not plant evidence.
01:02:52
That's the response. When you plead the fifth, it's all over whether you did it or not.
01:02:56
Did Furman sink the prosecution when he did that? He sunk the case. I assert my Fifth Amendment privilege.
01:03:03
This part of Furman's testimony was heard outside the presence of the jury. All right. Thank you, sir.
01:03:09
Thank you, Your Honor. But juror Lon Cryer had already heard enough from Detective Furman to form an opinion about
01:03:16
him and his role in the investigation. In my mind, I started saying, well, he planted the gloves and the hat.
01:03:23
He had plenty of opportunity to do it. And because this investigation wasn't 100 percent by the book, something nefarious went
01:03:32
on? It means that I can't convict someone of murder. had one last chance, closing arguments. For five hours, Marsha Clark reviewed that trail
01:03:43
of evidence from Bundy to Rockingham. Clear proof, she said, that Simpson killed Nicole
01:03:50
and Ron. And you know he did it. Now, these murders did not occur in a vacuum. They occurred
01:03:58
in the context of a stormy relationship, a relationship that was scarred by violence
01:04:03
and abuse. It wasn't my best. It wasn't. I was tired. I was demoralized. By the time I got to
01:04:10
actually talk to the jury, I thought, are you hearing anything? I don't know if you're hearing
01:04:15
anything. I don't know. It just didn't feel like anybody cared. Stop this cover-up. Then it was
01:04:23
Johnny Cochran's turn. If you don't stop it, then who? It was classic Cochran as he delivered that
01:04:30
iconic line which would forever define the trial. If it doesn't fit, you must acquit.
01:04:37
So with Cochran's speech ringing in their ears, the exhausted jury would now decide the fate of Orenthal James Simpson.
01:04:47
But it turns out, most of them had already made up their minds. Coming up, an eight-month trial decided in less than four hours,
01:04:58
leaving millions to ask, was justice done? It was physically painful. That was not justice.
01:05:07
You blame yourself for this? The spectacle on national television was over. Now the fate of O.J. Simpson would be settled behind closed doors by 12 people who had all endured eight long months of a grueling trial and sequestration.
01:05:42
But as deliberations began, Lon Cryer, a.k.a. juror number six, was antsy. You wanted out of there.
01:05:50
All I could think of. In my mind I had formed an opinion that I probably going to go not guilty I also worried that am I the only person saw it that way Cryer and the 11 other jurors took their first straw vote
01:06:07
Oh, wow. 10 to 2 for acquittal. I went in the restroom and I went, oh, yes, kind of things.
01:06:15
And it wasn't because of the 10 to 2 verdict. It was because I'm close to getting out of here.
01:06:22
Two votes now spelled the difference between both Simpson and the jury finally going home.
01:06:31
I was open to someone showing a differing view that maybe could have changed my view.
01:06:37
The two jurors who voted for guilty, what, they didn't try to win anybody else over?
01:06:41
Not at all. They didn't stick with it? Not at all. And that mountain of DNA evidence was apparently not part of the deliberations.
01:06:49
Nothing about the DNA actually even came up in discussion. During jury deliberations, the DNA evidence wasn't even mentioned.
01:06:56
As fast as this went, no, it never came up. And a short time later, a second vote.
01:07:02
An eight-month trial, decided in less than four hours. You have reached a verdict in this case, is that correct, Madam Foreman?
01:07:12
It would be announced the next day. I was convinced, convinced he was going to be found guilty.
01:07:22
All right, Mrs. Robertson, would you have the envelope with the sealed verdict forms, please?
01:07:28
Yes, Your Honor. Then the next day, the jury, the families, detectives, and attorneys arrived at Judge Ito's courtroom for the very last time.
01:07:37
I saw Johnny in the courtroom, and he looked pretty upset. And I said, what are you worried about? You won.
01:07:46
And he said, well, he didn't think he had. The funny thing is, all the pundits, you know, that night before the verdict came in, were predicting a conviction.
01:07:55
Everyone. Everyone. But not you. Nope. As we gathered to watch, everything else seemed to stop.
01:08:03
An estimated 150 million of us tuned in, costing the economy nearly half a billion dollars in lost productivity.
01:08:12
Trading on the New York Stock Exchange plummeted 41 percent. and President Clinton was briefed on security measures
01:08:19
in case riots occurred not only in L.A., but nationwide. Superior Court of California, County of Boston.
01:08:28
Then finally at 10 a.m. Pacific Time on October 3, 1995, eight months of trial came to this.
01:08:36
We the jury in the above entitled action find the defendant, Orenthal James Simpson, not guilty of the...
01:08:41
When she read Nicole's verdict first and they said not guilty, I remember thinking, shh, they haven't read Ron's yet, thinking for some crazy reason that my brother's verdict would be different.
01:08:51
Simpson not guilty of the crime of murder in violation of penal code section 187A, a felony upon Ronald Lyle Goldman, a human being.
01:09:01
And then I lost it. I don't know why I thought it would be a different verdict. Oh no, I was pissed.
01:09:09
And you just go, wow, is this really our justice system? It was unbelievable. It seemed really obvious to me that it was going to be guilty.
01:09:22
It felt horrible. It was physically painful. You know, that was not justice. And I thought of Ron and Nicole, and I thought, this is wrong.
01:09:34
It's so wrong. You blame yourself for this? You know, I always do. I do. I mean, I was the one trying the case.
01:09:41
but at the end of the day there was no way to reach that jury there was no way to make them
01:09:46
believe there really wasn't it wasn't so much that i thought he was just totally innocent
01:09:52
it's just that i don't feel that there was enough evidence presented to me convicting
01:09:55
one verdict two reactions divided by color across the country For the first time in more than 15 months, O.J. Simpson was a free man.
01:10:12
Fred Goldman, as he'd done so many times before, spoke for the families. Last June 13th, 1994, was the worst nightmare of my life.
01:10:35
This is the second. Honest to God, that's one of those moments of little blur. Crying and shock and anger and all shoved together.
01:10:55
And then we left. With nothing after nine months, it was all settled. America's newly insatiable appetite for trial binge-watching
01:11:08
had ended without Simpson getting the just desserts many had hoped for. But this would not be the last we'd see or hear of Orenthal James Simpson,
01:11:19
because Simpson would soon be back in court. And this time, things would be quite different.
01:11:26
Coming up, O.J. Simpson on the spot and under oath when Dateline continues. From the county jail to the country club, it didn't take O.J. Simpson long to get back to his old life.
01:11:52
On the links and on camera, Simpson was everywhere. saying he was eager to clear his name.
01:11:59
Watching... Seething were the families of Nicole and Ron. You know, here's this arrogant murderer, you know, flaunting his celebrity.
01:12:10
Kept saying he was looking for the real killers on every fairway in America. And every time he looked in the mirror at home, he had found them.
01:12:19
But Fred Goldman still wanted justice, even if it meant Simpson remained free. I wanted a court to say he was guilty.
01:12:29
No court could do that now, but a civil court could find Simpson liable for killing Ron and Nicole.
01:12:36
And that meant filing a wrongful death lawsuit. If Simpson lost, he wouldn't go to prison,
01:12:42
but he might have to pay damages to the families. The Goldmans hired a relatively unknown attorney named Dan Petrocelli to represent them.
01:12:52
He had never handled a case that involved murder. Petrucelli would argue the case here in Santa Monica, where a jury would be selected from
01:13:01
a largely white population. And unlike in the criminal case, the burden of proof was lower.
01:13:07
This jury wouldn't have to agree unanimously on a verdict. And as a matter of law, O.J. Simpson would have no choice but to testify in pretrial
01:13:16
depositions and the trial itself. And that meant Simpson would have to answer for all the DNA evidence, his abuse of Nicole,
01:13:25
and something that surfaced in the National Enquirer. One of the lead pages is a picture of Simpson walking,
01:13:34
and one of his feet were elevated, and they had circled the shoe that he was wearing
01:13:39
and said that was a Bruno Mangli shoe. During the original investigation, the bloody shoe prints at the crime scene
01:13:46
were matched to this exact type of Italian shoe. Now, thanks to the photo, Petrocelli could put the shoes on Simpson.
01:13:54
Then we had it sent out to a lab for authentication. Came back, this is a real picture.
01:14:01
In January 1996, Simpson arrived at Petrocelli's office for a deposition that would be videotaped,
01:14:08
putting the attorney face to face with his boyhood idol. By that point, I knew he was a stone-cold killer.
01:14:18
But he extended his hand out for me to shake it, and I just couldn't resist. I shook his hand.
01:14:29
I always regretted that that I literally shook the hand that probably wielded the knife that killed my client son and killed his ex But that was as friendly as it ever got
01:14:45
For 13 days, Petruccelli grilled Simpson about the night of the crime, the cut on his finger, and the shoes.
01:14:53
The deposition turned out to be a goldmine for us because he made so many inconsistent statements.
01:14:59
Then in October 1996, O.J. Simpson would tell his story to a jury as the civil trial got underway.
01:15:09
No TV cameras and no discussion of racist cops planting evidence. It was a different kind of trial.
01:15:17
You know, it was a trial based on evidence. It was all about facts. And the primary witness in this case was O.J. Simpson himself, who had no choice but to take the stand.
01:15:30
He had no answers, no explanations why his DNA and his hair and his fiber and his clothing were there at the crime scene.
01:15:38
Why the victim's blood was in his house. Why the victim's blood was in his car. This is evidence that would put people away in three seconds in most cases.
01:15:49
And near the end of the trial, another devastating wave of evidence. More photos of Simpson wearing the same Bruno Mali shoes.
01:15:58
30 more pictures. It really put the ultimate lie to Simpson. And now a jury would decide.
01:16:05
After deliberating five days, they had a verdict. It was unanimous. But the jury has decided, yes, O.J. Simpson did willfully and wrongfully cause the death of Ron Goldman.
01:16:18
Finally had a court say he did it. It was only confirmation of what we knew, but he did it.
01:16:31
The families were awarded $33.5 million in damages, of which they've only received a fraction.
01:16:40
But Simpson lost what was left of his reputation. That aside, he again walked out of court a free man.
01:16:50
It turned out justice was coming for O.J. Simpson in ways he never imagined. Coming up, O.J. Simpson in criminal court again.
01:17:02
This time, the verdict is different. I'm going to send to you as follows. Now, decades later, what else has changed?
01:17:13
2007 O Simpson was still living the good life having relocated to Florida That year, he took a trip to Las Vegas, after which his life would never be the same.
01:17:37
In September, Simpson was arrested and later charged with robbery, assault, and kidnapping
01:17:42
for breaking into a hotel room with several armed men. He claimed to be taking back his personal memorabilia, which had been stolen.
01:17:51
But he was heard saying he wanted to keep it away from the Goldmans. I'm going to sentence you as follows.
01:17:58
And exactly 13 years to the day that he was acquitted of the murders in Brentwood,
01:18:04
Simpson was convicted and later sentenced to up to 33 years. O.J. Simpson was released on parole in 2017 after serving nine years.
01:18:16
As for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, since neither Mr. Simpson nor anyone else was convicted,
01:18:24
police say the case remains open. If new evidence is presented, they'll look into it.
01:18:30
But they're not actively investigating. Quite a bit has changed in the decades since that horrible night in Brentwood.
01:18:39
If it doesn't fit, you must acquit. The man who helped acquit Simpson, Johnny Cochran, died in 2005.
01:18:46
Simpson's friend and attorney, Robert Kardashian, also passed away two years earlier.
01:18:52
LAPD detective Phil Van Adder also died in 2012. We don't have any answers right now.
01:19:00
His partner, Tom Lang, is now retired. It is in the memory of Nicole that this foundation was formed.
01:19:07
Denise Brown became very active educating others about domestic violence and started a speaker's bureau to get the word out.
01:19:15
Kim Goldman wrote a book about victims of high-profile crimes. And she has a son whose middle name is Ronald.
01:19:23
Ron was a good human being. Her father, Fred, was awarded the rights to Simpson's book,
01:19:29
If I Did It, Confessions of the Killer, which Goldman says he considers a true account
01:19:34
of how Simpson killed Ron and Nicole, something Simpson denied. Cato Kalin is still in Los Angeles,
01:19:43
and among his many projects, started a clothing line. Kris Jenner? Well, you know.
01:19:50
I wish to assert my Fifth Amendment privilege. As for Mark Furman, there was never any evidence that he planted anything However he did plead no contest to one count of perjury for lying at trial in connection with those audiotapes and was sentenced to three years probation Since then
01:20:08
Furman has appeared as a commentator on the Fox News Channel. Neither Marcia Clark nor Chris Darden ever tried another case for the DA's office. Clark
01:20:19
went on to practice law as an appellate attorney. She's also the author of more than ten books,
01:20:25
including a novel entitled Blood Defense, where the main character is an ambitious defense attorney.
01:20:33
Chris Darden has also written several books and started his own law firm specializing in criminal defense.
01:20:40
Never answer a hypothetical question from a reporter. Carl Douglas continued practicing law and has erected a small shrine to his mentor, Johnny Cochran, in his office.
01:20:53
Judge Lance Ito retired in 2015 after serving more than 25 years on the bench. The once mostly white LAPD is now much more racially representative of the city it polices.
01:21:07
Though far from perfect, race relations have dramatically improved between the cops and the city's black community.
01:21:15
And we hope that that injustice will be prevented in the civil trial. and attorney Dan Petrocelli moved to Brentwood, not far from where O.J. Simpson once lived.
01:21:27
Simpson's Rockingham estate has been sold. The new owner demolished the house in 1998 to build a new one.
01:21:33
And Nicole's condo is still there with a remodeled exterior and a new address number.
01:21:39
But the gawking busloads of tourists have dwindled. And as for O.J. himself... We are coming on the air with breaking news.
01:21:47
Just moments ago, NBC News confirmed that O.J. Simpson has died at the age of 76.
01:21:53
In April 2024, O.J. Simpson, whose rise and fall riveted the nation, died of cancer.
01:22:01
I can't think of anyone, historical or someone that we may have known, where the first chapter and the second chapter of their lives are such a stark contrast, revered and then reviled.
01:22:14
O.J. Simpson may be gone, but his case lives on. That mountain of evidence that was supposed to guarantee a slam-dunk conviction?
01:22:23
Most of it is still around, buried deep in the LAPD's archives. That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.