Wow, it's been a while. I updated part one in March and here it is June. I've been having a lot of problems. I had the outline done but my notebook disappeared. I redid the outline on my phone, then the note disappeared as well. Then I gave up because I was beyond pissed and didn't wanna do it a third time. I finally figured it was time to redo it so here I am.
If you need a recap and don't want to go back to the first chapter, here is the breakdown.
[BREAKDOWN OF PART ONE]
Nicole and OJ met. They married. They separated. Nicole went home one day. A friend named Ron stopped by to give Nicole her moms glasses that she left at a restaurant. Nicole and Ron were brutally murdered. OJs DNA was found. The matching bloody glove was found at his home as well as a sock drenched in Nicole's blood. Even Kris Jenner (who was best friends with Nicole) said that Nicole feared for her life when it came to OJ and told Kris she felt OJ would one day kill her and get away with it.
That's the basic run down. I would suggest re reading the chapter if you might have forgotten a few things because there is a lot more information. Let's continue.
[9-1-1 CALLS]
Nicole made several 911 calls before her death. Police responded to at least 9 of them. OJ always seemed to be screaming, harassing and even threatening her.
With many of the recordings the yelling isn't totally audible, but you can definitely tell OJ is angry and you can hear Nicole telling him plenty of times to get out.
One incident seemed to be really bad as on January 1, 1989 the police were called. When they got there they saw a half naked Nicole, covered in bruises. She told them that OJ tried to kill her.
[POSSIBLE WITNESS]
There was one possible witness. Her name was Jill Shively. She said she saw OJ leaving Nicole's home. She felt his behavior was erratic and strange and as he sped off she wrote down his license plate. After turning it into the police it turned out she was only a few digits off of his actual plate. They said she might have gotten a few wrong due to it being dark and the fact he sped off.
[TRIAL]
The trial started January 25 of 1995. The trial ended October 3 of 1995. That's a pretty long time and in that time many things were uncovered.
It seemed like a pretty open and shit case. OJs blood was found at the scene of the crime. OJ had motive. Witnesses said his behavior was odd. OJ lived only about 6 minutes away from Nicole, giving him plenty of time to do it and return home to go to his flight. But thanks to Johnnie Cochran and Robert Kardashian, OJs lawyers, it wasn't as open and shut as it seemed.
Before we get into what hurt the case note that the jury was made up of 8 African Americans, 1 Hispanic, 1 Caucasian and 2 people of mixed race.
Okay so the first thing that hurt the case was the Rodney King case. I won't go into super detail about this right now cause I plan on talking about it in a different chapter. But basically Rodney was a black man who was brutally beaten by a group of white cops to the point he died. There is video of these cops viciously beating this man to death and yet the cops were acquitted. Johnnie and Robert used this to their advantage. When OJ went back to California he was immediately handcuffed by police, as if they already made up their minds.
The second harmful thing was the lead detective, Mark Fuhrman. During the trial Mark was asked if he had ever used the n word in a derogatory way towards an African American. He said no and if anyone says differently they are lying. Then they played a recording of Mark who used derogatory words over 40 times in one sitting. That called into question the things he found. Now Mark was the first one at OJs house. In fact, he climbed the fence. He was the one who found the glove. So people started to suspect that he planted it there.
The third harmful thing was how the evidence was handled. The defense argued that the scene could have been contaminated. They said evidence was bagged incorrectly. They also said some evidence was stored in a hot van for too long.
The fourth harmful thing the the case was the gloves. They had OJ put on the gloves and they didn't fit. Now some people think OJ purposely acted like they didn't fit him, which really isn't hard to do, or the fact that the gloves were frozen, unthawed and frozen again as a preservation technique that it shrunk the gloves.
The last thing that harmed the "open and shut case" was defense attorney Johnnie Cochran himself. In his closing speech he gave a powerful speech.
He put on a beanie on and said that even with it on he is still Johnnie Cochran. If you put it on OJ, who has a large head, he is still OJ. It isn't a disguise. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't fit. And "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit."
On October 3, 1995 the jury deliberated for only 4 hours. They came back with the verdict of not guilty.
[LAWSUIT]
Even though he was found not guilty in the murder of Nicole and Ron, Ron's family filed a civil action suit against OJ for the death of Ron. They ended up winning. OJ had to pay Ron's family $33.5 million. While he couldn't go to jail or be tried again in federal court, the fact Ron's family won means the judge thought OJ was in fact guilty of the crime.
But if a jury thought OJ was innocent, who else could it have been?
[BILL WASS]
Bill was a drug dealer and claimed that Robert Kardashian paid him $1,000 to follow Nicole. This might have been as a request from OJ who was very possessive of Nicole. Bill said it was to see it Nicole had been seeing anyone.
To Bills credit Nicole had said once she felt like someone was watching her and even noticed someone near her yard, staring at her one time.
Bill kept a notebook of what Nicole did, where she went and who she was with. The notebook was found in a woman named Paula's car. Paula was OJs girlfriend at the time. The handwriting did match Bills handwriting.
Bill also claimed that Robert offered him $15,000 to kill Nicole.
Bill is in prison on unrelated charges but is adamant he killed Nicole. But refuses to do interviews unless he is paid.
[GLEN ROGERS]
Glen Rogers is a serial killer who was allegedly in the same neighborhood. He stated he was painting a house just a few houses down from Nicole's.
Before Glen's death he told his brother that he killed Nicole and Ron, something his brother really believes happened.
Glen told him that OJ paid him to steal earrings from Nicole and to "kill Nicole if she got in the way."
[JASON]
Jason is OJs son. While this isn't really a popular theory, it does kind of make sense when you think about it. This theory was created by Bill Deere, a police investigator.
Jason was on probation for assault with a knife again a former employer. He had also been accused of beating his past girlfriends. One of them said Jason almost broke her back after slamming her in the bathtub.
Jason owned a storage shed that he eventually stopped paying for to which got auctioned off. Bill actually bought it.
Inside were a few journals that Jason kept. It documented his rages, his anger, and threats to kill people who harmed his family.
Bill even went undercover in a hospital for 2 weeks in order to get Jason's medical records to prove that he had intermittent rage disorder, also known as intermittent explosive disorder or IED. IED is an impulse-control disorder characterized by sudden episodes of unwarranted anger. The disorder is typified by hostility, impulsivity, and recurrent aggressive outbursts. People with IED essentially "explode" into a rage despite a lack of apparent provocation or reason. Meaning if you have a rage episode you aren't in the right mindset and you might not even know what you are doing at that time.
So the theory is that on the day Nicole Brown was killed she was suppose to go to the restaurant that Jason worked at after the recital. Jason was super excited to be able to cook for them. But Nicole called him letting him know they won't be going to Jackson's where he worked because it was too expensive so they were going to another restaurant. People who worked with Jason said he was extremely upset.
Jason's timecard had writing on it of the time he clocked in, his breaks and all that. The odd thing is that the automated machine was working. So Bill believes he didn't use the machine as it was his way to give himself an alibi cause when he got back he could write out a different time.
Bill believes he went to let Nicole know how upset he was that he didn't get to cook for her and her family and there might have been an altercation between the two. He believes that Jason experienced one of his rage episodes and attacked Nicole and Ron who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
When Jason was able to calm down he saw what he had done he called his father, who tried to cover for him.
Now it's important to know that the police never really questioned Jason because they never thought of him as a suspect. They did of course as him a few questions about when he last saw Nicole, which he told them about how she was suppose to come to his restaurant but decided not to. That was pretty much as far as the questioning goes. So we don't know how long he was really gone from the restaurant or if anyone saw him leave from there.
Bill says this could explain OJs bizarre behavior after the fact. OJ even hired a lawyer for his son who was never even considered a suspect, which Bill found extremely odd.
Now I'm not saying this is what happened, but a father protecting his son after he killed someone in a fit of rage isn't out of the realm of possibility.
[FUN FACT]
Well, not really fun fact, but a fact. In 2014 over 80% of Americans asked thought OJ was guilty of killing Nicole and Ron.
[THOUGHTS]
Do you think OJ is guilty? If not, who do you think killed Nicole and Ron?