Murder in Brentwood by Mark Fuhrman

lies.
    In the civil trial deposition, Simpson declared that he didn’t believe he was cut before he left for Chicago and the injury to his left knuckle occurred in his hotel room after he was informed of his wife’s death. Yet, in his statement to Vannatter and Lange, Simpson did admit to cutting himself before he left for Chicago, and admitted bleeding in his house, in the driveway, and in the Bronco.
    “Hmm, it was cut before. But I think I just opened it again. I’m not sure,” he told Lange and Vannatter.
    But in his civil trial deposition, he never admitted that he even saw a cut.
    So what happened between the Vannatter and Lange interrogation and his civil trial deposition? Simple. Simpson hired attorneys.
    It would have been easy for Vannatter and Lange to nail him down to one story, to go through all his actions and movements the night before, starting with the recital and ending with the limo drive. Every half hour or fifteen minutes, what was he doing then? They could have had him commit to a timeline.
    There are many other specific questions that Simpson should have been asked. Did he go into the service entrance and laundry room? Did he usually put his clothes in the washer? Did he usually put his clothes away? What about his socks? Did he go behind the bungalows? What’s his shoe size? Did he own brown leather gloves or a black knit cap? Did he own a knife?
    Wouldn’t an admission that he bought a knife just weeks prior while on location at a movie set have been helpful to the detectives at this time? The follow-up should have been: “Where is the knife now, O.J.?” If the knife was at his estate, he could have described where it was. Conversely, if he said, “No, I don’t own any knives, except for kitchen knives,” that would have eliminated the defense’s miraculous discovery of the Stiletto and the mysterious envelope containing it, and brought up some interesting questions about the empty Swiss Army knife box that was sitting on the edge of the bathtub. A simple question-do you own any knives other than kitchen knives?- could have solved some of the mysteries in this case.
    These are all specific and direct questions that should have been used to get Simpson tangled up in his own lies. But Vannatter and Lange never asked any of them. They didn’t nail Simpson down to anything. Then they started telling him about the evidence they had on him. Almost apologetically Vannatter recounted what they had found at the two crime scenes. “We’ve got some blood on and in your car, we’ve got some blood at your house, and it’s sort of a problem.”
    Simpson said, “Well, take my blood test.”
    Lange jumped in: “Well, we’d like to do that. We’ve got, of course, the cut on your finger that you aren’t real clear on. Do you recall having that cut on your finger the last time you were at Nicole’s house?”
    “No,” O.J. answered. “It was last night.”
    At that moment alarms should have gone off. Did Simpson say he bled last night at Nicole’s house? But instead of trying to place a bleeding Simpson at his ex-wife’s house, Lange gave him an out.
    “Okay, so last night you cut it?”
    Inexplicably, Vannatter jumped in, “Somewhere after the dance recital?”
    Vannatter’s question opened up the time frame again and allowed Simpson to give another amorphous answer with a one-word response.
    “Yeah.”
    Finally, Vannatter tried to pin him down.
    “What do you think happened? Do you have any idea?”
    “I have no idea, man. You guys haven’t told me anything,” Simpson protested.
    Wait a second. Weren’t the detectives interrogating Simpson? Since when did they have to tell him anything? Then Simpson launched into a long and confusing digression about an incident that occurred a month prior while he was driving his Bentley and some “Oriental guys” appeared to be trying to rob or carjack him. Instead of getting the interrogation back on track, the detectives asked him more