The New York Times Book Review's lame defense of convicted perjurer Mark Fuhrman's book about the O.J. Simpson murders
My response to Fuhrman's false claims about "a bloody fingerprint"
Question: What happened to the disgraced poster boy for police racism after his conviction for perjury?
Answer: Fox gave him his own television show.
Last Wednesday, June 12, was the 30th anniversary of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Last Sunday, June 9, I published the uncut police interview with O.J. Simpson.
While working feverishly to meet the tight deadline for Evidence Dismissed: The Inside Story of the Police Investigation of O.J. Simpson—the 1997 book I co-authored with the LAPD’s lead detectives on the case, Tom Lange and Phillip Vannatter—I followed, with some concern, the attempts by the media to rehabilitate the reputation of the racist junior detective, Mark Fuhrman. A one-time high-school dropout, Fuhrman was in the midst of three years probation for perjury after his "no contest" plea in early October 1996 for making false statements during his sworn testimony at Simpson's criminal trial.
Diane Sawyer of ABC's Prime Time Live had softballed Fuhrman during an interview broadcast on October 8. That was followed by an announcement in the October 28 edition of Publishers Weekly that Regnery Publishing, a conservative, Washington-based publishing house, had purchased Fuhrman's book which would be released shortly after ours.
Predicting that Lange and Vannatter were going to be the villains in Fuhrman's book, I advised the detectives to launch a full-scale preemptive strike against Fuhrman in our book. However, even though they were extremely critical of Fuhrman’s behavior during the Simpson trial, they rejected my suggestion, still harboring a basic loyalty towards this fellow cop. In fact, our book already contained a qualified defense of Fuhrman, who had been accused by Simpson's attorneys of planting evidence at the murder scene and at Simpson's residence.
Despite all of his negatives, Fuhrman was completely innocent of that allegation. And all charges to the contrary were completely wrong and unfair. In short, because of the timing of his appearance at the crime scene, Fuhrman could not have planted this evidence, which had already been identified. It was simply impossible. And his perjury plea was limited to his repeated denials of using the racist n-word while under cross-examination by defense counsel F. Lee Bailey during the criminal trial.
Then, just before I completed our manuscript, a friend faxed me the galleys to an upcoming story about Fuhrman in Vanity Fair. Journalist H.G. Bissinger, the author of this shameless valentine to Fuhrman, had allowed him to falsely charge that Lange and Vannatter had missed, among other items of evidence, a "bloody fingerprint" on the back gate of Nicole Brown's residence on South Bundy, the scene of the murders. Apparently, Bissinger, a Pulitzer Prize winner, never bothered to check this and Fuhrman's other mistaken observations at the crime scene, allowing his attacks on Lange and Vannatter to go unchallenged.
After faxing the Vanity Fair story to Lange and Vannatter and speaking with them on a conference call, they agreed that Fuhrman's book was going to be his last desperate attempt to rehabilitate himself—at the expense of everyone else in the case, especially them. As a result, they authorized me to add an endnote to our book, stating: “Fuhrman claimed in his notes that he had also observed a bloody fingerprint on the locking mechanism of the rear gate at the South Bundy crime scene. However, no such fingerprint was seen by anyone else.”
Upon its release, our book was well received. Almost immediately we landed on the New York Times Best Sellers List, rising as high as number #5.
But, upon seeing the print copy of Fuhrman’s book, Lange and Vannatter were stunned by his outrageous charges. At first, both detectives merely brushed off Fuhrman's claims to have discovered evidence at the South Bundy and North Rockingham crime scenes that Lange and Vannatter had allegedly missed.
But neither man was prepared for what followed. Diane Sawyer and Oprah Winfrey launched a joint crusade hellbent on rehabilitating Fuhrman with each media diva using their considerable television platforms to accomplish that inexplicable goal.
In the Afterward for the paperback version of our book, the detectives and I wrote:
Apparently, Fuhrman was viewed, by those like Diane Sawyer and Oprah Winfrey, as not unlike Richard Jewell, a man wrongly accused. And, as with Jewell, the rehabilitation of Mark Fuhrman was somehow thought to be somewhat of a humane act. Fuhrman was now apologizing, with moist eyes and a boyish look, for his use of the n-word and then lying about it. What white person could not accept his apology, especially when he was being pampered by television media goddesses Sawyer and Winfrey?
After Fuhrman allowed himself to be humiliated with questions about his sordid past and then seemed to atone for his racism and perjury, the validity of his alleged discovery of "new evidence" at the crime scenes was, inexplicably, accepted without question. Consequently, Fuhrman was deemed credible by . . . what appeared to be his good intentions—even though he was a proven liar who was in the midst of three years' probation for perjury.
By mid-March, Fuhrman, with the essential help of Sawyer and Winfrey, leaped over our book and rose to number #1 on the New York Times list.
On Sunday, March 23, the New York Times Book Review weighed in with a full-length review of Fuhrman's book, written by Craig Wolff, a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Along with nearly everyone else in the media, Wolff made much of former LAPD junior detective Fuhrman's alleged discovery of this bloody fingerprint at the scene of the murders of Brown and Goldman. As Wolff pointed out, Fuhrman referred to this supposed evidence in his crime-scene notes.
I was so angry when I read Wolff’s lame and uninformed review that I asked Lange and Vannatter if I could respond on their behalf. When they agreed, I sent the following letter to Charles McGrath, the editor of the New York Times Book Review.
Dear Sir:
Along with nearly everyone else in the media who is still writing about the O.J. Simpson case, Craig Wolff, in his March 23 review of Murder in Brentwood, makes much of former LAPD junior detective Mark Fuhrman's alleged discovery of a bloody fingerprint at the scene of the murders of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman. As Wolff points out, Fuhrman referred to this supposed evidence in his crime-scene notes.
However, the issue should not be whether Fuhrman believes he saw a bloody fingerprint. The real question is whether this bloody fingerprint ever existed at all.
In his review, Wolff never mentions that Fuhrman, who is currently in the midst of three-years' probation for perjury, made several major mistakes in his crime-scene notes. In fact, the false claim of a bloody fingerprint was just one of the errors Fuhrman made.
For instance, Fuhrman wrongly speculated in his official notes that the two stabbed and slashed victims might have really died from gunshot wounds, and that their killer had possibly been bitten by a dog. Fuhrman also erroneously reported that a menu from a nearby Thai restaurant found under Brown's leg had come from a local pizzeria, and that a simple knit cap next to Goldman's body was a ski mask.
Along with the claim of a bloody fingerprint, all five of Fuhrman's independent observations were wrong. And, incredibly, they were the only new contributions Fuhrman had made to what was already known about this crime scene. Everything else in Fuhrman's notes had earlier been reported by other police officers who had logged in during the two-hour period before Fuhrman arrived.
As a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Wolff should have at least voiced some skepticism about Fuhrman's identification of a bloody fingerprint, considering the other mistakes in the detective's official crime-scene notes. Instead, Wolff embraces Fuhrman's far-fetched story, concealing Fuhrman's errors while touting "Mr. Fuhrman's allegiance to an unemotional step-by-step chronology . . . [that] returns the case to ground zero."
Assuming for a moment that Fuhrman did discover an actual bloody fingerprint, he would have been required, even as a junior investigator on the case, to protect such crucial evidence. But, by his own admission, he did nothing to secure it. He just walked away without even assigning a police officer to guard the area where he had supposedly made this discovery.
More importantly, Fuhrman had a responsibility to flag this alleged evidence, verbally, to a superior. Neither Fuhrman nor his partner, Brad Roberts—who has suddenly corroborated his old friend's discovery in the midst of Fuhrman's book-promotion tour—said anything to their supervisor, Detective Ronald Phillips, about finding a bloody fingerprint. And they certainly did not discuss this matter with the lead detectives, Tom Lange and Philip Vannatter, who arrived at the crime scene two hours after Fuhrman. If this evidence ever did exist, both Fuhrman and Roberts were negligent, at best, for not immediately telling the senior detectives what they had found.
On the morning after the murders, Phillips guided both Lange and Vannatter through their separate and routine "walkthroughs" of the crime scene—during which all of the known evidence was pointed out and described. But Phillips said nothing about an alleged bloody fingerprint—because he was unaware of it. Instead, Fuhrman—who spent the next two hours with Lange, Vannatter, and Phillips but never said a word about a bloody fingerprint—chose to hide his alleged discovery in his error-filled crime-scene notes, which senior detectives justifiably refused to take seriously.
Regardless, to reviewer Wolff, the culprit is not Fuhrman. Instead, he blames Lange and Vannatter, two honest detectives with a combined 56 years of spotless service to the LAPD. "Thus," Wolff writes, "the bloody fingerprint . . . was never pursued, and was ultimately lost."
Yet, according to the official report of the LAPD's Latent Print Section, none of the four fingerprint technicians at the Brown-Goldman crime scene, who made seventeen lifts, found a bloody fingerprint on or near the knob area of the rear gate—where Fuhrman claimed to have discovered it.
As everyone who followed the Simpson case knows, the killer wore gloves, one of which came off his left hand, which was injured in the midst of a struggle with Goldman. Would the killer, who is known to be right-handed, have handled the knob on the rear gate with his injured and ungloved left hand or with his gloved right hand?
Readers of The New York Times Book Review wouldn't know any of these discrepancies, because Wolff fails to mention them in his review. Wolff does express some healthy skepticism about Fuhrman's repeated denials of his racist past; but then, inexplicably, he accepts Fuhrman's account about crime-scene matters without question.
In short, the evidence remains overwhelming that Fuhrman and Roberts were simply mistaken in their identification of a bloody fingerprint—which came in the dead of night, at about 2:30 a.m., approximately four hours after the murders. It simply defies belief that these two junior detectives spotted evidence that no one else saw—particularly in view of the other mistakes in Fuhrman's crime-scene notes and the junior detectives' failure to notify their supervisor, as well as Lange and Vannatter, of this evidence.
Also, on page 17 of his book, Fuhrman describes this alleged bloody fingerprint as "identifiable, comparable, and high in quality," and, on page 218, Fuhrman continues, "The print was no doubt Simpson's, and it would have irrefutably connected him to the scene with his own blood, and possibly that of the two victims." Yet, during his sworn trial testimony in 1995, Fuhrman was nowhere near as sure, simply saying: "I saw a partial, possible fingerprint that was on that knob area."
How did a "partial, possible fingerprint" suddenly become "identifiable, comparable, and high in quality" that "irrefutably" connected Simpson to the crime scene? Didn't Wolff find this clear discrepancy rather odd? Wasn't it, at the very least, worth noting in his review? . . .
Wolff also fails to note that Fuhrman was only in charge of the Simpson case for about a half hour. Then, to his chagrin, Fuhrman was replaced by Lange and Vannatter of the LAPD's elite Robbery/Homicide Division, who, together and individually, had investigated over 500 homicides. After being taken off the case, Fuhrman did little more than stand and pout in the street outside the perimeter of the crime scene, waiting for the detectives from Robbery/Homicide to arrive.
Fuhrman remained under Lange and Vannatter's direct supervision for a two-hour period, between 5:00 and 7:00 a.m. During that time, Fuhrman performed well, finding a speck of blood above the outside door handle of Simpson's Bronco, as well as the famous bloody right-hand glove on a walkway on Simpson's estate. But, unlike his discovery of the alleged bloody fingerprint, Fuhrman, with considerable excitement, gave separate tours to Lange, Vannatter, and Phillips to show them the glove and to explain how he found it. Why didn't he do the same when he supposedly found the bloody fingerprint?
After 7:00 on the morning after the murders, Fuhrman's role was reduced to general detail work, far from the investigative and decision-making processes. In his book, Fuhrman is absolutely delusional about his importance to the Brown-Goldman murder investigation after that. Nevertheless, Wolff accepts without challenge and even praises Fuhrman's statements—many of which are wholly inaccurate—about details of the Simpson case in which he was not involved.
Demonstrating how truly uninformed he is about the overall Simpson investigation, Wolff concludes "that something was lost when Mr. Fuhrman fell out of the case. . . [which] he had worked so hard to build."
Significantly, Fuhrman had earlier applied for a transfer to the Robbery/Homicide Division, but his request was rejected by the LAPD's high command just before the Brown-Goldman murders. Even though Fuhrman—who was destined to remain a junior detective for the remainder of his twenty-year career—was angry and bitter after his promotion was denied, Wolff didn't bother to mention that either.
However, this rejection best explains the motive behind the unfounded attacks on detectives from the LAPD's Robbery/Homicide Division by Mark Fuhrman, an admitted perjurer who chose to take the Fifth Amendment rather than defend his brief role in this investigation.
The success of Fuhrman's book—as well as his own remarkable rehabilitation with the help of an uncritical media—is a classic victory of style over substance. But his newfound public acceptance—now with the help of The New York Times Book Review—has done nothing more than add to the confusion, disinformation, and circus atmosphere revolving around this bizarre murder case.
Sincerely,
Dan E. Moldea
The New York Times Book Review did not publish my letter to the editor.
Great book