Pulpless.Com Books by J. Neil Schulman

Novels

Alongside Night (trade edition forthcoming)

The Rainbow Cadenza (trade edition forthcoming)

Nonfiction

The Robert Heinlein Interview and Other Heinleiniana

The Frame of the Century?

Stopping Power: Why 70 Million Americans Own Guns

(trade edition forthcoming)

Book Publishing in the 21st Century, Volumes One and Two

Short Stories

Nasty, Brutish, and Short Stories (trade edition forthcoming)

Omnibus Collection

Self Control Not Gun Control

Collected Screenwritings

Profile in Silver and Other Screenwritings

(trade edition forthcoming)

The Frame of the Century?

J. Neil Schulman

PULPLESS.com, inc.

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Copyright © 1999 by J. Neil Schulman

All rights reserved. Published by arrangement with the author. Printed in the United States of America. The rights to all previously published materials by J. Neil Schulman are owned by the author, and are claimed both under existing copyright laws and natural logorights. All other materials taken from published sources without specific permission are either in the public domain or are quoted and/or excerpted under the Fair Use Doctrine. Except for attributed quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in

any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

Sections of this book were first published between 1997 and 1998 on the World Wide Web as a paperless book from Pulpless.Com.

First Pulpless.Com, Inc. Edition June, 1999.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-60515

Trade Paperback Edition ISBN: 1-58445-060-6

Adobe Acrobat Edition ISBN: 1-58445-061-4

HTML Edition ISBN: 1-58445-062-2

Book and Cover designed by CaliPer, Inc.

Cover Illustration by Billy Tackett, Arcadia Studios

© 1999 by Billy Tackett

Author's Note

This book is a highly personal account of the author's journalistic investigation of a crime. While the author has documented his subjective personal beliefs regarding the individuals referred to by name in the book, drawn from his knowledge of the facts, and has constructed speculative scenarios regarding these individuals based on inferences from those facts, it is in no way the author's intent that anyone should regard this book or any scenario within it as an accusation against any real individual. In those instances where the author does make statements regarding a real individual's possibly criminal activities or possible personal misconduct, the reader is cautioned that such statements are not based on any personal knowledge of the author but only on representations made to the author by sources whose credibility must be judged by weighing their statements against other known facts. It is the author's intent that this book's publication attempt to stimulate a threshhold of probable cause sufficient for further official investigation of the Brown-Goldman murders on June 12, 1994, to explore and either falsify or verify the crime scenarios in this book. Any defamatory statement within this book with respect to any real individual is unintended, and the author retracts it herewith.

To Barbara Branden

Who Taught Me That Logic and Feelings

Are Both Tools of Cognition

Table of Contents

chapter page

A Revelation 11

Introduction 13

Part One: Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan? 21

Postscript I 105

Postscript II 109

Part Two: Additional Questions 111

Addendum to Part Two: Ron Shipp's "Alibi" 177

Part Three: New Allegations 185

"Headcase!" 185

Wasz There a Conspiracy? 203

Simpson Friend Alleged to Have Lied About Knowledge of Murders 221

A Letter to Daniel Petrocelli 229

An Editor's Query Letter 233

A Correspondent's Questions About Simpson 235

From "Guilty" to "Reasonable Doubt" 241

Will No One Rid Me Of This Meddlesome Priest? 245

A Contradiction 249

A Friendlier Talk Show Host 251

Cuts 253

From Hate Mail to Baseball 255

What Might Be "Wrong" With "Something Wrong" 263

A Hard-Won Grudging Respect 265

Who is Irresponsible? 281

Meeting O.J. Simpson 285

How Could Shipp Have Known? 289

Everything That Dan Petrocelli Had Against O.J. Simpson 293

Could O.J. Have Been Tricked into Framing Himself? 295

About J. Neil Schulman 301

A Revelation

Everything is different than I thought.

What I thought was my cage

was the nest I'd built for myself.

What I thought was my life

was just my basic training.

We really don't know what's going on

right next to us.

The universe is so strange,

so surprising,

so dramatic.

Life can be exactly like

the most exciting novel

and for the writer,

how could I not jump in

to play one of the roles?

Shakespeare, after all,

used to play his characters.

But it's different

when your character suddenly is You,

and you find out

that you're not what you thought you were.

What had just been glimpses

through a dark glass

before

became an open window

for a few hours.

The Frame of the Century?

Do you know how long a few hours is

and what you can see

if you look around?

I wanted a glimpse

my curiosity was boundless

and be careful what you pray for

because the guy who answers

"Thy will be done"

has a real rough sense of humor.

The thing is, he climbed inside with me

and let me share the joke.

Unbefuckingleivable.

The game's afoot!

Heinlein was right.

Yoda was right.

The universe is not what it seems

and,

the amazing thing is

Neither are You.

February 18, 1997

Author's Introduction

I first published The Frame of the Century? on the World Wide Web almost two years ago.

The main essay in Part One, with the two postscripts, was published on my personal website on May 21, 1997, and a series of my answers to letters I received as a consequence of publishing it was placed on my website, and finally published May 31, 1997 as "Part Two, Additional Questions."

On June 21, 1997 I added an addendum to the book called "Ron Shipp's Alibi."

Ron Shipp, the focus of my investigation into the framing of O.J. Simpson for the Brown-Goldman murders, had made an appearance on Larry King Live, June 12, 1997, the third anniversary of the Bundy Drive murders. For the first time I was able to find, Ron Shipp was publicly representing that he had been at home the night of the murders. During that program, Shipp made a slip of the tongue that might possibly be interpreted as a confession that he'd been to Simpson's Rockingham estate the night of the murders.

I added "Part ThreeNew Allegations" on May 27, 1998.

During The Frame of the Century?'s almost two years as a free download from my website, close to 20,000 readers downloaded it. Without being available in any bookstore, the book was recommended as summer reading by a major American newspaper. I received perhaps two or three emails a week asking whether I had made any progress in my project to prove or disprove my theory. My answers to those inquiries were always vague optimism. The fact is, World Wide Web publication of my book opened up several sources to me who were intimately involved with O.J. Simpson, Nicole Brown Simpson, their friends

The Frame of the Century?

and families, and the murder investigations themselves.

Much of the information I have been made privy to is material I still cannot publish, some because it is the result of the investigations of other writers who intend to publish it eventually themselves, and some because it involves sources who wish to remain nameless and would be compromised if I were to publish the information. But for some of this new information, my sources have allowed me to publish it, so long as I don't identify them. This is a common demand made to investigative journalists seeking information, regardless of the skepticism it is bound to raise.

My personal source for the allegation that Ron Shipp knew about Nicole's murder five hours before the time to which Shipp testified in the Simpson criminal triala source also pseudonymized by Dominick Dunne as "Charles McCracken" in his memoir Another City, Not My Ownis a man who was a close friend of both O.J. Simpson and Nicole Brown Simpson for many years.

Another of my sources, also close to the Simpson family, may yet write his own book someday, and is not yet ready to go on the record.

Both of these men think that while Ron Shipp may have been an accomplice to the murder of Nicole, they are convinced that the murders were carried out by O.J. Simpson himself. Yet, in extensive discussions with both of them, neither one has been able to give me a single reason, beyond alternative interpretations of facts that we both know, why they think O.J. Simpson is guilty.

When all is said and done, it comes down to their having lost faith in O.J. because he was unable to convince them of his innocence against a heavy weight of incriminating evidence. Both of them have, in their own minds, placed the burden of proof on O.J. Simpson to prove his innocence to them.

O.J. Simpson, a man of pride if nothing elsewhether you choose to use the synonyms "conceit" or "egotism"has declined

Author's Introduction

to do so.

The third part of The Frame of the Century? updated the book with information I obtained in the first year following the book's web publication. I included a section on my call-in to KABC's Larry Elder Showwhich resulted in the first and only response Ron Shipp has ever made to my investigationand a meeting and subsequent correspondence I had with Larry; two more recent articles, an unanswered email I wrote to Fred Goldman's attorney in the civil suit against O.J. Simpson, Daniel Petrocelli, and my replies to comments made on my more-recent articles from Internet readers.

When I first wrote The Frame of the Century? I followed the principle of Occam's Razor that I would not make the theory more complex than necessary by bringing in elements that were not required by the theory and known facts. Since my book's first publication on the World Wide Web, the allegations of William Benson Wasz that on January 14, 1994 Robert Kardashian hired him to murder Nicole Brown Simpson have been made public.

The investigation of Wasz's allegations first and most completely by true-crime author, Joseph Bosco, and later by journalist David Bresnahan, and their impact on my own investigation, are the subjects of the chapter, "Wasz There A Conspiracy?" Wasz's allegations constituted a new element which required me to examine a more complex theory of why Nicole Brown Simpson might have been killed and why Ron Shipp, if he was even to be considered as a still-possible participant in the crime, would have had to be considered as one of several perpetrators rather than as a solo perpetrator.

Nonetheless, I am not eliminating my original theory of a one-man murder and frame-up (with a few unwitting accomplices before the fact and possibly some help well afterwards) as still possible. I have done no investigation whatsoever of William Benson Wasz and his allegations, and I don't see it as my job to

The Frame of the Century?

lend or not lend any particular weight of credibility to them. I find it odd only that the Wasz allegationswell known to all principals in the Simpson criminal, civil, and child custody cases and common knowledge on the Internetare still entirely unreported in all major U.S. media including newspapers, national magazines, and broadcast news. Apparently, nowadays, it's possible to keep a closely held secret among hundreds of thousands of people, just so long as it doesn't appear on the evening news.

The Frame of the Century? is not unique for suggesting that someone other than O.J. Simpson murdered Ronald Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson and framed O.J. Simpson for them.

A book by Christopher Springer, Solving the Simpson Murder Mystery, presents the theory that not only did Mark Fuhrman plant evidence against O.J. Simpson, but that Fuhrman was the actual murderer.

The book Blood Oath by "Steven Worth" (now identified by David Bresnahan as an alias for software millionaire Charles Cass) posits that the Brown-Goldman murders and frame-up of O.J. Simpson were part of a long-standing conspiracy, motivated by a desire for interracial strife, not unlike the "Helter Skelter" of the Manson family cases.

A persistent email correspondent of mine uses the physics of sound and a deconstruction of his criminal-trial testimony to challenge Kato Kaelin's alibi and argues that Kato was the actual murderer.

I trust it's more than "not invented here" syndrome that causes me to reject these other theories out of hand. Not one of any other theory brought to my attentionMafia hits, L.A.P.D.-C.I.A. plots, drugselling connectionsmeets the test of the Venn Diagramthe overlapping circles of personal access and motives, professional law-enforcement skills, perjured testimony, and premature knowledgewhich has been the basis for my own investigation.

Author's Introduction

After a lengthy trial, a jury of twelve men and women quickly acquitted O.J. Simpson of the murders that took place at 875 South Bundy Drive in West Los Angeles, the night of June 12, 1994. This leaves the official police inquiry into who murdered Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman still open. The Los Angeles Police Department's Robbery-Homicide Division still has a detective, Vic Pietrantoni the last time I checked, officially assigned to the case. Regardless of proclamations by attorney Daniel Petrocelli, a jury verdict in a civil suit does not change the fact that as far as the criminal justice system is concerned, reasonable suspicionthe corollary of reasonable doubtexists that someone other than Orenthal James Simpson committed those murders.

Los Angeles County District Attorney, Gil Garcetti, whose office prosecuted O.J. Simpson, is terrified of the prospect that they not only blew the Trial of the Century but actually might have pursued a wild goose. There are reasonable grounds to conclude that the investigation of the Brown-Goldman murders has been, since before the Simpson trial, hampered by instances of obstruction of justice, and the corporate-owned major media, using the excuse that "if it ain't official, it ain't news," has been complicit in this inaction.

Other pundits declare further investigation passé, the case merely an artifact of celebrity with no social overtones, ignoring the obvious fact that five years after the murders you still can't escape the late-night TV monologues with their snide references to Simpson's guilt, or the ongoing statist attacks on the jury system premised on its presumed failure to convict Simpson.

It has been up to radical alternative journalists to conduct our own investigations until a threshold is reached where the public officials no longer have any choice but to do their job and investigate, and the major media to do their job and report.

The Frame of the Century?

Our standards of propriety today have fallen so far that they allow radio and television broadcasters to use their microphones to harangue their listeners with an assertion that a criminal jury was mistaken and that a man declared "not guilty" got away with murder. Two disagreeing jury verdicts, one criminal, one civil, establish reasonable doubt as a fact of public policy, if nothing else.

But these reasonable doubts are self-righteously ignored by these oracles of omniscience who justify their pronouncements of unquestionable guilt with cult worship of a failed prosecution's "mountain of evidence" that, upon close inspection, is revealed to be a plaster volcano suitable for a third-grader's science fair entry. These Orwellian Duckspeakers get away with their outrages against the dignity of due process without anyone punishing them for this arrogant irresponsibility.

Yet, if a writer like myselfwith major creditschooses to investigate the possibility that the first jury was right and someone else with means and opportunity might have committed these murders, that writer is subject to being called irresponsible by these media rabble rousers merely for demanding that a theory with supporting circumstance be investigated for its truth or falsity; and that writer must subject himself to public ridicule for refusing to kiss the ring of pundit-class wisdom.

With a media establishment like this, that has only ad hominem attack for its most worthy dissenters, no wonder Los Angeles has been set on fire twice in the last three decades.

In light of the current state of the evidence, I believe that questions and suspicions about who other than O.J. Simpson might have murdered Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman on the night of June 12, 1994 are more reasonable than ever.

I will continue pursuing my investigation until either emerging facts prove the theory of my investigation falsein which case I will make a public apology to Mr. Ronald Shipp and his family for any emotional distress my investigation has caused

themor until facts emerge which prove my theory viable, in which case my energy and logic will have been vindicated, and Mr. Shipp will be subject to a more serious investigation than a lone writer is able to mount.

J. Neil Schulman,

January 18, 1999

The Frame of the Century?

Part One

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Sign of Four"

This is the story of a speculative theory I've been pursuing regarding the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, a double homicide for which O.J. Simpson was tried and acquitted for murder, then tried and found liable for civil damages.

But let me admit now that this story I am about to tell you is as much about what I am and the way my mind works as it is about anything I may or may not have found.

The very second sentence of this storythe one in the paragraph just prior to this onehas an assumption in it which may not be true: that what I have been doing has been a process of investigation leading to discovery, rather than a process of fictional invention.

I've been a writer now for about 27 years. During those years I've written both fiction and non-fiction.

I've written short stories and novels that I knew were completely made up: both the characters and the events of the story were fictitious.

I've written a fictional screen treatment about the pending divorce of the Prince and Princess of Waleswritten when they

The Frame of the Century?

were actually just barely home from their honeymoonand an episode of the Twilight Zone TV series, in which I had the assassination of JFK interrupted by a time-traveling Kennedy descendant. In these particular stories for the screen, I freely mixed together real persons and fictional characters into fictitious, even outright fantasy, situations.

I've written brutally honest poetry about my own feelings after my divorce. I've written dry theoretical essays and cool op-ed pieces and straight journalistic reportage and sarcastic articles and passionate polemics and half of an unproduced stageplay in which the characters are closely modeled on myself and several of my friends, but the situations and dialogue are deliberately farcical.

Throughout all these years of writing, I've always known exactly where the dividing line was between that which was real and that which existed only as artifacts of my imagination.

But not this time.

This time, I've either discovered something which practically nobody else can possibly believethey can't believe it just because it's just so damned improbableor else the fiction writer in me has imagined a story so compelling that it's fooled even its author into thinking that it might be true.

I need to be very precise here, because I'm going to be relating a theory regarding a murder case that involves real people and real events, and I will be using real names, including the name of a real-life person I will be casting into the role of a sociopathic criminal.

I must emphasize as strongly as I can that I am not accusing this person of the crimes I will be attaching to his name because I can not offer any evidence to support the events I attribute to him.

But I believe that if O.J. Simpson did not commit the murders at 875 South Bundy, this individual is the only one I know of who possibly could have framed O.J. for them.

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

The particular real individual whose name I will be using is merely a person who, given my knowledge of the evidence, I am unable to eliminate as the murderer of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

The particular real individual whose name I will be using is merely a person who, in the mind of this particular writer of fact, fiction, and fantasy, might have committed the crimes in the manner that I am speculating.

But this individual has never been a suspect in the Brown-Goldman murder investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department, the police agency which investigated these murders. I know this from a direct statement to me by a detective in the Robbery/Homicide Division of the L.A.P.D..

In fact, this statement is so important I will repeat it again, in boldface: The particular real individual whose name I will be using has never been a suspect in the Brown-Goldman murder investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department.

This individual is fully entitled to continue living his life unbothered by the suspicions of a writer such as myself, a writer who may be guilty of allowing his imagination to run away with him.

This individual is cloaked in a presumption of innocence that is the cornerstone of the American system of jurisprudence. He has no legal obligation whatsoever to respond to, or explain the reality of, or refute anything I am outlining. He, and his family, should be able to live unmolested by Hard Copy and the Enquirer and People magazine unless, at some future time, it should come to pass that evidence should be discovered that makes my speculation more than idle.

Were I, in fact, to publicly assert, as a matter of established fact, that my theory is true, I think this individual would be entitled to sue me, as well as any publication that were to publish such an assertion, for libel and win.

So I cannot state strongly enough: what you are reading is

The Frame of the Century?

speculation, not fact. But it's speculation that is based on and consistent with known facts.

The only reason why, in good conscience, I feel that I'm justified in using the real name of this individual is that he has willingly made himself a public figure in the aftermath of the Brown-Goldman murders. It is not because he was a witness in the criminal trial of O.J. Simpson. That appearance, even though on television, was compelled by subpoena. But he has since that compelled television appearance willingly appeared on national television shows such as Charles Grodin and Larry King Live, and even allowed a photograph of himself and his family to accompany an interview with him in People magazine.

That willing and affirmative abandonment of his right to privacy, in a legal sense, makes him a public figure, with all that implies under our civil legal system. Still, let me make clear: I do not know this individual personally, and I bear him no malice. The only reason he is the centerpiece of this story is that either by providence, or chance, or his own acts, or some unknown combination of these, he fits into the puzzle I have been working on, and makes the other pieces come together.

Even though he has no legal obligation to respond, I provided an earlier draft manuscript of this story to this individual. A cover letter, and a subsequent telephone conversation I initiated with his attorney, has promised that I would not publish this if he provided me convincing proof that my theory is wrong. I made that offer because of journalistic ethics. I did not and do not bear him any malice and have no desire to subject him causelessly to public scrutiny and suspicion, if he can simply prove me to be wrong. If you are reading this other than in manuscript, that means that he failed to provide me such convincing proof. I will add a postscript to the published version of this story including his response, if any.

Early on, I brought my theory to the Robbery/Homicide Division of the City of Los Angeles Police Department, and to the

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

office of Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti, requesting that they re-open the currently closed investigation of this crime on the basis of my theory. I have never been told that they ever did anything about it, so I assume that they have not.

I don't blame them.

My speculations defy common sense and strain the credulity of anyone who's in the business of investigating crimes, because my speculations suggest that the corpus delicti found in the Brown-Goldman murder investigationthe body of evidence that led police and prosecutors to investigate, indict, and try O.J. Simpson for these murdersdid not come about the way any professional investigator should assume it did, but that a "reality" was deliberately created by an obsessed individual with professional skills, for the specific purpose of leading police and prosecutors in the false direction of O.J. Simpson.

I'm going to suggest that those who argue that O.J. Simpson could not have been framed for the murders, and those who suggested that he was framed by Mark Fuhrman for racial motives, are both wrong.

I'm going to argue that a possible motive for a frame-up of O.J. Simpson had nothing to do with the color of his skin, but everything to do with his being a celebrity.

I'm going to suggest as a speculative theory that Nicole Brown Simpson was murdered by an individual who had the specific intent of framing O.J. Simpson for her murder. I speculate that the intended primary victim of this double murder was, in fact, O.J. Simpson, and that the murderer wanted to forever ruin O.J. Simpson's celebrated reputation and take away from him the woman he was obsessively in love with. I speculate that Nicole's murder was a means to this end and that Ron Goldman just showed up to drop off a pair of lost eyeglasses to Nicole's condo at 875 South Bundy at the tragically wrong time, and might have died trying to defend her.

My theory suggests that not only an innocent man was framed

The Frame of the Century?

for a double murder he did not commit, by an obsessed fan whom a celebrity had allowed into his life, but that the evidentiary frame upincluding blood identifiable in the laboratory as the celebrity'swas in place before the first police officer arrived at 875 South Bundy at midnight June 13, 1994, and at O.J. Simpson's estate at 360 North Rockingham five-and-a-half hours later.

My theory suggests that not only the celebrity was framed, but the detectives investigating the case were framed, the accused man's lawyers were framed, the prosecutors were framed, the families of both the victims and the celebrity were framed, andwhen the case was put on TV and made into the Trial of the Centuryanyone who watched the unfolding of the evidence of this case was framed.

My theory may be dead wrong. I have found no evidence to convince me that it is right.

But I have been unable to discover any evidence in my careful study of the evidence brought out regarding these murders that convinces me that my speculative theory is wrong, either. The evidence I have found which has been presented against O.J. Simpson is as compatible with my theory as the theory that O.J. Simpson committed these murders.

If two explanations of the evidence can exist simultaneously, I acknowledge that there are still two good reasons to prefer the explanation that O.J. Simpson is the murderer. The first is that this explanation is simpler: the tool of logic called Occam's Razor suggests that the explanation requiring the fewest elements is the one to be preferred. The second reason is that the explanation of the evidence that points to O.J. Simpson is more ordinary.

One could combine these two reasons into the old aphorism: common sense tells us that if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it is a duck.

My speculation is that in this case, common sense fails us, the wildly improbable can happen, and that what we have had pre

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

sented to us is what duck hunters call a decoy.

This "decoy" has never been investigated with any tenacity. The Los Angeles Police Department thought they were investigating only a murder, not a frame-up. To the extent that O.J. Simpson's defense team seriously contemplated that their client had been framed, their only theory was that the frame was by detectives investigating the case.

Yet, if O.J. Simpson was, in fact, framed, then there is a corpus delictia body of evidencefor a second crime.

Follow the reasoning, please.

L.A.P.D. detectives investigating the Brown-Goldman murders found a body of evidence leading to O.J. Simpson as the murderer. These pieces of evidence are the corpus delicti of that crime, the murders. This is the only crime that has been investigated so far.

But if O.J. Simpson did not commit those murders, then there is a second crime to be investigated: the framing of O.J. Simpson for the murders with those pieces of evidence which appear to be the corpus delicti which were found by the L.A.P.D. detectives.

The O.J. Simpson defense team only investigated the scenario that the frame-up of O.J. was done by the L.A.P.D. after the murders were committed, and their suspicions led them in the directions of Detectives Mark Fuhrman and Philip Vannatter, the "twin devils of deception," as Johnnie Cochran called them in his summation.

What I did at a certain point was to eliminate as a possibility that the Los Angeles Police Department would frame O.J. Simpson for the Brown-Goldman murders. Consequently, any frame-upthe crime of creating a false corpus delicti for the murdersmust have been committed before the L.A.P.D. arrived on the scene.

Whoever did the frame-up has to be either the murderer or an accomplice of the murderer. Whoever did the frame-up would

The Frame of the Century?

have had to be able to know that O.J. Simpson had no alibi at the time of the murders, as well as being able to create the corpus delicti of the murders that frames O.J. for the murders. Whoever did the frame-up has to be able to bring to the crime scene evidence of O.J. Simpson being the murdererincluding such possible items as O.J.'s blood, shoes, gloves, a watch cap, and O.J.'s white Broncoin order to accomplish the corpus delicti of the frame-up.

Any investigation I've done was premised on the idea that following the corpus delicti of a frame-up would lead to the murderers of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

I have pursued an investigation of my theory for several obvious motives, and two inobvious ones. Some of these motives are mundane; but two are not. Some are not particularly noble, and two are.

So let's get my crass motives for this investigation out of the way, first.

Ego. If my theory were to turn out to be right, then I'm smarter than Sherlock Holmes, and reprints of the classic works by Arthur Conan Doyle should, in honor of my feat of ratiocination, correct the spelling to "Scherlock." If I am right, then what even I thought was my megalomaniacal ego may, in fact, be too small for the overfed and underexercised body it's in. The satisfactions of being able to say "I told you so" to people richer than I am, more celebrated than I am, and generally regarded as more accomplished than I am would be enormous.

Money. This case has already generated almost fifty books, many of them bestsellers, with the largest advance of the lot coming in at around four million bucks. As a freelance writer, I'm in chronic debt. I would be kidding myself if I didn't admit that the prospect of not only getting out of debt but being set up for life hasn't been enormously appealing to me.

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

Fame. I wasn't particularly popular as a child. As a matter of fact, most of my schoolmates despised me. I was a fat smartass with a big vocabulary. I don't know that anyone ever totally gets over the psychic wounds one suffers as a child, but becoming world famous for accomplishing something worthwhile and sensational is certainly not a bad analgesic for the pain. It also gets your phone calls to your agent returned, and gets you good seats in restaurants.

Good regard. This isn't the same thing as fame. This is having people you already know and respect know and respect you, too. It starts with one's own family. There's nothing like having your parents tell you, "You did good." This is also true of one's offspring, and friends.

And now, the noble, and perhaps inobvious, motivations for me to have pursued this.

A Love of Truth. As long as I can remember, I have feared the counterfeit. Because of that, paradoxes and contradictions have always bothered me, and created that state of mind called cognitive dissonance.

As soon as I heard that O.J. Simpson was a suspect in the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, I paid close attention not only to the facts of the case as they were brought out first in the media, then later in the trials, but also to how O.J. Simpson was observed reacting. You will notice that I did not say "acting." Acting can be faked, or we would not have a movie industry. Reacting can also be faked, but it requires a much better thespian than anyone who has worked with him professionally has suggested O.J. Simpson is.

Irrespective of the evidence that has tended to incriminate O.J. Simpson for these murders, I have always believed that his demeanor has been predominantly exculpatory in moments when I do not believe he would have been capable of faking his reactions.

One moment in Simpson's trial is I think indicative. For most

The Frame of the Century?

of the prosecution's case, O.J. Simpson appeared tense, scribbling notes on a pad. Finally, it was the defense's turn, and O.J.'s mother, Eunice, took the stand. For the first time during the trial, the TV cameras showed O.J. Simpson as relaxed, and he smiled at her as he watched his mother's testimony.

I do not know what sort of person you would have to be to be able to smile at your mother when you are on trial for butchering two human beings. No doubt Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden could have argued that only a sociopath could smile under those circumstances.

Of course there is another explanation, which we must at least place on the table.

A man with a clear conscience, because he is innocent of the crime for which he is on trial, could smile at his mother under those circumstances.

Regardless of prosecution spin, the simple fact is that when O.J. Simpson was telephoned in a Chicago hotel room by L.A.P.D. Detective Ron Phillips phoning Simpson from his own home, to tell him that Nicole had been killed, Simpson immediately made plans to return home and did so as fast as he couldso, abruptly, according to one hotel employee, Caroline Gobern, that she considered him rude about it. It is true that Simpson telephoned his lawyer from the airliner going home, and prosecutor Marcia Clark suggests this as evidence of a guilty demeanor. But wouldn't you call your attorney if you learned in previous phone calls that a search warrant in a murder investigation had been granted for your estate?

When Simpson arrives home, he finds his home swarming with police and a media circus. He's immediately handcuffed, which lets him know that he is indeed a suspect. Even so, when L.A.P.D. detectives ask him to accompany them to police headquarters to be interviewed about the murders, he agrees immediately, even though grief and exhaustion would be perfectly reasonable grounds for his attorney, Howard Weitzman, to delay the inter

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

view for a day or so. Instead, after consulting with Weitzman for a half hour, Simpson agrees to talk to the detectives without his attorney present. Any licensed criminal attorney, especially one who knew or suspected that his client might be guilty, would never have allowed this if there were anything on earth he could do to prevent it. Instead, Weitzman goes to lunch and just asks the detectives to read Simpson his rights and record the interview. This request from Simpson's attorney does nothing to protect Simpson; but it would have protected the detectives from any confession being thrown out of court for a violation of Simpson's Miranda rights.

During the interview with L.A.P.D. robbery-homicide detectives Tom Lange and Philip Vannatter, while Simpson is quite possibly still in the "denial" stage of grief, in shock, and exhausted from almost no sleep in thirty hours (combined with two air flights and, at minimum, a high-profile family crisis), Simpson is tentative and imprecise in his answers to the detectives' questions. He can't account for blood evidence the detectives found, and appears to be making guesses about where it might have come from. He makes no glaring admissions which lead to guilt, but he does speak as if he assumes that a gun was the murder weapon, inviting the detectives to inspect his gun collection.

Whatever else he might be thinking, Simpson reacts as if he expects facts will clear him of suspicion. When Vannatter says to him, "We've got some blood on and in your car, we've got some blood at your house, and sort of a problem," Simpson's immediate response is, "Well, take my blood test." Simpson not only has agreed to a blood test, he has suggested it, first, himself. And when Lange asks about the possibility of a polygraph exam, Simpson asks "Does it work for elimination?"

Why would a guilty man whoregardless of anything elseis stressed to the max and exhausted, have thought to ask if a lie detector could clear a man? Are we to believe that even under these circumstances, Simpson is capable of not just giving a per

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formance from a memorized film script, which is his only professional acting experience, but of improvising a convincing dramatic performance on the spot while maximally stressed and exhausted?

I keep on hearing rumors that Simpson confessed. Each time I have tried to track down one of these rumors, I find it has been denied. Rosie Grier denied to a Simpson investigator that Simpson had confessed to him in his jail cell during a bible-reading session. Simpson attorney, Robert Shapiro, denies that Simpson ever confessed either to him or to Weitzman, whom Shapiro replacedand emphasizes that Simpson declared his innocence upon their first meeting and never wavered.

And, an L.A.P.D. detective asserted to me, after Simpson's loss in the civil suit against him for liability in the murders, that Simpson had long-before confessed to his criminal attorneys, and that Simpson was planning to confess publicly, soon. I had earlier spoken to two of Simpson's civil attorneys, who spoke as if they still believed him innocent. Further, two days after this detective's assertion to me, Simpson once again publicly asserted his innocenceas he had consistently done since June 13, 1994.

The transcript of O.J.'s cell phone conversation with Detective Lange, during Simpson's famous June 17, 1994 Bronco ride from Orange County back to Simpson's Rockingham house, has Lange trying to talk Simpson out of suicide, when O.J. is sitting in the back of Al Cowlings' Bronco with a Smith & Wesson .357 magnum revolver pointed at his head. Earlier in that Bronco ride, according to Lawrence Schiller and James Willwerth in their book, American Tragedy, O.J. Simpson made a cell phone call to his friend Robert Kardashian, and Simpson had told Kardashian that he had pointed the gun at his head and pulled the trigger but it hadn't gone off.

During the cell-phone calls Simpson made to others from Cowling's Bronco, including a call to Nicole's father, Lou Brown, and his own mother, Simpson is crying, declaring his innocence,

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

and telling anyone who will listen that he has been framed. But he is definitely depressed and suicidal, and many observers have taken this to be an indication of guilt for the murders.

Those who observe Simpson feeling guilty about something in the aftermath of the murders are not without their clues.

In the book Outrage, by former prosecutor and famed author Vincent Bugliosi, Bugliosi relates how, in a cell-phone call to his mother from Cowling's Bronco, Simpson told his mother, "It was all her fault, Ma." Bugliosi interprets that Simpson means Nicole must have said something to make him mad enough to take a knife and nearly decapitate her, and is blaming the victim for instigating her own death.

But is there another possible explanation for Simpson's statement to his mother? Could he think Nicole caused her own death because he thought she was promiscuous since their divorce, that he believed Nicole tried seducing the wrong man and was killed for it? That explanation is consistent with Simpson being aware that Nicole had taken many lovers since their split-up.

Schiller and Willwerth include an excerpt from a microcassette tape recording Simpson made at Kardashian's house the day of the Bronco chase, just before his attempted suicide. In that tape, Simpson is asking himself how he got where he is, about to be arrested. "Everybody loved me, but I don't know why I was feeling so alone all the time." Those who think Simpson guilty can picture Simpson feeling lonely after Paula Barbieri left a phone message breaking up with him for refusing to take her to Sydney Simpson's dance recital, so he phones Nicole to ask for one more reconciliation, and when she tells him in graphic language what he can do to himself, he decides to drive over and murder her in a fit of rage. Or, "And there was things that caught up with me. Uhhhhh, I don't even know what I'm saying here. Look where I am. I'm the Juice, whatever that means. But I felt at times like I wasahhh!I felt goodness in myself. I don't feel any goodness in myself right now. I feel emptiness. I don't even know

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what I'm saying here! I don't even know what this tape is for."

A statement that one feels empty of goodness could certainly be interpreted as the beginning of a confession.

But the confession is never made.

Alternatively, for a man who's addicted to the adulation of his fans, the abandonment by his "public" might indeed make him feel empty. As an indication of that theory of his utter dependence on others for his self-esteem, Simpson's low spirits didn't rise after his jailing until he started reading the many thousands of supportive letters that were being written to him. After he saw that, he was a man restored.

That is why someone who wanted to utterly destroy O.J. Simpsona fan who worshipped him and felt humiliated and rejectedmight decide the best way to punish O.J. Simpson would be to utterly ruin his reputation, take his fans away from him. What better revenge than to drive a man into his own despairing suicide? No villain out of an Edgar Allan Poe story could dream up a better revenge.

Lange and Vannatter's book, Evidence Dismissed, contains the transcript of Lange's cell-phone call to Simpson in Cowling's Bronco. Lange is trying to talk Simpson out of committing suicide and tells Simpson just to throw his gun out the window so "nobody's gonna get hurt."

The transcript has Simpson answering, "I'm the only one who deserves" and Lange cuts in, "No you don't deserve that."

Several writers have interpreted this as Simpson saying that he's the only one who deserves to get hurt because he started all this by murdering his ex-wife and Ron Goldman.

But surely, O.J. Simpson had plenty of other things to feel guilty about in what he saw as the last moments of his life? Perhaps it was his periodic abuse of Nicole over the course of their many-years love affairabuse he could no longer apologize to her for? Or, perhaps, O.J. Simpson's guiltas he replayed his life over and over in his mindmight have been caused by old regrets

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

about not having been able to prevent the swimming-pool drowning death of the two-year-old daughter from his first marriage, right when Nicole and he had first moved into the Rockingham house together?

All these bits and pieces have been interpreted as evidence of a guilty demeanor. But none of this must necessarily be interpreted as O.J. Simpson's guilt for having committed the murders at Bundy.

But I am not the only person who considers O.J. Simpson's demeanor mostly consistent with innocence.

Attorney F. Lee Bailey knows how an innocent man reacts when charged with murdering his wife. Many years before he agreed to join Simpson's defense team, Bailey had been the defense lawyer who'd exonerated Dr. Sam Sheppard for murdering his wife, the famous case that was the basis for the TV series and movie The Fugitive. Years after his death, Sheppard has now been proved, by a recent DNA analysis, to indeed have been innocent. Upon Bailey's first meeting with Simpson in jail, Simpson once against asserted his innocence, as he had done consistently, and Bailey is reported by Schiller and Willwerth in American Tragedy to have remarked to Simpson's friend, Robert Kardashian, "There is no way this man could have committed those murders. He is innocent."

Renowned criminal-defense attorney Gerry Spence, whom O.J. Simpson had considered hiring early on, had an opportunity to observe Simpson intimately during the criminal trial, and his comment was that if O.J. Simpson committed these murders, then he did not know he committed them. Schiller and Willwerth report Simpson's reaction, upon being told of Spence's comment: "I know what I did, and I didn't do this."

Simpson is constantly ridiculed for never hiring detectives to look for the actual killers. But during his trial, Simpson had three private investigators following leads: former L.A.P.D. cop Bill Pavelic, former New York police detective, John McNally, and

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former law-enforcement officer and now a private investigator, Pat McKenna.

Of Simpson's investigators, Pat McKenna is the most emphatic in his belief in Simpson's innocence. Schiller and Willwerth report McKenna as accompanying forensic expert Dr. Henry Lee to visit Simpson in jail, where Lee brought up the subject of DNA.

In an account of the meeting in American Tragedy, McKenna describes Simpson's reactions. "[Simpson] starts the woe-is-me and I-would-never-hurt-Nicole routine. So what? McKenna has seen crocodile tears in jails from Miami to Chicago. Now Lee tells Simpson about possible DNA tests and other things that show his blood in all the wrong places. Suddenly it gets interesting: McKenna sees O.J. doesn't have that look on his face he knows so well, that geez-I'm-gonna-get-caught look. This is different. Like: How could this be? What does this mean? On the way home McKenna tells Lee about what he learned in Chicago. How absolutely regular Simpson seemed. Witness after witness described somebody who sounded like no actor."

Simpson's lawyers brought in two psychological professionals to evaluate Simpson during the trial.

Dr. Bernard Yoduwitz, a forensic psychiatrist, spent time evaluating Simpson in jail during the trial. According to American Tragedy, "Simpson had no obvious mental illness no sign of the constant criminal aggression that marks criminal insanity He did not appear to be a psychopath, uninvolved with other human beings. Psychopaths were almost always misfits. He had, of course, reviewed Simpson's history of battering, but it did not measure up to that of the killers he knew. In seventeen years of stormy marriage, O.J. and Nicole had resolved any number of conflicts peacefully. Yes, there were incidents of violence, but there was not, by the doctor's standards, a pattern."

Dr. Lenore Walker, perhaps the top expert on domestic violence and spousal abuse (it was her work that defined the "batterer's syndrome" that would later be testified about in the

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

prosecution's case), had been brought in by Simpson's defense team to interview Simpson and issue a report. When the prosecution decided to cut short its domestic-violence case and concentrate on forensic issues more, Dr. Walker was dropped from the defense witness list. But her opinions were made available to Lawrence Schiller to be used in American Tragedy, after the criminal trial.

According to Schiller and Willwerth, "Walker had administered a battery of tests: the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, the Rorschach test, the Wechsler Scale of Intelligence test. Simpson's cognitive functioning was normal. His intelligence was in the superior range. His social skills were remarkable."

According to Walker's report, O.J. Simpson "did not fit the profile of a batterer who murders." "'He has good control over his impulses,'" Walker had said. "'He appears to control his emotions well.'"

Perhaps this is hard to believe for anyone who's heard Nicole's (highly edited) 911 calls to the police of October 25, 1993, where we hear O.J. Simpson obscenely ranting at Nicole. But then again, aside from shouting, all O.J. Simpson had done on that occasion was break a door that had already been broken and repaired once. O.J. never even entered the same room with Nicole on that occasionand Nicole had later apologized to O.J. for calling the police.

According to Lenore Walker's report, "Simpson could control his anger. He had a bad temper, but he yelled and left, or just left."

These two professional opinions, had they been presented in court, would not have been consistent with the speculations Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden made during the trial, about O.J. Simpson's motivations, and his formation of an intent, to murder Nicole by slashing her to death.

At least I'm admitting that I'm speculating.

Prosecutors never do.

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The contradiction between the physical evidence and O.J. Simpson's demeanor of innocence was the source of the cognitive dissonance that has led me on this quest for the truthor a reasonable facsimile thereof.

A Passion for Justice. Simply stated: since I believe O.J. Simpson is innocent, for reasons that have nothing to do with the physical evidence, I would wish to clear his name if I can establish his innocence factually.

You don't have to believe me acting upon these two noble motives if you don't want to. Nobody nowadays wants to imagine that anyone has any motivations that aren't crass and self-serving.

But the twin passions for truth and justice means that one's view of the rightness and wrongness of things impacts upon one's life. If one can not distinguish the truth, then how can one know good from evil?

And as for justice: perhaps the race is not always to the swift, but if it's never to the swift, then why bother running? If the innocent can be punished for the crimes of the guilty, and the guilty man reaps the rewards of the innocent, then why, aside from a crass fear of getting caught, should anyone strive to do good and not do evil? It seems obvious to me that a world in which justice is something real is far too important in its effect on our daily lives, and our hopes for the future, to be regarded as not being a practical motive for an investigation.

Prior to this, I've written two articles on the O.J. Simpson case, that were published as chapters of my book Self Control Not Gun Control. In those articles, written in 1994 and 1995, I first expressed doubt about O.J. Simpson's guilt, then an outright belief in his innocence. I think it will be useful to the reader to establish my state of mind entering into the investigation I will be relating, so I will reproduce them here.

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

Is This A Case For Perry Mason?

1994

We've all seen the classic 60's show so much that we know the plot structure by heart. First, a dramatic murder of an ex-wife occurs where the suspect is obvious: a prominent ex-husband with a history of losing his temper violently. Second, damning circumstantial evidence provides the basis for the suspect being charged. Third, the suspect runs, and clinches his guilt in everyone's mind.

"You've just made your case twice as hard," says Perry Mason to his new client.

We all know that the actual murderer, someone we've given no attention until then, will confess under Perry's relentless cross examination at the end of Act Four, just before the final commercial.

The events surrounding the O.J. Simpson case have followed the Perry Mason scenario so closely to this point that it is irresistible for a scenarist such as myself to speculate on what everyone else seems to be avoiding: what if O.J. really didn't do it?

The dramatist is concerned with how long-term character will direct a person in their ultimate crisis. That's why it's hard to accept O.J. Simpson, a middle-aged family man regarded by most as a person seriously concerned with moral behavior, as laying in wait for his ex-wife just a few hours after attending their daughter's dance recital, then cold-bloodedly committing a brutal double murder more characteristic of a Ted Bundy or a Jeffrey Dahmer. The fiction writer couldn't get away with this: if someone can commit this savage a crime at the middle of their life, then where's the trail of bodies leading up to it?

There's also the problem of what our suspect actually did while he was AWOL from the police with his best friend. If there was "consciousness of guilt," why weren't they stealing a car and

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heading for Tijuana, instead of cruising aimlessly nearby with every cop for a hundred miles looking for them?

But the fiction writer would have a greater problem here. The suspect writes a despair-filled suicide note, proclaiming his innocence to the world, then heads for the grave of the victim whom he says he's always loved. He had a gun and planned to kill himself on his ex-wife's grave.

Here's the motivational problem: if our suspect actually committed the murder and is going to kill himself next then he must confess his guilt to his best friend, and the friend will show him the kindness of assisting his suicide to save him from the impending humiliations of arrest, public exposure, and possible execution.

But if the best friend instead does everything he can to keep our suspect from killing himself, then the suspect's soul-baring must never have happened and his continued protests of innocent despair are what motivated the friend to risk felony charges of abetting a fugitive in order to save him.

Perry Mason has his work cut out for him: an ambitious D.A. who sees this prosecution not only as the ticket to national fame, book deals, and higher political office, but a media circus that, like the tribal corn kings, proclaims a man a hero then sacrifices him on the public altar.

Everyone has something to gain from the harvesting of the Corn King. Pundits use him as an object lesson of what happens when social workers don't get to intervene early enough in domestic violence. Arbiters of culture declare that society has no use for heroes. Snobs condemn the unwashed masses who cheered their hero as he rode his chariot past them on the way to his sacrificial altar. And everywhereeverywherea people fighting off the boredom of their own colorless despair find a moment's brilliance when real life imitates drama.

O.J. Simpson may, in fact, be guilty. The detectives of the L.A.P.D. are not dummies, and neither are prosecutors who are

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

resting their careers on a man who until now has been an exemplar of successful achievement.

Yet, prosecutor Hamilton Burger was back every week with an ironclad case, and if it had not been for Perry Mason's pursuit of the truth above all other agendas, justice would have gone awry week after week.

That was, after all, just make-believe. But when it comes to analyzing character, maybe fiction has more to teach us than history. Aristotle thought so.

We say that a man is innocent until proved guilty, so let's at least ask the question: If O.J. Simpson even conceivably might not have done these murders, who among us will search for who did?

O. J.

1995

I do not believe Orenthal James Simpson is guilty of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

In this opinion, I am joined by a majority of African Americans and a minority of my fellow Anglo Americans. I also seem to be alone in this view among every opinion-maker I know, from one end of the political spectrum to the other.

Everyone has an agenda they want served by the trial of O.J. Simpson.

The news, gossip, and talk media have a field day: a case such as this is their bread and butter for years. As Jimmy Durante used to say, "Everybody wants to get inta the act!"

The Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles District Attorney's office both have a motivation to have tried O.J. Simpson for these murders because trying a celebrity brings vast publicity to them, both as individuals and as government entities. Personal publicity leads to career advancement for detectives and prosecutors; departmental publicity leads to increased

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funding opportunities.

Once having charged O.J. Simpson with this crime, convicting O.J. Simpson of the charges is a high-stakes game, in which the careers of detectives and prosecutorsand of the Los Angeles District Attorney, himselfwill rise or fall according to whether or not O.J. Simpson is convicted. The trial of a more-ordinary defendant does not create incentives to falsify incriminatory evidence or suppress exculpatory evidence: both incentives exist in this caseand these extraordinary incentives have nothing to do with racism and everything to do with celebrity.

For the families of the victims, O.J. Simpson is a desirable person to believe committed these murders, because if their loved ones were murdered by some faceless, ordinary criminal, then these crimes lend no special grace to their loved one's memories.

If O.J. Simpson, a spousal abuser, did not murder Nicole Brown Simpson, then there is no grand cause to which her death can be dedicated as an example, and her death may seem unexplainable.

And even for the family of Ronald Goldman, having him murdered by a celebrity lends an explanation for his death in a way that having him murdered in an ordinary crime would not. According to Viktor Frankl in his book Man's Search For Meaning, the need to find an explanation or meaning in the death of a loved one is a necessary part of the healing of grief.

Without O.J. Simpson as murderer, such explanations are unknown, meaning is much harder to find, and solace is elusive.

Political conservatives, bent on seeing a restoration of tough treatment of criminals in this country, want O.J. Simpson convicted as proof that the criminal justice system can work.

Political liberals, who hate self-made millionaires, secretly want O.J. Simpson convicted as proof of their class-envy-derived feelings that anyone who fulfills the American Dream must be corrupt.

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

Radical feminists, bent on proving that men are beasts who first beat women then kill them, want O.J. Simpson convicted as proof that women need more legal protection against men.

The African American community is divided between those who feel O.J. Simpson should be punished because he married a white woman and lived the lifestyle of a rich white man, and those who want him exonerated because a white racist power structure is incapable of bringing true facts to light in a case involving an African American defendant who was married to a white woman.

Now let me reveal my agenda. I once personally encountered O.J. Simpson for all of ten seconds, and what I saw of him in that short a time left an indelible impression of him on my mind.

It was at a studio publicity screening of The Empire Strikes Back in 1980. O.J. Simpson and his then-young son, Jason, sat in the row in front of me. After the movie, as O.J. walked out of the screening room with his son, O.J. told him to pay close attention to Yoda's advice, "Do, or do notbut there is no try." I was left with the strong impression of a caring father who was concerned about seeing his son raised with strong values.

I was not left with the impression of a man who could cold-bloodedly murder his wife with their children asleep a few feet away.

I think O.J. Simpson, in spite of his having gotten drunk on occasion and maltreated his wife, is a man who when sober was extremely unlikely to have committed the brutal double murder with which he is charged, because the crimes do not logically follow from well-known facts about O.J. Simpson's character.

I am a writer by profession. I've written novels, screenplays, short stories, and journalism. Part of my craft is the study of character and motivation. The elements of character which are used to plot a story are based on our general knowledge of how people act in real life. A story in which individuals are shown doing things that don't follow from the established facts of their back

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ground fails to establish a "willing suspension of disbelief" in the reader, and fails the test of good writing.

My belief in O.J. Simpson's innocence is based on the known facts having failed to "suspend my disbelief." There are three main elements that give me reason to believe he is unlikely to be the murderer in this case.

First, I do not believe O.J. Simpson had sufficient motivation to want to kill his wife. He was not a loser without a life, was not sexually or romantically needy, and was not financially desperate. He was not destroying his life with drugs or alcohol. O.J. Simpson is a wealthy, attractive celebrity with charm and sex appeal who could have almost any woman he wanted. He was spending much of his life traveling, and his current girlfriend, Paula Barbieri is one of the most beautiful women alive. He had a prenuptial agreement with Nicole Brown Simpson that protected him from being financially drained by her.

No rational motive for premeditated murder can be derived from these facts.

Second, I believe that the circumstance of O.J. Simpson's activities on the day of the murders do not provide an adequate explanation for the formation of an intent for him to commit murder on that day. He had an obligation to attend his daughter's dance recital. He may have been in physical discomfort during the performance because of a flare-up of rheumatoid arthritis; thisaside from having to be present in a room with his ex-wife in stressful circumstanceswould account for his seeming in a sullen mood during the performance. Yet, he seemed in a better mood by the end of the performance. Maybe he was just bored by the recital.

After the recital, he went home. We are told that he went out for some McDonald's fast food with Kato Kaelin and ate indifferently. Then there is some timepossibly as long as an hourin which he seems to have been alone, without an alibi; except that we know that he called Paula Barbieri from his cellular

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

phone during this period. This provides an indication that his focus during that unaccounted-for time was on his current girlfriend, not his ex-wife.

If he had been at home the previous week, stalking his ex-wife, his murdering her the night of June 12, 1994 would be easier to believe. If he had been drinking or doing cocaine during that afternoon or evening, uncharacteristic behavior would be easier to explain. There is no evidence to suggest that O.J. Simpson was engaging in obsessive or destructive behavior on the afternoon or early evening of June 12, 1994. Instead, even with a period of missing time, his known activities are consistent with a father who finds time to honor his daughter in the middle of a busy travel schedule. To my mind, this does not create a likelihood of the formation of an intent to commit murder.

Third, I do not believe that the method of the murder is one O.J. Simpson would have chosen, even if he had been inclined to kill Nicole Brown Simpson or Ronald Goldman. O.J. Simpson owned guns. A gun is a weapon which can be used from a distance, making it less likely that one will be splattered with the victim's blood. O.J. Simpson has been repeatedly described as a man obsessed with cleanliness and neatness. He wouldn't allow smoking in his house. He has been described as folding his clothes neatly rather than just tossing them over furniture. He has been described as not even wanting to park his car under a tree because sap or leaves might dirty it. A bloody knifing is not the likely murder method for a man as compulsive about neatness as O.J. Simpson is described as being.

We have a murder with no witnesses, no murder weapon, and no fingerprints.

There is some blood, hair and fiber evidence linking O.J. Simpson to the murder scene; and a bloody glove on O.J.'s estate which matches one found at the murder scene.

There is knowledge that O.J. Simpson, when drunk, beat up Nicole Brown Simpson several times, the last known time sev

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eral years ago; and more recently frightened her by busting into her house and shouting at heran occasion on which he was not drinking and did not employ physical violence against her.

On what, then, are we to convict O.J. Simpson of these murders?

The negative proof that he can't provide an alibi for those exact minutes the murders were committed?

The fact that he was a spousal abuser, which provides less than a one-percent likelihood that this would lead to murder?

O.J. Simpson's despair about being charged with a double murder he may know he is innocent of, and a confused and panicked attempt to escape, knowing that a lifetime's worth of achievement and reputation had just been flushed down the drain?

Forensic evidence from police and prosecutors who have every incentive to convict O.J. Simpson for these murders and no incentive whatsoever to investigate the possibility that someone else may have committed them?

The physical evidence is not enough for me to convict him, given the exculpatory issues of character, motive, and formation of intent.

I think that there are so many people with agendas in this case, that the search for truth has been a casualty. If O.J. Simpson has been framed, it was not necessarily because of racist motives. It may well be that implicating O.J. Simpson was merely a convenient diversion by the actual murderer or murderers with their own unknown agendas.

We may never know, because by now, the actual murderers have had so long to cover their trail, no evidence will ever link them to their crimes.

It may be that even the "Dream Team" of lawyers defending O.J. Simpson believe their client guilty, and that in the absence of a solid alibi or evidence pointing to another culprit are simply doing the best they can to undermine the prosecution's case by

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

the remaining means available.

Which leaves us with O.J. Simpson, a man already convicted in the media; a largely black jury which, if they acquit O.J. Simpson, will not be believed if they say it was because of lack of sufficient evidence; and a celebrity whoif innocent as seems at least possiblewill never again regain his good name.

It's enough to make you wish Perry Mason was real.

That was how I thought about this case before I had any notion about how O.J. Simpson might have been framed for the Brown-Goldman murders.

After having researched this case in much more detail, I state my arguments why I believe him innocent differently, but my conclusions are the same. I don't see him as the sociopath that those who have decided he is guilty of these murders conclude that he must have been. I believe their conclusion of his guilt starts with the physical evidence, and then they project backwards onto O.J. Simpson the character of a person who must have been capable of committing the murders.

Jesus Himself would look guilty, merely by sitting at the defendant's table in a criminal trial. That's why the legal presumption of innocence is so important.

As a libertarian, I was also naturally inclined to view government with suspicion, and when I wrote these articles I had not yet eliminated in my mind the possibility that a police conspiracy was at work.

Today, as I write this, I must say I do not believe it would have been possible for any police officer to frame O.J. Simpson. I must agree on this point with those who think O.J. Simpson is guilty. Regardless of any possible racism by Mark Fuhrmanactual or merely invented by him to impress an attractive female screenwriterI find it snaps even my elastic credulity to believe that Mark Fuhrman had anything to do with the murders of Nicole

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Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldmanwhich is the only way he could have planted an Aris glove at the Bundy crime scene before L.A.P.D. patrolman Robert Riske discovered it there.

If O.J. Simpson was framed, I must conclude that the frame-up would have had to be in place before the first police officer arrived at the Bundy crime scene, two hours before Mark Fuhrman was called there.

Interestingly enough, the man whose name I will be using as my suspect in this case agrees with me.

I have one additional motivation for my persistent investigation: a purely subjective motivation. But I'll reserve discussing that for the second part of this book.

Vincent Bugliosi's book Outrage asserts as an incontestable fact that O.J. Simpson murdered Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. To make this assertion, Mr. Bugliosi must deny the intelligence and competence of anyone who disagrees with his assertion. This he does in copious detail.

I can understand the emotional force with which Mr. Bugliosi writes, and the passion for justice that makes him excoriate a man he thinks a smirking murderer, ridicule prosecutors he believes didn't do their job the way he thought it should be done, and dismiss the verdict of a jury that he believes was prejudiced, sloppy, and logically impaired.

In reading Mr. Bugliosi's book on the Simpson case, what seems to bother Mr. Bugliosi more than anything else is that O.J. Simpson appears totally unrepentant. If O.J. Simpson is, in fact, guilty, then Mr. Bugliosi's contempt for Simpson's demeanor is completely justified. But I believe Mr. Bugliosi makes a mistake in thinking that a man's demeanor is not evidence as worthy of being tested as physical evidence found at a crime scene, and if the two are in contradiction, one does not automatically veto the other. Mr. Bugliosi does assert that Simpson's demeanor is guilty;

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

but the instances he uses in his book are open to alternative interpretationsinterpretations that you can find in the books on the case by Schiller & Willwerth or Joseph Bosco.

Mr. Bugliosi must rely on the same cognitive limitations as the rest of the human race. He is not omniscient. He just looks at the physical evidence that exists and assigns, in his own mind, a set of probabilities that this evidence compels certain conclusions. Those conclusions convince Mr. Bugliosi of O.J. Simpson's guilt, so therefore O.J. Simpson's demeanor, in Mr. Bugliosi's view, must be a devilish facade.

But the theory I present here wasn't figured by Mr. Bugliosi into his calculation of probabilities. Since Mr. Bugliosi seems married to common sense, I doubt very much that it would make any difference in his reading of the evidence anyway.

Marcia Clark, in her book, Without A Doubt, is as certain of O.J. Simpson's guilt, and as repelled by Simpson's demeanor of innocence, as is Vincent Bugliosi. But I find it less offensive coming from Marcia Clark. I admit, that may be my hormones talking.

I do find it amusing, however, that the only "abuse excuse" that appears in the trial of O.J. Simpson was Marcia Clark's accusations in her book that Judge Lance Ito's treatment of her contributed to her losing the case.

Some women are just unlucky with men.

If by some odd set of circumstances, my theory is ever proven to be trueif the dice Mr. Bugliosi has been rolling to calculate his odds were, unknown to him, loadedthen perhaps I may have some small lesson to teach him, and Marcia Clark, and others who think that there can be no reasonable doubt about O.J. Simpson's guilt.

After all, I have personally paid a visit to the Twilight Zone.

And that's always been good for a lesson or two.

The Frame of the Century?

Let me state an obvious fact. Nobody has been convicted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Regardless of why you think the jury voted to acquit O.J. Simpson of the criminal charges brought against him, that acquittal legally leaves the case open and officially unsolved. There is no legal impediment to criminal charges being brought against some other individual for these murders, if evidence were brought to light which was compelling enough to be presented before a jury.

Neither does Mr. Simpson having been found liable for these murders in a civil trial prevent the prevailing plaintiffs in that lawsuit from deciding to release him from their claims of damages, if they ever found reason to do so.

In fact, Ronald Goldman's father, Fred Goldman, publicly told O.J. Simpson that he would willingly give up all winnings if O.J. Simpson were to confess to the murders. O.J. refused to do so, once again asserting his innocence as the reason he would not. Shortly thereafter, a moving van showed up at O.J. Simpson's house to cart off most of his valuables. And the house, itself, is in foreclosure. Surely, if Simpson is innocent, his willingness to sacrifice his property before admitting to a crime he did not commit is a signature of virtue?

But enough of preambles and covering my ass. It is time to tell my story, to offer my theory.

When we eliminate, from our consideration, O.J. Simpson's demeanor as evidence either of his guilt or innocence, and his history with his ex-wife, we are left with the corpus delicti of the crime: that body of evidence that led to his arrest, indictment, and criminal trial. The main elements of that corpus delicti are as follows:

1) At the approximate time that the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman must have occurred, nobody who does not have a motive to slant the truth has been able to testify to O.J. Simpson's exact whereabouts. By O.J. Simpson's own ac

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

count, he was no more than a five-minute drive from the scene of the murders while they were occurring. Brian "Kato" Kaelin has not been able to place O.J. Simpson's whereabouts at the approximate times of the murders. O.J. Simpson made no telephone calls from his home telephone at the time of the murders. Limousine driver Allan Park's observation of the number 360 on the curb where O.J.'s Ford Bronco would have been parked on Rockingham strongly suggests that the Bronco was missing when Park arrived at 10:25 P.M. to pick Simpson up for his flight to Chicago.

This leaves O.J. Simpson with no alibi for the time of the murders.

2) A left-hand brown Aris glove of a style that O.J. Simpson has been photographed wearing, and of a style that Nicole Brown Simpson is known to have purchased, was found at the Bundy crime scene. An apparently matching Aris glove for the right hand was found on O.J. Simpson's Rockingham estate, in a location that Kato Kaelin reported hearing three banging noises against a wall of his guest roombangs that were so loud that they shifted a painting on the wall and made Kaelin think it might be an earthquake. The Rockingham glove contains blood evidence that links O.J. Simpson to the Bundy crime scene: the victims' blood mixed with O.J.'s own blood on the glove found at Rockingham. There is also some hair and fiber evidence attached to the gloves that is indicative but not as conclusive.

3) Drops of blood positively identified as Simpson's were found at the Bundy crime scene. Blood identified as Nicole Brown Simpson's and Ronald Goldman's, as well as O.J.'s own blood, were found in O.J.'s Bronco. A trail of blood drops identified as O.J.'s picks up from where the Bronco was found parked at O.J. Simpson's Rockingham estate and leads from the Bronco, across O.J.'s driveway, into the foyer of Simpson's house. Blood identified as Nicole Brown Simpson's was found on a sock found on the floor in O.J. Simpson's bedroom. There are additional loca

The Frame of the Century?

tions of substances at O.J. Simpson's estate that are presumptively blood, but cannot be used to link him to the crime because they are unidentifiable and we also don't know when they were left.

4) Fibers matching the carpet of O.J. Simpson's Bronco were found on Ronald Goldman's shirt. Fibers matching a dark suit of a type that Kato Kaelin says O.J. Simpson was wearing the evening of the murders were found at the Bundy crime scene.

5) Hairs of a type consistent with O.J. Simpson's were found on a watch cap found at the Bundy crime scene.

6) Bloody shoeprints of size 12 shoes, the size O.J. Simpson wears, and identified by an FBI expert as rare Bruno Magli loafers sold at a store O.J. Simpson was known to frequent, and which some photographs which may or may not have been faked show O.J. Simpson wearing, were found in the victim's blood at the Bundy crime scene, leading to the alley. The footprints also, apparently, reverse, as if the killer returned momentarily for some reason. There are apparently no other confirmed footprints at the Bundy crime scene, leading us to conclude that whoever made those bloody footprints committed the murders.

In summary, the evidence links Simpson's blood and clothing to the Bundy crime scene, to the vehicle thought to have been used to transport him from his home to the crime scene and back again, and links the victims blood, hair, and fiber, to the Bronco and back to O.J. Simpson's home.

I believe that is it, as far as physical evidence goes. There are some additional DNA, fiber, and hair links between Bundy and Rockingham, with the Bronco as carrier, but nothing more. There are no fingerprints linking O.J. Simpson to the murders, though nine unidentified fingerprints were found at the Bundy crime scene.

No knife identified as a murder weapon was ever found. The Bruno Magli shoes were never found. There were extensive searches for both.

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

The black sweat suit Kato saw was apparently found by L.A.P.D. criminalist Dennis Fung in O.J. Simpson's hamper, but the criminalist, finding no evidence of it having been at a crime sceneno obvious blooddid not collect it. One can assume, as Marcia Clark did, that the criminalist was incompetent for not collecting it, if one wishes to believe that O.J. Simpson is guilty. (Or, one can consider that if the criminalist knew what his visual examination had failed to find, that this is exculpatory evidence that the clothes O.J. Simpson was wearing that night were not at the crime scene.)

If, even as a speculative exercise such as I am now conducting, we are to say that this corpus delicti of evidence could have artificially been created for the purposes of framing O.J. Simpson for these murders, then we already know certain important things about the framer/murderer.

1) The murderer is mentally capable of planning a murder and a frame-up of evidence in pathological detail.

2) The murderer is physically, mentally, and emotionally capable of then actually committing a brutal double murder with the intent of framing a third party. He would also have to have some life experience at conducting himself in risky and stressful situations.

3) The murderer has to at sometime in his life have obtained a body of knowledge which includes stealth, surveillance techniques (including possibly electronic surveillance), a knowledge of police, detective, and criminalistic procedures, and how to overcome impediments to entry such as locks and electronic alarm systems.

4) The murderer would have to have intimate knowledge of both O.J. Simpson and Nicole Brown Simpson, and be familiar with the layout of their homes.

5) The murderer would have to have access to O.J. Simpson's home in order to obtain clothing to be used in the frame-up.

6) The murderer would have to be approximately the same

The Frame of the Century?

physical type as O.J. Simpson and he would have to be able to wear some of this clothing, including O.J. Simpson's size 12 shoes. His stride while walking would have to bear close approximation to O.J. Simpson's stride. If he is seen near the murder scene, it is necessary that he can be physically confused for O.J. Simpson.

7) And, most importantly, the murderer would have to be able to obtain, prior to the murders, approximately forty or fifty drops of blood with genetic markers consistent with the blood of O.J. Simpson's. This blood would be the most convincing part of the frame-up, and would be indispensable. It would also require considerable resourcefulness, and access to an expert on the biochemistry of blood and its use in criminalistics, in order to obtain the blood and successfully use it in a frame-up.

Now, if there is any part of this that is impossible, we're done with this theory. Our speculation can account for the improbable or the merely difficult. We cannot account for the impossible.

Furthermore, if we know of no person in the real world who fits into those categoriesa person who fulfills the known conditions necessary to commit the murders and the frame-upwe are also done.

If we have found such an individual and he has been investigated in relation to these crimes and a reason found to have eliminated him as a suspect (such as his having presented an ironclad alibi for the time of the murders), then we are also done.

On February 12, 1997, at approximately 8:30 in the morning, I awoke with a startling thought.

An individual related to the Simpson case had come to my attention, about a week earlier, at the close of the civil trial, because something he had done had created cognitive dissonance in me. He had been a friend of O.J. Simpson's for 26 years. He had, under subpoena in the criminal trial, testified to incriminating statements made by O.J. Simpsontestimony that others close to Simpson said had to have been perjurious, because he

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

was never alone with Simpson when he claimed the statements had been made. Now, this individual, at the conclusion of the civil trial, was seen on TV news physically embracing the man who had sued O.J. Simpson for murdering his son: Fred Goldman.

What on earth, I'd wondered February 4, 1997 when the civil verdict against Simpson came in, was Ron Shipp doing hugging Fred Goldman?

I first saw Ron Shipp at the same time as did most everyone else in the world, on television, when he sat down in the blue witness chair during O.J. Simpson's criminal trial.

During the direct examination by Chris Darden, Ron Shipp appeared honest and forthright, but very uncomfortable. He had good reason to feel uncomfortable. As a black man testifying for the prosecution, and a friend of O.J. Simpson's to boot, Ron Shipp was alienating himself even more from the black community that now supported Simpson than he had done by becoming a L.A.P.D. officer. If O.J. Simpson had theoretically abandoned his African-American roots by moving to Brentwood and marrying the blonde Nicole, Shipp had done the same in the early 1980's by marrying a white Jewish woman and buying a house in the division of almost-all-white Santa Clarita called Canyon Country.

This alienation from the black community caused by his testimony against Simpson would later bring Ron Shipp death threats.

That is something I've had to keep in mind when contemplating going public with my theory.

Ron Shipp was called as a witness right at the beginning of the prosecution's case because in January 1989, after the one fully-documented incident of domestic violence between O.J. and Nicole Simpson, Shipp's current L.A.P.D. assignment had been teaching domestic violence at the L.A.P.D.'s police academy. As a friend of both, he could testify to both Nicole's and O.J.'s states

The Frame of the Century?

of mind, including O.J.'s admission that his excessive jealousy of Nicole might have fit the pattern of "batterer" that Shipp's course materials outlined. (This was the "batterer profile" that had, in fact, been authored by none other than Dr. Lenore Walker, whose trial testimony, had she been called, would have been that O.J. Simpson didn't fit into it.)

In the beginning of his direct examination by Darden, Shipp was asked if he and O.J. Simpson remained friends. Shipp replied, "I still love the guy ButumI don't know. This is a weird situation I'm sitting here in."

(Very weird, if what I now suspect him of has any truth to it.)

Shipp testified that on the night after Simpson's return from Chicago and his interrogation by the L.A.P.D. detectives, O.J. had supposedly invited Shipp alone into his bedroom to talk forensics. Shipp said that while O.J. got undressed for bed, O.J. had asked him how long it took DNA. to come back. (Shipp had also said that O.J. asked about a polygraph testbut this part couldn't be brought out in testimony because of California law forbidding mention of polygraphs.) And then, according to Shipp, O.J. Simpson had "kind of jokingly just said, you know, 'To be honest, Shipp I've had some dreams of killing her.'"

Later, under cross examination by Simpson attorney, Carl Douglas, Shipp was confronted with the question, "Isn't it true that you were never alone with O.J. Simpson that night at Rockingham? Isn't it true that the defendant's sister, Shirley, was the one who accompanied him upstairs alone that night?"

Shipp denied it.

The problem here, is that when O.J. Simpson got back from his interrogation, he was so depressed that O.J.'s old friend, Robert Kardashian, according to American Tragedy, had conspired with O.J.'s sisters, and O.J.'s brother-in-law Benny Baker, to make sure they stayed with him all night, because they were all concerned that O.J. might attempt suicide. There was a couch in O.J.'s bedroom where they have said one of them slept all that

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

night. In Shirley's testimony during the defense's case, she testified that Shipp could never have been alone with her brother to have the conversation about DNA, polygraphs, and homicidal dreams referred to jokingly, because O.J. had never been left alone by his family.

In O.J. Simpson's deposition for the civil suit against him brought by the parents of Ron Goldman and Nicole, Simpson himself swore that he'd wished he could have been left alone that night, because the constant familial companionship, as he tried to finally get some sleep after almost two sleepless days, was bothering him.

Furthermore, O.J.'s grown daughter, Arnelle, testified for her father that Ron Shipp had never left his bar stool in the downstairs living room the entire time he was at the Rockingham house that Monday night.

So the first question was, for anyone who believed that O.J.'s sister, Shirley, and his daughter, Arnelle, were not perjuring themselves for him (and if they were inclined to, couldn't they have come up with an alibi for 10:30 P.M. June 12th?): what possible motivation could Ron Shipp have had to lie about a conversation with O.J. Simpson that implicated his friend in the Bundy murders?

This was the first cognitive dissonance I'd had regarding Ron Shipp.

The second was his hug of Fred Goldman.

The cognitive dissonance, brought about by Ron Shipp's having moved so far away from his almost-three-decade-long worship of O.J. Simpson that he would literally embrace his worst enemy, was working in me right away.

On February 5, 1997, KABC radio talk host, Dennis Prager, had been on the air, taking calls about the verdict against Simpson, a verdict of which Dennis mightily approved. Like Marcia Clark

The Frame of the Century?

and Vincent Bugliosi, Dennis is so convinced of Simpson's guilt that the only theory he has been willing to express why anyone would believe in Simpson's innocence is self-delusion, usually among African American listeners of his who think Simpson was the victim of a police conspiracy.

Dennis, his wife Fran, and Fran's daughter, Anya, are friends of mine. I first met Dennis in January, 1992 when Fran, at that time booking guests for Dennis's Sunday evening KABC show, invited me at Dennis's request onto his show to discuss the first published of four op-ed pieces I eventually wrote for the Los Angeles Times on gun control. Dennis had been opposed to private ownership of handguns. My op-ed piece, relating a recent incident where a customer with a gun had saved a restaurant full of people from armed robbers, had been the final straw in his changing his mind.

Let me tell you. Dennis Prager doesn't change his mind lightly. He agonizes over every point.

Sometime after the first Simpson trial, I tried to interest a magazine editor I knew into letting me do an interview with Dennis. The interview was never sold, but in one of two taped sessions, which covered Dennis's views on a number of topics, I asked Dennis why he was so certain Simpson was guilty. Dennis's answer was, in essence, that everything he knew about how the world worked convinced him, and if at some future time he discovered that Simpson was innocent, it would be a major blow to his confidence in his reasoning processes.

I didn't think I had a chance of changing Dennis's mind on this one. But I did, at least, want to convince him that I might not be crazy.

On February 5, 1997, I faxed Dennis the following letter.

Dennis,

From our conversation, I know you hang your entire concept of how things work on your belief that no reasonable person can look at the evidence and conclude that O.J. Simpson did not commit the double

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

murder. You make it quite clear that you think his acquittal in the criminal trial is an artifact of an imperfect jury system.

Since I still believe O.J. Simpson innocent, let me try to explain to you why.

1) My understanding of human character is such that I have never found the motivations attributed to O.J. Simpson for these murders, or the way these murders were committed, compatible with other known facts about O.J. Simpson's personality. I refer you to chapters in my book Self Control Not Gun Control (which I gave you) for my points on this.

2) You always make it an either-or between those who say that if O.J. Simpson was framed, it must have been by a racist police conspiracy, or that the physical evidence must have been found, analyzed, and collected in an honest and competent manner. That is a classic false dichotomy. In fact, it is possible to believe that one or two corrupt individuals inside the L.A.P.D.for motivations which may have had nothing whatsoever to do with racecould have acted to frame O.J.. This is my belief.

3) The bottom line is, all the evidence to date collected proves is that O.J. Simpson's blood was at the crime scene. One could reasonably conclude that O.J. Simpson lied about being at the crime scene without necessarily concluding that he committed the murders. Or one could also conclude that someone other than policeperhaps persons close to O.J. with malice aforethought who committed the murders with the specific intent of framing O.J. Simpson for the murders before they were even committedplanted evidence.

I find it odd that O.J.'s former friend, black L.A.P.D. officer Ron Schipp [sic], was seen hugging the Goldman family right after the verdict in the civil trial last night. If I were to think anyone possible of participating in such a conspiracy, a person with both possible motive and opportunity to get into O.J.'s house before the crime and gather personal items of his which could be dropped at the crime scene, he'd be at the top of my list.

I know you think I'm crazy for thinking this way. I regret that; I have all sorts of reasons why I would wish you to think me sane. I bring to this question psychological tools which are more familiar to a novelist than a psychiatrist, in addition to rigorous epistemology. Clear, critical thinking is much too important to me to allow myself to be swept along with popular opinion merely because opposing a popular viewpoint is inconvenient.

Best regards,

Neil

The morning of February 12, 1997, my nagging cognitive dissonance about Ron Shipp suddenly came into stark focus. The

The Frame of the Century?

thought hit me that Ron Shipp didn't need to be part of any sort of conspiracy in order for him to have framed O.J. Simpson. He might have done it all by himself, because he conceivably could have been so jealous of O.J. Simpson that his jealousy turned into a secret vendetta.

I'd been thinking for a long time that O.J. Simpson likely hadn't murdered his wife because he was a winnersuccessful in life, lucky in loveand most murders were the acts of pathetic losers.

Ron Shipp had admitted on the stand in O.J. Simpson's criminal trial to having had a problem with alcoholism.

I had been thinking that if O.J. Simpson had been framed, it couldn't have been done by the police as claimed by some lawyers on O.J.'s criminal defense team because whoever did the frame would have had to have access to O.J.'s stuff in order to bring it to the Bundy crime scene in the first place.

Never mind whether Mark Fuhrman had found a glove at the Bundy crime scene and planted it on O.J.'s estate at Rockingham. The first question would be: how did those gloves (or that glove, singular) get to the Bundy crime scene in the first place?

This is assuming, of course, that they were O.J.'s gloves and had somehow shrunk between the night of June 12, 1994, and when O.J. Simpson struggled to pull them in front of the jury, many months later.

But Ron Shipp had been hanging around O.J. Simpson's house since Simpson had bought it in 1979. And, Shipp had admitted on the stand to being at O.J.'s house just a week before the Brown-Goldman murders.

Ron Shipp had been a police officer for the Los Angeles Police Department for fifteen years, including seven years in a patrol car, and working undercover, and teaching at the Los Angeles Police Academy, before taking early retirement because of (in his account) job-related stress and incidents related to his alcoholism.

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

That cross-linking of facts, that there existed an individual who because of professional experience and personal access to both O.J. and Nicolecould have engineered the murder of Nicole and the frame-up of O.J. perhaps all by his lonesome self, startled me almost out of my wits.

Believe me about this part. In the subsequent week, I visited a hospital emergency room twice suffering from a condition diagnosed as ketosis and dehydration, symptoms of severe dieting combined with a low-grade flu-like infection.

Mystical insights are supposed to happen to you when you fast in the desert, or go up into the mountains where the air is thin. I'd been starving myself for five months, and I was running a low fever. I was congested, so my breathing was shallow.

My body had physically reproduced the conditions historically attributed to mystics and seers. And, I had had a startling vision. I had thought that O.J. Simpson was innocent but had no idea who could have done these murders and framed him for them.

Now I had a notion.

I wrote it up as follows:

Novel or Movie Idea:

The Case of the Perry Mason Case

Logline: A writer with writer's block, to pass the time, watches the murder trial of a celebrity on TV, and playing connect the dots with the evidence, the writer comes up with an outlandish scenario which explains why the accused celebrity was actually framed by an obsessed fan whom the celebrity had allowed to get too close. The strange part is, it turns out to be true.

Plot:

The white ex-wife and ex-wife's white friend of an African-

The Frame of the Century?

American celebrity who is famous as a former football star, a sportscaster, a commercial spokesman, and an actor, is brutally knifed to death. Because the celebrity has a reputation of being jealous and sometimes violent, all evidence seems to link him to the murder, including articles of clothing linking the celebrity to the murder site. Just before the murder, the celebrity was in a movie in which he used a knife. Detectives never consider any other scenario than that the celebrity is the obvious murderer, and the celebrity is brought to trial for the murder. Even the celebrity's lawyers think he did it. The celebrity consistently maintains his innocence and is acquitted of the murders by a mostly black jury, but a subsequent civil trial before a mostly white jury finds him liable for the murders. The celebrity maintains he was framed by the detectives for racial motives. On this point the celebrity is wrong.

Throughout the entire process of investigation, two trials, and aftermath, one figure keeps on showing up in minor roles. It is a black police officer who was a fan and hanger-on of the celebrity. He had complete access to the celebrity's house and estate both before the murders and for some times afterwards. The police-officer/fan gets psychological satisfaction from being able to take fellow police officers over to the celebrity's estate to play tennis, and to show his fellow officers how important he is by how he is treated like a friend by the athlete. But at some point, the fan becomes sexually interested in the celebrity's ex-wife. Perhaps he manages to get close to her, perhaps he is obsessed by her at a distance. But in any event, at some point, either rejected by her or never having had a chance with her, he becomes angry with her and jealous of the celebrity, and decides to get his revenge on both of them. He steals items of clothinga pair of winter gloves the celebrity doesn't use anymore, a pair of expensive shoes from the back of the celebrity's closetand carefully stalks both the celebrity and the ex-wife. Then, on a June night, after making sure that the celebrity is home alone

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

by phoning him on some pretext, the police officer/fan goes over to the ex-wife's condo to murder her with a knife, wearing the celebrity's gloves and shoes. In the process of murdering her, however, a young waiter returning a pair of eyeglasses stumbles in during the murder, and the fan/officer has to murder him, too. The fan then plants one of the celebrity's gloves at the murder scene, and goes over to the celebrity's house to plant the other glove. The fan is seen by a limo driver waiting to drive the celebrity to the airport as the fan crosses the lawn of the celebrity's estate.

The fan stays close to the celebrity after the celebrity returns from his trip, and even works security for the celebrity at his estate in the period right after the murders. But he is fading from the limelight during the trial, so he comes up with a story about how the celebrity told him he had been dreaming about murdering his ex-wife. He testifies to this during the trial, which is broadcast on TV, and gets his fifteen minutes of fame.

Having done this, he is excluded from the life of the celebrity he used to worship, but he still can't bring himself to fade completely into the background, so he attaches himself to the family of the murdered young white man, and is seen hugging the murdered young man's father after his victory in the civil trial.

Eventually, the writer who is watching all this on TV, connects all the dots, and goes to a detective he knows and presents him with the scenario.

Dénouement:

Yet to be written.

And, when I wrote those words on the morning of February 12, 1997, I had no idea whether I would ever write that dénouement. But I knew I had to see if there might be any truth to it. So that morning I took my little scenario to Owen Smet, a robbery-homicide detective I knew on the Culver City police

The Frame of the Century?

force, and asked him what he thought.

Owen told me that, first, he was pretty well convinced that Simpson was guilty. That did not surprise me. But he also told me that he thought my explanation was the only alternative explanation of the evidence that even came close to making sense to him, and he was now curious whether Ron Shipp had an alibi for that night.

That evening, I went into an Altavista search on the World Wide Web, and looked up all the hits I could find on Ron Shipp. This led me to transcripts of depositions for the civil trial, and I downloaded a bunch of the transcripts.

The next morning, I did a key word search for Shipp in the transcripts I'd downloaded, and in O.J. Simpson's deposition, found something that made my heart go into my throat.

It was the following sequence:

Q: The Ron Shipp you knew was a former police officer. Correct?

A: I know I knew he couldn't get back on the force, yes.

Q: Why did you just add that? I didn't ask you that.

MR. BAKER: Don't answer that question.

BY MR. PETROCELLI: Q: Well, Mr. Simpson, you appear to have some animosity toward Mr. Shipp. Is that correct?

MR. BAKER: Don't answer that either. He doesn't appear to have anything. Maybe he does in your eyes but not in mine.

BY MR. PETROCELLI: Q: Do you have animosity towards Mr. Shipp right now?

A: I feel sorry for Ron Shipp, yes.

Q: Explain what you mean.

A: I feel sorry that he's a troubled person, and I tried to help him before because he had some problems, and I tried to help him, and I feel the same way about him now.

Q: Tell me what problems he has that you feel sorry for.

A: Well, the problems I knew he had was drugs and alcohol, and now obviously I don't know. I haven't seen him in a year and a half, two years.

Q: When did he have the drugs and alcohol problem that caused you to feel sorry for him?

A: Previous to these incidences.

Q: When was the last time that you knew or believed that he had a drug or alcohol problem.?

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

A: Roughly a week or so before Nicole's murders.

Q: How did you find that out?

A: Because he was at my gate.

Q: Uninvited?

A: Yes.

Q: Which gate?

A: The Ashford gate.

Q: How did you see him there?

A: I didn't see him

Q: How do you know he was there?

A: He was on my intercom.

Q: He buzzed?

A: Yes.

Q: What did he say?

A: He asked if he could use my Jacuzzi.

Q: What did you say?

A: Told him, "Ron, I was in bed."

Q: What time was it?

A: I don't know. At night.

Q: Were you alone?

A: Yes.

Q: Was the housekeeper there?

A: Maybe. I'm not sure.

Q: What did he then say?

A: He told me he had a big blond, a "Nicole type." quote, unquote. "You got to see this girl, O.J.. Could he use the Jacuzzi. I told him I didn't think it was on. He told me it was on because he had been there earlier.

Q: When you say you don't think it is on, you can simply turn it on, can't you?

A: Yeah.

Q: So then what happened?

A: He kept saying, "I owe you, Juice. Please, man, I owe you. You got to see this girl."

Q: What does that mean, he owes you?

A: I guess if he owes me a favor. He will owe me a favor.

Q: Oh, he will owe you if you give him this favor?

A: Yeah.

Q: Okay. Then what happened?

A: Well, after he told me it was on, I pushed the gate button for him to come in and told him to watch the dog.

Q: Did he tell you that he knew that the Jacuzzi was on from earlier that day?

A: Yes.

Q: Had he been out to your house?

The Frame of the Century?

A: Evidently.

Q: Did you know that?

A: No.

Q: Did he have access to your property?

A: No.

Q: How did he get on the property earlier that day?

A: Well, one of the complaints that I've had previous that I had Cathy discuss with him through, because both Michelle and Gigi had concerns about it, is that he would show up at times, climb the wall and bring whoever group he was playing tennis with without telling anybody. When I was out of town also.

Q: What wall would be climb?

A: The Ashford wall.

Q: Right next to this gate where the

A: I don't know. I wasn't there to see what part of the wall he climbed.

Q: You had told him he could come on your property and play tennis. Right?

A: Only if he called first. As a matter of fact, I actually had Cathy have a conversation with him about that.

Q: When did that conversation occur?

A: In and around that time, and on previous times she's had to tell him," Ron, you just can't show up at his house."

Q: Mr. Simpson, when you said you wanted him to call first, did you also want someone else to be home when he arrived?

A: I would prefer that, yes.

Q: So someone could let him in?

A: No. So thatI just don't like a lot of people on my property if I'm out of town, and I was gone most of the time, soand the housekeepers didn't especially Gigi, because she was brand-new, she didn't know how to handle it, and she had mentioned itevidently she had mentioned it to Cathy, and then Cathy had mentioned it to me.

Q: Did you tell Mr. Shipp that if no one was home and he wanted to play, he could jump the wall or

A: No.

Q: or get on the property?

A: No.

Q: So your understanding of your deal with him is that ifthat he shouldn't be jumping the wall and getting on the property to play tennis. Is that right?

A: I had no deal with him. I don't think anybody should jump my wall without my permission.

Q: And you told him so. Right?

A: Yes.

Q: Through Randa.

A: Right. And I told him myself. This was something that had happened before.

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

Q: Now, when he came in and used the Jacuzzi, did you see him that evening?

A: Yes.

Q: You were in bed. Right?

A: Yes.

Q: You came down to see him?

A: No.

Q: Tell me

A: At one point I did.

Q: What happened?

A: He went to my intercom system out back, buzzed me

Q: From the Jacuzzi?

A: Well, in the backyard. And buzzed me and said, "Juice, please, man, you got to help me out here. I need a bottle of wine." I think I was speaking with Cathy Randa at that time and

Q: On the phone?

A: I said, "I'm on the phone, Ron." And he said once again this whole thing, and he described this girl as a "Nicole type." "You got to see her."

And I said, "Ron, I don't even know if I have any wine." He said, "Ah, come on, Juice, please, man." So I got up. I went downstairs. I opened one of my patio doors. He walked in. I told him to look in the bar to see if there was some wine. I found a bottle that came in someone of the Christmas packages or some package somebody had sent me, and I opened it and I gave it to him and, as he was opening it, he said, "Man, you should go see her." And I walked out back, and she was I wouldn't say a Nicole type, but she was a big blond, real tall, I would say 5-10, 5-11 blond girl. And she was in the Jacuzzi, and she was talking about what a great property and that she could get used to being here, and asked me to get in the Jacuzzi. And then Ron was coming out at that period of time and said, "Come on, man, why don't you join us? And I said, "No, man, I got to get up early in the morning," and I went back upstairs.

If I'd been looking for evidence of Ron Shipp's obsession with both O.J. Simpson and Nicole, I couldn't have asked for more. Further, Simpson was testifying to Ron Shipp habitually coming onto his property uninvited, jumping his gate, being gentlyperhaps at other times not so gentlyrebuffed by his idol. The question was whether O.J.'s version of events could be believed. I subsequently downloaded Shipp's own testimony of this event from his cross-examination by Carl Douglas during the criminal trial, and could see by the sorts of questions that Douglas

The Frame of the Century?

was asking that Simpson had told substantially the same story to his lawyers that he was testifying to in his civil deposition. If this wasn't an indication of absolute truth, it was, at least, an indication of O.J.'s consistency in his version of what happened that night.

We can compare Shipp's own version of the events of that night, during his cross-examination by Carl Douglas.

Q. When was the last time before June 13th, 1994, Mr. Shipp, that you had occasion to visit the Rockingham location?

A. Probably about a week before that.

Note that Ron Shipp, not knowing what Douglas is getting at yet, confirms that his last previous visit to O.J.'s house was a week before his visit to Rockingham the day after the murders at Bundy.

Q. And that was when you visited there with some blond female; wasn't it?

MR. DARDEN: Objection, your Honor.

Your Honor, can we approach the sidebar?

THE COURT: Yes. I take it there's an objection?

MR. DARDEN: Yes.

THE COURT: Relevance?

(Sidebar conference.)

THE COURT: All right. Mr. Douglas,you may wind it up for the afternoon, please.

MR. DOUGLAS: All right, your Honor.

Q. It is true, is it not, that about a week before the death of Nicole Brown Simpson,you visited Mr. Simpson's house unannounced at about 10 o'clock p.m. with a blond female; true?

A. That was approximately

MR. DARDEN: Your Honor, I object to this question. I thought the court sustained it.

THE COURT: No, overruled.

Q. You may answer.

THE COURT: But with some not very broad here.

MR. DOUGLAS: Very well.

A. No, the night that the blond female was over, that was three weeks before. It was a good friend of my wife and we're good friends with her husband. Her name is Lisa Madigan. That was three weeks prior.

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

Suddenly, after an attorney's sidebar conference, which has given him time to think ahead, Shipp is now claiming that it was three weeks before that he had last been at Simpson's house.

Was there more than one visit, possibly with more than one woman?

Q. Is she about six-foot-one, resembling Nicole Simpson

A. No I'm sorry she's about about five-nine, almost five-ten.

Q. Was this the woman whom you wanted to share the Jacuzzi with?

MR. DARDEN: Objection.

THE COURT: The fact that he was over there about three or four weeks ago, that's about it that's relevant, counsel.

And, it appears, the difference between one week and three-to-four weeks was important to Judge Ito in deciding the relevance of this last visit.

MR. DOUGLAS: Very well.

Q. When you were there on this occasion, did you ask Mr. Simpson to go and bring you some wine?

A. That's correct.

Q. You drink a lot, don't you?

A. I used to.

Q. You've had a drinking problem; haven't you?

A. In the past I have.

MR. DOUGLAS: We can stop now, your Honor.

The next day, the cross-examination continued. Shipp had had all night to consider what this questioning might bring out, and what he might say about it.

Q. Now, we talked briefly yesterday about an occasion in June of '94 when you visited Mr. Simpson unannounced, asking to use a Jacuzzi with a friend, do you recall that?

A. I didn'tthat's totally false, totally false.

Q. Okay, there was an occasion when you came with a friend and asked to use Mr. Simpson's Jacuzzi?

A. Mr. Douglas, I hope you get your facts straight.

Q. Would you answer the question?

A. I went to play tennis, Mr. Douglas. I was playing tennis. After the

The Frame of the Century?

tennis game

THE COURT: Hold on?

THE WITNESS: You're attacking me, let me answer the question.

THE COURT: The jury is to disregard the last comments by Mr. Shipp and Mr. Douglas.

Mr. Douglas, ask your question.

MR. DOUGLAS: Thank you.

Q. Don't you recall an occasion when you called Mr. Simpson at about 10:00 in the evening and asked to use his Jacuzzi, do you recall that, sir, yes or no?

A. No.

Q. Do you recall after he let you use the Jacuzzi that about 20 minutes later you called back and asked him to bring you bottle of wine, do you recall that?

A. You just said 10:00 at night, didn't you say that?

Q. I'm asking do you recall when you called him back to ask him to bring a bottle of wine down to you, in the Jacuzzi?

A. Can I have the times clarified, sir.

Q. 1994, June; if not, May.

A. June; I'm talking about the time, not the day, the time.

Which is a very odd statement for Shipp to make here, since the previous day he had been disputing the date of his last visit to O.J.'s housedisputing it by two to three weeks.

Q. It was in the evening, Mr. Shipp. Do you recall that occurring?

A. I do recall that.

Q. Okay. You were with a friend other than your wife, were you not?

A. Yes, I was.

Q. She was blond, was she not?

A. Who was a friend of my wife's, correct.

Q. You say her name is what?

A. Lisa Madigan.

After reading O.J.'s deposition (it was only later that I compared it line by line to Shipp's testimony), I believed that Shipp's visit to Rockingham a week prior to the Brown-Goldman murders indicated such a strong obsession with both O.J. and Nicole that I felt I had to share the pattern I was detecting with the Los Angeles Police Department, which had investigated the murders, and the Los Angeles Country District Attorney's office, which

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

had prosecuted them.

My first attempt was to pay a visit to the West Los Angeles Division of the L.A.P.D.. There I was brought to Detective Ron Phillips, who had initially assigned Detectives Mark Fuhrman and Brad Roberts to investigate the murders in the middle of the night, June 13, 1994.

I introduced myself as a journalistshowing off the back cover author's photo of one of my books as proof that I wasn't just your run-of-the-mill nutcaseand somewhat haltingly told Detective Phillips that I believed I had a possible lead indicating another killer than O.J. Simpson for the murders at Bundy. At that point, Detective Phillips told me that he knew beyond any doubt who the murderer was that night, and that the murderer lived at 360 North Rockingham. Phillips wasn't even interested in sitting with me for the five minutes I said I would need to show him the materials I had brought that I thought supported my lead. Instead, he told me that since the case had been investigated by the L.A.P.D.'s Robbery/Homicide Division at Parker Center, they would have to listen to anything I had to say. He referred me to the third floor of Parker Center and gave me driving instructions there.

Within an hour, I was met in the lobby of Parker Center by Detective Brian P. McCartin, Robbery/Homicide Division of the Los Angeles Police Department. As he took me up the elevator to the third floor, I told him that this was regarding a double homicide that I thought the L.A.P.D. needed to re-open. He asked me which detectives had investigated it. I told him the detectives who had investigated the case were no longer with L.A.P.D.: Vannatter and Lange.

I give Detective McCartin credit. He didn't give me a dirty look or return the elevator to the lobby at that point. Instead, he took me to an interview booth on the third floor.

Detective McCartin was very professional and very polite. He gave me about forty-five minutes to lay out the reasons why I

The Frame of the Century?

thought it was possible that the L.A.P.D. could have been misled into identifying O.J. Simpson as their suspect in the Brown-Goldman murders, and why I thought that Ron Shipp should be looked at as a possible suspect. McCartin was naturally skeptical, and told me that he couldn't think of a murder case where an innocent man, particularly one as headstrong as O.J. Simpson, didn't take the stand in his own defense. I suggested that if you had half a dozen lawyers telling you that you shouldn't, perhaps even O.J. Simpson would finally take their advice, regardless of his desire to testifyand his lawyers' reasons for not wanting him to testify might have been that the evidence had also convinced them that their client was guilty.

I left Detective McCartin the materials I had put together at that point, and a copy of Self Control Not Gun Control, with the chapters relating to the Simpson case indicated.

As Detective McCartin walked me to the elevator, he asked me why I had put this effort inwhy was I interested in the first place? I told him that it was simply an unrelenting cognitive dissonance that the physical evidence simply wasn't enough to overcome my doubts of Simpson's innocence, based on my observations of his demeanor during the trial.

Detective McCartin had told me as he escorted me to the lobby of Parker Center that if they decided to re-open the Simpson case, I would be called for a re-interview. But even though he was polite during his interview with me, I knew I shouldn't hang by the phone, waiting for a call.

I was still determined to try to get an investigation going, however, so I decided to take my materials to O.J. Simpson's lawyers.

Both the criminal trial and the civil trial were over at this point, but I knew that if any of O.J. Simpson's lawyers still had any interest in establishing their client not having committed these murders, it would have to be his civil lawyers, because the possibility of an appeal still had not been ruled out. The civil trial

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

depositions I'd downloaded gave the office address in Santa Monica of Simpson's lead civil attorney, Robert C. Baker, Esq., of Baker, Silberberg & Keener.

I printed out another copy of the materials I had presented Detective McCartin, wrote a cover letter to Mr. Baker, and, the following Saturday morning, February 15, 1997, sat on the floor of the hallway outside the law offices, waiting for someone to show up. A handwritten note taped to the door, written to Federal Express, said someone would be in to open the office by noon.

When a woman came to open the office at about 11:00 A.M., I introduced myself, handed her a large envelope attached with rubber bands to a copy of Self Control Not Gun Control, and asked her to deliver it to the desk of Robert Baker or one of O.J. Simpson's other attorneys. I then asked if Mr. Baker would be in that day and whether I could wait for him. She told me that he would be in later, but that I could not wait.

I said okay, told her that I felt it important that Mr. Baker look at the materials immediately because they related to the possible innocence of O.J. Simpson, and left.

This was the cover letter I hand-delivered:

February 15, 1997

Robert C. Baker, Esq.

Baker, Silberberg & Keener

2850 Ocean Park Boulevard

Suite 300

Santa Monica, CA 90405-2936

By Hand

Dear Mr. Baker:

I am a novelist, screenwriter, and journalist living in Culver City, who like many others has been following the trials of O.J. Simpson since the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman on June 12, 1994. I am attaching to this letter my recent book Self Control Not Gun Control and my biography page from my site on the World Wide Web, as introductory credentials.

The Frame of the Century?

Yesterday morning, February 14th, I met for about 45 minutes at Parker Center with Detective Brian P. McCartin, Robbery/Homicide Division of the Los Angeles Police Department, and presented him the attached materials. [I included Detective McCartin's telephone number at Parker Center, taken from the business card he gave me.]

The purpose of my meeting was to present to the Robbery/Homicide division of the L.A.P.D. what I believe is a compelling theory that both exonerates O.J. Simpson for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, and identifies the individual who instead both premeditatively committed the double murder and premeditatively framed O.J. Simpson as the murderer.

I only know about these murders what any individual who watched the trial, read the newspaper and magazine accounts, and has done some independent research of publicly available sources is able to know. You, with your far more intimate knowledge of this case, can form a much better conclusion than I can whether the theory I present is plausible or nonsensical. But I believe I have brought to my analysis tools that are far more familiar to a professional writer than they would be either to detectives, attorneys, forensic specialists, or even professional psychotherapists. If I have managed to stumble onto an inobvious truth, these professional tools account for my ability to have done so.

The attached materials include a summary of my theory, written as a "fictional" scenario to create an instant gestalt of the theory, my previous writings on this subject (some of which is included in Self Control Not Gun Control and some additional material published on my web site), and excerpts I have pulled from the civil depositions and testimony summaries from the criminal trial of Mr. Simpson, which I believe supports each of the crucial points of my theory.

If Mr. Simpson did not commit these murders, than the individual who did must have an extraordinary set of characteristics. He must have professional training which would enable him to know precisely what circumstantial evidence would be convincing to detectives, forensic specialists, and prosecutors. The likely individual would have a background, therefore, in law enforcement. The likely individual would also probably have to have some background as a professional actor. The likely individual would have had to have had intimate and long-term access both to Mr. Simpson and his family, and his estate at Rockingham, in order to be intimately familiar with Mr. Simpson's personal habits, and to gather the items necessary in order to frame him prior to the murders. The likely individual would have had to have an evident psychological problem such as alcohol and/or drug abuse. The likely individual would have had to have a psychological motivation to wish to punish both Nicole Brown Simpson and O.J. Simpsona powerful stew of obsession with Nicole, worship of O.J., a life filled with personal frustration and failure. In short, the murderer of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman would have to be an obsessed O.J.

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

Simpson fan whose self-concept was dependent on O.J., who would seek his "fifteen minutes of fame" through his association with O.J. Simpson, and once removed from O.J. Simpson's circle by Mr. Simpson's incarceration during his murder trial, would find someone else to attach himself to.

I believe the single individual who fits all these criteria is Ronald Shipp. I presented this theory to Detective McCartin in the hope that the L.A.P.D. will re-open the murder investigation of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman on the basis of this theory.

I am presenting this material to you in the hopes that you will understand the gravity of what I am suggesting. If I am right, Shipp is probably let-down and depressed right now, at the conclusion of the civil trial. He may still have items he collected from O.J. Simpson over the years which would be physical evidence of his frame-up of Mr. Simpson. He may be psychologically able to be spooked into providing evidence of his guilt. Both of these reasons requires that absolute secrecy of my theory be maintained so as not to tip him off that he is a suspect. He may have grown complacent and be capable of being trapped if his sense of having gotten away with it is maintained.

Likewise, if my theory is wrong, then I do not wish to see Shipp's life destroyed by premature allegations. We know what the press in this country would do with a theory such as this, and it is not pretty.

If I am correct, however, and Mr. Shipp is proved to be the actual murderer, exonerating Mr. Simpson, I do not believe it is possible for me to overstate the mass psychological trauma this is going to have nationwide. If I am correct, Ronald Shipp not only murdered two innocent individuals and framed a national celebrity for the crime, but he also psychologically raped the entire nation.

I am providing you with the information because I am concerned that Mr. Simpson not despair. Such despair and frustration, knowing that he is both innocent and almost universally reviled, could lead him to damage either himself or others. I will leave it to your best judgment whether, or at what point, you would wish to convey my theory to him, with the understanding that every additional individual who becomes aware of my theory is one more individual who might inadvertently tip off Ronald Shipp that he is a suspect, and frustrate the ability to prove it beyond any doubt.

I would hope, however, that you might find a way to encourage the L.A.P.D. to re-open the investigation so that my theory can either be disproved, or proved.

If I can be of any further assistance, please feel free to call upon me.

Sincerely,

J. Neil Schulman

Attachments

The Frame of the Century?

A few days later, after a follow-up call to the office, I received a phone call from Phil Baker, Robert Baker's son, and also one of O.J.'s attorneys in the civil case. He told me that he had looked over the materials, and thought my scenario was "plausible."

Considering that I was presenting a scenario which suggested that elements of the Simpson case were wrongthat gloves and shoes which they had attempted to prove weren't his might have actually been stolen from him in order to be plantedI found Phil Baker's word "plausible" to be extremely interesting, to say the least.

Phil Baker had promised to call me back to discuss this further, but I never got another call and my follow-up calls to his office went unanswered.

After a week, I returned to the offices during regular hours and attempted to make an appointment. I was rebuffed, fairly rudely, by Phil Baker's assistant, Kim, and when I phoned to make one last attempt, Kim told me that the office secretary had informed her how I had tried to force my way into the office the previous Saturday.

Perhaps merely being a large bearded guy in a jean jacket, sitting in an empty hallway with a copy of his book, waiting for a law office to open on a Saturday morning, is enough to frighten a woman nowadays. No doubt working for O.J. Simpson's attorneys is also enough to make anyone paranoid.

But asking politely if you can wait in a law office is equivalent to "trying to force your way in"?

I saw how easily someone's paranoia could lead to making up false charges, and wondered how many of the sworn statements in the Simpson case were just as warped by the observer's own prejudices. Faye Resnick's cocaine-induced paranoia, during her observations of encounters between O.J. Simpson and Nicole, came to mind immediately. I saw how to a paranoid mind, simply showing up someplace might be interpreted as "stalking."

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

CNN had just reported that Simpson attorney and F. Lee Bailey's law partner, Dan Leonard, would be looking into the possibility of an appeal of the civil verdict, so I phoned him next at his law office in Boston.

Leonard took my call. I told him of my conversation with Phil Baker and the materials I had left at the Bakers' law office, and we discussed my views. Dan Leonard said that Ron Shipp had been on the list of possible suspects right from the beginning, but he told me that he didn't know why they hadn't looked into him more closely. I asked Leonard if they had been able to establish an alibi for Shipp for the night of the murders. Leonard told me that if they had, he didn't know what it was.

Again, this conversation ended with promises of further discussion, after Leonard had gotten ahold of the materials I'd left with the Bakers. But my repeated phone calls to Dan Leonard, some of them relating information I'd obtained from other contacts, were never again returned.

I made two more attempts to get an investigation going. The first was through an attorney who passed my materials on to the office of L.A. County District Attorney, Gil Garcetti. Garcetti responded that my materials presented a view of the Brown-Goldman murders that, according to the attorney, "Garcetti said he had never heard before."

But I still don't know if Garcetti had done anything to look into it.

In attempting to find out if there was any investigation happening, I telephoned Detective McCartin at Parker Center the morning of Friday, March 21st. McCartin told me he had passed my book and materials on to Detective Vic Pietrantoni, Tom Lange's former partner. He'd transfer the call.

When Detective Pietrantoni got on the phone with me, he lectured, and I listened.

Pietrantoni told me that he'd looked at my materials and read the chapters on Simpson in my book. While he regarded me as

The Frame of the Century?

intelligentperhaps even more intelligent than he was, in his phrasinghe couldn't understand how I could possibly believe Simpson innocent. He asserted to me that Simpson was a life-long bully. He was so certain that Simpson was guiltyhe saidthat he would bet his son's life on it.

Pietrantoni then told me that he was certain that Simpson was guilty, "Because Simpson confessed to his attorneys. They've been secretly working with us on this case, and sometime soon, you're going to be seeing O.J. Simpson confessing publicly and selling another book about it."

Knowing that this would the sort of thing that could get a lawyer disbarred, if he was doing it without his client's consent, I asked Detective Pietrantoni if he could tell me precisely which of O.J. Simpson's attorneys was working with the L.A.P.D.. He, not surprisingly, refused to tell me.

"You're telling me that O.J. Simpson's criminal attorneys suborned perjury during his trial by putting on witnesses they knew were lying?" I asked.

"Sure," he told me. "Defense lawyers are scum. They do that all the time."

I told him, after he wound down a bit, that in the absence of some proof that Simpson had confessed, I would just have to continue my investigation, and that's when I asked him whether an alibi had ever been established for Ron Shipp.

Detective Vic Pietrantoni, Robbery/Homicide Division of the Los Angeles Police Department, then told me what I most wanted to know. "Ron Shipp was never a suspect," he told me." We never investigated whether Shipp had an alibi [for June 12, 1994]."

A few minutes after my conversation with Pietrantoni, I got a call from Leo Wolinsky, City Editor and Assistant Managing Editor of the Los Angeles Times. I had faxed a proposal to him that I work with the Times as a free-lancer, to pursue a theory I would bring them that O.J. Simpson was innocent. All I asked (and received verbally from him) was a promise before I told them my

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

theory that they wouldn't proceed on it without me. Wolinsky's call was to set up the meeting for me to present my theory to them for the next Tuesday.

I told Wolinsky what Pietrantoni had just told me about Simpson having confessed to his lawyers, and told him that if this was true, my pending meeting with him regarding my theory might be futile. But he agreed to meet with me anyway, since he was skeptical that what Pietrantoni had told me was true.

The next morning, Saturday, I knew I wanted something more interesting to bring to the meeting with the Times than I already had. I didn't know what Ron Shipp's address was, but I had a pretty good idea what neighborhood in Canyon Country he lived in. I drove north for about a half hour until I got to the right neighborhood and saw some boys, maybe around 10 or 12, playing hoops in a driveway. I figured that kids would be less likely to clam up about the address of a neighbor than an adult would be. I pulled alongside and rolled down my car window. "Any of you kids know where Ron Shipp's house is?" I asked.

"Yeah, sure!" one of them went. It turned out that one of these boys went to school with Ron Shipp's son, David. Within seconds, I had a detailed description of what the Shipps' house looked like and how to drive there. It was only a few blocks away.

I followed their directions, which were pretty good for kids. It was better directions than I'd gotten on many occasions from adults. In a few minutes, I was parked in front of a house matching the description and location they'd given me.

It looked like a very nice house.

Then I saw Ron Shipp and his wife Ninawhom I recognized from their picture in People Magazine of September 30, 1996, which I'd color-copied from the librarycoming out of the house with several other kids, getting ready to go someplace.

I simply sat in my car, about five car lengths away, watching, and trying to figure out in my own mind if this man could be a murderer. I didn't see anything that made me think so. I paid

The Frame of the Century?

special attention to the size of his feet, which indeed looked pretty big to me.

After a while, I noticed that the Shipps had noticed me. Nina Shipp got into a car that looked to me like a Cadillac and drove away. Then Ron Shipp got into a gray Toyota pick-up and drove past me and pulled into his neighbor's driveway right behind me.

He got out and started walking toward me.

I'd already figured out on the drive over what I would say to him if we met.

He came right up to my driver's side window. "Can I help you?" he asked.

I took the opportunity to study him closely. I was sitting down and he was leaning over a little, so I couldn't tell how tall he was, but I could see that he was very athletically built. What I most noticed was the cross on a chain wrapped tightly around his neck. The People Magazine article on him quoted Nina Shipp as saying that Ron had been moodier since the Simpson trial and "He spends a lot of time reading the Bible."

"I'm very happy I have this chance to talk to you, Mr. Shipp," I said. "I'm a journalist doing some work on the Simpson story and a detective at the L.A.P.D. told me yesterday that O.J. is about to confess."

"No shit," he said.

"I'd like a chance to talk to you about it, get your thoughts," I said.

Shipp told me that he was on his way with his family to a birthday party in Simi Valley, and he asked me for a phone number so he could call me about an interview later. Call me a coward, but I didn't want to give him my name or my phone number. I said, "Listen, I'll be around this area for the rest of the day. Maybe I could just come back later?"

"That's not the way I do things," he said.

I told him that I'd be in touch again, and he nodded. He got

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

back into his pick-up and drove off.

I am still trying to figure out what that "No shit" might mean.

I got the same "We never heard this before" that had been relayed to me from Gil Garcetti at the end of my meeting of Tuesday, March 25th, when I presented my case to Leo Wolinsky and Joan Goulding, who had overseen the Times' coverage of the Simpson trials. In addition to giving these editors the excerpt from O.J.'s deposition I'd printed out, and a copy of my letter to Robert Baker, I also presented them a document I'd whipped up to break down my theory into its main points.

Here's what I presented to them.

10 Reasons to Consider That

O.J. Simpson Didn't Do it

1. Time line has always been short for O.J. Simpson to be able to clean up after committing blood-drenched murders and get ready for trip to Chicago.

2. No blood whatsoever on O.J.'s white carpet, which he would have had to walk on with a supposedly bleeding finger up to his bedroom after murders.

3. O.J. able to sign autographs casually at LAX an hour after murders took place.

4. O.J. had just flown into town June 10, 1994 before leaving for Chicago on June 12, 1994 casts doubt on stalking.

5. [We know] O.J. was not using cocaine or alcohol on June 12, 1994 because none was found in his blood on June 13, 1994 when police took it. No previous evidence of O.J. ever engaging in physical violence against Nicole when he was completely sober.

6. If O.J. is obsessing about Nicole just before murders, then why is he repeatedly phoning Paula Barbieri?

7. No evidence of escalating pattern of violence of O.J. against

The Frame of the Century?

Nicole; rather a pattern of de-escalating violence between 1989 and 1994. (In 1989 he's physically fighting with her causing injuries; after that, he's just breaking things and shouting). Unlike 1989, when Nicole photo-documents her injuries, Nicole photo-documents no injuries to herself in five years since 1989 because no photos later than that are found in her bank lock box with previous photos.

8. Weak motivation for O.J. to premeditatively murder Nicole. O.J. not romantically very desperate since as a wealthy, attractive, athletic, sports legend and celebrity he can whistle and beautiful women will line up for chance to be with him. List of stunning girlfriends include Paula Barbieri and Tawny Kitaen.

8. Murder method of using knife is odd choice for a man obsessed with cleanliness and neatness. O.J.'s neatness with clothes documented in testimony of Ron Shipp. O.J. won't park his car under a tree because sap might dirty it. O.J. won't allow smoking in his house.

9. O.J.'s documented concern for his children throws doubt on his committing murders a few feet away from his kids then leaving the bodies where his children might discover them.

10. O.J. immediately returns from Chicago when he is informed of Nicole's death and voluntarily makes a statement to police, and gives them permission to draw his blood, against his lawyer's advice.

10 Reasons to Consider That

Ron Shipp Did Do it

1. Ron Shipp wears size 12 shoes, same as O.J., and could have been wearing Bruno Magli shoes which left footprint at Bundy crime scene.

2. Ron Shipp has history of career failures, alcoholism, and possibly drug use. He tried out for football team at USC and didn't make he because "I wasn't good enough." L.A.P.D. would not

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

allow him back on force four months after he quit. His only significant success at acting were small parts playing a policeman that O.J. got for him. By his own sworn testimony he "idolized" Simpson. His main source of ego gratification when he was with L.A.P.D. was bringing fellow officers over to O.J.'s Rockingham house to show off O.J.'s trophies and get O.J. to sign autographs. Long term pattern suggests that his ego was dependent on O.J. Simpson for his major life satisfactions amidst career and personal failures.

3. Ron Shipp is only close acquaintance of O.J. Simpson with requisite skills to have framed O.J. As 15-year veteran of L.A.P.D., including undercover work, patrol work, and instructing at L.A.P.D. Police Academy, Ron Shipp has requisite skills to know what physical evidence would be convincing to detectives investigating a murder, and the requisite skills to know how to collect blood evidence in order to frame O.J.. He could have obtained a sample of O.J.'s dried blood at any time previous to murders and liquefied it with saline solution just as criminalists are trained to do so it could be dropped at Bundy crime scene at time of murder and on O.J.'s driveway just after murders. If he's the murderer, he could either deliberately collect liquid sample of Nicole's and Ron Goldman's blood to plant on O.J.'s Bronco, or with saline solution reliquefy mixture of their dried blood splattered on his own clothes while committing the murders.

4. As friend of O.J. Simpson, Ron Shipp was on O.J.'s property frequently, and by his own trial testimony was in O.J.'s bedroom several times before murders. This provides opportunity for Shipp to steal items of clothing from O.J.'s house including Bruno Magli shoes, Isotoner gloves, O.J.'s watch cap, which can be planted at Bundy crime scene, and second glove on Rockingham estate outside Kato Kaelin's room. As a mutual friend of many of O.J.'s and Nicole's acquaintances, Shipp could have had intimate knowledge of O.J.'s and Nicole's schedule for June 12, 1994, and know just when would be an ideal time to commit murders when

The Frame of the Century?

O.J. would have no alibi. A simple hang-up phone call to O.J.'s from a payphone just before committing murders could establish O.J. at home without any phone records.

5. Shipp has established pattern of jumping O.J.'s gate to get onto O.J.'s property, even when O.J. is not home. This can be verified with O.J.'s maids, Michele and Gigi, and with O.J.'s assistant, Cathy Randa. He would have had ample opportunity over many years to steal O.J.'s master house key to make a copy. In weeks before murders, O.J. instructed Cathy Randa to tell Shipp that he could not come by house without calling first to make sure it's all right because Shipp is coming onto property when O.J. isn't home and frightening new maid, Gigi. This provides indications both of Shipp's feeling separated from O.J., which is long-term pattern necessary to his ego gratification, and his possible intent in weeks prior to murders to gather items necessary to frame O.J. for murder of Nicole he is possibly fantasizing about.

6. Shipp is athletic man who is physically capable of having committed the double murders, and jumping O.J.'s gate.

7. Shipp is physically similar enough to O.J. to be used in a police line-up. Shipp is a black man who could have been black man Nicole saw looking at her through her window, and could have been black man witnesses reported near Bundy crime scene night of June 12, 1994.

8. One week prior to June 12, 1994 murders (approximately June 3rd to 5th), Shipp is at O.J.'s Rockingham estate with Lisa Madigan, a blond-haired Canyon Country neighbor physically similar to Nicole. In O.J.'s deposition, Shipp is reported as showing up at O.J.'s estate with this "blond Nicole type" late at night to use Jacuzzi with her and show her off to O.J.. By both Shipp's trial testimony and O.J.'s deposition, Shipp asks O.J. for bottle of wine, which O.J. reluctantly provides. In O.J.'s deposition, O.J. says that when Shipp asks O.J. for wine, O.J. is on phone to Cathy Randa, and I postulate it's to complain to Randa about Shipp once again showing up uninvited.

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

9. According to L.A.P.D. Homicide Detective Vic Pietrantoni, Tom Lange's former partner, "Ron Shipp was never a suspect" and "we never investigated whether Shipp had an alibi" for June 12, 1994.

10. According to deposition of Denise Brown, and Shipp's own trial testimony, Ron Shipp and Nicole were "close." According to Cora Fischman's deposition, in weeks prior to murders Nicole was engaging in sex with many male partners, as well as threesomes with Faye Resnick. This provides possible motivation for Shipp, who already wants to do everything just like O.J. Simpson does, to stalk Nicole, become obsessively sexually jealous of her, and when rejected by her (possibly after one or more sexual encounters with her) to decide to murder her and frame O.J. for the crime.

Conclusions

I postulate that for someone other than O.J. Simpson to have committed these murders, it has to be an individual who

1. Is physically capable of the murders and of jumping O.J.'s gate.

2. Can be physically confused in identification with O.J. Simpson.

3. Can wear O.J.'s shoes.

4. Has law-enforcement skills which can accomplish a professional frame-up of blood and other circumstantial evidence.

5. Has access to O.J.'s estate.

6. Has obsession with both O.J. and Nicole.

7. Has given no alibi to investigators.

8. Has history of psychological problems, personal failures.

9. Has history of substance abuse.

Things to Investigate

1. I postulate that Ron Shipp was romantically obsessed with Nicole. Al Cowlings thought so and reports are that Shipp had

The Frame of the Century?

said to A.C. that "he had a shot at Nicole if O.J. wasn't there" and this was A.C.'s reason for thinking that Shipp should be a suspect. Other Simpson friends supposedly have said that Shipp was in love with Nicole. Investigation of Shipp's relationship with Nicole might yield clues.

2. I postulate that on the same day, one week prior to murders, that Shipp brought Lisa Madigan over to O.J.'s Rockingham estate, Shipp also brought Madigan over to Nicole's condo on Bundy. [To the best of my knowledge, now, this did not happen.] This coincides with disappearance of Nicole's keys, which were found in O.J.'s bag in Al Cowling's Bronco when O.J. was arrested after famous Bronco chase. I speculate that Shipp stole Nicole's keys that day, used them a week later on June 12, 1994 during murders, and planted them in O.J.'s bag during time period of June 13, 1994 to June 17, 1994, when Shipp had complete access to O.J.'s house along with many of O.J.'s friends and family. Nicole's keys were found by police in O.J.'s bag when O.J. was arrested June 17, 1994 after Bronco chase. Investigation of Shipp's presence in Brentwood neighborhood of Nicole's condo in period before murders might yield clues (but trail is cold and Shipp might not have been recognized before TV appearance during O.J.'s trial).

3. I postulate that Shipp's wife, Nina, knows, or suspects, that Ron Shipp did it (if Ron Shipp did it). I speculate that (if Shipp did it) Lisa Madigan also suspects it. [This also, apparently, turns out not to be true.] If these postulates are true, this provides leverage to pry information out of one or both of these women.

4. If Shipp brought Lisa to Nicole's condo on Bundy the week before the murders, this would be evidence of Shipp's ability to steal Nicole's keys on date they turned up missing, and the coincidence of the keys disappearing when Shipp was there would be strong evidence of Shipp committing a frame. Identification of Shipp and Lisa Madigan in Brentwood neighborhood near Nicole's weekend prior to murders would be clue.

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

5. Ron Shipp was not investigated by L.A.P.D. for murders. Following theory of his being murderer might provide evidence to investigators since territory is virgin. But after 2-1/2 years, the trail is cold. Still, much older murders have been successfully investigated.

6. If Shipp did it, Shipp knows that he did, and that O.J. is innocent. This provides main avenue of proving it: by spooking Shipp into making a false move.

7. Shipp wears a cross around his neck and according to Nina, quoted in People magazine, Shipp has been reading the Bible a lot since O.J.'s criminal trial. People reports Shipp moodier since trial. Shipp might either be using Christianity as a cover for his murders, or might have "found Jesus" out of guilt for murders during an out-of-control period of his life. He might have rationalized not confessing because it would hurt his children. But his guilt, if he is guilty, might make him want to confess, if he feels he is trapped.

8. I did not find upon cursory inspection, nor would I expect to find, anything out of the ordinary in Shipp's lifestyle, two-and-a-half years after the murders. Nazis have led ordinary lives for many years after committing much worse atrocities. The human power to rationalize is almost unlimited. See Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Sitting across from a conference table in Leo Wolinsky's cramped cubbyhole at the labyrinth-like editorial offices of the Los Angeles Times, I read this aloud to Wolinsky and Goulding, point by point, and watched their jaws slowly drop. I don't know if their shock was caused by the idea that there might actually be a plausible case for O.J.'s innocence, or merely because of my bizarre imagination at having come up with this.

Our meeting ended with a discussion of the difficulties that would exist in pursuing an investigation of my theory. Wolinsky

The Frame of the Century?

said he needed to talk to the Times' lawyers.

About a week after our meeting, Leo Wolinsky told me had been advised by the Los Angeles Times' attorneys that they couldn't participate in a criminal investigation of a private individual who wasn't already under some official investigation. The risks of liability for possible invasion of that individual's privacy precluded trying to establish that he had committed a crime in the first place; the risk of being sued for libel if they published evidence of a crime that they might uncover eliminated any incentive to look in the second place.

Even my suggestion that the Times review the official blood toxicology reports from the Simpson case, to look for toxicological or metabolic discrepancies between Simpson's reference sample taken by police the afternoon of June 13, 1994, and the blood drops identified as his which he theoretically left at the crime scene only sixteen hours earlier, was apparently too much of an investigation for O.J. Simpson's home-town paper to undertake.

Apparently, a major daily newspaper engaging in investigative journalism of a crime, independent of those cases already being investigated by the police, is de facto against the law today in the United States.

The libertarian part of me was appalled by this discovery, and it encouraged me to continue, in spite of my knowledge that it might be against my best interests.

Besides, the Los Angeles Times had deep pockets if they got sued. I was so much in debt already that I was always contemplating filing for bankruptcy anyway.

I was, as they say, judgment proof.

Over the next couple of months I spent pursuing verification of my theory, I developed my speculations into as coherent a picture as I could manage.

I began researching in microscopic detail the physical evidence presented in the O.J. Simpson trials, trying to see if there existed

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

evidence that could destroy my scenario. I re-familiarized myself with the testimony in the criminal trial, and immersed myself in the depositions of the civil trial. I read most of the major books that had been written about the case. I looked for possible motives that could drive Ron Shipp to do those things that my theory had him doing. I tried to find out if he had ever been a police suspect, and whether he had ever established an alibi for the times of the murders.

I tried, without success, to interview Lisa Madigan, the "blonde Nicole type"the married friend of Ron and Nina Shippwho had accompanied Ronald Shipp to Simpson's estate a week before the murders. I later found out from one of her neighbors why she wouldn't talk to me. When Shipp had brought her name into Simpson's criminal trial, a TV truck from Hard Copy had shown up in front of her house. She wouldn't talk to them, either. I was later able to determine, through these neighbors, that Lisa Madigan was trying to make some extra money for her family by pursuing a career in commercial acting, and had met Shipp in an acting class. In a typical come-on, Shipp had gotten her into O.J. Simpson's Jacuzzi by suggesting that meeting O.J. Simpson might lead to acting parts. I was able to determine that Lisa Madigan didn't believe she had seen anything on her visit with Shipp to O.J.'s estate that would lead her to believe Shipp was planning a murder or frame-up that night. I sure would like to ask her if she saw a cut on O.J. Simpson's left hand that nighta cut that Ron Shipp might have also noticed.

But if Ron Shipp had been trying to set her up with O.J. as a temple offering, apparently she was never a party to the plan.

I tried (and failed) to place Shipp near Nicole's condo at any time closely preceding the murders. I talked to florists near Nicole's condo to see if Shipp might have bought any flowers in the weeks previous to the murders, figuring that if he had, it might be indicative of an attempt to romance her. I came up with nothing. I questioned anyone associated with Simpson who

The Frame of the Century?

would talk to me, and spent hours discussing my theory with veteran crime writer Joseph Bosco, who had sat in court for the criminal trial and written the fine book about it called A Problem of Evidence.

Bosco told me he liked my theory. He just wished there was some way to prove it. He couldn't think of one, either.

In essence, I tried to eliminate Shipp, in my own mind, as a possible suspect.

I wasn't finding any evidence to establish my scenario, but I was also unable to find evidence that could refute my theory about him.

While as a gumshoe I was on a wild goose chase, finding nothing that could encourage me that my theory had any basis in fact, as a writer I was developing a scenario for the murders that I thought could account for all but the blood evidence.

Then, following a lead given to me by one of Simpson's "DNA" attorneys, Robert Blasier, I interviewed a prominent microbiologist (one not involved in the Simpson case) who gave me a theory to account for that evidence, too.

The picture I was painting in my mind, a summary of what I had assembled so far, goes something like this.

The Ron Shipp I was postulating as an actor in these events (as opposed to the real-life Ron Shipp, who may bear only a passing resemblance to my model), would have to be a consummate failure, whose main source of ego gratification had to do with his association to his celebrity friend, O.J. Simpson. It was well-known that Shipp used to take fellow L.A.P.D. officers over to Simpson's house to show off his relationship with Simpson, give guided tours of Simpson's memorabilia, and use Simpson's tennis courts.

The Ron Shipp I was inventing had at least this in common with the real Ron Shipp: he hero worshipped O.J. Simpson.

The question in my mind was: did this hero worship turn into a fatal attraction?

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

My research told me that I was not the first person to suspect Ron Shipp of being involved in the Brown-Goldman murders. Reports said that Al Cowlings had suspected Shipp, as had O.J.'s sister Shirley Baker and her husband, Benny Baker. There were fragments of suspicions published in several of the books about the Simpson case. Supposedly Shipp had been attracted to Nicole, but the feeling wasn't mutual. Shipp's marriage might not have been solid: he was known to make moves on blonde "Nicole types" he met in acting class, and one of them he had even brought over to O.J.'s house a week before the Brown-Goldman murders.

Was this evidence of an obsession that Shipp also had for Nicole?

What if, following the "final break-up" of O.J. Simpson and Nicole, Shipp had made a move on Nicole and was rejected?

What if Shipp had been told to stop coming around to O.J.'s so much, and to call before coming over?

What if Ron Shipp, whose ego seemed so dependent on his association with a celebrity, was being given the bum's rush by that celebrity?

Ron Shipp had, apparently, tried to make an offering of a blonde neighbor of his to O.J. Simpson, a week before the murders, in a possible attempt to get back into his hero's good graces.

O.J. had rejected the sacrificial offering.

Would this hero worshipper react the way Cain did when his offering to the object of his worship was rejected? Would he take out his frustration by murdering the love object of the object of his love?

Did Ron Shipp murder Nicole Brown Simpson to take from O.J. Simpson the two things that mattered most to him: his love goddess and his celebrity?

I started plotting how the planning of the murders would have to go.

Shipp was an ex-cop, and after leaving the L.A.P.D. had tried

The Frame of the Century?

starting his own security firm. He could have had electronic surveillance equipment left over he could use on Nicole or O.J.

He could have sneaked into O.J.'s bedroom, grabbed a pair of shoes from the 40 pairs in O.J.'s closeta pair from the back so they wouldn't be missedand a watch cap and pair of winter gloves from a draweralso stuff that O.J. wouldn't immediately miss.

O.J. habitually hid a master key to his house outside his front gate, in case he got locked out. Shipp, the ex-cop and O.J. hanger-on, easily could have known where that key was hidden.

O.J. habitually kept a spare set of keys to the Bronco in his kitchen. Shipp could have known where those were kept, also, and grabbed them when he needed them. One of the books talked about evidence of someone having left O.J.'s kitchen door open, and the alarm system off, which O.J. discovered when he got home from a date with Paula Barbieri on June 11th, the night before the murders.

Then there was the most important question: how could Shipp have gotten hold of a supply of O.J. Simpson's blood?

It was not an easy challenge.

You don't simply go up to O.J. Simpson at a party and stick a syringe into his arm. Aside from the social impropriety of it, O.J. Simpson was reported by his friends to be squeamish about blood.

But what if Shipp managed to get alone with O.J. and got him to drink some Gatorade spiked with the so-called "date-rape" drug, Rhohypnol? Or perhaps a tranquilizer such as Xanax mixed into a glass of Chivas Regal? An unconscious O.J. might not be all that hard to draw blood from, if you knew what you were doing. You didn't need to store the blood in a purple-topped tube with EDTA in it, either. You could either freeze the blood relatively quickly (adding saline solution or even distilled water, if it coagulated a bit first) or even add some CPDAcitrate, phosphate, dextrose, and adeninewhich blood banks used as a preservativegood for keeping blood transfusable for up to a month.

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

Another possibility was to find out if O.J. kept any blood available at a clinic, for autologous blood donationthat is, his own blood that he might need for a knee surgery. In fact, O.J.'s mother had donated blood to herself for precisely that sort of surgical purpose. If you're having chronic knee problems, you might want to store blood long term. If you're going to store blood longer than a month, if you want it to keep for up to ten years, you have to add something like glycerine, and freeze it.

Clip off a few inches of the blood-bag tubing attached to the outside of the blood bag, and you'd have all the blood you need, with no one the wiser.

If Ron Shipp were lucky enough to go through O.J.'s bathroom wastebasket and find some gauze or tissue or toweling with O.J.'s dried blood on it, perhaps it could be reconstituted with saline solution or distilled water into liquid blood again. But how much would the DNA have degraded, and when reconstituted, would it be bright red again? And would there be enough to get the 40 or so drops that you'd need?

But there was one additional possibility I discovered.

If you didn't have enough of O.J.'s blood, Dr. Frankenstein could make more for you.

Dr. Frankenstein, as it turns out, could be anyone with a high-school diploma and a job in a biochemistry lab. Any lab doing criminalistics would do. So would most university labs. It just required a device called a thermal cycler used for PCR testing of DNA, and common lab equipment such as a blood centrifuge. Five thousand bucks worth of lab equipment that could be ordered on an 800 line, paid for by credit card, and delivered by mail, anonymouslyand another couple of hundred dollars in chemicals. The techniques had been in use for a decade, and everybody who worked in the field knew it could be done.

Any policeman who'd ever spent any time talking to a lab technician, or had to be briefed on DNA procedures for a criminal case, would know about it, too.

The Frame of the Century?

He'd need a drop of O.J.'s blood, as a reference sample. Type the red blood cells for ABO and enzymes. Do PCR on the white blood cells to clone the DNAas much as you need. Shipp wouldn't even necessarily need a drop of O.J.'s blood as a reference sample. If he had a lab blood report giving O.J.'s ABO type, ESD, and PGM subtypeused in case O.J. needed a blood transfusionthen all he would need is a sample of O.J.'s DNAand he could get that from a used Kleenex, or a fingernail clipping, or a follicle from O.J.'s hair.

Now you get a test tube of blood of the same ABO type. Centrifuge the blood to separate the red and white blood cells. Heat the red blood cells carefully to destroy the enzymes, while preserving the ABO typing, and pour in enzymes matching your reference sample. Then take the white blood cells and subject them to X-rays or short-length ultraviolet to destroy the DNA. Do PCR testing on the white blood cells to make sure none of the DNA is left. If it is, give them more radiation.

Then take the DNA you've cloned using PCR and mix well with the now DNA-free white blood cells, and mix it back with the red blood cells.

Voila. Instant O.J., suitable for use at the crime scene of your choice.

Of course, Ron Shipp wouldn't have to know how to do this, himself. It would be enough if he knew it could be done. If he could come up with some cover story so a lab technician would do it for him, or simply for cashand keep his mouth shut when he later suspected he might be an accomplice before the fact to a double homicideit would be enough. But, in all likelihood, nobody would even believe this sort of blood frame up would ever be done, and would never even look into it.

Detectives just don't have that sort of imagination. You'd have to write science fiction or something even to take this complex a plot seriously.

So, June 12, 1994, Ron Shipp is ready. He has O.J.'s shoes, a

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

watch cap full of O.J.'s hairs, a pair of the Juice's gloves, and a test tube with some of O.J.'s bloodoriginal, reconstituted, or Frankenstein.

He also has a Swiss Army knife that O.J. gave him, along with half O.J.'s other friends.

Shipp doesn't want to use his own car that night, so he drops his car at a dealership for a tune-up, and gets a loaner.

He uses the loaner to drive from his home in Santa Clarita to Sydney Simpson's recital, and there he begins his tailing of Nicole. He follows Nicole to Mezzaluna, and from there to her home. He then drives over to O.J.'s house on Rockingham, and parks somewhere inconspicuous. He's been working for a real-estate company. A computer listing tells him which houses in O.J.'s neighborhood are unoccupied. That's where he parks.

Dressed the way he saw O.J. Simpson costumed in a Naked Gun moviea black commando outfit and a watch capShipp sneaks into O.J.'s Rockingham estate, just as he's done dozens of times before, and positions himself near the tennis courts, which gives him a good view of Simpson's bedroom. There, possibly using a headset to listen to a bug he's planted inside the house, he waits until he sees O.J. lie down on his bed for a few minutes before his flight to Chicago. O.J. has been up since 5:30 that morning. He's been up now for almost seventeen hours. He's exhausted.

Shipp now has his opportunity.

He heads out to the Bronco and opens it, using the spare set of keys from O.J.'s kitchen. The first thing he does is remove the bulb from the ceiling lighta technique he learned years before as an L.A.P.D. patrol officer, to prevent himself from being a target when the door is opened. It's something, perhaps, that only a cop would think of. Even Detective Lange mentions having done this as a patrol officer in his book with Vannatter, Evidence Dismissed.

He drives the Bronco over to Nicole's condo, drives around a

The Frame of the Century?

couple of times just to make sure someone sees the Bronco, then parks in back and enters through the back gate.

He then makes some sort of noise outside Nicole's condo, to draw Nicole outside. She comes out to investigate.

Or if her intercom is working, Ron Shipp buzzes her and says, "Nicole, this is Ron."

And with a bizarre irony, Nicole Brown Simpson, expecting Ron Goldman and not being able to differentiate between male voices on the tinny intercom speaker, comes outside in her bare feet to find the wrong Ron.

Shipp opens the Swiss Army knife and uses it on Nicole, as Mark Fuhrman suggests in his book Murder In Brentwood. He kills her. I don't need to tell you how. It's exactly the same way the prosecution's detectives, medical examiners, and criminalists told you it could have happened during the trials of O.J. Simpson. One killer. It's over quickly.

Then Ron Goldman shows up. Perhaps he's there while Nicole's murder is still going on, and tries to save her. Or perhaps Nicole is already dying, and Goldman sees Shipp standing over Nicole's body. "Hey, hey, hey," are, likely, Ron Goldman's last words.

Shipp heads out toward the back gate, carefully dripping blood from the test tube, one drop at a time, as he goes. He walks slowly. The blood drops take on a circular pattern, with no tail indicating movement. He dabs some of O.J.'s blood on the back gate.

Then he remembers that there's more cross-linking and evidence- planting he wanted to do. He circles back to the crime scene and drags the watch cap across Goldman's shirt before dropping itmakes sure he gets blood on the gloves and some of Nicole's hair on it. Collects a small sample of Nicole's blood from the pool surrounding her body. Drops one of the gloves. Rubs O.J.'s shoes that he's wearing against their clothes and makes sure the shoes have the victims' blood on them.

Lucky thing that O.J. and Shipp both wear size 12 shoes.

Shipp is now desperate to get the Bronco back to Rockingham

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

before O.J. looks outside and might notice it's missing. So he drives like a demon back to Rockingham, with the headlights off.

Jill Shively, the one witness who claimed to have seen Simpson in the immediate vicinity of the murders at the time they probably occurred, was a grand-jury witness whose veracity was compromised because she sold her story before testifying about it, lied about having done so, and was also reported to have committed fraud in the past.

But just maybe Jill Shively is the Girl Who Cried Wolf, and sees O.J.'s Bronco cut her off and almost hit a gray Nissan at the intersection of Bundy and San Vicente. Shipp shouts for the car to move. It's night but light enough for Shively to see a black man costumed like O.J. Simpson in Naked Gun driving a white Bronco she recognizes as O.J.'s. Her mind does what witnesses' minds often do, and fits the facts into a firm memory of having seen and heard O.J. in the Bronco.

Shipp glides the car into a parking space next to the Rockingham gate to O.J.'s estate. He can tell that the limousine has already come to pick O.J. up for his trip to LAX for O.J.'s red-eye to Chicago. He makes sure that his bloody shoes leave plenty of Ron Goldman's and Nicole's blood in the Bronco, and uses some drops of O.J.'s blood from the tube as well to smear some blood around.

Then he sneaks back onto the Rockingham estate and behind Kato's room, where he drops the other glove, pre-stained with some O.J. blood.

Then he bangs on the air conditioner outside Kato's room three times, to make sure that someone will look back there and find the glove.

Then he hides.

He waits until O.J. has left for the airport in the limo, and Kato is back inside his guest room.

Shipp uses a bathroom near the garage to clean himself up,

The Frame of the Century?

and put all his bloody clothes, shoes, and murder weapon into a trash bag, which he can always dispose of much later. He changes back into his own clothes. He can't leave any of this behind. He realizes that there might be fibers, hairs, prints, his own DNA, etc., that might link him to the crime scene. He's much too obsessive to risk that.

Then Shipp finishes the frame-up, creating a blood trail from the tube of O.J.'s blood from the Bronco to O.J.'s house. He uses O.J.'s key to get into the front alcove, and notes that the security alarm is off. He drips his last few drops of O.J.'s blood inside the alcove, then pads up the stairs into O.J.'s bedroom and grabs a pair of O.J.'s socks from the hamper. He's saved just a few drops of Nicole's blood, taken from her pool of blood at Bundy. He rubs the blood into one of the socks and drops it onto the carpet.

He's brought one more item along for the piece de resistance of the frame-up. He's brought along the box from the Swiss army knife that O.J. had given him. He drops it on O.J.'s bathroom sink.

Then he hears something downstairs, maybe Kato, setting the alarm as O.J. called about. He waits until it's quiet then sneaks down the stairs again. As he heads out, he sees that the security alarm is now armed. He turns it off to get out. It's been so many years since O.J. told him the code that O.J. probably doesn't even remember that Shipp knows it. But Shipp, the hanger-on, memorized that code and has used it whenever he needed to get inside O.J.'s house. Now he's using it to get out.

He sneaks out the back of O.J.'s estate and walks calmly over to his car.

He doesn't know how long it will take detectives to make their way over to O.J. Simpson's house, but he knows he's left a trail that any decent detective could follow.

Ron Shipp gets back onto the 405 Freeway and drives back to his home in Santa Clarita.

When he slips into bed next to his wife, Nina wakes up and

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

asks, "Who was she this time, Ron?"

Ron Shipp confesses a drunken one-night-stand to his wife that never happened.

The next morning, the news of the murders is all over the radio and TV.

Ron Shipp calls O.J.'s house and gets Mark Fuhrman on the phone. This is working even faster than he thought possible. Shipp asks Fuhrman if O.J. hurt Nicole.

The next week gives him an opportunity to enhance his frame-up, as necessary. He still has friends at West L.A. division and at Parker Center, and Shipp starts passing them information about the doings at O.J.'s house, getting information from the ongoing police investigation in return. He's told of O.J.'s interview conducted by robbery-homicide Detectives Vannatter and Lange, and O.J.'s statement to them that he's been having weird thoughts about Nicole. The germ of an idea of how far he can go in further implicating O.J. starts percolating. He will first tell author Sheila Weller, suggesting that the alias "Leo," be used, that O.J. told him he'd been dreaming about killing Nicole. When Weller's book, Raging Heart, is published, the prosecutors easily figure out who "Leo" is.

Sheila Weller says, "Leo had a good working knowledge of criminal forensics."

A very good working knowledge of it, if my theory is correct.

As an indication that Shipp might never have intended his statements to Weller to be anonymousbut he just wanted it to look that way so he'd have plausible deniability when called to testify: "Leo" is a well-known acronym among police officers.

It's cop slang for "Law Enforcement Officer."

And Shipp admits, under Carl Douglas's cross examination, that he didn't have much expectation of anonymity, anyway.

Later, when Marcia Clark and Philip Vannatter interview him, Vannatter asks Ron Shipp if he thinks O.J. did it. Shipp pauses, then remembers his police training. Never tell an outright lie,

The Frame of the Century?

since it can be detected by a trained observer. He tells Marcia Clark, "Whoever did this did a heck of a job framing him."

Ron Shipp is the only other person, aside from myself, who has ever identified the murderer as the person who did the frame-up. The police and prosecutors denied that there was a frame-up. The defense team asserted that the L.A.P.D. did it.

And, in words reminiscent of MacBeth, Shipp seems to feel he has some kind of guilt of his own to atone for, guilt which may have nothing to do with his having failed to intervene in a domestic violence case, when he declares: "I will not have the blood of Nicole on Ron Shipp."

My letter to Robert Baker of February 15, 1997 shows my state of mind at the time I first identified Ron Shipp as a suspect in my mind. I thought I had a "compelling theory." Now I use the words "theory" and "speculation" almost interchangeably. I had expected, perhaps unrealistically, that I would find some physical evidence to support my theory. That I didn't uncover any has made me doubt my thinking process. Whether this increased doubt is justified or not is a methodological question I have not been able to answer to my own satisfaction.

I think my letter to Robert Baker also establishes that my writing anything about Ron Shipp's possible involvement wasn't something I felt entitled to do in the absence of more compelling evidence. On the one hand, I didn't feel I had the right to invade his privacy if I was wrong. On the other hand, I didn't want to let him know he was being once again looked at with suspicion if I was right.

This is a complex set of both moral and journalistic ethics problemsbalancing a pursuit of justice versus the privacy rights of an individual who's never been accused of a crimethat I've had to grapple with throughout my investigation. Even as I decide that I think these questions of mine need to be dealt with

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

openly and in public, I don't think I'll ever be fully comfortable with my decision to write about this, given that my decision to do so has been made in the absence of my finding any physical evidence which would incriminate Ron Shipp for the things I speculate him having done.

It was my original intention not to write about this until and unless an official police or district attorney's investigation had re-opened the Brown-Goldman murders.

I have obviously changed my mind, on grounds that even I consider ethically tenuous.

I ask myself:

Is a far-fetched theory on paper, unsupported by physical evidence, enough reason to possibly subject an innocent private citizen to the ravages of the American tabloid press? Is this just entirely fantasy spun out of an overactive imagination?

Did I, like so many other Americans, just watch too much of the trial of O.J. Simpson?

Have I made this all up in my own mind, simply because there's something magical about O.J. Simpson, and even though I don't even like football, I just don't want to believe him guilty of these horrible crimes?

Or, does this make sense? Is there truth here? Could any of this have actually happened?

Could this case be akin to the murder of tejano singer Selena by a close associate obsessed with her, or the fannish obsessions of Robert Bardo, who stalked then murdered actress Rebecca Schaeffer?

Marcia Clark successfully prosecuted Robert Bardo for that murder. I ask myself why she apparently never even considered that this case might be about a fan's obsession with a celebritya fan's jealous obsession of a celebrity leading to meticulously detailed pathological acts.

If Ron Shipp did what I speculate, then he was a unique fan with long-term access to his idol and a professional police and

The Frame of the Century?

security background that enabled him to act out his pathological obsession in a way that a Robert Bardo, or even a Ted Bundy, could never have dreamed.

A fan with the same shoe size as the man he was professionally capable of having framed.

Perhaps Simpson's attorney, Robert Shapiro, at one moment in defense discussion, almost had this figured out. On page 291 of American Tragedy, Schiller and Willwerth recount a defense lawyers' meeting of December 22, 1994, in which Shapiro tells his fellow lawyers, "It's possible the killers broke into the Bronco, drove it to Bundy, and committed the murders. They smeared the victims' blood around the inside of the vehicle, drove back, parked it, and dropped the glove off"

At which point, Schiller and Willwerth report, Johnnie Cochran interrupts and says, "Bob, don't waste our time with this bullshit."

Apparently, discussing their client's possible innocence was irrelevant to the defense strategy.

No wonder, if Simpson was innocent, that no one found "the real killer." Nobody in this supposed search for the truth was really looking very hard.

As I said in 1995, it's enough to make you wish that Perry Mason is real.

Come to think of it, if I'm right, then I made my wish come true.

I tell you one more time. I have no evidence that this theory is true, that the Ron Shipp I've been referring to in this story has even a passing resemblance to the retired L.A.P.D. officer and sometime bit-part actor, Ronald G. Shipp, who, in real life, lives with his wife and two children in a suburb of Los Angeles.

I do not know the true character or psychological makeup of Ronald G. Shipp. I have taken established physical evidence that was used in the case against O.J. Simpson and mixed this evi

Was O.J. Simpson Framed for Murder by his Biggest Fan?

dence with sheer speculation of a possible alternative interpretation. In the absence of physical proof of my speculations, we as a society are morally, ethically, and legally required to regard my speculations as fiction.

Mr. Shipp, if this is merely a fantasy I've made up, you have my sincere apologies. But as an ex-cop, you know that someone should have eliminated you as a suspect three years ago, as soon as they discovered that you wear the same size shoe as O.J. Simpson. Somebody should have asked you if you had an alibi. If you had told them where you were on the night of June 12, 1994, this story might never have been written.

But nobody, apparently, even asked. Detective Vic Pietrantoni of the L.A.P.D. Robbery/Homicide Division says you were never a suspect and nobody ever asked if you had an alibi.

Bill Pavelic, a former L.A.P.D. officer who investigated for O.J. Simpson's defense team, said he was never able to determine if you had an alibi.

And, apparently, the reason you weren't more closely investigated by O.J. Simpson's investigators, in spite of his family's suspicions, was that O.J. Simpson, himself, could never bring himself to believe that you did any of these things.

Could that be because O.J. Simpson knows you didn't commit these murders, because he knows who else did?

Is O.J. Simpson a much better actor than the critics ever thought?

I know this. I think between the two of you, one of you knows which one of you is lying.

And, if by some odd chance, I guessed right, I'd be very careful about that cross you wear around your neck.

Forgiveness comes only after confession and contrition.

If there's anything at all that you need to confess, that is.

The Frame of the Century?

Postscript I

Deciding to publish "The Frame of the Century?" has been, perhaps, the most profound decision I've ever had to make in my life.

I have been very careful to state multiple times in the story that I have no physical evidence that what I theorize about the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman is true, that this is a theorya speculation.

But I also know that once this story is published, it will be reported on by sensationalizers not as meticulous about what they repeat, and it could be assumed by people not paying attention that what I have written is already a proven set of facts.

An unbalanced individual might do something awful to Ronald Shipp or his family. I also lived in Los Angeles during the riots in Spring, 1992, and I understand that anything to do with the Simpson case is a tinderbox if handled indelicately.

Regardless of whether or not my speculation is true, I desperately do not want to trigger anything of this sort. My object in publishing this is to do what I have been trying to do since February 12, 1997: cause someone to confirm or eliminate my theory of the Brown-Goldman murders.

Even if sufficient evidence were found to indict Ronald Shipp, my primary interest in his trial would not be to see his conviction but to see whether there were sufficient evidence to clear O.J. Simpson's name for the Brown-Goldman murders. I would, however, vigorously oppose the prosecution seeking any greater penalty for anyone else tried for these murders than were sought against O.J. Simpson when he was tried for them. That would be an unconscionable double standard.

My primary reason for publishing "The Frame of the Century?" at this particular time, in the last weeks of May, 1997, is that O.J.

The Frame of the Century?

Simpson's Rockingham house, where he still lives with his two young children Sydney and Justin, is in foreclosure, caused by the 34-million-dollar civil judgment against him, and if Simpson is unable to bring his mortgage up to date by next month, he and his children will be forced to move. This would create a dislocation in the Simpson's children's lives once again, and they certainly do not need any more of those.

I would urge the families of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman to request the trial judge in their civil suit against Simpson, Hiroshi Fujisaki, not to allow this to happen while the theory I've presented is being investigated as to its truth or falsity.

I hand-delivered an envelope containing a draft manuscript of "The Frame of the Century?" to the home doorstep of Ronald G. Shipp, on Tuesday, May 13, 1997, at approximately 11:15 PM PDT. There were two cars parked at the Shipp house that I recognized as the family's (and I learned that the car I'd seen Nina Shipp driving, which I'd thought was a Cadillac, was in fact an Oldsmobile Cutlass).

My note, handwritten on the outside of the envelope, said, "Mr. Shipp: If you can present me with proof that convinces me that the enclosed is not true, I will stop its pending publication.JNS"

I also wrote on the outside of the envelope, "Personal and Confidential." I didn't even want Mr. Shipp's wife reading this, if he did not want anyone else to.

The next morning, however, I discovered that my AT&T True Connections number was not working. I phoned AT&T to repair it, but they informed me it would be at least twenty-four hours, even on an emergency basis, to restore it.

I felt it would be terrible if Ron Shipp wanted to get in touch with me and found the number I had given him not working. It would make me seem as if I were trying to defraud him or play a cat-and-mouse game with him.

So, I wrote the following letter, and again drove to his house to

Postscript I

deliver it immediately. This time, there were no cars parked at the Shipp house. The envelope with the manuscript I had dropped off only a few hours earlier was gone from the inside of the Shipp's screen door where I'd left it so I could reasonably conclude that Mr. Shipp was in possession of it. I put the letter, also marked "Personal and Confidential" on its envelope, inside the screen door.

My letter follows.

May 14, 1997

Ronald G. Shipp

[Street Address]

Santa Clarita, CA [XXXXX-XXXX]

Dear Mr. Shipp:

Apparently, the above AT&T True Reach [sic] number that I use for receiving voice and fax calls has had some problems that I wasn't aware of. AT&T tells me they are working on the problem, and hope to have it working within 24 hours.

Since the manuscript I left with you contains a theory about yourself that you might view as alarming, I wanted to make sure you had a way to reach me in a timely manner.

My cellular phone number is [XXX-XXX-XXXX]. I usually keep it off but I will keep it on until my 500-445-6345 number is working again.

I can also be reached by the above email address, which I check frequently.

Let me repeat what I said in my note to you on the manuscript's envelope. I have no desire to publish a story that might embarrass you if my conclusions are based on premises that can be proved false. If you have any means of proving to me that my theory is simply untrue, I will withdraw the manuscript from its pending publication.

Please be assured, I bear you no malice and my most important agenda is to establish the truth.

Sincerely,

J. Neil Schulman

About three the afternoon of Wednesday, May 14th, AT&T had my True Connections phone number working again.

When I still hadn't heard anything from Mr. Shipp by Friday

The Frame of the Century?

afternoon, I telephoned Shipp's attorney, Robert McNeill, to again make sure Mr. Shipp knew how to get in touch with me. After being told by the receptionist that Mr. McNeill was out of the office, I gave my nameand was immediately told to hang on; I would be connected.

After about four minutes on hold, Robert McNeill came onto the lineon speakerphone. I gave him my name, told him that I was an investigative journalist and had dropped off a manuscript with his client, Ronald Shipp, to give Mr. Shipp a chance to give me any information or response he wished. I explained about the problem I'd had with my True Connections number and explained that it had been working for 24 hours and I'd expected to hear from Mr. Shipp by now.

Mr. McNeill asked me if I was trying to get Shipp to "clear" the manuscript.

I said no, but that since I bore Mr. Shipp no malice, and because my manuscript linked him to the Brown-Goldman murders, I felt I had an ethical responsibility to give him a chance to prove me wrong before I published. "I have no desire to harm Mr. Shipp's reputation based on an unprovable theory," I said. That was why I was giving him this chance to respond, I explained to Shipp's attorney.

McNeill thanked me for the information, and we ended the call.

As of this writing, I have not heard or received any communication from Ronald Shipp or his attorney.JNS

Postscript II

On Sunday evening, May 18, 1997, at approximately 7:15 PM PDT, I drove over to Ronald G. Shipp's house, for the last time, with a friend.

The Shipps' cars were in the driveway and the garage door open so I assume they were home. My friend got out of my car, hand-delivered the final-draft manuscript of "The Frame of the Century?" into the front door of the Shipps' house, then returned to my car and we drove off. The manuscript included everything you are reading, including the first postscript and the bio info about me that follows, and a cover letter.

That cover letter read:

May 18, 1997

Ronald G. Shipp

[Street Address]

Santa Clarita, CA [XXXXX-XXXX]

Dear Mr. Shipp:

This letter is attached to what will be the published version of "The Frame of the Century?" unless you choose to respond to my offer to provide me with proof that my theories are false. As I said in my note to you on the manuscript's envelope, and my hand-delivered letter of May 14, if you provide me with sufficient proof to convince me that I am simply wrong about your having done the things I speculate upon in my story, I will stop its pending publication.

If I do not hear from you or your attorney by Tuesday, May 20, 1997, at noon, expressing a desire to communicate some information to me, I will conclude that you do not intend to do so and I will not stop its publication. In the event that I have not heard from you or your attorney by Tuesday, May 20, 1997, at noon, you can expect the public release of "The Frame of the Century?" at any time thereafter.

If you do, however, communicate with me a desire to take me up on my offer to respond to what I have written, I am willing to extend to you until noon, Monday May 26, 1997, to present me such proof as you would be interested in providing me.

The Frame of the Century?

To put this bluntly, if you have a good alibi for the time of the Brown-Goldman murders, and show it to me, or other proof that you could not have done what I speculate, then I will not publish the story. If you do not present me something that convinces me that I've dreamed all this up, I will feel it ethical to publish it, and will do so with the understanding that what I have written does not constitute anything legally actionable.

I suspect that an element in your decision may be questions about my character. If that question is troubling you, I suggest you or your attorney get in touch with my attorney and friend, [name deleted], at his office at [address deleted], Beverly Hills, CA XXXXX-XXXX. Mr. [deleted]'s telephone number is XXX-XXX-XXXX and his fax number is XXX-XXX-XXXX. Mr. [deleted] was a federal prosecutor for many years and enjoys a sterling reputation. He'll vouch for my honesty and ethics.

Sincerely,

J. Neil Schulman

Attachment: "The Frame of the Century?"

Monday afternoon, May 19, 1997, at approximately 2:00 PM PDT, I dropped off another copy of the final-draft manuscript and my cover letter to Ronald Shipp at the offices of his attorney, Robert McNeill.

On Tuesday, May 20, 1997, at 10:09 AM PDT, I telephoned Mr. McNeill's office and left a message on his voicemail, telling him that I was at home waiting for a call if he or Mr. Shipp wished to inform me that they wanted the chance to tell me anything.

The deadline I'd given Ronald Shipp and his attorney, Robert McNeill to inform meby phone, fax, mail, or emailthat they had any information they wished to present me passed without them having done so.

There was no warning that they considered what I had written grounds for a lawsuit if I published it. There was no denial of anything I'd speculated about.

There was no request, on any grounds, that I not publish this.

We are left on our own to speculate upon Ronald Shipp's silence. J. Neil Schulman,

May 20, 1997, 12:15 PM PDT

Part Two

Additional Questions

In Part Two, I answer questions that were raised by Part One of The Frame of the Century?the last version I gave Ron Shipp to read. Some of these questions were selected from letters to me or news group posts discussing my book, and I dealt with the ones I considered interesting and on point. Correspondents requesting anonymity were not identified. JNS

From an email letter (anonymity requested) of Thursday, May 22, 1997:

Mr. Schulman,

As a subscriber to alt.fan.oj-simpson, I just came across your posting promoting your book, The Frame of the Century?. After downloading your book, I searched it for any mention of the cuts on Simpson's left hand. I found only two references to these cuts in your book. You question why there was no blood from Simpson's bleeding finger on the white carpet of his house, and you ponder whether Lisa Madigan had seen a cut on Simpson's hand on the night of her visit to Rockingham a week before the murders. You fail to account for Simpson's admissions during his 6/13/94 L.A.P.D. interview by Lange and Vannatter that he had cut himself at Rockingham the previous night (6/12/94).

Unless you can work this into your frame-up scenario, it all falls apart. You could, I suppose, attribute the cuts to coincidence, but that would be very weak, in my opinion.

I do not consider the question of O.J. Simpson's left-hand cuts to be dispositive of the case, as much as writers such as Vincent Bugliosi would like us to think so. O.J. said he had possibly "re-opened" a cut he'd gotten earlier. He tells Vannatter and Lange

The Frame of the Century?

during his interview at Parker Center on June 13, 1994, "Mmm, it was cut before, but I think I just opened it again, I'm not sure."

That's why I raised the question whether Lisa Madigan saw a cut the night Shipp was over, an opportunity allowing Shipp to know that he would have to drip blood on the left side of the footprints.

In essence, I wonder whether Shipp, as part of his observations of O.J.which he would already have had to do in order to plan a frame of himhad observed, or otherwise learned of, a cut on O.J.'s left hand at any time in the days prior to the murders, which would have allowed him to know which side of the footprints to drop blood. Perhaps he merely overheard O.J. complaining about his left hand having a painful cut on it. I even wonder if he could have set up some sort of trap that would have caused O.J. to cut his handsomething sharp left where O.J. would have to be reaching for something, in a drawer for example.

Or, consider that deciding to obtain blood evidence from O.J. was a last minute decision brought about by a window of opportunity.

Let's postulate that Shipp is observing O.J. at Rockingham the night before the murders, looking for an opportunity to grab the Bronco. Shipp sees O.J. go out to the Bronco, cut himself in there ("Shit!" Shipp might hear O.J. exclaim as he then sucks on the wound to his left hand), and drip blood in the Bronco and all the way back into the house. All Shipp needs to do is sop up some of those blood drops into a paper towel or handkerchief, add a little water when he's ready to use it, and re-drip the blood back onto the walkway at Bundy, on the side of the footprints which corresponded to the hand he saw O.J. tending to after wounding himself. He can then use the residual blood on the paper towel or handkerchief to rub O.J.'s blood on the back gate and inside the Bronco itself.

On page 10 of the Pocket Books paperback edition of Sheila

Additional Questions

Weller's book, Raging Heart, Weller describes "Leo" (later admitted to as Ron Shipp) driving over to Rockingham on June 13, 1994. Weller's interview with Shipp occurred within weeks of the murders.

Weller writes, "Driving over to Rockingham this evening, Leo said to himself, 'I hope he doesn't have a wound on his hand. And I hope he doesn't want to get me in a corner and ask me questions.' When Leo saw the Band-Aid on the middle finger of his friend's hand, the first tiny alarm bell went off in his mind."

Now this is very interesting. By Ron Shipp's account to Sheila Weller, even before Ron Shipp has supposedly learned of any evidence in the casehe's never been at either the Bundy or Rockingham crime scenes, nor does he know what if anything was in the Broncohe's wondering about O.J. having cut his hand. Not his lip, or his arm, or his leg, just his hand.

Now there's a "coincidence" for you.

Shipp's supposed advance worry about O.J. having a "wounded hand" amounts to Shipp telling Weller that he had had a precognition about a wound to Simpson's hand.

Either Shipp is a psychic, or the most specific guesser in human history, or he is lying to Weller about having had to "worry" about a possible wound to O.J.'s hand before he saw it.

If Shipp already knew about the wound to Simpson's hand from having learned about it before the murders, then he had the specific knowledge necessary to frame the blood drops to the left of the footprints at Bundy.

When Shipp called Rockingham the morning of the 13th, he got Mark Fuhrman on the phone, and by Fuhrman's statements in Murder In Brentwood, Fuhrman refused to tell Shipp anything more than that Nicole had been murdered. So unless Fuhrman is lying about this point (and to what purpose?), Fuhrman is not the source of any advance knowledge Shipp might have regarding a wound to Simpson's hand.

But even if Shipp had been told about the wound to Simpson's

The Frame of the Century?

hand by some source who saw O.J. when he returned from Chicagosuch as someone at Parker Center or a member of Simpson's familywe need to ask why Shipp would be making up a story two weeks later for Weller, in which Shipp says that he didn't know about the wound already but was worried that there might be one. Even Shipp's statement that he had worried about a wound to O.J.'s hand is far too specific for what was known at that moment in time, before any identification of the blood evidence had been done.

Now, let's consider why Shipp would be telling Weller that, on the way over to Rockingham that evening, he was already thinking about a possible wound to Simpson's hand.

Someone who had seen Simpson's hand since O.J.'s leaving the hotel room in Chicago could have told Shipp about Simpson's woundbut then Shipp is lying to Weller about having hoped Simpson didn't have a wound. If Shipp was told by someone at Parker Center about the examination made of Simpson's wounded hand, then Shipp wouldn't be hoping Simpson didn't have a wound; he would already know Simpson did have a wound and hope about it would be excluded and irrelevant.

But even if we postulate that some other cops had been talking to Shipp about the crime scene evidence, doesn't this still indicate that Shipp already knew that O.J. had a cut hand before any of the blood drops had been analyzed and found to be evidence of a bleeding hand, much less O.J. Simpson's? If someone had told Shipp about what was found at the Bundy crime scene, then why wouldn't Shipp be hoping that Simpson didn't have cuts or bruises on his face or arms from a death struggle with Ron Goldman? Goldman's defense wounds were much grosser crime-scene evidence to detectives and criminalists than five or six as-yet-unidentified blood drops at the crime scene would beblood drops that on the evening of June 13, 1994, before any blood analysis had been done, could have easily been assumed to belong to one of the victims.

Additional Questions

Perhaps Sheila Weller's unpublished notes of her interviews with Shipp would answer these questionsif Weller decides to share them with the public when my questions gain wider interest.

Interestingly, on the night that I delivered a copy of the manuscript of The Frame of the Century? to Ron Shipp's house for the first time, I noticed some of my own blood on the white envelope, but did not recall when I'd cut my hand.

You can, indeed, bleed without being able to account for it.

In any event, I do not regard the question of the "coincidence" of O.J.'s having a cut on his hand that makes him look guilty conclusive, since I, for one, think that things do not necessarily happen by random chance and can be calculated as likely or not merely by figuring the odds. Human behavior does not happen randomly. Read what writers such as Robert Anton Wilson say about synchronicity versus coincidence.

The same correspondent asks:

One more thing. On page 38 of your book you say:

"The fan is seen by a limo driver waiting to drive the celebrity to the airport as the fan crosses the lawn of the celebrity's estate."

This is not supportable since Simpson, himself, admitted both in a T.V. interview and in his testimony/deposition at the civil trial that he was the person Park saw entering the house at 10:55 PM on the night of 6/12/94.

Well, I consider that O.J. is simply guessing what Allan Park saw at any given moment. Since Simpson is not considering, as I have, that a second black man dressed in black would have been at Rockingham the night of the murders, O.J. can only conclude that whatever the limo driver saw must have been himself bringing his bags outso that's the way he would explain it, to himself and others.

But on Page 90 of the hardcover edition of Marc Eliot's Kato Kaelin: The Whole Truth, based on 17 hours of Kato's taped conversations with Eliot for a book collaboration that was never

The Frame of the Century?

published, Eliot writes, "The office [adjoining Kato's guest room] is on the other side of a set of double doors that lead to the main house, which can only be unlocked from O.J.'s side. When Kato turned on the office lights he couldn't help but see how eerie the reflection was through the window. Again he felt uneasy. If anyone were outside, how hard would it be for them to look in?"

This statement refers to a time about a half hour before the three thumps outside Kato's room. Kato recounts to Marc Eliot his already having had a sense of someone around outside.

Human intuitionhunchesdo not have to be based on paranormal senses. Hearing a rustling outside on an otherwise silent night, or seeing shadows moving in a pattern the brain subliminally recollects as human movement, could bring about such a feeling. The apprehension that one is being watched, when one does not know whom the watcher is, is not all that unusual, and can properly be regarded as an indication to be taken into account for our investigation.

But there is another indication that someone else may have been at Rockingham that night.

Earlier that evening, Kato had asked Simpson if he could use Simpson's Jacuzzi. O.J. had given permission, told him how to work the jet controls, and Kato had done so. Later, O.J. Simpson had come to Kato's room to tell Kato that he'd left the jets of the Jacuzzi on. Kato is embarrassed. But, in both his trial testimony and his deposition for the civil trial, Kato says that he thought he had turned the Jacuzzi jets off.

Perhaps he had turned them off, and someone else had turned them back on, perhaps to create a white noise so he wouldn't be detected.

I suggest it's possible that whatever sightings there might have been that nightby either Kato or limo driver Allan Parkof a black man in dark clothes walking around O.J's Rockingham property, could have been Ron Shipp, either preparing for, or back from, the murders at Bundy.

Additional Questions

Is there any confirmation of O.J. rejecting Shipp's companionship, and of Shipp having access to O.J.'s house and property, other than O.J.'s own deposition?

Yes.

From Marc Eliot's Kato Kaelin: The Whole Truth, page 239:

Ron Shipp was an ex-cop who used to visit the house quite often with friends to play tennis. Sometimes Ron would be on the tennis court with three friends, and O.J. nowhere in sight. "He was always friendly to me," Kato said, "but I know his hanging around bothered O.J. Toward the end, whenever Shipp would show up, O.J. would look at Kato, raise his eyes to the sky, and say, "Oh, no, Ron's here again. I need to talk to him about this."

Shipp got to know the ins and outs of the house. He discovered, for example, that the Ashford gate had a latch that could be opened from the outside. Kato often used it to let himself in when he'd come home late. He preferred using this method because the Rockingham gate worked electronically and it had a slow lumbering motion, which meant having to wait until it opened completely, and then completely shut. On a cold night, with O.J.'s dog barking at his feet, it wasn't the most pleasant way to pass five or ten minutes.

Note that O.J.'s deposition for the civil trial began January 21, 1996, while Marc Elliot's book was published seven months earlier, in June, 1995. This information, documented by Marc Elliot, could not have been derived from O.J.'s deposition, which did not yet exist, and was the first time O.J. had talked about Ron Shipp publicly since June 13, 1994. Nor does Kato, who tells Eliot that he believes Simpson is guilty, have any reason to make anything up about Simpson's relationship with Shipp.

From an exchange of postings in alt.fan.oj-simpson. In a message of May 25, 1997, "Clio" asked:

The Frame of the Century?

[W]hy would Shipp murder Nicole, especially considering the allegation that he had a crush on her? Wouldn't he have been more likely to kill O.J.?

My reply:

The question of motivation for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman asks for speculation, whether one regards the murderer as O.J. Simpson oras I askRon Shipp. Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden, in their prosecution of Simpson, went to a great deal of effort to establish a pattern of domestic abuse and stalking in their attempt to prove that Simpson had a likely intent to murder Nicole, but even they were never able to come up with more than the barest speculations about what might have been going through O.J.'s mind that would have led him to commit murder.

Nor is motive one of the elements of the crime of murder that a prosecutor has to prove under California criminal law. Only the intent to commit the murder has to be proved.

The question of what could have created an intent in Ron Shipp to murder Nicole is one I speculate on at length. To me, the failures in his lifehis being forced to leave the L.A.P.D. for alcoholism and possible other substance abuse, his failure at starting his own security firm, and ending up in a run-of-the-mill job working for a property management company, which might seem a major come-down for a former L.A.P.D. copcreate a fertile field in which the seeds of frustration and jealousy might grow. And, who better than O.J. Simpson, his hero, for Shipp to become jealous of? O.J. must have seemed to Shipp to be the luckiest bastard on the face of the earth: rich, surrounded by beautiful women at his beck and calland, perhaps, in Shipp's eyes, not worthy of all the blessings that had been bestowed on him.

As for why Shipp might kill Nicole rather than O.J., well, that can get complicated. Clio's question is on point. In common stalking behavior, it is the rival of the love object who is often the target of violence, rather than the love object herselfor himself.

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I believe Ron Shipp's primary attachment was to O.J. Simpson, not to Nicole. Ron Shipp had, as stated in his own sworn testimony, idolized O.J. Simpson for years, whether or not that idolization was expressed homoeroticallywhich, considering O.J.'s homophobia caused by his father being homosexual, would have been particularly confronting to Shipp if any of his feelings toward O.J. were homoerotic. I believe any interest Shipp would have developed in Nicole would likely have been as a consequence of his feelings for O.J.perhaps to prove that he was up to scoring with his hero's woman. Or, alternatively, it conceivably could have been a psychologically acceptable way to actualize his own inexpressible homoerotic feelings toward Simpson.

One friend of mine, an award-winning novelist, suggested when I showed him the excerpt from Simpson's civil deposition with O.J.'s account of Shipp's visit to Rockingham with what O.J. said Shipp had declared a "blond Nicole type," that perhaps it was in Shipp's mind to create a menage a troisbehavior indicating, perhaps, repressed homoerotic desires. I doubt very much that either of the other two persons involvedSimpson or Madiganwould have had anything to do with such a plan, or even necessarily perceived the intent, because who ever really knows what goes on in the hidden recesses of a person's mind?

In any event, if Shipp had, at some point, made a pass at Nicole and been rejected by herat the same time that O.J. was trying to get him to stop coming around to the Rockingham house so muchthen the psychological basis for using Nicole as a means of punishing O.J. for being dissed would be in place.

I emphasize again that this is speculation.

But so is what the prosecution asserted were O.J. Simpson's motives.

In a letter of Friday, 23 May 1997,

an attorney I correspond with wrote:

The Frame of the Century?

NeilRead your O.J. piece, it was interesting. Unfortunately you have no evidence to back up your theory, just damn good speculation. Too bad the newspapers are not interested. [D]id you consider, while formulating your hypothesis, the revelations of the civil trial? By that I mean instances when O.J. was caught lyingabout peripheral matters, to be surebut nevertheless relevant, like whether or not he ever had those darn shoes (based on the pictures introduced into evidence, I understand that he in fact did, while he denied it). You may know much more about it than I, since I tuned out long time ago.

My reply:

Re. the "ugly ass" shoes. Bruno Magli made more than one style of loafers. O.J. was asked only about the ones he supposedly wore in the photographs introduced at the civil trial, which may turn out to have been faked using computer retouching. But this doesn't mean that O.J. didn't own some other style of Bruno Maglis, which had the sole print found at the Bundy crime scene-shoes that Ron Shipp could have swiped from among the other 40 pairs of shoes found in O.J.'s closet by the L.A.P.D. detectives searching his bedroom.

Even O.J. says, in his deposition for the civil trial, that he doesn't know whether he ever owned a pair of Bruno Magli loafers or not since the only footwear of which he says he ever paid attention to the brand were athletic shoes.

You know, I believe him. If you asked me the brand name of any shoes I've ever bought, I wouldn't know, either. Men are just that way.

So, I don't consider this a lie or a contradiction on O.J.'s part.

Some of the comments in the news group I've noticed have not been designed to promote an exchange of ideas, but merely to insult anyone who stands against the common viewpoint that O.J. Simpson is guilty.

One such comment, posted in alt.fan.oj-simpson on

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May 23, 1997 by John Griffin, responded to my offer for a free download of my book as follows:

This is one of the few occasions when you can get exactly your money's worth.

To which I responded:

This is interesting. I write a book in which I use the prosecution's own evidence to come to a different possible murderer, and take the position that those who have been asserting that O.J. Simpson was a victim of a conspiracy, are wrong and the only people who want to insult me (without first reading my book) are those who believe Simpson guilty.

Griffin responded to my comments in email, but his letter merely engaged in more scattershot ad hominem, without responding to anything substantive I'd written, and I assumed he wasn't worth responding to again.

But I was wrong twice. Later on, Griffin did make some substantive comments that I found worth responding to and it didn't take more than a few days for me to start getting insults from the other side, too.

Sometimes hostile comments turn into interesting exchanges. In a comment of May 24, 1997 in the news groups alt.fan.oj-simpson, alt.crime, and alt.true-crime, where I'd posted a notice regarding my book, "Jim" wrote from New Zealand:

Ridiculous pap. Obviously he committed the crime. This is just another example of more people without scruples cashing in on a terrible double murder. It's about time someone wrote a book about all these vultures.

I replied, in the news groups:

Now there's an open mind for you.

Excuse me, but you are not God. You do not know what hap

The Frame of the Century?

pened. All you can do is what any other human being can do: reconstruct what happened by collecting available facts and creating a pattern of those facts which are then made into a story.

This is what a prosecutor does during a trial.

I have done the same thing, onlyusing the prosecution's own set of factsI come to a different possible conclusion.

If you had read my bookwhich you can do at absolutely no profit to me by downloading it from the web, where I have posted it for freeyou would know that I openly acknowledge the desire for profit and recognition as one of the reasons a writer writes anything. But I also ask the reader to understand that a writer's motivations canand in this case didalso contain the motivations of seeking out truth and justice.

You are free to sneer at my motivations. But I suggest that a little humility, rather than the hubris of unwarranted certainty, is a more appropriate way to approach human affairs.

Interestingly, my comments hit home. I received the following letter in private email:

Hi,

I'm amazed you responded. Thanks for the restraint you showed.

I'm sorry if I offended you. Your book may well be a very good read, but I am concerned about the fact that two murder victims are making a lot of people an awful lot of money. That is not right.

Tell me: do you know for sure who your mother is? Do you think that is open to doubt? All you have to go on is what other people have told you about it. But you do know, don't you? (Unless you are adopted).

I suspect you have absolutely no doubt that O.J. did it. I suspect virtually every other writer who has cashed in on this case knows that too. What will the next angle be? A Martian did it? Manson slipped out of jail for the night and did it?

I am sick of all these books, sick of people making money out of these deaths. Even members of the dead woman's family have cashed in on it.

Thank God I am not an American and don't live in the US. Your society is warped. But someone like you, living there, probably cannot see that.

One final thing: when the murders took place I did not entertain for a

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second the notion O.J. might be involved. I was an O.J. admirer. In fact I thought he was a lovely chap, a genuinely nice guy despite his fame and wealth. When the police investigation started to focus on him I thought they had it horribly wrong. But, undoubtedly, they were right.

He did it. I know he did it, just as surely as I know who my mother is.

Jim

I replied, in email:

Jim,

I live a ten-minute drive from where the murders at Bundy occurredand that address is a two-minute drive from my ex-wife's house.

That makes it a story of neighborhood interest to a writer such as myself.

I'm not going to debate my parentage with you, or yours for that matter. But I will suggest that your epistemology needs some work. Whatever you know about the Simpson case is at many removes from what happened. You have had multiple layers of filtering on the information you've received. I suggest that the intelligence community ratings on information might come in useful to you in evaluating whatever you've heard:

RELIABILITYSOURCE ACCURACYINFORMATION

Completely reliable A 1 Confirmed by other sources

Usually reliable B 2 Probably true

Fairly reliable C 3 Possibly true

Not usually reliable D 4 Doubtfully true

Unreliable E 5 Improbable

Reliability can't be judged F 6 Truth can't be judged

I suggest that any information you've gotten through news sourcesand a good deal of what was claimed to be news in the Simpson case was nothing more than rumors and conjecturewould have an intelligence rating no better than B3, and more likely D4. This leaves us with the physical evidence in the case,

The Frame of the Century?

which I've dealt with in my book.

Jim replied in email the same day:

Neil, I am a journalist and had such a crime taken place in my neighbourhood then I admit that I, too, would have been intrigued by it.

But in all honesty I do not find it credible that any reasonable person might still argue for Simpson. He is guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

Your reasoning seems to be that, unless the murderer is seen by 100 witnesses to pump six rounds into a victim then there must always be an atom of doubt. I can't buy that. Not in this case.

A reasonable person would say Simpson is guilty. Sufficient evidence tells us that, in fact screams it out.

Do you honestly believe there is a possibility he is innocent? (And, frankly, I expect you will find a reason not to answer 'yes' or 'no' to thisbut perhaps that's the cynical journo in me coming out).

I have seen enough on this case to last me a lifetime but I will try to download your book. However, my PC is several years old and extremely slow so I make be taking on an impossible mission.

Good luck, Jim.

To which I replied:

Jim,

Yes, I think Simpson is innocent. For a long time the physical evidence confounded me, because it contradicted the many other indications of innocence I was perceiving. That contradiction created cognitive dissonance that wouldn't go away until this past February I was finally able to account for the physical evidence. My reasons for thinking him innocent are documented in my book.

I'm not saying Simpson couldn't be guilty. I just think there's more than a reasonable doubt, now, that he is.

I look forward to hearing from you after you've read my book.

Neil

I find, in reading back, that Jim made several comments I want

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to answer more completely.

Jim said, "[Simpson] is guilty beyond reasonable doubt."

That is the standard of proof in American criminal trials, and in this particular criminal trial, the jury (whatever we think of their cognitive methods) decided that such a reasonable doubt did exist: they acquitted Simpson. Under American jurisprudence, reasonable doubt of guilt, stated in a verdict of "not guilty," has been established in the Simpson case as a matter of law. Since criminal trials in California don't allow a distinction between "not proven" and "innocent," as Scottish courts do, we may even assert that the jury found Simpson legally innocent of the charges against him.

Jim also said, "Your reasoning seems to be that, unless the murderer is seen by 100 witnesses to pump six rounds into a victim then there must always be an atom of doubt. I can't buy that. Not in this case. A reasonable person would say Simpson is guilty. Sufficient evidence tells us that, in fact screams it out."

Of course I disagree, since I have doubts about Simpson's guilt which I think are reasonable. But my main point is that one needs to eliminate possible-in-the-real-world scenarios that suggest evidence could have been manufactured by someone with opportunity and possible motive before deciding "beyond a reasonable doubt" that incriminatory evidence found at a crime scene is enough to convict. I agree that merely suggesting a conspiracy by unknown persons would not be enough to establish reasonable doubt.

But, unlike the defense in the Simpson case, I've been investigating a specific person whom I believe had the opportunity and a possible motive to do it.

I think the prosecution did a pretty good job in defeating the defense's claims that the frame-up of O.J. Simpson could have been engineered after the murders at Bundy were committed. But neither the defense nor the prosecution ever addressed the question I raise about the possibility that an individual exists

The Frame of the Century?

with the skills, the access, some physical characteristics shared with Simpson, and a possible motive for framing Simpson for the murders at the very time they were committed, before the police even got there.

That, in my view, makes doubt about Simpson's guilt more than reasonable.

Finally, I received letters from several correspondents who believed O.J. Simpson innocent, and Ron Shipp a possible suspect, but they still believed a conspiracy was at work, involving either or both Mark Fuhrman and Kato Kaelin. Representative of that viewpoint was the following letter, sent to me in private email on

May 24, 1997. I've inserted my comments.

Dear Mr. Schulman,

I have just finished reading your book and agree with your account of these murders. I must say that I also picked up on Shipp from the very beginning. I believe if you add Mark Fuhrman to this you will find answers where there weren't any before. He was also obsessed with Nicole since his first encounter in 1985. His assistance would have come the next day to ensure the early morning visit to Mr. Simpson's residence. One might also venture he assisted in the murders since he has been shown to have lied about his whereabouts the night of the murders.

My reply:

I'm aware of comments that suggest Mark Fuhrman was interested in Nicole, but I do not use them to propose Fuhrman as involved in the frame-up of O.J. because I don't see it as likely that racist hatred of O.J. Simpson would motivate him to collaborate on a hate crime with a black man such as Shipp as a partner. Further, without Shipp, Fuhrman could not obtain the items necessary to frame O.J. This eliminates Fuhrman, in my view, from any role in my theory.

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The letter continues:

I cannot tell you how glad I am that another person has come up with this solution. I am no writer so I simply told people around me. I wouldn't let Kato Kaelin off the hook either. His living on O.J.'s estate was most helpful to the killers.

My reply:

No available evidence indicates to me that Kato was involved in a conspiracy of any sort. And, again, while Kato would have had access to O.J.'s house, he would not have the law-enforcement skills to be able to frame O.J.

It is the nexus of facts that Ron Shipp had access to both O.J. and Nicole, and a body of needed skills, that suggests him to me as a possible suspect. No other individual whose name has been brought into the case, or any other individual I'm aware of from my investigation, fits into both these categories-and Shipp would not have needed anyone else to have done what I suggest and would likely have had to have avoided any additional persons as conspirators because they might eventually turn state's evidence against him in any potential prosecution.

I think, if he did it, he did it alone.

The letter makes its final point:

Shipp would have to have had help committing these murders because of the fight put up by Ron Goldman.

My answer:

I don't agree. I think he would have been athletically fit enough to win a knife fight against an unarmed opponent.

The tool of logic called Occam's Razor cautions us to prefer that explanation which uses fewer, rather than more, elements. I don't want to leave Occam's Razor too many steps behind. I have been motivated by O.J. Simpson's consistent claims of innocence, supported by demeanor evidence, to postulate that one

The Frame of the Century?

individual with means, opportunity, and possible motive could have committed the murders and framed Simpson for them. That gives us one more element than the theory that Simpson himself committed the murders. I don't want to add any further elements to the theory of a frame-up that aren't warranted by the available evidence.JNS

A correspondent with an Islamic sounding name wrote me an extensive email letter on May 25, 1997, agreeing with me about Simpson's innocence, but disagreeing with my specific theories of the murders and frame-up. I'll excerpt and answer what I consider the most relevant parts.

Mr. Schulman:

After reading The Frame of the Century? I would conclude that it's very much so possible to believe that Ron Shipp committed the murders, especially since no one, as yet, has come forward with any eyewitness testimony. Although your overall theory that Ron Shipp did the murders and frame up is extremely tantalizing to one's intellectual juices, there are a couple of facts in this case that cause me to lay aside Ron Shipp as one who would have committed the crime but was beaten to the punch by stronger, more formidable conspirators.

1.)Simply put, it would have taken more than one person to lure Nicole out of the house and to the point of her attack.

Nicole knew Ron Shipp, and apparently trusted him. He would have had no difficulty getting her to come outside merely by ringing the bell and speaking to her on the intercom.

More than one person had to contain Goldmanregardless of who was killed first. Only the element of surprise, and shock, would preclude the victims from making a sound loud enough to be heard.

I believe it's possible that the killer murdered Nicole first, and Goldman arrived when she was already at least unconscious.

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Someone had to open the front gate for Goldman to get in, and at the same time be in complete control of two people, simultaneously.

It's easy for me to postulate that Shipp parked the Bronco in back of the house then came around to the front gate where he rang Nicole's bell. Leaving the gate unlatched might have been an oversight, or he might have left the gate unlatched for some other reason, such as to observe Bundy, and he did not re-latch it.

2.) If you bring out the evidence by Simpson that someone left his door open, and a cryptic message on his answering machine, then you must also mention the evidence by Simpson of his encounter with the Oriental guys on the Santa Monica Freeway, weeks before the murders, where they attempt to intimidate him by refusing to let him pass. This incident upset Simpson enough for him to get himself a gun, and put him in a worried and concerned state of mind.

The encounter with Asians you mention is interesting, but it does not necessarily become part of the Brown-Goldman murder case unless a link can be established. There is none I can find so far.

3.) If you mention that Jill Shively saw someone she thought was O.J. Simpson almost run her over, then you must also include that Mary Anne Gerchas would have testified that she saw four men in front of the Bundy residence during the time of the murders. Also, to complete the seeming circle of evidence pointing to more than one person committing the murders, Rosa Lopez would have testified that she heard men in the back of Mr. Simpson's property after he left for the LAX.

I mention Shively only because she would have been a witness for the prosecution. It's my job to account for evidence presented against Simpson, not evidence presented by his defense, which may prove to be irrelevant to the corpus delicti of the crime.

The Frame of the Century?

4.) You mentioned that Goldman could have yelled out, "hey, hey, hey," when he came upon Shipp murdering Nicole, but I ask you to consider this. As I said before, my understanding is that Nicole's front gate was closed and locked, with some sort of damage to it that required someone to have to open it from the inside. In that case, Nicole came out of her house to let Goldman in? Maybe she never made it to the gate to let him in, while at the same time, somebody more than gladly did let him in?

We can only speculate on the order of events at Bundy, so this is not a part of the corpus delicti of the crime I need to deal with. In any case, I suggest that the gate could have been left unlatched from someone coming in earlier.

5.) Robert Heidstra testified that he saw a vehicle turning left (away from Rockingham)! Why, if it was Shipp, would he go that way under the time constraints that he would have been under?

There are streets in both directions that could be turned onto to get back to Sunset Boulevard, the way back to Rockingham. It might simply have been the direction the car he drove was parkedand the same would be true if Simpson were the murderer.

Mr. Schulman, I am a believer in the exposition entitled, Blood Oath: The Conspiracy To Murder Nicole Brown Simpson, by Steven Worth. I don't know if you are familiar with his work in this case, but he says that he was contacted by one of the alleged conspirators who decided to come forth (albeit by phone only) and tell what really happened that night.

On my part, after reading the book, considering how the author came about his information, and from what I have been observing throughout the entire case, now including your theory, my personal opinion (which may not mean muchI'm just a common man) is that the ultimate murders grew from the same tree that produced the Alan Berg murder in 1984 in Denver, and more recently the Oklahoma City Bombing.

That requires a much more elaborate explanation for the murders at Bundy than is warranted by the evidence presented

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by both the prosecution and defense in the Simpson trial, and by the plaintiffs in the civil action. One does not multiply elements in an investigation without verifying each element independentlyand that's my general criticism of the theory that the Brown-Goldman murders required a conspiracy. If Shipp could have done it alone, and I think I've demonstrated that he could have, no conspiracy was necessary, so I don't feel it necessary to look for one.

Finally, I must say I liked the way you teased the readers as to who you felt committed the murders as you gradually revealed Ron Shipp as the culprit. But what I was most surprised about was who you didn't consider in your scenario. You make mention of the similarities of Shipp and Simpson, but what about Marcus Allen? He was sexually intimate (allegedly) with Nicole. He had what one could assume, a burning motivation to kill Nicole, namely, to protect his marriage and wife from finding out his exploits. And you mention similarities, well what about these:

O.J. Simpson Marcus Allen

Black and 6' 2" tall Black and 6' 2" tall

approx. 205 lbs. approx. 205 lbs.

interracial marriage interracial marriage

intimate with Nicole intimate with Nicole

wears size 12 shoe wears size 12 shoe

uniform no. 32 uniform no. 32

famous and wealthy famous and wealthy

Flight Out Of Lax That Night Flight Out Of Lax That Night

(supposed vacation?)

Who appears to be more of an O.J. clone and admirer than Marcus Allen?

If Marcus Allen had the abilities Ron Shipp had to do a professional frame-up of forensic evidence, then I would have looked at Marcus Allen as a suspect. It is the fact that Shipp fulfills the requirements of access to both Simpson and Nicole, and has the technical background to frame-up forensic evidence, that makes

The Frame of the Century?

him worthy of investigation. Marcus Allen doesn't fulfill those requirements to be considered since he wouldn't know what to do in order to make a frame-up of evidence convincing to detectives and prosecutors.

My correspondent then gave me a long list of questions which to his mind indicated a conspiracy.

I answered him, "I believe all your questions fall into areas I have examined in my book: either establishing the reasons why Simpson should be considered possibly innocent, or then looking for alternative explanations of the crime. But, any alternative explanation has to deal with the evidence as presented against Simpson, with as few additional elements as possible.

"Conspiracy theories make the mistake of multiplying elements. I've tried not to do that, and I believe, by eliminating a conspiracy as a likely answer to the Brown-Goldman murders, I have been able to identify the one person who all by himself could have accomplished both the frame-up and the murders themselves."

My correspondent followed up my response with additional comments and questions.

You say that Allan Park testifies that he sees a dark figure walking across Simpson's driveway. This is probably an oversight on your part, but Park never says that in his testimony. Clark asks him where does he first see the defendant, and he responds by saying (and pointing to the arrow on the map of Simpson's property) that the figure was at the point where the driveway starts and where Simpson's walkway leading to the front door ends, when he first saw him. It was Marcia Clark who then suggested, slyly, and added that the figure was walking across the driveway and into the house.

This question was raised by a previous correspondent. Remember that my object is to account for the most damaging possible interpretation of prosecution evidence against Simpson. If Marcia Clark is claiming that Allan Park might have seen Simpson from

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a point nearer to the lawn than he thought, then I have accounted for that possibility by pointing out that Park might have combined two different sightings (one of Simpson walking back into his house, one of a similarly dressed black man, Shipp, on the lawn) into one memory. If Park did not see anyone on the lawn, then there is no fault, because it does nothing to damage Simpson's innocence, nor does it damage my theory of Shipp as a possible framer/murderer.

Relying strictly on the evidence as presented at trial, Kato Kaelin heard the thumps on the back wall, and he realized someone was out there. But do you think it more likely to be Ron Shipp bumping and knocking around back there, possibly bringing attention to himself, or someone who didn't know the makeup of the area? Or who intentionally produced the bumps? I just can't shake or throw aside, or take lightly, in good faith (and I don't think anybody else looking for the truth should either) what Rosa Lopez, a mere next door neighbor (ordinarily, neighbors make good witnesses) said she heard. men talking. Sounds like conspiracy to me.

I think Shipp could have been back there to plant the glove and make noises so that Kato would later tell someone that someone was back there, so they could find the glove.

As far as Rosa Lopez's earwitness account of talking back there, she would have heard that for certain around 6:30 AM, when Fuhrman took others back there to show them the glove. If she heard this while she was asleep, she might have thought she heard this earlier as well, and projected her memory back in time by several hours. With an untrained observer, this sort of mis-witnessing is so common as to be an ordinary element considered in any police investigation.

I never believed Fuhrman planted the glove. I never believed Fuhrman planted anythingexcept the blood on the socksbut he [aggressively] not only threw Vannatter and Lange off course, but emphatically placed them on the wrong course towards Simpson.

The Frame of the Century?

Here's the thing. The question of whether blood was planted on the socks became an issue in court because Vannatter carried a tube of Simpson's reference sample blood back to Rockingham. But it was Nicole's blood, not Simpson's, that was identified on the socks, so Vannatter's actions, though quirky, become irrelevant to this question.

For Fuhrman to have planted Nicole's blood on the socks in Simpson's bedroom, Fuhrman would have had to have collected some of Nicole's blood from the Bundy crime scene before proceeding to Rockingham. But, when would Fuhrman have had the opportunity to do so, with a dozen other officers protecting the crime scene from tampering before Fuhrman even got there? None of the cross-examination by the defense ever established such an opportunity, so I eliminate Fuhrman as a single actor capable of having done that.

Now, once the blood samples are collected by the criminalists and returned to L.A.P.D.'s Scientific Investigations Division, Fuhrman is completely out of the loop, since he works at West L.A. Division, and wouldn't have access codes at S.I.D. So, we are left with Vannatter and Lange, as detectives, and L.A.P.D. technical staff, dealing with the blood at that pointand while they may have made mistakes, I can't find any likely motive why they would have participated in a conspiracy to frame Simpson at an early point. Later, when their incentives for finding incriminatory evidence against Simpson are higher, because their reputations are on the line, the samples are already at the California Department of Justice and Cellmark Diagnostics labs being analyzedand the window of opportunity for them to tamper is long gone.

Mr. Schulman, I really don't think we disagree too much, except to say you believe Shipp pulled it off alone, and you want to stay away from conspiracies without linking proof of one, which is fair. But Ron Shipp was a loser. He failed eventually in everything he tried to do with success. To say, after that track record, that he pulled off the "Frame of the Century"

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may be giving him more credit than he deserves. I don't know. But I wish you well in your continued investigation of this matter and if it turns out that you're right, then you deserve all the good that comes to you.

Shipp served for fifteen years on the L.A.P.D. before leaving because of personal problems. He had a problem with alcoholism, but judging from his appearance on the witness stand, and in interviews, and in my one encounter with him, he appears capable of well-reasoned action and decisive action while sober. Just because a person has chronic failures does not mean that he is incapable of success in all instances. It is the very fact that the high standards in law enforcement require consistent alertness which might have been Shipp's downfall. It does not mean that he had to be usually incompetent; he probably was competent 99% or more of the time regardless of any problems. It's that 1% or less of the time that he might have engaged in actions while impaired that would have caused life failuresbut that is a different question than testing his competence to take action when he was determined and sober.JNS

What is J. Neil Schulman's alibi

for the night of June 12, 1994?

A few days ago, a writer friend of mine who believes that O.J. Simpson is guilty, thought I was being unreasonable in asking Ron Shipp to provide an alibi for the night of June 12, 1994, three years later. "Do you remember where you were at the time of the murders?" he asked me.

"I know it was right in the middle of promoting my book, Stopping Power, which had just come out," I said. "But where I was precisely the night of June 12, 1994? I don't remember."

"My point exactly," my friend said.

Was I being unfair? I hadn't had one of my close friends murdered that night, in an incident that tended to freeze a moment

The Frame of the Century?

in time as graphically as the JFK assassination, so perhaps I have no specific reason to remember that night or wonder where I was at the time. I certainly had no idea that I would ever be writing about those murders.

But I wanted to find out anyway. So, on May 26, 1997, Memorial Day, when I had a spare moment, I dug out my tax records from 1994, which included credit-card bills, cancelled checks, and phone bills, as well as merchant batch deposits for my bookselling business. I also checked my computer for any files or messages that were stored in my hard drive, with file dates in June, 1994.

I found no checks I'd written on Sunday, June 12, 1994. I found no credit-card records that I'd purchased anything on June 12, 1994. I batch-deposited no credit-card merchant sales on June 12, 1994. I found no computer messages from June 12, 1994.

According to my L.A. Cellular phone bill of June 23, 1994, I made one call from my cellular phone on June 12, 1994, at 1:06 PM. It was to my ex-wife's number and I was charged for one minute. It was not a roam call, so I knew I was in my home area, rather than out of town that weekend, promoting my new book.

Then I checked my home phone bill.

Bingo.

My Pacific Bell telephone bill dated July 4, 1994 (I guess Pacific Bell doesn't allow its computers time off to celebrate American Independence Day) includes calls for June 12, 1994. Five calls I made that day were outside my free calling area, and generated billing records, either AT&T long distance, or Pacific Bell local long distance.

At 9:45 AM, I called my parents in Texas, an AT&T call. The call lasted 17 minutes and I was charged $2.38 at direct-dial weekend (night) rates.

At 5:13 PM, I called friends in Massachusetts, another AT&T call. The call lasted 14 minutes, and I was charged another $2.38, this time at direct-dial evening rates.

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At 5:27 PM, I called Gary Kleck, Ph.D., a criminologist who had advised me on technical matters for Stopping Power, at his home in Tallahassee, Florida. The call lasted two minutes and I was charged $0.34 at direct-dial evening rates.

At 10:26 PM, I made a call to Canoga Park, local long distance. The number is no longer in my files, so I called it today and the message phone that answered was not a name I recognized. But I was connected to this number for seven minutes and Pacific Bell charged me $.40 at direct-dial night rates. I also called this same number at 6:07 PM two days earlier, and was connected for three minutes and charged $.033 at direct-dial evening rates.

My final call for June 12, 1994 is a Pacific Bell call at 10:39 PM. The number I called is 818-403-0399. I was connected for two minutes and charged $0.14 at direct-dial night rates. I don't mind giving out that number because it's the public dial-up computer bulletin-board line for The Bullet Box, a Second Amendment rights BBS operated by my friend, Dan Feely. I have a bunch of other calls to that phone number on the same bill, all lasting between two and three minutes. That's how long it took my computer back then to dial into the board and exchange pre-compressed Tomcat message packets.

The software on my computer was a shareware version of Procomm Plus. It didn't allow for automatic timed call-ins to BBS's to pick-up messages. I had to be home to do it manually.

So, at the approximate time of the Brown-Goldman murders across town, I was at home, at my desk, downloading, and possibly uploading, computer messages.

I was able to find out where I was that night within about a half hour's looking.

Oh, and one more thing.

My shoe size is 10-1/2 Wide and I couldn't win a knife fight if you tied my opponent's hands behind his back.

The Frame of the Century?

Addendum, May 30, 1997

I can now tell you precisely what I was doing the Sunday of the Brown-Goldman murders, and whom I was on the phone with for seven minutes beginning at 10:26 PM that night, during the precise period of the murders.

As I said, if you read up a few paragraphs, I no longer had this number in my personal phone book and did not remember making either of the two phone calls to that number that weekend, almost three years ago.

But I'm a persistent son of a bitch, and don't like to leave mysteries unsolved. Also, when I told my friend about my "alibi" computer call to Dan Feely's computer bulletin-board, my friend said, "Someone else could have been using your computer. It's a weak alibi."

So I called Pacific Bell today and asked if the number on my bill was owned by the same party who'd owned it on June 12, 1994 when I got my bill. Pacific Bell said yes. That person, whose name I did not recognize, was, according both to the outgoing phone message I'd gotten when I first called and Pacific Bell, is Loni Specter.

So I called Loni Specter at 9:30 or so this morning.

I may not have remembered Loni Specter. But Loni Specter remembered me.

Loni Specter was the entrepreneur who had organized the Home/Auto/Personal Security (HAPS) Expo held at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles the weekend of June 10-12, 1994. A week earlier, Loni had called me to participate in a debate on gun-control to be held during the Expo, and the two of us had tried to find someone representing a pro-gun-control position to debate me. Loni reminded me that we had tried to get Gloria Allred to debate me, but she wanted too much money. Ironically, not long after that, Allred ended up as a counselor to the Brown family, and spent a good deal of her KABC radio program attacking O.J. Simpson's claims of innocence.

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Since Loni and I couldn't get anyone to debate me, I ended up doing two seminars, Saturday June 11, 1994, and Sunday June 12, 1994, at the HAPS Expo at the Century Plaza Hotel. There weren't very many attendees at the HAPS Expo despite heavy advertising on KABC; but lots of police officers, security personnel, and safety equipment salespeople in attendance at the Expo would remember seeing me there on both days, including writer, self-defense-instructor, and now KMPC talk-show host, Paxton Quigley, whose Saturday seminar I attended at the HAPS Expo.

I can now pretty well reconstruct what I was doing Sunday, June 12, 1994.

I was home in the morning, phoning my parents. I went over to the HAPS Expo sometime in the late morning or early afternoon and gave my final seminar to a largely empty room, spent some time behind a table trying to sell copies of Stopping Power, spent some time chatting with Paxton Quigley, who'd cancelled her second seminar due to lack of attendance, and was home by late afternoon, when I telephoned friends in Massachusetts. I don't remember whether I went out again that evening, but I was home by 10:26 PM, when billing records show I called Loni, possibly returning a call from him on my machine, and likely to commiserate with Loni, for the duration of the seven-minute call, about the small attendance, which had caused him to lose a bundle on the event.

After I was done talking with Loni, I logged onto the Bullet Box BBS at 10:39 PM and downloaded the day's Tomcat message packet, which took about two minutes.

I wouldn't have been free until 10:41 PM to jump into my car, drive across town to 875 South Bundy, arriving about 10:55 PM, the time O.J. Simpson was seen by limo driver Allan Park, and also about the time that Nicole's neighbor Steven Schwab testified he found Nicole's Akita wandering on Bundy with bloody paws. That pretty well eliminates me as a suspect in drawing a woman I didn't know outside, at night, and then knifing to death

The Frame of the Century?

this unknown woman and another man I'd never even heard of.

Now, can Ron Shippwho was long-time friends with both the accused murderer and one of the victims, who wears the size shoe that made footprints in the victims' blood, who is more athletically capable of the crime than the man who was tried for them, who was coming uninvited onto the accused's property for weeks before the crime, who had a police background including undercover work and who had "a good working knowledge of forensics"account for his Sunday night, June 12, 1994, as I have done?

Another participant, also using the handle "Jim" in the news group alt.fan.oj-simpson, writing on May 25, 1997, posted the following message:

This guy admits that he formed an opinion of whether Simpson could have committed the murders based on a 10-second encounter with him in 1980 at a screening of The Empire Strikes Back. He claims that because Simpson told his son Jason to follow the advice of Yoda, he was raising his son with "strong values." From this he concludes that Simpson would not murder his wife 14 years later. Talk about being star struck!Jim

I replied in the news group:

Jim,

It's not being star struck. It's called a first impression. O.J. Simpson made a good one on me, on an occasion when he wasn't trying to put on a show for anyone.

But, I agree, that would be a rather thin basis to form an opinion, if that was all I had to go on.

Why don't you deal with the other 2,900 words I wrote on that topic?

Apparently, Jim was more than upset with me. On May 25, 1997, he posted the following message in three news groupsalt.fan.oj-simpson, alt.crime, and alt.true-crime:

Additional Questions

You base this theory on Ron Shipp not having an alibi. Yet you have no idea if he had an alibi or not. Because he was never asked if he had one by the principles in this case that is good enough for you to postulate that this man is guilty of a brutal double murder? If you were any kind of reputable journalist you would have made it your first priority to find out if he had an alibi or not. Since you did not even have the decency to do this before accusing a man of the most heinous of crimes you will get no respect from me (and I would hope other reasonable people) in this news group.Jim

I replied in the news groups:

Jim,

I spent three months trying to determine whether Ron Shipp had an alibi. Eliminating Ron Shipp as a potential suspect was the main question that propelled my investigation. I asked detectives at the Robbery/Homicide Division of the L.A.P.D.. I asked Simpson's lawyers and investigators. And, most importantly, I gave Ron Shipp the opportunity to prevent publication of The Frame of the Century? entirely by giving me any proof whatsoever that my theories were wrong. I provided Shipp with the penultimate draft of the manuscript, and both Shipp and his attorney, Robert McNeill, with the final draft of the manuscript.

I've recounted my offers to Shipp in the postscripts to The Frame of the Century?

I quoted my second letter to Ron Shipp.

This only seemed to upset Jim more. He replied in the news groups on May 27, 1997:

Ron Shipp has stated in a number of interviews that he has been the target of numerous crackpots who did not agree with his position in this case. He stated that he had even received death threats. Who do you think you are that any individual, much less one who has been harassed for the past several years, should have to explain their whereabouts for any time period to you? Frankly it is none of your business where he was. If you have evidence that he had no alibi, that is one thing, but to demand that someone provide you with their whereabouts, or you will label them a double murderer, is repulsive, and I would imagine actionable. I just hope I get to serve on the jury!Jim

The Frame of the Century?

I replied:

Jim,

Sure, I'm willing to answer your question-in front of a jury, if necessary.

In a polygraph examination, if necessary.

I have no way of making you believe my answer, but I'll give it to you anyway.

I agonized over the decision of whether or not to publish the fruits of my investigation. I consulted with other journalists with experience in these matters. I thought long and hard about the possible consequences, not only to Ron Shipp and his family, but also to my own family.

That goes with the territory of being human. You make choices.

I gave Shipp the chance to silence me from continuing to question his involvement in the Brown-Goldman murders, simply by proving to me that the pattern of his involvement that I was detecting was false. He chose to remain silent, as is his right. But the consequence of his standing on that right was made known to him in advance: that I would publish. I did.

Who am I to have investigated, theorized, and created scenarios about a homicide? I'm a guy who thinks a lot and feels a lot, that's who. I'm a guy who's willing to get involved. And, I have a gift of being able to express myself, which God has bestowed on me.

I could talk about the role of a free press in ferreting out truths which make people uncomfortable.

I could talk about the consequences of nobody ever daring to speak their minds unless their thoughts are officially sanctioned. Our current legal climate comes close to that, by intimidating major media organs from engaging in independent investigations of crimes that are not already being investigated by government agencies. That de facto policy is bad for a free society.

Before I published, I went to the police, to the D.A., and to the

Additional Questions

Los Angeles Times to let them do their job: find out if there was anything to my theories. They have the resources to verify or falsify my theories which no free-lance writer can have. They didn't do their job, so I published, in the hope that the attention to my theory will cause them to reconsider.

Now you, of course, are free to continue thinking I am wrong headed. I have no expectation that I will convince you that I did what I perceive to be necessary and good, a pursuit of truth and justice.

But those are my main reasons. I'm not saying personal interests didn't play a function also. I'm only human, subject to the usual temptations. But, you know, it will be God's job to judge me on those charges. And I'll accept the verdict from that court without protest.

Sincerely,

J. Neil Schulman

Also, on May 27, Jim posted the following in alt.fan.oj-simpson:

If anyone knows how to contact Mr. Shipp or his attorney Robert McNeill (apparently) I would appreciate the info. He should be informed that this "book" is being publicly distributed via the net.

If anyone in L.A. could get this information to Mr. Shipp or his attorney, I'm sure they would be interested.Jim

I replied, posting Robert McNeill's law office address and phone, then added:

"Of course, if you read my final postscript, then you already know that I delivered to McNeill's office a final draft of the manuscript before publication, to allow him to advise Ron Shipp on whether to respond to my offer not to publish if he proved to me that my theories were wrong."

On May 29, 1997, Jim replied in the news group:

Thank you for the information. While I don't agree with your methods and

The Frame of the Century?

approach to this publication, I do respect your honesty and forthrightness in dealing with me.

While I understand that you gave him a copy of the final draft, my concern is that he may not know that it is now publicly available. My intentions are to let him know it is, so he may take any action he deems necessary.Jim

As is only proper.

In the news groups alt.fan.oj-simpson, alt.crime,

alt.true-crime, "Bill" posted on May 26, 1997:

Perhaps in the next edition you could include at least one fact to support your theory that this fellow framed O.J Re-read it carefully and you will see that there isn't a single one here. Also missing are motive, means, and opportunity.

I must point out that, based on what is in the book, we can't rule out that the individual in question (I don't think it is fair to mention his name) was staying in the Lincoln Bedroom on the night in question, or even sleeping over at Judge Ito's.

Bill

I responded in the news groups:

Bill,

I have indeed established a possible motive, means, and opportunity. That statement makes me doubt that you actually read my book.

By a process of elimination, I am able to rule out, by logic alone, all but one man for having framed Simpson because no one else I'm aware of has all the following characteristics:

1) Wears the same size shoe as Simpson.

2) Would be physically similar enough to Simpson to be confused for him in a police line-up.

3) Had intimate knowledge of both Simpson and Nicole's lives and belongings.

4) Had proven repeated access to O.J.'s estate.

Additional Questions

5) Had a set of skills from 15 years on the L.A.P.D. necessary to be able to perpetrate a frame-up of forensic evidence.

6) Had a set of emotional characteristics consistent with a possible intent to commit the frame and the murders.

7) Declines to provide an alibi for the night of June 12, 1997.

That gets us a long way forward.

I have been able to find a few clues, mentioned in The Frame of the Century?, but I admit, they are not many, and they are not proof.

You ask for facts. Good. I want facts, too. But uncovering new facts usually requires the power of subpoena and search warrants.

I have been trying to get the police, or the D.A.'s office, to do such investigation necessary to prove or eliminate my theory since February 13, 1997and publishing my book is a means to that end.

Bill wrote back in email on May 26, 1997:

First, let me point out that I am not now, nor have I ever been, more than mildly interested in the O.J. extravaganza. I downloaded and read your book because of its revisionist theme only and had never even heard of Ron Shipp. So, I have no vested interest in either side of the O.J. debate. I am certain, though, that your premise is unsupported by any facts.[The list] is meaningless. If Shipp's shoe size were 10, one could merely suggest he wore size 12 shoes as part of the frame-up. If it were 13, he could have carried a shoe to the scene and planted the shoe print. If he wasn't at the scene, he could have made sure his hired killer wore size 12 shoes. If the only killer he could find wore size 8 shoes, he could have paid him to take a size 12 shoe to the scene, or hire a partner who wore size 12 shoes. Do you see what I'm getting at? As long as I am unencumbered by facts, I can suggest a dozen ways your suspect could have been responsible for the shoe print. The same goes for the rest of the list. Without evidence, it is all meaningless.

I wrote back:

The Frame of the Century?

Bill,

Sorry, your logic doesn't work. If Shipp wearing size 12 shoes is irrelevant, then O.J. Simpson's wearing size 12 shoes is equally irrelevant.

As for proof, we start with clues and indications, and try for proof. My object is to show that there is an uninvestigated person who passes the threshold requiring investigation.

In the news groups alt.fan.oj-simpson, alt.crime, and alt.true-crime, Joyce Roberts wrote on

May 26, 1997:

Mr. Schulman:

I really don't know why you wrote this book, or why you are offering it to us for a free download, but I suspect you dreamed up this angle on the case to attempt to jump on the O.J. gravy train.

I responded:

No, I dreamed it up for the same reason that Clyde Tombaugh discovered the planet Pluto. Gravitational irregularities in the orbit of Neptune suggested an additional, as yet unseen, body exerting an influence in Neptune's orbital path. Tombaugh pointed a telescope at where mathematics indicated such a body would have to be in order to affect Neptune's orbitand discovered a planet there, which was subsequently called Pluto.

I did the same thing. I'd previously defined certain facts that would have to be true if O.J. Simpson had not committed the murders at Bundy. The prosecution's evidence would have to be explained, without merely arguing that the police had planted it all, or were completely incompetent. Logic said that someone who could have accounted for the presence of such evidence would have to have certain characteristics.

I surprised even myself when an individual whose name was already associated with the Simpson criminal trial fulfilled all those characteristicsand then some.

Additional Questions

My continued investigation, attempting to eliminate this person as a potential suspect, instead kept finding clues and indications which made my suspicions grow even stronger.

My report on the procedures I went through in attempting to prove or disprove my theories, and what those procedures came up with, comprise the bulk of The Frame of the Century?

The posting continued:

You are, as they say, a day late and a dollar short with the Ron Shipp theory.

I responded:

I have to say I am at a loss to understand why people who post in news groups think no one who doesn't read their writings can possibly reach any conclusions without their help. I suppose reading criminal trial transcripts, depositions, doing personal interviews, digging through court records, and reading the books written by and about a case's participants doesn't count for anything.

This is around the fifth or sixth comment I've noticed suggesting that I am not the first to propose the Ron Shipp theory. That is not news to me. In my book, I point out that one of Simpson's civil attorneys, Dan Leonard, told me early in my investigation that Shipp had been a suspect from the beginning, and other books I read mentioned that Al Cowlings, Shirley and Benny Baker, and others thought Shipp was involved right from the beginning.

Bringing up Shipp's name as a possible suspect is not my unique contribution to this discussion. My unique contribution is putting some meat on the bones of the theory by showing why Ron Shipp is the only other person than Simpson who has all of the prerequisites to have been able to account for the physical evidence presented against Simpson in his two trials.

I've done something which, to the best of my knowledge, no

The Frame of the Century?