The Search for Justice (5 page)

After ending my discussion with Park, I then interviewed Kato Kaelin at Skip Taft ’s office. Kaelin, at first glance, looks
like the kind of person you ’d never want to be your witness; you ’d much rather have him appear for the other side. But his
shaggy surfer-dude hair, fragmented grammar, and off-handed manner are deceptive. In fact, although the police had already
interviewed him once, when they were first at Rockingham the morning of the murders, their interview wasn ’t particularly
thorough or focused. I wondered if they had been somewhat misled by his style.

As Kato and I talked, I discovered he was a college graduate who ’d played college football. A divorced single father with
a ten-year-old daughter—which accounted for his great empathy with Justin and Sydney Simpson—Kaelin had much more intelligence
than he was ever given credit for. Although he was very nervous in trying to recollect exactly what had taken place—because
he didn ’t want to make any mistakes—he had a good memory and he understood the facts. He was especially torn because of his
intense love and loyalty for Nicole. He didn ’t want to take any sides, he simply wanted to be as straightforward as possible;
and in doing so, he gave me reason to believe that O.J. was not involved in these deaths in any way.

An aspiring actor, Kato had met Nicole in Aspen about two years earlier, after she and O.J. had been divorced. Although they
were never romantically involved, they became close friends. She and the children lived in a house on Gretna Green, and Kaelin
had boarded for a while in the guesthouse there, paying five hundred dollars a month for rent.

When Nicole purchased the condominium on Bundy, Kaelin agreed that perhaps it was no longer appropriate for him to be living
under the same roof with her and the children, so while maintaining his close friendship with her, he temporarily moved to
the guesthouse on O.J. ’s Rockingham estate.

He told us that after O.J. returned from his daughter Sydney ’s dance recital early Sunday evening (Nicole and her family
had gone on to dinner at Mezzaluna restaurant), he and O.J. went out and picked up burgers and fries at McDonald ’s, then
returned to the house at around 9:45. O.J., who had been on the go since 5:00
A.M
., still hadn ’t packed for his red-eye trip to Chicago that night and went right into the house. Kato took his meal into
the guesthouse, where he ate it and then made a couple of phone calls to friends. At approximately 10:40
P.M
., while he was still on the phone, he thought he heard something or some knocking outside his room, so he nervously went
out
with a flashlight to investigate. He found nothing, and then, coming around the house, he saw the limo driver. Kato let him
through the gates, helped load the bags into the car once O.J. came outside, and watched them drive away at around 11:15.
He was awakened at 5:30 the next morning with the news of his friend Nicole ’s death.

It was unusual to interview two such key witnesses so early in an investigation. Normally the first thing that happens in
a case is that a suspect is identified by the police, then arrested and charged with a crime. A defense attorney isn ’t involved
until a client calls and says “I ’ve been arrested, I ’m in jail.” In this case, that hadn ’t happened yet. So far, we were
ahead of them.

T
he primary challenge to the defense is to anticipate the prosecution ’s case. Since I ’m not at all reluctant to admit that
I don ’t know everything, I seek out other professionals who can think like the prosecution with me. When I ’m putting together
a defense team, I try to find the most credible experts—people who ordinarily and often testify for the prosecution and are
or have been employed by government agencies. These people not only gain the respect of a jury, but my getting them keeps
the “top of the line” experts out of the hands of the prosecution.

We have to find out what the police know, and do what they ’re doing as they ’re doing it. And not only must we do what they
’re doing, we must do things they
should
be doing but for whatever reason aren ’t. Most important, they make mistakes, and we have to find out what those mistakes
are.
Fast
. So it was on Tuesday, June 14, at ten o ’clock at night—one
A.M
. in the East—that I was on my car phone to New York, tracking down Dr. Michael Baden, the noted pathologist and former chief
medical examiner.

I knew that forensic science would play an integral part in this case; the D.A. ’s office was already talking about the importance
of blood evidence. I had worked often with Dr. Baden, most recently on the Brando case, where he was able to establish
the trajectory of the bullet that had killed Drollet, and in doing so refute the prosecutor ’s case. Baden, who has conducted
more than twenty thousand autopsies in his career, had done distinguished pathology investigations into the assassinations
of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X.

Courtesy of the New York State Police, I finally located Baden in New York, where he is the director of the Forensic Sciences
Unit of the New York State Police. He agreed to join me, and then recommended a colleague, Dr. Barbara Wolf, the director
of anatomic pathology at Albany Medical Center. Dr. Wolf, a DNA expert, also works with the state police in Albany. Baden
also strongly agreed with my idea of contacting Dr. Henry Lee, an esteemed forensic scientist and the director of the State
Forensic Science Laboratory in Connecticut.

Although I had never worked with Dr. Lee before, I was familiar with his national reputation as an expert in crime-scene reconstruction.
It ’s said that the instructors at the FBI Academy respect him so much that they rise to their feet whenever he comes into
a room. I had seen him testify as an expert witness in both the William Kennedy Smith case in Florida and the federal investigation
into the Koresh matter in Waco, Texas. I was confident that Lee wouldn ’t fall into the trap of exceeding what he knew—that
he would go only where the science went. Later on, it turned out that my initial expectations of Henry Lee were a significant
underestimation of his great talents. When he simply walked up before the jury on the way to be sworn in, bowed to them respectfully,
and said “Good morning,” I knew at that moment that this was a special man. In addition to his skills as a criminalist, Henry
Lee ’s intelligence, magnetism, charisma, and ability to relate to the jury surpassed that of any witness I had ever seen.

When I reached Dr. Lee and explained the reason for my late-night call, he agreed to come on board, but cautioned me that
since he was a state employee, he first needed to get permission from the governor. Once permission was given—which it
immediately was—he, like Baden, would be in Los Angeles within two days.

I then called my friend Bill Pavelic, a retired nineteen-year veteran of the L.A.P.D., with eleven of those years spent as
a detective supervisor. Bill is perhaps the most anal-retentive, thorough investigator I have ever seen, and he is passionate
about police integrity and behavior. During his time on the force, he received more than two hundred commendations, including
ones from the U.S. Justice Department and Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti. Pavelic misses nothing. Not only
can he find the needle in the haystack, he can tell you who dropped it there and when. If there is a mistake made in police
procedure, protocol, or timing, no matter how insignificant it may appear to the layman, he will find it. Most important,
Pavelic himself has absolute integrity, as well as an indefatigable work ethic. When he agreed to come on the case, I felt
that one of the strongest links in the chain had been forged.

When I finally got home on Tuesday, it was midnight. Linell had waited up, and I told her what was going on—that I was now
representing O.J., that we were gearing up for a fight, and my free time, at least for the moment, had just evaporated. We
talked about what it would mean for our family and in particular for our two young sons, Brent, who was thirteen at the time,
and Grant, who was ten. We had always done a lot of things as a family; the boys were both at an age where they needed more
of me, not less. We ’ve been married nearly twenty-six years, and Linell had seen me disappear into all-consuming cases before,
but we knew this one would be bigger and that there was no way for me to do it except totally. She knew how I worked, and
lucky for me she understood it. For the next eighteen months, she and the boys would collect a sizable stack of IOUs.

Early the next morning—Wednesday, June 15—I called my old friend F. Lee Bailey in Florida. Bailey and I went way back. I trusted
and valued his judgment both personally and professionally. We worked together often. I brought him into
my cases, he brought me into his. He became godfather to my oldest son, Brent. He allowed me the honor of engraving his name
and “of counsel” on my law-practice stationery. We talked frequently on the phone, and when he came to California, he stayed
in my home. He was, I believed, as fine a friend and mentor as any man could hope to have.

At Bailey ’s recommendation, I quickly contacted Pat McKenna, an affable former Vietnam vet and experienced private investigator
based in Palm Beach. Another investigator, Barry Hostetler, came on board at the urging of my old friend Gerry Spence.

Some weeks later, again at Lee Bailey ’s recommendation, I brought on Howard Harris, a computer expert, and John McNally,
an ex—New York City cop who had worked with Bailey on the Patty Hearst case. The early coup of McNally ’s police career had
been in 1964, when he tracked down fabled jewel thief Jack “Murph the Surf” Murphy, who ’d stolen the Star of India from New
York ’s Museum of Natural History.

Thus within two days after O.J. ’s phone call, a formidable investigative team was not only on the case but in the field—Pavelic
at Los Angeles Airport, McKenna at O ’Hare in Chicago, the forensic scientists at the crime scene.

My thought was to get people interviewed at LAX immediately, including baggage handlers, ticket checkers, and security personnel—anyone
who would ’ve seen O.J. and could attest to his demeanor at the time he went on the plane. We quickly discovered that American
Airlines employees at LAX either couldn ’t, or wouldn ’t, talk. Everybody had been instructed that since this was a police
investigation the official policy was to be “No comment.” In my experience, this was very unusual. Evidently the edict had
come down directly from the American Airlines corporate executives, reportedly concerned about the privacy issues involved—who
else had been on the plane, for instance, and to what extent American ’s employees would become witnesses in what was clearly
becoming a high-profile case.

In Chicago, Pat McKenna investigated in and around the airport and the hotel where O.J. had stayed, gathering information
about which searches the police had already conducted and the areas they were concentrating on, and looking for physical evidence—knives
and bloody clothes. Every day we would read lurid stories in the newspapers about what was being uncovered in Chicago, but
none of it, ultimately, had anything to do with our case. Bloody clothes were found that were nine months old, rusty knives
were dug up in fields or found in ditches. Police investigators had even gone to the extent of actually going through the
discarded airline toilet waste and garbage, looking for fabric and knife fragments that might have been disposed of on the
plane. No incriminating physical evidence was ever found.

My tendency, when working on a case, is to become completely immersed in it, to the exclusion of anything else going on around
me. I don ’t, as a rule, watch much television; I read the national newspapers on the fly; and if it weren ’t for my friends
in the film industry inviting my wife and me to screenings, I ’d probably never see a movie. I do go regularly with my boys
to sports events—boxing, hockey, and basketball especially—not just because I enjoy them but because of their escapism quotient.
The result is case-induced tunnel vision, and the bigger the case, the less sense I have of the outside world.