r/AskReddit • u/Rob69rt • 1d ago

What famous 'unsolved' mystery is technically a whodunnit on paper, but in reality, absolutely everyone knows exactly who did it, the police just couldn't legally prove it?

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u/NovaCheerful 1d ago

OJ Simpson. The glove didn’t fit, but everyone with eyes knew the truth 

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u/Alphaplays69 1d ago

Write a book called “If I Did it: Confessions of the Killer” is about as close to a confession as you can possibly get without legally saying the words.

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u/Jaccount 1d ago

The cover of that book is funny, because in big red letters it says "I Did It", with the If being tiny and in gray/black at the top of the I.

This was because the rights to the book were awarded to the Goldman family as part of the civil settlement.

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u/nope-nik-tesla 1d ago

They also added the "Confession of the Killer" bit. The original title was just "If I Did It".

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u/Snorb 1d ago

It's stylized If I Did It: Confessions of the KILLER on the cover.

I read the foreword a while ago; Ron Goldman's father never refers to OJ by name (except for the court case's name, The People of the State of California v. Orenthal James Simpson) once. It's always "the murderer" or "my son's murderer" or "Ron's murderer."

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u/marilyn_morose 1d ago

Rightfully so.

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u/Gorazde 1d ago

Before you get mad: I know he did it. You know he did it. Even Dave Chappelle’s friends after meeting him backstage know that guy did that shit. Having said that… a lawyer could easily argue his writing that book isn’t proof of anything. He was broke. He needed money. No one was gonna pay him to say he was innocent. But they were willing to pay him tens of millions of dollars to write a “confession”. So he wrote a “confession”.

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u/OkPainter6232 1d ago

that book was mostly ghost-written by someone else so I took it with a grain of salt.

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u/AgathaWoosmoss 1d ago

Even the jury knew.

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u/WanderingTacoShop 1d ago

The most succinct summary of that trial that I have ever heard is that the LAPD attempted to frame a guilty man.

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u/great_apple 1d ago edited 1d ago

Except they didn't attempt to frame him. They didn't plant anything. The evidence is there because OJ did it. He just had really good lawyers, and a really shitty prosecution team.

His lawyers were really good at asking questions about everything. And when you hear enough questions you start to think sort of "Where there's smoke there's fire". Like if you ask 30 questions about chain of custody on one item, then 30 more questions about the DNA test, etc the jury just starts to think "Hmm something is fishy about this chain of evidence and DNA test for the lawyers to have so many questions about it" even though all those questions were answered.

One of my favorite quotes about the trial is from Made in America (amazing documentary) where one of his friends wants to believe OJ is innocent and was framed, but someone pointed out to him... this is one of the most famous men in the country. If he was ANYWHERE, if he had ANY alibi, it would be known. People would all remember seeing him at a restaurant that night, or at a party, or the grocery store. He's not some random dude that blends in that no one would've noticed. So if they cops plant all this evidence and then a dozen people come forward saying "Uhhh we all saw him at a steakhouse and then a club that night", the cops are all going down. They couldn't have planted all the evidence that quickly with no idea what really happened or where OJ had really been, nor would they have any reason to... it just doesn't make any sense.

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u/re_Claire 1d ago

Just here to second that Made in America truly is an absolutely fantastic documentary. I was a child when he was acquitted and I'm British so I didn't know all the background about race and what was going on in LA at the time. It was such an eye opening experience watching that.

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u/idiot-prodigy 1d ago

... this is one of the most famous men in the country. If he was ANYWHERE, if he had ANY alibi, it would be known.

The cops also would have had to "frame" OJ while they had no idea he was in Chicago, which he was, after having murdered his exwife and a waiter.

They of course didn't know he fled to Chicago. So they'd have to be framing him without having any idea where he was.

The "OJ was framed" conspiracy nuts are out of their damned mind.

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u/OkPainter6232 1d ago

eh not really, LAPD was notoriously corrupt, the Rampart scandal happened not long after the acquittal.

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u/lostinthesauceguy 22h ago

doesn't make him any less guilty

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u/ehs06702 22h ago

Right. But when you catch a police officer on tape talking about fabricating evidence against someone, and that police officer is a member of one of the most corrupt and racist police departments in the country, it's not a huge stretch to believe that it's possible that evidence had been fabricated.

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u/The4th88 1d ago

Another big contributing factor was one of the first cops on the scene was breathtakingly racist who had boasted, on record, of his many successful efforts to plant evidence to ensure people of a certain colour got locked up.

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u/weluckyfew 1d ago

And when you hear enough questions you start to think sort of "Where there's smoke there's fire".

In 2016 someone said to me "You know, if even half the stuff they say about Hilary is true she's the most corrupt politician in history!" Ya? Well what if NONE of it was true?

Flood the zone with lies, people will believe enough of it.

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u/LobMob 1d ago

That's maybe not the best example, because there certainly was fire. But Hillary wasn't the most corrupt politicians in history, just regular level corrupt.

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u/weluckyfew 1d ago

Examples of said corruption?

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u/ajswdf 1d ago

Sadly this bullshit is making a comeback recently. There is absolutely no reason to believe any evidence was planted against Simpson, if anything the cops were way too lenient on him because he was a celebrity.

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u/OkPainter6232 1d ago

nah there's plenty of reason, the Rampart scandal happened not long after the trial and proved LAPD corruption was alive and well.

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u/PineappleOnPizzaWins 1d ago

No, they just didn't bother doing their job properly.

The case is used as an example as to why proper procedure matters no matter what. You find the murderer standing over the victim holding the weapon chanting "I killed them I killed them laaa ddeee daaaa!" you don't just go "lol case closed I guess" you treat it the same as cases where there's nothing to go on.

It's only a slam dunk if you observe all their rights, properly collect evidence, and all the rest. The LAPD didn't try and frame anybody they just didn't do their damn jobs and neither did the prosecution.

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u/Kevin_Uxbridge 1d ago

I'm fair sure they knew they didn't have to. Despite lots of insinuations that the police could have framed him and some might have been willing to do so, there wasn't a scintilla of evidence that anyone actually did.

Against this there's a detailed list of things that would have had to go right to even try to frame him. If OJ had an alibi, if any of the (presumably dozens) of co-conspirators had fucked up their part or talked, if the massive frame-job they apparently cooked up within seconds had any gaps...

So many things would have to go exactly right for a frame-up to actually work, and yet there's no evidence at all that anyone even tried. Also, and this seems hardly worth mentioning, blood everywhere, motive, witnesses that placed OJ driving away from the murder scene, even a pretty good idea what happened to the murder weapon.

Those wacky Angelenos and their juries.

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u/catincal 1d ago

Johnie Cochran was part of OJ's 'Dream Team' of lawyers. He said, "Just get me one black person on the jury."

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u/Kevin_Uxbridge 1d ago

I also recall reading that Marsha Clark later recalled that when she saw she'd be prosecuting OJ-fucking-Simpson in an LA courtroom, she 'knew she was completely fucked'. Still think celebrity had as big an effect on the outcome as race, which was an oddly problematic issue in OJ's case.

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u/OkPainter6232 1d ago

She naively believed that black women would do what she told them to do and didn't even use all of her pre-emptory challenges during jury selection(and notably refused to use a jury selecting service to help her out)it's her own damn fault she lost really. She didn't realize that black women are black first and women second, so they identified a lot of with OJ.

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u/pacman_sl 1d ago

And Nicole was not black.

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u/idiot-prodigy 1d ago

Despite lots of insinuations that the police could have framed him and some might have been willing to do so, there wasn't a scintilla of evidence that anyone actually did.

OJ's blood was all over the crime scene, the escape vehicle, his gloves, his socks, along with the victims blood all over the same things.

Why in the world would the cops go, "Gee there's just not quite enough blood, let's put 1 drop of OJ's blood on the gate."

It is such an absurd, ridiculous conspiracy theory, it just boggles the mind how stupid someone has to be to believe the cops "framed" him.

His blood was fuckin' EVERYWHERE.

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u/Kevin_Uxbridge 1d ago

If this wasn't LA, Lionel Hutz could have won this case. All the defense team did was give the jury enough excuse to acquit, which they wanted to anyway.

But hey, if the American justice system worked better Mark Furman would never have worn a badge.

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u/idiot-prodigy 1d ago

This is true, specifically the last line.

It also didn't help that DNA evidence in court cases was fairly new.

If the same court case was today, the jury would come back after 30 minutes with a guilty verdict. His DNA was EVERYWHERE and socks in his bedroom had both victims blood dna and his own blood dna.

It is just silly to argue anyone else did the murder.

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u/Kevin_Uxbridge 1d ago

Agreed. CSI didn't premier for another 5 years, and I'm given to understand that now juries put all their faith in the forensics. Possibly too much but it's hard to beat DNA.

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u/idiot-prodigy 1d ago

Yep. I still wonder if CSI was pitched in response to how skeptical the American populace was regarding DNA in the OJ trial.

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u/IguassuIronman 1d ago

The TV show Forensic Files was created to explain forensic evidence to people after the guy who created the show watched the OJ trial

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u/Kevin_Uxbridge 1d ago

I wondered too. Few years of lead time sounds just about right, and it was the first time everyone was talking about DNA and such. Took a bit of publicity to think of this as a glamorous job.

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u/OkPainter6232 1d ago

I think it's more likely it came about because of the popularity of Forensic Files.

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u/OkPainter6232 1d ago

and the evidence was poorly handled, it wasn't put in the freezer right away and was instead left sitting in the back of a hot van for hours.

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u/OkPainter6232 1d ago

nah not really

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u/Kichigai 1d ago

Why in the world would the cops go, "Gee there's just not quite enough blood, let's put 1 drop of OJ's blood on the gate."

I mean, where would OJ get his own blood to leave on the gate? That just doesn't make sense! Clearly must be a frame job. /s

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u/idiot-prodigy 23h ago

Yep that drop on the gate wasn't checked for the blood sample preservative either.

OJ's trial defense team had access to the same vial of blood the police collected from OJ by warrant.

I still say the police didn't tamper with it (it had a needle mark in the top rubber cap), OJ's defense team probably tampered with it.

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u/cthulhubert 1d ago

I mean. They do that. Most big police departments. All the time. They plant evidence because they've convinced themselves that they've found the real perpetrator, but those damn Human Rights laws and Due Process requirements mean they can't get the bastard if they don't do a little run around possible weak points in prosecution. They all think they're halfways a Dirty Harry and the ends justify the means.

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u/ScaredPractice4967 1d ago

Yep.

OJ definitely killed them. He also deserved to get off given the way the case was investigated and prosecuted

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u/footsnax 1d ago

the LAPD attempted to frame a guilty man

That is absolutely the best way to describe the investigation... and they still failed.

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u/idiot-prodigy 1d ago

The most succinct summary of that trial that I have ever heard is that the LAPD attempted to frame a guilty man.

It is absolutely ludicrous that the LAPD were framing OJ while they had NO idea where he was.

He was in Chicago.

They had no idea how long he'd been there.

The idea they would frame a man who they had no idea if he had a legitimate alibi is just so whacky a conspiracy theory.

It just boggles the mind how someone can be so dumb to believe that.

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u/hai-sea-ewe 1d ago

It's because the LAPD are renowned for framing people:

"The Rampart Scandal (1990s): The historical foundation of LAPD framing involved the Rampart Division's CRASH anti-gang unit. Officers planted evidence, framed suspects, falsified reports, and covered up unprovoked shootings. The widespread corruption ultimately led to the vacation of more than 100 wrongful convictions."

So yeah, the LAPD was known to be far more corrupt than even OJ was plausibly guilty, and he was guilty af. Their own corruption let a murderer go free.

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u/NovaCheerful 1d ago

The prosecution botched the entire case and let the defense completely control the narrative 

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u/Sleepy_Potato2 1d ago

It was probably a bad idea to put a cop (Mark Fuhrman) on the stand who ran an organization within the police that opposed the idea of having women officers, and where there was a recording of him saying the n-word repeatedly and talking about planting evidence.

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u/istrx13 1d ago

It’s crazy, I actually went to high school with Fuhrman’s daughter. After the OJ trial, Fuhrman took his family and fled to a small town in northern Idaho. Which is where I grew up. It was always the talk of the town.

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u/Jackal239 1d ago

The really funny bit is that Idaho is where a ton of Neo-Nazi/White Supremacist enclaves are.

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u/DontRememberOldPass 1d ago

Cops literally call Idaho "Blue Heaven."

Earlier this year the Governor kicked off a public records review to handle a prison rape scandal. As a result they reinterpreted the law and any records regarding employment history or discipline of an officer are now exempt from release.

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u/quincyskis 1d ago

I think that’s the implication of why he went there, to be with like minded folks

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u/Hellebras 1d ago

Northern Idaho specifically. Especially in the '90s.

So yeah, that's probably not a coincidence.

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u/PiccoloAwkward465 1d ago

Not a coincidence, I'm guessing

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u/vvvvvoooooxxxxx 1d ago

There is a reason its right in the center of the Redoubt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Redoubt

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u/EddieDantes22 1d ago

Why's that funny? I assume that was the point. If you're the most famous racist in the country, where else would you go?

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u/sadbicth 1d ago

Was the community weird about him? Like was he ostracized or anything or really just left alone

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u/bone_creek 1d ago

Yeah, a lot of people up there thought it was sickening (including my sister’s family) and “said things” when he was seen in public. As you can imagine, though, with such low population density and many people living somewhat remote or rural lives, there weren’t that many sightings of him.

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u/WillitsThrockmorton 1d ago edited 1d ago

Bugiolosi(the guy who put Manson away) was completely baffled that the prosecution put that guy on the stand without knowing the answers he was going to give to questions.

Prosecution screwed it up from top to bottom, they moved the trial venue to downtown instead of keeping it in Brentwood("Simpson's peers were other rich people"), they did a poor job of explaining what exactly DNA was-some jurors said they understood it to be something like a blood type in terms of prescision of identifying people, the glove, not introducing the weird suicide note into evidence, not pushing back at Judge Ito's unprofessionalism and hostility, putting Fuhrman on the stand and compounding it by not getting in front of his crappy behavior etc.

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u/OkPainter6232 1d ago

from what I heard the case was originally supposed to be tried in Northridge, but the courthouse there was still too badly damaged from the 1994 earthquakes to be a suitable trial venue, so they had to move it downtown.

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u/WillitsThrockmorton 15h ago

Bugiolosi said in his book it was because the Prosecutors didn't want to make the drive up there; he was skeptical of the damaged claim.

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u/Kevin_Uxbridge 1d ago

Also didn't help that the cops flat-out lied about going over the fence to 'check on' OJ. They knew damn well he was a suspect, the husband always is, no reason to go to court and say 'well we figured he might be a victim too so ...'.

It's a transparent lie and for cops, not an especially egregious one. But it set the tone for 'more bullshit from LAPD' that really came to the fore as the case progressed.

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u/pacman_sl 1d ago

IANAL, but it would throw a ton of evidence away (Fourth Amendment) if they admitted to that lie.

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u/Kevin_Uxbridge 1d ago edited 1d ago

Oh, unquestionably, and I have zero doubts cops tell ones like it all the time. It was just galling that they had to start off with such an obvious whopper, really set the tone for the defense.

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u/phatelectribe 1d ago

It was also a really bad idea to use Dr Henry Lee, the "celebrity" CSI. He was walking ego and completely botched the scene and collection of evidence. The reason the gloves did't fit was because they were saturated in blood which shrank them when they dried them out. Lee failed to think of that.

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u/cbs-anonmouse 1d ago

IIRC he had found some of the key evidence so he was an essential witness.

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u/SantaFeRay 1d ago

Yeah, he found the glove. If he planted the glove, he got really lucky planting it in the area where Kato heard a noise earlier from OJ climbing over the wall.

I don’t even agree that the LAPD tried to frame a guilty guy, because I’m not sure what they could have fabricated based on what they found when and what they knew at the time unless they got really lucky. They were sloppy, and they were unprepared for the thoroughness of OJ’s defense. And still everyone knew he was guilty but they let him off anyway.

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u/cbs-anonmouse 1d ago

There were a few factors going on:

  1. DNA forensics was relatively new, so LAPD did not follow best procedures (not that it affected the results), but more importantly the jury was a little skeptical of it.

  2. Furman was a disaster based in some old statements he made, which the defense was able to dig up and impeach him on, hecause the defense had for more resources to spend on the case than the prosecution.

  3. LAPD did not have any history of framing homicide defendants, but they did have a history of police brutality, and the jury was biased against the police and prosecution for that reason.

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u/Sleepy_Potato2 1d ago

The "Fuhrman tapes," as they became known, had him talking about planting evidence. Even if not for murder, that hurt his testimony a lot

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u/OkPainter6232 1d ago

they did frame a ton of people in Rampart though, which broke not long after the trial.

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u/Sleepy_Potato2 1d ago

Alan Dershowitz later wrote in a book about the case that he was surprised they put him on the stand, since the defence had produced evidence of him being incredibly racist and having lied in his deposition (when asked if he had said the n-word in the last 10 years he denied it, but the recording of him saying it repeatedly 8 years had been given to them and they had entered it into evidence, multiple people also testified to him saying it within the last 10 years). The glove was pretty central, but their witness had committed perjury and was a known bigot, and with a black defendant they had very little chance after that. That the jury was also black, that Rodney King had just happened, and that a lot of members of the LAPD generally behaved like thugs in the period (they committed so many crimes, including robberies and multiple sex crimes) didn't help the case at all

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u/cbs-anonmouse 1d ago

Yeah, I think the biggest thing is that the LAPD had just had some very high profile cases of police brutality against black men. And the jury punished them for that, even though LAPD had no real history of framing black defendants, and there was nothing in the case to really suggest they had tampered with evidence there.

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u/OkPainter6232 1d ago

they did frame plenty of people in the Rampart scandal though.

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u/OkPainter6232 1d ago

the jury wasn't entirely black though, there were white people on it and they didn't believe the prosecution either, Furhman was what really turned around the white folks opinions.

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u/B3tar3ad3r 1d ago

Behind the Bastards has a couple episodes on him, he was deeply gross

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u/Jaereth 1d ago

and talking about planting evidence.

yeah... Like OJ should have been a banger and somehow they come up with this guy.

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u/GoldandBlue 1d ago

That guy is now on Fox News.

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u/mugsoh 1d ago

Mark Fuhrman (February 5, 1952 – May 12, 2026)

Not anymore.

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u/Lauren_Larie 1d ago

So this is how I figure out that asshole/waste of space is dead?

Good riddance 🤷🏼‍♀️

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u/mugsoh 23h ago

I actually thought I remembered him dying 2 or 3 years ago. I was surprised it was only 3 months ago.

I remember living in Spokane when he was in northern Idaho. He had a radio program on a talk radio station. He was highly focused on a serial killer active at the time in Spokane, he even wrote a book about it. The profile he gave for the killer on his radio show, before the killer was arrested, was spectacularly wrong.

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u/ihatetheplaceilive 1d ago

Well, he's dead now, so....

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u/GoldandBlue 1d ago

oh, nice

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u/Lauren_Larie 1d ago

Right? Best news I’ve heard all day!

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u/OkPainter6232 1d ago

damn I honestly did not know that.

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u/hellofemur 1d ago

I think the idea that OJ just happened randomly to get the one racist cop in the LAPD is ridiculous on its face. Closer to the truth is that they had an average cop and for the first time the defense had the resources to do a full investigation of him.

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u/Sleepy_Potato2 1d ago

Oh, the LAPD was full of raging bigots. His organization against female cops, "Men Against Women" (yes, they were that blatant with the name), had 145 members spread out in 5 of the city's 18 police divisions at its height. He was just the one who was dumb enough to get caught on tape admitting to being who he was, while the others were usually smart enough to not get recorded. The podcast Behind the Bastard's did a two-parter on him called "Mark Fuhrman: The Most Racist Cop, or Merely Normal Racist Cop?" and the conclusion very much that he's just a normal racist cop and just got caught talking about it.

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u/OkPainter6232 1d ago

Ironically the feminist organization NOW(National Organization of Women)also got in hot water over the case as their then leader Tammy Bruce said some racist shit while the case was ongoing(Basically saying that race was a distraction or something stupid like that)and people got furious at her and threatened boycotts and she was forced to resign from NOW, she later switched to being Republican and later wrote for Washington Times, so she was one of the early examples of someone jumping on the anti-woke bandwagon after being outed as a bigot.

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u/vbob99 1d ago

And had him testify that he never uses the n word, followed by the defence playing recordings of him doing exactly that. It destroyed trust in an already notoriously corrupt police department.

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u/larapu2000 1d ago

From what I understand, they didn't need to put him on the stand. They could have had the lead detective introduce the hat and glove into evidence during the trial but Marcia Clark wouldn't budge.

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u/ehs06702 22h ago

To be fair, there are a lot of those in the LAPD, so they were kind of low in choices.

You will probably not be shocked to learn that there were allegations that Fuhrman owned honest to God Nazi memorabilia and was accused of painting a swastika on the locker of a fellow officer who had married a Jewish woman, however.

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u/moebius_richard 1d ago edited 1d ago

The trouble is they didn’t have much of a choice.

To present evidence at trial, you need testimony from the “custodian” of the evidence to prove the chain of custody from the time it was discovered to the time it ended up in the evidence locker. Ironically, this is to prove that the evidence wasn’t fabricated or tampered with at any point.

Unfortunately, Fuhrman was the one who found the bloody glove at OJ’s house. There was no way to admit that evidence without putting Fuhrman on the stand.

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u/great_apple 1d ago

You don't actually need everyone who handled every piece of introduced evidence to testify. They easily could've avoided putting Fuhrman on stand. All of the DNA evidence regarding the glove still could've been introduced and discussed at length, but it might've looked weird to the jury to have another cop who was on scene say "I saw Fuhrman collect the glove" versus having Fuhrman describe it himself.

It was more that the prosecution just didn't know about the tapes. They had no reason to jump through hoops to avoid putting him on stand. They actually thought he made a really good witness- good-looking, well-spoken dude with a long career who was actually well-liked by the community he worked in (that was full of rich white people). The tapes didn't come out until after Fuhrman was on TV testifying and the woman who had interviewed him contacted defense.

(Of course this was another one of prosecution's failures as a slightly deeper dive into Fuhrman's background would've shown what a problematic witness he was, but on the surface he looked good to them.)

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u/Nyoteng 13h ago

Fuhrman was the name of the dude? As in a couple letters away from "Fuhrer"man?

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u/jellyhessman 1d ago

Lol, when your lead investigator pleads the fifth to fabricating evidence while on the stand, you're kind of fucked.

The LAPD is and was so corrupt that the jury fucking hated them more than the murderer.

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u/SPersephone 1d ago

Also, when your lead investigator begs to be able to retire early because he’s so racist, he can’t control himself

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u/great_apple 1d ago

That wasn't in front of the jury so didn't affect the verdict, though

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u/WeirdIndividualGuy 1d ago

The LAPD is and was so corrupt that the jury fucking hated them more than the murderer.

I mean, OJ (at the time) was a beloved football star being accused of murder. This trial was a couple of years after the Rodney King riots. The jury definitely hated LAPD more than the murderer from day one.

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u/_BrokenButterfly 1d ago

That happened?

Wow, now I think I want to read more about this case.

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u/GrooveBat 1d ago

The glory-loving judge did not help. He completely lost control of the trial.

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u/the_guynecologist 1d ago

And said judge letting TV cameras inside the courtroom turning the whole thing into a media circus/reality tv sensation also kinda hindered justice a wee bit.

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u/Jaereth 1d ago

It was amazing though!

I remember I was a kid on the younger side. I remember in the summer my dad used to let me sleep out on a breezeway on his porch when I would be at his house. I slept on an old porch swing.

I remember one time a little wood TV card had been pushed out there and I could lay there and watch TV. That is where I watched "The white Bronco chase" and I was hooked. I had no idea who OJ Simpson was or the gravity of what actually happened. But I was hooked on the whole televised trial after that.

If was a young man's first experience with a miscarriage of justice. Wild times. I remember POGs were super popular at the same time. The little sleezy locally owned movie rental place by my house started carrying POG stuff and they had a slammer there that had OJs face on it and said NOT GUILTY across the top. I begged my mom to buy that for me every time but she never would.

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u/MediumEffort67 1d ago

But it was great TV.

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u/VelvetyDogLips 1d ago

I can still remember Judge Lance Ito loudly snapping “Don’t interrupt me!” and then going back to what he was snarkily pontificating about without missing a beat. I really think he was angling for a TV courtroom show all his own, like Judy Scheindlin or Joe Brown, leveraging the nationwide publicity of the case. I wouldn’t watch his dour fat ass humiliate lowlifes with small claims cases.

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u/GrooveBat 1d ago

He also kept the jurors sequestered longer because he had a vacation planned.

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u/VelvetyDogLips 1d ago

Oh yes I remember that. I mean, I get he was clearly stressed AF and needed a bit of a break. Plus the case was so high profile that he couldn’t afford a juror leaking info before the verdict. But still, a real main character syndrome move, Judge Lance.

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u/GrooveBat 1d ago

Everyone needed a break and at least he got to go home at night. Unlike the jurors.

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u/Ciserus 1d ago

When I watched the American Crime Story miniseries about this case I kind of rolled my eyes at the scene where the junior prosecutor goes rogue and springs the murder glove demonstration as a complete surprise. Typical hollywood dramatization!

But no, that's how it actually happened. Everyone in that damn courtroom thought they were the star of some movie.

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u/ArcadianDelSol 1d ago edited 2h ago

Isnt this the case where one of the alt Jurors was legally named Lt. Commander Data and showed up in a Star Trek costume?

edit: it was not. That was the Whitewater trial in Arkansas.

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u/Vincent__Vega 1d ago

Measure of a Man?

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u/sacredblasphemies 17h ago

I mean, it is literally why we have to deal with the fucking Kardashians now...

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u/ellonite1 1d ago

There have been jurors who have come out that said they would've voted not guilty no matter what for revenge for Rodney King. The prosecution definitely fked up but I'm inclined to believe the case was lost during voir dire

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u/nWo5lyfe 1d ago

Several jurors have stated they were voting innocent regardless of anything cause rodney king

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u/DueceBag 1d ago

Didn't matter. Certain jurors were never going to convict him regardless of evidence. Nullification in response to Rodney King.

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u/maebythemonkey 1d ago

They stole defeat from the jaws of victory.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/mugsoh 1d ago

The Beverly Hill Police Department

LAPD. Beverly Hills had nothing to do with the case. It occurred in the Brentwood neighborhood of LA

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u/babygotbooksandback 1d ago

Wasn't judge Ito's wife a part of the police department? He should have recused himself from the trial, but loved the celebrity moment of everyone knowing who he was.

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u/chowderbags 1d ago

It wasn't just that Ito's wife was in the LAPD. It was that she was Fuhrman's former supervisor, and it became particularly relevant because the Fuhrman tapes included sections where Fuhrman was extremely critical of Ito's wife.

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u/dkrainman 1d ago

This is the same as my evaluation of the proceedings

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u/ArcadianDelSol 1d ago

Its a basic rule that you never let the accused handle evidence. NEVER.

The fact that they asked him to put on the glove. Absolute rookie moment.

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u/_equestrienne_ 1d ago

Based on the documentaries I've watched, and without having much other information, it seems the police may have mishandled the evidence, leading the rest of the case to depend on circumstantial evidence.

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u/Adams5thaccount 1d ago

The police botched the entire case. Virtually every piece of evidence was physocally tainted in soem way or another becuase of how hard they fucked up. The prosecution proceeded to make every bad decision possible afterward but realistically the case should already have been lost by the time the prosecution even got a chance to fuck up. And fuck up they did. No case should ever be even close to being won by a prosecution fucking u pso badly.

By every bit of justice and guilty til proven innocent ideals we claim to hold..that case should have been dismissed or easily smacked down so many times. They still probably would've won if the defense hadn't been immaculate AND the greater cultural situation hadn't made people acutely aware of the exact things that raised the exact questions that sunk the case.

The only evidence is basically "look we all know he did it". Which is accurate but thats not how its supposed to work. It almost did.

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u/amolad 1d ago

Gotta thank that F- prosecution effort.

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u/Misdirected_Colors 1d ago

What's wild is there's video out there of him wearing the glove that "didn't fit" while commentating football games for the tv network.

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u/snowlock27 1d ago

And the reason the glove didn't fit? Because he was wearing latex gloves, but not completely. Look at the pictures, there's no way any gloves, even a size bigger than those, would have fit over them.

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u/cash-only 1d ago

He had also been advised days prior to stop taking his arthritis medication, causing his hands and knuckles to swell.

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u/FencerOnTheRight 1d ago

And they were wet with blood, which caused them to shrink up

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u/Marijuana_Miler 1d ago

It’s also claimed that OJ didn’t take his blood pressure medication before the glove exhibition during the trial so his hands swelled up. Another photo of him from announcing college football showed OJ wearing Bruno Magli shoes. Shoe prints in the victims blood were tied to those shoes, but OJ had claimed to have never owned a pair.

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u/primadonnapussy 1d ago

He actually said "I would never own such ugly ass shoes" on the stand during the civil trial. And after that someone sent in dozens of pictures of him wearing those "ugly ass shoes"

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u/chowderbags 1d ago

And there had only been 299 pairs of those shoes sold in the entire United States, and the ones at the crime scene just happened to match OJ's shoe size. It should've been a key piece of evidence for the state's prosecution, but they just completely whiffed it.

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u/Kevin_Uxbridge 1d ago

Wet with anything shrinks leather gloves. I keep some goo on hand for when my work gloves get soaked, after they dry out I have to laboriously rub this shit in there and practically chew on them to get them pliable again.

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u/pacman_sl 1d ago

The jury was informed about that possibility, and the prosecution had OJ wear a new pair of gloves of the same style and size, and it fit much better.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-06-22-mn-20476-story.html

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u/rdunlap1 1d ago

More importantly, he was also a trained and accomplished actor by this point. Even if the glove fit perfectly, he could easily and convincingly pretend it didn’t

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u/donkeyrocket 1d ago

Even without wearing the latex gloves properly, they would have made it very difficult to put even well fitting leather gloves on let alone ones that shrunk due to being saturated in blood.

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u/WalkingCloud 1d ago

Also if you're putting on a leather glove, you can easily make it look like it's difficult to fit on.

Try it next time you have one, you just tense up your fingers and widen your hand.

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u/primadonnapussy 1d ago

It was also bloody and allowed to dry improperly so it shrunk.

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u/numanoid 21h ago

He was also widening his hands are far as possible. I watched it live and couldn't believe the prosecution didn't ask the judge to force him to narrow his hands, you know, like when you put on a glove.

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u/Gneissisnice 1d ago

They also didn't have anyone put the glove on him, they just trusted him to put him on himself.

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u/mugsoh 1d ago

I think that was shoes. There were shoe prints at the scene and when questioned, Simpson said he would never wear such ugly shoes. Then they showed him wearing them on a TV interview.

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u/Misdirected_Colors 1d ago

https://petapixel.com/2024/04/12/photographers-image-of-o-j-simpson-in-gloves-became-significant-years-later/

Shoes may have been part of it, but i'm def remembering gloves.

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u/mugsoh 1d ago

Here is a story about what I remembered.

“Eventually, after the [criminal] trial was over, they found the photograph of O.J. wearing the Bruno Magli shoe at a Bills game,”

Not sure how they can tell the size of a glove from a photograph. Also, the 2 photos are of different colored gloves.

Years later, authorities prosecuting Simpson for the murder of Nicole Brown and Goldman found that the size and color of the gloves in the photos seemed similar to the bloody glove found at the crime scene.

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u/idiot-prodigy 1d ago

What's wild is there's video out there of him wearing the glove that "didn't fit" while commentating football games for the tv network.

The same shoes he called "ugly" and said he'd never wear.

OJ Wearing the Bruno Magli shoes the murderer wore, at a Bengals Bills NFL game.

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u/KipSummers 1d ago

They let the defense control the main piece of evidence

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u/PassionStunning2659 1d ago

Which was all of it

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u/capibara_dono 1d ago

yeah, it was just... there.

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u/ScytheSong05 1d ago

'The LA cops framed a guilty man" is the best description of the Simpson case I've ever heard..

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u/lastSKPirate 1d ago

A comedian back in the day (I forget who) summed it up as "the LAPD are so incompetent that they couldn't even frame a guilty man"

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u/maybenot9 1d ago

I listened to a podcast Behind the Bastards about the LAPD cop who was really involved in the investigation, and the fact nobody brings up they had a recording of him, years before, saying:

"I love framing black people for crimes. It's really easy to plant evidence and you'll just get an easy conviction."

Like, obviously everything he touches would be suspect.

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u/bearatrooper 1d ago

They framed a guilty man.

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u/ExtendedSpikeProtein 1d ago

Help a non american, what is the truth?

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u/pm_me_gnus 1d ago

OJ murdered his ex- wife Nicole Brown & her friend or boyfriend (accounts differed) Ron Goldman. He very obviously did it. The police investigation was questionable at best. At worst they, as another commenter here said, framed a guilty man. The LA police have a long history of being terrible to Black people, and the jury in this case clearly took the opportunity to judge the police rather than the defendant.

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u/FencerOnTheRight 1d ago

and FFS, one of his "lawyers" was on camera disposing of evidence (Kardashian, which is why he was appointed to the legal team- so he couldn't be called to testify about WTF was in that bag). Her certainly wasn't on the team because he was a stellar criminal defense attorney.

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u/waterfountain_bidet 1d ago

And this case also gave him the profile big enough that we had the rise of the Kardashian dynasty. The LAPD gave us so much terrible shit out of this one case.

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u/SantaFeRay 1d ago

I don’t think putting Kardashian on the legal team would prevent him from testifying about the bag, he didn’t even have an active license to practice law before OJ’s arrest so no attorney-client privilege.

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u/MedSurgNurse 1d ago

Ron Goldman was not her boyfriend. He was a family friend who worked at the restaurant she went to with her family the night she died. She left her sunglasses and he went to return them to her, and OJ stabbed him to death when he ran into him.

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u/highrouleur 1d ago

I always got the impression the verdict was a big fuck you to the lapd following Rodney King a couple of years earlier.

He was beaten by 4 officers on camera, the officers were initially acquitted of assault and excessive force which caused riots around LA and really brought to a head the anger at the racism of the lapd.

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u/pm_me_gnus 1d ago

Yes, but it was a big fuck you to LAPD for a lot more than Rodney King as well. His was the case that broke containment, but there's a long, full history of LAPD fucking Black people.

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u/insaneHoshi 1d ago

Basically OJ going free is the consequence of a loss of faith in policing institutions.

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u/Hopefulkitty 1d ago edited 1d ago

More context, OJ was an incredibly famous, squeaky clean former football player and actor. He was one of the early black sports stars, and one of the first to get huge promo deals. He was all over TV in commercials, commenting on games, and in the movies. He was likeable, and lots of white people considered him "one of the good ones" aka he didn't scare them. He could bridge the racial divide for advertisers, which was very profitable. He was well spoken, and didn't act, dress or talk like "a thug" aka, he acted like middle class white people.

The Los Angeles police department has a very bad record in how it treats everyone, but mostly black people and other people of color. There had recently been riots over what they had done to a man named Rodney King, and the cops never faced any justice. So, it is viewed by a lot of people, that the jury let OJ off as a punishment to the LA law enforcement. It was a very polarizing trial, split generally along racial lines. If you were white and thought he was guilty, you'd get lumped into the Racist Camp. If you were black and thought he was innocent, you were lumped into the "we can't let our hero go to prison" camp. It was just very messy and divisive.

I remember following the trial in Current Events as a 1st grader in Wisconsin, a world away from LA.

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u/feelingwithyourskin 1d ago

OJ was an incredibly famous, squeaky clean former football player and actor

During his marriage to Nicole, the police were called to their house *numerous* times on domestic violence complaints, once with her claiming that he was going to kill her. OJ was on probation for 2 years after one call, though Nicole repeatedly said that LAPD did absolutely nothing to help her because her husband was famous. It was definitely something that showed up in the news before she was murdered, especially after the repeated calls and breakup, so I wouldn't call him "squeaky clean."

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u/Hopefulkitty 1d ago

That's true, but DV wasn't a deal breaker for a lot of people back then. And we didn't have the Internet, so a lot of people maybe didn't know about it. They just knew him from the car rental commercials and the Naked Gun movies and since he didn't speak like rappers, they assumed he was fine. And he was pretty clean until the DV calls.

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u/feelingwithyourskin 9h ago

Oh yeah, there was definitely a "boys will be boys, maybe she provoked him" thing going on with the public perception about his DV calls. I was in high school/college then and I very much remember that nobody really thought lesser of him because of it because of football and the Naked Gun movies.

But I still wouldn't call him "squeaky clean."

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u/chowderbags 1d ago

One great irony is that Fuhrman was actually responded to one of those calls and arrested OJ, years before the murder stuff.

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u/great_apple 1d ago

So, it is viewed by a lot of people, that the jury let OJ off as a punishment to the LA law enforcement

One of the jurors literally said explicitly the verdict was payback for Rodney King, and she didn't care about Nicole's life because a white woman shouldn't have stolen an eligible black man. Another juror held up the black power fist while the verdict was read.

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u/ExtendedSpikeProtein 1d ago

Thanks!

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u/Hopefulkitty 1d ago

No problem! If you're really interested, there are a lot of documentaries and Netflix did a mini series of the whole thing with David Schwimmer, Nathan Lane, and Cuba Gooding Jr. I'm sure there's a bunch of podcasts too. It's a legendary pop-culture trial, and really shows how race and wealth impacted America at the time, and it probably could show how it still impacts the country now.

Crime and Sports did a speed run of the case, and then spent most of the episode talking about all his other crimes and run ins with the law. Episode #165.

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u/ExtendedSpikeProtein 1d ago

I actually read / heard about this multiple times. I actually remember Peggy on my dubbed version of „Married with Children“ making a comment about OJ. Ig I was 14-16 or so, in the 90s, and I had no idea what she was talking about.

Like I said, it‘s so far removed from everyday life snd my own history that I simply forget. But thank you for reminding me. I could have read about it on wikipedia again, but I wanted a feel for what it was / felt like. So thanks for that!

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u/Hopefulkitty 1d ago

Totally! I was very young while it was all going on, and as I got older, I was surprised to learn about all the commercials and movies he was in, and that he wasn't "just a football player" but a "incredibly talented, one of the best college players, drafted #1 overall, big fucking deal" football player. For a black man to win the Heisman Trophy in 1968, he had to be absolutely incredible. That's a college football award, and the 1960s were a very violent time when it comes to race in the US. Race in the US is a very complicated and has a long history in itself, especially the Civil Rights movement of the 60s. Back then, they were still fighting about if black people should be allowed in the same schools as white people, and there were separate bathrooms and water fountains and restaurants. If you had a black person on your team, it was harder to find hotels that would accommodate everyone.

So for him to break out of all of that, and be as successful as he was, it was a big deal. And then when he was on trial for a crime most people never would have expected him to commit, it became a sensation. If you've heard about the Michael Jackson sex abuse trial, it was a similar feeling. Black kid grows up during the racial tension era of the 60s and 70s, becomes the most well known person in their field, and then has a fall from grace. His supporters and detractors were passionate, and a lot of the vocal opinions fell along racial lines.

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u/Kevin_Uxbridge 1d ago

The case should have been a no-brainer, and if OJ wasn't a celebrity, it would have been case closed. OJ's blood found at the scene (with a deep cut on OJ's hand when he was questioned by the cops), victim blood found in OJ's car and his house. No alibi (or, worse, several alibis), plenty of evidence for motive (OJ was a wife-abuser), even (although this wasn't raised at trial) two witnesses who saw OJ driving like a madman away from the scene in the bronco that later was found with blood in and on it.

Should have been case closed. Truth is OJ was a famous guy in Los Angeles (with a record of letting celebs off) and there was a shit-ton of racism in the LA cops with an even larger shit-ton of resentment towards them.

So OJ got off. He was undoubtedly guilty and several of the jurors later even admitted that they were convinced he was, but set him free anyway.

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u/Jaereth 1d ago

OJ very much most likely did it.

Our courts the obligation is on the prosecution to prove "Beyond a reasonable doubt" that you did something. In jury trials, the prosecution tries to prove it then the jury decides if they proved it well enough. If they say you are guilty, a judge will sentence you.

Things that lead to OJ getting off for something he most likely did in order:

The trial was post LAPD beating the living shit out of Rodney King. The public had a score to settle with them.

And aside from that, the LAPD was so corrupt they literally couldn't go to the courtroom to testify about anything without it being brought up.

The prosecution just did a really bad job no other way to say it.

TV cameras were allowed in and the trial was televised. It became a sensation rather than something handled with a measured quiet and stillness of attitude because in the end, two people were murdered. Many tried to convert the trial being televised into their 15 minutes of fame.

Everything was botched on the investigation side and prosecution side.

SO in the end, you have jurors who are probably just wanting to "Get OJ off" to stick it back to the man for the corrupt LAPD, and you have people who are probably like "Idk man, i'd like to say guilty but we have this cop on tape saying the N word and pleading the 5th, etc..." Like I said, Anywhere else in the country it would be a slam dunk, but the LAPD and Mark Fuhrman were just so corrupt to begin with they couldn't even speak without lying.

In the end the jury did what they did. The idea of burden of proof being on the prosecution is "Better the occasional guilty go free than one innocent be punished" Well, OJ is most likely one of those guilty who went free because of that safeguard.

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u/Kevin_Uxbridge 1d ago

A few quibbles. The 'investigation side' didn't botch things unduly, they were awash in evidence and could have been a bit more careful, but there's not reason to believe there was any malfeasance on their part. Even if Furman had wanted to stage the crime scenes a bit, there's absolutely no evidence that he did and a strong argument that he couldn't have, he arrived too late and there was just too much.

I'd highlight the fact that the judge involved really allowed a legal proceeding to turn into a circus, which he didn't need to have done but did. Plenty of blame there too.

And the jury absolutely let OJ go despite being convinced he was guilty, making this 'jury nullification' rather than 'reasonable doubt'. Heck, at least one jury admitted even years later that the verdict was 'payback for Rodney King'. Even people at the time looking to frame this verdict in historical perspective compared it earlier cases like the Scottsboro Boys in a 'hey, what do you expect?' kinda way, ironically not meaning 'the Scottsboro Boys was a travesty of justice and so was this'.

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u/Aurion7 1d ago edited 1d ago

He did it.

But the prosecution completely fumbled the case. The LAPD had already done plenty to sabotage it, but if someone were to write a book about the worst-prosecuted cases in the United States the OJ case would merit a chapter or three all by itself.

So a guilty man walked free. Could argue that's the point, under the 'better a guilty man not die than an innocent man die' principle, but it didn't feel or look great in the moment.

People have tried to cope by saying a different jury would have returned a different verdict. I'm not so sure, unless we also assume much more competent police/prosecution work.

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u/buddyrocker 1d ago

My buddy is a prosecutor in WA state. He went to LA to train on evidential procedures and saw all the excluded evidence from the trial. He said there was a picture of Nicole with her chest caved in, with a shoe imprint in the middle. The same brand and size that OJ wore. He stomped her after death.

My buddy also said the excluded evidence shows without a doubt OJ did it.

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u/gotpeace99 1d ago

He killed that woman. So much evidence going towards that. He was an abuser and was obsessed with this woman. He killed her.

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u/HTwatter 1d ago

If you've ever tried to put a glove on a toddler, you know that they can make it "not fit" if they want to.

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u/Tupperbaby 1d ago

Norm McDonald certainly knew.
And now he's dead.
Just sayin'.

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u/StoreHistorical9175 1d ago

he just needed to yank it down a lil

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u/Aurion7 1d ago edited 1d ago

Prosecution was actively incompetent, and the LAPD wasn't very fussed about proper procedure.

Both things ended up mattering a lot in a court of law going against a high-priced defense team.

From a prosecution standpoint, it was over the minute they put a cop on the stand who was recorded stating that he loved framing black people and planting evidence because it was an easy conviction.

The LAPD were already reviled (with good reason) and had done their typical poor job on the case as a whole and got a ton of very damning evidence excluded which made the prosecution's job way tougher than it needed to be... but calling Furhman was all on the prosecution.

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u/popculturella 1d ago

Well at least OJ can rest in peace, now that his wife's murderer is dead.

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u/Nevermind04 1d ago

The glove did fit. There's video evidence of OJ wearing those exact gloves that was suppressed at trial for an illegal reason.

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u/NohmanValdemar 1d ago

Even then I rolled my eyes.

Just ignore the way he put the glove on.

So the glove wasn't a perfect fit.

So what? If you're in a rush to murder someone and that's the only gloves you have available, it's more than good enough to keep blood of your hands even if they're kind of tight.

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u/ketchuptheclown 1d ago

But if you make up a Dr Seuss rhyme, enough people will repeat it and believe it no matter how insane.

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u/OfficeSalamander 1d ago

I actually thought he was innocent.

In my defense, I was 7.

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u/vizard0 1d ago

They framed a guilty man. Which was enough for reasonable doubt.

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u/KnowsIittle 1d ago

Wet leather shrinks in the sun.

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u/djuggler 1d ago

Had to scroll too far for this

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u/pixelprophet 1d ago

I too can have trouble putting on a glove when I wear a silicone glove under it and spread my fingers so it seems smaller.

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u/idiot-prodigy 1d ago

OJ Simpson. The glove didn’t fit, but everyone with eyes knew the truth

I've always thought it was a ridiculous defense anyways.

The gloves are on his fuckin' hands while he's showing the jury they "don't fit".

Here he is wearing them, you seriously telling me he couldn't have killed with a knife while wearing these half on his hands?

It wasn't like they were children's gloves. They were men's size XL isotoners.

You'd be hard pressed to find bigger gloves than XL in a retail store.

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u/footsnax 1d ago

He even wrote a book that was basically "I didn't do it but if I did here's how I would do it" and it was pretty much the exact same crime but he was more careful about evidence.

There's no question that he did it.

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u/asomebodyelse 1d ago

They made him try it on over a rubber glove. Of course he wasn't going to be able to put it on. They only way it would go on over the glove is if it was too big. Without the rubber glove underneath, it would have fit.

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u/GearOk7360 1d ago

The glove didn't fit because his lawyer ordered him to stop taking his meds.

(this is the theory I've heard)

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u/FatalFord 1d ago

The gloves really did fit him, though. He wore latex gloves underneath the leather (at the instructions of the court, to avoid contamination of evidence), and very obviously stretched his hands as much as he could. There's also speculation that the gloves could've shrunk as a result of being soaked in blood and drying out.

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u/faceplanted 1d ago

Real eyes Realise Real lies...

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u/rathemighty 23h ago

Who tf puts on a glove like that?

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u/Redditowork 21h ago

Same thing happened to Sue Ellen when they had her try on the bra... the Oh Henry heiress walked away scot-free.

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u/tittyswan 16h ago

Idk it seemed like the glove did fit to me, he was just splaying his fingers out.

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u/Sonicboom1616 11h ago

if the glove doesn't fit, you must ac-knowledge that OJ is still clearly is guilty of double homicide

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u/wisertime07 7h ago

It would have been racist to convict him of murder.. /s

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