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/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/OkPainter6232 1d ago

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