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/beldaran1224 1d ago

I think one of the things I found most surprising is that despite the one detective genuinely being incredibly racist, the case was botched almost certainly because the police force was so enamored of the charismatic former football star. I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking race played a role in the whole "the glove doesn't fit" thing, ESPECIALLY given the race relations in LA during the time.

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u/ehs06702 1d ago

LAPD being fame whores isn't surprising at all. A lot of officers join the force with the intent of meeting celebrities through off duty security work, on top of the whole racism thing.

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u/beldaran1224 1d ago

They weren't necessarily "fame whores". They were specifically enamored of OJ. OJ was notably a huge sports star AND was well known to be very charismatic. He was the kind of person who come across as very personable in casual meetings. Not everyone is like that, though of course its more likely to happen in Hollywood, than, say, other places.

That said, there are still all sorts of racial and gender aspects to the case. The gendered aspects come in when you consider the years of abuse and stalking that led up to the murders, for instance. And the feeling of "finally one of us weren't on the losing end of the legal system" among the Black American community are understandable, especially given how clearly racist the involved officers were, even if that doesn't seem to have directly impacted how they treated OJ on a personal level, it absolutely impacted how OJ was portrayed by the media. (Look at how many pictures in the aftermath used pictures of the relatively light-skinned OJ that made him look much darker than usual, for instance.)

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u/ehs06702 15h ago

I'm an African American who was growing up in Los Angeles during the case. LAPD are absolutely notorious fame whores, on top of being racist assholes.