The Run of His Life: The People v. O. J. Simpson

5. “MR. SIMPSON HAS

NOT APPEARED”

At 8:30 A.M. on Friday, as planned, Lange reached Shapiro at home. He and Vannatter had worked nearly all night to prepare the paperwork for the arrest, and Lange was tired and in no mood for a long conversation. He told Shapiro that the police had an arrest warrant charging O.J. Simpson with the double homicide, with “special circumstances,” of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Under California law, “special circumstances” refers to a list of designated aggravating factors that change the legal landscape of a murder case. The special circumstance charged against Simpson was a double homicide. Two implications jumped out immediately at Shapiro. First, the charge made Simpson eligible for the death penalty. (The final decision on whether the prosecution would seek execution would come later.) Second, California law does not allow for bail in special-circumstances cases. So Shapiro knew immediately that O.J. Simpson was going to jail on June 17 and that he would remain there for the duration of his trial-many months at the least.

The conversation between the two men was polite, and each heard what he wanted to hear. Lange did not view the call as an invitation to negotiate. He knew that it should take less than an hour for Simpson to travel from his home in Brentwood to Parker Center. He told Shapiro that Simpson had two and a half hours to surrender-that is, until 11:00 A.M. Shapiro saw Lange’s comments as more of a request than a command. The lawyer mentioned some concerns about his client’s mental state-he might be suicidal-but said that he would do his best to bring Simpson in on time. The two men agreed to stay in touch as the day progressed.

When he received the call from Lange, Robert Shapiro had been O.J. Simpson’s lawyer for less than seventy-two hours. He had been hired in a way that revealed much about his client, himself, and the case as a whole. It was Howard Weitzman, of course, who had represented Simpson when he returned from Chicago and went on to be interviewed by the police on Monday, June 13. Word that Simpson had given a statement to the police leaked out that evening, and the news prompted a strong reaction in wealthy television executive Roger King, who was monitoring events from New Jersey. King, the chairman of King World, which syndicates Oprah and Wheel of Fortune, among other television shows, was a sometime resident of Los Angeles and knew Simpson from playing the occasional round of golf with him. Appalled that Weitzman had allowed Simpson to be questioned by the police, King called O.J. and told him so-and recommended that Simpson find a new lawyer. “I’ll get you Bob Shapiro,” King promised. He then tracked Shapiro down to where he was having dinner, at the House of Blues, a popular Hollywood nightspot, and asked him to take the case. Shapiro agreed. He was hired by Simpson on Tuesday and entered the case officially on Wednesday.

What makes this transaction curious is that none of the participants really knew one another. O.J. and Roger King saw each other rarely, but King was the kind of man Simpson admired. O.J. believed King when he said that Weitzman had let him down. (This also allowed Simpson to blame someone else for his own decision to speak to the police.) More remarkably, King had never even spoken to Shapiro before he reached him at the House of Blues. The entrepreneur couldn’t name a single client the lawyer had represented, but he had some general sense of Shapiro as a skilled defender of celebrities. For his part, Shapiro did not hesitate before saying he wanted the case. And to Simpson, as always, image was everything: Robert Shapiro became his lawyer because he fit the image of a smart lawyer in the eyes of a fellow who fit O.J.’s image of a smart guy. (The Shapiro-for-Weitzman exchange also provided grist for these two lawyers’ longstanding feud, one that was based largely, it seems, on their similarity to one another.) Shapiro took over the case on Tuesday, June 14, and the following morning Weitzman issued a public statement saying that he had resigned from the case because of his friendship with O.J. and his obligations to other clients. Shapiro delighted in telling friends that Weitzman’s statement was a lie and that he had in fact been fired. The truth probably lies somewhere between the two versions-along the lines of a job departure once described by Casey Stengel: “We call it discharged because there is no question I had to leave.”

Shapiro had a very busy first week, organizing his initial efforts with Simpson’s medical and legal well-being in mind. Simpson told Shapiro that he was innocent, but lawyers are used to hearing this sort of thing from clients, especially at the beginning of a case. The first thing Shapiro did was arrange for Simpson to take a polygraph examination, which is something many criminal defense lawyers do. These tests are generally inadmissible in court, but lawyers often use them to force their clients to come clean, face reality, and make the best deal they can. Shapiro called his friend F. Lee Bailey, who is a national authority on polygraphs, for a recommendation on which expert to use. Bailey suggested Edward Gelb, who ran a firm called Intercept out of a set of nondescript offices on Wilshire Boulevard. (Bailey knew Gelb because they had hosted a short-lived television series together in 1983. Called Lie Detector, the program showcased Gelb and Bailey examining UFO sighters and other fringe figures to determine whether they were telling the truth.)

Gelb was out of town, so the test was administered by his top deputy, Dennis Nellany. Simpson took what is known as a “zone of comparison” polygraph examination, which measured three of his physiological responses to questions-heart rate, breathing, and the electrical sensitivity of his skin. Lie detectors do not, strictly speaking, detect lies. Rather, the examiner interprets the subject’s responses on a sliding scale in which negative numbers indicated deception and positive numbers, truthfulness. According to the test Nellany administered, any score higher than plus-6 meant that Simpson was telling the truth; any number lower than minus-6 meant he was lying. A score between plus-6 and minus-6 would be ambiguous.

Simpson scored a minus-24-total failure. The score was so catastrophic that some people around Simpson tried to attribute it to his distressed emotional state at the time of the examination. Bailey in particular tried to say that Simpson was so upset that the result should not be seen as dispositive. Nellany, however, regarded the polygraph as conclusive evidence of Simpson’s guilt in the murders, and he reported that view to Shapiro.

Shapiro weighed his options-which included an insanity defense. To that end, he called in another expert on Wednesday, June 15, one who could serve two purposes. As a respected psychiatrist with a private practice in Beverly Hills, Saul Faerstein could examine O.J. and prescribe medication. But Faerstein also had a national reputation as an expert witness in the field of forensic psychiatry. Shapiro thus viewed him as a hedge in case Simpson wanted to raise a diminished-capacity defense to the murders.

Faerstein went to the house on Rockingham and joined Simpson on the couch in the living room. Simpson talked and talked-about himself. The press was out to get him now; his image would never recover; it was all so unfair. What struck Faerstein most were the gaps in Simpson’s narrative-there was no sadness for the loss of the mother of his children, no concern for his children’s future, no empathy for Nicole. Simpson worried only about himself. His reactions were inconsistent with what Faerstein would expect from an unjustly accused man, yet Simpson was obviously not insane in any legal sense. So, as with Nellany’s examination, Faerstein’s report offered Shapiro no help in constructing a defense. Faerstein returned to see Simpson many times over the next two months to continue his course of psychiatric treatment. Like Shapiro, Faerstein was convinced early on of Simpson’s guilt in the murders.

On that same Wednesday, June 15, which was also the day of the viewing of Nicole’s body at a funeral home, Shapiro asked an internist, Robert Huizenga, to give O.J. a detailed physical examination. Shapiro wanted Huizenga to check on Simpson’s medical condition, but he also asked the doctor to document with photographs any bruises or abrasions on Simpson’s body at that point, which was less than three days after the killings; his lack of any major injuries would become a central part of his defense at trial. Also in those first two days on the job, Shapiro had recruited two of the nation’s leading forensic experts to Simpson’s team-Henry Lee, the chief police scientist for the state of Connecticut, and Michael Baden, the former chief medical examiner of New York City. By Thursday, June 16, both Lee and Baden had arrived in Los Angeles. In spite of all the activity, Shapiro found the time to make a characteristic gesture. On the night of June 16, he took Baden to a glamorous Hollywood screening of the Jack Nicholson movie Wolf, which was opening the next day.

Detective Lange’s call on Friday morning, June 17, presented Shapiro with a dilemma. What he could have done-indeed, should have done-was simple: make a direct effort to locate Simpson and then take him in to Parker Center, and thereby make the 11:00 A.M. deadline with ease. But the situation was more complicated than Lange knew when he made the call, for Simpson was not at home at Brentwood, as the police investigating his case had assumed. On Thursday, June 16, following Nicole’s funeral earlier in the day, Simpson had participated in an elaborate ruse to convince the vast media encampment outside his home that he had in fact returned to Rockingham. The person who was actually hustled into the property with a jacket over his head was his old friend Al “A.C.” Cowlings. Simpson had been taken to his friend Robert Kardashian’s home in Encino, in the San Fernando Valley. Remarkably, this operation was engineered by an off-duty LAPD sergeant, Dennis Sebenick, who was moonlighting as a security guard for the murder suspect. Sebenick did not, of course, apprise his colleagues on the force of the whereabouts of their prey. This kind of solicitude typified Simpson’s relationship with the LAPD.

Shapiro, therefore, had to retrieve Simpson from Encino, which was slightly farther from downtown than Brentwood. In his years of dealing with celebrity clients, Shapiro had learned the value of deference. He did not, for example, telephone ahead to Kardashian’s place and tell O.J. to get ready to leave. Defending his actions later, Shapiro said that he had acted this gingerly because he feared Simpson might harm himself if he were dealt with more harshly. Shapiro also knew that Simpson’s friends had just orchestrated Howard Weitzman’s departure in part because they thought he had been insufficiently zealous in protecting Simpson’s interests. Shapiro did not want to meet the same fate. If the choice was between offending the LAPD or his client, Shapiro would take his chances with the cops. While still at home, Shapiro called Faerstein, the psychiatrist, and asked him to meet him at Kardashian’s house; together they would break the news to O.J.

At 9:30 A.M., Shapiro arrived at Kardashian’s vast white villa, a garish affair resembling a Teheran bordello, all marble and mirrors. Simpson, who had been sedated, was still in the first-floor bedroom he was using during his stay. His girlfriend Paula Barbieri was with him; she had been at his side for much of the week. (After Simpson’s criminal trial, in a deposition in the victims’ civil case against O.J., Barbieri testified that she had left a telephone message breaking off her relationship with Simpson on the morning of the murders, June 12. But her actions the following week seem inconsistent with the notion that she was trying to end their affair.)

Shapiro and Kardashian woke O.J. and told him that they would be taking him to Parker Center to surrender. Again, they did not force him to leave. Instead, they explained that Doctors Huizenga and Faerstein were on their way to examine him before they had to leave for jail. Within moments, the house was buzzing with people. First Faerstein arrived, followed by Huizenga, who was accompanied by an entourage of assistants. Then came Henry Lee and Michael Baden. Kardashian’s girlfriend, Denice Shakarian Halicki, who also lived at the house, suggested that Al Cowlings be called, and he was summoned to join the group as well. Huizenga wanted to evaluate some swollen lymph nodes he had noticed in his initial examination of Simpson, particularly because O.J. had a family history of cancer. (Later tests showed no malignancy.) In addition-incredibly-Huizenga took the time to do some additional examinations to bolster Simpson’s defense, taking more photographs to demonstrate that Simpson had no significant wounds. Granted the privilege of being allowed to surrender, Simpson was missing his deadline so that he could, in effect, conduct his defense.

Shapiro was on the phone every fifteen minutes to the LAPD-stroking, consoling, explaining that these things take time and that Simpson would be on his way shortly. Patiently, but with some indignation, Shapiro gave a series of increasingly high-level officers the same message: “I have always had a good relationship with the police department. I’ve always kept my word. You have to trust me here. I will be there when I say I can be there.” After all, Shapiro told the cops, what difference did it make if Simpson surrendered at 11:00 A.M. or 1:00 P.M.?

Simpson, too, had his demands. In the hour or so after Shapiro’s arrival, the entire group gathered in a large second-floor study just off the master bedroom. When Huizenga finished taking blood and hair samples there, O.J. said he wanted to take a shower, then talk to his mother and his children. Simpson, Barbieri, and Cowlings went back down to O.J.’s bedroom on the first floor. When he arrived, Faerstein had wanted to keep a close eye on Simpson to make sure he wouldn’t harm himself. But he had no qualms about Cowlings monitoring O.J.; the psychiatrist assumed that Cowlings, too, would make sure Simpson remained safe.

Finally, Vannatter and Lange grew fed up waiting for the lawyer to drive the defendant to Parker Center. They had been reaching Shapiro on his cellular phone, so they did not even know where he and Simpson were. (Marcia Clark, who was beginning the grand-jury proceedings against Simpson that day, took a break from those labors to have her own indignant conversation with Shapiro.) At around noon, the detectives said they would wait no longer for Simpson to surrender. They wanted to send a squad car to pick him up. As always, the LAPD was concerned about the media. A news conference had been scheduled for noon, and now that had to be put off. It was just after noon when Shapiro put Faerstein on the phone with an LAPD commander, in an effort to explain the reasons for the delay.

“There is a warrant for this man’s arrest,” the commander said, “and we have to come get him. Now, where are you?”

Faerstein stalled. “I don’t think I’m at liberty to tell you where we are.”

“I don’t think you understand, Doctor. There are laws relating to aiding and abetting fugitives. Now, you tell me where you are-”

“Just a minute,” Faerstein said, and then handed the phone to Shapiro, who finally agreed to provide Kardashian’s address. Ever the negotiator, Shapiro secured the commander’s promise that Shapiro and Faerstein could accompany Simpson on his trip downtown.

Moments later, at about 12:10 P.M., a squad car arrived at Kardashian’s, and a police helicopter began circling overhead. Shapiro and Faerstein answered the door. Even then, after all the delays, the lawyer had another request. Shapiro and his professional colleagues-Faerstein, Huizenga, Lee, Baden, and Kardashian-had been gathered upstairs. O.J. was in a back bedroom talking with Barbieri and Cowlings. Shapiro asked the officers if Faerstein, the psychiatrist, could break the news to O.J. that the police had arrived. (Simpson had not even been told that the police were coming to get him.) The officers, who at that point had every right to barge in and take Simpson away, agreed. Faerstein walked back to the bedroom where O.J. and A.C. were talking. A moment later Faerstein returned, alone. “He must be somewhere else,” Faerstein told the officers.

One at a time, the people in the house fanned out. A few walked upstairs. With each passing second, the pace of everyone’s steps increased. O.J. wasn’t upstairs. Chests constricted. There was a brief ray of hope when they realized they had not checked the garage. Maybe O.J. went to get something out of the trunk of his car. But there was no one in the garage. Panic. They talked to Otto “Keno” Jenkins, Bob Shapiro’s chauffeur. He hadn’t seen O.J. And then the realization dawned on them that no one had seen Barbieri or Cowlings, either.

“No one leaves,” one officer said when he realized what had happened. “This is a crime scene.”

As he had done when the officers came for him in 1989 for beating Nicole, so he did when they came for him in 1994 for killing her: O.J. Simpson disappeared.

The LAPD’s considerable press apparatus had put out the word early in the morning: There would be an announcement regarding the Simpson case at noon. Reporters drifted in to Parker Center over the course of the morning and then learned that the briefing had been delayed. This was no great surprise, because most such events start late. Then there was a bomb scare at police headquarters, and the media people were told they could vacate the building if they wanted. No one left-media machismo. At 1:53 P.M., the reporters got the two-minute warning: The briefing was about to begin.

Commander David Gascon was the chief spokesman for the LAPD. With his neat black hair, obligatory mustache, and tight-fitting uniform, Gascon cut a typical figure for the department he represented. He was also fairly relaxed and approachable, and he had a good rapport with most of the reporters who covered the LAPD. They noticed, when he stepped to the podium, that he looked… different. He seemed shaken, and his voice quavered slightly.

“Okay, I have an official announcement from the Los Angeles Police Department,” Gascon said.

“This morning,” Gascon said, his voice unsteady, “detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department, after an exhaustive investigation which included interviews with dozens of witnesses, a thorough examination and analysis of the physical evidence both here and in Chicago, sought and obtained a warrant for the arrest of O.J. Simpson, charging him with the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman.

“Mr. Simpson, in agreement with his attorney, was scheduled to surrender this morning to the Los Angeles Police Department. Initially, that was 11:00. It then became 11:45. Mr. Simpson has not appeared.”

The room stirred.

“The Los Angeles Police Department right now is actively searching for Mr. Simpson.”

An experienced group of reporters were gathered in that room, and yet none of them could ever recall having heard the sound they issued at that moment: a sort of collective gasp. And then one journalist, name lost to history, let out a long and very astonished whistle.

“Mr. Simpson is out there somewhere,” Gascon said, “and we will find him.”

Shortly after it became clear that Simpson and Cowlings were really gone, Kardashian materialized in the foyer of his house with an envelope that contained a letter. Shapiro and Faerstein sat on the bottom step of the winding marble staircase and read it. They agreed that it seemed like a suicide note written by O.J. Meanwhile, the cops asked the assembled group where they thought Simpson had gone.

Someone suggested Nicole’s grave, near her parents’ home in Orange County. Someone else said the Los Angeles Coliseum, site of O.J.’s greatest moments of football glory at USC. “He might kill himself in the end zone,” Faerstein said.

In fact, no one had any idea where he was.

After Shapiro and Kardashian spoke to the officers on the scene and recounted the events of the morning to their satisfaction, the two men left for Shapiro’s office in Century City. (They also determined that Paula Barbieri had left the house shortly before O.J. and A.C., but not with them.) “The two Bobs,” as they were sometimes known, asked the officers if Faerstein could leave with them, but the police weren’t yet finished talking to the psychiatrist. Though the letter was clearly important evidence of Simpson’s state of mind and his possible plans, Kardashian took it with him rather than mentioning it, much less giving it to the police, who were looking for O.J.

From the moment Simpson vanished, Robert Shapiro focused on his top priority: Robert Shapiro. He knew immediately how furious the police and prosecutors were about Simpson’s disappearance, and he knew they would hold him responsible. Shapiro had embarrassed them in front of the entire country. Worse, Shapiro didn’t like what the cops were insinuating about his role in Simpson’s flight. Even though Shapiro had committed no crime in harboring Simpson for the morning, the mere fact that he might be investigated worried him. Shapiro decided he was finished dealing with underlings-Lange, Clark, and the like. Shapiro decided to call the district attorney himself, Gil Garcetti.

Everything had been shaping up so well for Gil Garcetti. Elected overwhelmingly in 1992, he had an ideal ethnic and political résumé. The son of Mexican immigrants and the grandson of an Italian, the fifty-three-year-old politician had spent his entire professional career in the D.A.’s office. (He was, in fact, a neighbor of O.J.’s in Brentwood, thanks not to his civil-service earnings but rather to the wherewithal of his wealthy wife.) Even his steely-gray hair came with an uplifting tale: It had changed color after Garcetti underwent chemotherapy in a successful battle with lymphoma in 1980. As a tough-on-crime prosecutor and yet a Democrat, he had a promising political future. One problem hovered-his office’s remarkable record of futility in high-profile cases. The D.A. had failed to obtain convictions against the proprietors of the McMartin Preschool in a lengthy child abuse case; against several motion picture industry figures in connection with the deaths of two people on the set of Twilight Zone-The Movie; against the Menendez brothers for killing their parents; and, most notoriously, against the police officers who beat Rodney King-acquittals that set off the riots of 1992. As Garcetti would frequently (and correctly) point out over the course of the Simpson case, evaluating an office of nearly a thousand prosecutors on the basis of how they did in a few “big ones” was pretty unfair. (Still, in his campaign against his predecessor, Ira Reiner, Garcetti himself hadn’t hesitated to play the can’t-win-the-big-one card.) These murders presented Garcetti with a case that was likely to dwarf the other “big ones” in media attention. Suddenly, though, he had a bigger problem than trying to convict O.J. Simpson-he couldn’t even find the guy.

So Garcetti focused on his top priority: Gil Garcetti. When Shapiro got on the phone with the D.A., the defense attorney began reciting a version of the same speech he had been giving the cops all day: You know me, Gil, I don’t pull this kind of stuff. I arranged Erik Menendez’s surrender from Israel. Name-dropping even at a time like this, Shapiro then became nearly unhinged, practically weeping over the phone: “I didn’t know he would run, Gil. You have to believe me.” The two men were old acquaintances; Shapiro had even contributed $5,000 to Garcetti’s campaign. But at this moment Garcetti addressed Shapiro with barely controlled rage: “Just get him in here, Bob. That’s all we’re thinking about now.”

At 3:00 P.M., just after he got off the phone with Shapiro, Garcetti went to give his own press conference, on the eighteenth floor of the Criminal Courts Building. Flanked by Marcia Clark and David Conn, Garcetti looked even more distraught than Gascon had in his briefing an hour earlier. He looked right at the cameras, which were broadcasting his words live.

“I want to say something to the entire community,” Garcetti said. “If you in any way are assisting Mr. Simpson in avoiding justice, Mr. Simpson is a fugitive of justice right now. [His feelings were garbling his usually adequate syntax.] And if you assist him in any way, you are committing a felony. Think about it. And I’ll guarantee you that if there is evidence establishing that you’ve assisted Mr. Simpson in any way to avoid his arrest, you will be prosecuted as a felon.

“Now,” Garcetti added, stumbling again a bit, “you can tell that I am a little upset, and I am upset. This is a very serious case. Many of us, perhaps, had empathy to some extent. We saw, perhaps, the falling of an American hero. To some extent, I viewed Mr. Simpson in the same way. But let’s remember that we have two innocent people who have been brutally killed… It’s a serious case. We will continue to treat it seriously.”

Through more than a half hour of hostile questions, Garcetti had nothing but polite things to say about the LAPD, but his frustration did surface toward the end.

Rewording a question that had already been asked approximately twenty times at the press conference, one reporter ventured, “The question so many people are asking-and perhaps this needs to be addressed to the LAPD, and it already has-is how can this possibly happen? The entire world is focused on this man. Is there any way to answer that?”

“I can’t,” Garcetti said simply.

“Surely you’re wondering that yourself.”

“Aren’t we all?” said the district attorney.

Garcetti’s press conference did nothing to ease Shapiro’s anxiety. He knew he remained the villain in the minds of the Los Angeles law enforcement establishment. So Simpson’s lawyer decided, in effect, to take his case to the public. He told reporters that he would be making a statement about the day’s events at 5:00 P.M., which was barely an hour after Garcetti’s briefing ended. Unlike every other event that had been planned for June 17, this press conference started right on time. Robert Shapiro was anxious to go. He stepped to a podium in a makeshift briefing room on the ground floor of his Century City office building and spoke calmly and methodically, with no notes.

Shapiro, too, started with a plea to the camera. But he was aiming for an audience of one. “For the sake of your children,” he told O.J., “please surrender immediately. Surrender to any law enforcement official at any police station, but please do it immediately.” There was an odd calm about Shapiro, a lack of affect to his presentation. For all the turmoil of the day-and the sheer strangeness of all the occurrences-he spoke without passion or even inflection. In retrospect, his agenda at the press conference appears utterly transparent: Whatever else had happened today, this mess was not going to drag him down with it.

Shapiro began by summarizing the day’s events: the early morning call from the detectives, his journey to Kardashian’s home, his passing the news of the arrest warrant to Simpson, and the defendant’s sudden disappearance. “I have on numerous occasions in the past twenty-five years made similar arrangements with the Los Angeles Police Department and the district attorney’s office and Mr. Garcetti. All of them have always kept their word to me, and I have always kept my word to them. In fact, I arranged the surrender of Erik Menendez from Israel on a similar basis. We are all shocked by this sudden turn of events.”

It was an extraordinary tale, and the reporters, along with the national television audience, listened with rapt attention. Shapiro’s account was also highly incriminating of his client. Simpson’s actions, as described by Shapiro, did not seem to be those of an innocent man. In light of Simpson’s escape, Shapiro might have had an obligation to recount this story to the police, but the lawyer was certainly under no obligation to share it with the public at large. Indeed, by some reckonings, much of what had gone on that morning at Kardashian’s house may have been protected by the attorney-client privilege-a privilege that only Simpson had the right to waive. Yet Shapiro told all. He had hung his client out to dry in order to save himself.

Yet Shapiro’s statement was only the beginning of the proceedings at this press conference. “Now,” Shapiro continued, “I would like to introduce to you Mr. Robert Kardashian, who is one of Mr. Simpson’s closest and dearest friends, who will read a letter that O.J. Simpson wrote in his handwriting today. Thank you.”

He became one of the most familiar, if least known, figures in the Simpson saga: loyal friend Robert Kardashian, the one with the white stripe in his hair. Heir to a meat-packing fortune in Los Angeles, Kardashian attended USC a couple of years before Simpson and served there as the student manager of the football team, the prototypical hanger-on position. He graduated from law school but quickly dropped practice for the business world. He started a music magazine and sold his share for $3 million in 1979. At the time of the murders he was running Movie Tunes, a company that played music in movie theaters between shows.

For many years Simpson and Kardashian shared lively and similar social lives. In 1978, Kardashian met his future wife, Kristen, when she was seventeen and he thirty-four; Kardashian had been there the previous year when O.J., then thirty, met Nicole Brown, then eighteen. Bob and Kristen Kardashian would ultimately have four children (Kourtney, Kimberly, Khole, and Robert, Jr.), and they often joined O.J. and Nicole for vacations. The two couples separated around the same time, too, and Kardashian’s divorce papers suggest that his marriage was beset by some of the same troubles as O.J. and Nicole’s. During the divorce, Kristen Kardashian obtained a restraining order that barred either party from “molesting, attacking, striking, threatening, sexually assaulting, battering, or otherwise disturbing the peace of the other party.”

Strangely, Kardashian seemed to have an attack of poverty during his divorce. In an affidavit filed on January 11, 1991, he wrote that he had been terminated from his job the previous December. “I AM NOW UNEMPLOYED AND HAVE NO INCOME,” the document stated. Yet at the time of the murders, Kardashian was living in the vast house in Encino, and from the moment Simpson was arrested, Kardashian suspended all other work, reactivated his law license, and toiled full-time on O.J.’s defense for more than a year. His Rolls-Royce became a fixture at the county jail. His devotion to Simpson had a desperate, frantic quality. In September 1994, he placed a full-page advertisement in Hits magazine, a trade publication, bearing the words JUSTICE FOR THE JUICE. In the ad Kardashian used the name of Movie Tunes’ executive vice-president, Michael Ameen, without Ameen’s permission. Ameen promptly quit, telling The Hollywood Reporter, “Robert’s commitment to this case has overwhelmed every other corner of his life.”

Kardashian’s divorce from Kristen pained him, especially because she left him for Bruce Jenner, the former Olympic decathlon champion. Jenner and Kristen later married, and at the time of the murders they were starring in a frequently played infomercial for a thigh-exercising device. According to a close associate of Kardashian’s, “It bothered him that she was on TV all the time with the Thighmaster. This case was his way to step over them. This was better than infomercials.”

Head bowed, with no words of introduction or explanation, Kardashian followed Shapiro to the podium at the June 17 press conference and began speaking into the nest of microphones. His audience surely dwarfed that of any infomercial. “This letter was written by O.J. today,” Kardashian said. Actually, it was not. The letter was headed “6/15/94,” two days earlier. Then Kardashian began reading: “To whom it may concern…”

Suicide notes vary. Some tell the truth; some don’t. Some reflect a genuine intention to commit the deed; some merely display a taste for melodrama. There is, of course, no way to tell for sure what O.J. Simpson truly intended to do when he composed the letter that Robert Kardashian read to the world on the afternoon of June 17, 1994. It is safe to say, however, that Simpson intended his letter to be understood as a suicide note-and as a public last will and testament. As such, it provides both intentional and unintentional clues to the nature of its author-and in particular to the banality, self-pity, and narcissism that are the touchstones of his character.

First everyone understand nothing to do with Nicole’s murder. I loved her, allways have and always will. If we had a promblem it’s because I loved her so much. Recitly we came to the understanding that for now we were’nt right for each other at least for now. Dispite our love we were different and thats why we murtually agreed to go our spaerate ways.

Kardashian edited as he went along, first by omitting the date at the top of the letter. Shapiro had suggested that Simpson had given this and two other letters to Kardashian right after he wrote them. But if O.J. had actually written them two days earlier, Kardashian might have had a clue that Simpson was contemplating not surrendering. By leaving out the date, Kardashian avoided uncomfortable questions about his own role in O.J.’s disappearance.

Kardashian also began his recitation by quoting the letter as saying “First, everyone understand I had nothing to do with Nicole’s murder.” The text illustrates that Simpson in fact omitted these two important words. The “suicide note” showed that Simpson was a terrible writer and speller, so it is difficult to draw any conclusions from his errors except about his near-illiteracy. However, it is tempting to infer some psychological significance from Simpson’s failure to render correctly this most important sentence of his letter. (Most newspapers that printed excerpts of the letter cleaned up the grammar and spelling, thereby leaving the impression that Simpson was more literate than he was.)

Two days earlier, standing before Nicole’s body at the O’Connor Mortuary in Laguna Beach, her mother, Juditha, had asked O.J. whether he had anything to do with Nicole’s death. Staring at Nicole’s corpse as he answered, Simpson used words similar to those in this note: “I loved her,” O.J. told Nicole’s mother. “I loved her too much.” From both the letter and the remark, it seems that O.J. believed his love for Nicole was in some way excessive.

It was tough spitting for a second time but we both knew it was for the best. Inside I had no doubt that in the future we would be close as friend or more. Unlike whats been in the press, Nicole + I had a great relationship for most of our lives together. Like all long term relationships, we had a few downs + ups. I took the heat New Years 1989 because that what I was suppose to do I did not plea no contest for any other reason but to protect our privicy and was advise it would end the press hype.

Kardashian rendered that last sentence in a considerably more grammatical way than Simpson wrote it.

I don’t want to belabor knocking the press but I cant beleive what’s being said. Most of it tottally made up. I know you have a job to do but as a last wish, please, please, please leave my children in peace. Their lives will be tough enough.

Leaving aside the question of whether a criminal conviction for spousal abuse and Nicole’s repeated pleas to 911 qualified as something more than “a few downs + ups,” it is Simpson’s self-obsession that is so striking here. He not only denies responsibility for beating Nicole but congratulates himself for accepting the blame for it. Ironically, there was in fact very little “press hype” about the 1989 beating incident. Notwithstanding his criminal conviction, Simpson received generally glowing press coverage from 1989 until even the week after the murders. That O.J. should have been so wounded by what little criticism there was again demonstrates his vast self-regard.

I want to send my love and thanks to all my friend. I’m sorry I can’t name every one of you. Especially A.C., Man, thanks for being in my life. The support and friendship I receive from so many, Wayne Hughes, Louis Marx, Frank Olson, Marc Packer, Bender, Bobby Kardashian I wish we had spend more time together in recite years.

Hughes is a USC benefactor and the owner of a chain of private warehouse facilities; Marx is a private investor who sold off his father’s toy company at great profit; Olson is the longtime chief executive officer of Hertz; Packer is a New York-based restaurateur; Bobby Bender is a garment-industry executive in New York. As for Kardashian, the letter suggests that even Simpson was astonished by the extent and intensity of his friend’s sycophancy.

My golfing buddie, Hoss, Alan Austin, Mike, Craig, Bender, Wyler, Sandy, Jay, Donnie Sofer, thank for the fun.

The first four mentioned were all playing partners of O.J.’s at the Riviera Country Club, near Simpson’s home in Brentwood. “Hoss” is Bob Hoskins, a Los Angeles-based businessman; Alan Austin ran a women’s wear boutique in Beverly Hills for many years; Mike Melchiori was a semiretired printing executive (he died of a heart attack in April 1996); and Craig Baumgarten, a former senior executive at Columbia Pictures, is now an independent movie producer. Wyler is Bender’s partner in the garment business. Sandy, Jay, and Don Soffer (correct spelling) were Simpson’s East Coast golfing companions. It is worth noting, given the way his case unfolded, that in this list of O.J.’s fifteen best friends, all of them except Cowlings are wealthy, middle-aged white men.

All my teammatte over the years. Reggie, you were the soul of my pro career. Ahmad I never stop being proud of you. Marcus you got a great lady in Katherine Don’t mess it up. Bobby Chandler thanks for always being there.

When he turned to his fellow athletes, the style of the letter shifted to that of a high school yearbook. Reggie McKenzie was Simpson’s top blocker on the Buffalo Bills; Ahmad Rashad played wide receiver for the Bills and later the Minnesota Vikings and was O.J.’s colleague and sometime rival at NBC Sports; Marcus Allen, who won the Heisman as a running back thirteen years after Simpson at USC, had a magnificent professional career with the Raiders and Kansas City Chiefs; Chandler, a teammate of O.J.’s at USC, played for the Raiders in the NFL. (He would die of cancer while O.J. was in jail during his trial.)

The reference to Allen was especially intriguing. Marcus Allen was in some ways O.J.’s protégé, the man who came closest to equaling his feats at USC and in the professional ranks. Not surprisingly, their relationship generated tensions, which were exacerbated by Allen’s on-and-off affair with Nicole. Some of O.J. and Nicole’s friends believe that it was jealousy about Allen in particular that ultimately drove Simpson to murder her. O.J. apparently knew about this affair and at least forgave Allen for it, allowing Marcus and Kathryn (the correct spelling) to marry in his home on Rockingham in 1993. But the instruction to Allen about his marriage-“Don’t mess it up”-may be a subtle reminder that O.J.’s resentments against him lingered.

Skip + Cathy I love you guys without you I never would have made it this far. Marquerite thanks for those early years. We had some fun. Paula, what can I say, You are special I’m sorry we’re not going to have our chanc. God brought you to me. I now see, as I leave, you’ll be in my thoughs.

Skip Taft was O.J.’s business manager; Cathy Randa, his secretary; Marguerite, his first wife and the mother of Jason, Arnelle, and Aaren, the child who drowned in the pool at Rockingham. Barbieri was, of course, his principal-but far from exclusive-girlfriend during the period after his separation from Nicole. The only women mentioned in the suicide note are secretaries, wives, and girlfriends-an apt summary of O.J.’s view of the place of women in the world.

By the end, the letter came to resemble the speech Simpson gave on August 3, 1985, upon his induction to the professional football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. O.J. thanked many of the same people, in much the same style. (“… I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Skip Taft and Cathy Randa…”) Notwithstanding the macabre circumstances, Simpson seems to have composed his suicide note in the manner of the celebrity intent upon allowing a few friends to share in his reflected glory.

I think of my life and feel I’v done most of the right things. so why do I end up like this. I can’t go on, no matter what the outcome people will look and point. I can’t take that. I can’t subject my children to that. This way they can move on and go on with thair lives. Please, if I’v done anything worthwhile in my life, let my kids live in peace from you (press).

Simpson demonstrated a certain prescience here. Even though he was ultimately acquitted, he did become a pariah; people do look and point. But what is peculiar is how he converted his own inability to cope with unpopularity into a problem for his children: “I can’t subject my children to that.” Sydney and Justin had lost their mother. A more rational and generous reaction might have been to hold them close and assure them that they were not going to lose their father, too. Simpson’s ego compelled him to imagine that his own problems with the public would torture his children-when of course it was he, not they, who could not abide the humiliation.

I’v had a good life I’m proud of how I lived, my momma tought me to do un to other. I treated people the way I wanted to be treated I’v always tryed to be up + helpful so why is this happening? I’m sorry for the Goldman family. I kwow how much it hurts. Nicole and I had a good life together, all this press talk about a rocky relationship was no morr than what ever long term relationship expriences. All her friends will confrim that I’v been tottally loving and understanding of what she’s been going through. At times I’v felt like a battered husband or boyfriend but I loved her, made that clear to everyone and would take whatever to make us work.

Though it is theoretically possible that the 5-foot-5-inch, 129-pound Nicole battered her husband, a 6-foot-2-inch, 210-pound football player, there is apparently no record of O.J.’s seeking medical assistance because of her physical abuse.

Don’t feel sorry for me. I’v had a great life made great friends. Please think of the real O.J. and not this lost person. Thank for making my life special I hope I help yours. Peace + Love O.J.

Inside the O in his name, Simpson scrawled a happy face-a flourish that is almost too perverse to contemplate.

For all that the content of the letter reveals of its author, what is perhaps most striking is something that is absent from it. Simpson portrays himself as an unjustly accused murderer, but his letter does not even request the police to locate the “real” killer of his ex-wife and her friend.

Shapiro handled the questions from the reporters at the press conference. One asked why Kardashian had read the letter. After all the letter, on the whole, was highly incriminating of Shapiro’s client. “We read it because it is the only words that we have from O.J.,” Shapiro replied. This answer says much about the care and feeding of celebrity clients. O.J. wanted it done, so it was done. It is possible that Simpson wanted the letter read only in the event that he committed suicide. (Others who attended the meeting at Kardashian’s house were appalled that the letter was read to the public.) There would have been no harm in Shapiro’s waiting a while and then deciding whether to read the letter. But reading the letter simultaneously granted O.J.’s last wish and served Shapiro’s own interests, by demonstrating that the lawyer had been duped by a despondent and possibly deranged man. Elaborating on the question of why he had the letter read, Shapiro went on, “I have never felt worse in my professional career as a result of what has happened today.” In other words, Shapiro had it read, in part, because it made him feel better.

Another question again illustrated the way Simpson’s status as a celebrity affected the way his case was conducted. Shapiro mentioned that three letters had been found at Kardashian’s house-one to the public (which Kardashian had read out loud), one to his children, and one to his mother. A reporter asked if Shapiro had read all three. No, the lawyer said. “They are under seal and will be turned over to the persons to whom they are addressed.” All three letters constituted crucial evidence in locating a fugitive accused of murder. First and foremost, it was the police who were entitled to seize and read those letters. Yet Shapiro and Kardashian blithely walked out of the house with them and then announced that the fugitive, not the police, would determine who read them. This was so much the natural order of things in Los Angeles that the removal of the letters from the house scarcely drew a word of comment in the local media.

Nor was that Shapiro’s most remarkable answer at the press conference. “What were the last words you heard from O.J. Simpson?” a reporter asked.

This question called for him to reveal a communication that may have been subject to Simpson’s attorney-client privilege, yet Shapiro did not hesitate to answer. “My personal words with him were of a complimentary nature to the way I had been with him and for him to thank me for everything I had done up-to-date,” he replied. The response raised another question (which went unasked): If Simpson was offering you valedictory thanks about your efforts on the case, why didn’t you think he was about to flee?

Many lawyers with a client on the run would have gone straight to their desks and worked the phones to sniff out any clue of the missing man’s whereabouts. But Shapiro had never liked to spend any more time than necessary at the office. After the press conference, he simply went home. His wife, Linell, greeted him at the door.

“Where have you been?” she asked. “He’s on television, Bob.”

The LAPD had put out an all-points bulletin for Al Cowlings right around the time of Gascon’s press conference, at 2:00 P.M. Around that time, Vannatter, Lange, and their colleagues put in their first calls to the many police departments whose jurisdictions abut that of the LAPD. But because the police had never seized Simpson’s passport, the cops had to cast an even wider net. They alerted the U.S. Border Patrol, as well as the airlines, the U.S. Customs Service, and the Mexican Judicial Police.

It wasn’t until just after Shapiro’s press conference ended, however, at around 6:00 P.M., that the Los Angeles media confirmed the description of the car the police were seeking: a 1993 white Ford Bronco with California license plate 3DHY503. Not surprisingly, perhaps, given the vast public interest in the case, it was the broadcast announcement, not the law enforcement effort, that produced almost immediate results.

Chris Thomas had been watching television at home in Mission Viejo when he learned Simpson was on the run. At 6:25 P.M., he and his girlfriend, Kathy Ferrigno, were heading north on Interstate 5, the Santa Ana Freeway, on their way to a weekend of camping. They had been joking about O.J.’s disappearance, studying in a halfhearted way the cars coming toward them, seeing if Simpson might be among them, on his way to Mexico. After a few minutes of this, Ferrigno looked into the passenger-side rearview mirror and started saying, “Oh my God!-Chris, Chris, Chris!” Thomas slowed down and in a moment Ferrigno was face-to-face with Al Cowlings. When he noticed that she was staring at him, Cowlings glowered at her. Their location at that moment was about eighty miles south of Kardashian’s house in Encino, near the El Toro interchange on Interstate 5. They were about a five-minute drive from the gravesite of Nicole Brown Simpson. The Bronco-and this later proved important-was heading north, that is, back toward Los Angeles and away from the Mexican border.

Ferrigno jotted down the Bronco’s license plate, and Thomas pulled to the side of the freeway by a call box. Thomas called the California Highway Patrol and gave the dispatcher his impression of Cowlings’s demeanor: “We looked at him, you know, and he like stared us down, like he was death.”

As Simpson described it in his deposition in the civil case, he and Cowlings left Interstate 5 intending to go to Nicole’s grave, but they retreated when they saw that the cemetery was staked out by police. Just a few minutes after Thomas’s telephone call, Orange County sheriff’s deputy Larry Pool saw the Bronco heading on an on-ramp returning to the northbound Santa Ana. Pool sped alongside the Bronco and looked inside. Cowlings smiled nervously at him. The officer then radioed in to check the plate on the Bronco and learned that it was a match for Cowlings’s.

“Ten-four, I’m behind it,” Pool said into his radio, and with that, all air traffic on the police radio band receded into a stunned silence.

As the Bronco began to move on the freeway through the city of Santa Ana, the traffic grew heavier and then came to a complete standstill. Pool and a colleague in another car, Jim Sewell, used the opportunity to leave their cars and, with guns drawn, advance by foot on the Bronco.

“Turn off your engine,” the officers shouted to Cowlings.

Cowlings started screaming and pounding his left hand on the side of the door. “Fuck, no!” he said. He was banging the car so hard that it was rocking in place. “Put away your guns! He’s in the backseat and he’s got a gun to his head.”

Fearing bloodshed, the officers held their ground and watched Cowlings drive off as the traffic ahead of him cleared. The Bronco began moving again at moderate speed, still heading north. Returning to their black-and-white squad cars, the Orange County officials simply began following the Bronco, and radioed for backup assistance. The chase was on.

Cowlings turned on his car’s four-way flashers and called 911 from his car phone shortly after the confrontation. “This is A.C.,” he told the dispatcher at 6:46 P.M. “I have O.J. in the car.”

“Okay, where are you?” the dispatcher asked.

“Please,” Cowlings said. “I’m coming up the Five freeway… Right now, we all, we’re okay, but you got to tell the police to just back off. He’s still alive. He’s got a gun to his head.”

“Hold on a moment. Okay, where are you?” the dispatcher responded. “Is everything else okay?”

“Everything right now is okay, Officer. Everything is okay. He wants me to get him to his mom. He wants me to get him to his house.”

The dispatcher patched through another voice, who asked Cowlings his name.

“My name is A.C.,” he bellowed. “You know who I am, goddammit!” Cowlings hung up and continued driving north, in the general direction of Brentwood.

The police, of course, were not the only people looking for Cowlings that afternoon. As soon as the LAPD announced that O.J. was missing, Bob Tur, the dean of the L.A. media’s helicopter journalists, also began scheming to find O.J. and A.C. Mulling over Simpson’s predicament with his wife, copilot, and video cameraperson, Marika, Bob Tur reached the same conclusion as the doctors who were treating Simpson. Tur guessed that he would try to visit his ex-wife’s grave in Orange County. So he and Marika steered their KCBS chopper to Ascension Cemetery in Lake Forest. Tur noticed that the cops had staked the place out, likewise waiting for Simpson. Then Tur drifted over to the Santa Ana Freeway and caught sight of the Bronco, apparently just after Cowlings’s confrontation with Pool and Sewell. The backup units-there would be a dozen in all-were falling in at a safe distance behind Cowlings and Simpson as they headed north. KCBS began broadcasting live, and the other stations, with their own helicopters, picked up the chase a few moments later.

It was, to be sure, an unusual moment in journalism, but not quite as rare as many people thought. The freeway chase, broadcast live by cameras mounted in helicopters, is a staple of television news in Los Angeles. Local stations break into programming on a regular basis to follow the most routine chases, even some that emerge out of traffic infractions. Bob Tur had had 128 previous journeys like this one, and local pilots all know the drill; they follow police transmissions on their scramblers. Even though the Bronco was picked up on camera about seventy miles from the house on Rockingham, the helicopter pilots’ intimate knowledge of the local terrain meant that they could, and did, project exactly where the Bronco was going. As a result, for those watching in the Los Angeles area, there was no mystery about Simpson’s plans or his route.

For the national audience, however, it was another story. One after another, the networks broke into their regular programming to pick up the chase live. (NBC skittered back and forth from the Bronco to the fifth game of the National Basketball Association championship series, between the New York Knicks and Houston Rockets.) The network anchors were far less familiar with the customs of these helicopter chases and completely ignorant of Los Angeles freeway topography. Their narratives, accordingly, reflected only bewilderment at the scene unfolding before them. On ABC, for example, Peter Jennings repeatedly confessed that he did not know where the Bronco was or where it was going. These uninformative nondescriptions somehow made the chase even more hypnotizing for the rest of the nation.

Simpson’s televised journey into the unknown transformed a tabloid murder into an international phenomenon. Approximately 95 million Americans watched some portion of the chase on television, which exceeded that year’s Super Bowl audience by about 5 million.

With the helicopters gathering above, the Bronco continued north on the Santa Ana, passing Disneyland in Anaheim, and then headed west on the Artesia Freeway. It was here, in the period just after 7:00 P.M. Pacific Time, that word of the chase spread and television coverage became ubiquitous. Seven news helicopters followed the Bronco’s trail.

Crowds began forming in Compton, a small, heavily black city just south of Los Angeles. The numbers were small at first, just a few dozen people drawn to the spectacle by what they had seen on television. Cowlings turned off the Artesia, traveling less than a mile south on the Harbor Freeway, and then west on I-405, the San Diego Freeway. These moves confirmed what Cowlings had told the police; though he still had a good thirty miles to go, he was en route to Simpson’s house in Brentwood. The San Diego Freeway took Simpson through Torrance, a community not at all like nearby Compton. Mark Fuhrman, in his distinctive style, once explained the difference. His taped interviews with aspiring screenwriter Laura Hart McKinny contained the following description: “Westwood is gone, the niggers have discovered it… Torrance is considered the last white middle-class society.” The reaction to the Bronco was different in “the last white middle-class society.” No supporters lined the highway, and O.J. and his helicopter entourage passed through without fanfare. In Inglewood and at the edge of Watts, the largely African-American communities to the north, the spectators returned. They were shouting encouragement at this point. “Go, O.J.!” many screamed. “Save the Juice!”

The helicopters had to pull back briefly when the Bronco, curving gently north along the contour of the Pacific Ocean, passed by Los Angeles International Airport. The scene on television became even stranger for a moment when the cameras from the choppers showed several jetliners landing beneath them. Their airspace clear, the helicopters then resumed the chase as the Bronco moved into the densely populated West Side. Hundreds of people lined the overpass at Venice Boulevard, another area with a heavy minority population. Several people held up encouraging signs, and many were yelling in support of O.J.

Knowledgeable television broadcasters had been speculating for some time that Cowlings would leave the San Diego Freeway at the Sunset Boulevard exit, since it was the most direct route to Simpson’s home in Brentwood. Yet notwithstanding the advance notice, the crowd of people at the Sunset exit was modest, perhaps a couple of dozen. That area, of course, is the edge of Bel-Air, perhaps the wealthiest and whitest community in all of Los Angeles. Only a handful of the people there turned out to cheer for O.J.

Cowlings indeed left I-405 at Sunset, then he dodged traffic for about a mile until he could make a right turn into the privileged, hilly precincts of Brentwood. He knew a shortcut. Instead of making a right onto Rockingham, he turned north off Sunset one street earlier, onto Bristol Avenue. With the helicopters still tracking him among the gated homes, Cowlings then made a left onto Ashford, from which he could turn into O.J.’s driveway. Cowlings, however, almost didn’t make it. There were so many television satellite trucks parked on tiny Ashford that Cowlings had to slow to nearly a full stop to inch his way past them. With dusk fast approaching, Cowlings finally managed to pull into the driveway at 360 North Rockingham. The Bronco’s flashers illuminated the cobblestones in the driveway from which, earlier that week, police had scraped blood samples. It was shortly before 8:00 P.M.

At about 7:15 P.M., when A.C. and O.J. were still wending their way to Brentwood, Detective Tom Lange had reached Cowlings on the cellular phone in the Bronco. In their conversation, Cowlings confirmed that he was heading to O.J.’s home and that Simpson remained suicidal. Lange did his best to calm the situation. Without telling Cowlings, Lange also arranged for the LAPD’s SWAT team to go to the Rockingham house and prepare to arrest Simpson there. A team of about twenty-five SWAT specialists, with their arsenal of stun grenades and night-sighted weaponry, arrived at Rockingham about fifteen minutes before Cowlings did. Several of Simpson’s friends had set up a vigil there, but the officers evicted everyone except Kardashian and O.J.’s twenty-four-year-old son, Jason. True to form, though, the LAPD did invite one outsider to tag along: Roger Sandler, a photographer for Time and Life magazines.

The SWAT team’s plans nearly went awry immediately. As soon as the Bronco stopped in the driveway, Jason sprang from the front door and began yelling at Cowlings, who seemed to be equally hyped up. The 6-foot-5-inch Cowlings, a defensive lineman taken out of USC by the Buffalo Bills the year after they selected Simpson, stuck his long arm out the driver’s window and pushed Jason away. There was a considerable poignancy to the scene. Jason’s relationship with his father had long vacillated between poor and nonexistent. Cowlings’s pokes made clear the status of the pudgy and unathletic son: He was not wanted in his father’s moment of crisis. A pair of officers gingerly approached Jason and all but dragged him back into the house.

Jason’s approach unnerved Cowlings. He started screaming that the police had to get back, get away. He even stepped out of the car and caught sight of one of the officers posted on the wall along Ashford. “He’s got a gun!” Cowlings screamed before he reentered the car. “Don’t do anything stupid! Get the police away!”

The police, of course, were not going to go away. Lange had handed over negotiating duties to the SWAT team’s Pete Weireter, who was posted inside O.J.’s house. Weireter reached O.J. on the cellular phone and attempted to talk him into surrendering.

Minutes passed, and the world waited to see if O.J. Simpson would blow his brains out on live national TV. Unaccustomed to chases of this duration, the local television stations agreed that they could share one another’s pictures of the scene so each helicopter would have a chance to refuel. Suddenly, there was very little to see: just the Bronco parked in the driveway. Close observers noticed one spectator with the best view of all. Jason had brought Kato, the white Akita that had apparently witnessed the murders, to live at Rockingham. The dog, which Jason would later rename Satchmo, wandered around the Bronco as O.J. and A.C. lingered inside it.

The silence at the driveway standoff contrasted dramatically with the scene unfolding at the foot of Rockingham, on Sunset Boulevard. A raucous crowd several hundred strong had gathered there, drawn to the drama. Sunset was impassable; even residents of the area couldn’t get home. (Shapiro had asked Michael Baden and Saul Faerstein to meet him at O.J.’s home, but the wall of people prevented either doctor from reaching Rockingham.) Local reporters broadcasting live from Sunset found a stark racial division at the scene. The whites, a minority of the revelers, were curiosity seekers-“looky loos” in the LAPD phrase-who had come simply to experience the bizarre scene. The African-Americans, on the other hand, had mostly come to show solidarity, and their chants and shouts made their feelings clear. “Free O.J.!” they repeated again and again. Interviewed on KCBS, one of them said, “I feel that the black people ought to come together. They’re trying to make us extinct.” A woman then added, “First it was Michael [Jackson] and Mike Tyson and Rodney King. I’m calling for the unification of the black race!”

Up at the Rockingham house, Weireter eventually obtained Simpson’s promise that he did not intend to hurt anyone except himself. The negotiator told O.J. that his children needed him. Simpson asked to speak with his mother, who had checked into a San Francisco hospital for stress-related symptoms. No problem, said Weireter, just come inside. He seemed to be making progress when the battery in O.J.’s phone went dead. Cowlings went into the house to fetch a replacement. Finally, Simpson agreed to give up.

“You’ll have to come to us,” said Mike Albanese, chief of the SWAT unit. After a pause, Simpson hesitantly put a foot out the door of the Bronco. It was 8:53 P.M., nearly an hour after Cowlings had arrived at Simpson’s home. In his hands, O.J. held a couple of family pictures, which he had been clutching in the car. He staggered into the foyer and collapsed into the officers’ arms. “I’m sorry, guys,” Simpson kept repeating. “I’m sorry I put you through this.” Albanese allowed Simpson to use the bathroom and gave him a glass of orange juice to drink while he called his mother on the telephone. Deferential even then, the officers finally asked whether Simpson was ready to go. He nodded. The officers put handcuffs on him and led him out the front door-with Roger Sandler behind them, recording the moment for posterity and Time. The police had forbidden the news helicopters from shining their powerful lights down on the scene, so the public never saw Simpson being placed in an unmarked cruiser for the trip downtown.

With Simpson gone, other members of the SWAT team examined Cowlings’s Bronco. (When he was booked at the police station, Cowlings had $8,750 in cash in his pockets.) In what appeared to be Simpson’s travel bag, they found O.J.’s passport and a plastic bag that contained a fake goatee, a fake mustache, a bottle of makeup adhesive remover, and three receipts from Cinema Secrets Beauty Supply, dated May 27, 1994. The officers also found a fully loaded Smith & Wesson.357 magnum blue steel handgun. It was registered to Lieutenant Earl Paysinger, yet another of Simpson’s friends on the LAPD. About five years earlier, at a time when Paysinger was providing security for O.J., the lieutenant had bought his client the gun.

An eighteen-car caravan escorted Simpson to his booking at Parker Center. He was then transported to the L.A. county jail for his first night in custody, which he spent on suicide watch. In his book I Want to Tell You, Simpson wrote, “The first week I was in jail I thought about Jesus being crucified.”