Police Sources Link Evidence to Simpson : Crime: Probe reportedly focuses on bloodstains at the murder scene and the ex-football star’s home.

Mounting evidence links former football star O.J. Simpson to the brutal slayings of his former wife and a waiter who worked at a trendy Brentwood restaurant, Los Angeles police sources said Tuesday.

Much of the investigation Tuesday focused on bloodstains--both at Simpson’s lavish Brentwood mansion and at his former wife’s townhouse two miles away, where the crime was committed.

Nicole Brown Simpson, 35, and Ronald Lyle Goldman, 25, were stabbed to death Sunday night, and knowledgeable sources said Simpson had scratches on his body when he was questioned by police Monday.

Among the pieces of evidence in the case are bloodstains found Tuesday in one of Simpson’s cars, the sources said. They said a bloodstained glove discovered at Simpson’s mansion matches one found near the bodies at his ex-wife’s townhouse in Brentwood. In addition, they said, rust-colored spots found on the mansion driveway have been determined to be bloodstains.

But Simpson’s attorney, Howard Weitzman, insisted Tuesday that his client is not involved in the killings.

“I am convinced that he is innocent,” Weitzman said, denying that a bloody glove was found at Simpson’s house.

Tests are under way on the blood to see if it came from the ex-football star, his former wife or Goldman. While tests to match blood types take little time, DNA tests--which can establish more positive identification--can take several days.

But police apparently plan to move quickly. One source close to the case said Tuesday that an arrest is expected within the next few days.

The arrest may be made on the basis of matching blood types, without waiting for the DNA test results, sources said. A highly regarded prosecutor, Marcia Clark of the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office’s special trials section, has been assigned to the case. Prosecutors are seldom assigned to a case before an arrest has been made.

Police said Tuesday that Nicole Simpson and Goldman--a waiter at Mezzaluna, a Brentwood restaurant she frequented--were not linked romantically. Friends said he apparently was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, returning a pair of glasses she had left at the restaurant, when the attack occurred.

The county coroner’s office, which completed autopsies on the pair Tuesday, said both victims died from “multiple sharp force injuries.”

Neither the coroner’s office nor police would release details about the nature of the stab wounds or the weapons used to inflict them, but a source said the woman’s throat was slashed and Goldman’s wounds indicated that he put up a fierce struggle before he died.

The relationship that appeared to be attracting detectives’ attention Tuesday was the often tempestuous, sometimes violent, off-and-on one between Simpson and his former wife.

A man who lived in the Westwood apartment next to Nicole Simpson’s when she was first dating the football hero said Tuesday that he frequently heard the couple quarreling loudly. “We would see her with black eyes,” said the neighbor, who asked not to be identified.

The Simpsons later married, then divorced in 1992, three years after he pleaded no contest to a battery charge filed after he allegedly struck her and told her, “I’ll kill you.”

In an interview with KCBS-TV, Dr. Susan Forward said that she had treated Simpson’s ex-wife on two occasions and that Nicole Simpson told her she was being battered and terrorized by her former husband.

Although Nicole Simpson told the therapist that the ex-football star continued to threaten her after they separated, the couple were seen together at a number of social events after the divorce, and friends said their relationship again seemed congenial.

The friends said the pair had been attempting to get back together in recent months, and a saleswoman at a sportswear store on San Vicente Boulevard said Tuesday that O.J. Simpson expressed optimism about the prospect of reuniting with his former wife, who often bought gym clothing at the store.

“O.J. was in here around Christmastime,” Jodi Kahn said. “He said he was going to reconcile. He seemed like he was really happy.”

But a source said Tuesday that Nicole Simpson told her former husband several weeks ago that they could never reconcile, and police said they had been called to the townhouse in the 800 block of South Bundy Drive several times in recent months to deal with disputes between the two.

The blood-soaked bodies of Nicole Simpson and Goldman were found sprawled on a walkway in front of the townhome early Monday morning.

They were found by a passerby shortly after 12 a.m., and within a few hours, police began looking for Simpson. By dawn, they learned that he was in Chicago.

Weitzman said Simpson had taken a “red-eye” flight there from Los Angeles late Sunday night to attend a meeting hosted by Hertz, the auto rental firm for which he has been a spokesman.

Although the precise times of death have not been announced, sources said there appeared to be ample time between the slayings and the departure of the flight for someone to have driven from Brentwood to Los Angeles International Airport.

Los Angeles police reached Simpson by telephone in Chicago, and he flew back to Los Angeles late Monday morning. Police picked him up at his mansion in Brentwood, took him to police headquarters in Downtown Los Angeles and questioned him for about two hours. Weitzman said that after the questioning, Simpson went to the home of a friend Monday evening.

On Tuesday, crowds of news reporters mingled with curious passersby to create a carnival-like atmosphere outside the green, wrought-iron gate in front of Simpson’s big house on Rockingham Avenue.

Simpson did not appear, and the curious had to make do with the comings and goings of deliverymen, paparazzi and occasional movie stars such as James Garner, who happened to drive past.

Most of the onlookers missed the police, who finished their investigative efforts and left the home early in the morning.

As the investigation progressed, Weitzman continued to assert that his client is innocent.

“Not only is he going through a tremendous grieving period, but all these rumors about his possible involvement are circulating,” Weitzman said.

“He came back here, cooperated, and has not been officially told he cannot leave or that he is a suspect,” Weitzman added. “But he has to sit here and listen to all these rumors. . . . It really is a horrible time for O.J.”

Asked if he believes reports that his client will be arrested soon, Weitzman said:

“I hope that’s not true, but, as we know, they arrest innocent people on occasion.”

According to Forward, Nicole Simpson said her ex-husband accused her of seeing other men and sometimes followed her, once saying: “If I can’t have you, nobody can.”

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Times staff writers Josh Meyer and Carla Hall contributed to this story.