Grand Jury Reportedly Probing Simpson Alibi : Crime: Family friend may have information on his actions on day of murders. No weapon has been found.

Prosecutors on Tuesday continued working behind closed doors with police investigators and the Los Angeles County Grand Jury in the O.J. Simpson double murder case as authorities suspended a hunt in a Chicago field for a crucial piece of evidence--the murder weapon.

Amid tight controls on information, there were indications that prosecutors directing the secret proceedings on the 13th floor of the Downtown Criminal Courts Building have sought testimony focusing on Simpson’s alibi. The former football great has told his attorneys he was waiting for a limousine at his Brentwood estate at the time his ex-wife, Nicole, and her friend, Ronald Lyle Goldman, were killed.

One of the first witnesses to testify Monday was a family friend who was living in the guest house at Simpson’s estate, and who spent much of the afternoon and evening of the murders with Simpson, according to a source who insisted on anonymity and is close to the witness.

Kato Kaelin--an actor and writer is friendly with the defendant, his ex-wife and their children--told the grand jury he greeted the limousine at the gate on the night of the murders, the source said. Simpson came out of the house a short time later, according to the source, who would not specify how much time had elapsed. Kaelin’s encounter with Simpson did not “suggest anything unusual was taking place,” he added.

Kaelin, who has appeared in little-known Hollywood offerings such as “Beach Fever,” met Nicole Brown Simpson while skiing in Colorado a few years ago, and initially rented a guest house at her previous residence on Gretna Green Way in Brentwood, the source said. After she moved to the condo where she was slain, Kaelin moved to O.J. Simpson’s estate. Kaelin was particularly popular with the Simpsons’ children, whom he cared for frequently at both locations, according to the source.

In an interview Tuesday, Kaelin’s attorney, William J. Genego, gave the following account of his client’s observations on the night of the murder, before Simpson took a limousine to the airport to catch a red-eye flight to Chicago: “My guy saw O.J. coming out of the house to the limo. He does not know where O.J. was when the limo arrived. He could have been in the house, as far as he knows. . . . But at no time did he say that O.J. was not at home.”

Genego said his client’s knowledge of the events that night “neither implicates nor exonerates Mr. Simpson.”

Kaelin was subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury as its first witness last week, sources said. But his lawyer balked because he was not given adequate time to consult with Kaelin, and requested a postponement. When it was not immediately granted, Genego urged Kaelin to take the 5th Amendment, and successfully petitioned a judge to grant a delay until Monday.

As the district attorney’s office maneuvered Tuesday for advantage in the legal battle ahead--apparently seeking a grand jury indictment that would avoid a public preliminary hearing where much of prosecutors’ evidence would be laid out--Simpson’s lawyers dodged reporters and had their first full day to review newly obtained autopsy reports and other police evidence.

The defense team, led by attorney Robert L. Shapiro, offered no comment on the grand jury developments or the scientific evidence accumulated against their celebrated client--who has denied any involvement in a crimes. Both sides prepared for a court appearance today in which a range of preliminary issues will be addressed, including the evidence that has been shared by prosecutors and Los Angeles police, and Simpson’s request that he be permitted to have sleep medication and a so-called cervical pillow, a device that fits around the back of the neck.

Shapiro said the device is needed because the Men’s Central Jail, where Simpson has been housed since Friday in a one-man cell, provides no regular pillows for inmates. The hard jail bed, according to Shapiro, exacerbates Simpson’s discomfort from an old football injury.

As of late Tuesday, the evidence against Simpson still did not include a murder weapon, officials said. Los Angeles police called off a third search of a field in Chicago, near the hotel where Simpson stayed briefly the morning after the murders, without locating the knife they suspect was used in the killings.

Police suspended their hunt in a trash-strewn lot near O’Hare International Airport for a knife linked to the June 12 murders, but a Los Angeles detective insisted that the weapon was probably somewhere in Chicago.

Despite finding only a duffel bag, a pair of socks and sunglasses after three days of combing through the lot, Los Angeles Homicide Detective Bert Luper said the area remained the “most logical place to dispose of the weapon.”

“We’ve done the majority of the searching we expected to do here,” Luper said.

Luper said Los Angeles homicide detectives and a Chicago canine unit were breaking off their search near the O’Hare Plaza Hotel--where Simpson spent several hours after the murders--until they receive more reliable information about Simpson’s whereabouts that morning.

Luper said police have been unable to verify an anonymous tipster’s report that Simpson, clad in a touring cap and golf shirt, was seen emerging from the wooded area about 7 a.m. on June 13.

But Luper insisted Tuesday that both the “timing and corroborating evidence” suggest that the murder weapon is “still in there somewhere.”

“He had the opportunity (to leave the hotel room that morning),” Luper said. “It’s one of only a few places where he would have had time to dispose of anything.”

While Chicago police and six evidence-sniffing dogs combed the lot and the rear of the O’Hare Plaza property Tuesday morning under Luper’s supervision, another group of detectives searched an unspecified area inside O’Hare International Airport.

Detectives also were questioning at least 15 witnesses in the airport and hotel areas, among them airport security workers who might have used an X-ray device to peer inside the bag Simpson reportedly carried with him from his flight from Los Angeles.

In other developments:

* Court records shed new light on financial battles between O.J. and Nicole Simpson during their 1992 divorce. O.J. Simpson was portrayed in papers filed by his attorneys as a man in failing health and beset by financial setbacks which caused his income to dip 40% from 1991 to 1992.

The papers were filed to support Simpson’s contention that he should not have to pay an inordinate amount of child support and alimony. Under a temporary support arrangement, Simpson was ordered to pay nearly $15,000 monthly to support his two children and $9,000 per month in alimony. The final divorce judgment provided for Simpson to pay $10,000 monthly in child support and no monthly alimony.

“Respondent’s health is also a consideration. . . . Because of his athletic career, (he) sustained numerous injuries. He now suffers from severe arthritis, which eventually will become extremely crippling. He currently takes three medications a day,” the documents state.

“It would not serve the goals of accomplishing substantial justice by (requiring) the party in failing health to support the party who is young and in excellent health for a lengthy period of time.”

The documents also portray Simpson as reeling financially. They state that the NBC contract he negotiated for the 1992 football season was $100,000 less than the prior year, mainly due to financial constraints at the network.

He was also an economic victim of the 1992 spring riots. One of two Pioneer Chicken franchises he owned in South-Central Los Angeles burned down.

* LAPD Sgt. Dennis L. Sebenik said he has been questioned by LAPD Internal Affairs investigators concerning his role in spiriting a decoy into Simpson’s Brentwood mansion Thursday while Simpson went to a home in the San Fernando Valley. But he insists he did nothing wrong. “I was off-duty, OK?” said Sebenik, a 25-year veteran assigned to the LAPD’s Harbor Division. “It was a straight deal. I’m a loyal, faithful police officer. . . . I was clean as a whistle in what I did last week.”

* NBC Sports President Dick Ebersol said Monday that he had been aware of Simpson’s plea of no contest to a spousal battery charge when the network hired him as a football analyst in 1989, but was assured by Simpson and his wife that the matter was behind them.

“I discussed with both of them how they were doing (in the relationship) during our negotiations” in June and July, 1989, Ebersol told The Times. “They both said that they very much wanted to be together.”

Katz reported in Los Angeles, Braun in Chicago. Also contributing to this story were staff writers Rich Connell, Gordon Dillow, J. Michael Kennedy, Leslie Berger, Carla Rivera, Frederick M. Muir, Andrea Ford and Jane Hall.

Legal Procedures

Here are the next legal steps in the O.J. Simpson case:

* Compliance Hearing: Scheduled for today before Municipal Judge Patti Jo McKay to determine if the coroner complied with a request by Simpson’s attorney to gain access to the autopsy reports on the two victims and any evidence gathered during the autopsies. McKay also will determine whether officials gave Simpson’s lawyers all police reports on the slayings.

* Preliminary Hearing: Scheduled for June 30. Prosecutors must present evidence and testimony showing that the case should go to trial. If McKay determines there is enough evidence, the case will be bound over to Superior Court.

* Grand Jury: At any time, a grand jury could issue an indictment, and a grand jury has begun hearing testimony on the Simpson case. If an indictment is issued, the case would go to Superior Court without a preliminary hearing.

Source: Associated Press