911 Tape Tells of Stormy Simpson Relationship : Inquiry: Defendant’s ex-wife pleads for help as obscenities are screamed. Defense reviews forensic evidence.

On tapes released Wednesday by the Los Angeles Police Department, O.J. Simpson’s ex-wife is heard crying and pleading for help as a man identified as Simpson furiously screams obscenities in the background after breaking down her door.

“Can you get someone over here now? . . . He’s back. Please. He’s O.J. Simpson. I think you know his record. . . . He showed up again. Could you just send somebody over here? He’s in a white Bronco. But first of all, he broke the back door down to get in. . . . He’s f------ going nuts. . . . He’s going to beat the s--- out of me,” Nicole Brown Simpson says on the tape of her 911 call--made Oct. 25, 1993, eight months before she was killed.

“He broke the whole back door in. . . . He came and he practically knocked my upstairs door down, but he pounded it and he screamed and hollered and I tried to get him out of the bedroom because the kids are sleeping in there.”

In the background, a man says: “I don’t give a s--- anymore.” Nicole Simpson responds: “Would you just please, O.J., O.J., O.J., O.J. . . . Please leave.” The man screams back: “I’m not leaving!”

On the tape, she describes Simpson as “ranting and raving” and “crazy.”

The tape offers a chilling peek into the tumultuous union between the former high school homecoming princess and the Heisman Trophy winner--a relationship that prosecutors contend ended brutally when he killed Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Lyle Goldman 11 days ago.

According to Nicole Simpson’s account on the tape, the incident began after O.J. Simpson became upset over a picture of an ex-boyfriend in her photo album.

In response to press requests, police also released a tape of the 1989 incident that led to Simpson’s no-contest plea to misdemeanor wife-beating. On that tape, the phone is apparently off the hook and a female at the Simpsons’ North Rockingham Avenue address can be heard screaming. There is no dialogue, and a police log of the incident says only: “Female being beaten . . . could be heard over the phone.”

Authorities took no action after the October, 1993, emergency call because Nicole Simpson declined to press charges. However, during the same month, she contacted the unit of the city attorney’s office that prosecuted her 1989 battery case against Simpson, saying she was terrified and in fear for her life. According to authorities familiar with that contact, Nicole Simpson said there were “many, many incidents” in which Simpson had threatened her.

“It has been an ongoing, chronic, severe problem,” said one authority familiar with that conversation. “It wasn’t one time or five times. It was many times.

“It was before 1989, it was after 1989--it was no secret,” said the authority, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “She was completely terrorized. It was not exclusively hitting her. (It was) other things. She was extremely frightened and in fear for her life. Chronically. She was terrified; she believed he was going to kill her.”

Deputy City Atty. Alana Bowman, head of the city attorney’s office domestic violence unit, said Nicole Simpson was treated like other victims of spousal battery. Although unable to provide specifics about Simpson’s encounter with her office, she said Nicole Simpson “talked to one of our victim advocates over the years, but . . . never brought forth any criminal violations that we could proceed on” besides the 1989 case.

The tapes released Wednesday, though not specifically linked to the murder case against Simpson, appeared to add a sobering emotional dimension to the public’s understanding of the stormy marriage at the heart of the investigation.

O.J. Simpson’s lawyer, Robert L. Shapiro, could not immediately be reached for comment.

Earlier in the day, Shapiro and other members of the defense team were allowed to examine detailed evidence in the double-murder case against Simpson including coroner’s photos, tissue and blood samples and tapes of an unusual three-hour interview that Simpson gave investigators the day after the killings.

At a courtroom hearing Wednesday, the prosecutor in the case shot down one of the more sensational reports in the torrent of coverage of the murders: that investigators had recovered a bloody ski mask and booked it into evidence.

“There is no ski mask,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Marcia Clark said.

Millions of Americans, already drawn to the strange, twisting saga via the unrelenting eye of the news media, were zoomed into the courtroom and inadvertently allowed to eavesdrop on a private exchange between the jailed sports legend and the bailiffs.

“I’ll do anything to stay out of that cell,” Simpson said in a plaintive, personal aside picked up by a television microphone that the judge later sternly ordered removed. The comment--the first personal reaction by Simpson broadcast since the sensational case exploded--came as the officers tried to usher him from the courtroom during a break in the proceedings.

In a dark, pin-striped suit and tie-less shirt open at the collar, Simpson appeared more attentive and relaxed than during his first court appearance Monday. He said little, but no longer seemed dazed and groggy as his eyes scanned the spectators and reporters packed into the courtroom of Municipal Judge Patti Jo McKay.

Immediately after the procedural hearing, the defense team, including two forensic pathologists, went to the coroner’s office to examine evidence under the supervision of the coroner, Dr. Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran. The coroner looked on but declined to answer any defense team questions about the evidence, said his spokesman, Scott Carrier.

After a four-hour review of material in a secured, subterranean area of the coroner’s complex, the lead pathologist for the defense team, Dr. Michael Baden, emerged and immediately disputed chilling reports that Nicole Simpson had been nearly decapitated.

“No, no. There is none,” Baden said of the near-decapitation reports as he made his way to a waiting cab.

Joining the defense team at the coroner’s office and in the courtroom was a new co-counsel, retiring Santa Clara University School of Law Dean Gerald Uelmen. Shapiro described Uelmen, 53, as “the foremost constitutional scholar in California” and said Uelmen would explore “statements that could prejudice or preclude a fair trial” for his client.

Uelmen, a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles who is considered an expert on the death penalty, has known Shapiro for 20 years and the two worked together on another high-profile slaying involving Marlon Brando’s son.

In other developments:

* The Los Angeles judge widely criticized for giving Simpson allegedly lenient treatment in a 1989 domestic battery case involving Nicole Simpson called a news conference to defend his handling of the case, saying that the athlete had received no special treatment. Judge Ronald R. Schoenberg said the city attorney’s office agreed with a sentence that included no jail time.

* A Los Angeles detective wrapped up an unsuccessful hunt for the murder weapon in Chicago, saying he had recovered useful evidence and witness statements, leaving open the possibility that investigators could return to the city where Simpson headed after the slayings. Among the items collected by investigators were a broken glass and bloodstained washcloth. Simpson has maintained that a cut on his hand came from a broken glass in the hotel room where he briefly stayed.

* Divorce court records offered new details on the financial and personal relationship between Nicole and O.J. Simpson. Nicole began dating the former sports star when she was 18 and just out of high school and moved in with him when she was 19, according to papers filed by her attorneys in the 1992 divorce case. Seeking large alimony payments to maintain a lavish, bi-coastal lifestyle, her attorneys portrayed Nicole Simpson as a community college dropout who sacrificed her own career to be a devoted companion of her high-profile husband, who “required that she be with him.”

* The Los Angeles County Grand Jury on Wednesday continued--for a fourth day--hearing evidence in the O.J. Simpson case in secret. Jurors are due to return today to hear more testimony that prosecutors apparently hope will lead to an indictment against Simpson and eliminate a preliminary hearing on June 30, the day the grand jury’s term expires.

In court, the most significant development was the acknowledgment that a bloody ski mask is not among the evidence against Simpson gathered by police. (The existence of the mask was widely reported, but the Los Angeles Times could not verify those reports and did not publish them.)

Shapiro extracted the ski mask disclosure when he said in court that it was one of two items that had been reported by some journalists, but were not on a list of evidence given to him by the prosecution.

Later, when asked, he would not say what the second item is.

In her remarks to McKay, Clark noted that statements that Simpson gave police the day after the slayings were made voluntarily and that he had waived his right to remain silent.

She said she would turn over a tape-recording of those statements to the defense team along with any other evidence or reports the defense requested, including some raw notes.

Clark lost her bid, however, to videotape the defense team as it examined physical evidence gathered from the autopsies. But McKay allowed for someone from the coroner’s office be on hand during the examination. In other rulings, McKay ordered that Simpson be provided with a cervical pillow to ease his discomfort from what his lawyer said is an old football injury.

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Rich Connell, Carla Hall, Tina Daunt, Rich Simon, Carla Rivera, Leslie Berger, Nicholas Riccardi and Jeff Leeds.

* THE 911 CALLS: A14