Fascination With Macabre Makes Instant ‘Landmarks’

She was across the street, just exploring a market, when she lifted her eyes and was shocked by the sight.

“I said, ‘Oh my God, there’s the place where he bought the knife--or supposedly bought the knife.’ ” And so Jeri Emmett Laird, 58, who said she was once a battered wife, just had to traverse Broadway to take a peek around Ross Cutlery, the narrow Downtown storefront where O.J. Simpson purportedly paid $78 two months ago for a 15-inch Stiletto knife.

Never mind that the blade has not been linked to the murder of Simpson’s ex-wife or her friend. Just the testimony on Thursday that Simpson had purchased the knife had been enough by Friday to turn the otherwise unprepossessing cutlery store into yet another macabre landmark in Los Angeles: a gathering point for gawkers, a target for Simpson backers who made hate calls and someday, perhaps, an answer to a trivia question under the category of Famous Crimes.

Laird came because, she said, “I wanted to be part of history.”

Two LAPD traffic officers stopped by because, as one said, “I’d like to see a knife like the one O.J. bought--but they’re sold out.”

Rick Conroy, 38, a produce worker wearing shorts and an Oakland A’s cap, just wanted to look and ask himself, why here?

“How did he find out about the place?” Conroy asked. Even assuming it is true, he said, that Simpson was filming a movie just down the street, why not buy a knife in Brentwood, or Beverly Hills, or any of the fine knife stores out that way? “That’s what I wonder. Why this place? Who told him?”

The lingering mysteries, and the enormous brutality and notoriety of the Simpson slayings, are still drawing the looky-loos 18 days later to the murder scene and to Simpson’s own home, not far away. The sites seem likely to become popular stops on Hollywood’s ballyhooed Grave Line Tour, a hearse-driven foray to a diverse array of notorious scenes, including the Chateau Marmont hotel, where comedian John Belushi died of a drug overdose, and the home in which Lana Turner’s lover, Johnny Stompanato, was stabbed to death by Turner’s 14-year-old daughter, Cheryl Crane.

To take in such sights is part of the public’s fascination with celebrity and a way to connect with history--with events that pass on into the ages, said Dr. Robert J. Rome, past president of the Los Angeles County Psychological Assn.

People gaze at the tiled walkway where Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman were found for much the same reason they still stare in wonder at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated 31 years ago.

“There’s a certain attraction to the notoriety, a communing with history,” Rome said. “(People) want to be where something happened. . . . They’re becoming one with history.”

But Dr. Michael J. Singer, a Long Beach psychiatrist, expressed a darker view of human motives. “I think it allows people to express their own hostilities, without harming anyone. They go to the scene and fantasize about the crime. In a way, they’re releasing their own anger, resentment and hostilities.

“That doesn’t mean they’re pathological people,” he added. “It’s just part of human nature.”

Ross Cutlery co-owner Allen Wattenberg, who testified Thursday that Simpson had purchased a retractable-blade knife with a straight handle, said he was distressed by all the curiosity-seekers. “Publicity is a double-edged thing. Some people are rude and pushy.”

Not only that, but they do not buy, he said.

“It’s just human nature,” Wattenberg said, trying to explain the mind-set of all the new visitors. “You see a red light flashing and you want to know what’s going on.”

The murder scene was another popular place Friday, even as prosecutors were showing grisly photographs of Nicole Simpson during the second day of her ex-husband’s preliminary hearing.

“This is not like me at all--but I’ve seen it so much on TV,” said Patty Ruff, 42, of Agoura Hills, who joined as many as a dozen other spectators outside Nicole Simpson’s two-story, Mediterranean-style condominium in Brentwood, before traveling on to Simpson’s Tudor mansion.

“I thought I’d see blood,” Ruff said, noting that the exterior of the condo was not quite as “spooky” as she had imagined it would be. “Disappointed? Well, I didn’t think you could wash away blood. Does it stain?”

Another visitor, Ralph Williams, was a former USC student who brought his 9-year-old daughter, Ah-tenae, and 11-year-old niece, Kenya Johnson.

“I’m just envisioning in my mind the bodies lying there,” Williams said. “It’s a rush of excitement--but of sadness, also. I feel a lot of sympathy for the victims.”

Williams said he had met Simpson many years ago. “It really hit me hard,” he said.

Despite the two signs erected by the South Brentwood Homeowners Assn.--”PLEASE Respect Our Privacy”--the crowds came and went all day. Some took pictures near the signs. Others, including Cheryl Gendron, a 25-year-old tourist, searched for better angles for photos across the street.

“I feel so weird taking pictures,” she said. “People think we’re so morbid.”

So why was she clicking that shutter?

“It’s just morbid curiosity.”

Gendron, a resident of West Palm Beach, Fla., was making her first extended trip to Los Angeles with her boyfriend, Ken Nash. They had already been to Simpson’s home and to Nicole Simpson’s former home on Gretna Green Way--from which she made the now-famous 911 call last October.

“It’s just so eerie, I guess, knowing she was slumped right over there,” Gendron said, gazing at the murder scene. “It’s creepy.”

Pat Welch, 43, of Los Angeles was one of those sharing theories. She cast a discerning eye toward the shrubs and said: “There’s a lot of places to hide up in there, and it’s dark here at night.” She also noted the speaker box just outside the high gate. “Evidently, (Goldman) pressed the button and she found out who it was and came down to get the glasses,” Welch theorized. “I’m figuring somebody followed him.”

Nash had a counter-theory: that the attack was already in progress when Goldman arrived.

“I figure he stumbled upon it,” Nash said.

The impromptu discussion went around and around.

“You know another theory?” Welch said later, to a pair of newcomers. “They did use a gun. How many people today just use knives?”

By that point, traffic on Bundy Drive had become so heavy and slow that a police car tooted its siren, urging drivers to keep moving. Gendron and Nash were in their convertible, about to pull out into the street, but first a question out the window: “Do you know where Nicole’s buried?”

At Simpson’s home, two miles away, Linda Tollenaer took pictures of her son Pete, 14, who stood at the wrought-iron gates in a Michigan ball cap. They and a friend, Wendell Edwards, were vacationing from Moline, Ill., their first trip to Los Angeles.

“I think it’s pretty exciting, myself,” said Tollenaer, who had taken Pete to Knott’s Berry Farm, Disneyland, Universal Studios and the beach. The trek to Simpson’s home held a certain magic for them; it was Space Mountain, without the long line.

“That’s all (Pete) has talked about,” Tollenaer said. “He said, ‘Can we go to O.J.’s house?’ We never dreamed we’d find it.”

As they stood in the hot sun, taking still pictures and video footage, a man inside the gate of Simpson’s home--apparently a security guard--kept urging the crowd to back off the driveway and stay in the street.

“Private property,” he said.

“I came from Hawaii to be here,” protested Kimo Togafau, 35, of Honolulu, who had come with his wife, Tina.

They came just to follow the Simpson case and see these points of interest, Togafau said. “O.J.’s like Elvis--America’s famous people. If I’ve got the money, I’ve got to go see. Some people are very special in my heart.”