Police Seize Knife Found Near Simpson’s Home : Slayings: Investigators express skepticism that it is the murder weapon, but stains on the blade will be tested.

Undeterred by reports that a mysterious package in the hands of a Municipal Court judge may contain a knife connected to the O.J. Simpson case, police and sightseers hunted Saturday for the missing murder weapon, and a woman discovered a kitchen knife smeared with red stains less than a block from Simpson’s home.

Daniella Gonzalez, a Los Angeles resident drawn to the neighborhood by the unfolding drama that has transfixed the nation for the last three weeks, said she was walking through the area when she came upon a polka-dot blouse next to a fence a few doors from Simpson’s estate. She said she kicked the bundle and discovered something solid inside.

Unwrapping the blouse, she found a large kitchen knife with a steel blade about eight inches long attached to a brown wood handle. The blade is about the same size as that of a weapon described in court last week, but the rest of the knife does not resemble that weapon--which witnesses testified Simpson bought in early May.

Gonzalez, who was accompanied by several members of her family, was questioned at the scene. Several other bystanders said they had seen her apparently stumble upon the knife. Gonzalez was questioned by police. Officer Steven Homeyer said the knife would be booked into evidence at the LAPD’s West Los Angeles station.

Sgt. Jeff Hanson called the knife, found at about 2:30 p.m., “potentially possible evidence” and said it would be photographed and examined by police. But even as police sources confirmed that the knife had been recovered, they expressed skepticism that it will turn out to be the murder weapon.

Analysts in the LAPD’s Scientific Investigation Division are expected to test the stains on the newly discovered knife to determine whether they are blood and, if so, whether they match blood found at the murder scene and in Simpson’s home and car.

Police have had their share of false alarms lately including a knife recovered from an American Airlines waste dump that stirred a flurry of interest last week. Investigators have all but ruled it out as a possible weapon in the case. As a result, law enforcement sources said the hunt will continue despite Saturday’s discovery.

In recent days, investigators have concentrated their efforts on the area between Simpson’s Brentwood estate and the scene of the murders, which occurred outside the Bundy Drive condominium of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson. It was there just after 12 a.m. June 13 that the bodies of Nicole Simpson and her friend Ronald Lyle Goldman were discovered in pools of blood.

Even as detectives were examining the well-heeled neighborhoods of Brentwood, members of O.J. Simpson’s camp were coyly declining to comment on speculation that a bulky Manila envelope displayed in court Friday may contain a knife.

A source close to the case told The Times on Saturday that the package contains a knife identical to one described in court Thursday--a 15-inch Stiletto made in Germany and allegedly purchased by Simpson on May 3 in Downtown Los Angeles. In its upcoming issue, Newsweek magazine will report that “two well-placed sources” say a knife is inside the envelope, although the magazine did not say what type of knife its sources described.

Even if the defense team has produced a knife such as the one described in testimony last week--a cutlery store owner and an employee testified that Simpson bought a knife from them, and prosecutors displayed photographs of an identical knife purchased by detectives after the murders--its exact significance to the case is hard to assess. There would be little way of proving that the knife in the envelope is the same one that Simpson bought at the store, and no way to be sure that he did not own more than one such knife.

In addition, many questions remain about how and when Simpson’s representatives came into possession of the new evidence--issues that could influence its usefulness in court.

Reached Saturday, Simpson attorney Robert L. Shapiro declined to discuss the contents of the envelope, which he last week provided to a specially appointed judge serving as a “special master.”

“This thing was done under the strictest of confidence,” Shapiro said in an interview. “Anything we do about this will be in confidential communication with the court.”

The judge has ordered that the envelope be kept sealed for now. But that has not stopped much of America from speculating. Legal experts and laymen from coast to coast have theorized everything from a bloody knife to a clean knife to yet another article of blood-spattered clothing in an investigation where bloodstains form a mainstay of the prosecution case.

Calls from around the world have flooded police and the district attorney’s office with suggestions and other unsolicited tips. A secretary to lead prosecutor Marcia Clark said that on Saturday she found more than 180 messages on the answering machine. Police have been similarly deluged. Most callers, police say, are either seeking details about the case or offering hints on where to look for the elusive knife.

Some have urged police to dig up local landfills, others have recommended rooting through airport trash cans and one enterprising local professor has called a number of people connected with the case to suggest that police conduct a thorough search of tree branches in Chicago and West Los Angeles.

“I would drop it in the sewer, right there,” Darlene James of Los Angeles said Saturday outside the condominium where the killings took place.

“I’d put it in a car’s gas tank,” said Carl Koppelman of El Segundo.

Ironically, many legal analysts believe that finding the murder weapon would have only slight bearing on the outcome of the Simpson case. Unless the knife could be definitively tied to Simpson on the night of the killings, its value to the prosecution would be minimal. And unless defense attorneys could show that there was no way Simpson could have wielded such a knife on the night in question, they also would stand little to gain by finding the weapon.

Nevertheless, the hunt for the weapon has captured extraordinary public attention, especially in Los Angeles and Chicago, the two areas where police have concentrated their searches because they are where Simpson was known to be in the hours immediately after the killings.

Late last week, police descended on a vacant Brentwood lot and searched for more than three hours with metal detectors. Other detectives and police officers beat back brush and peered into storm drains Friday--all to no avail.

The continuing police searches and a surge of macabre tourism in the upscale Brentwood neighborhoods where Simpson and his ex-wife lived have led irritated residents to ask for additional police protection to hold down the crowds.

At Simpson’s home Saturday, police erected barricades to keep out hordes of gawkers. The barricades kept out some traffic, but hundreds of sightseers still traipsed through the neighborhood and the area around the murder scene. Late in the day, after the kitchen knife turned up, police sealed off the area around Simpson’s house, keeping even the media at bay.

Earlier, pedestrians headed up side streets near Simpson’s home, but were intercepted by police cars. But they did not turn back. A crowd gathered down the block from Simpson’s house, on Ashford Street, peering at the Simpson home from 200 feet away, some of them complaining about not being allowed closer.

“This is crazy!” said Roger Phillips, an accountant from Hollywood who was turned away from the Simpson mansion. “This is a public place. We’re free to move about.”

Others were sympathetic to the residents.

“I think it’s fair,” said Alex Ornelas, who came with his son Jesse from South Gate to see the Simpson sights. “If they don’t put a law or an ordinance up, everybody’s going to come here.”

Times staff writer Richard A. Serrano contributed to this report.