Simpson Offering $500,000 Reward for Tips in Case : Investigation: Defense says other possible suspects were ignored. Police sources discount chance glove was planted.

Moving on two fronts to assert the innocence of their high-profile client, lawyers for O.J. Simpson on Wednesday announced a $500,000 reward for information leading to the “real killer or killers” and filed a motion accusing police of ignoring evidence that points to other possible suspects.

“It has become apparent to me that the investigative resources available to the prosecution of this case have, from the first discovery of the bodies, been exclusively devoted to only one theory: that the defendant Orenthal James Simpson was personally responsible for these murders,” Simpson lawyer Robert L. Shapiro stated in a declaration accompanying the motion. “Evidence suggesting his innocence has been ignored in the investigation.”

In other developments Wednesday:

* Law enforcement sources said the Los Angeles Police Department has tentatively determined that it would have been almost impossible for Detective Mark Fuhrman to have pocketed a key piece of evidence--a bloody glove later found outside Simpson’s home--from the scene where the bodies of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman were discovered. Members of Simpson’s defense team have suggested that Fuhrman might have planted the glove at the Simpson estate, an assertion that department officials say is far-fetched. According to sources, 14 police officers and supervisors were on hand when Fuhrman arrived at the murder scene.

* Minutes from a June 29 supervisors’ meeting at the Los Angeles County coroner’s office indicate that 16 evidence errors were made during the murder investigation. An office spokesman downplayed the significance of those errors, which include placement of incorrect labels on fluid samples. The spokesman said that would not compromise any evidence in the case, but even minor mistakes could reinforce defense challenges to the integrity and competence of the investigation.

* In announcing the reward offer, a Simpson attorney said the defense team is launching its own investigation into the killings, hiring another private investigator and opening a toll-free hot line for tipsters.

The motion filed Wednesday was signed by Shapiro, Gerald F. Uelmen and Alan M. Dershowitz. In the motion and Shapiro’s accompanying declaration, the defense attorneys cited several items that they said could bolster their client’s claims of innocence and which they alleged have not been adequately investigated. For instance, Shapiro said an officer at the scene of the murders suggested that the killer might have been bitten by a dog; he requested access to any records of visits to emergency rooms in the area by people seeking treatment for dog bite wounds.

He also said Nicole Simpson received a number of threatening, obscene phone calls in December, 1992, from a suspect who was not O.J. Simpson. Shapiro asked for immediate access to any official information on that topic as well.

Shapiro further alleged that files turned over to him by prosecutors quote a neighbor who heard Nicole Simpson’s garage door being opened on the night of the killings. A number of fingerprints at the crime scene do not match the victims’ or O.J. Simpson’s, Shapiro added, demanding that more material on those leads be forwarded to him immediately.

Another piece of information cited by Shapiro was a comment by the Simpsons’ daughter, overheard by a police officer immediately after the killings. “I heard Mommy’s best friend’s voice and heard Mommy crying,” he quoted the 8-year-old as saying, but did not elaborate.

In addition, the defense lawyers asked for records including: police reports on any prowlers or burglaries in the Brentwood neighborhood in the six months before the killings; reports of “unsolved similar murders in California in the past year,” and reports on internal investigations involving detectives or other authorities involved in the case.

Simpson is scheduled to be arraigned Friday, and his attorneys asked for a hearing prior to that so that a judge could consider their requests for access to information in the case. Superior Court Judge Lance Ito denied that request, saying the motion should be handled by the trial judge, who will be announced Friday.

Even as the Simpson camp launched its latest offensive, police were completing an internal inquiry opened after the defense team suggested that Detective Fuhrman might have planted a bloody glove at the football Hall of Famer’s Brentwood estate. According to law enforcement sources, police officials have interviewed nearly every officer who was at the murder scene and have tentatively concluded that it would have been all but impossible for the investigator to carry away a bloody glove from that location without being spotted.

Those sources said Police Department records and interviews indicate that 10 patrol officers and three sergeants had been at the scene for roughly two hours by the time Fuhrman arrived with his supervisor, Detective Ronald Phillips. A fire captain also was there, as is often the case when bodies are found.

“By the time he (Fuhrman) gets there, the scene is frozen for all intents and purposes,” one police source said. “Uniformed people and supervisors were all over the place.”

Fuhrman and Phillips arrived about 2:10 a.m. on June 13, sources said, adding that the area already had been cordoned off with yellow police tape. The detectives, according to police sources, were shown the scene by patrol officers, who pointed out a knit cap and a bloody glove near the bodies. Without touching any items, patrol officers also showed them a pager, an envelope, some keys and other items lying on the ground, some covered in blood.

Fuhrman and Phillips looked at those items from several feet away using flashlights, according to the police sources.

Those sources said they believed that it would have been impossible for Fuhrman to slip into the area where the bodies were lying and grab evidence without one of the 14 other officers at the scene noticing him. Moreover, those sources said they considered it unlikely that so many officers would have missed a second glove as they were securing the area.

Even as police tried to resolve that issue, however, the defense team was moving on another front, appealing to the public for its help in solving the murders and clearing the former football star of charges he committed the double homicide.

Leroy (Skip) Taft, who has served as Simpson’s personal attorney and adviser for 25 years, announced to a throng of reporters Wednesday afternoon that Simpson was “personally offering a reward of $500,000 for production of evidence establishing his innocence and further leads to the real killer or killers in this case.”

Speaking in a Brentwood plaza about a mile from the scene of the June 12 killings, Taft said Simpson has retained well-known private investigator John McNally, a retired New York police detective, to head a probe intended to prove the athlete-turned-actor’s innocence. Taft also announced creation of a toll-free line to field tips on the case. The number--(800) 322-3632--includes the two numbers Simpson wore during his football career, 32 and 36.

Taft, who declined to take questions, said Simpson had decided to offer the reward and sponsor his own investigation in part because authorities rejected the services of Simpson’s hired experts in conducting their probe.

Rewards, especially large ones, often turn up valuable tips, but legal experts caution that witnesses who come forward in response to offers of money can be questioned about their motives--just as witnesses who sell their stories to tabloid publications have come under attack.

Combined with the strongly worded motion accusing the police of failing to investigate, the offer of the reward is the latest move by Simpson attorneys to drive home their contention that authorities have mishandled the explosive murder case from the beginning. The attorneys have accused police of lying to obtain a search warrant and have suggested that the Police Department and the Los Angeles County coroner’s office used sloppy procedures in handling some of the evidence.

An internal coroner’s office document made available to The Times on Wednesday could provide defense attorneys with further ammunition on that point. Minutes from a June 29 supervisors’ meeting refer to “16 evidence problems” related to the case.

The minutes do not go into more detail, but a source in the coroner’s office said they involved such things as placing bodily fluids in mislabeled containers (bile in a container marked urine, for instance), failing to examine the stomach contents of one victim, drying clothes from the victims improperly, and storing the bodies in unlocked crypts.

Although he would not comment on the specific allegations, a spokesman for the office downplayed their significance.

“None of this is anything that is going to be detrimental to the case,” said coroner’s spokesman Scott Carrier, adding that the defense team is aware of the mishaps. “There’s nothing that compromises any evidence and nothing that will affect either side.”

Though the defense has challenged many aspects of the investigation, no one has come under greater scrutiny or attack than Fuhrman, the detective who said he discovered a bloody glove on the grounds of Simpson’s Brentwood estate.

Defense attorneys have seized on a 1983 case filed by Fuhrman in which he claimed he had a stress disability and have used that case to suggest that his credibility is suspect. Documents accompanying that case quote Fuhrman using racially charged language and discussing his preoccupation with violence.

In addition, Fuhrman has come under investigation by LAPD officials probing allegations of sexual harassment and mistreatment of female officers at the department’s West Los Angeles police station. Fuhrman has worked at that station for many years.

According to one source, a female police officer interviewed as part of the intense inquiry under way at that station said Fuhrman made an inappropriate remark in her presence.

But one source familiar with the inquiry said the female officer’s credibility has subsequently been challenged based on incidents unrelated to Fuhrman. Several sources said that no disciplinary action is likely to be taken against the detective. The sexual harassment audit is complete and the report is being reviewed by department leaders. Once it is approved, it will be turned over to Internal Affairs to see whether departmental charges should be brought against any officers.

The sources added that though Fuhrman was one of many male West Los Angeles officers associated with an informal group that dubbed itself “Men Against Women,” his performance in recent years has won him plaudits from supervisors and has allowed him to be promoted through the patrol ranks and placed in a coveted detective slot.

He was, however, passed over for a recent opening in the esteemed robbery-homicide division, considered the premier LAPD detective unit. Simpson’s defense team has suggested that Fuhrman might have planted a glove at Simpson’s home to be hailed for cracking the high-profile case.

As both sides gear for a trial that could commence in late September, investigators are eagerly awaiting the results of DNA tests conducted on blood samples recovered from Simpson’s home and car, as well as from the murder scene.

According to sources familiar with the testing procedures, the definitive DNA tests still have not been run on the samples. Results of PCR tests, an expedited form of the testing, have suggested that droplets found at the murder scene and in Simpson’s car could be from the former athlete. Other tests conducted on the glove discovered outside his Brentwood estate were inconclusive but suggested that while the blood of the two victims might be on that item, his blood did not appear to be.

Further tests will be needed to produce more conclusive findings, and those results will not be known for days or even weeks, sources said.

Times staff writer Henry Weinstein contributed to this report.

Defense Sets Up Toll-Free Number

O.J. Simpson’s legal advisers, offering a $500,000 reward for leads in the double-murder case, said a toll-free number for such information would be activated Friday. On Wednesday afternoon, people who called the number, (800) 322-3632, heard the following message:

“Hello, this is the law office of Robert Shapiro. Thank you for your call. If you would like the address where you can send a letter of support to O.J. Simpson, press 1 now. If you have an important lead regarding the O.J. Simpson case, press 2 now. If you are an expert in a field relating to the O.J. Simpson case and would like to offer your services, press 3 now. If you are seeking legal representation, press 4 now.”