Detective Explains Using 4 Officers to Notify Simpson

The lead investigator in the O.J. Simpson murder case explained Tuesday why it took four police officers to notify Simpson of his ex-wife’s death--a longstanding question that defense attorneys have used to suggest that the officers acted improperly.

Los Angeles Police Detective Tom Lange also suggested the answer to another lingering mystery in the case: which victim was killed first. According to Lange, the soles of Nicole Brown Simpson’s bare feet were clean, signaling that she had not tracked through the deep pools of blood at the scene. By contrast, Ronald Lyle Goldman’s shoes were stained in blood--evidence that he came upon the bloody scene after Nicole Simpson had been killed.

Late in the day, Simpson attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. began cross-examining Lange, barely getting under way but extracting one small concession from the detective. Authorities did not contact the coroner’s office until nearly seven hours after finding the bodies, a delay that may have complicated determining the time of death. Cochran asked Lange whether, under ideal circumstances, prompt notification would have been preferable.

“That would be ideal,” Lange said. “We don’t often see that.”

Lange’s testimony occupied the entire court day and mostly rehashed points that long have been known and that other witnesses have described. But the explanation for the number of officers who traveled to Simpson’s house had not been presented to the jury, and it marks a potentially important rebuttal to defense criticism of police conduct. During last summer’s preliminary hearing, another detective testified about the trip to Simpson’s home, but no jury was present.

Simpson’s lawyers have suggested that the presence of four officers at Simpson’s house in the pre-dawn hours of June 13 shows that the officers already had made up their minds that Simpson was a suspect and that they were out to gather evidence. Simpson was arrested five days after the June 12 murders and charged with the killings of his ex-wife and Goldman. He has pleaded not guilty.

But Lange said Tuesday that two officers, Detectives Ronald Phillips and Mark Fuhrman, went to the house to tell Simpson that his ex-wife had been killed and that his children were at the West Los Angeles police station. According to Lange, those two detectives led the way to Simpson’s house and were planning to stay there in case Simpson had questions or needed help.

Lange added that the other two officers, himself and Detective Philip L. Vannatter, were there to meet Simpson, ask him a few questions and establish rapport so they could count on his cooperation as the investigation continued.

“I think it was important that we meet Mr. Simpson, that he should know who we are, that we certainly would be working with him in the future,” Lange said.

The detectives were unable to rouse Simpson at the house, however, and decided to jump the fence and enter the property without a warrant after Fuhrman found a spot on the former football star’s Ford Bronco. That stain, which later was identified as blood, raised the detectives’ concerns and convinced them that they needed to act quickly, Lange said.

“I felt that someone inside that house might be the victim of a crime and might be bleeding or worse,” he said.

Lange’s testimony, a centerpiece of the prosecution’s case, followed a short debate over how to proceed with a potentially important defense witness, Rosa Lopez. Defense attorneys say Lopez can bolster Simpson’s alibi, but she quit her job recently and gave lawyers the slip, causing them to worry briefly that she had left the country for her native El Salvador.

She has re-emerged in Los Angeles, but Simpson’s lawyers are worried that she may disappear again and try to leave the country.

To prevent her testimony from being lost, Simpson’s attorneys suggested that she be questioned under oath now and that the session be recorded on videotape, for use if she becomes unavailable.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher A. Darden objected to the videotaped testimony or to calling Lopez out of order--meaning that she would take the stand during the middle of the prosecution’s case. He said defense attorneys had not presented evidence supporting their contention that Lopez was an imminent threat to flee.

Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito ordered Lopez to appear in court Friday.

That would mark the first courtroom appearance of a witness who has posed problems for the defense from the start. Although Simpson’s attorneys want the option of taking her testimony via videotape, one legal expert said jurors might treat such testimony skeptically and he doubted that Ito would let that occur.

“It’s even doubtful that the judge will allow anything other than live testimony in court because if she is out of the country, how is the judge going to enforce the perjury admonition?” asked Albert De Blanc Jr., a Los Angeles criminal defense lawyer. “There is no real leverage on her to testify truthfully like there is with other witnesses, subject to four years in prison, if she has left the country.”

Lange spent five hours on the stand Tuesday as prosecutors attempted to extract as much information about the investigation as possible from him, part of a broader strategy to minimize the significance of Fuhrman, expected to take the stand this week. Defense attorneys long have signaled their intention to aggressively challenge Fuhrman--they maintain that he is a racist who may have planted evidence. Through his lawyer, Fuhrman has vehemently denied both allegations.

Vannatter also is a potentially problematic witness because he authored a request for a search warrant that Ito ruled contained misstatements about the case. If Vannatter testifies, defense lawyers plan to use the statements to suggest his unreliability, a tactic that could undercut the value of his testimony.

As a result, prosecutors are focusing most of their questioning about the evidence on Lange, an even-tempered LAPD veteran who has investigated more than 250 murders and whose credibility has not faced any serious challenge from the defense.

Lange told the jury Tuesday that he was the officer who told Nicole Simpson’s family of her murder, calling them from Simpson’s kitchen phone shortly after 6 a.m. The detective said that he initially spoke to Lou Brown, Nicole Simpson’s father, and that while they were talking, Denise Brown came on the phone.

“Denise Brown began to scream over the phone what I believed to be hysterically,” Lange said. In interviews, Denise Brown, the oldest of Nicole Simpson’s sisters, has said she began yelling that she believed that Simpson was the killer.

But before Lange could testify about what Denise Brown said that morning, defense lawyers objected, saying the conversation was hearsay. After a sidebar conference, Ito agreed, so the jury did not hear about that conversation.

Along with his partner Vannatter, Lange has overseen the investigation from just hours after the bodies were discovered, and his testimony ranged from describing the immediate aftermath of the killings to outlining the lengthy investigation that ensued. Among other things, Lange conceded that bloodstains from the back gate at Nicole Simpson’s condominium were not collected along with other evidence on June 13.

Instead, Lange said he noticed that blood was still on the gate when he returned July 3 for a walk-through of the crime scene.

“I inquired of the criminalist if he had checked that gate as I had requested,” Lange said. “He said he had not.”

Prosecutors announced in court last week that a DNA test of one of those blood drops showed genetic characteristics identical to some found in Simpson’s blood. Defense attorneys have countered that the tests performed so far are not definitive and that so much time had elapsed between the murders and the tests that results from them are compromised.

As she has with other witnesses, Deputy Dist. Atty. Marcia Clark used her examination of Lange to anticipate expected defense challenges. Simpson’s lawyers have questioned other police witnesses about whether they wore gloves over their hands and booties on their shoes while working at the crime scene.

Lange said he had worn rubber gloves but acknowledged that he had not worn any covering on his shoes. That was not unusual, Lange said, noting that in more than 20 years of investigating homicides, he has never worn shoe coverings to a crime scene.

Later, however, defense attorney Robert L. Shapiro said that even if wearing shoe coverings and other protective gear is not common LAPD practice, it should be.

“Our experts will testify,” Shapiro said outside court, “that everyone would have proper attire at the scene--gloves, booties, proper headgear--so nothing is contaminated.”

Searching for evidence of contamination, defense experts were allowed to examine some of the physical evidence over the weekend and Monday. The experts met at an Albany, N.Y., laboratory to look at the pair of bloody gloves that prosecutors say links Simpson to the crimes as well as at other evidence.

The shipping of evidence back and forth between coasts did complicate the proceedings, however, as some of it was not back in time for Tuesday’s session. Lawyers blamed the delay on courier services and expressed confidence that nothing had been lost.

As they have pressed forward with their central theme--that sloppy and misdirected police work contaminated and corrupted evidence--defense attorneys have cited at least one piece of questionable judgment by Lange: his failure to promptly book a pair of Simpson’s shoes into evidence after seizing them under a warrant.

In testimony Tuesday, Lange said he had booked those shoes early the next day. The only reason for the delay, Lange added, was that the unit where evidence was to be booked had closed for the day by the time he had seized the shoes. Lange said he booked the shoes the next morning after leaving them in the trunk of his police car overnight.

The defense attack on the handling of evidence received another small setback Tuesday when a television program released a statement saying that it had studied a videotape used by the Simpson camp and concluded that it may not bolster the defense case. On the tape an officer can be seen striding through the crime scene, and Simpson’s lawyers have said it demonstrates the notion that police were traipsing through the area and possibly contaminating evidence.

But “Inside Edition,” which shot the videotape, said its records show that a film crew did not leave its offices to go to the condominium where the murders occurred until 1:15 p.m. on June 13. The crime scene was released at 3:45 p.m. that day. On the same videotape, “Inside Edition” said in a statement, another officer can be seen taking down the yellow police tape, indicating that police were no longer protecting the crime scene.

Another theme that defense attorneys have aggressively pursued is the notion that police acted improperly at Simpson’s house when they arrived hours after the murders. While there--and without a search warrant--detectives say they spotted blood drops in the driveway and a bloody glove behind the estate.

Ito has allowed the jury to hear about that evidence, but defense attorneys have attempted to portray police as reckless. They are expected to question Lange about the conduct of the police and to suggest that the officers’ actions constituted a search--evidence of the defense theory that officers jumped to the conclusion that Simpson was the culprit.

Clark and her colleagues are braced for that challenge, and she used her questioning of Lange to blunt it by showing that the officers acted with restraint.

“Did you open closets?” Clark asked.

“No,” Lange said.

“Open drawers?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

“Look in shelves?” the prosecutor continued.

“No,” he answered again.

“Check under couches or under tables?” she asked.

“No,” he said again.

“What were you doing?” Clark asked.

“We were trying to contact Mr. Simpson,” Lange answered, adding that once the detectives learned that Simpson was in Chicago, they stopped looking for him at the house.

Lange’s account may be challenged by Arnelle Simpson, the defendant’s daughter. She was in court along with Simpson’s mother and eldest son Tuesday, but Arnelle and Jason Simpson left the courtroom before the detective testified about the events at Simpson’s home on June 13.

Arnelle Simpson was at the house that day and may be called to testify when it comes time for the defense to present its case.

Lange returns to the stand this morning, when Cochran is to resume his cross-examination. That questioning is expected to last much of the day.

Next to testify: Brian (Kato) Kaelin, who was living at the Simpson estate when the murders occurred and who became a minor celebrity last summer after his testimony during the preliminary hearing.

One witness not expected to take the stand is Jill Shively, who told the grand jury that she had seen Simpson fleeing the scene of the crime. Prosecutors were stunned to learn last summer that Shively had accepted money for telling her story, and Clark asked the grand jury to disregard it.

Since then, there have been periodic reports that Shively would be called anyway. But on Tuesday, her lawyer said he had not been notified that the prosecution wants her to take the stand.

“My understanding is that the D.A.’s office does not plan to call her,” said James M. Epstein, Shively’s lawyer. “I’ve been told if they change their mind they will contact me first.”

Times staff writer Henry Weinstein contributed to this article.