THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL : Tabloid World Scrambles to Get Its Hands on Fuhrman Tapes

The hottest commodities in the tabloid world this week are the Fuhrman tapes.

These are the gritty tape recordings of nine years of occasional conversations between Los Angeles Police Detective Mark Fuhrman and Laura Hart McKinny, a North Carolina college professor and screenwriter. Gathering material for a screenplay about cops, McKinny drew from Fuhrman a demonstration of the racist language and evidence-planting methods used in the less savory segments of the LAPD.

Fuhrman’s lawyer said the cop was talking trash merely to give McKinny a true picture of life in L.A.’s rough squad rooms. But Simpson’s chief attorney, Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., says the tapes show the real Fuhrman. They also prove, Cochran maintains, that the detective perjured himself when he swore he has never, in the past decade, described African Americans with a phrase much used by racists.

Judge Lance A. Ito will decide whether the tapes are admissible in the Simpson trial. But outside the courts, the tabs are going wild in their effort to procure them. “They are calling nonstop,” said Ron Regwan, partner of McKinny’s lawyer, Matthew H. Schwartz.

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The tabloid news market, consisting of supermarket tabs and TV magazine shows, is like the international weapons trade. It is a shadowy world of paid informants, spies and go-betweens who set up deals for a price. Driving the market is an insatiable appetite for the gossip and hot celebrity news craved by the tabs’ readers and viewers.

McKinny’s attorneys, Regwan and Schwartz, are well aware of the marketplace. McKinny, acting on the recommendation of a friend, had contacted their firm after a Simpson team private eye learned such tapes existed. Once she signed up with the lawyers, Regwan told me, “we wanted to find out the value of the tapes and advise her of that.” If the tapes were going to be public, Regwan said, “we said you might as well get some compensation.”

The attorneys talked to “maybe one or two journalists” who said they were interested in exclusives on the tapes.

But “we were never able to figure out the value,” Regwan said. “No deal was made. It was very preliminary.”

Now that the tapes are headed for the Simpson court, Regwan said, McKinny has decided against selling them. “At this point, she does not want to sell or license [the tapes],” Regwan said. “In all likelihood, they will not be licensed or sold.”

The allure of the tapes was confirmed when I talked to a couple of supermarket tabloid editors, Dan Dolan of the Globe and Phil Bunton of the Star.

The Globe ran a story on the tapes several days before some of their more sensational segments became known in a North Carolina court last week. Under the headline, “Cop’s Own Tape Will Set OJ Free,” Dolan said, “we had basically what was on the tapes . . . it was in broad strokes. . . . We did not pay Mr. Schwartz or the writer or anyone associated with the tapes. My recollection was that it was straight reportage on it.”

He said he heard the tape was priced at $100,000. The Star’s Bunton said, “I think the value is quite high. . . . It certainly would be worth five figures, if not more.”

Bunton said he has talked to “go-betweens . . . who have seen transcripts or heard the tapes and say they are dynamite. But it’s hard to judge. When people are selling a story, it’s always dynamite.” He added that “my understanding is they are not for sale.”

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A friend tells me that my fascination with the story of the tabs and the tapes shows that I am in “mental and moral free fall.”

On the contrary, following the tabloid scene is a necessary part of my beat, which is reporting on how the media are being twisted and turned by the various forces at play in the Simpson case.

Some of the more important news breaks of this case have emerged from the tabloid underworld, either through the web of snitches or from sources on either the law enforcement or defense side. Simpson’s statement to police when he was first questioned; his supposed jailhouse confession to the Rev. Rosey Grier, and graveside family pictures have first surfaced in the tabloids. Some of this has found its way into the mainstream press.

If the Fuhrman tapes leak before they are heard in court, it will be a huge news break.

Cochran acknowledges that it will be tough to prevent it. “I’m worried about that,” he said as he walked from the courthouse late Monday afternoon. “I am going to make sure that doesn’t happen. They [the tapes] are worth a lot of money.”

But he promised tight security. “I’m going to be sleeping with those tapes,” he said. “They’re not going anywhere.”

Maybe not. But as Cochran stepped into his car after greeting the fans who await him every day, you could see them hungering for a listen. “What about the tapes?” several people shouted to him.

That will be the question that dominates the Simpson trial for the next several days.