Simpson Lawyers Say Vannatter Lied on Stand : Trial: Defense calls FBI agent, mob informants. At issue is whether defendant was a suspect at time of warrantless search.

Trying to close their case with a bang, lawyers for O.J. Simpson called one of the case’s lead investigators to the witness stand Tuesday and accused him of lying about the reasons for going to Simpson’s house after the murders--a contention that received a boost from an FBI agent but sputtered when a pair of organized crime informants were asked about it.

The day’s testimony was a mishmash of accusations, denials and evasions--all intended to raise questions in the jury’s mind about the credibility of Detective Philip L. Vannatter of the Los Angeles Police Department, a respected 26-year veteran of the Robbery-Homicide Division and one of two lead investigators in the Simpson case.

At issue was Vannatter’s statement--made repeatedly in front of the jury and during previous hearings--that he and three other detectives did not consider Simpson a suspect when they drove to his house from the scene of the crimes early on June 13, 1994.

Simpson has pleaded not guilty to the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman. He was first questioned by police the day after the murders but was not arrested until later that week, after police received results of blood tests suggesting that drops found at the scene of the crimes matched Simpson’s type. Later tests, performed using more precise DNA analysis, confirmed the earlier results.

Vannatter first took the stand in March, and insisted at the time that Simpson was not considered a suspect when detectives drove to the former football star’s Brentwood home. On Tuesday, he reiterated that assertion even more stridently as Simpson attorney Robert L. Shapiro suggested that the detective had lied.

“Mr. Simpson was no more a suspect at that point than you were, Mr. Shapiro,” Vannatter snapped.

But defense attorneys launched an ambitious campaign to undermine that statement, presenting their witnesses in front of a jury that at first seemed puzzled but then took note as the testimony began to unfold. FBI Agent Michael F. Wacks recounted a snippet of conversation that he overheard between Vannatter and Lawrence Fiato, one of two brothers who have worked as government informants in organized crime cases. Wacks also testified that the Fiato brothers told him about another conversation with Vannatter.

Wacks and Fiato said they recalled Vannatter saying something about believing Simpson was a suspect when police went to his house. But neither could recall his exact words, and then Craig Anthony Fiato, in a contentious face-off with lead Simpson trial lawyer Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., testified that he had exaggerated his earlier statements regarding Vannatter’s comments as a way of getting the FBI agent’s goat.

“I was exaggerating the circumstances to aggravate him,” said Craig Fiato, who wore sharkskin pants, a black jacket and a gold loop in his left ear.

“Why did you want to aggravate Mr. Wacks?” Deputy Dist. Atty. Brian Kelberg asked.

“Well,” said Fiato, “that is what pimping does. You pimp each other, and I got one over on [the agent], and he has done it to me in all these years I have known him.”

“And you enjoyed that exercise?” Kelberg asked. “Is that correct?”

“I was ecstatic with that exercise,” he responded with a grin.

“Would it be accurate to say that it did not appear that Agent Wacks shared your enthusiasm for what you had done?” Kelberg continued.

“The blood drained from his face,” Fiato said.

Attack on Credibility

The issue of what Vannatter said about the detectives’ motives for going to Simpson’s house that morning is potentially significant for several reasons. Police entered Simpson’s estate without a warrant, they said, because they worried there might be more victims inside his house; if in fact they already believed Simpson was a suspect, that could render the search invalid.

More fundamental is the basic question of Vannatter’s credibility. If he lied about that issue, defense attorneys will argue that he cannot be trusted on the rest of his testimony--essentially the same tack they are preparing to launch with respect to former LAPD Detective Mark Fuhrman, who testified that he had not used a racial epithet within the past 10 years, only to then be confronted with clear evidence that he had.

Unlike Fuhrman, both sides agree that Vannatter stands at the very heart of the prosecution case, and thus any questions about his credibility go to the center of the government’s case.

As a result, legal analysts said the defense challenge to the detective could represent an enormous boon to its case.

Laurie Levenson, a Loyola law school professor, described the testimony as “a terrible nightmare for the prosecutors.

“It fits into the defense’s themes of conspiracy and don’t trust the police,” she said. “It may make jurors think that if Vannatter is willing to lie and if he thought O.J. was the prime suspect all the time, then maybe he was willing to plant blood.”

Barry Tarlow, a prominent criminal defense attorney in Los Angeles, sounded that same theme in even stronger terms.

“It reminded me of the song that Cornwallis had his band play when he surrendered to George Washington at Yorktown, ‘The World Turned Upside-Down,’ ” he said. “The chickens are now coming home to roost.”

Homing in on the latest defense campaign to discredit a police officer, Shapiro on Tuesday asked Vannatter: “Did you tell Larry Fiato that you . . . went to Rockingham because O.J. was a suspect, the husband is always a suspect?”

Vannatter, who bristled at Shapiro’s challenge to his integrity, responded: “I don’t have a specific recollection of making that statement. I don’t believe I did make that statement.”

He added that if anyone recalled him saying such a thing, it would have to have been a comment perhaps made in jest and then taken out of context.

Kelberg, who has played an increasingly significant role in the prosecution’s case in recent weeks, promised a brief cross-examination. This time, the loquacious lawyer, whose long-winded questioning has occasionally drawn the jury’s anger, delivered.

He fired a few quick questions to Vannatter and asked the veteran detective whether he felt his reputation had been unfairly challenged by the defense in the Simpson case.

“You bet I have,” said Vannatter, a white-haired, craggy-faced detective. “I have dedicated over 25 years of hard service to this city, and I’ve done a lot of work, and I have seen a lot of people murdered, innocently murdered, and I have attempted to do the best I can to come to successful conclusions.”

Witnesses Challenge Vannatter

But no sooner had Vannatter finished testifying than the defense began to call the witnesses to challenge his account.

First up was Agent Wacks, who testified that he had walked out onto a smoking deck on the 18th floor of the Downtown Criminal Courts building earlier this year and caught a snippet of conversation between Vannatter and Larry Fiato. The agent could not recall the exact words he heard that day, but said it was “something to the effect of not going up to the house to save victims, and that he was a suspect.”

Simpson’s name was never mentioned, Wacks said, but the agent conceded under Cochran’s questioning that he had no trouble figuring out who was being discussed.

“There was no doubt in your mind he was talking about the O.J. Simpson case, was there?” Cochran asked.

“No,” the agent responded.

Time and again, Ito interrupted Cochran’s efforts to draw out the questioning, reminding him to stay on track and to avoid repetition. Cochran pushed that envelope as far as he could, trying to get Wacks to repeat that balcony conversation as many times as possible in front of the jury.

But Ito became increasingly insistent.

“Counsel, we’ve gone through the statement now five times,” the judge said near the end of Cochran’s questioning.

“I am dealing with this particular aspect, Your Honor,” Cochran pleaded. “I have a right to do that.”

“Five times is too many,” Ito responded. “Proceed. Either conclude with something that is new or sit down.”

Once Cochran did yield the floor, Kelberg shifted the emphasis, moving from the words stated to the tone in which they were uttered.

“Sir, in fact the tone you heard in Mr. Vannatter’s voice as he was saying the comment you heard him say was one of sarcasm, wasn’t it?” Kelberg asked. Cochran objected, but Ito crisply overruled him.

“In my opinion,” Wacks responded, “it was totally sarcastic, yes.”

After another question, this one successfully blocked by Cochran’s objection, Kelberg asked: “There was nothing about what you heard that you thought was significant, is that a fair statement?”

“I put no import to the statement whatsoever,” Wacks said.

Ito Cuts Camera, Informants Testify

Once Wacks left the stand, Assistant U.S. Atty. Beverly Reid O’Connell, making her first appearance in the Simpson courtroom, asked Ito to cut the courtroom audio and video feed for the appearances of the Fiato brothers.

A media attorney objected, saying that the brothers were not formally part of the federal government’s witness protection program and actually had courted publicity by agreeing to appear on camera with ABC for a story unrelated to Simpson. But the attorney, Karen Frederiksen, could not produce evidence of that on short notice, so Ito granted the federal government’s request.

Outside court, however, an ABC News producer confirmed that both Fiato brothers had allowed themselves to be photographed for their program.

“Craig Fiato was interviewed in June, 1995, for a story unrelated to O.J.,” said Dave Rummel, a senior producer with the network. “It was a voluntary interview--no restrictions. Both were photographed voluntarily.”

On the stand, Larry Fiato testified that he had talked to Vannatter about the detective’s trip to Simpson’s home on the morning after the murders. Fiato recalled two conversations, one at the courthouse and an earlier one at a Southern California hotel.

“What did he tell you?” Shapiro asked.

“The exact words I don’t know,” Fiato answered. “If you want it word for word, I don’t know, but it was something to the effect that he went over there as Mr. Simpson was the suspect.”

That essentially corroborated the FBI agent’s statements, but like the agent, Fiato also acknowledged that he could not be sure of the exact words and did not consider the remark especially important.

“Would it be accurate,” Kelberg asked, “to say that you did not attribute anything of significance to whatever Mr. Vannatter may have said on either occasion?”

“That’s correct,” Fiato responded after an objection was overruled.

Although qualified and in some respects incomplete, the testimony of the agent and younger Fiato brother seemed generally to support the defense’s contention that Vannatter had made comments casting doubt on the stated reasons for the police trip to Simpson’s home.

But the gains made by the defense on that front were at least partly undermined by the testimony of the elder Fiato, a flamboyant mob informer whose tall frame and shock of white hair drew stares from the moment he strode into the courtroom.

Unlike the other witnesses, who had pleasantly fielded questions from both sides, Craig Fiato openly challenged Cochran in front of the jury.

After Cochran presented him a transcript of a tape-recorded interview, Craig Fiato acknowledged that Vannatter had made a comment to him. But he professed that he could not say what the detective had meant.

“I heard Detective Vannatter say the suspect is always, I mean, the husband is always the suspect. That is what I heard him say,” Fiato began.

Cochran began to ask another question, but Fiato interrupted.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Let me finish. He didn’t say O.J. Simpson. He said the suspect is always--is always the husband. . . . That was a general statement. That is how I took it. I don’t know the context.”

Cochran and the jury seemed taken aback by Fiato--Cochran by the informant’s answers and the jury by his appearance. But the entire matter was concluded Tuesday afternoon, allowing Ito to send the panel home early and hear arguments outside the panel’s presence regarding the defense’s efforts to call still another controversial set of witnesses--these to challenge the testimony of an FBI agent who performed tests in the Simpson case.

And even as that issue was being hashed out, the defense was forging ahead on still another front.

On Tuesday, Simpson’s lawyers filed a second appeal asking the state’s high court to intervene immediately and overturn the Court of Appeal’s ruling that Ito cannot give jurors a proposed instruction on Detective Fuhrman’s availability to testify further in the case. That instruction would have allowed the panel to weigh Fuhrman’s credibility in the light of his failure to appear for further testimony.

Dennis Fischer, Simpson’s California appellate lawyer, said the appeal was spurred by the possibility that Ito may instruct the jury on the law as early as Friday morning.

“The bottom line is that we need an immediate ruling if the Fuhrman unavailability instruction is to be restored by the time Judge Ito gives the jury its instructions,” said Fischer, a leading scholar of California’s Constitution and its Supreme Court. “We haven’t given the court much time to act, so this is a long shot for us.”

Times staff writers Henry Weinstein and Tim Rutten contributed to this story.