Free Murder in Brentwood by Mark Fuhrman Page A

walking through the scene, since doing so is standard procedure. The importance of the fingerprint was obvious. Brad and I agreed completely that whoever walked down that path left bloody shoeprints, blood drops to the left side of his body, and a bloody fingerprint on the gate. The suspect just about signed his name in blood before he escaped.
    Whose blood was it? At least some of it belonged to the suspect, because there was enough blood to suggest that the suspect was bleeding. A blood smudge beneath the fingerprint indicated that the suspect transferred blood, most probably from his hand or finger, onto the gate. And as he swung his hand up to open the gate, he cast droplets of blood there as well. But if we were lucky, the blood stain would include blood from the victims. By linking the victims’ blood to the suspects blood and identifying the suspect, the fingerprint could have closed the case.
    Later, after Simpson was arrested, it would have been virtually impossible for him to claim that the print was left there at some prior date. The print was in blood. Simpson told Lange and Vannatter that he cut himself the night of June 12, 1994. But he also claimed he had not been at Nicole’s Bundy town-home for a week. Eleven hours after Brad and I observed the print, Simpson made these statements and locked himself to that story forever.
    Standing on the street discussing the case while waiting for the RHD detectives to arrive, Brad and I felt absolutely confident that with a bloody fingerprint this case was all but solved. Sure, there might be questions or challenges. Whoever left the print might have pressed a finger into blood already there, leaving a latent print behind. But that would mean this person had been at the murder scene at some point after the murders and before the first officer arrived at approximately 12:15 A.M.
    A defense attorney might argue that the print had been made by one of the first uniformed officers at the scene accidentally touching the gate. But the blood would have been drying for at least an hour and a half.
    My observation of a bloody fingerprint and its recording in my contemporaneous notes also showed something else, the significance of which I had no way of knowing at that time. I had no idea whose print it was. This makes the defense’s later that I planted a bloody glove at Simpson’s Rockingham estate completely absurd. Why would I plant a glove to implicate Simpson if I already knew we had a fingerprint at the crime scene, but I didn’t know whose fingerprint it was?
    Other than an eyewitness report or a confession, you can’t get a more powerful single piece of evidence than a fresh bloody fingerprint at a crime scene. Had the bloody fingerprint been properly handled and analyzed, it alone could have put the case away. But there was only superficial mention of the fingerprint at the trial. What happened to this crucial piece of evidence? Somehow, the fingerprint was lost, and so, eventually, was the case.
    While Dennis Fung was at Rockingham testing the blood on the Bronco door, latent print specialists from SID were at Bundy, eager for something to do. Instead of having the latent print specialists wait until Fung returned to secure all the blood evidence, Lange had them dust the exterior and interior of Bundy for prints. Left to themselves, latent print specialists would not be concentrating on the blood evidence. In fact, they would avoid anything with the obvious indication of blood, knowing full well that their fingerprint dust would most probably contaminate that evidence. But with a fingerprint on the rear gate, the SID personnel should have been directed to photograph and inspect it.
    If Lange merely told latent print specialists to print the area but did not actually supervise what they were doing, his police-work was sloppy. This might seem like a petty charge, but after all, fingerprint people are not detectives. They do not have experience with how a crime might