O.J.: Made in America

When I got there, they had the scene very well secured.

They had the entire block taped off.

Front door wide open, little music playing

in the background, candles are lit inside.

Very violent confrontation. Rage.

Two victims, blood everywhere.

We find a glove... It's a left glove...

and a blood trail indicating the

suspect has been wounded on the left side.

So we're just getting into this when we

find out that this is apparently OJ Simpson's estranged wife.

We have two children asleep.

I have a very brutal murder.

Someone's gotta make a death notification of next of kin.

Which is Simpson.

Lang and Vannatter were talking

and they called me over and said,

"You were at Simpson's house once, right?

We want you to take us up there."

We pull close to the gate.

Vannatter was hitting the doorbell,

they keep ringing the doorbell

and so I just stroll down the street.

By the other gate, there's a white Bronco.

On the driver's side door handle, blood.

I mean there was enough evidence outside,

we gotta make sure everybody's okay in here.

Oh God, what are we going to do, Simpson's in there dead.

Well, yeah, we need to go in.

So I jumped up over the fence and I opened the gate.

Bang on the front door, nothing.

Walk around to the back, there's a couple of bungalows.

The first one was Kato Kaelin's.

Kato Kaelin was a live-in...

... friend.

We say to the police, "Check on Mr. Simpson."

OJ's in Chicago.

Well, he left last night.

Oh, thank God.

They all leave and I'm left here with Kato Kaelin.

I go "Tell me what you did last night."

He goes, "Well I was talking on the phone

and all a sudden there was, like, an earthquake.

It was just like...

... on the wall and pictures shook."

Okay.

I walk back outside and I start walking

down the back, behind the bungalows.

And then as I pan down,

I see this brown, glistening...

At first I thought it was dog crap.

And then I shined a light on it. It's a glove.

Just like the one... Ed Bundy...

Uh, yeah, this is gonna get deep.

This is gonna be a crime scene.

I make the decision to make a telephonic

to the Brown family and I talk to Lou Brown

and say that your daughter Nicole is dead.

It's quiet for about two seconds then

all this screaming. It's Nicole's sister, Denise.

"I knew that motherfucker, he was gonna kill,

I knew he was gonna do this."

I mean, she didn't hesitate.

Nobody comes unglued like that

unless they have a strong suspicion.

We gotta look at it a little differently now.

We lock everything down, no more searching,

can't do anything until we get a warrant.

Phil Vannatter called me and said,

"I've got some information; I need to get a search warrant.

I need you to tell me if you think it sounds okay."

And he just summarized the evidence and it was huge.

Okay, yeah, go ahead, get the search warrant, you're fine.

And he said, "You know who it is?

It's OJ Simpson."

OJ Simpson?

Um...

I was never into sports,

so I didn't even know what game he played.

I thought he was a has-been.

Monday afternoon came around,

Simpson came back from Chicago and they handcuff him.

It was quite surprising.

Your ex-husband's always a suspect in a case.

Okay, wow. Here we go.

He said he's gonna talk to us, which is really strange.

You have one opportunity forever

to talk to this guy, forever.

He's thinking he can control a couple of cops.

Especially these guys 'cause, you know, they're pretty nice.

What Vannatter and Lang failed to do was

simply to pin him down on what

he did on the day of the murder.

OJ just rambled and created an interview

transcript that was useless to the prosecution.

What do you mean, you were running

around doing what you do?

What do you mean?

What do you mean you cut yourself in Chicago

but the blood got on the Bronco before you left.

What do you mean?

There's a million things that they just let go.

Yeah, uh huh, yeah, uh huh.

Oh my God.

What I wanted was his blood, photographs

taken of the bleeding finger, I wanted his

fingerprints now that we've got his cooperation.

We get the blood, we get all these things

we want which are going to be evidence.

And then, ya know, he's released.

What?

Why would you do that?

If he was any other guy, would you have let him go?

And they said, "Where can he go?

After all, what can he do?"

I mean, everybody recognizes him.

When I went over to Rockingham,

he had like three TV's

and each and every one of them,

he had a different channel on.

Suspect, what are you talking about?

Is he crazy?

And I said, "OJ, what happened to your finger?"

And he says, "I cut it on a glass in Chicago."

And I went oh, okay.

Somebody else sat down and asked him the same question

and he said, "I was chipping golf balls."

And I went, uh-hmm, later on that evening,

same question came out, "Oh man, I was getting

the cell phone out of the Bronco, cut myself."

I was like, wow.

I tried to leave there and OJ goes, "Shipp, hold on."

and he says, "They asked me to take

a lie detector test.

I told them no."

I said, "What do you mean, you told them no?"

And he says, you know, jokingly, he says

"Well, you know to be truthful, Shipp,

I have had dreams of killing her."

I wanted to leave.

I said, "I'm outta here."

Here, at OJ Simpson's home,

in the fashionable suburb of Brentwood,

the world media has settled in to the siege.

Against the public backdrop,

police are quietly, methodically reconstructing

the events of last Sunday evening to answer the question:

Could this American sports hero, possibly, be a murderer?

At the time that this murder took place,

OJ was at home, awaiting a limousine

to take him to the airport

for a promotional event in Chicago.

OJ Simpson has described

him as his quarterback.

He is defense attorney Robert Shapiro.

I agree with that assessment.

He was known as the fixer.

He was a Hollywood lawyer.

He was not know as a "trial dogg" with two G's.

You hired Bob Shapiro to cut a deal.

Bob had never tried a murder case.

And so when he called me in June

and said, "I need some help in the OJ case."

I was more than ready.

Well, I worked for Bob Shapiro

on some of his other cases

and I was pretty successful.

So they recruited me as the defense investigator.

OJ was putting together his team.

They sent a guy over to me.

"Hey man, we're putting together this thing."

"We're going to need you, OJ needs you."

And I said, "I'm not on board."

And I'll never forget that investigator's look on his face.

He said, "What?"

I said, "OJ killed her, I'm not on board."

I gotta say, I have a lot of fun with her.

At times, I felt like a big brother to her 'cause

I'd come over there and she'd share things with me.

And I kinda felt special that she thought

enough of me to tell me her problems.

She's a great human being.

Thank you.

I remember early in...

in the years that her and OJ was dating,

we were all down in the Caribbean.

OJ was working on a film,

and if a lot of don't know, I'm gonna let you know now,

blacks can not swim, we can't float.

Justin can.

Well, thank God, well he got that from his mom.

So, we're out in the saltwater, right?

And Nicole is out there looking like, you know,

she was made to swim, she's backstroking and

she's doing all these things.

So, here's OJ and I, we're standing

on the shore and she's waving us in.

Now, this is saltwater, in the Caribbean.

Everything down there floats.

OJ and I got out there and we tried to float,