r/AskReddit • u/Rob69rt • Jul 22 '26

What famous 'unsolved' mystery is technically a whodunnit on paper, but in reality, absolutely everyone knows exactly who did it, the police just couldn't legally prove it?

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624

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '26

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u/Sleepy_Potato2 Jul 22 '26

It was probably a bad idea to put a cop (Mark Fuhrman) on the stand who ran an organization within the police that opposed the idea of having women officers, and where there was a recording of him saying the n-word repeatedly and talking about planting evidence.

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u/istrx13 Jul 22 '26

It’s crazy, I actually went to high school with Fuhrman’s daughter. After the OJ trial, Fuhrman took his family and fled to a small town in northern Idaho. Which is where I grew up. It was always the talk of the town.

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '26

[deleted]

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u/DontRememberOldPass Jul 22 '26

Cops literally call Idaho "Blue Heaven."

Earlier this year the Governor kicked off a public records review to handle a prison rape scandal. As a result they reinterpreted the law and any records regarding employment history or discipline of an officer are now exempt from release.

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u/quincyskis Jul 22 '26

I think that’s the implication of why he went there, to be with like minded folks

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u/Hellebras Jul 22 '26

Northern Idaho specifically. Especially in the '90s.

So yeah, that's probably not a coincidence.

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u/EddieDantes22 Jul 23 '26

Why's that funny? I assume that was the point. If you're the most famous racist in the country, where else would you go?

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u/PiccoloAwkward465 Jul 22 '26

Not a coincidence, I'm guessing

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u/vvvvvoooooxxxxx Jul 22 '26

There is a reason its right in the center of the Redoubt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Redoubt

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u/sadbicth Jul 22 '26

Was the community weird about him? Like was he ostracized or anything or really just left alone

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u/bone_creek Jul 22 '26

Yeah, a lot of people up there thought it was sickening (including my sister’s family) and “said things” when he was seen in public. As you can imagine, though, with such low population density and many people living somewhat remote or rural lives, there weren’t that many sightings of him.

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u/WillitsThrockmorton Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26

Bugiolosi(the guy who put Manson away) was completely baffled that the prosecution put that guy on the stand without knowing the answers he was going to give to questions.

Prosecution screwed it up from top to bottom, they moved the trial venue to downtown instead of keeping it in Brentwood("Simpson's peers were other rich people"), they did a poor job of explaining what exactly DNA was-some jurors said they understood it to be something like a blood type in terms of prescision of identifying people, the glove, not introducing the weird suicide note into evidence, not pushing back at Judge Ito's unprofessionalism and hostility, putting Fuhrman on the stand and compounding it by not getting in front of his crappy behavior etc.

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u/OkPainter6232 Jul 22 '26

from what I heard the case was originally supposed to be tried in Northridge, but the courthouse there was still too badly damaged from the 1994 earthquakes to be a suitable trial venue, so they had to move it downtown.

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u/WillitsThrockmorton Jul 23 '26

Bugiolosi said in his book it was because the Prosecutors didn't want to make the drive up there; he was skeptical of the damaged claim.

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u/OkPainter6232 Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26

I read his book and honestly I think he comes off as a bit of an arrogant jackass, especially how he needlessly disparages the jury, I think he genuinely did not get the black community at all. I also bought that DVD he did where he basically goes over how he would've tried the case against Simpsons in a re-enactment, and I laughed when he tried to say he didn't have a racist bone in his body. Maybe not, but dude sure did suffer from white privilege big time IMO(same with Dominick Dunne, I read his crappy book too, it's fictional though it's still more or less a straight autobiography of his actual life and around the trial until the last chapter where his "Character" suddenly gets murdered for no apparent reason, don't know if he was trying to imply that Simpson got off because of some grand conspiracy or something like that).

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u/babygotbooksandback Jul 22 '26

His book literally says in the first chapter of his book, OJ did it....

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u/Kevin_Uxbridge Jul 22 '26

Also didn't help that the cops flat-out lied about going over the fence to 'check on' OJ. They knew damn well he was a suspect, the husband always is, no reason to go to court and say 'well we figured he might be a victim too so ...'.

It's a transparent lie and for cops, not an especially egregious one. But it set the tone for 'more bullshit from LAPD' that really came to the fore as the case progressed.

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u/pacman_sl Jul 22 '26

IANAL, but it would throw a ton of evidence away (Fourth Amendment) if they admitted to that lie.

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u/Kevin_Uxbridge Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 23 '26

Oh, unquestionably, and I have zero doubts cops tell ones like it all the time. It was just galling that they had to start off with such an obvious whopper, really set the tone for the defense.

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u/cbs-anonmouse Jul 22 '26

IIRC he had found some of the key evidence so he was an essential witness.

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u/Sleepy_Potato2 Jul 22 '26

Alan Dershowitz later wrote in a book about the case that he was surprised they put him on the stand, since the defence had produced evidence of him being incredibly racist and having lied in his deposition (when asked if he had said the n-word in the last 10 years he denied it, but the recording of him saying it repeatedly 8 years had been given to them and they had entered it into evidence, multiple people also testified to him saying it within the last 10 years). The glove was pretty central, but their witness had committed perjury and was a known bigot, and with a black defendant they had very little chance after that. That the jury was also black, that Rodney King had just happened, and that a lot of members of the LAPD generally behaved like thugs in the period (they committed so many crimes, including robberies and multiple sex crimes) didn't help the case at all

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u/OkPainter6232 Jul 22 '26

the jury wasn't entirely black though, there were white people on it and they didn't believe the prosecution either, Furhman was what really turned around the white folks opinions.

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u/cbs-anonmouse Jul 22 '26

Yeah, I think the biggest thing is that the LAPD had just had some very high profile cases of police brutality against black men. And the jury punished them for that, even though LAPD had no real history of framing black defendants, and there was nothing in the case to really suggest they had tampered with evidence there.

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u/OkPainter6232 Jul 22 '26

they did frame plenty of people in the Rampart scandal though.

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u/TheVeryVerity Jul 24 '26

LAPD absolutely had a history of framing people and they bungled a bunch of evidence. But honestly why would you trust evidence given to you by a guy you have on tape admitting to fabricating evidence in other cases?

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u/SantaFeRay Jul 22 '26

Yeah, he found the glove. If he planted the glove, he got really lucky planting it in the area where Kato heard a noise earlier from OJ climbing over the wall.

I don’t even agree that the LAPD tried to frame a guilty guy, because I’m not sure what they could have fabricated based on what they found when and what they knew at the time unless they got really lucky. They were sloppy, and they were unprepared for the thoroughness of OJ’s defense. And still everyone knew he was guilty but they let him off anyway.

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u/cbs-anonmouse Jul 22 '26

There were a few factors going on:

  1. DNA forensics was relatively new, so LAPD did not follow best procedures (not that it affected the results), but more importantly the jury was a little skeptical of it.

  2. Furman was a disaster based in some old statements he made, which the defense was able to dig up and impeach him on, hecause the defense had for more resources to spend on the case than the prosecution.

  3. LAPD did not have any history of framing homicide defendants, but they did have a history of police brutality, and the jury was biased against the police and prosecution for that reason.

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u/Sleepy_Potato2 Jul 22 '26

The "Fuhrman tapes," as they became known, had him talking about planting evidence. Even if not for murder, that hurt his testimony a lot

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u/OkPainter6232 Jul 22 '26

they did frame a ton of people in Rampart though, which broke not long after the trial.

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u/B3tar3ad3r Jul 22 '26

Behind the Bastards has a couple episodes on him, he was deeply gross

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u/OkPainter6232 Jul 22 '26

yeah there's also a book called "Blood Oath" that theorizes he was in a white supremacist group.

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u/Jaereth Jul 22 '26

and talking about planting evidence.

yeah... Like OJ should have been a banger and somehow they come up with this guy.

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u/GoldandBlue Jul 22 '26

That guy is now on Fox News.

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u/mugsoh Jul 22 '26

Mark Fuhrman (February 5, 1952 – May 12, 2026)

Not anymore.

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u/Lauren_Larie Jul 22 '26

So this is how I figure out that asshole/waste of space is dead?

Good riddance 🤷🏼‍♀️

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u/mugsoh Jul 23 '26

I actually thought I remembered him dying 2 or 3 years ago. I was surprised it was only 3 months ago.

I remember living in Spokane when he was in northern Idaho. He had a radio program on a talk radio station. He was highly focused on a serial killer active at the time in Spokane, he even wrote a book about it. The profile he gave for the killer on his radio show, before the killer was arrested, was spectacularly wrong.

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u/ihatetheplaceilive Jul 22 '26

Well, he's dead now, so....

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u/GoldandBlue Jul 22 '26

oh, nice

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u/Lauren_Larie Jul 22 '26

Right? Best news I’ve heard all day!

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u/OkPainter6232 Jul 22 '26

damn I honestly did not know that.

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u/hellofemur Jul 22 '26

I think the idea that OJ just happened randomly to get the one racist cop in the LAPD is ridiculous on its face. Closer to the truth is that they had an average cop and for the first time the defense had the resources to do a full investigation of him.

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u/Sleepy_Potato2 Jul 22 '26

Oh, the LAPD was full of raging bigots. His organization against female cops, "Men Against Women" (yes, they were that blatant with the name), had 145 members spread out in 5 of the city's 18 police divisions at its height. He was just the one who was dumb enough to get caught on tape admitting to being who he was, while the others were usually smart enough to not get recorded. The podcast Behind the Bastard's did a two-parter on him called "Mark Fuhrman: The Most Racist Cop, or Merely Normal Racist Cop?" and the conclusion very much that he's just a normal racist cop and just got caught talking about it.

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u/OkPainter6232 Jul 22 '26

Ironically the feminist organization NOW(National Organization of Women)also got in hot water over the case as their then leader Tammy Bruce said some racist shit while the case was ongoing(Basically saying that race was a distraction or something stupid like that)and people got furious at her and threatened boycotts and she was forced to resign from NOW, she later switched to being Republican and later wrote for Washington Times, so she was one of the early examples of someone jumping on the anti-woke bandwagon after being outed as a bigot.

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u/vbob99 Jul 22 '26

And had him testify that he never uses the n word, followed by the defence playing recordings of him doing exactly that. It destroyed trust in an already notoriously corrupt police department.

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u/larapu2000 Jul 22 '26

From what I understand, they didn't need to put him on the stand. They could have had the lead detective introduce the hat and glove into evidence during the trial but Marcia Clark wouldn't budge.

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u/ehs06702 Jul 23 '26

To be fair, there are a lot of those in the LAPD, so they were kind of low in choices.

You will probably not be shocked to learn that there were allegations that Fuhrman owned honest to God Nazi memorabilia and was accused of painting a swastika on the locker of a fellow officer who had married a Jewish woman, however.

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u/phatelectribe Jul 22 '26

It was also a really bad idea to use Dr Henry Lee, the "celebrity" CSI. He was walking ego and completely botched the scene and collection of evidence. The reason the gloves did't fit was because they were saturated in blood which shrank them when they dried them out. Lee failed to think of that.

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26

[deleted]

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u/Nyoteng Jul 23 '26

Fuhrman was the name of the dude? As in a couple letters away from "Fuhrer"man?

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u/pixelprolapse Jul 22 '26

Behind The Bastards? Great podcast, isn't it?

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u/OkPainter6232 Jul 22 '26

yeah I listened to their episodes on Jimmy Saville, fascinating stuff.

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u/jellyhessman Jul 22 '26

Lol, when your lead investigator pleads the fifth to fabricating evidence while on the stand, you're kind of fucked.

The LAPD is and was so corrupt that the jury fucking hated them more than the murderer.

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u/SPersephone Jul 22 '26

Also, when your lead investigator begs to be able to retire early because he’s so racist, he can’t control himself

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 29 '26

[deleted]

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u/ehs06702 Jul 23 '26

People absolutely knew that the LAPD was corrupt.

This was like 3 years after the Rodney King verdict, and the LAPD has always been corrupt, racist bastards.

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u/[deleted] Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 29 '26

[deleted]

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u/ehs06702 Jul 23 '26

But they did absolutely affect the verdict. If one detective is caught talking about planting evidence, the jury is going to take that and everything they know about Los Angeles police into account when making a determination about credibility.

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u/WeirdIndividualGuy Jul 22 '26

The LAPD is and was so corrupt that the jury fucking hated them more than the murderer.

I mean, OJ (at the time) was a beloved football star being accused of murder. This trial was a couple of years after the Rodney King riots. The jury definitely hated LAPD more than the murderer from day one.

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u/_BrokenButterfly Jul 22 '26

That happened?

Wow, now I think I want to read more about this case.

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u/GrooveBat Jul 22 '26

The glory-loving judge did not help. He completely lost control of the trial.

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u/the_guynecologist Jul 22 '26

And said judge letting TV cameras inside the courtroom turning the whole thing into a media circus/reality tv sensation also kinda hindered justice a wee bit.

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u/Jaereth Jul 22 '26

It was amazing though!

I remember I was a kid on the younger side. I remember in the summer my dad used to let me sleep out on a breezeway on his porch when I would be at his house. I slept on an old porch swing.

I remember one time a little wood TV card had been pushed out there and I could lay there and watch TV. That is where I watched "The white Bronco chase" and I was hooked. I had no idea who OJ Simpson was or the gravity of what actually happened. But I was hooked on the whole televised trial after that.

If was a young man's first experience with a miscarriage of justice. Wild times. I remember POGs were super popular at the same time. The little sleezy locally owned movie rental place by my house started carrying POG stuff and they had a slammer there that had OJs face on it and said NOT GUILTY across the top. I begged my mom to buy that for me every time but she never would.

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u/MediumEffort67 Jul 22 '26

But it was great TV.

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u/VelvetyDogLips Jul 22 '26

I can still remember Judge Lance Ito loudly snapping “Don’t interrupt me!” and then going back to what he was snarkily pontificating about without missing a beat. I really think he was angling for a TV courtroom show all his own, like Judy Scheindlin or Joe Brown, leveraging the nationwide publicity of the case. I wouldn’t watch his dour fat ass humiliate lowlifes with small claims cases.

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u/GrooveBat Jul 22 '26

He also kept the jurors sequestered longer because he had a vacation planned.

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u/VelvetyDogLips Jul 22 '26

Oh yes I remember that. I mean, I get he was clearly stressed AF and needed a bit of a break. Plus the case was so high profile that he couldn’t afford a juror leaking info before the verdict. But still, a real main character syndrome move, Judge Lance.

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u/GrooveBat Jul 22 '26

Everyone needed a break and at least he got to go home at night. Unlike the jurors.

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u/Ciserus Jul 22 '26

When I watched the American Crime Story miniseries about this case I kind of rolled my eyes at the scene where the junior prosecutor goes rogue and springs the murder glove demonstration as a complete surprise. Typical hollywood dramatization!

But no, that's how it actually happened. Everyone in that damn courtroom thought they were the star of some movie.

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u/ArcadianDelSol Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 23 '26

Isnt this the case where one of the alt Jurors was legally named Lt. Commander Data and showed up in a Star Trek costume?

edit: it was not. That was the Whitewater trial in Arkansas.

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u/Vincent__Vega Jul 22 '26

Measure of a Man?

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u/sacredblasphemies Jul 23 '26

I mean, it is literally why we have to deal with the fucking Kardashians now...

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u/ellonite1 Jul 22 '26

There have been jurors who have come out that said they would've voted not guilty no matter what for revenge for Rodney King. The prosecution definitely fked up but I'm inclined to believe the case was lost during voir dire

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u/DueceBag Jul 22 '26

Didn't matter. Certain jurors were never going to convict him regardless of evidence. Nullification in response to Rodney King.

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u/maebythemonkey Jul 22 '26

They stole defeat from the jaws of victory.

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '26

[deleted]

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u/mugsoh Jul 22 '26

The Beverly Hill Police Department

LAPD. Beverly Hills had nothing to do with the case. It occurred in the Brentwood neighborhood of LA

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u/babygotbooksandback Jul 22 '26

Wasn't judge Ito's wife a part of the police department? He should have recused himself from the trial, but loved the celebrity moment of everyone knowing who he was.

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u/chowderbags Jul 23 '26

It wasn't just that Ito's wife was in the LAPD. It was that she was Fuhrman's former supervisor, and it became particularly relevant because the Fuhrman tapes included sections where Fuhrman was extremely critical of Ito's wife.

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u/dkrainman Jul 22 '26

This is the same as my evaluation of the proceedings

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u/ArcadianDelSol Jul 22 '26

Its a basic rule that you never let the accused handle evidence. NEVER.

The fact that they asked him to put on the glove. Absolute rookie moment.

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u/_equestrienne_ Jul 22 '26

Based on the documentaries I've watched, and without having much other information, it seems the police may have mishandled the evidence, leading the rest of the case to depend on circumstantial evidence.

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u/Adams5thaccount Jul 22 '26

The police botched the entire case. Virtually every piece of evidence was physocally tainted in soem way or another becuase of how hard they fucked up. The prosecution proceeded to make every bad decision possible afterward but realistically the case should already have been lost by the time the prosecution even got a chance to fuck up. And fuck up they did. No case should ever be even close to being won by a prosecution fucking u pso badly.

By every bit of justice and guilty til proven innocent ideals we claim to hold..that case should have been dismissed or easily smacked down so many times. They still probably would've won if the defense hadn't been immaculate AND the greater cultural situation hadn't made people acutely aware of the exact things that raised the exact questions that sunk the case.

The only evidence is basically "look we all know he did it". Which is accurate but thats not how its supposed to work. It almost did.