Mark Fuhrman
Mark Fuhrman (born February 5, 1952) was a detective in the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) who found the bloody glove that linked O.J. Simpson to the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson.
In 1970, Fuhrman enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. He was honorably discharged in 1975 after attaining the rank of sergeant. He later joined the LAPD as a police officer, eventually becoming a police detective.
During the 1995 murder trial of O.J. Simpson, the defense accused Fuhrman of being a racist and planting evidence. Anthony Pellicano, a private investigator for Fuhrman, stated in the Washington Post (August 22, 1995), "Fuhrman's life is in the toilet. He has no job, no future. People think he's a racist. His life is ruined. And for what? Because he found a key piece of evidence."
Role in O.J. Simpson murder trial
During the trial, Fuhrman denied ever using the word "nigger" for the previous ten years, yet the defense was offered audiotape contradicting that testimony. Fuhrman gave a taped interview in 1985 to Laura Hart McKinney, an aspiring screenwriter and former girlfriend of Fuhrman's working on a screenplay about male and female police officers. In further interviews, Fuhrman bragged about beating and torturing gang members, and was quoted as saying "Yeah we work with niggers and gangs. You can take one of these niggers, drag 'em into the alley and beat the shit out of them and kick them. You can see them twitch. It really relieves your tension."[1] He went on to say "we had them begging that they'd never be gang members again, begging us."[citation needed] Fuhrman's negative attitude toward African-Americans was also evident in the taped interview. He said that he would tell Blacks, "You do what you're told, understand, nigger?"[citation needed] See Fuhrman tapes for more details. 'Men Against Women' was not an organization, it was a screenplay written by Laura Hart McKinney, Fuhrman and other LAPD officers role played in the play by play acting and talking into microphone and recording the officers whilst acting out their roles.
As a result, the prosecution labeled their main police witness as a "bad cop." With the jury absent on September 6, 1995, Fuhrman was asked questions as to whether or not he had ever falsified police reports or if he had planted or manufactured evidence in the Simpson case and he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Fuhrman later pled no contest to a perjury charge and was sentenced to one years probation and fined $200. He appealed the case and in October 2, 1996, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Ouderkirk cleared Mark Fuhrman of all charges and purged his record, (Case #LACBA109273-01 Filed at Clara Shortbridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center 10/02/1996)LAPD did an official investigation into all of the cases Mark Fuhrman handled in his career as a police officer and Sgt. Detective and no evidenced of racial biased was found.
Brad Roberts was the first officer who found both gloves and Fuhrman was the second and Phil Van Atter was the third(one at the murder scene, the other at Simpson's home), much of the blood drops at Simpson's home, and who entered Simpson's estate without a search warrant due to exigent circumstances. Only very limited excerpts of the tapes were admitted as evidence in the 1995 murder trial against O.J. Simpson, yet the admitted portions were strong enough to cast doubts on Fuhrman's motives and credibility. Laura Hart McKinney, Fuhrman's former girlfriend was paid $255,000.00 dollars for the tapes that she offered up to the defense in the hopes of taking advantage of her 15 minutes of fame and to sell her screenplay 'Men Against Women'. Fuhrman's credibilty was re-established when O.J. Simpson wrote his book 'If I Did It' and the American public rejected it. The Fox News interview by Judith Reagan and the publishing of the book by Harper/Collins were canceled. Fuhrman made $105,000.00 dollars for his first book 'A Murder in Brentwood' in royalties and had to sue the publisher to get those. He has not made royalties on any other of his last five books.
Post-Trial
After the trial, Fuhrman retired from the LAPD and moved to Sandpoint, Idaho and wrote a book about the Simpson case, called Murder in Brentwood. For his next book, Murder in Greenwich, he investigated the then-unsolved 1975 murder of Martha Moxley and presented his theory that the murderer was Michael Skakel, a relative of the Kennedy family. Skakel was convicted for the murder in June 2002. The book was made into a TV movie in 2002, starring Christopher Meloni (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Oz) as Fuhrman.
In May 1998, Mark Fuhrman was given a polygraph test on the Fox Network show Lie Detector. The test's administrator claimed the results indicated that Fuhrman did not plant the bloody glove and that he was not aware of the bloody glove before entering Simpson's property.
More recently, Fuhrman has written books on the controversial subjects of capital punishment and the medical treatment and death of Terri Schiavo.
Most recently, he has written a book on the John F. Kennedy assassination. In it he advances a theory debunking the Single Bullet Theory while still maintaining that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. He claims that the Warren Commission was forced to adopt the Single Bullet Theory for political reasons. However, he says that a dent in the presidential limousine used that day in the chrome above the windshield vindicates the story told by John Connally that a first shot hit President John Kennedy without hitting him.
Fuhrman is a frequent guest of conservative commentator Sean Hannity and a contributor for FOX News. He is also the host of the popular Spokane, WA radio show "The Mark Fuhrman Show" on AM radio station 1510 KGA between the hours of 8am-11am Pacific. The show covers local and national policitcs and topics and includes many guest callers and listeners.
In response to the proposed book If I Did It written by O.J. Simpson to be published by ReganBooks (an imprint of HarperCollins), Fuhrman stated that he would drop HarperCollins as publisher of his own books in the future. However, Simpson's book has since been cancelled due to public outcry of the book and the interview. Fuhrman did drop Harper/Collins and will not write anymore books with them until his contract expires.
Books
- Murder in Brentwood (February 1, 1997), ISBN 0-89526-421-8
- Murder in Greenwich: Who Killed Martha Moxley? (June 1, 1998), ISBN 0-06-019141-4
- Murder in Spokane: Catching a Serial Killer (May 22, 2001), ISBN 0-06-019437-5
- Death and Justice: An Expose of Oklahoma's Death Row Machine (September 2, 2003), ISBN 0-06-000917-9
- Silent Witness: The Untold Story of Terri Schiavo's Death (July 1, 2005), ISBN 0-06-085337-9
- A Simple Act of Murder: November 22, 1963 (May 2, 2006), ISBN 0-06-072154-5