LAPD Detective Mark Fuhrman also helped solve a Connecticut murder that had a Maine connection.
An LAPD cop who famously jumped the wall at murder suspect OJ Simpson’s house and found incriminating evidence has died.
Mark Fuhrman later became the accused killer’s scapegoat when he was found to have used a racial profanity.
A jury in 1995 let former NFL star Simpson go free despite overwhelming evidence he slaughtered his ex-wife and her male friend.
The case was tried in racially-charged Los Angeles amid clashes between the black community and the LAPD.
Simpson’s lawyers exploited race to get their client off, making the so-called trial of the century hinge on an alleged white racist cop vs. a black celebrity murder suspect.
Fuhrman denied being a racist but once the jury heard him on an old tape using a racial slur the cake was baked and Simpson walked.
The tall, ramrod, handsome ex-Marine became a beat cop following his military service, later working up to detective.
After Nicole Brown Simpson and local LA waiter Ron Goldman were found butchered to death outside her condo, cops focused on her ex-husband.
Fuhrman ended up outside at OJ’s gated house, telling a fellow cop they needed to jump the wall to see who may be inside.
Senior Detective Phil Vanatter approved the plan and the athletic Fuhrman hopped the wall.
Walking around the back of Simpson’s house, Fuhrman found a bloody glove on the ground later linked to a matching glove that had been discovered at the murder scene.
The defense claimed he planted the glove, a charge Fuhrman found laughable.
But in racially-charged LA, it didn’t take much to persuade a predominantly black jury that Fuhrman had framed OJ Simpson.
Fuhrman lost his law-enforcement certification after pleading guilty to a charge of perjury for lying during the trial that he had never used a racial slur.
He went on to write several true-crime books and was instrumental in helping solve the 1975 bludgeoning of Martha Moxley, a Greenwich, Connecticut teenager found stabbed to death with a broken golf club in her yard.
The brilliant Fuhrman’s civilian legwork helped cops bring a murder charge 25 years after the crime against Michael Skakel, a Moxley neighbor and cousin of the Kennedy family.
Skakel, who had allegedly confessed to the murder while attending the drug-treatment Elan School for troubled kids in Poland, Maine, was found guilty of her killing.
However, after Skakel had served 11 years in prison, his conviction was overturned by the Connecticut Supreme Court in 2018, and prosecutors officially dropped the charges in 2020.
R. I. P.