22 ore 20 min, 12 giug 1994 anni - Witness hears a dog barking

Descrizione:

10:20-10:35pm While watching television, Pablo Fenjeves, a neighbor of Nicole's hears the cries and constant barking of a dog.

WITNESSES TELL HOW NICOLE SIMPSON'S DOG LED THEM TO HER BODY By William Hamilton and Christine Spolar July 2, 1994

"LOS ANGELES, JULY 1 -- Two neighbors of O.J. Simpson's ex-wife Nicole described today how her hysterical dog led them to her body lying in "a river" of blood on the walkway leading to her Brentwood town house.

The stark account by the witnesses, who were shown graphic color photographs of the bodies of Nicole Brown Simpson and a male friend, Ronald L. Goldman, came on the second day of a preliminary hearing to determine whether the former football superstar will face trial on double murder charges.

The hearing was cut short this afternoon because of a dispute over taped interviews with two witnesses that were conducted by Simpson's lawyer, Robert L. Shapiro. At the prosecution's request, Municipal Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy-Powell adjourned until Tuesday.

Shapiro also turned over to the judge a lumpy manila envelope that she said contained evidence found by the defense. At first the judge said she would unseal the package in open court. But she then reversed herself and ordered both sides to submit written arguments on the matter, leaving unresolved until next week the mystery of the envelope's contents.

Aside from these brief dramatic flourishes, prosecutors spent much of today's court session methodically reconstructing the night of the murders, June 12, in an apparent effort to show that Simpson had time to commit the crimes before leaving later that night on a flight to Chicago. Simpson has pleaded not guilty to the murders, and his lawyers have contended that he was at home waiting for a limousine to take him to the airport at the time they took place.

Simpson, who has sat impassive during most of the two days of proceedings so far, took deep breaths, sighed heavily and wiped his hand across his face as a police photograph of his ex-wife's body, clad in a bloodstained black halter dress, was displayed.

He struggled to maintain his composure as Sukru Boztepe, who lives in an apartment on Montana Avenue several hundred yards from Nicole Simpson's condominium on Bundy Drive, described how he found her body.

Boztepe said he had been literally pulled to the murder scene by her dog, a white Akita, which one of his neighbors had found wandering the streets earlier in the evening and given to him to keep for the night. Boztepe said he and his wife left their apartment around midnight with the dog, which was pulling hard on its leash.

Finally, he said, the dog stopped in front of Nicole Simpson's condominium and looked up the path that led to the house.

"The dog stopped and looked to the right," he testified. "I looked to the right too. I saw a body. It was a woman laying down horizontally all the way to the path, her face turned to me on the right side."

Bettina Rasmussen, his wife, testified that there was blood everywhere. "It was coming down like a river," she said.

Without explicitly stating what they were doing, prosecutors moved chronologically through the night of June 12, from the time Nicole Simpson arrived at Mezzaluna, a Brentwood restaurant, around 6:30, to the discovery of her body some 5 1/2 hours later.

Karen Lee Crawford, the manager of Mezzaluna that night, testified that Nicole Simpson arrived at the restaurant in a party of 10, stayed for about two hours and left sometime between 8:30 and 9 p.m.

A half-hour later, Crawford said, she got a call from a woman, presumably Nicole Simpson's mother, asking if she had left her glasses at the restaurant. Crawford said she went outside and found the glasses in the gutter, where they had fallen when the group got out of their car. She went back inside, told the woman on the phone that she had found the glasses, put them in an envelope and placed it behind the bar.

Five minutes later, she said, Nicole Simpson called and asked to speak to Goldman. A few minutes later -- "I would say at about 10 minutes to 10," Crawford said -- Goldman left to take the glasses to Nicole Simpson's home a few blocks away.

At that point prosecutor Marcia Clark walked up to the witness stand and showed Crawford an enlarged picture of the bloody murder scene. Crawford identified an envelope in the photo as similar to the one in which she had put the glasses.

Another Mezzaluna employee, Stewart Tanner, testified that he had planned to go with Goldman to a bar after they both got off work. Tanner said he saw Goldman just as he was about to leave. "He said he would talk to me later," Tanner said.

Four neighbors of Nicole Simpson's, none of whom knew her, then described the moments leading to the discovery of her body, and the frantic dog that finally led them to the scene.

Pablo Fenjves, who lives behind her town house, said he first heard a dog barking around 10:15 or 10:20 p.m. when he went to a downstairs office to do some work after watching the beginning of the 10 o'clock television news. At 11, when he went up to bed, the dog was still barking, he said.

Steven Schwab said he first saw the Akita near Nicole Simpson's condominium sometime around 10:55 p.m. as he walked his own dog. The Akita, he said, appeared extremely agitated. It was dirty and had what appeared to be blood on its paws. As he headed back toward his apartment a few blocks away, Schwab said the dog kept following him, barking at each house they passed.

The dog was so upset, Schwab said, that he did not want to keep it in his apartment for the night. When his neighbors, Boztepe and Rasmussen came home, Schwab readily agreed when Boztepe said he would take care of the dog for the night.

After the dog led the couple to Nicole Simpson's bloody corpse, Boztepe said he and his wife then went to two neighboring houses and asked that their occupants call 911. The police, he said, arrived in about two minutes.

Clark showed both Boztepe and Rasmussen a photograph of the murder scene, holding it so that it was visible only to the judge and the witness.

"This is exactly what I saw," said Boztepe.

Before displaying the photograph, Clark had signaled to relatives of Nicole Simpson and Goldman who were sitting in the courtroom. Turning toward the spectator section, she silently mouthed, "I'm going to show a picture." The entire courtroom seemed to tense up.

As has been the pattern in the case, today's hearing was not without unexpected legal twists and turns. Midway through the morning testimony, Judge Kennedy-Powell suddenly adjourned the hearing, returning to say she had been informed that the defense had presented new evidence, contained in the envelope she held in her hand and that she said had originally been given to another judge.

Later, she said that on the advice of Superior Court Supervising Judge Cecil Mills she was going to open it. But after hearing a flurry of objections from both sides, she said she would postpone a decision.

On Thursday, Kennedy-Powell said she would also put off until next week ruling on the defense motion to suppress evidence gathered by police at O.J. Simpson's home in the hours after the murders. Shapiro contends that police improperly conducted the search.

Among the evidence Shapiro seeks to exclude is a bloody glove similar to one found at the murder scene.

June 12

9:30 p.m. -- Karen Lee Crawford, Mezzaluna's Sunday manager, received a phone call from a woman who had been dining with Nicole Brown Simpson, asking her to look for Nicole's sunglasses. Crawford found the glasses in the gutter in front of the restaurant, asked if the caller would pick them up, and put the glasses in a sealed envelope by the bar. Five minutes later, Nicole Simpson phoned Crawford directly and asked to speak with Ronald L. Goldman.

9:50 p.m. -- Goldman left Mezzaluna to return the glasses to Nicole Simpson, according to Crawford.

10:20 p.m. -- Nicole Simpson's neighbor, Pablo Fenjves, heard a dog barking persistently while he was watching television.

10:55 p.m. -- While walking his dog, Steven Schwab saw Simpson's large, white Akita dog with four bloody paws wandering alone. The Akita followed him home.

11:40 p.m. -- Sukru Boztepe arrived home and found Schwab sitting by the pool of their apartment complex with the dog. Boztepe took the dog inside his apartment, planning to keep it overnight until they could contact an animal shelter. He said the Akita had red spots that looked like blood on all four paws and legs.

Midnight -- Boztepe and his wife, Bettina Rasmussen, took the dog for a walk to look for its owner after the dog kept running to the window and scratching at the door. When the dog stopped in front of Nicole Simpson's home, the couple noticed a woman lying on the ground and a lot of blood. The couple ran to a neighbor's home to summon help."


Sourced from:
The Washington Post

Https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1994/07/02/witnesses-tell-how-nicole-simpsons-dog-led-them-to-her-body/82c11ef0-4de5-4d89-ba99-131eb349e425/

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