the garage was open, with a white Ferrari inside. A black Jeep Cherokee was parked outside on the driveway. Riske led us past the Ferrari and into the rear of the condo. As we walked up the stairway, Riske pointed out a Ben and Jerry’s ice cream cup on the stairway rail. When he had first noticed it, the ice cream had not yet appeared to have melted. He explained that when he walked through the house initially he had not found anything unusual. Two children, a boy and a girl, had been sleeping in the upstairs bedroom, and he had arranged their transport to the West LA station.
As we walked through the house, I noted that there were lighted candles in the bathroom around the tub, and also in the living room. Romantic music was playing. The female victim had been home for several minutes prior to her death, at least enough time to light the candles and put music on the stereo. I also noticed a lithograph poster of O.J. Simpson on the wall in the front room.
Riske led Ron and me through the open front door, which showed no obvious signs of forced entry. From the front porch landing, Riske pointed to a bloody shoeprint heading west down the walkway. We could easily see the victims from the landing. We were within a couple of feet of the female victim and several feet away from the male victim, who was now in full view.
The female victim s head was resting with her chin on her upper chest-or so it appeared, but her hair was obscuring her face. She was soaked with blood, which seemed to come from her neck or face area and drained down onto the walkway. Her right leg was wedged under the metal fence. On the ground nearby was a takeout menu.
Although the male victim was more visible now, his wounds were not so obvious, and I could not tell how much he had bled or from where. Riske led us around the front porch and down the walkway along the north side of the condo, pointing out a trail of blood drops just to the left of the bloody shoeprints. As the shoeprints faded out, we came to a heavy metal gate that was about two-thirds of the way open. Riske pointed to smears of blood on the upper rail of the gate. I noticed two blood drops on the bottom inside of the gate. We continued out to the rear driveway.
In the driveway, just north of the Cherokee, Riske showed us two coins on the pavement, intermingled with drops of blood. The blood trail stopped at the beginning of the alley. There, the person either had stopped bleeding or had entered a vehicle.
Riske walked around lo (he front of the residence while Ron and I went back inside the house. Ron had previously told me that I was the lead detective on the case, and I began making my preliminary notes. The initial indications were that the female victim was O.J. Simpson’s ex-wife, but that could not be verified yet, and I was not about to jump to conclusions. The male victim was as yet unidentified, and my impression was that he did not fit with the female victim.
At this point in the investigation, my instincts leaned toward an attempted residential robbery. The cause of death seemed to be some type of traumatic force, maybe a blunt object or a firearm. The scene indicated that the female victim had opened the door, either answering it or possibly investigating a noise outside.
The male victim’s presence was not as easily explained. He could have left the residence and been confronted by an assailant who then killed him, either intentionally or in the course of a struggle. The female might have heard the struggle and opened the door to investigate. Then she too was killed, and the suspect fled down the walkway.
I also considered the possibility that the male victim was a suspect. Perhaps he had been killed accidentally by another suspect during the murder of the female victim.
On any investigation, you can’t jump to conclusions and then try to make the evidence fit your theory of what happened. Instead, you must to let the evidence speak for itself. And you have to