It’s been two decades since the white Bronco carrying O.J. Simpson in a strangely serene, low-speed police chase burned itself into our collective psyche.
The NFL Hall of Famer — armed with a gun, his passport and a fake beard — was threatening suicide after authorities decided to arrest him on suspicion of murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson, 35, and her waiter friend Ronald Goldman, 25.
Simpson’s friend Al Cowlings piloted the ghostly SUV from one freeway to another as an estimated 95 million television viewers looked on.
The shocking slayings took place June 12, 1994, just steps from the Brentwood, Calif., condo where the young Simpson children, Sydney and Justin, slept upstairs.
Cops eventually found two blood-soaked leather gloves and a trail of bloody Bruno Magli shoeprints — evidence that would factor prominently in the televised soap opera that was the People vs. Orenthal James Simpson.
The voyeuristic circus dubbed the “Trial of the Century” ended Oct. 3, 1995, when a jury of nine blacks, two whites and one Latino found the Heisman Trophy winner not guilty.
The racially charged courtroom drama introduced a memorable cast of characters including Simpson’s legal Dream Team, his house guest Kato Kaelin and embattled Los Angeles Police Detective Mark Fuhrman.
Two decades later, the Daily News checks in on the key players who captivated America:
THE SUSPECT
O.J. Simpson, 66, has spent the last five years at Lovelock prison in Nevada on an armed robbery and kidnapping conviction. He’s serving up to 33 years for leading a group of men in a Las Vegas casino confrontation with two memorabilia dealers. He won’t be eligible for parole until 2017, but he filed a new appeal Wednesday.
“He’s depressed,” his manager Norman Prado recently told The News. Prado said he regularly corresponds with the former Buffalo Bills star and last spoke to him a couple of months ago. He said one popular topic is Glen Rogers, a serial killer on Death Row who claims he carried out the murders.
“(Simpson) wants to know more (about Rogers), but he told me, ‘Norman, a guy could run up with a knife dripping with Nicole’s blood, and they’ll tell him to stop covering for O.J.,’” Prado said.
Simpson lost his Florida house to foreclosure last year and still owes a $33.5 million civil judgment to the estates of his ex-wife and Goldman.
TRAGIC VICTIMS
Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were savagely knifed to death June 12, 1994.
GRIEVING FATHER
Fred Goldman, 73, is the grieving father and Simpson nemesis whose relentless pursuit of the athlete-turned-actor led to the megabucks civil judgment.
“We went after him whenever we saw an opportunity to take something away, so there’s a level of satisfaction knowing our efforts all those previous years might have been part of the reason he ended up committing armed robbery. We made him constantly worry about keeping his memorabilia away from us,” said the dad who moved to Arizona with his wife, Patti, after the civil trial.
“Hopefully he’ll die in jail. It’s the next best thing to seeing him found guilty of double murder and being put to death,” Goldman said.
THE PROSECUTOR
Marcia Clark, 60, was the co-lead prosecutor in the criminal trial and quit the L.A. County District Attorney’s office after the acquittal. She earned a reported $4.2 million for her Simpson book “Without a Doubt” and has worked as a legal commentator for “Entertainment Tonight,” CNN, ABC and NBC covering high-profile cases including the George Zimmerman murder trial in Florida.
KARDASHIAN TV
Robert Kardashian was a longtime Simpson friend who read The Juice’s apparent suicide letter on live TV the day of the Bronco chase. He sat beside Simpson throughout the trial but expressed doubts about the “Naked Gun” star’s innocence before dying in 2003 from esophageal cancer at age 59. His daughter Kim Kardashian later catapulted to superstardom with a sex tape that helped the family snag its famous E! reality show, “Keeping Up With The Kardashians.”
THE GETAWAY VEHICLE
The white Bronco is privately owned by a collector who snapped it up for a reported $75,000 after the civil trial.
“It’s well taken care of. It’s not on the street,” owner Michael Pulwer told The News, declining to name the SUV’s exact storage location.
He said he gets about five to 10 requests a year from people or organizations wanting to rent the world-famous wheels for exhibition.
It was transported to Connecticut two years ago to serve as a prop for a party hosted by The Brant Foundation Art Study Center in Greenwich. That same year it was on display at the Luxor hotel in Vegas.
“I think someday, somebody will want to have it in a museum of famous or infamous cars,” Pulwer said. “But on this anniversary, I think we should care more about the people who were killed than the white Bronco.”
THE COP AS ‘VILLAIN’
Mark Fuhrman, 62, found the bloody glove at Simpson’s house but later became the trial’s unexpected villain when recordings revealed he repeatedly used the N-word while consulting on dialogue for a screenplay. The recordings contradicted the LAPD detective’s claim he hadn’t used the hateful slur in a decade and led to a felony perjury conviction that ended his police career.
Simpson’s team accused Fuhrman of planting the glove in a racially motivated plot to frame the former gridiron great.
“This was the simplest case in the history of murder in Los Angeles, but it turned into a giant car wreck,” Fuhrman told The News. “The truth wasn’t important. All they cared about was the sensationalism of a guy who could play a child’s game and become a celebrity.”
Fuhrman, who lives in Idaho and has written several books, works as a pundit for Fox News. He said Simpson is “getting what he deserved” as a Nevada inmate.
“I know I sound bitter and angry, but I’ve wasted 20 years of my life on something that took 20 minutes (of detective work),” said the retired cop who many blame for turning the tide of the criminal trial.
“I wasn’t even on call that night, but my boss wanted me to handle it. Everything was fine until 1:05 a.m. on June 13, 1994. If I could go back, I wouldn’t answer that call. It wasn’t worth it.”
Asked if he had any regrets, Fuhrman said, “You can’t go back.”
“You don’t get a do-over when you screw up like that. I wasn’t privileged. I didn’t have a father growing up. If I could change all that, maybe I wouldn’t have been a policeman,” he said.
He said his recorded racist statements were taken out of context.
“We were writing a screenplay,” he tried to explain. “Some people say, ‘Well, you had to think those things to say them.’ Okay, I did. But I could absorb a lot of personalities and regurgitate them.”
He called the case “the Great Wall of China speed bump” of his life.
“You watch people in the news talk about drug addicts and abusers who get convicted and do their time. They say, ‘He paid his price, time to move on.’ Well, I would like that same consideration.”
FAMOUS HOUSE GUEST
Kato Kaelin, 55, was the breakout star of the criminal trial with his long, surfer-style blond locks and colorful, often conflicting, testimony. He was Simpson’s houseguest in 1994 and told jurors the football star had no obvious cuts or injuries shortly after the murders.
The would-be actor parlayed his trial fame into spots on “The Weakest Link” and the reality shows “Celebrity Boot Camp,” and “Gimme My Reality Show!” His newest endeavor is a loungewear line for couch potatoes, aptly called Kato Potato.
“By no doing of my own, I was thrust into an intense spotlight. Never had a man done so little to be recognized by so many,” Kaelin, who still lives in Los Angeles, told The News. “I didn’t ask for any of it.”
He said his Kato Potato line has been in the works for years and will launch this summer with a followup kids’ line called Kater Tots. It features special pockets for TV remote controls and bags of potato chips.
The self-professed “slacker” — who has long maintained Simpson was probably guilty of the double murder — said his sister lost a son to an IED explosion in Afghanistan in 2004. He said the family tragedy gave him a deeper understanding of the complexities of life and loss.
“I can’t imagine the pain of losing a child. I can only see it through my sister’s eyes,” he said, adding that he’s not hawking a clothing line to cash in on anyone’s grief.
JUDGE & RINGMASTER
Lance Ito, 63, is the Los Angeles Superior Court judge who allowed cameras in the courtroom for Simpson’s trial and thereby sealed his fate as the unofficial godfather of reality TV.
The bearded and bespectacled jurist caused a stir last year when he walked two blocks to the civil court building to watch part of Katherine Jackson’s trial against Michael Jackson’s concert promoter AEG Live. His term is up next January, and he didn’t run for reelection, setting the stage for his retirement.
DRUG THEORY
Faye Resnick, 56, was a friend who spent considerable time at Nicole Brown Simpson’s condo until leaving for rehab just days before the double murder. The Dream Team floated the theory that Nicole’s true killer was a cocaine dealer targeting Resnick. Her steamy tell-all memoir “Nicole Brown Simpson: the Private Diary of a Life Interrupted” hit bookstores during jury selection in the criminal trial. She posed nude for Playboy in 1997 and later appeared in multiple episodes of Bravo’s “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”
HIS GAL PAL
Paula Barbieri, 47, was the beautiful and dutiful girlfriend who was with O.J. Simpson just hours before the double murder. She visited Simpson in jail but dumped him soon after his acquittal. She posed for Playboy in late 1994 but later sought salvation as a born-again Christian. She’s now married to a Florida judge and has a daughter.
IF IT DOESN’T FIT, YOU MUST ACQUIT
Johnnie Cochran Jr. was the Dream Team’s master showman. He delivered the crowning blow, “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” He reportedly got $2.5 million for his book “Journey for Justice” about the case. He did a brief stint as co-anchor on Court TV’s short-lived “Cochran & Grace” with Nancy Grace and represented the families of NYPD misconduct victims Abner Louima and Alberta Spruill.
Cochran scored a 2001 acquittal for Sean (Diddy) Combs in the Manhattan weapons case stemming from a December 1999 nightclub shooting that nearly landed his then-girlfriend Jennifer Lopez on the witness stand.
Cochran died in 2005 from an inoperable brain tumor at 67. Simpson attended his funeral.
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