Mark Fuhrman
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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."
Civilian Accounts of Violent Racism
Residents of Westwood Village in the late 1980's claim to have witnessed Furhman physically assaulting black teenagers he believed were either gang members or loiterers. Fuhrman was a foot-patrol officer for the LAPD at that time. Resident Ryan Thompson remembered Fuhrman and a partner approached him and some friends one weekend day in front of a videogame arcade. Thompson and his friends were between 14 and 18 years old at the time. Fuhrman requested a private conversation with only the black individuals present in the alley in back of the arcade. The black teens agreed and returned moments later, claiming Fuhrman (but not his partner) had verbally and physically assaulted them, showing facial bruising to prove it. The teens also claimed this scenario happened before, and that Fuhrman had called them "niggers."
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 able to find an audiotape contradicting that testimony. Fuhrman gave a taped interview in 1985 to Laura McKinney, an aspiring screenwriter working on a screenplay about female police officers. Fuhrman bragged about his membership in the secret organization within the LAPD known as MAW (Men Against Women). In further interviews, Fuhrman bragged about beating and torturing gang members, "we had them begging that they'd never be gang members again, begging us." 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?" See Fuhrman tapes for more details.
As a result, the prosecution was forced to label 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 probation and fined $200.
Fuhrman was the officer who found both gloves (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.
Post-Trial Fame
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 (, Oz) as Fuhrman.
More recently, Fuhrman has written books on the controversial subjects of capital punishment and the medical treatment and death of Terri Schiavo. Critics claim that Fuhrman's book stands in contrast to the autopsy report of Schiavo, which was released just prior to his book.
Most recently, Fuhrman has written a book on his account of the John F. Kennedy assassination.
Fuhrman is a frequent guest of conservative commentator Sean Hannity and a contributor for FOX News.
Fuhrman is the host of the popular Spokane, WA radio show "The Mark Fuhrman Show" on AM radio station [1510 KGA] between the hours of 9am-12pm. The show covers local and national topics and includes many guest callers and listeners.
Books
- Murder in Brentwood (February 1, 1997), ISBN 0895264218
- Murder in Greenwich: Who Killed Martha Moxley? (June 1, 1998), ISBN 0060191414
- Murder in Spokane: Catching a Serial Killer (May 22, 2001), ISBN 0060194375
- Death and Justice: An Expose of Oklahoma's Death Row Machine (September 2, 2003), ISBN 0060009179
- Silent Witness : The Untold Story of Terri Schiavo's Death (July 1, 2005), ISBN 0060853379
- A Simple Act of Murder : November 22, 1963 (May 1, 2006), ISBN 0060853379
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