Alex Constantine - April 23, 2024
By Alex Constantine
My investigation of the Simpson case is often challenged by mass media propaganda pushovers who ask the same question: "Oh yeah, what about the blood evidence?" This is assumed to be an air-tight argument, a gotcha, a knock-out kick in cage combat. My response is always the same: "exactly!" Then I explain that the blood evidence was clearly planted.
It's an air-tight argument.
Here comes more of the same. I've written about the socks found by police in Simpson's bedroom and impounded. They were examined by a forensic examiner twice, and no blood was detected. A third examination found "copious amounts of blood" on one of OJ's socks.
The late Joe Bosco, a reporter for Penthouse magazine, wrote that DNA tests determined the blood was Nicole's. He cited an anonymous police source. There was one problem with this account -- the DNA test was conducted months AFTER Bosco reported the results.
I met and talked to Bosco, a former baseball player turned journalist, for several hours at his home in Santa Barbara after the trial concluded, and came away with the opinion that he was a con artist. Yet there he was at the Simpson trial day after day, one of the few reporters in the gallery with a highly-coveted permanent seat.
The question is, how did Bosco know that Nicole's blood was on the sock months before laboratory DNA testing determined this was so -- evidence "confirmed" by a second reporter in a local LA newscast?
This article from the San Francisco Chronicle explores the mystery. "Further developments" appended at the end of the story lend further support my contention that OJ Simpson was framed:
journalist may face contempt charge over a Simpson story
By William Carlsen, Chronicle Staff Writer
Aug 2, 1995
The effort to force disclosure of news leaks in the O. J. Simpson case widened yesterday when Judge Lance Ito required a second journalist to take the witness stand for questioning about DNA results he allegedly received from a confidential source.
Joseph Bosco, a book author who wrote an article about the Simpson trial for the June edition of Penthouse magazine, invoked the California Shield Law when asked to identify a police source mentioned in the story. The law protects journalists in some circumstances from being cited for contempt for refusing to reveal their sources.
Without the jury present, Bosco testified only that his article was true and accurate in stating that a "certain police officer" gave him the DNA information.
Ito is expected to rule today on whether Bosco and Tracie Savage, a television reporter who invoked the shield law Monday under similar questioning, must disclose their sources or go to jail for contempt of court.
TESTS DONE LATER
Both the defense and the prosecution have demanded to know who told the journalists last September that DNA in blood on a sock found in Simpson's bedroom matched Nicole Brown Simpson's. The information turned out to be erroneous because DNA tests on the sock were not done until months later.
The defense said that knowing the journalists' sources was critical to helping them prove that police conspirators knew Nicole Simpson's blood was planted on the sock, and they leaked the information. "It was a self-fulfilling prophecy," defense attorney Robert Shapiro told Ito.
Earlier, without the jury present, the defense questioned Michele Kestler, one of the managers of the police laboratory, about the DNA leaks. But she said that she always assumed the information came from Cellmark, the Maryland laboratory where many of the DNA tests were conducted.
"Our employees have too much integrity and honesty," she said, adding that she had never talked to reporters.
In other developments yesterday:
-- A North Carolina appeals court turned down a request by Simpson's lawyers for an immediate hearing on a ruling that denied them access to recorded statements made by Detective Mark Fuhrman. The defense has said that the tapes reveal Fuhrman lied when he testified he had not used a racial slur in the last 10 years.
-- Defense bloodstain expert Herbert MacDonell testified that the transfer of blood inside a sock found in Simpson's bedroom "could not have occurred if a foot was in the sock," a statement supporting the defense contention that the blood was planted after the killings of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
-- Ito handed the defense a victory, allowing them to present evidence of a pattern of contamination in the police laboratory's DNA testing section. The prosecution fought bitterly to keep out the evidence as misleading. ...