OJ Case: Witnesses Tell Of Detective Mark Fuhrman’s Displays Of Racial Animosity

By Kathryn Wexler

September 5, 1995 at 8:00 p.m. EDT

LOS ANGELES, SEPT. 5 — Fighting back tears, a woman testified today in the O.J. Simpson murder trial that detective Mark Fuhrman had told her he wanted to kill black people and used the racial slur “nigger” in her first conversation with him.

It was the first time the predominately black jury heard about Fuhrman’s use of the epithet or about his verbal displays of racial and ethnic hatred, all of which have been the subject of weeks of heated debate between prosecutors and defense lawyers.

Later, jurors heard a tape of Fuhrman uttering the racial slur. In the recording, made by screenwriter Laura Hart McKinny, Fuhrman says of female police officers: “They don’t do anything. They don’t go out there and initiate a contact with some 6-foot-5-inch nigger who’s been in prison for seven years, pumping weights.”

Fuhrman’s actual words, on a scratchy tape recording that McKinny attested to, followed powerful testimony by several witnesses, including Kathleen Bell, who said she was frightened by Fuhrman’s racist attitudes.

Bell said she met Fuhrman in a Marine recruiting center at a Redondo Beach office building where she worked as a real estate agent one day in 1985 or 1986. She said Fuhrman had told her, “If I had my way, all the niggers would be gathered together and burned.”

Bell also testified that Fuhrman told her that “when he sees a black man with a white woman driving in a car, he pulls them over,” even if they had committed no traffic violations.

Bell said she then asked Fuhrman if he would feel any differently if the couple were in love. “He said, That’s disgusting,’ ” she recalled.

Fuhrman started talking about burning blacks, Bell said, which was “probably the most frightening thing I had ever heard.” Her voice breaking with emotion, she added, “Nobody ever said that to me before.”

The testimony was something of a triumph for defense attorneys, who were devastated last week by Judge Lance A. Ito’s ruling severely restricting the jury’s access to racist statements made by Fuhrman — a retired police detective who is a key prosecution witness — and tape-recorded by McKinny. The defense is attempting to impeach Fuhrman’s testimony last March when he said he had never used the “N-word” in the last 10 years and also said he had never met Bell.

The prosecution tacitly acknowledged the power of today’s testimony by barely cross-examining Bell and a second witness, Natalie Singer, who said she too heard Fuhrman make racist statements.

Fuhrman is a key witness because he said he discovered a bloody glove behind Simpson’s estate that matched another glove found at the site where Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald L. Goldman were slain on June 12, 1994. The defense has alleged Fuhrman may have planted the glove to frame the celebrity defendant because it contends the former policeman had a pathological hatred of blacks.

Bell said she decided to come forward about Fuhrman because “I didn’t want someone to be tried without all the information.” She said that she faxed a letter with the details of her three encounters with Fuhrman to defense attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. and that she also faxed a copy to the district attorney’s office, which never responded.

Bell said she had not seen Fuhrman since the mid-1980s but recognized him on television when he testified during a July 1994 preliminary hearing in the Simpson case.

“I saw him and it all came back, all of it,” she said.

Singer, who used to reside in Los Angeles, testified that in 1987 she was introduced to Mark Fuhrman by a roommate who was dating his partner. She said that during one of the times Fuhrman came to the house while she was there, he told her “the only good nigger is a dead nigger.”

McKinny took the stand late in the afternoon, explaining that she first met Fuhrman in 1985 in a cafe in Westwood, Calif., and interviewed him over nine years for a screenplay she was writing on sexism in the police force.

She told the jury that Fuhrman used the racial epithet “nigger” in a “demeaning, derogatory fashion” a total of “approximately 42 times.” She said that during her first interview with Fuhrman, he said, “We have no niggers where I grew up.”

Ito allowed defense attorneys to play the tape of Fuhrman using the slur during a discussion of female police officers after agreeing that the tape segment he originally said could be played was inaudible.

By the end of Singer’s testimony, before the tape was played, the prosecution had conceded that the defense had proven Fuhrman held vile views.

“We have sat here, we have taken it on the chin,” prosecutor Christopher Darden said. “I think the defense has clearly established that Fuhrman is a racist.” Darden asked that the defense be precluded from introducing more evidence that Fuhrman used racial epithets because it would be redundant.