#I agree with shane; that case bums me out man

[mxliv-oftheendless]

The Shocking Case of O.J. Simpson (Part 1)

Yep, we’re back with this insanity! In honor of me getting through the first week of winter semester, here is the next installment in KISS Unsolved! However, unlike last time, where we saw Paul, Gene, and Vinnie going on a hunt for the supernatural, here we see them covering a true crime case, because Buzzfeed Unsolved also covers unsolved true crime cases. It actually took me quite a while to decide which episode to adapt for this, but ultimately I decided on this one, partly because this case really fascinates me. I also decided that since there’s three co-hosts in this AU, Vinnie’s going to be the one covering the true crime cases (I thought it fitting, since he’s a bit of an unsolved mystery himself). Here is the original episode if you want to watch that before reading this story. 

A quick note about this one: I learned from last time to split up the episodes so I don’t go over the post length limit and Tumblr starts acting like a jerk. I know it’s awkward, but that’s how it’s gonna have to be. 

IMPORTANT NOTE: this case is very controversial. I realize that. It also contains some effed-up details that some people may not be comfortable with reading. If at any point you are feeling uncomfortable, please do not hesitate to stop reading. You are not a lesser person for it.

And now, without further ado, enjoy!

Tag list: @cosmicrealmofkissteria​  @ashestoashesvvi​  @kategwidt​

Commentary text:

Paul

Gene

Vinnie

Something said in unison

[screen cuts from title card to Vinnie, Gene, and Paul sitting behind a desk cluttered with papers, pens, a desk lamp, and other objects. Behind them are bulletin boards full of things from various unsolved cases and conspiracies. In order from left to right: Paul, Gene, Vinnie]

VINNIE: This week on Buzzfeed Unsolved, we discuss the brutal murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, or as you may know it: the case of O. J. Simpson, who was Nicole’s ex-husband, a Hall of Fame running back in the NFL, and the case’s top suspect.

PAUL: Fun fact: we’re all old enough to remember this case.

GENE: Yep. I remember there was a lot of Yiddish thrown around my house after the verdict.

VINNIE: A lot of people our age and older than us will remember quite a bit about this case. I remember watching it on television.

PAUL:  Yeah, I actually never knew O. J. was a football player. I always knew him as the guy who murdered someone.

GENE: Me too.

VINNIE: Yeah. There’s a lot of unpack here, so… let’s get into it. [opens folder]

[screen cuts away from the three to a black screen. Pictures and text appear on screen as Vinnie narrates]

VINNIE [voiceover]: In the early morning of June 13th, 1994, at 12:10 AM, the bodies of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald L. Goldman were found outside Nicole’s Brentwood townhouse, stabbed to death.

[screen cuts to the three of them in a car driving through a neighborhood, Brentwood. Vinnie is driving, Paul is in the passenger seat, aiming a camera at Vinnie, and Gene is in the backseat]

VINNIE: So right now, we are on our way to Nicole Brown Simpson’s former residence. [time skip: the car parks on the side of the street]

PAUL: [looks at the house across the street] Is that it, right over there?

VINNIE: Yep. That’s the place.

GENE: I feel… I don’t really feel all that right going into this place.

VINNIE: Oh, we’re not going onto the property.

GENE: We’re not? I thought we were going to go see where the bodies were found.

VINNIE: Oh hell no, we’re not doing that.

PAUL: That is kind of disrespectful.

GENE: Okay, good.

[all three of them sit still for a couple beats. Then Vinnie sighs and unbuckles his seatbelt, and opens the door to get out. Gene and Paul follow suit. Screen cuts back to the slideshow]

VINNIE [voiceover]: At the time, Nicole and O. J. Simpson were divorced and living in separate residences, both in Brentwood. The bodies were discovered by two neighbors who were literally led to the crime scene by Nicole’s dog. Multiple neighbors would say the dog was incessantly barking at the time of the murder. [audio of a barking dog plays with the narration]

[cuts back to the sidewalk in front of Nicole Brown Simpson’s house. Paul has the camera on Vinnie, who is taking steps while Gene watches off to the side]

VINNIE: So the dog led the neighbors down the street, to the entrance, and they saw the blood coming down from the entrance to the sidewalk.

[cuts to the three once again sitting in the car; it is now darker out]

PAUL: What occurs to me, though, is how close together all these apartments are. And how…

VINNIE: How no one heard…

PAUL: Yeah. From the way I always heard it, I assumed the houses were really spread out and the street was bigger. But no, they’re all pretty stacked on top of each other. I think… I feel like someone would have had to have heard something.

VINNIE: … That’s a good point, I never thought about that. [runs his hand over his face] Jesus…

GENE: This case just got so much heavier.

[screen cuts back to the slideshow]

VINNIE [voiceover]: Let’s go over the established, highly-detailed timeline. On June 12th, 1994 at 6:30 PM, Nicole, her children, and others arrive at a restaurant called Mezzaluna. At 9:15 PM, Nicole’s sister calls Mezzaluna and says her mother left her glasses there. Ronald Goldman goes to pick up the glasses. At 9:00 – 9:30 PM, Brian “Kato” Kaelin and O. J. Simpson go to McDonald’s for dinner.

Can’t imagine McDonald’s was excited to hear that…

Yeah…

…as part of the testimony.

Was that part of the testimony?

I mean it had to have been, since it’s on the official timeline.

… Well.

*snickering*

I mean… it got a lot of coverage at the time so… free advertising, I guess?

Yeah, I suppose.

VINNIE [voiceover]: At 9:45 PM, Kato and O. J. return home from McDonald’s. Kato was staying in O. J.’s guest house at the time. At 9:48 to 9:50 PM, Goldman leaves Mezzaluna with an envelope containing Nicole’s mother’s glasses. At 10:15 PM, Nicole Simpson’s neighbor hears a dog bark and cry while he is watching TV. The prosecution would later cite these barks as Nicole’s dog, who was crying out over the murder of its owner, Nicole.

They went by dog bark?

Well all dog barks are a bit different. The neighbor could’ve recognized it as Nicole’s dog from the bark.

Yeah, that’s probably what happened.

Honestly, I feel like the dog is the real hero of this story.

*laughs* I don’t think there are many heroes in this story, Gene.

No, let’s say that. We need at least one good thing to come out of this story.

Fine, okay. This dog’s a regular Lassie.

VINNIE [voiceover]: At 10:25 PM, a limo driver named Allan Park arrives at O. J.’s home, O. J. having been scheduled for a red eye flight from L. A. to Chicago at 11:45 PM. At 10:40 PM, O. J.’s guest, Kato, hears three loud thumps on the outside wall of the guest house he is staying in. From 10:40 to 10:55 PM, Park buzzes O. J.’s intercom several times, but there is no answer. Just before 11:00 PM, Park sees a shadowy figure—six feet tall, two hundred pounds—walking across the driveway towards the house. At 11:00 PM, Park tries buzzing the intercom again; this time, O. J. answers. O. J. tells Park that he had overslept and had just gotten out of the shower.

Suspicious.

Yeah, quite suspicious.

This is a very detailed description of a “shadowy figure.”

*laughs* Yeah, “He was six feet, weighed two hundred pounds—and was enshrouded in shadow.”

*laughter*

VINNIE [voiceover]: At 11:45 PM, O. J. departs on an American Airlines flight to Chicago. And taking us back to the start, at 12:10 AM, the bodies of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald L. Goldman are discovered outside her townhouse stabbed to death. Evidence found at the crime scene includes a bloodstained glove left behind by the killer, a knitted hat, and a bloody footprint. At 5:00 PM, detectives arrive at O. J.’s house and discover some key pieces of evidence… but we’ll get to that later. Meanwhile, O. J.’s flight lands in Chicago. According to lead prosecutor Marcia Clark, Detective Ron Philips called O. J. to inform him his ex-wife was dead. O. J.’s first response: “Who killed her?”

Not good.

Yes, very not good.

Not, “How did she die?”

Nope.

“What happened?”

Nope.

“Who killed her”… that’s what he said.

*quiet laughter*

That’s not the go-to question there.

*laughter* Heheh, no, it is not.

Not the best decision ya could’ve made, O. J.

VINNIE [voiceover]: O. J. was questioned for three hours by the LAPD, but released. On June 17th, 1994, O. J. was charged with the murder of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman. But he famously did not surrender to the police, and was declared a fugitive. The ensuing low-speed police chase of O. J. on the freeways of southern California in his white Ford Bronco is a lasting memory for anybody familiar with the case.

Do either of you remember this?

Oh yeah, I definitely remember this.

My memories of this are actually a little vague. I do remember people talking about this after it happened, though.

I think my sister actually yelled at the screen for O. J. to go faster.

*laughter*

VINNIE [voiceover]: O. J. was in the passenger seat, while the car was driven by his friend, Al Cowlings. Cowlings explained he did not stop because O. J. had a gun to his own head in the car, and because O. J. was suicidal. A suicide note written by O. J. was in fact found, but we’ll get to that in a bit.

[screen cuts to the three back in the car. It is daytime, and they are now on the freeway]

VINNIE: So right now, we are going about the speed O. J. was going, and we’re in rush-hour traffic.

PAUL: I gotta say, I’m actually a little bored.

GENE: This doesn’t exactly feel like Fast and Furious.

VINNIE: Well, the stuff in Fast and Furious probably doesn’t happen in real life, Genie.

VINNIE [voiceover]: During the chase, they recorded a phone call between O. J. and homicide detective Tom Lange. Here’s some audio from that:

LANGE: Nobody’s going to get hurt.

SIMPSON: I’m the only one that deserves…

LANGE: No, you don’t deserve that.

SIMPSON: I’m gonna get hurt…

LANGE: You do not deserve to get hurt.

SIMPSON: [groans]

LANGE: You do not deserve to get hurt. Don’t do this.

SIMPSON: All I did was love Nicole. All I did was love her.

VINNIE [voiceover]: The chase would end at O. J.’s home in Brentwood. Inside the car, they found, in what I imagine was unintentional humor, makeup adhesive, a fake mustache and goatee, O. J.’s passport, and a gun.

Pfft, hahahahah—!

*laughing* What the hell?

*laughing* I know, that’s—just try to imagine one of the most famous people at this time, trying to sneak through airport security with a glued-on mustache…

That’s hilarious!

… and thinking it’s gonna work.

This guy didn’t even change his passport, that’s… was he even trying at all?

VINNIE [voiceover]: O. J. surrendered to the police at 8:51 PM. Now, let’s go over the suicide note. Apart from thanking those who meant a lot to him in his life, O. J. professed his innocence. Quote, “First, everyone understand. I have nothing to do with Nicole’s murder. I loved her; always have and always will. If we had a problem, it’s because I loved her so much.”

Well, that’s… kinda sweet, I guess…

Seems kinda over the top to me.

I had the same impression. Overall, though, when you put it in with everything else… I don’t know.

What’s our consensus here, do we all agree that he did it?

I have actually been told that we should refrain from explicitly saying who we think did it.

Oh, really?

Why?

Well, because this is a very controversial case. We all remember how controversial it was. We don’t wanna step on any toes.

... I guess that’s fair.

Yeah, that’s fair.

To be continued in Part 2!

[emblem-333]

Kevin Durant: Whose Side Are You On?

Can it have been less than thirteen months since we were so close to a KD-LeBron NBA Finals rematch; the one we wanted. The legend Kevin Durant battling demons with his brother Russell Westbrook. All the fun we could have had talking about the Dion Waiters revenge x-factor. The playground fights for rebounds between Steven Adams and Tristan Thompson. Kyrie and Russ, the best shoot-first point guards in recent memory; also the best square-peg in the round hole fits next to a dynamic star we universally agree isn’t assertive enough. Both teams are super flawed, crossing their fingers the trends of their fringe players sustain just for a couple more weeks. In the Golden State series forward Andre Roberson hit 54.5% of his threes thru the first four games - one of the major reasons OKC jumped the vaunted 73-win Warriors team. It felt right. Out of place, but right.

A very winnable Game 5 slips out of OKC’s hands. It's alright. Game six is when they’ll close out and cement Kevin Durant as one of those too rare nowadays stars to stick with the team that drafted him. 39.5 fg% combined with Russ’s 36.8 fg% in the final 3 contests of the season insured Game six would go down as one of the most impactful moments in NBA history. The biggest “choke jobs” in recent memory. Klay Thompson and Steph Curry stole Durant. In a way, it seemed poetic for the championship hopes of the Thunder franchise to go belly up for the KD era the way it did. For all the talk of loyalty, we omit the fact Sam Presti signed KD and Russell to extensions before trading their friend James Harden, because ownership didn’t want to pay him $58 million for four-years. Loyalty in sports isn’t a responsibility solely on the player. The Thunder franchise only came about because Clay Bennett and his cronies moved the team from Seattle.

(One underrated deplorable argument after the Durant decision came down last summer was the Thunder fans somehow deserved this because of them benefiting from the hijacking of the Supersonics. That wasn’t the fans fault. So what they wanted a team? If the shoe was on the other foot Seattle would clamor just as hard for the Thunder to ditch OKC.)

But you know what? Fans do have a right to be…bummed. To piss and moan about Durant undoubtedly taking the easy way out. Leaving whom we thought was buddy Westbrook hung out to dry - if Russell wanted to be all alone in Oklahoma is besides the point. I don’t know why I was so invested in their friendship. Kevin Durant and I will never cross paths for as long as I live; ditto for Westbrook. Maybe it’s the battles I’ve seen the two take part in. They came into the league together. Rose to prominence together. Won together. Lost together. Cried together. Durant called Russell his “brother” in his iconic MVP speech. It was the moment I believed Durant was never leaving OKC. I thought they were brothers. It crushed me to learn they were work buddies and nothing more.

The 2016-17 Golden State Warriors are in a league by themselves. Not just because of their on court talent, but how they’ve achieved that aforementioned talent. No team ever fielded four All-Stars in their primes. The 1962-63 Boston Celtics, off their most successful season in franchise history added 22-year-old John Havlicek to a team that already had still in their primes Bill Russell, Sam Jones and Tom Heinsohn. “Hondo” wasn’t the top-20 all-timer he’d grow to become yet. What’s regarded largely as the best Celtics team, the ‘85-‘86 team were fortunate to have prime Larry “Legend”, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish; Bill Walton moonlighting for them as a third big. Point guard Dennis Johnson was coming off an All-Star caliber 1984-85 season, but his best days were with the Sonics in the late 70’s and the Suns in the very early 80’s. DJ was more of a complementary piece by 1986. A damn good one, by the way. The Lakers in the Shaq-Kobe years were strictly a two-man show; when Gary Payton and Karl Malone signed in the summer of 2003 it was more of two respected vets last gasp at a ring as role players. Neither were All-Stars at that point in their careers.

Super-teams are not new. Prior super-teams in the late-sixties, eighties, nineties, 2000s and 2010s either built entirely from within, mostly from within, or shrewd management of the cap that allowed the front-office to chase the market players in free agency. All predecessors started from the bottom, a draft pick, a signing or taking advantage of dim-witted general managers to catapulted them on the road to calling themselves a super-team. No super-team made an NBA season more redundant than the 2016-17 Golden State Warriors.

We shouldn’t hate the Warriors for being smart these last couple of years. Not trading Klay Thompson for Kevin Love when people thought it was unwise to pass up on acquiring who was a top-12 player in Love. Drafting Stephen Curry, the aforementioned Klay Thompson, Draymond Green; having the guts to start him over the well-known and highly paid David Lee. Having the guts to cut ties with Mark Jackson when it became obvious behind the scenes that things were about to go belly up, but on the surface to us fans it all seemed hunky-dory. If you fault the Golden State Warriors for signing Kevin Durant I’d like you to consider visiting your nearest psych ward.

There are some factors that make the Durant decision more damning than the infamous LeBron drama we watched unfold seven-years ago. Cleveland, unlike Oklahoma, was going to go as far as LeBron could carry them. James’ best teammates in his first stint as a Cavalier were Mo Williams, Delonte West, Ben Wallace, Wally Szczerbiak, Anthony Gibson, Larry Hughes and Shaquille O'Neal. Dan Gilbert, for all his pitfalls, wasn’t afraid to write a big check to any player. Desperate to put a competing team around LeBron, Gilbert and GM Denny Ferry gave up cap space, picks and other assets for decent players on bad contracts. This strategy kickstarted in 2006 lead to his departure. In hindsight: we couldn’t really blame LeBron for wanting to leave. We had a right to be bummed. But from his viewpoint wasn’t hard to see why he wanted to bolt.

In contrast, the Thunder had a GM willing to let his young core breathe. In doing so Durant flourished with Westbrook, Harden, Ibaka, Adams, Waiters, and never spent a year in Oklahoma since 2009 on a bad team. Ownership clutched their pearls when the idea of paying the luxury tax was even uttered. Cleveland drafted poorly, were too willing to overpay for pass their peak talent.

Oklahoma drafted exceptionally well. They literally weren’t willing to pay the price of greatness and lacked the fortitude to know what was good for them long-term after the Harden trade. Case and point: mismanaging of Durant’s foot injury in 2014-15, the staff rushed the reigning MVP back to the floor before he was ready and killed yet another promising season. Afterwards, Russell Westbrook snapped and attempted to carpet bomb the rest of the league by himself. Scottie Brooks, Sam Presti, Clay Bennett couldn’t bring themselves to DNP Russ, allowing the star to put unnecessary miles on himself, and in a deep draft that year the Thunder picked fourteenth when potential game changers Myles Turner, Trey Lyles, Devin Booker and Justise Winslow were already off the board.

LeBron left a Cleveland team who anxiously sold their future, in order to build a contender in Miami. In need of a fresh start, he also took the smoother path to a title. Miami, unlike Golden State, wasn’t set at every position at the time of LeBron’s arrival. Were they favorites to comfortably win-it-all? Absolutely. But, Mike Bibby played 21 minutes a game in the playoffs, started all but one of those twenty-one games. It wasn’t as if the Heat were without flaws. It’s more difficult to build a title contender three close friends than to join a cast and crew that didn’t need you in the first place. You felt the role-players mattered on the Miami. If Shane Battier misses his three attempt in Gams 2, at the 5:08 mark of the Finals, the Thunder go up 2-0 and we’re staring at a completely different NBA landscape possibly.

The lack of vision, outside the box thinking and uncompromising owners lead to the Durant departure. Thunder fans have no right to throw him under the bus. In 2010, all the media circulation on where LeBron was going to go after his contract with Cleveland expired wore him down to the point where he disengaged in Game 5 of the Boston series, tore off his jersey in the decisive Game 6 defeat and announced his leaving on national TV. Durant didn’t quit on his team; he willed them past the Spurs, played the best ball of his life in every facet, except scoring, in the Golden State series. Bitching about KD developing close-ties within the Warriors isn’t valid, there’s no evidence to support he didn’t leave it all on the floor for his team. When KD hangs up his laces and the all the statistics were all set in stone, the lone edge KD will undoubtedly have over LeBron is his mental toughness at the crucial point right before they hit the market for the first time as unrestricted free agents.

Now Durant vs LeBron is an official rivalry, not wishful thinking. Durant scored one over his biggest adversary, overtook him at almost every turn and nullified perhaps the greatest performance by a loser in the NBA Finals. For the entire year we argued KD rode the coattails of Curry to reach the championship that alluded him; fast forward eleven months and Durant was the one carrying Curry over a Cavaliers team that wasn’t afraid of them like the rest of the league was a year before. And in the process of doing launched himself over Curry; taking over Golden State and burying Under Armour.

No matter your qualms, Durant made the right decision for Kevin Durant. He’s a grown man who’s earned the right to do what’s ultimately right for himself and himself alone.