#hi again martin and bosco!!

[i-am-pinkie]

☺️

I’m paying to force seven thousand strangers to see a photo of my late husband having fun with his dog. Tumblr Blaze is totally worth it. XD

[gagbrag]

Qawaali Song Of Shahrukh Khan’s Zero Is Peppy Number With Katrina Kaif

Trailer of Shahrukh’s Zero has already arrived which seems like an ambitious project with lots of VFX involved in it. Buzz around the movie is quite high at the moment. Glimpses of couple of songs have been given by director Anand L. Rai already. In one of these songs, Shahrukh Khan will be seen with Sultan Salman Khan and Eid trailer of Zero has given us some hint about it. There are couples of other songs also where romantic side of Shahrukh Khan can be seen once again. Both the songs have been choreographed by Bosco Martis. Now, let’s know little more about these songs.

Choreographer Bosco Caesar has confirmed the fact one of the song is a Qawali. Bosco has said, “It’s a mood-based situational song. Some portions of it were visible in the trailer when SRK is seen running in his kachchha (boxers) on the road.”

Last time, Shahrukh has been seen in a Qawwali while doing ‘Tujmse Milke’ song for Main Hoon Naa that has released in the year 2004. On the occasion, Bosco has said that the Qawwali song is not conventional. He has said, “We have designed something special. It doesn’t have a signature move, but will appeal to the audience.”

In the movie Zero, Shahrukh Khan will be seen as a vertically challenged person. In order to make the character right, tedious work of VFX is done for each and every frame of this movie. Due to this reason, shooting of the song has been difficult according to the choreographer Bosco Martin. He has told us, “We have designed something special. It doesn’t have a signature move, but will appeal to the audience.”

Katrina is expected to be seen in a different avatar in Zero also. Regarding the song with Katrina, Bosco has said “With Katrina, you can’t expect anything but a high-voltage dance number. She’s come a long way when it comes to dancing. The whole look and picturisation distinct from what she has done before. We are in the process of filming and it should be out soon.”

Later on, Bosco has also added “We have done Pashmina (Fitoor, 2016) and Kaala Chashma (Baar Baar Dekho, 2016) with her. This is one of the biggest dance numbers that we have shot with her in terms of scale”

[ryanellisphoto]

#148 — Saturday, February 2nd, 2019 — Ryan Ellis Photography - Detroit Street Photography Session #148 — Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 (ca. 1971) - Nikkor 55mm f/1.2 (ca. 1977) - Joel Bosco 

Arrived @ 10:30 AM 

Departed @ 4:30 PM 

796 photos (and 13 videos) taken in 6 hours with just 63 “keepers” among them, rendering an 8% “success” rate at a pace of 132.67 shots per hour (I aspire to have at least a 10% “success” rate, taking at least 100 photos per hour as I am going out and around).

PATH TAKEN:

Greektown

The Broadway (and Shoes) (I met [again] and photographed the owner, Pepper Martin)

The Belt (I hesitated to photograph as freely as I usually do in order to preserve what I thought were the only two batteries I had on me… I wanted to put a positive twist on my blunder in my head [extoling the creativity that might spring at last by the pressure of a limitation], but my realism overrode my optimism this once, and I let myself mourn my apparent absent-mindedness)

David Klein Gallery (So very graciously, I was allowed to see the showing prior to the gallery’s opening time for the day. This is already my favorite gallery in the city. To use a lovely old-English word, I was astonied by that level of kindness; it stuck with me all day)

The Detroit Shoppe (I photographed and chatted with the man tending the store)

Campus Martius Park (I met with my hip hop pal, “Shadow Klan.” I told him I had portraits of him as well as a mix CD made by a recent friend I met at the Detroit Synth Project. This man can do a good bit musically, and in this context was doing early hip-hop-sounding beats. I hope to collaborate with the good man.)

Monroe Street headed towards GT (I photographed the two birds [one in flight] here… I asked a man passing by why there was a small knot of sparrows all collected on top of one SUV parked by the road with bike racks on it as opposed to the similar SUV right behind it that had nothing whatsoever on top of its otherwise quite-identical roof. He said that it was because there was snow that was turning to ice atop the one that was absent atop the other. I agreed and praised the man’s intelligence and perception. Also, the sun, I thought, was shining on the one car and not the other.)

Greektown (I gathered my portraits of “Shadow Klan” as well as my Detroit Synth Project-veteran pal’s hip-hop mix CD, and I laughed immensely [and for the rest of the day] about the fact I was going to turn the tables on my friend by essentially giving the giver what the giver usually gave ………… Also, I scoured my vehicle and found TWO more batteries [and this time full instead of half-full batteries for my Nikon D800! I thought I had put them on one bag, but they were in another. I shouted and sang in out and out joy for a while in my freezing cold car]! That turned my day right around from gloomy to glowing [regarding my outlook on how many shots I would be able to take] …………………… It was so cold in the car that drinking the Powerade I left in there as I went out and walked gave me immediate and intense brainfreeze!) 

Campus Martius Park (No “Shadow Klan” [my rapper pal] in sight)

The Esplanade on Woodward Avenue (from here I spied a SMART bus [just a plain, old city “omnibus,” as old Brtisihers might call it] across the street from me. I photographed the driver [with his ascent] through the window before taking a couple of portraits of him at the door from farther and nearer. He was a nice gent, and I showed him the shots and CD I had in my left hand in a grocery bag. He seemed charmed by the mission I was on to give these to my pal.)

Spirit of Detroit Plaza (Here I met Joel Bosco [travel {etc.} photographer -- his IG is joelbosco] I joked that the Spirit of Detroit had strong arms to be holding the people and gilt bronze sphere in his two arms without budging for so long. I added that we should shoot sometime together in the future, and I gave him my business card and headed further out to anywhere, Detroit)

Hart Plaza (I decided, whether or not good pictures would occur along the way, I would take my chance to wave hello to the nation geographically above and below me [Canada]. Before I got my chance, as I was walking that way, I turned and looked down a stairway that led to a below-ground commons loop, with both open and enclosed gathering areas, in the plaza. I usually avoid that area, because it is rife with homeless folks year-round and has too many spots that have too few wider views along its course to see if an attacker might be in waiting. It was what turned out to be a post service shopping cart that caught my eye and beckoned me warily down the snowy stairs. I can be daft, and I was here. I did not notice there were several young men snowboarding perpendicular to the path down the stairs I was on. There was a perpendicular set of stairs that also went from the ground level down to an underground level. I asked permission to use my camera, and when the athletes agreed, I took full advantage of the Carhart bib and coat I was wearing [with Red Wing boots] and layed across the ground to get my first shots of the extreme sports fanatics. I am a tad ashamed to include three shots from this part of my day, since I took so many other good shots; I just liked the way these felt better) ——— (I ran into Mr. Joel Bosco [the aforementioned photographer] again. I restated my desire to sometime shoot with him in the city, and he asked an interesting question, querying me what it meant to go shoot with someone. I paused and pondered and looked at him and asked what he was doing at the moment. He took on an open posture and gestured quizzically. I then said I was headed anyplace myself and asked if we might do the same path together at once, and he agreed.)

Campus Martius Park

The Hudson Site

Urban Bean Co. 

David Klein Gallery (I had such a grin on my face [and it was a dumb one] as I walked again through the gallery. I could not shake it off my face. It was shaping to be a good day, and I was overwhelmed by the goodness of the folks I knew and had just met in the city. I decided to direct more of my energy to enjoying the flutter of endorphins rather than trying to finesse their exact source)

Library Street Collective 

The Belt

Greektown 

Diamond’s Hot Dog Stand (You will never guess what Joel and I bought at the stand. He got a dog and a Pepsi; I got a dog  and  a Mountain Dew [I mostly never drink pop, so this was a rare treat]. His had jalapeños while mine did not. Diamond bought a food truck! She is expanding her business. I am happy for her and wish her all the best in the world.)

Eastern Market

Hot Bax (His IG is greektownhotbax -- He is Deon, my street drummer / bucket drummer friend. I have seen and photographed the man as long as I have been doing street photography in Detroit. I told him that my second week in Detroit [in January 2016… look up my D.S.P.S. #002] doing street shooing, I photographed his longtime collaborator drumming not far from where he was drumming. Deon seems to be doing well.)

The Belt

The Guardian Building (Mr. Joel Bosco and I parted ways after seeing just inside and part of the way around the outside of this building)

Campus Martius Park (I saw a beam of light hitting these three young men in Detroit Red Wings [our city’s professional, big league {at times world’s best} hockey team]. They were crowded around a pair of public electric scooters. I asked and was permitted to photograph them, and that I did. The one man with the overalls had a Detroit Super Mario look about him. I told him as much, and he chuckled over the resemblance)

Greektown

——————————

WHAT WENT ON ON THIS DAY IN DETROIT?

I just told you. Hahaha. 

TL;DR — I shot alone (in the sense that I had no plans to meet with anyone that day) for the first time in months, but Providence paired me with a new friend, and together we traversed downtown and Greektown and eastern market, cameras in hand, having conversations on foot.

——————————

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[sogivemecoffeeandtvhistory]

Is O.J. Innocent? The Mysteries of June 12, 1994

Lest anybody think the trial of O.J. Simpson for the June 12, 1994 murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Lyle Goldman has lost the power to captivate the public after over two decades, I would point not to FX’s wildly successful miniseries, American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson, or ESPN’s masterful 30 for 30 documentary, O.J.: Made in America or Investigative Discovery’s new documentary series Is O.J. Innocent? The Missing Evidence, which premieres tonight, but rather to the unusual series of events that unfolded on March 4, 2016.

Early that morning, it was reported that the Los Angeles Police Department was conducting an investigation into a folding buck knife that had been recovered from Simpson’s former Brentwood estate years ago. The construction worker who first identified the knife had turned it over to a retired cop, George Maycott, who was working security in the area in an off-duty capacity. Maycott only turned the knife over to the police in January after making an inquiry about the Simpson case in planning to have the knife framed.

The response that day was notable and its echoes were impossible to miss. Fittingly, the first report came from TMZ, the celebrity gossip website founded by Harvey Levin, who came to national attention as an investigative reporter for KCBS during the Simpson trial. Just as the National Enquirer, the Star, and the Globe broke countless stories throughout the Simpson trial, it was, once again, a tabloid that is known to pay its sources for leads that broke the story and the more reputable mainstream media quickly followed. CNN reported on the story hourly that day, and all of the cable networks carried live LAPD Capt. Andrew Neiman’s press conference responding to the developments. Virtually all of the major players in the case offered some kind of exclusive reaction to the media, as did a variety of legal analysts, many of whom first made a name for themselves during the Simpson trial. The frivolity that came to infest the Simpson trial was evident: Many, even Neiman, could not help but note how interesting the timing of the discovery was given the widespread popularity of American Crime Story. One CNN commentator said, “It’s Inception meets Soapdish.” Indeed.

Once the initial shock wore off, the story faded from public view, though TMZ, the Los Angeles Times and CNN kept up with it through its natural conclusion over the next month. The Los Angeles Police Department confirmed on April 1 – just days before American Crime Story’s finale – that the knife was unconnected to the crime.  

As captivated as I was by the unexpected turn of events, I considered it highly unlikely that the knife was at all relevant to the case. The most obvious indication was the ambiguous timeline of when, exactly, the knife had been recovered from Simpson’s former estate, with dates ranging between 1998 and 2002. This matters greatly because Simpson had not even lived in his house on 360 North Rockingham since the summer of 1997, when the bank that had foreclosed on it put it up for auction. An investment banker purchased the estate for nearly $4 million in 1998 and had the property razed. As it happened, Maycott retired from the LAPD in 1998 and his attorney later clarified that the knife had been recovered in 2002 or 2003. Moreover, this was not even the first knife to have been recovered from the Simpson estate by a construction worker. On April 24, 1998, a folding blade knife was found, though the police quickly established that the knife contained nothing of evidentiary value.

But until the investigation concluded, one could not dismiss outright the possibility that the knife could have been involved. After all, the murder weapon had never been recovered and that leaves a number of questions. The 15-inch stiletto knife Simpson purchased from Ross Cutlery weeks before the murders that the prosecutors suggested could have been the murder weapon at the preliminary hearing was, in fact, a red herring. The defense turned it over in an envelope early on in the proceedings, a move that attracted much speculation and intrigue during the summer of 1994. So from where did the murder weapon originate? Was it a knife given to Simpson at the Forschner Group board meeting he attended just days before the murder? Did it come from Nicole Brown Simpson’s Brentwood condominium? Did it have something to do with the empty box with the Swiss Army logo found by Det. Mark Fuhrman and his partner, Brad Roberts, at Rockingham upon their first search of Simpson’s house after the murders?

I found it interesting when sources within the Los Angeles Police Department told NBC News by the end of the day March 4 that the recovered knife could not have been responsible for the wounds that killed Nicole and Ron. I thought it even more interesting that, in a TMZ report published early on March 5, Dr. Irwin Golden, the deputy medical examiner who conducted the autopsies (as well as the autopsies of Jose and Kitty Menendez, the other double homicide that transfixed Los Angeles and the country), claimed a folding buck knife could have been responsible. Golden, curiously enough, testified at the preliminary hearing but not at the criminal trial. It was his superior, Dr. Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran, who was not involved with the autopsy, who testified. It was explained at the time that Golden would not testify because of the dozens of procedural mistakes and oversights that transpired during the autopsies. (A coroner’s investigator was not even called to the crime scene until 10 hours after the police first arrived.) However, it should be noted that Golden also testified, under cross-examination by Robert Shapiro during the hearing, that there were “two morphologically different types of stab wounds on the victims.” When Shapiro asked, “Could two knives have produced the injuries on both of the victims?” Golden responded, “Yes.”

Two knives would very strongly imply two assailants. This, of course, runs counter to the very specific scenario that the prosecution locked into early on in the summer of 1994: Simpson committed the murders at around 10:15 p.m., with premeditation and without any accomplices or accessories.

After the verdicts to the criminal trial, then-District Attorney Gil Garcetti was quick to announce that the case was closed. But the facts of the Simpson case have never felt resolved, starting with what really happened the night of the murders. Until and unless the events of that night are fully explained, it will be hard to dismiss outright any purported new development in the case, no matter how unexpected or unlikely.

Questions about what happened between 9:30 and 11 p.m. on the evening of June 12, 1994 and how that influenced the trial that followed have percolated for years – mostly in message boards and freelance journalistic projects and in the BBC documentary OJ: The Untold Story, which, notably, never aired in the United States – but they are rarely taken seriously or discussed extensively. The premiere of Is O.J. Innocent? The Missing Evidence on Investigation Discovery is likely to attract slightly more attention given the involvement of Martin Sheen as executive producer (and narrator). While it remains to be seen what conclusions are drawn and theories are sketched in the six-part series, the facts of the case stand to bear much closer scrutiny even over two decades later.

The Simpson case has all of the elements of an American spectacle: celebrity, conflict, violence, tragedy, diversity, mystery, scandal, spectacle, controversy, pride before the fall, conspiracy, rumor, race, innuendo, a “mountain of evidence,” a “trail of blood,” and no shortage of secrets or lies involving all parties to the case. Yet at another level, the deeper one looks into the facts of the murders and the trials that followed, the stronger impression is that not all is what it appears to be with the Simpson case, which came to be about so many things other than the brutal stabbing deaths of two people.

As much as the events of June 12 and June 13 have been disseminated and litigated, there are still a number of lingering questions and oddities surrounding the very beginning of the investigations into the murders.

Was there an accessory to the crime? During the June 20, 1994 news conference held after O.J. Simpson pleaded not guilty to the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, Marcia Clark locked the prosecution into a very restrictive scenario, saying that Simpson was “charged alone, because he is the sole murderer” and that “the investigation does not indicate that anyone else was involved.” She also predicted, “We do expect fully to prove premeditation.” With that – and at such an early point in the case – Clark hubristically removed any chance of the prosecution fully exploring the possibility that Simpson had an accomplice at the scene of the murders or an accessory after the fact.

However, this was not an opinion unanimously shared by the prosecution. Shortly after the murders, an anonymous member of the prosecution’s team told TIME magazine: “There was a clean-up. He had help.” Bill Hodgman, director of special operations at the L.A. district’s attorney office, was known to have been particularly skeptical. Years after the verdicts in the criminal trial, he told the journalist Joseph Bosco, “I always knew it wasn’t O.J. alone,” and that “he must’ve had help.” Daniel Petrocelli, who represented the Goldmans in the civil suit, did not raise the notion at trial, but pointed to a number of indications that somebody “extremely loyal” must have helped Simpson in his book about the case, Triumph of Justice: The Final Judgment of the Simpson Saga.  

There are reasonable questions to be asked about the evidence. Take Simpson’s white Ford Bronco, for example. Given how bloody the crime scene was, why wasn’t there more blood in the Bronco? Det. Mark Fuhrman identified only a speck of blood on the car door’s outside handle and smears on the console, steering wheel, and carpeting. However, the forensic evidence the Bronco could offer would soon be rendered obsolete. The car was never properly impounded that day and when it was finally impounded, it was never properly secured and, given its notoriety, broken into multiple times that summer.  

And speaking of cars, consider the testimony of Allan Park, the chauffeur who drove Simpson to the airport the night of the murders. At the preliminary hearing and during the criminal trial, Park testified that he saw two cars parked inside the estate at the Rockingham gate that night: a Rolls Royce and a “dark” car behind it. However, Arnelle Simpson testified that when she returned from the movies that night, she parked her black Saab on the Rockingham side of the residence. And it was the black Saab that appeared in photographs the next day. So what did Allan Park see the night of the murders? Could it have been the black Saab?

There is a very curious, and consistent, lie in Arnelle Simpson’s testimony at the preliminary hearing, criminal trial, and civil trial. She testified that after she was first approached by the police the morning of June 13, she led the officers – Detectives Tom Lange, Philip Vannatter, Ronald Philips and Mark Fuhrman – into the front of the house so that she could unlock the door and turn off the alarm. However, Lange, Vannatter, Phillips, Fuhrman, and houseguest Brian “Kato” Kaelin all testified that Arnelle led them through the back door of the house. When Simpson’s defense attorney, Dan Leonard, asked Arnelle about the detectives’ testimony, she said it was “impossible” for them to have entered through the back door. Why would four police detectives agree to conspire with Kato Kaelin to lie about the entrance of the house they first used?

Why Arnelle Simpson could have reason to lie is another matter. O.J. Simpson and Kaelin both testified in the civil trial that before Simpson boarded his flight to Chicago that night, he called Kaelin to ask that he set the home’s Westec alarm system. This was the first and only instance in which Kaelin, who had been living at Rockingham for about five months at the time, would be asked to do this. Kaelin testified that he knew the alarm had set because he saw the light go from green to red and, furthermore, that he did not deactivate the alarm because he did not know how.

This strongly implies that someone was in the house between around 11:35 p.m., when Simpson called Kaelin, and just after 5:30 a.m., when the cops entered the estate and no alarm was activated. Even if Kaelin had lied about setting the alarm, what would Arnelle have to gain about perpetuating the lie of how she entered the house that morning in her testimony? Could this have something to do with the discovery of a load of wet wash still in the machine and a blood smear on the light switch in the adjacent bathroom? It should be noted the load of laundry included a pair of sweats and women’s underwear – and that Simpson’s live-in maid, Josephine “Gigi” Guarin, was away that weekend. (Curiously, neither the sweats nor the blood smear were collected as evidence, though the washing machine appeared in police video.) Guarin testified at the criminal trial that the laundry basket in the room had been Arnelle’s, while Arnelle testified that she had not even been in the main house since the Saturday night before the murders and that she had not run a load of laundry herself in days. If that’s the case, then who ran that load of laundry? How many loads of laundry were there?

This brings to mind a particular rumor about Kato Kaelin, which is that the story he told on the stand about the night of the murders was quite different from what he confided to friends like Grant Cramer in the days after the murders, which was reportedly much more suspenseful and dramatic. One account has it that Kaelin found Simpson in his yard that night covered with blood and helped him undress. Another has it that Simpson told Kaelin he was involved in a traffic accident. Whatever the case, Kaelin was tracked down the day after the murders and brought to Rockingham, where he spoke with Simpson and most members of his inner circle. Kaelin appeared to have been sufficiently rattled. He clumsily invoked the Fifth Amendment in his appearance before the grand jury at the end of that week, despite the fact that he was a witness and not a suspect. By the time Kaelin testified at the criminal trial, he would not even concede telling Cramer that Simpson expressed relief at the fact that Kaelin could testify that he was home all evening.

Of the possible accessories, one of the most intriguing is the woman who tracked Kaelin down the day after the murders, Cathy Randa, Simpson’s secretary. Randa’s fealty to Simpson knew no bounds: She helped organize Simpson’s inner circle in the weeks immediately after the murders. She did not have the best relationship with Nicole; it was Randa who facilitated Simpson’s liaisons with Paula Barbieri, even as he was working on reconciliation. More consequentially, Randa played a curious role in the destruction of evidence in August 1994. When the police executed a search warrant on Simpson’s San Vicente office in connection with the grand jury investigation of Al Cowlings for his role in abetting the infamous June 17 Bronco chase, they discovered pamphlets and other materials concerning domestic violence, but were unable to seize them because they were not covered by the warrant. When the police returned weeks later with a warrant, Randa had shredded the documents, even though she knew full well they were of interest. So it’s particularly interesting that Randa had told the police that she received a message from Simpson on her answering machine the night of the murders and that she “never even thought about” saving the message. If that message contained information that could have exonerated Simpson I tend to think she would have thought about saving the message.

While I think Robert Kardashian’s involvement in Simpson’s life and this case is far more extensive and disturbing than has ever been made public, he has a most interesting role in two events that occurred in that pivotal five-day span between the murders and Simpson’s arrest. It was, of course, Kardashian who was videotaped walking away from Simpson’s estate with his Louis Vuitton bag the day after the murders. A couple of months back, Reelz aired a documentary about Kardashian, which featured exclusive video of the complete series of events by which Kardashian walked off with the bag, provided by Burt Kearns, a television producer who had recorded it at the time. Cathy Randa, who, along with Simpson’s business lawyer Leroy “Skip” Taft, accompanied Simpson back to Rockingham the day after the murders, gets out of the car with her bag and the Louis Vuitton bag, and immediately grips Kardashian in an embrace. They walk over to the foot of the driveway and he has his arms firmly around her as they talk in an obvious and concentrated tone, but now the bag is placed up against his leg. By this point, Simpson had been handcuffed and un-handcuffed by the police in his backyard before Det. Vannatter and Simpson’s attorney Howard Weitzman walked back out and into the car. Still standing on the right side of the driveway, Kardashian is now holding the bag. As the crowd begins to disperse, Kardashian shifts to the left side and walks off with Randa. Kardashian would insist that he first asked the police to take the bag onto the property and was told they would not. Whatever happened, the video gives lie to any notion that Kardashian’s response upon receiving the bag was to turn it over to the authorities. Kardashian insisted in a court document during the criminal trial that he never opened the bag or knew what was in it and when it was ultimately turned over, it was empty. Whatever was in that bag will likely never be more than conjecture.

And what are we to make of the fact that two days after the murders Kardashian accompanied Simpson to LAX so that he could personally retrieve the golf bag he had taken with him to Chicago? Why did Kardashian accompany him? While Kardashian was fastidiously loyal to Simpson throughout the trial, he was not a member of Simpson’s inner circle in the period leading up to the murders. And besides, why was it so urgent that Simpson personally retrieve his golf clubs before even Nicole’s funeral service?

Among others, I firmly believe that Arnelle Simpson, Kato Kaelin, Cathy Randa, and the late Robert Kardashian, have been less than forthcoming about their involvement the night of the murders. And that’s without even mentioning Al Cowlings, who surely must know everything Simpson knew about the night of the murders.  

“Two Bodies On The Westside”: In Joseph Bosco’s book on the Simpson trial, A Problem of Evidence, he reports the rather extraordinary detail that at 10:30 p.m. on the night of the murders, a woman called the Los Angeles Police Department to inquire about a double homicide on the Westside, of which there would be only one that evening. This fascinating piece of information went without mention throughout the entire trial but the officer who responded to the call, Sgt. Stephen R. Merrin, a two-decade-plus veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department and patrol watch commander for the stationhouse in Wilshire that day, up until 10:45 p.m. Bosco later explained Merrin insisted on confidentiality but he did testify at the civil trial. According to police logs and his January 1997 testimony, at approximately 10:30 p.m. that night, Merrin received a phone call from a woman who identified herself only as being “with NBC” and asked if the police was “sitting on two bodies on the Westside.” It should be noted that Brentwood is not even Wilshire’s jurisdiction.

There has never been an explanation for this phone call. What are the chances of a woman inquiring about a double homicide in the neighborhood where a double homicide occurred at or around the time it happened. There are a few ways of looking at this: Someone wanted the police at the scene of the crime much earlier than they otherwise would have been. If this woman actually was affiliated with NBC, then perhaps she did really want to know what the police knew about the murders, which still leaves the question of what she knew, and how. In the course of the civil trial testimony of Paul Tippin, who was involved in “clue detail” in the weeks after the murders, he mentioned that the notes for this woman’s call included the name Pete Noyes, who was news director of the NBC affiliate at the time. Was there somebody at the scene of the crime after the murders but before the police first arrived? Or was this just a random coincidence?

Brad Roberts, The Forgotten Man: Given how destructive and distracting Det. Mark Fuhrman’s role in the police investigation and trial became, and how much of the police investigation came on to hinge on his credibility, it bears much closer scrutiny that Brad Roberts, Fuhrman’s partner at the time, was with him much of that night and was in a position to corroborate much of what he saw. And yet after that first day, Roberts may as well have disappeared.  

At 1:05 a.m. on June 13, 1994, Detective Ron Phillips, Fuhrman’s supervisor, called to inform him of the double homicide and summon him to the crime scene. Phillips and Fuhrman, who drove over together and arrived at 2:10 a.m., would be the sixteenth and seventeenth police personnel – but the first two detectives – at the scene. By 2:30, Officer Robert Riske, the first member of the police to respond at the scene, had given Fuhrman and Phillips a walkthrough briefing of the crime scene and Fuhrman was making preliminary notes when Brad Roberts arrived. They then toured the scene again.

However, the case was soon enough kicked up to Tom Lange and Phil Vannatter, of the high-profile Robbery-Homicide Division. Interestingly enough, when Vannatter first arrived at the scene, it was Phillips – who held a supervisory position and who had not conducted a thorough walkthrough of the crime scene – who briefed him and also turned over Fuhrman’s notes. Roberts never submitted a written report of his findings, according to the defense team’s private investigator Pat McKenna, and Lange and Vannatter never submitted what, if any, notes they took as they surveyed the crime scene.

Roberts was in a position to corroborate many of Fuhrman’s findings. When Fuhrman guided him through the crime scene, they saw one glove and one knit cap, drops of blood on the walkway gate and, of some consequence, a bloody fingerprint on the knob of the walkway gate at Bundy. As Roberts told Diane Sawyer in a February 1997 interview, “I mean, the killer signed his name with that fingerprint.”

Roberts joined Fuhrman at Rockingham sometime after 7 in the morning – after Fuhrman had returned to South Bundy from Rockingham to compare the glove he discovered on the estate with the one found at the crime scene. Fuhrman, who had identified a speck of blood on the door of the white Ford Bronco parked on the street, credits Roberts with having identified the blood inside the Bronco. Additionally, Fuhrman and Roberts observed the drops of blood on the Rockingham driveway, a large drop of blood outside the front door, and three drops of blood in the foyer. When Fuhrman and Roberts were assigned to clear out the house, they conducted a sweep in which they found two dress socks in Simpson’s master bedroom, which would not be collected for two weeks. They also found: an empty box with a Swiss Army logo at the edge of the tub in Simpson’s master bathroom, used black terry-cloth towels next to the bathtub, dark clothes in the washing machine, and blood on the light switch of the bathroom adjacent to the laundry room.

Moreover, when Simpson returned to Rockingham the morning after the murders and was briefly handcuffed, it was Roberts who led Simpson away after being un-handcuffed. When Roberts told Simpson that the police found “a blood trail that goes from the Bronco right up to your house,” Simpson broke into a sweat and hyperventilated, saying only, “Oh man … Oh man … Oh man …” Furthermore, it was Roberts who gave Marcia Clark a tour of the Rockingham scene when she first arrived. Clark would say in her book about the case, Without a Doubt, that Roberts had nothing to bring to the case. Clark also said in her book that she personally oversaw the execution of the June 28 search warrant. That search failed to turn up a number of pieces of evidence Fuhrman and Roberts had first discovered: the Swiss Army box, the clothes in the washing machine, the blood on the light switch. They were never collected. The house was, of course, spotless again by then. Fuhrman did not see a conspiracy in this. He told Greta Van Susteren, then at CNN, in a June 1999 interview, “It was simply forgotten. There is nothing overt that I can show.”

Yet after that first day, neither the District Attorney’s office nor the Robbery-Homicide detectives followed up with Roberts in any way regarding his involvement. Just as surprisingly, neither did the media.

In his memoir about the case, Murder in Brentwood and in a later book, The Murder Business, Fuhrman lays out a compelling and shocking reason why Roberts’ involvement in the case was all but disappeared According to Fuhrman, this was to protect Vannatter and Lange, as well as the prosecution, from significant embarrassment.

For starters, that’s because a number of key pieces of evidence mentioned above were never properly collected – the black socks; not all of the blood drops at Rockingham were collected; the dark clothes in the washing machine. Others were never collected at all, like the Swiss Army box and, most seriously, the fingerprint on the walkway gate. In fact, blood was not recovered from the gate until July 3 and the sample that was recovered contained a conspicuously concentrated level of DNA than the samples collected the morning of the murders, as well as a high level of the blood preservative EDTA.

In Murder in Brentwood, Fuhrman recounts how, in preparation for his March 1995 testimony, Marcia Clark advised him to be much more ambiguous about the blood he found on the turnstile knob. He called it a “bloody fingerprint” and in the course of their conversation she said, “But not being an expert you would not be changing your testimony by saying, ‘possible fingerprint,’ would you?” Fuhrman then goes on to recount two instances in which Clark rejected his suggestion to call Roberts to testify, even though doing so would have insulated the prosecution from attacks lobbed by the defense: When Dennis Fung was hammered in cross-examination for not collecting the extra blood drops from Bundy until July, Fuhrman suggested Roberts testify to having observed the drops in his walkthrough on June 13. When the defense claimed that the black socks in Simpson’s bedroom were planted because they did not appear in the video of the Rockingham scene filmed on June 13, Fuhrman suggested Roberts testify to having observed them when they cleared the house on June 13.

If Roberts had testified, Fuhrman surmises from this, it would have become part of the record that neither Vannatter nor Lange read the notes Fuhrman turned over when they assumed control of the case. In fact, Fuhrman’s notes would go almost entirely unmentioned over the course of the case. That’s because Lange and Vannatter never read them, at least not when they should have, at the beginning of the investigation. Fuhrman did not know this until January 1995, when he began inquiring about what became of the bloody fingerprint. Notably, in Chris Darden’s direct examination of Vannatter, he was asked to testify only to the facts that Ron Phillips submitted Fuhrman’s notes and that he maintained possession of them. He was never asked if he read them.

Why would Marcia Clark go to such great lengths to protect Vannatter? While Fuhrman, Phillips, and Roberts only met Lange and Vannatter the night of the murders, Clark and Vannatter were known to have had a friendly professional relationship and had worked on cases before. In fact, when Vannatter called Clark the morning after the murders, thus bringing her into the case, he did so in defiance of the typical protocol. As Joseph Bosco explained, if a deputy district attorney is needed at a crime scene outside of working hours, a member of the district attorney’s office is assigned to be on call. Vannatter did not call the assigned number that morning. Instead, he called Clark at her private home and Clark arrived at Rockingham while the search warrant was still being executed.

That’s because, according to sources in the district attorney’s office who spoke with Bosco, Clark had “helped cops with evidence problems in other cases.” Lucienne Coleman, a deputy district attorney and close friend of Clark’s until the trial estranged them, told him, “It doesn’t surprise me that the police would call Marcia specifically. She’s friendly with cops. She would sit and drink with them.” What Clark knew and when is still very much an open question as far as I’m concerned.

Roberts was not simply a passive bystander in all of this. As Fuhrman recounted in his book The Murder Business, in the middle of August 1994, Roberts submitted to Phillips a memo for Deputy District Attorney Bill Hodgman explaining exactly what evidence he found and how it conflicted with Vannatter’s testimony at the preliminary hearing, where he took credit for many of the discoveries made by Roberts, such as the blood in the Bronco. As Fuhrman explains, in preliminary hearings it is acceptable for one detective to testify to the observations of other detectives for efficiency, but that Vannatter did so in a way that completely cut out Roberts’ role and other discoveries he had made outside of Vannatter’s presence.

The day after Roberts submitted the memo, Vannatter and Lange showed up in the squad room at the West L.A. stationhouse and spoke with Roberts in an interrogation room. Roberts told Fuhrman that Vannatter had intercepted the memo: “He said he was the finder, and I had to be okay with that. He said I couldn’t testify to the evidence I found.” According to Fuhrman, Lange and Vannatter convinced Roberts to destroy the memo for the sake of the case. Fuhrman suggests this is because the way in which Vannatter had testified about the evidence under oath at the preliminary hearing, and would testify at the criminal trial, was not truthful. If Roberts testified and contradicted any aspect of Vannatter’s story, the defense would have an opportunity to argue that the first search warrant at Rockingham was written and sworn to by an officer who lied under oath about the evidence used to support the search warrant in the first place. (When Fuhrman raised the episode to Hodgman years later, Hodgman said he had never received the memo and would have launched an internal investigation and proceeded from there if he had. One can only wonder how different the case would have been.)

Pat McKenna, the investigator for the defense team, explained to Bosco a different theory as to why Roberts may have been shut out of the case. Given how much Roberts found at both the Rockingham and Bundy crime scenes, isn’t it curious he never submitted a report in the period immediately after the murders? Certainly a report, submitted in a timely manner, explaining the extent of his findings, would have been able to counter what Vannatter claimed and firmly establish Roberts’ involvement with the case.

McKenna believes that Fuhrman left Bundy for Rockingham prior to Lange and Vannatter’s arrival at 4 in the morning, and that he had company. The defense asked for Phillips, Roberts, and Fuhrman’s phone records in that pivotal two-hour period. McKenna told Bosco, “What we finally got were sanitized telephone records. We wanted to know what all those blacked-out calls were.” Rosa Lopez, the Salvadoran maid of Simpson’s next door neighbors Wolfgang and Marta Salinger, is best remembered for her confused testimony about when exactly she saw the Bronco outside Simpson’s home. What’s not nearly as well remembered is that she also testified to having been frightened by the sounds of footsteps and two men’s voices and that in the early morning hours after the murders, Fuhrman interviewed her – the only police officer to do so, although she said he had told her that he would follow up. Rockingham was not being canvassed at that point.

As with most aspects of this case, I think much more went on here than meets the eye.

For what it’s worth, his involvement – or non-involvement – with the Simpson case does not appear to have had a negative impact on Brad Roberts’ career. In fact, he would be involved with a number of high-profile investigations over the next few years, including the 1996 death of high-profile movie producer Don Simpson (who had 21 different drugs in his system when he died) and the death a few months earlier of Dr. Stephen Ammerman, Simpson’s unorthodox rehab physician, who died in a pool house at Simpson’s estate from an overdose cocaine, morphine, Valium, and Venlafaxine. Roberts led the investigation into the December 2000 murder of Susan Berman, the daughter of organized crime figure David Berman and friend of Robert Durst.

Perhaps his career with the Los Angeles Police Department was a primary factor, but I find it interesting that in a case where virtually everyone involved has spoke to the media and the public about the nature of their involvement, Roberts never has – with the exception of a February 1997 interview with Diane Sawyer for ABC’s Prime Time Live, as part of a promotion for Murder in Brentwood. Notably, just days after that interview aired, Roger Cossack mentioned in an interview with Fuhrman on CNN’s Burden of Proof that the show had asked whether Roberts could appear or even phone into it but that the Los Angeles Police Department would not allow him to because of the fact he is “an active police officer.” A few years later, when Geraldo Rivera sought an interview with Roberts for a special about the anniversary of the murders, he was informed by the LAPD that the request would have to be declined because the case was still in “an investigative state.”  

When did O.J. become a suspect? The defense moved early in pretrial hearings to suppress the considerable evidence obtained during the detectives’ first visit to Rockingham on June 13. Judge Ito declined to prohibit the evidence in a late September 1994 ruling, but his conclusion that the detectives – in particular Phil Vannatter, who authored the first search warrant – were not “merely negligent” but demonstrated a “reckless disregard for the truth” raised a number of questions about what, exactly, the police were doing when they jumped Simpson’s fence to conduct an exploratory detail. The fact that officers had jumped Simpson’s fence to conduct their initial search was one of several significant ones to be omitted from that first search warrant.

Throughout the trial and beyond, the official story has always been that Detectives Lange, Vannatter, Fuhrman and Philips all left South Bundy for Rockingham in order to notify O.J. Simpson, as next of kin, of the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and that he was not considered a suspect in the murders at the time they left South Bundy. LAPD Commander Keith Bushey would testify at the criminal trial that he personally ordered the officers to notify Simpson, as next of kin. Bushey specifically cited “the Belushi situation,” in which several of John Belushi’s relatives first learned of his overdose in 1983 through media reports.

During his cross-examination of Vannatter, Robert Shapiro pointed to some of the other oddities within this chain of events, starting with the fact that Simpson was not legally his ex-wife’s next of kin. There would have been sufficient evidence in Nicole’s townhouse to surmise the general nature of the relationship between Nicole and O.J. And, given that there were upwards of 15 officers at the scene, it’s not unreasonable to assume at least one of them would have known about the divorce, given Simpson’s celebrity and, more significantly, his heretofore amiable relationship with the Los Angeles Police Department.

Then there is the fact that Lange and Vannatter, the lead detectives on the case, left the murder scene prior to it being secured and prior to writing down their own notes and observations of the crime scene. As it has already been made clear, the detectives failed to read even the notes prepared by Fuhrman. Why was it necessary for four police officers to make what was supposedly only supposed to be a next-of-kin notification? Why was it necessary for the two lead detectives to be part of that trip during the first hours of the murder investigation?

While Shapiro’s memoir about the case, The Search for Justice, was largely self-serving, he makes a few additional, worthy points about the notification cover story: If Simpson wasn’t a suspect, why didn’t the police return to South Bundy to continue the crime scene investigation when no one answered the bell at the gate at Rockingham? Why did the detectives instruct Arnelle Simpson to let them into the house so they could “search the premises”? If Lange and Vannatter genuinely thought that another crime had occurred at Rockingham, why was there no backup? Why is it that when Kato Kaelin first told Fuhrman about the bumps on the wall of his guesthouse the previous night Fuhrman immediately sent Kaelin into the main house and insisted on investigating the area by himself?  

In A Problem of Evidence, Joseph Bosco presents several rather startling revelations. There was, reportedly, an administrative log at the LAPD’s Detective Headquarters with the notation that at 2:58 a.m. on June 13 “O.J. Simpson was the “suspect” in a “double homicide at 875 South Bundy.” A press release referring to Simpson as a subject of interest in the investigation was also prepared within two hours of the first officers’ arrival at the crime scene. Moreover, Bosco also reported that Vannatter, Lange, Fuhrman and Phillips were not alone when they first arrived at Rockingham. Two uniformed patrolmen in a black-and-white car were also at the scene. As Bosco points out, their presence would not have been necessary unless they were canvassing the neighborhood, which they would not have set out to do unless it was part of the criminal investigation.

The officers’ true motivations in setting out for Rockingham in the early morning hours of June 13 became a significant point of contention during the defense’s rebuttal under a characteristically bizarre set of circumstances. On September 18, 1995, Johnnie Cochran asked Judge Ito to allow the testimony of Craig Anthony and Larry Fiato, which he said would contradict the statements made by Vannatter. Larry Fiato and his brother Anthony, also known as “Tony the Animal” and “Tony Rome,” were enforcers for the Mafia before they turned informant and testified for both the U.S. government and district attorney’s office in several cases, including a 1995 murder trial that ended in conviction. (Coincidentally, Tony had previously been linked romantically to Denise Brown, who told the Boston Herald earlier in the year that he was “a wonderful guy.”)

On September 19, 1995, the Fiato brothers testified that, earlier in the year, Vannatter had discussed the police investigation with them on several occasions and made remarks to the extent that the officers did not turn up at Rockingham for a next-of-kin notification but because “the husband is always the suspect.” Larry Fiato recalled speaking with Vannatter in a hotel room during the course of a hit-for-hire investigation in January and again at the Los Angeles Courthouse in February. Tony’s recollections were vaguer but similar and he also testified that he exaggerated earlier statements made about the issue. (Out of concern for their safety as government informants, Judge Ito banned audio and video recordings of their testimony, though Larry Fiato would appear on CNN’s Larry King Live, naturally, shortly after his testimony.)

Vannatter was subsequently called back to the stand. He testified that he did not have “a specific recollection” of making such statements to the Fiato brothers but that if he did, he was referring only to the fact that “any person that has personal contact with a murder victim is a potential suspect until they are eliminated.”

Just as revealing was the testimony of FBI Special Agent Michael Wacks. He testified that he overheard Larry Fiato’s conversation with Vannatter at the Los Angeles Courthouse and while he said that Vannatter had sounded sarcastic, he did not dispute that Vannatter had said “something to the effect of not going up to the house to save victims” and that he was “somewhat surprised” that Vannatter would be discussing anything about the Simpson case with Larry Fiato but that Vannatter’s tone was “totally sarcastic.” This still leaves the question of why Vannatter was discussing any aspect of the murder investigation with mob informants. It was after this that Keith Bushey testified that he personally ordered Ron Phillips to carry out the notification.

What was the relationship between Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman? There are a number of interrelated questions as it pertains to the relationship between Ron and Nicole at the time of the murders, starting with, what was the extent of it? What did Nicole’s friends know? What did Ron’s friends know? Was Ron only there to drop off the glasses Nicole’s mother, Juditha, had misplaced at Mezzaluna that night? (John De Bello, the owner of Mezzaluna, told New York Daily News that as far as he was concerned, Ron “just went to do a good deed.”) If that is case, for whom did Nicole draw a bath in her candlelit master bathroom? And, for that matter, why was a used pregnancy test found in Nicole’s trash?

By virtually all accounts Nicole and Ron were friends but not lovers, though they were close enough that many friends saw it as likely that they would have become romantically involved in time. Whereas Nicole’s penchant for secrecy came to manifest itself in many forms, Ron’s friends were unanimous in their belief that if he was romantically involved with Nicole, or any woman, it is information he would have shared. Actually, when Ron’s friend Barry Zeldes asked him just days before the murders whether he was sleeping with Nicole, Ron reportedly answered: “If O.J. caught me with her, he’d probably kill me.”

That being said, in the weeks before the murders, Ron had been seen driving Nicole’s Ferrari (the one with the vanity license plate, L84AD8), and that he knew that was risky enough. Just two days before the murders, Ron and Nicole went to the trendy nightclub The Gate. According to the Los Angeles Times, a friend of his warned him that he was “asking for trouble” showing up at a nightclub with Nicole like that but he insisted, “We’re just friends.” And yet they were so close that Beverly Newman, who lived two houses away from Nicole on South Bundy, went so far as to tell People magazine that she assumed Ron and Nicole were married, adding, “I thought they had adopted a little black boy and I thought how nice that was. Almost every night he would be out playing with the kids.” This all indicates a particularly close and conspicuous relationship between the two. Leslie Letellier, who operated a boutique in Brentwood frequented by Ron, Nicole, and O.J., explained that Ron had met Nicole at The Gym and the nearby Starbucks, where Nicole had become “the center of attention to a lot of young, starstruck guys,” including Ron and his circle of friends, and that their paths would cross at the same boutiques, restaurants, salons, and so on.

This prompts the question: what did O.J. know or suspect? His possessiveness in the period throughout their divorce and attempted reconciliation is well known. There are numerous, similar stories about Simpson finding and interrupting Nicole while out with friends, informing her group they were still very much involved.

Faye Resnick, perhaps Nicole’s closest friend in the period before the murders, albeit an extremely controversial one, shed some light on the nature of the relationship between O.J., Nicole and Ron, both in her first book, Nicole Brown Simpson: The Private Diary of a Life Interrupted and in more detail during a March 1997 cover-story interview with Vincent Bugliosi for Playboy. In particular, Resnick recalled an episode from early May 1994, after O.J. and Nicole had returned from the group vacation to Cabo that came to signal the beginning of the end of their attempt at a reconciliation. According to Resnick:

“We were in front of Starbucks after working out that morning. We had gone to have some coffee and Ron Goldman was there with four of his friends. That’s when I met Ron. And O.J. came pulling up in his Bentley … and he said, ‘This is my wife. I just want you to know this is my wife you’re talking to. Nicole, I want to talk to you.’ So he summoned her over to the car. And she went over and he said, ‘You can’t be with other men.’ She said, ‘It’s just coffee. We just got back from working out. I’m not with any men.’ And he left. She came back and said, ‘Let’s go, Faye.’ When we left, we noticed O.J. was behind us, a couple blocks, following us. That was one experience.”

When Bugliosi asked whether Simpson had seen Ron and Nicole together on “any other occasion,” Resnick answered that Simpson had seen them seated next to each other at Starbucks and speculated to her that they were having an affair.

As it happens, there may very well be one person out there with significant knowledge about the relationship between Ron and Nicole in the months prior to the murders: Dr. Jennifer Ameli, a psychiatrist who purportedly treated both Ron and Nicole in the months preceding the murders. Ameli first turned up in connection with the Simpson case in September 1994, after her office was ransacked and files stolen; at the time it had only been rumored that she was treating Ron. Ameli subsequently claimed that she had been followed and threatened. Ameli did not turn up at criminal trial; a Los Angeles Times report later noted that neither prosecutors nor defense attorneys found her story credible.

Ameli’s story only came out after she came to the attention of Daniel Petrocelli, the Goldmans’ lawyer in the civil trial, by way of a tip from Geraldo Rivera’s producers. The story also came to public attention through an early 1996 National Enquirer report about Ameli’s treatment of Ron and Nicole. Ameli met with Petrocelli and his legal team and told them that she had treated Ron since October 1993 and that Ron introduced her to Nicole, who saw her regularly, including three days before he murders. Ameli produced her notes from that meeting, which described Nicole as “extremely upset” and “extremely frustrated and fearful of her husband.” According to Ameli’s notes, O.J. and Nicole had fought about “M. Allen, Ron G., and government money.” In addition to Ron Goldman, this refers to Nicole’s ongoing affair with Marcus Allen, who she was allegedly seeing again in the months before the murders, and Simpson’s threat to report Nicole to the IRS over a property tax arrangement. Ameli’s most shocking claim was that she had talked with Nicole the night of the murders and that Nicole had told her about how she told Simpson to “‘f’ off” and how she was now “relieved” but also “frightened.”

There were reasons to doubt Ameli, however. Petrocelli said the police were not unconvinced that the break-in at her offices was staged. It had been reported there were no signs of forced entry. Ameli never produced evidence of payment from either Ron or Nicole, claiming that Ron paid her in cash and Nicole filed her bills through her medical insurance. Moreover, Ameli disclosed new information slowly and over time, although she produced the testimony of two of her assistants, who substantiated details pertaining to Ron and Nicole’s visits and would have no reason to lie.

Petrocelli said he ultimately decided not to call Ameli as a witness because while “there was nothing in her story I could flatly contradict,” neither the Browns nor the Goldmans believed her, there was no evidence of payment, and there were still a number of questions about the way she presented her story. In the end, Dr. Ameli is either a convoluted fraud or a key to the dynamic between Ron and Nicole at the time of the murders.

Who was Nicole Brown Simpson on the phone with the night of the murders? According to the police report, when Sydney and Justin were taken to the police station in the first hours after the bodies were found, a police officer overheard Sydney say to her brother, “Justin, I heard Mommy’s best friend’s voice and I heard Mommy crying.” According to the Officer Vasquez who authored the report, Sydney did not indicate whether her mother’s “best friend” was male or female or when and where she overheard this. As it happens, the defense had not ruled out calling Sydney to testify at the trial, while stressing that it wanted to avoid that scenario. (“Over my dead body,” Denise Brown told Dominick Dunne.)

In addition to the phone call alleged by Dr. Jennifer Ameli, Nicole had at least two other significant phone conversations that evening that bear closer scrutiny. While it did not come out until his deposition during the civil trial, O.J. had called Nicole at around 9 p.m. the night of the murders to talk with Sydney after her dance recital and had tried to say as little as possible to Nicole while on the call. What do you bet there’s more to that phone call?

Nicole also spoke with Faye Resnick that night. It’s unclear whether this occurred before or after Nicole’s phone call with O.J., though Resnick makes no mention of such a conversation in her chapter on “the last call” in Nicole Brown Simpson: The Private Diary of a Life Interrupted. Resnick depicts the conversation as a positive and forward-thinking one and says they talked about how Nicole effectively shunned O.J. at Sydney’s dance recital, O.J.’s mercenary threat to report Nicole to the IRS, as well as Nicole’s ongoing affair with Marcus Allen. Resnick indicates Nicole had either seen him that day or had made plans to see him that evening.

So who was the “friend” Sydney overheard her mother crying on the phone with? I have read equally compelling explanations for both O.J. and Faye. For example, Cici Shahian, a member of Nicole’s inner circle in the years before her death, told Dominick Dunne, “Nicole didn’t want the kids to know she was fighting with O.J. on the phone. She would say, ‘It’s my friend.’” In contrast, Christian Reichardt, Resnick’s fiancée at the time of the murders, O.J. ally and dubious character, makes a nevertheless compelling point when he explains: “[Sydney] probably said, ‘Faye’ and when the cops asked, ‘Faye who?’ she’d say right back, ‘You know, Mommy’s best friend.’ That happens with the cops. They ask two questions, get two answers and splice them together.” Is it possible there was more to Faye and Nicole’s friendship than the message communicated by Resnick through her tell-all?

Why was O.J. Simpson really in Los Angeles at the time of the murders? In the early stages of preparation for the civil trial, Daniel Petrocelli held a number of informational interviews with a number of people, including members of O.J. and Nicole’s inner circle. It was Kris Jenner, for example, who suggested Petrocelli meet with Alan Austin, a successful women’s clothing store owner and frequent golfing partner of Simpson’s at the Riviera Country Club; Austin was among the “golfing buddies” mentioned in Simpson’s “suicide” note read on national television by Robert Kardashian on June 17, 1994.

By Petrocelli’s account, Austin made a number of intriguing allegations over the course of their meetings – that Simpson had told him in May 1994 that it was Nicole who had broken up with him; that Nicole’s affair with Marcus Allen was likely a motive for the murders; and that O.J. and Nicole may have met with a therapist about a domestic violence incident that occurred after the 1989 beating.

One particular concern Austin explained to Petrocelli was Simpson’s travel plans in the days surrounding the murders. As has been established, Simpson was in Connecticut the Thursday before the murders, where he attended a board meeting for the Forschner Group, which produces Swiss Army knives. It was after that meeting that Simpson allegedly flashed a foot-long knife to his driver and told him the weapon “could even kill someone.” Simpson returned to Los Angeles on Friday, and spent the proceeding day with Paula Barbieri, ending with a gala event on Saturday night, after which they spent the night at their own homes. (The next morning, Barbieri left him an eight-minute phone message breaking up with him, which he claims not to have received.) Simpson, of course, was booked for an 11:45 p.m. red-eye flight to Chicago that Sunday night for a Hertz-sponsored golf tournament.

What Austin didn’t understand is why Simpson would put himself out as he did when his plans in Chicago had been established so far in advance. He told Petrocelli that Simpson was much likelier to simply stay out East for the weekend rather than fly back and then fly out late at night. As for the importance of Sydney’s dance recital, Austin pointed out that Simpson had missed Sydney’s first communion in May and Justin’s graduation from kindergarten just days before the murders. “You know, it doesn’t make any sense,” Austin told Petrocelli. To him, it suggested premeditation. Either way, based on habit and history, there was clearly something other than his daughter’s dance recital that brought Simpson back to Brentwood in between previously scheduled obligations in Connecticut and Illinois.

Another detail that could very well indicate premeditation was Simpson’s phone conversation with Christian Reichardt, Faye Resnick’s fiancée, at around 9:00 p.m. According to Simpson’s civil trial deposition, they talked only about Resnick’s intervention that week and potentially making plans when Simpson returned to Chicago. They did not talk about the recital or Nicole. Reichardt told Petrocelli that he had talked about how happy he was with Paula, which had to have been a lie – but to what end? Petrocelli said it was likely a “transparent attempt by Simpson to establish an alibi, to paint himself as an improbable person to go out an hour later and kill Nicole.” Did this call occur before or after Simpson’s conversation with Nicole? Perhaps they did have words and he caused her to cry. What is notable is that Simpson and Reichardt were not close friends by any definition of the term – Simpson had sought to exert influence but Reichardt wouldn’t firmly declare his allegiance as a Simpson supplicant until after the murders – and yet Reichardt is one of the few people Simpson is known to have talked to during this very narrow, decisive window of time.

A Word On The Brett Cantor Theory: Several months ago, I was put into contact with someone who had worked private security in the late 1980s and 1990s and was familiar with some of the people involved. He believes the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman are “a spin-off from the Brett Cantor murder, and not the other way around.” Brett Cantor was an A&R executive at Chrysalis Music Group and a partner at Hollywood’s Dragonfly nightclub when he was stabbed to death at his home in July 1993. Nicole had been a regular at the club and Ron had worked there for a time as a manager. Coincidentally, Cantor was described as having been “given a Colombian necktie, his tongue pulled out through his throat.” During the Simpson trial, Johnnie Cochran asked Lange on cross-examination whether he was had heard of the Colombian necktie in an attempt to suggest drug lords were responsible for the murders. By the way, Cantor’s father, Paul, who died in 2014, was a longtime manager for Dionne Warwick. Warwick used to date none other than Al Cowlings throughout the 1980s, although his addiction to cocaine was said to have come between them. Warwick was close enough to Simpson to visit him at his Brentwood home the day after the murders. Cantor’s murder, which has never been solved, was considered relevant enough that in September 1994 Judge Ito granted the defense access to the Los Angeles Police Department’s “murder book” of its investigation. And yet, other than some superficial attempts to connect Cantor to Ron and Nicole, nothing much ever came of it.

What I was told was that Cantor’s business dealings were much more extensive than have been acknowledged. Cantor was not merely involved in identifying up-and-coming bands like Jane’s Addiction and Rage Against the Machine. Apparently, he was involved in the bidding war for Michael Jackson’s 6,000-title ATV Music Publishing portfolio, which included songs from The Beatles and Elvis Presley. I was told, “The murder of Brett Cantor had a $70,000,000.00 motive attached to it.” I interpreted this as a reference to the fact that when EMI Music Publishing emerged victorious from the bidding war in November 1993, the conditions included a $70 million advance for Michael Jackson against the revenue EMI was expected to generate managing the publishing rights to ATV Music over a five-year term. I was also told that Robert Kardashian, a former president of MCA Radio Network in the late 1980s, was involved in arranging EMI’s successful offer. Intriguingly, one of the other advisors to EMI Records Group CEO Charles Koppelman during this transaction was Alfred DiSipio. In the 1980s, DiSipio and his associate Joseph Isgro had been members of the Network, an affiliation of independent music promoters, which came under scrutiny when a February 1986 NBC News report suggested DiSipio and Isgro were involved in payola arrangements with radio programmers and had dealings with East Coast organized-crime figures, including John Gotti. While federal prosecutors never filed charges against DiSipio, Isgro was charged in a 57-count indictment that included payola and racketeering but the case was later dismissed with prejudice due to prosecutorial misconduct, twice. Notably, Isgro’s attorney, Donald M. Re, who has represented Al Cowlings for decades, told the Los Angeles Times, “The primary purpose of Joe’s indictment was to draw attention away from a previous government probe into possible illicit activities at MCA Records – and to that end, it was absolutely successful.”

What don’t we know about the night of the murders? In a June 1995 Los Angeles Times column, Bill Boyarsky described “a subculture of O.J. tipsters who thrive in this land of storytellers”, the people who “dwell on the periphery of the Simpson case” with morsels of information they consider to be pertinent. Much to my surprise, these tipsters are still out there. I have written about various facets of the O.J. Simpson murder trial over this past year and I’ve been truly surprised by the few people who have reached out to me with their own clues and theories. Less surprising is that these people often insist on complete discretion. After all, O.J. Simpson is up for parole later this year.

Granted, most of these purported leads have not lead me anywhere, but I find them tantalizing all the same. I was asked, for example, if I knew that the ex-husband of Ron Goldman’s stepmother, Marvin Glass, was a prominent Chicago lawyer with a roster of drug-dealing and Mafia-connected clients, who received an 8-year sentence in federal prison for laundering drug money. Goldman’s stepmother, Patti, divorced Glass not long after his sentencing in 1986 and married Fred Goldman shortly thereafter. (Glass died in 1997.) While I fail to see any connection between this aspect of Goldman’s background and the period preceding his murder, let alone the murder itself, there is a distinct current of Mafia ties surrounding the key figures involved in the murders. I find it hard to shake the impression that Goldman’s background is irrelevant entirely and that he was simply in the wrong place in the wrong time. That is why when I was told, “Ron didn’t show up alone that night,” I couldn’t dismiss it outright. (“Did you know Faye Resnick fled to Australia in the early 1990s after a close friend was murdered in San Francisco?” I was also asked, though I still tend to believe any allegations involving Resnick are a deliberate misdirection.)

I cannot help but think about the unknown unknowns of the case, the factors and variables that will likely never be fully known. There’s the other Tom Lange, for example, a neighbor of Nicole’s who claimed to have seen a blonde woman arguing with a black man near a white vehicle at around 10:05 p.m. on the night of the murder. Dominick Dunne spoke with a friend of Simpson’s who received a call in Europe from someone at the crime scene after the murders but before the police arrived – how many people were there within that interval? Several of Nicole’s neighbors later claim to have seen a white Bronco, but it could easily have been multiple, separate vehicles. And on the subject of vehicles, why did the police return the set of bloody car keys found on Ron Goldman to the woman from whom he borrowed it? If lipstick was found on Goldman’s cheek, as it has been reported, does that mean he was with Nicole when O.J. showed up? If so, how were the two of them so quickly overpowered? The questions proliferate.

Is O.J. innocent? I am not sure that will ever be definitively resolved, though I doubt it, and I do not believe the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman occurred in the manner argued by the police and prosecution.

[millenniallust4death]

Oh yeah. Fun times! I’ll paste the description here that I wrote on Facebook a few years after Martin died. Bosco was a workingline GSD from Czech/Slovak lines. Most people know that Bosco went after me with serious intent at the end of Martin's illness. Bosco didn't even hesitate. He had NEVER shown aggression towards me previously; he didn't even like the conflict of squaring off and playing tug with me. I will never forget the guttural growls, flat alien eyes, and booming bark in that tight bark and hold. I nearly peed myself in fear. The thing is, my experienced GSD friends weren't surprised that Bosco went after me. Everyone was like, "Yeah, he was just doing his job". [A friend asked me how I was still alive because Bosco was from hard, old lines with serious aggression. He was not a dog you fucked around with. Bosco loved Martin with such devotion that they will forever be relationship goals for many of my dog training friends.] I stood completely still, looked to the side, and kept my mouth shut. As soon as Martin stopped throwing up and had enough air, he gasped out [”Nein. Fuss.”] for Bosco to recall. Bosco instantly obeyed. Even lying prostrate on the ground and sick beyond belief, Martin was still the boss of Bosco. Without that kind of control, Bosco would have seriously injured me. How many owners really have that kind of control over their dog? I certainly don’t. Bosco sat there and intensely watched me while I helped Martin up off the floor. I knew that if Martin became incapacitated again then Bosco would immediately defend Martin from me. 

Keep in mind - the more incapacitated the owner becomes, the more the dog’s aggression will exponentially increase. It was a terrifying experience but one that I understood given Bosco’s breeding. Workingline GSDs, particularly Czechline, are increasingly becoming popular as service dogs - they are beautiful (black sable, am I right?), biddable, and live to work. But you gamble the safety of a paramedic, an unsuspecting Samaritan, or even your mom when you assume that your workingline GSD is 100% unicorn. How do you really know until it's too late?

Looking for your opinion on raising a dobe as a PTSD service dog (trained to do things like deep pressure and body blocking/alerting to people behind me) because I'm looking into breeds. I've raised an Aussie Shepard and Border Collie before, as well as smaller dogs my whole life but you seem to really know what you're doing

I'll be honest- I think it is a bad idea. I do not recommend dobermans (or any guardian breed with limited exceptions) as service dogs for those with panic, anxiety, or stress-related disorders at all. For every one that you find will work well for such a job, you will find ten more that could not do it.

Please understand, the breed's temperament is designed to work against you here. These are dogs who are meant to guard their owners from assaults. If you are broadcasting down the leash that you are nervous about that guy who just came up behind you, even if he's minding his own business, what do you think you are telling your dog to do? What do you think will happen if you have a meltdown in public and Freak The Fuck Out and start seeing everyone as a potential threat? These are dogs intended to intercept threats before they reach their owners- so if an innocent person walking down the street towards you triggers you, that is now a threat in your dog's mind. This is a potentially very dangerous situation you've just put yourself, your dog, and other people in.

Can you find a dog to do it? Sure. That dog would be worth more than gold. We call this unicorn hunting in the service dog world. You are looking for a relatively uncommon dog to find, and if you have never done the service dog thing or the guardian breed thing before, you are going against pretty strong odds.

Whenever this sort of thing comes up, I always think of @millenniallust4death's post on one of her past blogs, about how her late husband's dog went for her in defense of her husband as he was ailing from cancer and she had moved towards him to help him. He was able to call the dog off, so she was unharmed, but still. This was a German Shepherd from lines intended for intense protection work. He saw his owner in distress and acted without thinking when someone- someone he knew and loved and trusted- made too swift of a movement towards his vulnerable owner.

I am not saying every doberman will do this. But I do think you would be playing with fire.

I had a doberman service dog. We actually just passed the anniversary of him winning an award from the national doberman club for his service work. We did a lot of work to try to prevent this from happening. He was neither the first service dog I trained nor was he the first guardian breed I trained. Prior to my current vet job, I was a dog trainer that specialized in aggression. I loved him very much and he was well suited to the work. But, also, there is a reason I deliberately did not get another doberman as a service dog when I needed to retire him due to his failing health.

[poetryofchrist]

November 2018 Biblical Studies Carnival

Biblical Studies Carnival 153 - Cold Entertainment

"power is an object of critique, and critique a means to attain power"1

Week 1... to Nov 6

Zeal to promote the common good, ...2

Don't miss the political tent. Oh No. Is there no other tent on the carnival grounds? Is every act of reception of the Bible a political act? (via James McGrath) Here's a distant view on the body politic from Jim Gordon, posted independently of the prior link. James also shared this choice from the NYT. The Political tent of TNK

... Civility, wholesome Laws,learning and eloquence ...

Pomegranate in razor wire

Via Jim Davila, an ancient political choice, Was Jeroboam pagan or yahwist?

The will to power via knowledge, Prof. Carol Meyers on The Shunammite woman and patriarchy Like us or not? Bosco Peters has a series on disagreeing with the bible. Mark Goodacre' colleague, Marc Brettler, reflects on Torah as the tree of life. Deception to get attention to a cause, Daniel Falk on Dead sea scrolls are a priceless-link. Noted also by Michael Langlois De faux rouleaux au Musée de la Bible. Rivka's questions and our own building lessons via Rachel Barenblatt.

Protection schemes from Bob MacDonald, your host, in 1 Samuel 25, illustrating the law of brotherhood. Moshe Blidstein on oaths while holding a Torah scroll - politics and God. Wondering about the history of the usage of political? Here's a contribution this month Colin Maccabe and Holly Yanacek, from OUP.

The NT Political Tent

... bridled and restrained from outrageous behaviour, ...

What is the most important lesson the early church learned from Jesus? from Andrew Perriman. Jim Gordon on stones. I will also give that person a white stone. Phillip Long on A warning against too much wealth. Andrew Perriman on "geo-political realignment" here, and the presence of hell. From Biblical Studies online, Female disciples in early Christianity Candida Moss on anti Semitic use of bible. From Larry Hurtado Terminology and its effects e g scribes-vs-copyists. Via Jim Davila, Aren M. Wilson-Wright on Politics begins in childhood with the abcedary. Jim West reviews Lukas Bormann's New Testament Theology.

Weeks 2-4 TNK

... enabled to inform and reform others...

Jacob’s Dream by Aert de Gelder 1710-1715

A review of Kings, Subjects, and the Divine: Politics in the Hebrew Bible by Moshe Halbertal and Stephen Holmes by reviewer, David Polansky. James Pate reviews Creation and Doxology, The Beginning and End of God's World. Airtonjo on Research in the Pentateuch. Baruch Schwartz asks, Can one do source criticism of a dream? Jones F. Mendonça notes the peculiarity of day 2. Rachel Barenblatt speaks with the voice of Eden. Zilla Eschel on Paying with shekels of silver. Bob Ekblad on Strangers and Aliens. The Hebrew Language Detective on Bavel. Henry Neufeld on the value of Pi. Via Jim Davila, a meteor blast for Sodom?

John Martin's 'Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah,' 1852

A podcast with Kyle Greenwood via James McGrath on Genesis 1 and 2. From BAR, how to make a mud-brick. Moshe Sokolow on Adam vs Nephesh, an interesting twist, subject to testing and verification. Dualism in TNK? Albert Baumgarten on the textual issue in Esau's kissing of Jacob.

A leaf from T-S A43.1, one of the Genizah’s serugin manuscripts, how to read a shorthand Bible Jer 27.

William Whitt introduces a new translation of Samuel. Full text is online here.

Micah and Defense Spending, Jim Gordon on Hans Walter Wolfe. This newsletter from Cambridge on the Genizah fragments was noted by Jim Davila. Tim Bulkeley on Jesus as a false prophet according to Zechariah 13:6. Heavy sheep from Tim, the shepherd, on Isaiah 53. (Phil Long has some wolves to add to these.) Statutes that were not good, Oliver Achilles on Ezekiel 20. A final status report from your host on his completed draft English libretto for the music of the te'amim. Another Robert has also completed his Bible as noted here.

The opening of Psalm 68 (‘Salvum me fac’) from the Vespasian Psalter

A work of beauty from the Medieval manuscripts blog on the Vespasian Psalter. Via A. Riddle, Behind the Scenes of the Old Testament, Cultural, Social, and Historical Contexts, edited by Jonathan S. Greer, John W. Hilber, and John H. Walton. Via Jim Davila, a review of Septuaginta, a reader's edition. Brian Davidson gives an example from Exodus 32. Claude Mariottini reports on the lost tribe of Manasseh and a follow up on the northern deportation.

Henry Neufeld muses on the Old in Old Testament, a hermeneutical strategy noted here by James Mcgrath. Jim Gordon begins a series of guest posts on Eugene Peterson with a note by Simon Jones on Under the unpredictable plant.

NT

we subject ourselves to everyone's censure,

Via Jim Davila, Gospels before the book. What, Me Worry? Phil Long on The birds and the grass (now legal in Canada).

James McGrath on the poor in spirit and cultural blindness.

Jesus and the Synagogue, Bosco Peters on Liturgy. Michael Bird on Rachel Held Evans and the Canaanite woman.

James Tissot (French, 1836-1902). Jésus dans la synagogue déroule le livre)

Paul Anderson on Anti-Semitism and Religious Violence as False Interpretations of the Gospel of John. An interesting inscription from Nazareth in a book about Wilhelm Froehner, a colleague of Ernest Renan. Via Jim Davila. Larry Hurtado on the wild theory of textual transmission of the Gospels and on Saul as Persecutor and Jewish Tolerance of Diversity. And a dialogue here on God's Library. Robin Jensen considers the image of the cross in history. Andrew Perriman on Why did the Jews accuse Jesus of making himself equal to God. And again citing McGrath and Barrett on the use of I am in John. Wayne Coppins reviews the action at SBL on Frei's, The Glory of the Crucified One, and adds some missing comments on his favorite parts as co-translator particularly as regards the implications for Christology in John. Ring found with Pilatus inscribed note by James McGrath and Todd Bolen. Additional comment from Jim Davila. Lena Einhorn posted a video (from SBL 2012) on a time-shift between the Gospels and Josephus. Spencer Robinson works through Schreiner's Romans. Issue 5 of JJMJS is available, all on Paul, Judaism, and the Jewish People. Including Matthew Thiessen's riff on Jon Lennon's Imagine, also several scholars on personal callings and conflicts with interpretive schools. Tim Bulkeley has a very short 50th anniversary note here.

The 4 horsemen

Henry Neufeld on Romans 9-11 concerning human wiggle room, (a.k.a. free will), and foreknowledge vs 'a reasonable amount of ordinary knowledge for a deity'. d. miller on family practice, the holy kiss.

Brian Small on the two mountains in Hebrews 12. And a paper revisiting High Priesthood Christology. And from SBL Hebrews at the Cyber-Center.

Marg Mowczco on 1 Timothy, a critique of the ESV Study Bible notes. And on ministry titles in 1 Corinthians 16:16. Mike Bird interviews Jörg Frei on Jude and 2 Peter, a glimpse into the difficult history of the Biblical canon. Richard Fellows comments on Jerome's list of New Testament proper names. Narrative, subtlety, and urgency in the Alpha and the Omega, political eschatology in Revelation. Ian Paul on Conspiracy theory and the book of Revelation. Greg Jenks on amber and red lights, reviewing N.T. Wright. Your host has been influenced this month by this research for the carnival, so much so that he formed a last post of the month on how to form a reading strategy for the New Testament. Other things

and happy is he that is least tossed upon tongues;

Part of an ancient computer

Larry Hurtado on Evans JBL 136.4 (2017): 749-64 about over-emphasis on a performance model of the use of Scripture. Also on silent reading in Roman antiquity. More abstracts (prior to the pay wall) are available on performance criticism here in the Oral History Journal of South-Africa. An interview with Steve Walton, Paul Trebilco, and David Gill on their collection of essays, The Urban World and the First Christians. Here's a nice technique of mouse over magnification and detailed analysis Taylor-schechter-genizah-research-unit...fragment-8. Centre for the study of New Testament Manuscripts has digitized Codex Koridethi. Ancient technology outlined by Airtonjo. More on it from Livius Drusus here and via Jim Davila here. Modern technology will get you to the Hebrew alphabet classes in Seoul. The video is quite cute.

Ian Paul issued a note on Facebook worthy of the political theme noted this month. A whole raft of Anglicans had a conversation on Twitter about the least of these and with more on the early teachers in Christendom on the least. Sefaria has released two dictionaries online A Dictionary of the Targumim, Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature by Marcus Jastrow and A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English by Ernest Klein.

Tim Bulkeley notes a free Biblical Archaeology course from Bar Ilan University here. There's probably time before the end of the world. Via Drew Longacre, National Geographic has an article on the cloak and dagger search for sacred tests. Jim Davila points to an article on reading obituaries in ancient Judah.

Hand from Tomb 2. Photo by Jeremy Smoak

While searching for a secured image of the hand in that article on obits, I accidentally discovered this November article in Chinese, 十個關於早期基督教出乎意料的事實 Ten unexpected facts about early Christianity copied from an article a few months earlier in English and showing how scholars are quoted in or out of context around the world by Facebook, Blogger, and Google+. It would seem that the English speaking world of Biblical Studies has limited contact with similar studies in other cultures. ulb Münster has several bibles online including the Complutensian Polyglot, Erasmus, Bengel, Wettstein, Griesbach, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort, Nestle, and others, all free to download. Africa Journal of Evangelical Theology is now online from 1982-2012 as noted here. Jean Lipman-Blumen has a reflection on toxic, the word of the year. A final note from Religion and Politics on Eugene Peterson and the Imperative of Biblical Literacy.

Next Carnivals

So hard a thing it is to please all,

Local storefront near Oak Bay junction, a study in culture

What comes after 153? Advent. Dale Brueggemann has an Advent series planned that might interest some of you. Post is here. Christopher Scott (@ChristopherLS) will be hosting the December 2018 carnival CLIV (due January 1, 2019). Please email (plong42 at gmail.com) or direct message on Twitter (@plong42) to volunteer for a 2019 carnival. Phil has thrown down the gauntlet. Hosting a carnival is a valuable task. You will be challenged to decide what to include from the several possible source streams that you follow on aggregators, flipboards, social media, blogs, and other news feeds. Just what is Biblical Studies? BS opens up questions that may be disturbing to an established position. Do you follow people that you may disagree with? You may allow some leeway since preachers and theologians of all confessional stripes say they 'study the Bible'. And you may watch secular blogs and newspapers, for some of them express reception history, whether assumed or critical, from the Bible. As the month progresses, a theme emerges, maybe flippant or serious, not always as expected. Take up the gauntlet. 1 From CRASSH on The Imaginative Landscapes of Islamist Politics. 2 Source of the right justified commentary, https://ift.tt/2U1q92J

from Blogger https://ift.tt/2ADp2xk via IFTTT

[millenniallust4death]

The Stories Behind the Images in the Martin & Bosco Calendar. A person who bought a Martin & Bosco calendar asked me to share the stories behind the images. I’ve shared these stories on Facebook but not on Tumblr. This is going to be a long post so I’ll put in a “keep reading” cut.

Cover Photo This was shot in the town of Millet, AB. I loved the graphic feel of the boxcars and wanted to take photos of Martin & Bosco there for my dog photography group. Of course, the best graffiti was on the side of the car facing away from town. The tracks run along a crazy steep ditch so I'm standing in the mud at the bottom of the ditch shooting upwards. My perspective makes the boxcar seem huge. Bosco is challenging to photograph because of his black fur so he easily disappears into dark backgrounds. Martin positioned Bosco so that his head wouldn't be lost against the graffiti. After taking my photos, we got take-out from the Burger Barn and sat in the park enjoying the sun. I chose this photo for the calendar because it was such a fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon and I learned so much about how to make a challenging location work for photography.

January This is Martin's favourite photo of all time and it was shot with a $100 camera. Martin was taking Shade's toy skills course at Gold and he liked to plow the snow from his training field before practice. I brought Martin a coffee for break and captured this authentic moment between him and Bosco. I love how Bosco spit out his Kong so that he could fully focus on what Martin was saying. Bosco & Martin had such a wonderful relationship. 

February This photo was taken in January 2017; Martin was removing the old straw from the loft in preparation for starting a barn renovation. Martin was in a great mood that morning because he owned a barn that he could renovate. He was carrying the straw bale on his left side in order to block Bosco from getting into heel position. Anytime Martin walked with purpose, he had to block Bosco from trying to heel because there isn't anything Bosco finds more self-rewarding than heeling with his Guy. Of course, blocking heel position meant that Bosco was even more determined to get into heel position which left Martin feeling torn between amusement and frustration. I was laughing so hard at Bosco's determination to wedge himself between Martin and the straw bale that I had to stop taking photos. Martin definitely shaped Bosco to have a confident and pushy offered heel.

March Bosco telling Martin that it was time for training. Whenever Martin was asked if he ever felt lonely living in such an isolated area, he would open this photo on his phone. "I have never felt a moment of loneliness since we brought Bosco home." Of course, Martin never said if this was a good thing.

April This is a very important photo to me. Martin loved to stand at our northern property line and gaze at the endless horizon of rolling fields. He greatly loved our home and the four years he spent here were the happiest that he had been in his entire life. He was living the life that he had always dreamed of. I think this is the only photo I've taken that truly captured who Martin was as a person. During Martin's terrible illness, I looked at this photo before I made every single healthcare decision on Martin's behalf. It eliminated all of the noise of other people's expectations and reminded me what quality of life meant from Martin's perspective. I am going to have this photo printed and framed.

May Martin took a break from working in his shop to enjoy the winter sun and Bosco laid next to him. I asked Martin to look to the left and Bosco immediately wanted to see what Martin was looking at. It's a simple photo that still shows the depth of Bosco's bond with Martin.

June Martin playing a two tug game with Bosco on a gorgeous spring afternoon. I finally got the timing right for this shot! A split second later and Martin's arm obscures Bosco's face...which is the shot I usually got. :) I included this photo because Martin spent an incredible amount of time teaching Bosco toy skills.

At 13 seconds, you can see how fast Martin and Bosco move for the bite presentation shown in the photo. Martin played tug in the Michael Ellis style which involves moving your body out of the way of the tug.

July Martin was baffled by people who bragged that their dog bit them during training. Martin trusted Bosco; in return, Bosco would turn himself inside out to avoid putting teeth on Martin. This relationship is what allowed Martin to do a tug under the chin reward for fronts and more importantly, what allowed him to keep training Bosco even after he lost the ability to clot during chemo. Here’s what a tug under the chin reward looks like. I chose a blooper video because that’s more fun than always seeing a perfect practice.

August This photo was taken at the gorgeous Carolyn Beach Inn on Lake Huron in Ontario. We stayed here for our nineteenth wedding anniversary. I chose this photo for the calendar, not because it is a pretty silhouette, but because of what the photo represents to me. During the many day drive from Alberta to Ontario, I mentioned in passing that I'd like to try doing some silhouette shots when we arrived at the Inn. So, Martin worked out that we'd have to leave my mom's house in Wheatley at 4:30 AM and drive non-stop for 13 hours to make it to the Inn in time for sunset. Without a single complaint, Martin drove non-stop, arrived at the Inn, and immediately posed for photos just before it got dark. He was always my biggest supporter and helped me achieve everything that I have accomplished.

September Martin & his dog with his own hay bale in his very own pasture. Life absolutely couldn't get any better than this for Martin. Martin was the happiest he had ever been in his entire life living on our farm in Alberta. I am so grateful that I supported Martin in living his dream. I did freelance research work while we lived on the farm and I didn't make nearly as much money as if I'd worked in a traditional library. But not having any regrets today is worth all the money in the world to me.

October I shot this photo for an assignment in my dog photography group; your photo was supposed to be inspired by a movie. I chose to do a variation on Martin's favourite movie, Ladyhawke. This photo was shot in August so yeah, Martin is wearing a heavy cloak and gauntlets in the summer but it's Alberta so it's a dry heat. He was so wonderful at supporting my photography. It's very unlikely that I will ever pick up my camera again because without Martin, photography just isn't any fun. Soul Dog Studios did an amazing job editing this image.

November This photo started Martin's (unhealthy) obsession with Dutch Angle photography; he would email me photos using this type of camera angle with "DUTCH ANGLE!!!" in the subject line of the message. He would scream, "DUTCH ANGLE!", during movies if the director used this type of camera tilt. (We did shots every time there was a Dutch Angle frame in the new Star Trek movies. Ugh. I still feel sick when I scroll past those films on Netflix.)

December The final one! I took this photo in December 2016 while Martin was in Shade's Advanced Toy Skills course. It was -30°C (and below) for the entire course but Martin never complained. You know that I bitched at having to film his practices!. Martin never had any interest in titling Bosco but he spent loads of time and gobs of money training his dog. Looking back, Martin likely took so many classes because we had so much fun- we never stopped laughing and we never took his training seriously. I always had issues editing Martin's training videos for his Gold classes because I was always saying inappropriate things, we were laughing hysterically (once I laughed so hard that I fell off my chair and only filmed the grass), or he'd forget that he couldn't reward Bosco using profanity which was his norm , "Fucking A, Buddy!". I chose this photo for the calendar because it reminds me of all the fun we had during training. 

[millenniallust4death]

Martin took Shade's 12 week retrieve course at Gold and her process is really cool. It's too much material to type out in a Tumblr post. Here are a few points. Martin started out with a piece of PVC but Shade suggested that he switch to a rolled up magazine covered in duct tape as the hold object. It has a slight give so the dog naturally has a firmer grip. "The proper place for a dumbbell is right behind the canines and before the molars." (Read this last line again!)

In Shade's system, you need a few foundation skills before teaching a hold: a solid offered front, switch toy marker, and a chin target. Of course, you also need no conflict between you and your dog over toys (or you'll see avoidance behaviours like head ducking); dog needs to be comfortable being in your space. Senta is very sensitive to spatial pressure so Martin had to work on her feeling comfortable being in his space before teaching a hold.

An overview of the hold process:

Grab (no video - Bosco cheerfully shoves everything in his mouth) - Seated hold with chin target - Offered front for hold, another example, and one more (all for food) - Here's a hold failure and how Martin handled it - Hold for toy or this example and hold for a toy using switch - Moving hold/coming into front - Coming into front from angles (I don't think I posted the video of this step?). Then you move on to pick up fast, return fast, etc.

Whew! Let me know if you have questions.

How do you teach your dog a good, solid hold? What do you use? How do you do it? What advice can you give?

@cynological, @shotinthekidney, @oregonforestdog, @streetdogmillionaires

[millenniallust4death]

Trying to video Bosco's trot for his vet appointment tomorrow was a hot mess. Much galloping, hopping, leaping (he tried to bite Martin's nose), barking, and arguing. We'll have to try again later. On the other hand, if he's not limping by now then his shoulder has healed.

[millenniallust4death]

If it was me and Bosco? I would have to pay Bosco a lot more for this exercise because it's a hard skill for him or he'd tell me to go fuck myself. Bosco isn't a dog that offers displacement behaviours like staring into the distance or sniffing the ground. He communicates his displeasure about being cheated out of the proper payment for his work by screaming; he has muzzle punched Martin in the junk in the past. I know that Bosco has a 3 to 1 fun to work ratio when we are training; it's 5 to 1 when he has to heel backwards. I would feed the food to encourage Bosco's head position up, up, up and feed outside his left lip to encourage him to keep his giant ass in. How you deliver the reward in heeling really matters. Then I'd throw a reset treat to release stress. It has the added bonus of reinforcing the dog for finding heel position on his own from different angles. If the dog can't find heel position from a reset treat then that gives you important information that the dog doesn't know exactly where heel position is. You need to back up and play the platform pivot game again. I might throw a few treats and play the pendulum game to make things more fun and get Bosco's energy up. Or maybe I'd break this session in half and have a toy play break. Don't think about fading the reward until the picture is exactly what you want to see. How you structure your training session and how you give the reward is important in creating an engaged heeling partner.

We still working on heeling! Just doing a little bit every day, but I have been stuck on this particular exercise for several weeks now so there hasn’t been much excitement to share. The first problem I had was that inside the house, there is not very much space to move around, so Tristan kept bumping his rear end on things an then giving up because he felt too crowded. In the yard we have enough space, but Tristan is very vigilant about people walking past our yard, so the new problem is that he keeps pausing to stare into the distance, which is NOT a behaviour I want built into our heeling! I am debating between using higher value treats to keep his attention (I’m currently using kibble), but the higher value the treat, the harder it can be to fade out that reinforcement…Or my other option is that I might try this exercise in a neutral environment, like a local park, where he doesn’t have a house to guard. 

Then the other problem we were having is that he is swinging his rear out to his left a lot again, so I went back to lots of “sidestep your hind legs to the right” exercises, and now I’m trying to click when he is moving his legs to the right. I had to walk really slowly today for him to be successful with that, which tells me I need to modify the distraction/motivation level next time. But I am happy to see his posture improving, and he knows where heel position is, he just needs more fluency getting there. 

[millenniallust4death]

Yeah, it always seemed like Martin was doing so much with Bosco because there are so many videos out there of them training. I videoed every session and posted a clip because Martin liked to review his training every evening to see what he needed to work on for the next day. But the sessions themselves were only 3 to 4 minutes in length or less. The only exception to that was tracking because of all the driving to locations and track laying. Plus the time for planning the track features the night before. IPO tracking is such a huge time commitment for training. But you learn a lot about your dog.

Martin based the wobble board he built on this free plan. You should totally build one - just stay a step back from it to keep your ankles intact! XD

Thanks again for sharing such a lovely memory with me. It truly meant a lot. And as @molosseraptor commented, it was so nice to see Martin and Bosco having fun on our dashboards again. ❤️

i wanted to stop by and tell you i was deep scrolling my blog, and came across an interaction we had a millennia ago (2015) where i had reblogged a video of martin and bosco doing the heim exercise. back then i mentioned that baby canon and i were learning to do it because of them, and i want you to know that to this day canon and i still perform this exercise regularly and i am often reminded of martin and bosco while doing it.

i would have sent the link but tragically tumblr has flagged it for "breaking community guidelines" (disrespect to the highest degree), but i hoped you would find warmth in knowing that they are still living on in the daily lives of others ❤︎

I took a few days to reply to your message because your words made me tear up. It means so much to me that you think of Martin and Bosco whenever you do the heim exercise. Thank you for sharing such a lovely memory with me.

Martin loved the heim exercise for rear end awareness work because Bosco was such a Clydesdale. He enjoyed seeing what kind of weird variation he could invent. You and Canon can level up to the wobble board version. XD

[millenniallust4death]

@lostlegendaerie 's tags:

#getting choked up about this post again!!!! #the quiet love of thousands of people for a man and his dog that they never met #martin and bosco #thank you for sharing them with us OP #may all of us be loved this much when our own time comes

@terioncalling 's tags:

#hello martin and bosco! #gently nudges them out again with the reblogs like launching a tiny boat #good luck on your adventures boys

Every morning, I open my Tumblr app and see messages like these in my Activity. How can I not smile and feel a bit of joy? Serotonin I can actually afford in this economy. XD

I’m paying to force seven thousand strangers to see a photo of my late husband having fun with his dog. Tumblr Blaze is totally worth it. XD

[millenniallust4death]

Every time the leaves change I think of him in the hospital wanting to see the red of the autumn leaves.

This is a memory that is deeply bittersweet for me. It was a rock bottom time in my life when I wished I was dead while simultaneously, I was shown how generously supportive the Tumblr community is. So many strangers around the world took videos and photos of beautiful trees. People who didn’t have red leaves took photos and videos of the most stunning view in their area so Martin could see beauty beyond his hospital room before his life was cut short. @wyrd66​ sent beautiful original Bosco art. I cry remembering how kind this emotional support hell site was. Every fall, my mutuals still post red leaves in remembrance of Martin. It’s why Tumblr is the only social media platform that matters to me. I will be here until the site is turned off.

She was able to be called off with no harm to the contractor but, again, this is what the breed is for.

Exactly.  I see people in my breed marketing dogs specifically for service dog work. Sure. Maybe the sire or dam is outwardly social - which is NOT the correct temperament for a GSD (aloof but approachable is). But I know that the breeder can’t actually read a pedigree because the lines behind the parents are known for extreme possession or serious aggression or both. Or there isn’t any nerve in the mating outcome or the pedigree isn’t balanced or whatever. Breeders want to make a sale so find a neutral third party who can objectively read a pedigree before you purchase a puppy if you are committed to finding a mythical unicorn for service dog work. Even then, the puppy might still wash at ten months old. 

Looking for your opinion on raising a dobe as a PTSD service dog (trained to do things like deep pressure and body blocking/alerting to people behind me) because I'm looking into breeds. I've raised an Aussie Shepard and Border Collie before, as well as smaller dogs my whole life but you seem to really know what you're doing

I'll be honest- I think it is a bad idea. I do not recommend dobermans (or any guardian breed with limited exceptions) as service dogs for those with panic, anxiety, or stress-related disorders at all. For every one that you find will work well for such a job, you will find ten more that could not do it.

Please understand, the breed's temperament is designed to work against you here. These are dogs who are meant to guard their owners from assaults. If you are broadcasting down the leash that you are nervous about that guy who just came up behind you, even if he's minding his own business, what do you think you are telling your dog to do? What do you think will happen if you have a meltdown in public and Freak The Fuck Out and start seeing everyone as a potential threat? These are dogs intended to intercept threats before they reach their owners- so if an innocent person walking down the street towards you triggers you, that is now a threat in your dog's mind. This is a potentially very dangerous situation you've just put yourself, your dog, and other people in.

Can you find a dog to do it? Sure. That dog would be worth more than gold. We call this unicorn hunting in the service dog world. You are looking for a relatively uncommon dog to find, and if you have never done the service dog thing or the guardian breed thing before, you are going against pretty strong odds.

Whenever this sort of thing comes up, I always think of @millenniallust4death's post on one of her past blogs, about how her late husband's dog went for her in defense of her husband as he was ailing from cancer and she had moved towards him to help him. He was able to call the dog off, so she was unharmed, but still. This was a German Shepherd from lines intended for intense protection work. He saw his owner in distress and acted without thinking when someone- someone he knew and loved and trusted- made too swift of a movement towards his vulnerable owner.

I am not saying every doberman will do this. But I do think you would be playing with fire.

I had a doberman service dog. We actually just passed the anniversary of him winning an award from the national doberman club for his service work. We did a lot of work to try to prevent this from happening. He was neither the first service dog I trained nor was he the first guardian breed I trained. Prior to my current vet job, I was a dog trainer that specialized in aggression. I loved him very much and he was well suited to the work. But, also, there is a reason I deliberately did not get another doberman as a service dog when I needed to retire him due to his failing health.