THE MATERIAL I HAD received on Jason was more than I had ever expected to find, more than anyone could have imagined existed. And yet, if he was a walking time bomb—as at least one psychologist had indicated—a lot more people than just Jason might have their lives ruined if I didn’t go forward.
Night after night I woke up haunted by these thoughts. I wondered to what length O.J. may have gone to protect his son and whether or not he blamed himself for what may have happened. I tried to put myself in O. J.’s place and asked myself, as a father, whether or not I would risk making myself the number one suspect in a double murder in order to try and ensure my son’s freedom. I could only wonder what might have been going through O. J.’s mind had Jason called him on the evening of June 12, 1994. Over and over I kept hearing the phone ring, wondering what my response would have been had my son called to tell me he had his stepmother’s blood on his hands.
I had never been an absentee father like O.J. I did not have a deeply troubled child, as did O.J. I considered myself a devoted father. Yet it wasn’t difficult for me to imagine what life had been like for Jason and his father. I could picture O.J. doing his “thing,” placing himself first and his wife and family second. He was doing what he knew how to do—play football, act in movies, golf, and sit on the boards of various multinational companies. I had to believe that if Jason Simpson was guilty, then O.J. felt responsible for not having been there for him when he was needed. The documents I read over and over indicated to me that each time Jason attempted suicide or overdosed, it was his strong cry for help and attention. O.J. was not there. That did not mean, however, that O.J. did not love Jason. Quite the contrary.
If Jason was in fact guilty, O. J.’s decision to go to the crime scene after the murders made a great deal of sense. Not only would he have been concerned for Jason, but for Nicole, Justin, and Sydney. Imagine what it would have been like for O.J. if he had arrived at the scene after the murders, bent down over Nicole’s crumpled body and discovered that she really had been killed—that her head had been nearly severed from her body, and then looking up, catching sight of Goldman’s lifeless stare, and realizing that he too had been murdered. In one mind-blowing moment, O. J.’s world would begin to crumble. He would look up and see that the lights were not on in Justin and Sydney’s rooms, that the front door to the house appeared to be closed, and that they were, for the time being, safe.
I could only wonder how O.J. might have reacted had Sydney and Justin actually been awake and crying that night. No doubt O.J. was pulled in two different directions: a desire to ensure that his and Nicole’s children were safe, and an equally strong desire to protect his firstborn son. If Jason had indeed committed the murders on Bundy Drive in an act of uncontrollable rage, I wondered if it would have been possible for O.J. to sleep through the night not knowing who might be the next target of his son’s rage. Were Sydney and Justin also at risk? I had to know what happened that night and was determined to keep coming back to Los Angeles until I was satisfied I had answered the important questions.
These thoughts still haunted me on February 22, 1997, when I left Dallas for Los Angeles accompanied by Chris Stewart, Herman King, Phil Smith and Don Pennington, Phil’s assistant. Phil owns Phil Smith Productions, which is a documentary film company in Irving, Texas. He was my close friend and confidant and had agreed, at short notice, to film the crime scene and other important locations connected to the murders. The idea was to build a three-dimensional record for later use, should the time come to present our evidence to a jury.
I’m glad that we took this step, for construction had already begun on Nicole’s residence on Bundy Drive. The property had been sold and the new owners, understandably, were trying to reconfigure the front entrance so it would not be easily recognizable. I suspected that the Rockingham house would also soon be changing hands, and that this location, too, had to be documented before the guesthouse, tennis courts, or even the main house itself underwent major changes. After filming the two residences we went on to document Mezzaluna Restaurant and Ron Goldman’s apartment on Gorham Avenue.
The next day, February 23, while filming the alley behind Bundy Drive, we observed a woman who drove a station wagon bearing California plates going through the trash bins in the alleyway behind Nicole’s. I learned her name was Emma Pearson. When the owners and renters in this alley put their trash out each week, Emma and another man would root through it looking for redeemable soda cans and other small treasures they might be able to sell.
Emma told me she did this so she could donate the proceeds to her church. “You’d be surprised at what you find in these trash bins!” she said. One time she found $2,000 rolled up in a shoe and another time an expensive watch. Emma said she wasn’t there for herself, but to help others. I’m not sure about the other man’s intentions, but I really believed Emma.
I asked her about June 12 and she said normally she would have gone down the alley that Sunday and Monday, but it was blocked off by the police. I asked her what she would have done had she found any clothes with blood on them.
“I wouldn’t want to touch them,” she said, “but I can assure you that if I had found them, knowing what had happened, I would have called the police!”
I truly believe she would have and that gave me an idea. After we completed filming, I went back to our hotel. I picked up the phone and called the National Enquirer. I disguised my voice. “I found the bloody clothes that the murderer of Nicole and Goldman had been wearing on the night of June 12. Are you interested?” The voice on the other end of the line asked me who I was.
“Never mind,” I said.
“Are you or are you not interested?”
“Are you sure these are the bloody clothes?” the response came. “Yes.”
“What do you want?”
“I want half a million dollars. Are you interested?”
“Yes, if they are in fact the clothes and you can prove it.”
“Would you be willing to negotiate payment through a lawyer and keep my identity secret?”
“Yes. How can we get in touch with you?” “I’ll be in touch with you,” was my response.
As I was putting the receiver down, I heard him say, “Don’t hang up . . .”
The call actually served an important purpose, for it demonstrated to me that even three years after the murders, these bloody clothes, if I had them for real—not that I would ever have considered selling them—were worth half a million dollars. There was still that much interest in what had taken place on Bundy Drive. Plenty of people besides me were interested in closure and in solving the murders once and for all. They too wanted the truth.
Having just called the National Enquirer, I then pondered how much these bloody clothes would have been worth within weeks after the murders. As Dr. Lee, the renowned forensic expert stated, the person or persons who killed Nicole and Goldman would have been covered in blood.
O. J.’s Bronco had less than a thumbnail full of blood throughout the entire vehicle. There was not a single drop of blood on the brake or accelerator, despite the pints of blood that covered the Bundy Drive walkway.
No bloody clothes were found in the alley on Bundy Drive from any of the trash bins. The plumbing pipes in O. J.’s bathroom, laundry, and shower had been cut out and examined, and no blood was found.
It was hard, if not impossible, for me to believe that less than one hour before the murders, O.J. had returned to his residence with Kato, after a trip to McDonald’s to buy a hamburger, and supposedly had taken a knife and gone to Nicole’s residence to carry out a premeditated murder. There was no way for O.J. to know whether or not his children would be asleep or awake or if Nicole might or might not have company. But according to the police, he had designed a premeditated murder that had to occur within a twenty-minute time span.
I had investigated many murders in my day and I knew that anything is possible. However, the one thing of which I was still convinced was that O.J. was innocent of the killings. But if O.J. didn’t do it, I had to be equally certain Jason could have. To that end, I returned to Jackson’s Restaurant, to make absolutely sure he indeed had no convincing alibi.
That particular night I drove along with Chris Stewart and Herman King to the restaurant on Beverly Drive, where I had made reservations under the name of William Dear. Knowing that movie actors, producers, and directors eat there frequently, I thought that the hostess might recognize my name. There is a movie director by the name of William C. Dear, spelled the same way as mine.
The hostess seated us in a booth against the far wall, which gave me a clear and unobstructed view of chef Alan Ladd Jackson in the kitchen. This is the same view that, had I been seated there on Sunday, June 12, 1994, I would have had of Jason Lamar Simpson as the chef.
I told the hostess it had been a number of years, three in fact, since I had been to Los Angeles and first dined at their restaurant. I didn’t tell her about my investigation, or that I had eaten there at least three times in the last two years.
“I used to come in on Sunday nights when there was hardly anybody here. The last time was the first Sunday in June of 1994,” I told her. “It was virtually empty. Mr. Jackson wasn’t cooking. It was someone else.”
“Yes,” she responded. “Mr. Jackson didn’t cook on Sunday nights. There wasn’t enough business to warrant his being here. We were lucky to have twenty to thirty people on a Sunday night. In fact, we closed altogether beginning in late July or early August on Sunday nights because of lack of business.”
I looked over at Chris and Herman, for this was again confirmation of what I had suspected to be true. “I think the last time I was in here, there was a young man cooking by the name of Jason,” I said.
“Yes,” she replied. “He was our regular sous chef and would cook on Sunday nights when Alan was off.”
I asked her why business was so heavy during the week, but so sparse on Sundays.
“This is a small restaurant, we only seat about eighty-five people and most of our customers come for lunch or dinner during the week. We’re busy on Fridays and Saturdays too, but never on Sundays. That’s why we finally decided to close Sunday nights.”
As I had previously confirmed, and now reconfirmed, there could not have been 200 people on that night of June 12. The restaurant could not hold 200 people, even if it was crammed to the rafters. Had there been, the regular chef and owner, Alan Ladd Jackson, would have been there.
I had to know who had given Jason the airtight alibi. And why? As I engaged the hostess in general conversation, she mentioned that Alan had opened another restaurant called Jackson’s Farms on Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills. I could feel the blood rush to my head, for I had assumed that he had only this one restaurant.
I had to resist the temptation to come right out and ask her if Jason had been here at Jackson’s on the night of June 12, 1994, or if he had been the chef at Jackson’s Farms. But I was still reluctant to tip my hand at this point. I had a gut feeling that I had to be extremely careful, for whoever had given Jason an alibi for the night of the murders had their reasons. I had come too far to risk having doors close on me before I had adequately explored what lay behind them.
As I contemplated these things while silently finishing my dessert, I realized I might have made a giant blunder by presuming that Jackson’s Restaurant, not Jackson’s Farms Restaurant, was where Jason had been cooking on the night of the murders. The mistake would be easy enough to make. Both restaurants had “Jackson’s” in their name, and both were on a street prefixed with Beverly, one on Beverly Drive and the other on Beverly Boulevard. Perhaps Jackson’s Farms was a restaurant that held 200 people and they had been open on June 12, 1994.
I paid my bill trying unsuccessfully to escape the sinking feeling that I had not properly checked all the facts before concluding that Jason’s alibi had holes in it. After asking for the address for Jackson’s Farms in Beverly Hills, we drove directly there.
No sooner had Chris parked the car than that sinking feeling turned into a knot in my stomach. Jackson’s Farm, in the heart of the Beverly Hills shopping district, with its large, yellow awning and casual indoor and outdoor dining, was considerably larger than Jackson’s Restaurant on Beverly Boulevard. I had only to stand out on the street and peer inside to see the difference between them. This restaurant was large enough to seat 200 people. It also had an open kitchen at the end of the room where patrons could watch their meals being prepared. I could see from the sign on the entrance door that Jackson’s Farm was open for business on Sundays.
I sent Herman in. I watched through the window as he spoke to the hostess before crossing the room to the kitchen at the far end of the restaurant. I could see him speaking with one of the prep chefs. For an instant my hopes were raised when I saw the prep chef shake his head “No” at Herman. A few minutes later Herman was back outside, confirming my worst fears.
“I told them Jason was a friend of mine from USC,” Herman said “and that I was looking for him.”
“And?” I asked impatiently.
“He had been a chef here, though he left to be with his father during the trial. They say they haven’t seen him since, but I don’t believe them.”
My head was now beginning to throb. The restaurant had been open on Sundays, could seat 200 or more people, and Jason had been a chef there. Jason’s alibi on the night of the murders appeared to be as solid as other investigators I had spoken to said it would be. So far everything I had done appeared to be fruitless.
“I’m going for a walk,” I told Chris and Herman. “Meet you back at the hotel.”
Chris and Herman respected my need for time alone and didn’t try to interfere. Nor did they try to inject any levity into what appeared to be one of the worst moments in my career. I could compose the headline myself: Bill Dear, master investigator, spends thousands of dollars and countless hours pursuing an innocent suspect. For the first time since I could remember, my instincts and intuition as an investigator seemed to be wrong. I had, apparently, blown it big-time.
I walked the two and a half miles back to my hotel where I put myself to bed only to spend the next eight hours tossing and turning. It was at sunrise, when I was still wide awake, that I decided to go back to square one and to check the facts as I should have checked them months and years earlier.
Over breakfast, I asked Herman to see what he could find out about Alan Jackson and his partners in the two restaurants and to see if he could come up with any leads on Jason. Chris was assigned to drive to Norwalk to see if he could get a copy of the tax records on the two restaurants and to see if Jason’s name appeared on any recently incorporated Los Angeles County business records. In the meantime, I was going to the Beverly Hills City Hall, to the office of the city clerk, to find out what I could about Jackson’s Farm.
I already knew that city hall was located on North Rexford Drive because I had passed it on my marathon walk the night before. I went to the permit office and asked to see records for Jackson’s Farm Restaurant on Beverly Drive. It didn’t take the clerk but a few minutes to pull the file and for me to then scan it, my heart pounding. Alan Jackson was the principal member of a syndicate of limited partners going by the name of Big Fish Enterprises. But before going to the trouble of copying down the list of partners, I needed to look at the date when the partnership had incorporated. This date, I knew, wouldn’t tell me when a chef was hired, or on what days meals were served, but it would tell me when the process to open their restaurant had begun. According to the record, the partnership had formed on February 15, 1995, eight months after the murders.
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” I shouted, while people stared. Never assume, always verify! I knew that. I taught that. Jason couldn’t have been a chef at Jackson’s Farm on the night of the murders because the restaurant hadn’t yet been opened!
City hall employees must have been wondering what kind of person would make a fool of himself over the contents of business records. It wasn’t until I met up with Herman and Chris later that night at Jackson’s Restaurant that I would begin to come down off my high.
Chris and Herman were as eager to tell me what they had discovered as I was to tell them my news. But dinner at Jackson’s was not the place or the time to discuss such matters. However, Chris and Herman could tell by my disposition that what I had found out had put us back on track, and I could tell that they also had something important to share.
Alan Jackson was back cooking behind the grill that night, and our regular hostess, the one who had helped us the night before, was greeting customers. And as before, she was happy to stop by and chat with us.
I wanted to make this meal particularly memorable, something that Alan Jackson himself wouldn’t soon forget and something that would also give me an opportunity to establish a rapport with him. By the time our meals had arrived, I knew what I was going to do. A small fly, buzzing in the window behind me, had provided the inspiration. When the hostess and our waiter were well out of sight, I caught the fly in my hand in one quick movement, shook it up so that it was dazed and flung it into my mashed potatoes. A direct hit. The fly, its wings caught in the potatoes, was on its back, its legs still kicking.
Chris, who sat across from me, looked incredulous. Herman looked equally baffled, but his shock dissolved into laughter. He knew I was always up to something. He called the waitress over to our table and pointed to the fly.
“Oh my God. Oh my God!” the waitress said repeatedly.
I smiled up at her. “I like your food but I don’t like it raw.”
“I just don’t know how that fly could have gotten in there,” she said.
“It’s no big deal.”
The fly’s little legs were still pumping when our waitress took the plate to Alan Jackson. I saw him shake his head, obviously as upset as she was. Within minutes he was at our table, offering his apologies.
“I love your restaurant and I love your cooking,” I told him, shaking his hand.
“I’m glad you do,” he replied. “I don’t know how something like this could have happened.”
“Think nothing of it,” I replied.
Once our conversation had gotten started, it was easy enough to ask him about himself and how he got into the restaurant business.
“I’ve always liked cooking,” he told us. “I suppose it’s got to be that way if you’re going to survive in a business like this.”
I asked him about the restaurant closing on Sundays. He couldn’t remember exactly when that had begun, but thought it was around July or early August, due to lack of business.
However much I wanted to ask him about the alibi that he had provided Jason, I didn’t press my questioning any further. Jackson finally returned to the open kitchen after a little more chitchat and after offering us dessert—crème brulée, my favorite—on the house. At least we had established a rapport. There was no question now that he would remember me. Who could forget the fly?
On leaving the restaurant, I wondered what Jackson’s motive could have been if he was the one who supplied a false alibi for Jason. Chris and Herman helped me to possibly answer that question when they provided me with the details they had turned up while I had been at the Beverly Hills City Hall.
First, they discovered that Jason was indeed still in Los Angeles. Though he continued to move from one job to another and from one apartment to another, he apparently was picking up his mail at the Rockingham house. More important to me, Jason had also given a formal deposition in Los Angeles as part of the civil trial against his father.
The civil trial actually started in September 1996 after a continuance was filed on April 2, 1996, to allow further depositions—one of which was Jason’s, which was taken on May 8, 1996. The civil verdict against O.J. was rendered on February 5, 1997.
I continued my investigation all through the civil trial. I learned that, in Jason’s deposition, he had gone on record about his and his father’s alleged activities on the night of the murders, but this wasn’t the only thing I would learn.
Chris and Herman had also found out other important details about Alan Ladd Jackson and his two restaurants. They learned that Jackson had been deep in debt at the time of the Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman murders. In 1994 and 1995 his home had been foreclosed, and the limited partnership that owned Jackson’s Restaurant had an assortment of liens filed against it by major food and restaurant supply companies, along with two IRS tax liens. The total amount owed was in excess of $150,000. And yet, a year later, the 1995 tax liens and many of the other bills were gone. In fact, he and his partners even had the money to open yet another restaurant, Jackson’s Farms. There was not a clue from the records as to where the money had come from to pay off the taxes and other debts at Jackson’s Restaurant.
I couldn’t help but now begin to wonder about this so-called airtight alibi for Jason Simpson that had come from Jackson’s Restaurant for the night of June 12. Who at Jackson’s Restaurant had given Jason that desperately needed alibi?
And why?