Former Los Angeles police detective Mark Fuhrman, who was convicted of lying during testimony at the OJ Simpson murder trial, has died. He was 74.
Fuhrman was one of the first two police detectives sent to investigate the 1994 killings of Simpson’s ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ronald Goldman, in Los Angeles. He reported finding a bloody glove at Simpson’s home but his credibility came under attack during the trial as the defence raised the prospect of racial bias.
Under cross-examination, Fuhrman testified that he had never made anti-Black racial slurs in the past decade, but a recording showed he had done so repeatedly.
Lynn Acebedo, the chief deputy coroner in Kootenai County, Idaho, said that Fuhrman died May 12. The county does not release the cause of death as a rule.
Alan Dershowitz, a prominent lawyer and law professor who was a legal strategist on Simpson’s defence “Dream Team,” said Fuhrman was a “much better detective than he was a witness".
“He’s very smart, and you know, a very, very aggressive detective. Ultimately his actions helped us win the OJ case because of his use of the ‘n’ word,” Dershowitz said Monday evening (local time). “I got to know him later, after it was all over, and we had a cordial relationship.”
Fuhrman retired from the Los Angeles Police Department after Simpson’s 1995 acquittal. He subsequently moved to Idaho with his family and set up an eight-hectare farm, raising chickens, goats, sheep and llamas.
In 1996, Fuhrman was charged with perjury and pleaded no contest. He later became a TV and radio commentator and wrote the book Murder in Brentwood about the killings.
A criminal-court jury found Simpson, a former star NFL running back and actor, not guilty of murder in 1995, but a separate civil trial jury found him liable in 1997 for the deaths and ordered him to pay US$33.5 million (NZ$57 million) to relatives of Brown and Goldman. He served nine years in prison on unrelated charges and died in Las Vegas of prostate cancer in 2024 at the age of 76.
Kato Kaitlin, a friend of Brown who also testified in the murder trial, wrote in a post on X that he wanted to respectfully acknowledge Fuhrman's death and that he hopes Fuhrman's loved ones can find peace.
“While we were never close personally, our lives were indelibly linked through our roles in the OJ Simpson trial over thirty years ago. It was a deeply complex and painful chapter for everyone involved, but any loss of life is a time for reflection and solemnity,” Kaitlin wrote.
Fuhrman’s father left when he was 7 years old, and Fuhrman often cared for his younger brother while his mother worked. As an adult, he joined the Marines and then the Los Angeles Police Department.
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