Faye Resnick said in her book that O.J. Simpson is a murderer. Simpson, in turn, hinted in his book that Resnick played a role in the slayings of his ex-wife and her friend.
Now, Simpson's attorneys have finally spelled out their "Faye's fault" theory: the killings were drug hits intended to send Resnick a message to pay her cocaine bills.Although attorney Johnnie Cochran Jr. offered no evidence, he spent much of Wednesday aggressively questioning detective Tom Lange about a possible drug connection. Cochran went so far as to say the murders may have had a drug lord's signature in the form of a "Colombian necklace," defined by Cochran as an ear-to-ear throat slash.
Lange insisted there were no signs that drugs were involved in the June 12 killings. He was to return to the stand Thursday for an eighth day of testimony.
Legal experts said Cochran may have taken a major risk that could backfire.
"The jury is absorbing all of this. I'm beginning to wonder if they're not thinking, `Is the tide beginning to turn? Is the defense team beginning to get desperate?' " said South-western University law professor Robert Pugsley. "At the moment, the defense is in need of regrouping."
Resnick's lawyer, Arthur Barens, scoffed at the defense allegations.
"They appear to be grasping at straws to create a hypothetical defense," he said.
He said Resnick has not been subpoenaed to testify.
In her salacious book "Nicole Brown Simpson: The Private Diary of a Life Interrupted," Resnick admitted using cocaine last spring but did not say she used it in Nicole Simpson's home. She was more than clear, however, about her views on who killed her friend.
"I truly believed that O.J. Simpson had murdered Nicole," she wrote near the end of the book. "It was as pre-ordained as the path of the sun across the sky."
Simpson made his own allegations in his book "I Want to Tell You."
"I know in my heart that the answer to the death of Nicole and Mr. Goldman lies somewhere in the world that Faye Resnick inhabited," he wrote.
Also on Wednesday, Judge Lance Ito ruled the defense can see edited versions of some police documents, including interviews with crime scene officers about detective Mark Fuhrman's movements during the murder probe and a report on remarks he allegedly made about Nicole Simpson's breast implants. Ito said he would not allow the defense to look at records involving allegations that Fuhrman kept a cartoon containing a Nazi symbol.