It’s been 24 years since O.J. Simpson’s acquittal in the 1994 murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ronald Goldman divided public opinion in a way that perhaps no other verdict in U.S. history has. At 85, F. Lee Bailey, one of the “dream team” of lawyers many excoriated for representing Simpson, is attempting to recast his reputation with a book intended for a generation too young to have lived through the “trial of the century,” reports the Boston Herald. “There has been a polarization as bad as I’ve ever seen,” said Bailey. “A lot of white people have berated me for prostituting my talents; blacks were happy with the outcome (of the trial). I finally decided millennials are large in number. I can reach them.”
The book suggests the murders were carried out by hitmen sent by Cuban or Colombian drug dealers to collect a $30,000 debt from Faye Resnick, who was staying at Brown’s California condominium until Resnick checked into a drug rehab center three days before her friend was found with her throat slit. “The killers were told to kill a blond woman,” Bailey said. “They probably assumed Nicole was Faye.” Bailey concedes he has no proof for that theory. He argues not only that hitmen mistook Brown for Resnick, but also that Mark Fuhrman, a white former Los Angeles police detective, planted a bloody glove at Simpson’s estate as part of a racially motivated plot against him. “The glove could not have been dropped there by O.J.; he simply didn’t have time to commit the murders,” Bailey said. “Mark Fuhrman dropped it there.” When asked under oath whether he had planted or manufactured evidence in the case, Fuhrman invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and declined to answer.