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Investigators make formidable team

2008-05-19

The Boston Herald

July 22, 1994 Friday THIRD EDITION

BYLINE: HELEN KENNEDY

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 004

LENGTH: 277 words

The detectives hired to help clear O.J. Simpson include a respected veteran gumshoe and a bitter former Los Angeles police officer with a possible grudge against the department. John McNally, a former New York City police detective sergeant who joined the case Wednesday, has been the right hand of Simpson's lawyers for 20 years.

'He's a top-notch investigator who is excellent in interviewing and reinterviewing witnesses,' said attorney Dan Leonard, partner of Simpson defense attorney F. Lee Bailey. McNally is best known for his single-handed 1964 arrest of notorious jewel thief Jack 'Murf the Surf' Murphy. He also spent three years working on the Patty Hearst bank robbery with Bailey and Boston lawyer J. Albert Johnson, who called McNally 'extremely thorough and highly effective.'

The other investigator, Zvonko G. Bill Pavelic retired abruptly from the LAPD in 1992 - just before passing the 20-year mark which would have allowed him to collect his pension. Pavelic, who often publicly attacked the LAPD and former chief Darryl Gates, told the Associated Press he quit because he was 'sick and tired of watching innocent people get framed, especially members of minority groups.'

Bill Pavelic was originally scheduled to be called as a witness in the Reginald Denny beating case to testify that the black men being charged were victims of a racist department. Prosecutors called Pavelic angry, bitter and paranoid.

Mike Pirouzian, president of Private Investigators of California, said neither detective has a private investigators license and questioned whether any evidence they turn up would be legally admissable.

LOAD-DATE: March 08, 1995

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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