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SPECTOR EVIDENCE STOLEN BY O.J. TEAM?

2008-06-29

 

Daily News (New York)

May 3, 2007 Thursday 

SPORTS FINAL EDITION

 

BYLINE: BY MICHELLE CARUSO DAILY NEWS WEST COAST BUREAU mcaruso@nydailynews.com

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 336 words

LOS ANGELES - Tooth or nail . . . or a big red herring?

Phil Spector's murder trial was thrown into chaos yesterday when a former clerk for lawyer Robert Shapiro came forward and swore the rock mogul's first defense team found and may have concealed a key fragment of tooth or fingernail at the crime scene.

Spector, 67, hired Shapiro, an ex-member of the O.J. Simpson defense Dream Team, immediately after he was booked for Lana Clarkson's slaying on Feb. 3, 2003, but he later fired and sued the high-profile lawyer.

Ex-clerk Gregory Diamond kept mum until about two weeks ago regarding the alleged evidence tampering he claims he saw during a Shapiro-led defense team visit to Spector's mansion. Then he contacted authorities.

Diamond named Shapiro's associate, lawyer Sara Caplan, as the person who picked up something "white, whitish and quite small" on the floor "lodged between the carpet and the staircase."

He said Caplan gave the item to Dr. Michael Baden, a forensic pathologist working for Spector's team, who examined it and said it might be "a fragment of a tooth," Diamond testified.

Diamond testified the white item was "passed around" to other defense team members at Spector's house, including another ex-Simpson minion, private investigator Bill Pavelic.

"I don't know who had it last," Diamond said.

Prosecutors suspect the tiny item could be a missing fragment of Clarkson's acrylic thumbnail.

Diamond denied he earlier told cops he had seen Pavelic put the white fragment in his pocket.

"That question was put to me and I said 'No,' " he replied.

The ex-law clerk's story dovetails with a 2004 allegation that the defense team had found at the scene - and hidden away - a missing sliver of Clarkson's nail that could prove she struggled before she died or might have tried to block the fatal shot.

But Baden testified immediately after Diamond and denied the incident ever happened.

Today, Caplan, Shapiro and other members of the defense team will be called to the hot seat to tell their sides of the story.

LOAD-DATE: May 3, 2007

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: EXCLUSIVE PHOTO: Lana Clarkson one month before she was found dead B-movie starlet Lana Clarkson at convention. Photo by John Chennavasin - ZUMA Press

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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Hotline shut down as 'tips' plummet

2008-06-05

Hamilton Spectator (Ontario, Canada)

August 25, 1994 Thursday Final Edition

SOURCE: FROM ASSOCIATED PRESS

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A8

LENGTH: 320 words

DATELINE: LOS ANGELES

 

Calls to a hot line created for tipsters with possible leads in the O.J. Simpson murder case have dropped off so precipitously in recent weeks that his attorneys have decided for now to pull the plug on the highly publicized effort, members of Mr. Simpson's defence camp said yesterday.

"Like anything, the initial impact was the biggest," said Robert Shapiro, one of Mr. Simpson's attorneys. "Since then, it's worn off some."

In its first week of operation, the toll-free number generated thousands of calls -- Mr. Simpson's attorneys say they logged more than 250,000 tips within days, a rush so intense that they were forced to install extra lines to capture the recorded comments deluging the hot line.

Many of the calls came from people sympathetic to the football star charged with murdering Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman. Others sought to cash in on Mr. Simpson's offer of a $500,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the "real killer or killers."

But in the weeks since that first burst of phone calls, members of Mr. Simpson's team say the quantity and quality of calls have tapered off dramatically. In recent weeks, tantalizing tips mostly have been replaced by wackier offerings and meddlesome wanna-be investigators, Mr. Simpson's representatives say.

"Initially, it was a very good idea," said Bill Pavelic, an investigative consultant working with the Simpson team who recommended that the hot line be shut down. "We got a lot of good leads. But the calls lately have not been as good. We get people who want to tell us how to do things, not people who have information."

Because of that, the service was temporarily disconnected, and Mr. Shapiro said Mr. Simpson's attorneys expect to decide later this week whether to leave it off permanently. Tuesday, callers to the number got a recorded message saying that the number was "temporarily out of service."

 

LOAD-DATE: October 13, 2002

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Shapiro

TYPE: News

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