The Whole Truth?

By Richard Lacayo

Powerful court cases are like a tornado. They exert a devastating centripetal force. Try as you may to keep yourself on the periphery, you can be dragged deep into a nasty center, the kind of place where it's easy to be torn apart. It must feel that way lately for some of the people who once thought of themselves as secondary players in the murder trial of O.J. Simpson.

Two of them are Brian ("Kato") Kaelin, who was living in Simpson's guesthouse on the night of the murders, and Kaelin's friend Rachel Ferrara. TIME has learned that prosecutors Marcia Clark and William Hodgman are pursuing a potentially important new lead that contradicts the sworn testimony given by Kaelin and Ferrara at the preliminary hearings in July. Kaelin told the court that at about 10:40 on the night of the murders, he was in his quarters on the Simpson estate talking on the phone with Ferrara, when he heard three loud "thumps" on his wall. Fearing a prowler, Kaelin said, he went outside to investigate, then returned to his room, where he called Ferrara back and told her he had seen no one. On the stand, Ferrara corroborated the account.

Kaelin's version was favorable to the prosecution because it was just outside his guest cottage where police say they discovered the bloody glove that matches one found near the bodies of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman. His testimony suggested that the glove may have been dropped there by someone at around 10:40. But if so, was that person necessarily Simpson?

That's why prosecutors are now eagerly investigating a claim brought to them by two friends of Ferrara's, who say that in conversations they had with Ferrara after the murder, but before she gave her testimony, she described her phone talks with Kaelin in a crucially different manner. The two friends, both of whom have also related their story to TIME, say Ferrara told them that in Kaelin's second call he reported that when he opened his door to go outside, he found Simpson standing there. When a startled Kaelin told O.J. about the noises, Simpson replied that he had heard them too. The two men briefly inspected the grounds before Kaelin returned to his guesthouse to call Ferrara back.

If prosecutors can confirm that account, it would place Simpson outside the guesthouse at around the time they believe he dropped the bloody glove nearby. But if their new lead is potentially important, it's also a decidedly mixed blessing. In order to present a jury with a revised version of Kaelin's story, they would have to refute his earlier one, in the process casting doubt on his reliability as a witness. If they recant their earlier testimony, Kaelin and Ferrara could open themselves to perjury charges, though prosecutors would presumably decline to press those in return for the pair's cooperation. William Genego, Kaelin's attorney, denies his client lied on the stand. "I am completely confident that any investigation will show that Kato told the truth."

Ferrara's two friends claim that they urged her without success to take her story to the police. One of the pair says that during the week of June 13 she contacted the West Los Angeles police station with the story and left her name with a desk clerk. When no one from there called her back, she called prosecutor Hodgman this week. "I didn't know if this was important or not," she says. "But I kept thinking someone should know." After meeting with L.A. police detective Philip Vannatter in a van parked near her apartment, she was driven to a nearby police station, where she talked for 2 1/2 hours with Vannatter, Clark and Hodgman.

Even as the district attorney's office was trying to shore up the likelihood that it was Simpson who dropped the telltale glove, O.J.'s lawyers were trying to chip away the credibility of another supporting player in the case, L.A. police detective Mark Fuhrman, the man who claimed to have found the glove there. In July the defense team leaked stories that Fuhrman had a history of open hostility toward blacks, a charge that Fuhrman vigorously denies. Though Robert Shapiro, the lead defense attorney, promised not to make race an issue in the case, Simpson's attorneys filed a devastating motion that seeks police- department records on Fuhrman and three other detectives on the case. Contending that Fuhrman "is a dangerous officer with a propensity to create false information against African-American defendants," the defense offered an affidavit from a former real estate agent who claims Fuhrman told her that "if I had my way, they would take all the niggers, put them together in a big group and burn them."

Meanwhile, a grand jury begins hearing witnesses this week in an investigation of Al Cowlings, Simpson's good pal and the driver of the white Bronco during O.J.'s freeway chase. Prosecutors are looking into the possibility that even before acting as Simpson's driver, Cowlings was trying to help his friend cover his tracks, perhaps to the extent of concealing or destroying evidence. If so, the faithful companion could be charged as an accessory to murder. That's what it's like in a tornado's way.

With reporting by Elaine Lafferty and Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles