In O.J. Simpson Trial, Prosecutors Attack Maid's Memory Losses

LOS ANGELES - "I don't remember."

Over and over, Rosa Lopez's interpreter repeated the answer the witness gave in Spanish: "No me recuerdo."

The Salvadoran maid couldn't remember the day, month or even season when she gave her alibi story to O.J. Simpson's investigators. She couldn't remember conversations with her employers, a police detective, two of her friends, news reporters or a former employer she still cooks for on special occasions.

At one point yesterday, she couldn't remember what she had said on the witness stand 20 minutes earlier.

But Lopez could remember what she was doing at 30 seconds after 10 p.m. on June 12: boiling water in a microwave oven. A few minutes later, she says, she took her employer's golden retriever for a walk and saw Simpson's white Ford Bronco parked in front of his mansion.

Under a grueling cross-examination, Lopez remained calm and confident as she stuck to her story - although she admitted that she didn't know the exact time she saw the Bronco and never told police what she had seen.

She is the only witness to place the Bronco at Simpson's estate about the time prosecutors say he was driving the vehicle to Nicole Brown Simpson's house and murdering his ex-wife and her friend.

In contrast to her demeanor last Friday, when she was tearful and distraught under questioning from Deputy District Attorney Christopher Darden, Lopez gave calm, brief answers.

When pressed for an answer, she sometimes replied, "If you say so." But as the day wore on, the words "I don't remember" became a litany.

That was her response when asked if she told a friend and former employer that she would testify to "anything, anytime in this case."

And it was her response when asked whether she told fellow maid Sylvia Guerra that she could get $5,000 from the National Enquirer if she, too, said she saw the Bronco.

"I don't remember having said that, sir," Lopez testified.

"So you could have told her that?" Darden pressed.

"I don't remember having said it, sir," she replied.

Darden found Lopez's memory problems suspicious.

"Did somebody tell you to say that if you don't remember something, it will make it easier for you?" he asked.

"No sir," she replied.

Darden repeatedly suggested that Lopez's testimony was scripted by defense attorney Johnnie Cochran Jr. and other defense attorneys, and he aggressively questioned her about whether money played a part in her involvement in the case.

After a long string of questions, Lopez denied she received any money from Simpson's lawyers or from tabloids, scoffing at the suggestion that she was paid $5,000.

"With $5,000, I would no longer be here, sir," Lopez snapped.

"Well, what if you were given $5,000 to stay here?" Darden shot back.

"I'm not here, sir. I leave and I get lost," said Lopez, who reluctantly obeyed the judge's order to remain in the United States to testify on videotape.

The videotape could be shown to the jury later if Lopez makes good on her promise to leave the country to escape media harassment.

Darden bore in on the witness using details from a report from a defense investigator who interviewed Lopez twice last summer. The report says Lopez placed the Bronco outside Simpson's estate between 10:15 and 10:20 p.m.

"All I said was that it was after 10," Lopez said.

"So you don't know how long after 10?" Darden asked.

"No, sir."

Darden asked if investigator William Pavelic first suggested she had seen the Bronco at 10:15 or 10:20 p.m.

"If that's what he's saying, that's fine," she said.