FBI Expert Tries To Tie Simpson To Rare-Shoe Prints -- Footwear Testimony On Heels Of Gloves Effort

LOS ANGELES - If the gloves don't fit - see if the shoes do.

That was the prosecution's tactic in the O.J. Simpson trial yesterday, when an FBI shoe-print expert testified that Simpson's size-12 feet match bloody shoe prints from a pair of rare, expensive Italian shoes.

The next witness is a shoe salesman from the Bloomingdale's department store in New York, which stocked the Bruno Magli shoes linked to the prints found near the bodies of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

Shoe-department manager Sam Poser was to testify today. He has told investigators that he has seen Simpson in the store but has no receipts - or even a clear memory - showing that Simpson ever bought a pair of Bruno Magli shoes, sources said.

Indeed, the prosecution's shoe evidence appears to be among the weakest of the extensive physical evidence in the murders of Simpson's ex-wife and her friend.

For instance, FBI Special Agent William Bodziak said yesterday that a tip from Tokyo and his own trip to Italy yielded only this information: The killer wore a size-12 Bruno Magli in the Lyon or Lorenzo styles. The retail price for a pair was about $160, and Bruno Magli didn't sell too many of them in that size.

A pair of Reebok tennis shoes that Simpson is known to have worn are also a size 12, and the soles of the Reeboks and the Bruno Maglis match up perfectly, Bodziak told jurors.

"I could include him as a candidate for having possibly worn those shoes," Bodziak testified.

But there was no testimony linking Simpson to the Bruno Maglis, as prosecutors elicited last week regarding bloody gloves found at the crime scene and Simpson's estate. A witness testified that Nicole Simpson may have unwittingly outfitted her killer when she bought the gloves for Simpson from Bloomingdale's in 1990.

That strategy backfired, however, when prosecutors asked Simpson to try on the gloves and he struggled to stuff his hands into them. A witness later said the gloves shrank.

Bodziak's direct testimony was followed by a quirky cross-examination by F. Lee Bailey, who last cross-examined Mark Fuhrman, the detective accused of being a racist who planted evidence.

Bailey tried to suggest that the approximately 30 shoe prints were left by at least two assassins who cleverly tried to frustrate authorities by each wearing size-12 Bruno Magli shoes.

Bodziak called the theory "ridiculous," and legal analysts were left shaking their heads.

"Bailey's cross-examination was bizarre," said law professor Peter Arenella of the University of California, Los Angeles.

If anything, Arenella said, Bailey helped the prosecution by eliciting a scenario that wasn't suggested during direct testimony: that the numerous prints came from a single killer who returned to the crime scene.

Prosecutor Hank Goldberg later suggested that the killer went back to the bodies to look for a glove and a cap left behind. The apparent mate to the glove was found on Simpson's estate.

Arenella called the return-to-the-crime-scene theory "far more plausible than Bailey's suggestion that two brilliant killers used the same size and style designer shoes to fool the police into thinking there was only a single killer."

Bailey's line of questioning turned comical when he attempted to counter Bodziak's suggestion that people with size-12 feet are between 5 foot 11 and 6 foot 4. Simpson is 6 foot 2.

Bailey had large-footed - but apparently under 5-foot-11 - defense attorney Carl Douglas stand, then asked Bodziak to guess how tall Douglas was.

"How tall are you?" Bodziak asked Bailey, who was standing next to Douglas. When Bailey responded "5-9," Bodziak observed, "You've got raised heels on." Bailey was wearing a pair of boots with 1-inch heels.

Earlier, prosecutors tried to show that the Magli prints also were traceable to carpet on the floor of Simpson's Bronco, a heel impression on Nicole Simpson's back and a heel print on the front of her black dress. Bodziak said that although some marks were consistent, they were not extensive enough to match the Magli soles.