Fuhrman `Torture' Tale Echoes '78 Probe Of Beating

LOS ANGELES - In graphic passages from the tapes that have come to dominate O.J. Simpson's murder trial, former Los Angeles Police Detective Mark Fuhrman said he and other officers went on a bloody beating spree and "basically tortured" suspects after two policemen were shot in 1978, then lied to internal-affairs investigators about the incident.

Sources say the Los Angeles Police Department has now uncovered records of a Nov. 18, 1978, incident that matches many details described by Fuhrman in that audiotape, which along with tape transcripts has been provided to the prosecution and defense in O.J. Simpson's trial.

Official departmental corroboration of even some significant details could lend credibility to the account that Fuhrman gives in the 1985 interview, and might bolster the contention of Simpson's lawyers that the recently retired detective was telling the truth in the interviews, not making up details to impress a would-be screenwriter.

Anthony Pellicano, a private investigator who works for Fuhrman, told reporters yesterday that the former police detective, who testified under oath that he had not used a racial slur to describe blacks, was suffering from a "mental block" when he said that.

The public retreat came after disclosure of taped interviews in which the now-retired detective, who testified that he found a bloody glove at Simpson's estate, uses the racial slur many times and claims to have framed innocent black people.

Pellicano said Fuhrman made the statements in the interviews with North Carolina screenwriter Laura McKinny, who was writing a screenplay about the Los Angeles police, during a 10-year period when he was under a lot of stress.

"It was a very, very hard time in his life," Pellicano said. "He was upset with his job, he was upset with the LAPD, he was upset with his boss, he was upset with a lot of things.

"What he was doing was trying to create screen characters, and in his own words, he was talking a lot of trash," Pellicano said.

Beyond the Simpson trial, the tapes may hold profound implications for the LAPD. If the department's re-examination of the 17-year-old incident determines that Fuhrman's account was factual, there could be profound political and social fallout from a case that the LAPD already acknowledges has become a public-relations nightmare.

In the transcript shared with the Los Angeles Times, Fuhrman said he was the primary suspect in an 18-month internal-affairs investigation that resulted from the 1978 incident, but that he escaped any punishment.

"They knew damn well I did it," he said, according to the transcript. "But there was nothing they could do about it. Most of the guys worked 77th (Street Division) together. We were tight. I mean, we could have murdered people. We all knew what to say."

Fuhrman was briefly assigned to the Simpson murder case and discovered the bloody glove on the grounds of the former football star's estate, but prosecutors have forcefully argued that the defense's attack on Fuhrman's character and credibility does not prove that he planted evidence and is intended to distract the jury from the question of Simpson's guilt or innocence.

Simpson has pleaded not guilty to the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman.

"Whatever (Fuhrman's) personal beliefs may be," Deputy District Attorney Marcia Clark said Wednesday, "the truth of the matter is that he could not have done what they're trying to prove he did."

In the transcript, Fuhrman talks about the investigation of a shooting at a housing project in Hollenbeck Division, which includes the Los Angeles district of Boyle Heights.

"Two of my buddies were shot and ambushed, policemen," Fuhrman said, according to the transcript. "Both down when I arrived. I was first unit at the scene. Four suspects ran into a second-story apartment, and we kicked the door down, grabbed the girl, one of their girlfriends, by the hair, stuck a gun to her head, and used her as a barricade."

McKinny asked whether she could include those details in her work. Fuhrman objected, saying the statute of limitations would not protect him.

Fuhrman's attorney, Robert H. Tourtelot, has said his client was not speaking as himself on the tapes but rather as a character in a fictional work. Fuhrman's attention to the statute of limitations, however, could undermine that argument.

"We basically tortured them," Fuhrman said in the transcript. "There was four policemen, four guys. We broke 'em. Their faces were just mush. They had pictures of the walls with blood all the way to the ceiling and fingermarks of trying to crawl out of the room."

Afterward, "we went downstairs with the garden hose," the transcript said. "We had blood all over our legs, everything."

The bottom line, Fuhrman said: "You don't shoot a policeman. That's all there is to it."

Sources say the LAPD turned up records of an incident with many parallels to the one described by Fuhrman. It involves two shot officers, it took place near a housing project, the suspects were not immediately apprehended, Fuhrman was working in Hollenbeck Division at the time, and charges of brutality were leveled against the department afterward.

Simpson's attorneys yesterday filed a motion with Superior Court Judge Lance Ito seeking to play for the tapes for the jury.