Post-Trial Life and Final Years

So media hind the Bards a podcast about the very worst people in all of history. This week, we're on part two of our episodes on the recently and lamentably departed Mark Furman, who now that we've gotten to know, you know, the mood has turned somber here in the behind the Bastards studio because Sophie and our guest for today Joe Kabian are all overwhelmed with grief at the tyight that we've lost. you know, that that's no longer with us. The great mind The great heart, the great law enforcement officer, Mark Fermman, you know, I don't know. It almost looks pointless to go on Why are we here I'm really happy though that in death that he can be you the United States newest gender neutral bathroom That's right, That's right. Yeah. find out where they put them. someomewhere in Idaho. Yeah. The only gender neutral bathroom in Idaho Just if you see a grave in Idaho pisss on it, it might be M Fermman. It might not be a way to know. You gott nice. somehow our hearts will go on And on and on. Let's talk about the shit Robert. talkal about the OJ trial. I'm excited Let's talk about we love the OJ trial. get if you want to watch the documentarary starring Ross from Friends as Robert Kardashian, you know, we'll wait for you. U but I can replicate the best parts. Just imagine Ross from friends saying J over and over again. and you pretty much got the important bits, you know I'm I'm really happy that Ross from Friends career could go so well He ends up doing Brown face to play an Armenian guy because surge from system of down one answers phone I do think what is really funny to me about that is they they had Cuba play OJ, Cuba G junior. Andon. It's a weird case of like, Casting, doing a lot of the acting because I can believe that OJ's evil because Cuba Gooding Jror' really That's true. It was a very like thing like, oh wow, a lot of the lifting's just being done by like I know who Cuba Gooding Jior is. But, yeah, they nailed it on that one. They just had no idea. 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Surprise someone you love with a custom song made just for them with Joybox. Visit joybox. studio to get started on your personalized song today. Don't just say I love you. Sang it with Joybox Let's talk about Mark Ferman. By the early nineteen nineties, Mark Furman was a veteran LAPD detective who seems to have been somewhat popular and influential among like at least his clique in the department. was known for making racist and sexist jokes and for his He's got a hobby What kind of hobby do you think a guy who like J joined the Marines because he like idolized violence and never got over not getting to go to war and then became a cop. What kind of what do you think like one of his hobbies is? What do you think he collects? Stamps? I'm gonna to go stamps. Uh no, me it's military memorabilia I was goings. I was going. I know these guys. I fucking know these guys. I am a historian by trade and every time you meet a guy Every fucking time E Oh I collect some military memorabilia I'm like it's notazi shit, isn't it? It's always it's always not. And they'll always tell you like you don't even have to come on to them because they're so defensive. and that's true with Mark because I noted I'd read like two articles that had said that, oh, he got into like collecting like military old military uniforms and awards. And so I'd wondered, but that's all they said. L they didn't like say anything, like accuse anything. But in his own book, when Mark sang and like, yeah, I liked collecting old military stuff Qote, someome of which happen to be German I was like, no one even said that, Mark, No one was even asking and you just brought it up because you knew ' like you knew what we knew, you know, and you had to confirm it for us. That's very funny. That's a direct A to B. Like no cop is collecting like, you know what? I got really into the Iperial Japanese Navy, which to be fair is not that much of a better of a choice. still 're one thing specifically. There's not an LAPD detective who's like, yeah, I'm just really interested actually in like the differences between the like the Austro Hungarian military proper and then like the actual like Hungarian military and the ways in which these kind of like differing like forces within the same state clashed and I like to collect items that sort of embody that clash and like, no, it's always just Nazi shit. Oh no, you misunderstand me, sir. I am simply a enthusiast of the Han Ved militaria is all. Sheriff. J me I'm the only one in the world. Yeah One of his favorite cartoons, because he also likes he loves to collect political cartoons, like newspaper cartoons. He's a big cartoon guy and he has like a lot a bunch of them displayed at his desk at any point in time This is relevant Because when the O.J. Simpson case blows up and whether or not Mark Fan iss a racist becomes an important matter for reasons we'll discuss later, people are like, He was in a swastika at his desk. cartoon swastika, like displayed prominently, like taped and like displayed or something up, like pasted up at his his workplace And people thought that was weird. And so in his autobiography, Mark had to be like, that's bullshit I didn't have a drawing of a swastika. I mean, yes, there was a swastika in a drawing, but it was from a political cartoon by an artist called Paul Conrad. And the cartoon was like a swastika rising up out of the ashes of the recently collapsed Berlin wall U I haven't actually been able to find this cartoon, but here's this is Furman's explanation for what Conrad was going for with the cartoon Cred was asking whether we were making a mistake by allowing a country with the power and history of Germany to be reunified So that that's why Firman was like, and that's why I liked the cartoon is, you know, I thought it was asking a poignant question and this is obviously what it meant. And that's why there was a swastika at my desk And I don't buy I don't buy it. and also that's not what the cartoon was about. Okay againain, because Google so fucked up the, I didn't find that cartoon, but I did find an article that interviewed Paul Conrad about that cartoon because it came up during the Simpson trial. And the New York Times reached out to Paul Conrad and asked for comment, and Paul gave a very different explanation for what that comment meant again Mark is like, obviously, it means that you know, maybe reunifying Germany is a mistake because of the Nazis. Here's why Paul said he made that comic. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in nineteen eighty nine, Span, Italian and other European workers were sent back to their home countries to create jobs for the East Germans. Out of this came the rising up of the No Nazis, the skinheads, or whoever you wish to refer to them. My statement was in protest and anger that the downing of the wall, hopefully producing freedom for all of Germany, had in fact given rise to the tortured thinking of the past That's the same That statement. Yeah. he is talking about like the visible rise of the skinheads and how that like upset him and stuff. And Mar is No, when the wall fell, people were just worried the Nazis were coming back. And there's just a difference between those two things. I guess it doesn't matter much in the context of the court case, but it's interesting to me And think of the the mental pathways that lead a sergeant, I guess in the LAPD to look at that and be like, this is something that needs to be on my desk because it says something so poignant and powerful about the reunification of Germany. Germany? Yeah I don't know Kind of weird, Mark, kindind of weird Um probablyrobably the thing that Mark's peers at the station knew best about him is that he had some issues with women He'd lied about much of what he told that journalist, you know McKinney and the tapes that we talked about last episode, But men against womomen, the group that like he talked about founding, was a real organization within the LAPD that has been like independently reported on Now it was never an officially recognized group, obviously, but it did appeal to a large number of male officers. and there's internal documentation that not only did the Department Bass know that men against women existed, but that they knew Fhman was the ringleader behind starting it The group began with Mark and several other older male cops complaining about split tailes, which was a cop slur for female cops And I don't know when it started. Most of the We usually say like eighty five. whichich is like right when he got back onto patrol, which is weird that he's got like the social cloud that he's like starting this group But maybe this is him distracting from his own disgrace by like trying to rally everyone to attack the lady cops, I don't know Prior to nineteen ninety seven, the only evidence that this group existed was those taped interviews of Mark Ferrman, and initially Mark claimed that these had been lies, blustered to feel cool But after the OJ. Simpson case, the LAPD conducted an investigation into the tapes and into, you, sexis and racism within the LAPD, and they came to some shocking conclusions about the group men against women an LA. Times summary of that investigation. Members of the group believed there was no place for women in the LAPD. Members would act aloof to female officers, ignore them, and try to get them into trouble during their probationary periods after joining the department In some cases, the actions of the group inhibited some women from safely and effectively performing their duties and created fear in many women that these male officers would not provide backup if they requested it in the field, the report said Further, there was evidence that the Minst womomen officers would ostracize male officers who did not support their boycott against female officers That's kind of what I would expect. It's the same thing of like whenever we talk about black or Latino cops, but like, no Mark Ferman isnt a racist. I think of the blowback that they would get if they didn't say that You know what I mean? Like this is how these institutions work. Yeah, even I'm sure there's a fair amount of dudes who came for and said no, Mark Firm is a stand up dude that had been called slurs by him or been treated like shit. But they were like, look Th blue line. Yeah And that's why because they bring in a woman cop who had nice things to say about him and they like No, I always trusted him And The fact of the matter is This is a guy who inside the LAPD was known and had been repeatedly investigated for like being a sexist asshole. And the fact that nobody did anything about it is proof of the fact that it wasn't weird Right? Right? Like it wasn't same with him, you know, casually saying the N word all the time. Cstantly. Yeah So that ninety seven report revealed that men against women, the existence of this group found in the mid eighties, was exposed to the top brass to like the people running the department in nineteen eighty six when they held like the LAPD holds a closed investigation. So they're investigating this because women have complained about this group within the department, but its they're not like telling anyone And they're not going to publish the results of the investigation because that might they already know how it inform people. Yeah, exactly. After this closed investigation, the department chose to take no action and continued their investigation into why women were being harassed in their department for almost a decade. So there's a wider investigation like, why are women in the LAPD unhappy And there's also an investigation into the group Men Agst Women. and the department's like, well, there's nothing to do there, but it's got to take at least another ten years to find out why lady cops are unhappy No way to know, sir impmossible, certainly these two things areight connect. So, investigators would later conclude that a major reason that all of this went down was that most police supervisors did not consider female officers being harassed as a problem. Right? This isn't an issue and often these superiors are members of men against women themselves quote from the report Supervisors had such close relationships with the officers who were harassing the women that it made it difficult for the women to lodge complaints, the report said In some cases, the supervisors worked with or four subordinate male officers on off duty business ventures. Fhman's supervisors not only allowed him to act out his prejudices, but they accommodated him by allowing him to select his partners and other separatist working conditions, the report said again, This is Mark is racist. This group is racist. His supervisors support it. It's widely popular with a lot of men who react to Mark forming this male superremissist group by letting him avoid working with women. department isn't just allowing this, they're actually modifying their rules in order to accommodate Mark and other people like him. Yeah, Mark, why love the LAPD. Yeah Well, for now, Mark one, it's not going to be a lastic victory, Joe. as we talk about So here's where I gott to do something though. and I gott to say something I don't normally say on this show, which is that I don't know if this if Mark is as responsible for this group as this report makes it sound because Mark would claim to have founded the group and the report says he founded the group And I don't know that I doubt that in particular. I just really don't want that to lead you to think that Mark is the ring leader here because this makes their angle is Mark is manipulating everyone. Everyone falls into line around Mark as opposed to I think Mark is servicing a need and desire by his peers And that's why they accommodate him because he's giving them what they wanted Right? And I think that's an important caveat U So that ninety seven report doesn't make the LAPD look good, but again, it does kind of portray Mark specifically as a guy whose unique toxicity warped the environment around him. In fact, as much as this report portrays Ferman as a deeply poisonous influence, the same year it was released, nineteen ninety seven, Mark puts out his own book, Murder in Brentwood, which I've quoted from a few times. And in that book, he includes a letter that LAPD chief Daryryl Gates sent his mom in nineteen ninety five during the OJ Simpson trial Uh and the here's a line from that letter I too am very proud of Mark, and I know he has done his job proudly and properly and very effectively, perhaps too effectively for the OJ defense lawyers And so if Mark is This uniquely toxic individual who warped the environment around him Why is the police chief saying he's a great detective who did his job perfectly? Why is everyone accommodating and working with him? Again, like trust that format You know? Yeah, I think there could be a few things to it, like you said and I It's the thin blue line at work where Yeah he he can be on video or tape like he is routinely saying slillurs admitting to crimes that he then says he was bullshing about. like, But every cop's going to line up and be like, No, he's perfect. He's our perfect little boy. It doesn't matter what the evidence says. Yeah. So I think I think there's a little bit of that A little bit of him being, you know, misogynous the greatac piece of shit And a little bit of him servicing an organizational institutional need for someone to take the reins to lead the misogynistic piece of shit club Yeah, exactly. And someone like I can see also why bosses might have wanted someone deniable to leave the harassing club that makes women want to quit the job Like they want less women cops too. They like it being there because it makes them want to leave, but they don't want to be getet in trouble. They don't want that stank on them, you know, Let Mark the chief of police be doing this shit. has actual work to do hypothet. Let Mark do it. Yeah Um So that LAPD report concluded The type of sexual harassment used in West Los Angeles was about power, pure and simple. In short order, Furman exerted that power over the younger, less experienced, and therefore more vulnerable female officers. Furman's power grew every time he made an unchallenged sexist comment and roll call, every time he blatantly ignored a female officer, every time he resolved a field situation for a female officer, and every time his behavior was reinforced by his supervisors such as deploying him with only male partners. As his power rose, his inability to influence the peer group grew until it was Ferman who set the tone for the watch, not the supervisors. and Oh shit. Is that because he was just so powerful? Is that because the supervisors again figured it's better to let Furman take the heat for making doing these things that we want done, but I don't want to be responsible for doing That's my contention. I think it's probably both. like I think the supervisors, the higher ranking people want him in those positions to be the fall guy. But also kind of like we've already said, he's a bit of a charismatic dude. peopleeople do like him And he isn't all together terrible at his job of being an LAPD of being an LAPD officer. Yeah. So exactly I think the two things are kind of You know, it's like Ramoron a shark, you know what I mean? Yeah like one leads to the other. One feeds the other. Like the supervisors want him to do this, but at the same time, the supervisors wouldn't pick him unless he was popular enough to pull it off Yeah, ye, exactly, exactly. unless like he was really liked and respected widely. whichich is, you know something you just have to realize as you go through this. 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I love hearing about dead cops. Yeah ye. So as good a case as all of this makes, especially that LAPD report makes for Mark being a bastard, again, I don't buy the centrality of just him quite as much as they want to put it out, right? Beause he's not just a poisonous worm. He's a worm who's been poisoned by the other I don't know, sick worms in the apple or this analogy was a mistake, whatever I just want to highlight Because after the OJ trial, the LAPD has a strong vested interest in cutting Fermman off like a tumor, they're going to blame a lot of their culture problems on him, as many of them as possible. and that's not really accurate or fair. You know he's a symptom, he's not the cause Environmental audits performed on the LAPD in the nineteen nineties uncovered systemic gender bias issues, not just in West LA, but across the entire department. Penny Harrington of the National Center for Women and Policing, said this at the time Widespread sexual harassment, intimidation, and threats against women on the force remain a serious problem on the LAPD, a problem made worse by the apparent complicity of the top command So during the mid nineteen eighties, men A against womomen was said by Firman to have had one hundred and forty five members in five out of eighteen of the department's police divisions. There's one hundred and forty five cops in the humen Woman Haters Club of the LAPD in like eighty seven and Maybe he's lying. I don't know what the real numbers were. I don't even know if they had like a roll call or whatever. I can't imagine they did. Yeah And it's kind of it's hard for me to tell because he's just getting back to patrol duty in the mid eighties. I don't know how much of this he's judging up. I will read I'll read a quote from the Christian science Monitor kind of summarizing his claims about how this group worked and like what they did. because as I said, they're holding trials. They have like tribunals for male officers who are like nice to girls. Like it's the saddest fucking I'm just gonna read this book guys guys guys are fucking pathetic. He also reveals that it held mock trials of male officers who were accused of fraternizing with women. Such tribunals often occurred after midnight in parking lots where participants would drink beer and sentence fellow officers to silent treatment and other means of ostracization. I to. It's so sad. And it's so sad that I had to know more. I want to know more about these fucking tribunals. And so thankfully, it turns out that back in nineteen ninety seven, the New York Daily News got access to some unreleased cut parts of the tapes that referenceced these tribunals and theyosted they published an article, including quotes from that And so I'm going to quote from that article. This is like explaining what these looked like By God, you're gonna be what would you guess is the aesthetic inspiration for these nightime trials of cops who are nice to girls? U Ft Nowg way worse wayay worse Joe. Okay. greatreat. I'm going to quote from the for that artacle On a nineteen eighty eight tape, Ferman described tribunals as a cross between criminal trials and Ku Klux Klan rallies, where members would drink beer and. Again, he compares it to a KKK rally. These losers. Here's Mark, standing around in a dark parking lot of a baseball diamond at three thirty in the morning and I put my hood on and I am calling a tribunal and we get in a circle with Tony standing in the middle. Okay, the charges are as follows. You were seen having a coffee with one of the enemy, Ferman said Male officers found guilty of fraternizing with females were sentenced to punishments like a week of silence tment or silent treatment or the back, where other male officers would turn their backs on the offender My God First off shit is your clan rally, your anti girl clan. and you got a hood T be brought He brought his own hood to work. brought you. iss shoot those with your gun. No, that's the sheriff's department. That's by your own hood in the LAB. Budget fits are a m fucker. BYOH, everybody knows that. Yeah Yeah, that's after Biden cut the budget, they had the trim nose. So this is what they meant by defud the police. Yeah, exactly Many of the claims Mark made in those interviews with McKinney focused around what he would call kill parties These were, if you believe, Mark, both parties were cops celebrated and praised other officers who'd killed citizens And a term for times an officers might just like kill someone for fun during a call. like they show up and there's a guy that they don't like or think is an asshole and they like kill him so that they can have a kill party. Like he's kind of claiming that like sometimes we just like murder people that we either know or bad or don't like for fun and hold parties celebrating it And he brought this up in part to point out that women were not invited to Maw's kill parties. When like the Men against womomen guys would hold a kill party, they didn't invite any of the girls to their cool kill parties I believe him because we know this happens today with the LAPD and the LA SD. I I don't are confirmed, you know? stuff like this is happening. I don't know if they call them this, but they're happening. They probably have an even more horrible name and like the badge bending thing as well U like ye all this shit still happens. Yeah. ye, ye, variants of it at least. So for his part, Mark always denied that men against womomen was anything more than quote, a tongue in cheek beer drinking joke used by officers to blow up steam, make us laugh and try to forget the impossible job we had in front of us. Being a cop so hard, sometimes you gotta dress up like a clansman to hold trials for having coffee with a girl. ven the parking lot outside work You just do the three thirty in the morning? The nineteen eighties version of locker room talkal. Is that what is Jeszus. much. Y ye own off steam because cell phone off steam invented yet. so he could just like sit around playing candy Cush all day. That's right, That's right or deep fake porning his coworkers Which is the kind of guy Mark would have been in twenty twenty six. one hundred percent. He claims that after that investigation in the mid nineteen eighties, internal affairs investigated him but found no evidence of discrimination, just a few bad jokes on the tape and again falling back to calling them jokes. man shits Yeah, they thought the Kan rallies were just a bit. Ironic, Robert it's fine. Yeah, yeah, there were joke comedy Klan rallies That's what the the three K stand for. The comedy clan rally Yeah. I think that's what Joe Rogan's Davig his new club Yeah. On the tape and in the book, Ferman repeatedly blamed police captain Margaret York for a lot of his issues. He hates this lady, Margaret York. She says that she bullied him over Maw, and over a bunch of other stuff. and that when she arrived in the West L.A department, quote, she immediately singled me out and tried to make my life miserable. And he like accus, I think of like sleeping to the top. He says a lot of awful stuff about this lady. It's going to be really funny later on because of who she's married to. But we'll talk about that in a second McKinney would later use what she'd gotten from Mark to write a screenplay called Men againgainst Women about like female cops dealing with bigotry in the LAPD basically. It gets optioned for one thousand dollars by John Flynn, but it's never turned into a movie, tragically. I don't know that it was a good screenplay. I haven't had a chance to read it yet After her last talk with Mark in nineteen ninety three, that's the last of her recorded interviews with him, she filed them away until about a year or so later, she saw something crazy on the news And this is what leads us to the OJ. Simpson trial. Right U Now we' we're finally into the story. everyverybody knows Mark four So By the time of the murders in nineteen ninety four, Mark had already been to OJ's Rockingham estate in Brentwood once before in the mid nineteen eighties, I think it was eighty five or eighty six, because there'd been a domestic dispute between OJ and Nicole, right? And so Mark had shown up once and he'd seen, you know, a pretty bad situation, right? OJ was an abusive guy. This is not a fun Like he had reason to not like O.J. Simpson, like going into this previously. In nineteen ninety two, he had been deployed on the streets during the unrest and rioting over the Rodney King beating and its aftermath when the cops who beat Rodney King got off. right? So he's there for the LA riots. Mark doesn't write much about this other than to say that he was on the streets at the time, but the fact that the LA riots had happened like two years earlier is really relevant to everything that happens with OJ. And I know everyone who grew up at the time knows it, but like That's a big fear running through this. is that like, well, if he's convicted, is there going to be like another massive uprising because LA had just boiled over like that? And people were really angry again about the police and police misconduct because of everything Mark everything I've told you about Mark comes out during this case, right? So that's all also in the mix here too, you know? U I'm not gonna to linger crazy long on the details of the trial itself because that's been litigated everywhere in the world. I'm just gonna talk about Mark's role in it On the night of june twelfth, nineteen ninety four, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were brutally murdered. And we all know it was OJ, right? Like no' ever, you, noody's ever posited any other realistic thing. OJ wrote a book called If I didid it Afterwards. You know, I don't think that's we don't need to hop around here So after doing it, OJ goes to the airport and he flies to Chicago, right? and the bodies are discovered at around twelve ten AM on the thirteenth. Detective Mark Furman arrives at OJ Simpson's house because you know, once they know this has happened, they're obviously going to go to OJ's place. Furman had been there before, so he and his partner drive to the Rockingham estate at around five AM and he finds an apparent bloodstain on Simpson's Bronco parked outside Now, from this point forward, things proceed fairly normally for a while. There's an investigation that commences and Mark is not the main detective on it, but he's playing a role. He's at OJ's house. He's looking for evidence. And he is the guy who first locates the bloody glove, right? That's going to be like this major thing in the case. is that he sees it behind the Simpson home Right? And he finds it, but he does not pick it up and this is important and he doesn't introduce it into evidence. So remember that for later, but he does find it, right? And because he finds it, once this goes to trial The prosecutors decide to put Mark on the stand to walk everyone through when he found the glove because this is an important piece of evidence that connects O.J to the murder, right? And so they need Mark to talk about it. And it just so happens that when Mark goes on the stand the first time to talk about having found this glove, there's another lawyer watching on TV because this is this is a big deal from the beginning. Obviously OJ goes on the run briefly and that's all filmed. So by the time this goes to trial, public interest is as a fever pitch And so while Mark is talking about finding this glove on the stand, a lawyer named Robert Deche is watching the evening newews, right and He sees Mark and he tells his wife, That's the guy who found the bloody glove. And his wife is like, yeah. And I'm going to quote now from a New York Times article from nineteen ninety six Mr. Deutch happened to be familiar with the detective from a case in which police officers shot a black robbery suspect and then, Mr. Deutch believes, planted evidence against him. After the newscast, Mr. Deutsche put in a call to Robert L. Shapiro on the Simpson Legal team He reported that the detective had once applied for a stress disability pension and had told psychiatrists that he had tortured suspects and hated Nwards. So this other lawyer who's been involved in a case with Furman where A black man was like abused, right has because of everything that happened to that case, found out about Furman's backstory because it's public. and it came out during that other case. And he calls Simpson's defense attorney, O one of them, he's like, hey, I know something really important. The glove is the most important piece of physical evidence prosecutors have And if you can say Well, this is the guy who found it And he's a racist who planted evidence and talked about planting evidence You can get the whole thing thrown out Right? Yeah. like that's a great way to sprinkle in reasonable doubt. And Shapro, as soon as this guy calls Shapir and says, I know this guy is a racist who talked about framing black men Shapiro's like, ding ding fucking ding, baby. Say less, you know? I know how I'm earning my salary, right? Fuck yeah. I mean that's ye That's like getting a gift on a platter. Oh god, yeah So, the Juice's legal team were looking for absolutely any angle that they could play to keep their client from spending the rest of his life behind bars. And given the recent LA riots and the filmed brutal beating of Rodney King, which the officers responsible for had gotten off for committing, many Angelinos were not only willing to believe that a bad cop had said OJ up, they didn't even need to be convinced of that to believe it Right? Because the bloody gllove was bad for Simpson, anything that impuned it as evidence was a priority, which meant Mark Furman was a priority. And once they start digging into the past the stuff that Deutsche told them, they found plenty of valid reasons to believe that like, oh, this guy really might have set OJ up, right? Like it's a believable case, at least And the most damning thing they find during this process of digging up all the dirt they can on Mark Fermman is these tapes, right? And basically somebody tells someone who knows McKinney informs Shapiro, hey There's a lady who was like interviewing this guy and he said some crazy shit And I think he said the N word a bunch because by this point, Mark has set on stage under testimony, oh, I never said the n word Like not in the last ten years. Have I used that? It's so weird that he knows like, oh, well, I haven't said it in like ten years. like but you did Yeah, he's specifying ten years. Yeah. You remember this happened specifically ten years ago? That's a really weird thing to remember Yeah And so it becomes really important to be able to prove that that's a lie. and the tapes will prove it's a lie. So right once Shapiro finds out these exist, he's going to move heaven and earth to get them introduced into evidence. Part of that is going to be making sure that the media finds out that there's tapes, right and starts getting clips of the tapes because that creates buzz and brings up news and soon there are news articles quoting segments of these tapes. of these clips, some get leaked by the defense team after they get access to the tapes. Um And you know, it's bad stuff. You know, I quoted earlier a brief summary, but other things in those tapes Fran admits to brutality, to police to beating people, He admits to sexually harassing female colleagues and civilian women. He repeatedly uses the N word Portions of the tapes are ultimately admitted into evidence and shown to the jury Because one of Mark's favorite stories to tell McKinney were all the ways that like cops planted evidence on people, and that's incredibly relevant right Yeah Like and it again, this is often framed as like, o, the shitty media and oh, these tapes never should have been introduced. Though, if the detective on a case who found a key piece of evidence thirteen hours of talking about how much he loves framing black guys by planting evidence, that's actually super relevant. Even if he's lying, that's super relevant I'm sorry, I just is I call this Destroy My Testimony mixtape. Yeah. Yeah. And we're gonna play a clip from the Destroy My Testimony mixtape. This is a clip I found from the Kyra Phillips showhow on CNN that was part of a recent special on The Firman tapes that played some bits that had not been previously revealed. I'm gonna play you a clip that just tosses out of these quotes so you can kind of hear what he sounded like and get like an idea of sort of the highlights. This is like a worst of the Feran tapes ul They' Weinstein they little fight for Jew, other the wandering Jew far what s. Sexist. How do you? rest a violent suspect I yall. Have a man do it Disturbing You got to be a borderl soion have. You got toa be violence Cool So that's the kind of shit he's saying, right? I didn't include him saying in word repeatedly, but he does, you know and The LA would claim then and after that most of these allegations had no real world backing. He was just lying. There's no evidence of it And you know, he was lying a lot, but that also makes it impossible to trust Mark Fermman You know, even if he never planted evidence on anyone, the fact that he has thirteen hours of pretending it Do impw in his reliability. I would you. so. Yeah Best case scenario, he is just a liar Yeah Yeah. So many legal experts agree that the Firman tap is in specific and Mark's whole existence as a detective and involvement with the glove may well be why OJ walked away a free man It didn't help that he repeatedly shit talked Captain York on the tapes. I mentioned this earlier, he talks a lot. She sleptt her way to the top. She's always mean to me The judge on the OJ Simpson case is a guy Judge Itdo U Captain York was his wife Oh my God I mean, it does bring up, I mean, as as funny as it is poor Lance at a certain point should have the judge like recuseed himself from the situation There was a big debate. And I think it was just because things had gone like they was they didn't want to deal with that nightmare, but no, that was a major topic of discussion. likeike that had to be ruled on. Another judge had to come in and say it's okay I don't think this we'll cut some stuff out, but I don't think this' like make it make it be an issue. But no, they did have to get a ruling on that And this is one of the reasons why everyone's so pissed at Mark is because like this trial' already hell, already incredibly expensive, already a fucking circus. And then now we have to stop it to figure out if we've got to find a new judge because you fucking shit talked his wife a bunch on tapes to a journalist. You idiot? L What are the fucking odds too, man? like Firm is ago fununny. is a great example of a dip shit. Just dripping over his own feet his constantly In like statistically almost impossible ways. He trippps over his own dick so hard the whole LAPD fell Like, yeah Like of all the judges of all the people in the LAPD. He manages to go on tape for hours, shit talucking the wife of the guy that's gonna destroy him. It's amazing. It's so funny That's fucking great. So the stupidest part of all this is Mark never even needed to be involved in the OJ trial in the first place. There was no good reason for him to have been on under oath at all. Yes, he had found the glove, but that just means he spotted it with his eyes and he pointed it out to the other detectives But he never touched it. It was another detective who introduced it into the chain of custody, and you could have just had that guy testify Right? The DA's office never needed a call on Mark I've read reporting that says prosecutors did because they interviewed him and they found him impressive and trustworthy because he's like tall and like looks like the statuesesque ideal of a cop. And they're like, oh, great, yeah, this guy looked good on stand next to OJ. just a horrible decision. He looks like TV cop guy He looks like a TV cop, right? And they're like he'll be a great witness. He should never have been there. I lo The LAPD did this having full access to his personnel records. No' just like a PR fucking landmine. L put him up there. We're gonna step right on this, motherfucker And knowing because I know that you're supposed to me you might be like, oh, well this wasn't like how could they have known this wasn't a normal case? becausecauseuse it was already the most famous case in the history of American law enforcement Be J Simpson, the trial st mass nice celebrity. He's huge. They knew this was going to be under an enormous amount of scrutiny and they knew this guy's history and it was they had no excuse to make a decision that's stupid. It's really fucking stupid Um ress it. No I want to read a quote from the author of that New York Times review of books, article quoting Peter Arinella, a professor of law at UCLA, critiquing the decision to have Firman on the stand If a person creates a fantasy life once, they are going to do it again, Professor Aronella said. There are only two plausible explanations for the prosecutor's decision, Professor Aonella speculated. One is that the prosecution was overwhelmed by the defense team's blizzard of motions. The other, he said, is that prosecutors had gotten away with using racist cops in other trials What do we think that is? What do we think is the explanation here I think there's a very good chance, Robert, that the LAPD has been using a lot of racist cops in trials and getting away with it That's right because right the LAPD is racistist fuck. And you know who else no No noody nobody Here's ads. Fuck. This is Dr. Joy from Thraapy for Black Girls. If you could enjoy your spotless space without so much scrubbing, wouldn't you Of course you would. Well, I've got you Dawn Power wasash dish spray cuts through the mess and gets everything clean in half the time We're talking about both the toughest messes in everyday dishes Plus, its's work goes beyond the sink, like to clean counters, stoves, grills, and to remove stains on laundry. And it's really good at getting those hard to clean dishes So basically, Dawn Power Wwash cleans everything from dishes to grills, removing all the grease and grime and does it twice as fast. 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Find a beginner class near you at tryfencing. org that's tryfencing. org And we're back when he'd been cross examined, Mark Furman had testified that he had not made any anti bllack racial slurs in the last decade The recordings prove that that was a lie Mark had to retire in shame from the LAPD in the wake of the trial Um, obviously OJ Aquitted, right? We all know that don't fit, You must acquit. Good didn't fit. they had to acquit, right? Sorry. And they caught charges later on, but he didoy it took a while. He did. and Mark doesn't, obviously Mark's not the only reason, you know, the globe doesn't get gets OJ off, but he's part of why OJ gets off, you know? And because he's perjured himself on the stand, he becomes the only person who actually gets convicted in the OJ. Simpson case, which is really funny to me because an detective who shows up in his house Mark's charged with perjury and he pleads no contest in nineteen ninety six. He receives a slap on the wrist before he and his family move to the small town of Sand Point, Idaho, which at the time was famous because a bunch of Nazis and far right apocalypse weirdos had moved into the area. There's like articles that are including like The Aryan nations and like almost heaven and Bogue writes and like his fucking militia weirdos, and Mark Furman all in the same list of like reasons that Idaho's scary. It's really funny. that he's like it's like Mark Ferman is listed alongside all of the Nazis as like reasons that Idaho is a hub of the far right. It's really funny At least they all have the same hobbies. Like you guess want to compare Nazi uniform collections collecting swastikas? Yeah Wanna see my concerning German political cartoon? Yeah. Um So Mark moves there and there's articles about it, you know, and he, you know is kind of settles into normal life. He's initially saying that I just want to be like a quiet, normal person I found an article. describes me as having grown a mustache and started training to be an electrician's helper I don't know why it specifies that he gre a mustache first, but it That was what my face was for the Netflix years. I was like, why is that a guys So now that he's free, Marark's artistic bent reasserted itself. and with the The fact that he's now getting to kind of indulge his creative side is helped by a fat advance from a publisher that wanted him to write a book on the trial. Everyone involved with the OJ. Simpson trial got a book deal. If If you were in any way involved and you wanted to get a bunch of money, you could write a book about the OJ Simpson trial. They were handing those out like fucking hotcaigs And Ms was a best seller. It does very well. I think he makes a lot of money off of it Goddamn you Mark Yeah, in fact, it works well enough that he stops training to be an electrician and he never winds up having to work a real job again Instead, he settles into life in sandpoint and continues writing While Mark worked on his first book, the LAPD and performed another in depth analysis of his claims in the tapes. They did find that many were proably untrue per the LA times, summarizing a few of these Fermman and other officers tortured and beat four suspects faces to just mush after a nineteen seventy eight officer involved shooting in East Los Angeles. Fermman and his partner rammed a suspects vehicle during a puruit, april twenty fourth, nineteen eighty six and struck and kicked him after he was apprehended. Fermman's partner named Tom tore up driver's licenses and used racist slurs. Police investigators identified the officer, but found the statements about him were unfounded Again, all those are things that like he claims to have done in the tapes that they found that they said we proved he didn't do Right? or we couldn't prove that he had had done Right? However, per that article, investigators found that the department's handling of some of those incidents dating back ten to twenty years does not hold up to the LAPD's current standards. In fact, investigators found the handling of some cases to be grossly deficient. So the LAPD says we couldn't prove he did any of this Also, our records keeping was really bad and we like literally weren't taking notes at all about the complaints people made against officers. So who knows what happened is kind of what they say. What if we told you He was lying He was also a violent psycho and institutionally, we are incapable of doing our job. Yes. Couldn't have done anything And it's very interesting too, because like, if you read the news articles from the time, a lot of them are like Well, it turns out the firan tapes were all lies. The LEP looked into it and they were able to show it was all untrue. And that's not really what the report says. Some of things were untrue, but a lot of things were like, well, we can't prove it. because our records are shitty And that's not the same as showing it didn't happen. We threw all the complaints out. Yeah. That's very different, in fact. We can't prove any of this happened because we made sure we didn Yes. ye U that said, otherther important claims made in the tapes were true. As I've already gone into, men against women was real and documented by the LAPD. Sexual harassment was also found to be just as widespread as Markc claimed, and multiple witnesses have reported seeing Mark Ferman use racial slurs just as he himself used them in the tapes Mark's next book published in nineteen ninety eight was Murder in Greenwich This covered a murder that we've discussed on this show in our RFK junror episodes, the nineteen seventy five Unsolved Murder of Martha Moxley