Part Two: Mark Fuhrman: The Most Racist Cop, or Merely Normal Racist Cop?

Robert concludes the story and, thankfully, the life of Mark Fuhrman, after discussing his most famous moment: the OJ Simpson trial. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Robert Evans?

  Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, 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 Fuhrman, 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 Kasabian, are all overwhelmed with grief at the Titan that we've lost, you know, that is no longer with us. The great mind, the great heart, the great law enforcement officer, Mark Fuhrman, you know, I don't know, it almost feels pointless to go on. Why are we here?

• 0:47Speaker 01

  I'm really happy, though, that in death, that he can be, you know, the United States' newest gender-neutral bathroom.

• 0:56Robert Evans?

  That's right, that's right. Yeah, find out where they put him. Somewhere in Idaho.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02Robert Evans?

  The only gender-neutral bathroom in Idaho.

• 1:04Speaker 01

  Just if you see a grave in Idaho, piss on it, it might be Mark Fuhrman. It might not be.

• 1:10Robert Evans?

  No way to know.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  You gotta roll those dice.

• 1:12Speaker 02

  Somehow, our hearts will go on and on and on. Let's talk about this shit, Robert. Talk about the OJ trial. I'm excited.

• 1:19Robert Evans?

  Yeah, let's talk about, we love the OJ trial.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  We do!

• 1:22Robert Evans?

  Again, folks, if you want to watch the documentary starring Ross from Friends as Robert Kardashian, you know, we'll wait for you. But I can replicate the best parts. Just imagine Ross from Friends saying "Juice" over and over again, and you pretty much got the important bits, you know?

• 1:41Speaker 01

  I'm really happy that Ross from Friends' career could go so well. He ends up doing brownface to play an Armenian guy, because Serge from System of a Down won't answer his phone.

• 1:52Robert Evans?

  I do think what is really funny to me about that is, they had Cuba play OJ, Cuba Gooding Jr., and it's a weird case of like, the casting doing a lot of the acting, because I can believe that OJ's evil because Cuba Gooding Jr.'s really evil?

• 2:12Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 2:14Robert Evans?

  It was a very, like, casting, like, oh, wow, a lot of the lifting's just being done by, like, I know who Cuba Gooding Jr. is.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, they nailed it on that one. They just had no idea.

• 2:24Robert Evans?

  Great idea. Yeah.

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• 2:33Robert Evans?

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• 4:11Robert Evans?

  So, let's talk about Mark Fuhrman. By the early 1990s, Mark Fuhrman was a veteran LAPD detective who seems to have been somewhat popular and influential among, like, his, at least his clique in the department. Mark was known for making racist and sexist jokes and for his... He's got a hobby? What, what kind of hobby? Do you think a guy who like, 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?

• 4:43Speaker 01

  Oh, shit, stamps? I'm gonna go stamps.

• 4:47Robert Evans?

  Ah, no, it's, it's, it's military memorabilia.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Oh, God, he owns Nazi memorabilia.

• 4:53Speaker 02

  I was going coins. I was going coins.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  I know these guys. I fucking know these guys. Uh, I am a historian by trade and every time you meet a guy, every fucking time.

• 5:06Robert Evans?

  Every time.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  Like, oh, I collect some military memorabilia. I'm like, it's Nazi shit, isn't it? It's always, it's always Nazi shit.

• 5:12Robert Evans?

  And they'll always tell you, like, you don't even have to come on to them because they're so defensive. And, and that's true with Mark. Cause I, I'd noted, I'd read like two articles that had said that, oh, he got into like collecting like military, old military uniforms and, and, and awards. And so I'd wondered, but that's all they said. Like, they didn't like, say anything, like accuse anything. But in his own book, when Mark's saying, and like, yeah, I liked collecting old military stuff, quote, "Some of which happened to be German."

• 5:43Robert Evans?

  And I was like, no one even said that, Mark? No one was even asking? And you just brought it up because you knew? Because like you knew what we knew, you know? And you had to confirm it for us? That's very funny to me.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  That's a direct A to B. Like, no cop is collecting like, you know what? I got really into the Imperial Japanese Navy, which to be fair, is not that much of a better of a choice.

• 6:02Robert Evans?

  Not, not better.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  But like, still, like, they're, they're going to one thing specifically.

• 6:06Robert Evans?

  There's not an LAPD detective who's like, yeah, I'm just really interested actually in like the differences between the pro, like the Austro-Hungarian military proper and then like the actual like Hungarian military? And the ways in which these kind of like differing, uh, like, 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.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  Oh, no, you, you misunderstand me, sir. I am simply a enthusiast of the Hanved militaria is all.

• 6:38Robert Evans?

  Sure, buddy.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  Just me, I'm the only one in the world.

• 6:40Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Yeah, so 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 OJ Simpson case blows up and whether or not Mark Fuhrman's a racist becomes an important matter for reasons we'll discuss later, people are like, he always had a swastika at his desk. Like a cartoon swastika, like displayed prominently, like taped and like displayed or something up, like pasted up at his, uh, 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,

• 7:22Robert Evans?

  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. I haven't actually been able to find this cartoon, but here's, this is Fuhrman's explanation for what Conrad was going for with the cartoon. Conrad was asking whether we were making a mistake by allowing a country with the power and history of Germany to be reunified. So that's, that's why Fuhrman 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. Uh, and that's why there was a swastika at my desk and I don't buy it. I don't buy it. And also that's not what the cartoon was about. Okay.

• 8:02Robert Evans?

  Again, because Google's so fucked up, I didn't find that cartoon, but I didn't 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 comic meant. So 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 1989, Spanish, 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 neo 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.

• 8:47Robert Evans?

  That's not the same.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  No, that's not the same at all.

• 8:51Robert Evans?

  Statement. Yeah, he is talking about like the visible rise of the skinheads and how that like upset him and stuff and Mark is being like, 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.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  And then think of the, the, the, the mental pathways that lead a sergeant, I guess, in, in, 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.

• 9:24Robert Evans?

  Of Germany? Yeah. I don't know.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  Nobody believes you!

• 9:28Robert Evans?

  Kinda weird, Mark. Kinda weird. Um, so probably the thing that Mark's peers at the station knew best about him is that he had some issues with women. He lied about much of what he told that journalist, you know, McKinney and the tapes that we talked about last episode, but Men Against Women, 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 of Brass know that Men Against Women existed, but that they knew Fuhrman was the ringleader behind starting it. So the group began with Mark and several other

• 10:12Robert Evans?

  older male cops complaining about "split tails," which was a cop slur for female cops. And I don't know when it started, most of the, Mark will usually say like 85, which is like right when he got back on to patrol, which is weird that he's got like the social clout 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 1997, the only evidence that this group existed was those taped interviews of Mark Fuhrman. 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 know, sexism and racism within the LAPD, and they came to some shocking conclusions

• 10:55Robert Evans?

  about the group Men Against Women, per 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 Men Against Women officers would ostracize male officers who did not support their boycott against female officers.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  It's kind of what I would expect. It's the same thing of like whenever we talk about black or Latino cops, be like, no, Mark Fuhrman isn't a racist. It's like, 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.

• 11:46Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  Even, I'm sure there's a fair amount of dudes who came forward and said, no, Mark Fuhrman's a stand-up dude that had been called slurs by him or been treated like shit.

• 11:57Robert Evans?

  But they were like, look, then blue line. Yeah. And that's why they, because they bring in a woman cop who had nice things to say about him and that like, no, I always trusted him. And the fact of the matter is, like, 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?

• 12:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:28Robert Evans?

  Like, it wasn't that weird, you know?

• 12:29Speaker 01

  Same with him casually saying the N-word all the time.

• 12:32Robert Evans?

  Yeah, constantly. Yeah. So, that '97 report revealed that Men Against Women, the existence of this group founded in the mid-'80s, was exposed to the top brass, to like, the people running the department in 1986, 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 it's, they're not, like, telling anyone, and they're not going to publish the results of the investigation, because that might-

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Because they already know how it's gonna-

• 13:01Robert Evans?

  -inform people. Yeah, exactly. After this closed investigation, the department chose to take no action and continued their investigation into why women- Women were being harassed in their department for almost a decade. So there there's a wider investigation like, why are women in the LAPD unhappy? And there's also an investigation into the group Men Against Women. And the department's like, well, there's nothing to do there. But it's going to take at least another 10 years to find out why lady cops are unhappy. No way to know.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Sir.

• 13:28Robert Evans?

  Impossible.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Certainly, these two things are not connected.

• 13:32Robert Evans?

  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 for subordinate male officers on off-duty business ventures. Fuhrman supervisors not only allowed him to act out his prejudices, but they accommodated him by allowing him to select his partners in other separatist working conditions, the report said. So again, this is Mark is racist.

• 14:17Robert Evans?

  This group is racist. His supervisors support it. It's widely popular with a lot of men who react to Mark forming this male supremacist group by letting him avoid working with women. Like, the department isn't just allowing this. They're actually modifying their rules in order to accommodate Mark and other people like him.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, Mark one.

• 14:40Robert Evans?

  I love the LAPD. Yeah. Well, for now, Mark one. It's not going to be a lasting victory, Joe, as we'll talk about. So here's where I got to do something, though. And I got I gotta 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 ringleader here because this makes the their angle is Mark is manipulating everyone. Everyone falls into line around Mark as opposed to I think Mark is

• 15:20Robert Evans?

  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. So that 97 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 Fuhrman as a deeply poisonous influence, the same year it was released, 1997, 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 Daryl Gates sent his mom in 1995 during the

• 16:01Robert Evans?

  OJ Simpson trial. And 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, don't trust that format, you know?

• 16:32Speaker 01

  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 he can be on video or tape like he is routinely saying slurs, admitting to crimes that he then says he was bullshitting about like, but every cop's gonna line up and be like, no, he's perfect. He's our perfect little boy. It doesn't matter what the evidence says. So I think I think there's a little bit of that, a little bit of him being, you know, misogynistic racist 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.

• 17:13Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. And someone like, I can see also why his bosses might have wanted someone deniable to lead 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, get in trouble. They don't want that stank on them, you know?

• 17:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, the chief of police can't be doing that shit. He has actual work to do.

• 17:33Robert Evans?

  Yeah, exactly. Let Mark do it. Yeah. So that LAPD report concluded, "The type of sexual harassment used in West Los Angeles was about power, pure and simple. In short order, Fuhrman exerted that power over the younger, less experienced, and therefore more vulnerable, female officers. Fuhrman's power grew every time he made an unchallenged sexist comment in 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 Fuhrman who set the tone for the watch, not the supervisors."

• 18:11Speaker 01

  Oh, shit.

• 18:13Robert Evans?

  Is that because he was just so powerful? Is that because the supervisors, again, figured it's better to let Fuhrman 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.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  I think it's probably both. Like, I think the supervisors, the, the, 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. People do like him. And he isn't altogether terrible at his job of being an LAPD.

• 18:47Robert Evans?

  Yeah, of being an LAPD officer. Yeah.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  So, I, I, I think the two things are kind of, you know, it's like a remor on a shark, you know what I mean? Like, the, the 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.

• 19:09Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Unless, like, he was really liked and respected widely.

• 19:16Robert Evans?

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• 19:32Speaker 01

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• 19:37Robert Evans?

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• 21:21Robert Evans?

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• 21:48Robert Evans?

  And we're back. Thank God, life matters again, you know? Without ads, what do we have? Nothing, you know? That's, that's it. That's the only reason to be. That and hearing about Mark Fuhrman. I don't know.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  That's very important to me personally. I love hearing about dead cops.

• 22:08Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. So as good a case as all of this makes, you know, 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? Because 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 Fuhrman 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 1990s

• 22:52Robert Evans?

  uncovered systemic gender bias issues, not just in West LA, but across the entire department. Penny Harrington of the National Center for Women in 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 1980s, "Men Against Women" was said by Fuhrman to have had 145 members in five out of 18 of the department's police divisions. So there's 145 cops in the, he, he men, woman haters club of the LAPD in like 87. 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.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  I can't imagine they did.

• 23:36Robert Evans?

  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 80s. 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, 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 going to read this quote.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  God, these guys are fucking pathetic.

• 24:05Robert Evans?

  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. So, I wanted to know-

• 24:21Speaker 01

  Fucking pathetic!

• 24:22Robert Evans?

  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 1997, the New York Daily News got access to some unreleased cut parts of the tapes that referenced-

• 24:37Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 24:38Robert Evans?

  -these tribunals. And they like posted, or they published an article, including quotes from that. And so, I'm gonna quote from that article. This is, like, explaining what these looked like. And by god, you're gonna be, what would you guess is the aesthetic inspiration for these nighttime trials of cops who are nice to girls?

• 24:57Speaker 01

  Uh, frat?

• 25:00Robert Evans?

  No!

• 25:01Speaker 01

  Pledging of some kind?

• 25:02Robert Evans?

  Way worse, way worse, Joe. Okay, great. I'm gonna quote from, uh, from that article. "On a 1988 tape, Fuhrman described tribunals as a cross between criminal trials and Ku Klux Klan rallies, where members would drink beer and conduct a mock trial." Again, he compares it to a KKK rally.

• 25:20Speaker 02

  These losers.

• 25:22Robert Evans?

  Here's Mark, standing around in a dark parking lot of a baseball diamond at 3:30 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,' Fuhrman said. Male officers found guilty of fraternizing with females were sentenced to punishments, like a week of silence treatment, or silent treatment, or the back, where other male officers would turn their backs on the offender." Like, my god.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  This shit is so sad.

• 25:54Robert Evans?

  First off, your Klan rally, your anti-girl Klan, and you got a hood? What?

• 25:58Speaker 01

  You brought, he brought his own hood to work? I thought the LAPD issued those with your gun!

• 26:04Robert Evans?

  No, that's the sheriff's department. You gotta buy your own hood in the LAPD.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  Bunch of cuts, you motherfucker.

• 26:11Robert Evans?

  BYOH, everybody knows that.

• 26:14Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, that's that after Biden cut the budget, they had to had to trim those. So

• 26:19Speaker 01

  This is what they met by defund the police.

• 26:21Robert Evans?

  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 where cops celebrated and praised other officers who'd killed citizens, and a term for times when 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 are bad or don't like for fun and hold parties celebrating it.

• 26:55Robert Evans?

  And he brought this up in part to point out that women were not invited to to Ma's kill parties. When like the Men Against Women guys would hold a kill party, they didn't invite any of the girls to their cool kill parties.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  I believe him because we know this happens today with the LAPD and the L A S D.

• 27:12Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't doubt it.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  These things are confirmed, you know?

• 27:16Robert Evans?

  Stuff like this is happening. I don't know if they called them this, but they're happening.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  They probably have an even more horrible name and like the badge bending thing as well. Like, all this shit still happens.

• 27:29Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, variants of it at least. So for his part, Mark always denied that "Men Against Women" 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 Klansman to hold trials for having coffee with a girl."

• 27:49Speaker 01

  In the parking lot outside of work.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  You just do the nineteen-

• 27:52Robert Evans?

  At 3:30 in the morning?

• 27:54Speaker 02

  The 1980s version of locker room talk. Is that what just happened? Jesus.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  Pretty much.

• 27:59Robert Evans?

  Yep, yep.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  Just blowing off steam because cell phones hadn't been invented yet, so he couldn't just like sit around playing Candy Crush all day.

• 28:06Robert Evans?

  That's right. That's right. Or deep fake porning his coworkers, which is the kind of guy Mark would have been in 2026. So, um, he claims that after that investigation in the mid 1980s, Internal Affairs investigated him but found no evidence of discrimination, just a few bad jokes.

• 28:25Robert Evans?

  On the tape and in his book-

• 28:26Speaker 01

  Once again, falling back to calling them jokes, man, this shit's old as hell.

• 28:30Robert Evans?

  Yeah, the Klan rallies were just a bit-

• 28:35Speaker 01

  They were ironic, Robert, it's fine.

• 28:37Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, they were Joe comedy Klan rallies. That's what the 3K stand for, the Comedy Klan Rally.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  I think that's what Joe Rogan's naming his new club.

• 28:47Robert Evans?

  Yeah. So, on the tape and in the book, Fuhrman repeatedly blamed police captain Margaret York for a lot of his issues. He hates this lady, Margaret York. He says that she bullied him over Ma and over a bunch of other stuff. And that when she arrived in the West LA apartment, quote, "She immediately singled me out and tried to make my life miserable." And he like accused, I think of like sleeping to the top. He says a lot of awful stuff about this lady. And it's gonna be really funny later on. Because of who she's married to, but we'll talk about that in a second. So, McKinney would later use what she'd gotten from Mark to write a screenplay called Men Against Women about like, oh, female cops dealing with bigotry in the LAPD, basically.

• 29:32Robert Evans?

  It gets optioned for a 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 1993, 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? Now, we're finally into the story everybody knows Mark for. So, by the time of the murders in 1994, Mark had already been to OJ's Rockingham estate in Brentwood once before in the mid 1980s, I think it was 85 or 86, because there'd been a domestic dispute between OJ and Nicole, right?

• 30:14Robert Evans?

  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 like a fun, like, like he had reason to not like OJ Simpson, like going into this previously. In 1992, 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 Sure. 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?

• 30:57Robert Evans?

  Because LA had just boiled over like that. And people were really angry again about the police and police misconduct because of everything that 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? I'm not going to linger crazy long on the details of the trial itself, because that's been litigated everywhere in the world. I'm just going to talk about Mark's role in it. On the night of June 12th, 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were brutally murdered. And we all know it was OJ, right? Like, nobody's ever, you know, nobody's ever posited any other realistic thing. OJ wrote a book called If I Did It afterwards, you know? I don't think that's, we don't need to hop around here.

• 31:42Robert Evans?

  So after doing it, OJ goes to the airport and he flies to Chicago, right? And the bodies are discovered at around 12:10 a.m. on the 13th. Detective Mark Fuhrman 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. Fuhrman had been there before, so he and his partner drive to the Rockingham estate at around 5 a.m. And he finds an apparent blood stain 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?

• 32:25Robert Evans?

  That's going to be like this major thing in the case. He is that he sees it behind the Simpson home, right? And he, 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 OJ 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 all, this is a big deal from the beginning. Obviously, OJ goes on the run briefly and like, that's all filmed.

• 33:09Robert Evans?

  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 Deutsch is watching the evening news, 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 1996. Mr. Deutsch happened to be familiar with the detective from a case in which police officers shot a black robbery suspect and then, Mr. Deutsch believes, planted evidence against him. After the newscast, Mr. Deutsch 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 inwards.

• 33:52Robert Evans?

  So this other lawyer who's been involved in a case with Fuhrman where a black man was like abused, right? Has because of everything that happened to that case, found out about Fuhrman's backstory, because it's public and it came out during that other case. And he calls Simpson's defense attorney, one of them, and he's like, hey, I know something really important, because the glove is the most important piece of physical evidence that the 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?

• 34:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a, that's a great way to sprinkle in reasonable doubt.

• 34:32Robert Evans?

  Yeah, and Shapiro, as soon as this guy calls Shapiro 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?

• 34:47Speaker 01

  Fuck, yeah. I mean, that's, that's like getting a gift on a platter.

• 34:51Robert Evans?

  Oh, God, yeah. So the juice is legal. 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 Angelenos were not only willing to believe that a bad cop had set OJ up, they didn't even need to be convinced of that to believe it, right? Because the bloody glove was bad for Simpson, anything that impugned it as evidence was a priority, which meant Mark Fuhrman was a priority. And once they start digging into the past, the stuff that that Deutsch has 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,

• 35:34Robert Evans?

  at least. And the most damning thing they find during this process of digging up all the dirt they can on Mark Fuhrman 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 on under testimony, oh, I never said the N word, like, not in the last 10 years, have I used that?

• 36:01Speaker 01

  It's so weird that he knows, like, oh, well, I haven't said it like 10 years, like, but you did.

• 36:05Robert Evans?

  Yeah, he's specifying 10 years.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  You remember this happened specifically 10 years ago. That's a really weird thing to remember.

• 36:13Robert Evans?

  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. And 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. And, you know, it's bad stuff. You know, I quoted earlier a brief summary, but other things in those tapes, from it admits to brutality, to police, to beating people, he admits to sexually harassing

• 36:53Robert Evans?

  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 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's again, this is often framed as like, oh, the shitty media and oh, these tapes never should have been introduced. No, if the detective on a case who found a key piece of evidence has 13 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, it just is.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  I call this destroy my testimony mixtape.

• 37:37Robert Evans?

  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 show on CNN that was part of a recent special on the Fuhrman tapes that played some bits that had not been previously revealed. I'm gonna play you a clip that just tosses out like three 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 Fuhrman tapes.

• 38:03Speaker 06

  Vulgar. Weinstein, she had a little fight with Jew, her little wandering Jew, the plow wife, she had a big nose.

• 38:11Speaker 06

  Sexist. How do you arrest a violent suspect? I yell out, how about man doing?

• 38:19Speaker 06

  Disturbing. You've gotta be a borderline sociopath. You gotta be violent.

• 38:26Robert Evans?

  Cool. So that's the kind of shit he's saying, right? I didn't include him saying the N-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 Fuhrman. You know, even if he never planted evidence on anyone, the fact that he has 13 hours of pretending it does impugn his reliability.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  I would say so.

• 38:57Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 38:59Speaker 01

  Best case scenario, he is just a liar.

• 39:03Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. So many legal experts agree that the Fuhrman tapes 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 slept her way to the top. She's always mean to me. The judge on the OJ Simpson case is a guy Judge Ito. Captain York was his wife.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 39:33Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 39:34Speaker 01

  I mean, it does bring up, I mean, as funny as it is.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  Poor Lance.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  At a certain point, should have the judge like recused himself from the situation?

• 39:44Robert Evans?

  That was a big debate, and I think it was just because things had gone like they that was they didn't want to deal with that nightmare. But no, that was a major topic of discussion like that had to be ruled on. Another judge had to come in and say, it's okay. Like, I don't think this will cut some stuff out, but I don't think this will 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 is 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. Like.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  What are the fucking odds too, man? Like Fuhrman is a.

• 40:23Robert Evans?

  So funny.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  Is a great example of a dipshit just tripping over his own feet.

• 40:30Robert Evans?

  His constantly.

• 40:32Speaker 01

  Like statistically, almost impossible ways.

• 40:35Robert Evans?

  He tripped over his own dick so hard, the whole LAPD fell like.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, like of all the judges, of all the people in the LAPD, he manages to go on tape for hours. Shit talking the wife of the guy that's going to destroy him.

• 40:53Robert Evans?

  It's amazing. It's so funny.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  It's fucking great.

• 40:59Robert Evans?

  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 to 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 statuesque ideal of a cop. And they're like, oh, great. Yeah, this guy will look good on stand next to OJ.

• 41:44Speaker 02

  He looks like a sitcom cop. He looks like TV cop guy.

• 41:48Robert Evans?

  He looks like a TV cop, right? And he'll be a great witness. He should never have been there. Like, this didn't need to happen at all.

• 41:55Speaker 01

  The LAPD did this, having full access to his personnel records.

• 41:59Robert Evans?

  Knowing everything about him.

• 42:00Speaker 01

  He's just like a PR fucking landmine. Like, no, put him up there. We're gonna step right on this motherfucker.

• 42:05Robert Evans?

  And knowing, because I know that you're reposting me, you might be like, oh, well, this wasn't a, like, how could they have known this wasn't a normal case? Because it was already the most famous case in the history of American law enforcement.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  OJ Simpson is a massive celebrity.

• 42:18Robert Evans?

  He's a huge celebrity. They knew this was going to be under an enormous amount of scrutiny, and they knew this guy's history, and they had no excuse to make a decision that stupid. It's really fucking stupid.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  Impressive.

• 42:31Robert Evans?

  So, I want to read a quote from the author of that New York Times Review of Books article quoting Peter Aronella, a professor of law at UCLA, critiquing the decision to have Fuhrman 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 Aronella 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."

• 43:02Robert Evans?

  What do we think this is? What do we think is the explanation here?

• 43:07Speaker 01

  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.

• 43:13Robert Evans?

  That's right.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  Because the LAPD is racist as fuck.

• 43:17Robert Evans?

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And you know who else? No, mm.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  No, nobody, nobody.

• 43:22Robert Evans?

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• 43:27Robert Evans?

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• 44:26Robert Evans?

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• 45:11Robert Evans?

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• 45:38Robert Evans?

  And we're back. So, back when he'd been cross-examined, Mark Fuhrman had testified that he had not made any anti-black racial slurs in the last decade. The recordings proved that that was a lie. Mark had to retire in shame from the LAPD in the wake of the trial. Obviously, OJ is acquitted, right? We all know that.

• 46:00Speaker 02

  Well, the gloves don't fit. You must acquit.

• 46:02Robert Evans?

  The glove didn't fit, they had to acquit, right?

• 46:04Speaker 02

  Sorry.

• 46:05Robert Evans?

  And, you know-

• 46:06Speaker 01

  He caught charges later on, but-

• 46:07Robert Evans?

  He did, he did.

• 46:08Speaker 01

  It took a while.

• 46:09Robert Evans?

  He did. And, and Mark doesn't, obviously, Mark's not the only reason, you know, the glove-

• 46:13Speaker 02

  No.

• 46:14Robert Evans?

  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, is the detective who shows up at his house. Mark gets charged with perjury and he pleads no contest in 1996. He receives a slap on the wrist before he and his family moved to the small town of Sandpoint, Idaho, which at the time was fameless 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, and Bogrites and like his fucking militia weirdos and Mark Fuhrman, all in the same list of like reasons that Idaho's scary.

• 46:56Robert Evans?

  It's really funny that he's like, it's like Mark Fuhrman is listed alongside all of the Nazis as like reasons that Idaho is a hub of the far-right. It's really funny.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  At least they all have the same hobbies. Like, you guys wanna compare Nazi uniform collections while I'm here?

• 47:11Robert Evans?

  There you go, collecting swastikas.

• 47:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. Wanna see my, my concerning German political cartoons?

• 47:16Robert Evans?

  Yeah. So, Mark moves there and there's articles about it, you know? And he, you know, is, is kinda settles into normal life. He's initially saying that I just wanna be like a quiet, normal person. I found an article that describes him as having grown a mustache and started training to be an electrician's helper. I don't know why it specifies that he grew a mustache first, but it does.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  That was what my face was for the Netflix viewers. I was like, why is that a thing?

• 47:44Speaker 01

  The perfect disguise.

• 47:46Robert Evans?

  So, now that he's free, Mark'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 you, if you were at 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 hotcakes. And Mark's was a bestseller. It does very well. I think he makes a lot of money off of it.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  God damn you, Mark.

• 48:18Robert Evans?

  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 performed another in-depth analysis of his claims in the tapes. They did find that many were provably untrue. Per the LA Times, summarizing a few of these, Fuhrman and other officers tortured and beat four suspects faces to just mush after a 1978 officer-involved shooting in East Los Angeles. Fuhrman and his partner rammed a suspect's vehicle during a pursuit, April 24, 1986, and struck and kicked him after he was apprehended. Fuhrman'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.

• 49:03Robert Evans?

  So, 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 done, right? However, per that article, investigators found that the department's handling of some of those incidents dating back 10 to 20 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.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  What if we told you, "He was lying, he was also a violent psycho, and institutionally, we are incapable of doing our jobs"?

• 49:52Robert Evans?

  Yeah, 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 Fuhrman tapes were all lies. The LAPD looked into it, and they were able to show it was all untrue." And that's not really what the report says. Some 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.

• 50:14Speaker 01

  We threw all the complaints out.

• 50:16Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's very different, in fact.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  We can't prove any of this happened because we made sure we couldn't.

• 50:23Robert Evans?

  Yes, yeah. That said, other 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 Mark claimed, and multiple witnesses have reported seeing Mark Fuhrman use racial slurs, just as he himself used them in the tapes. Mark's next book, published in 1998, was Murder in Greenwich. This covered a murder that we've discussed on this show in our RFK Junior episodes, the 1975 unsolved murder of Martha Moxley. Now, Mark theorized that the killer was Michael Skakel, and a lot of people had previously. Michael was the nephew with Ethel Kennedy and childhood friend of RFK Junior, and there'd long been suspicion on behalf of Michael's brother and then Michael,

• 51:07Robert Evans?

  but no one is ever able to prove anything. In the early 1990s, the Skakel family hired a PI firm to look into the risk to Michael and his brother, Thomas, who were both publicly suspected of the crime, per an article on Oxygen.com, and I'll talk about why I'm using Oxygen as a source in a little bit. The agency's highly confidential report was leaked to the press in 1995, and it revealed that both Michael and Tommy had lied to Greenwich police during their initial interviews 20 years earlier. One of the few people who had seen the report is former Los Angeles police detective and writer Mark Fuhrman, the author of Murder in Greenwich: Who Killed Martha Moxley? So included Oxygen, not because it's a good source, because it shows how Mark's involvement in the case is used and reported on by them. It's like, he's the only one who's seen this secret report, you know?

• 51:50Robert Evans?

  That he's become credible to these reactionary, paranoid conservative sources, kind of now in this point in time. It's interesting.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  He becomes a true crime guy.

• 52:00Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  He's perfect for it.

• 52:02Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  And no reason to explain why he's a former LAPD detective.

• 52:08Robert Evans?

  Former. And RFK Junior for himself, because he writes an article about Mark's book, and he blames writer Dominic Dunn for bringing Fuhrman into the matter. Dunn had been accusing the Skakel family of covering up the crime and trying to get the brothers prosecuted for years, right? And is kind of responsible for keeping suspicion on the Skakel brothers alive in the media during this time. And so he reaches out to Mark Fuhrman and furnishes him with like documents. He's gathered during his own investigations and is like, I need you to like, make this publicized because you're famous now. And despite Mark's perjury conviction after his book's success and due to the regret in the wake of OJ's acquittal, Mark had a lot of credibility in some circles, more than you'd expect.

• 52:50Robert Evans?

  And he was seen by too many conservatives as a wronged truth teller and good cop. So Mark puts out this book that Dunn has basically paid him to write, arguing that Michael Skakel did this murder. And it does build a lot of support for that belief. In an article for The Atlantic in 2003, RFK Jr. would later claim, "On July 10th, 1988, one month after its publication, Connecticut authorities convened a one-man grand jury consisting of Judge George Tim. The state's attorney Jonathan Benedict took over the Moxley case and began a multimillion dollar effort to convict Michael Skakel." Right? That's how RFK Jr. looks at it. That's not unfair. The question is whether or not Michael was guilty. Right? If you believe Michael's guilty, then it's not bad that Mark did this.

• 53:32Robert Evans?

  If Michael's innocent, then he destroyed an innocent man's life. Right? Now, in 2002, Michael was convicted of the murder of Martha Moxley. In that same year, Mark's book was adapted for a TV movie and Mark Fuhrman was played by Christopher Maloney. This may seem like a redemption arc for Mark, but it turns out the prosecution of Michael Skakel was dog shit and it was later overturned. Michael spends like 10 years in prison, but he gets out because he's found it was bad. They didn't do a good job prosecuting him. Mark's gonna go to his grave insisting Michael was guilty. I don't actually know who's guilty of this crime. So whether or not this goes in the bastard column depends on what you believe about Martha Moxley's murder.

• 54:15Robert Evans?

  That said, I don't think Mark knows or cares who really did it. He writes in his book on her murder. In the intro, he's like, "I was interested in Martha's murder because of, quote, 'money, power, celebrity deceit and corruption.'" Basically like, "Oh, because this is a famous family involved in this murder, I thought it was cool and sexy." And like a lady died, like a girl died. And they came to me to get it publicity. Like, come on, dude. Like, if you, if you really think this guy murdered her, sure, absolutely. The right thing, but like, don't just write that, oh, it's a sexy little girl, girl got murdered. Man, come on.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  It's just like true crime shit like he would. He missed out on the wave of podcasts.

• 54:55Robert Evans?

  Yes, yes, he would have made a lot of, and he does actually kind of make, he makes it into a little bit of that wave.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  Oh, god damn it.

• 55:01Robert Evans?

  So Mark, Mark keeps writing over the next few years. He publishes a mix of books, a lot of like serial killer books. He publishes an exposé of Oklahoma's death row. He's actually anti death row, I think, kinda. He does publish a book on the death of Terry Shivo, a brain dead coma patient who was taken off of life support after a math. This is a huge culture war moment, right? This poor woman is.

• 55:22Speaker 01

  Why the fuck is he writing a book about Terry Shivo?

• 55:25Robert Evans?

  Cause he believes she was murdered.

• 55:27Speaker 01

  What?

• 55:28Robert Evans?

  He thinks this is murder. Yes, a lot of people do. He's that kind of guy. In 2006, he puts out a book about the JFK assassination that honestly had nothing interesting to say. And in 2009, he hilariously wrote a book titled, The Murder Business: How the Media Turns Crime Into Entertainment and Subverts Justice. That's you, Mark. You're the media.

• 55:51Speaker 01

  That's just an autobiography, Mark.

• 55:54Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 55:55Speaker 01

  My favorite part of his JFK book is how he came to the conclusion is that JFK's head just did that.

• 56:00Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's right. That's right.

• 56:01Speaker 01

  He was never shot. His head just did that. It runs in the Kennedy family.

• 56:05Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 56:05Speaker 01

  It's why RFK's face is so red all the time. He's fighting back the, the natural urge for the Kennedy's head to explode.

• 56:12Robert Evans?

  That's right. I mean, well, it's, it's wrong because it was Bernie Montgomery Sanders, but we'll continue to move right past that.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  Agree to disagree.

• 56:21Robert Evans?

  Mark spends the aughts and teens as a forensic and crime scene expert for Fox News. He also hosts a radio show and a TV history show on the Fox Nation streaming platform. I don't think it still exists. It was like Fox has answered and Netflix and the aughts.

• 56:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:37Robert Evans?

  And Mark has like a show where he goes through. Famous crimes and talks about them as the great detective who got OJ acquitted.

• 56:45Speaker 01

  Of course, he ended up on Fox. He was destined for that job.

• 56:49Robert Evans?

  He was, and he becomes an activist in his old age, you know, even though he actually in the early 2000s is permanently barred from ever being a law enforcement officer in California again. He becomes an advocate for police chokeholds because they keep people safe. You know, the chokeholds are important. It's a critical tool for safety.

• 57:07Speaker 01

  Well, I want to say.

• 57:08Robert Evans?

  For other people to die on.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, a hill for other people to die on.

• 57:12Robert Evans?

  Yeah. He repeatedly denied the relevance of chokeholds in investigations to deaths in police custody, and I found a good example of this in a 2016 Raw Story article. Quote, "While examining the history that led up to the OJ Simpson case, ESPN's 30 for 30 documentary series, OJ: Made in America, recalled how the 1991 beating of Rodney King opened the nation's eyes to the LAPD's treatment of the black community. But Fuhrman, whose racist language is often blamed for derailing the case against Simpson, argued that King's beating could have been prevented if the chokehold procedure had not been banned in the early 1980s." If they could have choked him, you know, that whole Rodney King beating wouldn't have been a problem. If only they would have gotten to choke him. They had to beat him because they couldn't choke him.

• 57:52Speaker 01

  If you see, if they simply didn't ban chokeholds, like six dudes wouldn't have to beat an unresisting person.

• 57:58Robert Evans?

  Yeah, exactly. It's like, I wouldn't have stabbed him if you'd have let me shoot him, you know, like, okay, man. And it's perhaps ironic, given his love of chokeholds, that Mark Fuhrman's end would come at the hands of throat cancer, which took him out of this world at age 74, not a moment too soon, like a couple of days ago. And that's the Mark Fuhrman story. Like a couple of weeks ago by the time you hear this, but.

• 58:25Speaker 02

  What a guy.

• 58:26Speaker 01

  You know, I kind of didn't expect to come out on the side of cancer on this one. But here I am.

• 58:32Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 58:33Speaker 01

  I'm wearing my tumor jersey, you know, big foam fingers saying cancer number one.

• 58:39Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's the fucked up thing about cancer is, you know, especially when it comes for you or people you care about, it's this relentless nightmare monster. But the other flip side of it is that it's the thing that guarantees no dictator or Fox News personality stays around forever.

• 58:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like the the mortality version of Al Capone getting caught for tax cheating.

• 59:00Robert Evans?

  Right, right.

• 59:01Speaker 01

  Eventually you get the tumors.

• 59:02Robert Evans?

  Eventually it'll get you. Yeah.

• 59:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, at least he's dead.

• 59:07Robert Evans?

  Yeah. At least he's dead.

• 59:08Speaker 01

  He's not on the Fox tree. He's dead like his streaming platform.

• 59:12Speaker 02

  Oh, man. Joe, you want to plug your plugables at the end here?

• 59:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I am the host of the Lions Led By Donkeys podcast. We're a military history podcast. We talk about all eras of history. We try to make things funny and interesting. I'm also the author of the book, The Highlands Burn. You can get it wherever you get your books. It's military gunpowder fantasy. So if you like World War One technology and magic, there's a book for you now.

• 59:44Robert Evans?

  Excellent. All right, everybody. Well, that's going to be it for us here at Behind the Bastards. And that's going to be us for it at Here Podcast. I don't know why I'm doing the aphasia thing. Anyway, we're done. Go home. Begone.

• 1:00:01Speaker 02

  Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes of Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit Remind Me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode. For clips and our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, youtube.com/AtBehindTheBastards. We love about 40% of you, statistically speaking.

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