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After O.J.: Fuhrman Tapes Revealed. Aired 11p-12mn ET
Aired July 21, 2017 - 23:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANNOUNCER: The following is a CNN special report.
[23:00:25] KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN SPECIAL REPORT: The detective and the tapes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you use in the word -- describing people?
PHILLIPS: They swayed a verdict.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Not guilty of murder.
PHILLIPS: And divided our country. So what else was on those tapes? Now a CNN exclusive, excerpts from the Mark Fuhrman tapes you've never heard and the woman who recorded him.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The thought of the party takes your breath away.
PHILLIPS: Laura Hart McKinny tells all.
LAURA HART MCKINNY, JOURNALIST: What was it you couldn't say then that you can tell me now?
PHILLIPS: Tonight after O.J. The Fuhrman tapes revealed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are tragically into the third day of this major riot--
PHILLIPS: Los Angeles.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Flames are jumping about 25 feet in the air --
PHILLIPS: A city torture by a history of racial rage.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fire and the blaze were held off by rioters.
PHILLIPS: In 1965 racist white cops ignited the watts riots.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A massive combined National Guard and police sweep is underway to bring peace and order.
PHILLIPS: By the late '80s allegations of excessive use of force had escalated racial tensions. Rappers like NWA made clear, black neighborhoods were ready to blow. Then in 1991 there was this, a grainy video of four white cops beating Rodney King. When the LAPD officers were exonerated in 1992 the city exploded, then just two years later. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a horrendous crime. We have two people
dead at the scene.
PHILLIPS: Two people brutally murdered, Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman and the main suspect, Nicole's ex-husband, football legend, O.J. Simpson.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Simpson you are charge with the crime of murder. How do you plead?
O.J. SIMPSON, FOOTBALL LEGEND: Absolutely 100 percent not guilty.
PHILLIPS: There was a wealth of forensic evidence from drops of blood to shoe prints to a bloody glove. Mark Fuhrman was the detective in the investigation and would play a pivotal role in the trial.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you use the word nigger?
PHILLIPS: And it was a trial that from the start was clearly about race, in a city with a deep history of racial turmoil.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And you say on your oath that you have not addressed any black person as a nigger or spoken about black people as niggers in the past 10 years, Detective Fuhrman?
MARK FUHRMAN, DETECTIVE: That is what I am saying. Yes, sir.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When you're watching the trial and you see this and you know what you've got on those tapes, what were you thinking?
HART MCKINNY: I just laughed. I couldn't believe it. Why would he say that?
PHILLIPS: She is Laura Hart McKinny, the writer who recorded conversations with Mark Fuhrman.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Anything out of a nigger's mouth for the first five or six sentences is a lie.
PHILLIPS: And she remains mostly silent until now.
PHILLIPS: Why have you decided to come forward now and talk to us?
HART MCKINNY: I trust you.
PHILLIPS: Does it feel good to talk about this?
HART MCKINNY: Yes, it's time.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Could you come forward, please.
HART MCKINNY: There were bits of the puzzle I was unable to reveal at the time and I was unable to be as truthful as I really wanted to be.
PHILLIPS: So she is telling her story, her truth and for the first time excerpts from the Fuhrman tapes you've never heard, vulgar, sexist.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How do you arrest a violent suspect?
[23:05:00] FUHRMAN: Have a man do it.
PHILLIPS: Disturbing.
FUHRMAN: You got to be a border line socio path, you got to be violent.
PHILLIPS: Violent.
FUHRMAN: Five years ago I would have spun around and choked him out until he told me the truth. Obviously he is lying the first two times. After that you usually get the truth. So if you use that, you get a lot of laughs from lot of policeman.
HART MCKINNY: What, the 77th lie detector test?
FUHRMAN: Yes. Like in the locker-room, some new kid, you know. Why didn't you give him the 77th lie detector test?
PHILLIPS: And even one tape made just months before he would testify in the O.J. Simpson murder trial.
FUHRMAN: If I go down they lose the case.
HART MCKINNY: Even before the trial started he knew how important he was to this case.
PHILLIPS: Right. He knew exactly how important he was.
HART MCKINNY: Yet he lied on the stand.
I have no idea why.
PHILLIPS: In 1985 McKinny met Mark Fuhrman in Los Angeles, ten years before the O.J. Simpson trial.
PHILLIPS: What's it like to be back here?
HART MCKINNY: It's an odd feeling, very odd feeling.
PHILLIPS: It all began here at what was then Alice's restaurant.
HART MCKINNY: I was sitting outside working on my laptop and he was dressed in regular clothes and he sat down and I was like he seems like a nice person. He said what are you writing?
PHILLIPS: She told Fuhrman she was writing about a woman cop. His response surprised her.
HART MCKINNY: He just sort of stopped and -- a woman cop? He said you're never going to find a woman cop who's a good cop. You're never going to find. A competent woman cop I think is more accurate. I thought whoa. How did it unfold before you thought this guy can help me?
I said why would you say that? And he said I work with them and they're incompetent. They're unable to hold a gun. They're not trustworthy. They're utterly incompetent and they're dangerous.
PHILLIPS: Exactly what McKinny needed to write her screen play about misogyny in the Los Angeles police department?
FUHRMAN: Their response is what? But it's really their natural response.
PHILLIPS: But before the recordings there was a relationship.
HART MCKINNY: First of there we had a brief encounter.
PHILLIPS: What do you mean brief encounters?
HART MCKINNY: We had a romance.
PHILLIPS: So it started out as a romance before you started doing the tapes?
HART MCKINNY: I would say it did.
PHILLIPS: The taping began when their romantic relationship ended.
FUHRMAN: If somebody thinks enough of you they'll come up with some type of a name. We gave all the females names, like these really ugly ones called critter, and this other one we call her, uh Hench Monkey like in the Wizard of Oz. She looks just like one of those monkeys they send out of the castle.
HART MCKINNY: Can I use all those?
FUHRMAN: Sure. Use critters.
PHILLIPS: What were you thinking when he was saying those things?
HART MCKINNY: Bingo. I feel that often when I'm working. There will be a bingo moment or I get chills and when I get chills I can help somebody else get chills.
PHILLIPS: But Laura Hart McKinny would get much more than chills and a dramatic screen play.
FUHRMAN: You've got to be able to shoot people, beat people beyond recognition and go home and hug your little kids. You don't pack those qualities.
PHILLIPS: Her 12 tapes would become a racial powder keg.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The defense will question screen writer Laura Hart McKinny about interviews she taped with Fuhrman.
PHILLIPS: Exposing alleged hatred. FUHRMAN: I guarantee you every Hitler's birthday there's a
celebration behind closed doors.
PHILLIPS: Impacting the trial of the century.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you use the word nigger?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They show the tapes will show he was a racist capable of planting a bloody glove.
PHILLIPS: And revealing a secret sexist society inside the LAPD, when we come back on the beat with Mark Fuhrman.
HART MCKINNY: He threatens me and he said I'll take you and any females you bring and I'll choke you all out in a minute.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[23:13:35] PHILLIPS: Making it in Hollywood was screen writer Laura Hart McKinny's dream and she knew exactly what her movie should be about. So your goal was to write a screen play about sexism within the LAPD. Why?
HART MCKINNY: I hate it when people are cruel to each other and thought it's got to be happening not just here. It's got to be happening around the country.
PHILLIPS: And it was sure happening in L.A. in the 1980s with resentment and retaliation against the campaign to recruit more women and minorities to the LAPD.
HART MCKINNY: I could tell there was a story - I didn't t know what the story was that I was - to deal with him.
PHILLIPS: And her man on the inside, Officer Mark Fuhrman had plenty to say on the subject.
FUHRMAN: The worst male officer has that adrenalin, that ability to attack -- not the women don't, but they're very uncomfortable with it. Their natural response is split. Split, hide, yell, scream, and hide in the corner. That is really their natural response. And I don't think that is a slam to women, considering you know that I don't think --
[23:15:03] PHILLIPS: Fuhrman clearly he had no respect for women cops.
FUHRMAN: Guys get a lot of time on the street, but now they are studying. They didn't want to be detectives but now they see the writing on the wall. Either they get off the street or they are going to have some split-tail for a partner.
PHILLIPS: A split-tail for a partner. Did you even realize at the time that was such a vulgar name for a woman?
HART MCKINNY: No, I didn't even know what a split tail was. I thought I really need to step up my game here. I really need work hard with these women at the police academy shadowing them so I'm clear to represent their voices.
PHILLIPS: Voices like Tia Morris.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Every rank up through captain.
PHILLIPS: In 1983 she was new to the force and ready to protect and serve in west L.A. at roll call, rookie officers like Morris sat up front.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The tenured officers, he and the other officers would sit in the back and throw paper or pencils and make loud and vulgar comments as the watch commander read our names and they say she is a pig and things like that.
PHILLIPS: Nobody stood up and said hey, don't back down. When you found out you had to work the beat with him, what's your reaction?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was scared. I was scared only because of him standing up in front of all of our peers and the watch commander and other supervisors and he flat out said I do not want to work with Morris. He was angry.
PHILLIPS: How did he treat you that night?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The whole night he threatened me and he say I'll take you and any other females you want to bring up to the academy and I'll choke you all out in a minute, because you're not even strong. You can't handle a man.
PHILLIPS: Then Morris says came a high priority call, burglary in progress.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He wouldn't get off the car so I'd have to approach the scene by myself.
PHILLIPS: So he made you get out at the scene. He wasn't going to help you.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He shined his light and just sat there. He didn't get out.
FUHRMAN: It was like a man and wife relationship, you know. Somebody's got to make the decision. It's the man. And that is the way it is in the car.
PHILLIPS: What if somebody had come towards you?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He would have been happy because he could have allowed me to get hurt and that would be right up his alley.
PHILLIPS: Morris says she was so scared she didn't finish her shift that night. But Fuhrman wasn't the only one with this attitude towards women. They called themselves MAW -- men against women. Meeting here at the park in the dead of night, what was your reaction? HART MCKINNY: I couldn't believe it. I said I mean you guys actually
go to the park after work and just drink beer and then great women? He said yeah. That is what we do.
FUHRMAN: Stand around the dark parking lot of a baseball diamond drinking beer at 3:30 in the morning.
HART MCKINNY: I spent time writing here thinking about what it would be like for the MAW guys to be here.
PHILLIPS: Fuhrman even described disciplining one of their own.
HART MCKINNY: So they would hold these late night meetings and figure out how they were going to harass other male officers that were being nice to female officers.
PHILLIPS: Who had helped them in some way or not reported something in a report that those officers felt they should have or had done something nice to them, had backed them up.
PHILLIPS: Coming up, tribunals and kill parties.
HART MCKINNY: Just the thought of a kill Party takes your breath away.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[23:23:005] PHILLIPS: By day a ball field, by night an imaginary courtroom.
FUHRMAN: Call it a tribunal where we get in a circle. The prosecutor, the sergeant in arms stands by the defendant. Your charges are as follows.
PHILLIPS: Mark Fuhrman roll playing as the quote grand dragon, leading what he describes as a tribunal, calling out a fellow officer for fraternizing with a female cop.
FUHRMAN: And then I go does anybody have any evidence to produce? Well, on 2/25 I observed the defendant not only kiss but touch on ass of the female officers.
I did not, silence. It makes guys aware.
PHILLIPS: Seemingly makes guys aware that if they are nice to female officers there will be consequences. That is how MAW, men against women, reportedly worked.
FUHRMAN: We have factions in five divisions.
PHILLIPS: What was a typical outcome of these mock trials, these tribunals?
HART MCKINNY: Depending on the crime committed, the grand dragon would determine what the (inaudible) would be. That the other guys wouldn't talk with him. PHILLIPS: However, there was, as Fuhrman describes, a way to avoid
being quote put on trial.
FUHRMAN: This is publicly humiliating a female officer in front of a bunch of male officers.
[23:25:04] PHILLIPS: Tia Morris says she had to work with the men of MAW.
PHILLIPS: So when you heard about men against women and this group of guys making it their mission to intimidate and harass women, did you believe it?
TIA MORRIS, FEMALE OFFICER: I didn't. But then I really saw how serious Mark Fuhrman was about the other men talking to the women. If they came up to me and spoke or anything like that, Mark Fuhrman would say what are you doing? Don't talk to her and they would back away.
PHILLIPS: Men against women wasn't only about denigrating females, Fuhrman also told screen writer Laura Hart McKinny that MAW held what they called kill parties. Celebrations she found unimaginable.
HART MCKINNY: The thought of a kill party takes your breath away. When there was an officer-involved shooting, some officers of the MAW Group would celebrate it. The thought of taking someone's life and being happy that it wasn't you and finding a way to go great job, that was a hell of an evening, it's just overwhelming, the really is, the idea of a kill party.
PHILLIPS: Tribunals. Kill parties. Equally disturbing is that Mark Fuhrman stayed on the job despite allegations of his sexism, racism.
MORRIS: He told me I needed to go and dance on soul train.
PHILLIPS: And internal investigations. In 1985, 10 years before the O.J. Simpson trial, Tia Morris testified before an administrative board about the behavior of Mark Fuhrman and other officers.
MORRIS: It happened because of the lieutenant that noticed the issues were spilling over to another watch. He told us what he observed and what he had been hearing about the men against women and the WAF, the White Angle Faction police. He did specify he knew it was stemming from Fuhrman and said he was going to start an investigation and he did.
PHILLIPS: Fuhrman and others were not formally punished but Fuhrman's reputation took a hit.
So then Mark Fuhrman comes up for a promotion and you look at him in the eye and say?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.
PHILLIPS: Bernard Parks was an LAPD deputy chief when Fuhrman came up to promotion. BERNARD PARKS, DEPUTY CHIEF LAPD: I made a point to always take a
moment to look at somebody's background and not give them an opportunity to put the department in a bad light.
PHILLIPS: So you knew he would put the department in a bad light?
PARKS: My view was you didn't want to take the chance.
PHILLIPS: One year after Fuhrman was passed over for a promotion, Parks had to set up another task force.
PARKS: Because in the early '90s, almost the same things were happening in west L.A. That were happening in the '80s and you heard rumors about women being mistreated and not given an opportunity.
PHILLIPS: One member of that task force, Tia Morris.
MORRIS: It was amazing to me because for one I'm sitting here thinking here I went through this in the '80s and I'm saying the department knew about a lot of this stuff. They knew how he was and nobody did anything.
PHILLIPS: So being on this Task Force, you were privy to internal reports and Mark Fuhrman was mentioned in a number of these.
MORRIS: Yes. We were privy to all of his past investigations and a stress claim that he filed where he talked about how he hated blacks and Hispanics, and women. And he was blaming the department for his stress, because of those issues that he had.
PHILLIPS: This time the investigation resulted in officers being reassigned, including Mark Fuhrman, a fateful move with consequences that no one could have imagined. Coming up Mark Fuhrman's behavior would no longer be just an internal problem. The whole world would watch him implode.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[23:33:24] KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: By 1995 Laura Hart McKinny had settled down with her family in suburban North Carolina but back in L.A. her old friend Mark Fuhrman was back on the stand.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You say on your oath that you have not address any black person as a nigger, was spoken about black people as niggers in the past ten years, Detective Fuhrman?
MARK FUHRMAN, DETECTIVE: That is what I'm saying, sir.
PHILLIPS: As Bailey was grilling Fuhrman, no one knew about Laura Hart McKinny tapes, except for her and a few close allies. Then came the one phone call that changed everything.
LAURA HART MCKINNY, JOURNALIST: I picked up the phone. He said may I speak with Laura Hart McKinny and I said this is she but I didn't recognize the voice. PHILLIPS: McKenna was a private investigator working for O.J.
Simpson's lawyers. A sign to find anything that would support the defense's strategy that Mark Fuhrman was a racist who planted evidence.
HART MCKINNY: He asked if in that story I had research tapes and if I had taped Mark Fuhrman.
PHILLIPS: And your thought was?
HART MCKINNY: I just froze and said yes and then we left town, immediately, because I had no idea what to do.
PHILLIPS: Including what to do about some unexpected advice.
Who suggested you destroy the tapes?
[23:05:00] HART MCKINNY: Judge who was an acquaintance of mine in L.A.
PHILLIPS: Did that surprise you?
HART MCKINNY: Yes.
PHILLIPS: So did she want to protect Mark Fuhrman?
HART MCKINNY: I'm thinking that she wanted to protect the integrity of the trial.
PHILLIPS: What did you say to her?
HART MCKINNY: I was plummet why?
PHILLIPS: Did she see the writing on the wall? Was she afraid potentially a murder could walk free, because of what these tapes represented?
HART MCKINNY: She didn't know what was on the tapes, but when I said the tapes are confidential and she said it's a murder trial. Nothing is confidential and they would subpoena you and your tapes and your life would change forever.
PHILLIPS: And that is exactly what happened. When McKinny refused to hand over the tapes, Simpson's lawyers came to North Carolina and took her to court.
HART MCKINNY: I have a business relationship with him.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And you're still trying to Market this?
HART MCKINNY: I was completely unprepared to be in a courtroom. I was extremely nervous.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This material is collateral. And I will deny the subpoena. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think it's an outrages ruling and we're going to
appeal. This is bomb shell evidence and absolutely critical. It's relevant, germane, material.
PHILLIPS: He won. He didn't have to give up the tapes.
HART MCKINNY: Was very pleased that we won and thought that is the end of it, great.
PHILLIPS: And then you lost on appeal.
HART MCKINNY: Right.
PHILLIPS: And then you thought?
HART MCKINNY: I thought I have to send the tapes.
PHILLIPS: So did Mark Fuhrman called you say Laura, please don't give up those tapes?
HART MCKINNY: He requested I not give up the tapes.
PHILLIPS: What did you tell him?
HART MCKINNY: No -- that I had to give them up.
PHILLIPS: Did you feel a need to protect him?
HART MCKINNY: No. He is very capable of protecting himself.
PHILLIPS: As for McKinny she could no longer protect the tapes or her privacy. So who told Pat McKenna you had these tapes?
HART MCKINNY: That I don't know. That person has never been revealed to me.
PHILLIPS: Still a mystery?
HART MCKINNY: Still a mystery. So to this day you don't know who gave you up, basically to the defense.
HART MCKINNY: No. I don't know who called.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you stop and think about what you should next do?
PHILLIPS: Coming up O.J. Simpson charged with murder and Mark Fuhrman still taping.
More from the infamous tapes you've never heard.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[23:41:48] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good afternoon, Ms. McKinny.
HART MCKINNY: Good afternoon Mr. Cochran. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Over the 10 --
PHILLIPS: Johnny Cochran had everything he wanted. Laura Hart McKinny, her tapes and recordings of Mark Fuhrman saying the "n" word.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And in preparation of your testimony today can you tell the jury how many times you counted that he used that word?
HART MCKINNY: Approximately 42.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 42 times?
HART MCKINNY: Yes.
FUHRMAN: Yes, the 77th ... leave that old station man, it's got the smell of niggers that have been beaten and killed in there for years.
PHILLIPS: How did you stomach listening to that over and over again?
HART MCKINNY: Those comments that he used made me feel repulsed but also it lit a fire under me. It's despicable, the fact that he can think about that and talk like that makes me think it's happening and so I have to find a way to reflect that.
PHILLIPS: So it just empowered you.
HART MCKINNY: It just pissed me off.
PHILLIPS: And it made her a crucial player in the trial of the century. She could have profited handsomely from those tapes but she didn't.
HART MCKINNY: I would never do that. I would never have sold the tapes.
PHILLIPS: Is it true you were offered $250,000 for them?
HART MCKINNY: I was.
PHILLIPS: So, why didn't you sell them?
HART MCKINNY: No one, talking about me, should be profiting from this tragedy that people have to live with every day of their life.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: McKinny what was your occupation?
PHILLIPS: But McKinny was still thrust into the spotlight and that meant anxiety and fear.
I remember you got a lot of death threats. They didn't understand why these tapes had to come about. Did you feel safe during all of that?
HART MCKINNY: No. I was extremely scared.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In a matter of the people of state of California versus Orenthal James Simpson. PHILLIPS: The verdict didn't make her feel any safer.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We in the jury and involve in title action find the defendant Orenthal James Simpson not guilty of the crime of murder and violation of penal code.
PHILLIPS: What was your reaction to the verdict when O.J. Simpson was found not guilty?
HART MCKINNY: I didn't go out of the house for a while.
PHILLIPS: Really?
HART MCKINNY: Yes.
PHILLIPS: Why?
HART MCKINNY: There was the reality that maybe the tapes had something to do with the jury's verdict and because of that I would be persona non grata in many people's eyes.
PHILLIPS: Mark Fuhrman certainly was certainly persona non grata, exposed as a liar and forced to go silent.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Detective Fuhrman, did you plant or manufacture any evidence in this case?
FUHRMAN: I assert my Fifth Amendment privilege.
[23:45:00] PHILLIPS: But his silence would not protect him. His voice on those tapes could not be erased. Excerpts you are now hearing for the very first time.
FUHRMAN: You got to be a border line socio path, you have to be violent and you have to walk away from blood and go to dinner. You have to be able to shoot people, beat people beyond recognition and go home and hug your little kids. You don't pack those qualities. If you do you're either so ugly or they're lesbians or so dyke-ish that they're not women anymore. They're like caught in between it's like half in a door and half out. You know they're caught between dimensions. There's just no way to do it all.
PHILLIPS: Stories of alleged sexism, racism, and police brutality. McKinny's tapes would impact more than just the O.J. Simpson trial. They would impugn the integrity of the LAPD.
When you heard those tape recordings for the first time, what did you think?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was a belly punch at the wrong time. And you go how could this have happened to us? How did we even let him stay on the job?
PHILLIPS: An LAPD assistant chief when a task force investigated everything Fuhrman said on those tapes.
Why had he been allowed to behave the way he did for so long and not be held accountable?
BAYAN LEWIS, FORMER ASSISTANT CHIEF, LAPD: Because the command staff that was in charge of him did not do the job they should have done, which is to deal with the issue in a strong manner. So it was kind of shunted off to the side. Boys will be boys and we needed to tell the organization if you even claim to be engaged in this kind of behavior, we'll investigate it and let chips fall where they may and secondly, if it was within statute, then we would take it to the district attorney and file on it.
PHILLIPS: In 1997 the task force released this report, keeping secret portions of the tapes. Excerpts not played in court and never made public until now. This is the confidential personnel version of that report. It reveals more of Fuhrman's disturbing recordings. Quote grabbed her by the hair and stuck a gun to her head. Held her like this, threw the pitch down the stairs. And quote I'd pick up three or four gang members, bring them to the station. Take one in the basement and just beat the dog shit out of him."
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hundreds of inert views were conducted and nearly a quarter of a million documents were reviewed.
PHILLIPS: In the end the task force confirmed 12 of 29 events describe by Fuhrman. But just about everything he told McKinny was bigger, bloodier and more violent than the actual events, with one exception, MAW, Men against women.
Did you ever at any point feel I need to report what he is saying? This is dangerous?
HART MCKINNY: No. No, I didn't. I really believe that if I could tell the story in a way that was honest and fair with a strong narrative that I could help inform people.
PHILLIPS: Fuhrman's words would inspire McKinny's writing for decades.
Mark Fuhrman told you he personally he felt trapped. What did he mean by that?
HART MCKINNY: He was trying to articulate the depth of his soul. There is something with his own identity that was connected to being a police officer and so much of it was being (inaudible) by having to work with women that if he'd been in a different time in history, he would have been more appreciated, more openly respected by some people.
PHILLIPS: Next Fuhrman worries more about the movie than the murder.
FUHRMAN: They are going to say that I planted the glove to be able to ...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To sell.
FUHRMAN: To peddle this which is absolutely psycho?
PHILLIPS: And whatever happened to McKinny's screen play?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[23:53:33] PHILLIPS: It was 1994. Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown were dead, and her ex-husband, O.J. Simpson, was charged with the murders.
So a month and a half after the murders, Fuhrman tells you this.
FUHRMAN: My ass is on the line, because if the media gets a hold of this, although we can say - well, we've been in negotiations for years, months whatever. They are going to say that I planted the glove to be able to sell to peddle this which is absolutely psycho.
PHILLIPS: Mark Fuhrman was still getting together with you and recording these tapes after the murders had happened. Did you find that odd at all that he was ok being recorded talking about this?
HART MCKINNY: No. No, because he liked to talk about his thoughts and his feelings.
PHILLIPS: Stunning to hear now, but not really surprising when looking back on a man known to be cocky.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you use the word nigger?
PHILLIPS: Who lied on the stand.
FUHRMAN: No, sir.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The court finds the defendant guilty based on his plea of no contest.
PHILLIPS: And pled no contest to perjury. But in his 1997 book, murder in Brentwood, Fuhrman apologized, writing, in my heart I always knew it was wrong, even if I said them only to create a fictional story. My first failure was the lure of greed, and the second was my lack of compassion.
[23:55:09] FUHRMAN: I'm not a racist.
PHILLIPS: Fuhrman also went on an apology tour, visiting Diane Sawyer, Oprah, and Larry King.
FUHRMAN: I thought I knew better being a policeman how to make the most controversial, outrageous, violent controversially crammed police show that we could make. And I was wrong. I didn't know what I was doing.
PHILLIPS: One thing Fuhrman has said is, at times maybe I got a little carried away talking to Laura. I don't know if you've heard that before, but what's your reaction to that?
HART MCKINNY: He said those things, so he believed them. But I don't think he got carried away. I really don't. I think he was being truthful. PHILLIPS: Today, no longer a screenplay consultant, or a cop,
Fuhrman, who declined to be interviewed for this program, is an author.
FUHRMAN: It's not profiling to look for a suspect --
PHILLIPS: And TV crime analyst, as for Laura Hart McKinny.
HART MCKINNY: It's been an emotional journey. We have to be willing to be vulnerable.
PHILLIPS: She teaches screen writing at the University of North Carolina, School of the Arts. And that screenplay she developed with Mark Fuhrman's help? It never became a movie.
HART MCKINNY: Missouri scum who should not be allowed in our venerable policeman against policewoman --
PHILLIPS: It became a book.
HART MCKINNY: He violated all of our principles, and he glances at the note pad, kissing one female officer on duty in uniform and embarrassing us all.
PHILLIPS: Its fiction, and the title, the same as Fuhrman's real-life secret society, Men against women.
Was completing this book therapeutic for you after all these decades?
HART MCKINNY: Yes.
PHILLIPS: Publishing the book was therapeutic, but disclosing the tapes, still painful. For more than 20 years, you were the woman with the tapes that changed the face of this trial. What has that been like for you?
HART MCKINNY: It hasn't been good, I will say. That -- that part hasn't been good. I felt that ashamed would be wrong, but I have felt bad that the revelation of the tapes could have actually had something to do with the verdict.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Orenthal James Simpson not guilty of the crime of verdict in violation of penal code --
HART MCKINNY: Could have actually helped to make a guilty man go free.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Is this your verdict, so say you one, so say you all?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
PHILLIPS: But those tapes have also done exactly what McKinny started out to do. Chief Willy Williams proposed sweeping changes in how his department handles sexual harassment.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It doesn't happen under my watch, period.
PHILLIPS: Are you glad that Laura recorded Mark Fuhrman?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Absolutely. It was horrible for us because it had a huge impact on the O.J. Simpson trial, and it made us look absolutely horrible within our minority community. They said, look, we've been saying all along that you use the n-word, that you lie and it took years after this to deal with it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We will be doing a reorganization of the department, and it will serve the best interest of the duties of this department and the citizens of Los Angeles.
PHILLIPS: Are you glad Laura recorded Mark Fuhrman?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm very pleased. Most things, hard lessons, are things that are thrust upon you when you don't ask for them and you have to react to them. And I think everybody's better for it.
HART MCKINNY: I think those tape spoke volumes. The revelation was priceless.
PHILLIPS: Decades later, are you glad you didn't destroy those tapes?
HART MCKINNY: Yes.
PHILLIPS: Why?
HART MCKINNY: I have three sons. I would have a very hard time today sitting here thinking of my sons and telling them that I destroyed something that I was proud that I had done.
PHILLIPS: Why would he want to keep talking to you for so many years? Did he ever say why?
HART MCKINNY: He wanted to be infamous, he said.
PHILLIPS: That is what he said?
HART MCKINNY: He said that.
PHILLIPS: But infamous is very different from famous.
HART MCKINNY: That is what he said. No, I want to be infamous.
PHILLIPS: Well, he became infamous.
HART MCKINNY: He did.
