Tom Lange was the lead homicide detective for the Los Angeles Police Department assigned to the OJ Simpson murder case — one of the most watched criminal trials in American history. In this second part of a two-part conversation, Lange picks up where Part 1 left off, going deeper into the evidence, the decision-making, and the failures that defined the case.
The interview opens with OJ's first interview after returning from Chicago. Within 30 seconds, Lange had his read: he was dealing with a sociopath. OJ never asked about his children. He never asked what happened to his wife. Not on the phone from Chicago, and not in the formal interview. Lange also walks through what he found at OJ's Chicago hotel room — thick drinking glasses he personally tested, proving OJ had deliberately staged a cut on his finger before loudly announcing it at the hotel front desk. There were 25 pieces of evidence like this that never made it to trial.
The sharpest revelations involve the prosecution. Lange learned — 27 years after the verdict — that limo driver Alan Park had told Marcia Clark he saw OJ standing by the trash cans the night of the murders. Clark never shared that with Lange, her own lead investigator. "She lied to me," he says. "I had more problems with Marcia on direct than I did with Johnny on cross." The episode also covers the Bronco chase from inside the command center: the brass demanding a perp walk, OJ vanishing from Kardashian's house, and Lange on the phone with a man holding a gun to his own head while SWAT was already staged at Rockingham — with orders to shoot if OJ stepped out armed.
Lange closes with the clearest account yet of why this case — the most evidence-rich murder case of the century — was lost. The wrong courthouse. Cameras in the courtroom. A prosecution that believed DNA alone would win it. And a jury that was played to instead of persuaded. The trial wasn't about two people who were murdered. "This is all about showtime," Lange says. "It wasn't about two young people who got slaughtered."
