Los Angeles police last week began an investigation whether a knife purportedly found on property once owned by O.J. Simpson is a piece of evidence or if the story of its discovery was “bogus from the get-go,” a police captain said.
The knife will be subjected to testing for hair, DNA, serology and other forensic evidence, said LAPD Capt. Andy Neiman, who declined to describe the knife in detail.
“It is a knife; it is not a machete,” Neiman told reporters at a hastily arranged news conference in front of police headquarters.
Given Simpson’s acquittal of double murder, the LAPD still considers the 1994 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman an open case, Neiman said.
The case is not considered closed until there is a conviction, he said. However, because of double-jeopardy prohibitions, we could not chargeMr. Simpson with the homicides …,” Neiman said.
Forensic experts will try to determine if this “evidence is in fact evidence or it’s just a facsimile or a made up story …,” Neiman said. He added that “the whole story … (may) be bogus from the get-go.”
The knife was purportedly found in the late 1990s at Simpson’s former Rockingham Avenue estate in Brentwood, about the time the home there was demolished, Neiman said.
Multiple media outlets, citing anonymous sources within the LAPD, reported late last week that a preliminary examination of the knife has determined that it does not appear to be the murder weapon.
The finder of the knife, described as a construction worker, turned it over to either an off-duty or retired LAPD motorcycle officer, who was working as a security officer on “a movie job,” Neiman said.
The officer, whom he declined to identify, kept the knife until recently, when he turned it over to Los Angeles police, Neiman said.
“I was really surprised … it was quite a shock,” Neiman said.
Neiman declined to reveal many details of the discovery of the knife, repeatedly citing the fact that there is an open homicide investigation in progress.
Neiman said it was unclear, if homicide detectives would go back to the property to investigate further because construction has taken place in the years since the demolition.
And Neiman said investigators want to know the identity of the person who allegedly found the knife. He urged that person—or anyone knowing the identity of that person—to call police.
Late Friday, the website TMZ identified the officer who had the knife as George Maycott, who told the website he was given the knife by a construction worker in 2002. Maycott said he immediately notified somebody at the LAPD’s West Los Angeles division, but there was no interest in the knife, so he took it home, TMZ reported.
