BLAST FROM THE PAST
LA detective in Simpson-Goldman murders dies at 70

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Philip Vannatter, the Los Angeles police detective who served as a lead investigator in the 1994 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, has died in Southern California, according to his brother. He was 70.

Vannatter died Friday at a Santa Clarita hospital of complications from cancer, his brother Joe Vannatter told The Associated Press on Sunday.

He was among the first detectives on the scene at former football star O.J. Simpson's mansion in June 1994, following the stabbing deaths of Simpson's wife Nicole and her friend, Ron Goldman. Vannatter testified at the murder trial, at which Simpson was acquitted.

More here.

So, of course, I'm sure Detective Vanatter was a dedicated, hardworking man who solved lots of crimes throughout his career and we all ought to respect his memory for that. It is interesting to me, however, that this AP obituary makes no mention of the fact that Vanatter single handedly made the policing blunder that almost certainly let OJ off the hook.

If memory serves, Vanatter was the guy who showed up at the crime scene with a vial of blood freshly drawn from the celebrated Heisman winner and murder suspect at police headquarters. We can only speculate as to why such an experienced detective would do something so stupid - okay, I'll admit, I'm in the camp that believes the LAPD tried unsuccessfully to frame a guilty man - but the long and the short of it is that the presence of OJ's blood, taken by the police, at the crime scene while it was being investigated, was enough to introduce reasonable doubt in the jury's minds about all that foolproof DNA evidence that was supposed to provide a slam dunk conviction. I mean, you can trash prosecuting attorneys Marsha Clark and Chris Darden all you want, but when you have cops running around the crime scene carrying vials of the suspect's blood, you've definitely got your work cut out for you.

So Vanatter, more than anybody else, blew the OJ case, most likely in his zeal to deprive the suspect of his civil rights, which ended up denying the victims' families their rights. That's how I'm going to remember him. I wonder if police departments since then have learned a lesson from this. Probably not.

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