You're Wrong About - The O.J. Simpson Trial: When Kato Met Marcia

Episode Date: April 27, 2020

Sarah tells Mike about the clash of the titans, the fury at the grand jury. We follow Kato, the wise fool of the kingdom, for the week between the murders and the Bronco chase. Digressions include John Travolta, French kickboxing movies and "The Mummy." The celebrity cameos are less numerous than usual but no less absurd. Support us:Subscribe on PatreonDonate on PaypalBuy cute merchWhere else to find us: Sarah's other show, Why Are Dads Mike's other show, Maintenance Phase Continue reading →Support the show

I think it's like finding out that Mick Jagger is singing back up on Your So Vayne. I think you can't unhear it and it adds to the experience. Welcome to You're Wrong About, the podcast where we tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Oh, that's nice. Because we're gonna put Kato under oath this episode, right? We are, yes. That was super topical. So help us God. That was beautiful. I do think that the whole truth is fundamentally inaccessible to human beings. It's not unequivocal with that. But that is the thing that people say in this situation. So like, I'm faulting the legal system. I'm not faulting the tagline. I am Michael Hopps. I'm a reporter

for The Huffington Post. My name is Sarah Marshall and I'm working on a book about the Satanic Panic. And we are on Patreon at patreon.com slash You're Wrong About and lots of other places and if you're in quarantine and you can't do it right now or you don't want to, we know it's weird out there and don't feel obligated. Yes, I concur. Do whatever you want. Under capitalism, people either have too much or not enough money and all things being a numbers game, you probably are one of the people with not enough. So like, buy yourself some fancy butter. So what, uh, what are we going to talk about today? We're going to talk about when Cato met Marsha. It's the Flintstones Meet the Jetsons of Heart story. Yes. Are you excited? Yeah,

we're finally getting to the point in like all those anthology movies that came out in the 90s that like follow one character for like an hour and a half and they all meet in like the last 10 minutes. Yes, we're doing that. We're making a high concept low budget 90s mini series. So we're talking about Brian Cato-Kalen and I would love for you to bring us up to speed about, you know, who is Cato-Kalen and what adventures of his have we observed so far in this story? Well, Cato was a friend of Nicole's who witnessed abuse but felt himself to be powerless to stop it and he ended up falling into OJ's orbit. And then sort of by accident, he ended up becoming the primary alibi witness for OJ on the night that Ron and Nicole were murdered. Since then,

he has spoken to the cops and was released back into basically OJ's custody. He's moved back into the guest house. So when we left Cato, he was sleeping on the floor in OJ's house on the night of June 13th protecting the housekeeper Gigi. And so on the morning of Tuesday, June 14th, Cato wakes up to find the house full of breakfast because area restaurants are still sending free food over. Oh yeah. And so Cato-Kalen, the whole truth by Mark Elliott, which I am relying on for my Cato's eye view, tells us that by early morning, Cato was updressed and returning the dozen of the phone calls left on his machine. And he gets a call from Bob Shapiro at two, who two days before making the announcement publicly that he's taking over as OJ's primary criminal defense attorney

is like, hey, Cato, I'm taking over as OJ's primary criminal defense attorney and I have some questions for you. Okay. And I would also say I was thinking about this as I was reading the Bob Shapiro parts of my research for this episode. It's interesting to me that there are like a lot of really good performances in the People vs. OJ Simpson. And yet I don't automatically see and hear them in my head now, except Bob Shapiro. Oh yeah. When I read anything about Bob Shapiro now, I just hear John Travolta in my head, John Travolta with his little eyebrow. I have vacillated for ever since that show came out on like, I was like, is this like an okay performance or like a weird, is it weird for a while? I was like, I think it's like really bad actually.

And now I think it's great. So yeah, so just know that that's in my head, I guess. So Cato has his call with Bob Shapiro. And meanwhile, he's still at OJ's house where Germain Jackson of the Jackson Five and also Deanne Warwick stop by. Like there's just a continual stream of people coming by to show their support because they're seeing OJ as a grieving husband at the stake apparently. Do you have any friends that aren't like, C list celebrities? Yeah, like old white men who he plays golf with. That's like his two friend groups. Those are his two lists on Facebook. Deanne Warwick and the CEOs, those are his friends. And so Mark Slotkin, who's a friend of OJ's who was married to Robin Greer, who's a good friend

of Nicole's, comes by with Bobby Chandler, who had been OJ's teammate. And according to Cato, something weird happened. Mark Slotkin said out loud that he'd heard something that afternoon about noises outside Cato's room Sunday night. Cato wondered how he knew that. Suddenly Slotkin looked directly at Cato and said, you better get your story straight, man. This is OJ. Think about what you know and make sure you really know it. So he's being sort of low key intimidated. Do we think it's on the orders of Shapiro? Like who would have told them? I don't know. Yeah, potentially. I mean, I can see there are many routes for information to travel in this house where like, there seem to be a bunch of people coming in and out and sharing

information with each other. So we could have gotten it from Shapiro, I think, or from somewhere else. To me, the point is that OJ's sort of network of friends and associates are maybe without needing to all get on the same page and be kind of like a briefing or like, hey, let's protect our friend. Let's make sure that this Cato guy who showed up recently and was originally living with Nicole and who isn't really of our circle, let's make sure he's on the same page as us, which is that our friend couldn't have done this, right? Do OJ a solid? And so Arnell, OJ's daughter from his first marriage, volunteers to take Cato to the meeting with Shapiro. And so the house is of course still being staked out by reporters. So they're

mobbed on their way out. Cato's not a car? Is this like a man in LA without a car? He does have a car, but it's like, it's parked outside of the compound. And so it's like surrounded by reporters and stuff. So he can't really access it. But Cato says of this, that he's also getting the feeling that everyone in OJ's camp was trying to make sure he was never completely out of their sight, which, yeah, I see that. I don't think Cato is paranoid. Yes. If I had killed someone, that is how I would treat the main witness against me. Okay. So Cato was taken in and he meets Bob Shapiro and Shapiro basically sits him down and starts questioning him first about who is he? Where is he from? What does he do for a living? What's his relationship with Nicole? How long did

he live at her house? Had he ever seen her in OJ fighting? Then they talk about the events of Sunday, the hours leading up to the murder, the trip to McDonald's, the duffel bag, the thumps on the wall. And throughout this, Shapiro's cell phone keeps ringing. Finally, he gets a call that makes him happy and he announces that they have retained a forensics expert that they wanted for the defense team. And throughout this meeting, Shapiro is kind of assembling the defense team as they go and calling around and signing on experts. He's showing up in the post credit sequence of all of their movies and inviting them to join. Does Cato, is Cato still telling the same story that he told the cops? Is he editing his story already for Shapiro? According to Cato, he is telling the

same story consistently the whole time because that he was on the phone with his friend Rachel, he heard thumps on the wall of his guest house at what will turn out later to be the time that OJ would have been re-entering the property, although of course Cato at the time has no way of knowing that. And tell me what else you remember Cato sort of being a witness to that night. So he had gone to McDonald's with OJ. OJ was acting really weird, but in a way that Cato couldn't really put his finger on. They came back, OJ was still acting weird, and then Cato heard this thump and he went out of the guest house and went to the main house and OJ was supposed to catch a flight that night and the limo driver is waiting outside the house and OJ is still acting

weird and then Cato sees this mysterious blue duffel bag that we now think is like the murder clothes, but at the time Cato is just like, huh, an extra duffel bag and then nobody ever talks about it ever again. Yeah, and Cato is also the last person who saw OJ before the murders took place. So Cato is the single most important person in terms of establishing the timeline and the timeline really is pretty key here. So yeah, isn't it weird? It's like, you know those fairy tales about like, there's one about the sort of town fool who like, he goes to a strange kingdom to seek his fortune and he accidentally saves the king because he's waving away a mosquito, but the king thinks he's waving him over and so he gets up and then his throne is struck by lightning

and he's like, my God, this man is a genius. Like I feel like Cato is just accidentally important in that way. He's like Forrest Gump. He's just like stumbling through all of these like world historical events without really having any inkling of how big of a deal he's going to be in all of them. Yeah, and who could imagine also? Certainly not Cato. So Bob is questioning Cato. He's taking all these cell phone calls and putting the team together and eventually Shapiro asked Cato how he was doing. Cato said fine and said again that he would be totally honest about everything. That's all we want you to do Cato. Just tell the truth. Poor naive Cato. When the interview concluded, Shapiro turned off the tape recorder. Cato asked him to tell O.J. that he loved him,

missed him and was praying for him. Shapiro then silently stared at Cato for a long time before speaking. This is kind of meshing well with Michelle remembers in terms of like the kind of confused narrator. Because also Bob Shapiro must be listening to this and thinking holy shit this is so incriminating. I feel like Bob Shapiro is like this man is playing five-dimensional chess with me. What kind of game is he up to by asking me to pray for O.J. And Cato is just like I just wish him well. And Cato has no idea like the information that he's sitting on and how incriminating it is and how perfectly it matches with the timeline of the murders. And he's just like well of course I'm going to tell the truth. All I'm going to do is tell the

truth and then everything's going to be fine. And Shapiro is probably like oh fuck if this guy tells the truth we're never going to win this case. And I don't even think he's necessarily that innocent about it. Like I think he does have kind of a weird you know he's aware of the fact that O.J. was being weird. Like he's like O.J. has been weird. This is weird. This just feels I feel sick to my stomach about this whole thing. We should also keep in mind that Cato wrote this book. Yeah. So it's also very much in Cato's incentives to be like all I wanted to do was tell the truth. So he could be playing up his sort of like lapdog innocence a little bit. Yes. I think we also like experienced multiple things at once. You know I think that like his reaction immediately following

the murders could be fundamentally one of innocence and also self-interest because we've seen him to be a self-interested guy. Yeah. And you know and he also has real reason to fear O.J. and his associates. They're powerful and you know clearly can inflict some damage. Right. So Cato asked Shapiro to tell O.J. he loved him. This woman was praying for him. Shapiro then silently stared at Cato for a long time before speaking. When he did his words were pointed. Do you think he did it Cato? Cato returned the stare. After a pause he said God I hope not. Poor Cato. I love that. That's an honest answer. If he wanted to like you know smooth things over with O.J.'s lawyer he'd be like no of course I don't he's not capable of that but he's like

I sure hope he didn't. Gee willikers mister. So they have a two hour interview and then Arnell does come and pick Cato up and then afterwards Cato is basically describing to Arnell what Bob Shapiro asked him and how he responded. And as he's describing the thumps on the wall he says I noticed for the first time that Al Cowlings was standing behind her. Al Cowlings being a very close friend of O.J.'s and the guy who's going to be his driver in the Bronco chase in a few days. So Cato says I noticed for the first time that Al Cowlings was standing behind her staring at me with a look of disgust on his face. I smiled at him and nodded but he didn't smile back. I wondered what that was all about. I felt sick to my stomach even though I hadn't eaten in nearly

two days. I couldn't understand why AC had looked at me like that. I hadn't done anything. I mean I guess they're they're preemptively mad at him for betraying O.J. I guess is that what's going on? Yeah I mean I feel like you know you you've direct anger at people who know things that implicate people you love right? Like that's frowning at the messenger. Right. And Cato says I had the feeling I was being watched that anything I said and did was being monitored evaluated. I suddenly felt the need to get out of there and it's like yeah yeah that that sounds like a positive direction. Get an Airbnb move out of the guest house. So he calls his friend Grant who was the friend who was with an Aspen when he met Nicole and Grant picks him up and

takes him to his house. But right before Cato leaves he gets a phone call from Howard Reitzman O.J.'s original lawyer who then puts O.J. on with him and he says juice how are you? Is everything okay? Yeah O.J. Droll. I'm okay. What can I do for you? Anything? Just tell the truth. So he keeps being told in this kind of like creepy coated way like just tell the truth Cato. Yeah. Just tell them what you know. I'm sure you're gonna do the right thing. Just do the right thing. I'm sure you're not gonna betray O.J. Yeah. So Cato spends the night at Grant's but then he asks Grant to take him back to O.J. the next morning because it's the day of Nicole's wake and he has to get a suit. Originally Cato was supposed to ride in one of the two limos that had been reserved for the family

to Nicole's wake but then at the last second they're like no no family only Cato can't come. Then they let Arnell and O.J. son Jason's friends into the limos. Apparently this is the moment when Cato knows that there's a rift between him and the Simpsons. Oh that's interesting that that little thing is what made it clear to him. Yeah that it's like how we realize things where it's like stuff really piles up and becomes pretty obvious and then like a little thing happens and you're like oh my god I'm not in the family limos. Yeah it sounds really trivial but like finding out that you're not in a group chat with like people that you know is like legitimately devastating and it feels like the 90s equivalent of that you're like you're not

going to give me a ride. Yeah because in the 90s the economy was so good that people whenever they wanted to gossip they just rode around in a limo. Yeah let's let's trick people into thinking that millennials really believe that. Yeah. So Cato ends up driving himself to the wake and he has to fight his way through a crowd of people. I just want you to envision this because it's like a part of the daily lives of a lot of the people who the story is about and it's just such a weird thing to imagine like he's like okay fine I will drive my own car. I'm kind of worried it won't start because it's been five days but that's the least of my problems because the entire street is mobbed and there's people all over it and so he gets his car started and then he's like

trying to get out of his parking spot and there's just gockers and camera people the street is just packed. Yeah. Like I can't imagine it would be like driving through the zombies and the mummy or the followers of the mummy and the mummy I don't know. I can always tell when you've seen a movie recently when all of your metaphors come from the same movie. I've always seen the mummy recently to be fair like there's rarely a time in my life when I can't be described as having watched the mummy recently. It's like the third it's like that one time in the mummy. Well that movie has everything Mike and away most things are like that one time in the mummy so I don't know what to tell you but he does get to the wake. It makes him think of how he and

Nicole used to go to church together because they were both raised Catholic and he goes to view Nicole's body and the book says he was surprised to see how genuinely beautiful she seemed in death. She was dressed in a black blouse that completely covered her neck all the way up to the chin which of course is because of the wounds to her neck that killed her because she was almost beheaded. God. And Cato prays for her and then after he leaves the viewing he sees that OJ is sitting down and sort of wailing it seems performatively and he's saying I no longer have a wife I'm left without a wife there's no more Nicole I don't have Nicole anymore and Cato is like I can't handle this any longer I have to go like I just can't watch this but as he's getting

out to go Cora Fishman who's one of Nicole's close friends comes up to Cato and throws her arms around him and kind of is sobbing and hugging him and then she goes up to OJ and according to Cato starts pounding on his chest and saying what happened what about the kids and OJ says I loved her too much and Cora says why did you do this how could you whoa at the funeral yeah whoa multiple people heard him say I loved her too much at Nicole's wake oh I know and then what's what's interesting to me too is that at the end of all this at the end of like feeling like his he's being monitored by OJ's friends and family and kind of pushed around he's like well I guess I'll sleep at OJ's again tonight and he like once again sleeps in a corner of the living room

on the floor and it's like but why Cato yeah sleep at Grant's house yeah he must have other friends that he doesn't happen to mention in the book I mean he must have many people whose couch he can crash on yeah he's an affable guy Cato is everybody's friend like I feel like he has lots of living room floors he could be sleeping in so I don't know I can see that being motivated partly by him wanting to like not make the Simpson family think that he feels weird about anything right right you know for his own safety and also maybe out of being a people pleaser right and the next day is the funeral where Nicole is buried in Dana Point where her parents live and Cato sees OJ that day and he goes to OJ and says I love you and OJ says sorry to put you through this Cato

and Cato says I just want you to know I'll be there for you always and anyway I can which is like what are you offering Cato what's that about yeah and it's also weird that he hasn't concluded that OJ did it I can see being in denial but it's like he does seem to like get on some level we're not getting a lot of him being like but clearly I thought he was innocent at this time like Paul is very careful to be like I could not conceive of the possibility that OJ could have killed anyone so it just did not enter the transom of my mind and like we don't get that from Cato I mean I guess he doesn't know about like the blood and all that kind of other evidence at this point but still it's like you've seen somebody act violently towards someone she dies I mean just interesting

to me that that Cato hasn't been like it was clear to me that he killed her and I had to do this whole fake thing so that he wouldn't kill me too whereas what he's actually saying in the book is more like I didn't really know if he did it or not and then you have to remember that this book is based on taped interviews that Cato did with the author before he gave testimony at OJ's trial so the degree to which he needs to be equivocating right now so that he doesn't say anything that contradicts his testimony later right that's all part of this also right so there's some like weird game theory shit going on about what's going to end up incriminating him yes like what could end up potentially incriminating him if he changes his story later or if he caves to any kind of pressure

from OJ's camp because by his own account he is fearful of his own safety so hard to know what to believe in these accounts yeah I mean once again like why go to the trouble of constructing a meticulously made unreliable narrator book when he just read a celebrity memoir from the 90s yeah there are a bunch of balloons at the funeral reception at the brown's home and Cato tells Justin Nicole's son that if he writes a note to his mother he'll tie it onto the balloon and send it to her oh that's sweet yeah I know I'm like damn Cato that's like that's smart I feel like Cato he's a kid person yeah he seems like he gets kids on like a fundamental level right yeah I think so and so according to Cato Justin writes a note that says mommy I miss you I know you're in heaven

and Cato attaches the note to balloon and Justin became very excited as he watched it until it completely disappeared into the high clear sky and then later on at the reception he's watching OJ with Sydney and Justin and as he says later has the feeling that this is the last unsupervised meeting that they're gonna have for a while so right you know in his head he's like yep they're gonna take OJ in pretty soon so Cato does go to Grant's house that night and apparently Grant is very focused on Cato's newfound fame he's talking about how much Cato has been on TV the last few days because of course the cameras keep catching him going in and out of OJ's house and he says when they make the TV movie out of your life they better call me oh my god tone it

down Grant somebody's dead according to Cato Grant kept talking about how much money he'd already turned down to tell as much as he knew which is like nothing right he said he'd been offered upward of a hundred thousand dollars Cato responded by saying he was grateful for his support and apparently Grant's girlfriend is also like hungry for all the details and keeps pestering Cato for information and Grant also tells Cato at one point that he found a bucket outside of one of his windows and a bunch of cigarette butts on the ground next to the bucket from where he deduces that someone has been surveilling their house Grant's house yeah where Cato is staying and Cato says I began to wonder was I a target and it's like maybe but more likely it was the media I mean this speaks to

the absurd economics of the news media at the time a hundred thousand dollars for fucking Grant who has like nothing interesting to say like yeah you can't get a hundred thousand dollars for like a blockbuster nonfiction book advance yeah there was a time apparently in this country when he can get a hundred thousand dollars for Cato Kalen's friend this is testimony which would have been third hand information about OJ right like yeah a friend of a friend of OJ Cato is a hot stock right now it also the way that it shapes the incentives because Grant has every reason to lie he knows that hundred thousand bucks is only going to go to him if he has juicy stuff to say right so it's in his interest to say like yeah Cato told me that OJ was like yeah but I'm gonna kill her on Wednesday

or whatever like he needs to punch this up oh yeah you now have if you start drawing the circles around like OJ and then OJ's friends and then OJ's friends of friends you've got like hundreds of people who could potentially make tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands dollars from like exaggerated scoops of what was really going on behind the scenes and all of them have an incentive to lie like this is not a way to discover the truth about a situation no just like pour money on it and see what happens yeah yeah I mean later on we're gonna learn about Paula's experience with the tabloids which includes you know them just completely making up all kinds of stuff about her and what she's not too sexually right and having a threesome with OJ and EC to which she

responds that they think I was trying to make alphabet soup oh that's that's pretty good Paula that's pretty good it's a pretty good joke and also what's interesting about the media incentives at this point too is that if you're a reporter you need to come back to your editor with a good story you don't necessarily need to come back with a true story no because the fact is tabloids don't really run corrections and even if they did it would be on page 5000 and 35 and nobody would notice anyway so even if you have a sense that like somebody is kind of a cynical operator who like one time chatted to Nicole and OJ at the grocery store and they really don't have much and you can tell if they're playing up their story because you're going to give them ten thousand dollars

you don't really have an incentive to be like uh we're just not going to run this this sounds fake you're just going to fucking run it because it's going to get the equivalent of page views at the time yeah it's a terrible system yeah it's back and also it's it's removing from the record your role in the conversation which potentially was substantial and which connects to our Michelle remembers series right which this one makes look really short so you're Cato Kalin you're a simple soul from Milwaukee with an amazing torso with an amazing torso and beautiful hair when you came to the big city to seek your fortune and you worked as a comedy waiter and now at the end of this past whirlwind week of your life you're staying with your friend Grant who's pestering you about

what's going on and wants to play you in a tv movie and so into all this add the sound of a telephone ringing at six in the morning on Friday the 17th of June and it is a call from detectives tipping in car saying that they would like to take Cato in for just a little bit more questioning and to be ready at eight o'clock is this do i know this date is this the grand jury slash bronco chase day yes this is June 17th oh this is like the this is the room where it happens this is like the big day when everything comes together i don't understand that reference but yes one of Cato's friends in LA is a guy named alan merez who is the producer of savatee which is a film that Cato worked on in the past and so at this stage Cato calls Alan because

Alan used to be a lawyer before he went into movies and is like can you be my lawyer that's how like normal people get lawyers yeah they call their friend Alan yeah like the only lawyer they know and Alan's like i'm not a criminal lawyer and i'm like a french kickboxing movie guy now so no but i can refer you to someone and Cato's like yes please find someone to represent me i have no idea what to do yeah i imagine that he's like when on a writer in reality bites when ben stiller asks her if she has a lawyer and she's like i don't have a lawyer i don't even have a dentist this is a good time to cut to marsha's account you want to do that yeah okay so what kind of transition do we need to establish that we're in marsha's pov like what like music would

use to signify her or something we need like a horizontal white and then we cut to marsha standing when swept on tatooine so we're on tatooine marsha is at the la district attorney's office and can you remind us of where we last left marsha yes she is investigating this crime and increasingly irritated with the cops for being super duper incompetent and she's the only one who is taking this seriously and so in a sort of hail mary pass the la district attorney has decided to start essentially their own investigation by launching a grand jury hearing yeah in which they can call witnesses and get them under oath and kind of lock their stories in in a way that the police are unwilling to do yeah the da's office convening the grand jury after marsha has

been pushing for it as a way to circumvent the police to me has the feeling of marsha saying to the la pd i drink your milkshake yeah very satisfying to me so after gilgar seddy decides to convene the grand jury the following day as marsha's leaving the office on thursday she's already starting to hear rumors that the la pd are negotiating with bob Shapiro to have oj voluntarily surrender so it's thursday night marsha's like okay things are coming together we're going to convene the grand jury we're going to see oj surrender himself tomorrow apparently and with all that in mind she says first order of business real in kato kailyn oj simpson was clearly kato's benefactor i could just about bet that had kato known simpson was a suspect he would

not have spoken so freely about the thump for instance and risk dumping his meal ticket okay and so marsha decides like okay kato knows more than he said to us so far he's withholding or being coy with us because he doesn't want to implicate this guy who's supporting his hollywood lifestyle so we got to get him in and grill him a little bit oh my god this reminds me i think there's something really typical about the way that we think that other people are making way more calculations than they are because actually kato's just kind of clueless and like yeah let's talk about kato's adventures this week like what has he been keggy or like yeah really acted in his own self-interest in any real way and he's not like doing this like 10 moves ahead

type of chess i like i'll give them this piece of information probably hold this other one to protect oj he's just like yeah we went to mcdonald's it was fine like he hasn't really or he's like i feel i feel a weird feeling about it but i don't know and it's like right you don't know like you have incomplete information right i think the problem with what kato saw both in his own life and at trial is that it looks bad for okay but it doesn't you know turn the key yeah in any way in terms of his lack of an alibi like you can look at everything kato knows and be like well okay it can still be innocent if everything that kato observed is true and it's like yeah he could be like kato is not able to hang this guy he's not as useful as the prosecution

would like him to be he's in this weird nether zone and if he's making a calculation unlike i don't want to lose my free rent when this guy goes to jail which i think on some level we all make calculations based on how we personally benefit but i think most of those calculations are invisible to us and i don't think kato is sitting there like this guy's my meal ticket i must change my story i think that's probably affecting him in some way but not not in a way that like he's deliberately masking his true feelings yeah he's not like wadsworth and clue yeah it was a good deal and now he has to come up with more money than he had before so that's a factor but like i think it's also fair to imagine that he could be just shocked and focused on the fact

that his friend yeah has been stabbed to death yeah maybe his other friend did it and maybe he has some degree of responsibility for that like those wheels might not be turning consciously but that doesn't mean that that's not somewhere in his mind also but marcia doesn't know all that yeah and marcia's view of kato is you know he's shady he's an obstacle yeah and she's of course right about the fact that he shouldn't have been palling around with ok during this time and ok shouldn't have had access to him yes and she probably wants to compensate for all the fuck-ups that the la pd are making right so if they're going too slow she's going to go really fast to try to get as much information out of him as fast as possible exactly so to this point kato doesn't

know that a grand jury is what's going on and i doubt that he knows what a grand jury is he just knows that the cops want to talk to him again right and the last time the police talked to him they detained him for like eight hours yeah kato's already been treated like a suspect and that is the kind of experience that makes you think i should probably get a lawyer yeah that's probably a good idea like this might be kato's best idea in this entire book and this is the thing he's going to be punished for most oh so they subpoena kato and the detectives tell him he's required to appear before grand jury today and kato says fine except he has no idea what a grand jury is yes i did not know this until like two weeks ago so i i'm with kato on this he

eventually ended up at the da's office was taken into a room and introduced to david kahn a los angeles da and deputy district attorney marcia clark oh i guess we should be had dramatic music to play or something i know you want like the camera to zoom in on her as she like turns around like who's this kato guy or something yes i think she's smoking yeah clark dressed in a blue business suit seemed to kato quite friendly too friendly especially when she opened her eyes wide put a big smile on her face and said hi how are you doing can i get you anything we're going to have a great time this does kind of read like michelle remembers yeah she's like i'm your special nurse kato i knew right then and there she was going to be trouble he said she asked me to follow

her once again i was on the go she took me to her office which i couldn't help noticing had a large poster of jim morrison on one wall when she saw me looking at it she smiled and said you like jim morrison so do i wait so is he under oath is he like how is this working no he's not under oath he's being brought in for a chat at this point okay she says are you a friend of oj simpsons yes a friend of necoles as well yes you live in oj's guest house right yes a nice guest house very nice you have a bed sure by a back wall right kato felt he was being treated like a preschooler and wasn't going for it when you mind if i waited for my lawyer that's when clark's demeanor took a sudden radical shift her smile disappeared her eyes grew harder what are you

hiding mr calen oh car chimed in yeah kato what are you hiding come on you can trust us geez you guys are trying to trick me i want to wait for my lawyer what are you hiding marcia clark said louder this time i've got nothing to hide i'll talk to you i'll tell you everything i know i just want to wait for my lawyer fine marcia said and continued and then she keeps questioning him so that's kato's version okay we're gonna have a little rush him on here and we're gonna get marcia's version now okay what do you think about that though it just seems unethical like this is how the justice system is supposed to work the minute somebody says lawyer you stop you take a step back and you get them a lawyer like that's that's the foundation of the whole thing and my

feeling about all this is like listen i don't know what i'm talking about i'm not a lawyer i have an mfa in fiction but it does seem to me that it's like not a bad idea to just have everyone have a lawyer if they want one just as a general default yes like that's just how it is yes so here's marcia's version it's friday morning and she is in her office when she gets a call from one of the cops on detail who says kailyn's here with us but he says he won't talk unless his lawyers with him this was extremely unusual witnesses don't arrive in the company of lawyers unless they're worried about being charged with a crime from what i could see brian kailyn had no criminal liability the events he'd witnessed on the night of june 12 had clearly occurred after the murders i was afraid

that his request for an attorney meant that simpson had gotten to him and it's like marcia you're not wrong like okay has gotten to him several times but like he has a pure silly heart yeah and he wants a lawyer because that's a citizen's right yeah it's weird how many people within the justice system cannot fathom that the justice system itself traumatizes people yeah like why would you want a lawyer it's like because i've read books yeah it's not like lenny briscoe offers to help you straighten everything out yeah and like understands that you're telling the truth i feel like her job depends on her not knowing i mean this is like the whole problem is that it's not it's not a marcia problem it's like a prosecutor problem yeah oh yeah this is the culture that she's in yeah

absolutely a prosecutor's job is literally to like believe what the cops say and to never believe suspects yeah and also again like structurally she can't show frustration at the police or the other lawyers she's working with right and not just because of the way the system is set up which already is dumb but because she's a woman which makes it right even less functional for her it appears yeah and so who can she take out her aggression on but kato kailyn right the cops brought kato into my office at a little past nine i looked up for my paperwork and saw for the first time that wild man of dirty blonde hair casual hip clothes goofy surfer boy slouch my first thought zone out case she fucking hates him so much it's so palpable and kato's like well that's just like

your opinion man i know and people feel this way about kato a lot of people it's like i fucking hate that kato kailyn guy and it's like why yeah what do you hate puppies also yeah it's so funny i said that because the next line is hey guy i greeted him casual seemed the way to go he shook my hand and figured it like a puppy mmm puppies don't really figure it but she's conveying the idea so that's good yeah she asks him if he feels prepared to go before a grand jury she says he answered in half sentences nodding a lot managing to say very little great i thought this guy can barely handle small talk what's going to happen when we put him on the stand but this there's no such thing as small talk with a prosecutor like this is this is what drives me nuts like

i know you're acting like we're just two people at a party like what do you do how long have you lived in la that's not what's happening right like you need to behave as if you know that he knows that you have the power to send him off the river this is a situation which he is legally required through a subpoena to speak with you regardless of what the content of your conversation is like what's your favorite marvel movie all of it takes place under this structure of like he is being compelled to be there yeah there is no such thing as small talk under those circumstances and marcia should know that yeah and then it's like if someone is in a position of power how do you make them behave in a way that is respectful to the amount of power that they have over anyone yeah it's tough

and also maybe that means that the official roles that we give people shouldn't be so powerful if people are consistently uncomfortable with having that much yeah and if it's if it's systematically invisible to them yeah like if we're going to give it to them let's not render it invisible yeah so marcia says i cut to the chase do you remember what you were doing when you heard the thump on your wall i think i was talking to my friend rachel okay that was what he had told the cops and again she's like trying to outfox him and it's like marcia he's just sleepy yeah just talk to him just asking stuff and i love how she's like i tried to approach him and he was taciturn and weird and so i had to play hardball and kata's interpretation is like she was being

weird and fake and treating me like a child and i didn't like it i just want to be back at the beach fever set i understood that world i know that's what i imagine he's thinking let him back into the french kung fu movie and so marcia says did you tell her about what you'd heard this is about rachel and he says i really don't um you know want to say anything until my attorney gets here i mean you seem real nice and all and um i really want to help you out but um i really can't talk about the case without him i'm real sorry really marcia i am his words tumbled over each other as he squirmed in his seat and cast me a bc ching look i wasn't buying this act kato wasn't as dumb as he appeared he cut off the questioning expertly kato i don't get it i told him why do you think you need

a lawyer as far as i can tell you have no liability whatsoever marcia i know and in kato's description marcia continues rapid fire questioning for a while and then mr calen marcia clark finally said leaning in and smiling are you having fun yet oh god he looked at her and said hey is there a two drink minimum with that the tension broke and everyone started of all things to laugh okay i love that this is kato's version where he breaks the tension by telling a joke and like even though they're like bagguring him and being kind of mean to him they all laugh because he's funny those are his comedy waiter skills coming out and then right after kato tells his joke he says a man who looks to kato like wallace shan comes in with the kato's friend alan and this is his lawyer oh good

bill genigo or genigo inconceivable um yeah so it's it's it's comforting to imagine wallace shan coming to kato's rescue yeah and so kato's lawyer goes up to marcia and says my client will remain silent and i'll answer any further questions for him oh marcia clark looked at her watch it's five to one you can have three minutes with your client before we take him to the grand jury he's scheduled to appear at one o'clock that's ridiculous genigo said how can you subpoena him for a grand jury the same day you want him to testify clark stared hard at genigo mr calen is going to testify at one o'clock and that's that lawyers are dope get them and then kato's lawyer turns to him and says we're going to go down to the grand jury and ask for an intervention that's a

postponement trust me on this and so marcia is like okay time to go and kato's lawyer says i haven't even had the chance to look at the police reports like we haven't prepared in any way this is truly ridiculous and marcia says to kato you're going to testify that's that she turned back to genigo and added if you try to stop him i'll have you arrested for obstruction of justice whoa in response genigo tore a piece of paper from a pad and wrote down all that he wanted kato to say on the stand it read on the advice of my attorney i must respectfully decline to answer and assert my right to remain silent wow but there is something really i mean after all this research i did in a white color crime it is really remarkable that like this is how rich people do rich people justice

is like you simply don't say anything under any circumstances yeah you should never talk to the police for any reason if you can possibly avoid it it's like their strategy is always like wait say zero because if you say nothing they can't catch you in any lies if you say like oh i couldn't have done this crime because like i was in tampa with my friend then they can check were you in tampa are there plane tickets who's your friend etc etc etc if you just say literally nothing they have to actually prove you did the crime they can't just catch you in one lie and once they catch you in one lie it's easy to find other lies and make you look guilty and also don't talk to them because you think no harm can come of it because you're innocent because

people don't always seem innocent yes so kato's lawyer is telling him to treat this like he's a rich person which is good advice yeah yes he's like you have burnout hair but you're going to get rich person justice and so kato is led into the grand jury room and he he says it looks like nothing so much as a college lecture hall it's like he's back at u w o claire oh and so they swear him in and marcia starts questioning him about the night of june 12 and basically no matter what she asks kato just reads off his piece of paper and says on the advice of my attorney i must respectfully decline to answer and assert my right to remain silent good message disciplined by kato as we have said before he does well if he's given direction yeah is this chapter of marcia's

book in all caps like this burnout wouldn't say shit there's some italics okay so the way marcia describes all of this is kato's lawyer asked to have the weekend to prep kato to testify before the grand jury on monday instead of friday and to go over the police statement and marcia's like that's ridiculous the statement is two pages long you don't need the whole weekend all you're doing is opening up more time and space for the witness to be contaminated and for okay and his crowd and his lawyers to get to him no it's hard because it's like yeah that's true it's like kato doesn't kato is not really plotting any of that yeah if we're to believe his account it's like you are right but like he's kind of not the person who you need to be putting the fear of god into

right and also kato has basic rights under the justice system like sorry marcia yeah kato calin has rights yeah it's in the constitution it says kato calin has rights and so before the grand jury testimony begins she gets a call from patty joe fairbanks who is the senior legal assistant at the da's office and marcia goes to see her and learns that oj was supposed to turn himself into parker center this morning and he did not and the whole voluntary surrender thing that was supposed to be happening did not happen so marcia's in a bad mood when she gets into that grand jury room bad marcia yeah and all of the bad choices that have been made this whole week right marcia is having the experience that many people have now had courtesy of experiencing an epidemic where if

you're one of the people who's like worried more and earlier than other people in your life you get to have the delightful experience of being ignored and then potentially watching the consequences occur and you're like i could have stopped it if i had done my job better but i wasn't able to so i don't feel good i feel bad yeah and everything that you've predicted is coming true yeah and it didn't matter that i was right no one listened to me and probably if the same thing happened that they still wouldn't listen to me and yeah damn you kato right with your stupid freewheeling lifestyle and your half sentences and your luscious hair you know and your kickboxing lawyer damn it yeah so the phone rang robert shepiro marcia gets on the phone with bob and says what's

going on bob this is no time to screw around marcia i promise you he's coming in said shepiro this is where i'm seeing john travolta in my head god i do hear it is john travolta oh my god yeah that might be you though what do you mean i shot back he's had all week to get his things together what are you guys doing he's being checked out by some doctors said shepiro his speech was infuriatingly slow his tone condescending i'm sure you've heard that he's very depressed we just need to be sure that he doesn't go into custody in a suicidal frame of mind oh i'm sure he's depressed i snorted and so she and bob have called back and forth basically with her being like bring him the fuck in yeah and bob's like can't just yet just still working on it you know right and then he's

like putting her on the phone with other people like he puts sol ferstein the forensic psychiatrist they've retained on the phone with her why what just to kill time i think just to get her to talk to us it's very childish if that's what's going on and she asked ferstein for directions to the house and he kind of seems to be giving her an evasive answer and she says doctor you better stop playing games here do you understand that you're obstructing justice that's a criminal charge and i don't think you need a record like that do you wow she's just throwing out these threats man she's desperate i mean things are bad it's like she's like will you respect the power that i have as an officer of the court and they're like no yeah i mean she also must know that these charges wouldn't stick

to and they know that the charges wouldn't stick i mean like but she's just saying if it gets them to snap into line i think yeah and so she kind of has to end these conversations without any resolution because she has to go start questioning kato right so she has to like take a deep breath and compose herself and go into the grand jury amphitheater and announce that she's going to do her opening statement on monday and she's going to have kato testify on friday which is like that seems weird and you know it's like that she's like we really need this guy on the record like write the fuck now she calls kato to the stand she has him spell his name which he does and she says well at least he could spell his name okay and she starts questioning him and he reads from his piece of

paper you seem to be reading from a piece of yellow paper i said did your attorney write that out for you this morning yeah don't fall for it kato on the advice of my attorney i must respectfully decline to answer and assert my constitutional right to remain silent don't break character i couldn't believe that this twerp was taking the fifth he'd read from that paper three more times before the four person warned him that his refusal to answer questions was quote without legal cause and that if he persisted in his refusal he would be held in contempt now we had to find a judge to do just that pronto oh so they're retaliating yeah she's like fuck this guy we're gonna get him in front of a judge and threaten him with contempt and force him to testify although

aren't there scenarios under which like he would have come in and she could have interviewed him with a lawyer president and actually gotten this stuff like he hasn't been particularly coy about what happened that night i mean he told the cops right he was forthcoming with the cops but marcia thinks he's withholding information for whatever reason right it just seems like we've now escalated into this like it's a big official thing and it's like she's taken it to this new level it's hard because it's like it's not like it's it's not like it would have been ideal to have him have a whole weekend to iron things out and for potentially the defendant because she doesn't know that he's gonna end up in jail later today and certainly the defendant's

circle and his lawyers to get more access to kato right and to manipulate his testimony like that's a real problem and that's already been taking place so like she's not wrong yeah it's just i feel like she it feels like she's behaving in a really adversarial way with him and then getting upset when he's noticing that because she's kind of coming in really aggressively and he's like hey that feels threatening to me like i'm going to protect myself yeah and she's like why is he doing that yeah like maybe you have no option but to treat him adversarily given the situation but you have to at least be aware that like you're going to get that response and then not keep escalating it so what happens when they get him in front of the other judge

i will tell you um interestingly kato's book goes more into the legal issues than marches does oh and so kato takes a stand again he has asked if he's going to cooperate and he says on the advice of my attorney i must respectfully decline to answer and assert my constitutional right to remain silent i'm the decider and so then he's declared to be in contempt of the grand jury okay and is taken down for an immediate hearing okay and so we're told in kato's book one of the major issues was whether in fact kato could be granted immunity before the grand jury which would then automatically remove his fifth amendment rights which is his right to remain silent right because they can't throw you in jail so you're then compelled to be like yes i killed that dude or

like yes i stole that candy bar or whatever it is right yes you can't incriminate yourself if you can't go to jail yeah and so at the superior court hearing marches asked why she won't just grant kato immunity for his testimony because that would seem to cut the gordeon knot she responded that it might taint kato's value as a prosecution witness by suggesting that he indeed had something to hide and the da's office had been forced to quote bargain for his testimony besides she added kato wasn't entitled to immunity because he had already told the police what they wanted to know okay and so the judge points out that there are really two issues involved one having to do with the fifth amendment the other with the sixth a person's right to counsel if a person wants to confer with

his lawyer the judge pointed out he's entitled to do so especially if he's a witness and not a defendant thank you judge yeah thank you judge chuliger the honorable chuliger this of course was at the heart of the dispute clark's office had treated kato in every way as a suspect and defendant falling just short of charging him in the case clark told the judge that since kato had been taken into custody that morning he was in fact a defendant and therefore the sixth amendment and possibly the fifth no longer applied what she's just flailing yeah wow she's like no he is a defendant fuck it yeah i don't think that's how rights work but okay the judge replied that no warrant had been issued for kato's arrest and then according to the records he hadn't been handcuffed when taken

to the station so technically speaking he wasn't a defendant at best the judge said and this might be stretching it he was a suspect in a murder case yeah and even that's a stretch yeah and so he says you know let's be real he's a witness he's not a suspect he's not a defendant right and then marshes like look i just got off the phone with fucking john travolta this guy's being a dick john travolta is being a fucking dick to me i don't know what to tell you leave me halfway here dr chuliger and so the judge says to marsha you know really like what is the downside of giving kato the weekend to consult with his lawyer and prepare to give testimony putting aside he may flee the country and be in brazil by morning and according to kato's book everybody in the courtroom left like ha ha

what a crazy thought someone who's involved in this trial fleeing and disappearing and driving away toward the horizon that's silly ha ha look it's not as if the defendant in this case is going to be in a protracted low speed chase from one graveyard to another in one hour's time so everything's going to be exactly the same on monday and ultimately marsha can't really argue with that she has to concede and be like okay fine we will do it on monday but then does that give kato immunity or that was a separate issue i think they just dropped that i think that they yeah they were like well this is an option right and ultimately settled on let's give him the week to talk to his lawyer and bring him in on monday okay and so they go back before the grand jury and marsha

apologizes to everybody assembled for having brought them in for testimony that they're not going to be able to hear and she says i silently pray that they wouldn't hold it against me okay even worse would they reject any of kato's future testimony because he had taken the fifth great what a way to start i mean that that's you marsha that's on you as soon as the judge hit the gavel he was handed a piece of paper by the bailiff he paused and then announced to everyone in the courtroom that oj simpson was now officially a fugitive from justice no one had known during the hearing that the infamous bronco chase was in full progress and being televised live across the nation and around the world because we didn't have cell phones then otherwise would people would have gotten texted we did have cell

phones they just weren't that many of them yeah and i don't i don't think text messages existed people had beepers so you could be you could text like oj loose i guess that sounds like he's a slut and so the grand jury is released and kato heads out and goes back to alan's house and turns on the tv and watches his friend in a low-speed pursuit so him and paula and marsha and everybody are united by watching this weird slow motion watch him call it happening interestingly marsha doesn't describe learning that oj is on the loose in the grand jury room she describes getting a call from phil van adder back at her office and learning it that way oh okay as i drove home that night i was too bummed to listen to the non-stop reports on drive time radio which like i

love that she's one of the principals in this whole story she's like i'm too depressed to listen to the bronco chase yeah she's like i need some almond brothers i'm not listening to this new shit i hope she listens to some almond brothers so yeah that's that's uh the story of when kato met marsha and our next episode our tenth episode is going to be all about the bronco chase because that's all anyone has been asking for i know for 200 years it's like radiohead playing and everybody wants to hear creep that's like all anybody that's like all anybody requests from us they're like do the bronco chase it's our free bird so what are we left with in this episode we are left with our first experience

of our subjects entering the legal system we've seen the first chapter of this as a courtroom story so yeah what kind of a starter we off to and so next time things are gonna get even worse yeah and we will talk about the chase i am interested in why everyone else thinks it's so interesting i don't think it will be that interesting but i will be my best no it's a chase it's not a person it's the story of like a car driving real slow in one direction and then driving back real slow in the other direction i know that something will appear and that there will be human elements of it that i'm really compelled by but i don't know what they'll be at so we'll find out and uh if our listeners get bored i have a french kickboxing movie that i can recommend