I think it's like finding out that Mick Jagger is singing backup on You're So Vain, I think you can't hear 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 going to put Kato under oath this episode, right?

We are, yes. So super topical. So help us. God is beautiful. I do think that the whole truth is fundamentally inaccessible to human beings, and I quibble with that.

But that is the thing that people say in this situation. So, like, I'm faulting the legal system. I'm not following the tagline.

I am Michael Hobbs. 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 Patrón at Patreon Dotcom. 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.

Yeah. So what what are we going to talk about today?

We're going to talk about when Kato met Marchette, the Flintstones. Meet The Jetsons story. Yes, I 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 ten minutes.

Yes, we're doing that. We're making a high concept, low budget 90s mini series.

So we're talking about Brian Kato Kaelin. And I would love for you to bring us up to speed about who is Kato Kaelin and what adventures of his have we observed so far in the story?

Well, Kato was a friend of Nicole's who witnessed abuse but felt himself to be powerless to stop it. And he ended up falling into orbit and then sort of by accident, he ended up becoming the primary alibi witness for O.J. on the night that Ron and Nicole were murdered.

Since then, he has spoken to the cops and was released back into basically OJs custody. He's moved back into the guest house.

So when we left Kato, he was sleeping on the floor and his house on the night of June 13, protecting the housekeeper. And so on the morning of Tuesday, June 14th, Kato wakes up to find the house full of breakfast because area restaurants are still sending free food over. Yeah, and so Kato Kaelin, the whole truth, Finmark Elliott, which I am relying on for my cadeaux eye view, tells us that by early morning, Kato is up, dressed and returning the dozens of 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 O.J. is primary criminal defense attorney, is like, hey, Kato, I'm taking over America's primary criminal defense attorney and I have some questions for you, OK? And I would also say I was thinking about this as I was reading the five Shapiro parts of my research for this episode. It's interesting to me that they're like a lot of really good performances and the people versus O.J. 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 country of all two of those little eyebrows. Yeah, I have vacillated for ever since that show came out on. Like I was like, is this like an OK performance or like is it weird?

For a while I was like, I think it's like really bad actually. Yeah, no, I think it's great.

So yeah. So I just know that that's in my head I guess. Yeah. So Kato has his call with Bob Shapiro and meanwhile he's still at his house where Jermaine Jackson of the Jackson five and also Dionne Warwick stop by. What's like that is just a continual stream of people coming by to show their support because they're seeing O.J. as a grieving husband right at the stage, apparently.

Does he have any friends that aren't like C list celebrities? Yeah, like old white men who he plays golf with. Yes. That's like his two friend groups.

Those are his two lists on Facebook. Dionne Warwick and the CEOs.

Those are his friends. Yeah. And so Marc Slatkin, who's a friend of O'Jays who is married to Robin Greer, who's a good friend of Nicole's house fire with Bobby Chanler, who had been his teammate. And according to Cato, something weird happened. Marc Slatkin said out loud that he had heard something that afternoon about noises outside Kato's room Sunday night. Hado wondered how he knew that suddenly Slatkin looked directly at Cato and said, You better get your story straight, man.

This is OK. 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, 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 from Shapiro, I think, or from somewhere else.

To me, the point is that O.J. is sort of network of friends and associates are maybe without needing to all get on the same page and they kind of like a briefing or like, hey, like, let's protect our friend. Like, let's make sure that this Kato guy who, like, showed up recently and it was originally living with Nicole and who isn't really of our circle, like, let's make sure he's on the same page. Is that right.

Which is that like our friend couldn't have done this right. Do O.J. a solid. And so Arnelle O.J., his daughter from his first marriage, volunteers to take Kato 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.

Caterers have a car. Is this like a man in L.A. 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. Right. Kato says of this that he's also getting the feeling that everyone in his camp was trying to make sure he was never completely out of their sight, which. Yeah, yeah, I see that.

I don't think Kato's being paranoid. Yes.

If I had killed someone, that is how I would treat the main witness against me. OK, so Kato was taken in and he meets Bob Shapiro and Shapiro basically sits in down and starts questioning him first about who is he, where's 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 and O.J. 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 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 morning, 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 Kato is Kato still telling the same story that he told the cops? Is he editing his story already for Shapiro?

According to Kato, he is telling the same story consistently the whole time is 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 O.J. would have been re-entering the property, although course Kato at the time has no way of knowing that. Yeah, and until tell me what else you remember Kato sort of being a witness to that night.

So he had gone to McDonald's with O.J. O.J. was acting really weird, but in a way that Kato couldn't really put his finger on.

They came back. O.J. was still acting weird. And then Kato heard this thump and he went out of the guest house and went to the main house. And O.J. was supposed to catch a flight that night. And the limo driver is waiting outside the house and O.J. still acting weird.

And then Kato sees this mysterious blue duffle bag that we now think is like the murder clothes. But at the time, Kato was just like, huh, an extra duffle bag.

And then nobody ever talks about it ever again, huh?

Yeah. And Kato is also the last person who saw O.J. before the murders took place. So Kato 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 like there's one about the sort of town hall 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. Right. Like, my God, this man is a genius. Like, I feel like Kato is just accidentally important.

And 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 Kato. So Bob is questioning Kato. He's taking all these cell phone calls and putting the team together. And eventually Shapiro asked Kato how he was doing. Kato said fine and said again that he would be totally honest about everything.

That's all we want me to do is tell the truth.

Poor, naive Kato. When the interview concluded, Shapiro turned off the tape recorder. Kato asked him to tell OK that he loved him, missed him and was praying for him.

Shapiro then silently stared at Kato for a long time before speaking when he was kind of meshing well with Michelle remembers.

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.? Okay. Just like I just wish him well.

And Kato has no idea, like, the information that he's sitting on and how 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 and you tell the truth and everything is going to be fine. And Shapiro is probably like, oh, fuck, 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, OK, it's 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 Kato wrote this book. Yeah. So it's also very much in Cadeaux 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, experience 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 has real reason to fear O.J. and his associates. They're powerful and, you know, clearly can inflict some damage. Right. So Kato Shapiro, to tell O.J. he loved him.

This woman was praying for him. Schapira then silently stared at Kato for a long time before speaking. When he did, his words were pointed. Do you think he did it? Kato Kato returned the stare after a pause. He said, God, I hope not.

Poor Kato. I love that.

That's an honest answer. If you wanted to like, you know, smooth things over right with his lawyer, he'd be like, no, I don't. He's not capable of that. But he's like, I sure hope he didn't jee Whitakers mister.

So they have a two hour interview and then Arnelle does come and pick Kato up. And then afterwards Kato is basically describing to our 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'Jays and the guy who's going to be his driver in the Bronco chase in a few days. So Kato 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 Acee 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 direct anger at people who know things that implicate people you love. Right. Like that's frowning at the messenger. Right. And Kato says, I have 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 sounds like a positive direction.

Get an Airbnb move out of the guest house.

So he calls his friend Grant, who was the friend he was with in Aspen when he met Nicole, and Grant picks him up and takes him to his house. But right before Kato leaves, he gets a phone call from Howard Weitzman, OK, his original lawyer, who then puts O.J. on with him, and he says, Juice, how are you? Is everything OK? Yeah, OK, Darryl, I'm OK. What can I do for you?

Anything. Just tell the truth. Ziggy's being told in this kind of like creepy. Yeah. Coded way. Like, just tell the truth, Kato. Yes. Tell them what you know.

I'm sure you're going do the right thing. Just do the right thing. I'm sure you're not going to betray O.J.. Yeah, so Kato spends the night at Grandma's, but then he asked Gran to take him back to OK the next morning because it's the day of Nicole's wake and he has to get a suit. Originally, Kato 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 like no no family.

Only Kato can't come back. And they let Arnelle and O.J. send Jason's friends and the limos. Apparently, this is the moment when Kato knows that there's a rift between him and The Simpsons.

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. Yeah, 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 an. Can you give me a ride? Yeah, because in the 90s, the economy was so good that people, whenever they wanted to gossip, Vegas rode around in a limo. Let's let's talk people into thinking that millennials really believe that.

Yeah.

So Cato ends up driving himself in the wake and he has to fight his way through a crowd of people, I guess 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, OK, 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 this parking spot. And there's just gawkers and camera people. The street is just packed. Like, I can't imagine it would be like driving through the zombies in the mummy or the followers of the mummy in the mummy.

So 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. Be Fair is rarely a time in my life when I can't be described as having watched the mummy read something like it's like that one time in The Mummy.

You've made the movie have everything, Mike.

In a way, most things are like that one time in the Mummy. So I don't know what to tell you. But he does get in the way.

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. And 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 Kaito prays for her.

And then after he leaves the viewing, he sees that O.J. is sitting down and sort of wailing, it seems performative way. And he's saying, I no longer have a wife. I am left without a wife. There's no more Nicole. I don't have Nicole anymore. And I was 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, Arcore Fishman, who's one of Nicole's close friends, comes up to Gado and throws her arms around him and kind of is sobbing and hugging him.

And then she goes up to O.J. and according to Kato, starts pounding on his chest and saying, what happened? What about the kids? And I says, I loved her too much. And Cora says, Why did you do this?

How could you go at the funeral? Yeah, well, multiple people heard him say I loved her too much at Nicole's wake. Oh, I know.

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 OJs friends and family and kind of pushed around. He's like, well, I guess I'll sleep at Ojai's again tonight. Oh, he once again sleeps in a corner of the living room on the floor.

And it's like, why can't I 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. He does everybody's friend like feel like he has lots of living room floor as 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 is buried in Dana Point, where her parents live.

And Kato sees O.J. that day and he goes to O.J. and says, I love you. And O.J. says, sorry to put you through this, Kato. And Kato says, I just want you to know I'll be there for you always in any way I can, which is like, what are you offering, Kato? What's that about? Yeah.

And it's also weird that he hasn't concluded that O.J. 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 O.J. killed anyone. So it just did not enter the transom of my mind. And like, we don't get that from Kato.

I mean, I guess he doesn't know about 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 Kato 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 Kato did with the author before he gave testimony at his 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 the story later or if he caves to any kind of pressure from his camp 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? But when he gets read a celebrity memoir from the 90s.

Yeah, there are a bunch of balloons at the funeral reception of the Browns home.

And Kato tells Justin Nicholson 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, Kato, that's that's smart. I feel like Kato. He's a kid person. Yeah.

He's like he gets kids on, like, a fundamental level, right? Yeah, I think so. And so according to Kato, Justin writes a note that says, Mommy, I miss you. I know you're in heaven. And Kato attaches the note to Berlin. And Justin became very excited as he watched it until it completely disappeared into the highclere sky. And then later on at the reception, he's watching O.J. with Sidney and Justin and as he says later, has the feeling that this is the last unsupervised meeting that they're going to have for a while.

So. Right. You know, in his head, he's like, yep, they're going to take our game pretty soon. So Kato does go to Grant's house that night. And apparently Grant is very focused on Cadeaux newfound fame. He's talking about how much Kato has been on TV the last few days because, of course, the cameras keep catching him going in and out of his house. And he says when they make the TV movie out of your life, they better call me, oh, my God, tone it down.

Somebody dead. According to Kato, 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 one hundred thousand dollars. Kato 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 Kato for information. And Grant also tells Kato 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 which he to do says that someone has been surveilling their house. Grant's house. Yeah, where Kato is staying, Kato 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.

Yeah, you can't get one hundred thousand dollars for, like, a blockbuster nonfiction book advance. Yeah. There was a time apparently in this country when you can get one hundred thousand dollars for Kato, Kaitlyn's friend.

This is testimony which would have been third hand information about O.J.. Right.

Like a friend of a friend of O.J. Kato 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 a hundred thousand bucks is only going to go to him if he has juicy stuff to say. Right.

So it's in his interest, just like, yeah, Kato told me that O.J. was like you all, but I'm going to kill her on Wednesday or whatever.

He needs to punch this up. Oh, yeah.

You now have if you start drawing the circles around like O.J. and then O.J. friends, then OJs 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 going to learn about Paula's experience with the tabloids, which includes them just completely making up all kinds of stuff about her and what she's up to sexually. Right. And having a threesome with O.J. and A.C. 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 that'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, because the fact is tabloids don't really run corrections. And even if they did, it would be on page five thousand and thirty five 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 O.J. at the grocery store and they really don't have much, and you can tell they're playing up their story because you're going to give them 10000 dollars.

You don't really have an incentive to be like, we're just not going to run this. This sounds fake. You're just going to fucking run it the. Going to get the equivalent of page views at the time, yeah, it's a terrible system. Yeah, it's bad. And also it's removing from the record your role and the conversation, which actually was substantial and which connects to our Michelle. Remember a series. Right. Which this one makes really short.

So you're Kato Kaelin.

You're a simple soul from Milwaukee with an amazing torso, with an amazing torso and beautiful hair.

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 in a TV movie. And so into all this, add the sound of a telephone ringing at 6:00 in the morning on Friday, the 17th of June. And it is a call from Detectives Tippit and Carr saying that they would like to take Kato 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 Bronco chase? Yes, this is June 17th. This is like 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, but one of cadeaux friends in L.A. is a guy named Alan Morra's, who is the producer of Saturday, which is a film that Kato worked on in the past. And so at this stage, Kato calls Alan because Alan used to be a lawyer before he went into movies.

And it's like, can you pay my lawyer? That's how I like normal people. Get lawyers.

Yeah, they call their friend Alan. Yeah. Like the only lawyer they know.

And Alan, I'm not a criminal lawyer and I'm like a French kickboxing movie guy now, you know, but I can refer you to someone.

And Kato was like, yes, please find someone to represent me. I have no idea what to do. Yeah, I imagine that he is like Winona Ryder 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 Marcia's account. I want to do that. Yeah. OK, so what kind of transition do we need to establish that we're in? Marcia's pov like what music would you use to signify her.

Something we need like a horizontal way. And then we cut to Marcia Stanning windswept on tattooing.

So we're on the scene. Marcia is at the L.A. District Attorney's Office. And can you remind us of where we last left, Marcia?

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 L.A. district attorney has decided to start essentially their own investigation by launching a grand jury hearing 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 Marcia has been pushing for it as a way to circumvent the police. To me, has the feeling of Marcia saying to the LAPD, I drink your milk shake.

Yeah, very satisfying to me. So after Gil Garcetti decides to convene the grand jury the following day, as Marcia is leaving the office on Thursday, she's already starting to hear rumors that the LAPD are negotiating with Bob Shapiro to have O.J. voluntarily surrender. So it's Thursday night. March is like, OK, things are coming together. We're going to convene the grand jury. We're going to see O.J. surrender himself tomorrow, apparently. And with all that in mind, she says, first order of business real.

And Kato Kaelin, O.J. Simpson was clearly Cato's benefactor. I can just about bet that had Kato known Simpson was a suspect, he would not have spoken so freely about the thumb, for instance, and a risk dumping his meal ticket. And so Marcia decides like, OK, 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. He'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 is just kind of clueless and like, yeah, let's talk about Cadeaux Adventures this week.

Like, has he been cagey or like, yeah, really acted in his own self-interest.

And any real is not like doing this like ten moves ahead type of chess. So like I'll give them this piece of information, probably hold this other one to protect O.J. He's just like, yeah, we went to McDonald's.

It was fine. Like he hasn't really.

But he's like, I feel, I feel a weird feeling about it, but I don't know. Yeah, 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 it it looks bad for OK, but it doesn't, you know, turn the key. Yeah, and anyway, in terms of his lack of an alibi, you can look at everything Kaito knows and be like, well, OK, you can still be innocent.

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 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 Cloo. Yeah. 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 I think it's also fair to imagine that he could be just shocked and focus on the fact that his friend. Yes. Been stabbed to death. Yeah. Maybe his other friend did it. And maybe he has some degree of responsibility for that. Like Rose wheels might not be turning consciously. Yeah. Doesn't mean that that's not somewhere in his mind also.

But Marcia doesn't know all that. Yeah. And Mark, his 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. A.J. shouldn't have had access to him. Yes.

Everybody wants to compensate for all the fuck ups at the LAPD are making. Right. So if they're going to 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. The last time the police talked to him, they detained him for like eight hours. Yeah, Kato has 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 a 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 D.A. and deputy district attorney Marcia Clark. Oh, I wish we had dramatic music or something.

I know you want, like, the camera to zoom in on her as she turns around, like, who's this Kato guy or something?

Yes, I think she's smoking. Yeah. Clark, dressed in a blue business suit, seems to Kato quite friendly to 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 a 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. OK, she says, Are you a friend of O.J. Simpson's? Yes, a friend of Nicole's as well. Yes. We live in our guest house, right? Yes. A nice guest house. Very nice. You have a bed? Sure. Fire 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. Carlin? Oh, ha. Chimed in Jakarta. What are you hiding? Come on, you can trust us. She's. 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. Find Marcia said and continued, and then she keeps questioning him. So that's Cato's version. OK, we're going to have a little Rashomon here and we're going to get Marcia's version now. OK, what do you think about that, though?

It's 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 the foundation of the whole thing. And my feeling about all of 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, 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 Kaitlyn's here with us, but he says he won't talk unless his lawyer's 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 Kaitlynn 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. That's like Marcia. You're not wrong. Like, OK 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 Lennie 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 market 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 suspect.

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 even less functional for her, it appears. And so who can she take out her aggression on? But Kato Kaelin. Right. The cops brought Kato into my office at a little past 9:00.

I looked out for my paperwork and saw for the first time that wild man of dirty blond hair, casual clothes, goofy surfer boy slouch, my first thought zone out case.

She fuckin hates him so much.

It's so palpable and was like, well, that's just like your opinion, man.

They know and feel this way about Kato. A lot of people. It's like, I fucking hate that Kato Kaelin guy. And it's like, why. Yeah. Why do you hate puppies also. Yeah.

It's so funny I said that because the next line is, hey guy, I greeted him casual. Same way to go. He shook my hand and fidgeted like a puppy.

Puppies don't really think they fidget, but 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 time. What's going to happen.

We put him on the stand, but there's no such thing as small talk with a prosecutor like this is what drives me nuts. Like right now you're acting like we're just two people at a party. Like, what do you do? How long have you lived in L.A.? 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 up 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 the structure of like he is being compelled to be there. Yeah, there is no such thing as small talk under those circumstances. And Marsha 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 Marsha says I cut to the chase. Do you remember what you were doing when you heard the thump on your wall. Hey, I was talking to my friend Rachel, OK? That was what he had told the cops and the guy she's like trying to outfox him. And it's like Marcia, he's just sleepy.

Yeah.

Just talk to him, just ask you his 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 his interpretation is like she was being weird and fake and her child, I didn't like it.

I just want to be back at the beach fever set. I understood that were I know that's what I imagine he's thinking.

Let him back into the French kung fu movie. And so Marsha says, did you tell her about what you'd heard? This is about Rachel. And he says, I really don't want to say anything until my attorney gets here. I mean, you seem real nice and all, and I really want to help you out, but 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 beseeching.

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 and Kato's description, Marcia, continues rapid fire questioning for a while. And then Mr. Callan, Marcia Clark finally said, leaning in and smiling.

Are you having fun yet? Oh, God. He looked at her and said, hey, is there to drink minimum with that, the tension broke and everyone started, of all things, to laugh. OK, I love that this is Cato's version where he breaks the tension by telling a joke and like even the. They're like badgering him and being kind of mean to him. They all laugh because he's funny. Those are his comedy waita skills coming out.

And then right after Kato tells his joke, he says, a man who looks to Acardo like Wallace, Shawn comes in with cadeaux friend Alan. And this is his lawyer. Oh, good. Phil Conargo are going to go.

Inconceivable.

Yeah. So it's just that it's comforting to imagine Wallace Shawn coming to Kato's rescue. Yeah. And so Cadeaux lawyer goes up to Marshall and says, my client will remain silent and I'll answer any further questions for him.

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. Go said, how can you subpoena him for a grand jury the same day you want him to testify? Clark stared hard at an ego. Mr. Carlin 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, OK, time to go. And Kato's lawyer says, I haven't even had a 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 Kuniko and added, If you try to stop him, I'll have you arrested for obstruction of justice.

Whoa. And any response, can you go to 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 collar 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 burnt out hair, but you're going to get rich person justice. And so I kinda was 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 UW Eau Claire. And so they swear him in. And Marchette starts questioning him about the night of June 12th. And basically, no matter what she asks, Kaido Guess reads off his piece of paper and says, on the advice of my attorney must respectfully decline to answer and assert my right to remain silent.

Good message discipline 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. Yeah. This out. I wouldn't say shit.

There's some italics. OK, so the way Marsha describes all of this is Cadeaux lawyer asked to have the weekend to prep Kato to testify before the grand jury on Monday and Friday and to go over the police statement and is 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 O.J. and his crowd and his lawyers to get to him know it's hard because it's like, yeah, that's true.

It's yeah, she's right. Hado doesn't is not really plotting any of that. Yeah. Where 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 so Kato has basic rights under the justice system like sorry Marshall.

Kato Kaelin has rights. Yeah, it's in the Constitution. It says Kato Kaelin has. Right.

And so before the grand jury testimony begins, she gets a call from Patty Jo Fairbanks, who is the senior legal assistant at the VA's office. And Marcia goes to see her and learns that O.J. was supposed to turn himself in to Parker Center this morning and he did not. And the whole voluntary surrender thing that was supposed to be happening did not happen.

Ujamaa is in a bad mood when she gets into that grand jury room. Bad, bad mood, Marcia. Yeah, 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've got to have the delightful experience of being ignored and potentially watching the consequences occur.

And you're like, I could have stopped it. I had done my job better, but I wasn't able to. So, yeah, I don't feel good. I feel bad. Yeah, and everything that you've predicted is coming true. Yeah. 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 Kaido. Right.

With your stupid, freewheeling lifestyle and your half sentences and your luscious hair, you know, and your kickboxing lawyer.

Yeah. So the phone rang.

Robert Shapiro, 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 Shapiro. This is where I'm seeing John Travolta in my head.

But I do hear it is John Travolta, right? God, yeah. Yeah.

I love 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 Shapiro. 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 calls back and forth, basically with her being like, bring him the fuck em. Yeah, Bob's like, can't just yet because I'm still working on it.

Right. And then he's like putting her on the phone with other people, like he puts Saul Fairstein, the forensic psychiatrist they've retained on the phone with her.

Why. What? Just to kill time, I think, just to get her hotness. It's very childish if that's what's going on.

And she has feierstein 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 we 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, too. And they know that the charges wouldn't.

I mean, like, she's just seeing 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. Right. Don't want to. 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 to 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 right now, she calls Kato to the stand. She has him spell his name, what she does. And she says, well, at least he could spell his name, OK?

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, figure 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 foreperson 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 going to 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 present 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 taking 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 and things out and for potentially the defendant because she doesn't know that he's going to end up in jail later today. And certainly the defendant 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, he'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. She's like, why is he doing that? Yeah.

Like maybe you have no option but to treat him adversarial given the situation. But like, you have to at least be aware that, like you're. And to get that response, and that's not right, keep escalating it. So what happens when they get him in front of the other judge?

I will tell you, interestingly, Kato's book goes more into the legal issues than Martius does. Oh, and so Kato takes the 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 is declared to be in contempt of the grand jury and is taken down for an immediate hearing.

OK, and so we are told in Cadeaux 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, Martius asked why she won't just grant Kato immunity for his testimony because that would seem to cut the Gordian knot. She responded that it might taint cadeaux 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. 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 six, 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 Chu Léger, the Honorable Tulga.

This, of course, was at the heart of the dispute clerk's office that treated Kato in every way as a suspect and defendant, falling just short of charging him in the case. Clerk 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 apply.

What? She's just flailing. Yeah. Wow. She's like, no, he is a defendant.

Phuket. Yeah. I don't think that's how rights work. But OK. The judge replied that no warrant had been issued for Cadeaux arrest and then according to the records, he hadn't been handcuffed and 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.

And then motions 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. Give me halfway here, Dr. Tulga.

And so the judge says to Marcia, 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 Cadeaux book, everybody in the courtroom laughed 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.

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, Marcia can't really argue with that. She has to concede and be like, OK, 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. And so they go back before the grand jury and Marcia apologizes to everybody assembled for having brought them in for testimony that they're not going to be able to hear.

She says, I silently prayed that they wouldn't hold it against me. Even worse, whether, in fact, any of Cato's future testimony because he had taken the fifth grade, what a way to start. I mean, that's you, Marcia, 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 O.J. 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 people would've gotten text. If we did have cell phones. There just weren't that many of them. Yeah, I don't I don't think text messages existed. People had beepers so you could be taxed like O.J. loose.

I guess that sounds like he's a slut. Well, I don't think that he was, so. Yeah.

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 Marcia and everybody are united by watching this weird slow motion. Watch a. I call it happening, interestingly, Marcia doesn't describe learning that O.J. is on the loose in the grand jury room. She describes getting a call from Phil Vannatter back in her office, alerting it that way. OK, as I drove home that night, I was too bummed to listen to the nonstop reports on Drive Time radio, which like I love that she's one of the principals.

And this whole story, she's like, I'm too depressed to listen to the Bronco chase.

She's like, I need some Allman Brothers. I'm not leaving. No shit. I hope she listen to some Allman Brothers. So, yeah, that's that's the story when Kato met Marcia. And our next episode, our tenth episode is going to be all about the Bronco chase.

Yeah.

Because that's all anyone has been asking for, you 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 choose our Freebird? So what are we left with in this episode?

We are left with our first experience of our subject's entering the legal system. We've seen the first chapter of this as a courtroom story. So, yeah, what kind of a start are we off to?

And so next time things are going to get even worse. Yeah, and we will talk about the case. I am interested in why everyone else thinks it's so interesting. I don't think it will be that interesting when I do my best.

No, it's a case. 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 yet. So we'll find out. And if our listeners get bored, I have a French kickboxing movie that I can recommend.