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O.J. Simpson listens to testimony.
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LAS VEGAS – One of two memorabilia dealers O.J. Simpson is accused of robbing testified Thursday that the former football star burst into a hotel room with a handful of other men, including one who pointed a gun in his face, and, amid a chaotic scene filled with screamed threats and accusations, carried off hundreds of items.
Bruce Fromong, who testified he has known Simpson since the early 1990s and has worked with him selling and promoting memorabilia, said he was at a Las Vegas hotel room on Sept. 13 expecting to meet an anonymous buyer when Simpson burst into the room with the others and shouted that the items were his.
“O.J. was screaming, 'This is all my s--. This all belongs to me. You stole this from me. Let's pack up. Let's get out of here,'” Fromong said.
Simpson, 60, and two co-defendants face robbery, kidnapping and other charges. The hearing, scheduled for two days, is to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to take them to trial.
Fromong, the first witness called, said the confrontation lasted no more than five or six minutes and ended with the group stuffing hundreds of items into pillowcases and leaving the Palace Station hotel-casino.
Some of the items he had brought, Fromong testified, had nothing to do with Simpson but were lithographs of football great Joe Montana and items signed by baseball stars Duke Snider and Pete Rose that he thought he could sell.
At one point, as everything was being packed up, Fromong said he told Simpson, “O.J., those are my Joe Montana lithos.
“I said, 'O.J., that's my stuff. That doesn't have anything to do with anything.'”
Fromong also identified numerous items entered as evidence, including a plaque and clothes that he said were Simpson's, and that Fromong said had been obtained from his former business partner Mike Gilbert. During the confrontation, Fromong testified, Simpson told him he knew Gilbert had stolen them from him.
Throughout the confrontation, Fromong said, one man pointed a gun at his face and told him at one point, “I'll shoot your a-.”
Under questioning from Clark County Deputy District Attorney David Roger, Fromong said he offered to give Simpson Gilbert's phone number, but instead Simpson took his cell phone, with the number stored in it, and promised to leave the phone for him at the hotel's front desk.
During his cross-examination, Simpson attorney Gabriel Grasso attempted to show that Fromong planned to profit from the confrontation, asking him if he called the television show “Inside Edition” before he called police.
“Nine-one-one was already being called,” he said.
Grasso also noted that in his statement to police Fromong said Simpson had told the others, “Get my ... . Leave the other stuff alone.”
Fromong was the first of eight witnesses Roger said he expects to call.
Simpson entered the courthouse 30 minutes before the hearing, surrounded by a contingent of lawyers and about a dozen uniformed officers. Simpson, who arrived in a black Hummer, looked stoic as he arrived in dark sunglasses, a gray suit, white shirt and matching tie.
The former football great didn't stop to talk or make eye contact as he made his way into the courthouse and through a metal detector.
During a brief break in the hearing, he stood up to shake hands with his bail bondsman and chat with several members of the courtroom audience.
In Simpson's mind, according to a close friend, the charges are rooted in the former football star being found not guilty in the 1994 slayings of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman.
“He believes he's being tried for that now,” said Tom Scotto, 45, a North Miami Beach, Fla., auto body shop owner.
“He's taking this serious. It is serious,” said Scotto, who traveled from Florida with Simpson and sat in a courtroom gallery filled with about 100 spectators. Among them was Simpson's older sister, Mattie Shirley Simpson Baker, 64, of Elk Grove, Calif.
Simpson and co-defendants Clarence “C.J.” Stewart and Charles Ehrlich face 12 charges, including kidnapping, armed robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, conspiracy and coercion. A kidnapping conviction could result in a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. An armed robbery conviction could mean mandatory prison time.
Outside the courthouse before the hearing began was a small crowd of onlookers who mingled with more than a dozen camera crews and an odd group of hangers-on trying to win some media attention. The latter group included a man dressed in a chicken suit who stood near a woman in a rabbit costume with the words “Stop police brutality” painted on it. She roller-skated by a large law enforcement contingent as a helicopter circled overhead.
“I'm like, hey, how can I make a buck off this happening four miles from my house,” said Scot Savage, a 43-year-old real estate salesman who showed up with a tie-dyed T-shirting promoting OJtalk.com, the Web site he is using to sell $9.95 coffee mugs proclaiming either Simpson's guilt or innocence.
Some streets were blocked off around the courthouse, and police officers were stationed at barricades. Down the street, a parking lot was filled with a caravan of television trucks. Court officials said they had issued more than 200 media credentials for the evidentiary hearing.
No one disputes that Stewart, Ehrlich and former co-defendants Michael McClinton, Walter Alexander and Charles Cashmore went with Simpson and California collectibles broker Tom Riccio to meet Fromong and his fellow memorabilia dealer Alfred Beardsley at the hotel room.
During his testimony, Fromong dismissed Beardsley as a Simpson groupie who set up the meeting.
“Mr. Beardsley is a groupie. Somebody who used to like to say he was part of the O.J. group, he knew O.J.,” Fromong testified. “He would say he worked for O.J. He liked to drop the name.”
Simpson has maintained that he wanted to retrieve items he knew had been stolen from him by Gilbert, including the suit he wore the day he was acquitted of murder in Los Angeles.
The case is likely to pivot on Simpson's contention that he didn't ask anyone to bring guns, that he didn't know anyone had guns and that no guns were displayed.
Three of Simpson's co-defendants have pleaded guilty or agreed to do so and are expected to testify against him.
Cashmore, 40, a journeyman laborer, said McClinton displayed a gun.
Alexander, 46, of Mesa, Ariz., told police after his Sept. 15 arrest that he and McClinton carried guns, but that he kept one in his waistband while McClinton displayed his as Beardsley and Fromong were frisked.
“O.J. said 'Hey, just bring some firearms,'” Alexander said, according to a transcript of his tape-recorded statement to detectives.
McClinton, 49, of Las Vegas, who later turned two handguns over to police and surrendered his concealed weapons permit, is expected to bolster that account.
“That ups the ante,” said Michael Shapiro, a New York defense lawyer who provided commentary during Simpson's 1995 murder acquittal in Los Angeles. “When guns come into play, bad things can happen.”
Nevertheless, the prosecution's case has certain weaknesses, including some unsavory witnesses.
Of the eight men who were in the room with Simpson, six have run afoul of the law before, with convictions for arson, theft, cocaine trafficking and assault among them.
Moreover, Simpson's lawyers have argued that the men who turned against him lied to win generous plea bargains for themselves.
Still, Simpson and the others are likely to be bound over for trial “because the burden of proof is such that all they have to show is that some evidence suggests a crime occurred,” said Tom Pitaro, a veteran Las Vegas defense lawyer who teaches trial advocacy at the Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Another Simpson's lawyer, Yale Galanter also indicated he expects the case to go to trial.
“This is a different animal,” Galanter said shortly before the hearing began. “There aren't too many times I walk into a courtroom and know I'm going to lose.”
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Associated Press Writer Ryan Nakashima in Las Vegas contributed to this report.
