Pair Say Guns Were O.J. Simpson's Idea
Testimony Centers on Vegas Dispute

By Karl Vick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 14, 2007

LAS VEGAS, Nov. 13 -- Both of the men who carried guns into the Las Vegas hotel room where O.J. Simpson went to retrieve memorabilia testified Tuesday that Simpson asked the men to "get heat" before going to the hotel, and instructed one of them at the threshold of the room to draw his pistol.

"He said, 'Show them your weapon and look menacing.' O.J. Simpson said that to me," said Michael McClinton, who drew a .45-caliber pistol and shouted most of the orders in Room 1203 of the Palace Station Hotel and Casino on Sept 13. "Oh, he said that. There's no doubt in my mind he said that."

The testimony on the third day of a preliminary hearing appeared damaging to Simpson, who along with two co-defendants faces a possible life sentence for a dozen felony charges, including armed robbery and kidnapping. Simpson said he was trying to recover footballs, plaques and other memorabilia. That merchandise, obtained by a former Simpson acquaintance and then sold to a memorabilia broker, had been ordered surrendered as partial payment on a $33 million civil judgment to the family of Ronald Lyle Goldman. That judgment followed Simpson's 1995 acquittal on charges of murdering Goldman and Simpson's ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson.

McClinton said Simpson had warned earlier that one of the memorabilia collectors they were confronting might be armed. And, indeed, one of them, Bruce Fromong, testified last week that he had a pistol in his pickup and that he hotly spoke of retrieving it after Simpson's party left with the items both men claimed to rightly own, plus several that only Fromong claimed.

But Simpson's instruction to draw a gun took the encounter to another level, said McClinton and Walter Alexander, a golfing buddy of Simpson's who had introduced McClinton to the former football star, and who wore a borrowed .22-caliber pistol into the room on his hip.

"It changed the whole plan," said Alexander, who like McClinton testified as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors.

Alexander also described Simpson emerging from the car at his own hotel after leaving the scene. "O.J. got out of the car saying, 'Damn it, they called the police,' " he said. Alexander testified that a few hours later Simpson said, "Just stick to no guns involved. If there's no guns, it ain't [expletive]."

Alexander said he pressed Simpson for assurances that he would help him if he was arrested, but that Simpson laughed and said the problem would go away.

"I told [McClinton] at that time, 'I'm not going to jail for O.J. I'm going to tell the truth. If you want our stories to match up, just tell the truth.' "

On cross-examination, Simpson's lawyers made few inroads against McClinton but did painful damage to Alexander. The Arizona man insisted that his primary concern in pleading to a felony was maintaining his real estate license.

"Well, you've sold other things in your life other than real estate, haven't you?" asked defense attorney Yale Galanter.

"Cars. Jet Skis," Alexander said.

"Have you ever sold flesh?" Galanter shot back.

The witness denied it, but after being confronted with Web addresses, e-mails and online photo catalogues of prostitutes, he insisted that the business was really run by his ex-wife, identified as "LA Sweet Sarah."

Alexander was also at pains to account for a voice mail left on the phone of a close Simpson friend who offered to help him "in any way." At the time, Alexander said he was dissatisfied with the deal prosecutors were offering. "If I had some help, I'd do everything I can," he said on the tape.

"At the time, I was considering not being a DA's witness," Alexander testified. "I really felt that he was being set up," he said, referring to Simpson. "So I could lean toward that angle rather than tell the exact truth. I felt this case could lean in either direction."