Powerful court cases are like a tornado. They exert a devastating centripetal force. Try as you may to keep yourself on the periphery, you can be dragged deep into a nasty center, the kind of place where it's easy to be torn apart. It must feel that way lately for some of the people who once thought of themselves as secondary players in the murder trial of O.J. Simpson.
Two of them are Brian ("Kato") Kaelin, who was living in Simpson's guesthouse on the night of the murders, and Kaelin's friend Rachel Ferrara. TIME has learned that prosecutors Marcia Clark and William Hodgman are pursuing a potentially important new lead that contradicts the sworn testimony given by Kaelin and Ferrara at the preliminary hearings in July. Kaelin told the court that at about 10:40 on the night of the murders, he was in his quarters on the Simpson estate talking on the phone with Ferrara, when he heard three loud "thumps" on his wall. Fearing a prowler, Kaelin said, he went outside to investigate, then returned to his room, where he called Ferrara back and told her he had seen no one. On the stand, Ferrara corroborated the account.
Kaelin's version was favorable to the prosecution because it was just outside his guest cottage where police say they discovered the bloody glove that matches one found near the bodies of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman. His testimony suggested that the glove may have been dropped there by someone at around 10:40. But if so, was that person necessarily Simpson?
That's why prosecutors are now eagerly investigating a claim brought to them by two friends of Ferrara's, who say that in conversations they had with Ferrara after the murder, but before she gave her testimony, she described her phone talks with Kaelin in a crucially different manner. The two friends, both of whom have also related their story to TIME, say Ferrara told them that in Kaelin's second call he reported that when he opened his door to go outside, he found Simpson standing there. When a startled Kaelin told O.J. about the noises, Simpson replied that he had heard them too. The two men briefly inspected the grounds before Kaelin returned to his guesthouse to call Ferrara back.
If prosecutors can confirm that account, it would place Simpson outside the guesthouse at around the time they believe he dropped the bloody glove nearby. But if their new lead is potentially important, it's also a decidedly mixed blessing. In order to present a jury with a revised version of Kaelin's story, they would have to refute his earlier one, in the process casting doubt on his reliability as a witness. If they recant their earlier testimony, Kaelin and Ferrara could open themselves to perjury charges, though prosecutors would presumably decline to press those in return for the pair's cooperation. William Genego, Kaelin's attorney, denies his client lied on the stand. "I am completely confident that any investigation will show that Kato told the truth."