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Ferrara's two friends claim that they urged her without success to take her story to the police. One of the pair says that during the week of June 13 she contacted the West Los Angeles police station with the story and left her name with a desk clerk. When no one from there called her back, she called prosecutor Hodgman this week. "I didn't know if this was important or not," she says. "But I kept thinking someone should know." After meeting with L.A. police detective Philip Vannatter in a van parked near her apartment, she was driven to a nearby police station, where she talked for 2 1/2 hours with Vannatter, Clark and Hodgman.
Even as the district attorney's office was trying to shore up the likelihood that it was Simpson who dropped the telltale glove, O.J.'s lawyers were trying to chip away the credibility of another supporting player in the case, L.A. police detective Mark Fuhrman, the man who claimed to have found the glove there. In July the defense team leaked stories that Fuhrman had a history of open hostility toward blacks, a charge that Fuhrman vigorously denies. Though Robert Shapiro, the lead defense attorney, promised not to make race an issue in the case, Simpson's attorneys filed a devastating motion that seeks police- department records on Fuhrman and three other detectives on the case. Contending that Fuhrman "is a dangerous officer with a propensity to create false information against African-American defendants," the defense offered an affidavit from a former real estate agent who claims Fuhrman told her that "if I had my way, they would take all the niggers, put them together in a big group and burn them."
Meanwhile, a grand jury begins hearing witnesses this week in an investigation of Al Cowlings, Simpson's good pal and the driver of the white Bronco during O.J.'s freeway chase. Prosecutors are looking into the possibility that even before acting as Simpson's driver, Cowlings was trying to help his friend cover his tracks, perhaps to the extent of concealing or destroying evidence. If so, the faithful companion could be charged as an accessory to murder. That's what it's like in a tornado's way.