Aren't they beautiful? Aren't they beautiful?" Daniel Petrocelli repeated the words in the "clean room" as he stared at the 30 different pictures that had just emerged from a FedEx package and were spread out on an oval table. It was the middle of the Christmas recess in the O.J. Simpson civil trial, and the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs was admiring a present. There, shown 30 times over on Simpson's feet, was what the attorneys would argue was a pair of rare size-12 Bruno Magli shoes, the Lorenzo model, with the distinctive stitching, seams and design, one of only 299 pairs sold in the U.S. between 1991 and 1993. Most important, they were the kind of shoes that the plaintiffs said left bloody prints at the scene where Simpson's ex-wife Nicole and would-be actor Ronald Goldman were murdered. "Ugly-ass shoes," Simpson had said during depositions, denying he owned them.
"Aren't they beautiful? Aren't they beautiful?"
Most of the important strategizing by the plaintiffs transpired in what was dubbed the clean room. It was set up in September in Suite 205 of the Doubletree Guest Suites Hotel, just across the street from the Santa Monica, California, courthouse where the trial would be held. The plaintiffs' attorneys had heard tales of "defense shenanigans" during the criminal case, so their first step was to install a complex alarm system that would guard against breaches in security. A motion detector was activated every time the room was locked, and there were separate deadbolt locks on the back room that housed a computer linked to a mainframe at Petrocelli's office at Mitchell, Silberberg & Knupp. The back room had an important blue wastebasket; everything that went into it was put through a shredder. Periodically, Suite 205 was swept for bugging devices. It was in this secure area that the plaintiffs saw 30 more keys to victory.
In the beginning, Petrocelli had only one photo--and he was concerned. Early in the trial, he had presented a single picture of Simpson wearing Bruno Maglis taken by photographer Harry Scull. The defense declared the photo was a fake, and Petrocelli was afraid the jury might buy into that claim--even though his partner Peter Gelblum had brutally discredited the defense photo expert, Robert Groden, a J.F.K.-assassination buff with no formal training in photography. Then came word that other pictures existed. "Oh, my God. Are they real?" Gelblum asked Petrocelli.
Frame after frame showed Simpson at a Sept. 26, 1993, football game at Rich Stadium in Buffalo, New York. John Kelly, the lawyer for the estate of Nicole Brown Simpson, had flown to Buffalo to pick up all the photographs that E.J. Flammer, a freelance photographer, had taken. Flammer had published one of the photos in the Buffalo Bills newsletter in November 1993. He had saved a dated invoice for the photo assignment and had a copy of his sideline pass for the game. In fact, the plaintiffs would eventually come into possession of additional pictures as amateur photographers began digging through their old contact sheets to find prints of Simpson wearing Bruno Maglis. Some photos were even faxed to the plaintiffs. But for Petrocelli and Gelblum, the package of 30 was dramatic enough. They would be the only ones the lawyers would present in court.