in Sandpoint, Idaho. The streets are still wet from the previous night’s drizzle and it looks like it might snow. Mark Fuhrman is walking me down Cedar Street, on the way to Eichardt’s Pub, a popular local hangout.
You remember Fuhrman for the notoriety he gained as one of the first detectives on the scene in the O.J. Simpson double-murder case, the cop accused by Simpson’s legal Dream Team of being a racist, planting evidence and cooking the case.
In his new life in lily-white Northern Idaho, he’s just another townie, though maybe a little more famous than others as the author of numerous books, the host of a local radio show, and a contributing analyst with Fox News Channel. “By the way, do you see all the Nazis walking down the street?” says Mark Fuhrman, who still walks with a cop’s rigid, upright bearing.
The question is meant to be rhetorical, a play on this area’s reputation as a bastion of white-power groups and wacky militias. Still, even though there are no swastikas on display so far, there is a small chance we could stumble upon a member of the Aryan Brotherhood, whose headquarters are in Hayden Lake, just 40 miles away. Instead of neo-Nazis, the city center is filled with boutiques, art galleries, ski shops, cafés and pubs — though most are closed because it’s Sunday.
A few stragglers meander in and out of Eichardt’s, where a sign above its doorway reads, “Circus Here Today,” and pub T-shirts boast of “Putting the fun back in dysfunctional.” “Every once in a while, I come here and hang on a night, listen to a band and eat the fries,” says Fuhrman as we stroll into the mellow joint, whose vibe is small town–meets–après ski, with a touch of British pub. He is dressed casually in Levi’s jeans and a T-shirt tucked into his pants.
We choose a table against the back wall, and Fuhrman makes a point of nabbing the seat that faces the entrance. The ex-cop likes to know “who is coming and going.” His eyes scan the perimeter, stopping briefly on the two men sitting at opposite ends of the bar seemingly fixated on their microbrews and the colorful collection of and Pez dispensers on display.
Fittingly, the beers on tap have names like Moose Drool Ale and Devil Dog Ale. Daniel Boone could really sink his teeth into the fare here — buffalo and elk, ground into burgers and stews, and fresh fish, blackened and served on a bun or in salads. Fuhrman picks the Cajun buffalo burger with a blue-cheese crumble, and the much-ballyhooed fries, which are topped with garlic chunks piled nearly as high as the nearby Schweitzer Mountains.
Sandpoint is a picturesque town of 7,000 near Lake Pend Oreille, which hosts the yearly fishing derby, and coughed up from its depths a world-record rainbow trout in 1947. Its environs offer world-class skiing, hunting (hunters are allowed to kill bears and cougars, and with crossbows!) and, of course, fishing.
Local entertainers have names like Truck Mills, and the standard attire for local men and women is pretty much the same — a baseball cap, a pair of Levi’s, and a baggy T-shirt decorated with a fisherman slogan. Sandpoint’s population is 94.6 percent white.
The economy used to be fueled by the timber industry. Now the tourism industry has taken hold, and land prices have skyrocketed — though $300K can still get you a nice home on the lake. It’s far, far away from the gritty streets of Los Angeles, and Fuhrman couldn’t be happier.
His celebrity status is minimal — no one’s rushing to get his autograph or kick him in the shins. He just fits in. It could be because he stays low-key, and doesn’t parade around town in an expensive Humvee like our governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who owns a place nearby.
He also refused to get involved in the town’s one murder last year. “I don’t shit in my backyard,” he says matter-of-factly. Although Fuhrman has been in self-imposed exile from Los Angeles for more than a decade, he still has never fully escaped the collateral damage of June 12, 1994 — the night that Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole Brown, and her friend Ron Goldman were brutally stabbed to death outside her home on Bundy Drive in Brentwood.
Recalling that period is no rosy walk down memory lane for Fuhrman. When the double homicide went down, Fuhrman was in bed after returning early from a conference in Palm Springs. His boss, Homicide Supervisor Ron Phillips, was surprised to find him at home and asked him to help with the investigation.
“I wasn’t on call,” Fuhrman says. “I didn’t have to go, but I did. It would have been a life.
” His decision to heed the call that day would ultimately damage his reputation, undermine the credibility of the LAPD and the District Attorney’s Office, racially divide a nation, and, Fuhrman believes, change the course of yet another murder investigation that he was handling at the time. The victim in that case was a 24-year-old hippie named Dawn Gamez who was suffering with HIV. Gamez was shot in the head on April 6, 1994, two months before Brown and Goldman were slain.
Her 25-year-old husband, Herman Gould, the son of a well-to-do psychiatrist and Beverly Hills socialite mother, was charged with her killing, but later let go. Fuhrman still smarts over the district attorney’s decision to drop the case against Gould. He says that Gould walked because of the beating Fuhrman’s reputation took during the O.
J. When Fuhrman arguably became the most distrusted cop and most notorious lightning rod in America. “Nothing changed from the time Gould went to court to the time [charges against him] were dismissed, except for my involvement in the Simpson case,” he says.
“It is just too much trouble to have me exposed in another case that wasn’t worth it. I think it is a case that should have been put before a jury.” Page 1 of 7 in Sandpoint, Idaho.
News RSS