One of the news highlights for me in 2012 was the spectacular trial of Jason Simpson in which he was found guilty of the hideous double murder of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman – a crime for which his father OJ Simpson had previously been wrongly blamed.
If you don’t remember the trial, it’s probably because it didn’t happen.
Yet, in the early months of last year, esteemed Dallas-based private investigator William Dear released the second of two books in which he revealed the results of his own investigations into the case. OJ is Innocent and I Can Prove it: The Shocking Truth about the Murders of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman, argued that OJ took the blame for the murders in order to cover up for Jason.
The lack of any new police action can only mean that either the evidence isn’t quite as irrefutable as Dear claims it to be.
So you must forgive me for feeling cynical about the latest spurious claims, this time from private investigator Paul Heubl, who claims that drug dealers were responsible for Whitney Houston’s death last year in a bathtub in a Beverley Hills hotel room.
Heubl alleges that Houston was in debt to the dealers to the tune of $1.5 million and that he has video evidence to prove that she was murdered by henchmen intent on collecting the debt. Unlike Dear, Huebl doesn’t base his claims on flimsy circumstantial evidence, but on video footage of two men entering her suite at around the time of her death, as well as various injuries which suggest the singer may have been involved in a struggle before she entered the bath of scalding water.
It may be a somewhat cynical view, but it seems to me that both proclamations have far more to do with fostering headlines and publicity for the detectives involved than in answering difficult questions for family and friends.
yet another depressing case in point is the latest sighting of missing chef Claudia Lawrence, who was apparently spotted in Amsterdam by a former private detective, whose sole response appears to have been to take his tale straight to the British tabloids.
The circus reminds me of those TV psychics who claim to have helped police solve various murders – look behind the claim and you’ll find a cloud of scotch mist thinner than your average wisp of ectoplasm.