Playboy Interview: Vincent Bugliosi

Vincent Bugliosi's phone doesn't slop ringing. "Hard Copy," "Geraldo" and "Dateline" want him to speak about the O.J. Simpson civil trial. A national magazine wants him to write about it. Dozens of talkradio hosts from around the country want his comments. His publisher needs updates for the paperback edition of "Outrage," his best-selling book about the Simpson criminal trial, in which he details how a guilty man walked free. The president of Fox Television, as well as executives from CBS and Showtime, want to discuss show ideas with him. There are invitations from law firms and bar associations all over the country asking him to speak. His editor for the book he's writing about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy needs to know if he's still on schedule. His doctor and his dentist call, wondering if he's going to keep his appointments. His wife checks in to see if they're still on for dinner and a movie.

Bugliosi probably has Charles Manson to thank for making him famous. Bugliosi was an anonymous deputy district attorney in Los Angeles when Roman Polanski's wife, actress Sharon Tate, was found murdered along with four other people in a home in Bel Air on August 9, 1969. The murders were bloody and vicious--and there seemed to be no motive. The next day two more bodies were found in a house in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles. The crimes were strikingly similar--and Manson was the mastermind behind both.

Manson became America's most infamous mass murderer, and Bugliosi was the prosecutor who put Manson and his "family" members away for life. Less than three years later Bugliosi decided to challenge his boss, District Attorney Joe Busch, and run for public office. Bugliosi was outspent by about seven to one and lost in a very tight, brutal election. In 1974 he made another foray into politics, running this time for California attorney general. Again he lost, but by then he had discovered a second career. He and co-writer Curt Gentry published "Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders," which became the top-selling truecrime book of all time (with more than 7 million copies sold).

Bugliosi now divides his time between infrequent court cases (in his prosecutorial career he won 105 of 106 felony jury trials, including 21 consecutive murder convictions) and writing true-crime books, most based on cases he tried. Among his books, most written with collaborators, are "Till Death Us Do Part" as well as "And the Sea Will Tell." He also wrote "The Phoenix Solution," a proposal on how America can win its war on drugs.

Born on August 18, 1934 in Hibbing, Minnesota, Bugliosi had what he describes as a normal childhood. He played sports, worked odd jobs, attended a Catholic school and respected his mother and father. Both his parents came from Italy, and his father worked in the mines, owned a grocery store and was a railroad conductor in Hibbing. Bugliosi's childhood passion was tennis, a game he taught himself. He eventually became Minnesota's state high school champion and the Northwest junior champion, winning a partial tennis scholarship to the University of Miami in Florida, where he eventually met his future wife, Gail. They went to California, where he graduated from UCLA Law School in 1964 (he was president of his graduating class). He joined the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office soon after passing the bar.

His fame from prosecuting Manson made Bugliosi a Public figure, and when a British TV network came up with the idea in 1986 of putting Lee Harvey Oswald on trial for the assassination of President Kennedy, the producers asked Gerry Spence to defend Oswald and Bugliosi to prosecute. When it was over the jury came back with a guilty verdict: Oswald, in this mock trial, was the lone killer. There was no conspiracy. Spence said, "No other lawyer in America could have done what Vince did." The preparation Bugliosi did for this tried led him to decide that a book taking on various conspiracy theories was in order, and he has been diligently working on one ever since.

His Kennedy book had to be put aside, however, when O.J. Simpson was charged with murder. There was never any doubt in Bugliosi's mind that Simpson was guilty. But he saw mistakes throughout the proceedings, among them that Judge Lance Ito wrongly allowed race to become an issue when he permitted the defense to show that detective Mark Fuhrman had used a racial slur within the past ten years. The prosecution team of Marcia Clark and Clris Darden was, according to Bugliosi, startingly inept and incompetent in its prosecution of the case. Too much evidence was left out of the trial--such as Simpson's statement to the police that he didn't know how his hand got cut; Simpson's suicide letter; and the Bronco chase on which Simpson carried a disguise, a gun and $8750 in cash. Bugliosi, convinced that a sure win for the prosecution was bungled, decided to write a book showing what went wrong and how he would have handled the case had he been in charge. "Outrage" hit a nerve with the public when it appeared, reaching number one on the "New York Times" best-seller list. Dominick Dunne pronounced, "If you only have time to read one book on the criminal trial of O.J. Simpson, I would recommend, without hesitation, Vincent Bugliosi's 'Outrage."' (The updated paperback edition of "Outrage" is coming out March 15.)

To find out if the book's success has calmed his outrage and to get his opinions on Simpson's subsequent civil trial as well as his reflections on some past cases and future works, we sent Contributing Editor Lawrence Grobel (whose most recent interview was with actor Harvey Keitel) to talk with Bugliosi at his home in the San Fernando Valley. Grobel's report:

"The first time I spoke with Bugliosi he told me that he was about to be on Charles Grodin's show and thought I might want to watch. I flipped a channel and there he was, charging that O.J.'s defense team 'possessed the gonads of 10,000 elephants.' Bugliosi does not mince words.

"I soon realized that his outspokenness on 'Grodin' was quintessential Bugliosi. The man is a bulldog. When he believes in something--whether it's O.J.'s guilt or solutions to the drug problem--he bears down on listeners with formidable intensity. So I wasn't surprised that we often didn't wrap our sessions until after five or six hours of nonstop talking. Nor was I surprised when he'd follow up our sessions with phone calls to elaborate on points we had discussed. Vince has a meticulous intellect, which is what made him a great prosecutor, and he loves a good argument. Even more important, he loves to win those arguments, which is another sign of a good lawyer."

[Q] Playboy: In the past five years we've seen two Menendez trials and the cases of Heidi Fleiss, Reginald Denny, Michael Jackson, Snoop Doggy Dogg and O.J. Simpson. How much faith can people have in the criminal justice system?

[A] Bugliosi: Oh boy. These are high-visibility cases, most of which went the wrong way. But we can't judge our system just because of them.

[Q] Playboy: Still, should we really have been surprised with the Simpson verdict in the criminal trial?

[A] Bugliosi: Yeah, we should be surprised by the Simpson verdict, because everything points to this guy's guilt. Nothing points in the direction of anything else. We're talking about murder here. Juries are much more apt to overlook a slight transgression of the law than the ultimate crime of murder. We can't have people commit murder in our society and get away with it. We're not talking here about forgery or about theft. We're talking about a guy with a sharp knife, not only stabbing but killing two precious human beings, chopping them up, leaving them in a pool of blood. And he's out there playing golf, smiling. I'm convinced that the verdict in this case caused a psychic trauma to the American people. I've had people tell me they vomited when the verdict came in. They couldn't go to work the next day.

[Q] Playboy: Not everybody was sickened by the not-guilty verdict. His defense team was pretty happy.

[A] Bugliosi: Look at the photo of the moment of the verdict--Robert Shapiro's not happy. He looks as if he just heard his child was run over. Shapiro's problem is, he has to live with this verdict for the rest of his life, knowing that he put together this team. Simpson has a quizzical look on his face, like, "What? You're actually going to let me walk out of here?"

[Q] Playboy: Were you surprised by the initial groundswell of support for Simpson?

[A] Bugliosi: It was shocking. I know we look up to celebrities, but to this extent? Where within a month and a half he reportedly received 350,000 letters of support? Where the chaplain of the U.S. Senate said a prayer for him? Where people called in to talk shows suggesting, "He's O.J. He's suffered enough. You should let him go"? Even deputy sheriffs at the Los Angeles County Jail were reportedly asking him for autographs.

[Q] Playboy: What has the reaction been to your book among colleagues, law students and laypeople?

[A] Bugliosi: Phenomenal. It's already required reading at several law schools and D.A. offices around the country. In fact, just yesterday I was on Syracuse radio and a D.A. called in and said Outrage is now required reading for all prosecutors in his office. I get letters from lawyers all over the country. More letters for this book than for Helter Skelter. I got mail for all my books, but no one's ever thanked me for writing a book before. With this one, letter after letter, "Thank you, Mr. Bugliosi, for writing this book." They use words like therapeutic, cathartic and closure. They want to know how it's possible that this guy walked out of court. Many even said that my book restored their faith in the judicial system, because after this trial people said, "We've got to abolish it. Why have juries if this guy is so obviously guilty?" My book helped them understand what happened.

[Q] Playboy: And yet you still prefer that a jury decide unanimously for a murder conviction, rather than allow a two-thirds majority to convict.

[A] Bugliosi: There have been all types of arguments about changing the jury system, and I reject most of them. If you're taking away a person's life or liberty you should have to convince all 12 people. Second, if you knock it down to ten to two, or nine to three, you're eliminating the Henry Fonda type of juror in 12 Angry Men, the one man who turns around the other 11. You're not going to have that if you don't have a verdict. Why should the majority even bother to listen to the minority? You're also dissuading law enforcement from working as hard as it should if you say you need only ten to two.

[Q] Playboy: Your book certainly makes a lot of sense--in hindsight. Chris Darden pointed out that you weren't there.

[A] Bugliosi: Cochran has said that, Darden has said that. It's a stupid observation. If you buy that argument, Truman Capote shouldn't have written In Cold Blood, Tommy Thompson shouldn't have written Blood and Money or Joe Wambaugh The Onion Field. What do you tell a historian who writes a three-volume history of the Civil War--"You weren't there"? This trial was televised, there's a transcript. Obviously, you don't have to be there. The question always comes down to: Is what you're saying valid? So what if I wasn't present? If I wasn't even a lawyer, if I was in a coffee shop on the Left Bank in Paris during the trial and a carrier pigeon brought me the information each night? It's a point of monumental irrelevance. The issue still is, is what I am saying right or wrong? This wasn't Monday-morning quarterbacking. There is no viable alternative to the things I'm talking about here. When Simpson's main defense is that he was framed, there's only one thing you have to do: Knock that down. If you don't, he walks out of court. When you have Simpson admitting dripping blood on the night of the murders and he has no idea how he got cut, you introduce that evidence. There is no alternative there. A two-year-old should see this stuff. Yet no one say it. Jeffrey Toobin [of The New Yorker] sat there for nine and a half months and wrote that the prosecution was brilliant. That there was nothing the prosecutors could have done--the verdict was preordained.

[Q] Playboy: Toobin may have been reporting it that way in The New Yorker, but in his book The Run of His Life he wasn't so full of praise for the prosecution. What did you think of his book?

[A] Bugliosi: It's well-written but a big disappointment, a very superficial book. For example, trial summation is an extremely important part of this case. It could have turned it around if the prosecution had argued it properly. I have 75 pages in my book about final summation, with 15 pages of endnotes. Toobin wrote four or five pages, with no legal analysis. Also, some of the jurors wrote a book telling why they came back with a not-guilty verdict. If you're writing a book about the Simpson case and you have a book written by the jury, including the foreperson, what could be more important? And yet there's nothing in his book except a reference that they wrote a book. Contamination and cross-examination were very big issues at the criminal trial. Yet unbelievably, he devotes only two brief sentences to them.

[Q] Playboy: Another prominent O.J. book was Lawrence Schiller and James Will-werth's American Tragedy. What did you think of that one?

[A] Bugliosi: If you're going to ask me about all these other books, then let me preface my remarks by asking: What do you want me to do? Do you want me to lie or to tell the truth? If I tell the truth I come off as boastful, even though I'm just being factual. I never make a charge without supporting it. But since you're asking me, here are my views: The only book, other than mine, that I would highly recommend is O.J. Unmasked by M.L. Rantala. It's a very good analysis of the physical evidence in the case. There's a lot of good information in Schiller's book, ten times more so than in Toobin's book, about what was going on behind the scenes in the defense camp.

[Q] Playboy: Schiller's book couldn't have been written without Robert Kardashian's cooperation. Time said Kardashian betrayed a friend and also a client. Did it surprise you that he has talked?

[A] Bugliosi: No, I think he just wants to live with himself. He obviously knows Simpson's guilty. He has many years ahead and he doesn't want to be a part of a lie anymore. Remember the black officer, Ron Shipp? He said, "I don't want Nicole's blood on my hands." He told Simpson outside the presence of the jury to tell the truth. He wanted to be able to live with himself. That's what's happening with Kardashian.

[Q] Playboy: What do you make of Simpson's attempt to discredit the pictures that surfaced of him wearing the Bruno Magli shoes?

[A] Bugliosi: He argued that they're fake photos. Simpson said it's his legs, his body, his head, but not his feet and shoes. He reprised Lee Harvey Oswald. The day after the JFK assassination Oswald was asked if he had owned a rifle and he said no, whereupon he was shown a photograph taken by his wife, Marina, of him holding the rifle used in the assassination. He said his head was superimposed on someone else's body.

[Q] Playboy: In the criminal trial you felt Judge Lance Ito's erroneous rulings hurt the state's case.

[A] Bugliosi: By allowing the defense to play the race card, Ito was largely responsible for this verdict, along with the unbelievable incompetence of the prosecution in handling Ito's improper rulings. I always had an uneasy feeling about Ito, like, What is this guy going to start doing? Is he going to start walking around on his hands in front of the jury to show them that not only is he fair minded but he's also physically agile? At a time when they were losing jurors and there was a fear they would get below 12, probably causing a mistrial, he sent them up in a blimp! Yes, you heard me right--a blimp. And then he wanted to take a minivacation in the middle of the closing arguments.

[Q] Playboy: As we speak, the civil trial is in its final days. You've now had a chance to compare Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki with Judge Ito. Who's the better judge?

[A] Bugliosi: Fujisaki is kind of languorous on the bench--one of the lawyers will object and he won't even rule. Not like Ito, though I think Fujisaki's doing a better job with the exception of some serious mistakes that have given the defense an opportunity on appeal. For instance, allowing Simpson to be asked about taking a lie-detector test, permitting the gal from the shelter hotline to testify that a woman named Nicole was being threatened by her famous husband--that's inadmissible hearsay. But they probably will not constitute reversible error, because of all the other incriminating evidence.

[Q] Playboy: What do you think of the socalled dream team's books: Johnnie Cochran's Journey to Justice, Alan Dershowitz' Reasonable Doubts, Shapiro's Search for Justice, Gerald Uelmen's Lessons From the Trial?

[A] Bugliosi: From a legal standpoint, the best of the defense books is Dershowitz'. At least Alan had the decency not to say that Simpson is innocent. He makes an effort to analyze the legal issues in a scholarly way. The deficiencies are that it's a very short book and he has serious misstatements of fact in it. Here's a guy who was number one in his class at Yale, he was the youngest law professor ever at Harvard, and he's probably the top criminal appellate lawyer in the country. He'd do a lot better if he didn't rely so much on sophistry to get by. Uelmen's book is unbelievably bad. For a person of his erudition and scholarship to write a book like that is really surprising. Shapiro's and Cochran's books are worthless--they're just personal memoirs and full of legal errors. The authors know a murderer walked out the courtroom door, and they talk about a search for justice? I don't like the audacity of that. They deceived the jury, we all know that. Now they're trying to deceive the American public.

[Q] Playboy: What's your take on Chris Darden's In Contempt?

[A] Bugliosi: Almost worthless. Another memoir. A third of it actually deals with his life in Oakland. It's very superficial. No detailed analysis of the legal issues. And the scholarship is terrible. I'm upset with Darden, and I'll tell you why: My book has 356 pages of why this case was lost. Darden's has one paragraph! He says he walked into that courtroom and he saw this need in the jurors' eyes to settle a score. He saw a need to settle a score in the eyes of a 22-year-old white girl who works for an insurance company? He told Barbara Walters that he didn't have a snowball's chance in hell. "As soon as I looked at the jury, I knew the case was over." One of the prosecutors asked me, "How could Chris write that? When he joined the prosecution team he was just as confident as we all were." And when the verdict came in he quotes himself as saying, "My God, my God, my God!" Which proves that he doesn't believe a word he's saying in his book. Otherwise, why was he so shocked and surprised? According to him, he already knew nine and a half months earlier, when he walked into court that the case was lost. In his book he says that after the Fuhrman tapes surfaced, "I had no more energy for this circus and I had nothing more to sacrifice." He "sacrificed" instead of feeling honored to represent the people of California. He had a whole year to work on it and he talks about sacrifice? You have two people decomposing in their graves, you know the guy is guilty, you have a ton of evidence against him, and this guy is quitting? Prosecutors don't talk that way. They fight to the very end with every ounce of energy they have in them. The defense attorneys deceived this jury and now Darden deceives the American public. He's using this black jury as a scapegoat for his and Marcia's incompetence.

[Q] Playboy: Marcia Clark obviously would not agree with that assessment.

[A] Bugliosi: I see a lot of potential in Marcia. She's very bright, articulate, knowledgeable. She can think on her feet and I like the way she makes her points. But her persona in front of the jury was different. I don't know what happened to her. One possible explanation might be that she knew the jury didn't like her so she changed her personality. She wasn't dynamic or forceful. Her opening statement was terrible. She didn't present the suicide note, the chase, none of that evidence. And then she argued that there was only one glove at the murder scene. That doesn't mean anything to anyone. You have to go on to say, "So there was no second glove there for Mark Fuhrman to pick up and deposit at Rockingham." You really have to spoon-feed a jury. Can you imagine Marcia Clark telling the jurors during jury selection, "This is not a fun place for me to be"? As if she was apologizing for prosecuting Simpson. And Darden, in his summation, telling the jury, "Nobody wants to hurt this guy. We don't. But the law is the law." They also didn't know how to preempt the defense. They were constantly creating the impression in front of the jury that they were trying to suppress relevant evidence. Their preparation of their witnesses was poor, and their waiting until the last moment to prepare their final argument, as if they were college students cramming for an exam, was inexcusable.

[Q] Playboy: What do you think Marcia Clark's book will be like?

[A] Bugliosi: I just don't know how she's going to address the fact that her incompetence was staggering. How do you argue why you didn't talk about detective Philip Vannatter bringing the vial of blood back to Rockingham? How do you justify arguing for one minute out of eight hours on the key issue of the trial? If your blood's at the murder scene, you're guilty. Say goodnight, Gracie, there's nothing more to say. Unless it's a frame-up, right? So how do you argue for one minute out of eight hours when you know that if the jury buys the frame-up argument this guy walks out of court? What's she going to say to that? People looked at the prosecutors--who seemed to be intelligent, educated, articulate--and made the assumption they were taking care of business. They weren't! They conceded the conspiracy issue by default.

[Q] Playboy: The defense's assertions that the police tampered with Simpson's blood and planted the glove on his property gave the jury the reasonable doubt it needed to declare Simpson not guilty. Many of the black jurors probably knew someone who had been mistreated by the police. Yet the distinction you make between police brutality and frame-ups wasn't made at Simpson's criminal trial.

[A] Bugliosi: That's right, and it's probably one of my most important observations about this case. Police brutality, and lies by the police to cover it up, is common, not percentagewise, but numerically. But police frame-ups of blacks--for robbery, rape, murder--are virtually unheard of. There's no history of police framing blacks in Los Angeles or anywhere that I know of. That is not part of the black experience. It's nonsense. This just went right over the heads of that jury, of Darden, of Time magazine. Time said it was easy for the jury to buy the police frame-up theory, because all the jurors had to do was play back in their minds the tape of the Los Angeles police beating Rodney King. As if beating up King and framing Simpson were one and the same thing. The cops don't do frame-ups. Cochran sold this jury the police frame-up theory from its experience of police brutality.

[Q] Playboy: How do we know police don't frame? If someone with a camera hadn't captured the King beating, many white Americans would have never become so graphically aware of police brutality. Just because there aren't recorded examples doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

[A] Bugliosi: Then how come there wasn't a parade of black people taking the witness stand at the trial to say that they were framed by Fuhrman? Not one black took the witness stand to testify Fuhrman framed him. You know why? Because it's moonshine. Look, I'm not saying it hasn't happened. I'm saying it's virtually unheard of.

[Q] Playboy: The crux of the defense's argument was that Fuhrman did something wrong, and he only made it worse for himself by lying on the witness stand.

[A] Bugliosi: I'm not condoning what he did, but Fuhrman is not a criminal.

[Q] Playboy: The man was caught in a dramatic lie, and to the layperson, a lie under oath is perjury.

[A] Bugliosi: There's a serious question as to whether Fuhrman even committed perjury. Laypeople erroneously believe that all lies under oath are perjury. Granted, it's the most important element of the corpus delicti of perjury. But there is a second element: The lie has to concern some material matter. It must be relevant to an issue in the case. For instance, unless a witness' age or weight is somehow relevant to an issue in the case, their lying under oath about their age or weight is not perjury. Fuhrman's lie about not using a racial slur in the past ten years was not, in my judgment, perjury because it had nothing to do with whether Simpson was guilty or not guilty of these murders.

[Q] Playboy: The executive vice president of the National Lawyers Guild, James Lafferty, called Fuhrman's sentence of three years' probation and a $200 fine "a scandalous miscarriage of justice." He said Fuhrman received less than the amount imposed on people guilty of littering highways. "Not only did Fuhrman lie under oath, he also contributed to one of this country's biggest and most expensive judicial debacles."

[A] Bugliosi: Formal punishment is just one of the ways that you bring about justice. But it's not the only way. When Richard Nixon was guilty of obstruction of justice he didn't get any sentence at all. But he suffered. He left the presidency in disgrace. He lost the most powerful office in the world. You don't call that punishment? That's part of justice. Lafferty apparently isn't happy about the fact that Fuhrman, who did nothing wrong, woke up in the middle of the night, went to the crime scene, found evidence against Simpson and had his life ruined. He's a convicted felon who can't vote, can't even own a rifle. He has to go to a probation officer. That's not punishment enough for this guy, he wants more, right?

[Q] Playboy: Why are you so sympathetic to the man who may have cost the prosecution its case?

[A] Bugliosi: Why shouldn't I be sympathetic to him? He didn't frame O.J. Simpson. And the prosecution joined in the vilification of him. Marcia Clark said to the jury, "Do we wish this man had not existed on the face of this planet? Answer, yes." What she should have done was mitigate the damage. You point out that the last time Fuhrman used the N word was in 1988, seven years before he testified. You point out that he had black friends, that he got up three mornings a week to play basketball with them. That he worked hard to free a black man charged with the murder of a white man. His mother called me a few months ago and was crying over the phone. She said, "You're the only one who stuck up for my son." And she sent me a beautiful little painting of hers to show her appreciation. But it was easy to stick up for him, the guy did nothing wrong! He couldn't have framed Simpson if he wanted to. Now he's going to his probation officer and Simpson is playing golf.

[Q] Playboy: And you've agreed to write an introduction to Fuhrman's book.

[A] Bugliosi: Because he's one of the biggest victims in this entire case. I'm trying to bring out the truth.

[Q] Playboy: In the criminal trial, race came to matter more than the evidence. Was this inevitable?

[A] Bugliosi: This was not a racial case. It was simply a case of a man who happened to be black being tried for murdering his former wife and her male companion. Nothing more, nothing less. Cochran, showing no respect, no concern for the black community, blatantly and cynically exploited the black community to its long-term detriment, just to help his client, who is black in color only. Cochran is viewed as a hero when the black community should view Cochran for what he is.

[Q] Playboy: Which is?

[A] Bugliosi: Johnnie Cochran, as opposed to Simpson, hadn't turned his back on the black community through the years. Cochran's law firm is almost all black. He contributes heavily to black causes. But when it came to crunch time, he told the black community to take a walk. Because he was inciting them, working them up into an emotional lather. And he didn't give a damn. There's a tremendous amount of antiblack sentiment in this country as a result of this verdict, anger stemming from Cochran's actions. This has already manifested itself at the ballot boxes in the form of resistance to affirmative action, welfare and other social programs important to blacks.

[Q] Playboy: Cochran said about Jeffrey Toobin that his opinions really are racist in their implications: that the jurors weren't very smart. The same comment can apply to you as well. Does Cochran have a point--or is he still manipulating race issues?

[A] Bugliosi: He's playing the race card. I'm not denigrating blacks at all. Remember, there were three whites on the jury, too. What does their color have to do with it? They were stupid people, for Christ's sake! How do we know they're stupid? Well, one juror said, "What difference does it make if he used to beat Nicole? If you want to try him for wife beating, try him down the hall. It's not relevant." I mean, come on! Nicole was saying, "He's going to kill me." She told the police. And this juror said it wasn't relevant? How about the gal on Nightline who said Dr. Henry Lee--the top forensic sleuth who testified to the possibility of a second shoe print at the crime scene, which turned out to be a permanent indentation left in the concrete by one of the workers who laid the cement years earlier--was the most impressive witness because when he took the stand he gave them a nice smile? How about the one who said the DNA was valueless? She didn't pay any attention to it at all. Of course they're stupid people! It has nothing to do with their being black. Listen, no one is less racist than I am. In fact, show me another white public personality who within the past five years has spoken out in depth about how to substantially reduce the problem of police brutality against blacks in America. In an article (No Justice, No Peace) in the February 1993 edition of this magazine prompted by the Rodney King case and subsequent riot, I pointed out, with irrefutable statistics, that district attorneys around the country rarely ever prosecute the police for engaging in brutality and excessive force against members of minority communities. I denounced this practice and strongly urged district attorneys to commence criminal prosecutions against the very small percentage of offending officers who, by this conduct, stain the blue uniform of the rest of the force.

[Q] Playboy: What about the civil trial? Did Fred Goldman ever contact you to be involved with that?

[A] Bugliosi: Mr. Goldman called me two weeks before June 12, 1995. He said the statute on the wrongful death suit was about to run out--it's a one-year statute--and he wanted to know if I could handle it. At the time I thought there would be a guilty verdict, or at least a hung jury, so I told him I don't handle civil trials. First, the motions and the rules are different; second, I'm not practicing now; and third, I was working on book deadlines. Now we jump ahead: The trial's over, with a not-guilty verdict. I get another call from Goldman: "Did you change your mind?" I was busy trying to get my Kennedy book out, and civil work doesn't appeal to me. There's a blizzard of pretrial motions and I don't even have a secretary. My sister called me from Florida and put a guilt trip on me: "Why aren't you helping Mr. Goldman?" I started thinking that I was abandoning this guy. So I called him back about four days later and said, "Mr. Goldman, I still can't handle this case all by myself. You're going to have to hire a law firm on this thing. I'm working out of my house, I don't even have a computer, I work with my pencil. But I'll tell you what I'll do: I'll do the cross-examination of Simpson and the final summation. All the pretrial stuff I can't handle." Whereupon he told me that he had hired this big West Side law firm, and I haven't heard from him since.

[Q] Playboy: Should the civil trial have been televised?

[A] Bugliosi: I'm against cameras in the courtroom, because common sense tells you they're going to affect the testimony of some witnesses. How do you avoid the fact that you have witnesses up there knowing that they're talking to millions of people? People don't like to speak in public--either they're going to be a little more hesitant to speak up or they may embroider their testimony, in which case you're compromising the whole purpose of a trial. There's only one reason for a trial that I know of: to determine whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty of the crime. I know of no secondary purpose to educate the public.

[Q] Playboy: Alan Dershowitz believes, "The tragedy is that the world will not be able to judge for itself whether justice was done because of the ban on TV cameras. And for justice to be done fully, it must also be seen to be done."

[A] Bugliosi: Dershowitz may have a point. There's an argument to be made that in this case perhaps cameras should have been allowed, only because they were permitted in the first trial. If there is a judgment against Simpson it may give blacks the appearance of impropriety, and the appearance is the equivalent of reality. So there's a problem there.

[Q] Playboy: Dershowitz says that "both juries could be absolutely right even if one acquits and the other finds liability on precisely the same evidence."

[A] Bugliosi: I agree with that. But I don't agree that the first jury was right.

[Q] Playboy: Will Simpson be allowed back into society if the verdict goes his way again?

[A] Bugliosi: No, I don't think so. He will get back into society to a certain degree, but there are just too many people who are absolutely convinced of his guilt.

[Q] Playboy: Is it possible that Simpson has effectively blocked out what happened the night of the murders?

[A] Bugliosi: I find that completely farfetched. I think he's a psychopath. He has no conscience. In his mind he's O.J. Simpson, she was a bitch and had it coming. During the slow-speed chase he supposedly told his mother on the cellular phone, "Ma, it was all her fault." Well, the defense would have obviously argued that what he meant was, she was hanging around with the wrong group of people and that's why the murders happened. But I think you and I know what he meant. I was asked on a talk show--it was his birthday--what would I give Simpson as a gift? I said a conscience, so he can suffer.

[Q] Playboy: What did you think of the judge who ruled that Simpson could have his children back?

[A] Bugliosi: The judge was off base; there was no excuse for her to do what she did. All she had to do was wait until the civil trial was over. By not waiting it can only be helpful to Simpson for the jury to know that he got custody, particularly in the area of damages, because the jury might think whatever damages they award would not only be punishing him but also his innocent children. Simpson has gotten every conceivable break in the world.

[Q] Playboy: You've said that you've seen many murderers in your life, but none approached Simpson for audacity. Not even Charlie Manson?

[A] Bugliosi: No, no. Manson would not do this. Manson certainly was more evil than Simpson. Manson wanted to murder as many people as he could, but there was an element of honesty to him. Normally a defendant never talks to the prosecutor until he's on the stand, but Manson was always wanting to talk to me, trying to get control over my mind. And when we talked I'd say, "Charlie, you're not fooling me, I know you're responsible for these murders." He'd say, "Yeah, I'm responsible for these murders the way violence on TV is, the way the. Beatles are." Instead of saying, "Vince, you know I had nothing to do with these murders." He wouldn't do that, there was a slight element of honesty about him. But I've never seen anyone with the guts of Simpson. Can you imagine, a couple of days after nearly decapitating Nicole to refer to himself as a battered husband?

[Q] Playboy: One last Simpson question: What if he really didn't do it?

[A] Bugliosi: [Laughs] What if I had wings and could fly? What if he didn't do it? Jesus, then all the people like me owe him a big apology. The question isn't, Did he or didn't he do it. The question is, Is it possible for him to be innocent? And the answer is, He can't be innocent. Not in the world in which we live. Only in a fantasy world can you have the Himalayan mountain of evidence against him like this and have him be innocent. If he's innocent then these two poor people are still alive.

[Q] Playboy: Your outspokenness has definitely made you a media darling. How has it affected your life?

[A] Bugliosi: People see me on TV or hear me on radio and think I want this. I cringe every time I hear from the media. I turn everyone down. I even turned down David Brinkley and they kept calling back until I went on. But I got more than 500 requests during the trial and turned down 95 percent. I had no desire to see my mug on TV and I don't view myself as a celebrity.

[Q] Playboy: Because you're not afraid to say what's on your mind, you're labeled by some as opinionated and arrogant.

[A] Bugliosi: People say I'm an extremely opinionated person. If opinionated means that when I think I'm right I try to shove it down everyone's throat, they are correct. But if opinionated means that I have opinions on a lot of things, you'd have to search far and wide to find people of fewer opinions than I have. As for arrogant, I am arrogant and I'm kind of caustic. I'm a little more arrogant and abrasive vis-à-vis the Simpson case than I normally am because I'm angry here. The great majority of people I deal with are hopelessly incompetent, so there's an air of superiority about me.

[Q] Playboy: You were pretty angry when you prosecuted Manson. Which case was bigger: Manson's or Simpson's?

[A] Bugliosi: The Simpson case is ten times bigger than the Manson case. Manson was a lot bigger in Europe than Simpson was because Roman Polanski is from there, as was one of the victims.

[Q] Playboy: The Manson case put you in the spotlight and really changed your life. How did you see it differently from your co-prosecutors?

[A] Bugliosi: When I first got on the case my co-prosecutor, the LAPD, was talking about robbery and about conventional motives. As soon as I saw the writing on the wall and helter skelter and the fact that there was very little taken--if anything at all--from the murder scene, I immediately started thinking that these murderers are trained, their motive is going to be bizarre. It turned out to be even more bizarre than I expected.

[Q] Playboy: Even though we've seen murderers such as John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Richard Ramirez, you still believe that Manson is the most frightening murderer of them all. Why?

[A] Bugliosi: Manson is more dangerous than the other killers we've had in America because he possesses two characteristics that don't normally coexist in the same human being. The first is that he wanted to kill everyone. The other is his phenomenal ability to dominate and control. I probably couldn't persuade someone to go to the local Dairy Queen to get a milk shake for me. Here's this guy getting people to kill for him and having no remorse for the murders they commit. Normally, if someone wants to murder everyone he's not going to have this trait of control and domination. When you have both of these characteristics in one person then you have a Hitler type. A Manson type.

[Q] Playboy: Had somebody bought some of Manson's songs early on, would Manson have become a pop idol rather than a cult figure of such evil?

[A] Bugliosi: Could be. That's what he wanted more than anything else. If someone had bought Hitler's paintings in Vienna in 1918 maybe we wouldn't have had World War Two. People say that Manson didn't have a good childhood. His mother was always taking off. She'd turn him over to friends for a couple hours and then would disappear for weeks or months. But there are thousands of people who have similar backgrounds, and they don't end up mass murderers.

[Q] Playboy: Manson receives more mail than any other inmate in the history of the U.S. prison system. His case has continued to intrigue millions of people the world over. Do you think you might have had anything to do with that?

[A] Bugliosi: To a limited degree.

[Q] Playboy: Well, Alex Ross wrote in The New Yorker that your book Helter Skelter is too strong for its own good. "Bugliosi aggrandized a savage con man into the archconspirator of the age. The author deserves thanks for insuring that Manson will undoubtedly never leave jail, but the book that maintains his infamy also maintains his fame."

[A] Bugliosi: It's a valid point. But are you suggesting I shouldn't have written the book? When the trial was over I kept expecting someone of Truman Capote's stature to write a book about the case. But there was no one, and that's when I decided to do it.

[Q] Playboy: What's harder, being a trial lawyer or a writer?

[A] Bugliosi: Writing. I don't care to write. I don't even view myself as a writer, though it's what I do for a living. I view myself as a lawyer who happens to have gotten into writing. My wife doesn't want me to denigrate my writing ability. She says a lot of people like the way I write. But to me a real writer is someone who sits down and creates stuff. I don't create anything, I just work with documents, transcripts and police reports, and I interpret. I don't have any aspiration to be a great writer. That's why most of my books have co-authors.

[Q] Playboy: In Helter Skelter you wrote that Manson became the high priest of antiestablishment hatred. Do societies need dark figures to balance things somehow?

[A] Bugliosi: People have said to me that you must have evil because without it people wouldn't appreciate goodness. Well, I'd rather eliminate all the atrocities, the Holocaust and all that shit and not appreciate good. Just have it where people don't kill one another. I would be willing to sacrifice this beautiful revelation of good if we didn't have all this other stuff.

[Q] Playboy: Should any of the Manson people--Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, Leslie Van Houten, Robert Beausoleil, Charles Watson--ever be paroled?

[A] Bugliosi: Nope. Rehabilitation is the least important reason we put people behind bars. There are two other reasons: deterrence and retribution. That's why we have laws, to deter prospective criminals from violating the laws. And retribution is another name for justice. How can you have justice without retribution? Atkins was convicted of eight murders. This is 26 years later--that's less than three and a half years a murder. Not enough.

[Q] Playboy: You've written a controversial book about how to end the drug crisis in America. How serious is the drug problem in relation to other social and economic issues?

[A] Bugliosi: I view it as the most serious internal crisis this nation has faced since the Civil War. And that's why we have to take drastic, revolutionary measures. The Gulf war showed what this nation does when it's serious about something as colossally insignificant in the scheme of things as the price of oil. Within a couple of months we mobilized 500,000 troops and got the support of 28 nations. We're not serious about solving this drug problem. Carter, Bush and Clinton are all good people, but they're not going to cross the street in the rain without an umbrella to solve the problem because it's erroneously perceived to be insoluble. But if you start throwing presidents out of office because they're not solving the drug problem, a cure will be found very quickly.

[Q] Playboy: What would you do if you were president?

[A] Bugliosi: The easiest thing to do would be to use the muscular approach. Send down a mission to seize and apprehend the architects and authors of this cocaine blitz into America. Cocaine is the source of crack, which is at the root of the orgy of despair and bloodshed in our inner cities. We have to go to the source of the problem. We know we can't eradicate coca because it grows all over the world at elevations between 1500 and 6000 feet. Education doesn't work. Virtually every (continued on page 174)Vincent Bugliosi(continued from page 62) adult who uses drugs is aware of the danger and doesn't care. We can't arrest our way out of this problem. There is no way we can stop this nation's appetite for drugs, and there's no way we can stop drugs from being brought into this country. The entire armed forces of this country could not interdict cocaine coming into the U.S. What's the real source? It's the minds of the people on top. The coca fields don't have feet of their own, the laboratories don't have hands of their own. There are people at the top of the pyramid, such as the Medellín and Cali cartels, which are responsible for about 85 percent of the cocaine coming into this country. If these people decide they don't want to do it anymore, it's not going to happen anymore. Now, how do we get them to decide they don't want to do it?

[Q] Playboy: Good question.

[A] Bugliosi: Send expeditionary forces, maybe 2000 DEA or FBI agents, down to Colombia, grab these people by the scruffs of their necks and bring them back here where they can be tried in a separate court system and be given the death penalty. Once one of these drug leaders is executed and his successor reads about it, the drugs are not going to come here. They're going to go to Europe.

[Q] Playboy: You make it sound simple, but the drug lords run empires. They have billions of dollars. They surely could mobilize resistance. They could even send assassins to our country to eliminate leaders or drop bombs on Wall Street.

[A] Bugliosi: That's just far-fetched. They are not going to take on the U.S. by starting to assassinate our people. How do they possibly think they could survive? These people don't have a nation behind them. They don't have a fleet of ships and airplanes. We're talking about gangsters who are on the run, like Pablo Escobar running from one place to another in his underwear. They're small-time next to a nation.

[Q] Playboy: A nation or an army wasn't needed to blow up the federal building in Oklahoma or to bomb the World Trade Center in New York.

[A] Bugliosi: I guess we shouldn't go after any country then, under that argument. But they're not going to do that. They want to live. They're not stupid people. These people are rational businesspeople. We have the power to stop them and solve the problem within six months, if we have the spine to do it.

[Q] Playboy: You acknowledge that some of your proposals to end money laundering would infringe on personal liberties, but would be necessary because of the severity of the problem. Aren't you crossing a line here?

[A] Bugliosi: This is an immense problem. Our children are dying, the war on drugs has been going on for 70 years, it has infected the very fiber of this country. Are you telling me that you'd rather have the problem? I know you're playing devil's advocate, but what you're saying is, "Let's not do it because there's a problem." It's like the Los Angeles County prosecutor's office in the Simpson case: There's a little problem--let's lie down and play dead.

[Q] Playboy: Wouldn't it be a lot easier just to legalize drugs and deal with them the same way we do alcohol and firearms?

[A] Bugliosi: I don't view legalization as a solution to the drug problem. I view it as a solution to drug-related problems. The courts would be cleaned up overnight. You would have 25 times fewer robberies and burglaries. It would substantially reduce violence. On balance it seems that legalization would have more benefits than the present prohibition. However, using drugs is bad, and if you legalize, chances are use would go up.

[Q] Playboy: What do you think about the Clinton administration's decision to go after doctors in California and Arizona who prescribe marijuana for patients?

[A] Bugliosi: Marijuana use is not even a true crime. It's not inherently wrong. If you didn't have a statute to prohibit it no one would think it would be wrong to smoke a marijuana cigarette. Here you have the people of a state saying it's lawful in a limited situation, where someone is on his or her deathbed and we're trying to alleviate some of the pain--even if marijuana eliminated no pain at all but had a placebo effect, who gives a damn? These people are dying. We give them morphine, which comes from the opium poppy. And you have the ridiculous, hypocritical Clinton administration--and Clinton is better than the Republicans--fighting this. The Republicans--who I thought were all in favor of states' rights--are happy about this. I'm disappointed in President Clinton. It's inexcusable for him to say we're going to treat these doctors like criminals.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever tried drugs? Smoked a joint?

[A] Bugliosi: No. I've never even smoked a cigarette.

[Q] Playboy: Where would you place yourself on the political spectrum?

[A] Bugliosi: I'm kind of a moderate. I'm not a conservative and I'm not a law-and-order fanatic. I'm suspicious of people who wear their patriotism on their sleeves. It's usually better left inside.

[Q] Playboy: Back in 1972 you decided to run for district attorney of Los Angeles County. Why?

[A] Bugliosi: I'll tell you how it happened. Joe Busch, my boss, had a pretty serious drinking problem and was not running the office well. I had no interest in politics. I used to teach one night a week at the Beverly School of Law, and one of my students asked why I didn't run for D.A. Little by little he talked me into it. My state of mind was that I was running to be the head of a law office. I'd increase the conviction rate, I'd have a training program, Ralph Nader was supporting me. Well, it turns out that the D.A.'s office is a political office, you have to raise money, get endorsements. I didn't know anything about this stuff.

[Q] Playboy: Bill Boyarsky in the Los Angeles Times called it the most vicious campaign he had ever covered. What made it so vicious?

[A] Bugliosi: I was going to start investigating corruption in L.A. I was naive and stupid, talking about going after people who were polluting the air and those who were defrauding the consumer, instead of lying low and getting into office and then getting into it. I started talking about what I was going to do and they ganged up on me. It was the entire establishment of Los Angeles County. The newspapers ganged up on me, the corporations, even the union leaders. On my side, I had several police departments supporting me, I had college students, rank-and-file union people. Joe won and I left the office after that.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you decide to run for attorney general two years later?

[A] Bugliosi: Why do you want to get into all this stuff? I don't want to get into all this political mess.

[Q] Playboy: Had you won, might you have tried for governor? President?

[A] Bugliosi: No, I don't care for politics. I can't tell you the number of people who have come to me and said, "Run for county supervisor or mayor." I have no interest at all. Governor doesn't appeal to me. President is a turnoff.

[Q] Playboy: What's your take on our current president?

[A] Bugliosi: Clinton has been a pretty good, effective president. And he's probably one of the brightest men we've ever had in the Oval Office. I don't view him as a strong leader, however, and his credibility could definitely be better. He's as elusive as mercury.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think that Paula Jones should be allowed to press her sexual harassment suit against the president while he's in office?

[A] Bugliosi: The most prominent paper in the country is The New York Times, and its editorial board is at the top of the pinnacle. Several months ago it said, unbelievably, that the Paula Jones thing should go to trial now, that Clinton isn't above the law. Here you have the most powerful, most important and busiest man on the face of this earth, and you have this incredibly silly lawsuit filed a couple of days before the statute of limitations would have run out, and the editorial board of the Times spouts the platitude that no one is above the law. Well, of course, you goddamn simpleminded bunch of idiots, no one is saying that Clinton is above the law. However, you do treat certain people differently under the law. You treat him differently while he's president. You have the will of millions of people under a democratic process who want this man to guide and shepherd the destiny of this country for the next four years. You're going to let someone like Jones come in with a civil lawsuit and potentially tie up the office of the presidency? It could go on for a month! These simpletons at the Times apparently don't know the difference between treating someone differently and being above the law. We treat diplomats, minors, elderly people differently under the law. We give many people immunity from prosecution, even though they're guilty as sin, so we can go after other people. Yet the Times comes out with this stupid, ignorant, simplistic analysis saying Clinton is not above the law. The precedent--that a civil lawsuit can tie up the presidency--is mind-boggling! What you do in a case like this is you postpone it until his presidency is over. We continually balance interests in our society. Paula Jones' rights as an individual have to yield to the rights of millions of people who elected the president. She could wait three years before filing her lawsuit, but now that Clinton is president she can't wait a day longer to go to trial.

[Q] Playboy: President Kennedy's death created a flourishing book industry. How far along are you on your book about his assassination?

[A] Bugliosi: Maybe two thirds of the way. It's getting into two volumes, which may affect its marketability. There's a book out just about every week and they're all focused on conspiracy, and my view is that Oswald acted alone.

[Q] Playboy: That was also Gerald Posner's view in his widely praised book, Case Closed. What's going to make your book different from his?

[A] Bugliosi: I agree with all of Posner's conclusions--that Oswald killed Kennedy and acted alone--but I disagree with his methodology. There's a credibility problem. When he is confronted with a situation antithetical to the view he's taking, he ignores it or distorts it. I don't do that. I present the opposing side in the way it should be presented and try to knock it down. So my book will have more credibility and much more depth. Right now 85 percent to 90 percent of the American people believe in some conspiracy. I'm hoping after my book to cut that down to 65 percent or 60 percent. Then I will feel that I've achieved something.

[Q] Playboy: With your life as a lawyer, writer and commentator, are you a wealthy man?

[A] Bugliosi: People think I'm a millionaire, but there are lawyers in this town who've never been in a courtroom who can buy and sell me a thousand times.

[Q] Playboy: You mean you don't drive a fancy car or invest in art?

[A] Bugliosi: I'm primitive in that sense. My wife's embarrassed that I drive a 1989 Oldsmobile. She doesn't want to be seen in it and I don't blame her. She just got herself an Infiniti, so I usually borrow her car when I go to meetings in Beverly Hills because I don't want people looking down on me. If someone doesn't know me and I show up at a meeting with my car, they think I've fallen on hard times. But there's nothing I want, nothing I need, except maybe a new tennis racket.

[Q] Playboy: So there's no hidden art collection in some vault?

[A] Bugliosi: Not too many people have less traditional cultural taste than I do. Things such as opera, ballet, sculpture, paintings depress me. If you offered me a week at the Louvre or a week in a room with the daily newspaper I'd read the paper. I personally have no appreciation of art. Art is motionless, it's not representative of life. Life is motion and energy, so when I look at sculpture or paintings it's depressing. I also question the value of art. People pay not for the painting but for the name of the artist. What could be more artificial than the value of a product being primarily determined not by its quality but by the identity of the producer? Van Gogh's Sunflowers went for $40 million. It upsets me when I see nonsense like that. You could have someone do a virtually identical, maybe even better painting, and it's not worth anything.

[Q] Playboy: An artist usually acquires a name because of the quality of his or her work. Sometimes it takes generations to achieve. Van Gogh sold only one painting in his lifetime.

[A] Bugliosi: Well, I'm out of my depth here. The only areas of traditional culture that don't depress me are books and music. My favorite music is the Latin American standards that came out of Mexico and Cuba between the Twenties and Forties.

[Q] Playboy: Besides books and music, you must also enjoy sports, for you attended the University of Miami on a partial tennis scholarship. How good were you at tennis?

[A] Bugliosi: I got to the finals in the Miami Invitational once against Gardnar Mulloy, who, four years earlier, had been number one in the country. After that he won the Wimbledon doubles. Tennis was an enormous challenge to me growing up in Hibbing, Minnesota. Not many people played there, but there was a wall and I used to hit a ball against it all day. I never had a lesson and had the same grip for both my backhand and forehand. I won the Minnesota state high school tennis championship. Then I became the Northwest junior champion.

[Q] Playboy: What was your childhood in Hibbing like?

[A] Bugliosi: I had a simple childhood. I played basketball, football, baseball. Every Friday night I went to the cowboy movies. Wild Bill Elliott, the Durango Kid and the Boston Blackie serials were my favorites. I found jobs mowing lawns, working as a caddie, setting pins in the bowling alley, picking up garbage behind markets, painting the lines on the main street. My mother was at home cooking, my father worked in the ironore mines, then he had a grocery store, then he became a conductor on the railroad. My mother was the most feminine woman I've ever known and my father was the most masculine man. It was cute to observe the two of them. She was a dove, he was a lion. But he was the boss, he ran the home.

[Q] Playboy: Is that the way it is with you and your wife, Gail?

[A] Bugliosi: I'm in charge, yes.

[Q] Playboy: Who makes the important decisions in your family?

[A] Bugliosi: I do. We're getting into an area here where I'm sure to get attacked, but it seems to me that someone has to be the boss. It's childish for someone not to be the boss--like two kids in a sandpile saying, "I got my way this time, now it's your turn." Marriage, the family, it's an organization, a unit. And like any other unit, someone has to be in charge.

[Q] Playboy: Women are going to love reading this.

[A] Bugliosi: But this is not looking down upon a woman at all. If people don't agree that the man should be in charge then the question is, do they want the woman to be in charge? I'd like to see a feasible arrangement where you have two people and neither one's in charge. How do you succeed in anything in life if you have no one in charge and everyone is going off in different directions?

[Q] Playboy: Do you believe in equality in a marriage?

[A] Bugliosi: I believe in complete equality between men and women in every area except marriage. In marriage the woman has to take the subordinate role not because man is superior but because every unit has to have a leader, and the man is the more natural leader.

[Q] Playboy: So you see a woman as having a specific role to play in a marriage?

[A] Bugliosi: Unless it's not economically possible, I believe a woman's role is in the home. I don't view that as a subordinate role, as feminists do. Someone has to stay at home, take care of the children, cook for the family, and it's far more natural for the woman to fill this role. I don't know why feminists think that working in the highly competitive and treacherous business world is somehow superior to being at home. But hey, if that's what they want and the husband doesn't mind, that's fine. I just don't think that in the last analysis they're doing themselves any favors.

[Q] Playboy: Do you do any cooking?

[A] Bugliosi: No. Coffee is about all I can do. I can make toast.

[Q] Playboy: Does your wife like to go out more than you?

[A] Bugliosi: Yes.

[Q] Playboy: Do you find yourself going out more because of that?

[A] Bugliosi: Yes.

[Q] Playboy: When you go to a movie, who selects the film?

[A] Bugliosi: Normally, I will defer to her because movies are more important to her than they are to me.

[Q] Playboy: If she wants to go out and you don't, then what?

[A] Bugliosi: She goes out with girlfriends.

[Q] Playboy: What about your environment--who has furnished and decorated your house?

[A] Bugliosi: Oh, she has. There are people in and out of this house--I don't even know who they are. She takes care of all that stuff.

[Q] Playboy: Who pays the bills?

[A] Bugliosi: She has the checkbook, and she pays all the bills. She takes care of everything.

[Q] Playboy: How did you meet Gail?

[A] Bugliosi: She was only 16 and I was 20 and working as an assistant to the tennis pro for the city of Miami. I strung rackets and worked at the tennis shop and she was a young gal who came over there. We got married a year later. She deserves a Congressional Medal of Honor for living with me.

[Q] Playboy: You've been married for more than 40 years. Have you noticed things about yourself that have changed?

[A] Bugliosi: I'm 62 and I'm seeing some things for the first time. Eight years ago I was looking in the mirror and I saw my eyelashes, which I had never noticed before. To me, eyelashes are supposed to curl up and mine were these short, amorphous, rather hideous-looking hairs protruding straight down from the ends of my eyelids. I was amazed that they didn't inhibit my vision. Then, a few months ago I was about to go on national television and the makeup person was putting colored stuff on my face. She said, "I'll give you a mouth." What was she talking about? I looked in the mirror and for the first time I noticed this slit-like fissure that's been masquerading as a mouth for years and years. I used to have a mouth. But apparently when you get older your lips do a disappearing act and there's a thin seam across your face. I didn't know it until she said this.

[Q] Playboy: If you could have anything you wanted, besides a mouth, what would it be?

[A] Bugliosi: I just want to be left alone. That's what I want more than anything else. I've been so busy I don't have time to eat during the day. I've had to postpone dental and medical appointments. I haven't gotten back to Johnny Carson, who wanted to have dinner, play tennis. I had to turn down speaking at an Italian American event that President Clinton was attending. I'm working on multiple deadlines. I'm in negotiation with various networks--CBS, Showtime, Fox. I keep saying to myself, It's got to slow down. I'm still waiting to go back to my youth when my greatest moments were moments of solitude and I could hear my footsteps.

Simpson has a quizzical look on his face, like, "What? You're actually going to let me walk out of here?"

Even if marijuana eliminated no pain at all but had a placebo effect, who gives a damn?