Mark Fuhrman dies at 74

By Ben Olson
Reader Staff

Former Los Angeles Police Detective and longtime resident of Sandpoint and Spokane, Mark Fuhrman, died May 12 in Kootenai County. He was 74 years old.

In 1996, Fuhrman was convicted of perjury during his testimony at the O.J. Simpson murder trial. He was one of the first police detectives sent to investigate the 1994 killings of Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman in Los Angeles. Fuhrman’s claim that he’d found a bloody glove at Simpson’s home came under fire during the trial as the defense raised the prospect of Fuhrman’s racial bias. Under oath, Fuhrman testified that he’d never used anti-Black racial slurs, but recordings showed he had used one particular epithet repeatedly. 

After the Simpson trial, Fuhrman retired from the Los Angeles Police Department and moved to North Idaho, living in Sandpoint for some time before settling in Kootenai County. Fuhrman’s relocation to North Idaho helped establish a trend of Southern California police officers also moving to North Idaho. Today, reports claim that over 500 retired police officers have moved to “blue heaven,” as they sometimes refer to North Idaho.

Prior to his work with the LAPD, Fuhrman had enlisted in the Marines. After the murder trial and subsequent perjury conviction, Fuhrman became a frequent Fox News commentator and also participated in radio shows. He wrote the book Murder in Brentwood about the slayings, followed by other true-crime books.

Fuhrman told reporters after his conviction that he was not a racist, should not have used racist language, and also that he believed he’d been made a “scapegoat” in the case.

Alan Dershowitz, a lawyer and strategist on Simpson’s defense “Dream Team,” said Fuhrman was a “much better detective than he was a witness.”