Room 1203: O.J. Simpson's Las Vegas Conviction

By Andy Caldwell

The basis of the A&E special OJ: Guilty in Vegas—an account of the notorious celebrity’s downfall by the detective who led the investigation.
 
Rod knocked on the door, and within a few moments, the door swung open and there was O.J. Simpson. This was and is a moment that is hard to reconcile in my mind. As I stood there—a detective tasked with investigating a crime and thinking I was going to conduct this interview just like any other—I was a little star struck . . .
 
In 1995, NFL great and movie star O.J. Simpson beat a murder rap for the death of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman. But in 2007 his luck with avoiding Lady Justice ran out in Las Vegas.
 
Written by the lead detective assigned to the case, Room 1203 is the true story of the convoluted and bizarre events surrounding a violent armed robbery of a sports memorabilia collector in a Vegas hotel. On that night, Simpson put an exclamation mark on his spectacular fall from the height of Hollywood’s glamour and glitz to a shadowy world of scams and schemers in Sin City.
 
This book provides details, insights, and facts not previously reported—and reveals the investigation that pieced the crime together and landed an arrogant man who believed he was above the law in a Nevada prison.
 
“Read it in two sittings. . . . Dispelled the idea that the robbery in Las Vegas was more of a misunderstanding than a real crime and that Simpson was merely trying to get back his own property.” —Dennis Griffin, bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of a Casino Mobster

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 19, 2017
• ISBN: 9781947290051

Book preview

Intro

On a warm Las Vegas evening in September 2007, O.J. Simpson led an assembly of armed henchmen into a hotel room at the Palace Station Hotel and Casino and held two men at gunpoint while they robbed them. Using violence and terror, Simpson stole property under shady circumstances he helped to create and then tried to sell to the world the lie that he was simply taking his own property back. It was an evening of deceit and arrogance that endangered the lives of innocent people and an evening that would result in one of America’s most infamous persons being sent to prison.        

On the night of Sept. 13, 2007, I was working as a robbery detective for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department with my partner, Det. Eddie LaNeve. With one call, a reported armed robbery in Room 1203 at the Palace Station, my life and career were transformed. The next year of my life was consumed with investigating the events surrounding O.J. Simpson’s decision to commit an armed robbery in a Las Vegas hotel and casino.

Former NFL star O.J. Simpson, who was surrounded by figures such as Robert Kardashian during his world-famous double-murder trial and who played the beloved Officer Nordberg from the Naked Gun series, had become a man who surrounded himself with thugs who make threats of violence when things don’t go their way. His fall from the grace he received from his adoring mainstream fans in the ’80s and early ’90s was remarkable. But in the sordid underworld of immorality, he was still able to enjoy a life where a different kind of fan would do anything to be around him.  

I found myself investigating a crime that at face value was incredibly simple. I also found that the media and much of the public wanted this robbery to be more than it was; people wanted this amazingly dramatic back story that either made his actions more egregious or more innocent. But it was the person of O.J. Simpson and the investment, both positive and negative, that people made in his rise and fall that made a simple investigation become complex and full of unexpected twists and turns. 

Chapter 1

Call to Robbery

Sept. 13, 2007, started out as a slower-than-usual Thursday evening for robberies in Las Vegas. The robbery section for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department was one of the more elite units on the department and detectives usually earned their way in by putting in hard work elsewhere first. The crime of robbery is often misunderstood and the word robbery is often used incorrectly to describe burglary. What sets robbery apart is its violent and personal nature. A robbery is when someone uses force or threats of force to take something from you; it’s someone walking up to you with a gun pointed at you and saying, Give me your money! or someone beating you with a bat before taking your watch. It is a life-changing crime to experience and often creates emotional scars that leave victims feeling unsafe, violated and paranoid and may require intensive therapy to recover from. It is a crime that few people commit and the monsters who do commit it have a violent tendency that leads them to commit it over and over until they are caught. It is a crime that rightly deserves lengthy prison sentences.

I was working swing shift as a robbery detective and when it was slow, my partner Eddie and I would leave the office to help uniformed officers handling lower-level robberies that would normally not get a detective to respond to. We heard the dispatcher broadcast a street robbery between two transients who lived in a dry flood control tunnel in the southwest part of Vegas. One of the subjects was reported to be armed with a knife and had taken a wallet from another homeless guy. By the time Eddie and I arrived, the uniformed officers already had the armed suspect in handcuffs and in the back of their black-and-white patrol car. 

  This type of call would normally take an officer and partner off the streets for about two hours; but for Eddie and me, we could get it done in about half the time because we specialized in robberies. This would be an easy one for us, but the suspect was a homeless man. Before Eddie was promoted to detective, he worked as a patrol officer in downtown Las Vegas where a majority of the vagrants lived in the late ’90s and early 2000s. Eddie earned his spot in the robbery section by working a decoy program in the downtown area. The decoy program ran for only a few years before the plug was pulled on it. I’m still not sure how none of our officers got seriously hurt being decoys. Officers of slight build are ideal candidates to play the decoy, because muggers are more likely to victimize people they can overpower. The decoy officer would volunteer and dress up like a drunken tourist—going as far as even spilling beer on the clothes to smell bad. The officer would wear a wire and have a safe word of help, and arrest phrase of What did you do that for? A team of four to eight officers in plainclothes would stay close, hiding in a van or nearby business so they would come running if they heard the officer call for help over the wire. It was rare the officer called for help, even when surrounded by five or six gangbangers harassing and pushing the officer around. The decoy would have a $20 bill hanging out of a pocket; most of the time, the officer would get pushed and threatened and the suspect would take the money and run. When the decoy said, What did you do that for? the rest of the officers would rush the suspect, surround him, and take him down. It was a fun operation for officers to work as long as they were not the decoys. I got to work a few of these with Eddie, but we were never the decoys because both of us are too big to make good victims.

The summer heat of Las Vegas extends into September and the daytime temperatures were still in the 100s; so the body odors are pretty pungent on most of the local transient population. Taking this arrest meant Eddie and I would have to load this suspect in my undercover cloth-seated Nissan Maxima and drive with him from our office to the jail in downtown Las Vegas behind the Fremont Street Experience. Although the trip to the Clark County Detention Center with a pungent transient would be as unpleasant as you can imagine, it was what we’d have to do before booking the suspect that made Eddie reconsider arresting this particular suspect. As part of the booking process, we would have to remove the suspect’s shoes and socks. The smell of removing a vagrant’s shoes is pretty bad—especially in the summer heat—but removing the socks is a whole different level of smell that few people will ever experience. Most of the time, the socks are stuck to the skin and, as the socks are peeled off, skin flakes off with them. The material of the sock often feels thicker than it looks from all the sweat and grime build-up. When the sock starts peeling away from the bottom of the heel, the smell hits its worst level; at times, it can be strong be enough to cause a gag reflex. After a couple of minutes pass, the smell becomes manageable and the booking continues like any other arrest.

Even though Eddie wasn’t excited to take the arrest, he still agreed it was the right thing to do. The only thing we needed was for one of the uniformed officers to transport the suspect back to our office and we would handle the rest. This was a win-win-win for the officers because they got to catch the bad guy, got the bragging rights of arresting an armed robber, and didn’t have to do the paperwork. It was also a win for us as detectives, because we were able to help out the uniformed officers—even though we would have to put up with the smell for a short time. 

At about 8:30 p.m., we had only been back at the LVMPD robbery office for a few minutes when my pager went off, alerting me there was a robbery that needed detectives to respond. All of the on-duty robbery detectives receive pager notifications when there is a robbery or kidnapping reported in the City of Las Vegas and the unincorporated areas of Clark County, which had a population of about 1 million people at that time. Each robbery detective was assigned a certain area of town as a specific area of responsibility. It just so happened when my pager went off, it was a reported armed robbery with multiple suspects at the Palace Station Hotel and Casino—in my assigned area. I felt horrible for the uniformed officer in the transient arrest who undoubtedly had his hopes up that he wouldn’t have to do the paperwork himself. Had the pager gone off five minutes later than it did, he would have been gone and I would have gotten someone else to cover the Palace Station robbery while Eddie and I did the paperwork. I think he could tell by our hurried footsteps toward him that we had bad news: he would have to finish the paperwork himself.

The information on the pager is limited to the nature of the crime: the location, an event number (which is a recordkeeping number assigned to any event resulting in police action) and basic suspect information. As a police officer, one of the hardest lessons to learn is that most of time, you have to work with limited information that cannot slow how you respond or react when you arrive. So Eddie and I grabbed our duty bags, jumped into my undercover Maxima and headed toward the Palace Station from our office. Within a block, Eddie’s phone started to ring; it was our supervisor, Sgt. Rod Hunt. Rod was a great boss. He always had a calm and quiet demeanor about him, but he was a physical fitness junkie so he looked like he could rip anyone’s head off with his hands at any given time. He did everything he could to help make our jobs easier; he trusted us to be cops and let us run investigations the best way we knew how, knowing we had the best interests of the victims and our community in our hearts. It was pretty normal for him to call when there was any reported robbery other than street robberies where no one was injured. He usually just wanted to know that we received the pager notification and were responding. But this was not an ordinary call. Eddie laughed for a moment and asked Rod if he was serious. Eddie is an awesome cop, but at times he is a little rough around the edges. I think his exact words to Rod were, Are you shitting me? Eddie listened for a minute or so and told Rod we were headed to the Palace Station and he would give him an update as soon as he knew something. When Eddie got off the phone, he laughed again and, with his New Jersey accent, told me there were multiple victims—and they were reporting one of the robbery suspects was O.J. Simpson.

The moment he told me that O.J. was possibly involved in an armed robbery was one of those moments I can never forget. My instant thoughts were: How is that even possible? No way could O.J. be that stupid! What if it really is him, the most notorious guy in America? Eddie and I were not just partners at work; we are also friends outside of work. For a few moments, Eddie and I forgot we were detectives and acted like two buddies who had just heard O.J. Simpson robbed someone. As we pulled into the parking lot of the Palace Station, we both quickly discounted the possibility of O.J. Simpson being involved in a robbery and regained our bearing as robbery detectives. 

The Palace Station is only a couple miles from our office, so we arrived within 15 minutes. The parking lot was pretty busy, but I was able to find a spot in the north lot by the main entrance. As we walked into the casino, the chaotic noise of slot machines could be heard in every direction. The seats at the slots and card tables were full for a Thursday evening. There were cocktail waitresses walking around give free drinks to anyone who was gambling. If O.J. Simpson had just committed an armed robbery, it was not going to slow down the activities of the casino floor. We walked to the security kiosk inside the main entrance of the casino, which is elevated so security officers get a better view of everything going on in the casino. I asked if a security officer could take us back to the security office. Las Vegas casinos have their own individual security forces that are larger than most mid-sized town police departments in America; they have dispatchers, advanced surveillance, militaristic command structure and most of the officers are armed. Because of the size of Las Vegas casinos, most police officers need security to show us where the security offices are. One of the security officers, an older gentleman wearing a uniform that from a distance could be mistaken for an LVMPD uniform, asked us to follow him. On the way, I asked him if he had any details about the robbery. He only knew the robbery happened in one of the rooms and the victims were in the main security office. I asked him if he had heard anything about O.J. Simpson being on the property that evening and he said no. Security forces at casinos are good about knowing if there are any high-profile guests on their property. Based on his response, I felt more that Rod’s information about O.J. being involved was wrong. 

The security guard walked us through the casino floor maze to a door people would never notice unless they were looking for it. In most casinos, the carpet and walls have a way of matching in a monotonous way that causes your eyes to focus on the slot machines and various games. People rarely notice the doors that lead to the working areas that keep all that money flowing and exchanging on the casino floor. He walked us through a large kitchen area with pots and pans clanging and an army of cooks hustling to keep the food flowing and the guests satisfied. Then he led us through an outdoor service area where bread was being delivered, into a hallway on the backside of the main building and to a door with an industrial-style buzzer. The security guard pushed the buzzer and the door was opened from the inside. Eddie and I were greeted by a man in a suit—one of the security supervisors who waved us into the main security office.

There was nothing fancy about this room. It was about 40-foot square with plain white walls and a couple of long folding tables with simple chairs. We walked in to see two large middle-aged men pacing around the room and talking loudly on their phones. One of the initial responding police officers, Officer Lewis, was also in the security office with the victims. The victims had flamboyant personalities and were understandably upset, but they were being so loud that they were distracting me from gaining any details of the robbery from Officer Lewis. I asked them to end their calls and relax so we could get a handle on what was going on, but they weren’t calming down quickly enough. Being mindful of the possibility these guys had just been robbed, our attempts to quiet them were at first polite. Eventually, though, it escalated to Eddie demanding they both sit down and be quiet for a minute. That was the beginning of what would be a rocky relationship between the victims and me. 

When the two men, Bruce Fromong and Alfred Beardsley, were able to slow down enough to see Eddie and I were there to help, they began to calm down on their own. Officer Lewis was able to provide me with some preliminary details, but they were limited at this point because when there are multiple witnesses and suspects, it takes time to reconstruct what happened. Fromong and Beardsley had consistently told the LVMPD patrol officers who were first to arrive that O.J. Simpson, along with some other men, had robbed them at gunpoint. Officer Lewis seemed skeptical of Fromong and Beardsley’s story and the security supervisor had already told me, It was never reported that O.J. Simpson had been on the property. After about five minutes, it became clear that I just needed to sit down with one of the victims and have him calmly explain what had happened that evening at the Palace Station. Between the two, Fromong was calmer at this time and a little more coherent. I singled out Fromong to try and get some basic details about what he alleged had happened. About this time, Det. Linda Turner and Rod arrived in the security office to help. Linda and I had gone to the police academy together and she had experience working some big cases, so I was glad to see her and Rod. I gave them what little information I knew and asked them if they could interview Beardsley. After Beardsley went to another room with Linda and Rod, Eddie and I prepared to begin a formal recorded interview with Fromong. Before I got my notepad and recorder situated to start the interview, I was already getting a little frustrated because Fromong was rambling about things such as how he had worked in the California Department of Corrections and so he knows how to handle situations like this. People react differently after they have been the victim of a violent crime, but it is pretty common for men to puff up their chest and act tough even when it is clear they are shaken up inside. This is what Fromong was doing, but because of how loud he and Beardsley were when I first arrived, my empathy was running a little short and I just needed him to stay focused on my questions. Before I start a recorded interview with a victim, I like to explain what I am doing and why I am doing it. Robbery victims can be very scattered in their thoughts and, without some direction, they often tell investigators stories that are all over the map because they will remember a detail they left out and will jump backward to something they already talked about or forward to something that does not make sense yet. I had to bluntly tell him to just stick to answering the questions I ask. He kept mentioning he was O.J. Simpson’s manager but also that O.J. robbed him. It was clear this was going to be a long interview before it even started.

Once I started recording, though, the interview went pretty well. One technique I use to keep victims on track is to ask simple questions and walk them through what had occurred, one question at a time. I was able to get Fromong to stay focused on my questions long enough to find out he lived in North Las Vegas and had come to the Palace Station that night for a pre-arranged viewing and possible sale of his sports memorabilia collection. He was there to meet Beardsley, who was the middleman for the sale to a client named Tom Riccio. Fromong did not know Riccio, but knew Riccio owned a memorabilia business in Los Angeles. Fromong met Beardsley and Riccio in the hotel lobby, where Riccio them the buyer was going to come to a room Riccio had reserved to view the memorabilia. Riccio led them into Room 1203, followed by a bellman pushing a cart full of Fromong’s sports memorabilia. While Fromong was waiting for what he thought was a potential client, O.J. Simpson came in the room with five other men. Two of them had handguns and the group took Fromong’s memorabilia collection at gunpoint. Fromong was unwavering in claiming O.J. Simpson was one of the suspects. At this point, I was stuck with two possibilities: I’m either talking to a complete nut job or O.J. Simpson did really rob this guy. I needed to get more details from Fromong, but I also needed to know if this guy was wasting everyone’s time. Eddie went up to the surveillance room to ask if he could review the video to see if O.J. Simpson was, in fact, on the property while I continued with the interview. 

I took a break from the interview and I walked out to a hallway just outside the security office to have a little privacy. I called Eddie to see if he had found anything. Initially, Eddie was quiet and short with answering me; it was clear he was walking to a spot where he could share information without others hearing. Within a moment, he started to talk a little muffled and said, You’re not going to believe this. It is O.J. Simpson and he did come in with some other dudes and they all left carrying shit they didn’t have when they went in. I was a little shocked and I asked him, Are you sure it’s O.J.? He responded with a little laughter and a little profanity in his New Jersey accent telling me, There’s no mistaking that fucker—it’s him! At that moment, I realized this was going to be huge and I would have to make sure we would not give anyone reason to question our work.

Chapter 2

Victims and Another Suspect

So now I know something actually happened and it involved O.J. Simpson, but I’m still feeling uncomfortable with Fromong’s story. It just didn’t make sense. At this point in