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LAS VEGAS - A furious O.J. Simpson plotted and led an amateur sting operation on a pair of sports collectors in a Las Vegas hotel room to retrieve memorabilia the onetime "trial of the century" defendant believed was stolen from him, an auction house owner testified today.
Thomas Riccio, taking the witness stand in a hearing to determine if Simpson and two co-defendants will face trial on kidnapping, armed robbery and burglary charges, portrayed the former football star as the driving force behind the Sept. 13 confrontation at the Palace Station Hotel and Casino.
But Riccio said Simpson, 60, considered the autographed footballs, plaques and other items seized at gunpoint from collectors Alfred Beardsley and Bruce Fromong to be his stolen family heirlooms and never discussed using weapons or violence.
"O.J. was going to come into the room and identify the stuff and hopefully they were going to turn it over to him and we were going to call the police. That was basically the plan," Riccio told a packed Las Vegas courtroom.
"O.J. was mainly the one plotting this out," Riccio said. "We all were sort of (plotting it), but he was mainly the one making the decisions."
Riccio said he was stunned when at least one of five men who stormed into the hotel room with him and Simpson brandished a gun, because that was never part of the plan.
"There was no reason to have a gun," he said. "They were getting the stuff back without a gun."
Riccio said Simpson later seemed "depressed" Fromong and Beardsley had called police. He said Simpson asked him to deny that guns were involved.
Prosecutors played an audiotape of that message in court, where Simpson is heard saying: "What are they talking about, a gun? Nobody had any guns. Where did that shit come from?"
Two of Simpson's initial co-defendants in the case, Charles Cashmore and Walter Alexander, have pleaded guilty to lesser charges in exchange for their cooperation. Michael McClinton has also agreed to enter a guilty plea.
Simpson and his two remaining co-defendants, Stewart and Charles Erlich, are charged with a dozen criminal counts including conspiracy, kidnapping, armed robbery and burglary.
Riccio testified Beardsley contacted him in August to sell a collection of stolen Simpson memorabilia and that he quickly contacted Simpson, Los Angeles police and the FBI.
Finding the police and FBI uninterested, Riccio said, he and Simpson ultimately came up with a plan to meet Beardsley in Las Vegas on the pretext that a buyer was interested, then confront him and take back the stolen memorabilia.
Earlier in the day, Fromong, 53, told the court Simpson and the other men stormed the hotel room in "military invasion fashion" and stole the items of memorabilia.
"The first person in that I saw was a black gentleman that came towards me," he said, indicating Stewart. "A lot of other guys came in behind him. A second man came in with a drawn semi-automatic (weapon) which was pointed at me."
On cross-examination, Simpson defence attorney Gabriel Grasso questioned Fromong's account, pointing out that he didn't initially tell police that anyone had brandished a gun.
Grasso also suggested Fromong was trying to profit from the incident. Grasso displayed Fromong's website for the court, which offers several items of memorabilia described as "IDENTICAL to the one OJ stole from me!!!!!!"
Simpson, who parlayed his fame as an athlete into a career in Hollywood, was acquitted of the June 12, 1994 murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ron Goldman after the sensational "trial of the century" that transfixed America and much of the world.
A civil court jury later found Simpson liable for the deaths and ordered him to pay $33.5 million ($44 million) in damages to the victims' families, a judgment that remains largely unpaid.
- REUTERS
