Mark Fuhrman, the former Los Angeles police detective whose testimony became a flashpoint during the O.J. Simpson murder trial, has died at 74, Kootenai County Chief Deputy Coroner Lynn Acebedo said.
Fuhrman died May 12, Acebedo said, adding that the county does not release the cause of death as a rule.
Fuhrman was one of the first two detectives assigned to investigate the 1994 killings of Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman, in Los Angeles. During the trial, his credibility came under attack after the defense raised the prospect of racial bias.
Under cross-examination, Fuhrman testified that he had never made anti-Black racial slurs in the past decade, but a recording showed he had used them repeatedly.
Alan Dershowitz, a prominent lawyer and law professor who served as a legal strategist on Simpson’s “Dream Team,” said Fuhrman “was a much better detective than he was a witness.” Dershowitz also said Fuhrman’s actions helped the defense, citing his use of the “n” word.
Fuhrman retired from the Los Angeles Police Department after Simpson’s 1995 acquittal. He later moved to Idaho with his family and set up a 20-acre farm, where he raised chickens, goats, sheep and llamas.
In 1996, Fuhrman was charged with perjury and pleaded no contest. He later worked as a TV and radio commentator and wrote the book “Murder in Brentwood” about the killings.
Separately from the criminal case, a civil trial jury found Simpson liable in 1997 and ordered him to pay $33.5 million to relatives of Brown and Goldman, and he later served nine years in prison on unrelated charges before his death. Fuhrman died in Las Vegas of prostate cancer in 2024 at the age of 76.
Kato Kaelin, a friend of Brown who also testified in the murder trial, wrote on X that he wanted to “respectfully acknowledge” Fuhrman’s death and hoped Fuhrman’s loved ones could find peace, saying their lives were “indelibly linked” through the decades-ago case.
This story has been updated to correct the last name of Brown’s friend who testified in the murder trial; he is Kato Kaelin, not Kaitlin.