Former Los Angeles police Detective Mark Fuhrman, whose discovery of a bloody glove in the O.J. Simpson murder case was later overshadowed by revelations that he repeatedly used racial slurs and lied under oath, has died at age 74, it was reported today.
TMZ, citing a family friend, reported that Fuhrman died at his home in Idaho after battling an aggressive form of cancer.
Fuhrman became one of the central figures in Simpson‘s 1995 murder trial after allegedly discovering a blood-stained glove outside Simpson’s Brentwood estate that prosecutors linked to the killings of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
His credibility later collapsed after audio recordings surfaced in which he repeatedly used racist language and made inflammatory remarks while discussing his experiences as a Los Angeles police officer.
During the trial, Fuhrman testified that he had not used the “n-word” in the previous decade. He later pleaded no contest in 1996 to a felony perjury charge stemming from that testimony.
Defense attorneys argued the recordings showed Fuhrman harbored racial bias and may have planted evidence in the case, helping fuel reasonable doubt among jurors. Simpson was acquitted later that year.
Fuhrman retired from the Los Angeles Police Department in August 1995 while the trial was still underway.
Appearing on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in 1997, Fuhrman acknowledged he had used the racial slur and expressed regret for falsely denying it during the Simpson trial.
“I owe everyone an apology, including you,” Fuhrman told Winfrey. “I wish I would have just said yes when I was asked that question.”
In the years following the Simpson case, Fuhrman wrote several true-crime books, hosted a radio program in Spokane, Washington, and worked as a television commentator and forensic analyst for Fox News.
In 2024, California’s Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training formally declared Fuhrman permanently ineligible to serve as a law enforcement officer in the state because of his felony conviction.