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There's one man on the planet that knows what it's like to bust OJ Simpson and be responsible for putting him in prison. We have him on the show today. One degree is scandalous with this man over here. Hi, Tom, Senator, I'm Kato Kaelin. Yes, yes. Yeah, and I was. I read some of the our guests, if I'm going to mention my name is Andy Caldwell. What an incredible story. What an incredible documentary. What just the room. 2:48. For those that don't know, that's the room where O.J. was in Vegas. It's incredible palace station room. That's incredible because he wasn't staying there, but that's where the whole crime went down, right? Busted into there. Now I was in Vegas that weekend. I know I've talked about that story, but it's really interesting now that we're having A.. I was there. I was in the palms that weekend. My friend was having his birthday party. We had the real world suite, so we were all having dinner the night before at Nine Steakhouse. O.J. is there, so you know that he's there at staying at the hotel? Absolutely. It was that weekend. That's amazing. And he joy. He came to our table when we were eating dinner. He knew some of us, blah blah blah. But Kato, the funniest thing about it was he had a film crew that he hired following him around, that he was trying to turn into a pilot for a reality show. And it's really to me, you can't make this up, right? And the interesting thing was, he wasn't him. He didn't seem himself like he wasn't interesting. He wasn't entertaining. He was kind of boring when he was saying, Well, I think there's the cameras on him. He's not a performer, I'm not sure, but it was odd and he was like, he seemed a little bit like a lost dude, like he was really looking to hang out with some people. Well, I think I don't know, sort of for fact if he's had a crew with him. I think he's got a kind of a he can tell a person can tell of a person at a table just not like him or that that's going to take your energy away. And I'm sure people did not like him. I don't know. But he was still an attraction, right? Anywhere he goes, there's a buzz. People are still everybody's getting their picture taken with him. Yeah, right. And they want to be around him. He had it, man. He could have been playing golf the rest of his life. And we're going to get the entire story. It's great. And boy, did he pay a price, right? He got the wrong judge, when you say. I think so. Yeah. Anyway, so Kato, Kloss, at least for December, right? Kato, Kloss, I do. The Kato. The other 11 months. It's Caitlyn, the the one month December. It's Kato claws. Oh man, I love it. You got your packers playing well. It's life is good for holiday scenes. You know what? December 21st is the longest, shortest day, longest night. And after that, it gets brighter every day. Well, 20 24 is going to be the year Kato, by the way, and Kato and I were hanging out together last Saturday. He came out to my neighborhood and to our good friends, Kyle and Christine. They throw the best parties in L.A. period. I just told her on Instagram. I posted, I said, Best Christmas party ever. Incredible. We could play a little video just to show you a little bit about it. But Kato, were you expecting that? We're expecting the dance floor? Were you expecting the Rockettes? Were you expecting 350 people? Everything was the Rockettes. Everything was great. I just didn't like the front door of charging me $10000 to enter. Yeah, I was always that was. I thought my woman's. My wife got it in free day to pay. What is it, ladies night? It was cool. You know, everybody else was paying fifteen thousand. So. Oh okay. Well, you know this guy? Yeah. Great party. Great time. Very festive. I hope everybody's having a good time around the holiday season. What's the neighborhood like where you live? Is it exciting? Is it festive? The area, matt? They they shut the street down on Friday. Complete, put snow on it, you know, melt away. But they put snow. They've got it's really incredible with the streets going down. Bands playing and it's a once a Toluca Lake is where they do. They closed the street down the first week in December, the first Friday. Nothing like it, and it really makes me feel like I'm back in the Midwest for that one day. Yeah, a little slice of Americana. Yeah, it makes it feel good. Neighborhood. Yeah, it's wonderful. Yeah. Hey, for one night or for a few hours, people are not politically active. They don't care about any, you know, political, you know. Oh, and I got into a fistfight with The Grinch. Tell that story later. I can't wait to hear that. Yeah, yeah. Hey, by the way, if you get The Grinch on the show, maybe we could like have him say his side of the. Just for the record, not all green people are the same. I look forward to that, by the way. We do have a great list of guests coming up Fyre Festival, that was kind of a big one. If you think of some of the biggest festivals over the last 20 or excuse me, the biggest scandals over the last 20 25 years were wrapping it up with some really, really big names coming up, including today. Are you ready the end of this one? Yeah, let's do it. All right. This is there's going to be a good one. You remember O.J. busted in Vegas? He actually did time. The entire story of what went down September 2007, coming up right after this break. All right, kiddo, it is time to bring on the man who's done what nobody else on this planet to could do bring O.J. Simpson to justice, he did it. Eddie Caldwell, who was the star of a great documentary, and you and I were talking about it, but it's called O.J. Guilty in Vegas. I just watched it again on prime. I watch it for the first time a couple of years ago. Great doc. You watch twice because you love Vegas. Yeah, I do. I do. But I also love it. You know, there's just so much to talk about. Andy, you were fantastic in the documentary, and it was the documentary based off your book because you were the detective in Las Vegas that was part of the team that busted O.J.. We're getting it all into it. All the details. But then you wrote the book Room one, two or three, 12 03, which is a palace station. Yeah, where it all went down for O.J.. So give us the gist, the the timeline of you writing the book and then how the documentary happened. Yeah. So, you know, we sat out and I say we, my wife and I talked about writing the book just for posterity, right? We were going to publish it ourselves. And then we had a neighbor who said, Don't publish it yourself, you know, pitch it to an agent. See if somebody will publish it for you. I pitched it to an agent and an agent liked the idea and she picked it up and kind of without telling us she made this pitch to a showrunner who was interested in the story. And then they called us and they said, Hey, we'd like to do a documentary. They, you know, they kind of threw some ideas at us, and I initially said, no, but then I thought, You know what, my kids again, just kind of for posterity, right? It was a good thing. So we opted to do it. And you know, you end up seeing the finished product. Tom and I have been in Hollywood for 50 years between us, and you get a deal on the first try. I don't get this. I just don't. How does that work? Do you know it was a story? Yeah, I was. I was reading on a little bit of room. 2:48 Here's I want you to go through how you had the detectives in the hallway and you have three detectives waiting. You have this O.J. charm by letting you in. So is he aware that this is the thing where you're going to break in that scene? Know your detectives? This thing fascinates me. We explain this. The entire like Tom says a timeline. How this all worked. Well, do you want me to jump into the room? Because I mean, the room is one of those the initial contacts with O.J. that was an interesting, you know, kind of a. Or do you want me to walk through with the robbery and how we ended up with the room? I think the one of the cool things is is it's a what? It's a Saturday night in Las Vegas in September, so it's still hot. I was in Vegas that weekend. We'll talk about that later. But Kato, he's driving around with his partner. They're they're apprehending or they're they're dealing with a homeless guy, right? And and you're getting his socks off and you're dealing with some of that non glamorous police work that goes on, you know, just off the Vegas Strip and then you get a call, right? So why don't we start with that? That call that you got are the page on that Saturday night in September 2007. Sure. So yeah, we see the page come out right and it came out in an area that I'm responsible for, so I knew it was going to come to me. But then, sure enough, you know, my partner gets a phone call saying, Hey, you guys got to get over to the police station because there's been a robbery. You know, we learned that O.J. Simpson is involved. And, you know, my partner's response is, you know, kind of comical like, you know, shut up. Come on, that's not O.J., right. That's done right? Come on. He's not that stupid. At least you think that was right. So we also you don't think O.J., that oh, I'm sorry, I was going to say it all started on the O.J. is at Palace Station. You're going to come on. It's got to be a big win. Yeah, the Venetian man, he's got what he grew up on this thing. Circus Circus was sold out. And so we just go that way, man, and we're still kind of going with the thought process of. All right. Maybe something happened, but the whole thought of O.J. Simpson, that's just not, you know, that's not that's not real. So we get to the parking lot. We're in the same car and we get out of parking lot. And, you know, security in Vegas is pretty advanced. You get to those casinos and they know when someone famous is on property. So the first thought is, Hey, you know, when we get contact security, we'll say, Hey, was O.J. Simpson on property? So I go up. The security guard is sergeant, and I said, Hey, O.J. on property that night. The guy says, No, O.J. wasn't here. So now I'm even further down the rabbit hole of no way. O.J. Simpson's involved in this, which, you know, it's not great to kind of go off in a closed mind. And then we contact these the two victims right? Security has him off in a room, and these two victims are not. He is not. He gets themselves right. They're just they're odd characters and they're they're loud and they're making all this fuss over what happened. And both of them are big dudes, and I'm a pretty big guy too, you know? But both these guys are six three, six four. So everyone in the room is this big guy. And so they're all being so loud. We had to kick one of them out and we start our interview, right? And as we interview one of the victims, this guy is adamant that it's O.J. Simpson, right? And his story is so consistent that if he's making it up, the guy's going to be like a pathological liar or O.J. said. Like, you could check out that easily, right, it's either O.J. or it isn't right. Yeah. You think right? So you know, I said, my partner, I'm like, Hey, man, go up and check out the video, see if see what we can see right now. Keep in mind security. You said no, O.J.. It doesn't make sense. It's O.J.. No. Come on. He didn't. Armed robbery in a casino. That's yeah. So sure enough, I go back and I start interviewing and my phone rings, and it's my partner, Eddie, and he's up in the surveillance room and he calls me and you know, he's he's from New Jersey, so he's got a Jersey accent. He's like, You're not going to believe this. And it was pretty colorful. The explanation of O.J., he said. But it was O.J. Simpson walking in there and the gun got to be kidding me, right? And all of a sudden, you ever limp the whole thing. Yeah, yeah. Well, your life changed that night, right? And it's never been the same. You're in Washington now in a rural area of Washington as as a commander for a police department there. After you were a detective in Vegas, your life changes you. You do a little Hollywood stint there. You make the documentary, but you know, look, let's backpedal a little bit and people are going, What the hell is O.J. doing? Breaking into a hotel room at the palace station? He was staying at the Palms Kato, so he was living a little bit better that way. By the way, he was trying to sell a reality show of his own. That's what he was working on that weekend. But here's the thing I'm confused about. He was very, very protective of this memorabilia. This was some of the best stuff from his days at USC, the Buffalo Bills, the whole thing. What he had done is he had one of his boys clear out the house in Brentwood, Kato's house, you know, the week that he was getting raided. Right. So then it was in a storage locker. Somebody forgot to pay the bill and then these guys take it over. Why didn't he was out of jail? He never went to jail. O.J. Why didn't he get this stuff and move it to Florida? Why was it in a storage locker that long? And, by the way, also was any of my underwear involved? No, I think you're clean on that instead. I clean on that end. Hey, who's writer who's writing for? And it sounds like Kato's humor. I know you. Go ahead. I want to hear this. Tom, great question. Want to hear? So, OK, so one of the struggles we had throughout this whole process, right? Let me say I had was staying focused on. So because it's O.J. and it's this whole cast of characters that are just kind of nuts, right? It's hard to stay focused on, you know, what happened here, right? So it's easy to get diverted off on to all. OK, why was the property here? Why did the property end up in the room? And everybody had all these reasons. But you know what? It didn't matter. Right? And so one of the things that I had to avoid doing and the D.A. actually helped me with this kind of Rain Man because you get these little clues of, OK, let's figure out about what happened with the property and you suddenly think it doesn't matter, right? You know, some of it's good for historical information, but the focus always had to be there was property in that room that did not belong to him. Him and his band of merry nuts came in there with guns and they took it from people. That that they weren't allowed to take it from right. And so all this masquerading of. Of the property, that was the defense's attempts of trying to mitigate his culpability in this. So I had to try to focus on OK was the property because it was in the room. I don't care what he thought he was going to have in there. The property that was actually there was it his and it was right? Yeah. Was there a part of you, Andy, that's thinking I had better? Be careful with every step I make here because this is O.J. Simpson. This is going to get magnified times 10 million. So there's no room for error. You know what happened in L.A.? So were you extra cautious and making sure you didn't move too fast? Did you guys talk about that? Yeah. So my partner, Eddie and I, we did, right? And so the nightmare happens, right? I mean, it literally happened to us. We got to make sure that we're, you know, dotting the i's and crossing our t's, right. And so we took we talk about it. We plan out how we're, you know, just every extra effort we're going to. We're going to take it to make sure we do this right. And then, you know, a couple of days later, TMZ airs an audio recording and they air this audio recording. And all of a sudden you realize, wait a second, how is it possible that TMZ has an audio recording of what happened in that room, right? How is that even possible other than the fact pay for play, baby? What's that? They bought it. Someone, someone sold it to him, right? Yeah, how. But as a cop, that wasn't our worry, right? Our worry was OK. If if you got this audio in the room, what else do you have that was hits, you know, covertly recorded? And then did you record our meetings? And it turned out he did. He he took a digital recorder and I say he is that Tom Riccio character, right? The guy who rented the room, the guy who set this whole thing up prior to him letting Beardsley, you know, the victims in the room. He put this digital recorder up on an armoire where nobody was looking for it, and he just clicked the thing on and it recorded six hours of audio. It recorded our criminalistics folks in there processing the room. It recorded private conversations with cops, detectives and there were some unflattering things said in that room and some inappropriate things in the room. And so he's doing this, obviously, is he knows it's he could sell this tape, he doesn't. I don't think he knows that there's going to be a robbery, but he knows that he's probably going to sell this thing of O.J. coming into a room. Am I right? Is it to protect himself? Essentially, is that what he was doing? Yeah, yeah. So OK. When we talk about Tom Riccio, let me give you like a little bit of historical context of what the man did. Now, again, this doesn't. This isn't going to be relevant for the actual trial right of actually convicting O.J., but a little bit of history, right? So he ends up being a middleman in this transaction. And all he cares about is getting O.J. Simpson to enter into an exclusive contract with him over this book that O.J. had written if I did it right. And he wants O.J. to sign two hundred copies. Nobody else gets any sign copies. It's just those two hundred. And he was going to bank on this. And remember, at the time, O.J. had just lost the rights to the book. So he was going to get this exclusive contract. Now. The deal that Recio brokered that was going to happen in Vegas, it fell apart. So what actually happened in Vegas was not Rico's plan, but Recio brokered another plan because that deal with O.J. was so important to him that those 200 book signatures, right? So that's so Riccio was recording everything because he was basically entering into contracts with everybody. So I don't believe it was his intent to capture what he captured. He was just protecting himself to look out for all his contracts, and he was trying to establish with people, and he was clinging to the fact that a verbal contract was as good as a written contract. But that's illegal, anyways, correct, to videotape people without them knowing they're being videotaped. So audio, audio, just audio. Yeah, but no Nevada legal Nevada is a two party or a single party consent state, so you can covertly report record people in Nevada. What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas with the Recorder? Well, then he must have known that law. Otherwise, he's sure that leads to the question here because if you've seen the documentary and this became your life A.. Were we dealing with, um? Really stupid. Good criminals or idiotic or just brilliant bad criminals, I mean, because this was an unbelievable cast of characters that you dealt with here, you probably needed a huge whiteboard with all the moving parts and all the characters trying to keep everything straight. But what was your takeaway about O.J. and his Merryman? Yeah, I mean, he gathered around him a cast of sycophants and nuts, right? They weren't good criminals. In fact, everybody was ready to roll over on each other, and then they all wanted to record each other so they could all sell it later or protect themselves later, right? So no, they weren't sophisticated by any stretch of the imagination, and they were all a bunch of old guys. You know, there was one guy who was involved that Charles Cashmore like, I was just wrong place, wrong time. You know, he saw O.J. Simpson and O.J. basically asked him, Hey, you want to come along with us? He had no idea what he was getting in the vehicle for. He shows, Are there things happen around you, O.J.? I'm coming. Yeah, yeah, that's it. Right? Can you imagine that one of the things that happened during this is O.J. is so charismatic, right? And you think, OK? And come on, we all think he killed Nicole and Ron Goldman, right? But how does how does he still attract this fan base that he he attracts, right? The guy is unbelievably likable, even when you're aware he's committing crime. He has this magnetic personality that draws people in. And I'll say that to even my experience. He can quickly draw you in, and you have to kind of check yourself and say, Wait a second, I'm like getting sucked into this world of this. You know, this alternate reality this guy creates and you have if you don't put yourself in check, you get sucked right in. Mhm. Yeah, I agree with that. He's very charismatic. I saw, and he loves being agitated by people. He loves autographs and people recognize him. Although I have to say I don't think the judge felt that way. Well, let's let's let's hold off with a giant. Well, I guess I know what I'm saying. I know that I was just bringing up everything because I don't think the judge certain people can't be, you know, taken in. But I think like Andy and myself and Tom, you probably watch sports and you know, I get it. I get it. But yeah, just a bad human being. And Kato, you could probably relate to this. And Andy, I know you can't do with O.J. because he could turn it on like that and he'll suck people in. It's hard to say no, because he's a powerful presence. The charisma is off the charts, etc. and he knows it. But as soon as things start going south, a light switch, you know, flips right? And his his demeanor and you've seen it, and maybe you could talk about it. How quickly did you see that transformation from a guy that thinks he's snowball and everybody to a guy who might realize he's in a little bit of hot water? Yeah. And I want to kind of highlight something that I don't think I talked about anywhere else. Marcia Clark, right? During the preliminary hearing, she came up to us and she visited with myself and the prosecutor, and she said something really interesting to our prosecutor RDA, right? She said that we had the one piece of evidence that she knew was true about him, but she couldn't prove. And she described him as a light switch that she believed, just like you just said, that he had the ability to just turn it off and turn it on instantly, right? And that's what we had in that audio, right? In that audio recording. You heard a guy go in who was initially calm and then he went zero to 100 in nothing flat, right? And then on the way back out, when he leaves the room, you hear him just turn it back off and he's he seems back to normal. And what was great was we had audio to show that. So yeah, it was a real thing with him that he has that capacity. Well, Tom and I know that we've had a Tom laying on our show lead lead detective with the O.J. trial, and he said pretty much the same thing. But he said he let O.J. just talk and talk about himself. So he knew that he'd like hearing great things about himself, of how they could ease him in there and how comfortable, comfortable he became when he was being interrogated. And they used that sort of as a tool for, you know, getting more and more information from O.J.. You know, I'm not here to badmouth other cops, but I think one of the things that Lang writes about is he didn't end that interview, right? O.J. didn't. They ended it. I mean, I don't know that O.J. just keep babbling and talking. I know they wanted to get his blood drawn. But when I read that, I thought, Man, if you got to go talk and let him talk, you know, let him develop his lies, get him locked into those lies and twist them later. And that was one of those things when I was reading through it, I thought if he didn't in that interview, you just keep rolling. Yeah. Yeah. But again, I'm not here to, you know, I wasn't there, so I got to know it. Tom's a great detective. No one knows the circumstances that he was dealing, so don't worry about. OK, so you guys had to be extra cautious, right? So you didn't move in that quickly. Our piece in this together. But then you eventually got the green light and you said we got enough or before that before you arrested them. You, your partner, the female detective, your lieutenant, you guys four or five of you strong. They go to the palms and they're heading up to OJ's room where his girlfriend was in there with him and that. How nervous were you walking through the palms, going up the elevator and heading to his room knowing, Hey, it's Showtime, baby. You're going to find out what really happened. You're going at your first, really interaction with him on his turf. You know, I'm going to say I'm not nervous at all, I was tired we were we had been at work since 10:00 a.m. the previous day and we're not getting to interview him till late afternoon the following day. So we, you know, we've been well over 24 hours at this point. We get to talk to him. So, you know, you're tired, you still got the facts and you want to get everything fresh. So I guess. There's an excitement about it, I guess, if I'm looking back on it, but not really a nervousness now. Yeah. Well, Kato, you started asking them about that, that interaction in the room. Yeah. So you had three other detectives there kind of stationed on the hallway and he invites you in the room and that's where it starts, process where you said how likable he can be. And is, is ed, you're Eddie, your partner with you at this time coming in the room with you? Yeah. So we, you know, we tried to design this tactically, right? And our supervisor did a good job and he thought, OK, Eddie's my partner, right. Everything we did, we did together, right? But our boss thought, Well, if we're going to go do an interview with O.J., maybe it's better that I have a female detective with me to just not be, you know, so the thought process is so overwhelming, right? So to maybe soften the interview. So before we go in our our supervisor, he says, Hey, take Detective Turner with you and you guys do the interview, and I will tell you that my partner was bummed out about that, right? Because here's your chance to interview O.J.. You just got the carpet yanked out from under you, and I wasn't keen on the idea or two, but he's our boss, right? And it wasn't three we had on surveillance. It was six. So we had six people on twenty four hour surveillance on O.J. and it and I got to tell you, under normal circumstances, the best surveillance team you're going to find in the nation, right? Nobody knows they're following them, but it's O.J. Simpson. So they're probably not as worried about being spotted. So there's actually three of us. I'm sorry, there's four of us that walk up to the room and only two of us are going to go in because it was like the consolation prize that our boss gave to Eddie. He's like, Yeah, you know, at least go to the room, but don't go in so you knock on the door. And sure enough, you know, O.J. short, right? So I'm six five to answer the door, and I'm like, Oh, that's kind of surprising. But the moment the guy starts speaking, you are sucked into his world because, you know, he he over the top is like, Hey, guys, you know, thanks for coming up. And. And he opens the door, right? He just starts waving us in right now. You to keep in mind, the plane is just two of us to go in. And my boss is designing this plan. But as O.J. says, Come on in. My boss is like that. Are the whole plan goes out the window. I was like, OK, well, O.J. isn't like me in two. So he comes in. So of course my partner is going to come in to. Now O.J., he puts his head out in the hallway, and this was the most unrealistic scene to me, right? And he knows he's under surveillance on this crack surveillance team that he's not supposed to know is there. And he leans out. He literally says, Hey, guys, you want to come in too. And these guys are not supposed to be being seen. And what do they do? Did they put down their newspapers, their drinks and they all come into the suite party? No. Jay's room. It's all right. Room service is covered in fifteen minutes. What do you guys need? Caviar or some champagne? Right? Well, we're charging through is the is the female detective. I think your name was her name was Turner. Is that correct? Yeah. Linda Turner is Linda. Is O.J. trying to do his charm on Linda or she's immune to it. It is all business. I saw her the documentary. She's not playing right. We need to see for those there, for the audience that hasn't seen it, Tom and I have, but I want them to know when we walk into the room. It's such a freak show going on that we're delayed easily, you know, five minutes because there's this little dog running around the room and it's yapping and it's Vegas in the summertime, right? So it's hot, but they're putting a sweater on this little dog and this little dog's leg is caught in it. So you got this little three legged dog running around the room. Why are these two ladies in bikinis or running around trying to chase it and catch this dog? And it's you can't sit back and think, What is this a twilight zone? You know, is there a hidden camera here? What's going on, right? And finally, you know, O.J. yells at his girlfriend and says, Hey, you know, get out of here, I'll grab the dog. He grabs the dog and they get out with the dog. And, you know, I don't want to exaggerate the length of time of that interaction, but it was it was probably five minutes of just this odd circus that we sat there and watched every, you know, all the detectives and our boss slapstick comedy, by the way, those two girls and the dog. They've got a show now at the Mirage. I'm kidding. They could say. Well, good. Hey, Eddie, you guys walk in there and this is serious business. You're here to question a guy in an armed robbery. O.J. he's got his girlfriend around half nude. She's got the Chanel, a little puppy running around. It's a it's a freak show in there. Did he have any idea how serious the situation was? And was there any doubt in your mind that he was guilty of something at that point? No, no, no. I want to do arrest him that night, right? I didn't. I think he should've went to jail that night. The fact that and it wasn't even our lieutenant's decision, that decision came out from from deputy chief said we couldn't arrest him that night, that they wanted the DA's office to give us an arrest warrant to arrest him. So to me, the guy's guilty. We got probable cause. He should go to jail, right? Do I think he knows the significance of it? No, because I think the man he convinces himself, he didn't do anything wrong, right? I think he genuinely, genuinely believes he didn't do anything wrong. It's the world this guy exists in. But, you know, when we go into the room, there's also these legalities that we got to keep in mind, right? We got to keep in mind that he's already told us he has a lawyer. We didn't even have to read him his Miranda rights. He was quick to say he has one, so we can't interview him right now. I can't ask him questions. In the current setting, because he had already asked or identified that he wanted a lawyer, so we also have to do that tap dance to make sure we're legal in the process. So what we have happen is as we sit down, he just starts rambling. He just starts talking to us. And Linda Turner, she ends up sitting behind him, and I don't think he knew that she was taking notes of everything he said. And. There's two prongs to Miranda, right? He has to be in custody and we have to be asking him questions. And some people might argue he wasn't in custody. I got to tell you with nine cops in the room. It's a pretty it's a pretty hard argument to say he's not in custody right now. He's not in jail, but custody is a perceptual issue. So, so we got to cover our bases. So as Linda sitting behind him, she just taking notes. She's just going to town with everything he's just babbling about. He's free to talk to me. I just can't ask him questions about about the case. I can ask him where he's from. I can. I can probe him to get conversation going. I just can't ask him incriminating questions. And he just says all kinds of dumb stuff that we just start taking notes on and it just strengthens our case. Thank you, O.J.. OK, so the arrest happens now you've been on that since the opening page. Since this whole saga started, this should be your caller. You should be the one. Put the cuffs on him. What happened? Why weren't you the one making the arrest? Wait, can I go back and tell you the fun thing that happened in the room? Or should people just watch it in the dark? Of course. Because it is Dallas, baby. You know, I'm I'm sitting in front of him and my partner sitting next to me, right? And O.J. sitting on the corner of the bed in his suite and he's playing with his phone. You know, he's bouncing it back and forth in his hands, and he's just talking to us, right? I don't even notice that the guy sets the phone down. But all of a sudden he stops and he looks up at me and dead serious from a jovial conversation we shift gears to. He looks at me, said, Hey, what did you do with my phone? Like, he essentially accuses me of stealing his phone now catches me a little off guard. But luckily, Eddie's sitting next to me is like, Hey, juice. He literally called him juice, right? He's like, juice. It's it's right there between your legs. O.J. reaches down and gets his phone between his legs now. You got to get this, this this vision in your mind to this hotel room. O.J. sitting on the corner of a king size bed, right? And you got cops all around the room. Adult males watching it. He takes this phone. He brings it up to his chest. He holds it to his chest. And he flops his entire body back on the bed. And he just starts giggling, right? Legs up in the air, arms wiggling around. And this goes on for men. 10 15 seconds of us just sitting there in silence, wondering, is this really happening? Right? And then O.J. sits back up and he starts having a conversation like it didn't just happen. Insanity plea crazy, even at a higher right because you don't know that or what you're thinking. What was he, you know, making a move for something? I mean, is it again? You never know. Just hide it. OK? Well, he fumbled his phone. That's really interesting that he was high. OK, back to the arrest. Who did it and why wasn't it you? Yeah, so. Our administration wanted an arrest warrant for their own reasons. In fact, I had gone to a Los Angeles Dodgers game because we were youth leaders, my wife and I and we had promised these kids we were going to take them down there. And on my way down to Dodger Stadium, we had we just got to Dodger Stadium to start the game and we were doing a one day trip down and back right. I get a phone call from just a previous partner said, Hey, congratulations, you guys arrested him. I said, What are you talking about? I'm in Dodger Stadium. And the text was like, What are you talking about? It's on the news right now. They just arrested him now at homes. So I called my partner, Eddie, and I wake him up out of a dead sleep. And he's like, No, I'm in bed. What are you talking about? So, Eddie, he does a little bit of legwork and he finds out, Yeah, sure enough, these other detectives went down and arrested O.J.. Now, once they put cuffs on him and transported him back to the office. They have to get the rest of our squad back there to do the paperwork because none of them knew they had no details. You know, they knew we had probable cause to arrest him, but. There was nothing they could do. So literally, I had to drive back all of our squad had to come in and wrap all this stuff up, but yet when it came to actually putting cuffs on him, that wasn't out of your eye. That was a different folks. In Kaikohe, he pulls a total O.J. move, so, you know, they let him out on bail. OK, so he goes back to Florida. And one stipulation was you cannot be in touch with any of these co-conspirators, right? Nobody else involved in this case. So he goes through his bail bondsman essentially to relay a message to ask him, that dude goes, You know, I don't want to go to jail. I got to do something about that. So he has to go out there, fly out to Florida, grab O.J. and not easy to trick him into coming back to Vegas. And that's when his Vegas luck turned south, because that's when Jackie Glass bad a*s Jackie Glass enters the story. And was that just bad luck? I would imagine there's a lot of judges he could have got. But what are the odds he got her and was at the the worst thing that could have happened to him? No, no. So that all it happens by just case number, right? So there was there is no it happens by when the arrest warrants are signed, when he goes into custody and how he's arraigned. And then it just starts a track, right? So you get arraigned by a certain judge. And once you get arraigned in that court, in the lower court, it tracks to the upper court. So that's just the way it worked out. Hmm. Well, you talked about Kato, I mean, because then she was not playing any games, was she? It was another televised to everybody, kind of in America was watching again to see what they see. How much of the trial did you sit through? We there know. So Nevada has exclusionary rule, right? So once the trial starts, all witnesses are kicked out and you're not allowed to watch it, track it. Talk about it. Anything right? So even though the trial is going on and it went on about a week before I testified, I'm not supposed to have anybody tell me what's going on. I'm not supposed to know what's going on in the courtroom, which is hard to do right? Because, yeah, like Kato said, yeah, in 2007 or 2008, when I went to trial and this was wild while it was everywhere and in Vegas, I mean, it was every local news outlet. So it was hard to not know what was going on in that room. Yeah, you're sequestered, you got your honor. Obviously, you have to honor it. And you know, people, when that was going on, I was being interviewed a lot and people were saying to me, Do you think this is the payback of Nevada showing how a trial is supposed to be run? Do you feel that? Do you feel that the judge was thinking, I'll show, I'll show people how to run a real trial? Did you get that for me? So, you know, this is a tricky question. Right? So let me let me answer it as best I can. And still, hopefully, you know, fill the spare. No wrong answers. You're fine. In my experience and at the time, the DEA said, Hey, let's add up how many robberies you've handled during the time you've worked in robbery homicide, right? So in that time I worked in robbery, I'd handled over a thousand robbery cases. I'd never seen somebody get that that harsh of a sentence. Right? That shocked all of us. But as far as how she ran the courtroom, that was normal. You know, that's that's the way Judge Glass ran her court. That's the way she ran trials. She was, you know, nothing but business. And in fact, a lot of our judges were that way, right? So, so solid on how they ran it. But as far as when it came down to that sentencing. Yeah, I think a lot of us raised our eyebrows and said, Oh, my goodness me, that's that's that was that was harsh. We live in L.A. with the D.A. here. That would be a slap on the wrist. Maybe if it got to trial, if it got to trial right, jogger George Gascon, I'm sure, would just go. The one thing I found interesting about her, though, is she seemed to have an ego like she seemed to really enjoy the fact that she's the one that put O.J. away. It almost seemed personal. That's the impression I got from watching the documentary. You were in the documentary. What was your vibe? Am I misreading that? No, I think she is. But you know, she's she's she's she's a lawyer first, right? So there's no way you're going to get her to say that, hey, you know? It was payback. You just you you're never going to get a lawyer to say that, but I think if you look at face value, that guy got a harder sentence than anybody ever could have imagined, right? But I will tell you her answer has always been consistent. I know she's been asked this over the years, time and time again. She's she's sentenced by the letter of the law what the law allowed her to do. She sentenced. She gave him consecutive sentences where she can and concurrent sentences where she had to. And then you end up with that crate. I mean, fifteen to thirty three, fifteen to thirty three. We'll have murderers that will be out of prison in 10 years, right? O.J. Simpson, for an armed robbery in a casino room, got 15 to 33 years. Mm-Hmm. And he didn't even have a gun. Right, it was. Or were they all packing heat when they rolled in there now, only to give a gun to? No. Michael McClinton and Walter Alexander were the only two armed subjects. Yeah. And are they in jail? No. They all took plea bargains. And you know, that's one of the things I was going to say. That's what I was going to say. That was that that wanted people to know that, that they turned on him. Yes. Yeah, they testified against him and they got probation, right? So the only other person that went to prison on this was that Clarence Stewart, who sat in the in the trial with him, right? And I think universally, we all thought that was dumb, right? But I think, you know, there were so many attorneys that one of the attention of this trial. I think his attorneys. They didn't take the plea bargain. They wanted to sit next to O.J. Simpson because they wanted the attention and they got it right. And then Clarence Stewart won an appeal because it wasn't fair to sit next to O.J. Simpson and trial. You're going to get convicted and you're going to get the same thing he did. So when he won his appeal, he basically like time served for three years. And wow. And I forget because O.J. appealed, he appealed. Also, his appeal turned down. Correct. If I remember, it was turned down. We're talking about people talk about being. Yeah. Talk about being radioactive. You sit next to him in the courtroom and you're going down. That's all it takes. Yeah, incredible. You know, I thought there was one other really odd thing that happened, and it's O.J. related. And it was when he was flying back from Orlando with the bail bondsman, and he was heading back to Las Vegas to face the judge again and find out that he was, you know, getting his parole doubled or his bond doubled, and he's going to stay in prison for a little while. He he turns towards the window on the plane and starts communicating with Nicole and not real quietly like, what have you gotten me into? And literally, with using her name and the bail bondsman talked about it in the documentary Very, very strange. Very, very odd. Just creepy on so many levels. Did you ever talk to that guy about it and did you ever see anything extremely weird from O.J. in your interactions? So I did talk to the bail bondsman was Miguel. You know, he told me about it. But again, this is one of those where some of those secondary and tertiary stories were great to know. Just because, you know, it's O.J. Simpson, right? It's he's he's a cultural icon. So those stories were interesting, but I also had to stay focused on the case rate of just what are the elements of the crimes and what are we trying to prove? But yeah, there was interactions with him that were strange. You know, we had to go have him sign his notice of intent to seek indictment. So, Eddie, we go into the jail and they pulled him into a cell so we could we could serve him this form. Now this form is a form he doesn't need to read. It doesn't even matter if he signs it, I can say, refuse to sign and give it to him. It's just our notice to say, Hey, we might go to the grand jury on you. When Eddie and I walk into the room where he's already sitting, this guy stands up and he treats us like we're his long lost best friends in the whole wide world. And he's happy to see us. He doesn't even want to talk about the document that's sitting in front of him. He has to sign. He wants to sit there and visit with us like we're friends. And again, it had been another long day and you entertain it to a certain point. But he's got a lawyer. There's not much else I can do here. So it's a matter of O.J. saying the form, and we're not here to visit with you. This is just sign the form. We got to go right. And it was strange how the guy you know, he still, you know, like giggling like, Oh, OK, you know, great. Well, we'll get this. Signed it, you know, thanks. Good buddies, agree. Just really strange. That's a great invitation. That's a great invitation. I'm switching gears just for a second here because I want to ask you, you said you had over a thousand robberies that you investigated now and you're working Las Vegas. It's known as Sin City. And I know you've seen probably everything, and I don't think what people know is is the reason that you became a pastor is because you reach a boiling point, you reach a point in your life and you go. I've got to I've got to do something positive. I mean, what you do is positive, but it's sort of like seeing God or something. It's like, I want to do something, I'm going to shift. I'm actually the complete opposite and go into becoming a pastor. Is it because of? Working in Las Vegas. No, but I do think that, you know, the heart of law enforcement is serving people right and helping people. And right. I love that. So part of my faith is when the opportunity open to take over pastoral leadership. We just wanted to pursue that because, yeah, there is there is part of law enforcement. And yeah, there is some cynicism that you want to run away from. And it does seem like the purity of church gets you away from that cynicism. But that's not true. You know, once you serve as a pastor, the cynicism is still there, just as it shows up in a different form. Hmm. Sure. You can't escape it. Let me give a plug for your book room 2:48. O.J. Simpson's Las Vegas conviction. Andy Cardwell are our guest here. Wrote that book You were the detective that helped bring him down. How long did it take you to write the book? My agent was a she. She crack the whip a lot on me. I had to write one chapter a week. So she was pretty strict on. That's a good pace. Yeah. So it was, you know what, when you write, you've got to get into a rhythm. Mm hmm. In writing Sekulic, right? And I'd never written a book before. In fact, I don't I don't read books. I read theology and philosophy books. So to actually write a true crime book, it took me a little bit ago. So it took me a couple of times write that first chapter. But once I got the first chapter, it started to make a little more sense to me. Well, you're getting a lot of compliments from Tom, and Tom has a major book coming out also. And so he knows good writing and yeah, you can. Can you say, sure, I got a big book on the scandal, the Varsity Blues scandal, the recruiting scandal that's going to blow that whole thing wide open. And then hopefully a documentary to the real story about why it happened the way it did with all the, you know, the story came out last week with Felicity Hoffman. Yeah, she spoke for the first time. She's one of the celebrities that were involved in that, and she said that the FBI broke her door down, right? They brought her. They put guns to their head. Lori Loughlin, her and her husband, Mossimo. Guns pulled on them door, knocked down, taken to a dark room in downtown L.A.. If you can believe that you like terrorists, it's all Hollywood, too, because Felicity Huffman is married to William H. So, yeah, it's it's it's a great thing. But Andy, my story is is incredible. It's about the one guy that they brought into this thing so they could move the venue from California to Boston. And is this whole power play by the Justice Department? That's the whole, the whole, the whole reason behind Varsity Blues, which we'll talk about. And he said in your book, I'll send you one. Hey, Andy, where do you get your book because you are a great guest. You are awesome on the documentary. And the book's fantastic. So tell everybody where they can get it. Yeah, just on Amazon. Amazon. You just put in the search bar room 2:48, and it's the only thing they'll pop up. What's this Amazon thing is, is that where you can buy a book and stuff? Yeah, I heard this Amazon thinks, all right, good where you get everything. Pretty good rating too. I think it's scary like a four point five stars. So and in my one of my bad ratings on there, it's actually Tom Riccio, one of the one of the nut jobs in the case, right? He writes a rating under a ghost name, right? And the little, you know, he can't even read. Probably, right? So that's hysterical. Hold much grudges, Recio. Hey, if you got if you got any pull with Judge Glass, we'd love to get her on the show. Tell her Kato. Kato, Kaelin. It will be gentle on her. You know, I'll see if I said, but no, no promises. Yeah, that's great. And I'm sure you're still friends with your partner, Eddie. Yeah, he's great. You know what? That's great. And I just love the the whole thing. And when you talk about these characters because I can see that these are the characters, you're going, Who are these people? And it's like a circus around O.J. and it's really like, is it because he can? He attracts maybe that and you are great, but it's fantastic to hear the story. Yeah. Andy, thanks so much, man. We'll let you get back. Is that a Christmas tree behind you? It looks good. That is a Christmas tree. Yep, right? Yep. Tis the season that OK that it is. So I hope there's not much crime where you live for the next couple of weeks until the holidays. So enjoy the season. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to meet you. Hey, thanks, guys. Thanks for having me on for. You bet from Tom Zellner and Kato Claus. Just just saying it for this month only. Thank you. Tell everybody at the station you met Kato. It sounds good. Thanks. Tomorrow. Hey, make sure you download and subscribe to our YouTube channel. You download our episodes on your audio wherever you get it. Follow us on social media. We want to pump those numbers up. Give us a big like tell your friends you get guests like Andy. I mean, come on, man takes you right in the middle of what happened when O.J. was arrested. That's right. And you'll see it. Check us out on Instagram and all. And we put the link on there for you. It's easy. It's on YouTube. One degree, a scandalous subscribe. It's free. Yep, and we've got some great shows coming up, so enjoy the excitement of the holiday season. Kato, you keep being Kato. I'll see you here next week. Bring the eggnog. See you. Thanks for watching everybody. For Kato Kaelin, I'm Tom Zander. This is one degree is scandalous. We'll see you next week. E-Tron. Audi is fully electric model line up, delivers electrified driving without compromise. The Audi Q8 e-tron SUV offers fully electric quattro engineering with enhanced comfort and efficiency, while the sophisticated Audi e-tron GT makes electric driving an experience you'll never forget. Audi e-tron pure electric energy meets progressive performance defines progress you can feel. 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