One of the most dramatic characters of the O.J. Simpson trial that captivated the United States three decades ago has died.
Mark Furhman, the former Los Angeles police detective who reported finding the bloody glove that became iconic in the acquittal of the former football star and actor who was accused of murdering his wife and her friend, died in Idaho May 12, according to The Associated Press.
He was 74. No cause of death was released.
BREAKING: Former LAPD Detective Mark Fuhrman, who discovered the bloody glove in the 1995 O.J. Simpson murder case and was convicted of lying on the witness stand, has died at the age of 74. pic.twitter.com/jub984PXUr
— Fox News (@FoxNews) May 18, 2026
Furhman’s testimony as an investigator assigned to the scene where Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman were knifed to death in Los Angeles in June 1994 was a key part of the O.J. Simpson trial, which ran from January to October 1995 and has been a matter of cultural division ever since.
I hate that OJ never got a chance to find the real killers. Those pesky devils.
— Cliff (@CliffordL2112np) May 18, 2026
After Fuhrman testified that he hadn’t used racial slurs in the previous decade, Simpson’s defense attorneys introduced recordings of Fuhrman using racial slurs in conversations with an aspiring Hollywood screenwriter, as the AP reported.
In the overheated racial context of the trial, the revelation might have been key to the jury’s eventual decision to find Simpson not guilty.
It played into the defense argument that racism was at the core of the accusations against Simpson as a black man by a racist Los Angeles police force.
Fuhrman was eventually charged with perjury in connection with the comments and pleaded no contest, NBC News reported. He was convicted and sentenced to three years’ probation. He was the only person convicted in connection with a murder trial that fascinated the country.
Mark Fuhrman, the disgraced LAPD detective who discovered the infamous bloody glove in the O.J. Simpson murder case and later pleaded no contest to perjury, has died at age 74, TMZ reports. https://t.co/ugDzcnPlvC pic.twitter.com/unEWFx5cY2
— KTLA (@KTLA) May 18, 2026
In addition to Furhman’s testimony, the bloody glove he found at the murder scene ended up in a memorable scene in the trial when Simpson’s defense team had Simpson try on the glove in front of the jury.
Simpson struggled to get the glove on, leading Johnnie Cochran in his closing argument to use it as a symbol of what he called the flaws in the prosecution case.
“If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit,” he said.
Simpson himself died in 2024 of prostate cancer at age 76.
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