The O.J. Simpson gloves were a pair of blood-stained brown leather gloves that became the single most argued-over piece of physical evidence in the 1995 murder trial: one was found beside the bodies of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman on Bundy Drive, the other behind a guest house at Simpson’s Rockingham Avenue estate. DNA and trace evidence tied them to the victims and to Simpson. A courtroom demonstration in which Simpson appeared unable to pull them onto his hands tied them, in the jury’s mind, to reasonable doubt.
Where the Two Gloves Were Found
Late on June 12, 1994, officers responding to 875 South Bundy Drive found a blood-stained left-hand glove on the walkway near the bodies of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. The blood on it would later be linked to three people: the two victims and Simpson.
Hours later, LAPD Detective Mark Fuhrman recovered a matching right-hand glove on the grounds of Simpson’s Rockingham estate. Investigators believed it had been dropped behind the guest house occupied by Brian “Kato” Kaelin, who reported hearing three loud thumps against his wall around 10:45 the night of the murders. Kaelin initially thought it was an earthquake. Police theorized the noise came from someone moving along the narrow pathway behind the room and bumping into an air conditioner.
Fuhrman’s discovery became one of the most contested moments in the case. The defense accused him of planting the Rockingham glove as part of a racially motivated frame-up. His credibility collapsed when tapes surfaced of him using racial slurs, and he invoked the Fifth Amendment when asked on the stand whether he had planted evidence. For many jurors, that answer clouded everything he had touched.
What Kind of Gloves They Were
Both gloves were size extra-large, style number 70263, manufactured by Aris and marketed as “Aris Isotoner Leather Lights.” Despite the popular shorthand, they were leather gloves rather than the fabric Isotoner product. Richard Rubin, a former vice president and general manager at Aris Isotoner, testified that the leather used in the model was roughly 30 percent lighter than standard men’s glove leather and about 10 percent heavier than women’s weight leather, which gave the “Lights” name its meaning.1Famous Trials. Testimony of Richard Rubin
Aris made style 70263 exclusively for Bloomingdale’s starting in the early 1980s, and production numbers were small. About a thousand dozen pairs were ordered for 1989, and roughly 10,000 pairs for the 1990 season, which Rubin called the product’s peak. Those figures were “minuscule in the scheme of the amount of leather gloves that Aris produced.”1Famous Trials. Testimony of Richard Rubin
Bloomingdale’s buyer Brenda Vemich identified a credit card receipt showing that Nicole Brown Simpson bought two pairs of Aris Isotoner Leather Lights on December 18, 1990, for $77. Prosecutors also introduced photographs and video stills that Rubin identified as showing Simpson wearing brown and black pairs of the same rare extra-large model while working NFL games between 1991 and 1994.
What the Gloves Carried
Laboratory analysis found blood on the gloves consistent with all three people at the center of the case. DNA testing matched genetic markers to Nicole Brown Simpson, Ron Goldman, and O.J. Simpson. The Rockingham glove also held a strand of hair matching Nicole’s.
Trace evidence added more layers. Blue-black cotton fibers on the Rockingham glove matched fibers on Simpson’s socks and matched each other. Fibers consistent with Ron Goldman’s shirt appeared on both gloves. Dog hair on the Rockingham glove matched Simpson’s Akita, Kato; hair on the Bundy glove matched another dog, Chachi. Animal hair was also found inside the Bundy glove.
How the Defense Attacked the Glove Evidence
The defense went after the collection process as hard as the results. LAPD criminalist Dennis Fung acknowledged on cross-examination that he had not worn rubber gloves while collecting all of the evidence, that he had missed blood drops on a fence near the bodies and returned weeks later to gather them, and that the victims’ dog had been near the blood stains and had to be shooed away.2Famous Trials. Dennis Fung
The defense’s most specific claim was chemical. Purple-topped test tubes used to store reference blood samples drawn from Simpson and Nicole after the murders contained EDTA, a preservative. If EDTA showed up in crime scene stains, the defense argued, the blood had come from those stored samples, not from the killings. FBI chemist Roger Martz developed a test using liquid chromatography and tandem mass spectrometry and reported that while EDTA was clearly present in the known preserved samples, none was identified in the crime scene bloodstains. The defense pressed him on the fact that he had not retained the underlying digital data, having printed his charts and then overwritten the files because of limited computer storage, so the raw data could not be independently reviewed.3U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General. FBI Labs Report: Roger Martz’s Testimony in O.J. Simpson Case
The Courtroom Try-On
On June 15, 1995, prosecutor Christopher Darden asked Simpson to try on the bloody gloves in front of the jury. The decision was Darden’s alone. He later wrote in his memoir, In Contempt, that he acted preemptively because he believed defense attorney Johnnie Cochran would call for the demonstration if the prosecution did not.
Simpson was instructed to put on thin latex gloves first, to preserve the biological evidence on the leather. He then struggled visibly to pull the leather gloves over his hands, tugging and flexing his fingers in front of the jury. The defense argued that the gloves had shrunk from prolonged exposure to blood and moisture and that the latex liners added bulk and friction that prevented a natural fit. Rubin had testified that leather gloves can shrink up to 15 percent when drenched in moisture, and that even if stretched, the evidence gloves could never return to more than 92 percent of their original size.4Los Angeles Times. Simpson Prosecutors Focus on Shrinkage of Gloves He estimated the gloves had degraded from extra-large to “closer to a size large.”1Famous Trials. Testimony of Richard Rubin
Prosecutors countered that Simpson was spreading his fingers to keep the gloves from sliding on. The visual damage was done. Darden later called the demonstration a mistake and said he should have accounted for the shrinkage. Defense attorney Alan Dershowitz called it “the greatest legal blunder of the 20th century.”
“If It Doesn’t Fit, You Must Acquit”
Johnnie Cochran built his closing argument around the failed try-on. He called it “the defining moment in this trial” and delivered the line that outlived the case: “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”5Famous Trials. Closing Argument of Johnnie Cochran The phrase compressed every defense theme (contaminated evidence, a compromised detective, a sloppy investigation) into a sentence a juror could carry into deliberations.
The jury acquitted Simpson on October 3, 1995. The DNA numbers were overwhelming on paper, but the try-on gave jurors something concrete: a man whose hands did not appear to fit the gloves he was accused of wearing when he killed two people.
The Gloves in the 1997 Civil Trial
The families of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman brought a wrongful death suit that reached trial in late 1996, and the glove evidence played out very differently. Richard Rubin returned and demonstrated that the bloody gloves could fit easily without latex liners underneath. Defense attorney Robert Baker chose not to ask Simpson to try them on again.6Encyclopedia.com. O.J. Simpson Trials: 1995 and 1996-97
On February 4, 1997, the civil jury unanimously found Simpson liable for the wrongful deaths of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson and ordered him to pay $8.5 million in compensatory damages to the Goldman family and $12.5 million in punitive damages split between the two families. The lower civil burden of proof, preponderance of the evidence rather than beyond a reasonable doubt, was part of the difference. So was the fact that, without the latex liners and with Rubin’s live demonstration, the gloves fit.