Liberal-oriented columns, commentary and archived articles on national and international news, politics, and the communication arts--with emphasis on China--by Joseph Bosco, author, journalist, director and actor; Professor of Drama and Communications at Beijing Foreign Studies University. 

Monday, July 30, 2007

Did Bill Wasz Lie To Me?

It now appears all but certain that William Benson Wasz lied to me, and through me and because of me, to many, many others, about the one essential fact of his "O.J. Story" that had to be true for any part of his tale and confession to be worth a dry spit to anyone other than conspiracy aficionados. Namely, that he never had access to the small, spiral notebook found in Paula Barbieri's stolen Toyota 4Runner after his arrest in Newport Beach on the night of January 31, 1994, some four-and-a-half months before the Simpson murders, June 12.

This 'fact' was first revealed by then retired LAPD homicide detective Tom Lange as an endnote in his and his partner Phil Vannater's book, written with Dan E. Moldea, Evidence Dismissed (Pocket Books 1997). It was the only endnote or footnote in the book. That notation, from January 1997 until literally today, has dominated far too much of my personal life, and the entirety of my career as a journalist and author of book-length nonfiction since the moment I read it and made a couple of phone calls to the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office, and the Robbery/Homicide Division of the LAPD. To say that it almost sabotaged my journalism career, cost me a 31-year marriage, and countless friends and colleagues, is an under-statement. (For those of you with little or no knowledge of what this is about, you can read most of the story here.)

All of which is why I have done nothing with this mind-numbing, gizzard-ripping discovery for six months. What first hit my e-mail box in February was too staggering to digest emotionally in anything other than small, bitter bites at a time, much less write about it. How does one report to others that he was that wrong about a story and a man? That wrong about a story and a man that he'd screamed to the world he was absolutely goddamn right about, often quite defiantly, quite rudely, to some pretty big folks in the publishing business? To household names in the TV news and news talk-show business? Folks who would call me repeatedly and say, stop it, Joe, you're gonna hurt yourself and your career? Folks whose names and faces you would all know instantly if I mentioned them? I burned some pretty famous bridges in those days because I absolutely believed Bill.

For god's sake, the then Editor-in-chief of Time Magazine, and shortly thereafter the boss of a whole lot more (and the best-selling author of justly acclaimed biographies and histories from the early days of the Republic) still tells people that I cried on the phone the Friday afternoon he called to tell me the story would not run--15 minutes before it was going to press as the cover story! I don't quite remember it that way, but he is probably telling the truth--I put my life and almost every penny earned in those days into working the story as deeply as possible because so many important people were telling me to drop it posthaste. Which is exactly what you don't tell an investigative journalist who believes he's on to something.

I don't understand yet how I am going to report it. I only know that it is time I have the emotional courage to begin the process. I have learned in these 6 months that one must admit or confess such monumental wrongness to someone in spoken words before one can begin to deal with it as prose. There is only one person in my life in China close enough to be that someone. That person knew nothing about nor cared one iota for what happened in Brentwood USA in the early summer of 1994; but she listened wonderfully because she cared about me; may the gods love and bless her for it. She still doesn't understand what the fuss is all about in the scheme of a life lived, not remembered. She is a very smart lady.

Far too many of us aren't that smart. Far too many of us still think what truly happened that night on a street named Bundy 13 years ago in one of the most western parts of the North American continent, a long way from Beijing, China, is of great importance; of course, I am one of them. But, frankly, between you, me and that goofy looking dude over there waiting for a bus, I wish I had never heard of the case. The impossible wish. Writing about murder is what I did. Particularly, any murder case that involved Dr. Henry Lee. You know the rest.

Just the facts: In the early days of this year, I received an unsolicited e-mail from someone I had first interviewed a little more than 10 years earlier. While the initial e-mail was anonymous, the question and information it contained identified the sender instantly. The anonymity quickly went away and a number of e-mails were exchanged; enough so that soon I came to understand that much of the underpinnings of the latter years of my journalism career were planted in shifting sand.

This individual asked that anonymity remain when I reported on our exchange. In spirit, I will honor that; but both he and I know that the moment I report any part of this story anyone with any knowledge of Bill Wasz's connection to the Simpson murders will know his name, or at least how easily he can be identified in press filings from that time.

This person was the lawyer that Bill called from a phone in Orange County lock-up shortly after the Simpson murders captured the headlines; he had gotten the name and number from a fellow inmate. Bill's request was fairly straight-forward: You have experience in media cases and I have a story to sell; I also need a lawyer to get my personal effects booked with my arrest released. This attorney was successful in all regards to Bill's request: the story was all over the tabloids and Bill's "journal" quickly became the story of the moment for the Simpson press corps. It then entered the hands of LAPD detectives of the Robbery/Homicide Division. What happened next is public record; the story vanished and all of us at "O.J. Central" moved onto the next loco story du jour.

In the winter of 1997, when the story was back at least for me, this attorney answered the single most important question I would ever ask him the first time we spoke: Did Bill Wasz ever have possession of the "notebook" after his arrest in January, long before the Bundy murders? In my notes, it is unequivocal: No, he did not. In 2007, this lawyer tells me his memory is that I asked him the wrong question. He says I asked him if Bill ever had possession of the notebook alone after his arrest on January 31?

The shocking difference is that this lawyer now tells me that he sat with Bill in a lawyer-client visiting area in Orange County lock-up and watched him create what we have long called Nicole's "schedule" on a couple of days in early December 1993, which he had found in the car when he stole it. The "recreation" came after Bill "became frantic" when he realized that pages of a notebook he remembered being in the car were not among his effects. He says that Bill then began recreating in another notebook in his effects what he remembered reading in the "other" notebook. He says he even helped Bill with dates and times. He says it was all okay because Bill was only recreating what he had found after he had quite blindly stolen Paula Barbieri's car.

The lawyer says it wasn't fraud because that is an oxymoronic issue when selling a story to tabloid television. You don't answer questions that are not asked by folks who don't care about truth anyway. When pushed hard on the fact that Bill had always told me that this lawyer had cheated him, that the tabloid show had paid more than what he reported to Bill and therefore his "cut" was many thousands less than he thought it should be, in paraphrase, he basically said: Come on, you know Bill and money as well as anyone. Didn't he ever accuse you of making money off of him and not sharing?

There were many questions asked and answered over some weeks that pretty much sealed the deal on the absolute identity of the lawyer and e-mailer--but that was one of the first.

Did Bill Wasz lie to me and the world about "Nicole's schedule" in his handwriting in the small notebook still in the possession of the LAPD? I now believe he did. That changes everything. It also proves to the world what so many have already said so often: What a fool Bosco is, huh?

In closing, however, we must ask the most important question if this story is in fact the truth: If Bill was telling this 'evangelical Christian lawyer' the "truth," then who wrote Nicole's schedule in a notebook allegedly in Paula Barbieri's car when Bill stole it? Honestly, I don't think I give a damn any longer, but I know it is the first logical question to ask if one does give a damn.

Much more later. This is the beginning. And then soon, for me, I dearly hope, a quiet ending.
  

12:27 AM / Editor / permalink    6 comments  



Friday, July 27, 2007

A New 'This Ya Gotta See' Post



There are many reasons why Edie McClurg is so beloved by her friends; only one of them is that from time to time she sends something to your e-mail box that will brighten, enlighten, stimulate and irrigate your intellectual and sensorial faculties for a moment, a day or a lifetime.

Here are images and words of the decidedly whimsical variety; just exactly what one needs on certain kinds of days.

If you've ever had a house with a real yard and you put up one of the many kinds of sugar-water feeders to attract hummingbirds--because you love studying those little fellows do what appears to be impossible--you're gonna love these pictures. The words are Edie's.

"Woman is Abagail Alfano of Pine, Louisiana--she did not do it for a lark but had studied them daily and one morning put the cup from feeder with water in it and they had gotten used to her standing by the feeder and came over to her hand. She says in touching they are as light as a feather.

"Said if had known her husband would take pictures she would have put on makeup !!

"This is something I have never seen before, or ever even heard of. This lady lives in a Hummingbird fly zone. As they migrated, about 20 of them were in her yard.

"Just for a lark, she took the little red dish and filled it with sugar water and this is the result."


What a treat for we who are endlessly fascinated by those tiny geniuses of flight -- thanks Edie!.
  

6:35 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  



Thursday, July 26, 2007

Another Joseph Bosco Website -- New Notes and Photos*

I see ya; I gotcha covered, dude.

Almost all of my dreams and life-desires came true to one degree or another. I also failed at one point or another in the pursuit of all of them in acts of both omission and commission. But, excuse the jubilant, sad truth, stated in an overly stale cliche, I did things my way, along the way, and have only a handful of regrets (futile as regrets are, we feel them nonetheless). My son Joseph went me several pegs higher in all categories. And his son will do all the better in the dreams-coming-true gauge of life.

To achieve most anything in life, one must have been loved and given confidence by someone while young (not often enough does it come from parents, damn them!) from which blooms the self-esteem necessary to stride towards dreams unafraid. I received more than my fair measure from my parents; my son Joseph received so much more of the same from Linda, his mother, and me, throughout his youth; therefore, Joseph Allen Bosco will soar to whatever heights in whatever areas of human endeavor he chooses to go, because he is loved and gently guided by two extraordinary parents, both from extraordinary families from several branches.

Yep, my grandson, Joseph Allen Bosco, not yet 4 months old, has his own website. That is as it should be. He is one helluva youngster with a potential degree of happiness and fulfillment in life damn nigh close to one-hundred out of 100 because of the two people who brought him into this world.

Michelle, Joseph and Joseph


Click
Joseph Allen Bosco


The Two Josephs

O, I love them so; perhaps this fall we will all finally be together and I can hold one and behold the other with a twinkle and a wink. I wish to meet Baby Joseph the 'baby' before he becomes a toddler come late next winter.

*... Joseph, the father, could put a bat on a ball and pitch (you name it, your choice; including velocity and count) better than just about any ballplayer I ever coached or watched play the game. He broke Will Clark's batting average record in district play in the season of '86 in New Orleans. I, and many others, just wished he could have done it with some power. If only a little bit. However, his rare see-ball, hit-ball ability from either side of the plate made his Have-Bat-Will-Travel career longer than most who play a game that is guaranteed to break your heart sooner or later. From Little League to a 20-year MLB Hall of Fame career, it matters not, because someday someone is going to tell you no, you can't play any longer. And it will hurt--from Pony League to Major League--because it is so much more than just a game.

I am almost walking at grammy's house

Something tells me that Baby Joseph will have that quick, early, inside-pull-hammer swing that gets you a long ball often enough to count when the manager is working out his number one line-up for the season. And then there is the double in the gap the other way; out-front just enough, or plate-even on anything thigh-up a tad on the pitcher's half of the plate, but with the speed to turn at least some of those routine doubles into a triple now and again; and leg a double out of enough would-be singles. All of which keeps the other guys creeping in on you with every nasty spinner or top-drawer burner, rather than creeping back, cutting down your angles, because they know they have an extra second or two to get you at first or turn the double-play.

I think he's gonna run okay, too; he's starting to scoot around pretty good

He has it in the eyes already; he's looking for what's coming. He's eye-balling things over with comprehension and creative wonder at the connective state of things when the wind is blowing his way. He also looks uncannily like a man I loved greatly, Ziggy Powajbo, my now deceased father-in-law, and a great ballplayer before the Second World War took the heart and center out of his professional baseball career. To say that Ziggy (Baby Joseph's maternal great-grandfather) and Don Zimmer were look-a-likes and shared many attributes and philosophies for the game they both loved so much is an instant cliche. Come on, look folks. If that ain't Zim's (and Ziggy's) 'look,' I'm going blind.

Thatta baby--hit it hard somewhere. Maybe they'll drop it or something. Atta boy.


"Baze" and his 'nephew', Baby Joseph

And I want you to meet my other Number Two Son, Craig Bazely; although he always produced when it counted on a ballyard, and was a fine athlete, I love him for being him, for some three dozen plus years now. I was thrice blessed with 'sons.'--and ballplayers. Of course, it was Baze's home run to left, a high-trajectory bullet towards the lake beyond UNO's Privateer Park, with Joseph aboard at second, that beat Jesuit High School for the 1986 district championship. It was the first time a New Orleans public high school had done that in the private-school dominated top athletic conference in New Orleans and Louisiana since 1951--35 years. It must be noted that Baze's rocket gets closer to the lake every time we all get together and drink a few and remember a lot.

Jeezeumtalley! I miss them all.
  

11:33 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  



Wednesday, July 18, 2007

"The One," Seeing China On The Movie-Making Plan

"The One" did it. I was wrong again. It was certainly more than a week; but I am finally back in my digs at Beiwai after well more than two weeks hopping here and there making movies up and down the eastern sea board of China. Since June 30, the trail, in short, was thus: Beijing, Guangzhou (21 hour train ride; "The Legend of Bruce Lee," 40-episode TV series), Shunde; Ningbo, Dalian, Tianjin; Dalian - Shenyang - Beijing (late night, all-night train rides again); Dalian and Beijing. This stop at the house will be short. I fly back to Dalian, Friday, July 20, for what is expected to be only two or three days of shooting and then back to Beijing for a spell of grounding and healing.


I must happily correct a major mistake in the post just below this one; it will demonstrate the often comical breakdown in communications between producers, agents and actors in China even when language is not a problem. The really fascinating film titled, in English, respectively at this point, "The One" and "One Man's Olympics," is not about the Berlin Olympics of 1936, but rather the Los Angeles Olympics of 1932!

It really is a good story that deserves telling, though. In brief, it is about China's then champion sprinter, Liu Changchun, the first Chinese to compete in the Olympic games. It was not at all easy for him to achieve that benchmark. He was a university student in Shenyang when it and all of Northeast China was occupied by the Japanese as a puppet state and given a new name, Manchukou, to go along with its newly enthroned new/young/old emperor, Pu Yi, the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty of China. Although he was alternately courted, imprisoned, cajoled, and beaten by the Japanese authorities in efforts to make him represent the puppet state in the Olympics, Liu Changchun refused, period.

In feats at times of intense intrigue, full-scale combat, multiple escapes and recapture, and derring-do of disguised, clandestine travel and familial heartbreak, the young sprinter made it to Shanghai. There he was able to board the American ocean liner Wilson (named for Woodrow Wilson, the former U.S. president) of which my character was Captain, in his attempt to reach Los Angeles in time to represent China, singularly, in the Olympics.

Aboard ship, the plot and his plight does not let up: Racism of the ugliest sort, and a killer typhoon, take over the story and through many flashbacks serve as the narrative spine of the screenplay.

I will not give away what actually happens aboard the Wilson, and Liu Changchun's eventual destiny within the annals of the modern Olympic Games (although the links provided do that and more).

I will say that shooting a movie on an aging ocean liner still plying its passenger trade between Dalian and Tianjin (with 1,000 regular passengers and crew continuing on about their lives and business as we several dozen do ours) ain't easy! It is decidedly unpleasant in every aspect--other than the film personnel, who are all brothers and sisters forevermore after the bonding we underwent aboard this nautical monstrosity. I have not the time or strength to detail much of what has happened thus far aboard this rusty, stinky, fume-belching behometh, at this moment. Perhaps I will be able to do so here or in a print venue at a later date. This is primarily because we are not done with that monster (I purposely also do not name it; I still have to work with its real-life crew).

With luck, we will finish with the sad old lady in another two or three days of shooting. Thereafter, we will shoot interior and other exterior scenes in sound stages and on locations in Beijing and Tianjin.

There are too many unknowns between now and the movie's release (intended to accompany the advent of the Beijing Olympics next summer) to predict the final quality of the project. But, it could be a pretty damn good story; all of the basic elements necessary are there.

More to come.

Production stills by Amanda Weiss
  

6:16 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  



Sunday, July 01, 2007

Making Movies North and South

I will be away from my computer and pretty much out of touch for the next week or so. I am heading south to the outskirts of Hong Kong this morning for shooting on the 40-episode TV Series, "The Legend of Bruce Lee." Then I head north to Dalian for shooting on the feature film, "One Man's Olympics," about a little-known but fascinating story of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. See you in the funny papers.
  

9:09 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  



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