Part One: Mark Fuhrman: The Most Racist Cop, or Merely Normal Racist Cop?

Summary

Behind the Bastards

Episode Summary:

Episode: Part One: Mark Fuhrman: The Most Racist Cop, or Merely Normal Racist Cop?
Host: Robert Evans with guest Joe Kasabian
Date: June 2, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode is the first in a two-part look at Mark Fuhrman, the former LAPD detective whose racism became a pivotal element of the O.J. Simpson trial, and whose life story is emblematic of the systemic rot within American policing. Host Robert Evans and guest Joe Kasabian examine whether Fuhrman was an extreme outlier or just another "normal" product of 20th-century American law enforcement. Their discussion covers Fuhrman’s background, personal traumas, time in law enforcement, and the culture of LAPD in its most infamously bigoted era, offering both incisive analysis and dark humor throughout.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The “Why” of Mark Fuhrman ([09:05])

• Background and Cultural Context

  • Mark Fuhrman grew up in Eatonville, Washington—a predominantly white, insular community with a legacy of anti-Indigenous violence and celebration of racist pioneers.
  • "A lot of little genocide villas out in the PNW and elsewhere." —Robert ([10:33])

• Early Family Life and Upbringing

  • Evans and Kasabian detail Fuhrman’s abusive, alcoholic mother and emotionally distant, aggressive father. Parental traumas bred mistrust, paranoia, and insecurity in Mark.
  • "This is something you’ll hear from people who are close to him, he’s just kind of a paranoid kid..." —Robert ([12:07])

• Childhood Racism ([13:08])

  • Local Black residents recalled Mark and his brother as racist bullies. Mark later denied all accusations, implausibly claiming no one ever used a slur in small-town 1950s Washington.
  • "You grew up in the 50s in rural Washington and you never heard anyone call them anything but their name? I don’t believe that." —Robert ([15:09])

Artistic Frustrations and Military Detour ([16:32])

• Aspirations vs. Machismo

  • Mark dreamed of artistic pursuits, but social and self-imposed pressures to embody a "manly" persona drove him to the Marines—foreshadowing lifelong insecurity.
  • "There’s a version of this story that’s also the tragic tale of a kid who… kept forcing himself to do these aggressive, masculine things…" —Robert ([16:35])

• Vietnam Service: Illusions vs. Reality

  • Served as an MP and machine gunner during Vietnam, but never saw combat; later lied about experiences, yearning for a "baptism of fire" he never received.
  • "He never gets to like consummate this act that really does seem to mean a lot to him." —Robert ([18:46])

LAPD Beginnings and the War on Gangs ([24:25])

• Police Academy & Early Cop Persona

  • Excelled at the Academy, visually "the perfect cop," fastidious with an artistic flair for handwriting.
  • "His penmanship was almost a work of art." —Robert ([24:32])

• TRASH & CRASH Unit Initiation ([30:20])

  • Assigned to anti-gang unit in LA; original name was T.R.A.S.H. (Total Resources Against Street Hoodlums), then rebranded as CRASH. Programs were ineffective, racially targeted, and key to the escalating violence and corruption that fueled the LA riots later on.
  • "One of the first major gang taskforces, he was there for the ramp-up of what would become CRASH... the cornerstone of Gates’ anti-gang initiative." —Robert ([31:06])

• Disaffection and Attempts to Leave Police Work ([35:08])

  • The pressure, violence, and misery of anti-gang policing led Fuhrman to seek a disability pension, claiming PTSD-style symptoms and "urges to kill suspects." Psychological counselors were ill-equipped; Mark severely exaggerated symptoms, fabricating Vietnam experiences and his own psychological profile in pursuit of a pension.
  • "[The] very fact he had said these things to a doctor showed bad judgment." —psychologist Susan Saxon Clifford ([39:11])
  • "I think Furman’s plan was to try and argue that because the Marine Corps had made him into such a lethal killing machine, he was unsafe to be a cop..." —Robert ([41:45])

• Widespread Pension Abuse in LAPD

  • Disability pensions ("psycho-pensions") were rampant in the LAPD—a way out of working, sometimes fraudulently. Fuhrman’s was denied after being exposed as feigned.

Return to the Force: A "Model" Cop with a Dark Side ([48:07])

• Back in LAPD

  • Returns to active duty, now patrolling wealthy, low-conflict West LA, thriving in this safer environment, able to present charm and tact.

• Tactics, Racism, and Bullying

  • Multiple first-person accusations (from both Black civilians and law enforcement colleagues) of harassment, brutality, and extreme slurs—denied by Fuhrman but consistent with later evidence.
  • "He might have said racist shit just to piss her off... his motivation in that might have been just to troll her, which doesn’t make it not racist." —Robert ([53:24])

• Within LAPD: Big Fish Among Sharks

  • Allegedly painted a swastika on a Jewish colleague’s locker; Fuhrman denied, then deflected: "There were so many people who either didn’t care for him or flat out couldn’t stand him, that it’d be difficult to speculate who did it…"
  • "The whole department wanted to paint a swastika on that guy’s locker, why do you think it was me?" —Robert, paraphrasing Fuhrman’s logic ([56:13])

• He-Man Woman Haters Club for Cops

  • Established infamous “Men Against Women” club within the department—an institutional, misogynistic “boys club” (to be discussed further in part 2).

Normalizing the Problem: Mark as a "Typical" Cop ([63:53])

• Racism and Sexism Widespread

  • LAPD was and remains an institution built on white, male solidarity. Fuhrman was not an outlier—just more vocal and attention-getting than most.
  • "His racism and sexism are pretty normal among his colleagues." —Robert ([63:53])

• Dual Nature—Selective Tolerance

  • Capable of forming relationships with nonwhite officers (especially if it benefited his standing) and said to be “not racist around them”—but this did not prevent casual, performative, and real bigotry.

The McKinney Tapes: Preparing for the O.J. Bombshell ([67:17])

• Setting Up the Bombshell
  • Screenwriter Laura Hart McKinney recorded over 13 hours of Fuhrman boasting, lying, and making brutally racist, misogynistic, and criminal admissions—tapes that would later explode in court.
  • "He tells Martha Laurie Diaz, a friend of McKinney’s, that women cops are ineffectual because they don’t do anything. They don’t go out and initiate contact with some 6 foot 5 inch N word..." —Robert quoting transcripts ([68:52])
  • Fuhrman’s future defense: his words were "just for character," not real life. But some of his "fictional" stories matched proven fact.

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Small-Town Racism
  "You grew up in the 50s in rural Washington and you never heard anyone call them anything but their name? I don’t believe that." —Robert Evans ([15:09])

• On Macho LARPing "Mark’s often kind of larping specifically as Dirty Harry." —Robert ([21:33])

• On Seeking Disability Pension
  "The one moral thing that Furman ever tried to do here—steal a pension from the LAPD." —Joe Kasabian ([41:35])

• On LAPD Internal Culture
  "How are you so racist that the LAPD is like, 'Whoa, whoa.'" —Joe ([55:50]) "He is like a kind of popular bully... specifically with like, the cool kids in the LAPD who are like the white guy officers." —Robert ([57:35])

• On Normalcy of Bigotry
  "Mark is toxic and racist, but his racism and sexism are pretty normal among his colleagues." —Robert ([63:53])

• On The ‘Men Against Women’ Club
  "He makes the he man, woman hater club for cops. He does do that. He's the Alfalfa of the lapd." —Robert ([71:57])

• On Masculinity Confusion
  "Was the goal to, like, not ever have any contact with [women]? What is masculinity—do you want to be liked by women or do you want to hide from them?" —Robert ([72:23])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Mark Fuhrman’s Early Life & Racist Upbringing: [09:05] – [16:32]
• Vietnam & Artistic Frustration: [16:32] – [21:58]
• LAPD, Gang Units, “CRASH”: [24:25] – [35:08]
• Disability Fraud Attempt: [35:08] – [48:07]
• Return as West LA Cop, Public & Private Racism: [48:07] – [57:57]
• Swastika Incident/Dynamics Inside LAPD: [55:50] – [59:23]
• The “Normalcy” of Racism & Misogyny: [63:37] – [66:08]
• The McKinney Tapes & O.J. Setup: [67:17] – [71:43]
• “Men Against Women” Club Teaser: [71:43] – [72:23]

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Tone & Style

• The discussion is caustically funny, irreverent, and deeply cynical about the realities of policing.
• Joe Kasabian and Robert Evans frequently use dark humor to underline how skewed—and pathetic—Fuhrman's values and legacy appear when exposed to daylight.
• The format is both narrative and extemporaneous, with riffing, tangents, and return to central themes.

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Memorable Moments

• Fuhrman’s Denials & Logical Gymnastics
  The crew highlight the absurdity and self-serving nature of Mark's excuses—suggesting that almost anyone in the department might have painted a swastika, thus exculpating himself ([56:13]).
• Discussion of Masculinity
  Reflecting on how anti-women “clubbing” and chauvinism gets ingrained in “boys club” policing ([73:03]).
• Moral Height of Fuhrman’s Life
  "The one moral thing that Furman ever tried to do...steal a pension from the LAPD." —Joe ([41:35])

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Next Episode Preview

• The episode ends on a teaser for Part Two: further details on the Men Against Women club, the O.J. trial, the infamous tapes, and Fuhrman’s lasting impact on police culture and American history.

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This episode is essential listening for understanding how individuals like Mark Fuhrman don’t emerge in isolation—they are bred and normalized by the systems around them. The hosts' blend of black humor and blunt analysis makes for a thoroughly engaging, if disturbing, exploration of American policing’s dark heart.

“His racism and sexism are pretty normal among his colleagues.” —Robert Evans ([63:53])

Transcript

[Sophie]

Media.

[Robert Evans]

This is behind the Bastards, a podcast in which Sophie misses the mysterious robot woman who I believe was murdered, and Sophie believes was never a person, but was instead just a program that Zoom used to have, and they replaced it with a thing that tries to get you to use AI Whenever you record.

[Sophie]

Yeah, well, we don't use Zoom anymore, but I do miss the little.

[Robert Evans]

I forget what we use.

[Sophie]

I don't. I do miss the lady being, like, recording in progress. So I'm in progress, but I could

[Joe Kasabian]

just say thought that maybe she misses you.

[Sophie]

Probably everybody misses me.

[Robert Evans]

I. I never think that. James. Not James. You're Joe. Joe Kasabian, our guest for today, host of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast, author of numerous works of fiction and at least one work of nonfiction, the Hooligans of Kandahar. Joe, Will, what else do you gotta plug for us here?

[Joe Kasabian]

My newest gunpowder fantasy novel, the Highlands burn, comes out May 29. It'll probably be out by the time this episode comes out. So, yeah, pick that up. It'll be available ebook, audiobook, paperback, wherever you get your books.

[Robert Evans]

Awesome. Well, check that out. And check out. You know, Joe, you can't have gunpowder fantasy without both gunpowder and people who are willing to lie. And you know who always has a gun and also lies a lot?

[Joe Kasabian]

Uh, cops.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, cops. Exactly, Joe. That worked. Okay, okay, okay. This is a better intro than I thought. Great, great. And just in the last, you know, literally the week that we're recording this, it'll have been a couple of weeks ago when you good people on the Internet or at Netflix, which I guess is also on the Internet, get to listen to watch these episodes. But we lost a great man and a great law enforcement officer, Joe. And, you know, let's all take our hats off, have a moment of silence for a great man, Officer Mark Fuhrman. You know?

[Carlos King]

Oh, God, we all do.

[Robert Evans]

We all miss him. We all miss him. It's hard going on without Mark, you know, I have trouble. What's the point of life without Mark Fuhrman? Without a really racist detective who's largely responsible for O.J. simpson getting away with murder?

[Sophie]

I, I, I think I'm gonna, like, garden this weekend and, like, you know, go outside, touch some grass, and, like, not think about Mark Fuhrman at all. But for the next couple hours, I

[Robert Evans]

guess we're gonna be thinking a lot about Mark Fuhrman.

[Joe Kasabian]

To be fair, Sophie, that is something you're gonna have in common with Mark Fuhrman. He's also touching grass.

[Jenny Garth]

He's touching Grass.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, he is. He is. He is. Forever and ever. Fun fact.

[Sophie]

He died the week that we're recording this.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. The original intro that I had written out for this started, as Leo Tolstoy would have said. All great episodes of behind the Bastards are one of two stories. A bad person goes on a journey or a famous asshole just died. And that's what we're doing this week, right? We're doing our eulogy and the life and times of former LAPD detective and O.J. simpson trial star Mark Fuhrman. And if you're not, if you didn't live through the O.J. trial, like everybody recording the podcast right now, or if your memories have just faded, OJ Simpson was really good at football and pretty good at being in the Naked Guy, I think it was. No. Was it Airplane? He was in a couple of movies.

[Joe Kasabian]

He was an airplane. Right. I don't know. I was born in 88. So this is right about On My Line.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. So he's very famous. Beloved sports star transitioning into just general star. And then his wife and her partner, his ex wife and her partner are found brutally murdered. Oh, gee, did it. We don't need to beat around the bush here, right?

[Joe Kasabian]

We're saying, what if I did it?

[Robert Evans]

He wrote a book saying if I did it, you know, but he didn't get convicted. And if you ask people why didn't he get convicted, obviously there's a lot

[Sophie]

of different reasons if the club doesn't fit.

[Robert Evans]

Basically, everyone agrees that the reason why O.J. ultimately, and there's a number, but the reason why O.J. ultimately got acquitted is because a police detective named Mark Fuhrman, who was, you know, part of the. One of the first guys on scene and one of the guys involved with, like, the finding of that famous black glove, was revealed to be a super racist because of a bunch of tapes where he had talked about all of his racist beliefs and his joy of doing things like planting evidence to get black people convicted of crimes that they hadn't committed. And this dropped into the O.J. simpson case like a bombshell and is said to have played a major role on why OJ Got off, is that Mark Fuhrman really muddied the waters because he was such a racist piece of shit. It brought into question all of the evidence around O.J. and all of the police work that had been done to gather that evidence. And so it ultimately just torpedoed the case. And that's somewhat debatable. But, Mark, because of how famous the case was and because of how big the story went that this LAPD detective had been talking about all these crimes that a ton of LAPD cops were implemented in. It caused this huge scandal for the department. So it was very influential on the history of, like, law enforcement and very influential for the LAPD and just within American culture. And so that is the story we're telling this week. The story of Mark Fuhrman. Are you excited, Joe?

[Joe Kasabian]

I will say for all of the episodes I've been on this show, this one has the lowest body count,

[Robert Evans]

no direct deaths.

[Joe Kasabian]

Did you have me on because Kim Kardashian's dad is involved in this?

[Robert Evans]

That's right. That's right. It's the Armenian angle. He did not racially profil you.

[Joe Kasabian]

Yes. I fucking knew it, Robert.

[Robert Evans]

Yes. Yes. I needed to have someone who was on OJ's side and all Armenians, like, inherently support OJ Simpson because of Robert Kardashian.

[Joe Kasabian]

Yes. We have no choice.

[Sophie]

One of Robert's favorite things to bring up constantly is when Ross from Friends played Robert Kardashian.

[Joe Kasabian]

That was weird.

[Robert Evans]

Ably. It was really weird. It was really weird casting.

[Joe Kasabian]

Yeah. They kind of put him in brown face in a way. It was strange.

[Robert Evans]

I love it.

[Joe Kasabian]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

I just love the way he kept saying juice. This is an I heart podcast. Guaranteed human.

[Jana Kramer]

This is Jana Kramer from Wind down with Jana Kramer. So why do they call it a dishwasher? Well, don't worry. It's not a trick question or anything. It's just because it washes dishes. If the filter and the dishwasher itself are dirty, those dishes aren't actually getting clean. That's why you need Cascade Platinum Plus. Powered by two times the cleaning power of Dawn, Cascade Platinum plus doesn't just remove 100% of grease and residue from dishes. It's. It cleans your dishwasher and filter too. So you get clean dishes and a dishwasher that keeps washing. Just scrape, load, and done. Find Cascade Platinum plus at your local retailer. Cascade is a proud sponsor of the Elton John Impact Awards, honoring those who have helped shape a more inclusive and compassionate world with their artistry, advocacy, and unwavering commitment to equality. Cascade would like to take this opportunity to congratulate all of this year's deserving honorees. Don't miss the Elton John Impact Awards podcast, available on June 1st on the iHeartRadio app. And everywhere podcasts are heard.

[Robert Evans]

Hey, guys, it's us, the Jonas Brothers.

[Joe Kasabian]

I'm Joe.

[Robert Evans]

I'm Kevin.

[Joe Kasabian]

And I'm Nick. And guess what? We created our own podcast. Called hey Jonas.

[Robert Evans]

We invented a podcast.

[Joe Kasabian]

Well, we didn't invent it.

[Robert Evans]

We.

[Joe Kasabian]

We just contributed to it.

[Robert Evans]

We're the first people to do podcasts. We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions.

[Joe Kasabian]

Well, sick and tired is a strong way to put it, but, you know, tired and sick.

[Robert Evans]

Tired and sick. Listen to hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just listen.

[Joe Kasabian]

We don't care where you hear it.

[Carlos King]

If you're watching the latest season of the Real Housewives of Atlanta, you already know there's a lot to break down.

[Robert Evans]

Portia accusing Kelly of sleeping with a married man. They holding K. Michelle back from fighting. Drew Pinky has financial issues.

[Carlos King]

On the podcast Reality with the King I, Carlos King, recap the biggest moments from your favorite reality shows, including the Real Housewives franchise, the drama, the alliances, and the tea everybody's talking about. To hear this and more, listen to Reality with the king on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Sophie]

This is Saigon, the story of my family and of the country that shaped us.

[Narrator (Saigon podcast)]

From iheart Podcasts. Saigon.

[Robert Evans]

You don't think I'm serious about a

[Narrator (Saigon podcast)]

free Vietnam, one city, a divided country, and the war that tore America apart?

[Robert Evans]

This is for Vietnam. They're pouring petrol all over him. Freedom. There's a fire coming to this country, and it's going to burn out everything.

[Narrator (Saigon podcast)]

Listen to Saigon on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

Okay, let's begin our episodes.

[Joe Kasabian]

Okay.

[Robert Evans]

Mark James Fuhrman was born on February 5, 1952, in Eatonville, Washington. Now, that's not that far from where Sophie and I live right now up here in the Pacific Northwest. Today, Eatonville is about 75% white. I think it's a little bit less than 75% white, but not much. And it was a lot whiter than that in the 1950s. So, you know, the PNW is a very white place today, and it was even more so back then. And that is definitely the kind of community that Mark grows up in. What became Eatonville began with the homestead of a guy named Thomas Cobb van Eaton in 1888. Constructed very close to pictures Mount Rainier. As more settlers arrived in the area and particularly began to advance towards the mountain, Eaton turned his homestead into a business selling necessities to travelers. People settled around his house, and in 1903, a railroad connection made Eatonville a real town. And the Eatonville Lumber company, the biggest business in town. Prior to that point, settlers in the area had tended to just call the whole area Mashall's Prairie after a group of Niskali Indians who originally inhabited the region. These native people had been massacred in 1856 by a militia known as Maxson's Raiders in retaliation for a fight with a Washington militia a few weeks earlier. I think this is all part of the Puget Sound war. Per the website historylink.org, official reports claimed only 8 of the Mashall hostiles were killed. But virtually all accounts and testimonies agree that the Raiders under Maxson's command killed defenseless elderly, women, children and infants. So that's where Mark's hometown comes from. Many such cases in the US A lot of little genocide villas out in the PNW and elsewhere.

[Joe Kasabian]

I love that this whole town just started because a bunch of dudes squatted on another dude's front lawn.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. After wiping out the people who had previously lived there. Yes.

[Joe Kasabian]

That's the classic Pacific Northwest trait.

[Robert Evans]

Very tale. As old as. Well, the pow. And Mark would have grown up. He wouldn't have been grown up being taught that like Maxson's Raiders had killed all of these peoples like kids. Right. Like they would have been taught. And there was a battle, you know, and they killed eight of these braves. Right. As opposed to. And then a genocide was done.

[Joe Kasabian]

They killed 100 warriors. Yeah, warriors, women and children.

[Robert Evans]

The original military aged males.

[Joe Kasabian]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

So he would have been raised, as I stated, in a community that was nearly all white and in which legends of Indian hunters like Maxson's Raiders would have been celebrated in school and in the popular culture of the day, racism would not have been weird for him. I've never read Mark discuss any of this history, not even in his books does he really talk a lot about his childhood. But he wouldn't have been able to avoid this kind of stuff growing up in the region. His dad, Ralph was a truck driver and a carpenter and would be described later by Mark as insensitive and irresponsible as well as a braggart who doesn't mind hurting his loved ones. His mom, Billy was a waitress. Their marriage was not a love match and the two divorced when Mark was just seven years old.

[Joe Kasabian]

I can't imagine how their kid ended up being a cop.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. Shocking. Shocking. This guy who talks about what an asshole, what a violent, angry asshole his dad was turns into a violent, angry asshole. It does happen sometimes. It's a bummer. I don't know I actually hate that this happens, but it's not good. So Mark stays mostly with his mom, who remarries once, but not for very long, as she has a hellish drinking problem and per those who knew her, could be a mean drunk. So again, Mark doesn't just grow up with his dad being this, like, very abrasive kind of figure. His mom, who largely raises him, is like, an abusive drinker at some times. Mark thus grows up. This same person alleged, very mistrustful and paranoid. Right. This is something you'll hear from people who are close to him, is he's just kind of a paranoid kid who has trouble being at ease with people, which is not an uncommon reaction to growing up in an abusive household. Right.

[Joe Kasabian]

Yeah. This is all tracking so far.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, it's all tracking so far. An article in the New York Times Review of Books by Fox Butterfield notes this about Mark's level of. We'll call it racial awareness as a child. Oh, no, Only a few. Yeah, only a few black families lived in Eatonville. And Mr. Furman and his younger brother Scott had run ins with two boys, and one of them, the Blues, they'd see you coming down the street and say, here come the N words, recalled Daniel Blue, now a truck driver in Tacoma, Washington. So that's this claim. You'll get both the Blues will say that, like, Mark and his brother would use racial slurs, target them with racial slurs, would make fun of them, you know, would mock them. We're like bullies. We're racist bullies. Right?

[Joe Kasabian]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Now, for his part, Mark has denied these allegations. Right. Or at least he denied them back in the late 90s. And he writes a book after the O.J. simpson trial, because everybody does, called Murder in Brentwood. And he addresses the allegations from the Blue brothers during this book. And this is again, this is while he's, like, right after the case, he's been essentially revealed as a racist to the entire world. So he has to address that in his book. Mark says that although Dan, like, basically, this is a lie, I never said that to anybody. You know, Dan says that we played football together, but we weren't even at high school at the same time, so he couldn't have played football together. And I guess that's probably true. But also, I can see Dan, like, mixing up who he played football with and when. But remembering accurately, somebody called him a slur, you know, like people pretty easy

[Joe Kasabian]

to do growing up in the area.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. But Mark did say, the truth is, I never heard either brother called Anything other than their name by me or anyone else. And that's the thing. If before Mark saying, like, well, we weren't even in high school together, you know, this is a big story at the time, I'd be willing to believe maybe somebody would like life or attention, you know, to have a little moment in the biggest news story of all time at this point. But when Mark is like, I never heard anyone call those boys a name. I'm sorry. You guys grew up. These are like the only two black kids in town. You grew up in the 50s in rural Washington and you never heard anyone call them anything but their name. I don't believe that.

[Joe Kasabian]

I don't believe that for a second. Not for a second. And like, even like the idea, like, oh, well, we couldn't have played football together. We weren't even in the same grade. Yeah. Because nobody who lives in the neighborhood, a small town, plays pickup football games

[Robert Evans]

ever would ever have played any kind of pickup football game. Right. And it's the. Or would have mistaken, like, you for younger brother maybe. I don't know, like the.

[Joe Kasabian]

Sure.

[Robert Evans]

The whole. The whole idea that, like, he never heard any racism against these kids in small town Washington. Like, growing up in rural Oklahoma in the 90s, I heard black kids in my school get called slurs, you know, Definitely. And number one, it was a lot more diverse. Like rural Oklahoma, way more diverse than rural Washington. But just the whole fucking like that. I just like that from the jump. Mark, you're lying. Yeah. So I don't know how racist he was, but he grew up with a lot of racism. Mark moved around as an adolescent and attended high school, first in Gig harbor and then Belfair. In 1970, he graduated high school. By this point, Mark had come to be known for something besides his racism. He was an artsy kid, weirdly enough. Like, he is. He really likes art. He wants to be a creative. He wants to, like, be, you know, pursue a creative vocation. That seems to be his passion. And he will always. And also the people who are close to him will always say that, like, Mark, at his core, wanted to be an artist. And I think there's a version of this story that's also the tragic tale of a kid who, because of the time and place and his ideas about macho stuff, couldn't do the thing that would have made him happy. And so kept forcing himself to do these aggressive, masculine things that he didn't really want because he just wants to be an artist. But in 1970, he graduates and enlists in The Marines. Because that's what you do, right.

[Joe Kasabian]

And yeah, was he also turned down by an art school in Austria or is this just a weird connection?

[Robert Evans]

He doesn't even apply. Doesn't even apply. But he does kind of do the Hitler, right, Like where he volunteers for the stupid war that he didn't necessarily need to volunteer for. And so instead of continuing or doing anything to further the art thing, he winds up going to Nam. Now he serves, I should say, during the Vietnam War. He is a Vietnam era veteran, I guess he is a veteran of the Vietnam. He's deployed to Vietnam, but he's not a combat veteran. Right. Like he never actually fights and he will claim otherwise. I'm only bringing it up as relevant. Yeah, that's most people.

[Joe Kasabian]

That's most people.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. And the only, again, there's no shame in that. But he will lie about this. Right. And that's why that's really relevant. Mark's service came late in the war and was in reality quite boring. He doesn't actually get to do any of the stuff that like, you get the feeling he really wants to fight. Right. Like this is a kid who like, as a lot of young men do, wants to prove himself in combat, like feels like he wants to, wants to have that experience and he's not going to get it. He gets trained as an MP and a machine gunner and rises to the level rank of sergeant. During his four years in the Corps, he could have been deployed to combat, but it never quite happened that times. That New York Times Review of Books article claims that, quote, the closest he got to the ground war was aboard a ship in the South China Sea. The ship he's on is the USS New Orleans and it's an amphibious transport ships. And Mark is basically like living there and like on call, like if we need to, you might get sent into combat at any point in time, but it never actually quite happens. So Mark spends a period of time just kind of living for months on like the edge of maybe going into battle. But he never gets to like consummate this act that really does seem to mean a lot to him. And this, this act is like the fact that this gets interrupted that he never gets. His baptism of fire is going to bother him the rest of his life. Like I get the feeling he never fully gets over not being tested in this way. And he seems to really want that.

[Joe Kasabian]

I've met a lot of guys like that over the years.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Joe Kasabian]

That they want it so much. They enlist as like infantry dudes. And then they end up on like a massive Ford operating base that might have a rocket fired at it. And they want to sound like the most high speed Green Beret ass motherfucker for the rest of their life. And they probably wear hats about where exactly they were stationed, where exactly they got whatever. Yeah, like Camp Liberty. Like, that's the lamest fucking shit. My favorite was Cold War veteran hat I've seen. That one's a classic, man. That's like the ultimate dude who never did shit.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I love it. It's the. I feel. I feel like I have a level of understanding because, like, there is. Our society does, like, idolize the experience of being a combat veteran to such an extent for young men that, like, I get why he's obsessed with this. Of course he is. Right. It's not an unfamiliar thing. And, you know, I'm not like, no one's like, very few people are immune entirely to that feeling of like, oh, there's got to be like something to this experience that's like, special and powerful and wrote a whole book about it. Yeah, yeah. And when somebody believes that and buys into that and goes as far as getting on the assault boat next to the coast, but never quite gets to have it, there's like a degree of failure to launch almost syndrome that I think is just gonna spark in him the rest of his life. He never gets over this, you know,

[Joe Kasabian]

and he doesn't even go into the country.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Joe Kasabian]

Like, he's living on this boat. So it's like.

[Robert Evans]

Living on the boat.

[Joe Kasabian]

Yeah, that's like, even worse because even if you go to one of these bases, it's very similar to any other irregular conflict where you might get ambushed still, you might get artillery, you might get mortared, whatever. Something could still happen that you can kind of grab onto that you did something. But he's just sitting on a boat.

[Robert Evans]

He's just sitting on a boat and it's just not the thing he wants it to be. Now again, he does. He's not a draftee, so he's not just doing his, like, you know, one quick, you know, in and out. He does a full four years. During his time as a sergeant, he develops a reputation for what that Times journalist Butterfield calls a reputation as a macho officer. And again, he's not an officer. That's Butterfield using the wrong terminology.

[Joe Kasabian]

Yeah, he's a non commissioned officer.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, he's a non com. And specifically a macho, macho quote in the Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry mold. And Mark's gonna Love this movie. When it comes out not long after and he is going to deliberately like try to play act as Dirty Harry like people are. Especially early in his career he's like often kind of larping specifically as Dirty Harry and he'll compare himself to Dirty Harry a lot.

[Joe Kasabian]

He really wants you to think that's dork shit. Robert.

[Robert Evans]

It's really dorky. Some sleep serious tweez shit. Come on, Brockin.

[Joe Kasabian]

Lame.

[Robert Evans]

Like sir. Yeah, it's sad. And it just. The number of toxic men like this who you could just. You really needed like an older brother who would be like, hey man, I know you've gotten a lot of. Picked up a lot of shit from comic books and movies about what men are supposed to do and that's all wrong. You need to calm down and get comfortable in your own skin. Like you're not missing anything. Cause you didn't get shot at. Like he didn't have any. I really get the feeling there was not, there was not any kind of positive male influence in his life who could have like modeled proper behavior. So he's doing these things like, well, I guess I go to the marines and that'll make me a man, you know, and then later it's gonna be, I guess I'll become a cop and that'll make me a man. And you get the feeling this is a guy who doesn't know who he is and who has some. It's not even that. This is a guy who knows a little of who he is. He knows he wants to be an artist, but he can't do that. And so he never gets to find out like more of the person that he might otherwise be as he falls into pretending to be this violent macho asshole. And gradually that becomes him more and more is kind of the thing that I take out of this. This is a guy I don't think had to go down this route, but chose to over time because he was scared to try to portray himself as anything else.

[Joe Kasabian]

What's the chaotic evil version of a glow up?

[Robert Evans]

Right, Right, exactly. So Mark's second wife, Janet Hackett, later told reporters he loved art, but he joined the marines and the police as if he was trying to prove himself. On the outside, Mark is very poised, but inside he had the lowest self esteem you can imagine. So that's one of his three ex wives. I'm not making all of this up myself, you know, this isn't just like my headcanon. That's at least someone who was close to him saying pretty much the Same thing. So after he does his four years with the Marines, Mark decides to see if joining another heavily armed group of men working for the government might stop him from feeling insecure. So he joins the LAPD in 1975. He excels at police academy and he graduates second in his class with widespread praise from his instructors. When he becomes a rookie cop, his bosses were all impressed by his appearance. Mark is in great shape. His uniform's always spoiled, spotless. He, like, looks really good. He looks like the perfect cop. He's like tall, blonde haired, blue eyed, and you know, his shit's always like, really like, locked down. His background is an artist.

[Joe Kasabian]

The Marines would have taught him how to do that.

[Robert Evans]

Yep, yep, yep. And he's also, he's kind of a fastidious dude. His background as an art nerd shows through here too. His superiors noted that his penmanship was, quote, almost a work of art. Right? Like that's one of his, like his superiors in the labd is that, like, his writing was beautiful. Like, his handwriting is gorgeous.

[Joe Kasabian]

They're just like finger painting.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. They could barely read. Yeah. You know who else can barely read? Joe.

[Joe Kasabian]

Who's that?

[Robert Evans]

The sponsors of this podcast. All nearly illiterate, thanks to America's broken public education system.

[Jenny Garth]

This is Jenny Garth from I Choose Me with Jennie Garth. You know, history is full of surprising little details. And laundry turns out it's got its own fascinating story too, because not all detergents are created equal. Tide liquid laundry detergent isn't just clean, it's boosted clean for cleaner, whiter, brighter and fresher results compared to Tide simply. And those stubborn stains that always seem to show up at the worst times. Tide tackles 100% of common stains for every load, every time. Now, if grease is your nemesis, think food spills, cooking splatters. Tide's got 10 times grease fighting ingredients compared to bargain brands. And it works in a machine, in any water condition, on all your machine washable fabrics. It's no wonder. Tide was America's number one detergent in sales last year. So if it's gotta be clean and it's gotta be fresh, it's gotta be Tide. Shop now at your local retailer. Tide is a proud sponsor of the Elton John Impact Awards, honoring those who have helped shape a more inclusive and compassionate world with their artistry, advocacy and unwavering commitment to equality. You won't want to miss the Elton John Impact Awards podcast, available on June 1st on the iHeartRadio app. And everywhere podcasts are heard number one

[Jonas Brothers]

hits, millions of Records sold, awards sold out, tours. You think the Jonas Brothers are satisfied?

[Robert Evans]

Nope.

[Jonas Brothers]

It's podcast time.

[Robert Evans]

We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions.

[Jonas Brothers]

Hey Jonas is available now, and their first guest is a big one, Paul Ruth.

[Joe Kasabian]

You know, Steve Carell is a great singer. Didn't he tell you not to audition at the office or something? I told him we were filming Anchorman.

[Robert Evans]

Clearly, I was the idiot.

[Joe Kasabian]

Thank God he didn't listen to me, right?

[Jonas Brothers]

Listen to hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Alec Baldwin]

Hi, it's Alec Baldwin. This season on my podcast, here's the thing, I'm speaking with more artists, policymakers, and performers like composer Mark Shaiman.

[Robbie Kaplan]

Once you've established that you you have the talent, it's about the hang. It's the pleasure of hanging out with the people that you're with. You know, Rob and I was always a great hang. We would sit in kibbutz for hours and then eventually get around to the music. That's what I mostly think of when I think of him. The time together.

[Alec Baldwin]

Laughing Lawyer Robbie Kaplan.

[Lawyer (Marriage Equality)]

The great gift of being a lawyer is the ability to actually change things in our society in a way that very few people can. I mean, you can really make a difference to causes in the United States if you bring the right case at the right time.

[Alec Baldwin]

Marriage equality.

[Lawyer (Marriage Equality)]

Yeah, Windsor's the perfect example.

[Alec Baldwin]

Director Morgan Neville.

[Joe Kasabian]

Film school teaches you all the wrong things about making documentary. What do you want to say? Documentary is all about your ear. What do you hear? I feel like my job is listening really, really hard.

[Alec Baldwin]

Listen to here's the thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

Why is everyone obsessed with romance right now? Like everyone, your co worker who quote unquote doesn't read. Is reading romance your mom? Book talk the entire Internet. I'm Sanjanah bhasker. I'm Tyler McCall and this is Radio831, a romance podcast. The books, the tropes, the adaptations, the drama, the discourse, and what all of it says about how we actually love, yearn and obsess. We're going to Wuthering Heights, which, for

[Sophie]

the record, is not a romance novel.

[Robert Evans]

And yet it has haunted the romance genre for 200 years. We're getting into dark romance age gaps, certain Russian hockey players, and sentient objects in love, which is a thing.

[Sophie]

That's the kind of conversation we're having every episode.

[Robert Evans]

Listen to the Radio 831 podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. I was. That wasn't even really a joke. There's a good chance the sponsor of this podcast are illiterate. A shocking number of Americans functionally are.

[Joe Kasabian]

Anyway, it's a good time to be writing a book, Robert, let me tell you.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Sophie]

Did you feel the pain in my laugh?

[Joe Kasabian]

Mm.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. So in his first days as an LAPD rookie, Mark seems to have been very eager to please and impress. He would often show up to work like a half hour to an hour early. This commitment to going above and beyond the job description was recognized by his bosses. And in 1977, he was assigned to a dangerous but prominent assignment working with a sexy new unit in East LA targeting Hispanic street gangs. Per an article in the LA Times quote. In 1977, with black gangs emerging as a formidable criminal element and Latino gangs continuing to pose problems, department administrators received a one year federal grant for a special 44 man unit to concentrate on neighborhoods where gang crime was heaviest. Based at the Hollenbeck Division in East Los Angeles, the unit was dubbed Total Resources Against Street Hoodlums trash. But civic leaders thought the acronym disparaging just Total Resources Against Street Hoodlums. Hoodlums. Come on, guys.

[Joe Kasabian]

I love these. My 50s slang.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Now it is the 70s, but yeah, it still seems outdated. Ultimately. The trash.

[Joe Kasabian]

Get those roustabouts.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, get the roustabouts out of here. And people probably haven't heard about the TRASH program, but a lot of Angelenos have heard about the CRASH program. And the crash.

[Joe Kasabian]

That's where I thought you were going. I was like, of course this guy was in a fucking crash unit.

[Robert Evans]

That's where I am going. Because the trash unit is the immediate precursor to the crash unit. So you start the crash unit in like 77. I think it's 79. They change the name to crash. They're like, oh, you know what? Trash is a bad acronym, but if we throw a C in there, you

[Joe Kasabian]

know, it changes everything.

[Robert Evans]

That sounds a lot better. Right?

[Joe Kasabian]

It's what we're doing on the streets is not the problem, Robert. It's what we're calling ourselves to put out a really cool challenge coin.

[Robert Evans]

Right? Right. Total. T for total. That's bad. C for community. That's good. So the CRASH program becomes the cornerstone of Chief Daryl Gates Anti Gang initiative. The goal here was to counter gang activity by treating the battle against organized crime as if it were a literal War to use the lessons of insurgent conflict in Vietnam in order to, like, defeat street crime. Now, one major early measure adopted by the LAPD was the use of stop and frisk tactics, which, which they referred to as jamming. So, you know, a lot, a lot of racism, a lot of, like, targeting of black and Hispanic men, and a lot of, like, targeting in a way that leads to violence when there doesn't need to be. So a lot of people are going to get beaten and arrested and killed who don't need to be, because this program is basically built in order to ensure there are additional unnecessary violent interactions between law enforcement and the community.

[Joe Kasabian]

Yeah, they had to name it CRASH because it was really hard to find an acronym for the word boomerang.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. So the city government judged the CRASH program a success and took over funding it in 79. And again, that's when it becomes CRASH instead of trash. And I'm not sure by what metric you'd call CRASH a success in 1979. As that article noted, from 79 to 81, the number of major gang related crimes in Los Angeles more than doubled from 2088 to 5158 during the first, like, four years or so. That the CRASH program, I mean, during the second two years of it, but like, yeah, from like 79 to 81, it doubles more than now. What's funny is that around that time, the sheriff's department had a program with a similar goal that worked much better. Like the sheriff's anti gang program is a lot more effective than the LAPD's. But the LAPD just kind of keeps ballsing their way through crash, which critics say spread out police attention far too widely. A large part of the problem with these anti gang units is that they had very little effective oversight and a ton of incentive to lock people up for bullshit reasons and carry out acts of extreme violence against them. These programs would ultimately culminate in the shattering LAPD Rampart scandal. This keeps getting worse and worse until it blows up in a major way that causes massive problems, like all LAPD scandals, because that's how the LAPD works. You know, like, we're always building to something that's going to, like, blow up in the city of Los Angeles. Face.

[Joe Kasabian]

They had to create their own gangs to fight gangs with tattoos and colors and, you know, especially the sheriff's department.

[Robert Evans]

Ironically enough, the only way to beat a bad guy with a gang is a bad guy also with a gang.

[Joe Kasabian]

That's right.

[Robert Evans]

That's right.

[Joe Kasabian]

But one is paid by the Government.

[Robert Evans]

But yeah, one of them has official badges. So at the same time as Crash is making the gang problem worse, it contributes to this ever growing sense of unease and the building racial tension in Los Angeles. This is all like the, the whole. All of the bad things about this program are going to help cause and lead to the LA riots. Right? This all feeds into Rodney King. And you know the reaction to that, why everyone is so fucking pissed at the lapd, you know, before that even happens. For his part, Mark does not seem to have liked anti gang work. He described his mission to his second wife, who he was married to during this period, as to, quote, harass anyone who looked like a gang member and obliterate them. That's.

[Joe Kasabian]

I assumed he would love that.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, he does not. Per the Times. The job put enormous pressure on Mr. Furman, Mrs. Hackett said. That's his ex. He was blond and blue eyed, six foot three, and he stood out in a crowd in the largely Hispanic neighborhood. She said he became a lot more on the edge, moody and depressed because of the job. Mrs. Hackett recalled. Sometimes he refused to talk or smile for days. And like, you don't need to be there. No one's making you do this job. I'm not surprised. It's miserable. It sounds awful, bro, you have a job.

[Joe Kasabian]

You could just quit. You're not the Marines anymore. Just hit the bricks.

[Robert Evans]

She doesn't tell us a lot. Like, I don't have a ton of detail inside their marriage, but you get a lot from the fact that she's like, yeah, he seemed miserable, so I left him. I got out of there. Like, she divorces him because of his moodiness, like right around this time. So Mark winds up alone, has to like live with a fellow cop in an apartment. This does not make him less depressed. I think the cause of his deep and the cause of his sadness should be pretty obvious. He wants to, like, be an artist. He doesn't like this job. But his need to prove himself as a man has forced him into a series of brutal, dangerous, and pointless jobs that make him miserable and make him miserable to be around. And he seems to have recognized this as well. In 1981, the LAPD had just opened a behavioral science service section which hosted the first police psychological counseling unit in the country. So there aren't any police psychological counselors officially until 1981, which probably explains a lot.

[Joe Kasabian]

That's fine, right? They do so well nowadays.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. It helps so much today.

[Joe Kasabian]

Anyway, it changed American policing, obviously.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. After this, there were no more problems.

[Joe Kasabian]

Yeah. Solved it.

[Robert Evans]

So actually, this actually explains maybe why the counseling doesn't help and even can contribute to making things worse within, like, the construct of these police departments.

[Joe Kasabian]

Because killology or whatever it's called, it's

[Robert Evans]

a little worse than that, actually. It's weird. So Mark sits down. He has a counseling session with a psychiatrist or psychologist named Susan Saxon Clifford. And she talks to him, and he goes through. Because he's. He's trying to get. He wants to quit. He wants to get, like a. Like a medical pension, basically like a disability pension. So he starts telling her this elaborate story about how he has uncontrollable urges to commit acts of violence on suspects, sometimes choking and beating them, because he's just, like, overwhelmed by a desire to do, like, murderous violence to them as a result of his military training. He tells this to the department psychologist, and Susan's like, I think you should turn into your gun. Which two things are true. Number one, that's a very reasonable response on Susan's part.

[Sophie]

Shut up.

[Joe Kasabian]

Surprisingly. Surprisingly so.

[Robert Evans]

I love doing violence to suspects, but it's also kind of why programs like this are doomed to fail or make the problem worse. Because if you're gonna have. And apparently we are organizations in every city where a bunch of guys are given guns and the ability to use them with almost impunity to stop quote, unquote crime. And you don't have any way for those guys, when they're having a psychological problem, to, like, say, hey, I'm having a psych problem, and have it not ruin their career. You might cause a lot of worse problems. Right. Like, if that's how they see it, sure.

[Sophie]

Yeah.

[Joe Kasabian]

Then they're just not gonna say anything. Or like, also when she's like, I think you should turn in your gun.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Joe Kasabian]

Obviously he remains a cop. Right. Like, he remains a cop. So it's not like there's any force in. In. You know, it's like the concept of international law. Right. Like, it's all just a. A list of suggestions.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Joe Kasabian]

With no meaningful enforcement.

[Robert Evans]

Right. With. No. And with. With this thing set up almost to, like, encourage guys not to talk about stuff. Now, that said, I would go more into, like, oh, the psychological issues here. Except for. I think he's lying from the jump. I think he just doesn't want to do this job anymore. Right. So I don't even want to treat this like it's a serious psych issue that he's actually coming to them with. But I can see how this would make guys like that less willing to talk about their problems too. For sure. For her part, Dr. Sax Clifford later said, I wouldn't remove someone from duty unless I had very serious concerns. The very fact that he had said these things to a doctor shows bad judgment. And I gotta say, I think that's a bad way to phrase it that like. Well, but shouldn't he say things to a doctor if he's feeling them like this?

[Joe Kasabian]

She might be a bad therapist.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. I think it's good if you're. If you are. If legit. If you were really. If a cop was legitimately feeling uncontrollable urges to murder people and he decided as a result, I need to go to a therapist, that's actually good judgment, I'd say. Right?

[Joe Kasabian]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Really? Right.

[Joe Kasabian]

Well, if he was really troubled, he wouldn't have told me. So that's fine.

[Robert Evans]

I think that's a bad psych. Maybe.

[Joe Kasabian]

I think this might be a bad therapist.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. I think she might not be good at her job.

[Joe Kasabian]

Starting to think she went to University of Phoenix or some shit.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And that said, I don't think Marx telling the truth here. Right. Because Fuhrman wants out of the force and he wants to get a permanent disability pension by arguing that his experiences in the gang unit fucked him up too badly to go on. He does get placed on temporary workers comp leave. And so he's getting paid to not work. And he's able to go take art classes. So he goes to like Long Beach City College. He starts taking art courses. He's like, happy for like a year or so while this process is going on as he's trying to like, get cashiered out on disability because he gets to take his art classes.

[Joe Kasabian]

Painting. The finest hand turkey the university has ever seen.

[Robert Evans]

Exactly. Yeah. Weeping with beauty at it. Yeah. Now here's the thing. The cops don't want to. The cops, they don't want to do that. They don't want to like, pay him forever to not work. They would like him to either return to duty or to quit without a permanent pension because he hasn't really served very long. And they think this is bullshit too. But Mark really wants that disability pension. And so later in 1981, he applies for one, telling his superiors that he's just been too damaged by the job to go on. So at this point, you're probably wondering, how do I know that he's lying? One reason would be Mark Fuhrman's mouth was moving throughout all of this. And that's a pretty good indicator to tell if he's lying. However, I have other evidence. Mark told the doctors at the time who had been assigned to evaluate him for his disability claim that he'd loved his time in Vietnam and had fond memories of becoming a trained killer. He lied about his actual deployment, regaling them with stories of heavy combat and near death experiences. At the same time, per Dr. Ronald Kogler, he quote, bragged that he never had any second thoughts about what he did in Vietnam, never had any flashbacks. And I guess that's true, cuz he just sat on a boat. Why would you second guess that? But that's not what he means. Right?

[Joe Kasabian]

You know, but I think the one moral thing that Furman ever tried to do, hear me out here, is steal a pension from the lapd.

[Robert Evans]

It is, it is. This is him at the moral height of his life. Absolutely. We would all have been better off if he'd stolen a pension from the lapd. So I think Furman's plan was to try and argue that because the Marine Corps had made him into such a lethal killing machine, he was unsafe to be a cop because he couldn't see suspects without wanting to beat and maim them. And per Dr. Kogler, he traces his feelings about violence to his experiences in the Marines. Mark told another panel of doctors who evaluated him, I'm really capable of violent things. I feel like I'm out on a limb and someone's sawing it off. I have this urge to kill people. And again, I think these are lies. But it could have worked if it weren't for the fact that Mark was like the millionth LAPD cop to realize that a permanent disability pension sounded way better than working for a living. The department was noted nationwide as having a number one, an unusually good pension plan that promised officers with a psych disability up to half their pay, tax free for life. And so from 1980-19. Yeah, not a bad deal. Yeah. From 1980 to 1985, 175 LAPD officers were granted stress disability pensions, which became known as psycho pensions. That's like the, the term within the department for this. Now the fact that these kind of disability pensions were weirdly common just in LA was noted in a 1985 Los Angeles Times article by Robert Wilkes and Claire Spiegel. Quote, although stress pensions have risen dramatically in the LAPD during the last five years, they are rare in many other major law enforcement agencies outside of California. So no one else does this. And it's weird. Only LAPD cops are getting these because they just don't want to don't want to do the job.

[Joe Kasabian]

You would have thought, like the biggest department in the country, the best at institutional corruption. Like arguably, between them and their own sheriff's department, give it a way out to cash out early. They fuck yeah. They're going to take it.

[Robert Evans]

The efforts are probably cheaper than letting

[Joe Kasabian]

them just steal all their overtime like they normally do.

[Robert Evans]

Absolutely. I consider this probably a net benefit, you know. Yeah, like, let's get these dudes off the fucking streets.

[Joe Kasabian]

I support this.

[Robert Evans]

You know who else we should get off the streets? Joe?

[Joe Kasabian]

Who's that, Robert?

[Robert Evans]

The sponsors of this podcast. All of whom are walking the streets. I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing doing here.

[Jenny Garth]

This is Jenny Garth from I Choose Me with Jenny Garth. You know, history is full of surprising little details. And laundry. Turns out it's got its own fascinating story too. Because not all detergents are created equal. Tide liquid laundry detergent isn't just clean, it's boosted clean for cleaner, wider, brighter and fresher results compared to Tide Simply. And those stubborn stains that always seem to show up at the worst times. Tide tackles 100% of common stains for every load, every time. Now, if grease is your nemesis, think food spills, cooking splatters. Tide's got 10 times grease fighting ingredients compared to bargain brands. And it works in a machine, in any water condition, on all your machine washable fabrics. It's no wonder Tide was America's number one detergent in sales last year. So if it's gotta be clean and it's gotta be fresh, it's gotta be tied. Shop now at your local retailer. Tide is a proud sponsor of the Elton John Impact Awards, honoring those who have helped shape a more inclusive and compassionate world with their artistry, advocacy, and unwavering commitment to equality. You won't want to miss the Elton John Impact Awards podcast, available on June 1st on the iHeartRadio app. And everywhere podcasts are heard.

[Jonas Brothers]

Number one hits, millions of records sold awards, sold out tours. You think the Jonas Brothers are satisfied?

[Robert Evans]

Nope.

[Jonas Brothers]

It's podcast time.

[Robert Evans]

We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions.

[Jonas Brothers]

A Jonas is available now. And their first guest is a big one, Paul Rudd.

[Joe Kasabian]

You know, Steve Carell is a great singer. Didn't he tell you not to audition at the office or something? I told him, whoa, we were filming Anchorman. Clearly I was the idiot. Thank God he didn't listen to me right.

[Jonas Brothers]

Listen to hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Alec Baldwin]

Hi, it's Alec Baldwin. This season on my podcast, here's the thing, I'm speaking with more artists, policymakers, and like composer Mark Shaiman.

[Robbie Kaplan]

Once you've established that you have the talent, it's about the hang. It's the pleasure of hanging out with the people that you're with. You know, Rob and I was always a great hang. We would sit in kibbutz for hours and then eventually get around to the music. That's what I mostly think of when I think of him, the time together.

[Alec Baldwin]

Laughing Lawyer Robbie Kaplan.

[Lawyer (Marriage Equality)]

The great gift of being a lawyer is the ability to actually choose, change things in our society in a way that very few people can. You can really make a difference to causes in the United States if you bring the right case at the right time.

[Alec Baldwin]

Marriage equality.

[Lawyer (Marriage Equality)]

Yeah, Windsor's the perfect example.

[Alec Baldwin]

Director Morgan Neville.

[Joe Kasabian]

Film school teaches you all the wrong things about making documentary. What do you want to say? Documentary is all about your ear. What do you hear? I feel like my job is listening really, really hard.

[Alec Baldwin]

Listen to here's the thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Sophie]

This is Saigon, the story of my family and of the country that shaped us.

[Robert Evans]

The United States will not stand by and allow any power, however great, take over another country.

[Narrator (Saigon podcast)]

From iheart Podcasts, Saigon.

[Joe Kasabian]

Please allow me to introduce Joseph Sherman.

[Robert Evans]

You don't think I'm serious about a free Vietnam?

[Joe Kasabian]

I should stop talking so much.

[Jana Kramer]

I like hearing you talk.

[Narrator (Saigon podcast)]

One city, a divided country and the war that tore America apart.

[Robert Evans]

This is for Vietnam. I've taken a hit from Japanese ground fire. Do you read me? They're pouring petrol all over him. He's holding matches. I'm on a landmine for freedom. Let's get out. Freedom for Vietnam.

[Narrator (Saigon podcast)]

Saigon. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Rob Benedict.

[Robert Evans]

Staying here is madness. The world should hear about this. There's a fire coming to this country and it's going to burn out everything.

[Narrator (Saigon podcast)]

Listen to Saigon on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

And we're back. We're back and we're talking about Mark Fuhrman's attempt to get a psych disability penchant from the labd. So this doesn't work out for him. Ultimately, psychiatrist John Hockman concluded that Fuhrman was not legitimately disabled by his work. Hockman wrote, there is some suggestion here that the patient was trying to feign the presence of severe psychopathology. This suggests a conscious attempt to look bad and an exaggeration of problems. In a presentation to the pension board, he noted that Fuhrman had failed a standard psychological test as well. The board voted second, 6 to 0 to deny Mark's disability pension. Ouch.

[Joe Kasabian]

Nice. You have to go steal OT and rack up vacation days like a normal LAPD officer.

[Robert Evans]

That's right. You have to be a corrupt, lazy bastard the normal cop way. Now, the fact that Mark had completely invented his combat experiences in Nam, wasn't caught at the time. But the pension board did note that police records found no complaints of excessive force had been filed against Furman. If he were dangerously unhinged, the argument went, he probably would have fucked somebody up by now. I don't know if that's the best way to go about this is the lapd, but that's how they do it.

[Joe Kasabian]

I would expect nothing less from the lapd to be fair, like, well, if he was truly insane, he would have murdered someone by now.

[Robert Evans]

We have a ton of cops who have, trust us, we know what the murder cops look like, and we keep them on the job too.

[Joe Kasabian]

We would promote him.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, he'd be chief by now. So Mark doesn't take this denial lying down, though. He appealed to a county judge, which made his court records public, which is why we know all of this now. In September of 1983, the judge upheld the board's ruling, and Mark Fuhrman's brief break for the artistic life was over. He'd either have to quit the LAPD and find a real job or go back to work, probably as something. As a. Of a pariah within the department. Mark's not willing to get a real job, so he goes back to the lapd, and sure enough, he spends most of his first year back on active duty riding a desk. Now, I don't have a lot of detail on this period of time in his life, but it's interesting to me. It's just eight months before he gets back to active duty work as a patrolman in May of 1984. And this is interesting because you would assume after having tried to get out and like saying all this bullshit, he would be kind of unpopular and people would be making fun of him. I think he's actually, like, really charming and charismatic within sort of an organization like this because he seems to have friends in the department. He gets his gun and patrol route back pretty quickly and in short order, he's actually assigned to a better location. He gets sent to west la. West Los Angeles is the wealthiest Part of town and thus the easiest beat to walk. Right. Like a lot less of the crime and gang stuff that Mark was clearly scared by. And despite Mark's claims that he suffered from uncontrollable bloodlust, he excelled at working in west la, where tact and charm were significantly more valuable than violence. Which also maybe suggests that he was never actually all that violent of a guy. The fact that he does really well once there's a job where he can just be charming to other white people, he suddenly is a good cop. Like, quote, unquote. Right.

[Joe Kasabian]

And if he was, you know, handicapped by an uncontrollable urge to savage every single person he ever met.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Joe Kasabian]

Wouldn't he want to just ride the desk instead?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Joe Kasabian]

Rather than like, get back out on

[Robert Evans]

patrol, why does he want to be back in the street?

[Joe Kasabian]

Yeah. Like he had it made, dude. Just file paperwork. You get paid the same amount of money.

[Robert Evans]

Yep. So again, I think he's lying about being this like, violent maniac. As Brian Bentley, a black police officer who was Furman's partner during this period, told a journalist in west la, you can't even yell at people. There are movie stars who know the President of the United States and they write everyone they can. Basically. Like, Mark was really great at, like, being a cop who has to interact with celebrities sometimes. You know, I know from personal experience that's a slight exaggeration, but the basic point is pretty sound. Once Furman moves to an area where he's in no real danger, he seems to like being a cop. And his semi annual evaluations back this up. He gets positive reviews from his superiors in August of 1987. He's described by one as highly motivated and having a bias for action. He was described somewhat differently by civilians who encountered him at the time. Natalie Singer met Mark and his partner at the in the during this period in a hospital emergency room in 1987. She claims that he told her, the only good inward is a dead inward. So if not, what a great to hear Jesus.

[Joe Kasabian]

And knowing him, he just brings it up like, hey, by the way, that's

[Robert Evans]

how she says it. Yeah. Now. And actually kind of how Mark says it, because in his book Murder in Brentwood, he does kind of deny this, but he gives a very different story of his relationship with this woman. Quote, I met Natalie Singer in 1987 because my partner was dating her roommate. I can't recall exact incidents, but I won't say we didn't argue. I do remember that we did not get along. And I Tried hard to irritate and anger her. So he's like. He's saying, oh, I wouldn't have said that, but I did say stuff just to piss her off.

[Joe Kasabian]

So his defense is straight out of 2026. Like, no, you don't understand. I was simply trolling.

[Robert Evans]

It was a bit. It was a bit. Yeah, yeah.

[Joe Kasabian]

That's. Yeah, fuck off.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. So here's the thing. And, like, I don't know that either of them are lying about the basic facts, by which I mean, I believe that Mark said what Natalie said that he said because we have him recorded saying almost identical things. I also believe that Mark, when Mark said that, like. Well, I would often just say shit to piss her off. I think that's true. And I think he might have said that. He might have said racist shit just to piss her off. I think his motivation in that might have been just to troll her, which doesn't make it not racist. Right, right.

[Joe Kasabian]

I believe every side of the story simultaneously, if that's possible.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. These are all. None of these are in conflict. No. Another contact of Marx during this period who would later be asked to testify about his racism was Roderick Hodge, who he arrested on drug charges also in 1987. Hodge was acquitted of these charges and claims that the cop Furman, who arrested him, per time as, quote, snarling from his patrol car, I told you we'd get you n word, right? So Hodge says, when this guy arrested me, he snarls this to me, and then I'm acquitted because they were bullshit charges. Here's what Mark writes later about this interaction with Roderick. I came to know Roderick Hodge while working a gang narcotic unit as a uniformed officer in West Los Angeles from 1985 to 1987. Hodge was under investigation for dealing narcotics. I had many contacts with Hodge and arrested him twice. During both arrests, he made complaints about his handling by both arresting officers and wanted to speak with a sergeant. There was no merit to his charges, and he never claimed I used racial epithets. He was just complaining in an attempt to draw attention away from his own arrests. Now, I don't know who's this is. Who's telling the truth. I have no idea. The fact that Hodge was acquitted certainly makes me more inclined to take his side, maybe than Mark's here, but I don't actually know what happened.

[Joe Kasabian]

It's the whole book. Him just trying to explain all the n words ever said.

[Robert Evans]

A lot. Shocking. A lot of it, because he says it a lot. He's used that word a lot.

[Joe Kasabian]

I'm gonna go on a limb here and suggest he might not be the most trustworthy motherfucker on earth.

[Robert Evans]

Might be a racist.

[Joe Kasabian]

Yeah, might be racist.

[Sophie]

He might be a horrific racist.

[Robert Evans]

It is noteworthy that there are allegations of racism from Mark that also come from within the lapd. One of Mark's coworkers.

[Joe Kasabian]

Oh, God.

[Robert Evans]

Office. Yeah. Yeah. And that's wild.

[Joe Kasabian]

How are you so racist that the LAPD is like, whoa, whoa.

[Robert Evans]

Great question, Joe. How. Let's explore that. One of Mark's co workers, Officer James Purdy, married a Jewish woman around 1985 and would later testify that after his marriage, Mark Fuhrman painted a swastika on his locker.

[Joe Kasabian]

Now, oh, my God.

[Robert Evans]

Mark denies this, and Mark is like, I would never have done anything that hateful. Oh, my. A SWAT painted a swastika on an officer's, you know, locker just because he married a Jewish one. I would never do anything like that. And then Mark continues with a line of argument that's almost, like, crafted in a lab to make me doubt him. Purdy was hardly popular in west la. There were so many people who either didn't care for him or flat out couldn't stand him that it would be difficult to speculate who might have defaced his locker if that incident ever really occurred. The whole department wanted to paint a swastika on that guy's locker. Why do you think it was me? People, cops, were lining up to paint a swastika on this guy's locker.

[Joe Kasabian]

And the fact that when the swastika was painted on his locker, the cop in question was like, this had to be. Furman tells me that there's, like, a chain of events that led to the point where someone looked at him like, that's a cop who would paint a swastika in a motherfucker's locker. You know what I'm saying? Like, how many things did he do to get there?

[Robert Evans]

The fact that this guy defaulted to assuming it was Furman, if that's what he did. Right.

[Joe Kasabian]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Is says almost more than, like, if we knew for a fact Furman had painted the swastika, people were like, it had to have been him. It literally has to have been him. Right?

[Joe Kasabian]

The other cop was like, yeah, this has Furman written all over.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, it sounds like Mark. Yeah, sounds like Mark. So it's one of those things, like, it's such a. Like saying, oh, I would never have, like, done something that bad. But also, this guy sucks that almost anyone could have done it. So, like, why is he blaming me? It's such perfect bully logic. And I think that's the correct comparison to draw like a high school bully. If you want to understand the social role that Mark Fuhrman held in the LAPD hierarchy by the late 1980s, like the mid to late 80s, he is like a kind of popular bully. He's like, popular specifically with like, the cool kids in the LAPD who are like the white guy officers. Right. Like, that's kind of seems to be his position in the West LA department. He's like, you know, and again, he's obviously capable of being charming when he wants to be and being likable when he wants to be. It's also worth noting that as comfortable as he is with racism and as like, natural as it is for him to use racism and humor and slurs and humor, I think it's largely because he likes the edgy trolling. Because Mark is at least capable of forming genuine friendships and working well with non white officers. Right. Which makes me think, again, he's capable of viewing individuals as people. He's obviously racist, but the racism also comes out. Not just the racism is not coming out uncontrollably. He lets his racism out when he thinks it's funny and will be socially beneficial. And he's more than capable of, like, not letting it out when he either is with like, a non, like a black or Hispanic officer that he gets along with or that he recognizes as popular and that he doesn't want to be, like, uncool around. Right. Like, he's able to do that. He's able to calculate when he lets the racism out.

[Joe Kasabian]

So we have, like, another classic example of some dickhead racist troll deploying racism as something, as a barb, slowly, over time, simply becoming a racist.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Joe Kasabian]

Damn, Robert, where have we heard this

[Robert Evans]

ability to tale as old as time? So when the O.J. simpson trial came out, and like the recordings of Mark being a racist that we'll talk about later came out, several of his former partners who were black and Hispanic men were brought forward by the LAPD to talk about the fact that, oh no, Mark wasn't a racist. And they all expressed seemingly genuine sentiment that Mark had not been racist around them. These guys are all cops, so I won't say I believe them entirely. But I could also see individual guys not having had that experience with Mark for the reasons that I just explained. And again, racism's a thing for Mark, but it's not the only thing. Social standing and comfort at work matters. And he's capable of, like, taking people as individuals and forming relationships with them based on that, especially if it's advantageous to his social standing. One of his first partners was Roberto Alons, an Hispanic officer who said that Furman exemplified exactly what a police officer ought to be. We take it to the bad guys, and Mark was very good at it. However, it's just as clear to me that in the normal course of daily life, dealing with people he saw as civilians and not colleagues, Mark defaulted to violence and to bigotry. Per the New York Times, from 1984 to 1990, at least half a dozen complaints were made against Mr. Fuhrman, including several contending that he threatened or beat suspects. But most of them were ruled groundless by the department for lack of independent witnesses. In 1984, he lost a day off for seizing a pedestrian's wrists. And in 1986, he received a one day suspension for leaving an improper remark on our motorist's windshield.

[Joe Kasabian]

So again, what did he write on someone's windshield?

[Robert Evans]

I wish I'd found out. I could not find that anywhere. I did look, but I didn't find like that specified anywhere. But I. You want to keep a. Because when the tapes that include him claim and talk about all the crimes he pretended to have committed or claimed to have committed, the LAPD will be like, well, he was lying. We didn't find any evidence. It's braggadocio. Some of it certainly was. But also, every time he got, like, accused of a violent crime, it usually got ignored because there were no independent witnesses. Which means in my head, Mark probably just beat someone up, and it was his word versus that guy. And Mark was a cop, right? Yeah. Because we do know he did beat some people. He got in trouble for it several times. Which means, I assume a lot of these other cases were just. Yeah, the LAPD was able to ignore it anyway.

[Joe Kasabian]

It's not like a cop gets caught beating someone the first time. You know, once they start people up, it's because they've built up, been doing it a while for time, you know, that they know they can get away with it. Their. Their bros, their co workers are going to lie for them. They know the department's in internal investigations is never going to find them.

[Robert Evans]

Yep, exactly.

[Joe Kasabian]

You know, they're immune.

[Robert Evans]

And part of what has given Mark that sense of impunity is experience. And a lot of his experience is in being bigoted against female LAPD officers. And I want to quote again from that New York Times article, the most serious blemish on Mr. Furman's work in the West Los Angeles division was the hostile views he sometimes expressed about minorities and women. His performance evaluation in August of 1985, which was made available to the New York Times by a member of the Simpson defense, noted, he is outspoken and critical in his perception of the department's application of affirmative action. He's been counseled to leave his personal feelings at home and to make every effort to adhere to the affirmative action guidelines. And that. That says a little bit right there. And I think the first most important thing for me to note as a result of that is that while all this comes out during the trial because the O.J. simpson defense team needs to paint Furman as a particularly toxic, racist officer, that's not true. Mark is toxic and racist, but his racism and sexism are pretty normal among his colleagues. One LAPD officer during this period told the Times that when he was assigned to west la, he was warned, there are a bunch of old white guys who hate blacks and women at west la. That's the department that Mark is transferred to because he's a racist and a bigot. You know, like. And a lot of guys mid-80s.

[Joe Kasabian]

Of course he's a misogynist. Like, this isn't like a defense of Furman. If anybody's confused. It would be really weird if there was a cop in 1985. He's like, no, I would love to work with a woman. That guy doesn't exist.

[Robert Evans]

And the reason this is relevant is not that. And so that makes it okay that he was a normal level of racist for the lapd? Kind of. It just means that don't take the defense seriously and don't take the LAPD seriously when they try to position Mark as a particular outlier. Mark's a normal cop and a normal detective, and his racism is normal. You know, like, that's the thing to take out of this.

[Joe Kasabian]

Yeah, that's the problem. Right? Like, no, he is just indicative of the LAPD as a whole.

[Robert Evans]

And he's not. When I say normal, doesn't mean every cop says the same shit. Cause he does stand out sometimes. But what I mean is that even though he was noted as like, oh, Mark is more of a bigot than a lot of other guys, he speaks out more. No one noted. And that's crazy that a cop would say this. Nobody fired him. Nobody didn't want to work with him. He was, like, maintained his position in the lapd. Cause it just wasn't that weird that he was that kind of guy.

[Joe Kasabian]

Yeah, he just stuck out.

[Robert Evans]

Exactly. So that 1985, performance evaluation of Marx continued. He was also counseled by this raiding lieutenant and captain regarding his very strong expression of his personal views regarding women and minorities in police work. He was not receptive. He stated he felt as an American citizen, he had a right to express his views.

[Joe Kasabian]

Of course, this isn't about me being a racist, Robert. It's about my freedom of speech.

[Robert Evans]

About my freedom to be a racist. Yeah, exactly. Now, by way of defending Mark, his supervisor from 1989 to 1994, Gary Fullerton told the New York Times that Furman joined a basketball league made up largely of black LAPD officers who had to meet up at 6:30am and was like, who would do that if they were racist? The Times talked to one of these players, Sergeant Ed Palmer, who is a black officer, and told them that he saw no signs of racism from Furman in their basketball games. If you really hate African Americans, why would you get up at 5:40 to play basketball with me? And, like, I don't know, man, but racists do all sorts of crazy shit, dude. Like, you know that. Like, you. You actually do know that, Ed. Yeah.

[Joe Kasabian]

And again, these are only dudes who are cops as well.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, exactly.

[Joe Kasabian]

This is the classic us versus them of American policing, where, like, yes, he's a racist, but he's totally fine to hang out black people who are also cops.

[Robert Evans]

That's right. And all of these accounts are coming out during the trial when Mark. When the tri. It's become clear that the trial hinges largely on whether or not Mark's a racist. And so, like, the LAPD gets everyone they can who's not white in the department to say something nice about Mark and every woman that they can. Now, that fact leads to a lot of, like, see saw moments when you're reading about Furman, particularly during the Simpson trial, because you'll read, like, one series of quotes about how this is. These allegations of awful things he said, and then you'll read a very heartfelt quote about someone saying something nice about Mark. And this is all a result of a coordinated campaign within the lapd, you know, in order to kind of buttress Mark's reputation because he was sort of standing in for the department at that point. One person who definitely saw the racist side of Mark was Laura Hart McKinney, a screenwriter who, in the spring of 1985, got interested in writing a movie about female cops. So she starts interviewing several real LAPD officers for, like, texture and research purposes. McKinney's noted as being, like, a pretty dedicated researcher when she does she like lived as a homeless person in Santa Monica for like a week, I think to like research a screenplay at one point.

[Joe Kasabian]

Okay.

[Robert Evans]

And so she's like, really talks to a lot of people. And one of the people she meets is Mark Fuhrman. They like meet kind of casually earlier that year and become friends. And so she starts sitting down and like taping Mark, talking about his experiences on the job. And McKinney would ultimately interview Mark several times between 1985 and 1994. And depending on who you read, McKinney is either again, a very diligent screenwriter trying to do research to do the best work she can, or basically a hack who like can't quite make it. And you know, is largely during this period, once it comes out that Mark's the center of this case, is trying to like profit off of it, that's certainly what some people will argue about her. I don't think that's really fair. But she has all of these tapes with Mark. She winds up having hours and hours. I think it's 13 hours of recorded interviews with him, with him just kind of talking. And here's how. Elizabeth Gleek was writing for Time magazine, described the contents of these tapes according to partial transcripts and comments by the lawyers in court, Furman describes engaging in police misconduct of the most damning kind, beating suspects, bloody coercion and badgering minorities, contrary to his sworn testimony last March that he had not used the N word in the past 10 years. Furman's blustering talk on the tapes is laced with that word and contains other terms offensive to African Americans, Hispanics, women and Jews. In a portion of the transcripts obtained by Time, for instance, he tells Martha Laurie Diaz, a friend of McKinney's, that women cops are ineffectual because they don't do anything. They don't go out and initiate contact with some 6 foot 5 inch N word that's been in prison for 7 years pumping weights and God, these tapes are bad and remarkable. That's not even the. That's the least of the crazy awful.

[Joe Kasabian]

And he knows he's being recorded.

[Robert Evans]

He knows this is intentional. Now he does not. When the Simpson case comes up, cuz this has been going on since 85, and when the fucking Simpson case starts in 94, he's not thinking, oh, there's tapes of me with the N word on him that could become part of this case. He doesn't necessarily ever hear anything from McKinney. Right. Like, why would McKinney? Because he's not there's never been a case that blows up like the O.J. simpson case. Right. So Mark would have had no way to expect, oh, well, maybe I'll be all over every news station in the country, and there will be potentially a lot of money in having a bunch of incriminating info about me. Right. He doesn't think about that at all as he's sitting down for these tapes. And I don't think McKinney is either, to be fair. Like, she's trying to write a screenplay. She's not trying to, like, gotcha, Mark Fuhrman. And if you want to critique her for something, it's the fact she's listening to this guy say this awful shit about the crimes he's committed inside the LAPD and is just, like, cool stuff from the screenplay.

[Joe Kasabian]

This will be very useful for me. Thank you.

[Robert Evans]

Like, if I were to sit down with an active LAPD detective who were to admit to me blithely about all of the crimes and torture that he commits, I would try to get him imprisoned. Like, that would be my. As a journalist, like, that's what I do.

[Joe Kasabian]

I love to casually sit down and create the LAPD version of the act of killing and then just use it for my drama.

[Robert Evans]

Weird. But it is gonna wind up being really good for O.J. simpson that McKinney has these tapes. And once these tapes and the audio in them comes out, Mark's basic argument in defense of himself is going to be that, like, well, none of this was. I had lied in the tapes. I was putting on a show, a character that's not really me. I was trying to impress this outsider. And so none of it was true. I just wanted to sound cool so that her script would be cool. Right. I was trying to give her what she needed to make an entertaining movie. Some of that is true. Mark is definitely judging things up to sound more exciting because he thinks maybe it'll wind up in a movie. Right. Like, that's absolutely a part of what's going on.

[Joe Kasabian]

I do buy that.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And it's not hard to buy. And Mark tells several specific stories of specific incidents of violence and racism that can't be documented and several more that have been documented as having not happened that, like, we know this didn't happen. We know this didn't happen. And there's a bunch more where it's like, well, we don't know if it happened or not. There's no evidence one way or the other. Right. However, within kind of that mix of things, that definitely didn't happen and that we can't prove happened. There are some things that we know happened that there's outside evidence of and that are proven to have happened. And probably the most important thing that we know was real that Mark talked about was a club that he started inside the Los Angeles Police Department called Men Against Women. And we will talk about that.

[Joe Kasabian]

What the fuck?

[Robert Evans]

And the O.J. simpson trial in part two. How you doing, Joe? This is like some Jophie.

[Joe Kasabian]

This is like the Little Rascals. He Man, Woman Hater club for Cops.

[Robert Evans]

It is. It is. He makes the he man, woman Hater club for cops. He does do that. He's the Alfalfa of the lapd.

[Joe Kasabian]

I hate that so much. Thank you.

[Robert Evans]

It's really funny. I mean, it's not like the horrible things that he does, but it's, like, funny in a cosmic sense, you know?

[Sophie]

Sure.

[Robert Evans]

Or if you're just a fan of the Little Rascals, it's funny because it's

[Joe Kasabian]

fucking pathetic, you know? Like, everything about this man is so pathetic.

[Sophie]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. It's. It's. That's the thing, right? And I. This is. That was the surprise to me as, like, growing up as a young man who also grew up, like, with a bunch of different, like, misogynistic and sexist beliefs. But I fundamentally missed the whole, like, oh, we're supposed to, like, hate women. I thought you, like, wanted to have, like, like, a wife or a girl. Like, I thought, like, that was, like, the goal was to, like, have women in your life as opposed to, like, people like Mark, where it's like, oh, is the goal to, like, not ever have any contact with them? Like, what is. What is. What is masculinity? Like, do you want to be liked by women or do you want to hide from them? Like, I don't understand which we're supposed to do.

[Joe Kasabian]

I was. I was raised by, like, my dad was a pretty misogynistic piece of shit. And that all kind of confused me as well, because he kind of fell into the furman kind of things. He was also a racist. And it always confused me because I was like, I thought that you wanted to attract women. Right. And mind you, I'm like, 10, and now you're leading me down a path where you're going to be Mark Fuhrman, which is divorced, living with a shitty cop for a roommate.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, we don't want to spend any time around girls. I thought the goal was to be liked by them. Was I wrong? Obviously that's not. Shouldn't be your life goal. But like a kid realizing that, like, oh, a lot of, like, guys just like, hate being around women. I didn't realize that. I thought, like, that doesn't make any sense. Yeah, we're gonna have some fun talks about gender politics in the Los Angeles Police Department. But first, let's talk about gender politics and Joe Kasabian's bibliography. Sorry, Joe, that wasn't a great way to lead to your books. But you have books.

[Joe Kasabian]

Yeah, yeah. I'm the host of the Lions that by Donkeys podcast. We talk about military history, we try to make things interesting and funny. And I am the author of the book the Highlands Burn, which is a military gunpowder fantasy novel. And you can get it wherever it is. You get your books, ebook, audiobook, read by me, paperback, stone tablet, whichever you'd like.

[Robert Evans]

Excellent. Well, I personally approve of the fact that you have stone tablet publications of your book, Joe. That's a good idea. All of my books are about to be re released in the form of an old man telling the story around a fire.

[Joe Kasabian]

Oh, that's good.

[Robert Evans]

Which. Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, that's a real proud moment in any author's life when you get your old man around a fire Edition. Anyway, the episode's over. We should probably be dead by Joe's book.

[Sophie]

Phydro's books. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Full video episodes of behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit remind me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode. For click clips in our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, YouTube.com BehindTheBastards we love about 40% of you, statistically speaking

[Robert Evans]

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[Jonas Brothers]

Number one hits, millions of records sold, awards, sold out tours. You Think the Jonas Brothers are satisfied?

[Robert Evans]

Nope.

[Jonas Brothers]

It's podcast time.

[Robert Evans]

We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions.

[Jonas Brothers]

Hey, Jonas is available now, and their first guest is a big one, Paul Rudd.

[Joe Kasabian]

You know, Steve Carell is a great singer. Can he tell you not to audition the Office or something? I told him, whoa, we were filming Anchorman. Clearly I was the idiot. Thank God he didn't listen to me right.

[Jonas Brothers]

Listen to hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Carlos King]

If you're watching the latest season of the Real Housewives of Atlanta, you already know there's a lot to break down.

[Robert Evans]

Portia accusing Kelly of sleeping with with a married man. They holding K. Michelle back from fighting. Drew Pinky has financial issues.

[Carlos King]

On the podcast Reality with the King I, Carlos King, recap the biggest moments from your favorite reality shows, including the Real Housewives franchise, the drama, the alliances and the tea everybody's talking about. To hear this and more. Listen to Reality with the king on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.

[Sophie]

This is Saigon, the story of my family and of the country that shaped us.

[Narrator (Saigon podcast)]

From iheart Podcasts. Saigon.

[Robert Evans]

You don't think I'm serious about a

[Narrator (Saigon podcast)]

free Vietnam, One city, a divided country and the war that tore America apart?

[Robert Evans]

This is for Vietnam. They're pouring petrol all over here. Freedom for Vietnam. There's a fire coming to this country and it's going to burn out everything.

[Narrator (Saigon podcast)]

Listen to Saigon on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.