WWOJD?

For those of you who watch Jeopardy (which disavows any connection with this site), should the answer “O. J. Simpson” ever come up in the category GIVEN NAMES, the question is, What (or Who) is Orenthal James? No wonder he was so fast and good at evading tackles, with a name like that, he must have been chased around the schoolyard more than once.  There's probably an anti-bully lesson in here too, but that's not my area of expertise.


But back to the question. For those of you who missed the 1990s, O. J. would . . . kill the two of them with utter disregard for style, decorum, or perfection. In fact, these murders epitomize shoddy killing. Nonetheless, there are some very good lessons on the back end to be learned.

1. Hire all the best lawyers in your metropolitan area so that no one remotely competent can help prosecute you.

2. Place your murder weapon and bloody clothes in a duffle bag and then tell your lawyers to place it in a safe deposit box (NOTE: do not tell your lawyers what is really in the bag; tell them it’s full of letters and mementos for your kids should anything happen to you).

3. Make sure that someone on your defense team can rhyme. It turns out juries, especially in California, are partial to rhyming couplets. I would suggest, in fact, that you consider hiring a poet for this job—it turns out they write and publish and write and publish and do it all for nuthin’. I bet you could find a REAL POET who would write your opening statements and your closing arguments in iambic pentameter for less than your lawyer pays his/her paralegal or secretary.

4. Get a friend to drive you around on freeways in a white SUV for a few hours. Nothing generates public support like a slow chase interrupting a NBA final.

5. Don’t worry about DNA, bloody gloves, or shoe prints. It turns out that evidence does not matter if you have money to hire a good team of lawyers.

Unfortunately for most of us, we don’t have such luxuries, so we have to worry about being perfect.

Oh, and if you do get away with murder, don’t fall into the moron category by getting busted for breaking into a hotel room with a gun. If O. J. taught us anything, it’s kill ‘em all—don’t leave any witnesses. I think had he remembered that the second time round and killed everyone in the hotel, he’d still be playing golf in Florida.

On a vaguely related note, if you do execute a good kill, make sure you pay your taxes faithfully and fully. What the case of Al Capone has taught is that the government of the people, by the people, and for the people is most aggressive in prosecuting those who cheat the government instead of those who merely kill the people.



*Note to my lower income and middle class readers: Don’t buy the print copy of “The Perfect Murder: For Rich Bastards”—it’s essentially the same as “The Perfect Murder: For Imbeciles” except that it includes one line that the Imbecile version doesn’t have, “Hire all the best lawyers in your area,” and it costs $250. I’m trying to soak the rich, but so far I’ve only sold a few (and no, I am not at liberty to tell you who bought them, but I can say they did not go to jail, despite the overwhelming evidence against them—I should have charged them more).