The bloody glove found on O.J. Simpson's walkway — and the detective who says he discovered it

The glove lay on the walkway at O.J. Simpson's estate, bloodied, one of a pair.

A detective says he found it there.

The record gives him no name.

He is the detective who says he discovered it, and that is how the record keeps him.

The glove was later matched to a glove found at the crime scene, where two people had been stabbed to death hours earlier.

It became a pivotal piece of evidence.

It is also the subject of a claim: that it was planted.

That claim is a defense argument, not a fact the record establishes.

Whether the glove was planted remains unproven.

The prosecution said the glove was genuine, a link between Simpson and the murders.

The defense said it was tainted, placed there to frame him.

The detective's own credibility later collapsed when tapes surfaced of him using racial slurs and boasting about planting evidence.

But the tapes do not prove the glove was planted.

They prove the detective said those words.

The glove's origin sits between those two things: what the prosecution argued, what the defense claimed, and what the record does not settle.

A neighbor walking her dog had found the first body at 12:10 a.m.

Police responded, and they focused on Simpson.

He had flown to Chicago that night; he returned and was questioned.

The glove on the walkway was discovered during that response.

It was a detail found in the dark, on a path leading to a man's home.

The man would be charged with two counts of first-degree murder.

He would be acquitted.

But the glove remains where the case left it: a piece of evidence whose discovery is now a story told two ways.

One way says it was found.

The other says it was placed.

The record supports the first.

The record does not support the second.

That would require evidence the record does not contain.

THE NIGHT OF JUNE 12

The neighbor was walking her dog.

It was approximately 12:10 a.m. on June 12, 1994.

She found Nicole Brown Simpson's body outside the condominium on Bundy Drive in Brentwood.

She called police.

Nicole Brown Simpson and a waiter were both dead.

The waiter had come to return eyeglasses Nicole had left at a nearby restaurant earlier that evening.

Both had been killed with a knife.

Nicole's throat was cut.

The waiter suffered multiple stab wounds.

The victims were pronounced dead at the scene.

The exact time of death is not in the record.

The street was quiet.

The bodies were outside, in the open.

The dog walker had not expected to find anything.

She found what the night had left there.

The knife was never recovered.

The murder weapon was not found.

The record says what happened that night.