THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 19, 1995 TAG: 9507190041
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: LARRY BONKO
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Long : 106 lines
WHILE HANGING OUT with the rest of the gawkers at the Los Angeles County Criminal Courts Building the other day, I paid a vendor in his 70s named Eddie Dee $2 for the official ``Marcia Clark Fighting Prosecutor'' lapel button.
He made a neat profit of $1.25. I know because Dee, a bone-thin, chatterbox who moved here from Jersey City, N.J., ages ago, told me so.
He likes to brag about how well he's done since The Trial of the Century began more than 110 days ago in central city Los Angeles, where the tall buildings wear smog like a halo.
Some days, said Eddie Dee, he's made as much as $2,000. That was in the days when the double murder trial of O.J. Simpson was just getting started.
And today? What kind of a day was today for Eddie Dee?
It was a $400 day so far, he said.
Not bad.
``Don't let anyone tell you that you can't make a living selling O.J. stuff,'' Dee said. He started with four buttons for sale. Now he's up to 19 different styles and shapes.
He also peddles T-shirts of two designs. One says Simpson is guilty. The other says not guilty.
While it has been a while since Dee saw a $2,000 day in the button and shirt-selling business, that doesn't mean the tourists, local celebrity-watchers, or men and women with a crusade have gone from the vicinity of the courthouse.
Far from it.
They come by the hundreds to see the circus on the sidewalk.
``We don't have the nuttiness we've had around here a few weeks ago, but there is still nuttiness,'' said Fred Graham, the lawyer turned TV commentator - the one with hair as white as a Maine snowfall - who sometimes anchors Court TV's coverage of the trial.
He works across the street from the courthouse in a bivouac of satellite dishes, tents flopping in soft breezes and scaffolding called Camp O.J.
On this day, a crew from WMAQ in Chicago led by reporter Phil Rogers has joined the mix in Camp O.J. to cover the local angle - witnesses testifying about how Simpson looked and acted on the flight from Los Angeles to Chicago on June 12, 1994, the night of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.
At times, three, four and five camera crews roam the area like restless nomads.
And all around is the nuttiness of which Graham speaks.
Adolph Buschek, a member of the Los Angeles police department whose job is to see that the lawyers and witnesses make it inside the courthouse without being hassled, told me about a man who announced that he had rigged his Nissan sedan with a bomb.
The sign he was carrying at the time said this: ``Mr. President. Why is the CIA trying to kill me?''
There was no bomb in the car parked one block away from the courthouse, said Buschek.
But there was a real threat.
``The man was carrying a knife that was nearly as long as his leg.''
He is now under lock and key.
Michael Dahl shows up at the courthouse almost every day, and always in a dress. On this day, he was wearing a cool blue cotton number.
``By night, I'm Michael the bartender. By day, I'm Karissa, the cross-dresser,'' he said. He is well over 6-feet-tall - an imposing sight in a short skirt and blonde wig. Karissa shows up at the courthouse simply to be seen.
Tour buses glide by all the time.
In contrast to Karissa, who hangs around the courthouse just for fun, Morris ``Big Money'' Griffin is there day after day to spread his gospel, which is this: Simpson is an innocent man who is the victim of a police conspiracy.
The police, said Griffin, are trying to turn his hero into a zero.
He has 25 large signs that he arranges against a low brick fence not far from the courthouse doors. On one is written, ``Face the truth. The original glove didn't fit.''
Griffin works nights, so it's no problem for him to be at the courthouse most of the day. He brings a portable TV and radio with him, which is appreciated by the out-of-towners who come to catch a glance at the famous lawyers in this case.
for $1 apiece.
Near Officer Buschek's post at curbside, hustler Tony Larsen sells a $40 watch on which police cruisers endlessly chase Simpson's white Ford Bronco around the dial.
How's business?
``I'm making some kind of change,'' said Larsen, whose inventory also includes ``Free the Juice'' hats and T-shirts. Guilty? Not guilty? What's the difference? A buck's a buck to the vendors.
Rodney Vanworth is a 44-year-old artist from Los Angeles who said he isn't selling anything as he spends his afternoons at the courthouse where the trial grinds on up on the ninth floor. He is laying out a painter's history of the trial - 75 canvases on which he invites people on the streets to write anything that is in their hearts.
First, Vanworth scrawls what he thinks in black ink - thoughts such as ``Was it O.J. or the drug dealers?'' He asks others to write their thoughts in blue. Shirley Ann Stanley, who told me that she is a minister, printed the news that God has told her the trial will end soon. ``Real soon.''
Vanworth calls it living art.
Also artful is the mural, 40 inches by 18, from Brian Bennett who depicts the trial as a football game in which judge, jury, defendants and lawyers scramble for the end zone.
Actually, it's quite good. I was tempted to buy a print. I was touched by the nuttiness. MEMO: TV columnist Larry Bonko is in Los Angeles for the twice-yearly
Television Critics Association. by CNB