Mark Fuhrman, Infamous LAPD Detective In O.J. Simpson Trial, Dies at 74

LOS ANGELES, CA — Mark Fuhrman, the former Los Angeles police detective convicted of lying during testimony at O.J. Simpson's murder trial, has died.

Fuhrman died May 12, according to the chief deputy coroner in Kootenai County, Idaho. TMZ reported Fuhrman had been living in the county, located in the extreme western part of Idaho near Spokane, Washington.

Fuhrman died from an aggressive from of throat cancer at the age of 74; he was diagnosed last year. He was hospitalized for about a week before he died, TMZ reported.

There will be no funeral, according to the publication.

Fuhrman was one of the first two detectives sent to investigate the 1994 killings of Simpson’s ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ronald Goldman, in Brentwood.

He reported finding a bloody glove at Simpson’s home, leading to him becoming one of the prosecution's key witnesses. Simpson's lawyers claimed that police had planted the glove, but offered nothing to support the allegation.

Fuhrman's credibility, however, was undermined when the defense raised the prospect that racism played a part in the way police handled the case.

Under cross-examination, Fuhrman testified that he had never made anti-Black racial slurs over the previous 10 years. But that was shown to be untrue when Simpson's lawyers introduced tapes of him using the word dozens of times, the New York Times reported.

While Fuhrman owned up to using the N-word, he said it was in the context of creating a screenplay. However, one witness testified that the detective had used the word in earnest and said that Fuhrman wanted Black people to be "gathered together and burned.”

The revelation became a turning point in the trial. Simpson's lead lawyer, Johnnie Cochran, told the jury Fuhrman was like Hitler and called him “a lying, perjuring, genocidal racist."

In 1996, Fuhrman was charged with perjury and pleaded no contest as part of a deal with prosecutors. He was sentenced to three years’ probation and fined $200. The charges were expunged in 1999, the Times reported.

Fuhrman had apologized for using the racist language over the years.

That included in 1996, when he told ABC's Diane Sawyer he apologized "from the bottom of my heart." He denied being a racist, the Los Angeles Times reported.

“I’ve had an autopsy done on me for two years — personally, professionally — and it’s been grossly unfair. Nobody’s reported my victories, my accomplishments, my true personality — the way I treat all people," he said in the interview.

Fuhrman retired from the Los Angeles Police Department after Simpson’s 1995 acquittal. He subsequently moved to Idaho with his wife Caroline and their young daughter and son and set up a 20-acre farm, raising chickens, goats, sheep and llamas.

He later became a TV and radio commentator and wrote the book “Murder in Brentwood” about the killings.

A criminal-court jury found Simpson not guilty of murder in 1995, but a separate civil trial jury found him liable in 1997 for the deaths and ordered him to pay $33.5 million to relatives of Brown and Goldman. He served nine years in prison on unrelated charges and died in Las Vegas of prostate cancer in 2024 at the age of 76.

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Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.