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From: Jasper
Date: 9/15/04
Time: 10:58:23 PM
Remote Name: 69.212.37.137
Ludwig,
Caroline Fuhrman is a mystery. I tried out every theory I can think of to explain her strange behavior but I was unable confirm or reject any of them. The best I could do was put what I knew to the “if” test and see what appeared most likely.
I knew that Caroline must have had one hell of a reason for calling Geraldo live on television in July 1994 to tell him that her husband was with her at the time of the murders. If Mark committed the murders and set himself up with a different alibi, he could not have been happy to learn what she said. No one had even hinted at the possibility that he might have committed the murders and nobody was sure of the time.
So far, this is my best guess of where Caroline fits into the murder/frame-up scheme.
If the authorities decided that the murders happened when Marcia Clark said they did (before 10:30), Mark’s alibi was at a gas station “in the desert” in the form of a credit card. If they decided they happed after 10:30, Caroline was his backup. She must have at least feared that he would be accused of the murders. By the same token, she couldn’t have known the role he intended her to play or she wouldn’t have screwed it up by calling Geraldo six months before the trial to say he was with her.
In Murder in Greenwich (page 112) the MF admitted that he was “furious” when he found out about the call. Why? He never mentioned the alibi. He turned the incident around to suggest that it was mostly about the screenplay he was writing with Laura Hart McKinny and to explain his initial anger by saying that her call might have lead to the defense discovery of the McKinny tapes. Sounds to me as though he was giving that explanation to Caroline, not the public. In another part of the book he says he thinks the defense learned about the tapes from a representative of Fred Dryer who saw McKinny’s tape recorder during an interview to promote their Men Against Women screenplay. This is an example of what our Miss Marple calls “Fuhrman Speak.” It’s also an example of how he has backup stories ready for take-off if the first one doesn’t fly.
We know Mark wasn’t at the Police Protective League seminar on the night of the murders because it ended the night before. We don’t know what his wife knew or what she suspected. He could have told her the same lie that he told Marcia Clark. I think he did. I don’t think Caroline bought it. I don’t think he wanted her to. I think he wanted her to believe that he was having a sexual affair and couldn’t come clean with her about where he really was because of it. At the same time, she had to know he was a liar and a racist before she married him. He might have also confessed a “weakness” for other women that “meant nothing” in terms of his love for her.
All things considered, I think that we’re dealing with a woman madly in love, desperate to hang onto her man and prone to self-delusion because of it. I think that she feared he would be accused of the murders simply because of his racism.
I know enough about Mark to make these educated guesses but I don’t know enough about Caroline to wager anything of value that I guessed right. –Jasper