[Sample B: Approval/Signature Sheet] - George Mason University

assassination by rehashing the evidence and trying to boil it down to what he called in the
title of his brief book, A Simple Act of Murder: November 22, 1963. The publisher
described Fuhrman as “America’s most famous detective,” but left out why Fuhrman is
famous: he was caught lying about repeatedly using a certain racial epithet to refer to
African-Americans, which contributed to the acquittal, despite a mountain of forensic
evidence, of former football star O.J. Simpson for the murder of his ex-wife and her
friend.
Fuhrman claimed that he was investigating the Kennedy assassination as a
“simple act of murder” by “examining the relevant evidence and arriving at logical
conclusions” as any detective would. 288 f course, much of this evidence is in dispute by
experts on both sides of the debate, and there is nothing simple about the Kennedy
assassination case. Fuhrman, however, was not deterred in trying to determine whether
Lee Harvey Oswald was responsible, and whether he acted alone or part of a conspiracy.
In Fuhrman’s view, Oswald indicated his guilt by repeatedly lying during police
interrogation about key matters, and that the evidence against Oswald was a “slam-dunk
case” before Ruby gunned down the alleged assassin. 289
Fuhrman’s portrait of Oswald was the same as the Warren Commission. The
former detective claimed “Oswald was socially isolated,” a “failure” both as a Marine
and as a defector to the Soviet Union, and displayed a “propensity for violence.”
Oswald’s “extreme political views,” the author added, “seemed to be more an expression
288
Mark Fuhrman, A Simple Act of Murder: November 22, 1963, (New York: William
Morrow, 2006), 11.
289
Fuhrman, 74.
129