Experts Parry Cross-Country Over Footprints in Simpson Trial

A footwear expert for the prosecution in the O. J. Simpson case took aim at a crucial defense theory today, testifying that the mysterious parallel lines and stray footprint that he saw on the walkway at 875 South Bundy Drive were not the treadmarks of a second killer.

William Bodziak, a special agent for the F.B.I., spent the morning on the stand disputing the testimony of the defense's renowned expert, Dr. Henry Lee, or at least the spin that Mr. Simpson's lawyers placed on what Dr. Lee said. That set up an unusual transcontinental debate, with Dr. Lee defending himself in a press conference 3,000 miles away.

Mr. Bodziak said that the defense's purported "second killer" may well have been the anonymous mason who installed the walkway before Nicole Brown Simpson ever moved in, with the parallel lines produced not by the shoes of an assailant but by trowels rubbing on wet concrete. What the defense had characterized as a second "shoe print," Mr. Bodziak said, comprised different elements left at different times.

The witness conceded that the one shoe print that Dr. Lee said was a shoe print actually was a shoe print, and not from the Bruno Magli shoe in Mr. Simpson's size that left bloody marks all along the walkway. But he said that print had been deposited during the 12 days that passed after the police photographed the crime scene and before Dr. Lee went there.

Mr. Bodziak said that the lines on the walkway differed from those etched in blood on a slip of paper photographed at the crime scene; on the envelope, containing the eyeglasses of Mrs. Simpson's mother, that Ronald L. Goldman carried with him on what turned out to be his last walk, and on Mr. Goldman's jeans. He implied that if they were all shoe prints, as the defense suggested, that would point to not just a second killer, but a third or fourth.

"Based on your analysis of all the evidence, including Dr. Lee's photographs, is there any evidence that more than one set of bloody shoe prints were left at the scene at the time of the murders?" Deputy District Attorney Marcia Clark asked.