Nine Unidentified Fingerprints from OJ Simpson Murder Case Could Hold New Clues More Than 30 Years Later

Nine fingerprints that went unidentified during the original OJ Simpson murder investigation could hold new clues more than 30 years later, according to a filmmaker who believes advances in forensic technology could help reveal who left them behind.

Filmmaker Ari Mark co-directed the Peacock docuseries 'OJ's Accomplice,' which reexamines the 1994 murders of Simpson's ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman. The series explores the theory that the former NFL star may not have acted alone, focusing on convicted drug trafficker and Simpson associate Joey Ippolito, who reportedly had ties to organised crime.

Mark told Fox News Digital he wants investigators to consider reexamining nine fingerprints recovered from the crime scene that could not be matched to any known samples during the original investigation.

Mark said: 'The fact that there's nine fingerprints sitting around that nobody wants to put through a system that's very updated and technologically not what it was before, that just seems unnecessary. Just do it.' In his view, latent prints can now be analysed in ways that were not possible before. Over time, the databases have collected more data and more people, so the chance of finding a match all these years later is greater.

In 1995, the Los Angeles Times reported that none of the identifiable fingerprints investigators collected at the Bundy Drive condominium, where Brown Simpson and Goldman were murdered, matched Simpson. Fingerprint specialist Gilbert Aguilar, a defence witness, testified that police knew Simpson's fingerprints did not match the identifiable prints recovered at the crime scene.

Under questioning by lead defence attorney Johnnie Cochran Jr., Aguilar testified that nine prints found at Bundy Drive could not be matched to any known sample. According to the Los Angeles Times, Simpson's lawyers argued that unknown attackers committed the murders and that detectives failed to adequately investigate that possibility because they quickly concluded Simpson had killed his ex-wife and her friend.

According to Aguilar's testimony, investigators compared the unidentified prints with those of Simpson, Brown Simpson and 58 friends, relatives and acquaintances, but found no matches. Aguilar also testified that investigators searched federal and state computerised fingerprint databases without finding a match.

Mark said his goal for the docuseries was 'to raise enough questions that it gets a second look.' He was careful about the call to action, he said, because victims' families are involved and he would want them to be supportive of that first. Assuming they were interested, he said, everyone deserves to know what actually happened, and if that involves a second person, a third person or whatever it is, that should be known too.

Aguilar, who appears in the docuseries, raised the possibility that today's expanded fingerprint databases could produce a match. In his words, back in 1994 prints were run through AFIS, the Automated Fingerprint Identification System — first checking everyone arrested by the Los Angeles Police Department, then Sacramento, then all the Western states. If somebody was arrested outside that database, in New York or Florida, for example, nothing would come up. The LAPD has all the prints, he said, and could have them tested again; whether they do is up to them now.

Before the docuseries premiered, Joey Ippolito's brother, Sam Ippolito, told The New York Times that Joey returned to a Los Angeles apartment around midnight on June 12, 1994, carrying a bag containing a heavy object. Sam said his brother appeared to have blood on his hands after leaving the apartment hours earlier to help a friend. According to Sam, Joey stuffed his clothes into the bag and told him to dispose of it while he showered. Sam said he tossed the bag into a dumpster near a construction site along Doheny Drive in Los Angeles. Sam shared a similar account in the docuseries.

An LAPD spokesperson told Fox News Digital that the investigation remains open. The spokesperson said: 'The OJ Simpson case remains an open and ongoing investigation. The Department has an obligation to continue to pursue justice in this matter, at a point that, if new evidence is found, detectives will follow those investigatory leads. At this point there is no other information available for release.' The docuseries producers asked the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office to have the unidentified fingerprints reexamined but received no response.

Defence investigator Pat McKenna said in the docuseries that the fingerprints should easily be sent to a lab for further analysis. In his words: 'This is like a door. Wide open. Don't you want to close that door? I would think they should want to do that. But I think they're afraid of what it would show.' Mark hopes advances in technology could pull something from the fingerprints — ideally, he said, there would be preserved DNA, and the right kind of reopening would force a reinvestigation of those materials.