October 8, 2024 • 53 mins
She became a household name in the 90s as the lead prosecutor in O.J. Simpson's trial, but her career in law was accidental. Marcia Clark initially wanted to be an actress!
Even though the prosecutor, author, and host had different career goals, she admits to Sophia that her interest in criminal law and solving mysteries started at a very young age! She also shares what it was like being in the eye of the storm during the trial of the century, the sexism directed at her, and how she felt when she first heard about the limited series The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story.
Plus, Marcia talks about her new podcast, 'Informants: Lawyer X,' which is about a high-profile defense attorney who turned police informer against her own clients, and that is just the tip of the iceberg! 'Informants: Lawyer X' is out now on Wondery+.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everyone, it's Sophia. Welcome to work in progress. Hey
wh'b smarties. Today we are joined by a guest that
has me absolutely geeked. I mean, someone that I grew
(00:23):
up watching on television, whose story has now been made
into an incredible scripted drama, who has led the most
interesting life, and I just can't wait to ask her
all of the questions I have. Today we are joined
by none other than Marcia Clark, prosecutor, author, television correspondent,
(00:44):
and television producer. She is perhaps best known for having
been the lead prosecutor in the O. J. Simpson murder case,
and during that case she was really thrust into what
has been called the hell of the trial. She was
made overnight in a way that was kind of terrifying,
and her experience on that trial was really a confluence
(01:08):
of media and tabloid drama and early disinformation in the
media and such incredible sexism, the craziest experiences of the
way that a woman could be picked apart a woman
in a position of power in an era that was
not great for women. No less, everything from her arguing
(01:28):
style to her hair, her wardrobe was picked apart. On television,
the La Times even described her as resembling Sigourney Weaver,
only more professional, and The New York Times retorted that
the transformation was not entirely seamless, like what this one
was prosecuting a murder trial. It seems so wildly inappropriate today,
(01:49):
but this is just a moment ago in our human history.
After the trial, Clark actually resigned from the District Attorney's office.
She was so disillusioned with justice system. And then she
and Teresa Carpenter wrote a book about the case called
Without a Doubt. Since the trial, Marsha Clark has made
numerous appearances on television. She's been a special correspondent for
(02:11):
Entertainment Tonight. She has provided coverage of high profile trials
and reported from even red carpets at the Emmys. She
is an incredibly multifaceted woman who has taken a lot
of frankly sexist pushback and turned it into an incredible career.
She's written several novels, even a series surrounding a prosecutor
(02:34):
in the lada's office called Rachel Knight, and now she
has a brand new podcast out called Informants Lawyer X.
It is a story you have to hear to believe
it because it's true. And I'm telling you from the
Hollywood world. If any of us had pitched this to
a studio, they would have said it was too fantastical.
(02:55):
But it's real life, and so for those of us
who are obsessed with justice, obsessed with true crime, this
is going to be your next favorite podcast. Informant's Lawyer
X reveals the story of Nicolagabo, a defense attorney who
represented key players in Australia's violent gang Wars, and as
she appeared to become one of the gang, she was
(03:17):
actually turning into a police informant, selling out the people
she was sworn to defend. It's a wild story and
I am so excited to ask Marcia how she discovered
Nicolagabo's story in the first place, and every single question
I wanted to ask her since the oj Simpson trial
was on TV. So let's get to it. Hi, Marcia,
(03:48):
how are you.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
I'm good. It's so nice to be here.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
It's so lovely to have you. Thank you so much
for taking the time. My mind is absolutely blown right now,
just thrilled that you're here.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
I've thrilled to be here. Thank you for having me.
Really yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
I mean, I you know, as a kid who went
to journalism school in LA.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
I'm like, I have so many questions for you.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
There is really there's so much to talk about. But
you know, anyone I get to sit across from has
a pretty incredible list of accomplishments, and yours I have
a million questions about. But I actually want to I
want to go back a bit to the beginning and
know if you could kind of retrace your steps. When
(04:34):
did you know that you wanted to be an attorney?
Was it a dream you had from the time that
you were a young girl, or or was it something
that sort of evolved, you know, through your young life
and led you to decide you wanted to be a
prosecutor in school? How did we get here?
Speaker 2 (04:51):
No, it's funny for you. It reminds me of that
buzz light Year thing where flying is just a series
of fallings. Yeah, and that's what it kind of happ
and to me, it was all accidental. I started out
wanting to be an actress, not movies. I wanted to
do not Broadway even I wanted to do off Broadway,
you know, small theater stuff, and I really liked that.
(05:12):
And in my y, that's crazy. And in my first
year of undergrad I realized I was majoring in theater arts,
and I realized, that's a really dumb major because you're
either an actor or you're not, you know what I mean.
But you know, certainly having a degree is not going
to make your one. So I gave up on that thought, Okay,
I should get like something different, and I thought, oh,
political science seems like it encompasses a lot of the
(05:34):
stuff that might interesting to me. And then I really
got into that and I wanted to be I got
interested in international relations, particularly, you know, I wanted to
work for the State Department, but I wanted to be
in the field, you know. I wanted to work out,
not at a desk. And back then, the only thing
that girls were allowed to do was type, and they
(05:56):
asked me how fast I could type, and I did
not have any desire to tell them that I was
a fast typist, nor was I a fast So that
was that that dream went crashing down. And then it
was like, now what do I do?
Speaker 1 (06:12):
You know?
Speaker 2 (06:13):
I mean, I really didn't know, and it was just
a matter of sitting down and making a list of
the things I liked to do the things that I
thought I could do, and it seemed to add up
to law school, which really pissed me off because I
hated school. Hated it, hats all forms of school. I
really liked studying on my own. Okay, you know, I
want to give me the book, I'll go away, I'll
(06:34):
figure it out. But I really don't want to sit
in class. So having to go back to school was
not my favorite thing to do. I went back to
law school with a very bad attitude. But I really
figured in the first like two months of law school.
I realized it was going to be criminal law. That
was the only thing I was going to practice, and
(06:55):
it was the I never looked back, and I never
regretted it because it really was where I wanted to be.
So it kind of happened like that. And I have
to tell you it was such an accidental thing that
I had actually forgotten about. The LSATs are the admissions,
you know, tests you have to take to get into
law school. Yeah, and I had forgotten that it was
(07:15):
due the following morning, and I went out and partied
the night before. Oh my god, it was really not good.
I showed up more than slightly hungover for the LSAT.
I mean, you know, you have to fill in those
little bubbles back in the day, and they were very blurry.
I don't know what score I got. It was good
enough to get into law school. That was fine with me,
so you know what I mean. It wasn't like some
(07:37):
big career path. It just kind of happened and happened
and happened, and then, yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
What was it about criminal law that stood out to
you so quickly?
Speaker 2 (07:47):
I think that started when I was like really really little,
I mean six years old, kind of little, because I
was always looking for the mystery, and I was always
looking to solve the mystery, make it up and then
solve it, which is sure, yeah, exactly. So there was
this house where we were living, at the end of
the street that looked kind of that was kind of
abandon well, it was abandoned actually, and so I decided,
(08:09):
of course that a big murder had happened there. And
I saw, you know, spots on the sidewalk and those
became blood drops, and for some reason I persuaded all
the kids on the block that this was really happening
and we were going to crack this case wide open. Yeah.
So It started very very young. I was always fascinated
with crime, and so it's not really a surprise that
(08:30):
in law school I said criminal laws had to be.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Right well, and not really a surprise that you fast
forward to today and you know you're writing these incredible mysteries.
It all really makes sense.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Yeah, it really does now.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
So many of us obviously came to know you as
a household name during the oj Simpson trial. It wasn't
lost on me as a tiny little activist in my
whole life. I remember saying to my parents, I do
not like the way they're talking about this lady on TV.
You know, it really irked me as a kid that
(09:10):
I could see, even as a child not understanding the
complexities of the world in patriarchy and society and systems
and all the things that I understand now. I could
see the way you were vilified. You know, this hyper intelligent,
committed prosecutor doing this work, who was as enraged as
the rest of us that this trial was going the
(09:32):
way that it was. And you know, there'd be tabloids
at the grocery store and people were calling you a bitch,
and it was like, it really pissed me off.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
As a kid.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
What what was that experience like for you at the time,
Because it seemed from the outside that because of who
OJ was and how public he and Nicole Brown Simpson's
life had been, and everyone knew about, you know, the
cops being called in, the abuse and the police reports
and the things, and yet everybody was pissed off at
(10:08):
you for going after the bad guy? Like what was
it surreal to you? Was it shocking? Was it traumatizing?
Was it infuriating? Maybe it was all of the things.
I feel like it was just such the beginning of
this era of all this stuff being on TV. Was
it surreal? As a lawyer?
Speaker 2 (10:30):
That really was? It? Really really was so Before Simpson,
I had been a prosecutor for fourteen years defense attorney
before that, and had never felt particularly focused on as
a female. And even if there even if I initially was,
even if the detectives initially kind of looked like a girl, really,
(10:53):
by the time I got into doing the job and
working with them and going out and talking to witnesses,
they got over it really fast and it didn't matter anymore.
Same thing with judges and other defense attorneys suggest it
became a matter of not no big deal, right, and
so I had stopped worrying about it. If ever I
did really worry about it, I don't think I really did.
(11:14):
I thought I just do the job, you know, get
past whatever. Then there were sexist jokes and all the
rest of it, whatever la la lah, and I do
the job, you know, because everybody could get over it.
It didn't stick in my mind at the time, and
by the time the Simpson case happened, it had been
many years of nobody giving me a hard time about
being female, or being impassioned, or being a prosecutor any
(11:36):
of that stuff. And at that time, as of that time,
having a high profile case meant what was high profile
was maybe the press would spell your name right and
only in print and certainly not on television, and maybe
they wouldn't mention you at all. You're just the prosecution.
So that was high profile. And that's all I had
(11:57):
ever had to deal with, and I had dealt with
other pride h profile cases. This was not my first.
But then when the Simpson case hit, there was a
sudden it was like being in this vortex. Suddenly there
was media coverage that was twenty four to seven. Suddenly
there were these cable networks and outlets that were all
over the country, not just in one tiny pocket here
and there, that were nationwide, and they needed content and
(12:21):
they could afford to fill the air waves constantly, And
so now the spotlight became huge, which it never had
been before. So that was shocking. And the degree to
which people got invested in, got involved and had opinions
and wanted to be heard was unprecedented. That I would
(12:41):
become a focus of interest at all, That I would
be the focus of any kind of attention was a
brand new thing and not a welcome thing, and not
a welcome thing in so many ways. Number One, I
never wanted to be the focus of attention like that
number or as me, you know, I mean, even when
I wanted to be an actress, I didn't want to
be focused on as me. I wanted to be a character.
(13:03):
So you know what I mean, there's that, Yeah, you would,
you know what I mean exactly. So this was horrifying.
But what was more horrifying to me was the way
in which I could see justice being subverted. All of
the proper considerations about truth, about evidence, about guilt and
(13:23):
innocence went out the window. In favor of gossip and
sensationalism and clickbait. Although we didn't know the word clickbait,
then it was that. And so it was really depressing
and very upsetting to see the important values in our
criminal justice system being buried under a mile of slime
(13:45):
and false reporting, deliberately false at times and just recklessly
false at other times. And then the court itself, the
judge himself, who became obsessed with celebrity and his own
spotlight and all of that was to the detriment of
justice and the proper legal administration. So it was really
(14:10):
it was a very depressing, very upsetting experience and very surreal.
And so what I had to do is early early on,
not pay attention. I just had to. Really, what I
had to do is in court, that's what matters, whoever's
talking about, whatever they're talking about. At one point I
heard rush Limbaugh was talking about my skirts. I mean, really,
(14:30):
how crazy does this get? So enough of that, and
so I turned off the TV, yep, and just focused
on what was going on.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
And now for our sponsors, it's such an odd thing
in my own relative experience with this to see what
it's like, particularly before the advent of social media where
you could have your own voice, where the media, for
(15:00):
as you said, clickbait, would essentially cast you as a
character in a in a version of a tabloid soap
opera because it helped them sell papers. Whether it was
anything real about your life or not, it it was.
It was so disconcerting and as a person who's pretty
obsessed with justice myself, drove me nuts because it feels
so unjust. And I think that's what I picked up
(15:25):
on as a kid. You know, watching this trial, what
a crazy thing to you know, to know your name,
to know lance Edo's name, like what who knows judges' names?
And this trial, you know, blew up into this space
that it was everywhere all the time, you know, twenty
(15:46):
four hours. It was like the Super Bowl never ended
in a way. That much coverage. You know, when you
when you talk about the reporting, and you know, you
said something really interesting a moment ago, you said, sometimes
deliberately reporting what did you know to be false? That
was moving at such a torrent that you couldn't get
(16:07):
ahead of it and make it stop.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
I mean, there were so many things. Sophia has so
many things that I can't even recount one in particular.
But I would have arguments with Johnny on the side,
and we always got along, you know, and there was
we did not have acrimoni personally ever, But I would
get annoyed because he would float these nonsensical stories about
this witness that witness. There weren't witnesses, and he knew it,
(16:30):
but he would just throw it out there because he
knew the press would pick it up and run with
it as though, oh new Lee knew this, knew that,
And it was can I say this? Okay? You know? Yeah?
And it was. And I said, Johnny, you know it's good.
We're gonna blow this up tomorrow. He said, well, you
know whatever. And of course it's not up to him
to worry about that. That's not his job. But it
(16:53):
is the press's job. He should be a journalist's job
to look at, you know, something that comes out. I
would watch it a reporter walk into the men's room
with someone from the defense team and then come out
and file a story. What do you think you had
one side of something that you've not verified, you've never
tried to corroborate. You don't care where it came from.
You guys were standing at the urinal together, and he
(17:14):
told you a tale, and now you're putting it out
there as though this is gospel truth. And that's completely
spinning public opinion and giving people a lie, giving people
garbage because you haven't bothered to corroborate or verify anything
you've done. So it would happen over and over and
over again. And Johnny was right, no one cared because
the very next lie would happen the next day and
that would wipe it out. And you know, it looks
(17:36):
like our politics today.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
I was going to say, it's not dissimilar to what's
been happening in Ohio.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
It's so hard to watch people who will lie for gain,
even if it causes harm. And I would imagine you
know that it was incredibly difficult to know what the
victim had been through, you know, how abused she'd been,
how many incidents of violence there were. Obviously you saw
(18:07):
more than any of the rest of us, what the
crime scene really looked like, all of these things that
I just I know the way they've stuck with me,
and I know I wasn't nearly as close to it
as you, and so I guess I wonder as misrepresented
as so much was in the world. Then were you
nervous when you heard that FX was going to make
(18:29):
the people versus O. J. Simpson?
Speaker 2 (18:31):
It was miserable, it was. It was miserable, miserable when
I heard they were going to do it.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Did that shift at all because you got to sit
down with Sarah Paulson or were you just worried the
whole time until you got to see it?
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Well? I couldn't. The actors were not allowed to meet
the real people they portrayed throughout the shooting. No, they
never did. They weren't allowed to. So yeah, I mean,
when I first heard it that they were going to
do this limited series, I thought, first of all, oh God, no,
please no, And then I thought, well, no harm, no foul,
No one's going to care, No one's going to watch this.
(19:07):
We all know the story. It's old news, you know.
And then people were telling me it's not old news,
and we think it's going to be big, And then
I was miserable again. And then I heard Sarah Paulson
was going to play me, and then I thought, well,
if this awful thing has to happen, at least I
have a genius portraying me. At least I have this
amazing actress portraying me, so that was like, that was
(19:30):
some comfort. But I didn't get to see her or
speak to her until they were done shooting. And then,
of course it was wonderful. We had the best time.
We closed the restaurant down, got pretty drunk, had a
great time. We still exchanged texts. I love her dearly.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Oh, I'm so glad. How did you feel about it
when you saw it? Or did you not watch it?
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Of course I had to watch it. Okay, could you
not watch it?
Speaker 1 (19:54):
I didn't want to assume.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
I thought it was great, you know. And people are
always asking me how how accurate it was, and was
this that and the other? And they always tell them, Look,
they can't be accurate. They I mean, they can be,
and they were to the extent that they could be.
They told the essential truth of the core of the story.
The ways in which racial justice, the issue of racial justice,
was manipulated in service of the acquittal of a man
(20:19):
who did not deserve it, The way in which the
wheels of justice were ground to a halt with all
kinds of tactics that should not be allowed. The ways
in which things went wrong should not have gone wrong,
leading to the verdict that we got, which we might
have gotten anyway. And that's an important thing to think
about in terms of our social history, written large in
(20:40):
terms of the context of that case, following so closely
after Rodney King and then the very most violent riots
of that century that occurred in the wake of the
Rodney King case so and trial. So, I mean, there
were so many issues that they did a really nice
job of incorporating there. To say that any limited series
(21:01):
could be completely accurate when you're talking about something that
was covered endlessly for a year twenty four to seven
is impossible, and you wouldn't even want to. So Yes,
in essence, I think they got a lot of it right.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
I thought it was really quite beautiful, and I was
so impressed with Sarah Paulson, and I loved whether it
felt incredibly accurate or not to you as a viewer.
I appreciated really being able to see what you as
a woman, were put through that a man never would
(21:38):
have been put through. To have your hair and your
clothes and your demeanor and your speech and your custody battle,
your personal life all picked apart. I thought we were
able to as an audience see the injustice that was
done to you within this world that you mentioned. This
(22:01):
injustice was done to these victims because such a terrible
injustice had been done to someone else and people were
afraid to repeat it. It felt like a miscarriage on
a miscarriage, on a miscarriage of what the law should be,
you know, from personal to societal. And I thought that
that was a pretty incredible thing for them to have
(22:24):
been able to do on film. Did it allow you
to revisit the intense scrutiny that you experienced. Was it
cathartic in a way to see it told honestly to
a point or was it kind of painful all over again?
(22:47):
Or maybe it's both.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
I think it is kind of both. It was cathartic
in the sense that Sarah captured the feeling of what
it was like to be in the focus of that
kind of attention. She captured it beautifully, and so that
was great. There's a wonderfulness about a feeling understood, and
she really did. Yeah, so that was good. It was
(23:11):
also very painful. Justice matters to me, the truth matters
to me a lot, and I saw it being I
saw it being shredded every day when I went to court,
and so I diving into that cesspool of what was really,
to me, just a complete subversion of all the values
(23:32):
that we hold so dear in a democracy where that
is founded on a system of justice that at least
strives to be fair, at least strives to be the
scales of justice. You know, she's blind and you're supposed
to be coming in to focus on the evidence, and
to focus on the truth, and to apply the law
to the evidence. This is what we're supposed to do.
None of that happened, and I don't think it was
(23:55):
allowed to happen for so many reasons. So that was
a very painful thing. And looking back watching the series
brought home that painful experience as well, so you know,
I mean, so it was both. It was both.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
Well, I remember the feeling I had watching it, going, God,
I wonder if she's at home, going see I'm not crazy.
It was this bad, you know, And not that that
fixes it, but at least you don't necessarily feel so alone.
I imagine at the time when it was happening, again,
there was no social media. You couldn't have a voice,
(24:31):
you couldn't get ahead of anything. You couldn't tell your
own story. It was told for you in the pages
you know of all these newspapers and tabloids all around
the country. And who did you have in your corner?
Like did you have a best friend who you called
every night to flip out about the day or was
(24:51):
the case so intense that you were sort of underground
in your office for months and had to do it afterwards?
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Like what was your life life?
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Not just as Marcia Clerk the prosecutor, but as Marcia
as a woman who was trying to deal with all
of this, Like who did you turn to?
Speaker 2 (25:11):
I did have best friends to talk to, and I
did talk to them every night, and I also had
my team and Chris, you know what I mean. And
so yes, I mean there were plenty of people to
talk to and vent to. And I'm sure they got
really sick of me. So I hope that I apologize
to them enough to say, I know you've heard this before,
but I can't believe what you know, you know what
I mean? Fill in the blank. Sure, And so yes,
(25:34):
there were people to talk to, and that was, of course,
as you know, very helpful. They have shoulders to lean on,
to wine to and to just you know, vent to constantly,
because it was a level of you're not in control
in a courtroom. I mean, I think anyone who says
that a prosecutor is controlling the proceedings is not a
(25:56):
lawyer or a very bad one because you are not
in control. Somebody once likened it to you know, oh,
you're the director of your film. No, you're not. The
judge is. You don't get to say cut. The judge does. So,
you know, you go in and you do your very
best to try and get the evidence to the jury
and to try and you know, unbury the truth for
(26:16):
the for the jury so they can see what really
happened and to see the truth in the witness's testimony.
But when when every roadblock keeps getting thrown in your way,
and every turn, everywhere you turn, there's another rock put
in front of the doorway that stops you from getting
to the jury from saying here, it is here, it
is here, this is what this means, this is why
(26:37):
we do this, this is what happened. But every time
you turn, it's like a door closes, that kind of thing,
or just big stumbling blocks that you're constantly trying to
crawl over. That kind of frustration was a daily occurrence,
and it was that you have to vent before you
go crazy. So it was it was that kind that
(26:59):
was the experience that ultimately, I think by the end
of the trial, I thought, I can't, I can't do
this anymore. Everything I thought and held dear about being
a lawyer, about being a prosecutor or a defense attorney,
all of those values kind of went got buried and
got tainted, got shredded. I didn't believe in the justice
(27:21):
system anymore. I walked away thinking I just can't, I can't,
I'm done, And then I got I wound up finding
that there were other things I could do, and wound
up writing. But then I wound up with writing fiction.
At first, the publishers Weekly when I put out my
first work of criminal crime fiction said, Clark turns to
(27:45):
fiction to control the outcome. Very true. You're like, obviously,
obviously right. How great is that? But then I discovered
that there was a beauty in writing about true crime.
And that's fairly recent, but I mean, I've always been
addicted to true and I do it still. I'm an
appellate lawyer. I do court appointed cases for the indigen
(28:05):
So I'm still practicing criminal law, and I get I
have all these true crime cases. But my agent said,
why don't you write a true crime book. Why don't
you get into another case. I said, but I have
so many already. Yeah, And then I got into but
you know, maybe that's a cool thing. And then I
fell on the story of Lawyer X and that was amazing,
(28:25):
And that was one of these true stories that if
it weren't true, you wouldn't believe a word of it,
Like if I told you this as fiction, you'd say,
too far fetched. A high powered criminal lawyer, she was
at the top of her game, representing the most notorious
gangsters in Australia in the midst of the Gangland Wars,
which was around the late nineties, early aughts into twenty
(28:46):
ten eleven, and bodies were literally dropping in Melbourne. And
this was a very beautiful city, seaside Port, beauty Port
city that was gorgeous, known for its culture, really beautiful place.
And suddenly this very lovely place to live has blood
flowing in the streets because of these gangsters and the
drug wars. And Nicola Gabbo was standing at the forefront
(29:09):
of it all as the premiere defense attorney for all
of the biggest of the big the most notorious of notorious,
and it turns out that she becomes an informant for
the police. And the notion that a defense attorney, especially
a celebrated one like that, becomes the most prized informant
for the detectives is something that Hollywood pudnta made it up.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
I mean, it's it's crazy, it feels unheard of and
now a word from our sponsors that I really enjoy
and I think you will too. How did you learn
about her story? And did she survive? I mean, it
(29:53):
feels like that's the number one person that a cartel
of drug runners is going to try to put out
a hit on. Like it does feel so far fetched
for a movie, but this is real life, Like how
did you hear about her? And then what happened?
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Is she okay? Well? Is she okay? Is a really
good question. She's in hiding right now. I tried to
reach out to her. This was a nine part series
for Wondery and I think it's exclusive to Wondery Plus
right now. It's part of the Exhibit cea campaign for
True crime shows podcasts at Wondery and it's the first
one out of the gate. I heard about it in Hollywood,
(30:31):
and at that time all I knew was that there
was some magazine article that I since discovered that actually
there was a book written by these journalists. Anthony Dowsley
was the journalist in Australia who happened upon this story
by hanging out in a cop bar one night and
here's people gossiping and talking, and the detectives are talking
(30:52):
and gossiping. This name keeps popping out, Nicolagabo, and he says,
what is the story here? Why are these detectives talking
about about this lawyer? This is not common And as
he started to unravel the story, he came upon this
incredible tale that has to be the cornerstone of his career.
And when he published, they refused to allow him to
use her name. So she was Lawyer X. And that's
(31:15):
the show that we got. That's the podcast that's just
out now on Wondering on Wondery Plus and informants Lawyer
X and so she is her story. I talked to
Anthony Dowsley, who was the one who investigated it, along
with journalist Patrick Carlyon, also a detective who became involved
with Nicolagabo. Paul Dale, and also another criminal defense lawyer,
Zara guard Wilson, who was also knew her and knew
(31:38):
of Nicolagabo and what she was doing. The story has
twists and turns. It is the most incredible thing. First
when I stumbled on it, I thought, Okay, that's just weird,
and then I realized there's a whole thing that happens
with hers. There are murders, a double homicide involved. It's
got everything. It's just incredible.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Well and I imagine, as both a prosecut and an author,
you're like, this is a gold mine of drama and
tension and excitement, and it's true.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Yeah, yeah, it's true. Unimaginable, Yeah it is. It was everything.
And what was incredible was as we're writing episode after episode,
I'm recording it and going, oh my god, you're getting
I mean one thing, no way, and you know something.
I mean, I've seen so much, having handled thousands and
thousands of cases, it's pretty hard to shock me, honestly,
(32:31):
and this shocked me over and over again, and I
really did keep going no way.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
So from that, from that place, you know, that amount
of expertise. You say, you've seen it all, so it's
hard to shock. You can you give the rest of
us who don't know the ins and outs of your
world a little bit of an overview of what the
risks are that criminal informants face and a little information
(32:58):
on what criteria is necess to even become an informant,
because obviously it's very rare for a defense attorney to
flip state's evidence on his or her clients. So like that,
obviously we know is the ground zero for informants lawyer X,
But what does it mean to be an informant in
(33:19):
the first place?
Speaker 2 (33:21):
So usually, and when I say usually, I mean always,
I've never heard of a defense attorney becoming an informant,
let alone an official registered informant for the police. Never.
This is a one off and it was a huge
story in Australia. We just get to find out about
it now and it's incredible. Usually, and when I say usually,
I mean always, informants are criminals. They're involved in some
(33:45):
kind of criminal enterprise, whether there it's a mafia situation,
whether it's just a drug ring or something, or it's gangs.
You know, it's somebody who's involved in the world, because
that's how they get the information, and that's the cops
get a hold of them because they get busted for whatever,
and then they get to make a deal and in turn,
(34:05):
in return for the deal that the cops give them
or the prosecutor gives them, they funnel information to them.
It is a very, very dangerous life. It's extremely dangerous
because you're always walking this tightrope that if the guys
that you're getting the information from, i e. Your gang,
your group, your drug ring, whatever it is, if they
find out you're snitching, you're dead, yes, or hurt very badly,
(34:28):
or your family is well your family right exactly. So
there's a lot of vulnerability there. And on the other hand,
if you don't deliver, you're going to go to prison.
So and the cops want you to deliver, the cops
are not going to make a deal with you, and
they're not going to carry through on that deal if
you don't give them what they want. So you're constantly
balancing these different interests. Nicola Gaba was doing in big time.
(34:51):
She was actually playing both sides against the middle. She
was working for the cops against her clients, but she
was also getting information from the cops her clients. It
was one of the most amazing kind of power plays
I've ever seen, where she's kind of the puppet master
of all time. But that's unusual. That's a very one
off situation. Usually it's the criminal trying to serve both masters,
(35:16):
very hard to do, to do, and then the cops
have to worry about how much they're getting what they're
getting from the inform and how much of it is true, right,
because he has every reason to want to please them,
to get to make his deal and keep on the
good side of them. And at the same time, lying
can help because it can shield people he wants to
shield or she wants to shield. On the criminal side
(35:37):
gets very complicated, but one thing that is never complicated
but always true is the constant threat of danger from
one side or another, prison or death.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Right. Well, and this is really interesting because you talk,
you know, across the country about the effects of celebrity
and press attention on criminal cases. Obviously so impactful when
we look back at oj trial, but even what you're
speaking about with this case, the Nicolagabo story, it became
(36:07):
a story because someone from the media heard about it.
And I'm really curious. You know, there's obviously a desire
to tell stories, and journalists want to inform their audience,
but sometimes informing an audience about a story like this
could cost someone their life. How do you kind of
(36:30):
mitigate these effects, you know, celebrity press attention, social media
attention on criminal cases. Are there best practices or is
Pandora's box just open at this point?
Speaker 2 (36:45):
You know, it's a really good question, Sophia. I think
that journalists are kind of grappling with this constantly now
that we have social media and it's so easy to
publish a story without vetting it. It's so easy to
just get out there and send that tweet, post that
in whatever it is, a blog if you will, and
I don't even think that's a big deal, but substack
(37:06):
if you will, and people get it right away. And
so it does become their responsibility to be very careful
about what they do, and a lot of them are.
A lot of them are. They're very cognizant of the
fact that there is integrity involved in here, and there's
personal safety concerns of everybody you're talking about. In case
of Nippy Nicolagabo, it was a particularly vexing problem for
(37:27):
Anthony Dowsley, the journalist, because it was known that if
you reveal who she is, her life is in danger.
Well yeah, right, her life is in incredible danger, and
so are the lives of her children, not to mention
the fact that the cops are going to be furious
because you're killing the golden goose. So there was a
lot of there's a lot of litigation that happened to
(37:49):
suppress this story for years. Anthony Dowsley had to fight
for five years to finally publish the story and then
fight for even longer than that to get her name out.
And he had to balance those interests that you're talking about,
the safety interest and the threat of danger that was
so palpable, so real. The problem is too though, these
(38:10):
are also an important thing that the public needs to know
that the system of justice is being undermined by this.
People will say, for sure, they'll say, oh, so what
you know, the criminal the legal rights of these criminals,
these drug lords is being trampled. Boo who it kills
(38:31):
me for them? You know, I don't care. I want
the police to get them, and she's helping them get them,
so yeah, for her, Well, yeah, but it's not so
clean and it's not so clear because if they can
trample these guys' rights, they can trample other rights as well.
It's because the slippery slope. What if it's your brother,
your friend, your cousin who got busted for one minor
(38:51):
thing and the cop knows that he can just tap
a source that's completely unreliable. Because after all, we say
that's okay, if you're going to bust crime, do whatever
you we have to set those guardrails there important. So
even though it's drug lords largely who got hurt by this,
but now what's happening is their cases are getting reversed
and getting thrown out, and these dangerous guys are getting
(39:12):
out of prison because of what she did. So it
matters that the cops weren't doing their job correctly and
she wasn't doing her job correctly. In the system of justice,
it's a three legged stool, and this is something I
say in the podcast Prosecutors, cops and defense attorneys in court.
Any one of those three doesn't do their job and
the stool falls down, and that's what happened here. This
(39:34):
is unusual. Usually it's one of the others but we
have to be cognizant of the fact that it matters.
There are ripple effects that occur as a result when
someone doesn't do what they're supposed to do.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
And now a word from our wonderful sponsors. So I'm
really curious this vantage of understanding all of this and
the amount of media literacy people have now. Still more
(40:07):
is needed, but we've come a long way, you know,
since since the famous trial. What do you think would
happen if the OJ Simpson trial were tried today? Do
you think it would be different?
Speaker 2 (40:20):
I think it would. I think it would because now
there are competing narratives that get to be heard, that
get disseminated, and that's a very good thing. I think
for all that we have been decrying can cancel culture
and all that stuff, and I agree that we shouldn't
have it. I in favor of having people have a voice,
(40:40):
whether you agree with it or not. Let everyone speak,
or just about everyone. You know, we have a First Amendment.
It does have certain guidelines. They're loose, and they should
be because I do want to hear from the right wing.
I want to hear from the left wing. I want
to hear from every wing. If I possibly can, as
long as it doesn't do obvious harm. The old saw
(41:00):
about crying fire in a crowded theater, well.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Exactly, you can't incite hate speech or harm.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
But yeah, right, inciting a riot or that kind of thing.
But other than that, competing points of view good thing,
and I want to hear them, and I think you
would today. Back then, things were so much more narrow,
even though you had television that was showing all kinds
of things. Television was kind of a distorting force too,
(41:27):
because you have this moving picture, you see snapshots. You
don't see the whole thing. You don't under you know,
don't necessarily pay attention to all the things that are
said in court and or could you. Everybody has lives.
But as a result, when you only see me yelling
in one in one two second sound bite, you don't
see the whole other eight hours of very calm, reflective discourse.
(41:50):
So that was kind of a distorting influence. Whereas today
you would probably have people on both sides saying, well
I think this or I think that. Back then, Howard
Stern and I think Coralda Rivera were the only two
willing to come out front and say I think that
Simpson was guilty. I think he's did it. I think
he should be found guilty. But everyone else was very
afraid to say, oh, he did it. Yes, I think so.
(42:13):
In fact, in the very beginning it was not divided
by race. Everyone hated us. Everyone said I don't want
to hear this, it's not true. I don't believe it.
And then even when they started to believe it, I
would hear things from people saying like, well, you know,
I haven't seen all the evidence, so I can't form
an opinion. But you're not on the jury. You can
(42:34):
form an opinion today right now, in the next five minutes.
No one cares. You get to say what you think.
People were afraid to say what they thought, so I
don't think that would be the case today. Even though
we have a certain degree of worry about, you know,
people being afraid to voice their opinions that are not popular,
I think that's relaxing a lot. And I think people
are more and more willing thanks to podcasts like yours,
(42:58):
for example, podcast like The Fifth Column, More Blocked and Reported,
or you Know or job Steps. You know, you have
all these podcasts that are willing to be brave and
say what they have, say what they think, whether it's
popular or not. That's a really good thing, and people
have access to it another very good things. So I
do think it would probably be different. Would we have
(43:18):
won a conviction, maybe not. It might have been a
hung jury. I think that with even back then, had
we had a judge who knew how to run a courtroom,
we would have had hung jury then too, and it
would have gone a lot faster as well. But but
you know, that's just a just a guess.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
Sure, Yeah, I think it must be so hard to
speculate on that stuff. I mean, I know people have
even asked you, oh, do you think if the you know,
the prosecutor had been a man, that it might have
gone differently, And it's like, how are you supposed to know?
Speaker 2 (43:51):
Well, how am I supposed to know? But it's also
it ignores the much more important forces that were in play.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
Say more about that.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
Yeah, race became a huge vocal issue. I was really
more beside the point than people realize. And so there
was four hundred years of social injustice being packed into
that courtroom. Rodney King, As I said, whenever you have
a case that's getting buried under all of these social
issues that really have nothing to do with the evidence
at all. He did not kill the goal because she's white.
(44:19):
She did not divorce him because he's black. None of
that mattered to them, and so none of that had
anything to do with the case. Should never have been
allowed in the courtroom, but once it is, it can't
help but have a divisive and very distorting impact on
the evidence and on the jurors as well. And so,
you know, I think that's true, and that was true
(44:42):
then and it's still true now in any case where
you have that sort of thing happening. And I do
think it may have had an impact, and it still
having an impact on the lawyer X cases because there's
a certain Nicola Gobbo herself is in hiding. But people
are still wondering who's going to be held accountable. What
about all the police who knew that they shouldn't be
using a defense attorneys as an informant. They knew it,
(45:04):
They knew this wasn't the right thing to do, but
they still did it. But no one's been prosecuted yet.
And I think that they're afraid because the public really
doesn't want to see cops go and go to prison,
or go to jail, or even get fired necessarily because
they liked what they were doing. They cleaned up the streets.
After all, of course, they did stop crying.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
And it's really hard to puncture the idea of the
good guy coming to save you. We're dealing with this
in our country all the time. You know, when you
realize that a third of the people murdered in America
die at the hands of a police officer, you go like,
oh God, what does that mean? You know what a
hold on? And it is really hard. And I say
(45:44):
this as a person who grew up, you know, with
my very favorite show on TV for a long time
being On Order SVU and who played a cop on TV?
And I'm like, I've had to reckon with a lot.
It's really complicated when you pierce the veil of the
societal story of who's a hero, who's a bad guy who?
(46:05):
It's deeply uncomfortable. And yeah, the question of this case,
you know, this lawyer X thing that you're talking about.
Did they need the information, yes, did they need to
put the bad guys away?
Speaker 2 (46:22):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (46:22):
Did they do it in potentially the wrong way that
probably put a woman in her family at risk.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
Yes, what does it all mean?
Speaker 1 (46:29):
Because someone will also say, well, she chose to defend
these people, and it's like, oh god, it's hard.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
It's hard, and it's very It's what's fascinates me about
Lawyer X is also what leads a person to put
themselves in this position where she's up against it. She's
really she's an up and comer, and then she's a
celebrated lawyer and she has all this power and all
this fame and very successful and then turns on a
(46:55):
dime to become an informant and suddenly turns on the
very people who made her as successful as she is,
and at the same time that makes her miserable, and
she goes through all kinds of stress, and I, you know,
I just think this is a psychological study that is
endless because there's all these layers to it. Yes, she's
a power player, but she's also a pleaser. She's someone
(47:17):
who wants to be the very best lawyer possible for
all these bad guys, but also wants to be the
very best informant the police have ever seen it. She
actually said that to them, I want to be the
best informant you've ever had. Am I not the best?
I mean, this is a person whose personality is so
complex and so at odds with her with her self.
It's like she chases her own tail all the time.
(47:38):
Twenty four to seven. I you know, I did try
to reach out to her a number of times.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
Did you get to her?
Speaker 2 (47:44):
I try and never got to, never got to. But
that would be one of the interviews that I would
really really love to have to find out why did
you do it? What made you do it? How do
you feel about it now? What are your regrets? I mean,
because I can see you know, it's really hard. It's
hard to actually weave your way through the path, the
psychological path that she wound up in to find you know,
(48:07):
she went this way and this way and this way
and this way. It is the serpentine path, to put
it mildly, And now you know she's I don't know
where she is, and that's probably a very good thing
for her and her children. But I mean, it's what
a case study that is well, and what.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
An interesting thing too. I wonder how you obviously your
circumstances are very different, but I wonder how you relate
because even for you, you know, you mentioned earlier you
were so disillusioned with the justice system after the acquittal,
and you left the LA District Attorney's office afterwards, and
your life has taken all these different twists and turns
and the writing and the podcast and the lecturing and
(48:45):
all the things you do. Do you miss anything about
your old career? Are there things that you would do
differently now? Or are you happy where it's all landed.
Maybe it's also a little bit of both.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
I don't know. I think I'm kind of a fatalist
about that. Things happened the way they happened, you know,
and so I'm here now, and it just it was
what it was, and that's what I don't look back
and say, Gee, I wish I were a prosecutor again.
Then again, you know, I left the office because I
had to at that time. I just couldn't envision going
(49:23):
back into court, and then I did what I did
after that, you know what I mean. It just kind
of I've always been that way. I was that way
before I became a prosecutor. This looks right, that looks right,
and you know, whatever fits in at that time, as
you say, when work in progress exactly. So, yeah, I
do wonder about someone like Nicolagabo whose ambition was always
(49:45):
the same. She wasn't like me. She was somebody who
always wanted to be a lawyer. At one time even
thought about being a prime minister. She was. She came
from legal royalty, that was her background, and her uncle
was a very famous barrister. So she came from, you know,
a family that it makes it not surprising that she
would want to be a high powered criminal lawyer, and
(50:07):
so that she became one, and she succeeded to such great,
such a great degree, only to throw it all away
by becoming a notorious informant and becoming the focus of
a huge legal scandal in Australia is so mind boggling
to me. She yes, honestly, she threw away her own dream.
Speaker 1 (50:27):
Yeah, I mean her story is wild and it as
you talk about it, and I think about all these stories.
Why do you think we're all so obsessed with true crime?
What do you think that is?
Speaker 2 (50:40):
You know, Sophia, I'm one of them so well, he
do like this. This is a very good question. Why
are we like the way we are? I just don't know.
I mean, I think that ultimately true crime fanatics like
us are curious. They're curious, they want to so all
the mystery. They want to know the answer, they want
(51:02):
to get the solution. You know, why did this happen?
How did this happen? These are always they're puzzles to solve.
And I don't mean to be that in a demeaning
or just diminishing way, because often lives are on the line,
serious issues are in play. Here, you're more serious, but
at base, I think it is a curiosity and a
need to know that fuels the True crime Society community.
(51:24):
And I feel like it is a community, and it's
one that I've been a member of for a long
standing member of since childhood. And I don't see that
ever changing.
Speaker 1 (51:33):
Yeah, I don't think it's going to change for me either.
Speaker 2 (51:38):
I'm so sucked.
Speaker 1 (51:40):
So you know, we're on the the precipice of this
new show, and there's such an incredible life and multifaceted
career behind you, and you're looking forward with all these
new projects as you look out at what excites you,
you know, what comes next, what feels like you're work
(52:03):
in progress in your life. It could be professional or personal.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
I feel like everything in my life is a work
in progress on YouTube. You know, from day to day,
I feel like I learned something new. I learned to
improve about one thing or another, whether it's big or small,
every single day. And that's why I related so much
to your show. It's such a great idea work in progress.
I mean, yeah, and I kind of think that if
(52:28):
you're not a work in progress, then you're kind of
treading water in not a good way. You want to
be always in progress, developing, learning, improving if you can.
That's what we trieded.
Speaker 1 (52:41):
That's absolutely I love that. Well, thank you so much.
It's really it's just such an honor to have you
on the show. I'm absolutely geeked about this, and I'm
so excited for the new podcast and I'm so I'm
just so excited to watch all of the next iterations
(53:02):
of the work that you do. Thank you for taking
the time today.
Speaker 2 (53:06):
Thank you so much, Sophia. It's been a pleasure. I
hope you enjoy Lawyer X on Wondering Plus I can't
wait
Hi, everyone, it's Sophia. Welcome to work in progress. Hey
wh'b smarties. Today we are joined by a guest that
has me absolutely geeked. I mean, someone that I grew
(00:23):
up watching on television, whose story has now been made
into an incredible scripted drama, who has led the most
interesting life, and I just can't wait to ask her
all of the questions I have. Today we are joined
by none other than Marcia Clark, prosecutor, author, television correspondent,
(00:44):
and television producer. She is perhaps best known for having
been the lead prosecutor in the O. J. Simpson murder case,
and during that case she was really thrust into what
has been called the hell of the trial. She was
made overnight in a way that was kind of terrifying,
and her experience on that trial was really a confluence
(01:08):
of media and tabloid drama and early disinformation in the
media and such incredible sexism, the craziest experiences of the
way that a woman could be picked apart a woman
in a position of power in an era that was
not great for women. No less, everything from her arguing
(01:28):
style to her hair, her wardrobe was picked apart. On television,
the La Times even described her as resembling Sigourney Weaver,
only more professional, and The New York Times retorted that
the transformation was not entirely seamless, like what this one
was prosecuting a murder trial. It seems so wildly inappropriate today,
(01:49):
but this is just a moment ago in our human history.
After the trial, Clark actually resigned from the District Attorney's office.
She was so disillusioned with justice system. And then she
and Teresa Carpenter wrote a book about the case called
Without a Doubt. Since the trial, Marsha Clark has made
numerous appearances on television. She's been a special correspondent for
(02:11):
Entertainment Tonight. She has provided coverage of high profile trials
and reported from even red carpets at the Emmys. She
is an incredibly multifaceted woman who has taken a lot
of frankly sexist pushback and turned it into an incredible career.
She's written several novels, even a series surrounding a prosecutor
(02:34):
in the lada's office called Rachel Knight, and now she
has a brand new podcast out called Informants Lawyer X.
It is a story you have to hear to believe
it because it's true. And I'm telling you from the
Hollywood world. If any of us had pitched this to
a studio, they would have said it was too fantastical.
(02:55):
But it's real life, and so for those of us
who are obsessed with justice, obsessed with true crime, this
is going to be your next favorite podcast. Informant's Lawyer
X reveals the story of Nicolagabo, a defense attorney who
represented key players in Australia's violent gang Wars, and as
she appeared to become one of the gang, she was
(03:17):
actually turning into a police informant, selling out the people
she was sworn to defend. It's a wild story and
I am so excited to ask Marcia how she discovered
Nicolagabo's story in the first place, and every single question
I wanted to ask her since the oj Simpson trial
was on TV. So let's get to it. Hi, Marcia,
(03:48):
how are you.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
I'm good. It's so nice to be here.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
It's so lovely to have you. Thank you so much
for taking the time. My mind is absolutely blown right now,
just thrilled that you're here.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
I've thrilled to be here. Thank you for having me.
Really yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
I mean, I you know, as a kid who went
to journalism school in LA.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
I'm like, I have so many questions for you.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
There is really there's so much to talk about. But
you know, anyone I get to sit across from has
a pretty incredible list of accomplishments, and yours I have
a million questions about. But I actually want to I
want to go back a bit to the beginning and
know if you could kind of retrace your steps. When
(04:34):
did you know that you wanted to be an attorney?
Was it a dream you had from the time that
you were a young girl, or or was it something
that sort of evolved, you know, through your young life
and led you to decide you wanted to be a
prosecutor in school? How did we get here?
Speaker 2 (04:51):
No, it's funny for you. It reminds me of that
buzz light Year thing where flying is just a series
of fallings. Yeah, and that's what it kind of happ
and to me, it was all accidental. I started out
wanting to be an actress, not movies. I wanted to
do not Broadway even I wanted to do off Broadway,
you know, small theater stuff, and I really liked that.
(05:12):
And in my y, that's crazy. And in my first
year of undergrad I realized I was majoring in theater arts,
and I realized, that's a really dumb major because you're
either an actor or you're not, you know what I mean.
But you know, certainly having a degree is not going
to make your one. So I gave up on that thought, Okay,
I should get like something different, and I thought, oh,
political science seems like it encompasses a lot of the
(05:34):
stuff that might interesting to me. And then I really
got into that and I wanted to be I got
interested in international relations, particularly, you know, I wanted to
work for the State Department, but I wanted to be
in the field, you know. I wanted to work out,
not at a desk. And back then, the only thing
that girls were allowed to do was type, and they
(05:56):
asked me how fast I could type, and I did
not have any desire to tell them that I was
a fast typist, nor was I a fast So that
was that that dream went crashing down. And then it
was like, now what do I do?
Speaker 1 (06:12):
You know?
Speaker 2 (06:13):
I mean, I really didn't know, and it was just
a matter of sitting down and making a list of
the things I liked to do the things that I
thought I could do, and it seemed to add up
to law school, which really pissed me off because I
hated school. Hated it, hats all forms of school. I
really liked studying on my own. Okay, you know, I
want to give me the book, I'll go away, I'll
(06:34):
figure it out. But I really don't want to sit
in class. So having to go back to school was
not my favorite thing to do. I went back to
law school with a very bad attitude. But I really
figured in the first like two months of law school.
I realized it was going to be criminal law. That
was the only thing I was going to practice, and
(06:55):
it was the I never looked back, and I never
regretted it because it really was where I wanted to be.
So it kind of happened like that. And I have
to tell you it was such an accidental thing that
I had actually forgotten about. The LSATs are the admissions,
you know, tests you have to take to get into
law school. Yeah, and I had forgotten that it was
(07:15):
due the following morning, and I went out and partied
the night before. Oh my god, it was really not good.
I showed up more than slightly hungover for the LSAT.
I mean, you know, you have to fill in those
little bubbles back in the day, and they were very blurry.
I don't know what score I got. It was good
enough to get into law school. That was fine with me,
so you know what I mean. It wasn't like some
(07:37):
big career path. It just kind of happened and happened
and happened, and then, yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
What was it about criminal law that stood out to
you so quickly?
Speaker 2 (07:47):
I think that started when I was like really really little,
I mean six years old, kind of little, because I
was always looking for the mystery, and I was always
looking to solve the mystery, make it up and then
solve it, which is sure, yeah, exactly. So there was
this house where we were living, at the end of
the street that looked kind of that was kind of
abandon well, it was abandoned actually, and so I decided,
(08:09):
of course that a big murder had happened there. And
I saw, you know, spots on the sidewalk and those
became blood drops, and for some reason I persuaded all
the kids on the block that this was really happening
and we were going to crack this case wide open. Yeah.
So It started very very young. I was always fascinated
with crime, and so it's not really a surprise that
(08:30):
in law school I said criminal laws had to be.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Right well, and not really a surprise that you fast
forward to today and you know you're writing these incredible mysteries.
It all really makes sense.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Yeah, it really does now.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
So many of us obviously came to know you as
a household name during the oj Simpson trial. It wasn't
lost on me as a tiny little activist in my
whole life. I remember saying to my parents, I do
not like the way they're talking about this lady on TV.
You know, it really irked me as a kid that
(09:10):
I could see, even as a child not understanding the
complexities of the world in patriarchy and society and systems
and all the things that I understand now. I could
see the way you were vilified. You know, this hyper intelligent,
committed prosecutor doing this work, who was as enraged as
the rest of us that this trial was going the
(09:32):
way that it was. And you know, there'd be tabloids
at the grocery store and people were calling you a bitch,
and it was like, it really pissed me off.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
As a kid.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
What what was that experience like for you at the time,
Because it seemed from the outside that because of who
OJ was and how public he and Nicole Brown Simpson's
life had been, and everyone knew about, you know, the
cops being called in, the abuse and the police reports
and the things, and yet everybody was pissed off at
(10:08):
you for going after the bad guy? Like what was
it surreal to you? Was it shocking? Was it traumatizing?
Was it infuriating? Maybe it was all of the things.
I feel like it was just such the beginning of
this era of all this stuff being on TV. Was
it surreal? As a lawyer?
Speaker 2 (10:30):
That really was? It? Really really was so Before Simpson,
I had been a prosecutor for fourteen years defense attorney
before that, and had never felt particularly focused on as
a female. And even if there even if I initially was,
even if the detectives initially kind of looked like a girl, really,
(10:53):
by the time I got into doing the job and
working with them and going out and talking to witnesses,
they got over it really fast and it didn't matter anymore.
Same thing with judges and other defense attorneys suggest it
became a matter of not no big deal, right, and
so I had stopped worrying about it. If ever I
did really worry about it, I don't think I really did.
(11:14):
I thought I just do the job, you know, get
past whatever. Then there were sexist jokes and all the
rest of it, whatever la la lah, and I do
the job, you know, because everybody could get over it.
It didn't stick in my mind at the time, and
by the time the Simpson case happened, it had been
many years of nobody giving me a hard time about
being female, or being impassioned, or being a prosecutor any
(11:36):
of that stuff. And at that time, as of that time,
having a high profile case meant what was high profile
was maybe the press would spell your name right and
only in print and certainly not on television, and maybe
they wouldn't mention you at all. You're just the prosecution.
So that was high profile. And that's all I had
(11:57):
ever had to deal with, and I had dealt with
other pride h profile cases. This was not my first.
But then when the Simpson case hit, there was a
sudden it was like being in this vortex. Suddenly there
was media coverage that was twenty four to seven. Suddenly
there were these cable networks and outlets that were all
over the country, not just in one tiny pocket here
and there, that were nationwide, and they needed content and
(12:21):
they could afford to fill the air waves constantly, And
so now the spotlight became huge, which it never had
been before. So that was shocking. And the degree to
which people got invested in, got involved and had opinions
and wanted to be heard was unprecedented. That I would
(12:41):
become a focus of interest at all, That I would
be the focus of any kind of attention was a
brand new thing and not a welcome thing, and not
a welcome thing in so many ways. Number One, I
never wanted to be the focus of attention like that
number or as me, you know, I mean, even when
I wanted to be an actress, I didn't want to
be focused on as me. I wanted to be a character.
(13:03):
So you know what I mean, there's that, Yeah, you would,
you know what I mean exactly. So this was horrifying.
But what was more horrifying to me was the way
in which I could see justice being subverted. All of
the proper considerations about truth, about evidence, about guilt and
(13:23):
innocence went out the window. In favor of gossip and
sensationalism and clickbait. Although we didn't know the word clickbait,
then it was that. And so it was really depressing
and very upsetting to see the important values in our
criminal justice system being buried under a mile of slime
(13:45):
and false reporting, deliberately false at times and just recklessly
false at other times. And then the court itself, the
judge himself, who became obsessed with celebrity and his own
spotlight and all of that was to the detriment of
justice and the proper legal administration. So it was really
(14:10):
it was a very depressing, very upsetting experience and very surreal.
And so what I had to do is early early on,
not pay attention. I just had to. Really, what I
had to do is in court, that's what matters, whoever's
talking about, whatever they're talking about. At one point I
heard rush Limbaugh was talking about my skirts. I mean, really,
(14:30):
how crazy does this get? So enough of that, and
so I turned off the TV, yep, and just focused
on what was going on.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
And now for our sponsors, it's such an odd thing
in my own relative experience with this to see what
it's like, particularly before the advent of social media where
you could have your own voice, where the media, for
(15:00):
as you said, clickbait, would essentially cast you as a
character in a in a version of a tabloid soap
opera because it helped them sell papers. Whether it was
anything real about your life or not, it it was.
It was so disconcerting and as a person who's pretty
obsessed with justice myself, drove me nuts because it feels
so unjust. And I think that's what I picked up
(15:25):
on as a kid. You know, watching this trial, what
a crazy thing to you know, to know your name,
to know lance Edo's name, like what who knows judges' names?
And this trial, you know, blew up into this space
that it was everywhere all the time, you know, twenty
(15:46):
four hours. It was like the Super Bowl never ended
in a way. That much coverage. You know, when you
when you talk about the reporting, and you know, you
said something really interesting a moment ago, you said, sometimes
deliberately reporting what did you know to be false? That
was moving at such a torrent that you couldn't get
(16:07):
ahead of it and make it stop.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
I mean, there were so many things. Sophia has so
many things that I can't even recount one in particular.
But I would have arguments with Johnny on the side,
and we always got along, you know, and there was
we did not have acrimoni personally ever, But I would
get annoyed because he would float these nonsensical stories about
this witness that witness. There weren't witnesses, and he knew it,
(16:30):
but he would just throw it out there because he
knew the press would pick it up and run with
it as though, oh new Lee knew this, knew that,
And it was can I say this? Okay? You know? Yeah?
And it was. And I said, Johnny, you know it's good.
We're gonna blow this up tomorrow. He said, well, you
know whatever. And of course it's not up to him
to worry about that. That's not his job. But it
(16:53):
is the press's job. He should be a journalist's job
to look at, you know, something that comes out. I
would watch it a reporter walk into the men's room
with someone from the defense team and then come out
and file a story. What do you think you had
one side of something that you've not verified, you've never
tried to corroborate. You don't care where it came from.
You guys were standing at the urinal together, and he
(17:14):
told you a tale, and now you're putting it out
there as though this is gospel truth. And that's completely
spinning public opinion and giving people a lie, giving people
garbage because you haven't bothered to corroborate or verify anything
you've done. So it would happen over and over and
over again. And Johnny was right, no one cared because
the very next lie would happen the next day and
that would wipe it out. And you know, it looks
(17:36):
like our politics today.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
I was going to say, it's not dissimilar to what's
been happening in Ohio.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
It's so hard to watch people who will lie for gain,
even if it causes harm. And I would imagine you
know that it was incredibly difficult to know what the
victim had been through, you know, how abused she'd been,
how many incidents of violence there were. Obviously you saw
(18:07):
more than any of the rest of us, what the
crime scene really looked like, all of these things that
I just I know the way they've stuck with me,
and I know I wasn't nearly as close to it
as you, and so I guess I wonder as misrepresented
as so much was in the world. Then were you
nervous when you heard that FX was going to make
(18:29):
the people versus O. J. Simpson?
Speaker 2 (18:31):
It was miserable, it was. It was miserable, miserable when
I heard they were going to do it.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Did that shift at all because you got to sit
down with Sarah Paulson or were you just worried the
whole time until you got to see it?
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Well? I couldn't. The actors were not allowed to meet
the real people they portrayed throughout the shooting. No, they
never did. They weren't allowed to. So yeah, I mean,
when I first heard it that they were going to
do this limited series, I thought, first of all, oh God, no,
please no, And then I thought, well, no harm, no foul,
No one's going to care, No one's going to watch this.
(19:07):
We all know the story. It's old news, you know.
And then people were telling me it's not old news,
and we think it's going to be big, And then
I was miserable again. And then I heard Sarah Paulson
was going to play me, and then I thought, well,
if this awful thing has to happen, at least I
have a genius portraying me. At least I have this
amazing actress portraying me, so that was like, that was
(19:30):
some comfort. But I didn't get to see her or
speak to her until they were done shooting. And then,
of course it was wonderful. We had the best time.
We closed the restaurant down, got pretty drunk, had a
great time. We still exchanged texts. I love her dearly.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Oh, I'm so glad. How did you feel about it
when you saw it? Or did you not watch it?
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Of course I had to watch it. Okay, could you
not watch it?
Speaker 1 (19:54):
I didn't want to assume.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
I thought it was great, you know. And people are
always asking me how how accurate it was, and was
this that and the other? And they always tell them, Look,
they can't be accurate. They I mean, they can be,
and they were to the extent that they could be.
They told the essential truth of the core of the story.
The ways in which racial justice, the issue of racial justice,
was manipulated in service of the acquittal of a man
(20:19):
who did not deserve it, The way in which the
wheels of justice were ground to a halt with all
kinds of tactics that should not be allowed. The ways
in which things went wrong should not have gone wrong,
leading to the verdict that we got, which we might
have gotten anyway. And that's an important thing to think
about in terms of our social history, written large in
(20:40):
terms of the context of that case, following so closely
after Rodney King and then the very most violent riots
of that century that occurred in the wake of the
Rodney King case so and trial. So, I mean, there
were so many issues that they did a really nice
job of incorporating there. To say that any limited series
(21:01):
could be completely accurate when you're talking about something that
was covered endlessly for a year twenty four to seven
is impossible, and you wouldn't even want to. So Yes,
in essence, I think they got a lot of it right.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
I thought it was really quite beautiful, and I was
so impressed with Sarah Paulson, and I loved whether it
felt incredibly accurate or not to you as a viewer.
I appreciated really being able to see what you as
a woman, were put through that a man never would
(21:38):
have been put through. To have your hair and your
clothes and your demeanor and your speech and your custody battle,
your personal life all picked apart. I thought we were
able to as an audience see the injustice that was
done to you within this world that you mentioned. This
(22:01):
injustice was done to these victims because such a terrible
injustice had been done to someone else and people were
afraid to repeat it. It felt like a miscarriage on
a miscarriage, on a miscarriage of what the law should be,
you know, from personal to societal. And I thought that
that was a pretty incredible thing for them to have
(22:24):
been able to do on film. Did it allow you
to revisit the intense scrutiny that you experienced. Was it
cathartic in a way to see it told honestly to
a point or was it kind of painful all over again?
(22:47):
Or maybe it's both.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
I think it is kind of both. It was cathartic
in the sense that Sarah captured the feeling of what
it was like to be in the focus of that
kind of attention. She captured it beautifully, and so that
was great. There's a wonderfulness about a feeling understood, and
she really did. Yeah, so that was good. It was
(23:11):
also very painful. Justice matters to me, the truth matters
to me a lot, and I saw it being I
saw it being shredded every day when I went to court,
and so I diving into that cesspool of what was really,
to me, just a complete subversion of all the values
(23:32):
that we hold so dear in a democracy where that
is founded on a system of justice that at least
strives to be fair, at least strives to be the
scales of justice. You know, she's blind and you're supposed
to be coming in to focus on the evidence, and
to focus on the truth, and to apply the law
to the evidence. This is what we're supposed to do.
None of that happened, and I don't think it was
(23:55):
allowed to happen for so many reasons. So that was
a very painful thing. And looking back watching the series
brought home that painful experience as well, so you know,
I mean, so it was both. It was both.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
Well, I remember the feeling I had watching it, going, God,
I wonder if she's at home, going see I'm not crazy.
It was this bad, you know, And not that that
fixes it, but at least you don't necessarily feel so alone.
I imagine at the time when it was happening, again,
there was no social media. You couldn't have a voice,
(24:31):
you couldn't get ahead of anything. You couldn't tell your
own story. It was told for you in the pages
you know of all these newspapers and tabloids all around
the country. And who did you have in your corner?
Like did you have a best friend who you called
every night to flip out about the day or was
(24:51):
the case so intense that you were sort of underground
in your office for months and had to do it afterwards?
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Like what was your life life?
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Not just as Marcia Clerk the prosecutor, but as Marcia
as a woman who was trying to deal with all
of this, Like who did you turn to?
Speaker 2 (25:11):
I did have best friends to talk to, and I
did talk to them every night, and I also had
my team and Chris, you know what I mean. And
so yes, I mean there were plenty of people to
talk to and vent to. And I'm sure they got
really sick of me. So I hope that I apologize
to them enough to say, I know you've heard this before,
but I can't believe what you know, you know what
I mean? Fill in the blank. Sure, And so yes,
(25:34):
there were people to talk to, and that was, of course,
as you know, very helpful. They have shoulders to lean on,
to wine to and to just you know, vent to constantly,
because it was a level of you're not in control
in a courtroom. I mean, I think anyone who says
that a prosecutor is controlling the proceedings is not a
(25:56):
lawyer or a very bad one because you are not
in control. Somebody once likened it to you know, oh,
you're the director of your film. No, you're not. The
judge is. You don't get to say cut. The judge does. So,
you know, you go in and you do your very
best to try and get the evidence to the jury
and to try and you know, unbury the truth for
(26:16):
the for the jury so they can see what really
happened and to see the truth in the witness's testimony.
But when when every roadblock keeps getting thrown in your way,
and every turn, everywhere you turn, there's another rock put
in front of the doorway that stops you from getting
to the jury from saying here, it is here, it
is here, this is what this means, this is why
(26:37):
we do this, this is what happened. But every time
you turn, it's like a door closes, that kind of thing,
or just big stumbling blocks that you're constantly trying to
crawl over. That kind of frustration was a daily occurrence,
and it was that you have to vent before you
go crazy. So it was it was that kind that
(26:59):
was the experience that ultimately, I think by the end
of the trial, I thought, I can't, I can't do
this anymore. Everything I thought and held dear about being
a lawyer, about being a prosecutor or a defense attorney,
all of those values kind of went got buried and
got tainted, got shredded. I didn't believe in the justice
(27:21):
system anymore. I walked away thinking I just can't, I can't,
I'm done, And then I got I wound up finding
that there were other things I could do, and wound
up writing. But then I wound up with writing fiction.
At first, the publishers Weekly when I put out my
first work of criminal crime fiction said, Clark turns to
(27:45):
fiction to control the outcome. Very true. You're like, obviously,
obviously right. How great is that? But then I discovered
that there was a beauty in writing about true crime.
And that's fairly recent, but I mean, I've always been
addicted to true and I do it still. I'm an
appellate lawyer. I do court appointed cases for the indigen
(28:05):
So I'm still practicing criminal law, and I get I
have all these true crime cases. But my agent said,
why don't you write a true crime book. Why don't
you get into another case. I said, but I have
so many already. Yeah, And then I got into but
you know, maybe that's a cool thing. And then I
fell on the story of Lawyer X and that was amazing,
(28:25):
And that was one of these true stories that if
it weren't true, you wouldn't believe a word of it,
Like if I told you this as fiction, you'd say,
too far fetched. A high powered criminal lawyer, she was
at the top of her game, representing the most notorious
gangsters in Australia in the midst of the Gangland Wars,
which was around the late nineties, early aughts into twenty
(28:46):
ten eleven, and bodies were literally dropping in Melbourne. And
this was a very beautiful city, seaside Port, beauty Port
city that was gorgeous, known for its culture, really beautiful place.
And suddenly this very lovely place to live has blood
flowing in the streets because of these gangsters and the
drug wars. And Nicola Gabbo was standing at the forefront
(29:09):
of it all as the premiere defense attorney for all
of the biggest of the big the most notorious of notorious,
and it turns out that she becomes an informant for
the police. And the notion that a defense attorney, especially
a celebrated one like that, becomes the most prized informant
for the detectives is something that Hollywood pudnta made it up.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
I mean, it's it's crazy, it feels unheard of and
now a word from our sponsors that I really enjoy
and I think you will too. How did you learn
about her story? And did she survive? I mean, it
(29:53):
feels like that's the number one person that a cartel
of drug runners is going to try to put out
a hit on. Like it does feel so far fetched
for a movie, but this is real life, Like how
did you hear about her? And then what happened?
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Is she okay? Well? Is she okay? Is a really
good question. She's in hiding right now. I tried to
reach out to her. This was a nine part series
for Wondery and I think it's exclusive to Wondery Plus
right now. It's part of the Exhibit cea campaign for
True crime shows podcasts at Wondery and it's the first
one out of the gate. I heard about it in Hollywood,
(30:31):
and at that time all I knew was that there
was some magazine article that I since discovered that actually
there was a book written by these journalists. Anthony Dowsley
was the journalist in Australia who happened upon this story
by hanging out in a cop bar one night and
here's people gossiping and talking, and the detectives are talking
(30:52):
and gossiping. This name keeps popping out, Nicolagabo, and he says,
what is the story here? Why are these detectives talking
about about this lawyer? This is not common And as
he started to unravel the story, he came upon this
incredible tale that has to be the cornerstone of his career.
And when he published, they refused to allow him to
use her name. So she was Lawyer X. And that's
(31:15):
the show that we got. That's the podcast that's just
out now on Wondering on Wondery Plus and informants Lawyer
X and so she is her story. I talked to
Anthony Dowsley, who was the one who investigated it, along
with journalist Patrick Carlyon, also a detective who became involved
with Nicolagabo. Paul Dale, and also another criminal defense lawyer,
Zara guard Wilson, who was also knew her and knew
(31:38):
of Nicolagabo and what she was doing. The story has
twists and turns. It is the most incredible thing. First
when I stumbled on it, I thought, Okay, that's just weird,
and then I realized there's a whole thing that happens
with hers. There are murders, a double homicide involved. It's
got everything. It's just incredible.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Well and I imagine, as both a prosecut and an author,
you're like, this is a gold mine of drama and
tension and excitement, and it's true.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Yeah, yeah, it's true. Unimaginable, Yeah it is. It was everything.
And what was incredible was as we're writing episode after episode,
I'm recording it and going, oh my god, you're getting
I mean one thing, no way, and you know something.
I mean, I've seen so much, having handled thousands and
thousands of cases, it's pretty hard to shock me, honestly,
(32:31):
and this shocked me over and over again, and I
really did keep going no way.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
So from that, from that place, you know, that amount
of expertise. You say, you've seen it all, so it's
hard to shock. You can you give the rest of
us who don't know the ins and outs of your
world a little bit of an overview of what the
risks are that criminal informants face and a little information
(32:58):
on what criteria is necess to even become an informant,
because obviously it's very rare for a defense attorney to
flip state's evidence on his or her clients. So like that,
obviously we know is the ground zero for informants lawyer X,
But what does it mean to be an informant in
(33:19):
the first place?
Speaker 2 (33:21):
So usually, and when I say usually, I mean always,
I've never heard of a defense attorney becoming an informant,
let alone an official registered informant for the police. Never.
This is a one off and it was a huge
story in Australia. We just get to find out about
it now and it's incredible. Usually, and when I say usually,
I mean always, informants are criminals. They're involved in some
(33:45):
kind of criminal enterprise, whether there it's a mafia situation,
whether it's just a drug ring or something, or it's gangs.
You know, it's somebody who's involved in the world, because
that's how they get the information, and that's the cops
get a hold of them because they get busted for whatever,
and then they get to make a deal and in turn,
(34:05):
in return for the deal that the cops give them
or the prosecutor gives them, they funnel information to them.
It is a very, very dangerous life. It's extremely dangerous
because you're always walking this tightrope that if the guys
that you're getting the information from, i e. Your gang,
your group, your drug ring, whatever it is, if they
find out you're snitching, you're dead, yes, or hurt very badly,
(34:28):
or your family is well your family right exactly. So
there's a lot of vulnerability there. And on the other hand,
if you don't deliver, you're going to go to prison.
So and the cops want you to deliver, the cops
are not going to make a deal with you, and
they're not going to carry through on that deal if
you don't give them what they want. So you're constantly
balancing these different interests. Nicola Gaba was doing in big time.
(34:51):
She was actually playing both sides against the middle. She
was working for the cops against her clients, but she
was also getting information from the cops her clients. It
was one of the most amazing kind of power plays
I've ever seen, where she's kind of the puppet master
of all time. But that's unusual. That's a very one
off situation. Usually it's the criminal trying to serve both masters,
(35:16):
very hard to do, to do, and then the cops
have to worry about how much they're getting what they're
getting from the inform and how much of it is true, right,
because he has every reason to want to please them,
to get to make his deal and keep on the
good side of them. And at the same time, lying
can help because it can shield people he wants to
shield or she wants to shield. On the criminal side
(35:37):
gets very complicated, but one thing that is never complicated
but always true is the constant threat of danger from
one side or another, prison or death.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Right. Well, and this is really interesting because you talk,
you know, across the country about the effects of celebrity
and press attention on criminal cases. Obviously so impactful when
we look back at oj trial, but even what you're
speaking about with this case, the Nicolagabo story, it became
(36:07):
a story because someone from the media heard about it.
And I'm really curious. You know, there's obviously a desire
to tell stories, and journalists want to inform their audience,
but sometimes informing an audience about a story like this
could cost someone their life. How do you kind of
(36:30):
mitigate these effects, you know, celebrity press attention, social media
attention on criminal cases. Are there best practices or is
Pandora's box just open at this point?
Speaker 2 (36:45):
You know, it's a really good question, Sophia. I think
that journalists are kind of grappling with this constantly now
that we have social media and it's so easy to
publish a story without vetting it. It's so easy to
just get out there and send that tweet, post that
in whatever it is, a blog if you will, and
I don't even think that's a big deal, but substack
(37:06):
if you will, and people get it right away. And
so it does become their responsibility to be very careful
about what they do, and a lot of them are.
A lot of them are. They're very cognizant of the
fact that there is integrity involved in here, and there's
personal safety concerns of everybody you're talking about. In case
of Nippy Nicolagabo, it was a particularly vexing problem for
(37:27):
Anthony Dowsley, the journalist, because it was known that if
you reveal who she is, her life is in danger.
Well yeah, right, her life is in incredible danger, and
so are the lives of her children, not to mention
the fact that the cops are going to be furious
because you're killing the golden goose. So there was a
lot of there's a lot of litigation that happened to
(37:49):
suppress this story for years. Anthony Dowsley had to fight
for five years to finally publish the story and then
fight for even longer than that to get her name out.
And he had to balance those interests that you're talking about,
the safety interest and the threat of danger that was
so palpable, so real. The problem is too though, these
(38:10):
are also an important thing that the public needs to know
that the system of justice is being undermined by this.
People will say, for sure, they'll say, oh, so what
you know, the criminal the legal rights of these criminals,
these drug lords is being trampled. Boo who it kills
(38:31):
me for them? You know, I don't care. I want
the police to get them, and she's helping them get them,
so yeah, for her, Well, yeah, but it's not so
clean and it's not so clear because if they can
trample these guys' rights, they can trample other rights as well.
It's because the slippery slope. What if it's your brother,
your friend, your cousin who got busted for one minor
(38:51):
thing and the cop knows that he can just tap
a source that's completely unreliable. Because after all, we say
that's okay, if you're going to bust crime, do whatever
you we have to set those guardrails there important. So
even though it's drug lords largely who got hurt by this,
but now what's happening is their cases are getting reversed
and getting thrown out, and these dangerous guys are getting
(39:12):
out of prison because of what she did. So it
matters that the cops weren't doing their job correctly and
she wasn't doing her job correctly. In the system of justice,
it's a three legged stool, and this is something I
say in the podcast Prosecutors, cops and defense attorneys in court.
Any one of those three doesn't do their job and
the stool falls down, and that's what happened here. This
(39:34):
is unusual. Usually it's one of the others but we
have to be cognizant of the fact that it matters.
There are ripple effects that occur as a result when
someone doesn't do what they're supposed to do.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
And now a word from our wonderful sponsors. So I'm
really curious this vantage of understanding all of this and
the amount of media literacy people have now. Still more
(40:07):
is needed, but we've come a long way, you know,
since since the famous trial. What do you think would
happen if the OJ Simpson trial were tried today? Do
you think it would be different?
Speaker 2 (40:20):
I think it would. I think it would because now
there are competing narratives that get to be heard, that
get disseminated, and that's a very good thing. I think
for all that we have been decrying can cancel culture
and all that stuff, and I agree that we shouldn't
have it. I in favor of having people have a voice,
(40:40):
whether you agree with it or not. Let everyone speak,
or just about everyone. You know, we have a First Amendment.
It does have certain guidelines. They're loose, and they should
be because I do want to hear from the right wing.
I want to hear from the left wing. I want
to hear from every wing. If I possibly can, as
long as it doesn't do obvious harm. The old saw
(41:00):
about crying fire in a crowded theater, well.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Exactly, you can't incite hate speech or harm.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
But yeah, right, inciting a riot or that kind of thing.
But other than that, competing points of view good thing,
and I want to hear them, and I think you
would today. Back then, things were so much more narrow,
even though you had television that was showing all kinds
of things. Television was kind of a distorting force too,
(41:27):
because you have this moving picture, you see snapshots. You
don't see the whole thing. You don't under you know,
don't necessarily pay attention to all the things that are
said in court and or could you. Everybody has lives.
But as a result, when you only see me yelling
in one in one two second sound bite, you don't
see the whole other eight hours of very calm, reflective discourse.
(41:50):
So that was kind of a distorting influence. Whereas today
you would probably have people on both sides saying, well
I think this or I think that. Back then, Howard
Stern and I think Coralda Rivera were the only two
willing to come out front and say I think that
Simpson was guilty. I think he's did it. I think
he should be found guilty. But everyone else was very
afraid to say, oh, he did it. Yes, I think so.
(42:13):
In fact, in the very beginning it was not divided
by race. Everyone hated us. Everyone said I don't want
to hear this, it's not true. I don't believe it.
And then even when they started to believe it, I
would hear things from people saying like, well, you know,
I haven't seen all the evidence, so I can't form
an opinion. But you're not on the jury. You can
(42:34):
form an opinion today right now, in the next five minutes.
No one cares. You get to say what you think.
People were afraid to say what they thought, so I
don't think that would be the case today. Even though
we have a certain degree of worry about, you know,
people being afraid to voice their opinions that are not popular,
I think that's relaxing a lot. And I think people
are more and more willing thanks to podcasts like yours,
(42:58):
for example, podcast like The Fifth Column, More Blocked and Reported,
or you Know or job Steps. You know, you have
all these podcasts that are willing to be brave and
say what they have, say what they think, whether it's
popular or not. That's a really good thing, and people
have access to it another very good things. So I
do think it would probably be different. Would we have
(43:18):
won a conviction, maybe not. It might have been a
hung jury. I think that with even back then, had
we had a judge who knew how to run a courtroom,
we would have had hung jury then too, and it
would have gone a lot faster as well. But but
you know, that's just a just a guess.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
Sure, Yeah, I think it must be so hard to
speculate on that stuff. I mean, I know people have
even asked you, oh, do you think if the you know,
the prosecutor had been a man, that it might have
gone differently, And it's like, how are you supposed to know?
Speaker 2 (43:51):
Well, how am I supposed to know? But it's also
it ignores the much more important forces that were in play.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
Say more about that.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
Yeah, race became a huge vocal issue. I was really
more beside the point than people realize. And so there
was four hundred years of social injustice being packed into
that courtroom. Rodney King, As I said, whenever you have
a case that's getting buried under all of these social
issues that really have nothing to do with the evidence
at all. He did not kill the goal because she's white.
(44:19):
She did not divorce him because he's black. None of
that mattered to them, and so none of that had
anything to do with the case. Should never have been
allowed in the courtroom, but once it is, it can't
help but have a divisive and very distorting impact on
the evidence and on the jurors as well. And so,
you know, I think that's true, and that was true
(44:42):
then and it's still true now in any case where
you have that sort of thing happening. And I do
think it may have had an impact, and it still
having an impact on the lawyer X cases because there's
a certain Nicola Gobbo herself is in hiding. But people
are still wondering who's going to be held accountable. What
about all the police who knew that they shouldn't be
using a defense attorneys as an informant. They knew it,
(45:04):
They knew this wasn't the right thing to do, but
they still did it. But no one's been prosecuted yet.
And I think that they're afraid because the public really
doesn't want to see cops go and go to prison,
or go to jail, or even get fired necessarily because
they liked what they were doing. They cleaned up the streets.
After all, of course, they did stop crying.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
And it's really hard to puncture the idea of the
good guy coming to save you. We're dealing with this
in our country all the time. You know, when you
realize that a third of the people murdered in America
die at the hands of a police officer, you go like,
oh God, what does that mean? You know what a
hold on? And it is really hard. And I say
(45:44):
this as a person who grew up, you know, with
my very favorite show on TV for a long time
being On Order SVU and who played a cop on TV?
And I'm like, I've had to reckon with a lot.
It's really complicated when you pierce the veil of the
societal story of who's a hero, who's a bad guy who?
(46:05):
It's deeply uncomfortable. And yeah, the question of this case,
you know, this lawyer X thing that you're talking about.
Did they need the information, yes, did they need to
put the bad guys away?
Speaker 2 (46:22):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (46:22):
Did they do it in potentially the wrong way that
probably put a woman in her family at risk.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
Yes, what does it all mean?
Speaker 1 (46:29):
Because someone will also say, well, she chose to defend
these people, and it's like, oh god, it's hard.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
It's hard, and it's very It's what's fascinates me about
Lawyer X is also what leads a person to put
themselves in this position where she's up against it. She's
really she's an up and comer, and then she's a
celebrated lawyer and she has all this power and all
this fame and very successful and then turns on a
(46:55):
dime to become an informant and suddenly turns on the
very people who made her as successful as she is,
and at the same time that makes her miserable, and
she goes through all kinds of stress, and I, you know,
I just think this is a psychological study that is
endless because there's all these layers to it. Yes, she's
a power player, but she's also a pleaser. She's someone
(47:17):
who wants to be the very best lawyer possible for
all these bad guys, but also wants to be the
very best informant the police have ever seen it. She
actually said that to them, I want to be the
best informant you've ever had. Am I not the best?
I mean, this is a person whose personality is so
complex and so at odds with her with her self.
It's like she chases her own tail all the time.
(47:38):
Twenty four to seven. I you know, I did try
to reach out to her a number of times.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
Did you get to her?
Speaker 2 (47:44):
I try and never got to, never got to. But
that would be one of the interviews that I would
really really love to have to find out why did
you do it? What made you do it? How do
you feel about it now? What are your regrets? I mean,
because I can see you know, it's really hard. It's
hard to actually weave your way through the path, the
psychological path that she wound up in to find you know,
(48:07):
she went this way and this way and this way
and this way. It is the serpentine path, to put
it mildly, And now you know she's I don't know
where she is, and that's probably a very good thing
for her and her children. But I mean, it's what
a case study that is well, and what.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
An interesting thing too. I wonder how you obviously your
circumstances are very different, but I wonder how you relate
because even for you, you know, you mentioned earlier you
were so disillusioned with the justice system after the acquittal,
and you left the LA District Attorney's office afterwards, and
your life has taken all these different twists and turns
and the writing and the podcast and the lecturing and
(48:45):
all the things you do. Do you miss anything about
your old career? Are there things that you would do
differently now? Or are you happy where it's all landed.
Maybe it's also a little bit of both.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
I don't know. I think I'm kind of a fatalist
about that. Things happened the way they happened, you know,
and so I'm here now, and it just it was
what it was, and that's what I don't look back
and say, Gee, I wish I were a prosecutor again.
Then again, you know, I left the office because I
had to at that time. I just couldn't envision going
(49:23):
back into court, and then I did what I did
after that, you know what I mean. It just kind
of I've always been that way. I was that way
before I became a prosecutor. This looks right, that looks right,
and you know, whatever fits in at that time, as
you say, when work in progress exactly. So, yeah, I
do wonder about someone like Nicolagabo whose ambition was always
(49:45):
the same. She wasn't like me. She was somebody who
always wanted to be a lawyer. At one time even
thought about being a prime minister. She was. She came
from legal royalty, that was her background, and her uncle
was a very famous barrister. So she came from, you know,
a family that it makes it not surprising that she
would want to be a high powered criminal lawyer, and
(50:07):
so that she became one, and she succeeded to such great,
such a great degree, only to throw it all away
by becoming a notorious informant and becoming the focus of
a huge legal scandal in Australia is so mind boggling
to me. She yes, honestly, she threw away her own dream.
Speaker 1 (50:27):
Yeah, I mean her story is wild and it as
you talk about it, and I think about all these stories.
Why do you think we're all so obsessed with true crime?
What do you think that is?
Speaker 2 (50:40):
You know, Sophia, I'm one of them so well, he
do like this. This is a very good question. Why
are we like the way we are? I just don't know.
I mean, I think that ultimately true crime fanatics like
us are curious. They're curious, they want to so all
the mystery. They want to know the answer, they want
(51:02):
to get the solution. You know, why did this happen?
How did this happen? These are always they're puzzles to solve.
And I don't mean to be that in a demeaning
or just diminishing way, because often lives are on the line,
serious issues are in play. Here, you're more serious, but
at base, I think it is a curiosity and a
need to know that fuels the True crime Society community.
(51:24):
And I feel like it is a community, and it's
one that I've been a member of for a long
standing member of since childhood. And I don't see that
ever changing.
Speaker 1 (51:33):
Yeah, I don't think it's going to change for me either.
Speaker 2 (51:38):
I'm so sucked.
Speaker 1 (51:40):
So you know, we're on the the precipice of this
new show, and there's such an incredible life and multifaceted
career behind you, and you're looking forward with all these
new projects as you look out at what excites you,
you know, what comes next, what feels like you're work
(52:03):
in progress in your life. It could be professional or personal.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
I feel like everything in my life is a work
in progress on YouTube. You know, from day to day,
I feel like I learned something new. I learned to
improve about one thing or another, whether it's big or small,
every single day. And that's why I related so much
to your show. It's such a great idea work in progress.
I mean, yeah, and I kind of think that if
(52:28):
you're not a work in progress, then you're kind of
treading water in not a good way. You want to
be always in progress, developing, learning, improving if you can.
That's what we trieded.
Speaker 1 (52:41):
That's absolutely I love that. Well, thank you so much.
It's really it's just such an honor to have you
on the show. I'm absolutely geeked about this, and I'm
so excited for the new podcast and I'm so I'm
just so excited to watch all of the next iterations
(53:02):
of the work that you do. Thank you for taking
the time today.
Speaker 2 (53:06):
Thank you so much, Sophia. It's been a pleasure. I
hope you enjoy Lawyer X on Wondering Plus I can't
wait
Hosts And Creators
Bethany Joy Lenz
Sophia Bush
Robert Buckley
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