LAS VEGAS — At a party the night after O.J. Simpson allegedly robbed two memorabilia dealers, his associates tried to extort $50,000 and threatened "to shoot . . . everyone else involved," Simpson's friend Tom Scotto testified today.
The associates, who have both testified that Simpson asked them to bring guns to the confrontation, cornered Scotto twice at a barbecue for his upcoming wedding, he said.
"You know me, Tom, but you don't know me that well," said Michael McClinton, according to Scotto. Their faces were just inches apart. "I'm a street [expletive] and I'll shoot everybody up."
Scotto, however, never told investigators about the alleged shakedown in a dark backyard -- even though he later gave them a voice mail in which another Simpson associate, Walter Alexander, appears to ask for money.
Dist. Atty. David Roger also asked Scotto if he said Alexander "didn't need to live" and threatened to have him killed.
"That's ridiculous," said Scotto, the final Simpson defense witness.
Scotto's testimony was part of the defense's attempts to portray Simpson as a victim of his shady cohorts -- not as their ringleader.
Scotto, who befriended the former NFL star in Florida, was in Las Vegas last September to get married, and Simpson was his best man. In the hours leading up to the alleged robbery, Scotto testified, Simpson acquaintance Clarence Stewart took him and his bride to get their marriage license, wedding cake and flowers.
Later that night, prosecutors say, Simpson, Stewart and four associates robbed the memorabilia dealers at gunpoint in a Palace Station hotel room. Simpson maintains that the group -- which Scotto had initially planned to join -- was simply trying to retrieve stolen footballs and plaques.
Prosecutors contend that Simpson had given some of the items to a former agent to evade a multimillion-dollar court judgment. Though Simpson was acquitted in the 1994 slayings of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman, a civil jury later found him liable for the deaths.
Simpson and Stewart -- neither of whom took the stand -- are each charged with a dozen crimes including armed robbery and kidnapping, which carries a potential life sentence. All of their associates testified against them during the nearly three-week case, which could go to the jury as soon as Thursday.
