It's True: OJ Was Set Up

One man charged along with [O.J. Simpson] said Tuesday that the Las Vegas hotel room dispute seemed like a setup.

Walter Alexander, 46, said Simpson may have been tricked because the memorabilia dealer who tipped him off also recorded everything on tape.

"It sounds like a setup to me," Alexander told ABC's "Good Morning America" on Tuesday.

-- AP, Sept. 19

I didn't catch the GMA interview, but I have to be honest: This sounds plausible to me.

I mean, think about it. This dirtbag Thomas Riccio wires himself up and lures Simpson to the hotel room on the pretext that stolen sports memorabilia are there, along with Simpson's teenage diaries, his misplaced car keys and "that Ray Parker Jr. CD you loaned to Mean Joe Greene in the early Eighties and never got back." Then he forces Simpson to assemble an ad hoc posse of strip-club bouncers and guys who got cut from training camp, he sticks his hand up Simpson's shirt and manipulates his voicebox so it sounds like he's saying "All you guys come with me," and he places a handgun in Simpson's hand or the hand of an accomplice and hypnotizes him into brandishing it threateningly. Then he convinces Simpson he's going to the room -- where, by the way, the door gets a little sticky, so he may need to force it -- to read for a part in a Court TV MOW called "Don't Let Nobody Out The Room: Think You Can Steal My Shit And Get Away With It?", and that the casting director likes to make her picks based on how loudly and repeatedly an actor can shout the title of the project.

You see? It's totally not his fault.