USA: Witness says O.J. Simpson plotted Las Vegas casino raid

An auction house owner testified on Friday (November 9) that O.J. Simpson plotted and led an amateur sting operation on a pair of sports collectors in a Las Vegas hotel room to retrieve memorabilia. Thomas Riccio, taking the witness stand in a hearing to determine if Simpson and two co-defendants will face trial on kidnapping, armed robbery and burglary charges, portrayed the former football star as the driving force behind the September 13 confrontation at the Palace Station Hotel and Casino. Riccio said there was no doubt in his mind that Simpson wanted to get back items he believed had been stolen from him, but told the hearing that Simpson was not carrying a gun during the incident. "He was one of the guys, he was the main guy I was looking at, and then the guy with the gun. And I never saw O.J. with a gun," he said. Prosecutors say three men, including Simpson, stormed into the hotel room of sports collectors Alfred Beardsley and Bruce Fromong at the Palace Station hotel and took thousands of dollars worth of Simpson's own memorabilia at gunpoint. Simpson, 60, who was acquitted in the 1994 slayings of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman, was arrested and held in jail for several days after the robbery in which he and his accomplices were accused of brandishing weapons while breaking into a hotel room and robbing the two sports memorabilia collectors. At the time, Simpson told reporters he had done nothing wrong and was simply trying to retrieve personal photos, a Hall of Fame certificate and other items he said were stolen from him by a former sports agent. But officials later charged him with kidnapping with a deadly weapon, robbery with a deadly weapon and assault and conspiracy to commit kidnapping, robbery and burglary, among other crimes. If convicted, Simpson could be sent to jail for the rest of his life.

ITN Source | November 10, 2007

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