Kootenai County confirms death of former LAPD detective Mark Fuhrman

Kootenai County officials confirmed the death of former Los Angeles Police Department detective Mark Fuhrman, the North Idaho resident whose name became fixed in one of the most watched murder trials in American history.

Chief deputy coroner Lynnette Acevedo said Fuhrman died May 12, 2026, and that the county would not release a cause of death. Acevedo also said, “There will be no other information provided through this office.” The county said the death certificate is confidential.

Fuhrman was 74. His death was confirmed through the Kootenai County Coroner’s Office, placing local authorities at the center of the official verification even as Fuhrman’s public reputation was shaped far from Idaho, in Los Angeles and at the Simpson trial in 1995.

Fuhrman became a central figure in the O.J. Simpson criminal case after he discovered the bloody glove at Simpson’s Brentwood estate. His credibility at trial was badly damaged after recordings surfaced of him making racist statements, after he had testified under cross-examination that he had not used anti-Black slurs in the previous 10 years.

He retired from the Los Angeles Police Department after Simpson’s 1995 acquittal. Reports later said Fuhrman had been living in Idaho in retirement and had also worked as a radio show host. That local tie explains why the Kootenai County coroner’s office, not a California agency, handled the official confirmation of his death.

The death returns attention to a figure whose role in the Simpson case remained controversial long after the criminal trial ended. Simpson was later found liable in a separate civil case, and Fuhrman’s name stayed attached to a prosecution that reshaped public debate over policing, race and courtroom credibility. In Kootenai County, the public record now ends where the county says it must: with confirmation of the death, and no cause attached.