Sometime after 8:00 p.m. as O.J. prepared to catch his late-night flight from Los Angeles to Chicago, he discovered that he had nothing at his home in the way of cash smaller than hundred-dollar bills. As it was Simpson's custom to tip the airport's curbside baggage handler - otherwise known as the skycap whenever he flew, such large denominations were an obvious inconvenience. With less than four hours left to prepare for his trip to the airport, Simpson turned to his lodger, Kaelin, and asked if he could borrow five dollars for the skycap's tip. Kaelin obliged him by producing a $20 bill, which Simpson took and put into his trouser pocket. -This did not remedy Simpson's problem, however. Still in need of five dollars for the skycap, Simpson would have to leave his home for a quick errand to break Kaelin's $20 bill at a local business to obtain the required amount. With no other choice but to do so, Simpson decided on a nearby fast-food restaurant for this venue and prepared for a quick drive there in his Bentley to exchange the $20 bill for a burger and some small change.When recalling Simpson's mundane request and its equally mundane solution at the grand jury eight days after the murders on June 20th, 1994, Kaelin would testify that:"He [O.J.] had said that he was embarrassed, but he needed to borrow some money. I said, 'Sure.' I went in my drawer and I had $45. And I invited myself to go along because I was hungry. So we went together to McDonald's."Kaelin never said why he didn't just give Simpson the five dollars that he had asked for. He did indeed have a five-dollar bill by necessity, given his own attested sum of $45. By withholding his five-dollar bill, Kaelin necessitated the otherwise unnecessary trip to McDonald's himself. Odder still was Kaelin's request to join Simpson for his evening jaunt to McDonald's:
"And I invited myself to go along because I was hungry."But Kaelin wasn't hungry. In his testimony for the 1996 civil trial, Kaelin told the court that he had eaten a carryout meal of sushi less than two hours earlier:"I drove to Vons [grocery store] and I picked up – they have those sushi dishes that are pre-made. So I got a California roll, like six pieces, because I was starving."Kaelin told his biographer, Marc Eliot, the same during the latter half of 1994: That he had already eaten a meal of sushi shortly before begging attendance to O.J. Simpson's trip to McDonald's. In the candid, audiotaped interviews between Kaelin and Eliot that formed the basis of Eliot's 1995 book, Kato Kaelin: The Whole Truth, Kaelin specifically described eating the purchased sushi in his bedroom while watching a pro-basketball game on television. As Kaelin later testified to returning home to his room at the Rockingham Avenue estate sometime after 6:00 p.m., this would place Kaelin's sushi dinner less than two hours before he invited himself to go along with O.J. to McDonald's 'because he was hungry'.Hungry or not, it cannot be forgotten that Kaelin had his own car parked out on the street and ready to be driven anywhere, anytime, by its owner to procure something to eat, just as it had been used two hours earlier. Kaelin did not need to bum a ride to McDonald's from O.J. Simpson or anyone else; nor indeed had he done anything like it in the six months he had lived at Simpson's home, according to Simpson when asked about it by plaintiff attorney Daniel Petrocelli during his civil trial deposition in January 1996:Daniel Petrocelli: "So this was the first time that you and Kato [Kaelin] had ever gone out alone to get something to eat?"O.J. Simpson: "First time he had ever asked to go with me, yes."Petrocelli: "And you had never asked him. Correct?"Simpson: 'Never, no."
As O.J. Simpson's full-time freeloader, Brian “Kato” Kaelin knew his place. He knew it was not appropriate to invite himself to go out with "The Juice", for this or any reason. For the six months Kaelin had burdened "The Juice" by living in “The Juice's" Brentwood mansion for free, enjoying the amenities thereof - also for free - he had comported himself in a manner proper to his lowly, parasitical position at the estate. In other words, he kept to himself and troubled his host, O.J. Simpson, as little as possible. Cordial as they were to each other, Kaelin was still Simpson's 35-year-old sponger with no rights to either Simpson's time or his attention. Whenever Simpson left the house during those six months, Kaelin did not ask him where he was going and if he could tag along, and rightly so: They were not friends and did not socialize, even as they lived under the same roof. Yet for the first and only time during his six-month residency in O.J. Simpson's guestroom, Kaelin made his unprecedented move, enthusiastically inviting himself to a seat in Simpson's car and for the most banal of errands, no less as if he were a sports fan meeting Simpson for the first time, and a trip to McDonald's with "The Juice" the fulfillment of a lifelong dream.Perhaps Kaelin was simply craving a McDonald's hamburger and fries? Though he had just eaten sushi in his bedroom a couple of hours before, he "was hungry" after all. Unlikely, according to Kaelin himself, admitting as much to Marc Eliot, his biographer and author of Kato Kaelin: The Whole Truth in 1994. In a recorded interview, Kaelin told Eliot that he rarely ate breads, fried foods or fast food. Because of this, Kaelin generally avoided establishments like McDonald's as a rule. He was, simply put, not a fan.
This revelation only made Kaelin's actions on the night of the murders all the more strange. Kaelin, who by his own admission would have preferred any other kind of food that evening, could have had it. He could have gotten behind the wheel of his own car and gone to a salad bar, or back to Vons for more sushi. Why then did Kaelin insist upon joining O.J. Simpson for his drive to McDonald's in the 8 o'clock hour of the evening on June 12th, 1994?He didn't go because he was hungry: He had just eaten.He didn't go for the company: He had seen O.J. Simpson on a regular basis for the last six months; all novelty found in spending time with "The Juice" would have long since worn off.He didn't go because he needed a ride: His own car was parked right outside.He certainly didn't go because he wanted McDonald's food.So why did he go? And how was it, too, that the one night on which Kaelin broke these hitherto unbroken patterns of both behavior and fast food preferences just so happened to be the night of the murders?
