With crime-ridden L.A. and the O.J. case behind him, Philip Vannatter now savors a rural Indiana life.

By Bill Shaw STAFF WRITER MOUNT STERLING, Ind. Try to imagine two more culturally diverse places than crime-ridden, traffic-choked Los Angeles and here in Switzerland County, which has eight cops, an empty 1852 jail and no stoplights. "We took out the stoplight because people got tired of waiting," Dave McFadden, police chief in nearby Vevay, the county seat, said with a shrug. "It Just blinks now." "That's why we moved here," said Philip Vannatter, 55, the L.A. police detective who directed the O.J. Simpson murder Investigation. Now retired, he lives in a handsome Civil War-era farmhouse north of Vevay with his wife, Rita, and macho dog Harry, a 7-pound Yorkshire terrier who wears a white ribbon on his adorable little head. Talk about dramatic lifestyle changes. The courthouse here is closed on Thursdays; why that is, nobody knows. There are more cops in Los Angeles (9,200) than there are people in Switzerland County (7,700), the poorest and second-least-populated county in Indiana. The county does lead the state in deer and car collisions, which is a problem. There are 1,000 murders a year in Los Angeles, a city of 4 million tl)at balloons to 8 million during tre workday. Switzerland County has zero murders per year. It took Sheriffs Deputy R.N. Smith and State Trooper Matt True an hour tp determine the last local murder. ; "

Sometime in the early '80s, a woman shot her husband and killed herself, and then in the late '60s, some man shot his wife, then killed himself." Trooper True said after searching records and making phone calls. The murderers around here seem to kill themselves, which Is nice."

All of this is refreshing news to the Vannatters, who live on 73 rolling acres six miles north of the . Ohio River. They bought the place during the thick of the Simpson mess. Rita grew up near Cincinnati, and her elderly parents still live there, which is why the Vannatters moved here. Their plan had been to retire to southeastern Indiana when Phil reached the 25-year mark with the Los Angeles Police Department. Unfortunately, two dramatic events changed the plan. The Jan. 17, 1994, Northrldge earthquake devastated Southern California and caused $75,000 in damage to the Vannatters' Valencia home. The detective had to keep working to pay for repairs.

Then, on June 14. 1994, while the Vannatters were discussing this depressing financial predicament over dinner, a few miles away, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were being stabbed to death by someone who had just about the same shoe size, glove size, blood type, DNA and hair texture as O.J. Simpson.

"I Just happened to be on call that weekend," he said. "Fate." Several hours later, Vannatter was summoned to 875 Bundy Drive to figure out who killed Simpson's ex-wife and her friend. Within hours, he realized the football great was the prime suspect and that this would be a long, messy investigation, further complicated by massive media attention. Retirement plans were postponed, again. "I thought, 'Oh, s - - -.' I'm stuck now," he recalled. He was right about that. Over the next two years, Vannatter and his partner. Detective Tom Lange, found themselves at center stage in the tedious and seemingly unending saga of O.J. Simpson. Lange and Vannatter were accused of planting evidence to frame Simpson something they hotly deny.

The Vannatter and Lange perspective on the Simpson case is detailed In an interesting new book by journalist Dan E. Moldea called Evidence Dismissed: The Inside Story of the Police Investigation of O.J. Simpson. The book immediately shot to fourth place on the New York Times and Los Angeles Times best-seller lists, and Vannatter has been making the rounds of the national television talk shows. "I'm having the time of my life," he says. "I got to meet Walter Cronkite and Howard Stern. Howard's a nice guy. He loves cops."

Not surprisingly, the book Is a searing indictment of Simpson, whom Vannatter refers to privately as a "narcissistic a ." Basically, the book takes readers on a cops' -eye-view of the murder investigation, which they maintain conclusively points to Simpson's guilt. The jury didn't see it that way, however. "I put 18 months of my life, seven days a week, into it," Vannatter says. "I was sick to my stomach when he was cut loose. Basically, the jury decided it was payback time for the LAPD. Tom and I investigated over 500 murders, and there was more evidence of guilt in the Simpson case than any other we worked over 25 years." The ordeal was not fun. "I was on the stand nine days with 100 million people watching on television, the Jury hated me, and the defense attorneys were trying to make a fool of me. I Just kept telling myself it's not gonna change my life and I'm caught in the middle of everyone else's big game," he says. "I Just kept thinking when this was over I could move to Indiana." Oh, well. It's over now, and things are good since Simpson finally got nailed in the civil trial; and Vannatter doesn't have to live in Los Angeles, look at dead bodies and wonder if someone will kill him the next time he goes to work. The most pressing demand on his time these days is feeding his two quarter horses, Flash and Parker; he hauled them across the country a few months ago. His "celebrity" status has gone pretty much unnoticed in common-sense Switzerland County, where the main topic of conversation is whether or not the shoe factory will close as rumored.

Last summer, Vannatter was grand marshal of the Swiss Wine Festival in Vevay and was flattered to be asked. Cable television hasn't arrived in Mount Sterling yet, so twice a week he watches the Indiana University basketball game at the Vevay Police Department with his cop buddies. Every morning, the Vannatters take a two-hour ride through the hills on Flash and Parker. They've been married 31 years, which Is astounding for anyone, much less a member of the LAPD, which has an impressive 85 percent divorce rate. "She's smarter than me, I guess," he says. Their two kids, Matt and Donna, still live in Los Angeles. Matt's an L.A. cop.

"Living here is a dream come true," Vannatter says while strolling around his property, wearing a backward red baseball cap that; reads: "Tinker Equipment. Ve-; vay, Ind." Both barns are built of 150-year-old, hand-hewn, pegged; walnut logs. He just built a great, four-board Kentucky horse fence; and discovered an early 1800s J cemetery while clearing brush; from a grove of trees. ; "I grew up in West Virginia, and this is just like coming home. A simple act of kindness around, here is a genuine act. Out there if . someone does something nice, you wonder what they want. "I don't miss the job at all, and I . don't miss L.A. 1 miss my friends, ; though," he says, excusing him-: self to welcome his mother- and father-in-law, who had Just driven over from Cincinnati for supper. It was 3 p.m. "People eat supper early in Indiana, don't they?" he says.