Clark Leaving D.A.’s Office for Talk Show

Marcia Clark, the lead prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson murder trial whose tough, charismatic courtroom demeanor made her an international celebrity, is leaving the district attorney’s office, and sources said she will host a television talk show.

Few details of the show were available late Wednesday, although sources asserted it will offer a twist on the usual talk show format.

“She’ll be profiling people,” one source said. Clark is expected to announce further details in the next few days, sources said, perhaps as soon as today.

Clark, 43, who spent 14 years as a deputy district attorney, has been in professional limbo since the murder trial ended in October 1995, with Simpson’s acquittal.

She said just after the trial ended, after signing with the William Morris Agency, that she was “at the crossroads in my life.”

A graduate of UCLA and of Southwestern University Law School, Clark joined the district attorney’s office in 1981 and quickly developed a reputation as a smart, aggressive attorney who relished a good courtroom battle.

In her most high-profile trial before the Simpson case, Clark not only persuaded a Superior Court judge in a 1991 nonjury trial to convict obsessed fan Robert John Bardo of killing actress Rebecca Schaeffer after stalking her, but to send Bardo to Death Row.

During the Simpson prosecution, which was televised live, Clark won admirers worldwide for her tenacity--admirers who have since hailed her as a feminist icon and role model.

As the trial wore on, meanwhile, the media frenzy that enveloped the case--and Clark in particular--proved unrelenting.

People magazine named her to its “best dressed” list in 1995. Her hairdo was news. So was the custody battle over her children. So was the humiliating moment when a tabloid published photos that showed her topless on a beach.

A month after the trial ended, in November 1995, Viking-Penguin, the New York-based publishing house, announced it had signed a book deal with Clark worth $4.2 million--one of the most lucrative nonfiction book contracts in the history of U.S. publishing.

A book, however, has yet to be published.

On Wednesday afternoon, Clark told senior prosecutors she would not be returning to the office.