Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman
On June 12, 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman were murdered outside Brown's condominium in Brentwood, Los Angeles, United States. Brown's ex-husband, retired football player and media personality O. J. Simpson, was charged with the murders and became a fugitive from justice after failing to turn himself in to the Los Angeles Police Department on June 17. A low-speed chase was broadcast live on television as Simpson fled in a white Ford Bronco, belonging to and driven by his friend Al Cowlings, before surrendering to authorities at his Brentwood estate.
Brown had met Simpson in 1977 when she was aged 18 and working as a waitress. Simpson and Brown married on February 2, 1985, and had two children together. Their marriage was described as involving domestic violence, with Brown alleging in writing that Simpson had beaten her on multiple occasions. The case garnered immense media coverage and public interest, especially the events surrounding Simpson's attempt to avoid arrest. The subsequent criminal trial in Los Angeles County Superior Court, saw Simpson tried and acquitted for the murders. The trial and verdict were divisive. A later civil trial found Simpson liable for the deaths and awarded the Goldman family $33.5 million in damages, though little was paid.
In his 2012 documentary, adapted from his book O.J. Is Innocent and I Can Prove It, private detective William Dear presented the findings of an independent investigation spanning more than 17 years. Dear concluded that O. J. Simpson did not commit the murders, but asserted that Simpson arrived at the crime scene after the killings had occurred. He claimed that investigators overlooked evidence pointing to an alternative suspect close to Simpson who, according to Dear, had motive, means, and lacked a verifiable alibi. Dear’s theory later circulated at a host of documentary and film festivals and won Best Investigative Documentary at the DocMiami Film Festival. His conclusions have not led to renewed charges or an official reopening of the case, and they remain disputed.
Background
Simpson–Brown marriage
Brown met Simpson in 1977 when he was 30 and she was 18, working as a waitress at the Daisy. They began dating although Simpson was married; he filed for divorce from his first wife in March 1979.Simpson and Brown married on February 2, 1985. They had two children together, daughter Sydney and son Justin. Brown signed a prenuptial agreement that prohibited her from working while married.
According to psychologist Lenore E. Walker, the Simpson–Brown marriage was a "textbook example of domestic abuse".
In letters and other documents, Brown wrote that Simpson had beaten her in public, during sex, and even in front of family and friends. She described an incident in which Simpson broke her arm during a fight; to prevent him from being arrested, she told emergency room staff that she had fallen off her bike. Brown wrote that she felt conflicted about notifying police of the abuse because she was financially dependent on Simpson. Of the 62 incidents of abuse, the police were notified eight times, and Simpson was arrested once. On February 25, 1992, Brown filed for divorce, citing "irreconcilable differences".
Brown said that Simpson stalked and harassed her after they divorcedan intimidation tactic meant to force the victim to return to the abuser. She said he had spied on her having sex with her new boyfriend and that she felt her life was in danger because Simpson had threatened to kill her if he ever found her with another man. She drafted a will. On June 8, 1994, a woman named Nicole telephoned Sojourn House, a women's shelter. She was considering staying at the shelter because she was afraid of what Simpson might do to her, as she was refusing his pleas to reconcile their marriage.
Murders
On the evening of June 12, 1994, Brown and Simpson both attended their daughter Sydney's dance recital at Paul Revere Middle School. Afterward, Brown and her family went to eat at Mezzaluna restaurant. One of the waiters at the restaurant was Ron Goldman, who had become close friends with Brown in recent weeks, but was not assigned to the Brown family's table.Brown and her children went to Ben & Jerry's before returning to her condominium on Bundy Drive, Brentwood. The manager of Mezzaluna recounted that Brown's mother telephoned the restaurant at 9:37 pm PDT asking about a pair of lost eyeglasses. The manager found the glasses and put them in a white envelope, which Goldman took with him as he left the restaurant at the end of his shift at 9:50 pm; he intended to drop them off at Brown's place.
Brown's neighbors testified that they heard profuse barking coming from outside throughout the night, beginning around 10:15 pm. Around 10:55 pm., a dogwalker who lived a few blocks away from Brown came across Brown's Akita dog barking in the street outside her home. The Akita, whose legs were covered in blood, followed the man home; he tried to walk the dog back to where he found it, but the dog resisted. Later, he left the Akita with a neighboring couple who offered to keep the dog overnight; as the dog was agitated, the couple decided to walk it back to where it had been found. Around midnight, as they reached the area where the Akita had been found, the dog stopped outside Brown's home and the couple saw Brown's body lying outside the house. Police were called to the scene and found Goldman's body near Brown's.
File:Affaire OJ Simpson - Scène de crime.png|thumb|Representation of the crime scene. A marks where Nicole Brown Simpson's body was found. B marks where Ron Goldman's body was found.
The front door to Brown's condominium was open when the bodies were found, but there were no signs that anyone had entered the building, by breaking in or otherwise. Brown's body was lying face down and barefoot at the bottom of the stairs leading to the door. The walkway leading to the stairs was covered in blood, but the soles of Brown's feet were clean; based on this evidence, investigators concluded that she was the first person to be attacked and the intended target. She had been stabbed multiple times in the head and neck, but there were few defensive wounds on her hands, implying a short struggle to investigators. The final wound inflicted ran deep into her neck, severing her carotid artery. A large bruise in the center of her upper back with a corresponding foot print on her clothing indicated to investigators that, after killing Goldman, the assailant returned to Brown who was on the ground, pulled her head back by the hair and slit her throat. Her larynx could be seen through the gaping wound in her neck, and vertebra C3 was incised; Brown's head barely remained attached to her body.
Goldman's body lay nearby, close to a tree and the fence. He had been stabbed multiple times in the body and neck, but there were relatively few defensive wounds on his hands, signifying a short struggle to investigators. Forensic evidence from the Los Angeles County coroner alleged that the assailant stabbed Goldman with one hand while holding him in a chokehold. Near Goldman's body were a blue knit cap; a left-hand, extra-large Aris Isotoner light leather glove; and the envelope containing the glasses that he was returning. Detectives concluded that Goldman came to Brown's house during her murder and that the assailant killed him to remove any witnesses. A trail of bloody shoe prints ran through the back gate. To the left of some of the prints were drops of blood from the killer, who was apparently bleeding from the left hand. Measuring the distance between the prints indicated that the assailant walkedrather than ranaway from the scene.
Arrest of O. J. Simpson
Whereabouts on June 12
Following the recital, Simpson ate takeout food from McDonald's with Kato Kaelin, a bit-part actor and family friend who had been given the use of a guest house on Simpson's estate. Rumors circulated that Simpson had been on drugs at the time of the murder, and the New York Post Cindy Adams reported that the pair had gone to a local Burger King, where a prominent drug dealer known only as "J. R." later said he had sold them crystal meth.On the night of June 12, Simpson was scheduled to board a red-eye flight from Los Angeles International Airport to Chicago, where he was due to play golf the following day at a convention with representatives of The Hertz Corporation, for whom he was a spokesman. The flight was due to leave at 11:45 pm. Limousine driver Allan Park arrived early at Simpson's Rockingham estate to pick him up at around 10:25 pm. Park drove around the estate to make sure he could navigate the area with the stretch limousine properly and to see which driveway would have the best access for the car. He began to buzz the intercom at 10:40, but got no response. He noted the house was dark, and nobody appeared to be home as he smoked a cigarette and made several calls to his boss to get Simpson's home phone number. He testified that he saw a "shadowy African-American figure", the same size as Simpson, enter the front door from where the driveway starts, before the lights came on; he did not see what direction the figure came from. He testified that he saw Simpson's house number on the curb outside the estate, but no car was parked outside. The prosecution presented exhibits showing the position next to the house number on the curb in which Simpson's Ford Bronco was found the next morning, implying that Park would surely have noticed the Bronco if it had been there when he arrived to pick up Simpson.
Around the time Park saw the "shadowy figure" arrive at Simpson's home, Kaelin was having a telephone conversation with a friend. At approximately 10:40, something crashed into the wall of the guest house Kaelin was staying in, which he described as three "thumps" and which he feared was an earthquake. Kaelin hung up the phone and ventured outside to investigate the noises, but did not go directly down the dark south pathway from which the thumps had originated. Instead, he walked to the front of the property, where he saw the limousine parked outside. Kaelin let the limousine in, and Simpson finally came out through the front door a few minutes later, claiming he had overslept. Both Park and Kaelin would later testify that Simpson seemed agitated that night.
Park noted that on the way to the airport, Simpson complained about how hot it was, and was sweating and rolled down the window, despite it not being a warm night. Park also testified that he loaded four luggage bags into the car that night, one of them being a knapsack that Simpson would not let him touch, insisting he would load it himself. A porter at the airport testified that Simpson checked only three bags that night, and the police determined that the missing luggage was the same knapsack the limousine driver had mentioned earlier. Another witness not heard at the trial claimed he saw Simpson at the airport discarding items from a bag into a trash can. Detectives Tom Lange and Philip Vannatter believe this is how the murder weapon, shoes and clothes that Simpson wore during the murder were disposed of.
Simpson was running late but caught his flight. A passenger on the plane and the pilot testified that they did not notice any cuts or wounds on Simpson's hands. A broken glass, a note with a telephone number on it, and bedsheets with blood on them were all recovered from Simpson's room at the O'Hare Plaza Hotel. The manager of the hotel recalled Simpson asking for a Band-Aid for his finger at the front desk, because he had "cut it on pieces of note paper".