Ron Goldman
Ronald Lyle Goldman was an American restaurant waiter and aspiring actor. A volunteer working with children suffering from cerebral palsy, Goldman appeared as a contestant on the short-lived game show Studs in early 1992. Goldman lived independently from his family and supported himself as an employment headhunter, tennis instructor, and waiter, and worked occasionally as a model. Goldman earned an emergency medical technician license, but he decided not to pursue that as a career. In 1994, Goldman befriended Nicole Brown Simpson, the ex-wife of American football player O. J. Simpson. On 12 June 1994, Goldman was murdered along with Brown, outside her home in Brentwood, Los Angeles.
Following a controversial and highly publicized criminal trial, Simpson was acquitted of both charges of murders, though he was later found liable for their deaths in a 1997 civil lawsuit filed by Goldman's father Fred, which rendered a $33.5 million judgment for damages. At the time of Simpson's death in 2024, the money had still yet to be paid in full, which prompted Fred Goldman to file a $117 million creditor claim against Simpson's estate in July 2024. On November 17, 2025, it was announced that Simpson's estate agreed to pay $58 million to Goldman's father to settle the claim.
Early life
Ronald Lyle Goldman was born on July 2, 1968, in Chicago, Illinois, and he grew up in the community of Buffalo Grove. After his parents divorced in 1974 and after spending a brief time in the custody of his mother, Sharon Rufo, he was raised by his father, Frederic Goldman. Goldman lived with his father and his younger sister, Kimberly. Goldman was raised Jewish.Goldman attended high school at Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois. He was a student at Illinois State University for one semester, where he planned to major in psychology, and he also had an interest in becoming a pledge in Sigma Nu fraternity. After his family relocated to Southern California when he was 18 years old, however, Goldman discontinued his studies and followed his family.
Prior to relocating with his family, Goldman worked as a camp counselor and had experience volunteering with children who suffered from cerebral palsy.
In California
While living in Los Angeles, Goldman took some classes at Pierce College. He learned to surf and enjoyed playing beach volleyball, rollerblading, and nightclubbing.Upon arriving in California, Goldman lived independently from his family and supported himself as an employment headhunter, tennis instructor, and waiter. He worked occasionally as a model for Barry Zeldes, owner of the Z90049 store in Brentwood Gardens.
Instead, Goldman told friends that he wanted to open a bar or restaurant in the Brentwood area. He planned for the venue to be known not by a name but by the ankh, an Egyptian religious symbol of life that he had tattooed on his shoulder. According to his friend Jeff Keller, he wanted to learn all facets of the restaurant-bar business and occasionally worked as a promoter at a Century City dance club called Tripps. He had also tended a bar called Dragonfly, which co-incidentally was owned by Brett Cantor. For Memorial Day, he participated with a group of event promoters in organizing a party at Renaissance, a club and restaurant on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica.
Goldman also expressed aspirations to act; he appeared on an episode of the dating game show Studs in early 1992.
Death
Final days
According to a June 15, 1994, Los Angeles Times article published three days after his death, Goldman met Brown only six weeks prior to the date they were murdered, when he borrowed her Ferrari. The two were seen together in clubs, occasionally meeting for coffee and dinner in the weeks before their deaths. According to police and friends, however, the relationship between the two was platonic. One article noted that he had borrowed her car when he met his friend, Craig Clark, for lunch. According to Clark, Goldman told him it was Brown's car, but he did not say she was his girlfriend. Instead, Goldman said they were friends.He dated Jacqui Bell for nearly two years before she broke off their relationship three months before his death. Not long before his death, Goldman earned an emergency medical technician license, but he decided not to pursue that as a career.
June 12, 1994
On the evening of Sunday, June 12, 1994, Goldman worked a server shift at Mezzaluna Trattoria in Brentwood. Brown called to report that her mother had inadvertently dropped her reading glasses outside by the gutter when they dined there earlier in the evening. Goldman had not been their server, but after a search at the restaurant turned up the glasses, Goldman agreed, at Brown’s request, to drop them off at her home after work. "Ron interjected he’d be happy to return them," said Tia Gavin, who waited on the Brown party.The Los Angeles Times reported that Goldman "punched out at 9:33 pm and stayed another 15 minutes to have bottled water at the bar." He made plans to go out with Mezzaluna's bartender Stewart Tanner later that evening. Before returning the glasses, Goldman stopped by his Brentwood apartment at 11663 Gorham Avenue, presumably to shower and change clothes; his autopsy indicated he ate a salad less than 40 minutes before he was killed. He then drove to Brown’s condominium, using his friend Andrea Scott's car.
File:Mug_shot_of_O.J._Simpson.jpg|left|thumb|O. J. Simpson's mugshot, June 17, 1994
Goldman and Brown were stabbed to death on the walkway leading to the condominium at 875 South Bundy Drive; their bodies were discovered shortly after midnight. Goldman's knuckles were bruised; The prosecutors argued that this indicated he had fought strongly, while Simpson’s defense team argued it was probably from a fall. Goldman had several small wounds to his face. During a reconstruction of events, the police theorized that Brown and Goldman were talking on the front patio of Brown's condominium when they were attacked or that Goldman arrived while Brown was being attacked; in any case, the police believe that Brown was the intended target and that Goldman was killed in order to silence him. Witness Robert Heidstra testified that while walking near Brown's condominium that night, he heard a man yelling, "Hey! Hey! Hey!" who was then shouted at by a second man. He also heard a gate slam. Goldman's family came to believe that Goldman was the man shouting "Hey!" and that he may have attempted to save Brown by intervening in the attack.
In the 1996 book Killing Time: The First Full Investigation into the Unsolved Murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, authors Donald Freed and Raymond P. Briggs wrote that lipstick was found on Goldman's cheek after his death, and suggested that Brown kissed Goldman when he arrived and that they were together on the front porch when they were attacked.
Goldman was 20 days shy of his 26th birthday when he died. He is buried at Pierce Brothers Valley Oaks Memorial Park in Westlake Village, California.
Trials
Criminal trial
After leading police on a low-speed chase in a now infamous white Ford Bronco, Simpson was tried for the killings of both Brown and Goldman. The trial spanned eight months, from January 24 to October 3, 1995. During the trial, there was some speculation as to whether Goldman and Brown were secretly dating, compounded by three facts, that Brown was wearing a slinky, revealing cocktail dress when she was found dead, candles were lit in the master bedroom and bathroom, and the master bathroom’s tub was full of water.Though prosecutors argued that Simpson was implicated by a significant amount of forensic evidence, he was acquitted of both murders on October 3. Commentators agree that to convince the jury to acquit Simpson, the defense capitalized on anger among the city's African-American community toward the Los Angeles Police Department, which had a history of purported racial bias and had inflamed racial tensions in the beating of Rodney King and subsequent riots two years prior. The trial is often characterized as the trial of the century because of its international publicity and has been described as the "most publicized" criminal trial in history. Simpson was formally charged with the murders on June 17; when he did not turn himself in at the agreed time, he became the subject of a police pursuit. TV stations interrupted coverage of the 1994 NBA Finals to broadcast live coverage of the pursuit, which was watched by around 95 million people. The pursuit and Simpson's arrest were among the most widely publicized events in history.
Simpson was represented by a high-profile defense team, referred to as the "Dream Team", initially led by Robert Shapiro and subsequently directed by Johnnie Cochran. The team included F. Lee Bailey, Alan Dershowitz, Robert Kardashian, Shawn Holley, Carl E. Douglas, and Gerald Uelmen. Simpson was also instrumental in his own defense. While Deputy District Attorneys Marcia Clark, William Hodgman, and Christopher Darden believed they had a strong case, the defense team persuaded the jury there was reasonable doubt concerning the DNA evidence. They contended the blood sample had been mishandled by lab scientists and that the case had been tainted by LAPD misconduct related to racism and incompetence. The use of DNA evidence in trials was relatively new, and many laypersons did not understand how to evaluate it.
The trial was considered significant for the wide division in reaction to the verdict. Observers' opinions of the verdict were largely related to their ethnicity; the media dubbed this the "racial gap". A poll of Los Angeles County residents showed most African Americans thought the "not guilty" verdict was justified while most whites thought it was a racially motivated jury nullification by the mostly African-American jury. Polling in later years showed the gap had narrowed since the trial; more than half of polled Black respondents expressed the belief that Simpson was guilty. In 2017, three jurors who acquitted Simpson said they would still vote to acquit, while one said he would convict.
Comparisons were made years later between the Trayvon Martin case and the O.J. Simpson case, and how race impacted both. During an interview with Piers Morgan, when asked if there was a similarity in the racial aspects of the cases, Kim Goldman said all of the evidence pointed towards guilt in Simpson’s case, while she believed George Zimmerman’s not guilty verdict was correct because it was a self defense case and that the killing of Trayvon Martin was not racially charged. Fred Goldman also denied racism played a factor in the killing of Trayvon or the outcome of the Simpson trial in an interview.