Fred Goldman's words resonated with millions upon the death yesterday of acquitted double murderer and former pro-football player and actor O.J. Simpson. He died of cancer, said to have been prostate cancer, and it was aggressive. He had been diagnosed with it a couple of months ago. Simpson was 76.
The tabloids like the Daily Mail had their photographers running around taking pictures of him in his final months. He was a far cry from his younger, more violent and murderous days, barely able to move around.
Before destroying his life and literally the lives of two other people--his former second wife Nicole Brown and an acquaintance of hers, Ron Goldman, who was merely at the wrong place at the wrong time-- Simpson appeared to have it all. He set rushing records as a running back for the Buffalo Bills in the early 1970s. Hollywood beckoned, and although he wasn't much of an an actor, he made a pile of money for his efforts. He might have been best known post-football days for his ads for Hertz Rent-a-Car, where he put his rushing abilities to good use running around in airports leaping over luggage and such. Simpson was well liked by many people who knew him, or thought they did. He had a beautiful home in Brentwood, California. While he suffered tragedy in his early adulthood, with having lost a child to drowning, he enjoyed the good life.
After his divorce from his first wife, he married the much-younger (by 12 years) Nicole Brown. As I recall, she had been a waitress at a restaurant when they first met. She was barely out of high school then, but O.J. saw potential to make her into his goddess. As Jeffrey Toobin, himself famous for exposing himself to all the world or some of it, wrote, O.J. had paid for breast implants for all four of the Brown sisters, but none had ever (at the time) had a college degree. O.J. also was very demanding and controlling. He had always been that way, but he was especially so with Nicole. The two had two children together, but O.J. continued to abuse her for years. One notable call from Nicole to 911 mentioned how he was going "to beat the shit out of me." Simpson was known as a wife abuser to the cops, but they were so enthralled by his celebrity, they did relatively little about it.
As is too often the case, such violent marriages or violent relationships involving exes end up in homicide. Nicole lost her life at the young age of 35 in June of 1994, almost thirty years ago. Ron Goldman was only 25 and merely being a good Samaritan by returning some sunglasses that had belonged to Nicole's mother, Juditha Brown (1931-2020). Goldman came upon O.J. murdering Nicole, and of course, O.J., whether strung out on drugs or not, had to kill the sole eyewitness. Given all of the Himalayan mountains of evidence, both physical and circumstantial, against Simpson, he got lucky. His murder trial, the trial that took a century a few wags noted, came on the heels of the Rodney King case, and Simpson's acquittal was payback for what was done to King. Simpson's celebrity might have played a role, and the fact that Nicole was a white woman who had been married to a Black man may have also played a role. Revenge for Rodney, though, was key. The jury "deliberated" only four hours, as I remember after the trial had lasted well over a year, so their minds were made up from the beginning to acquit. O.J.'s cadre of defense lawyers, dubbed "The Dream Team," pulled the race card by casting aspersions on one of the prosecution's star witnesses, Mark Fuhrman. The defense tried to say one of those expensive gloves O.J. wore was "planted," and then, in that infamous demonstration, Simpson claimed those gloves "didn't fit." The prosecution, for their part, were not the best and brightest, and they didn't introduce as evidence the obvious incidents of his guilt, specifically the slow-speed chase which was seen by millions of people on television. If Simpson had been innocent, he certainly wouldn't have engaged in such a drama. That alone pointed to his guilt. There were other blunders. In the end, though, that jury was not going to convict him no matter what.
However, Simpson got sued in civil court and found responsible for the two murders. He was ordered to pay millions and millions of dollars in damages, but the families saw little of the money. The Goldmans did manage to wrest the publishing rights to O.J.'s "novel" of the killings, If I Did It. O.J. couldn't profit there.
Moreover. Simpson once again did get in trouble with the law in an armed robbery case where he was attempting to recover memorabilia of his in Las Vegas. He was convicted of that crime and sentenced up to 33 years in prison. He served nine years for that crime in Lovelock, Nevada, before his release in 2017 and released from parole for "good behavior" in 2021. Presumably, he was still looking for the murderer or murderers of Ron and Nicole until cancer overtook him.
On this day, we should remember Ron, Nicole, and their families and not for the man who ruined lives.
“This is just a reminder for us of how long Ron has been gone, how long we have missed him and nothing more than that," Fred Goldman tells PEOPLE. "That is the only thing that is important today. It is the pain from then until now. There is nothing today that is more important than the loss of my son and the loss of Nicole. Nothing is more important than that.”
Fred Goldman was always tenacious in letting the public know just what Simpson was and what Simpson took from him and all of those who loved Ron and Nicole. At least he got to outlive his son's killer.
Mr. Simpson had spent large sums for his criminal defense. Records submitted in the murder trial showed his net worth at about $11 million, and people with knowledge of the case said he had only $3.5 million afterward. A 1999 auction of his Heisman Trophy and other memorabilia netted about $500,000, which went to the plaintiffs. But court records show he paid little of the balance that was owed.
He regained custody of the children he had with Ms. Simpson, and in 2000 he moved to Florida, bought a home south of Miami and settled into a quiet life, playing golf and living on pensions from the N.F.L., the Screen Actors Guild and other sources, about $400,000 a year. Florida laws protect a home and pension income from seizure to satisfy court judgments.
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