If I Did It

by The Goldman Family

  The next day, or the day after that—I can’t recall exactly—a detective came by to follow up with a few questions, and I walked the guy through it. I said I’d been drinking—that we’d both been drinking—and admitted that I’d become a little bit too physical. “I should have exercised more self-control,” I said.

  “It’s one of those things that happen in all relationships,” he said, and I agreed with him. We’d been partying a little too hard. It was late. We weren’t thinking clearly. But hey, nobody got hurt. Yada yada yada.

  As for Nicole, I guess she told the cops her own version of the same story, down to that misunderstanding about the nonexistent diamond earrings. I don’t know if she told them that she took a few swings at me, and that she came back for more after I locked her out, but she certainly told her mother, who went on national television and confirmed it. Still, at that point none of it seemed relevant. I had already apologized, profusely, and had even gone one better. “If I’m ever physical like that with you again, I will tear up the prenuptial agreement,” I told Nicole. I wanted her to know how serious I was about making things right. It didn’t matter to me that she had initiated the fight because my response was wrong, and that’s what counted—my response.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “I mean it,” I said.

  “I know,” she said.

  So, yeah—as far as I was concerned, it was over.

  But it wasn’t over. A month later, just as we were getting ready to fly to Hawaii, where I had business with Hertz, I woke up and read about the whole ugly incident on the front page of the Herald Examiner. It was surreal. I thought we’d moved on long ago, then bam!—there it was for the whole world to see. The story came as a complete surprise to Nicole, too. She had no idea that the cops were going to use her statement, and those incriminating photographs, to charge me with domestic abuse.

  In the days ahead, everything became a little clearer. I found out that it’s quite common for a woman to charge her husband or boyfriend with abuse, only to call the police the next day and ask them to drop the charges. I guess they’re afraid of what those guys will do to them when it’s all over, so they find all sorts of reasons to change their stories: It was a misunderstanding, officer. Deep down I really love him. I don’t want to hurt the kids. Now that I think about it, the whole thing was my fault. Many women kept getting victimized as a result, repeatedly, sometimes with deadly results, and the cops were trying to figure out how to deal with the problem. In fact, they were attempting to put a new law on the books that would give them the power to make the charges stick, even if the complaint was withdrawn. And I guess what happened was, someone at the L.A.P.D. decided that I would make the perfect poster boy for spousal abuse—a perfect, high-profile launch for their campaign.

  There was one glitch, however, and it was a big one. Back in those days, officers could only make an arrest if it was warranted by the situation, or if the perpetrator had a history of abuse. Our situation hadn’t warranted it—no one was getting beat up—and I didn’t have a history of abuse. Still, just in case anything had slipped though the cracks, the investigating officer sent a memo to various neighborhood precincts, asking if any officer had ever responded to a domestic disturbance at my home. Well, wouldn’t you know it—they got lucky. The Westec security guard who had stopped by during our one previous altercation, in 1984, had since become a member of the L.A.P.D., and both he and one of his fellow officers, Mark Fuhrman, responded to the memo. In his response, Fuhrman actually claimed that he’d been at my house that night, with the guy from Westec, and that he’d talked to both me and Nicole. If Fuhrman was there, and if he actually talked to either of us, I sure as hell don’t remember it. But that didn’t matter. The L.A.P.D. had been looking for a prior incident, and they’d just found it.

  In the end, I was convicted of spousal abuse. I was put on probation, given a few hundred hours of community service, and ordered to pay a modest fine. I wasn’t happy about it, but I didn’t think the charges were worth fighting, and I regret it to this day. If you don’t fight the charges, they stick. And these stuck. Suddenly, I was a convicted wife-beater.

  Did I physically drag Nicole out of the bedroom and push her out into the hallway? Yes. Did I beat her? No. I never once raised my hand to her—never once—and if Nicole were alive today she’d tell you the same thing. In fact, right after the newspaper story broke, when she talked to her mother about it, she took responsibility for the whole ugly incident. And even during the divorce proceedings years later, when she had good reason to want to lie about my allegedly violent nature, Nicole refused to play that game. She told her lawyers that the incident had been blown completely out of proportion—and that she’d instigated the violence, not me.

  Much later, months after the murders, I spoke about the incident with Dr. Bernard Yudowitz, a forensic psychiatrist. I remember crying as I told him about going up to San Francisco in 1986, to see my father, who was in the hospital at the time, riddled with cancer. He was tired and weak, but in good spirits, and we chatted for a while, then I took a moment to step out into the corridor to call Nicole, back in L.A. When I returned to the room, my father was dead. “I don’t understand why God gave me ten minutes with my father,” I told Dr. Yudowitz, “but not even one second with Nicole.”

  I will admit to you, as I admitted to him, that some of my arguments with Nicole did indeed deteriorate into shouting matches, and that we tended to get in each other’s faces. But most of the time we resolved our differences peacefully, without getting physical. Nicole and I were together for seventeen years, and we had our share of conflict, but by and large we were always able to work out our differences.

  During the trial, when Dr. Yudowitz took the stand—on my behalf, admittedly—he said what everyone expected him to say: That I did not fit the profile of a killer. In the days ahead, as expected, the newspapers trotted out their own experts. They said that four out of five murders were spontaneous, a result of circumstance more than intent, and that perhaps that had been the situation in my case. I also read about so-called “atypical” murderers: The quiet boy next door, say, or the mousy little preacher’s wife—men and women who seemed incapable of murder, but who were driven to violence by a given situation. Some experts immediately categorized me as atypical: I seemed like a nice guy, and it was definitely out of character for me to have committed the crime, but I could have done it just the same. That didn’t strike me as particularly insightful. Given the right circumstances, I guess anyone is capable of murder.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself …

  When I think back on my marriage to Nicole, I guess I’d have to say that 1989 was the big turning point—but mostly for her. Me? I was the oblivious husband. For one thing, I got busy. A few weeks after the incident, I had to go to Hawaii, for Hertz, and my business with them kept me occupied for the next few months. Then in the fall, I had NFL Live to do, with Bob Costas, and once again—like lots of guys—I lost myself in my work. I wasn’t even thinking about the incident, to be honest. I was moving forward, leaving it behind me, and in my mind that was a good thing. I thought we should put the past behind us. Cool off. Start fresh. And I figured Nicole probably felt the same way. She seemed a little removed at times, to be honest, but otherwise I thought things were fine. I didn’t realize till much later that she was having an affair, but that’s another story, and I was completely oblivious about that, too. Maybe it was self-delusion—who knows? All I know is that I thought things were solid, and that I felt we could get through anything. Plus I didn’t want the marriage to fail. We had two kids to raise, and we were at that point in our marriage where the kids had to come first. That’s just the way it was. It wasn’t that I didn’t love Nicole, or that I loved her less, but that I loved her in a different way. You lose some of the passion, sure, and you lose some of the closeness. And sometimes you’re just trying to stay out of each other’s way. But so what? The center of gravity shifts. You focus on th
e kids. You settle down. You mellow out. And that’s what I was doing, or trying to do.

  And it was working great—or so I thought. I remember being in New York in December 1991, hanging out with Nicole, doing a little Christmas shopping and stuff, and thinking how happy she seemed. She even looked terrific. She had been struggling to get back into fighting shape ever since the kids had come along, and complaining about it every time she caught sight of herself in the mirror, but after months of hard work she was in the best shape of her life. I was amazed, and I told her so, and I remember thinking how glad I was that we’d weathered the post-1989 storm. I was proud of myself for making it through the rough parts of the marriage, and equally proud of her, and I was feeling genuinely optimistic about the future.

  A month later, in January 1992, I was in New York for the playoff games, and flew home for a long weekend. The very first day I was back, Nicole and I went to lunch at Peppone’s, right there in Brentwood, and about thirty seconds after we sat down she let me have it: “I think we should separate,” she said.

  I was floored. I was tired and jet-lagged and I honestly wasn’t even sure I’d even heard her right, but she repeated it, saying she didn’t understand why I looked so surprised. We’d been having problems for a long time, she said, and we should both look at it as an opportunity to work on ourselves and think about the problems, yada yada yada. “I want to try living apart for a month,” she added. “But I don’t want to get the lawyers involved.”

  Then she suggested that I move out of the Rockingham house, to make the separation less disruptive for the kids, and I knew right off that I had to stop this thing before it got any crazier. “I don’t know what you think you’re going to accomplish by us living apart for a month,” I said. “I’m hardly here as it is, traveling all the time. If you want to work on yourself, you’ve got plenty of time to do it. And if you think I need to work on myself, maybe you can tell me what needs fixing.”

  “No,” she said. “That’s not it at all.”

  “Then what is it?” I said. “I’m confused. Is there someone else?”

  “No—God! How can you even think such a thing?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m trying to figure out how it came to this. I know we don’t have a perfect marriage, but who does? And I thought we were doing pretty well.”

  At that point she began to talk about the fact that she had spent her entire adult life with me—fifteen years—and that she felt as if she was living in my shadow. “All of our friends are your friends,” she said. “Everything we do is stuff you want to do. Our life together is basically about you.”

  I tried to defend myself, saying that I had always listened to her, and that I had never stopped her from pursuing her own interests and her own friendships, but she wasn’t really paying attention. “I want to be around people who like me for me, not because I’m O.J. Simpson’s wife,” she said.

  I thought that was bullshit, too, and I told her so, but she was adamant: she wanted to take a break from the marriage.

  “Fine,” I said, trying to keep emotion out of it. “If you want a break, I’ll give you a break. But there’s no way in hell we’re doing this without lawyers.” We needed the lawyers so that we’d be absolutely clear on what was going on, I explained. She wanted out, not me, for reasons I couldn’t really understand. And the Rockingham house predated our relationship. It was my house, a fact that was clearly spelled out in the prenuptial agreement. That house held a lot of history for me, including the drowning death of my infant daughter, Aaren—the little girl I had with Marguerite during the rocky tail end of our marriage—and I wasn’t going to let anyone tell me to move out.

  At the end of that month, with the lawyers already hard at work, Nicole moved into a rented house on Gretna Green Way, not eight minutes from my place, and—given my hectic travel schedule—took physical custody of the kids. I was in a state of mild shock for several weeks, to be honest, unable to get my mind around what had happened, and how it had come to this. Her mother was in shock, too, as were most of her friends. None of them seemed to think that our problems were all that significant, though of course one never really knows what goes on behind closed doors.

  The only person who had seen it coming was her best friend, Cora Fishman, because Cora had known about the affair—the one Nicole denied having. It wasn’t anyone she was serious about, I learned much later, but it had happened, and when shit like that happens you know that deep down something is very wrong. It’s strange, though, because years later, in a letter she wrote me when she was trying to reconcile, she still said nothing about the affair. Instead, she talked about the 1989 incident, and how that had been the big turning point in our relationship—for her, anyway—which was kind of odd because she was no longer blaming me for what had happened. She said she was beginning to realize that she had contributed as much to our problems as I had, if not more, and that looking back on it she felt that I’d been right from the start—that we did have a pretty good life together. It was the first time she had taken responsibility for her actions, and it was a good thing, but unfortunately it came too late. When I read that letter, it about broke my heart. All along I thought we were going to make it, and I guess I never really understood the depth of her unhappiness—let alone the reasons for it.

  So we started our new life, in separate homes but still committed to making it work—like so many other couples. I was optimistic, to be honest. I had been through this before, with Marguerite, twice, and we’d managed to survive the first separation, so in my heart it wasn’t over. We’re just separating, I told myself. We’re trying to get back together. And this time I’m determined to make it work.

  Still, it wasn’t easy. I didn’t enjoy watching Nicole settle into a new place with the two kids, watching her move forward without me. She even found a guy to help out with babysitting and running errands and stuff, someone she’d met skiing in Aspen, and she let him move into the guesthouse, rent free, instead of paying him a salary. His name, as you may recall, was Kato Kaelin.

  When that first Valentine’s Day rolled around, less than three weeks into the separation, I was in Mexico for a celebrity golf tournament, but I sent Nicole some nice flowers, and a note, and she was very appreciative. I told her I wasn’t giving up on us, and I didn’t. I was still traveling a great deal, mostly to New York, but whenever I was in town I’d take her out, sometimes alone, and sometimes with the kids.

  From time to time we even ended up in bed together. On occasion, she cried after we made love. I don’t know if she was crying from being happy or unhappy, to be honest, and I don’t think she did, either, but I kept hoping it was because she loved me, and because in her heart she knew that we belonged together.

  Still, I wanted to give Nicole her freedom—the freedom she thought she wanted—so I didn’t get pushy about wooing her back. It was pretty weird, though. Early on, for example, she went on a couple of dates, and she was a little worried about protocol because she hadn’t really dated anyone since she was a teenager. “You think the guy’s just trying to get into my pants?” she asked me at one point.

  “Honey, what do you expect?” I said “You’re gorgeous, you’re smart, you’ve got your own money, and you don’t want more kids. For most guys, that’s an unbeatable combination.”

  “So should I go out with him?”

  “Yeah. If you like him. Why not?”

  “But how do I know if he likes me for me,” she said, “and not for something else.”

  “What? You think he likes you for your car?”

  “I’m serious, O.J. This is all new to me.”

  She sounded like a teenager, but it struck me that in dating terms she really was a teenager. “Nicole, stop worrying so much,” I said. “You’re a great girl. Just be yourself and have fun.” I was sitting there, on the phone, trying to build up her self-esteem, and when I got off the phone all I could think was, Man, that’s my wife! That was bizarre!

  If th
ere is one good thing I can say about the separation, it’s this: We never fought about anything. In fact, during that entire period we only had one argument, and it was because some of her friends were racking up charges on my account at the golf club in Laguna. My assistant, Cathy Randa, spotted the charges and brought them to my attention, and I immediately called Nicole. “Who the hell do these people think they are, eating and drinking at my expense, and why the hell are you allowing it?” Nicole apologized, promised she’d take care of it, and that was the end of that.

  Afterward, we were friendly again—maybe too friendly. Nicole got into the habit of calling me two or three times a day, to chat, often about some of the guys she was dating. I thought that was a little strange—I felt she was treating me almost like a girlfriend or something—but I didn’t mind. I realized that, if nothing else, I was probably her closest friend, a friend she could talk to about anything, and it gave me hope. She always began by talking about the kids—that was the excuse, anyway—and within a minute or two the conversation shifted to stories about the men in her life. This one guy was a complete schmuck, this other guy seemed so nice at first but had turned into a real creep, and so on and so forth. I would think, Why are you wasting your time with them? You could still be living with me! But I didn’t say it. I didn’t want to push her. I wanted her to know I was there without putting any pressure on her.

  Then early in May, while I was back in town for a few days, I was out at a club with a group of friends and ran into Nicole and a couple of her girlfriends. I remember thinking it was kind of odd to see her there: We had been living apart for more than three months, and this was the first time I’d run into her in public. One of her girlfriends made a little joke about the situation: “O.J., are you stalking your estranged wife?” And I smiled and said, “Yeah, me and my whole posse.” We exchanged a few more words, everything warm and friendly, then went off to enjoy the club with our respective friends.