If I Did It

by The Goldman Family

  VANNATTER: How does that usually work? Do you drop them at the porch, or do you go in with them?

  OJ: No, I don’t go in the house.

  VANNATTER: Is there a kind of gate out front?

  OJ: Yeah.

  VANNATTER: But you never go inside the house?

  OJ: Up until about five days, six days ago, I haven’t been in the house. Once I started seeing Paula again, I kind of avoid Nicole.

  VANNATTER: Is Nicole seeing anybody else that you—

  OJ: I have no idea. I really have absolutely no idea. I don’t ask her. I don’t know. Her and her girlfriends, they go out, you know, they’ve got some things going on right now with her girlfriends, so I’m assuming something’s happening because one of the girlfriends is having a big problem with her husband because she’s always saying she’s with Nicole until three or four in the morning. She’s not. You know, Nicole tells me she leaves her at one thirty or two or two thirty, and the girl doesn’t get home until five, and she only lives a few blocks away.

  VANNATTER: Something’s going on, huh?

  LANGE: Do you know where they went, the family, for dinner last night?

  OJ: No. Well, no, I didn’t ask.

  LANGE: I just thought maybe there’s a regular place that they go.

  OJ: No. If I was with them, we’d go to Toscana. I mean, not Toscano, Pepponi’s.

  VANNATTER: You haven’t had any problems with her lately, have you, O.J.?

  OJ: I always have problems with her, you know? Our relationship has been a problem relationship. Probably lately for me, and I say this only because I said it to Ron yesterday at the—Ron Fishman, whose wife is Cora—at the dance recital, when he came up to me and went, “Oooh, boy, what’s going on?” and everybody was beefing with everybody. And I said, “Well, I’m just glad I’m out of the mix.” You know, because I was like dealing with him and his problems with his wife and Nicole and evidently some new problems that a guy named Christian was having with his girl, and she was staying at Nicole’s house, and something was going on, but I don’t think it’s pertinent to this.

  VANNATTER: Did Nicole have words with you last night?

  OJ: Pardon me?

  VANNATTER: Did Nicole have words with you last night?

  OJ: No, not at all.

  VANNATTER: Did you talk to her last night?

  OJ: To ask to speak to my daughter, to congratulate my daughter, and everything.

  VANNATTER: But you didn’t have a conversation with her?

  OJ: No, no.

  VANNATTER: What were you wearing last night, O.J.?

  OJ: What did I wear on the golf course yesterday? Some of these kind of pants, some of these kind of pants—I mean I changed different for whatever it was. I just had on some …

  VANNATTER: Just these black pants?

  OJ: Just these … They’re called Bugle Boy.

  VANNATTER: These aren’t the pants?

  OJ: No.

  VANNATTER: Where are the pants that you wore?

  OJ: They’re hanging in my closet.

  VANNATTER: These are washable, right? You just throw them in the laundry?

  OJ: Yeah, I got a hundred pair. They give them to me free, Bugle Boys, so I’ve got a bunch of them.

  VANNATTER: Do you recall coming home and hanging them up, or—?

  OJ: I always hang up my clothes. I mean, it’s rare that I don’t hang up my clothes unless I’m laying them in my bathroom for her to do something with them, but those are the only things I don’t hang up. But when you play golf, you don’t necessarily dirty pants.

  LANGE: What kind of shoes were you wearing?

  OJ: Tennis shoes.

  LANGE: Tennis shoes? Do you know what kind?

  OJ: Probably Reebok, that’s all I wear.

  LANGE: Are they at home, too?

  OJ: Yeah.

  LANGE: Was this supposed to be a short trip to Chicago, so you didn’t take a whole lot?

  OJ: Yeah, I was coming back today.

  LANGE: Just overnight?

  OJ: Yeah.

  VANNATTER: That’s a hectic schedule, drive back here to play golf and come back.

  OJ: Yeah, but I do it all the time.

  VANNATTER: Do you?

  OJ: Yeah. That’s what I was complaining with the driver about, you know, about my whole life is on and off airplanes.

  VANNATTER: O.J., we’ve got sort of a problem.

  OJ: Mmm hmm.

  VANNATTER: We’ve got some blood on and in your car, we’ve got some blood at your house, and sort of a problem.

  OJ: Well, take my blood test.

  LANGE: Well, we’d like to do that. We’ve got, of course, the cut on your finger that you aren’t real clear on. Do you recall having that cut on your finger the last time you were at Nicole’s house?

  OJ: A week ago?

  LANGE: Yeah.

  OJ: No. It was last night.

  LANGE: Okay, so last night you cut it.

  VANNATTER: Somewhere after the recital?

  OJ: Somewhere when I was rushing to get out of my house.

  VANNATTER: Okay, after the recital.

  OJ: Yeah.

  VANNATTER: What do you think happened? Do you have any idea?

  OJ: I have no idea, man. You guys haven’t told me anything. I have no idea. When you said to my daughter, who said something to me today, that somebody else might have been involved, I have absolutely no idea what happened. I don’t know how, why or what. But you guys haven’t told me anything. Every time I ask you guys, you say you’re going to tell me in a bit.

  VANNATTER: Well, we don’t know a lot of answers to these questions yet ourselves, O.J., okay?

  OJ: I’ve got a bunch of guns, guns all over the place. You can take them, they’re all there. I mean, you can see them. I keep them in my car for an incident that happened a month ago that my in-laws, my wife and everybody knows about that.

  VANNATTER: What was that?

  OJ: Going down to … And cops down there know about it because I’ve told two marshals about it. At a mall, I was going down for a christening, and I had just left—and it was like three thirty in the morning, and I’m in a lane, and also the car in front of me is going real slow, and I’m slowing down ’cause I figure he sees a cop, ’cause we were all going pretty fast. And I’m going to change lanes, but there’s a car next to me, and I can’t change lanes. Then that goes for a while, and I’m going to slow down and go around him but the car butts up to me, and I’m like caught between three cars. They were Oriental guys, and they were not letting me go anywhere. And finally I went on the shoulder, and I sped up, and then I held my phone up so they could see the light part of it, you know, ’cause I have tinted windows, and they kind of scattered, and I chased one of them for a while to make him think I was chasing him before I took off.

  LANGE: Were you in the Bronco?

  OJ: No.

  LANGE: What were you driving?

  OJ: My Bentley. It has tinted windows and all, so I figured they thought they had a nice little touch.

  LANGE: Did you think they were trying to rip you off?

  OJ: Definitely, they were. And then the next thing, you know, Nicole and I went home. At four in the morning I got there to Laguna, and when we woke up, I told her about it, and told her parents about it, told everybody about it, you know? And when I saw two marshals at a mall, I walked up and told them about it.

  VANNATTER: What did they do, make a report on it?

  OJ: They didn’t know nothing. I mean, they’ll remember me and remember I told them.

  VANNATTER: Did Nicole mention that she’d been getting any threats lately to you? Anything she was concerned about or the kids’ safety?

  OJ: To her?

  VANNATTER: Yes.

  OJ: From?

  VANNATTER: From anybody.

  OJ: No, not at all.

  VANNATTER: Was she very security conscious? Did she keep that house locked up?

  OJ: Very.

  VANNATTER: The
intercom didn’t work apparently, right?

  OJ: I thought it worked.

  VANNATTER: Oh, okay. Does the electronic buzzer work?

  OJ: The electronic buzzer works to let people in.

  VANNATTER: Do you ever park in the rear when you go over there?

  OJ: Most of the time.

  VANNATTER: You do park in the rear.

  OJ: Most times when I’m taking the kids there, I come right into the driveway, blow the horn, and she, or a lot of times the housekeeper, either the housekeeper opens or they’ll keep a garage door open up on the top of the thing, you know, but that’s when I’m dropping the kids off, and I’m not going in. There’s times I go to the front because the kids have to hit the buzzer and stuff.

  VANNATTER: Did you say before that up until about three weeks ago you guys were going out again and trying to—

  OJ: No, we’d been going out for about a year, and then the last six months we’ve had—it ain’t been working, so we tried various things to see if we can make it work. We started trying to date, and that wasn’t working, and so, you know, we just said the hell with it, you know.

  VANNATTER: And that was about three weeks ago?

  OJ: Yeah, about three weeks ago.

  VANNATTER: So you were seeing her up to that point?

  OJ: It’s, it’s—seeing her, yeah, I mean, yeah. It was a done deal. It just wasn’t happening. I mean, I was gone. I was in San Juan doing a film, and I don’t think we had sex since I’ve been back from San Juan, and that was like two months ago. So it’s been like—for the kids we tried to do things together, you know, we didn’t really date each other. Then we decided let’s try to date each other. We went out one night, and it just didn’t work.

  VANNATTER: When you say it didn’t work, what do you mean?

  OJ: Ah, the night we went out it was fun. Then the next night we went out it was actually when I was down in Laguna, and she didn’t want to go out. And I said, “Well, let’s go out ‘cause I came all the way down here to go out,” and we kind of had a beef. And it just didn’t work after that, you know? We were only trying to date to see if we could bring some romance back into our relationship. We just said, let’s treat each other like boyfriend and girlfriend instead of, you know, like seventeen-year-old married people. I mean, seventeen years together, whatever that is.

  VANNATTER: How long were you together?

  OJ: Seventeen years.

  VANNATTER: Seventeen years. Did you ever hit her, O.J.?

  OJ: Ah, one night we had a fight. We had a fight, and she hit me. And they never took my statement, they never wanted to hear my side, and they never wanted to hear the house-keeper’s side. Nicole was drunk. She did her thing, she started tearing up my house, you know? I didn’t punch her or anything, but I …

  VANNATTER: … slapped her a couple of times.

  OJ: No, no, I wrestled her, is what I did. I didn’t slap her at all. I mean, Nicole’s a strong girl. She’s a—one of the most conditioned women. Since that period of time, she’s hit me a few times, but I’ve never touched her after that, and I’m telling you, it’s five-six years ago.

  VANNATTER: What is her birth date?

  OJ: May nineteenth.

  VANNATTER: Did you get together with her on her birthday?

  OJ: Yeah, her and I and the kids, I believe.

  VANNATTER: Did you give her a gift?

  OJ: I gave her a gift.

  VANNATTER: What did you give her?

  OJ: I gave her either a bracelet or the earrings.

  VANNATTER: Did she keep them or—

  OJ: Oh, no, when we split she gave me both the earrings and the bracelet back. I bought her a very nice bracelet—I don’t know if it was Mother’s Day or her birthday—and I bought her the earrings for the other thing, and when we split, and it’s a credit to her—she felt that it wasn’t right that she had it, and I said good because I want them back.

  VANNATTER: Was that the very day of her birthday, May nineteenth, or was it a few days later?

  OJ: What do you mean?

  VANNATTER: You gave it to her on the nineteenth of May, her birthday, right, this bracelet?

  OJ: I may have given her the earrings. No, the bracelet, May nineteenth. When was Mother’s Day?

  VANNATTER: Mother’s Day was around that …

  OJ: No, it was probably her birthday, yes.

  VANNATTER: And did she return it the same day?

  OJ: Oh, no, she—I’m in a funny place here on this, all right? She returned it—both of them—three weeks ago or so, because when I say I’m in a funny place on this it was because I gave it to my girlfriend and told her it was for her, and that was three weeks ago. I told her I bought it for her. You know? What am I going to do with it?

  LANGE: Did Mr. Weitzman, your attorney, talk to you anything about this polygraph we brought up before? What are your thoughts on that?

  OJ: Should I talk about my thoughts on that? I’m sure eventually I’ll do it, but it’s like I’ve got some weird thoughts now. I’ve had weird thoughts. You know when you’ve been with a person for seventeen years, you think everything. I’ve got to understand what this thing is. If it’s true blue, I don’t mind doing it.

  LANGE: Well, you’re not compelled at all to take this thing, number one, and number two—I don’t know if Mr. Weitzman explained it to you—this goes to the exclusion of someone as much as the inclusion so we can eliminate people. And just to get things straight.

  OJ: But does it work for elimination?

  LANGE: Oh, yes. We use it for elimination more than anything.

  OJ: Well, I’ll talk to him about it.

  LANGE: Understand, the reason we’re talking to you is because you’re the ex-husband.

  OJ: I know, I’m the number one target, and now you tell me I’ve got blood all over the place.

  LANGE: Well, there’s blood at your house in the driveway, and we’ve got a search warrant, and we’re going to go get the blood. We found some in your house. Is that your blood that’s there?

  OJ: If it’s dripped, it’s what I dripped running around trying to leave.

  LANGE: Last night?

  OJ: Yeah, and I wasn’t aware that it was—I was aware that I … You know, I was trying to get out of the house. I didn’t even pay any attention to it, I saw it when I was in the kitchen, and I grabbed a napkin or something, and that was it. I didn’t think about it after that.

  VANNATTER: That was last night after you got home from the recital, when you were rushing?

  OJ: That was last night when I was … I don’t know what I was … I was in the car getting my junk out of the car. I was in the house throwing hangers and stuff in my suitcase. I was doing my little crazy what I do … I mean, I do it everywhere. Anybody who has ever picked me up says that O.J.’s a whirlwind, he’s running, he’s grabbing things, and that’s what I was doing.

  VANNATTER: Well, I’m going to step out and I’m going to get a photographer to come down and photograph your hand there. And then here pretty soon we’re going to take you downstairs and get some blood from you. Okay? I’ll be right back.

  LANGE: So it was about five days ago you last saw Nicole? Was it at the house?

  OJ: Okay, the last time I saw Nicole, physically saw Nicole—I saw her obviously last night. The time before, I’m trying to think … I went to Washington, DC, so I didn’t see her, so I’m trying to think … I haven’t seen her since I went to Washington—what’s the date today?

  LANGE: Today’s Monday, the thirteenth of June.

  OJ: Okay, I went to Washington on maybe Wednesday. Thursday I think I was in—Thursday I was in Connecticut, then Long Island on Thursday afternoon and all of Friday. I got home Friday night, Friday afternoon. I played, you know—Paula picked me up at the airport. I played golf Saturday, and when I came home I think my son was there. So I did something with my son. I don’t think I saw Nicole at all then. And then I went to a big affair with Paula Saturday night, and I got up and played golf Sunday
which pissed Paula off, and I saw Nicole at … It was about a week before, I saw her at the—

  LANGE: Okay, the last time you saw Nicole, was that at her house?

  OJ: I don’t remember. I wasn’t in her house, so it couldn’t have been at her house, so it was, you know, I don’t physically remember the last time I saw her. I may have seen her even jogging one day.

  LANGE: Let me get this straight. You’ve never physically been inside the house?

  OJ: Not in the last week.

  LANGE: Ever. I mean, how long has she lived there? About six months?

  OJ: Oh, Christ, I’ve slept at the house many, many, many times, you know? I’ve done everything at the house, you know? I’m just saying—you’re talking in the last week or so.

  LANGE: Well, whatever. Six months she’s lived there?

  OJ: I don’t know. Roughly. I was at her house maybe two weeks ago, ten days ago. One night her and I had a long talk, you know, about how can we make it better for the kids, and I told her we’d do things better. And, okay, I can almost say when that was. That was when I—I don’t know, it was about ten days ago. And then we … The next day I had her have her dog do a flea bath or something with me. Oh, I’ll tell you, I did see her one day. One day I went—I don’t know if this was the early part of last week, I went ’cause my son had to go and get something, and he ran in, and she came to the gate, and the dog ran out, and her friend Faye and I went looking for the dog. That may have been a week ago, I don’t know.

  LANGE: (To Vannatter) Got a photographer coming?

  VANNATTER: No, we’re going to take him up there.

  LANGE: We’re ready to terminate this at 14:07.

  And that was that. We went off to another part of the building, a photographer took a few pictures of the cut on my finger, and the cops gave me a ride back to Rockingham.

  We didn’t say a word the whole way.

  The press was there when I pulled up, and their numbers had grown. I had to fight my way into my own house, with some of the more aggressive reporters practically trampling each other to get at me.

  Two dozen people were waiting for me inside, mostly friends and family, and I greeted them in a complete fog. Bob Kardashian and Howard Weitzman were also there, eager to learn how it had gone at Parker Center. They took me aside and asked me to tell them exactly what I’d told the cops. I couldn’t remember much, but I remembered getting a little flustered when they asked me what I thought had happened at the condo, like I knew more than I was letting on. That pissed me off a little, to be honest, but I felt like I pretty much kept it together.