And A.C. said, “Maybe we should pull over.”
And I said, “No fucking way! You told them you were bringing me in, so bring me in already. Take me back to my house.”
I was feeling angry. Defiant. The rage was fueling me. I was ready to take on the world.
There were more cops now, still following, and I leaned close to the window and looked up into the sky. I think I counted half-a-dozen choppers.
When we were still a few miles from Brentwood, on the 405 Freeway, heading north, it seemed as if the whole world had turned out to watch. People were hanging off overpasses, cheering, holding up signs. GO JUICE!
I remember thinking, When did they have time to make those signs?
By that point, there were maybe a dozen squad cars with us, behind the Bronco, up ahead of us, on either side. A.C. didn’t like it, and he slowed to a crawl. “O.J.,” he said. “I’m pulling over.”
“No you’re not,” I said. “You’re taking me home.”
I put the Magnum to my head, so the cops could see it, and A.C. again used his cellphone to call the cops. “Back the fuck off,” he said. “Can’t you see the man’s gonna kill himself?”
The whole thing took less than an hour. By then we were driving past the Wilshire off-ramp, and A.C. took the Sunset exit. If the cops had any doubts about where we were going, they knew now: O.J. Simpson was heading home.
For a moment, cruising those familiar streets, I suddenly felt crushingly depressed again. A man spends his whole life trying to figure out what it all means, trying to make some sense of this business of living, and in the end he doesn’t understand shit.
I missed Nicole. I was worried about the kids.
There was a goddamn battalion waiting for us at Rockingham, and before A.C. had even killed the engine the cops had pretty much surrounded us.
I was pissed off again. What the fuck did they think I was going to do? Shoot it out?
I dialed 911. “You tell those motherfuckers to back off!” I said.
The operator patched me through to someone at the scene, and I hollered at him for a while, but I couldn’t see who I was talking to, and I’m not sure what I was trying to say.
Then I saw a sniper on the roof of a neighbor’s house, and I swear to God—I almost lost it. The sons of bitches. What were they planning on doing? Taking me out when I stepped out of the Bronco?
I showed them the Magnum again, and I could see the cops tensing up, backing off.
“Put that fucking gun down,” A.C. said. “You want to die?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”
And I didn’t know, to be honest. I was depressed. Then I was angry. Then I was depressed again. The shrink had told me that the pills were going to keep me from hitting bottom, but this felt awful close to bottom. And if bottom was worse than this, I didn’t want to know about it.
A moment later, I felt the tears coming.
“We should have tried harder,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Nicole and me,” I said. “I should have tried harder. Even when I thought I didn’t love her, I loved her. It’s just there were times I forgot.”
A.C. didn’t say anything, but I wasn’t even looking at him. I was thinking about all those years with Nicole, most of them so good I wasn’t sure I deserved them, and I was thinking about the way we’d gone and fucked everything up.
Like I said earlier, this is a love story, and like a lot of love stories it doesn’t have a happy ending.
I got out of the Bronco and the cops moved in. They gave me a few minutes in the house, a chance to freshen up, then took me downtown, to Parker Center. They booked me and took my prints and had me pose for a mug shot. The flash blinded me, and I closed my eyes for a few seconds.
Nicole had written:
I want to be with you! I want to love you and cherish you, and make you smile. I want to wake up with you in the mornings and hold you at night. I want to hug and kiss you everyday. I want us to be the way we used to be. There was no couple like us.
And I’m thinking:
You were sure right about that, Nic.
There was no couple like us.
AFTERWORD
Dominick Dunne
IT WAS HARD for me to read this mystifying book by O.J. Simpson, although it is so in his character to have become involved in a crooked scheme to make money on his murders and at the same time defraud the Goldman family of the money the civil trial awarded them. Simpson craves the attention he has irretrievably lost. America rejected his acquittal. There were few victory cheers for him. Overnight, he became unwelcome. One of his many high-priced lawyers, Peter Neufeld, said it was “unconscionable” that he was not received back in the Brentwood community where he lived. No, it wasn’t unconscionable at all. Who wants to have a two-time killer living in the neighborhood? What was unconscionable was the pack of high-priced lawyers and expert witnesses, the so-called Dream Team, who worked so hard and were paid so much to win an acquittal for a man they all knew had murdered two people: his beautiful former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, the mother of two of his children who were there at the time, allegedly asleep when the slaughter happened, and Ronald Goldman, an acquaintance of Nicole’s who unexpectedly appeared at the moment of murder on a good deed to return a pair of glasses that Nicole’s mother had left behind at a restaurant where he was a waiter. Ron was a young good-looking guy. He had ambition and big plans for himself in his future, all of which were stabbed out of him by O.J. Simpson.
I was in the courtroom every day of the Simpson trial for almost a year, and I became obsessed with Simpson and the terrible thing he had done. The photographs I was shown during the trial of Nicole’s nearly-severed head and Ron Goldman’s mutilated body will haunt me until the last day of my life. Simpson’s savagery that terrible night of June 12th, 1994 knew no limits. Of course the Goldmans hated him. I hated him too. Now, thirteen years later, I still feel my deep sense of hatred toward him whenever I see him on television. Once he was a handsome champion. Now his face has become the face of a failure.
Judge Lance Ito has taken a lot of heat over the years for allowing Johnnie Cochran, the head of Simpson’s so-called Dream Team, to usurp his powers and take over the courtroom as his own, but Judge Ito had many good points that should not go unheralded. One that I admired was his sensitivity for the feelings of the victims’ families. Media demands for seats in the courtroom came from all over the world and exceeded by far the number of seats available. I arrived in Los Angeles from New York a few days before the start of the trial. The following, slightly edited, is taken directly from my diary on the day when I met Judge Ito. I later used a version of my diary in my book about the Simpson trial called Another City Not My Own.
On the day Jerrianne Hayslett, who was in charge of media relations for Judge Ito, posted the seating arrangements for the media, there were screams of disappointment from those who had to share seats, or did not get seated at all in the courtroom. To my astonishment, I received a permanent seat in the front row that I did not have to share for alternate periods with other reporters. I could feel there was a great deal of resentment toward me, the out-of-towner. The Los Angeles Times sneeringly referred to me as “celebrity author,” and I was referred to more mockingly by a Copley News reporter as “Judith Krantz in pants.” The famous defense attorney Leslie Abramson referred to my books as “jumped-up romance novels.” I didn’t care. I had my seat. That was all that mattered to me.
“Judge Ito would like to see you in chambers,” said Deputy Jex a few days later in the snarling tone of voice he used when speaking to members of the media. I wouldn’t have minded his unpleasantness so much if he had been equally unpleasant to the defendant on trial for a double murder. Instead, he spoke to Simpson in the fawning manner of a fan at a Buffalo Bills game. It was the first time that I had met Judge Ito, who was shortly to spring to national prominence and the cover of Newsweek magazine.
“Sit down, Mr.
Dunne,” he said, motioning me to a sofa opposite his desk. “I’ve read some of your coverage of the Menendez trial. You certainly take a very definite stand. There’s no mistaking how you feel about those two brothers.”
I am, after all, a victims’ advocate. I felt the same passion against Simpson as I had against the Menendez brothers, who fired sixteen shots from two 12-gauge shotguns into their father’s and mother’s bodies.
“It’s come to my attention that there are some people who are giving you a hard time because of your seat in the courtroom,” he said.
“I can handle that, Your Honor,” I replied.
“You must understand that they’re giving me a hard time as well because of your seat in the courtroom,” he said.
For a minute, I thought the judge was going to take my seat away from me.
He continued, “I would like you to know that I assigned you that seat. That seat is yours for the length of the trial.”
“Thank you, Your Honor. I am very grateful.”
Ito stood up, indicating that the meeting was over. “Have you ever seen anything like this, Mr. Dunne?” He was referring to the massive media event that the trial was becoming.
“No, I haven’t, Your Honor, and I’ve covered a lot of high-profile trials.”
The judge looked me squarely in the eye. “You see, I felt very safe giving you a seat next to the Goldman family and the Brown family. I knew that you would know how to deal with the families, that you wouldn’t intrude on them or ask questions.”
I understood the judge’s look and words. I knew that he realized that I, like Louis Brown, the father of Nicole, and Fred Goldman, the father of Ron, was the father of a murdered child.
“Thank you, Your Honor,” I said as I went out the door.
In 1982, my daughter, Dominique, aged 22, was strangled to death by a former boyfriend who stalked her and killed her. Costumed as a sacristan in a Catholic monastery, he read the Bible throughout the trial, a cheap courtroom trick that fooled the jury. I experienced inner rage when the killer received a sentence of a mere six years, which was cut to three years on the day of the sentencing. Before dismissing the jury, the judge thanked them on behalf of both families. I stood up in the courtroom and screamed at the judge, “Don’t thank them on behalf of my family, Judge Katz.” I was removed from the court by two bailiffs. The killer was released after two and a half years. I was so crazed with grief and anger that I went to a private detective on lower Sunset Boulevard to inquire about hiring a killer to kill my daughter’s killer. Of course, I would never have gone through with it, even if the private detective hadn’t talked me out of it. I wrote about it instead and brought a halt to the career of the judge.
The point of telling you this is that I totally understand the rage of Fred Goldman and the hatred he felt for O.J. Simpson and Johnnie Cochran. I had had my own version of what Fred Goldman and his wife and daughter were going through. We became so close during those ten months that I was not afraid to tell Fred when he went too far in his media outbursts. He was fearless. The outraged public cheered him. He was the only one who dared take on the formidable Johnnie Cochran, whom I believe would have instigated riots in the city if Simpson had been found guilty. Among the many things I admired about Fred Goldman was how articulate he was when he stood before the news cameras. He was a man to be reckoned with. I also became enormously close to Fred’s wife, Patti, and his daughter, Kim. I understood the Goldmans, and the Goldmans understood me, and we became friends.
A lot of the time, I sat next to Kim. What a wonderful young heartbroken woman she was. What a sister she must have been to Ron. I adored her like the daughter I had lost to murder. We whispered to each other throughout the day about what was going on in front of us. One day, she told me she couldn’t stand it when I referred to O.J. Simpson as O.J. when I talked about him. She said it was too familiar, too friendly. I thought so too. It didn’t work for us to call him Simpson. I said to Kim, “What about referring to him as the killer when we talk?” From then on, whenever he entered the courtroom, we’d say to each other, “Here comes the killer.”
We all should have known when the long-sequestered jury only deliberated for a couple of hours after a ten month trial that something was amiss, especially when several of the jurors had arrived at the deliberation with their bags packed. The utter shock of hearing the words “Not Guilty” became a never-to-be-forgotten moment in all of our lives. The Court TV camera cut to the Goldmans, Kim’s tear-stained face was buried in her devastated father’s chest. On camera, my mouth was hanging open in disbelief. I love the Goldman family and whatever they do to destroy Simpson, even turning his own book, If I Did It, against him has my full backing.
DOMINICK DUNNE
August 2007
EPILOGUE
FOLLOWING THE LAW: The Extraordinary Story Behind the Publication of If I Did It
MORE THAN A decade ago, the Law gave Fredric Goldman a $19 million wrongful-death civil judgment for the loss of his 25-year-old son, Ron Goldman. That civil judgment reflected a jury’s conclusion, by clear and convincing evidence, that Ron was murdered. The bulk of that judgment, more than $12 million, was punitive. The jury determined that the murderer was guilty and needed to be punished. The Law gave Fred that judgment, and then it said to Fred, “Now go out and enforce it … if you can.”
Imagine if your loved one was murdered. Now imagine further that you know who did it. Everyone knows who did it. But the killer still walks free. He publicly taunts and criticizes you. And the only justice you have ever been given is a monetary judgment against that murderer. A monetary judgment? What are you supposed to do with that? The unfortunate truth is that if the judgment is to be enforced at all, then you have to enforce it. No one else can. No one else will. If you do not enforce the judgment, then the judgment simply does not exist.
And if you try to enforce the judgment, then you will need the help of many people, especially lawyers, who you cannot afford to pay, and you are in for a long, hard fight. The murderer is popular and charismatic, many people still support him, he has publicly bragged that he will never pay a penny on the judgment, and he has the help of his own lawyers, who he can pay.
Anyone in such a position faces a dilemma: to fight for justice or not to fight. Under such circumstances, who can blame a person for simply deciding to leave justice to the hand of fate? Maybe some wars are not worth fighting, and maybe fate should decide what becomes of the killer. No one should be faulted for choosing that path, for choosing not to fight.
By the same token, no one should be faulted for choosing the other path. Some might even say that it is not a choice at all, but rather a function of who and what we are, what we believe, and what we feel compelled to do.
Fred Goldman and his daughter, Kim, felt compelled to fight. And fight they did. Ron was Fred’s only son and Kim’s only sibling. Ron was savagely ripped from their lives. He was a young man, full of life. But the killer furiously and repeatedly stabbed him until Ron’s life slowly drained out of him. It was not quick or painless. Make no mistake about it, regardless of how pleasing to the eye or to the ear that killer might seem, the killer who did that to Ron is a monster. People remember that Ron Goldman was murdered, but people forget how.
I cannot imagine what it must be like for a father to lose his only son, especially in that manner. The first day I met Fred, he told me he did not like it when people asked him about “closure.” I also cannot imagine what it must be like for Kim to lose her only brother and her only sibling. Siblings are the only people who know each other their whole lives, and the bond between an only brother and an only sister seems especially strong. Kim once said to me, “There is not a day that goes by that I do not miss my brother.” Kim and Fred do not speak the name of the murderer. He is simply called “the killer.” He does not even get the benefit of a capital “k.”
Fred and Kim could never get Ron back. But they could pursue the only justice they were ever given. They
could try to enforce the civil judgment any way possible under the Law. It is hard to follow the Law while others break it. Fred and Kim have faced terrible obstacles and choices. At times, public pressure has been overwhelming. Some people have even called them “greedy” for trying to enforce their judgment.
It is difficult to defend such a system of justice, but I do defend it. I am one of the many lawyers who have tried to help Fred and Kim pursue their civil judgment. I am also a resident of Los Angeles. I have lived here since 1991, when I began my studies at the UCLA School of Law. My tenure in Los Angeles spans the years before the murders and the years after, including both trials, criminal and civil. Many members of the legal community, here and elsewhere, have been touched or impacted by this case. There are those who see it is a terrible mark on our legal system. I do not. I respect and accept the many careful determinations and sincere efforts that many judges and jurors have devoted to this matter, and, above all else, I adhere to them. That is my job: to follow the Law.
The wheels of justice sometimes turn slowly and in mysterious ways, but those wheels do keeping turning and grinding toward their inevitable result. The Law is a reflection of the deep human need for justice. Humans are not perfect, and neither is the Law or the system in which it operates. But without it, life would be far worse.
And so the problem remains: how do you enforce a civil judgment that appears to be unenforceable? Try to follow the Law. With O.J. Simpson, however, that was very difficult. He has at least two seemingly impenetrable defenses. First, he lives in Florida, which gives him an unlimited homestead exemption. That means that he can own a home in Florida, and that home cannot be foreclosed upon to pay his debts. Even if he robbed a bank and used the stolen money to buy a home in Florida, the bank he stole it from could not take away that home. Second, the bulk of Simpson’s identifiable income comes from pensions (a number of which he created with the assistance of other lawyers), and pension proceeds are exempt from judgment collection. Simpson and his lawyers did a good job of protecting him from the judgment.
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