by Kim Goldman
She cried constantly, making everyone around her uneasy. No one knew what to say to her, or how to bring her comfort.
They stayed at the home of Joe’s mother, Janette, and Kim asked Joe to drive her from store to store, searching for the perfect candle that would burn for the entire twenty-four hours of Ron’s birthday. They stayed up until midnight when, as they sat around the kitchen table, Kim solemnly lit the candle. Then she and Joe, together with his mother, wrote a few words of love and remembrance for Ron. Kim watched as the flickering flame burned.
The next day, as they were driving around New York with Rob, one of Joe’s friends, they happened to pass a cemetery. Rob made an idle comment; he had read a newspaper story about grave robbers who were digging up bodies and stealing jewelry. Joe punched his friend in the arm and reminded him that the topic was not appropriate. Kim, in the backseat, was crying softly.
Back home, things were not much better. I was running some errands and Lauren was at a friend’s house. Deciding to relax in the pool, Patti put on her bathing suit, grabbed a towel, and went into the backyard. She floated on a raft for only a few minutes before a panic attack struck. She had the sudden, eerie feeling that she was being watched, and she realized: I’m here all by myself. The whole world now knows who we are and where we live. Anybody could come over that privacy wall at any moment, with a camera or a knife. There are a lot of crazy people out there.
She did not see or hear anyone, but the fear was so real, so tangible, that she jumped out of the pool and raced back into the house.
Later, when she told me what had happened, I tried to calm her. “Relax, don’t be silly,” I said, “you’re perfectly safe here.” But my advice did not help. She simply could not shake the ominous feeling.
We decided that we were not up to traveling to Chicago. And as we talked further, we grew concerned about Kim. We wondered if she was under too much stress to undergo surgery right now. I phoned Kim in New York, and she agreed to postpone the operation. She and Joe would change their flight reservations and come directly home.
Prior to leaving New York, Kim spoke to her cousin Stacy in Chicago. Stacy told her that Sharon was planning to file a wrongful-death lawsuit against Simpson, asking for $1 million in damages.
“I went crazy, absolutely nuts,” Kim told me. “I called Sharon and asked her what the hell was going on. She denied that she was going to file a suit and said that she didn’t know a thing about it.”
Michael was relieved to be away from the chaos in L.A. and to have a chance to think about something else for a while, but even in Chicago the media were hungry. A reporter tracked him down, but the doorman at his father’s apartment house ran interference, telling the newsman that he had the wrong Glass family.
As a retired defense attorney, Michael’s father tried to get him to look at things from both perspectives. Although he felt, as Michael did, that Simpson was probably guilty, he kept reminding him that it was possible that prosecutors would not be able to convict him. Michael bristled at this negativity, but knew that his dad was trying to keep him from being devastated if the worst happened.
For the first time in his life, Michael found himself truly scared. He did not want to be outside after dark. Ominous strangers seemed to lurk around every corner. If this horrible thing could have happened to Ron, it could happen to anyone. It could happen to him. While still in Chicago he bought an expandable metal billy club to keep in his car for protection. He dubbed it his “O. J. Beater.”
In the midst of this chaos, I had a family to feed, a mortgage payment to make. My clients had problems, new projects and questions, and it was my job to deal with them. In the ghastly context of my life, these details were trivial, but attention to them was what put food on the table. The simple fact was that I could not afford to attend every courtroom hearing. Kim was on her way back from New York. She and Patti would attend the remaining sessions of the preliminary hearing; I would try to get some business done and slip into the courtroom if and when I could. In addition, nearly every TV station in L.A. was covering the hearing, so I would have plenty of opportunity to follow the course of events.
I could not keep my mind even remotely centered on my job. However, I quickly discovered that I was blessed with numerous clients who were unbelievably understanding. Many of them said, “We can talk on the phone if you can’t make it over.” Some of them even offered to come to my office.
* * *
When the preliminary hearing resumed on July 5, Kim had her first chance to attend, her first opportunity to view the defendant in person.
The moment he entered the courtroom, Kim’s body began to shake. She was petrified.
He sat down at the defense table and placed his huge hands in front of him. Like Patti, Kim could not believe how large he was. She stared at his back, willing him to look in her direction, but he would not.
Patti and Kim listened to an array of witnesses, who now appeared before the world for the very first time. Each would take his or her place in the lore of this bizarre case.
Limousine driver Allan Park testified that Simpson did not respond to his repeated buzzing. He said that just before 11:00 P.M., he saw a shadowy figure—“six feet, two hundred pounds, black, wearing dark clothes”—move across the driveway and into Simpson’s house. Moments later, the buzzer was finally answered.
Simpson’s houseguest, Brian “Kato” Kaelin, testified that he heard thumping sounds outside his window, where a bloodstained glove was later discovered.
Detective Mark Fuhrman told how he spotted what he believed to be blood on the driver’s door of Simpson’s white Ford Bronco. Only then did he jump the fence to enter Simpson’s property, concerned that there might be more victims inside the home. Once inside the property, after talking to Kaelin, it was Fuhrman who found the bloody glove that matched the one left at the crime scene.
Detective Phil Vannatter also contended that Simpson, at that point, was not considered a suspect.
We respected the detectives’ long and dedicated service to the community, but Patti said, “I think they made a mistake by insisting that Simpson was not a suspect. I don’t pretend to know the ins and outs of the law, search warrants, procedures, that sort of thing, but I do know that when someone is killed, the spouse or the ex-spouse is automatically suspected, and it seemed a little disingenuous to deny it.”
We were scared. Would the judge rule that the search of Simpson’s estate was illegal and, therefore, throw out the evidence? And if she did, would Simpson even be held over for trial?
But Judge Kennedy-Powell ruled that the detectives had reason to believe that an emergency situation existed when they scaled the wall of Simpson’s estate. Thus the search was legal; the evidence could be used. We were tremendously relieved. “We just might get a fair trial,” Patti said.
Day after day the evidence continued to mount. Day after day Simpson appeared uglier and smaller.
Vannatter testified that Simpson had a cut on the knuckle of the middle finger of his left hand. Prosecutors introduced a photo taken after he returned from Chicago, showing the cut.
Vannatter’s partner, Detective Tom Lange, testified about a trail of bloody shoe prints that led away from the bodies. The shoe prints did not match the high-topped athletic shoes that Ron was wearing, and Nicole was barefoot.
LAPD Crime Lab supervisor Gregory Matheson said that the trail of spots and shoe prints was made by human blood. Concentrating on one particular sample taken from the cobblestone path leading away from the murder scene, he presented the results of blood-typing tests.
Marcia Clark asked, “Could Nicole Simpson have left the blood drop at 875 South Bundy?”
“No,” Matheson responded.
“With respect to Ronald Goldman … could he have been a source of that blood drop on the trail?”
“No.”
“With respect to the defendant, could he have been the source of the blood drop that was found on the trail at 875 South
Bundy?”
“Yes,” Matheson said. “He can be included in the group of possibles.”
Additional testimony told us that the odds against someone having an identical match were more than 200 to 1.
On the final day of the hearing, Patti and Kim were forced to endure the testimony of Deputy Medical Examiner Irwin Golden. And what he said was ghastly.
Nicole died from a cut to her throat so deep that it nicked her spinal column. Dr. Golden described it as a “gaping” wound and pointed to a chart that highlighted the gash in deep red. Nicole’s knife wounds were largely confined to her head and neck.
Ron suffered dozens of knife wounds up and down his body, several of which could have killed him—two punctures that entered through the rib cage and into his right lung, a pair of deep slashes across his throat, one of which had severed the jugular, a five-inch-deep wound to the left side of his abdomen, and a puncture of his left aorta. There was also a deep wound to the left thigh.
Dr. Golden said that both victims were cut on the hands, arms, and face. These were defensive wounds that indicated they attempted to fight off their attacker.
This was the first time we had been confronted with the exact nature of the attack. Kim could not shake the image of a knife going into her brother’s chest, and she clutched at her stomach, fighting nausea. At the same time she was petrified and full of rage at the man accused of doing it.
Patti’s mind reeled. Ron was not just murdered, she realized, he was butchered! Tears welled in her eyes as she thought of how scared he must have been. “He didn’t have a chance,” she whispered to Kim.
The image of the terror that Ron must have experienced was etched on our minds, forever.
The defense team raised questions about the medical examiner’s work, noting that he had waited hours before performing tests that might have more closely pinpointed the time of death. Dr. Golden seemed to wither under the attack.
Golden’s wife was seated behind us. During a sidebar, worried about the effects of his bumbling delivery, Kim leaned back and asked her, in a whisper, “Is he nervous?”
“No,” Mrs. Golden said, gushing with pride, “he’s always like this.”
Judge Kennedy-Powell looked directly at the defendant and asked him to stand. She said simply, “The court feels that there is ample evidence to establish the strong suspicion of the guilt of the accused.” She ordered that Simpson would be arraigned in Superior Court on July 22. Until then, he would continue to be held at the Men’s Central Jail. There would be a trial. There would be no bail.
We were thrilled. Patti and Kim hugged each other and later congratulated Marcia Clark. “One down, one to go,” Marcia said.
Kim returned to her job at Wells Fargo Bank in San Francisco, but her attention was focused on the upcoming trial.
Each morning she took a bus to work, and the trip became a daily half hour of terror. She was obsessed with an irrational fear that the bus would tip over, she would be killed, and I would have to bury her, too. She decided that she was no longer afraid of dying, but terrified about what would happen to those left behind. She checked and rechecked her wallet, making sure that everything was in order. Morbid questions flew though her head: Do I have my ID with me? Will they be able to identify me? Who’s going to tell my dad?
Sometimes the panic caused her to hyperventilate.
She tried to calm herself by beginning to compose the victim’s statement that she would deliver when the defendant was convicted. She asked herself: What will I say to the court? A list of rabid obscenities came to mind.
NINE
Patti and I were back in the courtroom on July 22 for the formal arraignment. When Simpson was asked how he pled, he declared in a cocky, arrogant voice that he was “absolutely one hundred percent not guilty!” His demeanor, his complete failure to behave like a truly innocent man further persuaded us of his probable guilt. Why was he not pleading to take a lie-detector test? Why was he not screaming that there was a real murderer on the loose?
Patti shook her head. “There is no emotion there,” she said, “no sense of loss, no grief. He seems concerned only about himself.”
In San Francisco, Kim was at work, taking a coffee break, watching television in the employee lounge. When she saw the defendant respond to the formal charge, she felt physically ill. She ran downstairs to her co-workers, Amy, Rae, and Barbara, and shared with them what had happened. As always, they were in her corner, comforting and supporting her.
Meanwhile, two more players entered the arena. Judge Lance A. Ito was assigned to try the case and Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr., joined the team of defense lawyers. We had never heard of either man.
Contrary to what Sharon had told Kim over the phone, her Los Angeles-based attorney, Michael Brewer, filed a wrongful-death civil suit against Simpson. Sharon sought an unspecified amount of damages for the loss of Ron’s “companionship, society, comfort, attention … and support.” We thought that she had lost all that twenty years earlier. We were now, however, beginning to understand why she had appeared at Ron’s funeral in the company of an attorney.
I was very angry. How could money be on her mind at this moment? I wondered. Ron had been dead for only five weeks and she had reduced his life to a search for dollars. Loss of comfort? Loss of companionship? She would not have known Ron if he had bumped into her.
Reached by a reporter, I commented, “I don’t know anything about it other than what I’ve heard on the news. But it doesn’t surprise me.”
As part of her strategy, Sharon petitioned the court for power of attorney over Ron’s estate. I felt boxed into a corner. I could not allow this absurdity to continue, but I did not want to dredge up past miseries. Once again, my attorney friends came to the rescue. They told me they would file executor papers on my behalf, and not to worry about it.
Nevertheless, Kim went on the attack, writing a letter to the judge. When I read it, I felt the pain begin to surface. Kim wrote:
Your Honor …
I will get right to the point:
Sharon Rufo, our birth mother, made a conscientious choice every day for 20 years, to have no relationship with her two children.
My father, Fred Goldman, took on the challenge as any loving parent would, to raise two babies from ages 6 and 3, singlehandedly….
The last time Ron spoke to Sharon, was 3 years ago and before that he had not seen or spoken to her in at least 15 or more years. I, on the other hand, have had slightly more contact, none of which was positive or resulting in any type of ongoing communication.
Without rehashing every incident to explain the lack of mothering on her behalf, my father NEVER once said an ill word of her to Ron and I, even until this day. The decision to write this was mine as I am also sure Ron would have done the same.
Sharon Rufo gave up her right to be in control of anything when she walked out on us 20 years ago and it is beyond my comprehension that she would take the death of my brother and use it to her advantage to be in control now.
I am pleading with the court to not allow Sharon Rufo to be executor. She has a history of lying, cheating and manipulating situations to her best interest, which never included Ron and I, even until this day. She is continuing to be selfish as well as self serving, having no regard for others or the pain she may be causing, especially at a time as tragic as this one. Please do not grant her the opportunity to subject myself and my family to any more pain and grievance than we are already suffering.
My father is a caring, supportive, sincere and fair man. The three of us were/are very close, and are very honored, proud and fortunate to have been raised by such a wonderful and dedicated father. He sacrificed his life for the benefit of his children. Please, don’t take away all he has done, especially at a time when he is so vulnerable. My brother has already been taken from him, please don’t take away the last chances he has to be close to Ron and continue the wonderful job he has been doing for Ron and I our whole lives. My brother would want it t
his way….
Immediately after our divorce, Sharon had custody of the children and I had full visitation rights. Then I learned from Ron’s grammar school teacher that he was acting up in class and not doing as well as he had been. Knowing that divorce can be hard on kids, I pushed for all of us to get some counseling. Sharon balked at the idea, but eventually agreed to attend some of the sessions. In our early conversations with the counselor, Ron and Kim complained about Sharon’s lack of attention. She bailed out, and refused to continue the process.
I offered to take over the day-to-day responsibility for the children. Realizing that she would have more time for herself, Sharon readily agreed. So that the children would not have to change schools, I moved into Sharon’s apartment and she found another place.
We signed an informal agreement. Now our situations were reversed. I had custody, and she had full visitation rights. But she seldom utilized those rights. She often failed to show up for prearranged visits, and when the children tried to call her, she was seldom home. When they did speak to her, she offered lame excuses for not coming: She needed to do her laundry; she did not have money for gasoline. Sometimes, after she made these excuses, the kids would see her driving around the neighborhood.
After this scenario played out for one chaotic year, I decided that it was time to formalize the agreement and contacted my attorney to file the necessary papers.
On Friday evening, I arrived home from work, opened the door and called out, as I always did, “Hi, I’m home!” I was greeted with silence. The housekeeper was gone. The children were gone. Ron and Kim’s closets were empty. Their toys had vanished, along with them.
Immediately, I picked up the phone and called Sharon. Her response was a terse “I don’t know anything about it,” and she hung up the phone. I called one of Sharon’s sisters-in-law, Mary, and received a similar response. Then I called Sharon’s other sister-in-law, Donna. She was as shocked and panicked as I and concluded that Sharon and Mary must be in this plot together.
