by Kim Goldman
His enormous generosity—and that of the many thousands of people who responded—was overwhelming to our family.
Sadly, we cannot thank him publicly, for fear that his company might suffer a backlash from people so shortsighted in their view that they would boycott a certain brand name.
The support that we have received from total strangers has given us the ability to continue the fight, and there is no way we can adequately thank everyone who has helped. It reassures us that there are legions of decent people in the world who just want to do the right thing.
Originally our civil suit was filed jointly by Kim and me. However, Ron had died without a will. Since he had no children, a court ruled that his parents were his legal heirs and, under California law, a wrongful-death suit can be filed only by an heir. Thus, Kim’s name was dropped from the lawsuit. As far as we were concerned, it was a mere change in the paperwork. Our family was in this together.
Santa Monica Superior Court Judge Alan B. Haber “conjoined” the lawsuits filed by Sharon, the Brown family, and us. For the convenience of the court, the three cases would be tried as one.
The rules for a civil trial are quite different from a criminal trial. Only nine of the twelve jurors must agree on a verdict. And that verdict is based, not upon whether there is a reasonable doubt, but upon a “preponderance of the evidence.” The legal definition of the term simply means that if 51 percent of the evidence by volume or weight points to the defendant’s guilt, the juror must decide in favor of the plaintiffs.
This time, the murderer could not lateral the ball to his attorneys. He would have to “limp” to the witness stand on his arthritic legs. His left hand, its knuckle healed from the deep cut found there the day after the murders, would rest on a Bible. He would raise his right hand, the one that had dropped the bloody glove behind Kato Kaelin’s room, and swear to tell the truth.
Baker managed to delay the day of reckoning, and rumors surfaced that the killer would flee the country to avoid giving us his sworn deposition. Patti and I did not believe this would happen. He had already gotten away with murder, both literally and figuratively, and we were sure that he assumed the same thing would happen this time. “His ego will keep him here,” Patti said.
But Kim was beset by doubts and bitter over the turn of events. This was our case, not the state’s; we were supposed to be in control, not the murderer.
We did not learn what would happen until a day or two before Monday, January 22, when Dan called and said, “Okay, he’s coming.”
I made my way to a tenth-floor suite in West Los Angeles, not much more than a mile from the scene of Ron’s death. These were the offices of Dan Petrocelli’s law firm. We assembled in a long conference room. The witness would sit at one end of the table as he gave his pretrial deposition under oath.
Kim asked to be allowed in. But since she was no longer a legal party to the wrongful-death suit, the killer could refuse the request, and he did so. “I’m all of one hundred pounds,” Kim complained. “What can I do?” Asked by a reporter why he had refused, Kim snapped, “Because he knows that we know he murdered my brother. Would you face me?”
The killer swaggered in. He schmoozed his way around the room, jokingly reliving his latest golf game with his attorneys. He had a big, all’s-right-with-the-world grin plastered across his face, and his movements were extremely animated. He conveyed the sense that these proceedings were no big deal. He was just a happy-go-lucky guy.
I fixed my gaze on him. He looked at me, but quickly averted his glance. I continued to stare, but after a while I determined that I was not going to accomplish anything by looking at him except to give myself a splitting headache. He was not worth it.
A reporter asked me later how it felt to sit at the same table with the man I had openly called a coward and a murderer. “Necessary, but difficult,” I replied. “Let’s just say, you know what my feelings are and it would be difficult to be in the same room.”
A pattern emerged immediately. Whenever Dan asked a benign question, the killer looked him right in the eye and answered directly. Conversely, when the questions were of substance to the case, he appeared spacey and his gaze slipped past Dan. He took many deep, labored breaths. He fidgeted constantly. At key moments, his lead attorney, Robert Baker, asked for a short recess.
His testimony ran counter to both the physical evidence and the eyewitness accounts of scores of individuals. He contradicted himself. This is a man who so loves the sound of his own voice that he frequently volunteered information in defiance of his attorney’s advice, once prompting Baker to ask rhetorically, “Am I a potted plant?”
The tedious process took a total of nine days and produced a 2,582-page transcript. Dan would revisit this murky territory during the civil trial, and there were a few notable statements that were sure to cause the murderer serious discomfort.
I was not able to be present during every day of the deposition. Once, when I had to leave early, we asked if Kim could take my place for the afternoon.
“Absolutely not!” was the response, and the door was slammed shut.
“It’s very unusual,” Dan said. “Normally a family member is allowed in, if only for moral support.”
“You know,” Kim observed, “it’s always women who speak out that he attacks. Faye Resnick, Denise Brown, Marcia Clark—now me. There’s a pattern here.”
If she was not to be allowed inside, Kim vowed to haunt the halls. Every day she stood near the closed door, as close as she could get without coming inside. Before and after the sessions, and during breaks, she availed herself of every opportunity to glare at the killer.
Suddenly she found herself face-to-face with him, so close that she could smell his breath.
He looked her up and down and flashed his insulting half-smile.
“Don’t do that!” Kim thundered.
He chuckled.
Later, Kim moaned, “Of all the things I have longed to say, all I could come up with is, ‘Don’t do that!’”
The Browns’ attorney, John Q. Kelly, described a disturbing scene to me. Everyone was taking a break. The videotape was not running. The court reporter was not transcribing. The killer and his attorneys were, once again, discussing their golf games. It seemed to be all they could ever talk about, and Kelly bowed out of the conversation. He was lost in his own thoughts when the killer said something directly to him. Kelly did not bother to answer. Unaccustomed to being ignored, the killer became agitated and kicked at Kelly’s chair. Then, when he still did not respond, the killer walked over and slapped him on the back.
I asked Kelly to be more specific, to reenact exactly what had happened. He kicked my chair with such force that I almost tipped over, and when he slapped me on the back, he knocked the breath out of me.
“Are you sure you aren’t exaggerating this?” I asked. Kelly swore that he was not. Sharon’s attorney, Michael Brewer, was also in the room at the time and verified what had happened.
Clearly this is a man who must always be the center of attention. And if he senses that he is being ignored, he reacts with force.
TWENTY-NINE
Early on we had formed a negative impression of Faye Resnick. Her book about her friendship with Nicole, proclaimed as sordid and opportunistic, and her admitted drug use left her open to criticism and ridicule. We had not read her memoir and had been angered that she chose that route rather than protecting her credibility as a witness, which might have helped us in court.
As time passed, however, Resnick became more of a central figure. The defendant claimed that Resnick, not Nicole, was the real target that night, set up for a “hit” by drug dealers. The two were in agreement on only one major point: In the months preceding the murders, Resnick and the defendant had spoken frequently. The killer claimed that he was upset with Resnick and her drug-using friends, and was worried about Nicole being drawn into her world. Resnick had a very different story to tell when the attorneys traveled to New York to take her
deposition.
It quickly became clear why she had been so certain, from the very beginning, who the killer was.
Referring to the defendant, Dan asked, “You have seen him fly off the handle?”
“Yes, I have,” Resnick answered.
“Now, during those occasions when you saw Mr. Simpson get very angry toward Nicole, describe what his face would look like when he would get angry. And for that matter—you can describe, like, his whole body. You know what I mean?”
“Yes, I know,” she responded. “O.J. would get very—his facial structure, his jaw would protrude, his teeth would clench, sweat would come pouring from his head. You could see that his body, that he would perspire through his clothing. His eyes would get narrow and black. He became—and the only way to describe it is animalistic when he would become angry at Nicole.”
“And that would happen suddenly?” Dan asked.
“It would happen within minutes.”
“You could see changes in his face?”
“Yes.”
“What about his body? Was there any body language that also changed?”
“He just became bigger than life. He just got big.”
“Dominant?”
“Very—it was very aggressive, just, you—”
“Did it frighten you?”
“Absolutely.”
Much of Resnick’s testimony consisted of conversations with Nicole that would probably be considered as hearsay evidence, inadmissible in court, so we were particularly interested in her encounters with the defendant himself. According to Resnick, in the month preceding the murders, he telephoned her numerous times, threatening to kill Nicole because he could not bear the shame and humiliation that he felt she inflicted on him by breaking off their relationship. She quoted the defendant from a May 1994 conversation: “I know she is seeing another man, and if I catch her with another man … I will kill her.”
One evening we played a game called “What If?” One of the questions was “What if I only had an hour left to live?”
I responded, “For the first five minutes, I would do the obvious, then I would do something else for the remaining fifty-five.”
Kim was not so charitable. “I would beat him, take him into a corner, and torture him until he was dead, and I would take the full hour to do it.”
In my wildest fantasy I see myself alone with the killer. No one sees me come into the room and no one sees me leave. I put a gun to his head and I say, “You have one chance to tell the truth. If you tell the truth, you will live. If you lie to me, you will die. The question is this: Did you murder my son?” And if he says, “Yes,” I say, “I lied, you piece of trash, and you’re out of here.”
I recognize this as the fantasy of a father in agony. In reality, I could never do this. It is not who I am or who we are.
However, sometimes fantasy and reality come too close for comfort. I had just completed a business meeting in a pleasant, modern office complex in L.A., and as I walked through the parking lot, I heard someone call out, “Mr. Goldman?”
I turned and saw a man walking toward me. He introduced himself and said, “I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am about your loss. How are you doing?” Before I could answer, he continued. “I have an office right up there.” He pointed to the second floor of the building I had just left and kept talking. “Look, if you ever decide you want to kill that son of a bitch, just let me know. I can get you a high-powered rifle and scope that will never be able to be traced and you can take care of him.”
“No, no, no,” I stammered quickly. “I don’t have any interest in anything like that.” I desperately wanted to exit myself from this conversation.
“Yeah, well, I understand,” the man said. “If you don’t want to be the one to do it, I’ll find you somebody who can do it for you.”
My mouth was agape. I could not believe what I was hearing. A total stranger was standing here, in the middle of a parking lot, in the bright California sunshine, offering to commit, or arrange for, cold-blooded murder. And he was deadly serious. “Thanks, but no thanks,” did not seem quite strong enough, but that was all I could muster.
As I walked away he called out, “If you ever change your mind you know where to find me.”
I was deeply shaken. A whole family of things came to mind as I drove home after this freakish encounter. For an instant I wondered if this could be a setup, a sting of some kind designed to get me into trouble, but upon reflection, I doubted it. You only have to pick up the newspaper or watch the news on television to realize that there are many people who perceive violence as a legitimate solution to their grievances.
A long-suppressed memory returned to me.
My mind transported me back to Army basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. We were there for one reason. We were being taught to kill.
The instructors “armed” us with a rifle-bayonet mock-up—little more than a stick, padded at both ends. We looked like hockey goalies, wearing helmets, padding on our chests, and crotch protectors. Two by two, young soldiers entered a sandpit.
The training sergeant grew frustrated with the ineptitude of the combatants. None of the men were mastering the techniques to his satisfaction. He looked at me; I was a squad leader. “Get in there, Goldman,” he ordered. “You show ’em how it’s done.”
So I suited up and entered the pit. Instantly my opponent whacked me on the side of my head.
I went berserk. Survival instinct took over, and I flew through the motions I had been taught. After I knocked my opponent on his butt, the sergeant sent in another, and I dispatched him quickly. The sergeant continued to throw men into the pit and, one after another, I crushed them into submission. The illusion was very powerful; I truly felt as if I were fighting for my life.
Not until later that night did the emotional impact of the training exercise descend on me. I realized that if I was placed in a kill-or-be-killed situation, I was capable of violence. If I had to, I would fight for my life. If I had to, I could kill. But I would be left with a dismal sense of remorse. I wondered: How can someone consciously decide to kill someone else and not think twice about it? It is beyond my understanding.
Now, many years later, as I drove home on the Ventura Freeway, I recalled other memories from my military training. A young soldier learns to kill in a multitude of ways. The belt that holds up your pants can be used to strangle an enemy. If you put a lemon-sized rock into your sock, it can crush a skull with one powerful swing.
But the most troublesome techniques then, and especially now, were the uses of knives and bayonets. They can slash a windpipe or pierce a heart with chilling speed and efficiency.
I believe that we learn things throughout our lives that never leave us. Those things come to the surface when we need them. We surprise ourselves, often, with bits of information and pieces of knowledge that we had not thought of, consciously, in years. They are there, etched into some hidden corner of the mind. And I believe that phenomenon came into vicious play on the night of June 12, 1994.
During the fifth day of the killer’s deposition, Dan had asked about the time he was in Puerto Rico to play the role of a character named Bullfrog in an action-adventure movie entitled Frogman.
There was one scene where he wielded a serrated knife. Dan asked, “Did anybody show you in connection with that particular scene how to perform the physical actions?”
The killer replied, “How they wanted it to be done, yes.”
Dan produced excerpts from the Frogman script and read them aloud:
Without a sound, Bullfrog has entered the dive show shop. Doesn’t turn on the lights. Doesn’t have to…. Bullfrog comes up with a lethal, serrated dive knife…. Bullfrog cases the area. All clear…. Looking toward the back of the shop. Through the mazes of counters and gear, he sees a shadow…. Bullfrog steals past. Silent. Bullfrog’s made a circle. He’s behind the shadow. He lunges and, in one swift move, has the intruder on the floor, one arm twisted back in a
punishing hold.
That scene was filmed two months prior to Ron’s murder.
THIRTY
We joined three other couples for dinner one evening. I had not seen one of the men there in several weeks. He asked me a few questions about the trial, and we ended up sitting at the end of the table, ignoring the others, and discussing the criminal and civil cases for hours. On the drive home, Patti was very frustrated with me. “This cannot be the focus of everything we do,” she said.
“Well, he asked me,” I countered. “He wanted to know.”
“Well, next time it happens, could you just say you appreciate their interest but you don’t want to spend the majority of the evening discussing it? Tell them you’re trying to focus on other things during the weekends. It’s so consuming.”
Patti busied herself building a clientele for her electrology business and was finally able to rejoin her tennis league. Michael and Lauren were immersed in high school activities and their respective social scenes. I tried to attend to the details of the civil case and, in the meantime, sell point-of-purchase displays.
But Kim’s life had been on hold since she had dropped out of school and moved back home. After the criminal trial she was in limbo. She signed up for some additional college courses to, as she put it, get her brain functioning again, but she no longer wanted to major in psychology.
None of us had ever sought the limelight, but bits and pieces of our lives continued to be on display. Ron’s picture—and sometimes ours—regularly appeared on the covers of various tabloids, alongside screaming headlines that often reported erroneous information. So many people, all over the world, were so hungry for scandal that we never knew what would surface next. Kim, especially, felt naked.
Tricia Argyropoulis, a cousin of Ron’s friend Pete Argyris, was one of the many who had left a message on Ron’s answering machine the weekend that he died. She and Kim grew close. Tricia is an up-front, in-your-face kind of woman. Once, she and Kim visited a club called Roxbury that Ron used to frequent. They were enjoying themselves, dancing, when a woman intentionally pushed Kim. Kim just stood there, frozen. Tricia saw what had happened and immediately told the woman off. After her tirade, Kim said, “Gosh, you’re tough!”
