If I Did It

If I Did It

IF I DID IT

AUTHOR'S NOTE:
If I did it, this is what happened.
IF I DID IT. Copyright © 2006 by O.J. Simpson. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of
America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without writ-
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FIRST EDITION
Designed by Kris Tobiassen
Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data has been applied for.
ISBN 10: 0-06-123828-7
ISBN 13: 978-0-06-123828-4

CONTENTS
1. THE LUCKIEST GUY IN THE WORLD ................... 1
2. SO HAPPY TOGETHER ................................................. 35
3. PERIOD OF CONFUSION ............................................ 65
4. THE TWO NICOLES ...................................................... 97
5. THINGS FALL APART .................................................... 113
6. THE NIGHT IN QUESTION ..................................... 135
7. THE INTERROGATION ................................................ 173
8. THE FIGHT OF MY LIFE .......................................... 205

1
THE LUCKIEST GUY
I N THE WORLD
I'm going to tell you a story you've never heard before, because no
one knows this story the way I know it. It takes place on the night
of June 12, 1994, and it concerns the murder of my exwife, Nicole
Brown Simpson, and her young friend, Ronald Goldman. I want
you to forget everything you think you know about that night
because I know the facts better than anyone. I know the players.
I've seen the evidence. I've heard the theories. And, of course, I've
read all the stories: That I did it. That I did it but I don't know I did
it. That I can no longer tell fact from fiction. That I wake up in the
middle of the night, consumed by guilt, screaming.
Man, they even had me wondering, What if I did it?
Well, sit back, people. The things I know, and the things I
believe, you can't even imagine. And I'm going to share them

IF I DID IT I 3
with you. Because the story you know, or think you know—that's
not the story. Not even close. This is one story the whole world
got wrong.
First, though, for those of you who don't know me, my name
is Orenthal James Simpson—“O.J.” to most people. Many years
ago, a lifetime ago, really, I was a pretty good football player. I set
a few NCAA records, won the Heisman trophy, and was named
the American Football Conference's Most Valuable Player three
times. When I retired from football, in 1978, I went to work for
NBC, as a football analyst, and in the years ahead I was inducted
into both the College Football Hall of Fame and the Pro Football
Hall of Fame.
I did a little acting, too, and for a number of years I was a
pitchman for Hertz, the rental car people. Some of you might
remember me from the television spots: I was always running late,
pressed for time, leaping over fences and cars and piles of luggage to
catch my flight. If you don't see the irony in that, you will.
All of that was a long time ago, though, a lifetime ago, as I
said—all of that was before the fall. And as I sit here now, trying to
tell my story, I'm having a tough time knowing where to begin.
Still, I've heard it said that all stories are basically love stories, and
my story is no exception. This is a love story, too. And, like a lot of
love stories, it doesn't have a happy ending.
Let me take you back a few years, to the summer of 1977. I
was married then, to my first wife, Marguerite, and we were about
to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary, but it was not a good
time for us. Marguerite and I had been on shaky ground for a
number of years, and at one point had actually separated, but we
reconciled for the sake of our two kids, Arnelle, then nine, and
Jason, seven. A few months into it, though, while Marguerite and
I were in the middle of dinner, she set down her fork and gave me
a hard look.
“What?” I asked.
“This isn't working,” she said. 'And I'm five months pregnant.“
I knew the marriage wasn't working, but the news of the preg-
nancy was a real shock.
We finished dinner in silence—we were at the house on
Rockingham, in Brentwood—and after dinner went to bed, still
silent. I lay there in the dark, thinking about the unborn baby. I
knew Marguerite would never consider an abortion, and it made
for a very strange situation: The youngest Simpson would be join-
ing a family that had already fallen apart.
In the morning, I told Marguerite that I was going to go to
the mountains for a night or two, to think things through, and I
packed a small bag and took off.
On my way out of town, I stopped at a Beverly Hills jewelry
store to pick out an anniversary present for her—we'd been married
a decade earlier, on June 24, 1967—then paid for it and left. As I
made my way down the street, heading back to my car, I ran into a
guy I knew, and we went off to have breakfast at The Daisy, a cou-
ple of blocks away. We found a quiet, corner table, and our young
waitress came over. She was a stunner: Blonde, slim, and bright-
eyed, with a smile that could knock a man over.
” Who are you?" I asked.
2 O.J. SIMPSON

“Nicole.”
“Nicole what?”
“Nicole Brown.”
“How come I've never seen you before?”
“I just started here,” she said, laughing.
She was from Dana Point, she told me, about an hour south
of Los Angeles, and she'd come up for the summer to make a few
bucks.
“How old are you?” I asked.
“I just turned eighteen last month,” she said. “On May 19.”
“I'm sorry I missed your birthday,” I said.
She smiled that bright smile again. “Me, too,” she said.
After breakfast, I made the twohour drive to Lake Arrow-
head, and I spent the night up there thinking about my failing mar-
riage, and trying not to think about the gorgeous young waitress
who had served me breakfast. When I got back from the moun-
tains, I went home, having resolved absolutely nothing, and a few
nights later I went back to The Daisy. Nicole was there, and I took her
aside. “I want you to know that I'm married, but that my marriage
is ending,” I said. “So, you know—I'm still technically a 'married
man.' I don't know if that bothers you, but if it does I'm just letting
you know that things are going to change soon.”
“Is that the truth?” she asked.
“It's the truth,” I said.
Later that same night, I stopped by her apartment, on
Wilshire Boulevard, and took her to a party. By the end of the
evening, I was hooked.
That was in June 1977. For the next month, I saw her almost
every single day, until it was time to leave for football. I missed her,
and I spoke to her constantly. I also spoke to Marguerite, of
course, to see how the kids were doing, and to make sure the preg-
nancy was going okay, but I was pretty confused. I had a wife back
home, with a third kid on the way, and I was already falling in love
with another woman.
I came home in time for the delivery of the baby, but split
almost immediately after to rejoin the Buffalo Bills, the team I
was playing with back then. When football season ended, I
returned to L.A. and took a room at the Westwood Marquis, and
I found myself pretty much living two lives—one with
Marguerite, as an estranged husband and father of three, and the
other with Nicole, my new love. I spent most of my time with
Nicole, of course, at the hotel or at her little apartment, and from
time to time—when I was called away on business—she'd hit the
road with me.
Eventualy , I met Nicole's family—two sisters, Denise and
Dominique, who were living in New York back then; a third sister,
Tanya; and their mother, Juditha, who lived in Dana Point with her
husband, Lou. I didn't meet Lou till later, but that was only because
the situation never presented itself. He knew about me, of course,
and I don't think he had any objections, and if he did nobody
shared them with me.
Nicole also met my kids, but I waited an entire year before I
made the introductions. I was a little wary, for obvious reasons, but
Nicole took to them as if they were her own. They liked her, too.

Before long, the kids wouldn't go anywhere with me unless Nicole
was part of it.
I've got to tell you: Life was pretty good. I felt like the luckiest
guy in the world.
The following year, I moved out of the Westwood Marquis
and into the Hollywood Hills home of my old friend Robert
Kardashian, and I asked Nicole to move in with me. I think every-
one saw us as the perfect couple, including Nicole, but as the
months turned into years she began to drop notsosubtle hints
about getting married. I kept trying to put her off, of course,
because I'd failed at marriage once, and because I'd seen plenty of
other couples fail, but Nicole kept pushing. This led to a number of
heated arguments, and from time to time I was sure we were fin-
ished, but we survived—mostly because Nicole had faith in us. She
believed that our relationship was special, and that we could beat
the odds, and pretty soon she had me believing it, too.
In 1979, my divorce from Marguerite became final, and
Marguerite moved out of the Rockingham house. I was making
arrangements to put the place on the market, but Nicole talked me
out of it. “This is a beautiful place,” she said. “All it needs is a little
fixing up.”
She walked me through the house, room to room, telling me
what we could change, and how it would look, and it was obvious
that she had an eye for that kind of thing. She ended up redesigning
and redecorating the whole place, top to bottom, and it turned out
so well that I encouraged her to become a licensed interior decora-
tor. Within a year, she was working professionally.
She was happy. Sort of. The fact is, we still weren't married,
and I couldn't go a week without hearing about it: Didn't I love
her? Didn't we have a future? Couldn't we have children now, while
she was still young enough to enjoy them? These little discussions
often ended in arguments, and I absolutely dreaded them. Nicole
had a real temper on her, and I'd seen her get physical when she
was angry, so sometimes I just left the house and waited for the
storm to blow over.
Finally, in 1983, we got engaged. We had a big party, and
Nicole seemed very happy, but it didn't last. Within a few weeks
she was pushing me to set a date for the wedding. “I'm tired of
being your girlfriend,” she kept saying. “I want to get married
and have children. I've been helping you raise your own kids all
this time, and I love them, but I think it'd be nice to have a few
of our own.”
The woman had a point, but I just wasn't ready to commit,
and it wore her down.
One night in 1984, we were in the middle of another argu-
ment, and I went outside to get away from her. There was a tether
ball hanging from one of the trees, and a baseball bat lying nearby,
and I picked up the bat and took a few hard swings at the ball.
Nicole came out of the house and watched me for a few moments,
still angry, glaring, and I crossed into the driveway, sat on the hood
of her convertible Mercedes, and glared right back. I still had the
bat in my hand, and I remember flipping it into the air and acci-
dentally hitting one of the rims.
“You going to pay for that?” she snapped.

“Yeah,” I snapped back, then took the bat and whacked the
hood. “And I guess I'll pay for that, too, since it's my car—and since
I pay for everything around here.”
She shook her head, disgusted with me, and went into the
house, and I wandered back into the yard and took a few more
swings at the tether ball. It was crazy. It seemed all we did lately was
argue. People say a lot of marriages get into trouble at the seven-
year mark, and we weren't married, but we'd been together seven
years, and maybe that was the problem.
As I was trying to make sense of this, a Westec patrol car
pulled up to the gate. Nicole came out of the house to meet it, and
I realized it wasn't there by accident. The guy got out of the patrol
car and addressed us from beyond the gate. “We folks having a
problem here?”
“He just hit my car,” Nicole said. She turned to look at me,
still glaring, her arms folded across her chest.
“You want to file a complaint?”
Nicole was still staring at me, but I could see she was feeling a
little foolish.
“Ma'am?”
She turned to face the guy and apologized for summoning
him, and he got back into his patrol car and left. Nicole looked at
me again. I smiled and she smiled. A few weeks later, we set a date
for the marriage.
We got married on February 2, 1985, right there at the
Rockingham house. We had a private ceremony in the late after-
noon, with close friends and family, and followed it up with a
sevencourse dinner for three hundred people. We had put a big
tent over the tennis court, and hired a band, and people danced
into the morning hours. Just before dawn, we had a second sit-
down meal, kind of breakfastthemed. We didn't think there'd be
more than a hundred people left at the party, but most everyone
was having such a good time that they had refused to go home.
Nicole and I went to bed long after the sun came up. We were
happy. Maybe marriage is just a piece of paper, but it carries a lot of
weight.
A few days later, we flew down to Manzanilla, Mexico, for our
honeymoon. We stayed in a beautiful place called Las Hadas and
made love three times a day. That's why we were there, right? To
give Nicole a family of her own.
Six weeks after we got back to L.A., Nicole found out that she
was pregnant. She was so happy she was glowing—she looked lit up
from inside. She read just about every book ever written on preg-
nancy and motherhood, then went back and reread the ones she
liked, underlining the parts she found most interesting. I don't
remember her being sick once, or even feeling sick, and she was
never even in a bad mood, which was kind of weird, given all the
cliches about raging hormones and stuff. But I wasn't complaining.
Throughout the entire pregnancy, the only big issue—for her,
not for me—was food. She became obsessed about her weight, and
when her friends were around she was very vocal about the subject.
“A woman doesn't need to gain more than twentyfour pounds in
the course of the nine months,” she'd say, repeating it tirelessly. I
guess she thought she was a big pregnancy expert or something,