If I Did It (3 page)

them to drop the charges. I guess they're afraid of what those guys
will do to them when it's all over, so they find all sorts of reasons to
change their stories: It was a misunderstanding, officer. Deep down
I really love him. I don't want to hurt the kids. Now that I think
about it, the whole thing was my fault. Many women kept getting
victimized as a result, repeatedly, sometimes with deadly results,
and the cops were trying to figure out how to deal with the prob-
lem. In fact, they were attempting to put a new law on the books
that would give them the power to make the charges stick, even if
the complaint was withdrawn. And I guess what happened was,
someone at the L.A.P.D. decided that I would make the perfect
poster boy for spousal abuse—a perfect, highprofile launch for
their campaign.
There was one glitch, however, and it was a big one. Back in
those days, officers could only make an arrest if it was warranted by
the situation, or if the perpetrator had a history of abuse. Our situ-
ation hadn't warranted it—no one was getting beat up—and I didn't
have a history of abuse. Still, just in case anything had slipped
though the cracks, the investigating officer sent a memo to various
neighborhood precincts, asking if any officer had ever responded to
a domestic disturbance at my home. Well, wouldn't you know it—
they got lucky. The Westec security guard who had stopped by dur-
ing our one previous altercation, in 1984, had since become a
member of the LAPD, and both he and one of his fellow officers,
Mark Fuhrman, responded to the memo. In his response, Fuhrman
actually claimed that he'd been at my house that night, with the guy
from Westec, and that he'd talked w both me and Nicole. If
Fuhrman was there, and if he actually talked to either of us, I sure
as hell don't remember it. But that didn't matter. The LAPD had
been looking for a prior incident, and they'd just found it.
In the end, I was convicted of spousal abuse. I was put on pro-
bation, given a few hundred hours of community service, and
ordered to pay a modest fine. I wasn't happy about it, but I didn't
think the charges were worth fighting, and I regret it to this day. If
you don't fight the charges, they stick. And these stuck. Suddenly, I
was a convicted wifebeater.
Did I physically drag Nicole out of the bedroom and push her
out into the hallway? Yes. Did I beat her? No. I never once raised
my hand to her—never once—and if Nicole were alive today she'd
tell you the same thing. In fact, right after the newspaper story
broke, when she talked to her mother about it, she took responsibil-
ity for the whole ugly incident. And even during the divorce pro-
ceedings years later, when she had good reason to want to lie about
my alleged violent nature, Nicole refused to play that game. She
told her la s that the incident had been blown completely out
of proportion—and that she'd instigated the violence, not me.
Much later, months after the murders, I spoke about the inci-
dent with Dr. Bernard Yudowitz, a forensic psychiatrist. I remem-
ber crying as I told him about going up to San Francisco in 1986
to see my father, who was in the hospital at the time, riddled with
cancer. He was tired and weak, but in good spirits, and we chatted
for a while, then I took a moment to step out into the corridor to
call Nicole, back in L.A. When I returned to the room, my father
was dead. "I don't understand why God gave me ten minutes with

my father,“ I told Dr. Yudowitz, ”but not even one second with
Nicole.“
I will admit to you, as I admitted to him, that some of my
arguments with Nicole did indeed deteriorate into shouting
matches, and that we tended to get in each other's faces. But most
of the time we resolved our differences peacefully, without getting
physical. Nicole and I were together for seventeen years, and we
had our share of conflict, but by and large we were always able to
work out our differences.
During the trial, when Dr. Yudowitz took the stand—on my
behalf, admittedly—he said what everyone expected him to say: That
I did not fit the profile of a killer. In the days ahead, as expected, the
newspapers trotted out their own experts. They said that four out of
five murders were spontaneous, a result of circumstance more than
intent, and that perhaps that had been the situation in my case. I
also read about socalled ”atypical" murderers: The quiet boy next
door, say, or the mousy little preacher's wife—men and women
who seemed incapable of murder, but who were driven to violence
by a given situation. Some experts immediately categorized me as
atypical: I seemed like a nice guy, and it was definitely out of char-
acter for me to have committed the crime, but I could have done it
just the same. That didn't strike me as particularly insightful. Given
the right circumstances, I guess anyone is capable of murder.
But I'm getting ahead of myself .. .
When I think back on my marriage to Nicole, I guess I'd have
to sad that 1989 was the big turning point—but mostly for her.
Mc? I was the oblivious husband. For one thing, I got busy. A kw
weeks after the incident, I had to go to Hawaii, for Hertz, and my
business with them kept me occupied for the next few months.
Then in the fall, I had NFL Live to do, with Bob Costas, and once
again—like lots of guys—I lost myself in my work. I wasn't even
thinking about the incident, to be honest. I was moving forward,
leaving it behind me, and in my mind that was a good thing. I
thought we should put the past behind us. Cool off. Start fresh.
And I figured Nicole probably felt the same way. She seemed a little
removed at times, to be honest, but otherwise I thought things were
fine. I didn't realize till much later that she was having an affair, but
that's another story, and I was completely oblivious about that, too.
Maybe it was selfdelusion—who knows? All I know is that I
thought things were solid, and that I felt we could get through any-
thing. Plus I didn't want the marriage to fail. We had two kids to
raise, and we were at that point in our marriage where the kids had
to come first. That's just the way it was. It wasn't that I didn't love
Nicole, or that I her less, but that I loved her in a different
way. You lose some of the passion, sure, and you lose some of the
closeness. And sometimes you're just trying to stay out of each
other's way. But so what? The center of gravity shifts. You focus on
the kids. You settle down. You mellow out. And that's what I was
doing, or trying to do.
And it was working great—or so I thought. I remember being
in New York in December 1991, hanging out with Nicole, doing a
little Christmas shopping and stuff, and thinking how happy she
seemed. She even looked terrific. She had been struggling to get
back into fighting shape ever since the kids had come along, and

complaining about it every time she caught sight of herself in the
mirror, but after months of hard work she was in the best shape of
her life. I was amazed, and I told her so, and I remember thinking
how glad I was that we'd weathered the post-1989 storm. I was
proud of myself for making it through the rough parts of the mar-
riage, and equally proud of her, and I was feeling genuinely opti-
mistic about the future.
A month later, in January 1992, I was in New York for the
playoff games, and flew home for a long weekend. The very first
day I was back, Nicole and I went to lunch at Peppone's, right there
in Brentwood, and about thirty seconds after we sat down she let
me have it: “I think we should separate,” she said.
I was floored. I was tired and jetlagged and I honestly wasn't
even sure I'd even heard her right, but she repeated it, saying she
didn't understand why I looked so surprised. We'd been having
problems for a long time, she said, and we should both look at it as
an opportunity to work on ourselves and think about the problems,
yada yada yada. “I want to try living apart for a month,” she added.
“But I don't want to get the lawyers involved.”
Then she suggested that that I move out of the Rockingham
house, to make the separation less disruptive for the kids, and I
knew right off that I had to stop this thing before it got any crazier.
“I don't know what you think you're going to accomplish by us liv-
ing apart for a month,” I said. “I'm hardly here as it is, traveling all
the time. If you want to work on yourself, you've got plenty of time
to do it. And if you think I need to work on myself, maybe you can
te II me what needs fixing.”
“No,” she said. “That's not it at all.”
“Then what is it?” I said. “I'm confused. Is there someone else?”
“No—God! How can you even think such a thing?”
“I don't know,” I said. “I'm trying to figure out how it came to
this. I know we don't have a perfect marriage, but who does? And I
thought we were doing pretty well.”
At that point she began to talk about the fact that she had
spent her entire adult life with me—fifteen years—and that she felt
as if she was living in my shadow. “All of our friends are your
friends,” she said. “Everything we do is stuff you want to do. Our
life together is basically about you.”
I tried to defend myself, saying that I was always listened to
her, and that I had never stopped her from pursuing her own inter-
ests and her own friendships, but she wasn't really paying attention.
“I want to be around people who like me for me, not because I'm
O.J. Simpson's wife,” she said.
I thought that was bullshit, too, and I told her so, but she was
adamant: she wanted to take a break from the marriage.
“Fine,” I said, trying to keep emotion out of it. “If you want a
break, I'll give you a break. But there's no way in hell we're doing
this without lawyers.” We needed the lawyers so that we'd be
absolutely clear on what was going on, I explained. She wanted out,
not me, for reasons I couldn't really understand. And the
Rockingham house predated our relationship. It was my house, a
fact that was clearly spelled out in the prenuptial agreement. That
house held a lot of history for me, including the drowning death
my infant daughter, Aaren--t he little girl I had with Marguerite

during the rocky tailend of our marriage—and I wasn't going to let
anyone tell me to move out.
At the end of that month, with the lawyers already hard at
work, Nicole moved into a rented house on Gretna Green Way, not
eight minutes from my place, and—given my hectic travel sched-
ule—took physical custody of the kids. I was in a state of mild shock
for several weeks, to be honest, unable to get my mind around what
had happened, and how it had come to this. Her mother was in
shock, too, as were most of her friends. None of them seemed to
think that our problems were all that significant, though of course
one never really knows what goes on behind closed doors.
The only person who had seen it coming was her best friend,
Cora Fishman, because Cora had known about the affair—the one
Nicole denied having. It wasn't anyone she was serious about, I
learned much later, but it had happened, and when shit like that
happens you know that deep down something is very wrong. It's
strange, though, because years later, in a letter she wrote me when
she was trying to reconcile, she still said nothing about the affair.
Instead, she talked about the 1989 incident, and how that had been
the big turning point in our relationship—for her, anyway—which
was kind of off odd because she was no longer blaming me for what
had happened. She said she was beginning to realize that she had
contributed as much to our problems as I had, if not more, and that
looking back on it she felt that I'd been right from the start—that
we did have a pretty good life together. It was the first time she had
taken responsibility for her actions, and it was a good thing, but
unfortunately it came too late. When I read that letter, it about
broke my heart. All along I thought we were going to make it, and
I guess I never really understood the depth of her unhappiness—let
alone the reasons for it.
So we started our new life, in separate homes but still commit-
ted to making it work—like so many other couples. I was optimistic,
to be honest. I had been through this before, with Marguerite, twice,
and we'd managed to survive the first separation, so in my heart it
wasn't over. We're just separating, I told myself. We're trying to get
back together. And this time I'm determined to make it work.
Still, it wasn't easy. I didn't enjoy watching Nicole settle into a
new place with the two kids, watching her move forward without
me. She even found a guy to help out with babysitting and running
errands and stuff, someone she'd met skiing in Aspen, and she let
him move into the guest house, rent free, instead of paying him a
salary. His name, as you may recall, was Kato Kaelin.
When that first Valentine's Day rolled around, less than three
weeks into the separation, I was in Mexico for a celebrity golf tour-
nament, but I sent Nicole some nice flowers and a note, and she
was very appreciative. I told her I wasn't giving up on us, and I
didn't. I was still traveling a great deal, mostly to New York, but
whenever I was in town I'd take her out, sometimes alone, and
sometimes with the kids.
From time to time we even ended up in bed together. On
occasion, she cried after we made love. I don't know if she was cry-
ing from being happy or unhappy, to be honest, and I don't think

she did, either, but I kept hoping it was because she loved me, and
because in her heart she knew that we belonged together.
Still, I wanted to give Nicole her freedom—the freedom she
thought she wanted—so I didn't get pushy about wooing her
back. It was pretty weird, though. Early on, for example, she went
on a couple of dates, and she was a little worried about protocol
because she hadn't really dated anyone since she was a teenager.
“You think the guy's just trying to get into my pants?” she asked
me at one point.
“Honey, what do you expect?” I said “You're gorgeous, you're
smart, you've got your own money, and you don't want more kids.
For most guys, that's an unbeatable combination.”
“So should I go out with him?”
“Yeah. If you like him. Why not?”
“But how do I know if he likes me for me,” she said, “and not
for something else.”
“What? You think he likes you for your car?”
“I'm serious, O.J. This is all new to me.”
She sounded like a teenager, but it struck me that in dating
terms she really was a teenager. “Nicole, stop worrying so much,” I
said. “You're a great girl. Just be yourself and have fun.” I was sitting
there, on the phone, trying to build up her selfesteem, and when I
got off the phone all I could think was, Man, that's my wife! That
was bizarre!
If there is one good thing I can say about the separation, it's
this: We never fought about anything. In fact, during that entire
period we only had one argument, and it was because some of her
friends were racking up charges on my account at the golf club in
Laguna. My assistant, Cathy Randa, spotted the charges and
brought them to my attention, and I immediately called Nicole.
“Who the hell do these people think they are, eating and drinking
at my expense, and why the hell are you allowing it?” Nicole apolo-
gized, promised she'd take care of it, and that was the end of that.
Afterward, we were friendly again—maybe too friendly.
Nicole got into the habit of calling me two or three times a day, to
chat, often about some of the guys she was dating. I thought that
was a little strange—I felt she was treating me almost like a girl-
friend or something—but I didn't mind. I realized that, if nothing
else, I was probably her closest friend, a friend she could talk to
about anything, and it gave me hope. She always began by talking
about the kids—that was the excuse, anyway—and within a
minute or two the conversation shifted to stories about the men in
her life. This one guy was a complete schmuck, this other guy
seemed so nice at first but had turned into a real creep, and so on
and so forth. I would think, Why are you wasting your time with
them? You could still be living with me! But I didn't say it. I didn't
want to push her. I wanted her to know I was there without put-
ting any pressure on her.
Then early in May, while I was back in town for a few days, I
was out at a club with a group of friends and ran into Nicole and a
couple of her girlfriends. I remember thinking it was kind of odd to
see her there: We had been living apart for more than three months,
and this was the first time I'd run into her in public. One of her
girlfriends made a little joke about the situation: "O.J ., are you