If I Did It (17 page)

hear my side, and they never wanted to hear the
housekeeper's side. Nicole was drunk. She did her thing, she
started tearing up my house, you know? I didn't punch her or
anything, but II. . .
VANNATTER:... slapped her a couple of times.
O.J.: No, no, I wrestled her, is what I did. I didn't slap her at all. I
mean, Nicole's a strong girl. She's a—one of the most
conditioned women. Since that period of time, she's hit me a
few times, but I've never touched her after that, and I'm
telling you, it's fivesix years ago.
VANNATTER: What is her birth date?
O.J.: May nineteenth.
VANNATTER: Did you get together with her on her birthday?
O.J.: Yeah, her and I and the kids, I believe.
VANNATTER: Did you give her a gift?
O.J,: I gave her a gift.
VANNATTER: What did you give her?
O.J.: I gave her either a bracelet or the earrings.
VANNATTER: Did she keep them or-
O.J.: Oh, no, when we split she gave me both the earrings and the
bracelet back. I bought her a very nice bracelet—I don't
know if it was Mother's Day or her birthday—and I bought
her the earrings for the other thing, and when we split, and
it's a credit to her—she felt that it wasn't right that she had it,
and I said good because I want them back.
VANNATTER: Was that the very day of her birthday, May
nineteenth, or was it a few days later?
O.J.: What do you mean?
VANNATTER: You gave it to her on the nineteenth of May, her
birthday, right, this bracelet?
O.J.: I may have given her the earrings. No, the bracelet, May
nineteenth. When was Mother's Day?
VANNATTER: Mother's Day was around that . . .
O.J.: No, it was probably her birthday, yes.
VANNATTER: And did she return it the same day?
O.J.: Oh, no, she—I'm in a funny place here on this, all right? She
returned it—both of them—three weeks ago or so, because
when I say I'm in a funny place on this it was because I gave
it to my girlfriend and told her it was for her, and that was
three weeks ago. I told her I bought it for her. You know?
What am I going to do with it?
LANGE: Did Mr. Weitzman, your attorney, talk to you anything
about this polygraph we brought up before? What are your
thoughts on that?
O.J.: Should I talk about my thoughts on that? I'm sure eventually
I'll do it, but it's like I've got some weird thoughts now. I've had
weird thoughts. You know when you've been with a person for
seventeen years, you think everything. I've got to understand
what this thing is. If it's true blue, I don't mind doing it.
LANGE: Well, you're not compelled at all to take this thing,
number one, and number two—I don't know if Mr.
Weitzman explained it to you—this goes to the exclusion of
someone as much as the inclusion so we can eliminate
people. And just to get things straight.

O.J.: But does it work for elimination?
LANGE: Oh, yes. We use it for elimination more than anything.
O.J.: Well, I'll talk to him about it.
LANGE: Understand, the reason we're talking to you is because
you're the exhusband.
O.J.: I know, I'm the number one target, and now you tell me I've
got blood all over the place.
LANGE: Well, there's blood at your house in the driveway, and
we've got a search warrant, and we're going to go get the
blood. We found some in your house. Is that your blood
that's there?
O.J.: If it's dripped, it's what I dripped running around trying to
leave.
LANGE: Last night?
O.J.: Yeah, and I wasn't aware that it was—I was aware that II. . .
You know, I was trying to get out of the house. I didn't even
pay any attention to it, I saw it when I was in the kitchen,
and I grabbed a napkin or something, and that was it. I
didn't think about it after that.
VANNATTER: That was last night after you got home from the
recital, when you were rushing?
O.J.: That was last night when I was. . . . I don't know what I was.
. . . I was in the car getting my junk out of the car. I was in
the house throwing hangers and stuff in my suitcase. I was
doing my little crazy what I do. . . . I mean, I do it
everywhere. Anybody who has ever picked me up says that
O.J.'s a whirlwind, he's running, he's grabbing things, and
that's what I was doing.
VANNATTER: Well, I'm going to step out and I'm going to get a
photographer to come down and photograph your hand
there. And then here pretty soon we're going to take you
downstairs and get some blood from you. Okay? I'll be right
back.
LANGE: So it was about five days ago you last saw Nicole? Was it
at the house?
O.J.: Okay, the last time I saw Nicole, physically saw Nicole—I
saw her obviously last night. The time before, I'm trying to
think. . . . I went to Washington, DC, so I didn't see her, so
I'm trying to think. . . . I haven't seen her since I went to
Washington—what's the date today?
LANGE: Today's Monday, the thirteenth of June.
0.J.: Okay, I went to Washington on maybe Wednesday. Thursday
I think I was in—Thursday I was in Connecticut, then Long
Island on Thursday afternoon and all of Friday. I got home
Friday night, Friday afternoon. I played, you know—Paula
picked me up at the airport. I played golf Saturday, and when
I came home I think my son was there. So I did something
with my son. I don't think I saw Nicole at all then. And then
I went to a big affair with Paula Saturday night, and I got up
and played golf Sunday which pissed Paula off, and I saw
Nicole at. . . . It was about a week before, I saw her at
LANGE: E : Okay, the last time you saw Nicole, was that at her house?

O.J.: I don't remember. I wasn't in her house, so it couldn't have
been at her house, so it was, you know, I don't physically
remember the last time I saw her. I may have seen her even
jogging one day.
LANGE: Let me get this straight. You've never physically been
inside the house?
O.J.: Not in the last week.
LANGE: Ever. I mean, how long has she lived there? About six
months?
O.J.: Oh, Christ, I've slept at the house many, many, many times,
you know? I've done everything at the house, you know? I'm
just saying—you're talking in the last week or so.
LANGE: Well, whatever. Six months she's lived there?
O.J.: I don't know. Roughly. I was at her house maybe two weeks
ago, ten days ago. One night her and I had a long talk, you
know, about how can we make it better for the kids, and I
told her we'd do things better. And, okay, I can almost say
when that was. That was when I—I don't know, it was about
ten days ago. And then we . . . The next day I had her have
her dog do a flea bath or something with me. Oh, I'll tell
you, I did see her one day. One day I went—I don't know if
this was the early part of last week, I went 'cause my son had
to go and get something, and he ran in, and she came to the
gate, and the dog ran out, and her friend Faye and I went
looking for the dog. That may have been a week ago, I
don't know.
LANGE: (To Vannatter) Got a photographer coming?
VANNATTER: No, we're going to take him up there.
LANGE: We're ready to terminate this at 14:07.
And that was that. We went off to another part of the build-
ing, a photographer took a few pictures of the cut on my finger, and
the cops gave me a ride back to Rockingham.
We didn't say a word the whole way.
The press was there when I pulled up, and their numbers
had grown. I had to fight my way into my own house, with some
of the more aggressive reporters practically trampling each other
to get at me.
Two dozen people were waiting for me inside, mostly friends
and family, and I greeted them in a complete fog. Bob Kardashian
and Howard Weitzman were also there, eager to learn how it had
gone at Parker Center. They took me aside and asked me to tell
them exactly what I'd told the cops. I couldn't remember much, but
I remembered getting a little flustered when they asked me what I
thought had happened at the condo, like I knew more than I was
letting on. That pissed me off a little, to be honest, but I felt like I
pretty much kept it together.
Still, I was sure I got some things wrong. I was especially trou-
bled by all this socalled blood all over the place, and in the Bronco
in particular. I thought maybe I had cut myself in the house the
previous night, rushing around to get ready for the flight to
Chicago, but I wasn't real clear on how it had happened, or exactly
when. And I'd recently cut myself in the Bronco, reaching for my
cell phone charger, but I couldn't remember how recently. And

hadn't I had cut myself in Chicago when I threw that glass? Or was
that an old cut that just got opened up?
Christ, it was hard to keep track of things. I don't know how
they expected me to remember so much detail when half the time I
couldn't remember what I'd had for dinner the previous night or
where I was supposed to be later that day.
The only thing that mattered was that they believe me: I was
100 percent not guilty. They had to believe me.
That's not the way it looked to the cops, though—they had
spent hours going through every room in the house, looking for
evidence—and it's certainly not the way it looked on the news. We
went into the den and flipped through the channels. The major
networks were all over the story, and they all seemed to be saying
the same thing: O.J. Did It.
That really threw me. People were starting to think that I was
capable of murder. Worse, the media was starting to dissect my rela-
tionship with Nicole—a woman I had loved for fifteen years, before
everything went to hell. I could already see the story taking shape: She
was leaving him, and he loved her and wanted her back, and when he
realized she wasn't coming back he went over to her place and killed her.
Things were quickly getting out of control.
The press interviewed anybody they could get their hands on,
whether it was a passing neighbor near the Bundy condo or a clean-
ing woman up on Ashford. I didn't realize so many people were so
desperate to appear on TV, but I guess that's Hollywood for you.
I also saw plenty of file footage on Yours Truly, documenting
my glory days on the football field, my many years as a football ana
lyst, and my various business successes, but the stories always came
full circle and ended on me and Nicole: The young waitress I'd
swept off her feet when she was barely eighteen. The storybook
romance that turned volatile and ended in divorce. And, endlessly,
this crazy notion that I wanted her back.
Who the fuck were these people, thinking they knew anything
about my relationship with Nicole?
There'd been a time, almost two years earlier, when Nicole
decided she wanted to separate, and, yes—I had fought hard to
make her change her mind. But she wouldn't change her mind, and
I moved on. Months later she found she was having second
thoughts, and she wrote to share them with me:
O.J. You'll be my one and only “true love.”I'm sorry for the pain
I've caused you and I'm sorry we let it die. Please let us be a family
again, and let me love you—better than I ever have before.
So I tried again, and I put a whole goddamn year into it, and
we failed miserably, and when it finally ended I was glad to be out
of it. Everyone who knew Nicole and me knew that story, but the
reporters didn't want that story—it didn't support their theory. To
hear them tell it, I'd been pining for Nicole for the past two years,
begging her to come home, and on the night of June 12 I finally
snapped.
It was unreal. As I stood there, watching one misguided
reporter after another, each of them hammering the same theme, I
felt like I was losing my mind.
The real story, as I've told you, was much simpler and much
less dramatic. Nicole and I had been together for seventeen years.

The first fifteen had been absolutely terrific; the last two had been
total hell. Sounds like a lot of marriages, right? But now every-
thing I was hearing about myself was based on a cartoon version
of those last two years. I heard myself described as an obsessively
jealous exhusband so many times that the media almost had me
believing it. To make matters worse, a number of reporters ran
around interviewing these socalled experts on battered women,
creating the impression that Nicole had been a battered woman,
and that I, O.J. Simpson, her former husband, was a known bat-
terer. I remember hearing the phrase “escalating violence” a num-
ber of times, and wondering how it applied to us. I realized that
anyone listening to those particular reports would come away
thinking that there had been some kind of pattern in our mar-
riage—that I had repeatedly beat my wife, and that the beatings
had become progressively worse. Jesus! I hadn't even begun to
mourn Nicole, and here they were, telling me—and the world—
that I'd beat her mercilessly.
Whenever I changed the channel, I'd come across a variation
on the same theme. Someone would be talking to another one of
these socalled experts about the right way for a woman to leave an
abusive man, for example, and I would stand there in shock, open-
mouthed, listening. I simply didn't get it. This was a story about my
exwife, who had just been murdered, and they were turning it into
a story about spousal abuse. One expert went through various sce-
narios on the proper way to escape—call the police, leave the house
while he's at work, get a restraining order—yada yada yada. I had to
turn off the TV. It was making me nuts.
The saddest part is, people bought it. If it was on the news, it
had to be true.
Many months later, when I was sitting in prison, being tried
on two counts of murder, I was visited on several occasions by Dr.
Lenore Walker, a real expert on battered women, and she agreed
with what Dr. Bernard Yudowitz had told me—that I did not
have the personality of a batterer. She had subjected me to a num-
ber of standardized tests, and while I was happy with her conclu-
sion, I've got to tell you—just to be honest here—that those tests
were pretty much bullshit. I remember pointing this out to her:
“You have some questions on there that don't make any sense at
all,” I said.
She asked for examples, and I immediately came up with two.
The first was, “When you walk into a room, do you think everyone
is looking at you?” Fuckin'-A they're looking at me! I don't think it.
I know it. Everybody is looking at me.
The second was, “Do you think you're the subject of conversa-
tion in most social situations?” Hell, yeah! I am the subject of con-
versation!
Now, if a guy who sells insurance says that—and I don't have
anything against guys who sell insurance—it might mean he's got
some kind of personality disorder. Hell, for all I know, it makes him
a wifeabuser. But it doesn't mean shit when I say it, because it's the
truth. I remember telling Dr. Walker, “It isn't that simple. People
are different. I don't see how you can put so much faith in these
tests.” And I told her this after she came to me with the results, after
she decided I didn't have the makings of an abusive husband.