His Name Is Ron

by Kim Goldman

  He worked for a time at the Westlake United Cerebral Palsy Residence Home. His job was to help patients get out of bed, bathe, get dressed, eat, and do all the other daily activities that most of us take for granted. Even though many of the patients were so physically challenged that they required help for the most fundamental tasks, Ron saw them as people who deserved respect and dignity. He never patronized them. To him, they were simply people who had an illness, and they were perfectly capable of controlling their lives and making their own decisions.

  On an outing one day, Ron and several patients stopped at a fast-food restaurant. A patient named Jane attempted to place an order, but the counter clerk either could not understand her or simply grew frustrated. He turned to Ron and asked, “What does she want?”

  “Why are you asking me?” Ron responded. “This is Jane. She can order for herself.”

  The director of the residence recalled for us a day when Ron put music on the public address system and set about dancing with patients in wheelchairs; it was almost like a Fred Astaire routine. The director said that she had never seen so many smiles on the patients’ faces.

  However, it was the restaurant business that seemed to captivate him. Over the years he worked at several establishments, and thoroughly enjoyed the constant interaction with people. Seeing him in waiter’s clothes always bothered me a bit because I wanted him to do something more substantial with his life. But I had to admit that he was good. One evening, Patti and I stopped in for dinner at a place called Truly Yours, where Ron was working. It was a modest establishment, but Ron hammed it up for us, acting as if Truly Yours was a five-star restaurant. He placed a towel over his arm, deferred to our every whim, and called us “Ma’am” and “Sir.” I was not surprised when the manager told me that customers often requested his tables.

  Ron never expressed any interest in being an actor. That notion was raised when reporters learned of his one and only television appearance. Kim was in college in Santa Barbara when Ron called one day and teased, “Guess what I did!”

  “Uh-oh,” Kim said, her anxiety level rising.

  “I got dared to go on Studs,” he said. Studs was a low-budget version of The Dating Game.

  At the time, the show was very popular in a campy sort of way, but Kim knew that it had a sleazy aura. She thought: Oh my God.

  The show was supposed to pay for three dates with three different women, but Ron did not feel that the money they offered was sufficient, so he spent some of his own, just to make sure that the women were treated properly.

  When the show was ready to air, Kim threw a small party for her friends. “I was so embarrassed,” she remembers. “There he was, larger than life, hair slicked back, assuming the cocky, arrogant role he could slip on when he wanted to. I knew it was all a lark, and that he was blowing smoke, but half the time the show was on, I hid my eyes.” We all got a kick out of it, though.

  I watched the show at home, alternately laughing and cringing as he camped it up. I knew that he did not take it seriously; he was just having fun. But at one point I slunk down on the couch, hid my eyes, and muttered, “Oh my God! Where did that ego come from?”

  Later, when we teased him about it, Ron just laughed. “It was a blast,” he said. “Who cares?”

  Sometime after that one of Kim’s friends talked her into auditioning for the same show. When Ron found out, he informed his little sister: “You are not the kind of girl who goes on that show! No way! I won’t allow it.”

  There were two Rons. The one that the world saw now, in abbreviated clips on the nightly news or the tabloid shows, was carefree, a little cocky, and could dismiss any problem with a shrug of his shoulder. With family and close, trusted friends, however, he was a warm, vulnerable, incurable romantic who loved to send flowers, create intimate dinners, write notes, and send cards. Kim knew far better than the rest of us that Ron, at age twenty-five, desperately craved stability. He had come to the point in his life when he was ready to start his own business. He wanted to put down roots. He was searching for the woman he would marry and who would bear his children. Whether a boy or a girl, he wanted to name his first child Dakota.

  Ron was ready to settle down. All he needed was a little more time.

  EIGHT

  I have always been emotional. A Hallmark commercial or a Kodak moment invariably causes my eyes to fill and my throat to tighten. As emotion peaks in a sentimental movie, it is Patti who hands me a tissue. Those are tears of the bittersweet moments of life. Now, dealing with the intensity of this irrevocable loss was nearly impossible.

  For the first time in my life I have nightmares on a regular basis. I never sleep through the night.

  Only at night, in the privacy of my bedroom, when no one is watching and no one is listening, do I allow myself to break down. They say that a good cry can be cleansing, that it can make you feel better. That is not necessarily true. Nothing helps.

  The sight of a child, photos of someone else’s son, comments from a friend, overhearing other parents speak about dreams for their child’s future, a familiar melody on the radio—any one of these things, and hundreds more—are capable of creating the lump in my throat that inevitably leads to tears. There is no way to expect it. There is no way to control it. When the pain becomes too great to bear, I push it down again. I shove it to some unknown place, knowing all the while that it will surface again very soon.

  Jim Ziegler had seen one of his employees through a similar situation. It was the mother of Craig Hastings, the young man who had been stabbed to death in 1991, whom Kim had recalled during the frantic flight from San Francisco to L.A. Jim told us that the Hastings family had been aided by a state-run agency called the Victim-Witness Assistance Program, funded by property and money confiscated from convicted criminals rather than by tax dollars. We were immediately interested, knowing that we needed all the help we could get.

  Susan Arguela from the program contacted us. She visited our home and took some time to explain to us, as the family of a murder victim, what to expect from the legal system. She detailed the process that would lead to a formal trial: The first step was an arraignment, wherein the defendant would hear the charges against him or her and would be allowed to enter his or her plea. The judge would determine whether the defendant would be held in the county jail or if he would be allowed out on bail. Susan explained that bail in this case was unlikely, since the defendant had already attempted to flee. After that, the prosecutors planned to present evidence in secret to a grand jury, which could then vote an indictment. Another option was to hold a preliminary hearing in public to determine whether there was sufficient evidence to bring the defendant to trial.

  This was a new, and macabre, vocabulary for all of us, and it was a bit intimidating. What’s more, it already seemed obvious that because of the high profile of the defendant and his ability to hire a high-priced legal team, the entire process would consume a great deal of time. All we wanted was justice for Ron, but it appeared that patience was paramount. Susan assured us that she, or someone else from the Victim-Witness Assistance Program, would be present in court to shepherd us through the unfamiliar proceedings.

  Susan told us that if and when the defendant was convicted, California law granted each member of the victim’s family an opportunity to speak to the court, prior to sentencing. We could say anything we wished.

  My eyes met Kim’s, and I knew that she was already beginning to formulate her words.

  Like everyone else, we were shocked and saddened when authorities released tapes of Nicole’s 911 calls. We heard the sound of Nicole’s terrified voice on October 25, 1993, less than eight months before the murders, wailing, “He’s fucking going nuts…. He’s going to beat the shit out of me.”

  There was no dialogue on the tape of the 1989 incident that led Simpson to plead “no contest” to a misdemeanor charge of wife beating. There were only background sounds that the police log characterized as: “Female being beaten … could be he
ard over the phone.”

  The tapes worried and angered us. Why wasn’t this man prosecuted more vigorously in the past? Why did Nicole have to live in constant fear? It seemed clear that Simpson was accustomed to receiving special treatment, not only from the community, but from the police and the courts as well. It was offensive to realize that he had received a mere slap on the wrist for terrorizing his wife.

  We had all grown up believing in the concept of “innocent until proven guilty,” and we tried to apply that standard now. But it was becoming more difficult to keep an open mind.

  What would I have done if I ever suspected that this man had beaten my daughter?

  God help him.

  He and I would have a conversation, and it would go something like this: “If you ever lay a hand on my daughter again, you’ll be in major trouble with me. I’m going to keep my eye on you real closely, and if—God forbid—it ever happens again, I will break every bone in your body.”

  As the days passed, we found it extremely difficult to turn our attention to the details of normal life. We had work to do, appointments to keep, airplanes to catch. But it was nearly impossible to attend to life’s trivialities when every morning was preceded by a mere few hours of restless, nightmarish sleep, and every day was filled with increasingly bizarre and disturbing developments.

  It was supposed to have been a busy, happy summer.

  Kim and Joe had planned to fly to New York near the end of June to attend the wedding of one of Joe’s friends. After the wedding they would fly to Chicago, where Kim was scheduled for surgery. Prior to our marriage, on a joint vacation to Florida, Patti, Kim, Ron, and I had been involved in an automobile accident. A drunk driver, speeding on the opposite side of the boulevard, lost control of the car and mowed down several trees in the median strip. His car battery flew through the air and through our windshield, spewing acid. Ron and I were spared. Patti was burned slightly, but Kim caught the brunt of it. When Ron pulled her from the wreckage, he saw that her face and eyes were badly burned.

  Ron was at her side constantly in the hospital. For a time, her vision was gone and her face looked, as she put it, like barbecue. Ron fussed over her, catered to her, and assured her that she was still beautiful and that everything would be all right.

  Over the years, a series of surgeries had corrected most of the damage, but Kim had timed this additional procedure to coincide with her New York trip.

  Michael and Lauren had reservations to fly to Chicago for a two-and-a-half week visit with Brian and their dad.

  Finally Patti and I were going to join everyone in Chicago for a few days’ vacation.

  Now we did not know what to do. Everyone’s nerves were frayed, and an ongoing tension accompanied the roller coaster of emotions that we were riding. The horror was still too fresh, the emotions too raw. And there was another issue at hand. Evidence against Simpson would be presented in open court at a preliminary hearing on June 30. We wanted to be there.

  Lauren was in no mood to go to Chicago. Ron’s murder had left her frightened and feeling vulnerable around strangers. She cried constantly and had great difficulty sleeping. Most nights she brought a blanket or sleeping bag into our room and curled up on the floor next to Patti’s side of the bed.

  Lauren did not want to disappoint her dad, but she did not want to leave home, either. Yet she had a difficult time communicating her mixed feelings. Kim, sensing the dilemma, took Lauren for a long walk through our neighborhood and got her to open up. Kim explained that it was normal to feel the constant fear and encouraged her to do what she needed to make herself feel safe. She assured her that her father would understand if she wanted to stay close to home for a while longer. “Just be honest about your feelings,” she counseled. “It’s okay to do what’s best for you.” With the issue in the open, we were able to come up with a compromise. Michael would fly to Chicago by himself. Lauren and her friend Elise Main would join him later.

  For her part, Kim really wanted to attend the preliminary hearing, but she did not want to miss the wedding in New York or the surgery in Chicago. She still thought she could “do it all.”

  We wanted to keep a low profile and let the system proceed without our interference. We believed that Ron’s death would be dealt with in a fair way; we were sure that justice would ultimately prevail. We were still too consumed by our loss to be aware of the immensity of what was happening around us.

  As Patti and I walked into the nineteen-story Downtown Criminal Courts Building on West Temple Street in Los Angeles for the first day of the preliminary hearing, we saw a thick cluster of satellite dishes outside. Every network and every major L.A. TV station would broadcast the proceedings live, from gavel to gavel. Howard Rosenberg of the Los Angeles Times commented, “Moses parting the Red Sea wouldn’t get this coverage.…”

  Vendors, like rodents, had multiplied overnight. Ron’s now-famous photo ID was being hawked on T-shirts, trading cards, Pogs, mugs, and anything else that the entrepreneurial spirit could dream up. We saw placards proclaiming, FREE O.J.! We were offended and sickened by the display. Tragedy, it appeared, was good for business.

  As she had promised, Susan Arguela met us at the courthouse and took us upstairs to the office of Patty Jo Fairbanks, the secretary for the prosecutors. Susan reminded us of the purpose of the preliminary hearing. The prosecution’s task was simply to persuade the judge that there was a “strong suspicion” of Simpson’s guilt.

  As we waited for the proceedings to begin, we met the Brown family for the first time. I remember all of them being there—Juditha, Lou, Denise, Tanya, Dominique—we all hugged and expressed our sympathy. It was truly genuine and the pain was overwhelming. Some of them were wearing angel pins, replicas of one that Nicole frequently wore.

  After a time, Susan took us to the elevators and guided us down and into the courtroom. The room was filled with reporters and excited spectators. Despite Susan’s coaching, we were clueless as to how this was going to play out. This was a foreign world to us.

  We were seated, awaiting the start of the proceedings, when a side door suddenly opened and we first laid eyes on the man accused of murdering Ron. To Patti, he seemed huge. “His hands are massive,” she commented. When he turned and faced the spectators, Patti noted a carefree, arrogant smirk on his face. Who do you think you are? she wondered. Fake it if you have to, but show some remorse, some sadness. Your wife is gone, the mother of your children. And you walk in here like you have the world by the tail? You’re disgusting.

  I had expected him to be wearing orange prison overalls or whatever prisoners normally wear. I thought that he would be restrained by handcuffs and shackles. Instead, here was a man in an expensively tailored suit, smiling at what he seemed to consider an adoring crowd, sauntering toward the defense table. Idly he tossed his arm around the shoulder of his defense attorney, Robert Shapiro. I felt an overwhelming revulsion. This man was accused of murdering my son. What did he have to smile about?

  Much of the morning was squandered by legal bickering between Robert Shapiro and Assistant District Attorney Marcia Clark, but slowly we began to learn about the evidence. Police had found blood on the driver’s-door handle of Simpson’s white Ford Bronco, parked outside of his Rockingham estate. Inside the Bronco, detectives found bloodstains on the driver’s door, the instrument panel, the floor, the steering wheel, and the center console. In a search warrant affidavit, LAPD Detective Philip Vannatter stated, “Blood droplets were subsequently observed leading from the vehicle on the street to the front door of the residence.” Vannatter’s affidavit confirmed that police recovered a leather glove “containing human blood” on the south side of the Rockingham house. The glove “closely resembled” the glove that was found at the crime scene, near Ron’s feet. Inside the house, police found bloodstains in the foyer and a bathroom.

  The defense fought to have all of this evidence suppressed. Shapiro filed a motion charging that when Detective Mark Fuhrman scaled the fence at Simp
son’s estate, he had had no search warrant and had compromised the defendant’s privacy; therefore, all evidence found as a result of this action should be thrown out. Judge Kathleen Kennedy-Powell said that she would rule on the motion next week.

  “This is crazy,” I said to Patti, who agreed. Evidence is evidence, we thought. Blood is blood.

  So much of the day was consumed with procedural matters that very little was accomplished.

  On Friday, the second day of the preliminary hearing, several of the witnesses’ statements caused us to shudder, and we could sense that the prosecution was setting the stage for what we knew would be very difficult testimony to hear.

  Pablo Fenjves, a neighbor of Nicole’s, said that he heard the “plaintive wail” of a dog barking about 10:15 or 10:20 the night of the murders.

  Steven Schwab, another neighbor of Nicole’s, described how he came upon an agitated dog with bloody paws shortly before 11:00 P.M.

  Sukru Boztepe, yet another neighbor, was the first to discover Nicole’s body lying in front of her condominium. His wife, Bettina Rasmussen, testified that she saw the body for a moment, then turned away. “I never looked back again,” she said.

  “They will never get over this as long as they live,” Patti whispered. “What a horrible and devastating experience.”

  Kim, still in New York, was glued to the television screen, watching their testimony. Seeing and hearing the genuine emotion in their voices was very hard for her as well.

  Kim quickly realized that her decision to go to New York with Joe was a terrible mistake. She was supposed to share in the enjoyment of a friend’s wedding, but her heart was back in L.A. She knew that she should be at the preliminary hearing and she wanted to be with us on Saturday. Saturday, July 2, would have been Ron’s twenty-sixth birthday.