by Jenner, Kris
It was the night before the trial was to begin.
“Sure,” I said.
The enormity of the knowledge that the trial would begin the next morning was swirling around us. We were at the epicenter of this storm. At last, I felt, Robert wanted to talk about it. He came over, and this time he came into the house. We sat down in my living room and he pulled an envelope out of his suit jacket pocket.
“I can’t stay long,” he began. “I don’t want you to ever have any bad feelings about me and I need to give this to you.”
He handed me the envelope, which contained a handwritten letter from him.
“I just want to tell you that I know you’ll probably never understand why I’m doing what I need to do, but hopefully this will be over soon,” he said, and then he left.
I opened the envelope, and read.
January 22, 1995
Dear Kris, Kourtney, Kim, Khloé and Robert,
I feel I must explain my feelings about the O.J. case on this the eve of the trial. First of all, I want all of you to please understand that I did not want any of this to happen. God allowed this horrible tragedy to occur for whatever reason. I just happened to be in the “wrong place at the wrong time.” I am not a public figure and really do not enjoy the horrible invasion of privacy of you, me and my family.
I think that the division in our family between guilty and innocence is very sad. I do not want our family torn apart by this case. Please understand that I am trapped in the position I am in and can’t get out. I must see this case through. I truly believe in O.J.’s innocence and unless they find him guilty, I will continue to support him. I realize, Kris, that you also strongly believe in his guilt. You are entitled to your beliefs—just as I am. However, our individual beliefs should not interfere with our family. Neither of us should take pride in the outcome. The bottom line is that two innocent people were brutally murdered.
The past 7 months have taken such an emotional toll on my life—you have no idea. The other day, someone asked me a simple question about something that happened during the week of June 12 and for no reason, I started to cry. My life will never be the same. I’m sorry for what has happened but I was only helping my friend—just as any of you would do. Please don’t let whatever is going to happen in this case affect our family. Our lives are much more important than this one case.
The next few months will be difficult and time consuming and emotional. If I am abrupt or harsh or rude in any way, please don’t take it personally. It will be a very stressful time.
Remember, I love you all and just want the best for our family. Please be understanding.
Love, Robert
I burst into tears. He was finally acknowledging that we were in the middle of the Trial of the Century. I still felt like we were on different sides, but at least, on some level, we were on the same side as a family. We were going through the same things at the same time over the same friends, all of us experiencing similar emotions about two people we had known intimately. That he had brought the letter to me was monumental and was one of the things I will always remember about how good Robert was. He didn’t have to do that. He didn’t have to explain anything to me. We were divorced. Yet, he still felt he had to say, essentially, “I still care about you enough that I need you to know why I am doing this.” That’s how much Robert loved us as a family, and I will never forget that.
A few hours after Robert left, the phone rang.
“You have a call from a prisoner,” came a voice from a recording from the Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail, asking if I would accept a collect call.
“Yes,” I replied.
Then O.J.’s deep voice came on the line.
“Hi, Kris,” he said.
“Hello,” I said.
“I could never have done this,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going on.”
He began talking . . . and talking . . . about everything. What was so crazy was that he even started talking about the bloody glove that was found at the crime scene and that would loom large in the upcoming trial. He seemed more concerned about Nicole’s relationship with our friend Faye Resnick and what had been going on between Nicole and Faye than anything else. Faye had written a book that was published four months after the murders: Nicole Brown Simpson: The Private Diary of a Life Interrupted. In the book, she talked about her relationship with Nicole and their friendship. O.J. was very upset about this, because the book had come out while O.J. was in jail. In the book, Faye claimed that she and Nicole had experienced a “night of girlish passion” around the time of the murders. O.J. was really angry about this, and he wanted to talk about it and talk about it.
Everyone who knows O.J. knows that he can be very long-winded. He can talk a lot. I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about, because I truly didn’t. I really had very little insight into Faye and Nicole’s intimate friendship. I obviously knew they were great friends because I introduced them. But I didn’t know what was going on between the two of them. But O.J. was convinced I did and that I wasn’t telling him something. He was more concerned with that than the fact that he was sitting in a jail in Los Angeles for the murder of his ex-wife. He was obsessed.
I had to go run errands and get things done for my business before the end of the day, and I just couldn’t talk to him anymore.
“I’ll call you back,” I said, forgetting for a moment that he was in jail.
“No, you can’t call me back,” he said. “I’ll call you later.”
I left my house and went straight to Beverly Hills Stationers on Beverly Drive, where I had shopped for a decade, although I don’t remember driving to the store. That’s how distracted I was. I walked into the store and began ordering office supplies. I couldn’t concentrate. All that kept going through my head was the phone call with O.J. When I got up to the cash register to pay, the telephone behind the counter rang. The sales clerk behind the register, who I had known for years, turned to pick up the phone. She answered it and shot me a strange look. “There’s a collect call for you,” she said. “From jail!”
I was shocked. “What?” I said. Then I thought, How the hell did he find me here? It was scary.
“Oh my God, it’s O.J.,” I said under my breath.
“Would you like to take the call in the back?” the clerk asked.
“Uh, yes,” I said, practically running to the back room. I was so freaked out. A manager was back there. “Where’s the phone?” I asked. He pointed and I grabbed the phone, punching the line that was lit up.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hey,” said O.J.
“How did you know I was here?” I asked. “How did you find me?”
“Your assistant told me,” O.J. said.
Now I was stunned. “What?! What do you mean, my assistant told you? Why are you calling me at Beverly Stationers?”
“I just need to talk,” he said.
“O.J., I told you to call me later at home.”
But he wouldn’t let me off the phone. I talked to him for about ten minutes, and then I said, “I will call you when I get home.” I realized then that I couldn’t do my errands because he was going to call me wherever I went. Somehow he knew where I was and where I was going. So I went home, and the minute I walked in the door, the phone rang: O.J. again. I went upstairs and I talked to him and talked to him and talked to him and talked to him. I would put the phone down and go do something in my bedroom and come back and he was still talking.
O.J. was desperate to talk, but I was used to that side of him. The needy O.J., the obsessive O.J. This was a guy that I had known my whole adult life, and I felt like he was trying to make me believe that he hadn’t killed my friend, but not actually explaining how it couldn’t be true. He just kept saying, “This is why this couldn’t have been like this.” Or: “The glove wasn’t mine.” Whatever. He tried to explain away all of the accusations, and he would keep going back to Nicole and her relationship with other people. He was s
till totally obsessed with whom she had been seeing and whom she had been sleeping with and whom she had been friends with. He was just sort of way out there, talking about stuff that didn’t really matter. It was all really odd and very upsetting.
Finally, I said, “Okay, let’s talk in a while. I’m exhausted.”
That series of phone calls were the last time I ever spoke to O.J. Once the trial got under way, I never spoke to him again.
The trial began on January 23, 1995.
What struck me most was the whole entire thing was bigger than life. It wasn’t just a trial; it was a spectacle. Bruce and I parked in back of the courthouse, where we were told we had a spot. Marcia Clark’s case coordinator, Patty Fairbanks, met us there and took us under her wing. She told us all about Judge Lance Ito, who would preside over the trial. She told us what to expect. She gave us a tour of the entire facility: where to park, where to go through security, where to eat, what to say, what not to say.
“Never talk when there are others in an elevator,” she said, “because you don’t know who may be there.”
The biggest surprise for me during this time was that I was finally pregnant. I pulled out the maternity clothes that Nicole had given me before she died, and I decided to wear those clothes to the trial every day. Every day on my way to the courthouse, I would think, Please don’t let me have a miscarriage. I thought I was going to miscarry about five times because I was so upset all the time and I didn’t sleep at night. I was terrified of testifying. It absolutely took over my life as I watched my friends and acquaintances being called to testify on the witness stand one by one. I knew I was next. It was a very scary time, and I was overly emotional anyway because of the baby.
Before the first day of the trial, Bruce and I had to go into Marcia Clark’s office several times and talk about our relationship with Nicole and O.J. She wanted to know what we knew about them and their lives, and what could be possible reasons for O.J. to murder Nicole. At first it seemed like there was this whole domestic violence side of the trial that Marcia Clark was building her case around. It seemed like Marcia was planning for some of Nicole’s girlfriends, including myself, to testify on Nicole’s behalf on the subject of domestic abuse. I remember Marcia asking me if I wanted to see the crime scene photos, because I’m sure she didn’t want me to see them in court for the first time, as it would be such a shock.
In her office one day, Marcia put the crime scene photos up on the wall for me to see. They were very big and very shocking. I could see Nicole lying at the bottom of the steps in front of her town house in a huge pool of blood. I looked at them and just wept for her, wept for her family, and wept for her children. They were horrible pictures of her.
The photographs were so shocking that I felt like I wasn’t in the room with them but somewhere else, looking into the office and seeing those gruesome images. Maybe my mind was protecting me. The mind acts in very strange ways, and it can be very strong when you need it to be, and that is what happened to me that year. When you go through things of such enormity, you can wallow in your misery and you can feel sorry for yourself, you can become defeated and turn to drugs or alcohol, or you can become bitter and nasty. Or you can rise to the occasion and you can be strong and you can try to overcome your circumstances, and you don’t let yourself fall down. It’s really all about how you choose to overcome adversity.
I was trying to be there for all of my children and my friends who needed my support and who were also in pain, and to be there for Nicole’s parents and family if they ever needed me. But I also had to support myself. I didn’t want to lose myself in all of this because it was so tragic and it would’ve been so easy to be destroyed by all the pressures. Anger helped. I was really angry when I left Marcia Clark’s office after seeing the photographs. I was subpoenaed to testify and Marcia was preparing me for it.
The proceedings began each day at nine a.m. and went on until five p.m., and each day everybody would check in with everyone else on Nicole’s team—her parents, sisters, and friends—to see how everyone was doing and discuss what had happened on that particular day. Every day, as Bruce and I sat in the spectators’ seats with Nicole’s family and friends, I could see my ex-husband, Robert Kardashian, sitting at the defense table, always beside or near O.J. Sometimes my daughters Kourtney and Kimberly came to court with Robert and could see the division between us: Robert beside O.J., me sitting with Nicole’s family, Kourtney and Kimberly somewhere in the middle, all of us intimately involved in this crazy murder trial.
We became entrenched in the daily proceedings. To carry on with our daily routine became difficult. Whether I was watching the trial on television or sitting in the courtroom, on some level I thought about Nicole all day long. Outside the courtroom, things were even more insane. It became an absolute circus. During the 133 days of testimony, the trial, which cost $15 million, was all anyone talked about—on the news, at cocktail parties, in the gym, in the supermarket, you name it.
Everyone was watching the trial, glued to their televisions all day, every day. Every major journalist, media outlet, and public leader in the country was discussing the story: Larry King, Geraldo Rivera, the Reverend Al Sharpton, Tom Brokaw, Ted Koppel, Barbara Walters, Dan Rather, Connie Chung, Jay Leno. CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, and of course the New York Times—many of whom somehow got my home phone number and left countless messages asking for interviews.
It was surreal to walk into the kitchen and press PLAY on the answering machine, only to hear Barbara Walters and a dozen others say, “Hey, Kris, we’d love to get an interview.”
As I continued to think of testifying before millions watching around the world, I felt awkward. I wanted to be there for Nicole and do the best I could for her. At the same time, well, there’s no other way to say it: I was scared. Every commentator in the world would be analyzing, criticizing, and commenting on what I said. When my girlfriend Candace Garvey testified, all people had to say was something negative about her black headband. I could only imagine what they would say about me. What we wore was all so irrelevant; all we cared about was Nicole. Still, I knew I had to testify for Nicole if I was called.
In the end, I was never called to testify—and the reason why turned out to be the saddest thing of all. Marcia Clark decided that the jury wouldn’t be receptive to the whole domestic violence component of the case, and she decided to pull it from her prosecution strategy. We were all shocked.
It’s all still foggy, even today, but I believe Marcia’s office called to tell me that I had been relieved from the witness list. However, they added, I was still under a gag order and couldn’t speak to the press without permission.
On one level I felt relief that I didn’t have to get up and testify. I wouldn’t have to look Robert Kardashian and O.J. straight in the eye. How did things get so twisted? But on the other hand, I was confused. How could Marcia present the domestic violence side of our case if I wasn’t able to tell my side of the story about what I knew had happened to Nicole?
“Why aren’t I and Nicole’s other friends going to testify?” I believe I asked. “We have such valuable information.”
We all felt like if there was a reason Nicole was murdered, domestic violence was an important aspect of it, and why wouldn’t Marcia have all of us tell the countless stories about everything that we had seen over the years? Marcia knew the whole story, but she had to prosecute this case the best way she saw fit. I was upset. I kept thinking: I hope this woman knows what she’s doing, because this decision not to include domestic violence in a case that was all about domestic violence could be a make-or-break decision.
“We’ll call you if we need you” was all Marcia’s office told me.
Once I knew I wouldn’t be testifying, I felt a lot of relief despite my feelings about eliminating what I thought was the only defense. I was still officially a witness, so I wasn’t allowed to give interviews or to talk about the case. I couldn’t even leave town without permission from Judge Ito
, who issued his directives in writing.
I so admired Robert for bringing the letter explaining his situation at the start of the trial. But that didn’t mean I agreed with the pro-O.J. stance he was taking. Once or twice as the trial dragged on, I talked to Robert about his role. I tried to be subtle, but that was tough. “Are you crazy?” I asked him more than once about his unflagging belief in O.J. I guess that wasn’t a very subtle thing for me to say. “Look, do you know what you’re doing?” I asked him.
“I really feel like you’re wrong,” I would continue. “You weren’t there with her when we were all there with her and you didn’t see what was going on, because you weren’t as close to them at the end. I mean, you were still close to O.J., but you weren’t as close to O.J. and Nicole socially. You weren’t going out with O.J. and Nicole like Bruce and I were. I was seeing Nicole every day, and you weren’t, and you’ve got to listen to me.”
“No, you’re wrong,” he would say, cutting me off.
One day, when he came to bring the kids back to me after a visitation, Robert and I talked in the driveway after the kids went inside.
“You’re going to end up in a weird place here because I think you’re going to lose this trial,” I said.
“The only way we’re going to have a problem is if they find Nicole’s blood in the Bronco,” he answered.
When investigators did find Nicole’s blood in the Bronco, I told Robert, “Well, I guess you guys have a problem.”
“Oh, no we don’t,” he said.
That’s the way it was with everything with Robert. With every new piece of damning information, he would come back to me and explain it away. I think that’s what he was doing to himself in his mind, and I think he really believed it.
Then strange things started happening in the trial.
First, the whole Mark Fuhrman situation. Johnnie Cochran very passionately accused Fuhrman, the lead detective on the case, of being a racist, tampering with evidence, and essentially setting O.J. up for the murders.