And the cop said, “O.J., we can’t tell you. But we can tell you that the kids are all right. Where are you?”
I looked around the hotel room and came out of my fog. “I’m in Chicago,” I said.
“I need you to come back to L.A. as soon as you can,” he said.
Much later, during the trial, the prosecution made a big deal about my response to that phone call, claiming that I never bothered to ask what had happened to Nicole, and suggesting that I didn’t ask because I already knew. But that’s not the way I remember it. When I was told that Nicole was dead, my first response was the one I just noted: “Killed? What do you mean killed?” And even when I was told that I wasn’t going to get any more details, I remember asking, “What happened? What the fuck happened?”
The cop repeated himself: “We can’t say anything. We’re still investigating.”
And I said, “And my kids are all right?”
And the cop said, “Yes. As I said, the kids are fine. We need you to come home now, O.J.”
“Jesus Christ,” I said. “That’s all you’re going to say: Come home now!”
“O.J.,” the cop replied. “We’ll tell you what we know when you get here. We don’t know much ourselves. We’ll be waiting for you at your house.”
I went nuts, and I remember screaming at him – begging him not to leave me in the dark – but it didn’t help. When it became clear that the cops had nothing else to say – either because they didn’t want to share anything with me, or because they didn’t know much – I slammed the phone down, stormed into the bathroom, and threw a glass across the room. It shattered against the tiled wall, sounding like a gunshot.
I went back into the room and called Cathy Randa, my assistant, and told her what was going on. “I just heard from the cops,” I said. “They told me Nicole is dead.”
“Dead?” she said. “What do you mean dead?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “They say she was killed.”
“Oh my God!”
I told her to call the cops and get hold of the kids, and asked her to please get me on the next flight to Los Angeles.
Then I looked down at my hand and noticed that my finger was bleeding.
I made a few more calls. I called Hertz to tell them I had to go home, I tried calling the cops again, and I called the Browns, down in Dana Point.
Nicole’s sister, Denise, got on the phone, hysterical. “You brutal son of a bitch!” she hollered. “You killed her! I know you killed her, you motherfucker!”
Juditha took the phone from her, but I couldn’t understand what she was saying. I told her I was getting on the next flight to Los Angeles, and that I’d speak to her as soon as I landed. I got dressed and had the porter come up for my bags, then went down to the lobby and asked for a Band-Aid. I guess I’d cut my finger in the bathroom, when I threw that glass.
On my way to the airport, fighting panic, I made a few more calls. I tried to reach Cathy, to see if she knew anything else about my kids, and I again tried to call the cops. For the some reason, I even tried to call Kato, back at the house, to see if he knew anything.
When I got to the airport, I was told there was a flight leaving at 7:15, but that it was already booked. I spoke to one of the clerks and she spoke to the manager and they made room for me.
During the course of that entire flight, I sat upright and stock still the entire time. I felt like I was made of glass or something, and that if I moved too much I would shatter into a million pieces. I also remember trying to control my breathing, and thinking that my heart was beating all wrong. I guess I was on the edge of panic.
There was a guy in the seat across the aisle from me, and he noticed and asked me what was wrong. I told him that the cops had just called to tell me that my ex-wife had been killed, and that I didn’t even know where my kids were. He turned out to be a lawyer, and after expressing his condolences he gave me some advice: “You should contact your attorney the moment you land,” he said. “You’re going to need someone to help you navigate your way through this.”
Someone? Christ, the man had no idea. I ended up needing a fucking team to get me through it, and even then I almost didn’t survive.
When the plane landed, I found Cathy Randa waiting for me at the terminal, along with Skip Taft, one of my attorneys. Both Cathy and Skip looked shocked, but probably nowhere near as shocked as I looked.
“Where are my kids?” I said.
“They’re safe,” Cathy said. “They’re on their way to the Browns’ place.”
“That all your luggage?” Skip asked.
“No, there’s the golf clubs – but leave them. I’ll get them later.”
We hurried through the terminal and talked about what had happened, but they didn’t know much more than I did. And I was having trouble hearing them, anyway, because my heart was pounding and the blood was roaring in my ears. I was fucking terrified, to be honest. Nicole was dead – gone forever – and the police were waiting for me at my house.
When we were in the car, leaving the airport, Skip said we should go to his office before we went to see the cops.
“No,” I said. “The cops told me they needed to see me, and they said they’d be waiting at my house, and I’m going to my house. I can’t go to your office. I’m going to my house. That’s what the cops asked me to do.”
“The cops can wait,” he said. “We need to get a handle on this thing.”
“No,” I said. “I gave them my word. I’m going.”
At that point, Skip turned his attention to the radio, and he began flipping through the stations. I picked up bits of information here and there: Nicole Simpson Brown was dead. There was a second victim, a young man. The murders had taken place in the courtyard of her Bundy condo. Police were waiting to talk to O.J. Simpson, who had been out of town but was apparently on his way home. The whole thing felt completely unreal, as if it was happening to someone else, not me. I looked down at my hands. They were shaking uncontrollably. “What the fuck is going on?” I asked Skip. “Are people saying they think I did it? I can’t believe people would think that of me – that I could do something like that.”
Skip told me to relax, that nobody could possibly think I had anything to do with the murders. Cathy also told me not to worry. “Everything’s going to be fine,” she said.
“Did the kids see anything?” I asked.
“No,” Cathy said. “The police took them out back, through the garage.”
I felt the bile rising in my throat. It was all I could do to keep myself from being sick. “Call the Browns. Don’t let them tell the kids what happened. I want to be the one to tell them. They’re my kids.”
“I’ll call them,” Cathy said.
When we got to the house, the place was crawling with cops and reporters. It was unreal. We drove up to the gate and I could hear the reporters surging behind Skip’s car, shouting my name and snapping pictures.
“This is not a good idea,” Skip repeated. “We should have gone to my office.”
I ignored him. I got out of the car and moved toward the gate, and the reporters kept hollering at me from across the street.
There was a cop standing guard at the gate, and he seemed a little startled to see me.
“You going to let us through?” I said.
“Not the car,” he said. “Not anyone but you.”
I turned around and saw my friend Bob Kardashian crossing to greet me. I guess he’d been waiting for me there.
“Jesus, O.J.,” he said. He looked like he was near tears. “They’re not letting us in.”
Skip popped the trunk and Bob and Cathy reached for my carry-on bags and followed me back to the gate. Skip, meanwhile, backed out and went off to park the car.
The cop looked at Cathy, then turned back to face me and shook his head. “Just you,” he said.
“But they’re with me,” I said.
The officer didn’t care. He opened the gate just wide enough to let me pa
ss, and left Bob and Cathy behind, with the two small bags. The reporters were going crazy, snapping pictures and trying to figure out what was going on.
I looked through the gate, back at Bob – he looked ashen – and when I turned back the cop was reaching for his handcuffs.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I said. “I live here. This is my house.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Simpson. I’m going to have to handcuff you.”
“You ain’t gonna handcuff me,” I said.
“Mr. Simpson – ”
“You gonna handcuff me for what? I’m not crazy. I want to talk to someone. Who the fuck’s in charge here?”
Bob called out from beyond the gate: “What do you want me to do with the bags?”
Hell if I knew. I wasn’t thinking about the bags, and I didn’t realize what a strange part they’d play in the proceedings in the months ahead. One of them was my famous Louis Vuitton bag, and it gave reporters a lot of nothing to write about: What the fuck happened to the Louis Vuitton bag? What was in the fucking bag? Where was Bob Kardashian going with O.J.’s bag?
The irony is that I was trying to bring the bags into the house with me. You’d think that if there had been anything incriminating in those bags I wouldn’t have tried to lug them inside, but of course nobody wrote that part of the story. Instead, they made a huge fuss about the missing bags, and even suggested that Kardashian had walked off with all sorts of evidence, maybe even the bloody knife. Still, not once in the course of the entire trial did the prosecution make any attempt to retrieve the bags, which remained untouched for months on end.
I began to move toward the house, with the cop right on my ass, mumbling about the goddamn cuffs, and when I turned around I saw the horde of reporters across the street, with all sorts of cameras aimed right at us, rolling and pumping. I took a deep breath and figured I shouldn’t make a scene. This was my home. I didn’t want to see myself on the news later that day, giving a cop a hard time about handcuffing me. I had to keep cool. The only thing that really mattered was finding out exactly what was going on.
I put my hands behind my back and let the guy handcuff me. He led me toward the front door just as Vannatter and Lange came out the house. They introduced themselves, and told me they were in charge of the investigation.
“Well, I’m here,” I said. “I got here as fast as I could.”
“Thank you for coming,” Vannatter said.
“Don’t thank me,” I said. “Just take these goddamn cuffs ofi me. You shouldn’t he doing this to me in my own home.”
At that moment, Howard Weitzman showed up. He’s another attorney, and Skip had called him earlier, seeking his advice, I guess. Maybe he was already there, waiting for me, but that was the first I saw him. He looked directly at Vannatter and Lange. “Mr. Simpson is in no condition to talk right now,” he said. “He’s still in shock.”
And I said, “No. I can talk.”
Vannatter asked if I minded going downtown with him and his partner, and I said I didn’t mind at all.
And Howard said, echoing Skip, “That’s not a good idea.”
I don’t know whether I was in shock or not, but I was in no mood to listen to lawyers. “I’m going with them,” I said. “I’m going to do whatever they ask me to do.”
Howard was adamant. He didn’t want me to talk to those guys, and he was getting pretty hot and bothered about it. “O.J.,” he said. “You’re making a mistake.”
“I’m not going to sit here and try to cover my ass,” I replied, getting a little hot and bothered myself. “I’ve read enough thrillers and watched enough TV movies and seen enough shit on the news to know that the first guy they go to in these types of situations is the spouse or the ex-spouse or the boyfriend. I’m not going to be one of those people who get described as an ‘uncooperative witness’.”
Howard tried to tell me that that wasn’t the point – that we needed to take a moment to gather our thoughts and to try to figure out where things stood, and that once we had more information I could be the most cooperative witness in the world. But I didn’t want to wait that long. I wanted to know what the cops knew, and I wanted to know right away.
“I don’t need a lawyer,” I told Howard. “I’m innocent.”
And yeah, I know what you’re thinking: “Everybody’s innocent! The prisons are filled with guys who didn’t do shit!” But that’s my point. Half of you think I did it, and nothing will ever make you change your minds. The other half know I didn’t do it, and all the evidence in the world – planted or otherwise – isn’t going to sway you, either. But this wasn’t about that. This was about me, the prime suspect, the accused party, and I did what all accused men do at the moment of truth: I proclaimed my innocence.
Absolutely 100 percent not guilty, your honor.
You might remember that phrase. I used it at the beginning of the trial.
I turned to look at Howard again. “I’m going to talk to them,” I said. “I don’t care about anything else. I want to know exactly what the fuck is going on.”
And that was the truth. My wife was dead. I was exhausted. I needed to know what the cops knew. I wanted to get through this thing as quickly as possible, and I wanted desperately to see my kids.
So I got in the car with Vannatter and Lange and we went down to Parker Center, for the interview. No bullshit. No lawyers. No interference.
Just me and them.
If it had only been that easy…
7
The Interrogation
On June 13, 1994, a little after 1:30 P.M., I found myself in an interrogation room at Parker Center, in downtown Los Angeles, talking to Philip Vannatter and Thomas Lange, the two cops who were leading the investigation. The interview lasted thirty-two minutes, and the entire transcript follows:
Vannatter:
…my partner, Detective Lange, and we’re in an interview room in Parker Center. The date is June 13, 1994, and the time is 13:35 hours. And we’re here with O.J. Simpson. Is that Orenthal James Simpson?
O.J.:
Orenthal James Simpson.
Vannatter:
And what is your birth date, Mr. Simpson?
O.J.:
July 9, 1947.
Vannatter:
Okay. Prior to us talking to you, as we agreed with your attorney, l’m going to give you your attorney, I’m going to give you your constitutional rights. And I would like you to listen carefully. If you don’t understand anything, tell me, okay?
O.J.:
All right.
Vannatter:
Okay. Mr. Simpson, you have the right to remain silent. If you give up the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney and to have an attorney present during the questioning. If you so desire and cannot afford one, an attorney will be appointed for you without charge before questioning. Do you understand your rights?
O.J.:
Yes, I do.
Vannatter:
Are there any questions about that?
O.J.:
(unintelligible).
Vannatter:
Okay, you’ve got to speak up louder than that…
O.J.:
Okay, no.
Vannatter:
Okay, do you wish to give up your right to remain silent and talk to us?
O.J.:
Ah, yes.
Vannatter:
Okay, and you give up your right to have an attorney present while we talk?
O.J.:
Mmm hmm. Yes.
Vannatter:
Okay. All right, what we’re gonna do is, we want to…We’re investigating, obviously, the death of your exwife and another man.
Lange:
Someone told us that.
Vannatter:
Yeah, and we’re going to need to talk to you about that. Are you divorced from her now?
O.J.:
Yes.
Vannatter:
>
How long have you been divorced?
O.J.:
Officially? Probably close to two years, but we’ve been apart for a little over two years.
Vannatter:
Have you?
O.J.:
Yeah.
Vannatter:
What was your relationship with her? What was the—
O.J.
Well, we tried to get back together, and it just didn’t work. It wasn’t working, and so we were going our separate ways.
Vannatter:
Recently you tried to get back together?
O.J.:
We tried to get back together for about a year, you know, where we started dating each other and seeing each other. She came back and wanted us to get back together, and—
Vannatter:
Within the last year, you’re talking about?
O.J.:
She came back about a year and four months ago about us trying to get back together, and we gave it a shot. We gave it a shot the better part of a year. And I think we both knew it wasn’t working, and probably three weeks ago or so, we said it just wasn’t working, and we went our separate ways.
Vannatter:
Okay, the two children are yours?
O.J.:
Yes.
Lange:
She have custody?
O.J.:
We have joint custody.
Lange:
Through the courts?
O.J.:
We went through the courts and everything. Everything is done. We have no problems with the kids, we do everything together, you know, with the kids.
Vannatter:
How was your separation? What—
O.J.:
The first separation?
Vannatter:
Yeah, was there problems with that?
O.J.:
For me, it was big problems. I loved her, I didn’t want us to separate.
Vannatter:
Uh huh. I understand she had made a couple of crime – crime reports or something?
O.J.:
Ah, we had a big fight about six years ago on New Year’s, you know, she made a report. I didn’t make a report. And then we had an altercation about a year ago maybe. It wasn’t a physical argument. I kicked her door or something.
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