From February 1998.
It's late. I am in my living room, talking on the phone to O.J. Simpson. He's calling from his new house, which is not so far from his old house. "How you doin'?" he asks in his warm and friendly way. He wants me to know that my most recent trip to Los Angeles, from New York, has not gone unnoticed. The media, he says, have demanded to know the identity of the mystery blond who was with him on the golf course. "They wanted to know your name," he says. "And when I realized who they were talking about, I said, 'No, no. She's one of you.'"
I have to admit, this makes me laugh. You laugh when you talk to O.J. Simpson. You just do.
But then, within minutes, somehow, we're off and sailing again, through history, through this tragedy. Rather, it's O.J. who is sailing, pretty much alone. He rushes headlong—in a way that's become familiar to me—through apparently random thoughts on various events and characters, with a tone of mild, amused complaint. But there is also something else in his mood tonight. He seems more reflective than usual. I grab a pen and start scrawling notes.
"If I'm hurting right now," he says, rather out of the blue, "it's not because I've done anything wrong. It's because I miss her."
Then, a moment later: "If I could sit down with Fred Goldman and talk to him, I would say, 'Listen, I would love to get my hands on whoever did this. Love to.'"
"If I'm hurting right now, it's not because I've done anything wrong. It's because I miss her."His thoughts swing back to Nicole. Most of it is familiar by now. To you. To me. How difficult she was; how much he loved her. It occurs to me that he's replying to questions I haven't even asked, as if on autopilot. Then, suddenly, with no explanation or prompting, he says something that makes me stop breathing for a second.
"Let's say I committed this crime," he says. "Even if I did do this, it would have to have been because I loved her very much, right?"
I think about that remark all the time now, but I'm still not sure what it means. O.J. would angrily deny that it means what you may think it means. He has never come close to confessing that he murdered his ex-wife. But I now know O.J. Simpson a little, and I think I am beginning to understand what drives him. I also suspect that O.J. never says anything by accident.
The journey to those startling words—my journey, his journey—was a long one. Though it lasted months, I remember it mostly as a series of moments, some of them revealing and some, like his phone call, almost inscrutable. It began late last summer, more than three years after the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. And in truth I'm not sure if it has ended yet.
"Even if I did do this, it would have to have been because I loved her very much, right?"It is dark in Brentwood and very quiet. It is summer, and I am standing outside O.J. Simpson's Rockingham house, listening. Well—spying. His estate is surrounded by a hedge and, above that, a makeshift bamboo fence that blocks all views of the property. All you can see is a thatched brown roof and a fading American flag hanging from a pole. I hear children at play and the steady thump of a volleyball being hit back and forth. Sydney? Justin?
I slip my first of many letters under one of the two wide green gates that bookend the estate. "To O.J. Simpson," I have scrawled on the envelope. Even as I do this, I scarcely believe he exists anymore other than as a cloud of static above our heads, a billion dots of TV fallout.
"I just want to know about your life today," my futile letter begins. I assure him that my story is not an investigation into his guilt or innocence. This is, I later learn, what every journalist says.
I search, absurdly, for a doorbell or a buzzer, but there is none. You think you can ring O.J. Simpson's doorbell? A Westec Security car drives up, and I decide to leave.
Driving through the thin blanket of fog, back down Rockingham, I encounter a curious, inexplicable sight: A small, dark figure is walking up ahead. As I approach, I see that it is a child dressed in a grim-reaper costume. I wonder whether I am hallucinating.
My phone doesn't exactly ring off the hook with calls from O.J. or his friends. But I have to start somewhere, so I dial myself into oblivion. I feel absurd leaving messages for the now-iconic likes of Robert Kardashian and A. C. Cowlings. All I want, I tell their answering machines, is a picture of O.J.'s life today.
I slip more letters under O.J.'s gate. I traverse golf courses, question ice cream clerks, and call everyone I can think of. The few who will talk either want money or don't seem to know much. I begin to wonder whether O.J. has any life at all beyond the moral crucible of his story. Whether O.J. Simpson has simply become an abstraction that resides solely in the backs of the minds of 265 million Americans.
Getty ImagesSimpson looks at a new pair of the same type of gloves found at the Bundy murder scene and the Rockingham estate, on June 21, 1995.
David Goldstein, a veteran journalist from KCAL television in Los Angeles, who covered both O.J. trials, tells me a fascinating story from a few weeks earlier. O.J. was standing just a few feet from Fred Goldman, outside the Santa Monica courtroom where legal proceedings were under way following Goldman's successful wrongful-death suit. Goldman was talking to reporters, calling Simpson, as he always does, "the killer."
"Suddenly," Goldstein says, "O.J. gets up on a bench, spreads out his arms as if he's on a crucifix, and hollers, 'Jesus Christ, I am telling the truth. And I am a Christian!'"
In chemistry, O.J. would be called catalytic: a compound that does not change but changes everything it comes into contact with, sometimes explosively.The first time I see him in person is outside the same courtroom. Lawyers are slugging out the matter of O.J.'s money, property, and memorabilia, virtually all of which is now complicatedly, painstakingly being forked over to Goldman.
Simpson, dressed in a brown silk shirt and pants and limping heavily, enters the courtyard with one of his lawyers. A bolt of excitement shoots through the crowd as soon as he comes in, and reporters start rushing toward him, calling his name. My first thought is visceral, wordless, something like Oh!
In chemistry, O.J. would be called catalytic: a compound that does not change but changes everything it comes into contact with, sometimes explosively. It is not just that he has natural star quality, which he does. It is not just that he is at the center of the most celebrated murder case in history. No, it has something to do with how effortlessly he accepts the attention. He seems to glow beneath it. Then his lawyer whisks him off toward the door, and the flock of reporters lunge after.
Mike Gilbert, O.J.'s sports agent, has known Simpson for almost twenty years and has spent the past three years at the epicenter of the blast. After dozens of phone calls, several canceled appointments, and dozens more phone calls, Gilbert finally agrees to meet me.
We sit down to eat at a restaurant near Gilbert's house in Hanford, California, about a three-and-a-half-hour drive from L.A.
"O.J.'s life today?" he asks acerbically. "I can give you your story, but it's only one sentence. Ready: He doesn't have one.
"He's retired. He plays golf six days a week. All day. He hardly goes out. He drives his kids to school every day. He sometimes sees a movie. He reads a lot of books."
What books? I ask.
"John Grisham, mostly," says Gilbert. "And he just read Beach Music. He can't get work anymore. So that's his life. It's a very ordinary suburban life."
That seems like such an odd description under the circumstances.
"After the civil trial," Gilbert says, "I said to O.J., 'Imagine that there was an earthquake or a fire, and everything was destroyed, and all that you got out with was your friends, your family, and your children. You'd be so happy and thankful for what you had. And that's what we all have to do now; we have to just be thankful for what's left.'"
Does O.J. think that?
"Absolutely," says Gilbert. "He's thankful for what he has left."
"You know what? If Nicole came back, she'd be pissed at her family," says Gilbert. "Very pissed."
As we talk further, Gilbert grows irritated. "I know what's going to happen," he insists. "Your editors will never allow this to get printed, because the only thing people want to read is what a horrible guy O.J. is. That's the only acceptable thing to say, so why even bother?"
Try me, I say.
"You know what? If Nicole came back, she'd be pissed at her family," says Gilbert. "Very pissed.""I have been around athletes for twenty years," he says. "Of all the athletes I've met, he's probably the most kind and generous. I mean come on. I represented Marcus Allen. And a lot of guys just like him. Terrible womanizers. I was the guy who had to book their girlfriends at the same hotel, different floor, as their wives. You would not believe what I've seen. These guys could care less about anybody or anything around them. Is O.J. like that? Sure he is, but not to the extent that these other people are."
Gilbert sighs, then asks if I remember what the nun said in the movie Dead Man Walking. "She said, 'I'm not going to judge a man by the worst day of his life.'"
I stare blankly for a moment. What?
"I truly believe," he says carefully, "that anyone in this world is capable of murder. Anyone. If everything that could go wrong does go wrong. I have never said there's no way O.J. could have done this. I don't know what happened June twelfth, but I know O.J. If he came up to me and said, 'Hey, this is what happened. I did it,' you know what? I would feel horrible for him, because I would think if someone who is that generous and kind can be pushed into that situation, then it's a terrible indictment for all of us. Because here we are. We're no better than him."
Gilbert is facing his own legal problems. Among the Simpson assets that Fred Goldman has been authorized to claim is O.J.'s 1968 Heisman Trophy. After the court ruled, Gilbert secretly took possession of the Heisman—causing a brief stir over its whereabouts. Ultimately, Gilbert turned it over, but not before performing one final act of rebellion—he removed the nameplate.
"I didn't want the media zooming in on it and showing that trophy with O.J.'s name on it," he says. "You have to understand, in eighth grade I watched him win this thing, hoping one day to meet him. He was my idol. Not knowing that twenty-nine years later I would have to take that trophy and turn it over to the court. It broke my heart. I cried after I dropped the trophy off. Because one of the things I always said is, Look, you can never take away the Heisman, being in the Hall of Fame, running for 2,003 yards. Those are things you can't take away. Well, lo and behold, they are trying to take it away."
Gilbert says he will go to jail sooner than turn over the nameplate.
I ask him why he stays so loyal to O.J. "I'm removing the night of June twelfth, because I don't know," he says. "But I know who the man is that I knew for twenty years. The man who was always, always there for his friends. And I'm going to be there for him."
Everybody asks me whether Mike Gilbert is white or black, so I'll tell you: He's white. At one time, he represented more than fifteen professional athletes. Today, Gilbert says, he's lost most of his clients because of his association with O.J., his income cut by more than three quarters.
"My life has been absolute hell for three years, and I don't know when it's going to end," he says. "People think we're all a bunch of knife sharpeners, but you know, we are grieving, too. And the so-called grieving families at the center of this are not behaving like any grieving family I've ever seen."
He is referring to reports that the Brown family has sold some of Nicole's personal artifacts to media outlets. "You know, I knew Nicole very well, and you know what? If Nicole came back, she'd be pissed at her family. Very pissed. And this whole business of selling Nicole Simpson angel pins. Let me tell you, I knew Nicole, and she was not about to get her ass kicked by anybody."
If Nicole came back? Not about to get her ass kicked? But, Lord, she did get her ass kicked.
Okay, I'm listening.
"And here's another thing," Gilbert says with barely contained rage. "Marcus Allen—the lying, cowardly son of a bitch—Marcus Allen had an affair with Nicole. No question about it. That comes from his own mouth. He told me. I remember exactly where I was sitting, where he was sitting."
Allen has always denied that he had an affair with Nicole.
We finish our meal, and Gilbert rubs his temples. If Simpson could change anything, I ask him, what would it be? His answer seems glib at first, then fascinatingly complex—then hard to forget.
"He'd be on an earlier flight to Chicago."
After several weeks of calling, faxing, and cajoling various members of Simpson's inner circle, of flying back to New York and then returning to Los Angeles, I finally decide just to go to his house and stay there.
O.J.'s bodyguard Tom Gleason sits under a tree across the road from Simpson's front gate, taking shelter from the sun. I have brought him a bottle of Snapple. "You sure you didn't spike this?" he says and grins, opening it.
Tom, whom O.J. calls Thomas, bears an uncanny resemblance to Sylvester Stallone, only he is taller and handsomer. He started working as O.J.'s bodyguard on the day of Nicole's funeral. He escorted O.J. home from jail on the day of his acquittal, and he has been one step behind him virtually every day since.
Simpson sits in Superior Court in Los Angeles on December 8, 1994.
In what is perhaps some sort of bonding-with-your-captor syndrome, Tom and I become friendly, and he allows me to sit with him as he guards the property, which is soon to be auctioned, along with most of O.J.'s other assets, to start paying the $33.5 million judgment won by the victims' families. "I won't talk about Simpson," Tom tells me flatly. But out here, I think, if he doesn't, he'll be the only one.
One day, a young guy from the neighborhood comes over. He tells me he finds this a "great place to pick up chicks," especially in the vicinity of Tom, where they tend to congregate. As the guy leaves, he calls out: "Hey, Tom. Don't take a bullet for his ass. He ain't worth it."
Tom, of course, like every other person in proximity to Simpson, has been offered more than a million dollars to talk. "I have something to say," he finally tells me, "but I'm going to say it my way. On my terms, when the time is right.
"This thing," he says, sighing, "is so deep. It's so much deeper than anybody has even touched on. Everybody just writes the same old boring thing, over and over."
"Do you know?" I ask him. "Do you know the answer?"
"Do I know?" he says slowly. He pauses. "No. Well. No."
It is a bright, hot Saturday afternoon in Brentwood, and the stream of tourists is unending. The house is on the L.A. tourist map, and in addition to the hundreds of cars that stop here every day, tour buses also come through, stopping first here, then at Nicole's condo on Bundy Drive, five minutes away.
People come from all around the country just to look at the house. They climb up on their cars, peek under the gates, and take pictures. Gotta stay off the property, folks, Tom commands through his walkie-talkie, which transmits to speakers posted on each gate. It's private property, folks. The family still lives in there.
Usually the tourists don't realize that the voice they hear is that of a man sitting across the street, and often they seem to think it is O.J. talking to them. Two pretty young women pass by. Looking good, ladies, Tom intones, his deep voice seeming to come out of nowhere. Welcome to Rockingham. They almost start running down the street.
Getty ImagesO.J. Simpson\'s Rockingham Estate, shown in June 1994, in Brentwood, California.
Two gray-haired women who live nearby are taking their daily walk together, and they stop to talk to Tom.
"Hi, Rambo. Did they sell the house?" one of them asks.
Neighbors! The famous Brentwood neighbors. I follow them down the street.
"I don't think he did it," says one of them. The other one frowns.
"No, I don't. I knew the whole family very well. They always used to sit out here—O.J., Nicole, and the kids and the dogs. He just adored her. Have you met him? He's very friendly. Very warm. I think it's just terrible what's happened to the man."
The other woman informs me quietly that she has no doubt O.J. did it.
"But you two are still friends?" I ask.
"We just don't discuss it."
Cars drive up continually, and people ask us: "Is that O.J.'s house?"
"Yup."
They take pictures of one another in front of the gate. Many of them ask if they can take Tom's picture. Sometimes they offer their opinions.
"I don't think he did it."
"I don't see how he could have cleaned up all that blood."
"I think he did it, but I don't think there should have been a second trial."
"I think he knows who did it."
I meet as many white people who say they think he's innocent as I do black people who do. But there is nothing agonized in the debate out here. On the contrary, it is festive, the visitors flush with the excitement of seeing O.J. Simpson's driveway, gates, and roof. It's like seeing a famous movie set.
The flow never stops. Cars occasionally drive in and out of the gate, but so far—nearly two weeks after I attached myself to Tom—no Simpson. A white convertible pulls up, and I look up from the curb right in front of the house, and in the baking sun, for a split second, I think I'm experiencing a mirage. Nicole.
She zooms past me, through the gate. "Wow," I say to Tom. "Talk about a spitting image of Nicole."
Apparently, whoever she is, she is O.J.'s girlfriend.
"Yeah," Tom says. "Sometimes I wonder if it's deliberate."
Tom goes inside the estate. From the other gate, around the corner, a black van exits and comes roaring past. The driver peers through the darkened window at me. Either he looks angry, or he's squinting in the sun.
Tom comes back out. "That was him," he says. "I put in a good word for you."
I am discouraged after another round of faxes and phone calls to Mike Gilbert, trying to arrange an interview. Finally, Gilbert calls from O.J.'s house. "He just can't see any upside to doing this. I mean, what's in it for him?"
I can't honestly think of anything, I admit. But I have the feeling I'm getting closer. Or that O.J. is getting closer. He's been calling radio and television shows recently, answering the occasional question from a reporter, becoming a lot more visible in public.
"Give us another day to think about it," says Gilbert.
I drive to O.J.'s house and sit down on the curb. "Don't give up," Tom offers. "You never know." It's dark, and the moon hangs, as in a picture, right over O.J.'s roof.
Then, suddenly, O.J.'s baritone splits the silence from behind the gate. "Thomas!" Tom sprints to the gate and slips inside the property. Now, suddenly, five people are in front of the gate, realizing O.J. is behind it.
"Hey, O.J. Come out and talk to us," a man calls. "There's only a small group of us out here. We're a nice bunch."
The gate opens and O.J. steps out, with his rottweiler, Miles, next to him.
He's wearing white socks and no shoes. "I'm still in my golf clothes," he says with a smile. He pulls his hand over his head and says, "My hair isn't even combed!" Everybody laughs. I look around at people's faces, and everyone seems positively lit up.
"Hey, O.J.," a woman calls out. "You're not as tall as you look on TV."
"That's because all my lawyers are about this tall," he says, holding a hand up to his shoulder. Again, everybody laughs. One by one, people pose next to him to have their pictures taken. He smiles and shakes hands and jokes with everybody. I whisper to O.J., "Hi, I'm the person who's been pestering you all these weeks. I know you don't want to do it, but..."
O.J. smiles broadly. "It's not that I don't want to. I just have to think about when would be the right time, see?"
Getty ImagesSimpson arrives at the courthouse in Santa Monica, California, on May 15, 1997, to answer questions about his assets after failing to cooperate in paying a $33.5 million judgment against him filed by the families of murder victims Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. Simpson was found liable in February in the civil suit.
A van passing by almost crashes into a tree at the sight of O.J. A man gets out with his young son, who is wearing a Dodgers cap. Stunned, they walk toward us and introduce themselves to O.J.
"So," O.J. says to the boy, "where are you from?"
"Ohio."
"Ohio," O.J. says. "My last USC college game at the Rose Bowl, we lost to Ohio State."
O.J. is patting his dog's head as he speaks. "My son Jason gave this dog to me after I got out of incarceration," he says.
"What was that like?" somebody asks.
"Getting a dog?" O.J. deadpans, and everybody roars with laughter.
"There are people out there—it's worse than that they're angry I wasn't convicted," O.J. says. "They're angry because I'm not crazy right now.""There are people out there—it's worse than that they're angry I wasn't convicted," O.J. says. "They're angry because I'm not crazy right now."
A conversation ensues, about golf, about buckeye peas, about Shirley Temple, who, O.J. says, once lived down the street. Somebody asks O.J. if we can all take him out for a beer. He smiles and says thank you but explains that he has friends over. "My kids are in Laguna, so it's a rare night off," he says with a grin.
"Hey, O.J., is that your house?" somebody asks.
O.J. glances over his shoulder. "It was!" he says, and again the crowd laughs uproariously.
A white stretch limo pulls up, and a bunch of squealing people jump out. "We are from the Netherlands!" they shout. "We love you, O.J." They rush up to him and pose for pictures, giggling hysterically the entire time. One of them, a beautiful blond woman, asks for his autograph, and he says, "I can't do that. I've promised my kids I won't sign autographs at the house. I'm sorry."
The Dutch people are hanging all over O.J., and by golly, he starts to speak a few lines of what sounds like Dutch but turns out to be Afrikaans. "I picked that up when I was in South Africa," he tells them. They shriek uncontrollably.
After about half an hour, he retreats inside the gate. "We will talk," he says to me, and the gate closes.
The crowd is giddy. "Oh, my God! I can't believe how nice he was."
The next afternoon, it happens again. O.J. comes out of the gate, and this time a much bigger crowd mobs him. They have driven here from all around the country. They hug him, shake his hand, even hand him their babies. Most of them are white.
As I'm sitting on the curb the following evening, Tom walks out from the estate. "I think he might talk to you," he says.
Suddenly, I hear somebody whistling behind the gate, whistling the melody to "If I Only Had a Brain," from The Wizard of Oz. "Sshhh," I say to Tom.
The gate opens, and O.J. emerges. I walk up to him slowly, fearing he will retreat. But instead, he starts talking. Small talk at first, but he doesn't stop. No tourists are around. Soon he is talking about a book he recently read called The Spiral of Silence.
"How it works," he says, "is you could have a group of people, and they could be a minority of people who have access to expound their views, and consequently, they expound their views, and the other side of the society, who might even be the majority, who feel that their view is not the popular view, will not say anything because they do not want to be ostracized and feel that they're not going along with the popular view."
I nod, but he's really not looking for a response.
Then, in the middle of his discourse, a man pulls up and asks O.J. for directions. That's all, directions. "Excuse me. What's the best way to get to Sunset?"
O.J. leans on the car: "Okay ... you can only go two blocks here, turn right, go three blocks. That light is Sunset—turn left at the light."
The man drives off, and O.J. gets back to the spiral of silence.
"So what happens is you get the people expounding their views with no opposition, because the opposition feels that their view may be the unpopular view. I believe that exists in my case to the umpteenth degree. I've had some very, very avid supporters who are reluctant to be publicly supportive, but you see it out here."
I wonder if that's partly why he's talking to the crowds, and now to me—testing the public response.
He walks to the curb, still talking, like a professor pacing during a lecture. "There was a book I read that was mandatory reading when I was in school. When I was a kid, I remember two books that were mandatory reading. One of them was Animal Farm, and one was the ... something incident."
"Ox-bow?" I ask.
"Ox-bow Incident! Yeah. When the mob just made up their justice. Then they found out they had hung the wrong guy. But the point is, isn't this what they were talking about? This mob lynching? It may not be with a rope now. It's more sophisticated. We do it with TV and the press.
"Not only in my case. I'm appalled at what I see with this [JonBenet Ramsey] case in Denver. How can the media be so publicly calling these parents murderers? I don't get it. This is America! You can't do that!"
He clearly wants to be heard on this subject. He wants to participate in a larger discussion. But I wonder how he deals with it personally, when he thinks about how he's perceived—as a murderer who got away with it.
"Lee Bailey gave me a long talk when I first got out of prison, about [Dr.] Sam Sheppard and how popular opinion killed him. He said, 'O.J., you know who you are. Don't let popular opinion kill you.' There are people out there—it's worse than that they're angry I wasn't convicted. They're angry because I'm not crazy right now."
For about twenty minutes, O.J. talks and talks, almost stream of consciousness but calmly and even cheerfully—about Faye Resnick, Fuhrman, Clark, cops, beating his wife (never happened, though they got "physical" twice), fingerprints, blood drops. And Nicole.
"Her bruises weren't as bad as they make out," O.J says of Nicole. "Don't forget she was very white. I used to call her the overly white girl.""I see these women on TV with their candlelight vigils for Nicole. Everywhere I've ever gone with Nicole, women have disliked her. They thought she was cold and snobbish. But these women on the street with their candles. They all hated her before. It has nothing to do with Nicole. Everybody is just using her image for their own purposes."
A van pulls up and people rush toward O.J., hugging him, asking for autographs. Instantly, he glows. He is the star again, drinking up the attention.
After he is finished with this group, he says to me, "Before all this, I used to enjoy thinking I could make people happy. But now I think it works more the other way. I need them much more now."
He waves and slips inside the gate. "O.J.," I say, stopping him, "which golf course will you be at tomorrow?" Amazingly, he tells me and adds what time he'll be finishing his round.
Getty Images
After he goes inside, Tom and I walk over to my car, down the street. We stand and talk about what just happened. How to make sense of all this. We turn it like a Rubik's Cube—justice, evidence, race, America; O.J.'s ability to win over crowds and his almost fearless confidence that he can do so; and his oddly abstract attitude toward his own case, as if he were just another O.J. commentator. Before long, it's gotten late and we're still standing there. It must be about eleven o'clock.
All of a sudden, Tom freezes. He's listening. "Shit," he whispers.
O.J. is whistling again, that same song—"If I Only Had a Brain"—from The Wizard of Oz. It is coming from behind the gate. Tom looks worried.
"I'm sorry," I tell Tom. "I'm sorry that I got you talking like that."
Is he just letting us know he's there? What does it mean? Does it mean anything at all?
The next morning, I take the 405 to the Knollwood golf course in Granada Hills, where O.J. said he would be playing. "If somebody were finishing their game," I ask an attendant, "where would they come out?"
"Check the coffee shop. Who are you looking for?"
"Um, O.J. Simpson."
"I can't talk about that."
I scan the coffee shop. No O.J. I go make a phone call, and as I'm walking back out through the café, I suddenly hear a deep male voice yelling, "Hey, Esquire!"
I turn around, and there is O.J. at a table in the back, with about five other men. I walk over and sit down.
"He was just messing with you before," one of his companions says with a laugh. "He ducked under the table when he saw you come in."
"Tell me," I say to no one in particular, "what is it about golf?"
O.J. looks right at me. It's not a friendly look. He makes a grabbing motion: "It's about taking this hard, shaftlike thing and trying to get the thing in the hole," he says, with a cruder edge than I've heard him use before. We lock eyes for a moment. I interpret his mood as a swipe at a reporter, but the hardness is unmistakable. And it makes me wary.
But then his demeanor abruptly changes. His voice softens. "No, seriously," he says with a smile, "it has a lot to do with nature. It's so beautiful out there, with the hills and the streams. You can forget about all your problems. Nobody brings their problems in here. Golf is the most addictive sport I have ever played."
The bill arrives, and everybody puts money down. O.J. tries to pay, but the others won't let him. He walks outside and sits down, alone, at a round table facing the golf course. Behind us is a window where you can buy refreshments. The menu is written in black pen on the backs of paper plates that are taped to the windows. It's a public golf course, and everything is slightly faded and worn down. He's had to give up his memberships in private clubs, and he seems uncomfortable in the shabbier surroundings.
"Mind if I sit down?" I ask him.
He nods. He starts to talk. I try to memorize what he's saying. It's all about golf. Again, I am afraid he will get up and walk away. I ask if I can turn on my tape recorder, and he says yes.
When you're around O.J., you start to think, "Maybe he didn't do it." Eventually, you start to think, irrationally, even if he did do it, he didn't do it.When you're around O.J., you start to think, Maybe he didn't do it. Eventually, you start to think, irrationally, even if he did do it, he didn't do it.
It's a free-form conversation. Mostly, he's talking and I'm listening. I ask him about his life, but he slides back into the past. Tirades against Faye Resnick, the Browns, the custody lawyers. Detailed excursions into specific arguments he and Nicole had, who said what to whom and when and how and why.
It is hot, the sun is beating down, and he is ignoring what few questions I'm able to slip in—if he hears them at all. I suddenly realize that there is, after all, only one question the world wants him to answer, but it's not a question there is any point in asking anymore. You think that sitting with somebody is the same as having access to his mind, to what he knows, but, of course, it isn't. As O.J. speaks, I feel myself slipping away from, not closer to, clarity. It all flies through my head like familiar fragments of some distant folklore. Nicole, Faye, New Year's Eve, Marcus Allen, drug addicts, Denise…
Getty ImagesO.J. Simpson, No. 32 of the Buffalo Bills, looks on during an NFL game circa 1975.
"I've never thought of myself as a jealous person," he says. "I say to people, 'What was the motive for these crimes?' They say, 'Jealousy and control.' I say, 'Tell me what evidence was presented at either trial that showed jealousy and control.' I'm talking about drug addicts and hookers. That's what I'm yelling about [on the recording of Nicole's 911 call], I don't want these people around my kids. All I hear is 'Oh, she sounded afraid.' Well, she should have been afraid. There ain't an American out there that wouldn't have been just as mad as I was. And so in the midst of the argument, I kicked the door. So? In the midst of an argument, she's broken things.
"I hear her friends say, 'Oh, she had gone on with her life.' Wait a minute. What did she do the year before? She took trips. She went with guys that she said she was in love with. She had no O.J. in her life. No way, shape, or form did I have any effect on her life at all. And what did she do? She's back crying on my doorstep because she hated the people she was hanging around with. Right? Had sex with my best friend without my knowledge. That's how foreign she was to my life."
It spirals and spirals, like a whirlpool. Judy, Lou, Paula, Faye…
What was she like, I ask him, when they met?
"She was eighteen," he says. "She was innocent. She was confident. She was, you know, a little kooky. But she was gorgeous. She was, I thought, the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen. You know?
"And she didn't know who I was, and I loved that. No idea who I was. I don't think she ever watched a football game in her life. We'd go out, and people would come up to me, and she would say, All these people know you. Who are you?'" O.J. laughs. "She said, 'You guys wear helmets?' That's what I loved about her, you know. There was that innocence."
O.J. buys us each a Budweiser. His words continue to cascade. But the talk is strangely shapeless, without beginning, middle, or end. It's as if he just can't bear silence. He can't stop. Why is he talking to me? I don't know. What are we talking about? I'm not sure. He isn't ranting in anger. It's almost like petty kvetching, more a weary sort of gossipy complaining than an expression of deep outrage or loss or failure ... or guilt. It all seems so external. It's all blame.
As we walk toward the parking lot, I ask O.J. what he's learned from his experience of the last three years.
"My mother always told me that all you could ever do is the best you can," he says, climbing into his van. "I could wish I still had my Ferrari and my Bentley and all that, but I don't."
His Ferrari and his Bentley?
"And I'm not about material things. I like them, like everybody does. But that's not who I am. Who I am is a guy—if you weren't a press person, I'd be flirting with you." He laughs. "You know? That's what I do. That's me. I flirt with old ladies. Little kids. That's who I am. That's how I am.
"When I was a famous football player, they would write about me like I was a god, and I knew that wasn't true. I never let it get to my head. And it's the same now but in reverse. It couldn't be more extreme. People write to me and say, 'You're setting an example of how to act under extreme pressure.' I'm not doing it to set an example. I'm doing it because it's the only way I can survive. The only way I can look at my kids.
"Like I used to say to my lawyers, I don't want to hear reasonable doubt. I want to hear innocent. I didn't commit this crime. I didn't do this."
Now, suddenly, O.J. is talking about blood drops and Fuhrman and blood on the dashboard...
"When I was a famous football player, they would write about me like I was a god, and I knew that wasn't true. I never let it get to my head. And it's the same now but in reverse."When you're around O.J., you start to think, Maybe he didn't do it. Eventually, you start to think, irrationally, even if he did do it, he didn't do it. Looking at him now, I think it's entirely possible that O.J. himself does not know whether he did it.
Getty ImagesSimpson steps out of a red Ferrari Testarossa.
He starts his car. "I get sad and angry when I have to think about this stuff," he says. "But other than that, I'm okay. I'm a pretty stable guy. And I got fucked here. There's no doubt about it. But I believe in my heart I'm going to get it all back in spades. And maybe that's what my life's mission is."
He lifts his hand to wave and drives away.
Shortly, O.J. would move from Rockingham, lowering the flag to half-mast before he left. Most of his property has been seized now, though he has retained his $300,000 annual pension.
He doesn't move far—a few minutes away, to a house he is leasing on a remote street in nearby Pacific Palisades. The tourists seem to ignore this place. It is a smaller house with higher hedges. In the back, it overlooks the city and the ocean; it has a view of both courthouses in which he was tried.
I return to New York, still not sure what to make of my experience with O.J. We talk a couple of times on the phone. But no matter how much we talk, our conversations bring no clarity. My thoughts are fuzzy, irresolute. What to make of him? He seems so oblivious somehow. Not simple. Not unaware. But you expect to find some kind of torment in him—tortured by remorse if he is guilty of the crimes or by indignation at a grievous injustice if he is not. Instead, he seems so generally untroubled, despite having lost almost everything. So anxious to enjoy his life. So weirdly optimistic.
The next time I meet O.J. is in New York City, on a crisp November day, in a restaurant with a tuxedo-clad maître d' and a leather-bound reservations book.
"Who are you here to meet?" the man in the tux asks me coolly.
"Um..." I reply, just as Mike Gilbert appears.
O.J. enters behind him. This is the first time I've seen O.J. outside his fairly cloistered world. He has been venturing outside that world more often lately, and in fact this is his second trip to New York in a month. Gilbert has told me that O.J. was so energized by his last trip, and by what he considered his warm reception by people on the street, that he couldn't wait to get back.
I'm feeling a little anxious, for my part. As we make our way toward our table, I look around, wondering whether the glasses will crack, lunching ladies will faint, businessmen will storm out. But not a single head swivels. Perhaps they simply don't think it is him.
O.J. spends the morning shopping at a men's store. "I get so much love in this city," he says, stabbing his fork into a lightly browned scallop.
"Yeah, you should have been there," Gilbert says. "Cabdrivers were honking, waving, people shouting, 'Go, Juice!'"
"And there was this little old lady at the store who walked up to me," O.J. says. "Right up to my face. And she says, 'O.J., you listen to me, now. You give Fred Goldman nothing.'" He slices the air horizontally with his hand. "'Nothing.' And she says, 'And I'm Jewish and telling you this. Give that man nothing.'"
After we've finished eating, they leave for a meeting, and I remain at the table. One of our two waiters comes up to me and says, "Ma'am, I just want you to know that it was our pleasure serving you today. And it was our pleasure serving Mr. Simpson." He bows and vanishes.
Then the other waiter appears. He insists that I have some dessert and coffee on the house. "How is Mr. Simpson's family?" he asks. "How are the kids?" This waiter is from India.
"Uh, pretty good, I think."
He pauses before walking away. Then he says, "They still have their mother, right?"
I'm still thinking about that waiter hours later. Was he just confused? Was it his awkward English? Probably. But it occurs to me that the waiter also reflected a strange phenomenon. It is the essence of the journey O.J. seems to be making.
He was born to be a star. And as he reemerges in the public eye, and as the details of the case—even the murders themselves—begin to recede in the public mind, we may one day be left with just O.J. Simpson, famous person.
Maybe. I meet O.J. at his hotel that evening as he leaves for a TV studio to tape an interview for a prospective Fox-network talk show. He is in an upbeat mood. Flashbulbs pop as he leaves the hotel. At the studio, we are ushered into a room where a production assistant tells us we can relax for a while and watch the taping of another segment.
The program is a pilot for The Michael Moore Show. Moore, the iconoclastic filmmaker, is interviewing Sheryl Crow at the moment. As the camera pans the virtually all-white audience, O.J. mumbles, "That don't exactly look like a we-love-O.J. crowd, does it?" He laughs.
"He does the handshakes and the crowd pleasing, but he is ... different," says one friend. "He's like a person who's had a mild stroke. He's not the same."
The producers come to get him, and we all go down to the studio floor. Moore has been an outspoken critic of the media coverage of O.J., referring to himself as "the only white guy in America who thinks O.J. might not have done it." It is clear that O.J. expects the interview to be light.
"He does the handshakes and the crowd pleasing, but he is ... different," says one friend. "He's like a person who's had a mild stroke. He's not the same."The audience has not been told that O.J. is a guest. Moore introduces him by saying, "Our next guest won the Heisman Trophy in 1968. He's appeared in numerous films and more TV shows than you can imagine. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome … O.J. Simpson!"
There is weak applause, mixed with a faint groan and some laughter. Moore begins by actually asking football questions, which the audience perceives as a joke. Some laugh, some stare in disbelief. Within a couple of minutes, Moore drops the shtick.
"So, did ya kill her?" he asks. There is some laughter from the audience.
"No," O.J. replies emphatically.
"Did you kill her?"
"No, I did not."
"Did you kill him?"
"Absolutely not."
I turn to look at Mike Gilbert. He has turned pale.
"Wife beater!" a woman shouts from the back. "You beat Nicole! You beat her! You know you did!"
Moore stands up. "Hang on a second," he calls to the woman. "We're going to get into that."
A hush falls on the studio. Moore presses O.J. to admit that he hit Nicole. O.J. uses the same words he used with me when we discussed it: "We did get physical on one or two occasions."
The audience groans.
"And I regret that," O.J. continues. "I do regret that."
"In other words, you beat her," Moore says.
"Call it whatever you want."
Moore moves on to the killings. How many people in the audience, he asks, believe O.J. is guilty of the murders?
The hands of three fourths of the crowd go up.
"Murderer!" somebody shouts. One after another, people from the audience rise to deliver their salvo to O.J. Have you ever worn Bruno Magli shoes? Isn't it true that you had dreams about killing Nicole? Why did you run away if you were innocent? Some people stand and walk out noisily, shaking their heads and muttering.
"Murderer!" somebody shouts. One after another, people from the audience rise to deliver their salvo to O.J.Moore closes the show by asking O.J. if he would be willing to take a lie-detector test right there and then. Mike Gilbert looks as if he is about to pass out. There is a queasy silence, and it seems neither O.J. nor the audience knows whether Moore is kidding.
He is kidding. The audience cheers and boos. Finally, it's over. Several audience members rush up to ask O.J. more questions. He poses for a few pictures and signs some autographs. Then Moore takes him aside for a few moments of private conversation. Gilbert looks stricken.
Back in thedressing room, O.J. is elated. "You were terrific," someone tells him. "Just terrific."
"What did Moore say to you afterward?" I ask.
"Oh, he said the audience had been a little rough," O.J. says. "But I told him, 'No, you don't understand, this is what I want. I have always wanted this kind of dialogue.' I keep saying I'll go on any show and debate."
Outside, Gilbert and I get in a car together while O.J. rides with some New York friends who have joined us.
"Thank God that's over," Gilbert says, slumping against the car door. "Jesus."
I remember something Tom told me about seeing Gilbert in court with O.J. "You'd think he was the one on trial. He can't separate himself from Simpson."
If O.J. is nearly always impossible to read, to figure out, Gilbert seems transparent. His emotions come through his eyes, his demeanor, his pallor. Right now, he is miserable.
In the other car, right in front of us, O.J. is laughing, looking victorious. To him, it was a great show. He's glowing. When we arrive at an East Side bar, he is greeted warmly by all.
Getty ImagesO.J. Simpson and Nicole Brown Simpson sighted on January 7, 1981 at Stellini\'s Restaurant in Beverly Hills, California.
It is 1:00 a.m. We are at the bar in his hotel, and O.J. is soaring, telling football stories. Talking about his new girlfriend, who, he sheepishly admits, is twenty-two, closer to his twelve-year-old daughter Sydney's age than his own. Sydney, he says, will not allow him to have this woman around the house, ever, or any woman, for that matter. "She's tough," he says, shaking his head. "Just like her mother."
Suddenly, O.J. stiffens, and it takes a moment before I realize that a man passing our table has spit at him. When he passes again, this time with another man and a woman, a shouting match erupts. "Come closer and spit next time, asshole," shouts Bobby Bender, a close friend of O.J.'s who is with us.
"I'll come spit in your face, you fucking murderer!" the woman screams at O.J., who stands up and pushes his chair back. The trio scurry down the marble steps to the hotel lobby, where the woman, still hysterical, tells a security guard, "He was going to kill me! Did you see that? He was going to kill me, too!"
"I'll come spit in your face, you fucking murderer!" the woman screams at O.J.O.J. is a little quiet after that. This was personal, much more so than the hostile questions from the TV audience. He is still smiling, but his mood is different—like a pane of glass that is shattered but still intact. It's a mood I've had glimpses of before, moments when he seems almost absent. I think about an eerie remark a friend of his made to me recently.
"He still laughs the same," the friend said when I pressed him on how O.J. has changed since the murders. "He does the handshakes and the crowd pleasing, but he is ... different. He's like a person who's had a mild stroke. He's not the same."
But the cracks rarely show. Watching O.J. in New York and at the TV studio today, I kept thinking that what he wants most now, preposterously, is to move beyond the murders somehow. To be accepted again. To get his life back—"get it all back in spades," as he told me. He would love to be seen as truly innocent of the crime, as he insists he is. But if that's too much to hope for, then maybe it would be enough, somehow, if people just understood how much he loved her.
I walk O.J. to the elevator in the lobby. We are alone for a moment, and I take the opportunity to ask him about what he said to me during that late-night phone call from Los Angeles. It has haunted everything I have seen and heard about him since then.
I ask him if he remembers his comment to me. Let's say I committed this crime…. Even if I did do this, it would have to have been because I loved her very much, right? I half expect him to say he said no such thing. But he doesn't. Instead, he nods. Then he cocks his head at me as if to say, Yeah, so what's the problem?
And he takes the elevator upstairs to his room.
This article originally appeared in the February 1998 issue.
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