‘People forgot her’: Nicole Brown Simpson’s sister on OJ’s trial of the century 30 years on
When Denise Brown got the call telling her that her sister, Nicole, had been found stabbed to death outside her home in Los Angeles, she knew who killed her. In her mind, it was clear as day. “He’s done it, he’s finally done it,” Brown recalls thinking that morning back in June of 1994. “He” being Nicole’s ex-husband, the adored NFL star and former running back of the San Francisco 49ers, Orenthal James Simpson. “The detective asked me who did it,” says Brown. “I told them, OJ.”
The trial of the century ensued; over eight months in 1995 the world watched, transfixed, as OJ Simpson was tried – and acquitted – for the double murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman. Even Bill Clinton, then US president, paused what he was doing to watch the live verdict be delivered on 3 October. In civil court two years later, OJ was found liable for their deaths and ordered to pay a sum of $33m in damages to their families, the lion’s share of which remains unpaid – but, decades later, it’s the criminal trial that has stuck in people’s minds.
Along the
