But the awkward fact remained, the victims’ families and I enjoyed nothing approaching the close, comfortable relationship I’d had with Rebecca Schaeffer’s mother. Danna and I had exchanged notes and phone calls during a whole year of pretrial motions. But once Simpson had invoked his right to a speedy trial, the accelerated schedule, along with the unbelievable pressures of TFC, made the kind of relationships that mature and deepen with time close to impossible.
Whenever we seemed to be on the point of establishing a closer rapport, the media pulled the families in another direction. As a practical matter, I couldn’t order them not to talk to reporters. But in the past, I had found that victims’ families were usually willing to be guided by me. After all, the articles and television segments could affect the prosecution, and our shared goal was presumably to see justice done. Danna Schaeffer had been conscientious about consulting me each time she was called by a reporter. Her cooperation helped me exert some kind of damage control over publicity the defense would claim was prejudicial to their client. In the Simpson case, all bets were off.
I liked Fred Goldman a lot, and I know he did his best to help us. But he really felt he had to be out there, making statements and expressing his outrage, to make sure that a media obsessed with the melodrama of Nicole and O.J. didn’t neglect his own son’s memory. (Privately I applauded him. Fred and his family, I felt, served as the very conscience of this case.) Fred, at least, would give me a heads-up before he gave an interview to Geraldo. Not so, the Browns. I wouldn’t hear of their forays until I picked up the paper or passed a television set.
Early on, Denise and Dominique Brown had appeared on Good Morning America, where they’d seemed to me neutral, almost supportive of their brother-in-law. This was especially strange, I remember thinking, in light of Denise’s comment to Tom Lange the morning he called to tell her of her sister’s murder: “I knew the son of a bitch was going to do it,” she’d told him. Nothing equivocal about that. And then, in November, for reasons unknown to me (she certainly didn’t consult me about it), Denise Brown came out swinging. She announced publicly that she’d known O.J, was the killer from the moment she heard about Nicole’s death. She also claimed that Nicole had predicted Simpson would kill her and get away with it.
The defense team went absolutely crazy over this. Johnnie Cochran got up in court and fulminated about how awful it was for the Browns and Goldmans to be doing this to the defendant before trial. Denise’s television appearances also prompted a sanctimonious announcement from Shapiro that he “forgives” the family. When I heard that, I just thought, Fuck you, you patronizing asshole.
The absurd thing about it all was that the defense, the press, and perhaps the public all assumed that the District Attorney’s office had sent the victims’ families out on a campaign to spin public opinion. But nothing could have been further from the truth. The Goldmans and the Browns were simply beyond our control.
Of all the families of victims I’ve had contact with over the years, the Browns were by far the strangest. I’d known families who were indifferent and others who were overinvolved. This was something else.
On the surface they appeared warm enough. Lou Brown would come into court saying, “Where’s my hug?” and then hug me. I let him hug me because I couldn’t think of any tactful way to deflect it. But I wasn’t comfortable with it, in part because of something I saw during one of my visits to the Browns’ home at Dana Point. Lou had shown me into his study. On a table covered with photos-almost none of Nicole-there was a picture of Dominique-the family called her Mini-dressed in a teensy-weensy bikini, in what struck me as a provocative pose. There was also a shot of some magazine pinup, totally nude.
It was also clear to me early on that Lou Brown was a patriarch of the old order. According to Tanya, Lou had been delighted with his famous son-in-law and he’d been completely opposed to his daughter’s divorce. When Nicole first walked out on O. J. Simpson, her father would not speak to her or even help her move.
Juditha was a handsome, middle-aged woman of German birth; to me, she seemed sweet and well-meaning but utterly passive. She was well aware of Nicole’s domestic problems. Every time Nicole and O.J. fought, she told us, O.J. would take Juditha’s picture off the wall and throw it out a window. It became a running joke: “Oh, am I on the front lawn again?” Juditha seemed to have downplayed in her own mind what should have been a red flag, not-I believe-because she didn’t care about Nicole, but because she just couldn’t bring herself to deal with the trauma that would have resulted from confronting her own husband and her own emotions. Juditha was mildly supportive when Nicole left O.J., but was all too willing to let her go back on the occasions when she tried to reconcile. It must have been difficult for Juditha to look back on those events and reckon with them. But she never talked to me about that.
The Brown sisters all seemed clued into O. J. Simpson’s true nature. Denise had taken photos to document Nicole’s injuries after the New Year’s Eve incident. Dominique, who seemed to me the coolest of the lot and a real straight shooter, also seemed to have the most pent-up rage. She told me how, when Nicole was pregnant, Simpson called her sister a “fat pig,” and about how uncaring he was as a father. How he liked to show the kids off, but he really wasn’t around for them.
The Browns gave me a document, written by Nicole, dated Sunday, January 10, 1988. I found this particularly harrowing. Nicole had taken Sydney, along with her mother and Mini, to see “Disney on Ice.” When they all got back to Rockingham, Simpson was there with Al Cowlings. Nicole could tell something was wrong. A.C. looked tense.
[O.J.] followed Mini and Mom out to the car, rattling 100 mph about what a liar I am. He never stopped. He followed Sydney and I around the house. “Please don’t yell and scream in front of Sydney.” So A.C. grabbed her. And I tried to get away from her so she wouldn’t have to hear it.
Here was Nicole, two months pregnant at the time. He tells her he wants her to get an abortion. He orders her out of the house, saying, “I have a gun in my hand right now. Get the fuck out of here.”
She grabbed her baby, the cats, the diaper bag, and a bottle. Then she “got the heck” outta there.
Given the circumstances, I found Nicole’s account strangely dispassionate, as if she were separated by habit from her own feelings. And yet as I read between the lines, I could sense her mounting panic as she tried to protect her child. I could just imagine what Sydney must have seen and heard. That poor little girl. Forced to watch and listen as her father humiliated her mother. Kicked out onto the street. And I’m thinking, This guy abuses his pregnant wife, demanding she abort their baby, and now he moans to the world that the worst part of being incarcerated is the separation from his children?
The Browns also gave us a journal in which Nicole had chronicled more of her husband’s systematic neglect of his children. When I first glanced through it, I did not recognize it for what it really was. Nicole’s lawyers would later explain to me what these notations meant. They’d instructed her to write everything down in case of future litigation on custody or child support. When the father failed to show, missed days, came late, she was to document it in writing. And she had done as they’d instructed.
As I read through those entries, I saw and heard a Nicole who was becoming increasingly agitated. The angrier she got, the more she wrote. Beyond the simple recording of dates, she had started describing how her ex-husband acted, what he’d said to the kids. In the strictest sense, what we had from Nicole was not really a diary. And yet it was the essential diary.