Nicole began making entries in early 1992, after leaving her husband for the first time to set up housekeeping at her new condo on Gretna Green in Brentwood. “Home,” she wrote on Sunday, February 23. “Moving in.” Most of her entries were spare; one of the longest was for Monday, June 29, 1992.
O.J. called about 7:00 or 7:30. Justin kept wanting to talk. Asked if he can sleep there. Such a need for Daddy… Sad!! So he came at about 8:15. Justin is in heaven. I stayed home w/Sydney. It’s been 2 weeks since Justin spent the nite & saw OJ. 3 weeks since Sydney spent the nite and saw OJ…
During the early part of 1993, Nicole was clearly considering reconciliation. “O.J. & I got back together April 12 93,” she wrote. By spring of the following year, however, they were on the skids again. Nicole had bought her condo on Bundy. She seemed to be shuttling between Bundy and Rockingham, unsure of where to call home. OJ. was a chronic no-show as a father. By May 1994, Nicole had apparently had enough. “We’ve officially split,” she announced to her journal. “I told OJ we’re going back to every other weekend…I need the rest & O.J.‘s gone so much-he needs time alone with [the kids] ‘til he leaves again.”
On June 3, when she had little more than a week to live, Nicole documented another violent outburst. O.J. had come by the condo to pick up the kids; when he discovered they’d made other plans, he lit into Nicole for some perceived slight of the day before.
“You hang up [sic] on me last nite, you’re gonna pay for this, bitch!” he shouted at her. “You’re holding money from the IRS-you’re going to jail you fucking cunt!… I’ve already talked to my lawyers about this,” he continued. “They’ll get you for tax evasion, bitch… You’re not gonna have a fucking dime left.”
He continued his tirade even as Sydney’s little girlfriend arrived for a sleepover. “I’m not sure if they heard all or any of it,” Nicole agonized. “I just turned around & walked away.”
As I picked my way through a spotty trail of journal entries and documents, I could see how, over the next five days, the hostilities escalated. Simpson’s letter threatening to report her to the IRS flung kerosene on the flames. That letter had apparently gone through a few drafts. When we subpoenaed it from O. J. Simpson’s divorce attorney, Skip Taft, we also recovered a note from the lawyer saying that he had made the changes O.J. wanted but did not get “revengeful.” Two days later, Simpson sent Nicole a nasty follow-up to the IRS letter, informing her that while he welcomed the children at Rockingham, “Gigi [his housekeeper] is not an emergency cook, baby-sitter or errand running [sic] for you! She is an employee of mine and I expect you to respect that-now, and in the future.”
Four days later, Nicole was dead.
I knew there had to be more to document this downward spiraling relationship. Correspondence, a daybook, photos. I wanted to find just one shot of the Simpsons standing side by side-one in which Nicole was not wearing heels-to show the disparity in their sizes. I was sure her family could give us what we needed, but every time we went to them with a request, we had to wheedle and beg, and often came away empty-handed.
(For the time, when they were stalling on giving us the journals, Chris and I actually discussed the possibility of serving Lou with a search warrant. Talk about unprecedented. A search warrant on a victim’s family? Would we ever have looked like heartless bastards! Fortunately, the Browns turned them over before this became necessary.)
Unlike most victims’ relatives, who desperately try to move your case forward-“What can we do? What information can we offer to put this animal behind bars?”-Lou Brown played things very close to the vest. Lou had cleaned out the condo after Nicole’s death and reportedly stored her belongings. Chris and I asked him repeatedly to produce those boxes; he kept dodging us. It was “I’ll get it for you… I’ll look for it, I’ll look for it.” He never came up with them.
As to why, I can only speculate. Perhaps he felt that our probing violated his privacy. Believe me, I could relate to that, since my own secrets had become a tabloid commodity. But what completely floored me was then learning that the Browns had cooperated with Sheila Weller, author of a soon-to-be-published book called Raging Heart, and that they had given her information they’d never given us. That book, I’d learn, was pretty hard on O. J. Simpson. I couldn’t figure out why they were being so reticent with the D.A.‘s office. After all, we were the people who had a shot at putting him away.
Faye Resnick seemed to be right: O. J. Simpson had given the Browns considerable financial help over the years. We discovered a deed to their house that seemed to indicate that Simpson had taken over the mortgage. I wondered if Lou’s reluctance came from feeling beholden to his son-in-law. Or was he afraid of him? Or both?
Early in December we got a call from Nicole’s bank. She’d been renting a safe-deposit box, bank officials told us. Her father was now trying to get into it. We knew that the box might contain crucial evidence. Given Lou’s prior recalcitrance, we thought it was better just to go and get it ourselves. So Chris sent a couple of D.A.‘s investigators down to the bank with a warrant and instructions to drill that box.
The contents were more disturbing to me than anything I had seen to date. There were three Polaroid pictures of Nicole. The first looked like it was taken when she was very young, early in her relationship with Simpson, when she was still a teenager. Her hair was wrapped up in a towel. Her eye was blackened, her face puffed up and reddened. I studied the shot, looked at Chris, and just shook my head.
The box also contained several letters, one written by Nicole to O.J. very early in their relationship, complaining that he neglected her. There were three others from him to her, apologizing for having abused her and taking responsibility for having gone crazy. Implicitly acknowledged in one of those letters is the fact that he beat her because she refused to have sex with him.
Why would a woman keep those things in a lockbox? There was only one explanation. Even as she was trying to break free of O.J., part of Nicole accepted that she would never really escape, that O. J. Simpson might murder her. The message in the box was clear: in the event of my death, look for this guy.
I kept coming back to her eyes. She was so young at the time those pictures were taken that her eyes still reflected authentic emotion. I compared the photos mentally to those hanging by the stairs at Rockingham. A decade or more had passed between those two shots. The pain in her eyes had gelled into a glassy, deadened stare. Seventeen years of denying terror and clinging to hope, only to have that hope destroyed time and time again.
On Sunday afternoon, December 18, Chris and I drove out to Dana Point to confront the Browns. Phil and Tom went with us, although they were not real happy to be there. For starters, they were ticked off at Chris and me because we had used D.A. investigators, not the LAPD, to drill the box. But I’m sure they were also dreading the encounter with Lou, who by now had learned that we’d done an end run around him.
As always, Juditha Brown was gracious. She laid out a plate of pasta for us. I sat across from Lou. He didn’t appear angry, but there were tears in his eyes.
“Why didn’t you just ask me?” he said.
Tom and Phil were only too happy to let someone else answer. I was trying to come up with a reply when Chris stepped into the breach. He could be very good under pressure. He mumbled something plausible: “We weren’t sure that you could get into it legally. We could. We just felt it would be better for everyone if we went ahead and did it.”
That diplomatic fiction seemed to ease the tension. Juditha sat down with us for a long taped interview. I pressed her for specifics on the battering incidents we were trying to document. By her own admission, Juditha had no head for dates. And she had no memory at all of that harrowing incident following “Disney on Ice” when her son-in-law had called the pregnant Nicole a “liar” and a “fat pig.” I showed her Nicole’s letter to refresh her memory. Nicole had been clear about the fact that her mother and Mini had been there when O.J. flew off the handle, “rattling 100 mph.”