Did O.J. Simpson confess to murder? That’s the question everyone is asking after a taped interview from 2006 finally aired.
Fox billed the interview, which aired for the first time on the network Sunday night, as a “shocking hypothetical account” of the 1994 murders of Simpson’s ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman. In the interview, Simpson discusses grabbing a knife that fateful night and later seeing “blood and stuff.”
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The murder weapon was never found, though police were still looking for one as recently as 2016. Cops in Los Angeles investigated a knife reportedly found at O.J.’s estate but found no links between him and the purported murder weapon.
“As things got heated, I just remember Nicole fell and hurt herself, and this guy kind of got into a karate thing. And I said, ‘Well, you think you can kick my ass?’ And I remember I grabbed the knife — I do remember that portion, taking a knife from Charlie,” O.J. said during the interview. “Charlie” appears in O.J.’s account out of nowhere and baffled the people during a roundtable discussion, moderated by Soledad O’Brien, which aired alongside the interview. They weren’t even sure Charlie was real.
“And to be honest after that I don’t remember, except I’m standing there and there’s all kind of stuff around and …” O.J. continued.
“What kind of stuff?” interviewer Judith Regan asked.
“Blood and stuff around,” O.J. responded.
The interview touches on all the notorious details of the murder, including the Bronco car chase. O.J. said Charlie helped him get rid of the blood-soaked clothes, because “somebody’s gotta get rid of the bloody clothes.” O.J. also gets into his relationship with Brown, whom he admits he got “physical” with. “She started it,” O.J. said.
During the roundtable discussion, Christopher Darden, the prosecutor on the case said O.J.’s account sounded a lot like a confession.
“I don’t think there’s any question of his involvement and that he is the person who is wielding the knife,” Darden said. “I think Charlie is O.J.”
But O.J.’s lawyer Malcolm LaVergne contests that analysis.
“This idea that this is a confession interview is a joke,” LaVergne told CBS News. “It was scripted by Judith Regan, the publisher of the book. Mr. Simpson went along because because quite frankly he got a lot of money up front to go along with this.”
The interview was conducted and taped over a decade ago in 2006 as publicity for “If I Did It,” a book written by O.J. and a ghostwriter and published under the ReganBooks imprint of HarperCollins. The division pumped out hot takes and salacious titles until it closed down in 2006 in the wake of controversy around O.J.’s book.
At the time, both of the victims’ families were opposed to its publication. They didn’t want anyone making money off of murder.
But “If I Did It” was eventually published elsewhere, and the interview never aired.
Fox producer Terry Wrong told the Associated Press that the network unearthed the tape in response to audiences’ appetite for O.J. content. In 2016, the documentary “O.J.: Made in America” won an Oscar and the miniseries, “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story,” won an Emmy. In the roundtable discussion, O’Brien framed the footage as a deep-dive into the mind of a domestic abuser and contextualized the interview in a #MeToo frame.
O.J. doesn’t stand to make any money from the interview release. But Fox aired the uncovered segment during ABC’s reboot of American Idol, which drove ratings through the roof when Fox owned the rights to the show. So Fox didn’t want to be beat, according to Vanity Fair.
Cover image: Former NFL football star O.J. Simpson reacts after learning he was granted parole at the Lovelock Correctional Center in Lovelock, Nev., on Thursday, July 20, 2017. (Jason Bean/The Reno Gazette-Journal via AP, Pool)
