mikescott
12-06-2004, 02:28 PM
OJ yet to find ex-wife's killer
By Robert Lusetich
June 12, 2004
AFTER years of searching Florida's golf courses, OJ Simpson has yet to find his ex-wife's killer.
Today is the 10th anniversary of the murders of Nicole Brown, 35, and Ron Goldman, 25, a waiter at a once hip, now defunct restaurant who was returning spectacles she left at the eatery and was then butchered, probably as he interrupted the killer who slashed Brown's throat so deeply her head was almost severed.
Simpson - who vowed never to rest until he found the "real killer" - was a prominent black gridiron player turned broadcaster and actor, so the deaths were front-page news.
What ensued was an intoxicating ****tail of sex, fame, race and soap opera that left US society not quite sure of what was entertainment, what was news, what was gossip, or even what was relevant.
The loss of perspective was shamefully encapsulated by Larry King of CNN, who, without any irony at the height of the OJ drama, declared: "If we had God booked on the show and OJ became available, we'd move God."
Many were aghast.
"It was embarrassing and most people in TV news came away from it thinking, 'Let's never let that happen again'," says journalism professor Joe Angotti, of Northwestern University.
After two years of covering the case gavel-to-gavel, it seemed to me the world would never be the same after Simpson was found not guilty.
But it has remained strikingly so.
The US moved on and the "Trial of the Century" did not really spawn radioactive offspring -- in retrospect, it largely remains a sort of guilty indulgence. Someone once described it as an all-night bender after which you wake up, look in the mirror and say, head in hands, "Why did I do that?"
In truth, no one much cares to remember it -- but the problem is OJ still thinks he's The Juice.
Now 56, and forced to live in Florida because that's where the Brown and Goldman families -- who won a $US33.7 million ($48 million) civil judgment after the criminal case was sensationally dismissed -- can't touch his $US300,000-a-year pension, Simpson did the rounds of the television networks this week. Pious as ever, he even said he was angry with his late wife for "hanging out" with the wrong people in the last weeks of her life.
"There's times I'm angry at her because there's times when she could be doing things with the kids better than I, emotional stuff, especially with my daughter, and I'm angry with her," he said, adding that he had never spoken about his wife's death with his two children, now teenagers.
Simpson blames Nicole's friend Faye Resnick, who was "totally stoned on drugs and ... worried about something, whatever it was, none of us knows" for being somehow responsible for the murders. It is a variation of his former theory, completely unsubstantiated, that Colombian drug dealers were behind the killings.
It is unclear how many Colombian hitmen would wear $US300 Bruno Magli shoes -- coincidentally, the kind Simpson owned but was mysteriously unable to find -- or how they got the victims' blood in Simpson's car and in his house, or why a woman saw a white Ford Bronco -- the star of Simpson's infamous police chase a few days later -- speeding away from the crime scene, or ... you get the idea.
The fact is Simpson was found not guilty because a mainly black jury wanted to send a message to the mainly white US establishment that prejudice can be a two-way street: that The Man has to pay for all the beatings, the racially motivated arrests, the lynchings, the planting of evidence.
The trial was about many supposed grand themes, but tragically what it was hardly ever about were two people who were murdered.
"If there's a negative legacy I have, it's all of those damned court shows on TV," said Simpson this week.
Funny he should mention TV because the real reason he has tried to put himself back in the national picture is that he's pitching a television reality show called Juiced, in which he surprises people.
Perhaps he'
By Robert Lusetich
June 12, 2004
AFTER years of searching Florida's golf courses, OJ Simpson has yet to find his ex-wife's killer.
Today is the 10th anniversary of the murders of Nicole Brown, 35, and Ron Goldman, 25, a waiter at a once hip, now defunct restaurant who was returning spectacles she left at the eatery and was then butchered, probably as he interrupted the killer who slashed Brown's throat so deeply her head was almost severed.
Simpson - who vowed never to rest until he found the "real killer" - was a prominent black gridiron player turned broadcaster and actor, so the deaths were front-page news.
What ensued was an intoxicating ****tail of sex, fame, race and soap opera that left US society not quite sure of what was entertainment, what was news, what was gossip, or even what was relevant.
The loss of perspective was shamefully encapsulated by Larry King of CNN, who, without any irony at the height of the OJ drama, declared: "If we had God booked on the show and OJ became available, we'd move God."
Many were aghast.
"It was embarrassing and most people in TV news came away from it thinking, 'Let's never let that happen again'," says journalism professor Joe Angotti, of Northwestern University.
After two years of covering the case gavel-to-gavel, it seemed to me the world would never be the same after Simpson was found not guilty.
But it has remained strikingly so.
The US moved on and the "Trial of the Century" did not really spawn radioactive offspring -- in retrospect, it largely remains a sort of guilty indulgence. Someone once described it as an all-night bender after which you wake up, look in the mirror and say, head in hands, "Why did I do that?"
In truth, no one much cares to remember it -- but the problem is OJ still thinks he's The Juice.
Now 56, and forced to live in Florida because that's where the Brown and Goldman families -- who won a $US33.7 million ($48 million) civil judgment after the criminal case was sensationally dismissed -- can't touch his $US300,000-a-year pension, Simpson did the rounds of the television networks this week. Pious as ever, he even said he was angry with his late wife for "hanging out" with the wrong people in the last weeks of her life.
"There's times I'm angry at her because there's times when she could be doing things with the kids better than I, emotional stuff, especially with my daughter, and I'm angry with her," he said, adding that he had never spoken about his wife's death with his two children, now teenagers.
Simpson blames Nicole's friend Faye Resnick, who was "totally stoned on drugs and ... worried about something, whatever it was, none of us knows" for being somehow responsible for the murders. It is a variation of his former theory, completely unsubstantiated, that Colombian drug dealers were behind the killings.
It is unclear how many Colombian hitmen would wear $US300 Bruno Magli shoes -- coincidentally, the kind Simpson owned but was mysteriously unable to find -- or how they got the victims' blood in Simpson's car and in his house, or why a woman saw a white Ford Bronco -- the star of Simpson's infamous police chase a few days later -- speeding away from the crime scene, or ... you get the idea.
The fact is Simpson was found not guilty because a mainly black jury wanted to send a message to the mainly white US establishment that prejudice can be a two-way street: that The Man has to pay for all the beatings, the racially motivated arrests, the lynchings, the planting of evidence.
The trial was about many supposed grand themes, but tragically what it was hardly ever about were two people who were murdered.
"If there's a negative legacy I have, it's all of those damned court shows on TV," said Simpson this week.
Funny he should mention TV because the real reason he has tried to put himself back in the national picture is that he's pitching a television reality show called Juiced, in which he surprises people.
Perhaps he'