O.J.: ‘I MUST HAVE’
For a man speaking hypothetically about a murder, O.J. Simpson sure talks a lot in the first person.
The football-star-turned-actor-turned-convicted-felon tried his best to come off as an innocent man during the never-before-seen interview from 2006 about his book, “If I Did It,” but failed miserably — saying things like “I remember I grabbed the knife” and “everything was covered in blood.”
The previously unaired TV interview was conducted by publisher Judith Regan, with whom Simpson worked on the book — in which Simpson allegedly laid out how he would have killed his exwife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman on the night of June 12, 1994.
The two-hour interview had been under wraps for 12 years due to controversy before being repackaged and broadcast for the first time Sunday night on Fox.
In the sit-down, Simpson offered what he claims is a “hypothetical” explanation for the murders.
He described, for instance, how a man named Charlie came along with him and helped him ditch the knife and his bloody clothes — because, “Somebody’s gotta get rid of the bloody clothes.”
At one point in the interview, Simpson appeared to admit to dropping the infamous bloody glove that was found at the murder scene and later used during his trial to help acquit him.
“I had no conscious memory of doing that, but obviously I must have, because they found a glove there,” Simpson said.
Simpson — who was acquitted in criminal court for the murders, but found liable in civil court — slipped up several times like this during the interview, making statements like “I remember” and “I was” numerous times, much to the chagrin of the Fox panel gathered to discuss the airing.
The panel included Regan, former Los Angeles prosecutor Christopher Darden, Nicole’s friend, Eve Chen, and retired FBI profiler Jim Clemente.
“I think he’s confessed to murder,” Darden said in response to Simpson’s hypothetical rundown of that night’s events. “I don’t think there’s any question of his involvement and that he is the person who is wielding the knife.”
One of the most disturbing moments of the interview came when Simpson discussed how he felt at Nicole’s funeral.
“I still had so many feelings,” he said, noting how he was still upset about an incident that happened months prior, in which Nicole made her notorious 911 call claiming the Heisman Trophy winner was going to “beat the s--t” out of her.
Asked what he said to Nicole when he was caught on camera kissing her at her funeral, Simpson coldly said: “I don’t know if I said anything, to be honest with you.” Darden picked up on this detail. “He’s not thinking about the brutal way she was killed, the suffering,” he seethed. “All he’s talking about is his anger and his inability to further control her. And when he says, ‘Didn’t I tell you, didn’t I tell you?’ [he means] didn’t I tell you I’d kill your ass if you didn’t do what I told you to do.’ ”
Regan added, “Again, he blames her and he’s angry at her that he’s still angry. What he’s essentially saying is that after you kill someone you’d think the anger would go away, but it didn’t.”