Photographer remembers his part in the OJ Simpson trial
For about an hour, photographer Bill Renken found himself in the middle of the so-called “Trial of the Century.”
Renken, 74, has shot thousands of local sports photos in the past four decades as part of his photography business. The 16 photos he shot in 1991 of O.J. Simpson interviewing Bengals quarterback Boomer Esiason and head coach Sam Wyche put him in the national spotlight.
On Thursday, a day after Simpson’s death from cancer, Renken sat in the living room of his Green Township home and reminisced about the time in 1995 when he was called to a Los Angeles witness stand in Simpson’s murder trial.
“It was nuts,” he said, describing the scene outside the courthouse. “It was like a carnival, people hawking stuff.”
He flipped through his O.J. Simpson binder, Simpson’s mugshot glaring on the front cover. One page showed the business cards of Judge Lance Ito, prosecutor Christopher Darden and other players in the trial. On another, there’s a fragment of crime scene tape. There are Courttv stills of Renken testifying and a picture of him and trial witness Kato Kaelin at an event at Turfway Park a year later. There are also the pictures he took four years earlier of Simpson that embroiled him in the drama.
Renken didn’t know on Jan. 6, 1991, the significance of the photos he took that day. As a local photographer specializing in sports photography, he’d been to many Bengals and Reds games.
It seemed like a typical postgame interview. The Bengals had just won a playoff game, beating the Houston Oilers 41-14. The Bengals quarterback and head coach answered a few post-game questions from Simpson, who at the time was a broadcaster for NBC. Simpson also happened to be wearing designer gloves during the interview.
Five years later, authorities prosecuting Simpson for the 1994 killings of his ex-wife Nicole Brown-simpson and Ronald Goldman found the size and color of the gloves similar to the bloody glove found at the crime scene. Renken was one of several photographers subpoenaed to testify. He flew to Los Angeles and arrived at a courthouse surrounded by cameras and people selling Simpson souvenirs. He regrets not buying a wristwatch with a white Ford Bronco going around as the second hand. Lead prosecutor Marcia Clark and other members of the prosecution briefed him. He remembers a giant poster of Jim Morrison in her office, a detail he said was missing from the series “The People v. O.J. Simpson.”
He said as he took the stand, he noticed the anguish on the faces of Ron Goldman’s family. He looked at the defense table and there was Simpson.
“O.J.’S smiling like, you know, I looked at him, he looked at me,” Renken said. “He’s like, no big deal. He was kind of brushing it off. You know, because he had the dream team.” Throughout Renken’s 46-minute testimony, Simpson’s defense tried to trip him up, asking about the photo and saying the wrong teams, Renken said. On the flight back, he said he was treated as a celebrity. A man asked for his autograph. The pilots wanted to meet him. “I get introduced to the pilots,” he said. “I go, ‘Who’s flying this ship?’”
Renken still shoots sports photos, mostly for local schools in the western suburbs of Cincinnati. He has a framed copy of his photo signed by Simpson’s lead defense attorney, Johnnie Cochran. On the back of his business card is the photo with the word “EVIDENCE” stamped across it. “It’s a great conversation piece for an unfortunate situation.”