If I Did It (2 page)

having read all those books, but things didn't turn out exactly as
she'd planned. She gained twice that, if not more, and pretty soon
decided to stop weighing herself altogether. That was a relief, to be
honest. I had no problem with the weight. My kid was in there. I
thought my kid deserved a nice big home.
On October 17, we were in the hospital for the birth of our
first child, Sydney Brooke. Nicole was over the moon. She cried
when we took her home, but I guess all new mothers cry. I don't
know if it's from being happy or from being terrified; I figure it's
probably a combination of the two.
Nicole had nothing to be afraid of, though. Right from the
start, she was a terrific mother, and in fact she was a little too terrific.
She wouldn't let anyone near Sydney. Not the housekeeper. Not her
mother. Not even me at times. This was her baby, and her baby
needed her and only her, and nothing anyone could say or do was
going to change her mind. Only Nicole knew how to feed her baby.
Only Nicole could bathe her. Only Nicole knew how to swaddle
that little girl and hold her just right against her shoulder.
It got to be a pain in the ass, frankly. I couldn't get her to leave
the house.
“Why don't you let your mother take care of her for one
night?” I'd say. “She's been volunteering from the day we got back
from the hospital.”
“No,” she'd say. “Sydney needs me.”
It took months to get Nicole out of the house. We had gone
from hitting all the best places in town and jetting around the
world to ordering in every night. And the weird part is, I kind of
liked it. At first, anyway. Then I started getting antsy, and then food
became an issue again. Nicole was having a tough time losing the
weight she'd gained during the pregnancy, and it was making her
crazy. She would get out of the shower, look at herself in the mirror,
and burst into tears.
“So don't look in the mirror,” I'd say.
“That's not what I need to hear!” she'd holler.
“You know what? I'm sorry I said anything. But you're the one
that's having a problem with your weight, not me.”
It's funny, because suddenly I'm remembering what Nicole's
mother told me on the very day we first met: “Don't let Nicole gain
weight,” she said. “She's miserable when she gains weight.”
Eventually, most of the weight came off, and she mellowed out.
And eventually she realized that Sydney could survive a night or two
without her, and things slowly got back to normal. No, that's
wrong—they were better than normal. Motherhood had changed
Nicole in wonderful ways. She was happier than she'd ever been, as
if she'd found her place in the world, and every day she was more in
love with Sydney. I think she also loved me a little more, too. After
all, we'd created this little girl together. We were becoming a family.
On August 6, 1988, our son, Justin Ryan, came along. When
we took him home, I looked at my little family—my second fam-
ily—and I felt strangely complete. I don't know how else to put it.
All I know is that whenever I looked at them—Nicole, Sydney and
Justin—I felt that I understood what life was all about.
I think we had pretty close to a storybook marriage. We had a
few arguments, sure, like most couples, hut they never got out of

hand. After Justin was born, though, Nicole started getting physical
with me. She had that temper on her, as I said, and if something set
her off she tended to come at me, fists and feet flying. Mostly I'd
just try to get out of her way, but sometimes I had to hold her down
till she got herself under control. So, yeah—we argued. And we
could get pushy about it. And sometimes the arguments ended with
Nicole in tears. But more often than not they ended in laughter. It
was crazy: I can't count the number of times she'd turn to me in the
middle of a fight, pausing to catch her breath, and say, “O.J., what
the hell were we arguing about, anyway?”
Years later, during the trial, the prosecution tried to paint a
picture of me as a violent, abusive husband. They said they'd
found a safedeposit box belonging to Nicole, and that it con-
tained numerous handwritten allegations of abuse dating back to
1977. In the notes, Nicole reportedly said all sorts of ugly things
about me: That I constantly told her she was fat; that when she
got pregnant with Justin I said I didn't want another kid; that I
once locked her in our wine closet during an argument. I don't
know what all else I did, but the list was endless, and all of it was
fiction. And if it's true that those handwritten notes were from
Nicole, and that they really were found in her safedeposit box,
and that she really was making those allegations, well—I still say
it was fiction, still maintain that these incidents existed only in
Nicole's own mind. I honestly can't make any sense of it. I've
tried, though. At one point I wondered if she started working on
those notes when the marriage began to go south. Maybe she
thought she could use them against me if it ever came to divorce,
which makes me wonder: Why didn't she use them? I don't know
what she was thinking, frankly, but if any of those things hap-
pened I wasn't around when they did. And, yeah, I know: It
sounds cruel here, on the page, with Nicole gone and everything,
unable to defend herself, but I said I would tell the truth, and
that's what I intend to do.
Did things get volatile from time to time? Yes. Do I regret it?
Yes. I loved Nicole. She was the mother of two of my kids, and the
last thing I wanted was to hurt her. I only ever got truly physical
with her once, and that was in 1989—and the whole world heard
about it.
Let me take you back. It was New Year's Eve. Nicole and I
were at a party early in the evening, at the home of a producer
friend, hanging out with Marcus Allen, one of my old football bud-
dies, and his girlfriend, Kathryn. Marcus had bought some expen-
sive earrings for Kathryn, as a little New Year's present, and I guess
Nicole got a little jealous. Kathryn couldn't see what she was jealous
about, though, since Nicole was dripping in diamonds of her own,
and she spelled it out for her: “Well, look what you got, girl!” I don't
know what Nicole was thinking, but for some reason she got it into
her head that a pair of earrings—just like Kathryn's—were waiting
for her back at the house. And of course there were no earrings. We
got home after the party, and we were in bed, making love, and sud-
denly Nicole sat up and looked at me.
“You have a little surprise for me?” she said, smiling coyly.
“What surprise?”
“Diamond earrings, maybe?”

14 O.J. SIMPSON
“What earrings?” I said, getting irritated.
“Like the ones Marcus got Kathryn,” she said.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Kathryn said you bought a pair of earrings just like the ones
she was wearing. Where are they? If you didn't get them for me,
who'd you get them for?”
And I said, “You're crazy! I didn't get nobody no damn ear-
rings. And I'm not about to, either.” I'm sure that was the wrong
thing to say, but I was angry, and my anger set her off. She took a
swing at me and I grabbed her arm and literally dragged her out of
bed and pulled her toward the door.
“Where are the goddamn earrings?!” she hollered, still taking
swings at me.
“There are no earrings!” I snapped back.
“Liar! Who'd you give the earrings to?!”
“I didn't give any goddamn earrings to anybody!” I said.
“There are no earrings! Now get out of here. I don't want you in my
bedroom. ”
I pushed her into the corridor and locked her out, then went
back to bed, still fuming. I didn't know what the hell was going
on with Nicole. She was becoming increasingly erratic. Most of
the time she was a loving wife and a perfect mother, but it seemed
like lately any little thing could set her off. To be honest, it wor-
ried me. There we were, two in the goddamn morning, and she
was standing out in the corridor, banging on the door, hollering.
It was as if she had turned into a whole different person. Finally,
she gave up, and I could hear her moving off. There were plenty
IF I DID IT I 15
of other bedrooms in the house. Nicole could sleep alone if she
was going to be like that.
A minute later, she was back. Turned out she'd only gone to
get the key, and there she was, coming at me all over again, fists and
feet flying. So I grabbed her, again, and I threw her out, again, and
this time I kept the key.
“Let me in, you bastard!”
“No! Go away!”
I went back to bed and rolled on my side and pulled the cov-
ers over my head, wondering if something was wrong with my wife.
We'd been together for twelve years, and in many ways they'd been
the twelve best years of my life, but it seemed like most of 1989 had
been torture. You never knew what was going to piss her off, and
when she was pissed off she could hold onto her anger for days. I
wondered how long she was going to stay angry this time. She kept
pounding on the door, swearing and calling me names, and I wor-
ried that she would wake the kids, but eventually the fight went out
of her and she stormed off.
I don't know how much time passed, because I dozed off, but
suddenly she was at the door again. Only it wasn't her. It was the
housekeeper, Michele. “Mr. Simpson,” she said, trying to make her-
self heard through the door. “You have to come outside. The police
are here.”
The police? What the hell?
I pulled on a pair of pants and went downstairs and out the
front door and found Nicole sitting in a patrol car that was parked
ill front of the house. “What's going on?” I asked.

16 O.J . SIMPSON
I saw Nicole trying to get out of the car, and I could hear the
cops telling her to sit still. Michele was standing right behind me,
and she saw it, too. “Come on, Miss Nicole,” she called out.
“Everything's going to be all right. Come back inside.”
Suddenly Nicole was crying. “My baby's in the house,” she
said. “I want my baby back.”
“Well come on,” I said. “What's keeping you?”
Michele tried, too. “Please come in the house, Miss Nicole,”
she said. “Everything's fine now.”
One of the cops turned to look at Michele, scowling. “Why
don't you mind your own business,” he said.
“Hey,” I snapped. “You got no right to talk to my housekeeper
that way!”
“She should mind her own business,” he said.
I couldn't believe the guy. He was parked in front of my prop-
erty, talking shit to my housekeeper, and telling me how to run my
personal affairs. “Man, you don't have a right to talk to either of us
that way,” I said. I was seriously pissed by this time, and I was seri-
ously tired, and I didn't want to do anything stupid, so I turned to
Michele and led her back into the house. I figured Nicole would
come back when she was good and ready.
But Nicole didn't come back for several hours. She went down
to the precinct with the cops and they took a statement from her
and had her pose for pictures. It was three in the morning by then.
She was drunk, she'd been crying, and she was under fluorescent
lights without any makeup. Ask me how had she looked.
IF I DID IT 17
Then they took her to the hospital and the doctors gave her
the onceover. In their report, which I only read much later, they
noted that there were bruises on her face and arms. That was about
it. I could have told them about the bruises. The ones on her
arms—I put them there. Her face? I didn't hit her, but it's possible
she hurt herself while we were scuffling.
Years later, during the murder trial, I found out that one of the
officers who responded that night was John Edwards. He testified
that Nicole had bruises on her forehead, cuts on her nose and cheek,
and a handprint on her neck. I don't remember any of that, and if it
was there I didn't see it. Edwards quoted Nicole as saying, “You guys
come out here, you talk to him, you leave. You've been out here eight
times, I want him arrested, and I want my kids back.”
Eight times? What the hell was she talking about? And what
was that about wanting her kids back? Back from what? From
where? All I heard was, “My baby's in the house. I want my baby
back.” I wasn't stopping her. From where I was standing, the only
thing keeping her from getting out of the patrol car and marching
back into the house were the damn cops.
Edwards also said I screamed at Nicole: “I got two other
women! I don't want that woman in my bed anymore!” I don't
remember saying anything about not wanting Nicole in my bed
anymore, but at that moment it was sure as hell true. I didn't want
her anywhere near me. The part about the “two other women,”
though—Edwards got that completely wrong. I was talking about
the two women in the house—the nanny and the housekeeper

18 I O.J. SIMPSON
because Nicole seemed to be concerned about the baby, and I was
just letting her know that the baby was in good hands.
I guess she got the message, because she split and didn't come
home till just before daybreak. When she walked through the front
door, I looked at her and felt lousy. “I never meant to hurt you,” I
said. “I just wanted you out of the bedroom.”
“I have a headache,” she said.
“You want me to take you to the hospital?”
“No. It's probably just a hangover.”
“Maybe it's a concussion,” I said. “I don't mind taking you.”
“Just leave me alone,” she said. “I'm sick of this.”
I was sick of it too, frankly. I went off and spent what was left
of the night at a friend's house, and in the afternoon I went to the
Rose Bowl and tried to put the bad feelings behind me.
When I got home that evening, long after the Rose Bowl
ended, Nicole was there with the kids, and neither of us said a word
about the incident. We kind of walked around each other, not say-
ing much of anything, really, and I assumed that life at
Rockingham would eventually get back to normal.
The next day, or the day after that—I can't recall exactly—a
detective came by to follow up with a few questions, and I walked
the guy through it. I said I'd been drinking—that we'd both been
drinking—and admitted that I'd become a little bit too physical. “I
should have exercised more selfcontrol,” I said.
“It's one of those things that happen in all relationships,” he said,
and I agreed with him. We'd been partying a little too hard. It was late.
We weren't thinking clearly. Ilia hey, nobody got hurt. Yada yada yada.
IF I DID IT I 19
As for Nicole, I guess she told the cops her own version of the
same story, down to that misunderstanding about the nonexistent
diamond earrings. I don't know if she told them that she took a few
swings at me, and that she came back for more after I locked her
out, but she certainly told her mother, who went on national televi-
sion and confirmed it. Still, at that point none of it seemed rele-
vant. I had already apologized, profusely, and had even gone one
better. “If I'm ever physical like that with you again, I will tear up
the prenuptial agreement,” I told Nicole. I wanted her to know
how serious I was about making things right. It didn't matter to me
that she had initiated the fight because my response was wrong, and
that's what counted—my response.
“Thank you,” she said.
“I mean it,” I said.
“I know,” she said.
So, yeah—as far as I was concerned, it was over.
But it wasn't over. month later, just as we were getting ready
to fly to Hawaii, where had business with Hertz, I woke up and
read about the whole ugly incident on the front page of the Herald
Examiner. It was surreal. I thought we'd moved on long ago, then
bam!—there it was for the whole world to see. The story came as a
complete surprise to Nicole, too. She had no idea that the cops were
going to use her statement, and those incriminating photographs,
to charge me with domestic abuse.
In the days ahead, everything became a little clearer. I found
out that it's quite common for a woman to charge her husband or
boyfriend with abuse, only to call the police the next dad and ask