Nicole Brown Simpson
Nicole Brown Simpson (May 19, 1959 – June 12, 1994) was the ex-wife of American football player O. J. Simpson. Found murdered at her home in Los Angeles, California, along with her friend Ronald Goldman, her death led to one of the most controversial and widely-discussed criminal trials in the U.S. history.
The daughter of Juditha and Louis Brown, Simpson (like her older sister) was born in Germany, but the family moved to Dana Point, California, where she grew up, along with younger sisters Dominque and Tanya and older sister Denise. Attractive and outgoing, Simpson was elected Homecoming Queen at Dana Hills High School. Shortly after graduating from high school, she met her future husband while she was working as a waitress at a night club.
Simpson was married to O. J. Simpson on February 2 1985, then in his last years as a professional football player. They had two children together, Sydney Brooke Simpson (born 1985-10-17) and Justin Ryan Simpson (born August 6 1988). The marriage lasted seven years, ending when Nicole divorced him in 1992, citing an "abusive relationship."
On the morning of 1994-06-12, neighbors, alerted by a barking dog, found the badly mutilated bodies of Simpson and her friend, Ronald Goldman, in the enclosed front courtyard of her condo on South Bundy Drive in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles. Both had been brutally hacked and stabbed multiple times, with Simpson's head nearly severed. At the time of the murders, her children were asleep inside the condo.
After her death, O.J. Simpson was arrested and charged with both murders; he was acquitted of these crimes in a subsequent criminal trial. However, in a subsequent civil trial, he was found liable for the deaths of his ex-wife and Goldman and ordered to pay US$25 million to the families of Brown and Goldman. (See O. J. Simpson - Murder of his ex-wife and trial.)
In 1994, Nicole Simpson's sister Denise Brown established The Nicole Brown Charitable Foundation in Nicole's memory, to assist victims of domestic violence. [1]
Relationship with Goldman
Whether Nicole and Ron were just friends or something more was never known conclusively. The L.A. Times reported on 1994-06-15:
- "Goldman, 25, also had an increasingly close relationship with 35-year-old Nicole Brown Simpson, whom he had exercised with, accompanied to dance clubs and often met for coffee and dinner during the past month and a half. He told others that he was just friends with Simpson. But he boasted of her stunning good looks and talked about the special kick it gave him to see heads turn when the two of them pulled up in her white Ferrari in front of The Gate, a fashionable West Hollywood dance club, with him behind the wheel....Six weeks ago Goldman was driving the Ferrari, with its highly recognizable L84AD8 license plate, when he joined [another waiter Craig] Clark for lunch at Cafe Montana in Santa Monica. Clark said that Goldman told him it was Nicole Simpson's car, but that he did not say she was his girlfriend. "He said they were friends," Clark recalled."
On the night of the murder, Nicole's mother called the Mezzaluna at 9:30pm to inquire if her sunglasses were left at the restaurant. Nicole called at 9:35pm and asked specifically for Ron Goldman presumably to ask him to deliver the sunglasses to her that night. Between leaving the restaurant and arriving at Nicole's around 10:30pm, Ron stopped at his apartment to shower and change clothes. Nicole was found wearing a short black dress and inside were lit candles and music playing. There was speculation that their relationship was romantic but never any evidence. The police do not believe the relationship had any connection to the cause of the murder.
