Criminology - The Murders of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman Part 1

Episode Date: August 27, 2023

The 1994 murders of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman turned into the trial of the century. The murders were brutal and heartbreaking. But, the fact that Nicole Brown was married to famed football star O.J. Simpson drew massive media attention to the murders. Everything exploded when police began to zero in on O.J. as the possible murderer. Join Mike and Morf for part 1 of 2 on the murders of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman. To say that the case at the time made huge headlines would be an understatement, and Simpson's acquittal at the conclusion of the trial shocked many people. In this first part, we break down the timeline and movements of the individuals involved in the case. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 271 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Morford. How you doing, buddy? I'm doing good. How about you? Yeah, I'm doing pretty good. I talked with Gibby on T-Cat and Unsolved about it's been a full week since I dropped my youngest one off at college.

And I woke up the other day and thought, yeah, I'm really sad. It's been a week. And I can't remember the last time I was away from her for that long. So, you know, my wife and I are doing okay, but it's a struggle in the beginning, no doubt. Yeah, getting a little bit of that empty nest vibe going on. Yeah, something you'll experience many years into the future. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shoutouts. We only had two, but we appreciate them very much, Tanya Robinson and Julie Kiahan.

So thank you for that support. Yeah, we can't thank everyone enough that helps support the show. And for anyone that's thinking about doing it, you can go to patreon.com slash criminology to sign up. All right, man, I can't wait to get started into this case. Let's do it because we are tackling a really big one, a case so big that we have to break it up over two episodes. This is a case that resulted in what has been called the trial of the century. You know, it's one of those cases that many listeners will probably remember exactly where they were and what they were doing while the events were unfolding. And when there was a

verdict in the case, when the trial concluded, we're talking about the 1994 murders of Ronald Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson, who were alleged to have been. been killed at the hands of NFL football legend OJ Simpson. To say that the case at the time made huge headlines would be an understatement. And Simpson's acquittal at the conclusion of the trial shocked people. And even to this day, an overwhelming majority of people still think that O.J. Simpson got away with murder. We're going to try and unpack exactly what happened.

This story takes place in Brentwood, California, 25 minutes from down. downtown Los Angeles. The Brentwood neighborhood on the far west end of Los Angeles was a quiet and affluent area where celebrities could find peace in a nice area with lavish homes, but not directly in the eye of the paparazzi. If you've ever been to L.A. and visited the Getty Museum, you actually pass through the Brentwood Heights area. LeBron James, Harrison Ford, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Marilyn Monroe, Cindy Crawford, and Toby McGuire have all lived in Brentwood at one time or another. If you're a fan of the show Modern Family, the exterior used as Jay Pritchett's mini mansion is located in Brentwood. Brentwood is distinctly Southern California, but it's quietly tucked away from the chaos of Hollywood in downtown.

In 1994, the population of the Brentwood Pacific Palisades area was around 53,000 people, down 7% from the decade before. Brentwood was a great place for celebrities to settle in if they wanted to live. in a nice quiet area, but still be close enough to find acting jobs nearby or to get to nearby sports venues if they were athletes. Brentwood had quite a reputation as an upscale, quiet and safe neighborhood. But that all changed in June 1994 with a terrible double murder that rocked that community, the murders of Ronald Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson, and the aftermath that followed. One editorial article on June 19th, 1994 in the LA Times painted quite a picture.

It read Brentwood no longer a nice little secret community. The one sleepy enclave squirms under the glare of the sudden media spotlight. The article noted that in the space of five days, a quiet sleepy enclave of gated homes, fashionable boutiques, and a main boulevard dotted. with sweeping coral trees has been the scene of a double murder, a constant media vigil, and the grand finale of a spectacular car chase. So more if we're about ready to dive into the details, but I just want to take a minute, kind of go back, revisit what I said earlier, which is, you know, this was called the

case of the century, the trial of the century. it was so big that, you know, people were sitting home not going to work so that they didn't miss some of the trial and some of the things going on. We're going to talk about some things that happened before the trial that people were glued to. It was just must see television, if you want to call it that, because people were so invested in this thing. Yeah, for me, it was one of the. the first cases I can remember where the media was just parked and camped out and hanging on every tidbit of information that came out. We see that a lot today with cable news networks. They're all over the place and they're on top of literally every case and social media helps with that.

But back in the 90s, this was sort of new. So it's really something to have witnessed at the time. On the night of June 12, 1994, neighbors living near South Bundy Drive in Brentwood heard a dog barking just before 10.30 p.m. It was shrill and incessant, more like howling and wailing than yapping. After the Dick Van Dyke show ended at 1030, a man named Stephen Schwab took his dog for a walk. On his way back home around Bundy Drive and Dorothy Street, he encountered white Akita. It wouldn't stop barking at him. The dog was in great shape, well-groomed, and healthy. It didn't look like a stray, and it wasn't being aggressive, though it was upset or antsy.

The bark was tinged with urgency. As Stephen walked home, the Akita followed him. Stephen noticed that there was blood on the dog's paws, and he thought it must have been hurt, possibly from stepping on glass somewhere in the street, or from fighting another animal. As they walked down the road, the dog stopped and barked into the entryway of each gated yard.

Stephen thought that the dog might have belonged to the homeowners of one of these properties. A police officer on patrol was driving down the street, and Stephen stopped him to tell him about the end. Akita, but the officer told him he'd have to wait for animal control. So they went back to his building, Stephen heading home in the Akita following, where he left the dog in the courtyard. He would have brought the dog inside, but he had a cat, and he also figured animal control wouldn't be long. He had no idea that the Akita was connected to a terrible crime that had just been committed in the area. The Mary Tyler Moore show started at 11 p.m. And by then, the dog had still not

stopped barking in the courtyard. Stephen didn't want upset his neighbor, so he decided to walk the dog back toward where he found it, hoping that its owner would be out looking for it by then. However, the dog wouldn't go past the corner of Bundy Drive. It was happy to follow Stephen anywhere else, but trying to pass the corner, the dog pulled and resisted. So Stephen took it back to his building and he left it in the courtyard once again. While he got it a bowl of, of water. It was now 11.30 p.m. Animal control had called Stephen while he was trying to walk the Akita home. There was no staff to send out at the time. And Stephen would have to get the dog to the shelter by midnight for them to take it. Luckily, a neighbor walked into the courtyard. And this neighbor

was also Stephen's pet sitter occasionally. So it was natural to ask him for help with the dog. This man and his wife agreed to take the dog for the night and take it to the shelter in the morning inside his home. The dog was still very agitated, wouldn't calm down. So at midnight, the man and his wife decided to take it on a walk, just like Stephen had tried. This time, the dog pulled strongly, leading the couple as they walked. After walking just 600 feet, the Akita stopped and pulled at the entryway to one of the condos on Bundy Drive. Up the path, the man saw the body of a woman lying on the ground, her long hair spilling across the walkway.

Even in the darkness, he could see the blood covering the path, turning the tiles red. The couple quickly backed away, trying to get to a phone to call 911. They ran across the street to a neighbor's house to call for help. Just two minutes later, officers arrived unseen. It was 12.10 a.m. when they pulled up. As the neighbors headed home later, the Akita followed them this time, calm and quiet. It seemed after alerting them to what had happened, the dog didn't need to bark anymore. On scene, officers found not only the body of the woman that the couple had seen, but a man's body too. The man was lying just a few feet from the woman near some bushes. It had been too dark for the man to see him from the street when he saw the woman's body. It was clear to investigators that both victims had been very obvious. obviously attacked something sharp, and it was a bloody crime scene. Authorities went inside the condo, its front door still open, to clear the scene in case someone was still inside, whether it was a suspect or an additional injured person.

Music was playing softly, and a bath had been drawn in the master bathroom. Candles still burning were on the back edge of the tub. It turns out, officers did indeed find someone inside the home, unharmed. Two children still fast asleep in their beds. They were quickly woken up and taken out the back door away from the home without having to see any of the shocking crime scene. Some more of you and I talk a lot about people who are hiking through the woods or, you know, just going about their daily routine and they happen to stumble upon a dead body. Now, normally those bodies have been dumped somewhere, you know, maybe long after the crime has been committed. this is very different.

You know, this is a man and his wife who stumble upon a crime scene that is very fresh. And there's blood everywhere. The questions that run through my mind are just always, you know, what are these people think? And how do these things kind of haunt them for years to come? Especially knowing what a big deal. this is going to turn out to be a major crime, a well-known crime and an infamous trial. Yeah, and you mentioned something about sometimes it's somebody hiking that finds these bodies.

A lot of times it's hunters, it's people in out-of-the-way areas. But here we have a community with a lot of homes, a lot of residences that's not used to this kind of thing. So this had to be shocking for this couple to walk up on that scene. From the front path, there was a trail of blood leading to the back of the property. A large shoe print, size 12, left in blood was visible, a dark knit cap, a beeper, a set of keys, a pair of eyeglasses in an envelope, and a bloody leather glove. The left hand were found in various locations in the small area. Detective Mark Furman noted in his report a bloody fingerprint on Nicole's gate.

but for some reason it was never collected to compare to any other prints. A search of the home quickly revealed to detectives who the female victim was. Her name was Nicole Brown. She was 34 years old. Looking through her mail, officers found an envelope addressed to a name they recognized. Ornthal James Simpson, better known as OJ, a talented football player. He had won the Heisman Trophy in college. and in his pro career had been a running back for the bills and the 49ers.

He'd also been an occasional actor since his time at the University of Southern California. Retired from the NFL, 46-year-old OJ was still well known at the time for his commercials, advertising hurts rental cars, and he was certainly a celebrity. Seeing OJ's name, authorities then realize that Nicole Brown was Nicole Brown Simpson, the ex-wife of O.J. Simpson. Nicole and O.J. had been married for seven years before divorcing in 1992. The sleeping children in the home were identified as eight-year-old Sydney and five-year-old Justin Simpson, Nicole and O.J.'s children. The male victim found next to Nicole was identified as 25-year-old Ronald Goldman, but it was unclear at the time why he was there that night and how he was connected to

Nicole. The keys and beeper found at the scene had belonged to Ron, but the glove and knit cap did not. police believed that they belonged to the killer who didn't have enough time to find them in the dark before he fled the scene. After the realization by police that the dead woman was O.J. Simpson's ex, officers knew that things in the quiet Brentwood area were going to change.

The brutal double murder was undoubtedly going to rattle the community, and police had to talk to O.J. Simpson both to let him know that the mother of his children was dead, but they also had to rule him out as a suspect. After all, ex-spouses or murder victims sometimes turn out to be responsible for the murders, and its standard police procedure to investigate those closest to the victims,

then work outwards from there. Police would later learn that the white Akita that was running free in distress that night with blood on his paws belonged to Nicole. It was around 5 a.m. when detectives drove to O.J. Simpson's house on Rockingham Avenue, just two miles away from his ex-wife, Nicole's Bundy Drive townhouse.

They rang the buzzer at the outside gates multiple times, no one answered. They called the security company for the property and asked if they had anyone who could help them get inside or in touch with someone inside the home. But the security company couldn't help. And they also weren't sure why Simpson's maid, who lived on the property, wasn't answering the buzzer. There were high walls around the entire home.

As they walked the perimeter of the property, they saw White Ford Bronco, parked house, parked haphazardly. As they looked closer at it, they noticed that there was blood on the driver's side door of the Bronco. Investigators immediately wondered if someone had been targeting O.J. and his family in that perhaps O.J. Simpson himself was in danger or had met with foul play. Unable to get onto the property, Detective Mark Furman climbed over a wall and pressed the button that opened the gate, allowing fellow detectives, Van Adder and Lang onto the property, Furman would later explain during sworn testimony. Seeing the blood was the trigger that caused me to make the decision to go over the fence. There was a back house on the property, which the investigators decided to clear. Detectives knocked on the door and woke up Brian Kalin, who went by Kato, a friend of Nicole's who had been sleeping inside the home.

An aspiring actor looking for work in Los Angeles, Kaelan had once rented Nicole's guest house and babysat her children for a discount. When Nicole moved to the property on Bundy Drive, which didn't have a separate guest house, OJ asked Cato to move into the back house at the Rockingham property, instead of into a downstairs bedroom at Nicole's, because it wouldn't be right for another man, who wasn't OJ, to be living in the same house under the same roof as his wife. OJ even offered him quite the deal.

Cato wouldn't have to pay any rent at all. He just had to live on the Rockingham property and not with Nicole. This was, of course, an amazing deal in L.A. for anyone, let alone someone looking to save money while searching for their big break. So Cato took O.J. up on the offer. And you know, Cato kind of really turned out to be a memorable character in this whole saga. And I'm sure we'll talk about him more as we go along. But, you know, let's go back to this deal. You can live in the guest house rent free.

Well, everyone knows how expensive it is to live in L.A. So that would be an almost impossible deal to turn down for a guy who's an aspiring actor looking for his big break. Now, he would get his big break. It would just come a little differently than I think he expected it would. Yeah, the fame he got from this case is probably not the kind of fame he wanted. And I wonder if somehow, you know, they say actors can be typecast. I wonder if this whole saga wound up typecasting him as Cato, the guest house guy, and nothing more. And that maybe stunned his career because I don't know that he's really done a lot of mainstream stuff anyway since this incident.

But kind of interesting to think about. Yeah, I don't know if he ever would have been a big actor or anything like that. But there's no doubt he became famous. but he became famous for being Cato, not for playing a big role or, you know, something like that. So I would imagine, as you said, this probably stunted any kind of career he might have had in acting because sometimes it's really hard to play a role when you're kind of famous for something else in real life. That can be tough.

Just before 6 a.m. detectives van Adder and Furman also woke up Arnell Simpson who lived next door to Cato. Arnell was OJ's daughter from his first marriage to his wife, Marguerite. Police questioned both Arnell and Cato to see if they could shed light on what was going on. Arnell didn't have much to add, but Cato had something interesting to tell police. He remembered hearing some thumbs outside earlier behind his room. Cato estimated that it was around 1040 to 1045 when he heard the noise. He described it as someone knocking up against the outer wall of the home.

Detective Furman searched the area outside where Cato had heard a thump and found a blood-covered gloves in the bushes behind the back house where Caelin's room was. Cato told police that he had gone outside to check after hearing the noise. but he didn't see anyone. Finding the glove behind Cato's place was a major clue. This wasn't just some random glove, it turned out. It was a right-hand glove and looked to be a match to the left-hand glove found near the body of Ronald Goldman near the bushes in Nicole's yard. The only other thing Cato could add for detectives was that when he went out to check the noise,

he saw a limousine in the driveway waiting to pick up OJ. Kato decided to open the gate for the limo at the time instead of investigating the noise further and hadn't seen anyone or anything else suspicious in the yard. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder which emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do, but had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020. Blood and water.

Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. Arnell was able to use her key to the main house to unlock the front door to help detectives search for OJ. But both Arnell and Cato had told detectives that they didn't think OJ Simpson was home, and that turned out to be the case. He had left for Chicago on a late flight earlier that night. The limo that Cato had seen,

had picked Simpson up and taken him to the airport. O.J. Simpson was due to appear at an event for Hertz in Chicago. Police later learned that a few minutes after 11 p.m., limo driver Alan Park had taken Simpson from the Rockingham Estate to LAX. At 1145 p.m., OJ.'s flight took off. He was already in the air by the time that Nicole's Akita, who Nicole's children had named Cato, after their occasional babysitter Nicole's friend, Cato Caelin,

led the neighbors to discover the crime. scene. O.J. Simpson had checked into the O'Hare Plaza Hotel in Chicago before detectives ever made it to his home on Rockingham. At 6.21 a.m., Detective Lang called Nicole Brown's family from O.J.'s kitchen to alert them that she was dead. With O.J. gone, her parents were the next of kin to inform before the story hit the news. Detectives contacted the O'Hare Plaza Hotel at 6.30 a.m. and spoke to O'J. Simpson informing him of Nicole's murder and OJ quickly checked out. At the front desk, he demanded that they call a cab for him and also wanted a single band-aid for his finger, which had been cut.

He took the next possible flight back home to LAX. Around 7 a.m. on June 13th, Detective Van Adder made the decision to classify O.J. Simpson's home as a crime scene. The reasons for suspecting it was a crime scene were clear. There was blood on the white bronco parked there and a glove that matched one found at the Goldman Simpson murder scene was also found on OJ's property. Detective Van Adder also sought to obtain a proper search warrant for the home. Around 1045 a.m., a judge signed off on the search warrant allowing detectives to search the home and collect evidence. The bloody glove had been collected before the search warrant had been obtained, which would later come under scrutiny for possibly violating O.J. Simpson's rights.

But a judge ultimately upheld the validity of the original warrantless search. Though detectives had been aware of a rocky history between O.J. and Nicole, they hadn't gone there to target him as a suspect in the murders. They had his children in their custody, and they wanted to notify him of Nicole's passing respectfully, in person, not have him find out via the news. The glove wasn't found until after Mark Furman had jumped the wall, and only then did they start to become suspicious of OJ. Around the same time that the warrant was signed, Ron Goldman's coworkers were at the restaurant he worked at as a waiter called Mezzaluna, wondering where he was. An answering machine tape would record a colleague, Stewart, asking if Ron was going to come in.

All of Ron's work beeper pages went unanswered. And all this talk of beepers, more if it kind of takes me. me back to a time in the 90s, early to mid 90s. I had a beeper for work, pager, whatever you want to call it. I know I had a cell phone at some point. Maybe by this point I did have one in the mid 90s, but definitely these pagers were such a big deal. Number one, if you remember, we had limited minutes on our cell phones. It's not like today where everything. was unlimited and this and that. There was no texting on the cell phone. And a lot of times you got, I don't know what it was. I can't remember what 30 minutes a month or or something. It wasn't a lot.

So the, the beeper was kind of an easy way to let somebody know that you wanted to talk to them. Then they could either call you from a cell phone if they had one or a landline or maybe even a pay phone because those were still in play back at that point. I think I was the only one in my group of friends that didn't have a beeper. I was old school. I just wanted to call somebody to have them pick up and talk to them, not play tag going back and forth. But I think that really paints a picture of where this case was because we're in the mid 90s in this story and there's still beepers being used. And cell phones were really just coming online. But if this case happened today, obviously, there would be tracking apps, find my friend apps, social media. There'd be a lot easier ways for people to try and track Ron

down instead of, you know, leaving beeper pages for him to hopefully respond to. Yeah, I think I had a beeper all the way into the late 90s, if I remember it, at a job that I worked at. And then at some point, the beepers became a little more sophisticated. You could actually leave a message, a voice message. that would show up on the beeper, it would translate the voice message. I don't know. They got a little sophisticated. And then all of a sudden, they just kind of went away, unlike a lot of technology, right? Cell phones have just progressed and progressed. The beeper was such a big thing. And then all of a sudden, pretty much gone for most people. As police began to suspect that O.J. Simpson may be involved in the murder.

investigators would also later search room 915 of the O'Hare Plaza Hotel. The room OJ checked out of, police collected the bed sheets, which had blood on them. They also collected the pillows and broken glass that was in the bathroom sink. Very early into the investigation, it was clear that authorities were trying to rule out or perhaps rule in OJ Simpson. At the time of the attack, Nicole had been wearing a black dress. She was also still wearing a ring, earrings, and a watch. This suggested that it hadn't been a robbery attempt.

Her front door was open with nothing disturbed. And that was another clue that this was likely not a robbery. During the relationship, Nicole had experienced domestic violence at O.J. Simpson's hands. There were multiple police calls over the years, but OJ was only arrested one time. In 1985, Nicole called 911 from the Rockingham estate. Detective Mark Furman, the same detective who jumped the wall at Rockingham in 1994, responded to the call. Nicole was in her Mercedes-Benz crying.

The windshield on her car had been smashed with a baseball bat. Nicole's sister, Denise, remembered an incident from the mid-1980s, where six-foot-two, 200-pound OJ became furious at the suggestion that he took Nicole for granted. He threw pictures off the walls and down the stairs, yelled at everyone to leave, and physically threw both Nicole and Denise out of the house. Nicole ended up falling under her elbows very hard when he tossed her. About four years later, on January 1, 1989, just before 4 in the morning, Nicole called 911 from the Rockingham Estate again.

the dispatcher heard a woman screaming in the sound of someone being hit. When officers arrived, Nicole came running to them in just a bra and her sweatpants, which were covered in mud. She was screaming, he's going to kill me. All she had to say was OJ. When they asked who, there was a handprint on Nicole's neck. Her lip was cut. She had a bruise on her forehead and a black eye.

According to E. Online, an upset Nicole's neck. Cole said to police at the time, you've been here eight times and you never do anything to him. OJ told the officers that he had pushed Nicole out of bed after they argued but denied that he hit her.

Officers informed him they would be taking him to the police station but they were going to let him get dressed first. Instead of going with them, he got into his Bentley and drove off. They didn't chase him. They knew who he was and where to find him. In the

morning, Nicole went to the police station and told them that she wasn't going to press charges after all. Despite her reluctance to press charges, she had signed the report that night. So they had to give the case over to the LA City Attorney's Office who did file charges. O.J. Simpson pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of spousal battery. He received a sentence of two years probation, 120 hours of community service. a $500 fine to be paid to a woman's shelter, and also mandatory counseling twice each week. Just over one year later, Nicole filed for divorce on February 25, 1990. They finally settled in October 1992, and Nicole Brown Simpson was back to being Nicole Brown.

They still spent Thanksgiving and Christmas together that year. For Nicole, though, the nightmare wasn't over, even though she wasn't under the same roof as OJ every night. On October 25, 1993, Nicole called 911 from her home saying to the dispatcher, he's back. He's fucking going nuts. He's going to beat the shit out of me. As OJ screamed at Nicole, she tried to remind him that the kids were asleep upstairs. O.J. responded yelling at her. You didn't give a shit about the kids when you were sucking his dick in the living room. According to the book, The Run of his Life, The People v. O.J. Simpson. OJ was referring in the call to a 1992 incident when O.J. had looked through Nicole's window at night while she and her then boyfriend were having sex, not knowing he was watching them. O.J. Simpson had clearly been stalking Nicole. On May 19, 1994, Nicole's 35th birthday, OJ gave her a diamond, ruby, and sapphire bracelet, but she returned it to next week. The following month on June 7th, Nicole called a Santa Monica Women's Shepard.

shelter and reported that her ex-husband was stalking her. Less than one week later, Nicole was dead. Aside from the fact that an ex or a strange partner is always the first suspect in a murder investigation, Nicole and OJ had documented physical violence in their past. He had stalked Nicole, clearly angry about her having sex with her boyfriend. It was reasonable to wonder if Simpsons' rage or behavior, could have escalated into murder. And so, more if we talked about a lot of different things here regarding the relationship

between O.J. and Nicole, the domestic violence, the stalking. I just want to go back and kind of run through some of it because I do think it's a very big issue in this case. So first of all, you have a Hall of Fame. all-time great NFL player, six foot to over 200 pounds, even still at this point in really good shape, probably extremely strong, not someone that you'd want to mess with in an alleyway, being physically abusive towards Nicole, who was obviously much, much smaller than he was. the thing that really jumps out of me is the number of reported incidents. I think she said it in one call. You've been here eight times and you never do anything to him. If that is true, I think it really kind of underscores one of the big problems that has existed for a long time.

Now, this one's a little different because the police are dealing with a celebrity. So are they even a little less apt to do something to OJ than they would a regular Joe? And I think the answer is probably yes. Sad, but I think it's true. I think this man got away with a lot of things that some people wouldn't have, but also a lot of guys got away with stuff like this back in the day. Very scary stuff when you go through the documented incidents. I think one thing we've seen from covering cases in the past where there's domestic violence is there's a pattern.

And a lot of times it gets worse and worse and just continues. And eventually, many times it ends with someone dying. So I think in this instance, it only makes sense to wonder if Nicole died at the hands of O.J. Simpson in the culmination of all this domestic violence. Well, I think even without the domestic violence, OJ was going to be looked at, right? He's the ex-husband. They're going to take a look at him, but you add all of these documented incidents on top of that. And I think he has to be looked at even closer, right? Because of all these interactions and the violent nature of them. On June 13th, that, After OJ arrived back in Los Angeles from Chicago, he was briefly handcuffed at his house.

But when his attorney arrived, he was unhandcuffed and taken to the police station, where he was interviewed by LAPD detectives, Van Adder and Lang. His attorney, Howard Weitzman, explained that a patrol officer had mistakenly placed handcuffs on OJ and that he wasn't a suspect. At the station, OJ walked detectives through his version of the night of Nicole's murder. He told police that both he and Nicole had severed. Separately, gone to Paul Revere High School to watch a recital that their daughter, Sydney, was in. She had been one of the last children to perform. It ended around 6.30 or 6.45, and Nicole left the

auditorium while O.J. stayed behind and spoke with people there. According to O.J., he turned down a request by Nicole to go to dinner that evening. He told detectives that from there, he went home, getting there around 7 p.m. He called his girlfriend, Paula Barbieri, but she didn't answer. He decided to get in his Bronco and drive to her house, calling her a few times on his car phone as he drove. But she still didn't answer, and when he arrived at her house, she wasn't home. He got back home at around 8 p.m. He would later give another story, saying that he was actually at home the whole time, practicing golf swings in his yard, and that he had taken his car phone out of the Bronco to use at home.

So, you know, we talked about beepers. We've talked about cell phones many, many times. Now we're talking about a car phone. And you definitely have to be of a certain age to understand the car phone. You know, to me, more if the car phone was reserved for the rich and famous, to have a phone actually dedicated in your car. That means you were, you were doing okay. Yeah, as I said, I never had a pager or beeper, and I certainly never had a car phone. Somehow I picture you having a car phone, did you?

I barely had a car. And it definitely wasn't a nice car that you would put a car phone in. No, I never had a car phone. But there were a number of different versions of them, if I remember. Some were, I think, kind of hardwired into the car. This sounds more like maybe the bag version where you could take it in and out of the car. And then obviously at some point, car phones became non-existent because of the cell phone. Everybody had a cell phone.

You just use that in your car, as we do today. According to police notes, OJ told detectives that after they called him in Chicago to inform him of Nicole's death, he just went bonkers for a little bit. This is when he smashed the glass that was found in the sink in the hotel. and when he must have cut his finger or possibly reopened an older cut. When confronted with the fact that there were blood drops at his house and in the Bronco, OJ explained that he had cut his finger on something while he was getting ready to go to Chicago. But it was no big deal, and he had grabbed a napkin when he noticed it and kept packing.

OJ had gone to Cato's to ask him for change because he only had $100 bills. and they ended up going to McDonald's together, going straight back to the Rockingham Estate, and then parted ways. He then flew to Chicago. And obviously this blood, this cut on the finger is going to be a very big deal. Where exactly did it come from? Did it really come from him breaking a glass in Chicago? Or did it come from possibly a knife that was used in the murder?

All of that was OJ's account of the timeline, but through other people's testimony, we can put together something pretty close to the actual timeline leading up to the attack. Nicole had originally planned to take her family to Jackson's restaurant, where Jason Simpson, one of OJ's children from his previous marriage, was a chef. However, she decided to go to a restaurant she went too often called mezzaluna. Apparently, Jackson's restaurant had been too expensive, the party too large, and the kids were going to be too restless. so she changed her plans. A bit of speculation here is that Nicole changed plans so that OJ wouldn't be able to show up and crash the dinner. Though he claimed to have turned down a dinner invitation from Nicole,

he hadn't been invited to have dinner with them. In fact, he had been specifically told that he wasn't invited. According to the Courier Post online, Nicole had made herself clear, telling him that afternoon, get away from us, get out of my life, you're not welcome with his family anymore. And to me, this is a very big, you know, contradiction between the two parties. OJ kind of makes it seem as though everything's pretty amicable.

You know, Nicole even invited him to dinner, but he turned down the invitation. Meanwhile, it seems as though Nicole had a very different interaction, specifically telling him you're not invited and going as far as to say, you know, get away from us, get out of our life, you're not welcome. Those are two very different points of views. Nicole and her family arrived at Mezzaluna at about 6.45 p.m. around the same time. O.J. Simpson and Cato Caelin were at the Rockingham Estate talking. OJ was irritated that Nicole wasn't going to let him spend time with Sydney at the recital,

but Nicole just didn't want to see him. He was also very upset about how tight her dress was. was somewhere between 8.30 and 8.40 p.m. Nicole and her family left Mezzaluna as they were leaving Nicole's mother. Judith Brown dropped her glasses in the gutter, but she didn't notice. At 9 p.m. she called Mezzaluna and asked an employee if they had found them. An employee did find them, and she planned on having Nicole picked them up for her since she frequented the nearby Mezaluna restaurant, just a 10-minute walk away from her home. they were placed into an envelope labeled Nicole Simpson prescription glasses.

They would be waiting for her there at the restaurant. At around 9.10 p.m., OJ. asked Cato if he had small bills to make change for him. Cato gave him $20, and minutes later they headed to McDonald's. Cato had played basketball earlier and was still hungry, and OJ wanted to eat dinner. They got home at around 9.35, and Cato went into his room to eat. at 9.50 p.m. Ron Goldman left Mezzaluna. He had wrapped up a shift earlier and was still there when Judith Brown called. He went home and changed and then was intending to drop the glasses off at Nicole's home on his way to Marina del Rey, where he planned to meet up with some friends. This solves the mystery of

what he was doing at Nicole's that night. It was nothing salacious, of course, like what was suggested in tabloids that hinted that Nicole had planned a romantic night with Ron Goldman. It was late at night, a bath with candles had been drawn and Nicole was wearing a dress. But it turns out Ron Goldman was just trying to do a favor for someone he called a friend, as well as for the restaurant he worked at. He had gone to Nicole simply to do something nice, and for that he lost his life. And this is something,

Morf, it's always stood out to me about this case. You know, Ron Goldman making the decision to drop the glasses off. That ends up with him losing his life. You know, if he had not done that, waited, maybe done it the next day or waited for Nicole to come pick them up, would he still be a lot? Those are kind of sad but interesting things to think about. These small decisions that people make in how they, you know, ultimately

affect their, their life. Yeah, it's the epitome of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, you know, five minutes earlier, maybe he drops the glasses off and he's out of there, where five minutes later, maybe he's the one finding the body of Nicole. And he's still alive to tell his part of this story. There's always been speculation, a lot of theories and tabloid things about maybe he was going there to have an intimate encounter with Nicole and OJ showed up and caught them together. and that's what set them off. And, you know, earlier you mentioned the tabloids.

And man, they were all over this case. And, you know, they really dragged some people through the mud, namely Ron and Nicole, by suggesting certain things that I think turned out not to be accurate. But we'll talk about it more as we go on because it is the, this interaction or this decision by Ron Goldman to show up with the glasses that ultimately ends with him losing his life. And what does that mean as far as who the killer was and how everything transpired? Around 10.10 p.m. Cato Caelin called his friend Rachel on the phone. by 1015, Nicole's dog, Cato, the Akita, was barking nonstop.

It was enough for neighbors and joggers in the area to notice. Even neighbors across the alley were bothered by the bark, which was described as a pet in distress. At 1025, Allen Park, the limo driver, arrived at OJ Simpson's Rockingham Estate a bit early. He was scheduled to arrive at 1045. He drove around the corner of the property to the entrance on Ashford and parked. He smoked a cigarette and listened to the radio for a bit before pulling out of the driveway and back to the entrance on Rockingham. It was 1040 when he got out of the limo and buzzed the intercom. After a few times with no answer, he called his boss's pager and requested a callback.

He had not seen a Bronco parked on either Ashford or Rockingham. and it wasn't in either driveway. He would have noticed since he would have to maneuver around it on the street or plan where to pull up next to or behind it in the driveway. It simply wasn't there. At the same time, Cato, still on the phone inside with his friend Rachel, in the guest house, heard the thumps from outside near the air conditioning unit on the wall. A picture hanging on the wall had shifted in its place at the same time.

He asked Rachel if there had been an earthquake, but she had been. hadn't felt one. Outside, limo driver Alan Park figured that the situation was urgent and didn't want O.J. Simpson missed his flight, so he decided to call his mother to have her find his boss's number for him. This was common before the internet and smartphones to have to call someone who could use a phone book or look through your notes at home if you needed information on the go. At 1049, Park called his boss, Dal St. John at his home, but he didn't answer. Alan Park buzzed the intercom a few more times. At 1052, he heard the car phone ringing. It was his boss. Alan Park reported to his boss that it looked like no one was home. But St. John said,

O.J. usually running a little late, so hang out until about 1115. If he's not there by then, go ahead and come on home. In addition, his boss told him that O.J. Simpson usually watched TV in an area that you could see from the outside due to a skylight if you look near the garage. but there was no light coming from the area that Park could see. During this conversation, Alan Park saw a white male walking behind the house with a flashlight. He was looking in the driveway and side yard. Alan Park told St. John that someone was home.

This wasn't Simpson, of course. It was actually Cato Ceylon when he was investigating the three loud thumbs he had heard. At this time, when Park was watching Kalin looking for the source of the thumbs. He was still on the phone with St. John. He also saw another figure, about six feet tall, 200 pounds, wearing dark clothes, appear in what Park called the entranceway of the house, just about where the driveway starts. This man was definitely not Kalin, who was still checking things out in the side yard. Park saw the large man, who appeared to be a black male walking toward the home at 1055,

Alan Park ended the call with St. John and rang the intercom again. This time, O.J. Simpson answered, telling Park he would be down soon. He had accidentally overslept and was in the shower. Lights were now on downstairs. Cato Kalin opened the gate for Park and asked him if there had been an earthquake, still curious as to the thumps on his wall. By 11 p.m., Nicole's Akita,

was with Stephen Schwab at his building. Just minutes later, O.J. was walking to Allen Park's limo. He set a Gucci or Louis Vuitton garment bag down in the driveway. Cato, helping Alan Park, put O.J. Simpson's golf bags in the trunk, spotted a small black duffel bag near Simpson's Rolls-Royce and offered to get the duffel bag. But OJ. stopped him and said he'd get it. Alan Park got Simpson to the airport at 1135, just in time for his 1145 flight. On the way to the airport, Simpson said he was too hot. Alan Park had to turn on the air conditioning for him, and OJ rolled down his window. He mentioned to Park that he had to get dressed so fast, and he was sure he had forgotten to pack something. Soon after, OJ. was out of the state, and officers were

arriving at the crime scene on Bundy and Nicole's house. At around 1.30 a.m., Kato went to sleep. Between five and six, he awoke to detectives knocking on his door. They eventually told Kato to leave the property when it was designated a crime scene. As they escorted him to a car, they told him, be careful of the blood. Cato looked down when they mentioned it and saw drops of blood on the ground. So Morph, and kind of wrapping up this first part of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, obviously there is a lot left to get to, but I just kind of want to walk back through some of the things that are going to become very important.

You know, we've already talked about the physical violence that occurred during the marriage or the relationship between O.J. and Nicole, we have Ron Goldman making the decision to return the eyeglasses. I really want to talk a little bit about the limo driver because this becomes extremely important, right? We said it. He's there early. He keeps buzzing. Nobody's answering. He doesn't see the Bronco. And then it's as if, you know, all of a sudden, he sees someone who I think he believes is OJ. And then the next thing you know, OJ is answering from inside the home. It makes it seem as though OJ returned from somewhere, kind of snuck in, and acted as though he had been there, but fell asleep and then had to take a shout.

I mean, these are all going to be huge thing in the trial, in the case. And then you've got Cato Caelin hearing these thumps on the wall, investigating, you know, what they were. Those are going to come up. What exactly or who exactly made those noises. Yeah, I think all of that is very important. it really puts a timeline together that helps investigators narrow down what happened, when it happened, and sort of connect it back to the murders.

And then also you have the evidence that's found on OGA's property. You have a glove that matches a glove at the crime scene in Nicole's house. You have blood that detectives have found on the ground here, and they tell Cato not to step in it as he's walking away. then you also have blood they found on OJ's Bronco door handle. So everything seems to be tying together here, timeline wise and evidence wise. And this is all going to come,

come to be part of what happens going forward in the case. And I don't want to get ahead of myself here, but also what is going to be important is just exactly how some of that stuff got there. You know, the glove, the blood that you mentioned. Was it left there by O.J. Simpson or did someone else put it there? I mean, you know, there's no doubt. That's going to be a big thing at trial.

As we always see, the prosecution is going to say one thing. The defense is going to say another. And as always, it will be up to the jury to wade through all the evidence, the witnesses, and try to figure out what they believe really happened. Or at the very least, whether or not the prosecution has enough evidence. There were definitely some inconsistencies in O.J. Simpson's story, but also the interrogation of him was not very thorough. When things didn't make sense, police didn't seem to press him.

And they didn't really ask him to clarify things. So, I mean, no doubt. this story is far from over in part two of this case that will come out next Saturday night. We'll look at the aftermath of the murders, talk about an infamous slow speed bronco chase, and dive into the arrest and trial of O.J. Simpson. If you love the show and haven't done so yet, go out, give us a five-star rating. You can leave a review, but also keep telling your friends about the criminology podcast. That word of mouth really helps.

If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by going to facebook.com slash criminology podcast. And you can join our Facebook discussion group, criminology podcast, discussion in fans. So that's it for part one on the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. But Morp and I will be back with all of you with part two next Saturday night. So until then, for Mike and Morph. We'll talk to you next week.

Take care of everyone.