Domestic Violence
A 911 New Year's Call That Foretold A Murder Is Revisited
Could a missed opportunity in the OJ Simpson murder case have made a difference?
Posted January 1, 2015
Twenty-six years ago on New Year’s Day 1989, Los Angeles Police officers arrived at the Brentwood townhome of Nicole Brown Simpson, the ex-wife of professional football player OJ Simpson, after Brown Simpson had placed a frantic call to 911.
Upon their arrival, LAPD officers found Nicole hiding in the bushes outside her home wearing only a bra and sweatpants. When she saw the officers, Nicole cried out, “He’s going to kill me! He’s going to kill me!”
But police did not arrest Simpson, even though in California when there are visible signs of physical abuse in domestic cases it's grounds to hold the suspect for a few hours until the situation is diffused and the perpetrator is calm. In retrospect, the 911 call was more than a plea for help; if OJ did in fact kill his wife, the call was a recipe for murder.
Despite Brown Simpson's statement that she feared her husband was going to kill her, police did not act. The case could be held up as a classic example of what not to do at the scene of a domestic violence dispute, especially where there are visible signs of abuse.
After the officers and OJ left Nicole's home, she asked her sister Denise Brown to take photos of the bruises. Nicole locked the print photos in a safe-deposit box and informed Denise where the photos were and that if anything should happen to her, they were proof that OJ beat her.
On June 12, 1994, four-and-a-half years after that memorable 911 call, Nicole Brown Simpson’s slashed body was discovered in the courtyard of her Brentwood home, along with the body of restaurant worker and acquaintance Ronald Goldman--in the same yard where Nicole had sat huddled on New Year’s Day 1989 as she waited for police to respond to her domestic-violence call for help.
OJ was ultimately arrested and tried in the double murder of Brown Simpson and Goldman’s murders. During the trial, Los Angeles County prosecutor Christopher Darden painted OJ as a wife batterer. One of the pieces of evidence Darden used to back up the premise was to play Nicole’s New Year’s Day emergency 911 tape to jurors. In the background during that call, OJ could be heard shouting at his wife while she spoke to the dispatch officer of her fear for her life.
Still, the jury in October 1995 returned an acquittal, and OJ walked out of the courtroom a free man. Interviewed afterward, a few jurors said they believed OJ probably did kill Brown Simpson and Goldman but that the prosecution had not proven its case. The victims' families then sued OJ in civil court for wrongful death, a jury held OJ responsible for the deaths, and he was ordered to pay the victims' families for damages.
Today, OJ sits in a Nevada state prison on unrelated burglary charges, a sentence for which he will have served out in a few years, and he will be free once again.
It seems fitting that on this New Year’s, twenty-six years to the day that Nicole Brown Simpson alerted police during that fateful call of her former husband's intent, that both Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman are remembered.