Nicole Brown Simpson
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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 U.S. history.
The daughter of Juditha and Louis Brown, Simpson (like her older sister) was born in Frankfurt, 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, who at that time had retired from professional football. They had two children together, Sydney Brooke Simpson (born October 17, 1985) 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 June 12, 1994, 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 $33,500,000 (USD) 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. [link]
Relationship with Goldman
Whether Nicole and Ron were just friends or something more was never known conclusively, but Goldman is always referred to as "her friend". The L.A. Times reported on June 15, 1994:
- "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."
External links
| Key figures | Prosecution figures | Defense figures | Witnesses | Other elements |
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