“Look what the bastard’s done to me!” wept Nicole Simpson as her sister Denise snapped dramatic photos of the battered blonde – which offer horrifying proof of her vicious beating at the hands of O.J.

Those photos were seized by police from Nicole’s safe deposit box and are now in the hands of prosecutors. It’s up to Judge Lance Ito to decide if they can be introduced at O.J.’s trial.

“The most shocking photo shows the left side of her face badly bruised and swollen,” Denise told a family friend.

“Her face looked like raw meat!

“It looks like she was beaten with a baseball bat, but Nicole told me O.J. used only his fists.

There were small scratches on her face – under her eyes, on her nose and near her mouth. She had a bruise near the center of her forehead.

Nicole said she got the scratches when O.J. was trying to pull her hair and instead clawed her face. He was able to grab Nicole’s long hair and when he did he pulled out gobs of it. You could see small patches of missing hair on the back of her scalp.”

The beating captured in Denise’s photos took place at O.J.’s house on New Year’s Day, 1989. Police responded to the scene after receiving a 911 call.

“A few days after the beating Nicole asked me to come to her house, ” Denise told the family friend. “When she answered the door, I gasped with amazement. She looked like someone had beaten the hell out of her.

“O.J. beat me,’ Nicole said. “He’s crazy. Look at what the bastard’s done to me. One of these days he’s going to kill me!’ Then she started crying.

“She took me into the bathroom and begged me to take pictures of her battered face and body. She told me, ‘I need proof that O.J. beat me. Without proof no one will ever believe me. The public thinks he’s a hero who can’t do wrong.’

“I got her Polaroid camera and took several pictures.

“In addition to the shot of her face, I also took a photo of Nicole’s right underarm. She was black and blue from the armpit down the inside of her arm for about six inches.

“You could see individual finger marks underneath her arm where O.J. had grabbed her. Also there were small scratches from his fingernails digging into her skin where he grabbed her underneath the arm.

“Her right bicep was so bruised that she had a hard time lifting her right arm over her head or carrying her children!”

Denise also revealed that when Nicole went to the hospital after the beating, O.J.’s best friend Al Cowlings – not O.J. took her there.

Simpson eventually pleaded no contest to wife-beating charges stemming from the incident, and was ordered to serve community service.

Still fearful, Nicole stashed the photos taken by Denise in a safe deposit box. Denise didn’t know what had become of them – until she heard that police, armed with a search warrant, had recently opened Nicole’s box at a Brentwood, Calif., bank and found the photos inside.

“I figured they were the ones I took,” Denise told a family friend.

The National Enquirer (January 3 1995)