The insider says Mrs. Brown delayed releasing the letter for two important reasons.

“Nicole’s mom was scared,” says the insider. “When she read the letter she didn’t know what to do. She was stunned, because from the get-go she’d wanted to believe that O.J. wasn’t capable of killing her beautiful daughter.

“She’d hoped against hope that it wasn’t him. But most of all she was scared. She was frightened that if she opened her mouth – or any of Nicole’s sisters did – they’d be killed.

“That may not have been entirely rational thinking by them, but it’s hardly surprising after what they’d been through.”

The second reason, says the insider, was the Brown’s deep-rooted fear that if they took an aggressive stance against their former son-in-law, he would fight their move to keep custody of his two children, Sydney, 9, and Justin, 6.

On Sept. 12, the grandparents were granted temporary custody of the youngsters – and only after that did the Browns hand Nicole’s letter to the district attorney’s office.

Adds the insider: “At first, the prosecutors and Nicole’s girlfriends were angry and dismayed that Mrs. Brown hadn’t given this information to the D.A. way back.”

The mystery surrounding Nicole’s letter helps explain the Brown family’s reaction to their daughter’s slaying.

Many people were puzzled by 37-year-old Denise Brown’s declaration soon after the killings that her sister “was not a battered woman.”

She said: “My definition of a battered woman is somebody  who gets beat up all the time. I don’t want people to think it was like that. I know Nicole. She was a very strong-willed person.”

And her father said they were placing their faith in the legal system and “praying that justice will be done.”

Now Denise has stated publicly that she believes O.J. is guilty of murder.

She also says when the family cleared Nicole’s belongings from her Bundy Drive condo, they found “scribblings on scraps of notebook paper detailing incidents of abuse.”

But sources close to Nicole and her family tell STAR they were unaware of any such “scribblings” removed from the condo.

“The Brown family have decided to refer Nicole’s letter as ‘ scribblings’ to play down the impact of this document in the run-up to the trial,” says the insider.

And the Browns were stung by whispers that they ignored obvious signs of abuse to their daughter – because they were on their wealthy son-in-law’s gravy train.

O.J. hired Nicole’s cousin Rolf Baur, first as a gardener at their estate and then as manager of his two Pioneer Chicken fast-food outlets in Los Angeles. At the same time, Baur’s wife Maria, worked as the Simpson’s housekeeper.

Simpson’s father-in-law, Lou, ran his Hertz car rental franchise at Laguna Niguel. Simpson also paid USC tuition for Nicole’s younger sister Dominique.

But apart from the notorious New Year’s Day beating in 1989 – when cops answering a 911 call from Nicole found her bruised and cowering in her underwear in bushes at the Rockingham Avenue estate – friends say the Browns were unaware of their daughter’s nightmarish marriage.

Denise now admits she was “so naive” about the abuse issue.

Candidly, and with hindsight, she recognizes that the family missed the “hints” and the death threats that were always disclosed by Nicole in “a flippant, playful manner that defused the message.”

“In one breath Nicole would say that O.J. was going to kill her. In the next she would talk about a restaurant menu or the latest shopping trip,” says Denise.

After realizing the truth, Denise says she now wants to champion the cause of abused women.

Defiantly, Juditha Brown concluded:

“Justice will be done. I feel so sure about this. I have such confidence that justice will be done.”

Star Magazine (December 13 1994)