A Life Interrupted?

“You can close your eyes to reality but not  to memories.”

Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

On Sunday June 12 1994 Nicole Brown Simpson became a public figure overnight for on that balmy Sunday evening she was senselessly and brutally murdered in the grounds of her home at 875 South Bundy Drive in the leafy suburb of Brentwood in California.

Her murder trial and that of her friend Ronald Lyle Goldman who had been murdered alongside her became known as the ‘Trial of the Century’ with her former husband Orenthal James Simpson as the accused.

It is hard to believe that Nicole was murdered over twenty eight years ago for I can remember the BBC news reports and the iconic photographs of the bloody pathway lined with the neat rows of purple and lilac Agapanthus.

I also remember the farcical ‘Bronco Chase’, the sensational headlines week after week in The National Enquirer, the court testimony of Mark Fuhrman and the shock of the “Not Guilty” verdict on October 3 in the following year.

And yet what I most recall is the realisation of a grotesque dichotomy that despite the voluminous photographs of a beautiful and happy Nicole that she had in fact been abused by Simpson throughout most of their seventeen year relationship.

“I just don’t see how our stories compare -I was so bad because I wore sweats & left shoes around & didn’t keep a perfect house or comb my hair the way you like it –

or had dinner ready at the precise moment you walked through the door or that I just plain got on your nerves sometimes…”

Beginning with the news of the murders in June 1994 and from the first book I bought in the Autumn of 1994 to the sensational murder trial with the lurid tabloid tales and the campaign to raise much needed awareness against domestic abuse as well as being the subject of a controversial thesis – my interest in Nicole’s life has been an enduring constant.

There are literally hundreds of books that have been written about the life of Nicole and of her life with Simpson and the tales of glamour, celebrity, wealth and beauty have frequently made her appear remote, abstract and insignificant.

Yet it is the very tragedy of her early death that makes her life a compelling human story of hope, love, obsession and betrayal and that is why I choose to remember her.

Tee

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The Headlines. The Story. A Life Interrupted. 'Nicole Simpson’s carefree smile hid more than the pain of O.J.’s brutality – she had six abortions, and each was like a tiny knife through her heart. 'Nicole led a seemingly storybook life that was the envy of all her friends – until her marriage began falling apart. 'The voice is, by turns angry, exasperated, terrified and, finally resigned. It is her second 911 call within 10 minutes. The Headlines. The Story. A Life Interrupted. 'Like many cases of domestic violence, the story of O.J. and Nicole Brown Simpson’s stormy relationship fits a disturbing pattern – a pattern of official intervention that came too late and did too little. '"I'm afraid he's going to kill me!" 'Even in a city that saw 421 murders last year, these were startling.