On Tuesday, an attorney for the family of Nicole Brown Simpson dispatched a letter to News Corp., demanding information on the terms of the company’s contract with Simpson for “If I Did It, Here’s How It Happened,” a book in which Simpson reportedly discusses, hypothetically, how he would have gone about murdering his ex-wife and her friend, Goldman. The letter asks the News Corp. to disclose who was paid for the project—and how much. “My hope is that if they are truly sorry for the pain they have caused and they have had a revelation that this was an ill-conceived project, then they should fix it and make it right,” said Natasha Roit, the Brown family lawyer who wrote the letter. “It ought to be unwound.”
Simpson was found not guilty of the murder of Brown Simpson and Goldman. But a subsequent civil suit resulted in a $33.5 million judgment against him. It is common knowledge that Simpson has not settled that debt—and moved to Florida in order to safeguard his assets from seizure, Roit says. Given that knowledge, she argues, News Corp. surely knew how to structure the payments to a third party to help shield it. “There are clearly legal options that we have,” Roit said. “To say you are sorry without making things right rings hollow. We are asking for something not only that we’re entitled to, but that we have the moral position to obtain. It’s wrong, and we’re not going to drop it.”
A News Corp. spokesman confirms receipt of the Brown family’s letter. “We’ll do everything we can to cooperate,” the spokesman tells NEWSWEEK.
The Simpson firestorm ignited last week, with the news that flamboyant publisher Judith Regan was set to publish “If I Did It” and roll it out with a two-hour Fox TV special, in which she would grill Simpson about the crime, which Simpson maintains he did not commit. Regan, who has her own imprint at the Murdoch-owned Harper Collins publishing house, reportedly paid between $2 million and $3.5 million for the deal. Word of the arrangement prompted revulsion from the families of Brown and Goldman—and spawned a public outcry that played around the clock on cable TV. Other publishing houses rushed to denounce the deal. Some bookstores said they wouldn’t sell it, or would ship the proceeds to charity. Regan fanned the flames in a bizarre statement, claiming she had decided to publish the book as a means of getting Simpson to confess; she wanted to help the victims of violence, she wrote, unveiling allegations that she herself was once the victim of domestic abuse.
By late last week, Murdoch and Regan were facing a revolt within their own ranks, as prominent Fox personality Bill O’Reilly railed against the project and several local Fox TV affiliates proclaimed that they wanted nothing to do with it. On Monday, Murdoch decided he had had enough. “I and senior management agree with the American public that this was an ill-considered project,” Murdoch announced in a statement.
But his company did make one last-ditch effort to save the deal, according to the Brown and Goldman families. Denise Brown, Nicole’s sister, declared on NBC’s “Today” show that the News Corp. had approached the families with an offer of “millions of dollars” as criticism of the project began to peak. “They wanted to offer us millions of dollars. Millions of dollars for, like, ‘Oh, I’m sorry’ money. But they were still going to air the show,” Brown told “Today”’s Matt Lauer. “We just thought, ‘Oh my God.’ What they’re trying to do is trying to keep us quiet, trying to make this like hush money, trying to go around the civil verdict, giving us this money to keep our mouths shut.”
Roit, the Brown family attorney, says News Corp. contacted the lawyer for the Goldmans to initiate talks about the money. Roit stopped short of calling it hush money and said that the discussion never went beyond a preliminary stage—because the Browns emphatically rejected the offer. “It was very recent and very short-lived,” Roit said of the offer. In exchange, she claims, News Corp. intended to proceed with the project and issue a press release implying that the families had given it their blessing. “So O.J. gets to keep his money, the transaction gets to stand, the thumbing of your nose at the law and the judgment gets to stand, the families will get their money and News Corp. gets to keep its money,” Roit said of the proposal. “It was thwarted just as quickly as it was proposed.”
Jonathan G. Polak, an attorney for the Goldmans, confirms that News Corp. lawyers called him late last week to try to reach some accommodation. The lawyers wanted to go ahead with the book and TV deal, Polak says, but they were sensitive to the public perception that they were trying to cash in on a heinous crime. Their proposal: News Corp. would share profits from the venture with the Goldman and Brown families. “They realized they had made a big mistake and they tried to extend an olive branch,” Polak says. But unlike Roit, Polak says there “were never any strings attached. They never said you have to be silent or endorse or accept the book.” Polak says the Goldmans preferred that the project be killed outright. But when the News Corp. lawyers insisted that it move forward, the family hesitated. The company’s offer was something “Kim and Fred struggled with,” Polak says, adding that “it was a decision they ultimately didn’t have to make.” A News Corp. spokesman confirmed that the company had discussed giving money to the two families but told the Associated Press that the offer came with no restrictions.
Polak sent a letter of his own to News Corp. Tuesday. In it, he called on the company to destroy any existing copies of “If I Did It,” along with any copies of Regan’s taped interview with Simpson. Polak also asked that News Corp. assign to the Goldmans any rights the company has in the book or the interview—which could “provide a basis for the Goldman family to seek injunctive relief and/or money damages in the event that the book or the interview happen to surface.” In his letter, Polak voices his appreciation for Murdoch’s decision to spike the project, but states that “News Corp. still has considerable work to do to prevent others from profiting off of murder.” The game may have been called, but the players battle on.
With Johnnie L. Roberts
