LOS ANGELES (CNS) - “Dear Mr. Simpson. Hello. It's me, Kim. Ron Goldman's sister.”
So begins the introduction to a podcast released today by Kim Goldman, coinciding with the 25th anniversary of the slayings of her 25-year-old brother Ron and 35-year-old Nicole Brown Simpson outside Simpson's Bundy Drive townhouse in Brentwood.
The June 12, 1994, killings of Goldman and Simpson, ex-wife of football star-turned-broadcaster-and-actor O.J. Simpson, set off one of the most infamous legal odysseys in U.S. history, culminating in the “Trial of the Century,” in which the star athlete was acquitted of fatally stabbing and slashing the pair.
For Kim Goldman, who was famously filmed weeping inside the courtroom when the jury's not-guilty verdict was read in October 1995, the killing of her brother continues to haunt her. She said her podcast is an effort to confront those demons
“Confronting this part of my life is something I still need to do,” Goldman, 47, said in the introduction to the podcast, titled “Confronting: O.J. Simpson.”
“I want to confront the fear, the grief, the anger, the loss, the shame,” she said. “I want to ask questions that have never been answered, not only of O.J. Simpson, but of everyone involved, because this crime, this case, this trial has changed us forever.”
In her introduction, Goldman reads from a letter she said she sent to Simpson asking for an interview, a request that was declined.
“I'm sure it's really weird to be getting a letter from me, but for years, I've listened to what everybody else has had to say about you -- lawyers, the media -- but never from you,” she wrote in the letter. “I'm wondering if you would sit down and talk to me. I just want to understand whatever can be understood.”
Although denied a Simpson interview, Goldman said her podcast will include talks with investigators and witnesses in the case, the prosecutors and even two of the jurors who acquitted Simpson.
“I want to remember and honor my brother Ron by talking to the people who knew him before he was just a name in a headline,” she said.
She said the project is an effort to face her past, but she hopes others find benefit in it.
“This podcast will help me confront my story and hopefully help others who find themselves in similar situations confront theirs, even if it means coming face to face with a monster.”
O.J. Simpson, now 71, is living in Las Vegas, where he served about nine years in prison for an armed robbery at the Palace Station hotel/casino, where sports memorabilia was taken from a hotel room at gunpoint. Simpson claimed the items had been stolen from him.
Simpson also has paid virtually none of $33.5 million in civil damages stemming from a wrongful-death lawsuit against him by the Goldman family.
In a recent interview with The Associated Press, Simpson said he is enjoying life, thanks to daily golf games and time with his children. But he had little to say about the June 12, 1994, killings.
“We don't need to go back and relive the worst day of our lives,” he told the AP. “The subject of the moment is the subject I will never revisit again. My family and I have moved on to what we call the `no negative zone.' We focus on the positives.”
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