The O.J. Simpson Trial: Nicole Brown Simpson Part 2

“You can’t expect people to know the exact kind of help they need.” 

We continue our deep dive into the O.J. Simpson case with the history of Nicole Brown Simpson's marriage to O.J., their 1992 divorce and the last weeks of Nicole's life. Digressions include Julia Roberts, Malibu real estate and Madonna’s "Erotica." Mike is fighting a cold and apologizes for his raspiness. This episode contains even greater detail on the violence and domestic abuse Nicole suffered.

Plus, a correction! Sarah forgot to mention that O.J. Simpson received two years of probation for the 1989 incident.

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Where to find us:
Sarah's other show, Why Are Dads
Mike's other show, Maintenance Phase

Transcript

Sarah: By the way, I just opened to a random page and Faye Resnick's book, and my eyes were immediately drawn to the sentence, “Not long after our night at Don Henley's”. I really appreciate that Don Henley appears periodically as a ghost of the feast in our shows.

Mike: Welcome to You're Wrong About the podcast, where every episode is a content warning for the sequel episode, because it sounds like this story is just getting darker and darker as we tell it. 

Sarah: Yeah, it is. It is. And so what's coming is more of what we've heard and worse. 

Mike: We're just setting expectations. Traumatized.

Sarah: Well, yeah, well, we're all going to go through this together. So, you know, come with us if you can.

Mike:  I am Michael Hobbes. I'm a reporter for the Huffington Post.

Sarah: I am Sarah Marshall. I'm working on a book about the Satanic Panic.

Mike: If you'd like to support the show, we are on Patreon at patreon.com/yourewrongabout.

Sarah: And today we're doing Nicole Brown Simpson part two. So Mike, what have we learned so far? 

Mike: Okay, so last episode. 

Sarah: Oh, you're ready. You're like, I prepared.

Mike:  I've been looking forward to this all week.

Sarah:  I feel like I'm Holland Taylor in Legally Blonde, Elle Woods after doing your treadmill study session in my favorite scene.

Mike: So last episode we met Nicole Brown Simpson, who was 18 and five months when she met OJ Simpson.

Sarah: 18 and five weeks.

Mike: 18 and five weeks. Sorry. They got together pretty quickly. And they spent, I believe it was eight years, in a courtship period where his abuse of her was getting more and more severe, and his apologies to her were getting more and more extravagant. And his final offering to her, when we left this story, was he offers to get married after a period of abuse. So to apologize, he offers to get married to Nicole. And that's where we left it. 

Sarah: Because he has already bought her a Porsche. I want to tell you about something that to me personally is the most haunting detail about Nicole and OJ’s wedding, which is a very random and arbitrary thing, but there's footage of their wedding in OJ: Made in America. And there's just this tiny little scene of them, of OJ and Nicole and their guests, dancing to Jump For My Love by the Pointer Sisters. It's this very joyful song about letting love into your heart. And we talked in the last episode about Nicole believing that once OJ married her, he wouldn't cheat on her anymore. Which is what she's really focused on and what she talks to her friends about. She doesn't talk to people hardly at all about the physical abuse, but she talks to them about being frustrated that he's constantly unfaithful to her. And as they're getting ready to get married, he's like, yes, once we are married, I won't cheat on you. 

Mike: Right. The promise that has been made like 10 billion times in human history and kept four times.

Sarah: It's just like this it's this moment of like them dancing to this joyful, stupid song about idealistic, joyful, loving. And it just feels like if you marry someone and dance to that song at your wedding, they shouldn't be able to kill you like that. That shouldn't be allowed to happen. Well obviously, to kill people anyway, legally, but it just feels like if that be, you know what I mean? That's what is so discordant about abusive relationships is that there was this beautiful moment. And then everyone was a part of it and people talked about how it was this amazing wedding. People stayed and danced for 12 hours. There's footage of it in OJ: Made in America. 

There's this beautiful moment where OJ has a microphone and Nicole is a little ways away from him, and she's wearing this beautiful, very bridal, very princessy dress that she wouldn't let anyone look at before the wedding, because she was a superstitious old fashioned bride. And so there's footage of him at the wedding kind of giving this speech to her saying, “Nicole, you brought love into my home.” The quality of it is really grainy, but you can tell that she’s just beaming, just like beaming her face off. 

Mike: So she believes it?

Sarah: Yeah. And I watched it and he seemed so sincere, according to whatever my metric of sincerity is. But I was watching and I was like, well, what does that mean? I mean, is this OJ the pitch man? Or is this him expressing his emotions in the moment? Or does he know the difference? Or does he feel this degree of love and gratitude for her at times? And then at other times his abusiveness takes over? Or is none of this genuine? Or some of it? I think the frustrating thing about this and why people may remain in the dark about how abusive a relationship can be, if on the other side it has these beautiful and highly convincing displays of affection.

Mike:  Right? I have had various friends in abusive relationships, and it does seem that sort of what keeps you there is that the affection and the apologies and the emotions are actually very genuine, or at least they feel very genuine. What seems to characterize domestic abusers is that they are authentic, right? That their anger is authentic, but also their apologies are authentic, and their remorse is authentic. And they're sort of overstated declarations of love are also authentic because if they weren't authentic, you wouldn't stay.

Sarah: I mean, the thing is that it's very childlike behavior. You can't have a child who's 6’2” and made of pure muscle and who treats you like a stuffed animal. It's all toddler behavior, I think a lot of the time. It's this rage that doesn't know its own strengths and then just unconditional proclamations of affection and out of control remorse. And needing to be taken care of by the person you've just hurt.

Mike:  I mean, there's obviously a manipulative element to abuse too, but there's also these genuine emotions flinging back and forth and they're genuine emotions on both sides. 

Sarah: Yeah. And I feel like great liars are great liars because they believe what they're saying at the moment. And people describe OJ Simpson as a consummate liar. 

Mike: Oh really? 

Sarah: I can believe that at his wedding leading up to his wedding, based on all the proclamations he made, not just to Nicole, but to their friends. People in their social circle had this genuine belief, not just leading up to the wedding, but then after they got married, after they separated, as they were trying to reconcile, a lot of people talk in Sheila Weller's book and elsewhere about like, well, we just really wanted them to be together. And when they talked about breaking up, we encouraged them to reconcile. I mean, not everyone did that, but a lot of people after the fact where like, I feel so bad now because I encouraged Nicole to work it out with OJ, because we wanted this family that we love to be a part of to get back together because it had this abundant, beautiful lifestyle, these great parties, they did Easter egg hunts, and took the lavish vacations, and just had lots of family gatherings and sort of gathered in their friends and their community. And people didn't want it to go away. 

So I can believe that in the wedding, you know, we can believe in a scenario where during this wedding, he believed every word of what he was saying. He believed he was going to be faithful. He believed he wasn't going to hit her anymore. And where everything that happens still happened because I think... I've noticed listening to previous episodes and I'm always sighing in the middle of sentences. I don't know what that's about. I need to work on breathing. But to me it's important to acknowledge that often the worst harms are carried out by people who are incapable of facing their ability to cause harm.

Mike: Is there sort of an immediate counter narrative foreboding after the wedding, I mean, does he kind of revert back to his old ways quickly? 

Sarah: It absolutely returns to the way it was before. And it's possible that it immediately gets worse, because at the time that they get married, Nicole is already pregnant. We also know that she's had at least two abortions before this pregnancy. Her abortions are going to be tabloid fodder pretty soon.

Mike:  Does he know about the abortions? 

Sarah: I haven't read anything that says that specifically, but there's a later incident where she's early in her pregnancy with their son. So they've already had their daughter, Sydney, who she's a little bit pregnant with at the wedding. And she comes home with Sydney, from Disney on Ice and OJ starts attacking her and yelling at her and telling her to have an abortion.

Mike: Jesus.

Sarah: So we can extrapolate from that. But during her pregnancy with Sydney, OJ gets really fixated on basically the fact that she gains weight. What do you think about that?

Mike:  I mean, it's kind of weird to be like, man, what a dick. Because like we've already established that he's violent, but this is an extra layer of dickery.

Sarah:  But I feel like the mundane details, we can see other stuff through that, somehow.

Mike: That's just wild though, because that's what your body is supposed to do when you have a living creature inside of it. Of course you're gaining weight. And also, if you love somebody, it's fine if they gain weight.

Sarah:  Yes, to all that. But he apparently believes that she should only gain the amount that the baby weighs. 

Mike: Oh really? So she should gain like nine pounds and that's it? 

Sarah: Yeah, she says seven. She says, he said seven pounds. She doesn't even get the amount of weight that a healthy baby weighs. She can gain a small baby. I was a month early and I weighed seven pounds. Like she can gain an early baby.

Mike: So she spends the pregnancy getting criticized by him. 

Sarah: And it's so petty and he just is constantly calling her fat, calling her a fat pig. J Look at your arms. Look at your legs. 

Mike: I mean, can I just say one thing? One thing I've learned from reading many interviews and sort of researching a lot of weight stuff over the last couple of years is that there is no weight at which a woman cannot be made to feel fat. I mean, you hear about women that are like literal models saying, oh, I have some extra skin on the back of my arms or something like that. There's no level of beauty at which somebody doesn't have insecurities and those insecurities cannot be weaponized. Right. Imagine saying to Nicole Brown Simpson at age 20, whatever she was, you're fat or you're not attractive. It is unfathomable on any objective scale. And yet just because of the way that women are socialized, no matter their beauty, you can always make somebody feel like shit about their looks.

Sarah: And also, the objective reality doesn't matter. He's the only person she really wants to make happy ,and she can't. So it doesn't matter what she looks like. It matters how he treats her.  So let me read you some of a letter that was introduced as evidence in OJ Simpson’s civil trial. So this came out publicly many years later. It's undated and OJ testified that he never got the letter. So presumably she wrote it and then decided against sending it. And so she writes, “OJ, I think I have to put this all in a letter. A lot of years ago I used to do much better in a letter. I'm going to try it again now. I'd like you to keep this letter if we split so that you'll always know why we split. I'd also like you to keep it if we stay together, as a reminder. Right now, I am so angry. If I didn't know that the courts would take Sydney and Justin away from me if I did this, I would expletive every guy, including some that you know, just to let you know how it feels. I wish someone could explain all this to me. I see our marriage as a huge mistake, and you don't. I knew what went on in our relationship before we got married. I knew after six years that all the things I thought were going on were. All the things I gave into. All the, I'm sorry for thinking that. I'm sorry for not believing you. I made up with you all the time and even took the blame many times for your cheating. I know this took place because we fought about it a lot and even discussed it before we got married with my family and a minister. I wanted it to be a wonderful wife. I believed you that it would finally be you and me against the world, that people would be envious of us or in awe of us because we stuck through it and finally became a real couple. You wanted a baby, so you said, and I wanted a baby. Then with each pound, you were terrible. You gave me dirty looks of disgust, said mean things to me at times about my appearance, and walked out on me and lied to me. In between Sydney and Justin you say my clothes bothered you, that my shoes were on the floor, that I bugged you. There was also that time before Justin and a few months after Sydney, I felt really good about how I got back into shape. You beat the holy hell out of me, and we lied to the x-ray lab and said I fell off a bike. Great for my self-esteem. Then came the pregnancy with Justin and, oh how wonderful you treated me again. I remember swearing to God and myself that under no circumstances would I let you be in that delivery room. I hated you so much. And since Justin’s birth and the mad New Year’s Eve blow up, I don't see how our stories compare. I was so bad because I wore sweats and left shoes around and didn't keep a perfect house or comb my hair the way you liked it, or had dinner ready at the precise moment you walked through the door, or that I just plain got on your nerves sometimes. I just don't see how that compares to infidelity, wife beating, verbal abuse. I just don't think everybody goes through this.”

Mike: God, she's a good writer. That's a weird comment to make, but this is clearly a smart woman who's very good at expressing how she feels.

Sarah: Yeah. But then couldn't send the letter and then she says, “if I wanted to hurt you or had it in me to be anything like the person you are, I would have done so after the eligible incident, but I didn't even do it then .I called the cops to save my life whether you believe it or not, but I didn't pursue anything after that. I didn't prosecute. I didn't call the press and I didn't make a big charade out of it. I waited for it to die down and asked for it to. But I've never loved you since or been the same. I agree that after we married things changed, we couldn't have a house full of people like I used to have over in barbecue four because I had other responsibilities. I didn't want to go to a lot of events, and I backed down at the last minute on functions and trips I admit, I'm sorry. I just believe that our relationship is based on trust. And the last time I trusted you was at our wedding ceremony. It's just so hard for me to trust you again, even though you say you're a different guy.  That OJ Simpson guy brought me a lot of pain, heartache. I tried so hard with him. I wanted so to be a good wife, but he never gave me a chance.” Is your heart just breaking?

Mike:  It's like the saddest thing is that she's still apologizing for stuff that is normal stuff. I backed out of functions. Yeah, people do that.

Sarah: Yeah. Yes. And her sons are, she wore sweats. 

Mike: That's the best part about being in your 30s. It's not just wearing sweats, but not having to feel bad about it. That's the point of being in a relationship is having a sweats teammate.

Sarah:  Yes. That is the point of being in a relationship in your thirties, wearing your sweats and gaining over seven pounds.

Mike: So tell me if this is totally wrong, but it sounds to me like the trajectory after she has Sydney is her outwardly sort of trying to keep him happy and trying to keep the abuse at bay. But as the relationship goes on, her feelings, on the inside, start to turn more and more against him, because it's interesting that by the time she has the second kid, she says, I didn't want you in the delivery room.

Sarah: Yeah. And he didn't get in there either. Yeah.

Mike:  That implies, she's realizing that she needs to leave this relationship even while she's sort of placating him. Is that right? 

Sarah: Yeah. And I think probably what also happens is that there are periods where he will, after an outburst, be apologetic or be really loving and she can kind of focus on that while it's happening. And then only when things get bad, again, return to, oh God, I might have to do something about this. But I mean, it's funny. I was thinking about and one of the things that I said in our episode, part one that now will drive me nuts for the rest of my life, was that OJ Simpson was in control of her life for slightly more than half of it. And that's not true. It's slightly less than half of it, is what I should have said. Because she died right after she turned 35 and she met OJ right after she turned 18. So it was 17 years. I just think it's terrible that I make errors like that and call myself your bunking podcast person. 

Mike: I know the standards are terrible in this field. Yes. 

Sarah: But let's talk about the abuse that escalates from the wedding in 1985 to the illegible incident that she's almost certainly talking about in this letter, which happened in 1989. 

Mike: Was this the New Year's Eve incident? 

Sarah: Yes. So first of all, there's an incident in the fall or winter of 1985. 

Mike: Okay. So just after their wedding.

Sarah:  Well, they got married in February, so this is probably right after she had Sydney. According to Sheila Weller's Raging Heart. Nicole drives home from lunch and OJ comes out and starts attacking the windshield of her car and hitting her car with a baseball bat.

Mike:  What the fuck? Why does he do it?

Sarah:  I don't know. I don't know if the answer is out there. Cause the thing is too, it's never for any real reason. The fake reason is always like you embarrass me in front of Frank Sinatra. You kissed a guy’s cheek. You wore sweats. She never does anything wrong to inspire these things. I think it's just that he's in that place and he needs an excuse. And so Nicole is terrified. She runs inside and calls the police and the patrolman who shows up is named Mark Fuhrman.

Mike: Holy shit. Really? 

Sarah: Yeah. Can you tell us real quick, who is Mark Furhman? Why is he going to be important later?

Mike: He is going to be the detective who investigates the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson in, I don't know, 10 more years or whenever it is, yeah. 

Sarah: In nine years. And so he, a decade after this, will be useful to the defense team. Because they also are able to establish that he has a history of racist speech. What the defense makes of this visit that Fuhrman pays to Nicole in 1985, is that a) he's incensed by the fact that he sees a white woman in a relationship with a black man. So the defense will allege that he saw this and that he remembered it and filed it away. And then when he was called to Nicole's house, and realized that she had been murdered and it was the same woman that he had seen nine years before, he decided to frame OJ Simpson for that reason.

 The problem with that theory, aside from various issues about how do you transport a bloody glove to a second location, et cetera, and so forth, is that Mark Fuhrman was fairly nonchalant about this call and seems to have remembered it mainly because it involved a famous person and he'd never been called to a famous person's homicide on a domestic dispute before. 

Mike: So he showed up and he's like, hey, you're OJ Simpson. 

Sarah: So jumping ahead to 1995, Marcia Clark is questioning Mark Furhman. And now back in 1985, “we were talking about, you responded to the defendant's home at 360 Rockingham pursuant to a call where you saw a woman crying, leaning up against a Mercedes-Benz. Do you recall that testimony, sir? Yes, Ma'am. Marcia says did you ever fill out a report that described that event? No, I didn't. Now you saw that the woman involved with Mr. Simpson was a white woman, didn't you? Yes. Did he take any steps to further investigate that incident? No. Did you make any effort to encourage that the defendant be prosecuted for it? No. Did you notify any news media about that incident? No, I didn't. Could you have called your supervisor to come and further investigate the incident? Yes. Did you? No I didn't. Could you have interviewed Mr. Simpson concerning that incident? Yes. Did you? No. Could you have interviewed Nicole Brown concerning the incident? Yes. Did you? No.”

Mike: God. I'm just hearing like the Ride of the Valkyries in my head, just getting more and more intense as the tension in this exchange ramps up.

Sarah:  Who knows how many people in the courtroom even felt that tension or were like, wow, he really should have done something. And what Nicole says later is that the police dismiss it as a love spat. He's only taken a baseball bat to his own car, which he's allowed to do.

Mike: I guess, technically. Yeah. 

Sarah: And it's his own wife.

Mike: Not technically, but.

Sarah:  Mark Furhman, the statements he made in the past are very racist. That's true. He's capable of genocidal racist fantasies. But even within that, he wasn't moved to take this opportunity to arrest a black person. He knew who OJ Simpson was. He later said that he remembered the incident because it was a celebrity incident. It seems like in this case, celebrity was perhaps more powerful than racism, even for Mark Fuhrman. Or the lack of seriousness attached to domestic violence played a role in that. Maybe also if you're Mark Fuhrman or if you're any racist LAPD cop it's like property crime, that's a serious offense. Beating your wife? I don't know what I think. 

Mike: I mean, I think we often have a way of talking about prejudice as if people only have one prejudice at a time. One thing I've learned from reading up about white collar crime for the last almost year is that people have these prejudices against corporate criminals, like terrible Enron type  people. But then we also have positive prejudices for upstanding members of society. And so a lot of white collar criminal trials are one side saying these are corporate wrongdoers. And on the other side saying these guys coach a little league and they're fine. And so it's basically two biases fighting against each other. And it seems like that's kind of happening here too, that he has a bias against, or maybe he has a bias against black people, but he also has a bias for rich people and celebrities.

Sarah:  Or from sports stars.

Mike:  None of it is like defensible necessarily, but  it's these two things that are like bringing a little red ball into approval disapproval, and it's all these dumb instinctual forces pushing at it in different directions.

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. It's such a weird twist of fate that Mark Fuhrman who later on will become so useful to the defense team that seeks to exonerate her husband will be called to the scene of a domestic abuse incident and not take it very seriously. He ends up being useful to OJ twice, which should be a lesson to all racists. Sometimes your racism will cause something to happen that you won't like. That's what I have for you today.

Mike: Racism Isn't only good. It can also be bad if you're right. 

Sarah: Racism can have some unexpected consequences for you, racist. Ever think about that?

Mike: It sounds like very few people. Well, you tell me. How many people were aware of the abuse or was anybody aware of the extent of the abuse?

Sarah: I don't know. I can't say this with any certainty, but it seems to me based on everything I've learned so far, that very few people knew there was physical abuse in the relationship, or if they did, they thought that what they'd seen was an isolated incident or they laughed it off as not violent behavior. Or people would see him rage at her, but not actually physically hurt her or people didn't connect anger or emotional abuse to the possibility of physical violence. So I think it's like willful ignorance and a lack of education about how these patterns appear. 

Mike: What's weird about it is I imagine many of these people would sort of in the abstract be like wife beaters are the scum of society. But then it's like, well, my buddy OJ is not a wife beater. He just gets mad sometimes. He might've pushed her out of the car, but it seemed like maybe she fell too. Like they find these ways of justifying why it's not wife beating.

Sarah:  She was pushing his buttons once again. So many people say Nicole knew how to push OJ’s buttons, which meant things like she gave him a hard time about cheating on her. And slapped him on occasions that other people observed. So because she wasn't completely passive all the time, people could see it as kind of a mutual dynamic if they wanted to. 

Mike: Yeah. It's just weird how out in the open all this stuff was, to some extent. Or at least like the telltale signs of it were out in the open.

Sarah: Yeah. It's actually a lot like Kitty Genovese, right? Because all the people in this friend group, this extended family group, it's not like they saw him beating her and all ignored it happily, it's then a lot of people saw something, but it was enough that their confirmation bias could override it. Or some people, they really did see that it was a bad marriage and that she was unhappy and encouraged her to go., but just didn't understand all the ways that the abuse presented.

Mike:  And there's also a weird complicity in that. It also encourages you when you see a little part of something, not to talk about it with other people, right? That if three or four of their friends had sat down and said like, you know, I saw something kind of troubling. And then the other one would say like, why is that something pretty troubling too. And if you put together all of those friends' experiences, you actually would be able to paint a picture of what was really going on in the marriage. But because of cultural mores or just bias in favor of my buddy, OJ is a good guy, nobody sits down and says like, hey guys, do you mind if we talk about this altogether? And like, let's figure out what we should do.

Sarah:  So a really great example of this kind of behavior and this kind of Rashomon effect is that Nicole and OJ and their friends are on vacation in Hawaii, right before New Year's Eve of 1988. And according to OJ’s friend, Tom, who's quoted Sheila Waller's book, “There were these two homosexual guys sitting at a table next to us. Now Nicole liked to talk to certain types of people. Sometimes she would just pick people out. It was like OJ’s thing, except he talked to anybody just to talk. Nicole was more selective. She did have a cool aloofness about her. Now OJ, for one thing, does not like homosexuals. And number two, the two of them had been going through their horrible AIDS conversations.” And I'll add here that during Nicole's pregnancies, OJ had escalated from just sleeping with all kinds of random women, to having a long-term affair with Tawny Kitaen, which was also an escalatory thing between them. Because  keeping with the trend of Love, Actually references, things would happen. She found this beautiful jewelry that she assumed he had bought for her, but really it was for Tawny Kitaen. And she later saw Tawny wearing it in a photo. 

Mike: What's the AIDS scare?

Sarah:  So the AIDS conversations are because also during this time, Nicole is starting to refuse sex to OJ, which really makes him mad. And to say I'm really scared that you're going to get AIDS and you're going to give me AIDS because you refuse to be tested and you refuse to wear a condom with me or with anyone else. 

Mike: Jesus Christ.

Sarah:  It's a completely reasonable fear. Right? Yeah. It's kind of amazing that didn't happen. Aside from everything else we've talked about, she's living with, I think a significant amount of anxiety that OJ is going to give her HIV. So OJ’s  friend, Tom, remembered this conversation Nicole was having with the homosexuals. So one guy is sitting there, and he's got lesions on his hands. And he's talking about how this is his lover and he's dying. Nicole, who's holding Justin, is talking to them sympathetically, and I'm watching OJ and he's livid. Denise, who was also there when Sheila Weller talks to her, is like, they didn't have lesions. And the reason perhaps that OJ’s friend, Tom, is remembering it that way is because one of the guys gives little baby Justin a kiss on the forehead, and OJ gets furious and grabs Justin and started storming out to the parking lot. And then Nicole follows. And according to Tom, “Nicole really started raising shit screaming and yelling. It was embarrassing. Lou and Judy went, ‘Oh God, not again’.” 

But then Denise's interpretation. Nicole doesn't embarrass OJ, she leaves the bullying OJ. She says, “We sat in OJ’s rental car, Nicole and OJ in the front, me and AC in the back. They were fighting and he was screaming at Nicole. And then she said, ‘I don't need to take this’. And she got out of the car and got into my parent’s car.” And so we have an incident where the friend of the husband remembers him protecting his son from a guy with like weeping lesions on his body. And then he's going out to the parking lot in his harpy of a wife is yelling at him and everyone's like, oh no, Nicole is yelling at OJ again. 

Mike: Right. Classic Nicole. 

Sarah: And Denise is like, didn't see any lesions. Don't remember Nicole yelling at him. So people remember things differently. We see what we want to see, we really do. And so back from Hawaii Nicole and OJ go out on New Year's Eve with Marcus Allen, who is a younger pro football player, who is kind of OJ’s protégé, who kind of always flirts with Nicole and Nicole always shuts it down. But she kind of has told her friends like, I really like Marcus Allen. I mean, I would never do anything because I am married and I respect the sacred bonds of marriage, but I really like Marcus Allen. 

And so they go out to dinner and come back. And according to what Nicole says later about what happens when they come home is that they've been drinking. They start fighting. Nicole has found a bracelet that OJ bought for Tawny Kitaen, so she's upset about that. And OJ is telling his friends about it, according to Sheila Weller's book. It doesn't say anything about the jewelry, but says that they start fooling around and then quote, when it came time for her to give me some head, she said, no, can you believe that shit? What happens after that escalates after he gets upset because she refuses him sex. And according to him, there's a mutual wrestling type situation. And according to her, he punches her in the head and hits.

Mike: Mutual wrestling? Come on. That's like me mutually wrestling with the Rock.

Sarah:  Like when you're a woman and you refuse sex from someone who really wants to have sex with you and then you're like, let's do mutual wrestling instead of the sex. When you're trying to get someone to not have sex with you and you accomplish that by attacking them. So two police officers come to the door at 3:30 and here's the police report. “Officers Malusi and Edwards received a 911 radio call, ‘female being beaten at 360 North Rockingham’ could be heard over the phone. Upon arrival, my partner and I could not enter the above location due to the lock to electronic gates. My partner phoned the residence and was told by a housekeeper that everyone was fine, and the police were not needed. My partner told the housekeeper that we needed to speak with the victim to determine if she needed our assistance. A female, who's a housekeeper, said that everyone was fine and that we were not needed. I told her that I must see and speak to the woman who had dialed 911, and I would not leave until I did.” 

And the 911 call is the operator answered and just hears screaming in the background and the sound of someone being hit. It's absolutely horrifying to listen to. So officer Edwards is arguing with the housekeeper and trying to get into the residence. And then the report continues, “About that time, Nicole Simpson came running out of some bushes near her house. She was wearing only a bra and sweatpants. She had mud down the right leg of her pants. She ran across the driveway to a post containing the gate release button. She collapsed and pushed the button hard several times”.

Mike:  It's like out of a fucking horror movie. 

Sarah: Yeah. Another theme for us. “She was yelling during this time, ‘He's going to kill me. He's going to kill me’. As she said this, the gate opened, and she ran out to me. She grabbed me and hung on to me. She cried nervously and she repeated, ‘He's going to kill me’. I asked her who was going to kill her. She replied, ‘OJ’. I did not know this was OJ Simpson's home, but at this point I felt she might've met OJ Simpson. I asked her, ‘Do you mean OJ Simpson, the football player?'” It's like, how relevant is that at this very moment in time, I wonder. I mean,  I guess you do need to know, but focus on her for a second, maybe. I don't know. I’m not a cop.

Mike: It's like, hey, I follow him on Instagram. Like maybe now is not the time, Steve.

Sarah:  And then the report continues. “Nicole Simpson told us that the suspect, her husband, OJ Simpson, had beaten her up. She stated that he had slapped her with both open and closed fist, kicked her with his feet and pulled her hair. Nicole Simpson also stated that the suspect, OJ Simpson yelled, ‘I'll kill you’. Officer Edwards, I asked her if he had a gun, she said, ‘He's got lots of gun’s.” You know, she's visibly injured, there's cuts and bruises. And the imprint of a hand on her neck. 

Mike: This is not a, ‘he said/she said’ situation. This is like, anyone looking at this situation would be like, holy shit, this dude's trying to kill her.

Sarah:  Yeah. Well, I mean, when someone attacks you and beats you up and they say, ‘I'm going to kill you, I'm going to kill you’. I mean, they're not being subtle. There's no subtext there. And Nicole is talking to the police and according to the report, she kept saying, ‘You never do anything about him. You talk to him and then leave. I want him arrested. I want him out so I can get my kids’. 

At around this time, OJ Simpson appears, he yells, ‘I don't want that woman sleeping in my bed anymore. I got two women and I don't want that woman in my bed anymore.’ And then the police tell him that Nicole wants him arrested. He starts yelling that he did not beat her up. And he says the police have been out here eight times before and now you're going to arrest me for this. This is a family matter. Why do you want to make a big deal out of it? We can handle it. And then they allow him to go inside and get dressed and he flees and gets in his car and drives away. 

Mike: Okay. And then what do they do?

Sarah:  They took five units out looking for him, but they couldn't find him. And Nicole at this point has signed a crime report and has her injuries photographed at the West LA police station. This is more than it's ever happened before, in terms of police involvement, in terms of like witnesses. 

Mike: So is this the New Year's Eve incident that she's talking about in her letter? 

Sarah: This is the New Year's Eve incident. And this is the one that also seemed to have changed things for her.

Mike: What happens after this? Do they just like good luck? See you next time? Like what's the aftermath of this? 

Sarah: I mean, it's like her resolve has slowly eroded. Because OJ comes back and she has him staying in the guest house for like three months, but he's on the property. She has Denise come over and take pictures of her injuries as well as the police photos. And she shows them to her dad. And according to Sheila Weller's book, he's like, well, you can make it work.

Mike: No fucking way. Really? At this point?

Sarah:  Yeah. Yeah. It’s based on some understanding of marriage that I don't understand. Right. I think it's based on the idea that if you marry someone then you have to stay married to them. And also, if you don't know what it's like to be in a relationship with someone who you literally fear could kill you, then you can't know what it's like to feel that way. I think that's probably also true. 

Mike: It's so weird to put the institution of marriage above the actual experience of someone in a marriage.

Sarah: Yeah. And so after this, Nicole also starts talking to Ron Shipp, who's a friend of OJ's who works for the LAPD. And he starts talking to her and helping her out and becomes kind of an ally to her, but OJ still has his highest allegiance, which is continuing that theme. She tells him she's scared that he's going to kill her one day. And Ron says, no, he won't. This is what happens over and over again.

Mike:  Yeah. He's such a nice guy. He's my buddy OJ. He could never do that. 

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. It's fair also that, like all of us as people, I share, I'm sure, have a bias where we liked to imagine, or we like to assume that the people that we love couldn't kill anyone. That's not true.

Mike:  Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, in general it is.

Sarah: No it's not. Anyone could kill someone. It's just that the conditions of our lives generally don't push us to that. But like if I move around a certain number of factors in your life, I can get you to kill someone. 

Mike: True. I do get really mad when people count their pennies in front of me at the grocery store. I think we all systematically underestimate the extent to which our behaviors are affected by our circumstances in a million long and short term ways. But I mean, from what I know about crime from researching this white collar crime article for so long, is that most crimes, from premeditated securities fraud to domestic abuse, crimes of passion type thing are very circumstantial. And that very few criminologists believe in this idea of good people and bad people. Clearly individuals matter, but the circumstances tend to matter far more. 

Sarah: Yeah. And you know, and the fact that most murders are just so boring. You know, most people are on death row because they did something like shooting a clerk during an armed robbery for some tiny amount of money. That's cause for youth and impulsivity and possibly substances and possibly desperation and most instances of a human taking another human's life are not for unique or dramatic reasons. Yeah. And so all of that speaks to Nicole and OJ’s friend Ron Shipp, who's literally a police officer, doesn't recognize the killer in his midst, because he's not the killer in his midst until after he's killed people. And then there you are. I mean, the aftermath of this is interesting because ultimately not much comes of it. She doesn't go public. She seems to think about it, and she tells Ron Shipp that she has photos that she has thought about sending to the National Enquirer, or that she's going to maybe send it to them if he ever beats her again. But, I mean, she has these desires, but she also still wants to make it work and is afraid of leaving. As we mentioned in the last episode, she doesn't want OJ to lose any of his endorsements. And so she actually, at one point gets on the phone with Hertz and tells him that it was not a big deal and that they shouldn't take his endorsement away.

Mike: No way. 

Sarah: Yeah. And they don't want to and so they don't. They have every incentive to believe what she tells them, because he's been the face of their company for over a decade at this point, you know? And that's worked out very well for everyone involved.

Mike: It’s  also, so, so dark to think about what would have happened if she had come forward, because it's not clear like that would've made things any better.

Sarah: Would anyone have listened to her? Would anyone have cared?

Mike: It’s not even clear to me that he would have lost his endorsement if she would have come forward, because it would have been seen as a, he said, she said thing, the media would have discredited her. She would have been cast as a ditzy model, brainless, blah, blah, blah. In the way that this is the entire theme of our show, she would have been tarred as sort of out to get him or out to get money or trying to position herself for a lucrative divorce or something. And then he would have done his, like I'm OJ, I'm a nice guy stick. And like, it probably would have worked. I mean, he had a huge fan base, and I don't think anybody in the public would have seen this as an escalation of existing activities, because they had no idea of all the signs of this earlier. 

Sarah: Those exact tactics worked extremely well when he was on trial for killing her. So, yeah, exactly. And there was a lot more evidence of domestic abuse after the murder than before. So yeah, it's extremely reasonable to imagine in all that happening that he would OJ his way out of everything. So why cause yourself that pain, if nothing will be different and if you only hurt yourself. 

Mike: But then she does eventually leave him though. Right. So is this the incident that precipitates the separation? 

Sarah: Not really. They don't separate for a while. I think it's, maybe not a turning point, but a crucial or maybe it is a turning point. I don't know, but it seems crucial in some way, because she starts talking to Ron Shipp about the abuse and Ron Shipp teaches about domestic violence to other police officers and so he and Nicole started talking about abuse dynamics. 

Mike: He's like a domestic abuse specialist?

Sarah:  Within the LAPD. Yes. Think about the fact that there are some top minds involved and they weren't helpful. Ultimately, they were a little helpful, but not as much as was needed. So again, the question of, why didn't she ask for help? And it's like, well, she did, a lot of times. We can't put the responsibility on her or on any other abuse victim to always be the one who advocates for themselves to always be in an active position here. You can't ask people to always know that they need the help that they need.

Mike: Yeah. It's fascinating. 

Sarah: You know, we often don't actually.

Mike: It's wild to me that an expert in this, somebody who knows the field and knows like the academic research, presumably, wouldn't have just said, get the fuck out of there. It's never going to get better. And it's only going to escalate, and this has been going on for whatever 10 years now. It's not going to change so you need to leave. It's crazy to me that he was just like, well, OJ seems like a nice guy. You should probably stick with it. I mean, that's just unfathomable or it's extremely fathomable, but you know.

Sarah: It's fathomable, but it's deep. I mean, I think he feels that way partially, but I think he feels conflicted about it. And also OJ is his friend. Ron Shipp is in like a kind of low-level friendship with OJ. Like he does a lot of favors for him. He runs license plates for him. He does stuff for him. So the consequences to OJ, ultimately for the New Year's Eve beating, end up being a $470 fine, which is significantly less than I spent on car maintenance last week. And 120 hours of community service, which she also ends up kind of OJ-ing his way through a little bit, because he does like celebrity fundraising. As opposed to manual labor or something.

Mike:  Is the police report of this available? Is there any news coverage of this, of like... cause our court documents are public, right? So wouldn't there have been some news coverage?

Sarah: There’s a little bit of coverage at the time, but there's just not very much interest in it.

What Kris Jenner later says, Kris Kenner who was at the time Kris Kardashian, is that after they reconcile, OJ Is in the guest house from January to March 89 and then moves back into the main house in April, and they kind of come back together then. Kris Kenner says that after that Nicole had really just kind of given up.

Mike: Given up on resisting getting back together with him?

Sarah:  Giving up on trying to make the marriage better, basically. Like she didn't talk about trying to get him to stop cheating anymore. But maybe she also reached the kind of rock bottom of like acknowledging how bad it was and starting to try and get away. So he starts making plans to leave OJ,  according to Sheila Weller and 1991 and OJ doesn't really take it super seriously. He starts off describing it to people as a phase and says, you know, she can go off. She can party, she can do whatever. But if she ever has sex with anyone else, then he can't take her back.

Mike: God the density of this toxic bullshit in this relationship is incredible. From which no light can escape.

Sarah:  I think it shows that in some really basic way, he's the only real person to himself. It doesn't connect to him that she has feelings or that she hurts the way he hurts.

Mike: That’s probably so much of what’s behind  domestic abuse too. Just this like failure of object permanence. 

Sarah: Yeah. You know, or you have some awareness of the other person's feelings, but your feelings are so much bigger than theirs, you know? But anyway, Nicole starts, she established this friendship with her friend, Robin Greer in early 1991, specifically because she's a single woman and she calls her and says she's ending her marriage. And she wants to know single women and, you know, be among them. So they get divorced in 1992.

Mike: So three years after the New Year's Eve incident. 

Sarah: Yes. Previously Nicole had signed a prenup that took seven to nine months to iron out, which meant that she did not get, I mean, I don't know. I don't know how much 1992 money is. But OJ hung on to most of the assets, let's put it that way. She got child support. She got a condo in San Francisco that he owned. He hung onto the main house. So she moves to a place pretty close by OJ’s to stay close by for the kids. And also, they're pretty enmeshed. And so he kind of processes that divorced by first being in denial and then swearing that he's going to get her back and calling Nicole, according to a former babysitter, 10 or 15 or 20 times a night over and over again. And also starting to show up in the bushes outside of her house.

Mike: Literally?

Sarah:  Yeah, literally. Her friends call it Bush Syndrome.

Mike: What the fuck, like literally wait outside and see if like cars are arriving or leaving kind of thing?

Sarah: No, it might be that he goes there when he knows she's there with a date or he might just also be there generally. I really don't know, Mike. We don't know their things. It might be lost knowledge. He might just be out there a lot. He might just be there when she's sitting there, reading a book.

Mike: Clipping her toenails. Wow. It's so fucking weird. I mean, this is clearly coming from my own place of never having experienced one of these relationships myself, but it just seems like, I don't know. Nicole can't do anything right. When she's there, she gets abused. And then when she's not there, she gets abused.

Sarah: Yeah, of course she can't do anything right. So she has this kind of year out and she starts spending more time with friends, doing a little bit of partying. She has this house on Gretna Green Way with a pool, and eventually this guy Kato Kaelin, who she meets at Aspen, moves into the guest house there and pays reduced rent in exchange for looking after her kids when she needs a babysitter. 

Mike: So Kato Kaelin was her friend and not OJ’s friend? I thought he was like a weird OJ hanger on.

Sarah:  Well, that's what he becomes, but he met Nicole in Aspen when she and Faye Resnick were there partying. And according to Faye, Nicole wasn't interested in him romantically, but was interested in his friend Grant. But they kind of became friends and Kato Kaelin, as he became famous for during the trial, has this kind of labradoodle quality to him. He's kind of a goofy guy, but he's also very strong and fit. And he, at the time that Nicole was running nine miles a day, he used to run 10. They would run into each other while they were jogging. And so when Nicole is living on Gretna Green in this house where OJ’s face will sometimes show up in the window. It's nice to have the spare guy around.

Mike: Yeah. Does OJ just fucking loathe Kato Kaelin at this point?

Sarah:  He doesn't feel great about it, but he maintains good relations with him. The kids love him so much that they named their new dog Kato, which Kato Kaelin says becomes confusing. Someone will be like ‘Kato’! And he's like, yeah? 

Oh. She sees Dr. Susan Forward, who's a therapist who also specializes in the study of abuse of relationships. And Nicole starts reading Dr. Forward’s Men who Hate Women and the Women who Love Them. 

Mike: Oh, I've heard of this book. Yes. 

Sarah: And she later on will keep multiple copies of the same book by Dr. Forward in her home so that she can like never panic, and be without a copy. She can just grab one in whatever room she's in. So what Dr. Forward tells Nicole is that she has to completely cut off OJ. It's over, no more contact, no we're taking his calls. No more kind of taking the Chamberlain approach to appeasing Hitler, which is what she's been doing. And what she says is, you know, no, like she's going to taper. What I'm going to say is going to be so horrible, horribly, tragically, predictable. I just feel bad even for saying it. But what she says is that she thinks that if she gives OJ what he wants now, then he will back off and leave her alone later. And that she can't cut him off all of a sudden, because that would hurt his feelings. And, you know, she's right to think that doing that would potentially cause him to be dangerous because ultimately that does seem to be why, in the end, things escalate. 

So I mean, the most interesting part of the divorce is that they reconcile for a while in early spring of 1993. Nicole has been out on her own for about a year now. She starts talking to her friends about, you know, I just, I want to go home. I miss being home. This isn't my home. I want to go back to Rockingham. I want to go back to being a family and things being the way that they used to be. Because the good stuff gets bigger when you're away from it. And by this time, OJ  actually has moved up. Or at least for the time he has, and he's gotten serious about this woman, Paula Barbieri, who he's dating who's a model who people occasionally mistake for Julia Roberts. 

So things have shaken out pretty well for him. And at a certain point, she's the one who's calling him and he's the one who's not wanting to take her calls. And she makes copies of their wedding video to send to him, to remind him of the good times. And she just launches a full charm offense of trying to get him back. And ultimately in April, all of 93, she shows up at Rockingham and she drives up to the gate and I was like, OJ let me in, and he doesn't want to let her in. And he comes out and they walk around the neighborhood, and she tells him I want to come home. And at the end of that walk, they decided to make another try. And that lasts for a year. They're together, off and on, for another year after that. 

Mike: Wow. What does he do with the Julia Roberts looking lady? 

Sarah: The poor Julia Roberts looking lady is, basically when he's trying to make things work with Nicole, he wants nothing to do with her. And then, you know, when things get difficult, he kind of wants her again. 

Mike: I have been the Julia Roberts looking lady to so many people. I’m realizing this now. 

Sarah: You're surrounded by Jason and Alexander's, and you deserve a Richard Gere. But the Simpsons have another one of their classic, terrible, holiday events when they're going to the Jenner's Christmas Eve party in 1993, when Nicole finds a holiday gift basket from Paula and gets upset. And OJ’s like, it's just a gift basket. Leave me alone. Why would you assume that a gift basket means I'm seeing her? You're the only woman in my life. 

And then they go to the party and a guy named Joseph, who Nicole had a brief relationship with after she divorced OJ, is at the party and OJ cannot handle it. And he’s just like, how could Nicole do this to me? How could Nicole have sex with this person who I was later reminded of the existence of, how could she do this to me? You know, it’s totally the logic of a little baby, you know, like, I feel like so much abusive behavior is just the way that little babies get angry at their mothers for not being able to control the sun and the rain, he's angry at Nicole for all this stuff. 

Also at the time of the holiday party, there's also tension because Nicole is upset because she has made plans to move from the Gretna Greenhouse to another house in Brentwood, on Bundy, which is very weird to me that I make your place name in this story is Bundy and no one at the time ever talked about it.

Mike: Yeah. It's like she moved to John Wayne Gacy Avenue.

Sarah: She's upset at OJ because, now that she's moving to this house that doesn't have a guest house, OJ’s like, Kato, I really don't think it would be right for you to be living in a house with my ex-wife, because a man and a woman living together, it's just improper. And also, she's asking you for rent. You can live in my house free and Kato, in his telling is like, okay. And just kind of obliviously moves in with OJ and Nicole never talks to him again. 

Mike: What? Really? 

Sarah: Yeah. He was a man who she had in the house who was protection against this guy who she was physically afraid of. And he just for a few hundred dollars in rent money, because OJ, once again, flashes his OJ charm and Kato immediately melted and didn’t stand up for her at all, didn't even maybe think that he had the capacity to do that or that she needed it. Maybe it was just clueless about how bad things were.

Mike: Did he know about the abuse?

Sarah: This is actually a good time to have you listen to something for me. I want to do a grizzly man with you because there's audio of the 911 call that Nicole Brown Simpson makes in 1993 from the house Gretna green. 

Mike: It's going to bum me out so much.

Sarah:  It will. I'm going to have you watch it and just relay your reactions to it because I don't want to play it here, but I want to just do something to convey kind of what it is like as an adult human being who confronts a lot of human trauma for a living to witness this.

Mike: I’m stealing myself right now.

Sarah: I'm sending it to you on the Skype thing. 

Mike: Oh, there it is. Okay. Okay. 911 call by Nicole Simpson. Okay. It's two minutes and 36 seconds long. I'm starting it now. She's saying “He's back, please”. Oh, he's in a white Bronco. He's at the gate. Oh God. Oh, no. They're asking if he's the sportscaster. 

Sarah: Yeah. Although I like how this lady sounds unimpressed. 

Mike: Oh, my God. ‘He's going to beat the shit out of me’. Dispatcher's asking if he has any weapons. ‘He went home now he's back. I don't want anything to happen’. She's really distraught. Oh God. He just broke the back door in. ‘I tried to get him out of the bedroom because my kids are sleeping in there’. Oh my God. There's yelling in the background. Holy shit. Oh, and she's saying the kids are sleeping and he's screaming. Oh my God. Oh shit. You can't really tell what he's saying, but it's something like you don't mean shit to me or something. Oh my God. Fucking hell. The dispatcher asked,’ is he upset’? Are you fucking kidding me? Oh, God. And then it ends when she says’ it always comes back’. Fucking hell, that sucked. 

Sarah: Yeah. I just did that to you. I'm sorry. Now you have to play that tape for three teens and then you won't die in a week. 

Mike: God, it's just horrible. It's like right there. It's right there in front of you how enraged he is. 

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. You can't really hear that much of what he's saying. She's saying, OJ, please be quiet. The kids are sleeping. And there's so many stories of this going on and her trying to keep him down because she doesn't want the kids to hear it, or she doesn't want the kids to see him be abusive to her. And what he's talking about in the background is that, well, why does it matter if the kids are sleeping, and he is making noise? If she once gave a blowjob to a guy named Keith when the kids were sleeping upstairs? Which he was about because he was spying on them at that time.

Mike;  Holy shit. Really? 

Sarah: Yeah. Which is like one of the key issues that he fixates on. 

Mike: Oh. So did this happen before they got back together? Is that what he's mad about or did this happen recently?

Sarah: She and Keith were divorce before the reconciliation. 

Mike: Okay. So this is like a while back. 

Sarah: Yeah. It's history. And after they get back together, he also is like, let's clear the air. I'll tell you about all my sexual partners and you tell me about yours and then we'll have a clean slate, and I definitely won't hang it over your head for the rest of your life. The thing is that he's using the kids as a wedge which is a  theme from now on. It's not that he's expressing ownership of her. It's not that he's being angry and violent and possessive. It's the kids. How can she possibly parent and have sex at the same time? It’s impossible.

Mike: This isn't about the affordable housing that's being built. It's about preserving neighborhood character. 

Sarah: And so to answer your question about Kato and does he know about the abuse? Something I only learned when I read a book called Kato Kaelin: The Whole Truth, is that Kato Kaelin shows up at the house while this is going on, while this 911 call is in progress. 

Mike: Jesus. Okay. What does he do?

Sarah: To quote from Kato Kaelin: The Whole Truth, “At first Kato decided to stay out of it and went into the guest house. Before he closed the door, however, he took another look to make sure Nicole was all right and realized that OJ was still in a rage. OJ’s yelling became louder as he moved closer to her. Kato decided he had to do something after all. Sure enough, as soon as OJ saw Kato coming, he turned and continued his rage, shouting as if he were trying to somehow convince Kato that he, OJ, was really the wrong party in all this.” So he does actually help out by distracting him.

Mike: He’s waving the flare in front of the Tyrannosaurus.

Sarah: Kato stays with them and then the police come, and the police are like, what's going on? And who's this guy? The cops are talking to OJ in a  fairly friendly way, this is what Kato Kaelin observes. And one of the police officers says, yeah, I'm married too. I know what you mean. 

Mike: Oh, for fuck's sake. 

Sarah: One of the officers asked Kato if he can fix the french doors that OJ has broken.

Mike: So is this the end of their reconciliation? Do they go back to being divorced again after that? 

Sarah: No. I feel like once she starts thinking about trying to divorce, that takes a long time to build up to, and then once they get divorced, like she decides she needs to go back and that they can make it work. And then she realizes, you know, that they really can't, but that takes a long time. 

Mike: Yeah. I have friends that have been in this cycle, and it takes a long time for them to really believe that they're going to leave. It's especially hard when there's kids involved. It's understood. 

Sarah: Yeah. So this is where I'm going to turn to the gospel of Faye Resnick. Is that a name that's familiar to you?

Mike:  It sounds familiar, but who is she? 

Sarah: She was played by Connie Britton in the Ryan Murphy show. She was a good friend of Nicole's, and she published a book co-written with a tabloid journalist named Mike Walker called, Nicole Brown Simpson: The Private Diary of a Life Interrupted. And so Faye Resnick's book is interesting because she was a close friend of Nicole Brown Simpson, and also was someone who, according to her accounts, OJ called a lot when he and Nicole were on the outs. When they were fighting, Nicole and OJ would both call her, and so she has insight into him and seems also to be one of the people that he really didn't intimidate or whose charisma didn't work on her the way it worked on other people. 

So Faye Resnick's book comes out. It causes a big scandal because of its potential role in biasing the jury, even though it would bias them toward the prosecution. So it's interesting to think about how much of the scandal is based on, not what Faye Resnick has written about the contents of Nicole Brown Simpson's marriage, but about who Faye Resnick is because she's a relatively new Los Angeles socialite who is considered kind of new money. And she's three days into cocaine addiction rehab at the time of Nicole's murder. What everyone focuses on when this book comes out and what everyone has focused on since then, in a way that made me think when I read it, that it really wouldn't have any actual content and then being surprised as hell when it did, what everyone focuses on is the fact that it's scandalous and it talks about Nicole partying and having sex and there's gay stuff in it.

Mike:  Wait, what? I just sat up in my chair. What? What's this?

Sarah:  It is basically Faye Resnick... Well, let me, I'll actually just read it to you. This is a really great passage. And I think it's like what people thought of in 1994 when they thought of why they didn't care for Faye Resnick and it's for this same reason that I enjoy her tremendously. She and Nicole have gone out dancing. It's spring of 1994, and then they go to Faye’s place. And Faye writes, “I was in a mellow mood that night. As I walked through the door, I hit the stereo switch. Madonna's Erotica filled the house, and  pinpoints of candlelight glowed in every room. God, I loved my house. I had decorated it to reflect the wildly romantic, exotic persona that I rarely revealed. It's done in gold leaf and black, very Egyptian. With sculptures, down-filled sofas with tassels and fringes, light carpeting, zebra skins, black and gold Roman and Egyptian chairs, and massive Oriental screen and a magnificent Oriental desk. The black and gold motif carries into the bedroom. My custom made bed is Roman, also black and gold, covered with overstuffed down pillows and a wonderful bedroll. The whole place is an expression of romance.”

Mike:  She's stalling for time. What is all this? Why do we need all this scene setting?

Sarah: I love it. I feel like I'm watching Soap Net. “Nicole had never seen my place totally ablaze with candlelight. When we walked in, she said, ‘Wow, it's so sensual’. I laughed. My ex-husband, Paul, had said almost the same thing years ago when we were living in San Francisco. He'd spent a hundred thousand dollars decorating a huge path complete with jacuzzi. Sometimes I go there in the middle of the night when Paul was asleep and spend hours alone. One night, Paul woke up at about three o'clock in the morning, Not finding me in bed, he came to the bathroom and opened the door. He gasped when he saw the room bathed in the light of 15 large candles. The jacuzzi had rose petals scattered over the water and I was sitting in it reading Sigmund Freud as a new age music filled the room. Paul stood in the doorway a moment, drinking it all in. Then he stepped inside, closed the door, and said, ‘My God, this is the most sensual scene I've ever seen in my life’.” 

Mike: It's like porn movie dialogue. This is awesome.

Sarah: I love it. It's erotica dialogue. And this is made fun of in the press later on, Faye Resnick's decor choices. And I think this sums up kind of how she's seen in the media in ‘94. She's a party girl, she's extravagant, she's rich, she's new money.

Mike: She’s into Freud. 

Sarah: And you know, she's also someone who writes a book where she's like, yeah, I was in treatment for cocaine addiction, and I was freebasing and stuff. I like her, that's all I'm going to say. And she also throughout this book, so much of any story is hindsight, she's writing this about her best friend and she's writing it after her murder. You're going to give hindsight a lot of benefit of the doubt at that point. But what she talks about meeting Nicole and immediately understanding that she's carrying a lot of pain with her that even Nicole doesn't know how Nicole feels. And she just comes across in this book as someone who has an unusual amount of emotional intelligence for the cast of characters that we're looking at here. 

And so what happens after they get to Faye’s sensual house and Nicole goes to Faye's closet and picks out a nightie. And they are sitting on the bed talking and then Faye says, “Nic suddenly leaned over and started kissing me.” Then she writes, “Nicole pulled back and looked into my eyes. I said, I don't know how to do this. I don't know how. I was in a state of shock, but the shock wasn't strong enough to make me stop, despite underlying apprehension. I was enjoying this. Then I wasn't scared anymore. This was Nicole. It was wonderful being with her. It was more a spiritual bonding than anything else. I just felt like all the barriers were down between us. It was okay.” 

Then she writes that they fall asleep, and they wake up and see a flashlight in the window and they're like, “Oh my God, it's OJ. It's OJ again. It is OJ again, spying on us again”. But it's just the police because they're playing Madonna's Erotica too loud, so they turn it down and laugh and fall asleep. And so, yeah, that's the story. Well, I'll ask you, what do you think 1994 media did with this information?

Mike: This is what I'm thinking, as you're saying it. It's like this kind of nice moment of communion between two people that are both clearly going through some shit and maybe, I mean, who knows what was going through their heads, but it seems like just a nice moment of affection between two people. 

Sarah: And it feels true to how people end up making out with their friends and how you can also have moments where like the only way to access the kind of emotional intimacy that you need is sexually. 

Mike: Yeah. I mean, I don't know the spoilers, but one of the themes we keep coming across in the show is that the actual worst sin that you can do in public life is be tacky. It's not necessarily being immoral or being cruel, it's things like I was reading Freud in my hot tub and that sort of aesthetic objection that people have to you as a person ends up overshadowing everything else, right? Like if you're a woman with big hair and you say a really famous preacher raped me, all they're going to hear is like, oh, some bimbo says there was something sexual, but look how big her hair is. Look at her shoulder pads. 

Sarah: Ignore what she's saying. 

Mike: Exactly. And so I just, from my own cynicism with all of these stories, it's the fucking details about the candles and the music and the hot tub are such catnip to people that want to throw out this story. 

Sarah: Yeah. And then the fact that like at the crime scene, after Nicole's murder, the police find all these candles around the tub and this is written about a lot and also use by the defense as proof that it's because she's expecting a sex guest, but even if people aren't making that argument, it's that she had so many candles in her bathroom. So when you think about it, the murder is not that sad. Like what? And like Elizabeth Wurtzel writing about it mentions the candles, not even making the argument that they're tacky, but in a list of things that she's clearly calling tacky.

Mike: That’s not even fucking tacky, that's actually delightful.

Sarah: Candles are nice. And it's like, well, sometimes you have to beat up your wife or you stalk her a little because we've just gotten divorced, and you see her as your property. And it's understandable behavior. And it's not great, but it happens, you know. But if you have candles and you're a woman and you make out with other women then, who do you think you are?

Mike: So does Faye Resnick, in her book, also describe a lot of this abuse top? So she’s corroborating Nicole’s account of how terrible his relationship was.

Sarah:  Oh yeah. The same networks that are like, we've forgotten about Nicole. We're like, and meanwhile, crackhead Faye Resnick is buying more candles. Well, she did the thing that you're complaining about no one doing.  Do you hear what you're saying?

Mike:  She actually is remembering Nicole.

Sarah:  I think the thing I most love about Faye Resnick's book is that it feels to me that Faye Resnick, maybe it has like occurred to her that the press would become fixated on the lesbian part of the book or the part where Faye Resnick talks about her own cocaine use or says, quote, “Nicole did cocaine once in a blue moon, but she did like her tequila shots”, or talks about going out dancing with Nicole, because that's not allowed. Or the fact that Nicole enjoys sex and is a sexual person. I think she probably had some awareness of the fact that these were things that people would have a hard time handling. 

But what I also feel is that was not her focus as she was writing this. I feel like what her testimony is about ultimately is that she has this genuine good faith desire to help the public understand her friend, Nicole, and wants them to do that. And in order to do that, she has to explain that Nicole wasn't sexually satisfied by other men after she'd had this amazing sexual connection with OJ Simpson. It's kind of like Faye Resnick was a lawyer who just brought in evidence that she didn't realize would make the jury hate her client. 

Mike: It's fascinating because it was so hard in the nineties, and I think to some extent today, to actually say the phrase out loud that sometimes people who have sex and use drugs get murdered, and sometimes people who are kind of tacky are correct. That's something that we still need to remind ourselves about.

Sarah: And also nice ladies and good moms go out dancing and use cocaine. I mean, it's also beyond hilarious to me that like in Los Angeles, in the early nineties, there's this response ‘on behalf of media people who are in charge of making news’ of using cocaine? Unimaginable! Who could imagine using cocaine? And it's like, are you fucking kidding me?

Mike: Who could imagine doing the verb that is most associated with the previous decade that we have just lived through. How dare you? 

Sarah: Yeah. And I mean, another part of the story is that Faye goes to rehab for cocaine addiction because Nicole helps organize an intervention for her. And she’s like we love you, and you're a friend, and you need to go to rehab. And I will quit drinking and doing drugs with you, and we will be clean together. 

Two things that people are unanimous on when they talk about Nicole is that she was a great mom, and she was a great friend. That's really how she seems to be remembered by people that she was someone who showed up for other people, which is, to me, especially amazing because she wasn't really able to show up for herself.

Mike: I mean the whole “scandalous” lesbian things sort of plays into this. It's a way of downplaying Nicole's friendship and support that she's offering and receiving to this female friend of hers. We’re like, ‘Ooh, lesbians’, rather than seeing these as complicated people who may be very specific nouns don't necessarily apply to.

Sarah: Yeah. Faye Resnick is someone who lacks the self-awareness to realize the public wants an apology from her. That if she wants to come with this message of, think about my friend and understand her as a person and know her and love her. She essentially would have had to scrub her account of anything that made it real and not be writing about her friend but be constructing a perfect victim narrative. 

One of the other things that she talks about that the media of course fixates on is something that many of Nicole's other friends have talked about elsewhere, which is that after Nicole and OJ finally got divorced, she did have an affair with Marcus Allen, which he has denied, and that she really liked him. She really just felt good around him. And that she was seeing him again in May and the weeks before she was killed. The real story is like this deep, dark, sad story. But the part that people fixate on is Nicole talking about how Marcus is the only man, aside from OJ, who has really sexually satisfied her. And he tells a story about how she and Nicole were walking along the beach, Nicole picks up a piece of driftwood and is like, this is Marcus. And Faye Resnick realizes that she's referring to girth. 

Mike: Oh my God. 

Sarah: And so after that, for weeks or months, one of them will, according to Faye, have to say ‘driftwood’, and they'll all start laughing. And Faye Resnick just includes this, it's just an innocent detail. It's just Nicole was attached to OJ for many reasons and sex was one of them, and she also turned to men sexually for validation. And one of the reasons that she was drawn to Marcus Allen in the last weeks of her life, despite the danger, was because of the driftwood thing. I feel like that's what Faye Resnick  wants us to know. And maybe she didn't realize that people would be like, so you're telling me that this alleged victim had sex and liked it.

Mike: And spoke about it. Spoke about it in a way that we don't want women to speak about it. Yeah. So what is Faye Resnick's description of sort of the last days? Like the run-up to the murder? What is the narrative?

Sarah:  So this is April of 1994. So it's right after OJ and Nicole have reconciled. And now they're on vacation in Cabo with a bunch of their friends, including Faye Resnick, and have just been loving and all over each other and really happy. And Faye writes that Nicole says, “Faye, I think this is it. We're getting back together for good. And they hug and everyone's happy. And then Faye writes, “The very next night, OJ screwed everything up. We're all at Carlos and Charlie's and OJ suddenly started to flirt with a trampy looking young blonde. He did it openly, enjoying himself hugely, not seeming to care that everyone was watching. I looked at Nicole for a reaction. She looked back at me and Chris, who is sitting with us, Chris and I both said something like, ‘Can you believe this?’ Nicole said nothing. I knew my friend so well. She was blocking, and nobody could block unpleasantness like Nicole. The next day, most of our group hung out down at the beach, snorkeling and playing with the kids. Suddenly OJ started telling everybody that Nicole's biggest fear in life is frogs. Most of our friends knew about Nicole's phobia, so strong, so overwhelming that anyone who knew her well enough, wouldn't tease her about it. She loathed frogs.”

Mike: Frogs? Okay.

Sarah:  I get that. I am very freaked out by frogs. I remain haunted by pictures I've seen of a Chinese child holding a frog as big as he is. I don’t like that. I get it. 

Mike: Yeah. That's how I feel about abandonment. So, yeah.

Sarah:  So Faye continues, “OJ acted as if it was the biggest joke in the world. He told everybody, ‘Hey, can you believe this? It's just so ironic that my wife's biggest fear in life is frogs, and I've ended up starring in a TV series called The Frogmen’. OJ threw back his head and laughed and looked at us all with his happy smiling face. That's what made his next word seem so incongruous, so unsettling. ‘Hey baby’, he jibed at Nicole, ‘I'm the Frogman. Now, what do you think about that?’ Two minutes later, OJ got up and left. This time, Nicole wasn't blocking. She turned to me and said, ‘I don't think that's funny. He finds this to be funny. This is not funny at all. It's cruel. I'm afraid this man will kill me someday’. The next day, OJ flew to Puerto Rico for filming on The Frogmen. That evening, we went to the Paul Miller restaurant for dinner. As we sipped cappuccino, Nicole floored me when she said calmly, ‘That's it. I can't do it. I can't be with OJ. Seriously, it’s over. I feel that if we get back together, he'll end up killing me. I don't think he's changed’.” And it seems like after this, she really got closer and closer to decisively ending things and did so fairly soon after. And what feels real to me about why that happened is that it was like such a tiny thing. 

Mike: The frog thing?

Sarah: Yeah. Somehow don't you feel like it's the small things that reveal the truth more somehow. Yeah. What is it about the frog thing, do you think, for her?

Mike:  I can just see it being so fucking belittling. It's really not that much to ask. If someone says like, hey, you know, I'm afraid of like, whatever toothpaste, it's really not that big of a deal to just not bring up toothpaste around somebody. It's basic human decency, but he can't even clear that bar, the lowest imaginable bar. Just don't tease people about their frogs. It's fine. It's not that hard. 

Sarah: Yeah, you're right. It's such a minimal thing. And then it's almost like the big stuff you can excuse more easily.  I wasn't myself and I was full of rage, and I couldn't control it. But as yourself you are still being mean and it's just like seizing the remotest possible opportunity to be mean Yeah. So after that, Faye described her as having really strengthened resolve, and then let me pull up my timeline. I have a color coded timeline. 

Mike: Oh my God. 

Sarah: Yeah. It's deeper shades of pink for increasing danger levels. So they come back from Cabo and after that, she's like, I'm done. And then some more significant things happen. She goes to her nephew's First Communion on May 7th, and on May 8th she makes out her will. On May 14th it's her and OJ’s daughter, Sydney's, First Communion and OJ doesn't come. Which she, according to people who are interviewed later, is really hurt by.

Mike: Again, not that much to fucking ask.

Sarah:  Yeah. How many First Communions is your eldest child going to have, Orenthal James?

Mike: Clear the bar. 

Sarah: But then she got pneumonia the week of her birthday, which is May 19th. And OJ launches a charm offense and is taking the kids to and from school, which, because he does so little as a parent is like, wow. And he brings her See’s Candies, which are  her favorite, and gives her a bracelet. And Faye Resnick is observing this and is like, wow, this is a godsend for OJ because Nicole literally can't get out of bed, and he can forcibly charm her. 

Mike: So he's doing the equivalent of visiting Iowa over and over. Going to state fairs and shit and campaigning.

Sarah: Just corn dog after corn dog. And then she basically breaks it off as soon as she's well enough. She breaks it off on May 22nd. She gives back the bracelet. She tells her friends that she told him she couldn't be bought. It's a very Titanic moment. Also while she is sick, Ron Shipp, her LAPD friend, talks to her on the phone and feels concerned for her. And of course knows a lot about the history of abuse in the marriage, a lot more than most other people, and wants to visit her. But still for whatever reason is like, I should really ask OJ for permission before I visit Nicole. And he calls OJ and he's like, “No it's fine. You don't need to see her”. And he's like, “Okay.”

Mike: Ron!

Sarah:  I know. Ron is a complicated person. 

Mike: Come on, Ron.

Sarah:  Yeah. After that, her friends all say she really seems done, she seems happy. She seems like she's moving on. And OJ launches a charm offensive at Paula Barbieri, the Julia Roberts looking lady, to try and get her back. And towards the end of the first week of June, a few things happen. Nicole tells a few people that one of the keys to her house has gone missing from her keychain. And she's very worried that OJ has it. On June 5th she calls her realtor, and also a friend of hers named Jean McKenna, to give her the news that OJ has just told her that he's going to report her to the IRS. Which he seems to decide to do after it's clear to him that she's really not coming back. And I guess to either punish her or maybe a last attempt to get her to flee back into his arms.

Mike:  Jeez. 

Sarah: And what he's going to report her for is that she had bought this apartment on Bundy Drive, which she was very proud that she was able to do with the money that she made from the sale of the condo in San Francisco. Because she negotiated the purchase herself, which is a big adult thing to do, and had declared Rockingham as her primary residence on her taxes and the Bundy condo as an acquisition that she was going to rent out. So, OJ decided to report her for using the Bundy Drive condo as her primary residence, which means that she would owe $90,000, which is all the money that she has in the bank. So he's essentially vindictively bankrupting her.

Mike: Oh my God. 

Sarah: And this only deepens, according to people who are interviewed, her resolve to end the relationship and move on. And this is what Faye Resnick theorizes, maybe Nicole can stand for him to attack her over and over again, but now he's attacking the kids because they don't have any money. They're going to have to move again. And so on June 7th, Nicole calls Sojourn Shelter, which is a domestic violence shelter in LA, and the person who takes her call says that her ex-husband has been calling her, begging her to come back, and also stalking her. And that he told her several times in the past that if he caught her with another man, he'd kill her. And on June 10th, Nicole and her realtor drive around the neighborhood looking at properties that are within a few minutes drive of OJ's house. And when they have driven around for a bit and not seen anything that she wants, Nicole says, “Take me to Malibu”. And they look at a house on a hill overlooking the ocean that Nicole can reasonably afford. And she used to ride her horse on the beach. She's an OC surfer girl. 

One of the things that OJ was so critical about was her canceling at the last minute on events or not liking doing celebrity hobnobbing stuff with him, or not liking being part of the kind of Hollywood scene that he was trying to be part of. Because she just wanted to be with her family, or be with her friends, or have more of a homey lifestyle. And it feels like this is-

Mike: She wanted to be in her sweatpants!

Sarah:  She wanted to wear her sweatpants sometimes and gain more than seven pounds. Give her a fucking break. And they went out to Malibu and she was like, I like this. I, Nicole, like this. Me.

Mike:  That's a tiny little form of emancipation.

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. And the way Jean McKenna describes it later is that they look at the house and Nicole really likes sitting and she just says, “I can do this”. And so, June 12th, Faye Resnick is in rehab. Before she went, she was talking to Nicole. She was just like, “Why don't we just get out of town? Why don't we just go? We can go to Cabo for a while. We can go wherever we want. We have plenty of money.” She's feeling stalked and surveilled as well, like anyone who is close to Nicole is part of OJ’s network at this point. She's like, why don't we just get away? And Nicole’s like, no, we can't do that because Sydney has a dance recital on June 12th. And so Sydney is dancing to the music of Footloose. I really want to know what music from Footloose it is, but I haven't found that out. I love it when I say a detail that I think you think is totally irrelevant. You're like, okay, next thing. 

Mike: No, I literally don't know any songs from Footloose. I've never seen it. So nothing is going to have any metaphorical significance to me. 

Sarah: You don't know the main song from Footloose?

Mike: No! I'm an old millennial.

Sarah:  Footloose came out in 1984.

Mike: I don’t know.

Sarah: Anyway. Sydney is dancing to the music of Footloose and OJ shows up, but comes late. He doesn't sit near them, and Nicole doesn't talk to him. Faye says that Nicole tells her that Nicole said to OJ, “Fuck off. Get away from us. Get out of my life. You're not welcome with this family anymore”. And then after the recital, they go out to the parking lot. OJ tries to get the Browns to pose for a family photo. That doesn't work out. Nicole and the Browns are going to go to have dinner at Mezzaluna, which is an Italian restaurant in the neighborhood. And OJ asks to join, and Nicole tells him that he can't join, and basically bars him from the family table. According to another source in Sheila Weller's book, OJ tells his friend, Ron Fishman, “I'm going to get her, but good.”

Mike: Jesus Christ.

Sarah: And again, it's a little thing. OJ wants to come to dinner, but he can't come to dinner. They don't want him to come to dinner. 

Mike: Right. But within toxic relationships, every little slight becomes a metaphor for something larger because you lose the ability to talk about things in their actual proportion. Everything becomes like a front in this greater war.

Sarah:  Yeah. And it's rejection, right? It doesn't matter how tiny or rejection it is. He's being rejected and that's unacceptable. I think the logic of this is it's not that you look at the action the person is actually doing and judge the action, it's that you feel what you feel, and you think whatever this person is doing must have caused me to have this feeling. And it must be that bad. And I have to punish them that much for it. 

So they don't let OJ come to dinner with them. He leaves and Nicole and her kids and the Browns go to dinner at Mezzaluna, where there's a waiter named Ron Goldman, who Nicole knows slightly. Nicole mainly knows him because she's a friend of two guys about his age, they're all about 25, named Jeff and Mike. And Nicole has kind of hung out with them more and they have gone out to dinner together, and she lets them take turns driving her Ferrari to and from dinner, which  I think is really cute. From what Jeff and Mike say and what Nicole's other friends say to Sheila Weller, it seems like they're the David LeBon’s in her life now. 

Mike: They're like friends, platonic friends hanging out.

Sarah:  They're guy friends. And they're also like guys in their early twenties who are having the kind of young adulthood that she didn't experience. And the detail I know about their friendship that I really love the most is that she would call Jeff and Mike and say, “What are you guys doing?” And whoever she called would say, “Well, Melrose is on in half an hour.” And then she would go over and watch Melrose Place with them. 

Mike: Sweatpants! So this is the sweatpants dream that she's always had. That's all anybody wants.

Sarah: All anyone wants is to watch Melrose Place with Jeff and Mike, and not be stalked, and gain more than seven pounds. But I guess that little detail, and I love how in the press and at trial, it's the kind of impression that the public captive of Nicole is, she was a party girl, and she was out in her tight dresses and being sexual and doing cocaine and et cetera. And it's like, sometimes, yeah. But I just love the idea that she would call them up and come over to watch Melrose Place with these two guys.

Mike: Even party girls get to be more than one thing. I feel like that's generalizable.

Sarah: We're all so many things. So anyway, they're at the restaurant and she says “Hi” to Ron, who's a friend of her Melrose Place friends. Faye has written that Nicole kind of had a crush on Ron, and that Faye felt it was fated that they would sleep together one day because Ron is, I don't know if he's done modeling or not. 

Mike: I see him in these photos. He is cute. 

Sarah: Oh yeah, no he's gorgeous. Which I think also doesn't work out well for him in the media, but she says hi to Ron. And she has dinner with her family at Mezzaluna, and they're talking about if she gets this Malibu house then everyone can come visit her in Malibu and all the family members can be together. There's just this air of possibility. Things could really change for the better, good things are really possible. She says goodbye to her family and takes the kids to Ben and Jerry's for ice cream and then takes the kids home. And then according to Faye Resnick's book, they have a call sometime after 9:00. And Faye says that the last thing that Nicole says to her is, “I love you and I'll visit you in rehab tomorrow”. And ‘”Can I bring you anything, like See’s Candy, maybe?” 

Faye talks about undergoing hypnosis to try and recall every single detail of that phone call, but she just can't remember every single thing. And then they ended the phone call, and apparently after she talks to Faye - by my estimation of the timeline - she gets a call from her mother who dropped her glasses outside the restaurant, and who wants Nicole to pick them up tomorrow. And so Nicole calls the restaurant and catches Ron Goldman and asks him to bring them by because her house is only a few minutes away. And so he takes them and goes to his house and changes, and then heads over to her house. 

And the next thing that anyone hears is, sometime between around 10:15 and around 10:30, her dog, Kato, started to make a sound that one witness described as a plaintiff wail. And the next day, Denise Brown gets a call telling the family that Nicole has been murdered, and she says, “It was OJ”. And Faye Resnick, the next day, is informed at rehab that Nicole has been murdered, and says, “It was OJ”. And the story that we all know begins. I don’t know where to end this.

Mike: I have an ending question that we can do a clever little ‘to be continued’ with. So what strikes me about this entire story is that the way that you've described it, it's actually a pretty open and shut case.

Sarah:  That's what everyone thought, Mike. Tell that to poor Marcia Clark. 

Mike: Because how much more evidence do you need? Right. Like even without the physical evidence.

Sarah: Yeah. Well, what I feel is if someone else killed her, it's only because they got there somehow first, you know. If someone else would have murdered her, only would have managed it by beating OJ to it. Not that this was preordained, but like, you look at the ramp up to it and it feels like dominoes.

Mike: Yeah. I mean, it's really clear. And yet I've also, I know from your text messages that people also think that the verdict in the case wasn't necessarily wrong or wasn't necessarily unfair. And so it sounds like there's sort of two different stories going on where there's this sort of personal story of OJ and Nicole. And then there's the larger story of everything else that was going on in LA at the time. 

Sarah: I mean, with the way that we're approaching, this is kind of showing us as we're getting into the story that a trial is in some way very separate from the events that it's about. Her life ended on June 12th, 1994, and everything that happened after that, she wasn't a part of. I don't know. And I think this gets into the question of like, what is a trial for, what is a verdict for, and to what extent? 

I mean, another thing I would say about this verdict, is that it makes us think about how the law is not just prescriptive, but expressive. I mean, a verdict is not always primarily about the case, right? Or about the crime that precipitated the trial. 

Mike: Right. From my understanding of what I knew about the trial, that's basically what ends up happening, is it becomes about all this other stuff. 

Sarah: Spoiler.

Mike: Spoiler. So I think, spoiler, now that we ruined our next couple episodes, I think we're going to leave it there.

Sarah: Yeah.

Mike:  So yes. Join us next time, hopefully in your sweatpants. You have the right.

Sarah:  Yeah. Wear some sweatpants. Gain eight pounds. 

Mike: Read some Freud, light some candles. 

Sarah: Yeah. Read some Freud and light a candle for Nicole.