‘Killer’ won’t change any minds about O.J.
“If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer”
(Beaufort Books, 254 pages, $24.95)
When someone pulls on gloves to open a book, it’s usually a priceless volume – a Jane Austen first edition, or a signed galley proof of “Harry Potter.”
I wanted to put on gloves to read “If I Did It” also, but for different reasons.
The “yuck” factor in O.J. Simpson’s “hypothetical” account of how he would have murdered his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman is so high that the needle soars right off the scale.
The Goldman family won the rights to the book as part of a $38 million civil judgment, yanking it away from Simpson and the corporation he set up using his children’s names, a scheme a federal bankruptcy judge called a “sham.”
Just looking at the red-and-black cover slashed with yellow police tape, you can imagine the Goldmans almost gleefully turning Simpson’s project on its head.
The word “If” is in such small type that I fleetingly thought the Goldmans had changed the title. Simpson’s name does not appear on the cover, just the phrase “Confessions of the Killer.”
The money chapter – the one describing how he might have killed the victims – is the only reason anyone is interested in this book, and I’ll get to it in a minute.
The rest reads like a self-absorbed, self-justifying counseling session: the marriage, the conflicts in the marriage, the end of the marriage, how he wanted to move on but she was obsessed with him, and how he, in turn, was patient and forbearing.
But nasty little moments creep in, in spite of Simpson’s own defenses.
Describing the night Nicole famously called the cops on him and police took her statement and her picture, he writes that “she was drunk, she’d been crying, and she was under fluorescent lights without any makeup. Ask me how bad she looked?”
About one of their separations, Simpson writes: “It was a perfect arrangement. I had a family, but I lived alone. How can you beat that?”
This book is a docudrama in print; readers have to decide which parts are real and which parts are hypothetical. The Goldmans make clear that they believe that the “hypothetical” chapter is the truest part of all.
As his original book deal fell apart in the face of public protest, Simpson backpedaled and claimed the 32-page murder chapter was “mostly” his ghostwriter’s work.
Chapter 6 – “The Night in Question” – begins disingenuously. Simpson complains about arthritis pain so crippling he sometimes can’t pick up a spoon (let alone a knife, hint hint).
Then a guy he’d met only a couple of times – someone named “Charlie” – shows up and says something about Nicole’s conduct that sets Simpson off. And off they go to “scare” her.
“Then,” Simpson writes, “something went horribly wrong, and I know what happened but I can’t tell you exactly how. … I put my left hand to my heart and my shirt felt strangely wet. …
“(I) noticed the knife in my hand. The knife was covered in blood. … I wondered how I had gotten blood all over my knife, and I again asked myself whose blood it might be. …”
Money will change hands over “If I Did It,” but the book probably will not change any minds. Maybe Simpson will wind up as the 20th century’s Lizzie Borden, acquitted of double murder but still guilty in millions of minds.
If you still care about this case, if you think Simpson is guilty and you want to help the Goldmans, buy the book.
If you think he got a raw deal and don’t want the Goldmans to get a cent of your money, speed-read Chapter 6 at the bookstore, or get it from the library.
Either way, your decision is a moral one – definitely not a literary one.