May 11, 2008
For nearly 20 years, MIKE GILBERT was O.J. Simpson's sports agent. It was Gilbert who, after becoming disillusioned with Simpson, sold some of the memorabilia he says the former running back gave him. Simpson is charged with robbery for trying to take those items back from a dealer in Las Vegas last year, and faces trial in September.
Before their falling-out, Gilbert was one of the few left in Simpson's inner circle after the not-guilty verdict in the killings of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman. In this excerpt from Gilbert's new book, "How I Helped O.J. Get Away With Murder," Gilbert describes the night a few weeks after the verdict in 1995 when O.J. confessed to the crime.
O.J. and I were alone at Rockingham. He had gone out on the balcony to smoke some pot, a habit he acquired after the criminal trial.
Marijuana had the same effect on him that it has on most people: It made him slow, a little bit melancholy, and more relaxed. It was pouring rain outside, and that had a calming effect, too (as did the Ambien he had just taken).
We were both drinking beers, and for once, we weren't trying to get anything done, or struggling to evade some immense impending threat.
I had never wanted to ask O.J. about the murders. Part of me just didn't want to know. But that long, solemn night led me to give in to my deeper curiosity. I wanted to ask him about a conversation I had had with Al Cowlings, his best friend.
O.J. had always denied that he was involved with the murders, and his denials were always rooted in his claim that he had not even been at the scene of the crime. This was false, A.C. told me, indirectly at first, and then directly.
"So then why is it OK?" I asked A.C. "Why do we stay with him? Why do we continue to defend him?"
I remember A.C.'s words very clearly. He said, pretty forcefully, "What good would it do? Mike, it's like this. The kids already don't have a mom. If we help put O.J. in jail for the rest of his life, then they don't have a dad. Well, they'll have a dad, but he'll be in prison, and they'll know that he murdered their mother. We can't do that to them."
As O.J. and I sat there, in the quiet stillness of the night, I decided to cut out the middleman. I wasn't satisfied with hearing a secondhand confession.
"O.J.," I said, "what happened that night? What happened on June 12?"
