A sister of Nicole Brown Simpson, the slain ex-wife of O.J. Simpson, said this week that she would like to see law enforcement officials investigate whether multiple people were involved in the 1994 killing.
The sister, Tanya Brown, said she believed someone helped Mr. Simpson get rid of the murder weapon, and highlighted a recent New York Times article that, citing newly unsealed court files and interviews, examined the possibility.
“We deserve answers,” Ms. Brown said.
Ms. Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman were found stabbed to death in June 1994, and Mr. Simpson was charged with murder. He was acquitted by a Los Angeles County jury in a high-profile criminal trial but later held liable for the deaths in a civil case.
Ms. Brown said she was wary of anything that would fully reopen the case and the trauma of the 1995 trial. But at the same time, she said she would like to see prosecutors seek to answer whether someone helped Mr. Simpson or assisted in a cover-up.
She wasn’t alone in calling for renewed scrutiny of the case.
Alan Dershowitz, one of the lawyers who represented Mr. Simpson, said that a special prosecutor should be appointed to examine whether an accomplice was involved.
Mr. Dershowitz pointed to the findings of The Times’s report, which included documents detailing how a secret informant told law enforcement about the missing murder weapon and Mr. Simpson’s flight from justice. The informant’s brother told The Times that he saw his brother the night of the killings with what appeared to be bloody hands, and that he disposed of a bag with a heavy object inside at his brother’s request.
“The public, even though it’s been 30 years, is entitled to the best evidence as to what really happened or didn’t happen,” said Mr. Dershowitz, a professor emeritus of law at Harvard University.
Another member of the defense team, Robert Blasier, was wary of the idea, given that Mr. Simpson and the informant are now dead. Mr. Blasier, who believes the theories about an accomplice may be true, said that he doubted the world would ever know what really happened.
There are legal hurdles in revisiting the three-decade-old case. In a statement, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office noted that a charge of “accessory after the fact,” used when someone assists a criminal after the crime, carries a three-year statute of limitations. “Under California law, the alleged actions, even if provable, could not be prosecuted due to the lapse of time.”
A spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department has said that the Simpson case remains “open and ongoing” and that cold case detectives continue to make inquiries as new leads emerge.
In California, the state attorney general and district attorneys can hire or appoint special prosecutors. In Los Angeles there is recent precedent. Nathan Hochman, the district attorney, last year appointed a special prosecutor to investigate police misconduct cases.
During the 1995 murder trial, prosecutors focused on Mr. Simpson as being the lone participant in the murder. More than a decade later, in the book “If I Did It,” Mr. Simpson described a “hypothetical” account in which someone was with him at the scene and then helped him get rid of bloody clothes and the murder weapon.
The secret informant described in the Times article, Joseph Ippolito, had been a mafia associate and convicted drug trafficker from New Jersey who escaped from prison a month before the murders. He was also close friends with Al Cowlings, the confidant of Mr. Simpson who drove the white Bronco during the infamous police chase on the day Mr. Simpson was arrested.
Mr. Ippolito was arrested more than a year after the murders and told federal law enforcement then that he had important information about the state case, including details on the location of the weapon. Federal prosecutors considered Mr. Ippolito “extremely reliable” because he was helping them on successful mafia and drug cases.
Mr. Ippolito had been on the radar of law enforcement officials and even Mr. Simpson’s defense team. But prosecutors in Los Angeles did not seek to bring him in or question him at trial.
Mr. Ippolito died in 2006. Mr. Simpson died in 2024. Mr. Cowlings did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Dershowitz said the idea of an accomplice was plausible, as he from the start had wondered about the missing murder weapon.
“I’ve often thought that there might have been an accomplice,” Mr. Dershowitz said.
Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who commented on the Simpson case at the time, said she doubted a special prosecutor would be appointed and questioned whether it would lead to a break in the case. She is doubtful any new evidence could emerge.
Still, she faulted the authorities in Los Angeles for, in her view, not thoroughly investigating what Mr. Cowlings may have known about the killings.
“I think this is a bit like the Jimmy Hoffa story,” she said. “It will keep going because it was never resolved.”
The post Nicole Brown Simpson’s Sister: ‘We Deserve Answers’ on Accomplice Question appeared first on New York Times.
