'People forgot my sister'

Nicole Simpson was killed outside her home 30 years ago, leading to the trial of the century. Now, her sister Denise talks to Annabel Nugent about the woman she was and how her story resulted in a revolution on domestic violence

- 

When Denise Brown got the call telling her that her sister, Nicole, had been found stabbed to death outside her home in Los Angeles, she knew who killed her. In her mind, it was clear as day. "He's done it, he's finally done it," Brown recalls thinking that morning back in June of 1994. "He" being Nicole's ex- husband, the adored NFL star and former running back of the San Francisco 49ers, Orenthal James Simpson. “The detective asked me who did it,” says Brown. “I told them, OJ.”

The trial of the century ensued; over eight months in 1995 the world watched, transfixed, as OJ Simpson was tried – and acquitted – for the double murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman. Even Bill Clinton, then US president, paused what he was doing to watch the live verdict be delivered on 3 October. In civil court two years later, OJ was found liable for their deaths and ordered to pay a sum of $33m in damages to their families, the lion’s share of which remains unpaid – but, decades later, it’s the criminal trial that has stuck in people’s minds.

Along the way, though, the victims faded from view – their memory caught in the media storm. A new docuseries about Nicole, made by her sisters to commemorate the 30th anniversary of her murder, seeks to redress that. “People forgot her, you know?” Denise Brown tells me over Zoom. “Nobody knew who Nicole was. Nobody remembered her voice. She got lost – her and Ron.”

The Life and Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson tries to focus most on the first part of that title. In fuzzy home videos, Nicole grins and laughs; she’s on the beach cradling her babies, and on the dancefloor with her siblings. These vignettes offer another side to a woman who for so long has been framed only through images of violence: the polaroids she had taken of herself after being beaten, or the graphic crime scene photographs of her lifeless body strewn across front pages around the world.