The Tale of a Witness Who Wasn’t Called

O.J. Simpson’s life had lightly brushed Albert Aguilera’s through the years.

The two men attended USC at the same time and Aguilera was at the Coliseum in 1967 when the famed tailback ran his first play as a Trojan. A decade later, Aguilera took his then-10-year-old son to a fund-raiser in Mission Viejo, where Simpson autographed two old copies of the Daily Trojan commemorating the athlete’s Heisman Trophy win.

Then in 1986, during a stroll on a secluded, private Orange County beach, Aguilera says, he saw Simpson again, walking with his new wife, whose laugh he could hear above the sounds of the ocean. As he watched them, Aguilera says, the man he so admired suddenly knocked Nicole Brown Simpson to the ground with a hard slap across the face, leaving her crying in the sand.

It was a moment that now, nine years later, has linked the lives of the two men in a venue far from the world of sports.

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Aguilera was among at least four witnesses whom prosecutors had planned to call in the closing stages of their case to bolster the government’s contention that Simpson’s history of spousal abuse culminated in the murder of his ex-wife and her friend Ronald Lyle Goldman--a theory the defense has bitterly contested.

In a surprise decision last month, Deputy Dist. Attys. Marcia Clark and Christopher A. Darden announced that they would not call Aguilera and the other so-called domestic violence witnesses; they said the DNA evidence was strong enough to carry the case.

Among those witnesses were:

* Alfred Acosta, a former limousine driver, who has told prosecutors that in 1988 or 1989 he saw Simpson strike his wife as he was driving them from a social event to their home.

* Julianne Hendricks, a friend of Nicole Simpson’s sister Denise Brown, who has said she saw Simpson push his wife from a slowly moving vehicle in 1989.

* Giaconda Redfern, Nicole Simpson’s babysitter, who has said that Nicole Simpson was so frightened of her ex-husband that she gave Redfern a can of Mace for protection.

* Elizabeth Holmes, a physical fitness trainer for O.J. Simpson’s next-door neighbors, who has said she is prepared to testify under oath that she once saw Simpson push his wife during an argument in the yard of their Brentwood estate.

Although these witnesses were bumped during the prosecution’s case, they have been put on notice that they may be asked to testify during the trial’s rebuttal phase if Simpson’s lawyers attempt to paint a sympathetic portrait of their client, who has pleaded not guilty to the two murders.

Analysts say such testimony could effectively chip away at any nice-guy image of Simpson in the jurors’ minds.

“It was a good move for [the prosecution] not to put more domestic violence evidence on,” said John Burris, a Bay Area-based defense attorney, who has followed the trial closely. “It was rehashing old potatoes . . . and the jury would not have been impressed.”

Burris said he based that opinion partly on comments made by some of the jurors who have been dismissed from the case.

Aguilera’s testimony would, by his own account, be brief--the incident he says he witnessed at Victoria Beach near a condominium Simpson owned was over in seconds and cannot be linked directly to the deaths of Nicole Simpson and Goldman.

The 54-year-old Long Beach pharmacist said he was sharing a home with a friend in the gated community of Blue Lagoon near Laguna Beach when he decided to take a walk on the beach.

He said he knew Simpson had a condominium nearby but had never seen him in the area until that day in the summer of 1986.

“They were standing about 50 feet away,” Aguilera recalled of Simpson and his wife. “She had her back to me, but she seemed to be teasing him. She was playful. The next thing I knew he just hauled off and hit her with his open hand in the face and she fell.”

Simpson, according to Aguilera, bent over his wife as she wept and seemed, by turns, to console her and become angry.

“Then she got up and ran,” Aguilera said. “She turned and shouted something to him, but I couldn’t hear what she said.”

Simpson stood on the beach alone for several minutes, Aguilera said, then walked away in the direction his wife had taken.

“I felt bad for her,” he said. “I felt bad for him. Ever since then I’ve had a different opinion of O.J. I lost respect for him.”

He said that when he first heard that Simpson had been arrested for murder, he immediately thought back to the violence on the beach. “I had a bad feeling,” Aguilera said. “From what I had seen, he had a volatile temper.”

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After thinking about it for several days, Aguilera said he called a hot line the district attorney’s office had created to collect tips about the murders. But no one returned his call.

He said he was prepared to drop the matter but that his ex-wife, whom he had not seen in years, would not let the matter rest. She had heard about the incident from her children, who had been told of it by their father. She repeatedly called the district attorney’s office, urging prosecutors to contact Aguilera.

In December, when two investigators showed up at his door, he said he agreed to cooperate.

Although he has tried to keep a low profile in the case, Aguilera said his ex-wife, Lydia, has made that difficult.

Last month, he picked up a copy of a supermarket tabloid and found his story--as told by his former wife--touted on the cover with a headline calling him an “eyewitness” whose testimony against Simpson “will put him away.”

Across from a snapshot of a snarling O.J. Simpson was a picture of Aguilera that he said was taken surreptitiously. Inside was a picture of Lydia placing flowers on Nicole Simpson’s grave at a cemetery in Orange County.

“I don’t know what she was doing at the grave,” Aguilera said, shaking his head. “I’ve never even talked to her about the incident. She only knew about it through the kids.”

Shortly after the tabloid story appeared, Aguilera was scheduled to testify. With subpoena in hand, he waited at the Criminal Courts Building in Downtown Los Angeles for his day on the stand. But after two jurors were dismissed and the case ground to a temporary halt, he was sent home. He said he was told only that his testimony was not needed at the time and that he may be called in the future.

“I’m hoping, frankly, that they won’t call,” said Aguilera. And even if they do, he added, he sees little likelihood that Simpson will be convicted.

Citing the failure of juries to convict four police officers in the beating of Rodney G. King or to find Lyle and Erik Menendez guilty in the slayings of their parents, Aguilera said: “I haven’t lost faith in the criminal justice system, but I have lost faith in jurors.”