Ex-Wife Fabricated Domestic Abuse Charges, Simpson Says

In his first sworn account of the events surrounding the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman, O.J. Simpson has alleged to lawyers for the victims’ families and estates that his ex-wife not only abused drugs but also concocted stories of domestic violence in an abortive attempt to abrogate their prenuptial agreement.

During a wide-ranging and as-yet-incomplete deposition taken over five days late last month, Simpson underwent a grueling, detailed, and at times contentious interrogation at the hands of Daniel M. Petrocelli, lead attorney for Ronald L. Goldman’s father, Fred, in the wrongful death lawsuit filed against the former football star.

The 1,534-page transcript of their exchange, which occurred behind closed doors, has been obtained by The Times. The explanations and accounts offered by Simpson while under oath contain a number of previously unknown facts and strikingly different accounts of some of the case’s most controversial aspects. These include Simpson’s flight from arrest and the many instances of alleged domestic violence, which Simpson testified did not occur.

Simpson also offered versions of events that occurred on the night of the killings and the next day that flatly contradict testimony offered during the double murder trial that ended in his acquittal.

Among the more significant testimony elicited from Simpson so far:

* He made a phone call to his ex-wife less than two hours before police and prosecutors contend that the murders were committed. The existence of that call was never disclosed at his trial. According to Simpson, he asked to speak with his daughter Sydney, whose dance recital he had attended earlier in the day. Simpson testified he avoided any conversation with Nicole Simpson during the call. During the criminal trial, Simpson’s guest house tenant, Brian “Kato” Kaelin, testified that Simpson was “upset” and “agitated” when he returned from the recital because Nicole had limited his contact with their daughter.

* The ex-football star said he was unable to explain the cuts observed on his hands after the murders and, in fact, contradicted a statement he gave LAPD investigators the day after the murders concerning the origin of some of them. In a statement given to homicide Dets. Tom Lange and Philip L. Vannatter, which was never used by prosecutors in court, Simpson said he cut his hand while rushing to leave his Brentwood home and again the next day, when he broke a glass in his Chicago hotel room while in distress over learning of his ex-wife’s death. In the deposition, Simpson testified that he cut his hand when he picked up a shard of broken glass he saw on the floor of his hotel bathroom, and that he does not know how the water glass was broken.

* Simpson gave an account of the night of the murders that differs in key details from testimony offered by Kaelin concerning the period of time between his return from the dance recital and his departure for Los Angeles International Airport to catch a flight to Chicago.

* Simpson flatly denied ever telling limousine driver Allan Park, who drove him to the airport, that he overslept and failed to hear Park when he initially rang the buzzer at Simpson’s Rockingham estate. Park testified twice under oath that that was the explanation the former football star offered for his tardiness on the night of the murders.

* Simpson denied receiving a telephone message from Paula Barbieri saying that she was breaking off their relationship. During her deposition, Barbieri testified that Simpson left three messages for her; their full content has yet to be disclosed. Simpson offered no explanation as to why, if he felt his relationship with Barbieri was ongoing, he left a message for another woman that evening saying he was now totally “free” of other involvements.

Combative Witness

These accounts, which were not only transcribed but also videotaped in the West Los Angeles offices of Mitchell, Silberberg & Knupp--the law firm representing Fred Goldman--seem to show Simpson as a self-possessed, sometimes combative witness who frequently disregards the advice of his own chief counsel, Robert C. Baker.

At one point Baker accused his client of wanting “to give monologues against his lawyer’s advice,” to which the Brown family’s attorney John Q. Kelly responded: “I especially want to hear things against his lawyer’s advice.”

Elsewhere in the interrogation, Simpson gave a far more expansive account of his criminal defense lawyers’ claim that he passed the time waiting to leave for the airport on the night of the murders by chipping golf balls on his front lawn. Despite the fact that activity was carried out in the dark, Simpson testified he left “no divots” on his lawn and, in fact, none were subsequently discovered by police investigators, who did find golf balls, according to the transcripts.

Simpson also described how--after being informed of his wife’s death--he made a frantic series of phone calls from Chicago to friends and advisors--some of whom, he said, joined him in prayer. Others, he testified, were less sympathetic. For example, according to Simpson, Nicole Simpson’s sister Denise “started screaming,” seemed to accuse him of responsibility for the murders and “then the phone went dead.”

Hours later, after returning to his Rockingham estate in what he repeatedly described as “great pain” over his ex-wife’s death, Simpson and his friend and attorney Robert Kardashian returned to the airport to retrieve the former football star’s prized golf clubs, which had inadvertently been left behind.

On the day the LAPD expected his surrender, which led to his notorious low-speed chase, Simpson says, he and his friend A.C. Cowlings hid for some time in an orange grove near the cemetery where Nicole Simpson had been buried days before. Unable to visit her grave because police were guarding the cemetery’s entrance, Simpson began to discuss suicide and climbed into the back seat of Cowlings’ Ford Bronco, clutching a pistol to his chest. Simpson acknowledged that he never cocked the pistol.

That sequence of events, according to Simpson, led Cowlings to begin the televised journey back to the former football star’s estate, where he believed his mother was waiting.

Before setting out that day, Simpson has testified, he gave an amended version of his will to his longtime personal attorney, Skip Taft, and turned over to Cowlings at least $10,000 in cash and an envelope containing thousands more in checks he had won on golf bets.

When they fled Kardashian’s San Fernando Valley home, the two former NFL players took not only the cash, but also a .357 magnum pistol--part of Simpson’s private arsenal that included, according to Simpson’s deposition, an M-16 semiautomatic rifle and a number of large knives that he had acquired for aesthetic reasons and for use while camping. They carried along a professionally designed disguise that included a false beard and mustache. He had obtained the disguise, Simpson said, in order to fend off fans during a planned trip to Knott’s Berry Farm with his children.

However, nothing in Simpson’s deposition differs more strikingly from the impression prosecutors attempted to convey during the criminal trial than his sworn characterization of his stormy relationship with his former wife.

Simpson denied “ever” having struck or choked his then-wife. He testified that the bruises and contusions visible in photographs of Nicole Brown Simpson taken during their marriage were the result of defensive actions he took to fend off his wife’s physical assaults on him during arguments or of her habit of “picking” at her facial blemishes.

Asked repeatedly whether he ever “slapped, hit, strangled, choked, beat or hurt” his then-wife, Simpson replied over and over with the word “never.” This included the 1989 incident after which Simpson pleaded no contest to charges of spousal battery.

Petrocelli then asked: “And if Nicole said you did those things to her, she would not be telling the truth?”

Simpson replied, “Correct.”

Shortly afterward, Petrocelli inquired, “She would write notes to herself or journal entries about your beating her when that didn’t occur?”

“Yes, that’s correct,” Simpson responded.

Petrocelli then asked, “Why would she do such things?”

“Because she wanted me to tear up my prenuptial agreement,” Simpson testified, “and I gather her lawyers and her came up with that as a scheme.”

From other questions posed by Petrocelli during the deposition, it appears that the plaintiffs have witnesses who may testify to acts of domestic violence alleged to have occurred in San Francisco, New York and on Victoria Beach near Laguna, in a limousine after leaving a Beverly Hills social event, and at a Red Onion restaurant in Malibu, although Simpson denies categorically that any such confrontations occurred. He also denied absolutely ever stalking his ex-wife or following her in any fashion.

Twice during the course of the interrogation, Simpson alleged that Nicole Simpson was abusing drugs and drinking to excess, behavior he said so concerned him that he raised the issue with her mother, Juditha Brown.

Drug Use Denied

At one point, Simpson emphatically denied ever using marijuana, cocaine or methamphetamine himself. Baker, his lawyer, then intervened to prevent Simpson from answering any other questions on the topic. Moments later, Petrocelli asked, “Do you have any information whatsoever that in 1994 Nicole Brown Simpson abused or took illegal narcotics?”

“Yes,” Simpson responded.

“What is that information?” Petrocelli inquired.

“She told me on one occasion, and people that I talked to” also reported her mention of it, Simpson said.

He testified that he complained strongly about his ex-wife’s relationship with Keith Zlomsowitch, another prosecution witness never called to testify during the criminal trial. Simpson alleged that while looking through a window, he observed Nicole Simpson and Zlomsowitch engaged in a sex act on the living room couch, while the Simpson children slept upstairs.

The former football star’s description of his ex-wife’s alleged instability even extended to what he called her “phobia about frogs.” According to Simpson, the issue arose when he told Nicole Simpson he was playing the part of “the frogman” in a film about U.S. Navy commandos.

Petrocelli questioned Simpson extensively about his relationship with Kaelin, their activities on the night of the murders and calls Simpson made to Kaelin after the police told him that his former wife had been found murdered.

Asked if he considered Kaelin among his best friends, Simpson said no. Rather, he characterized Kaelin as an acquaintance, someone who “seemed to be a nice guy,” though sometimes “goofy.”

On the day of the murders, Simpson said he and Kaelin had conversed about “a little basketball and girls.” Asked for details, Simpson said they discussed his relationship with Barbieri and conceded to Kaelin that he didn’t know where Barbieri was: “She’s either out of town or she’s hiding from me. . . . I didn’t say she was upset with me, but she’s probably pissed or something,” he said.

Moreover, Simpson said that he talked on the phone to Playboy playmate Tracy Adele on the phone that day, at Kaelin’s suggestion.

On the third day of the deposition, Petrocelli zeroed in on the night of the murders, when Kaelin told Simpson that he had heard a loud noise outside his room. Simpson responded that he initially “wasn’t focused on what Kato was talking about.” He acknowledged that he gave Kaelin his security alarm code that evening for the first time and that he called him from the limousine on his way to the airport to make sure everything was secure at his home.

The sharpest exchange regarding Kaelin came on the fifth day of the deposition when Petrocelli demanded that Simpson explain why he had called his guest house tenant after being informed by police about the murders.

Petrocelli asked, “Why would you call Kato Kaelin within an hour of finding out that your wife has been murdered?” Simpson answered: “Because he was at my home. He talked about some noises the night before.”

A moment later, Petrocelli asked: “So you made an association between the murder and those--and the sounds Kaelin heard?” Simpson responded: “I may have.”

But Simpson never reached Kaelin, even though phone records indicate he tried to reach him three or four times by the time his plane landed in Los Angeles. Simpson denied that it was his intention to go over his “story” with Kaelin.

After Petrocelli asked Simpson why he was “so insistent” on trying to reach Kaelin, the former football star’s attorney told Simpson not to answer, saying the question was argumentative.

At this point, Simpson said that he also called his personal attorney Taft, and his longtime assistant Cathy Randa, but said they weren’t at his home and couldn’t tell him much. Nor, he said, could his daughter Arnelle. Hence, the former football star said, his calls to Kaelin.

Shortly afterward, Petrocelli asked, “What made you associate the noises that Kaelin heard with Nicole’s murder?”

Simpson responded: “I didn’t really associate anything.” Soon thereafter, Baker and Petrocelli had an argument about what Simpson had said on this point, with Baker insisting: “I wrote it down. He did not associate.”

Night of the Murders

Eventually, the court reporter read back the testimony, but the debate didn’t end and after Simpson denied that, as his interrogator characterized it, he “wanted to talk to Kaelin to cover your tracks,” Petrocelli moved on to another subject.

Goldman’s lawyer asked Simpson numerous questions concerning his tardiness in responding to the calls of limousine driver Park the night of the murders.

At the preliminary hearing and at the trial, Park testified that Simpson told him he had overslept and that was why he did not immediately respond when Park came to pick him up and take him to the airport for an 11:45 p.m. flight to Chicago.

Moreover, shortly after the murders, one of Simpson’s attorneys, Robert L. Shapiro, publicly said that his client was asleep at the time of the murders.

In his opening statement during the criminal trial, Simpson’s lead lawyer Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. appeared to contradict Shapiro when he said that his client was chipping golf balls at 10:10 p.m. Just what Simpson was doing at that time was never definitively resolved because he never took the witness stand and no eyewitness saw him between the time he left Kaelin after they returned from McDonald’s at 9:36 p.m. and Park entered the grounds of the estate about 10:55.

That point was conceded by Simpson under questioning during the deposition.

Park was considered one of the prosecution’s most credible witnesses because of his good memory, his demeanor and his decision not to sell his story to tabloid media despite entreaties to do so.

Park also was very careful in how far he would go in his testimony, in particular declining to say definitively that he did not see Simpson’s Bronco in front of the house when he arrived or when he left to take him to the airport.

Park testified at the trial that he saw a black person about 6 feet tall and weighing about 200 pounds stride through Simpson’s front door about 10:55 p.m.

Park also testified that he had been ringing the intercom buzzer at the gate of Simpson’s Brentwood estate for several minutes before the person entered Simpson’s house. Once the person darted inside, Park said, he tried the buzzer again and this time Simpson answered, apologizing for having overslept and promising to be down in a few minutes.

After Park described the figure, prosecutor Marcia Clark asked Simpson to rise in the courtroom and she asked Park whether Simpson resembled the shadowy figure who entered the house. The driver responded: “Yes, around that size.”

During the deposition, though, Simpson denied that he said anything about oversleeping. Simpson said that when he picked up the phone in his bedroom, he started talking before Park said anything, thinking it was Dale St. John, his regular limousine driver: “Yeah, yeah, I know I’m running late. I’ll be right down,” Simpson recalled saying.

Simpson said he hung up and Park called back and told him “rather tentatively, ‘I’ve been here,’ and I said--I guess I said something about, ‘Yeah, I know. I’ve been in the shower, but I’m coming right down,’ and that was it.”

Then Petrocelli asked Simpson, “You did not tell him you had overslept. Correct?”

Simpson replied, “Absolutely not.”

“And you in fact had not been sleeping, correct?” Petrocelli asked. “True,” said Simpson.

At another point, Simpson said he had not been very conscious of the time on the night of the June 12, 1994, murders. He said he had been sitting on his bed for “10, 15 minutes” and eventually noticed on his bedroom clock that it was 10:35 p.m. or 10:40 p.m. and that he had to get moving. He said he got up, went to the bathroom, “jumped in the shower” and then “started finishing packing my suitcase.”

But he said he didn’t know what time he finished dressing, only that the limousine driver was there when he did. He said he first heard the phone ring while he was in the shower and didn’t answer it.

Simpson said he knew this was the limousine driver because he stepped out of the shower and saw the light flashing on his phone. However, Park testified that he arrived at Simpson’s home at 10:25 p.m. and rang the buzzer--at the time that Simpson said he was sitting on his bed.

There was also considerable questioning about Park’s shadowy figure testimony and Simpson offered an account that was generally consistent with a call he made to television talk show host Larry King on Oct. 4, 1995, the night after the jury acquitted him on murder charges.

Simpson told King and reiterated in the deposition that the person Park saw was him. But Simpson offered a benign interpretation. He said that Park saw him reenter the house after he had come downstairs “to see if I had black shoes in my golf bag.”

He said he gestured to the driver, still outside the gate--thinking it was St. John or another driver who knew how to open his Ashford St. gate without being buzzed in.

However, that leaves a key question unanswered: Why Park only saw Simpson enter the house, but did not see him leaving the house a moment earlier.

Simpson said that when he went upstairs about 10:15 after hitting golf balls, “I turned off the lights at some point downstairs.”

He said he thinks he first turned off the lights in the TV room and then the overhead lights in the kitchen, but not the coach lights outside.

Simpson said that when he went upstairs, lights still were burning in his kitchen, entryway and bedroom.

In an attempt to knock down testimony from Park that Simpson’s house was dark when he arrived, Simpson said he conducted an experiment several times in the last month to prove to his lawyers “that you can’t tell what lights are on in my house from the gates.”

He said a number of lights could be on in the house and those lights could not be seen from the Ashford gate where Park drove up.

“Why did it look like no lights were on?” Petrocelli asked. Simpson responded: “You’d have to ask God that.”

When Petrocelli followed up, by asking, “Why?” Simpson got only one word--”because”--out of his mouth before Baker interjected, “Because he’s a physicist.”

There were numerous contentious exchanges between Petrocelli and Baker during the five days of interrogation. Baker frequently told Simpson not to answer questions and on one occasion accused Petrocelli of badgering his client as if they were part of a “Perry Mason” episode.

Perhaps the sharpest exchange occurred Jan. 23, when Baker said Simpson could not answer a question about certain items recovered from Cowlings’ Ford Bronco after the low speed chase. Petrocelli asked, “Why did you mention A.C., Mr. Baker?”

Baker quickly retorted: “My depo isn’t being taken,” prompting Petrocelli to say that was exactly his point. Then it got nastier.

“I don’t care what your point is, and I’m trying to respond to your question,” Baker snapped. Then Petrocelli declared, “My point is, stop trying to suggest answers. The witness can speak for himself. Just make an objection.”

Baker then declared: “Well thank you very much for making your speech, and I really am not asking for legal advice from you, so I will put anything on the record that I feel like I am going to.”

There were numerous questions about Simpson’s relationship with Barbieri, including whether their relationship was “monogamous.”

After the lawyers had an exchange on the meaning of the word “monogamous,” Petrocelli asked: “Am I missing something Mr. Baker?” prompting the following response from his adversary:

“Sir, I don’t think you’ve missed a hair on Mr. Simpson’s face so far. You have redefined tedium.”

“The truth is in the details,” Petrocelli retorted.

Times staff writer Jim Newton contributed to this story.

* SIMPSON TESTIMONY

Excerpts from transcripts. A17

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

About the Deposition

Civil lawyers have been able to place O.J. Simpson where prosecutors couldn’t--in the witness chair. Here are some ways the civil trial and deposition process are different:

* No 5th Amendment: In the criminal trial, which ended with Simpson’s acquittal on murder charges Oct. 3, Simpson exercised his constitutional right not to testify in his own defense. However, he has no such right in civil actions, such as the wrongful death lawsuits brought by the families and estates of the slain Ronald L. Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson.

* Fact finding: A deposition serves as a critical fact-finding element in civil lawsuits. Lawyers use depositions to gather information, to obtain leads and to attempt to pin witnesses down to a version of events that can be held up in court if the witness offers contradictory testimony before a jury. Attorneys on both sides plan to depose numerous other witnesses in addition to Simpson.

* Public vs. private: Although Simpson’s deposition is being taken in private, it is being recorded by a court stenographer and on videotape. In November, Simpson’s attorneys attempted to get the deposition sealed--a request that was denied by Santa Monica Superior Court Judge Alan B. Haber. The deposition is set to resume Feb. 19. The trial is scheduled to start April 2.