OJ lashes out at slain ex
2004-06-06 22:05
Los Angeles - OJ Simpson has lashed out angrily at the slain ex-wife he was accused of murdering 10 years ago and rallied in support of fellow accused stars Michael Jackson and Kobe Bryant.
The former US football star came out with guns blazing in a series of rare and startling television interviews he granted on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the double murders for which he was tried and acquitted.
Fox News interviewer Greta Van Susteren asked Simpson, 56, if he ever thought of Nicole Brown Simpson, who was brutally slashed to death outside her Los Angels flat along with her lover Ron Goldman on June 12, 1994.
"Yeah, I thought about her the other day, when it was her birthday, obviously, from time to time," he said in the interview due to be broadcast in the United States on Monday.
"There's times I'm angry at her because there's times when she could be doing things with the kids better than I, emotional stuff, especially with my daughter, and I'm angry with her," he said in excerpts seen on Friday.
Angry
Simpson, who maintains his innocence of the murders, added that he was angry at Brown for "hanging out" with a shady group of people in the last days of her life, saying that ultimately led to her slaying.
Simpson was found not guilty of murdering Brown and Goldman after a sensational criminal trial in 1995 that was watched live across the globe on cable television.
But he lost a 1997 civil trial in which he was found liable for the deaths and ordered to pay Goldman's family $8.5m.
In the interview, Simpson also accused Brown's sister Denise of profiting financially from Nicole's death over the years.
But he reserved some of his more inflammatory comments for the sexual assault accusers of pop icon Michael Jackson and of National Basketball Association star Kobe Bryant, who are both awaiting trial.
Simpson said fellow black sportsman Bryant may be a victim of his NBA fame and that many sports stars "have found themselves in a situation like that before. I have, certainly, in my life."
"In my opinion, 'date rape' and 'stranger rape' are two different things entirely," he said, referring to the charges that Bryant raped a 19-year-old woman in his Colorado hotel room last year. Bryant has denied the charge, insisting the encounter was consensual.
Michael Jackson
Turning to the child molestation allegations against Jackson, who is accused of abusing a 12-year-old-boy at his Neverland Ranch last year, Simpson said he doubted that his friend had committed the crime.
"I just have never seen that in him? I think Michael is just an affectionate guy toward kids," Simpson said adding that his children Sydney and Justin has visited Neverland in the 1990s.
He predicted that Jackson, whom he considers "asexual," would be acquitted because his accusers will not be believable in court.
"I think the credibility of the parent, the mother, will probably set him free," he said.
Jackson has pleaded innocent to a child molestation and other charges contained 10-count indictment in California that was handed down after the family of a young cancer patient accused him of abuse last year.
The embattled millionaire claims that the allegations against him are part a plot by the accuser's family to extort money from him.
The Jackson and Bryant proceedings, which are covered in minute detail by media whose appetite for such fare was piqued by the Simpson trial, are being dubbed the celebrity trials of the new century.
The publicity-friendly onetime actor also revealed he may get his own practical-jokes reality television show that he said might be called "Juiced."