OJ’s pursuit not over for one woman

It was the car chase that brought a nation screeching to a halt.

On June 17 1994 a white Ford Bronco containing a fugitive OJ Simpson led a convoy of police cars down southern California’s freeways – and 95-million Americans could not take their eyes off it.

Coverage of massive sporting events like the NBA finals and the US Open was interrupted with footage of the chase, while Domino’s Pizza reported record delivery orders from viewers unwilling to miss a single moment.

Twenty-five years later, that moment captured by hovering television helicopters and breathless newsmen remains an obsession.

But for one viewer, it held a particular fascination.

“We were huddled around and watching, no-one was breathing – we just stood there in complete awe and fascination,” Kim Goldman recalls in a new podcast. “It was weird because there [were] people hoping he would kill himself.

“And my dad and I just did not – we wanted him to be brought in and held accountable.”

Five days earlier, Goldman’s brother Ron had been stabbed to death alongside Simpson’s former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson.

In her 10-part podcast Confronting OJ Simpson, launched on the anniversary of the killings, Goldman sets out why she feels justice has not been served.

Simpson was famously acquitted in 1995 by a Los Angeles jury in a case decried by many as a media circus which became known as the “trial of the century”.

The acquittal of the Hollywood actor and former football star was greeted with disbelief by many Americans, with opinion on the sportsman’s guilt divided sharply along racial lines.

Simpson was later found liable for the deaths in a 1997 civil suit and ordered to pay damages to Goldman’s family totalling $33.5m (R496m). Most remains unpaid. Simpson maintains his innocence and has always denied trying to flee during the famous Bronco chase, even though he had ignored a police deadline to turn himself in.

He told a LAPD detective over the phone during the slow-speed pursuit to “let them all know I wasn’t running”, but rather visiting Nicole’s grave.

For Geoffrey Alpert, a University of South Carolina professor who studies police chases, Simpson’s celebrity heightened a deep-rooted fascination with the idea of a dangerous pursuit.

“We’re waiting for the collision – no-one wants anyone to die but we certainly like to see some mayhem,” he said, comparing televised chases with wildly popular Nascar races.

“The media has a broader fascination with that kind of event in the States than anywhere else,” he said.

“It goes back to when someone would rob a bank and the sheriff would jump on his horse and chase him.”

The car itself, owned by Simpson’s friend Al Cowlings who was driving during the pursuit, is on display in a Tennessee crime museum.

To the disappointment of fans who gathered on overpasses along the chase route that day with signs saying “Run OJ Run” and “Go OJ”, Simpson eventually surrendered.

But for Goldman, that has not led to any closure.

Simpson, now 71, was freed from jail in 2017 after serving nine years behind bars for an unrelated armed robbery.