The sister of Ron Goldman has spoken out 25 years after her brother was murdered, sparking the high-profile O.J. Simpson trial that gripped the nation.
“I usually reserve the peace and quiet of the day to myself,” Kim Goldman told ABC News, which noted that she always marked the anniversary of his death in silence. “This is the year of confronting.”
Goldman recalled that her brother, who was 25, was returning a pair of glasses to Nicole Brown Simpson’s Los Angeles home when they were killed.
“He put himself in harm’s way to protect somebody else,” Goldman said in the interview on June 11. “His last act of his life really showed you exactly who he was—his dedication and his commitment to his friends and the people that he loved and cared about. Even Nicole, for all we know who was an acquaintance. He didn’t run.”
O.J. later went to trial for the double murder and was acquitted of criminal charges. In 1997, he was found liable for wrongful death in a civil case and was ordered to pay tens of millions to the families of Brown and Goldman.
“There’s been so much coverage,” Goldman told the broadcaster, but also “a lot of missed opportunities, I think, to ask questions that go a little bit beyond the more obvious.”
O.J. Simpson attends a parole hearing at Lovelock Correctional Center in Lovelock, Nevada on July 20, 2017. (Photo by Jason Bean-Pool/Getty Images)Goldman said she is launching a podcast, “Confronting: O.J. Simpson,” and will interview people involved in the case.
“For me to be able to sit down with people I’ve had such a profound relationship with, or have been connected to for so long, seems like a great way to go a little bit deeper,” she said. “I’m proud of how far I’ve come and my dad has come. I’m proud of the growth and resiliency and the courage.”
About her brother, Ron, if he were alive, “he would be 50,” she said.
“It’s really hard to kind of wrap my head around who he would have become. Those are … realizations that are really hard for me, because they’ll never be,” she said.
Goldman said that when she speaks to her 15-year-old son about her brother, she describes Ron as a hero and doesn’t go into details about his murder.
“I don’t suffocate in my grief,” she also told The Associated Press in a recent interview. “But every milestone that my kid hits, every milestone that I hit, you know, those are just reminders of what I’m not able to share with my brother and what he is missing out on.”
In the interview, she also questioned if Simpson is following his parole conditions.
“Yeah, I hear he’s living the life of Riley out there in Las Vegas, being treated like a king,” Goldman sarcastically said.
Simpson’s Response 25 Years Later
Simpson told The Associated Press he is happy and healthy living in Las Vegas, plays golf nearly every day, and stays in touch with his children.
“Life is fine,” Simpson recently told AP in a telephone interview from his home.
He added that neither he nor his children want to talk about June 12, 1994, the night his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman were stabbed to death. Simpson was ultimately acquitted of the crime in what came to be known as “The Trial of the Century.”
“We don’t need to go back and relive the worst day of our lives,” he said as Wednesday’s anniversary of the killings approached. “The subject of the moment is the subject I will never revisit again. My family and I have moved on to what we call the ‘no negative zone.’ We focus on the positives.”
Relatives of the two victims are disgusted Simpson is able to live the way he does while their loved ones had their lives cut short so tragically.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
