Judy Brown's Last Phone Call to Nicole Brown
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Judy Brown’s Last Phone Call to Nicole Brown Simpson: Proof that O.J. Is Innocent? Michael T. Griffith 2017 @All Rights Reserved If Juditha (Judy) Brown called and spoke with her daughter Nicole Brown Simpson between 10:15 and 11:00 on the night of the murders, and not at 9:40 as the prosecution claimed, this would prove that O.J. Simpson did not murder his ex-wife Nicole and her friend Ron Goldman on the night of June 12, 1994. When Lou Brown, Judy’s husband, spoke with a coroner’s investigator the day after the murders, he said Judy called Nicole at about 11:00. This is documented in the addendum to the coroner’s report. The limo driver who picked up O.J. at his house that night saw O.J. near his front door at 10:54. Anyone who has studied this case will agree that if Judy spoke with Nicole on the phone at 10:15 or later, O.J. could not have committed the murders. Judy and Lou Brown Judy called Nicole to tell her that she had left her eye glasses at the Mezzaluna restaurant, where the Browns had eaten earlier in the evening. Nicole then called the restaurant to ask one of the waiters, Ron Goldman, to bring the glasses to her. After speaking with Nicole, Goldman did not leave for at least another 10 minutes, according to co-workers at the restaurant. Goldman then went home, presumably to shower and change clothes. We know that Goldman changed clothes after he left work that night and that he ate a salad before he left his apartment to go to Nicole’s house. When Goldman brought the glasses to Nicole, he and Nicole were brutally stabbed to death on Nicole’s front patio area. If Judy called Nicole at 10:15, Goldman would not have arrived at Nicole’s house until around 10:50 or 10:55, which would rule out O.J. as a suspect. When Judy Brown was questioned by Robert Shapiro, O.J.’s defense attorney, three days after the murders, she told Shapiro that she called Nicole “shortly before 11:00”: 1 Even when his marriage to Nicole was troubled and then ultimately failed, O.J. had maintained a very close relationship with Juditha, and she had always been his friend and ally. “I’m so glad O.J. has you on his side,” she said to me. “The children need their father.” I asked her, and Nicole’s sisters Denise and Tanya as well, about the last time any of them had talked to Nicole. I was trying to narrow down the time of her death. “I talked to her shortly before 11:00 that night,” said her mother. “How do you know that for sure?” I asked. “Because when we got home from Los Angeles, I looked at the clock,” Juditha said. “I had to call her about leaving my glasses at Mezzaluna, but I didn’t want to call her too late. I remember that it was just a few minutes before 11:00.” With that information, and knowing that Allan Park had picked up O.J. at Rockingham at a few minutes before 11:00, it seemed to me that it was clear that the murders on Bundy had taken place while O.J. was verifiably at home on Rockingham. I kept checking back with Juditha, to make certain that she was certain. (Shapiro, The Search for Justice: A Defense Attorney’s Brief on the O.J. Simpson Case, New York: Warner Books, 1996, p. 33) Judy said the same thing when she was interviewed on TV shortly after the murders. She said she had spoken with Nicole on the phone at about 11:00. However, one week after the murders, Lou Brown went to the coroner’s office and said that Judy’s call could have been as early as 9:30 and no later than 10:00. About a week later, reporters asked Lou about the call time of “about 11:00” noted in the addendum to the coroner’s report, and, to judge from his wording, he seemed to put the time of the call between 10:00 and 10:30. One report quoted him as saying the call occurred at “about 10 p.m.” (Los Angeles Times, June 28, 1994). Another report quoted Lou as saying “it was probably closer to 10:00”: A coroner's report today provided information that O.J. Simpson's attorneys said could help buttress the former football superstar's alibi for the night his ex-wife and a male friend were killed. But Nicole Brown Simpson's father questioned the accuracy of the coroner's report. The report states that Nicole Simpson was "last known to be alive at about 2300 hours [11 p.m.] speaking to her mother on the telephone." But Louis Brown, Nicole Simpson's father, reached at his home by telephone, said the report was "irregular, timewise." "It was probably closer to 10 [p.m.]," Brown said of the call from his wife Judith to Nicole Simpson. Brown said his wife made two calls when she returned home that 2 night: one to the restaurant where the family had just eaten to see if she had left a pair of eyeglasses; the other to her daughter to tell her the glasses were at the restaurant. The timing of the phone calls is crucial to O.J. Simpson's claim that he was at his Brentwood mansion awaiting a limousine to take him to the airport at the time Nicole Simpson, 35, and Ronald L. Goldman, 25, were stabbed to death outside her home two miles away. (“Simpson Evidence Disputed,” Washington Post, June 28, 1994) By the normal usage of English, saying “closer to 10:00” when being asked to comment on a time of “about 11:00” would usually mean between 10:00 and 10:30, not before 10:00. If Lou had meant to say the call was earlier than 10:00, presumably he would have said “before 10:00” or “prior to 10:00.” However, Lou might have been using “closer to” as a synonym for “before.” In subsequent interviews, he insisted that the call occurred before 10:00. Perhaps this is an appropriate time to note that the Browns turned against O.J. soon after the murders and made many false statements about him. For example, a few weeks after the murders, Lou Brown falsely claimed in an interview that O.J. had stopped sending child support payments. When Denise Brown, Nicole’s older sister, first spoke about the issue of domestic abuse after the murders, she said she did not consider Nicole to have been a battered wife, but later she painted O.J. as a cruel husband and a chronic wife abuser, even though Nicole specified in writing in 1992 and on tape in October 1993 that O.J. had not touched her in anger since January 1989 (over five years before the murders). Denise and Judy testified that O.J. acted like he was in a dark, angry mood during his daughter’s dance recital a few hours before the murders, but that was not what Denise had told the police before the trial, and the defense obtained a home video taken right after the recital that showed Denise and Judy saying a friendly goodbye to O.J. and even kissing him on the cheek (the video also showed O.J. smiling and shaking hands with Lou Brown). Judy testified at the civil trial that when she asked O.J. at Nicole’s wake if he had anything to do with the murders, he would not answer her, when in fact she had originally said the opposite in a TV interview. When Judy was confronted with the TV interview during cross-examination, she conceded that O.J. had in fact answered her question and that he had denied any involvement in the murders. Many other examples could be given. When waiter Ron Goldman heard that Nicole’s mother had left her eye glasses at the restaurant, he volunteered to take them to Nicole. “Ron interjected he’d be happy to return them,” said Tia Gavin, who waited on the Brown party (“Santa Rosa Woman Who Testified in O.J. Simpson Trial Reacts to His Parole,” The Press Democrat, July 21, 2017). Then, when Nicole called the restaurant, she asked to speak with Goldman and asked him to bring the glasses to her, according to Mezzaluna bar manager Karen Crawford, who took the call (criminal trial transcript, February 7, 1995). Although the prosecution claimed that Nicole and Goldman were just casual friends, they were in fact dating and had been seen together in clubs and elsewhere during the 3 months leading up to the murders. Goldman had even been seen driving Nicole’s car around town. Based on interviews with some of Goldman’s friends, the Los Angeles Times reported, Goldman also had an increasingly close relationship with 35-year-old Nicole Brown Simpson, whom he had exercised with, accompanied to dance clubs, and often met for coffee and dinner during the past month and a half. (“Victim Thrived on Life in Fast Lane, His Friends Recall,” Los Angeles Times, June 15, 1994) So it is not surprising that after Judy called the restaurant, Goldman volunteered to take the glasses to Nicole. Nor is it surprising that a few minutes after Judy called, Nicole called the restaurant, asked to talk to Goldman, and then asked him to bring the glasses to her.