medusa

Mind you this isn’t a stretch of a comparison at all. People forget that when OJ was first arrested for his wife Nicole’s murder, he told cops that he was the victim of abuse - that she had hit him. He recounted a domestic violence incident years earlier, in 1989, when he’d been arrested for assaulting Nicole. He claimed that she’d been the aggressor - she’d been drinking and picking a fight. He’d merely “wrestled” her to the ground to subdue her, to stop her from hitting him (something Johnny would similarly allege in court this week when he was questioned abut a December 2015 incident where he admitted, on tape, to headbutting Amber; he insists he was simply trying to stop her from hitting him and put her in a “bear hug” and that their foreheads touched. Nothing more). He said the police didn’t believe him since he was a man. And like Johnny, O.J. would allege throughout the criminal and civil cases surrounding his wife’s murder that she’d been lying about being abused, that she pulled a Gone Girl: Photos of her with bruises? Just makeup. Diary entries where she recounted the abuse she suffered? They were concocted to void their prenup.

What would Nicole Simpson have had to do to be safe? Go underground, change her appearance and identity, get cash without leaving a trail, take her children and run—all within days of her call to the shelter. She would have had to end all communication with family and friends, without explanation, for years, as well as leave her home and everything familiar.