O.J. Simpson Trial Witness Kato Kaelin Honors Nicole Brown Simpson After O.J.’s Death

O.J. Simpson met Nicole Brown in 1977 and divorced his first wife, Marguerite, in 1979. He married Nicole on Feb. 2, 1985; their daughter Sydney was born eight months later, and son Justin was born in 1988.

“You guys never do anything,” Nicole told police when they arrived at the Simpson home at 360 N. Rockingham Ave. in L.A.’s posh Brentwood neighborhood, responding to a domestic abuse call in the the early morning hours of Jan. 1, 1989, according to reports about that night. “You never do anything. You come out. You’ve been here eight times. And you never do anything about him.”

Simpson insisted he didn’t beat Nicole, only pushed her out of bed. Then, told he needed to go with the officers to the police station, he drove off instead. A few days later, Nicole went to the station and said she didn’t really want them to proceed with a prosecution, but she consented to out-of-court mediation.

On May 24, 1989, Simpson was sentenced to 24 months of probation, ordered to perform 120 hours of community service and pay fines totaling $470, and was told to attend counseling twice a week (he was allowed to do it by phone) after pleading no contest to misdemeanor domestic violence.

Nicole eventually moved out with Justin and Sydney and filed for divorce in February 1992. They settled that October, with O.J. agreeing to pay her a lump sum of $433,750, plus $10,000 a month in child support, and she retained the title of a rental property. She eventually bought a condo at 875 S. Bundy Drive in Brentwood and moved there in January 1994.

All the while, Simpson was alternately threatening her and trying to get back together. According to prosecutors and witnesses, O.J. had stood outside and looked through her window on multiple occasions, including one time when she was having sex with a boyfriend. Per Jeffrey Toobin‘s 1996 book The Run of His Life, in a diary entry from June 3, 1994, Nicole detailed a recent threat from Simpson: “‘You hang up on me last nite, you’re gonna pay for this bitch…You think you can do any f–king thing you want, you’ve got it comming [sic]…” and so on.

She called a battered women’s shelter in Santa Monica on June 7, 1994, to lament that her ex was stalking her. Five days later she was dead.