Published Feb. 7, 1995|Updated Oct. 3, 2005
Was O. J. Simpson an angry and menacing man in the hours just before his wife and her friend were murdered last June, or was he relaxed and happy, kissing family members and joking with friends?
Those starkly contrasting views of Simpson were laid before jurors Monday.
Two witnesses portrayed him as "spooky" and "frightening," while a home video showed him smiling and lifting his son.
The scene was the Paul Revere Middle School in Brentwood during the early evening hours of June 12, 1994.
Simpson and his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, were among those attending a school dance recital that ended at 7:15 p.m., three hours before she and Ronald Goldman were killed.
"He had a very bizarre look in his eyes, it was a very far-away look," said Denise Brown, Nicole's sister. "It was actually really kind of spooky. It was a frightening look."
Brown, weeping periodically as she testified for a second day, said that Simpson sat alone through most of the recital, glaring at his former wife and ignoring the dancing children.
Jurors also saw two photographs of Mrs. Simpson's deeply bruised face and right arm taken by Brown after Mrs. Simpson was beaten by her husband on New Year's Day 1989, according to Brown. Judge Lance Ito excluded a third photograph that the jury saw because Brown could not recall when it was taken.
Candace Garvey, a friend of Mrs. Simpson's and the wife for former baseball player Steve Garvey, testified that when she arrived at the school, she encountered a menacing Simpson.
"It was almost like he was simmering," said Garvey, whose daughter also danced at the recital. "He just seemed a little vacant, not responsive."
She said that when she walked from the auditorium during the performance, passing right by Simpson. "His jaw was set," she said, and he was staring in the direction of Mrs. Simpson.
"When he stared at me," Garvey said, "it was like he was looking right through me, and it scared me a little bit."
Lead defense attorney Johnnie Cochran Jr., using an amateur video of the scene outside the school after the recital, showed a different Simpson.
He first played the tape for Brown, who had earlier said that there had been only a brief exchange between her parents and Simpson.
The video showed her kissing Simpson, her mother kissing Simpson and her father shaking his hand. He also hoisted his 4-year-old son, Jason, for a kiss.
Defense lawyers suggested pictures were worth more than words.
"See that smile on Mr. Simpson's face there?" asked Cochran as the photograph flashed on the courtroom's giant monitor. "Does he look happy in that photograph to you?"
"Yes, he does," admitted Garvey, who called the transformation amazing _ and added later, "I guess that's why he's a (commercial) spokesman."
Cochran later said the prosecution's version of Simpson's demeanor that night had been distorted to manipulate the jury.
"The videotape," Cochran said, "does not lie."
Earlier in the day, under questioning by the prosecution, Brown testified that Simpson had ridiculed her sister because of the weight she had gained when she was pregnant.
"He used to call her a fat pig," Brown said. "He hated fat women."
During cross-examination, defense attorney Robert Shapiro questioned Brown about her self-admitted "drinking problem." Shapiro also suggested that too many margaritas and shots of tequila had impaired her memory of two incidents in the 1980s in which she said Simpson had abused and humiliated her sister.
"I don't mean to embarrass you, but on this particular evening, could you tell us how much you had to drink?" asked Shapiro, who hinted that a sober member of party recalled the incidents differently. "Would you say that your state of sobriety was at least impaired?"
"Slightly," Brown said, who described herself as a recovering alcoholic "sober for over a year now."
In addition to establishing her as a former heavy drinker, Shapiro noted that Brown had given birth to a son out of wedlock and, at 37, still lived at home.
At the end of the day, prosecutors tried to show that Mrs. Simpson's murder closely followed her final breakup with Simpson.
Cynthia Shahian, a friend of Mrs. Simpson's, testified that her friend was horrified by a letter she received from her ex-husband on June 6, about a week before the murders.
In the formal letter, written on business stationery, Simpson advised his ex-wife that because of a "change in our circ*mstances," she was no longer welcome to use his Rockingham Avenue address as her legal residence for tax purposes.
"What was the change in their relationship?" Prosecutor Christopher Darden asked Shahian.
"They were not together as a couple."
"And did that change occur within a few weeks of Nicole Brown's death?" Darden asked.
"Yes," she said, "it did."
_ Information from the Chicago Tribune, Knight Ridder and Washington Post was used in this report.
