Kim Goldman on Today - H 2014
Nearly 20 years after her brother, Ron Goldman, was killed along with O.J. Simpson‘s ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson, Kim Goldman opens up about her interactions with Simpson, including almost killing him, and how she feels that the accused murderer is now behind bars.
Goldman reveals in her new book, Can’t Forgive: My Twenty-Year Battle With O.J. Simpson, that she once considered killing the man she believes is responsible for her brother’s death, following Simpson’s acquittal in the murder trial. On Friday’s Today, Goldman shared what was going through her mind in that moment.
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“I was driving in a strip mall and this figure walked in front of my car, and I knew it was him,” Goldman said. “I was 100 percent confident. I studied him, I watched him, I knew that swagger, and I put my foot on the pedal. I white-knuckled it, I was revving the engine, and I thought, ‘I could take him out and nobody would ever know.'”
But she ultimately couldn’t do it.
“I thought of my dad, and I just couldn’t put him through that, and I’m not a killer so that wouldn’t be a part of me anyway, but I definitely fantasized it,” she added. “There was nobody around. I thought, ‘It’s just him and me.’ I had all that pent-up rage and anger, but at the end of the day, that’s not who I am.”
Although Simpson was acquitted of murdering Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson, he was later convicted of armed robbery and kidnapping in an unrelated case and is now spending 33 years in prison.
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Goldman says that while Simpson’s prison sentence was for an unrelated crime, she’s glad he’s locked up and feels like that provides some sense of justice.
“It’s justice for different reasons,” Goldman said on Today. “There’s a little part of me that thinks, ‘Finally, he’s locked away.’ I think us publishing the ‘Yes, I Did It’ book pushed [Simpson] right over the edge, but for me having him behind bars maintains some control in my life. That was sort of where I was able to breathe again because he wasn’t out raising havoc, and I was always a little nervous that he was going to pop up anywhere, so I like that he’s locked up. I’m thrilled with that.”
Goldman has written Simpson letters in prison, hoping to see him face-to-face, but a meeting has not occurred.
“I needed to see him small,” she explained about why she wants to see him again. “For so long, he had taken up so much space in my life and in my head. I needed to diminish him in size and see him in shackles and see him in an orange jumpsuit and have me be the one to finally walk away and let him watch me walk out the door.”
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Goldman also appeared on Friday’s The View, which also aired clips of Walters’ interviews with the Goldman family, including one during the murder trial and another after the civil trial.
In her View appearance, Goldman shared her thoughts on Simpson’s acquittal, saying she feels betrayed by the justice system.
“I feel betrayed by our system that I put so much faith in,” she said. “I hold Judge Lance Ito incredibly accountable for letting everything run amok in that case and letting us go on for months and months about things that had nothing to do with the hundreds of pieces of evidence that only pointed to one person’s guilt.”
And she said of Simpson’s prison sentence, “I wish it was for the crime he committed against our family, but I’ll have him locked up for a while, that feels good.”
Watch Goldman’s Today interview below.
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