I was in a hotel room in Quebec, Canada breaking up with the man I had been living with (on and off) for five years, when that white Bronco came on the TV at the foot of our bed. We stopped breaking up and stayed together through most of the trial, bonded by our sense of shock and inevitable injustice. When Simpson was acquitted we broke up, disgusted with just about everything.
Living in Miami I'd hear tales about the hobbling double-murderer hanging out in the coffee shops in Kendall, and little old ladies putting down their bagels and pinching him on the cheek. My sister once ran into him at Gulfstream race track and gushed, "Oh you're him," and he liked it of course. She gets star struck, but that was a low. I like to think that I would have spit on him or at least given him the finger.
And now, a lucky thirteen years to the day, justice has peeked behind her blindfold and given us a Palinesque wink: the double murderer is headed for the slammer, maybe for life.
I may not understand the psychological underpinnings of why this ultimate sociopath wrote a book describing how he might have murdered Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman, or why he engineered a two-bit robbery with a weapon and a bunch of shady witnesses. I'm just happy he's finally getting his, in a story that seems improbably wrapped up like a 1940s film noir.
The problem is: now that the Juice is toast who will be hunting diligently and ceaselessly on the south Florida golf courses for the "real murderer"?