Getty Images
Nicole Brown Simpson’s sisters are speaking out three decades after she tragically became a symbol of domestic violence.
On June 12, 1994, Nicole and her friend Ron Goldman were found brutally murdered outside their Brentwood home. Her ex-husband OJ Simpson was arrested for murder but was acquitted of all criminal charges. He passed away in April 2024 after a battle with cancer.
Tanya, Dennis and Dominic spoke to “Extra’s” Mona Kosar Abdi about her exploits and the shocking double murder that haunts them to this day.
“I was shocked and really angry for years,” Dennis said.
The women recalled Nicole’s comments about the abuse she suffered and said it still haunts them, 30 years on.
Mona asked Dennis, “Nicole said she thought he was going to kill her, right?”
She recalled her sister saying, “He’s going to kill me and get away with it. Let’s go to lunch.”
Dominique added, “Yeah, she was like, ‘OJ’s gone mad again, this time he broke down the front door and yelled and all that, but ha ha ha, let’s go for a run.’
Dennis said Nicole didn’t have very serious conversations because she was protecting her friends and family.
She was shielding her family from the truth that she was being abused at home by O.J.
Mona asked if they held any grudges against NFL players.
“I was the first to say publicly that I thought he was guilty,” Dennis noted.
When he got a call from police the morning after the murder, Dennis thought it was a prank.
Dennis said, “We’d just been out with Nicole the night before, so I picked up the phone and said, ‘Who is this?’ and he said, ‘Detective Tom Lang, your sister’s been murdered.’ I said, ‘Oh my goodness. He’s finally done it. He’s finally killed her.’ It was just a gut feeling, I knew it in my heart. He said, ‘Who?’ and I said, ‘O.J. Simpson.'”
Now Dennis, Dominic and Tanya are appearing in the new Lifetime Documentary “The Life and Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson”
“Do you feel like this is drawing attention to Nicole as a person?” Mona asked.
Tanya said, “You’re going to see her move, you’re going to hear her talk, you’re going to hear her voice. The only voice I remember of Nicole is the audio of the 911 call, so as we collect all the videos and put it all together in this beautiful montage of her, it really brings her to life.”
Mona asked, “What misconceptions do you think will be cleared up after watching this documentary?”
“In terms of the smear campaign against Nicole’s memory portraying her as… this documentary portrays her as a wonderful, loving mother, a caring mother,” Dominique said.
Tanya was still in high school when Nicole and O.J.’s children, Justin and Sydney, were born, and she admits she didn’t know much about her sister’s marriage until it was too late.
Wearing her sister’s keepsake watch on her wrist, she says, “I’m wearing Nicole’s watch, so she’s with me.”
“I didn’t know about Nicole’s abuse,” Tanya said, “and when I found out about it in court and saw the documentary, I was very, very angry.”
As far as the sisters know, Justin and Sydney have not yet seen the documentary, which premieres Saturday and Sunday nights.
“I don’t know if they’ll see it,” Dominic said.
She continued, “I think it’s been a long time. They’ve grown up, they’ve become adults, they have their own families, they want to live normal lives.”
The sisters also made a shocking revelation from the documentary, saying LAPD officers revealed that OJ’s first wife, Marguerite, was also a victim of domestic violence – something she has always denied.
“When I heard it was Margaret Simpson I said ‘Wow’ – we were shocked. We both fell off our chairs. We were in shock,” Dennis recalled.
When Mona asked if the anniversary of the murders felt any different in the wake of OJ’s death, Dominique responded, “When OJ died, it was complicated, sad and confusing because it could be the end of a 30-year chapter in our lives where we’d had a lot of turmoil. But it was also a 50-year relationship with him, so it was very sad. And I maintain a relationship with my children, but long story short, they’d lost a parent at that point.”
“The Life and Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson” will premiere on Lifetime on June 1st and 2nd.
