If I Paid It …
Sunday, September 30th, 2007
How much did it cost to get O.J. Simpson to (hypothetically) confess to the 1994 murders of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman? According to News Corp, O.J. was paid an $880,000 advance for the book and a companion interview. (Simpson says that the money’s gone, used to pay bills and taxes. A court placed whatever’s left on hold.) Of course, News Corp’s actual costs for the confession were much higher—having to pay for the production and destruction of 400,000 copies of the original version of If I Did It, as well costs for the TV interview (never aired).
Who gets the proceeds? Under a deal struck in bankruptcy court, the family of Ron Goldman–who won a $33.5 million judgment (so far uncollected) against Simpson—gets 90 percent of the book profits and the remaining 10 per cent goes to a group of O.J.’s creditors. In what some may consider poetic justice, the 10 percent creditors includes several attorneys: a former Simpson attorney ($15,000); another attorney ($20,000); and a pair of law firms ($300,000). Other creditor’s include the book’s ghostwriter ($350,000) and Simpson’s ex-in-laws, the Brown family ($24 million).
Why didn’t Nicole Simpson’s family get more? The Brown Family objected to the settlement and sued for the right to bid on the book. But their claim was denied because they planned to kill the book, not “maximize the sale of the asset” as ordered by the bankruptcy court. The result: one victim’s family gets 90 percent of the profits and the other gets less than 10 percent.
