Without a Doubt

by Marcia Clark

Chris, Scott, Lydia, and Hank Goldberg, a fellow D.A. who was terrific at writing motions, worked like Trojans to document incidences of O. J. Simpson’s brutality toward Nicole. This was not easy to do. As I’ve said, an abuser does not normally hit his victim in the presence of others. So, as a starting point, they turned to an inventory Nicole had compiled at the suggestion of her divorce lawyers. According to this document, she’d gotten her first beating right after she started to live with O. J. Simpson. A year or so later, while they were staying at the Sherry Netherland in New York City, Simpson beat Nicole for hours as she crawled for the door. From her diaries we had Nicole’s own description of how he “hit me while he fucked me.” How he called her mother a “whore.” These violent episodes continued throughout the eighties.