The Nineties: A Book

by Chuck Klosterman

Five days after the murders, on the Friday morning of June 17, 1994, Simpson was asked to surrender to authorities. Instead, he disappeared. That afternoon, his attorney, Robert Kardashian, read a letter the still-missing Simpson had left behind. Written in the past tense, it had all the signifiers of a suicide note (“I’ve had a great life,” Simpson wrote. “Please think of the real O.J. and not this lost person”). For almost an hour, people wondered whether it was only a matter of time before his corpse would be found. But then he reappeared, very much alive, holding a gun to his head in the backseat of a white Ford Bronco on I-405, chauffeured by a former teammate named Al Cowlings (later identified as O.J.’s closest friend). The freeway was cleared of westbound traffic as a fleet of police cruisers and multiple news helicopters followed the Bronco in a low-speed chase (Cowlings rarely pushed beyond forty miles per hour). After ninety minutes on the road, the vehicle finally returned to Simpson’s residence just before eight p.m. Pacific Time. Less than an hour after that, Simpson gave himself up to the police. Items found inside the Bronco included $9,000 in cash and a fake mustache and goatee.