Goldman's enduring vendetta

From the magazine

Fred Goldman is obsessed, says Neely Tucker in The Washington Post. Every day of his life is spent trying, in some way, to get even with O.J. Simpson, the man he is convinced murdered his son, Ron, in 1994. “I made a promise to Ron that I would pursue this bastard,” he says. “That we would never let this go.” Last year, Simpson cooperated in the writing of a book entitled If I Did It, which provides an account of how the former football star might have come upon Ron with his ex-wife, Nicole, gotten into a fight, lost control, and found them both bloodied and dead on the ground. When the project died amid a firestorm of controversy, Goldman gained the rights under the terms of the 1997 civil court judgment that found Simpson responsible for the killings. Goldman has now published his own, modified version, with additional text by himself and others. The biggest change, though, is on the cover: The title word “If” is rendered so tiny as to be almost undetectable. “To be able to occasionally say ‘Damn it, we nailed the SOB’ is a very positive experience,” Goldman says. “I wish we could do it more often.” Still, he acknowledges that no matter how hard he tries, he’ll probably never be satisfied. “The reality of the past 13 years is that it’s always a part of daily life. It never, ever goes away. You remember it every day in some form. The days you’d think are positives—holidays, anniversary, birthdays, someone talking about the achievements of their 30-year-old son—it only reminds you of what is not there.”

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