Judith Regan Statement: Why I Did It

Nov. 16, 2006 — -- Judith Regan, publisher of "If I Did It," which is being described by as O.J. Simpson's fictional "confession" to the slayings of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman. Below is a statement Regan issued through her publicist.

I was sitting with Howard Stern, of all people, when the verdict came down. Many of you probably remember where you were at that moment. It was a moment I, like so many others, was dreading.

Because, I knew that the "killer," as Kim Goldman so eloquently named him, would be acquitted. I knew it from my own experience.

Conviction is what I wanted -- and not just in the legal sense.

I wanted it because I had once been that young woman who loved with all of her heart and believed in the goodness of man, the trusting girl who fell for the guy, who believed in the beauty of romance, the power of love, the joy of family and the miracle of motherhood. Like Nicole Brown, I believed with all my heart … and then got punched in the face.

Literally.

On that day, October 3, 1995, as Howard and I sat watching the television with a conference room full of people, I said, "He'll be acquitted." I said it out loud, and the others in the room looked at me in a way I'd been looked at before: "Oh, God. She's crazy."

But I knew it, because I'd been there. I'd listened to the lies ("She hit herself'), watched him charm the police ("Sir, I don't know why she's saying this"), endured the ignorance of one cop who looked at me with disdain and said "You must like it," and couldn't understand why they didn't believe me.

That man was tall, dark, and handsome. A great athlete. A brilliant mind. He was even a doctor, with an M.D. after his name and a degree that came with an oath: "First, do no harm." He was one of the brightest men I'd ever met. And he could charm anyone. He charmed me. We had a child. And then he knocked me out, with a blow to my head, and sent me to the hospital.

He manipulated, lied, and broke my heart.

And then, after all but leaving me for dead in a hospital, where his daughter died a few days later, he left for good.

So as I watched this new scene play itself out, I knew that this man -- the killer, as Kim calls him -- would be acquitted. I'd seen it before: The men in court, dressed in their designer suits, blaming the women they attacked. I'd seen, firsthand, the "criminal injustice system," as I called it in my twenties -- the system that let him go one night after assaulting me so he could come right back and do it again.

I had my witnesses, thank God, or no one would have believed me. But he, too, had his fans, the ones who could not believe that a man that smart, that good-looking, and that successful "would ever do anything like that."

"Why," one of my own family members said in one of the many denials I'd heard, "would someone like him do that to you? Why? And if he did, you must have done something to provoke him." I'd heard it all.

So when the verdict came down, I watched the faces in the room freeze in shock.

"I told you," I said, and left the room.

The Trial of the Century, as it was called, was not just a moment for me, it was a seminal moment in American history. The curtain was pulled back on the issues of domestic violence, police corruption, and racism — on both sides. And when the final curtain fell, it fell on the killer, as he is known, providing a protective shield from the consequences of his grievous act.