Brown Responds to O.J. Simpson Interview

June 8, 2004 -- When O.J. Simpson complains of problems he's having raising the children he had with Nicole Brown Simpson, there's at least one person who has no sympathy — Nicole's sister.

Denise Brown, who spoke out on behalf of her murdered sibling on ABC News' Good Morning America, remains convinced he brought the problems onto himself when, she alleges, he killed Nicole 10 years ago.

"If he's angry at Nicole [for not being around], then he should not have murdered her," Brown told GMA. "Nicole would be here today if it wasn't for him. Ronald Goldman would be here today if it wouldn't have been for him."

June 12 marks a decade since Nicole and her friend Goldman were killed, and Simpson accused of their slayings. A California jury a year later acquitted the former football star of the double murder, but a separate civil suit in 1997 found him liable.

Simpson reflected on the 10 years since he went from revered NFL Hall of Famer and celebrity to accused murderer in a recent interview with Fox News, where he said sometimes he is angry at his ex-wife for not being around to help raise their two children, Sydney, now 18, and Justin, now 15. He said he has trouble helping his children deal with their problems and the loss of their mother.

"Sometimes I think maybe I feel it more than maybe they [Sydney and Justin] express it," Simpson said in the interview. "I don't know if that makes sense. It's just that sometimes when I feel at a loss to deal with a problem, even though intellectually I realize it's all emotion. And even if their mother was here, she couldn't deal with it, but I just feel she could have been a lot more than a rock for them emotionally."

Manipulative Killer?

But Denise Brown says Simpson is only trying twist around facts and portray himself as a victim.

"That's his personality," she told GMA. "He lies, manipulates. They [people like Simpson] try to change everything around so people will look at him like he's the nice, wonderful human being he supposedly wants to be."

Brown said she was outraged when she heard Simpson in the Fox interview talk about how he took Sydney and Justin to a Benihana restaurant to mark what would have been their mother's 45th birthday. Like some other restaurants, the food is prepared and sliced with dramatic knife work by the chef right in front of patrons, and Brown said her sister Nicole had a fear of knives.

"She had a huge fear of knives, and isn't it ironic that he [Simpson] goes to a place where they do all that cooking and cutting on a grill right in front of you?" she said. "And he takes the kids there? That's kind of sick."

‘He’s Going to Kill Me One Day’

Brown said she has never doubted that Simpson killed her sister, despite the outcome of the criminal trial. Years of documented domestic abuse convinced her from the beginning that Simpson was Nicole's killer.

"She [Nicole] would say, 'Denise, he's going to kill me one day, and he's going to get away with it. … Let's go to lunch.'," Brown said. "It wasn't as if she was saying, 'Denise, I need your help. Please help me.' It was sort of, just a flip way of saying it, and it was so sad because I wish she would have come to me and said, 'Please help me. I'm in trouble.'"

Brown denied Simpson's claims she has profited from her sister's death. While she said she has not received any proceeds from the $33.5 million awarded in the civil suit, she conceded she did make $17,000 one year from the Nicole Brown Simpson Foundation she helped start in her sister's memory. That profit, she added, was approved by the foundation's board of directors.

Brown also said she had a chance to profit from a book deal, but turned down the offer.

"I did have a $1 million book deal, and they wanted tabloid stuff," she said. "They wanted the cocaine, the partying, the drugs, and I told them that is not my sister's life. I said you can pay me $100 million, but I will not write a book like that, and I didn't do it."

Brown continues to carry on her sister's memory through the foundation, which is devoted to helping women in abusive situations. The organization plans to hold a candelight vigil to mark the 10-year anniversary of Nicole's death.