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Next month marks 30 years since Nicole Brown Simpson was found dead outside her home in Brentwood, California.
Brown Simpson’s ex-husband and former NFL starO.J. Simpson was acquitted of murder in the slayings of Brown Simpson and her friend, Ron Goldman, in what was dubbed the “trial of the century.” Simpson, who died in April, was later found liable for their deaths by a jury in a civil trial. No one else has been tried in connection with the murders.
Now, her sisters — Denise, Dominique and Tanya — and many of her loved ones are speaking out in a new four-part documentary series, “The Life and Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson.”
“I actually started conversations 10 years ago for the 20th anniversary, and then it just didn’t feel right,” said Brown Simpson’s sister Denise Brown. “And so we tried the 25th anniversary and it didn’t feel right then, either. And then I asked my sisters, I said, ‘Do you guys want to do something? Let’s humanize Nicole. Let’s let Nicole’s voice be heard. Let’s tell her story, let’s tell it to the world. Let people get to know who Nicole really was.'”
Denise Brown said in an interview on “CBS Mornings” that during the process of creating the documentary, they learned things about their sister that they didn’t know.
“There’s tough things in this documentary, and there’s things that we learned about in this documentary that kind of took us like ‘Whoa,’ we were shocked about it, too. So, it was a learning experience for us. It’s going to be a huge learning experience for the world to get to know Nicole.”
According to Lifetime, the documentary features 50 participants, who reveal more about Brown Simpson’s life and killing at 35 years old.
“Watching and listening to this documentary, I walked away very angry because I had no idea what a horrible person he was to her,” Tanya Brown said of O.J. Simpson.
The sisters also hope the documentary series sheds new light on the needed resources for domestic violence victims. Denise Brown encouraged people to get involved by volunteering at domestic violence shelters, and to be mindful of the shame attached to being a survivor of domestic violence.
“I asked Nicole all the wrong questions,” Denise Brown said. “I said, ‘Why? Why are you with him?’ And those are the questions you don’t want to ask a victim of domestic violence. You want to be supportive. You want to listen.”
Through the heartbreak and tragedy, Brown Simpson’s sisters have tried to remember their sister as carefree.
“She was a beach girl, and then she had children, and she loved her children, and I think that she got to feel that the last two years of her life,” Dominique Brown said. “I think that freedom reemerged … seeing her in that period of time, running, being with her children, going to recitals, doing things with the kids and the family and all of that. I think that ease came back to her, and I love that. We’d like to remember Nicole smiling.”
