The Run of His Life: The People v. O. J. Simpson by Jeffrey Toobin

before.”
    Edwards explained that the law required him to take Simpson in to the station. When Edwards turned to brief a second set of officers who had arrived on the scene, the officers saw a blue Bentley roar out of another gate at the property, this one on Rockingham.
    Edwards got into his car and took off after Simpson—and four other police cars soon joined in the chase—but they couldn’t catch up with him. Returning to Nicole, Edwards asked what had prompted her husband’s attack. She said she had complained because there were two other women staying in their home, and O.J. had had sex with one of them earlier in the day. Edwards never saw Simpson again.
    With Nicole having signed a police report, the police were obliged to bring the case against O.J. at least to the next step. The case was assigned to Officer Mike Farrell, who reached O.J. by telephone on January 3. Simpson explained that after he and Nicole had returned home from a New Year’s Eve party, where they had been drinking, they had had a verbal dispute “that got out of hand.” O.J. said it then turned into “a mutual-type wrestling match. That was basically it. Nothing more than that.” Accompanied by her two children, Nicole came into the West Los Angeles police station the next day, and she, too, minimized the dispute. She said she didn’t really want to go through with a full-fledged prosecution. Farrell mentioned the possibility of resolving the case through an informal mediation with the city attorney’s office. “I would like to have that,” the twenty-nine-year-old Nicole said. “I think that would be neat.”
    Still, under the law, Farrell had to present the case to the city attorney’s office, which would have the final say over whether Simpsonwould be prosecuted for misdemeanor spousal abuse. The prosecutors were torn, as they so often are in domestic-violence cases. If this really was just a single drunken brawl after a New Year’s Eve party, a prosecutor told Farrell, then maybe they should just let it drop. After all, they had a reluctant victim as their only witness. Farrell was told to ask around the West L.A. station and determine whether there had been other incidents at the Simpson home. If there was a pattern, they would prosecute.
    So Farrell asked around—and heard nothing. Both O.J. and Nicole had acknowledged that the police had come to the house eight times to stop O.J. from hurting Nicole, but at first Farrell couldn’t find a single cop who admitted to going to Rockingham. (O.J. had entertained about forty officers at his home at various times, and with their silence, the officers may have been repaying his hospitality.) Eventually, out of all the cops who had handled calls at the Simpson home, one spoke up. Yes, this officer said, he had been out to the house on a domestic-violence incident. Farrell asked him to write up the incident in a memo, and the officer wrote on January 18, 1989, “To whom it may concern”:
    During the fall or winter of 1985 I responded to a 415 family dispute at 360 North Rockingham. Upon arrival I observed two persons in front of the estate, a black male pacing on the driveway and a female wht sitting on a veh crying. I inquired if the persons I observed were the residents, at which time the male black stated, “Yeah, I own this, I’m O.J. Simpson!” My attention turned to the female who was sobbing and asked her if she was alright but before she could speak the male black (Simpson) interrupted saying, “she’s my wife, she’s okay!” During my conversation with the female I noted that she was sitting in front of a shattered windshield (Mercedes-Benz I believe) and I asked, “who broke the windshield?” with the female responding, “he did (pointing to Simpson)… He hit the windshield with a baseball bat!” Upon hearing the female’s statement, Simpson exclaimed, “I broke the windshield … it’s mine … there’s no trouble here.” I turned to the female and