Daughter: Simpson `Emotional, Confused' When Told Of Murders
LOS ANGELES - O.J. Simpson was "very upset, emotional, confused" after hearing his ex-wife was slain, Simpson's daughter testified today, as the defense opened its case in the double-murder trial.
Arnelle Simpson, 26, took the stand as the defense tried to show that Simpson didn't act like a killer before or after the murders of his ex-wife and her friend Ronald Goldman.
Smiling at her father, Simpson started her testimony by giving her birth date - Dec. 4, 1968. "I was born the same day my dad won the Heisman Trophy," she said.
She then described a wrenching scene at Simpson's house the morning after the murders. She said she was awakened by detectives at her door at 5 a.m. She lived in a guest house, next to Brian "Kato" Kaelin's room, at the rear of her father's Brentwood estate.
Simpson said she first got the news about Nicole Brown Simpson's murder from Detective Tom Lange.
"He said that she had been murdered and that there had been somebody else with her," Arnelle Simpson said. "I immediately started crying, and I asked him, `Are you sure that it was Nicole?' And he said, `Yes.' "
At the direction of detectives, she phoned her father's assistant, Cathy Randa.
Shortly thereafter, she said, her father called and spoke first with a detective and then with her.
"My father asked me what was going on. I said that Nicole is dead, she's not here with us anymore," Simpson testified.
She started to relate his response, but Judge Lance Ito stopped her, sustaining a prosecution objection. She then described Simpson's demeanor.
"How did he sound to you at that point?" asked defense attorney Johnnie Cochran.
"Very upset, emotional, confused," she said.
Cochran led her through a series of questions, attempting to show that Simpson was a loving father who cared for his ex-wife even after they had broken up. She said Simpson brought soup and medicine to Nicole Simpson when she had pneumonia after their final breakup.
Simpson and his daughter smiled fondly at each other when she took the stand, and Simpson grinned broadly at parts of her testimony.
Arnelle Simpson spoke of the death of a family dog, which drowned in the swimming pool, and how she, her father and Nicole buried the dog in the front yard of Simpson's home.
She described the off-and-on relationship between her father and Nicole and stressed that Simpson never dated his girlfriend, Paula Barbieri, while he was seeing Nicole Simpson after their 1992 divorce.
Jurors took more notes than they have in a while, sitting for long periods with their heads down writing while she testified.
Before Arnelle Simpson took the stand, Simpson's mother, Eunice, and sister, Carmelita Durio, were asked to leave the courtroom. They are the next two scheduled witnesses. Simpson's older son, Jason, ex-wife, Marquerite Simpson Thomas, and brother-in-law Benny Baker remained in the front row.
Before beating up on the technicians and the coroner, before attacking DNA and its related statistics, before punching holes in the prosecution timeline, defense attorneys want jurors to enter Simpson's circle of benevolence.
It's a world where Simpson isn't just a great football player and charismatic Hertz pitchman, but a human being as first-class as the airline sections he used to travel in: a kind, charitable, humble man who still calls his mother.
These witnesses make up the bulk of the early part of the defense case, which follows five grueling months of prosecution evidence.
But at some point, indeed, the sooner the better, analysts said, the defense will have to take aim at the heart of the prosecution's case: the physical evidence, namely, all that blood, hair and fiber that links Simpson to the murders.
To this end, Simpson has a stable of experts.