Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, October 17, 1995 TAG: 9510170079
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium
Nine days before she was slashed to death, Nicole Brown Simpson wrote in her diary that O.J. Simpson had warned her, ``You hang up on me last nite, you're gonna pay for this, bthe National Enquirer reported this week.
``You're holding money from the IRS, you're going to jail, you [expletive],'' Nicole Brown Simpson quoted her ex-husband as saying one day when he came to pick up their children. ``I've already talked to my lawyers about this, bThey'll get you for tax evasion.''
The jury that acquitted Simpson on Oct. 3 of murdering his ex-wife and her friend Ronald Goldman heard that Simpson had threatened her with the Internal Revenue Service, but that was in a lawyer's letter telling her that she was no longer to use his address as her own.
The voice the dead woman recorded in her diary is harsher. In an entry from 1988, when she was two months pregnant with their son Justin, she wrote that he called her a ``fat pig,'' ordered her to get an abortion and drove her out of their house at gunpoint.
The jurors heard that he called his pregnant wife a ``fat pig,'' but not that he demanded an abortion or aimed a gun at her.
While prosecutors publicized that diary entry and several others relating to domestic violence, and called witnesses to testify that Simpson beat his wife, neither they nor the defense sought to introduce the diary as evidence.
Her diary is in possession of the court, said Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office. The family has a copy, and the prosecution and defense do also.
The Enquirer got the diary from someone ``concerned about battered women's issues,'' executive editor Steve Coz said Monday, refusing to say if the tabloid paid for it. He said the victim's father, Louis Brown, authenticated the handwriting.
Simpson himself spoke out in this week's Star tabloid, which includes a paid interview and photo spread with the man who calls his acquittal a ``miracle.''
``I'm a free man at last - but now, I find myself hiding from the world, not really a free man,'' Simpson said. ``It's like I'm still a prisoner. And I haven't really had a chance to grieve.''
by CNB