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

Simpson was the only on-air talent who gave them Christmas presents. Ironically, in light of how his trial would unfold, Simpson always had a special fondness for police officers, and over the years many of them came by the house on Rockingham to use the pool or shoot the breeze. The cops turned out to be valuable friends, especially when it came to the events of January 1, 1989.
    At 3:58 A.M. on that New Year’s Day in Los Angeles, the phone rang in front of 911 operator Sharyn Gilbert. At first she heard no one at the other end, but her console indicated that the call was coming from 360 North Rockingham, in Brentwood. Then there were sounds—a woman screaming, then slaps. “I heard someone being hit,” Gilbert later recalled. There was more screaming, and then the call was cut off. Though no one ever said any words to her, Gilbert rated the call a “code-two high,” which meant that it required immediate police response.
    Officer John Edwards and his partner, a trainee named Patricia Milewski, went to the scene. Edwards pressed the buzzer at the Ashford gate to the property, and a woman who identified herself as the housekeeper came out. She said, “There’s no problem here,” and told the officers to leave. Edwards said they couldn’t go anywhere until they spoke with the woman who had called911. After a few minutes of this back-and-forth, a blond woman—Nicole Brown Simpson—staggered out from the heavy bushes behind the gate. She was wearing just a bra and a pair of dirty sweatpants.
    Nicole collapsed against the inside of the gate and started yelling to the officers, “He’s going to kill me! He’s going to kill me!” She pounded on the button that opened the gate and then flung herself into Edwards’s arms.
    “Who’s going to kill you?” Edwards asked.
    “O.J.”
    “O.J. who?” Edwards asked. “Do you mean O.J. the football player?”
    “Yes,” Nicole said. “O.J. Simpson the football player.”
    “Does he have any weapons?”
    “Yeah,” she replied, still breathless. “Lots of guns. He has lots of guns.”
    Edwards shined his flashlight on Nicole’s face. Her lip was cut and bleeding. Her left eye was black-and-blue. Her forehead was bruised, and on her neck—unmistakably—was the imprint of a human hand. As Nicole calmed down, Edwards learned that O.J. Simpson had slapped her, hit her with his fist, and pulled her by the hair. Just before Edwards placed her in the squad car to warm up, Nicole turned to him and said with disgust, “You guys never do anything. You never do anything. You come out. You’ve been here eight times. And you never do anything about him.” She then agreed to sign a crime report against her husband.
    As Edwards turned to the house, he noticed O.J. Simpson, wearing a bathrobe, walking toward him. Simpson was screaming, “I don’t want that woman in my bed anymore! I got two other women. I don’t want that woman in my bed!”
    Edwards explained that he was going to place Simpson under arrest for beating his wife.
    “I didn’t beat her,” Simpson said, still furious. “I just pushed her out of bed.” Edwards repeated that he was going to have to take him in.
    Simpson was incredulous. “You’ve been out here eight times before and now you’re going to arrest me for this? This is a family matter. This is a family matter.”
    Edwards requested that Simpson go back into to his house, get dressed, and return to be taken in to the station. As Simpson walked off, the housekeeper, Michelle Abudrahm, went over to Nicole, who was in the squad car, and implored, “Don’t do this, Nicole. Come inside.” The housekeeper was actually tugging on Nicole from outside the car, and Edwards came over and shooed her away. Moments later Simpson, now dressed, returned to the gate and began lecturing Edwards. “What makes you so special? Why are you doing this? You guys have been out here eight times before, and no one has ever done anything like this