On October 3, 1995, O.J. Simpson walked out of a Los Angeles courtroom after a jury acquitted him of murdering his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman. Nicole’s family had endured months of testimony about the violence inside her marriage and the knife wounds responsible for her death. Goldman’s parents had listened to the account of their 25-year-old son’s final evening. Both families left court without the convictions prosecutors had sought.
Investigators had collected blood, shoe impressions, gloves and hundreds of pieces of evidence. Simpson’s lawyers attacked the reliability of the forensic work and the conduct of detectives. The jury returned two not-guilty verdicts. Police had never recovered the knife responsible for the wounds, and no one else faced prosecution for the killings.
During the trial’s final weeks, federal agents in New York began questioning a prison escapee with an extraordinary set of acquaintances. He knew drug traffickers, members of organized crime groups and people close to Simpson. He also knew something prosecutors in Los Angeles wanted to hear. His name never reached the jury, and his cooperation remained largely outside public view for three decades.
The man had spent years moving between organized crime figures and wealthy acquaintances in California and Florida. His closest connections included Al Cowlings, Simpson’s longtime friend and the driver of the white Ford Bronco during the famous police pursuit. Five weeks before Nicole and Goldman were murdered, the man had escaped from a federal prison camp and returned to Los Angeles. By the time authorities caught him in August 1995, he possessed information investigators believed warranted attention from the prosecutors handling Simpson’s murder trial.
His cooperation extended across several federal investigations. Agents questioned him about drug trafficking, organized crime, fugitives and crimes committed by prisoners. Among those disclosures were allegations concerning Simpson’s conduct, his relationship with Cowlings and the whereabouts of the missing murder weapon. Federal prosecutors subsequently described his assistance as valuable, including the information supplied to authorities in Los Angeles.
The account survived in a five-page letter dated December 4, 1996. Written by Assistant U.S. Attorney David N. Kelley in support of a reduced sentence, the document was originally filed under seal. It provides a federal account of information received during Simpson’s trial, including allegations concerning the knife police had searched for since June 1994. Front Page Detectives presents all five original pages of the document in full.
At the center of the investigation was Joseph “Joey” Ippolito, a convicted drug trafficker whose friendships had brought him into Simpson’s social circle. His relationship with Cowlings predated the murders, as did his encounters with federal authorities. By the summer of 1994, he was a fugitive living near Sunset Boulevard, and the double murder in Brentwood was about to draw attention to his acquaintances.
