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When he first learned about If I Did It, Fred Goldman says there were two reasons why he said he hoped no one would buy it. "One, I didn't want to see [Simpson] profit one penny from butchering Ron, murdering Nicole. I perceived potentially as well that it could have been what has been called a 'manual for murder,'" he says. "Two things transpired since then—one, we learned that he had, in fact, been paid his money well before it ever became public, to the tune of personally getting $630,000 as part of his advance. … And additionally, after reading the book, [we] learned it was not a manual for murder. Absolutely not. We view it as a confession."
"But he doesn't really confess, based upon what I've heard about the book," Oprah says. "He hasn't really confessed and says this is all hypothetical."
Ron's sister, Kim, also explains that her family has not received any of the money awarded them in the civil trial. "[Simpson has] been thumbing the nose at us for years. He's been skirting the system," she says. "He lives in Florida, which is a debtor-friendly state. He's protected by the homestead laws there. We can't attach to his NFL pensions, any of his pensions. … The system that awarded us this $19 million judgment doesn't give us the resources to then go collect on it."
Fred and Kim say that publishing the book and taking 90 percent of the profits—which will amount to 17 cents per book—is a form of restitution. "We have a judgment, the only form of justice that we were able to attain through the civil court," Fred says. "And that piece of paper is meaningless unless we pursue that judgment. We took away the opportunity from him to earn additional money, and that money is the only form of justice."
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