I’ve told this before here but I have a connection too in a way. Old family friends of mine live a couple of blocks away from the site of the murder in Brentwood. It’s a friend of my mom for over 50 years. They have kids my age and we used to go there all the time.
My Mom’s friend was acquainted with Nicole. She used to jog by the house. They chatted once when they ran into each other at a book store shortly after the divorce and Nicole said how scared she was all the time.
The house where the murder took place has since been torn down but it was a major tourist attraction. Every day loads of stupid assholes would drive by and get their picture taken in front of the property. It fucked up the neighborhood for years.
I had just moved to an apartment in Brooklyn to go to law school in the fall. Actually, I had no knowledge of the events until Sunday night that weekend, as on Friday afternoon I was in a car with a couple friends en route to a wedding several hours away. We listened to CD’s in the car on the way up, got into town, got some takeout and sat in a hotel room eating and drinking. Next day we were at the wedding all day, and it wasn’t until Sunday night when I got home that I turned on the TV. Everything was replayed ad infinitum, so I didn’t miss anything.
When they read the verdict some months later, I was at the law school in the main cafeteria watching the TV in the corner. In the building on the floor below us, there was a lounge area with a TV; both rooms were filled to capacity.
At “not guilty”, a huge cheer rose from the room below us, while in ours you could hear a pin drop. We looked at each other in disbelief while hearing the cheering and hollering from downstairs. Weird.