Review and Analysis by Katherine Ramsland

To Read or Not to Read

Has there ever been a more controversial book? To publish or not to publish. To buy it or not. To read it or not. To believe it or not. Let's look at the context first and then consider the author and content. The book was reportedly Simpson's idea, which somehow makes it doubly disgraceful. He just wanted to make a lot of money. Unfortunately, he did.

Judith Regan

It was tabloid editor Judith Regan, with her own line at HarperCollins, who took the bait, having OJ Simpson explain to a ghostwriter how he would have murdered Ronald Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson. She schemed to make it look as if he were indirectly confessing and she had experts ready to support her notion that an actual confession had taken place. Regan was already famous for publishing outrageous material and this was to become her ultimate coup. She even explained her motive and strategy in 2006 to Newsweek.

HarperCollins Logo

Regan was with shock DJ Howard Stern when she heard the "not guilty" verdict in the OJ Simpson trial, and she'd already predicted this very outcome. She identified with Nicole Brown Simpson, because she, too, had once believed in fairy tale romances and she, too, had suffered from domestic abuse and learned the difficulty of pressing charges. "The trial of the century," she says, "was not just a moment for me, it was a seminal moment in American history." She was appalled that a man she believed was a killer had escaped legal consequences.

Regan claims in this interview that years later OJ called her "to confess" and she agreed to publish the book because she wanted to give people the chance to see that "there are consequences to grievous acts." She wanted to hear him say, "I did it," but she also hoped he would also say, "I'm sorry" and amend his life. (He didn't.) Regan said, "For the girl who was left in the gutter, I wanted to make it right."

Return to Movies & Entertainment