Kris Jenner has relived the trauma of the OJ Simpson trial — and her family’s connection to his acquittal. June 12, 2017, marked the 23rd anniversary of the murders of OJ’s ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Nicole’s friend Ron Goldman.
Jenner, 61, recounted to The Hollywood Reporter her closeness to Nicole, who was one of her best friends, and the former NFL star, confirming that OJ visited her in the hospital when she gave birth to eldest daughter Kourtney and that her children called him “Uncle OJ.”
She also alluded to the most infamous gloves on the planet.
When asked if she was in fact with Nicole in New York when Nicole purchased a pair of gloves “that may have factored into life later on,” Jenner gave a simple answer: “Yes.”
She noted of Nicole, “She feared for her life, yeah.”
Jenner was supposed to see Nicole the morning after she was murdered and was at first in complete “shock.” “I think after that initial shock of what’s going on, I felt like I knew, probably, what had happened,” she said.
Jenner said she felt conflicted about her presumption of the former NFL star’s guilt while her ex-husband Robert Kardashian, whom she described as “the love of my life,” was a member of OJ’s “Dream Team” of defense attorneys.
“I had to respect Robert … Robert was a very, very good man, very good judgment, he was an attorney, and he was OJ’s attorney for a period of time back in the day,” Jenner said carefully. “He was always the voice of reason, and always somebody that everybody went to for sound advice, and he always have the answer, and you always felt safe with him. On this particular subject, I felt one way and he felt another. After having so much respect for him for so many years, you just have to still have that same amount of decency and respect for another human being.”
She added, “I was very upset that he didn’t see it maybe the same way I saw it, but we have four children together, so that makes a huge difference when you’re going through something as tragic as this. He sat down and wrote a letter to me and my children the night before the trial and brought it over and said, ‘I just wanted to tell you that tomorrow is going to be the beginning of a really long journey and read this after I’m gone, and I hope you understand.'”
Jenner, who was present for almost every day of the “Trial of the Century,” took away some lessons from the infamous proceedings and their aftermath.
“You learn a lot about human behavior. You learn a lot about people you think you know. You learn a lot about the justice system. You learn a lot just about so many things, and I think that a great deal of it was some amazing lessons learned along the way, although through tragedy,” she said. “I have to believe that everything happens for a reason and somehow we got something out of that.”
When she learned of the not-guilty verdict, Jenner was in shock — and pregnant with daughter Kendall, whose middle name is Nicole after Jenner’s late friend.
“I got to the courthouse and Marcia Clark and some of the people that work for her and with her decided that it was better for me to be upstairs, because I was very pregnant,” she said. “I sat up there with one of Nicole’s sisters, I remember, and with Bruce [Jenner], and I remember just disbelief, and then thinking, ‘How are we gonna get out of here?’ We were just kind of scared.”
As for whether she’d ever reconnect with Simpson pending his potential release from prison this year, Jenner sighed.
“I don’t have a crystal ball,” she said. “But we have some very dear friends in common, so we’ll just see how it goes.”