October release for O.J. Simpson's If I Did It
Last Updated: Wednesday, August 15, 2007 | 10:39 AM ET
CBC Arts
Beaufort Books has come forward as the publishing house that will print O.J. Simpson's If I Did It, the infamous hypothetical account detailing the killing of the former football star's ex-wife and Ron Goldman.
The terms of the deal the small New York-based publisher made with the Goldman family were not disclosed.
"We will be working diligently to not only publish this book well, but to honour the memory of the victims of this terrible crime: Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson," Eric Kampmann, president of Beaufort Books, said in a statement Tuesday.
The company has Oct. 3 slated as a release date for the book, which will include the original manuscript as well as commentary.
Proceeds of the book will go to the Ron Goldman Foundation for Justice, a newly created charity to benefit victims of violent crime. Simpson will not receive any share of the profits.
Denise Brown, the sister of Simpson's ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson, said she was "shocked and horrified" to learn of the deal to publish the book.
She lamented in a statement on Tuesday that her sister's children "will have to be subjected to this step-by-step manual on how their mother and her friend Ron were murdered."
Brown also criticized the Goldman family for moving forward with the book.
However, an attorney for the Goldmans denounced Brown's comments, noting that she and her family have also sought a share of the book's possible profits.
The book project has been controversial since it was first publicized last fall. HarperCollins, a division of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., made a deal with Simpson for the book — written with the help of a ghostwriter — and a subsequent TV special.
However, both were scrapped in November after a massive wave of public outrage against the project. The 400,000 printed copies of If I Did It were reportedly recalled and destroyed.
Since then, Goldman family members — who are owed more than $30 million US in damages from Simpson — have been fighting for all rights to the manuscript, which they won in a federal court ruling in July.
Though acquitted of Brown Simpson and Goldman's killings in 1995, Simpson subsequently lost a wrongful death civil suit brought by the Goldman family and was ordered to pay damages of $33.5 million US — little of which the family has recovered over the past decade.
With files from the Associated PressShare Tools
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