Tag: Witnesses

Even three decades later, the O.J. Simpson murder trial still reverberates in the minds of those involved.

Simpson was famously acquitted of the June 12, 1994 murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, a waiter and aspiring actor, who were brutally stabbed to death outside Nicole’s condo in Brentwood, an upscale Los Angeles neighborhood.

A new docuseries, American Manhunt: O.J. Simpson, premiering on Netflix on Wednesday, Jan. 29, relives the touchstone moments from both the murder investigation — including the infamous low-speed police chase where Simpson sat in the backseat of a white Ford Bronco — and the unforgettable moment in court when the former Heisman Trophy winner tried on a blood-stained glove found at the crime scene.

But the series also focuses on more under-the-radar details, like hastily opened first-aid supplies found in an open cabinet in Simpson’s bedroom, an empty knife box in his bathroom and still-damp clothes in a washing machine and features interviews with potentially key witnesses who saw Simpson on the night of the murders but were never called to testify in court.

“The audience gets to listen to witnesses who were not called and consider evidence,” says director Floyd Russ. “I want them to feel like the jury.”

Here, those witnesses tell PEOPLE their stories:

Jill Shively: ‘When I saw it was O.J., I thought, what the heck is his problem? He looks angry’ 

Jill Shively was getting over the flu on the night of June 12, 1994 and needed to get food in her stomach. Shively says she left her Santa Monica apartment before 11 p.m. to drive to the Westward Ho Market in nearby Brentwood, trying to get there before it closed.

Driving east on San Vicente Boulevard toward Bundy Drive, less than half a mile from where Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman had been murdered, Shively nearly struck a white Bronco with no headlights on, which had driven onto the median in order to avoid hitting another car in the intersection.

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“I could see who it was and I knew it was a football player, but I wasn’t sure who,” Shively, now 63, says. “He was yelling at another driver, ‘Move, move.’ I recognized his voice because I had just seen a Naked Gun movie. It was O.J. Simpson.” 

But Shively’s testimony, which could have put Simpson near the scene around the time of the murders, was never heard in court.

Shively, who was raising her young daughter at the time, sold her story to the tabloid show Hard Copy. As a result, Marcia Clark, the lead prosecutor on the case, shied away from calling Shively as a witness.

“Marcia thought that tainted any testimony she might provide,” former prosecutor Chris Darden, Clark’s co-counsel on the case, says in American Manhunt.

For nearly 30 years, Shively has lived with guilt that she wasn’t able to testify at Simpson’s trial, only recently making peace with it. She’s not sure her testimony would have led to a conviction, but she claims she’s heard from jurors since the trial who wish they could’ve listened.

“I’ve spoken to jurors from the Simpson trial who said, ‘I would’ve loved to have heard your story,’” Shively says. “I asked them if it would have made a difference. And they said, ‘Maybe.’

Skip Junis: ‘O.J. was holding a bag and would not let anyone touch it’ 

Parked outside Los Angeles International Airport just after 11:30 p.m. on June 12, 1994, Skip Junis was waiting to pick up his wife, an American Airlines employee, when he saw a limo pull up about 40 feet away. Out stepped O.J. Simpson, he says. 

Junis, an advertising executive who played baseball at UCLA when Simpson was at USC, recognized him immediately and found it odd that the A-lister was holding a cheap gym bag. 

“O.J. went to a trash can and plopped the bag on top,” Junis recalls. “What was really peculiar is when he unzipped the bag, he pulled out a long item that was covered with a white rag or cloth and put it in the trash can.”

After he learned about the murders and that Simpson was a suspect, Junis says, he called both the prosecution and the defense teams to report that he could place him at LAX that night. But neither team called him back. 

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Junis, who would tell his story at parties, says LAPD detective Philip Vannatter finally contacted him, and the police then took him to the prosecutor’s office, where he was asked to draw a picture of the bag he saw Simpson carrying at the airport. They told him they would call him as a witness—but they never did. 

“I think Marcia Clark forgot about me,” he says.

Years later Junis says he was told by detectives that Clark decided not to call him because she didn’t think she could corroborate his story. The advertising executive still thinks about what he saw that fateful night. 

“I have spent many, many years now thinking of what he would have had in the bag to throw away without looking at it. Why would he have brought it from his house? It just doesn’t make sense.”