Friday afternoon, after we’d all taken off for summer hours, ABC News reported that OJ’s daughter came up with the idea for If I Did It. OK, technically it was Raffles Van Exel, previously best known for hovering in orbit around Michael Jackson, who came up with the idea and started noodging Arnelle Simpson about it; she just took it to OJ Simpson. ABC put the transcript of Arnelle’s deposition (117-page PDF) online to accompany their story; my favorite bit comes when she remembers talking to her siblings about how “it’s an opportunity for us, and in the long run there’s opportunity, there’s financial opportunity.” Asked by the deposing attorney to elaborate on what they thought that financial opportunity was, Simpson is totally straightforward: “That we would all be a part of the book, and that we would get money from the book when it came out.” And this was before she asked OJ if he’d do it, mind you.
But making money off her dad’s story just got a lot harder, because the judge in her bankruptcy hearing has ruled that Fred Goldman can have the rights, which means he and his family will be moving forward with their plans to sell the book, now titled Confessions of a Double Murderer, to the highest bidder. I wonder if they also acquired the film rights, and if they’ll be working on a sequel.