LAS VEGAS — The father and sister of Ron Goldman greeted O.J. Simpson’s conviction here on armed robbery and kidnapping charges with tears, laughter and a belief that their efforts to collect a civil judgment from the former NFL star paid off, family spokesman Michael Right said Saturday.
“It was the civil suit that brought him down,” he quoted Goldman’s father, Fred, as saying.
A Los Angeles jury acquitted Simpson in 1995 of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Goldman, but two years later, he was found civilly liable for the deaths and ordered to pay the victims’ families $33.5 million.
In his armed robbery trial, prosecutors contended that the confrontation with sports memorabilia dealers last year was the result of a decade-long scheme by Simpson to hide valuable mementos from the Goldmans.
Fred Goldman and his daughter, Kim, watched Friday night’s verdict on television, Right said. He said they were on the phone with each other — Fred Goldman in Ohio and his daughter in Los Angeles — when the clerk read off the guilty findings.
“Kim was telling me that she felt joyous one moment, and then she would break down and cry, and then she would feel joyous again,” Right said.
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