`He Killed Her Because He Couldn't Have Her' -- Prosecution Opens Case Against O.J. Simpson

LOS ANGELES - The jealous, ugly "other side" of O.J. Simpson that the public never knew killed his ex-wife because "he couldn't have her" and murdered her friend because he got in the way, a prosecutor told jurors today.

"The judge instructed you already that opening statements are not evidence," Deputy District Attorney Christopher Darden said. "We're lawyers, we're not witnesses, we're not under oath. Nothing we say is evidence. The things we say to you today are not the things you should carry into the jury room when you begin your deliberations. You should carry into the jury room the evidence in the case, the testimony from the witness stand, the exhibits submitted at trial, the instructions given to you by the court.

"And when you look at all of that, and you go back and reflect on the testimony and everything you heard, you'll know why he killed Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman.

"Why? Why would he do it? Why would he do it? Not O.J. Simpson. Not the O.J. Simpson we think we know, not the O.J. Simpson we think we've seen over the years. We've seen him play football for USC, we watched him play against UCLA, play in the Rose Bowl, we watched him win the Heisman Trophy. He may be the best running back in the history of the NFL.

"We watched him leap turnstiles and chairs and run to the airplane in Hertz commercials. We watched him with a 50-inch Afro in `Naked Gun 33 1/3.' We've seen him time and time again. We came to think that we know him.

"What we've been seeing, ladies and gentlemen, is just a public face, a public persona, a face of the athlete, a face of the actor. It is not the actor who is on trial here today, ladies and gentlemen. It is not that public face. There is that other face. Like many men in public, there is a public image, a public side, a public life. He may also have a private side, a private face. And that is the face we will expose to you in this trial, the other side of O.J. Simpson.

"The other face that Nicole Brown encountered almost every day of her adult life, the face she encountered at the last moment of her adult life, the face that encountered Ronald Goldman during the last moments of his life.

"The evidence will show that the face you see, and the man you will see, is the face of a batterer, a wife-beater, an abuser, a controller. You will see the face of Ron and Nicole's murderer.

"The answer will be clear to you as well," Darden said. "The answer to the question is yes. O.J. Simpson murdered Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman."

Prosecutor Marcia Clark, who shared the prosecution's statement with Darden, said there was more than an hour on the night of the murders during which Simpson's whereabouts were not accounted for, and said testimony would show that the defendant "was in an ugly mood, morose, depressed and clearly fixated on his wife."

Thus the trial began in earnest today in the case that has gripped the nation for seven months, since the stabbed and slashed bodies of Simpson's ex-wife and a friend were found outside her condominium June 12.

"He killed Nicole for a single reason," Darden said. "Not because he hated her. . . . He didn't kill her because he didn't love her anymore because in his mind he did.

"He killed her because he couldn't have her, and if he couldn't have her, he didn't want anyone else to," he said.

"By killing her, he committed the ultimate act of control," Darden said. And, he added, "he killed Ron Goldman because he got in the way."

Darden described Simpson as "an extremely controlling, possessive man" who dominated Nicole Brown Simpson in a variety of ways since they met when she was still a teenager. He controlled her spending and called her "a pig" when she was pregnant, Darden said.

"By hurling these insults, he stripped her of her self-esteem," he said.

"She was not a Barbie doll, ladies and gentlemen," Darden said.

Darden told the jury about several instances of Simpson's alleged abuse and stalking: a 1985 incident in which Simpson used a baseball bat to smash the windshield of their Mercedes-Benz after they fought; a 911 tape in which Nicole Simpson can be heard being hit; Simpson looking into his wife's window to watch her having sex with another man.