O.J. Simpson says his need to pay bills and secure the future of his children influenced his decision to write a book that expresses in hypothetical terms how he would’ve killed his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.
“It’s all blood money and, unfortunately, I had to join the jackals,” Simpson told the Associated Press. Simpson kept quiet on just how much he was paid in advance to write the book, titled “If I Did It,” but said it was less than the $3.5 million that has been widely reported.
News Corp., owner of Fox TV and publisher HarperCollins, canceled the project this week and an accompanying Fox TV special after the projects were roundly criticized. News Corp. spokesman Andrew Butcher said the company paid $880,000 to a third party in connection with the project. Of that amount, $100,000 was to go to the book’s ghostwriter and the rest to Simpson’s children.
“Absolutely no money was ever given to O.J. Simpson by us,” Butcher told AP. He said News Corp. cannot recoup any of the money lost after the book was scrapped because Simpson honored his contract by producing the work.
Simpson, meanwhile, says he has no remorse over agreeing to the book and TV deal. “I’ve been pimped for 12 years. Everyone’s made money on me,” he explained to AP.
In an interview with Miami radio station WTPS 1080 AM, Simpson said the title of the book was the publisher’s idea, and that he had definitely been paid.
“Would everybody stop being so naive? Of course I got paid,” Simpson said, according to Reuters. “I spend the money on my bills. It’s gone.”