More than three decades after the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, newly examined federal records have raised questions about whether O.J. Simpson received help covering up the killings. At the center of the allegations is Joseph Ippolito, a convicted drug trafficker with reported Mafia ties. His brother claims Ippolito returned home with blood on his hands the night of the murders. He was also allegedly carrying a bag containing a heavy object, raising questions about whether he helped dispose of evidence, including the murder weapon that investigators never recovered.
The allegations emerged in an October 18 investigation by The New York Times, which examined newly unsealed federal records and interviewed people connected to the case. Ippolito's brother, Sam, initially told the newspaper that Joey returned to their Los Angeles apartment around midnight on June 12, 1994, after leaving to help a friend. According to Sam, Joey had what appeared to be blood on his hands before placing his clothes into a bag and asking his brother to get rid of it. Sam claimed he discarded the bag in a dumpster near a construction site along Doheny Drive, although he never established what was inside.
Joey reportedly knew Simpson through his longtime friend Al Cowlings, who famously drove the white Ford Bronco during the televised police pursuit. After being arrested in 1995, Ippolito became a federal informant and provided authorities with information concerning Simpson and the missing murder weapon. The newly unsealed documents indicate that federal officials shared some of his information with prosecutors. However, neither Ippolito nor his brother testified during Simpson's murder trial.
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The investigation also uncovered significant problems with Sam's account. After giving his initial story, he asked The New York Times for payment and later tried to retract his claims when the newspaper refused. He said he wasn't sure he could reliably separate his memories from confusion about events that occurred more than three decades earlier. Other people familiar with Joey disputed his alleged involvement in the killings.
Former lead prosecutor Marcia Clark also questioned how significant Ippolito's information was. Speaking with the outlet, she said she had never been informed that he possessed credible evidence relevant to the murder case. "The fact that I was never so informed establishes he had no credible or relevant evidence to provide," she stated.
The possibility of an accomplice has circulated for years, partly because of Simpson's own hypothetical account of the killings. In his controversial book If I Did It, he introduced a character named Charlie who appeared during his imagined description of the murders. Simpson later discussed that scenario in a televised interview, although the character has never been definitively connected to Ippolito.
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Simpson was acquitted of murdering Brown Simpson and Goldman in 1995 but was found liable for their deaths in a 1997 civil proceeding. He died in April 2024, while Ippolito died in 2006. Neither man can address the allegations raised by the investigation.
The Los Angeles Police Department told The New York Times that the double-murder investigation remains open because no one has been convicted. Authorities indicated they would pursue credible new evidence if it emerged. Whether Ippolito ever possessed the missing weapon is still unknown, leaving Sam's disputed account and the information preserved in federal records as two pieces of a decades-old case that investigators have yet to reconcile.
