O.J. Slams Ghostwriter, Goldmans

Wed., Aug. 1, 2007 3:06 PM PDT by Julie Keller

When it comes to If I Did It, O.J. Simpson says he actually didn't—write it, that is.

In an interview streamed online Tuesday, one day after rights to the never published book were transferred to the family of Ron Goldman, the former footballer said that the ghostwritten confessional was full of errors.

Simpson also claimed that he only agreed to include a chapter containing a first-person account of the June 12, 1994 murders of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Goldman after his publisher swore it would be labeled as hypothetical. "Because I didn't do it, I will not justify the evidence they had," he told interviewer Kate Delaney. "We got to that chapter, and I said, 'Hey, I can't participate in that.' "

(The ghostwriter, Pablo Fenjves, has adamantly denied such allegations before, saying that Simpson and his team came to Fenjves with the idea, including the parts about the murder.)

Simpsons also gunned for the Goldman family, who were awarded the book rights by federal bankruptcy judge in Miami Monday. The family has been seeking to collect the bulk of the $33.5 million wrongful-death judgment against Simpson for the past decade.

"I find it sort of hypocritical that they talked everybody in America to boycott the book: It was 'immoral,' it was 'blood money,' " he said. "But we now see it wasn't 'blood money' if they got the money."

An attorney for the Goldman family quickly dismissed this claim, saying that Simpson left them no choice in the matter. While he was acquitted of the murders in 1995, he lost the civil case and was ordered to pay the huge sum to the families of both victims.

"Mr. Simpson himself has placed us in this horrific setting of seeking to liquidate this asset," Goldman attorney David Cook told the Associated Press. "His comments are beyond redemption."

The interview was carried by Market News First (www.mn1.com) and featured often hostile questions from viewers.

If I Did It was supposed to have been published by Regan Books but was nixed due to public outcry, and all 400,000 copies were destroyed.

Throughout the interview, which was Simpson's first since talking to Katie Couric in 2004, he essentially ignored most of the questions from the angry call-in audience who berated him for getting involved with the book in the first place. At one point, he pretended he didn't hear one caller, who asked Simpson if he thought it was "a bigger feat to break 2,000 yards in one season or slice two necks in one night."