Ron Goldman's father says his family may never see justice for his killing, hours before O.J. Simpson, who was acquitted of his son's murder, will plead his case for parole in an unrelated crime case.
The retired NFL star has spent the past nine years in jail—his minimum sentence—for taking part in an armed robbery in a Las Vegas hotel room, in which he claimed he was retrieving items that sports collectibles dealers took from him. If he is granted parole Thursday, he will be spared his maximum sentence of 33 years behind bars and could be released this October.
"Needless to say, [I'm] upset," Ron's father Fred Goldman said on Good Morning America. "What's troubling to me is not only him but the whole system gives second chances to violent felons, or for that matter, anyone in jail. Ron doesn't get a second chance."
In 1995, in what was dubbed the "trial of the century," O.J. was famously acquitted of double murder of both ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron, her friend.
We'll "probably never see that...never get the justice," Fred said, getting emotional. "Ron never gets to spend his life doing what he wanted to do. We'll never get to share his life and the killer will walk free and get to do whatever he wants."
"We lived our life with [Simpson] walking the streets and sharing the same roads that we did," Ron's sister Kim Goldman added. "With him being locked up in Lovelock [Correctional Center], it's been a chance for us to kind of reclaim some control over our life and have some semblance of sanity. So I'm preparing myself for that to be changing come October."
After he was acquitted of murder, O.J. was later found to be civilly liable for their deaths and was ordered to pay $33.5 million in damages to their families. He still owes them most of that sum.
"I hope that no one ever has to walk in our shoes," she said. "But we know that millions of people on a daily basis, on a yearly basis, are impacted by trauma and crime and the civil system awarded us a judgment and it is our job to follow the system, to follow the law, and to pursue that that judgment. That's his punishment. Anybody else would have to do that and would want to do that and I don't see why we should be different. If we don't pursue it, then we've given him another free pass."
"I think we'll do the same thing we did for the previous 20-plus years and we'll go after everything that's around there as Kim just said, that's a form of punishment," Fred said.