NEED TO KNOW
32 years after Nicole Brown Simpson’s murder, former lover Joseph Perrulli recalls the night O.J. was seen lurking in the bushes outside of her home
When Nicole confronted O.J., he said he “just happened to be driving by and wanted to make sure everything was okay”
Though reticent to compare himself to Ron Goldman, who was murdered alongside Nicole, Perrulli says, “Ron Goldman could have been me, absolutely”
One evening, while leaving Nicole Brown Simpson’s home, shortly after they’d become romantically involved in 1992, Joseph Perrulli had an eerie sense after he walked out of the door.
“I thought I smelled her perfume,” recalls Perrulli. “It was like she’d been standing there. I got this strange sense, and in Brentwood at the time you never felt that. It was a tony neighborhood, and so I got in my car and kept feeling the need to look over my shoulder. I remember looking in the rearview mirror.”
Several weeks later, Nicole called him to say her neighbor had seen O.J. lurking in the bushes outside that night.
At the time, Nicole was newly separated from football great O.J. Simpson, and she and Perrulli were falling deeply in love.
Nicole later confronted O.J. Says Perrulli, “She challenged him on coming to the house when she was there with someone. He said he just happened to be driving by and wanted to make sure everything was okay. He also said he really didn’t have a problem with me. He said he felt I was a gentleman.”
Joseph Perrulli and Nicole Brown Simpson
Credit: Courtesy of Joseph Perrulli
He also learned later on that Nicole sometimes wore Paco Rabanne men’s cologne, as did O.J — and says, “It wasn’t until then that I put two and two together.”
It’s one of the many stories he shares in his new book, The Forgotten Briefcase, all about the Nicole he knew in a way few did. But as romantic as his time with Nicole was, O.J’s threatening presence increasingly unnerved him.
One morning while on a jog with Nicole and another friend, they saw O.J. along their regular route. “I looked ahead and see this man with two children at the corner of the Brentwood Country Mart and it’s O.J,” Perrulli recalls of seeing the football star with his two young kids, Sydney and Justin.
“Our friend seizes up and said, ‘Joseph, whatever you do, keep running.’ I felt I needed to approach him but she was insistent. It felt like one of the most cowardly things I’d ever done. Before I passed, it almost felt like he marked me. His glare was penetrating.”
Afterwards, he says, Nicole “was very upset. She felt like he followed her with the children to make her look bad.” Still she downplayed it. “She said, ‘Look, it’s Brentwood. He lives close by. Those things are going to happen.”
Joseph Perrulli and Nicole Brown Simpson
Credit: Courtesy of Joseph Perrulli
The warnings and red flags continued, to the point that Perrulli eventually ended their relationship after a few months. He placed all of their mementos, photos and letters into a black briefcase, which all these years later, became the basis for his book.
On the morning of June 13, 1994, he got a call from a friend. “He was talking so fast, I couldn’t really understand,” recalls Perrulli. “And then I heard, ‘Nicole’ and ‘murdered,’ and it just hit me. I thought, ‘Oh he did it, he killed her.'”
“My friend said, ‘You should reach out to some people because they might think you were with her.’ I said, ‘Wait, somebody was with her?’ He said there was a body found with her, a man, and they were both killed.”
Joseph Perrulli for PEOPLE on May 28
Credit: Amanda Friedman
Of Ron Goldman, 25, the young waiter and aspiring actor who accompanied Nicole home that night, Perrrulli says, “He was an innocent young man and his story was overshadowed by the spectacle of the trial.”
Though reticent to compare himself, he says, “Ron Goldman could have been me, absolutely. “
Now, 32 years after the brutal murder, says Perrulli, “He should not be forgotten either.”
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