NICOLE BROWN SIMPSON - MISTRESS OF O.J. - WIFE OF O.J. and MOST FAMOUS UNSOLVED MURDER VICTIM

NICOLE BROWN SIMPSON - MISTRESS OF THE MONTH

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This month I'm doing something that I've never done in the years since I began researching and writing MISTRESS MANIFESTO BLOGSPOT.  The O.J. Simpson connection moves us from last month's topic PATRICIA SIKORA, the mistress of O.J. Simpson trial lawyer, JOHNNIE COCHRAN, with this month's, NICOLE BROWN SIMPSON, the victim of a yet unsolved murder, and the ex-wife of famous football athlete, Orenthal James Simpson. 

O.J. Simpson is the only person who has ever been on trial for the June 12,1994 murders of Nicole and her friend Ron Goldman. The trial held international interest for about a year, was televised live, and left many wondering about our criminal justice system. Even Princess Diana watched the show.  In 1995 O.J. was acquitted and freed.  The part of the trial that most people remember is when he tried on a leather glove said to be that of the murderer, and lawyer Johnnie Cochran chanted "If it does not fit, you must acquit." Simpson is currently in prison for charges not related to that murder and makes the cover of the National Enquirer often for having a rough time in prison. 

NICOLE BROWN was his mistress, then his second wife.  They met in 1977 and O. J. divorced his first wife Marguerite L. Whitley, the mother of his first three children, in March 1979.  But O.J., who'd been seeing Nicole for a couple years at that point, didn't marry her.  He waited until February 2, 1985, having retired from football and, by various reports, was still playing the field.  So from Nicole's perspective, she had been O.J.'s for about eight years at that point, and a possible motivation for marrying her may have been her pregnancy with her first child.  (That or she got pregnant honeymooning.)

During the trial and in my reading, there is little to no focus on the facts that their relationship began in adultery or went on for years without marriage. 

I think that is because O.J. did divorce, perhaps wanting a divorce before he met Nicole, and he did marry her.  Seems to me that when a mistress does marry her man and is accepted as his legal wife, she is forgiven for that mistress time.

When O.J. Simpson met the pretty, young blonde waitress, NICOLE BROWN, born in 1959 and 12 years younger than he, she was 20, some say 19.  (One account I read on the net had her age 17.) She worked at the Daisy restaurant where she waited on his table.

During these years before their marriage,  Nicole qualified as a "mistress" for the traditional reasons.  She got involved with an older, rich by comparison, married man who already had children. He was a man who could make her life so much more interesting and comfortable than her earnings as a waitress ever would and he brought her into his world.   Many of his friends were in the know about this and his other relationships, if only due to the bragging rights.  You could say he "molded" her.

He was the one in control of the relationship and her, a problem for their marriage when she grew tired of doing things his way so much and you could say had done some growing up and realized she wasn't the perfect fit for that mold.  Though Nicole eventually did earn some money when O.J. paid her to decorate and encouraged their friends to do so, she had come to live her life in fortunate financial circumstances and had become accustom to that.  She didn't really need to work or concern herself with getting an education.  According to Kato Kaelin and Marc Eliot, whose book "The Whole Truth," I reviewed last month, and in agreement with what her friend Faye Resnick said, Nicole did have some ideas about buying a franchise coffee house or going into a small business to earn income and give her something more to do, but well...

Nicole and many of her girlfriends were ladies who did lunch.  Or ladies who went out dancing in the evening. Or ladies who worried most about their looks and body,  their physical attraction and desirability, who sometimes preserved it with cosmetic surgery, such as the breast implants that both Nicole and Kris Kardashian got.  Their motivation was to keep busy and keep fit, to be there for a man, not to set the world on fire.  (Kris Kardashian Jenner is exceptional now, but she became a business woman after years of being primarily a wife and mother.)  Nicole had children but when the children were in school she was not stressed by the need to support herself.  Kato thought she had too much time on her hands.

In all I've read about Nicole, including in the book by Paula Barbieri that I reviewed last month, mixed with my own sense of her, I  think that Nicole was a confused person, a torn person, and one who was just as addicted to the volatile and on and off again relationship she had with O.J. as he was to her. This is not to say that she ever "deserved" to be abused physically or verbally, or to be killed by anyone, but what so many of us have wondered is, "WHY DIDN'T SHE LEAVE?"

Why did Nicole Brown Simpson take pictures of her battered face and put them in a bank box and then keep so silent about the abuse to her family and friends? Was it an old fashioned sense that in doing so she was keeping her family together with a father in the house for their children? Was it the years she had devoted to O.J. already? Was it the lifestyle that included many high-profile friends and vacation travel?

I suspect that Nicole, in her mistress time, wanted to achieve the goal of being a wife, that she was traditional in her values and going against herself as she was in waiting. I'm not judging her or anyone for not having career ambitions, it's just that women who don't work at something for pay are so rare these days.

In Barbara Cochran's book about her marriage and life as the wife of Simpson trial lawyer Johnnie Cochran,  "Life after Johnnie Cochran: Why I Left the Sweetest-Talking, Most Successful Black Lawyer in LA", also reviewed last month, there was a lot about her husband Johnny's desire and need to present himself a certain way to the conservative black community.  But Barbara and Johnnie met at college and she had a college education and a career as a teacher before becoming a mother.  Nicole spent her twenties as a mistress and didn't get any education.  That made it more difficult to leave an addictive off and on again relationship.

This too qualifies her as a traditional (Classic) mistress; Someone who quits working or is taken out of the job market (or school) to be free to be there for her man, free to travel as a companion, and unmarried to that man.  And when he travels for business or pleasure without her, she waits for his return. 

If you get to this page first, I encourage you to read last month's posts, which will help you see a fuller picture and the links between the people whose books I've reviewed.

Missy


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Missy Rapport / Mistress Manifesto Blogspot

This post was slightly edited April 2021

PAULA BARBIERI - O.J. SIMPSON'S OTHER WOMAN? OR ONE OF MANY?

THE OTHER WOMAN

My Years with O.J. Simpson

A Story of Love, Trust, and Betrayal

by Paula Barbieri

 

If you're interested in the O.J. Simpson Trial, the relationship he had with his ex-wife Nicole Brown, and his long relationship with Paula,  which went on throughout the infamous trial for the murder of Nicole, you might want to read this one. 

 

It's interesting, intimate, and honest,  and it does recall a vibrant relationship - until it wasn't - but I've got an issue with it.  The title is all wrong.  There is no reason to think of Paula as THE OTHER WOMAN, she doesn't make any case for that really, and Paula WAS NEVER O.J. SIMPSON's Mistress.  I was actually hoping that by reading this book, because of the title, that I would find out she was, but she doesn't fit any of the criteria I find important in defining Mistress.

What first made me think she had been O.J's mistress was a sentence in the book titled

KATO KAELIN - THE WHOLE TRUTH - The Real Story by Mark Eliot,  in which author Elliot writes on page 60 that OJ was "busy rotating a steady cast of young, willing, sometimes married, mostly single women, including one aspiring actress named Paula Barbieri, who held out serious hope that one day she might become the third Mrs. Simpson."  And then, on page 70, he states that according to Kato Kaelin, O.J. had steady liaisons with one or two Raiderettes (Los Angles Raider cheerleaders), "some who came by regularly," after all he wasn't married, and that he had bought Paula a "nifty little high-rise apartment on fancy Wilshire Boulevard."

Except that O.J. did not. Paula's career as a model kept her traveling and independent and self supporting.  In Paula's book she says she herself, from her earnings as a model, bought herself a house in Florida, as well as that condo.  She was making six figures as her career peaked.  Sadly, because, though she had decided to end their relationship and had left him a message on his answering machine stating so, a message he may have gotten the same evening Nicole was murdered, she also decided to stick with him for the duration of his trial for murder.  She was in Vegas modeling in a music video when the murders occurred. 

 

When Paula started with O.J., she was divorced, she'd had long term affairs that had not worked out, and he was on his way to divorce.  O.J.'s divorce was finalized while he and Paula were together.  The only hitch that temporarily qualified her for Other Woman Status?.  Nicole and O.J., who were clearly, to me, addicted to each other, probably because of the chaos and on and off again nature of their volatile relationship, gave it another try after their official divorce.  And Paula may have been the only one who wasn't sleeping around too!

 

Sadly, for all her loyalty and sacrifice, according to the Elliot book, O.J. admitted that he did not love her and would never marry her.

The real story here is how his incarceration and trial sucked her back in to being his girlfriend,  possible something he and his lawyers wanted to give him the image that he had so moved on from Nicole.  He had in Paula, someone he could talk to from prison each morning and night, and someone who would support him.  But all that loyalty destroyed her  health (temporarily) and career (permanently).  She was who lost everything, including her house in Florida and condo in Los Angeles too.  Bookers were afraid, they said, that when someone saw her picture, they wouldn't be thinking about the clothes she was modeling.  I wasn't familiar with her great success until I read this book, thinking unfairly that she was, like Kato Kaelin, a poor person.

 

Paula turned to Christianity to fulfill her, when, once O.J, was released and able to be a boyfriend again, she realized it really had been all over long ago.

 

***

PS:  LAST MONTH NICOLE BROWN SIMPSON was our Mistress of the Month.  Scroll through this blog to find the posts about her!

To read about a Mantress who there's a Hollywood murder-mystery surrounding, check out my posts about Superman!

C 2015 Missy Rapport/ Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot  All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

 

KATO KAELIN -THE WHOLE TRUTH - HE MOVED TO LOS ANGELES TO BE AN ACTOR

 

KATO KAELIN - THE WHOLE TRUTH

The real Story by Mark Eliot - From the Actual Tapes

Harper was the publisher

 

Kato Kaelin gave Mark Elliot a lot of interviews, but in the end Mark wrote this book on his own.   My read of this book? ; I came to understand Kato's confusion, fears, and hesitations about the famous murder that he got caught up in, and whether or not what little he had to say was important or not.  I believe he was so emotionally frazzled and afraid for his life at the time that he had a difficult time taking the stand. Today he says he believes O.J. did kill Nicole.

 

Today Kato is called an American radio and television personality who gained fame as a witness at the murder trial of O. J. Simpson, but he was called to testify because he was a house guest on O.J. Simpson's property when the murders occurred.  He heard what he thought were mysterious knocks on his wall about the time, possibly, that O.J. or someone was outside or around the property.  These knocks were loud enough to scare him and might have been an important element of the time line.  Kato had been a kind of house mate and babysitter to Nicole and the children and her confidant - at her place - before he moved in with O.J.  He liked them both.  He was friends with both, but at the same time he never took for granted his position, and being considered a guest meant he was portrayed as a squatter in some media.

 

I was going through some old boxes of books when I found my copy of this book and reread it. This book may have impressed me more rereading it  and this latest reading is was what triggered my research into the MISTRESSES around the O.J. Simpson trial, especially because NICOLE BROWN was O.J.'s Mistress before she was his wife.  (O.J. was married to his first wife when he met the 17?* year old Nicole and he was her one and only for years.)  But believe it or not, it was KATO KAELIN who I personally found to be the most interesting character in the trial back in the day. 

 

Public opinion was against this quirky character. I remember my neighbors and friends making some judgments - about his hair - his facial ticks.  One woman said that his facial ticks were from drug use. Some of it was snobby talk, unfair to Kato and everyone like him.  Being poor, being a houseguest, not having a great career, so what?  Poor people can still tell the truth.

 

Let me explain. Kaelin was one more person who came to Los Angeles to pursue acting.  Of the thousands of hopefuls who do that every year, very few every get to be professional actors who can make a living at it, because movie extra work (the bottom, agentless group) is like the bottom of the pyramid, and then a rare someone like Tom Cruise is at the very top. There are a number of actors, usually called character actors, who have been in dozens of films that you kind of recognize but don't who make a good living at it, and then those few who you recognize but forget to as you watch them embody the character, the ones that get the awards.  So Kaelin was not a looser, as portrayed in the media, but someone who had at least made the big move to be where the action was.  If he wasn't just a step higher than an extra, he was trying.  Of course, because of the trial, he did manage to become a public personality, a curiosity, and he did make some money from his fame, BUT HE NEVER SOLD STORIES FOR MONEY TO MAGAZINES OR REPORTERS, and it was only this book author he was talking to. 

 

That he was sort of adopted by Nicole Brown Simpson and the kids loved him and then later O.J., that he was on the sidelines of their crowd  as a house mate, guest, babysitter, all around good guy, is also REMARKABLE.  Of those thousands of hopefuls who come to Hollywood in hopes of making it big in acting most will spend most of their time working in restaurants.  Restaurant work is often the best an actor can get.  With tips it may pay a livable wage but best of all, you and your co-workers can usually switch around your schedules in order to go for auditions and other acting related events and appointments. So Kato managed to get himself into a flexible situation to be open for whatever might come, another important step.

 

THE FACT IS, KATO became friends with all these people who had more wealth and success than him,  maybe not close person friends all the time, but they mostly liked him because he was NATURALLY FUNNY, GOOD TO HAVE AROUND, a CHEERY PERSON whose sometimes unusual world view was interesting.  He enjoyed a good laugh at his  own expense and could be humble, even self depreciating.  He could turn a tense situation around with a remark.

 

 

He is now a millionaire due to his clothing line called SLACKER....  Enjoy his sense of humor here!

P.S.  Kato was raised Catholic and devout enough to wait until he was 23 and married before he lost his virginity.  This fact may reveal a lot about his personal values.  He's known to have had many women as friends through the years, platonic friends, and he tried to avoid getting too involved in the O.J. and Nicole relationship, focusing on the positive.

Continue on to my review of PAULA BARBIERI's book...

*On the net the age at which Nicole and O.J. met spans from 17 to 19.

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