Nicole Brown Simpson

Nicole Brown Simpson (née Nicole Brown; May 19, 1959 – June 12, 1994) was the ex-wife of professional football player O. J. Simpson and the mother of their two children, Sydney and Justin. She was killed at her home in Brentwood, along with her friend, a restaurant waiter named Ron Goldman. O. J. Simpson was acquitted of the murders, but was later found liable for the deaths in a civil trial.

Brown was born on May 19, 1959, in Frankfurt, West Germany, to Juditha Anne Brown (née Baur; 1931–present) and Louis Hezekiel Brown (1923–2014). Her mother was German, and her father was American. She attended Rancho Alamitos High School in Garden Grove, California and Dana Hills High School in Dana Point, California.

Photo taken February 1986 at the Kahala Hilton Hotel in Honolulu Hawaii

Brown met Simpson in 1977 when she was 18 years old, working as a waitress at the Beverly Hills private club called The Daisy. Although Simpson was still married to his first wife, Marguerite, they began dating. He and Marguerite divorced in March 1979.

Simpson and Brown were married on February 2, 1985, five years after his retirement from professional football. The marriage lasted seven years, during which they had two children, Sydney and Justin. Simpson pleaded no contest to spousal abuse in 1989. Brown filed for divorce on February 25, 1992, citing "irreconcilable differences" as the reason.

During their separation and later divorce, O.J. Simpson built a relationship with model Paula Barbieri. Brown had relationships as well, including with her friend Faye Resnick, and an alleged affair with Simpson's friend, fellow football player and football analyst Marcus Allen. Allen denies the allegation, though it is backed by multiple members of his and Brown's inner circle, such as O. J. Simpson, Faye Resnick, confidants to Sheila Weller, and Simpson's defense attorneys, who claimed Allen confessed the affair to Simpson. Simpson nonetheless let his friend get married at Simpson's North Rockingham Avenue estate. Beginning in 1993, Brown and Simpson attempted to reconcile, but "they were a dramatic, fractious, mutually obsessed couple before they married, after they married, after they divorced in 1992, and after they reconciled, at the fraying edge of which reconciliation the murder occurred."

In June 1994, Brown lived at 875 South Bundy Drive, in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California, with her and Simpson's children. Early on the morning of June 13, 1994, Brown, aged 35, was found murdered outside her home, along with restaurant waiter Ron Goldman. She had been stabbed multiple times in the head and neck, and had defensive wounds on her hands. The wound on her neck was gaping; through it the larynx could be seen. The C3 vertebra was also incised.

Simpson was arrested for the murders and found not guilty in a controversial criminal trial. He was later found liable for the deaths in a civil suit brought by the two victims' families and was subsequently jailed for an unrelated armed robbery at a Las Vegas hotel.

Nicole Brown Simpson is buried in Ascension Cemetery in Lake Forest, California.

In 1995, Brown's best friend Kris Jenner named her daughter Kendall Nicole Jenner in honor of Brown.

In 1996, after the conclusion of the trial, a judge granted Simpson's petition to give him full custody of his and Brown's children, Sydney and Justin. Brown's parents continued unsuccessfully to fight for custody.

After Brown and Goldman's murders, the townhouse at 875 South Bundy Drive where they occurred sat empty for two years, until the next owner extensively remodelled it and had the address changed.

R&B group H-Town dedicated their album Ladies Edition, Woman's World (1997) to Brown, to help victims of domestic violence.