What it was like to be part of the O.J. Bronco chase: Firsthand accounts on the 30th anniversary
Monday, June 17, marks 30 years since the O.J. Simpson Bronco chase, an event watched on live TV by an estimated 95 million people in the U.S. Yahoo News spoke with three reporters — Jane Wells, Conan Nolan and Zoey Tur — who covered the murders of Simpson's ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman and were involved in the slow-speed chase of Simpson and his friend Al Cowlings. They give their memories of the chase and their reflections 30 years later.
Video Transcript
Oj Simpson is wanted.
He's been charged in the two murders that took place Sunday night.
The truth is 95 million people watched the OJ Simpson pursuit because they didn't know what was going to happen next.
OJ Simpson was a fugitive from justice.
We were stuck.
There's some about us as human beings.
You know, it's like the gladiators.
You want to come out and see the show.
It was this like circus atmosphere.
That guy is considering suicide and it's the biggest party L A has ever seen.
He's in the back seat of the Bronco with a gun.
Is this the death of OJ Simpson?
Insanity?
That's what they were watching and they couldn't take their eyes off of it.
The bodies were discovered.
June 12th, 1994.
I'm working nights at the local Fox station.
I hear that OJ Simpson's wife has died.
She's initially referred to as his wife, not his ex wife and that there was another man who's found too.
There was some confusion.
How did this happen?
Who are these people, Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown?
And how is OJ Simpson involved or is he involved?
Everyone knew who OJ was, he was always in our living rooms.
This Heisman trophy winner, a man that with presidents, arguably the most popular black man in America, millions of Americans thought they knew this guy and like a lot of people, I thought, oh, poor OJ.
Oh, this is so sad that this happened to him.
What's going on if you cover murderers long enough, you know, that the first suspect in any case is a relative.
and then all week long, everything was unfolding and we were waiting for it to turn into another direction long as they had satisfied themselves that there's no way OJ Simpson could have done it and that didn't happen relatively quickly.
People became suspicious that he was guilty.
We had heard stories about how when OJ went to the funeral from Nicole Brown, he told the mother, listen, I loved her too much.
Why would you say something like that?
There was some alleged evidence to cut finger, you know, the glove, it's looking more and more like he is a prime suspect in this case.
And it was a big story.
OJ Simpson was set to turn himself in.
I went down to Parker Center and kept looking at my watch and you know, uh more time was going by more time was going by.
We know that he, he somehow he didn't make his way into the police headquarters.
Maybe, maybe it's somewhere else.
Finally LAPD spokesman by the name of Lieutenant Gas gun came outside.
We notice he looks really upset and he makes the announcement OJ is missing.
The Los Angeles Police Department right now is actively searching for Mr Simpson.
And the recited audible gasp from the assembled members of the media.
We actually did gasp because that's the one scenario we did not expect.
And then Robert Kardashian comes on and reads, I don't know, some kind of suicide letter I think of my life and feel I've done most of the right things.
So why do I end up like this?
I can't go on and the LAPD is now searching for OJ everywhere because I was a pilot reporter and I had a helicopter capable of, you know, cruising around at 100 and 50 miles an hour.
I had an advantage.
And I remember telling the crew, let's find this guy.
I was told by my desk, listen, head towards Orange County, south of Los Angeles.
OJ went down to Orange County to Nicole's grave, Mary Helen Campos, an assignment editor at K CBS gave me a call and said, listen to the FBI frequencies.
They may have triangulated his position.
Then we hear OJ is coming back.
He's on the freeway headed towards us, you know, talk about dumb luck.
I literally looked down below through the chin bubble of the helicopter and there was the freeway and as I moved upward, I saw a white Bronco, the white bronco that Al Cowlings is driving it was his Bronco, not the white Bronco allegedly used by OJ the night of the murders.
What we, uh, figure now is that OJ Simpson is sitting in the back seat and he has a gun at his head.
Once I saw the Bronco and the police chasing, I pulled in front of them.
We're heading south as OJ and Al Cowlings are heading north.
We end up having to get off the freeway and make a U turn to get behind them.
This was a slow speed, you know, chase.
It was really al caling slowing the situation down.
He believed that OJ Simpson was in a very bad state.
We're a little ways back.
I'm driving while the camerawoman's hanging out trying to get a and at that point I picked up the phone while driving can't do that anymore.
It's against the vehicular code and stay in front of him while the photographer was taking pictures mostly through the rear view mirror because we really didn't have AAA window.
And the one thing I didn't want to do was to pull up next to him.
I didn't want him to take his own life and I didn't want him to do it when we're taking a picture of him.
And then I saw something that really was very, very surreal.
People have parked on the other side of the freeway in the emergency lane and are sitting on the barrier in the middle of the 405 freeway people are standing on overpasses, you know, waving at the juice.
And I remember thinking, how is it possible?
They had time, not just to get there, but they had time to make a sign.
Their signs run OJ run.
Two people are dead.
Ok. And a guy is considering suicide and everybody, it's the biggest party L A has ever seen before.
He took the off ramp that took him to Rockingham.
We pulled off.
It was frankly too dangerous.
I didn't get to the house because the streets were all blocked off.
It was like Mardi Gras.
I mean, it was giddy, which was completely shocking because you had to remember uh two people were dead.
He's in the car for a very long time in the front drive of his house.
Mind you, I'm not seeing this because I'm in a news van.
I trying to find out what's going to happen.
Is OJ gonna kill himself?
Is LAPD gonna kill OJ.
How is this all going to end?
The vast majority of television sets in the United States were tuned to this because at any moment OJ Simpson could find himself on the wrong side of a sniper's rifle.
And that is why they watched don't delude yourself.
That's what it all, that's what it's about live television, what's gonna happen next?
He eventually gets out and then he's taken into custody and yet this wasn't the main event.
The main event was the courtroom drama and of course, the verdicts, I talk about it as before OJ and after OJ, because it consumed about three years of not just my life but the entire city's life and much of the journalists life in retrospect, I don't think anything good came from this.
Uh It was a, it was a depressing period.
But did he want the attention?
That's clear.
OJ Simpson loved the attention.
The kind of show that corresponds to what I think OJ Simpson thought of himself, which was as a cultural icon and he wasn't far off on that.
I think the pursuit really gave birth to, you know, the 20th century's fascination with reality television a little bit with my help, which is kind of a dismal thing to say if you're a reporter because it helped in a sense ruin what we consider television news these days.
You know, this partisan bullshit that we see every day on TV, masquerading as news.
I just think when people look at that chase, they think it's funny.
And that was not funny.
There was a man contemplating suicide in the back seat and his best friend was frantically trying to figure out what to do.
I think people forget that.
And I think too often in this story, they forget about Ron and Nicole.
Somebody butchered those two people and no one has ever been convicted of that crime.
