Newly uncovered court documents have revealed claims that a notorious mobster helped to dispose of the murder weapon in the 1994 killings of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
An investigation by The New York Times found evidence that there was much more to the story behind the killings than what the public heard during O.J. Simpson’s 1995 murder trial—including a potential accomplice.
Simpson, who was acquitted by a jury despite significant forensic evidence, openly spoke of a friend’s involvement in his 2007 memoir, If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer. In it, he described a hypothetical scenario in which a friend helped him dispose of the murder weapon and his bloody clothes.
Authorities gave the book’s hypothetical confession little weight, viewing it as a cash grab by Simpson, who was ordered to pay $33.5 million to the victims’ families in a 1997 California civil case.
But court documents the Times obtained suggest Simpson might have been telling the truth.
The records reveal that Joseph “Joey” Ippolito, a mob-connected drug runner and a friend of Simpson, who was described by federal prosecutors as an “extremely reliable” informant, told authorities he had information about the missing murder weapon.
However, by the time they received the information, Los Angeles prosecutors had already rested the case.
The weapon was never found. A medical examiner who testified during the case said the victims were likely stabbed with a single-bladed, 6-inch knife.
Earlier this year, Joey’s brother, Sam Ippolito, gave a bombshell interview to the Times. He said Joey had been at the scene of the June 1994 killings, and returned to their apartment that night carrying a bag with a heavy object inside and blood on his hands. He asked his brother to dispose of the bag.
Sam said he also remembered hearing Joey on the phone saying he had just been “helping” Simpson.
At the time, Sam said, he didn’t ask any questions and tossed the bag in a dumpster near a construction site.
Sam told the Times he was “100 percent” certain that Joey, who died in 2006, was at the scene of the murders. But after the newspaper turned down his request for money in exchange for the story, the Times reports, he recanted his earlier statements, saying he could no longer reliably recall what had happened.
In what became known as the “Trial of the Century,” the star NFL running back was acquitted of the murders by a jury in October 1995. The televised trial was dogged by the LAPD’s racist history and doubts about investigators’ handling of evidence.
Simpson later went to jail for armed robbery and kidnapping, unrelated to the 1994 murders.
He died from prostate cancer in 2024 at age 76. He was once friendly with President Donald Trump, attending his 1993 wedding to Marla Maples, six months before he was arrested for the double murder.
The Los Angeles Police Department said the case remains open since there was never a conviction for the murders.
“The department has an obligation to continue to pursue justice in this matter,” an LAPD spokesperson said. “At a point that new evidence is found, detectives will follow those investigatory leads.”
