Nicole Brown Simpson’s Sisters Give Update on Her and O.J.’s Kids

In the wake of the brutal double-murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ronald Goldman, on the night of June 12, 1994 — with a large swath of America and beyond unambiguously convinced to this very day that it came at the hands of O.J. Simpson — the Brown family mounted a colossal effort to shield the former couple’s two young children from what transpired that night and in the ensuing years.

Nicole and O.J.’s kids — Sydney and Justin — were only 8 and 5 years old and sound asleep upstairs in their mother’s Brentwood, California, home when she was stabbed to death. Nicole was 35. Ronald suffered equally brutal stab wounds. He was 25. But like a herd forming a protective circle to protect its young from harm, the Brown family mustered the strength amid the horrifying circumstances and rallied around the two children and valiantly kept them away from the limelight.

ET’s Rachel Smith spoke with Nicole’s three sisters — Denise, Dominique and Tanya — ahead of the 30th anniversary of Nicole’s death, which is the subject of a new Lifetime documentary, The Life and Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson, a two-night event premiering June 1.

The trio opened up to ET about how the Brown family protected Sydney and Justin from the media circus, how they reacted to O.J.’s death and how the children — now adults with families of their own — are coping all these years later after Nicole’s death and O.J.’s sudden death on April 10 following a battle with cancer. He was 76.

“Well, fortunately we lived in a community and kind of created a bubble around the kids,” Dominique tells ET. “Our neighborhood Safeway, the supermarket, didn’t put up the magazines.”

Dominque says the supermarket didn’t just turn around the magazines. They removed the gossip magazines — plastered with Nicole and O.J.’s faces — from the shelves. That small effort afforded the children, for a brief moment, some sense of normalcy.

“None of the gossip. None of the hoopla,” she added.

But there was still the issue of film crews surrounding the home eager for the next scoop, or the TV news helicopters hovering above the home. There was nothing the family could do about that, but they found a way to fortify the bubble.

“We would eat together, we would do family things,” Dominque says. “We did games. We used to play kick the can in the street. I mean, we used to do things like that.”

As if the constant news updates — from coverage of the murders to O.J.’s infamous white Ford Bronco chase across alarmingly empty freeways throughout Los Angeles — weren’t overwhelming enough, there was also the so-called “Trial of the Century,” which also garnered wall-to-wall coverage across the nation. The nearly year trial soon became one of the most widely publicized events in American history.

But the Browns had a plan to combat the coverage.

“Our televisions were all turned to VCRs except my father’s,” says Denise, referencing her father, Louis Hezekiel Brown. “He wanted to see what was going on the news, but all the other televisions were all VCR so the kids didn’t see any of it.”

These days, Sydney and Justin — now 38 and 35, respectively — keep a low profile. It is their hope to keep it that way for the foreseeable future.

“They have their own families,” says Dominque, who adds she keeps in real close contact with them. “They live normal lives. They want to be left alone and they have children of their own.”

“Please leave them alone,” Denise pleads. “They just want to live normal lives and happy lives. They don’t have both parents. It’s hard for them. It’s sad. I don’t know if it’s hard, but it’s sad for them. And I think their privacy is important to them.”

The sisters say they’re not sure if Sydney and Justin will watch the two-part Lifetime documentary. 

“I have mixed feelings about it because it’s so good. So many great stories about Mom,” Tanya says. “But then they’re going to hear what a horrible dad he was, what a horrible husband, a horrible human being. And it’s like, I don’t know if they have a good perception of him or a poor one. I’m not really in touch with them, but I think it would kind of hurt me if they had such a great relationship with Dad and then all of a sudden they see this and see a totally different person.”

That being said, Denise shares that, even if Sydney and Justin don’t tune in, Lifetime was gracious enough to put together a reel of Nicole’s best moments for the children to enjoy.

The former NFL star and controversial public figure left behind four adult children, who were by his side at the time of his death. He married his first wife, Marguerite Whitley, when he was 19 years old, in 1968. Together, the former couple welcomed three children — daughter Arnelle, 55, son Jason, 53, and a daughter, Aaren, who died when she was just a year old after tragically drowning in the family’s swimming pool.

O.J. met his second wife, Nicole, while still married to Marguerite, in 1977. O.J. and Marguerite divorced in 1979, and he continued to date Nicole until they tied the knot in 1985. Together, they welcomed Sydney and Justin. Nicole filed for divorce from O.J. in 1992.

Some three years later, more than 150 million viewers tuned in as O.J. was acquitted of the double murders, though a jury unanimously found O.J. liable for Nicole and Ron’s deaths in 1997. O.J. died owing a significant amount of money to the Brown and Goldman families after a civil trial jury ordered him to pay $33.5 million, which, with interest over the past 27 years has ballooned to over $100 million.

O.J.’s attorney has since said he would invite a legal rep of the Goldmans to review his findings of the late USC star’s estate as he calculates its worth. O.J.’s attorney, Malcolm LaVergne added, “We can get this thing resolved in a calm and dispassionate manner.”

Nearly two months after his death, the sisters reacted to O.J.’s death.

“I was sad for the children, but then again, I think it was mixed emotions,” Dominque shares. “It’s complicated. It’s the end of what we’re hoping or could be the end of a huge chapter of our lives. It’s someone who was in our family for many, many years. I mean, it’s been 50 years or something. Almost 50 years because they were together and then 30 years had passed. So, it was complicated. It was confusing. But then again it was very, very sad because now the kids have no parents.”

Denise added, “I was really happy. I was happy to hear because we had this kind of relationship, you know, it wasn’t a good relationship from the first time I met him. So, when Nicole was happy, I was very happy for her. And that’s all that mattered to me, that Nicole was happy. For me, it was probably a little more tense with the kids because I went out and spoke about domestic violence and I spoke about their dad. I felt I had to do it. I had to do it for her. I had to do it for all the other Nicole’s that are out there.”

The Life and Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson airs Part 1 on Saturday, followed by Part 2 on Sunday on Lifetime.

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