Nicole Brown Simpson's family thought O.J. Simpson was high on drugs and said he was babbling incoherently at her wake, deposition transcripts show.
"He was so doped up, I don't even think he remembers he was at a funeral," Nicole's mother, Juditha Brown, testified May 1, according to a transcript obtained Tuesday by the Associated Press.Simpson was "babbling" something about a ring and at one point seemed to be falling asleep, family members testified.
Also, Simpson attorney Robert Shapiro questioned Brown as the two of them stood over Nicole's casket, she testified. Shapiro asked about her phone call to her daughter the night of the murder, she said.
"In front of Nicole's coffin, he said, `When did you call Nicole?' " she testified. "And I said - I guess that's when I said `10:45.' " Phone records would later show the call was made earlier.
Four of Simpson's relatives testified in depositions for the wrongful death lawsuit against Simpson, who was acquitted of murder charges in the June 12, 1994, knife slayings of Nicole Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.
They spoke of the previously disclosed account of Simpson offering his then-ex-wife $5,000 to sleep with him one night just weeks before her murder. They also repeated their assertion Simpson had a foreboding appearance at his daughter's dance recital hours before the killings.
The depositions added some details to the emotional days that followed the murders, when the soon-to-be accused Simpson and members of the Brown family - who would later label him a murderer - gathered for a wake.
Simpson's sister, Dominique Brown, said that Simpson's behavior was unusual.
"He was kneeling, kind of babbling . . . and he wanted me to walk over to the casket with him," Dominique Brown testified on April 30. "And he said, `Where is that ring that I gave her, the one that I gave her for the children?' "