In a live interview on ESPN on Thursday, O.J. Simpson talked about life at home and on the golf links, but he was frequently agitated and argumentative, and even seemed a little confused at one point.
While telling interviewer Chris Myers that he doesn't have much money to spend on his search for the real killer of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman, Simpson seemed to stumble over who should be conducting the hunt."I can only do what I can do," he said. "Don't you think Fred Goldman." Then, catching himself, Simpson said, "They think I did it."
Simpson and Myers got into verbal tussles at several points. When Myers pressed Simpson about whether he had beaten his wife, the ex-football star said: "You guys are so full of beans."
But when the show went to a commercial, Simpson, with his microphone off, smiled broadly.
Asked if he could change one thing in his life, Simpson said, "I don't think I ever would have been unfaithful to either of my wives."
Of his life now that the court cases are behind him, he said, "I'm trying to raise my kids, get my golf handicap down and get enough information to get the DA to reopen the case."
Fred Goldman, who watched the interview from his office with the anti-crime group Safe Streets, was dismissive.
"All this monkey business about him still searching for the real killer is just so much bull," he said after the show. "He's found the killer every time he looks in the mirror, and he knows it."
Although he is widely considered a social outcast, Simpson insisted that he is well-received in public.
"Everywhere I go . . . people are nice to me."
Responded Goldman: "There's very little you can listen to him say that isn't full of lies or self-aggrandizement."
Simpson also said that a startling remark he made in the February issue of Esquire magazine was taken out of context, and didn't amount to much, anyway.
Simpson is quoted in the magazine as saying, "Let's say I committed this crime. Even if I did do this, it would have to have been because I loved her very much, right?"
He repeated his assertion that the real killer has something to do with the "world of Faye Resnick," a close friend of his ex-wife.
Simpson was acquitted of murder in a criminal trial, but a civil jury found him liable, and awarded the plaintiffs $33.5 million in damages.
Simpson is appealing the judgment. To date, Fred Goldman said he has received "zero."