Biggest Revelations in American Manhunt: O.J. Simpson

It’s been 30 years since the so-called “trial of the century” began on Jan. 24, 1995. The Black football star O.J. Simpson was tried for the 1994 murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson—who was white—and her friend Ron Goldman—also white—outside of her Los Angeles home.

Simpson was acquitted in that criminal trial in October because jurors found reasonable doubt, for his defense lawyers successfully made the case that certain pieces of evidence were manipulated and planted. But Simpson was found to be liable for their deaths in a civil trial in 1997 because the burden of proof was different in that case. He was ordered to pay more than $33 million to the families and spent nearly a decade in prison.

There have been many O.J. Simpson documentaries over the last three decades—like O.J.: Made in America, which aired on ESPN in 2016—but a new Netflix docu-series, American Manhunt: O.J. Simpson, aims to reintroduce the trial and its impact on conversations over domestic violence and racism to a younger audience that has grown up in the era of the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements. It also comes out less than a year after O.J. Simpson’s death in 2024.

Director Floyd Russ says Simpson was invited to participate in the Netflix documentary, but wanted to be paid for telling his side of the story—which the filmmakers considered unethical—and he wanted a certain level of control over the production that filmmakers could not allow.

Over four episodes, the docu-series unfolds like a timeline, featuring interviews with the lawyers involved, detectives, people who knew Simpson and some people who were not called to testify, but who say they saw Simpson on the run.

Russ says the goal of the docu-series is to allow the audience to be the jurors and decide for themselves whether or not Simpson killed his ex-wife and her friend. But he adds: “I think it's pretty clear that he did it.”

People Russ spoke to for the docu-series appear to think the same way. Here are some of the most revealing parts of American Manhunt.

People who knew O.J. express doubts about him

The filmmakers interviewed O.J. Simpson’s agent, Mike Gilbert, after the football player’s death. Gilbert was friends with Simpson and represented him for about 22 years. But he had a falling out with Simpson and even published a book in 2008 that claimed Simpson confessed to Gilbert that he was behind the killings after the trial.

In American Manhunt, Gilbert describes his client as an enigma: “Was O.J. a really good person who was capable of doing bad things? Or was O.J. just a really bad person that occasionally did good things? I still don’t know—who was he? Which person did I know?”

Ron Shipp, who had been friends with Simpson, recalls a conversation with Simpson shortly after the murders made headlines. Simpson complained to Shipp that authorities wanted him to take a lie detector test. Shipp thought it was a no-brainer, and asked Simpson why he was hesitant. He says that Simpson admitted he had had dreams about killing Nicole.

When Shipp was testifying, he talked about a pattern of domestic abuse, how Nicole had told him that Simpson hit her in the head and showed him pictures of bruises on her body after other altercations. Shipp said Simpson did not deny it when Shipp confronted him about it.

The main unsolved mystery

Arguably the biggest mystery in the O.J. Simpson case that never got solved is what happened to the murder weapon, a knife. No murder weapon was presented as evidence in the trial, and no proof of its whereabouts has turned up in three decades. And yet, a couple of people interviewed for American Manhunt think they know what happened to it.

Kato Kaelin, who was staying at OJ’s guesthouse at the time of the murders, recalls trying to help OJ load several bags into a limo en route to the airport to fly to Chicago for a corporate golf outing, but that OJ was insistent that Kaelin stay away from a small duffel bag. Kaelin’s interview is juxtaposed with the testimony of the limo driver, Allan Park, who described seeing the small duffel bag that Kaelin was referring to.

In an interview, Skip Junis says he was at the airport waiting to pick up his wife when he saw OJ get out of the limo. He says the athlete had several pieces of Louis Vuitton luggage, but was holding a cheap-looking bag and was adamant that the limo driver and the skycap stay away from that bag. The limo driver had also testified back in 1995 that OJ Simpson had a bag over his shoulder. Junis says he saw OJ go to the trash can, unzip the bag, pull out “something long” and immediately put it into the trashcan. Then he walked into the terminal and boarded a flight to Chicago.

The case for another O.J. Simpson documentary in 2025

The O.J. Simpson case was not only a case about domestic violence, but also a case about race. A central part of the defense’s argument was that one of the lead detectives on the case, Mark Furman, had a history of racist statements and therefore couldn’t be trusted.

When filmmakers interview Furman and ask him about his past racist statements three decades later, he said, “There was a period in my life. I talked about minorities in derogatory terms. I was kind of lost.”

Racial tensions were already high in Los Angeles when the O.J. Simpson trial took place. The city was still reeling from the 1992 riot which occurred after police officers were acquitted of assault in the video-taped beating of a Black man, Rodney King.

Russ hopes that American Manhunt, released in the aftermath of George Floyd’s 2020 murder—which sparked a national conversation about race and police misconduct—may prompt viewers to talk about the racial aspects of the O.J. Simpson case in a new, more informed way.

“A lot has happened in this country in the last eight years," he says. "The question still remains—has anything actually changed since 1995?"

Write to Olivia B. Waxman at olivia.waxman@time.com.