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SAN FRANCISCO - Newsweek magazine said today it obtained the crucial chapter in the scrapped O.J. Simpson book in which he told how he might have killed his ex-wife if he were the murderer, including arguing with her and finding himself holding a bloody knife.
Newsweek said it
obtained from a source who asked not to be identified the chapter in If I Did It, in which the former football star makes "a seeming confession" about the murder of his ex-wife and a friend.
In a 1995 criminal trial, Simpson was found innocent of murdering Nicole Brown Simpson and friend Ron Goldman.
In the chapter Newsweek obtained, the magazine said Simpson tells of arguing with his ex-wife outside her home, of her falling and hitting her head and of finding himself holding a bloody knife with both her and her friend dead.
Newsweek assistant managing editor Mark Miller said the chapter seems like a confession because it closely meshes with evidence in the case, he said.
The book was to have been published late last year by Regan Books, an imprint of HarperCollins which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.
But it was dropped amid public outcry at the crassness of the project. Murdoch apologised, and all 400,000 copies of the book were recalled and destroyed. Judith Regan, the publisher of Regan books, was later fired.
Miller, in this week's Newsweek, said, "What is striking about the chapter I read ... is how closely it tracks with the evidence in the case -- and how clearly Simpson invokes the classic language of a wife abuser.
"In his crude, expletive-laced account, Simpson suggests Nicole all but drove him to kill her," he said.
Miller said that Simpson tells how he drove to his ex-wife's home with a friend called Charlie and encountered her and Goldman. But Simpson stops short of describing their stabbings.
Miller said Simpson wrote that his ex-wife came at him like a "banshee."
He added, "She loses her balance and falls hard, her head cracking against the ground. Goldman assumes a karate stance, further angering Simpson. He dares the younger man to fight. Then, in the book, Simpson pulls back. He writes, 'Then something went horribly wrong, and I know what happened, but I can't tell you exactly how.'"
Miller said Simpson wrote that when he regained control of himself, he realised he was holding a bloody knife and was drenched in blood. His ex-wife and Goldman were dead.
Simpson has always denied committing the murders and said this was a hypothetical account written for a large sum of money and not meant to be taken as truth. Although acquitted of murder charges, Simpson was found liable for their deaths in a civil trial brought by the families of his former wife and Goldman.
- REUTERS