الوسم: been

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Different identity: These are the first pictures of Sydney Simpson since 2024, in two stills taken from footage filmed for an upcoming Daphne Barak ********ary to mark the 20th anniversary of Nicole Simpson’s murder. Sydney now goes by the **** Portia at the Atlanta restaurant where she works

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Daphne Barak writes: I chatted with the shy waitress. Her colleagues in the busy restaurant said she keeps to herself. They described her as ‘very quiet, as if she has a problem she can’t talk about’



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Low key: Sydney Simpson (last pictured here in 2024) has kept on the move and changed jobs constantly in her bid to shake off her notorious family history and the public’s curiosity about her life
She has spent the past two decades of her life on the run and hiding as if she herself had committed a crime when her only ‘mistake’ is her parentage and events well beyond her control.
It is 20 years this month since OJ Simpson was tried for the brutal double murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman.

The trial was a media sensation. For the first time cameras were allowed inside the courtroom and suddenly witnesses became stars of what could be labelled the first reality TV show.
America was transfixed by the spectacle that began on 17 June 1994 with that now infamous slow-motion car chase as television helicopters filmed OJ’s white Bronco being driven by his friend along the LA freeways while OJ sat in the back, a .357 Magnum to his head.

I chatted with the shy waitress. Her colleagues in the busy restaurant said she keeps to herself. They described her as ‘very quiet, as if she has a problem she can’t talk about’
His ultimate acquittal was as sensational as the news that the Hall of Fame running back turned bit-part actor had been charged in the first place.
It was the trial of the century. We know what happened to OJ next. Despite the criminal court’s ‘not guilty’ verdict, he lost a civil suit brought by the Goldmans and Browns and still owes them $33million.
Today he’s in jail, guilty of an armed robbery in Vegas and serving nine to 33 years in a jail in Nevada.
But so little is known about what happened to the lives of the other ‘victims’ of this story – OJ’s children: Arnelle, 46 and Jason, 44, from his first marriage to Marguerite Whitely and Sydney, now 28, and Justin, 25, Nicole’s children.
Twenty years on they are not easy people to find and for a reason. They have lived with the legacy of their father’s trial all this time and perhaps the most profoundly affected, and affecting, is Sydney.
I was in contact with Arnelle and she suggested, that as part of my upcoming special on the 20th anniversary of Nicole Simpson’s death, I should visit Sydney in Atlanta as a waitress where her half-brother Jason works as a sous-chef.
Surprisingly, the people she works with did not even know these two are related.

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I chatted with the shy waitress. Her colleagues in the busy restaurant said she keeps to herself. They described her as ‘very quiet, as if she has a problem she can’t talk about’.
As she carried on her work I heard her giving her **** to a diner, telling them: ‘My ****? My **** is Portia’.
Their caution over their identity is well founded from the experiences of their relatives. OJ’s sister, Shirley, told me that her father used to be a **** and explained that she had once run a catering business.
She said, ‘But people cancelled reservations with us when they heard I was OJ’s sister.’
Every**** touched by the OJ case carries a stigma, sadly.


‘People cancelled reservations with us when they heard I was OJ’s sister’
– Shirley Simpson
But for Sydney it seems that more than any of the others her life was so irrevocably transformed by the murders and the trial because she was the youngest.

She was just eight and her brother Justin was five on the night of the murders. She was in the house asleep.

I met Sydney first in 1996 when I conducted the first interview with OJ Simpson after he was acquitted.

It was in his house in Brentwood, Los Angeles. OJ was trim and ***** and he came across as a loving father to Sydney and Justin. His sister Shirley was there as well.
They gave every impression of being a warm united family, recovering two years after the trauma.
But one thing stands out more than any other during that first interview. As OJ was telling me about how he had suffered, the kids became visibly upset because they couldn’t find the family’s pet dog.
They were panicked and worried and OJ seemed only impatient and dismayed that he was not the center of attention during the search.

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The next time I met Sydney was 1998 when I spent a couple of days filming ‘A Day In A Life with OJ’.
We filmed him having breakfast with a bunch of old pals who supported him despite public opinion that was overwhelming against him. Then we headed to the golf course.
Afterwards we returned to his home. I still carry the image of Sydney with him on the sofa. She was in his arms, looking happy and safe. The outside world, the headlines the opinions and theories about her father all looked so far away, irrelevant in this father-daughter moment.
But obviously the relationship has changed over the years. In the meantime, Sydney made some headlines of her own. On one occasion it was alleged that she, during a public fight with her father she had blurted out, ‘You murdered mom’.

Then in January 2024 she was taken into custody after being violent and resisting arrest.
While working with Jason, Sydney also shares an apartment with her younger brother, Justin. He is a bus boy.


On one occasion it was alleged that Sydney, during a public fight with her father she had blurted out, ‘You murdered mom’
Her family is proud of the real estate license she recently got having passed the exam.

In the early days OJ’s sister, Shirley Baker and her husband Benny tried to provide some sort of ‘normal’ family home for the kids.
Earlier she had told me, ‘We were there to send the kids to school in the morning, with a meal and a smile.’

It was tough because OJ paid them a minimal fee, and the only reason they could manage to shuttle between their own modest home in California to Miami as often as they did, was because their daughter Terry is a flight attendant who could get them flights almost for free.

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Family affair: OJ Simpson’s daughter Arnelle and his niece Tracy, her partner Sam, Erbil Gunasti and Daphne, discuss OJ’s legacy over dinner

Today money is still a big issue for the OJ kids.
Over 4 days, at the new juice fasting resort Secret Fast in California, Arnelle and I talked and hiked and she revealed just how desperate their situation is and how difficult it has been for all of the siblings to maintain any sort of stability or job.

Arnelle told me that she is now looking for new employment, a new ********, a new life.

She said she worked ‘for a rapper called Hash for a while and then produced some fashion shows’ but that is all past tense.
There were reports that they were in danger of losing the house in Miami her father bought in a bid to escape the millions of dollars in civil judgment brought against him in Los Angeles.

The reports also claimed OJ was angry that Arnelle had been spending his $25,000-a-month NFL pension that he was allowed to keep.


‘I love my father, I love my father… Yes, he did something wrong’
– Arnelle Simpson
Arnelle explained it this way: ‘The home is gone. All the money went to attorneys anyway. There was no point to keep it. It went for for closure. It’s gone’.
Intriguingly, she elaborated: ‘I have the power of attorney for my fathers affairs while he is, you know, in his "situation".

OJ still owes the Goldman family $33m from the civil action.

So how do they feel about their father?
‘I love my father,’ Arnelle told me. ‘I love my father,’ she repeated before adding: ‘Yes, he did something wrong’.

She was referring to his latest brush with the law in Vegas – the reason he is in a Nevada jail. Hinting, though, that his punishment is too harsh.
The contradiction between her different moods continued. I couldn’t understand how she could sit telling me there was no money and then in the next breath excitedly share plans for a 50th birthday extravaganza for her cousin, Tracy, across three days in Vegas. She were scheduled to fly there, dine in a luxury hotel and then stay at a lavish mansion which she claimed belonged to a friend of OJ.

‘Would you visit your father as well?’ I asked trying to make sense of it all.

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First reality TV stars: America was transfixed by the spectacle that began on 17 June 1994 with that now infamous slow-motion car chase as television helicopters filmed OJ’s white Bronco being driven by his friend along the LA freeways while OJ sat in the back, a .357 Magnum to his head

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Defiance: Despite the devastation the murder had on their finances, prospects and anonymity, Arnelle arrogantly exclaims: ‘We don’t need any****. I don’t need help… I am OJ Simpson’s daughter!’

Arnelle told us, how they used to visit him: ‘He was wearing jeans, we could spend four hours with him, some family time. He was in a good mood. It wasn’t that bad.’
But it was unclear whether they still do. I remarked that OJ’s sister Shirley told me that she was scheduled to visit him soon and asked that when she was due to be in Vegas for a birthday party would she take the opportunity to visit him?
But she said she wouldn’t, yet didn’t elaborate.

Arnelle said she was thankful for not having kids because she said, ‘I don’t have any baggage’.
But doesn’t she? At another moment, when we rest under the pergola in Secret Fast, she said: ‘We have been living with ‘this‘ for 20 years… Me, my brothers, my sister…’
Unlike her younger siblings, Arnelle still remembers the good life that comes with being a celebrity daughter. She has the memories to make a painful comparison between what life had to offer her back then and today.
She said of her privileged life in LA: ‘Back then we were the first black family in that neighborhood in Brentwood!’

At another moment, she said: ‘I kept in touch with few of the "****s" from before.’
She looked so pre-occupied, with so much weight on her shoulders from a sort of father’s curse she has been carrying around for two decades.
She showed me photos of her with Sydney and Justin and proudly said: ‘Look, Justin is 6ft 2ins. And Sydney has been losing weight.
‘You know, when the whole thing happened to Paris (Michael Jackson’s daughter, trying to kill herself) I called them. I told the family: "Hey, it could have happened to us… to Sydney and Justin, but we brought them up okay"’.
Then she said: ‘For 20 years… every**** has had an opinion about us.’
Yet another moment, she screamed with much anger: ‘We don’t need any****. I don’t need help… I am OJ Simpson’s daughter!’