Nicole Brown Simpson’s Mom Let out a 'Gut-Wrenching Scream,' Fell to Her Knees When Cops Told Parents She Was Dead (Exclusive)
“The moment my mom got the phone call, I heard this screaming from my parents’ bedroom,” Nicole Brown Simpson’s sister Denise tells PEOPLE in this week's issue
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Nicole Brown SimpsonOne of Nicole Brown Simpson’s sisters is recalling the painful moment their mother Juditha learned of Nicole’s violent death in June 1994.
“The moment my mom got the phone call, I heard this screaming from my parents’ bedroom,” Nicole’s sister Denise, 66, exclusively tells PEOPLE in this week’s cover story. “It was gut-wrenching. I had never heard anything like it before.”
She continues, “And I ran back to my parents' room and I just said, ‘Oh my God.’ My mom was on her knees and she had the phone in her hand. My dad was on his elbow looking at my mom, and she says, ‘Your sister's dead.’ I said, ‘What?’ I thought it was a prank.”
“I honestly thought, who is playing a sick joke like this? We had just seen her the night before,” Denise adds. “I grabbed the phone, and the detective said, ‘Your sister’s been killed.’ I said, ‘Oh my God, he did it, he finally did it.’ I knew in my heart [it was O.J. Simpson].”
Nicole had been married to football superstar O.J. Simpson for seven years, during which she was subjected to verbal and physical abuse — torment that was graphically revealed to the world at O.J.'s 1995 trial for the murders of Nicole, 35, and her friend Ron Goldman, 25, in Los Angeles. While Nicole filed for divorce in 1992, O.J. remained in her life even after they separated, and the abuse continued.
Tanya Brown, 54, says she only learned the extent of O.J.’s violence during the murder trial.
For more on the life of Nicole Brown Simpson, as shared by her three sisters, subscribe now to PEOPLE, or pick up this week's issue, on newsstands Friday.
Roger Sandler
The Brown family at Nicole’s grave in Lake Forest, Calif., in 1995.“I was looking at the pictures, and then I looked at him, and I remember saying, ‘How can you do something like this to someone you love?’ ” (The pictures of Nicole’s bruised face shown in court were taken by Denise in 1989.)
O.J. was later found liable in a lawsuit filed by the Brown and Goldman families in 1997 and lived the rest of his days in infamy until his death from cancer on April 10.
Nicole and O.J. shared daughter Sydney, now 38, and son Justin, now 35, who were upstairs sleeping at their mother’s Brentwood townhome when she was brutally stabbed to death. Today Sydney and Justin are both parents and work in real estate — and prefer to stay out of the spotlight.
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O.J. Simpson and Nicole Brown in Los Angeles in 1981.Asked what life would be like if her sister was still here, Tanya tells PEOPLE, “She’d be excited to be a grandmother [to Sydney and Justin’s kids]. She was just so nurturing and endearing, giving little kisses to her babies and playing with them in the water. I think she would just be really proud of who they had become.”
If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go to thehotline.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.
The Life & Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson airs over two nights on June 1 and June 2 on Lifetime.
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