Kris Jenner . . . And All Things Kardashian (24 page)

While I was watching the television in Marcia’s office, Peter Jennings was broadcasting live from the courthouse and did some commentary about our arrival, which had occurred moments before. “And here comes Kris and Bruce Jenner,” I roughly recall Jennings saying over footage of Bruce and me walking into the courthouse. “Now, you know Kris is the ex-wife of defense attorney Robert Kardashian and . . .” He explained my whole history and why I was relevant to this trial. It was one of the most surreal things I’ve ever been through in my life. I was in such an emotional place, I don’t think I even remember walking into the building, and here I was, watching it played back on television. The rest of the country was watching too.

“Essentially the whole country stopped,” Jeffrey Toobin of the
New Yorker
said of America’s absolute fascination with the trial. “Long distance phone calls dropped during that period. Trading on the stock exchange dropped. Everything simply stopped for the announcement of the verdict because that’s how much the country was interested.”

I’ll never forget what happened next. Judge Ito invited the deputy to bring the jurors into the courtroom. Judge Ito said, “Good morning again, ladies and gentlemen,” and then asked Mrs. Deirdre Robertson, the law clerk, to hand the sealed envelope containing the verdict to the deputy, who returned it to the jury foreperson to make sure the verdict was correct.

“Madame Foreperson, would you please open the envelope and check the condition of the verdict forms?” Judge Ito said. Those few minutes leading up to the actual announcement felt like the longest moments of my life. I was sitting up in Marcia’s office and it was so still. The office was full: Bruce, Nicole’s sisters and
friends. The closed-circuit TVs were on as well as regular TV. But no one spoke. No one even seemed to breathe. It was like we were all frozen. In that moment, I said a silent prayer for Nicole.

Dear Lord, just give her justice and bring her peace,
I prayed, and then repeated it over and over in my mind while waiting for the woman to speak.

As all this was happening, O.J. looked like he was trying to stay calm, but I could see that he was on edge, looking back and forth between the jury and the judge and the deputy and fidgeting in his seat. It was hard to wrap my head around the fact that the man on television was the same man I had known all my life. The foreperson agreed that the verdict forms were accurate and then the judge asked everyone to “carefully listen” to the verdicts as they were read by the clerk and to “remain calm.” He warned that the bailiffs would remove anyone causing “any disruption.”

Then everyone stood up and Judge Ito asked O.J. and his lawyers to stand and face the jury while she read the verdict. O.J., looking almost bewildered, was the last to stand. At one point Johnnie Cochran, wearing his bright blue suit, pressed his palms together beneath his chin as if he were praying. The law clerk, Deirdre Robertson, began reading:

“In the matter of the people of the state of California versus Orenthal James Simpson, case number BA097211. We the jury in the above entitled action find the defendant, Orenthal James Simpson, not guilty of the crime of murder in violation of penal code section 187A, a felony, upon Nicole Brown Simpson, a human being, as charged in Count 1 of the information.”

Not guilty.

The words burned in my brain.

Robert had the most serious expression on his face the entire time that both of the verdicts were being read. It almost seemed
like disbelief. He didn’t smile or hug O.J. He just looked right at him and then turned back to face the jury.

I looked over at O.J. at the moment he broke into that soon-to-be-infamous little grin the moment the words “not guilty” rang through the air. He shot a little wave to the jury and mouthed the words “Thank you.” I watched so many intense feelings of relief, disbelief, and then joy go across O.J.’s face in those few seconds. Johnnie Cochran immediately gave O.J. this little victory hug from behind right after the verdict was read. Then right away the sounds of sobbing from the Team Nicole side of the courtroom. Fred Goldman held his daughter, Kim, as she immediately collapsed and began weeping in his arms. O.J.’s smile got bigger and bigger as the court reporter kept reading:

“‘The Superior Court of the State of California, County of Los Angeles, in the matter of the people of the state of California versus Orenthal James Simpson. We the jury in the above entitled action find the defendant, Orenthal James Simpson, not guilty of the crime of murder in violation of penal code section 187A, a felony, upon Ronald Lyle Goldman, a human being, as charged in count 2 of the information. We the jury in the above entitled action further find the special circumstances that the defendant . . .’”

The courtroom was in shock. Women were holding their heads in their hands, or running their fingers through their hair, or collapsing with their heads in their laps and their hands covering their faces. That image of Fred Goldman holding Kim, shaking his head, will always remain with me.

Marcia Clark’s and the other prosecutors’ faces were just stone cold—expressions of either complete exhaustion and pure defeat or shock and bewilderment. As the court reporter asked the jurors to confirm the verdict one by one, O.J. and his lawyers bowed their heads in a huddle. Then O.J. leaned toward Robert for a hug and
Robert held the back of O.J.’s head. Robert took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes almost like he was wiping away tears or stress—or maybe tears
of
stress. This entire time, sobs were just racking the courtroom. O.J.’s side of the courtroom was crying and holding their hands in prayer, too, but out of happiness. And then it was over.

W
e couldn’t believe it.
Not guilty!
I was sitting in a chair in the office, and I just bowed my head, said a prayer for Nicole, and cried my eyes out.
Wow, there is no justice for her,
I thought.
There is no peace for her.

“He’s going to kill me and he’s going to get away with it.”

I couldn’t get those words out of my mind. Not then. Not now. Those were Nicole’s words, and I could just hear her voice saying,
See, I told you.

Nicole’s sisters were sitting with me, but we couldn’t even talk. I mean, what do you say? We just kept saying, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” to one another. We were all so devastated.

Another thing I couldn’t get out of my head: O.J. thanking the jury. He was relieved, I think, that he could get out of there and go home. The thing is, not only was Nicole’s life over, O.J.’s own life, as he had known it, also was over. To have been and to continue to be shunned by his community and his peers and the people who had always adored him would be as devastating as a prison sentence to O.J. Simpson. If you know anything about O.J. Simpson, you know that that fact itself would be torturous for him. So I knew that, on some level, he would suffer for what I felt he did. I took some solace in that.

Robert rode with O.J. back to his house on Rockingham, where there was a celebration. I was not there, obviously, but I heard all about it. There was champagne and laughter and tears. Everybody
was so happy. O.J. was innocent, of course, and blah, blah, blah. Everybody on Nicole’s side just went back to his or her own home.

At some point during the early evening, Robert came over to my house. He knocked on the front door and said, “Can I come in? I need to talk to you.”

He had been to O.J.’s celebration party and he looked good. But he wasn’t gloating. Anything but. He had a calmness to him, and I sensed that he was hopeful that I would welcome him into the house. I felt that he had something important to say.

“Sure,” I said, wondering what could come next after this already insane and exhausting day.

Bruce was there. Robert asked me to go out to the patio with him. So we went outside and sat down.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“I know you must be upset because we won,” he said.

I know he wasn’t gloating, but just to hear him say “we won” really upset me.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“I just think that you and I need to put this behind us,” he said.

“We can’t let this be a part of our lives anymore. It’s almost ruined mine. We really need to be great parents for our kids, and that’s all that should ever matter. I really want to go back to just being a great dad and a good friend, and I don’t want this to get in the way of our friendship, because it could really destroy our family, and we’re still a family.”

I couldn’t argue with that. I told Robert that I didn’t agree with what had just happened, but I certainly never wanted to let our family be pulled apart as a result. Eventually, Robert and I were both crying, and Bruce, poor Bruce, was standing there probably feeling very uncomfortable, thinking:
What am I watching here?
Robert and I both told each other that we loved each other as people, and then I told him I was really happy he was the father
of my children. We agreed to carry on as parents and friends, and from that day forward we really started working on our friendship and our relationship as parents, vowing to always put our kids first.

We weren’t going to let O.J. Simpson eat away at us anymore. We decided that day that after being on two opposite sides of something so big—something so much bigger than we were—we had to take control of our feelings and move forward for the sake of our kids. The case could either destroy us or it could make us stronger. We decided to let it make us stronger.

As for O.J., I never saw him again after the trial. Often, I’ve thought about what would happen if I did see him. What would I do? What would I say? I still don’t know. As for Nicole, there isn’t a day that passes when I don’t think of her.

The day after the verdict was announced, Robert Kardashian sent a letter to the
Los Angeles Times
in an attempt to explain why he had decided to stand by O.J.:

“O.J. Simpson never lied to me,” he wrote. “He has told me that he did not commit these horrible crimes and I have no reason not to believe him. It is from that perspective that I came to stand by his side during his trial. For me, the question was: What would you do for a friend? Would you give up your business, put your personal life on hold and devote a year and a half of your life to a friend? I did, without realizing what an awful journey I was about to take.”

A year later, in an interview on
20/20,
Barbara Walters asked Robert what he thought when he heard that O.J. had failed a lie detector test a few days after the murders. “I was devastated,” Robert replied. “I didn’t know what to believe.”

“What’s your relationship now with O.J. Simpson?” Barbara asked later in the interview.

“The relationship is not the same as it once was nor will it ever be,” Robert said.

“Why not?” Barbara asked.

“Because I have doubts,” Robert said.

T
o this day and quite often, considering it has been sixteen years since the trial, I will be watching TV and for one reason or another the powerful image of Robert and O.J. together at the defense table will come flashing across the screen. It will literally stop me in my tracks. It’s always the same image: the moment the not-guilty verdict is read, and I can see the serious expression on Robert’s face. It never fails to jolt me and take me back to that exact moment in time at the end of the trial, while simultaneously sparking the same exact emotions I had that day. Now, sixteen years later, with Robert gone, the televised image of my former husband with O.J. Simpson still brings me to tears. Watching it, I often crumble and pray for both Robert and Nicole with everything inside of me, hoping that somehow, through some miracle, we could bring them both back.

CHAPTER TEN

The Haven

A
fter the verdict, it was time for a new beginning. Robert and I decided to move on from the conflict the O.J. trial had created between us for the sake of our kids. I had to end the sadness and pain of those years. It wasn’t fair to Bruce, whom I had dragged into all of it, to live my life in the past anymore. I had to move on, and I had to move swiftly. My focus reverted back to my lifelong dream: to be a wife and the mother of six kids, which meant I had two more children to go.

By then, I was eight months pregnant. It wasn’t that hard to juggle full-time work and motherhood because I had my amazing assistant, Lisa Frias, who helped me with Bruce’s business. We had developed a pretty impressive speaking business for Bruce. He was traveling all over the country, giving motivational speeches for Fortune 500 companies like Coca-Cola while attending Olympic events around the world.

Just before our baby was due, Bruce and I went back east to
stay with Kathie Lee Gifford, one of my best friends. I had known Kathie Lee since the 1980s when she was still Kathie Lee Johnson. Back then, she came to a baby shower I had given for a girlfriend, Shanon Christian. As you know by now, I love giving parties and showers, and that shower was an example of my style and taste for over-the-top celebrations. Kathie Lee fell in love with the Tower Lane house. She and I were on the exact same page: we both loved architecture and decorating and design. We hit it off instantly.

Kathie Lee and I had drifted apart during my divorce from Robert. But when I started dating and then married Bruce, who had known Kathie Lee and her husband, Frank Gifford, for decades, the four of us became the best of friends. So during that time I was pregnant, Bruce and I spent some time at Kathie Lee’s house in Connecticut. From there, we flew down to Atlantic City, where Kathie Lee and Regis Philbin were hosting the Miss America Pageant. Bruce was a judge in the pageant along with fashion and bridal designer Vera Wang. Little did I know that, fifteen years later, Vera would be designing wedding gowns for my daughters.

In Atlantic City, recovering from the trial and trying to unwind before giving birth to our first child together, Bruce and I asked Kathie Lee and Frank Gifford to be the godparents of our new baby. We hadn’t chosen a name yet. We were only considering
K
and
J
(
J
for “Jenner,” of course). I told Kathie Lee and Frank about how all my girls were
K
s, so this baby should be a
K
too. All my daughters were still living under my roof, and if I had named this baby girl a
J
name—I loved the name “Jade,” for example—I was afraid she wouldn’t feel like she was a part of the rest of the family. I wanted her to feel just as loved and wanted and adored as the rest of my girls. So I knew that as long as Bruce was okay with it, I needed to commit to another
K
name. I thought it was fitting, too, because I was a
K
, and Kathie Lee, her godmother, was a
K
. We decided it would be the K Club.