- Unedited crime scene photos nicole brown simpson trial#
- Unedited crime scene photos nicole brown simpson tv#
First Goldman’s jeans, stained with blood then his shoulder with a smear and then finally the wound, which was smaller than I had imagined when I was shielding my eyes. By the third time, I was able to move my hand, pausing the documentary on each photograph to give myself a chance to reveal the image one element at a time. The second time I tried to watch, I could tell what each photo contained, but I still couldn’t look. I covered my face with my hand and let my eyes go out of focus enough to be able to see through my fingers, only to snap my eyes back to my hand for the worst of the images. The first time I watched the episode, I knew the images of the murders were coming. These images are presented in flashes alongside images of the forensic sketches, which illuminate the totality of the violence without the shock of flesh and blood. As Hodgman explains that Simpson likely murdered Goldman between attacks on Brown, the camera flashes over images of Goldman’s injuries, including the deep slashes to his hands and abdomen. The wound in her neck is visible but secondary because her hair is plastered over her face, creating a gruesome illusion not unlike Magritte’s portrait of The Lovers - her partner is missing from the image, but anyway, her killer covered his hands, not his face. The first is a black-and-white photo of Brown’s head, her face looking up at the camera. As Hodgman dispassionately explains the picture the forensic evidence paints of the night of the murders, the images start to flash, recreating and grounding his conjectures in the physical realities that inspired those conjectures. Looking at these images, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman’s murders are easy to spin into a narrative, because the images of the carnage appear to be drawn out of familiar narratives already.īut if tabloids were able to play coy with wounds with the crime scene photos initially released to the public, the same cannot be said of the never-before-seen graphic photographs Edelman obtained for his film. The carnage seems too over the top to match the simple explanation of domestic violence. The morbid glamour of the photos appears to be a coincidence of artful obstruction, but the result is that the images have the appearance of a Hollywood slasher film. Once we get closer, it’s apparent that her face is covered completely by her hair. Brown’s body is crumpled behind a door frame with a massive trail of blood leading away from her. The shots of her feet look like they might have come from an episode of CSI. The images that were initially released to the press are shown early in the episode, as Simpson’s friend Ron Shipp explains how looking at a file of Brown’s photos inspired his decision to testify. But if the prosecution was foiled by the complexities of public perception, for Edelman’s own presentation of the murder itself, he is able to rely on testimony from prosecutor Bill Hodgman and on images of the crime scene that have never before been released. Much is made throughout the episode about the validity of different kinds of evidence, as it was the defense’s attack on LAPD collection practices that allowed forensics to be lost in the shuffle of gloves and allegations of prior police malpractice.
Unedited crime scene photos nicole brown simpson trial#
While the scope of Edelman’s work is vast, drawing a portrait not just of the Simpson case but of the last 50 years of American history, the show’s fourth episode - airing tonight on ESPN - focuses on the trial itself. Simpson’s life and his character with all the subtext of the trial made visible. If the trial first provoked obsessive questions about what happened to Nicole Brown Simpson, now the questions have turned inward as we as a nation wonder, What the hell happened to us? Over the last several weeks, a new documentary from Ezra Edelman, called O.J.: Made in America, has continued the fascination, organizing a story of O.J.
Unedited crime scene photos nicole brown simpson tv#
For the people who were too young to remember, the trial feels like a key to the phenomena of modern culture, the link that connects everything from systemic racism to reality TV to the Kardashians. For the people who were alive to witness the trial of the century in action, enough time has passed for the clarity of hindsight to kick in. Simpson has once again become the topic of national, obsessive conversation. Simpson: American Crime Story premiered this February on FX, the 1994 trial of former football hero O.J.