An in-depth investigation by the New York Times is raising further questions about the high-profile OJ Simpson case, in which the former football player was accused in the 1990s of killing his ex-wife – and whether a shady mobster-turned-informant may have been involved in helping cover up the murder. The Times’s investigation revealed that California prosecutors were unable to fully investigate whether Simpson, who was accused but not convicted of his ex-wife’s murder, may have had an accomplice at the scene of the crime. The extensive journalistic investigation, based on previously sealed court records and interviews, adds further intrigue to the infamous Simpson case.
No one was ever criminally convicted for the 1994 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. That year, Nicole Brown Simpson and Goldman were found stabbed to death outside her home in Los Angeles. The American professional football player and actor, OJ Simpson, was suspected in the murder.
Simpson’s prosecution gained international attention and became a media spectacle, being deemed the “trial of the century”. Simpson was acquitted by a jury in 1995 after a lengthy trial. The Los Angeles police department, which investigated the case, had a long history of racism.
Simpson’s attorneys pointed to the racist policing practices and the department’s handling of key evidence, helping them secure the acquittal. Simpson was later held liable for the deaths by a jury in a civil case. But the New York Times has now revealed that a shady informant began revealing information about Simpson’s case towards the end of the prosecution.
The informant, a wealthy mobster named Joseph Ippolito, had become a snitch after spending years on the run from the federal government. The information Ippolito had may have been key to the trial, but it was far too late for the prosecution to include his testimony. Ippolito, a longtime drug runner throughout the US known as Joey, came from the New Jersey underworld, where his father was a player within the DeCavalcante crime family, a major Italian American criminal organization.
After a stint in prison for trafficking drugs in the east coast, he moved to California in the late 1980s and managed an Italian restaurant. There, he was able to embed himself in the inner circles of the Los Angeles elite. Ippolito befriended Al Cowlings, a former football star and close friend of OJ Simpson.
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