O.J. says ghost author wrote flawed murder account

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - O.J. Simpson says his hypothetical account of killing his ex-wife in his aborted memoir "If I Did It" was invented by a ghost writer and filled with errors that he refused to correct for fear of appearing to be guilty of the crime.

Simpson related his involvement in the book, which was scrapped shortly before its release date last year amid a torrent of public outrage, in a rare, hourlong Internet interview streamed live on Tuesday by the Dallas-based Web site Market News First (www.MN1.com).

On Monday, after a long legal fight, rights to the book passed to the family of murder victim Ron Goldman, a friend of Nicole Brown Simpson who was slain along with Simpson's ex-wife at her Los Angeles home in June 1994.

Simpson was acquitted of criminal charges at the end of a sensational murder trial in 1995 but was found liable for the deaths of his former spouse and Goldman two years later in a civil case brought by the victims' estates.

Goldman's father, Fred Goldman, who originally opposed the book, said this week he wants it published because he views it as "an indictment of a wife-beater, of a murderer, written in his own words."

Judith Regan, the publisher who originally brokered the book deal, has said she considered the book Simpson's confession.

Simpson said the book was composed by a ghost author, and that he reluctantly agreed to include a chapter containing a "night-of-the-crime" account as told by him only after the publishers promised to clearly label it as hypothetical.

"Because I didn't do it. ... I will not justify the evidence they had. It didn't work then," he said. "We got to that chapter, and I said, 'Hey, I can't participate in that.'"

Simpson said he let the author ask him questions but otherwise played a passive role in describing the killings.

"I read what he wrote, and I saw all of these major holes, all of these impossible things," Simpson recalled. He gave few specific examples of the discrepancies he found but said he declined to correct any of them.

"All of these other parts of the book I would correct, but I told myself, 'If I correct this, there are going to be people out there that say, 'Oh, look how accurate this is,' Right?"

Simpson said he never thought the book would get published and consented to it mostly because he needed the money. He said he thought the Goldman family to be hypocritical for first condemning the book and now seeking to cash in on it.

Goldman's relatives gained rights to Simpson's book on Monday as a federal judge approved their settlement with the trustee for the bankrupt company set up to collect Simpson's reported $1 million advance for the manuscript.

The Goldmans' lawyers said they plan to capitalize on it by seeking new publishing, film or TV deals to help satisfy a $33.5 million judgment they won against Simpson in 1997.

Newsweek magazine in January published what it said were excerpts it obtained from the book, reporting that the chapter in question seemed like a confession in part because it closely meshed with evidence in the case.

The book was to have been published late last year by Regan Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. But the book was shelved at the last minute. Murdoch apologized and all 400,00 copies were recalled and destroyed. Regan was later fired from HarperCollins.