O.J. SIMPSON has finally come up with his side of the story, but it will be available only on video at $29.95 (£18.50), and few people, it seems, want to know.
In the video, which goes on sale on February 1st, the former football star claims that a friend of Nicole Brown Simpson sold drugs at her house, and that it was actually a drug dealer who killed his wife and her friend Ronald Goldman on June 12th, 1994.
Mr Simpson remained silent throughout his trial. The video, in which he answers questions from a tabloid television anchorman, Mr Ross Becker, is apparently aimed not just at dispelling suspicions that he was guilty of the killings, but at turning a handsome profit.
"Marcia Clark is making millions on a book deal, and so is (Chris) Darden: why shouldn't I be able to tell my story and make money, too?" Mr Simpson asks Mr Becker, referring to the lead prosecutors in his trial.
Worth £10 million two years ago, Mr Simpson is said to be almost broke because of legal fees, and to owe his key defence lawyer Johnnie Cochrane several hundred thousand dollars.
Reports that the video will make as much as 53 million may not be realised, however. The one time sports celebrity has been ostracised by big business, which regards his name as a liability.
One cable network has turned down advertisements for the cassette. Women's groups have threatened to jam the lines when the video goes on sale on February 1st.
Excerpts broadcast on the tabloid television programme Hard
Cops shows Simpson criticising Ms Clarke for saying he ran into an air conditioner outside his house. "I lived in this house 17 years; there ain't no way I'm going to run into an air conditioner" he says.
The person he alleges sold drugs from the house, Ms Faye Resnick, told Time magazine: "I don't enjoy being defamed in this way." She will consider legal action when the tape becomes available.
Mr Becker, who was paid a five figure sum for his work, said there were no restrictions on what questions he could ask and that he had kept a copy of the unedited interview to compare it with the final version.
Asked on television if he believed Mr Simpson had lied to him he replied: "Sure," and later acknowledged that: "he probably twisted the truth during the interview," but people Would have to decide for themselves.
Meanwhile, the foreman of the jury in the trial, Ms Armanda Cooley, has had harsh words for the retired detective, Mr Mark Fuhrman, whom she called a "snake".
Mr Fuhrman, a key prosecution witness, was depicted as a racist by defence lawyers. The jury of nine blacks, two whites and one hispanic simply didn't believe his evidence, according to Ms Cooley, writing in Madame Foreman, a book about the trial produced in collaboration with other jurors, Ms Carrie Bess and Ms Marsha Rubin Jackson.
"My first feeling when I saw him, he sort of looked like a Ku Klux Klan (member) or a skin head with hair," she said. "Fuhrman was the trial," Ms Bess wrote. Fuhrman found the hat. Fuhrman found the glove. Fuhrman went over the gate. Fuhrman did everything. When you throw it out, what case do you have? You've got reasonable doubt right before you even get to the criminalists."
Mr Simpson and Mr Fuhrman will confront each other again on April 2nd when a civil case opens in Santa Monica, California, to consider a wrongful death charge made by the families of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
F.Lee Bailey has agreed to head up Mr Simpson's defence.