US football legend O.J. Simpson said in London last night he has been suicidally depressed following the murder of his wife and brought a gun to her grave because "I just wanted to end the pain".
"I was being attacked. I was hurting. I was in a lot of pain and I just wanted the pain to stop", he said in a live Carlton Television interview that focused on the murders of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman.
He was acquitted of the double murder last October although he still faces a civil suit by the families of the victims.
Simpson is on a five day visit to Britain which will include a speech to the Oxford Union tonight.
Talk show hosts Judy Finnegan and Richard Madeley pressed Simpson on why, if he was innocent, he had fled and led the Los Angeles police on a highway chase in a car driven by a friend.
"That morning when I was told, that I was going to be arrested, I asked a friend of mine ... `Take me to Nicole's grave', because I had no memory of the funeral, they had me on medication", he said.
"He drove me to her grave, but the police had it cordoned off. We couldn't get in. He got out of the car. I got in the back seat, he came back and saw I had a gun and he said, I'm taking you home, and as we were on our way back up the LA freeway he called the police and, heading back from the grave we were spotted.
"Why did you have a gun?" he was asked. "Because I wanted to stop the pain," Simpson replied.
Simpson (48) described his late wife as "loyal to me ... I was never jealous of her, never worried, she was a tremendous mother". There had been only one incident of violence between them, he said, "an argument that got out of hand, that got physical. I took full responsibility for that."
He said the most damning evidence against him at his trial specimens of his blood at the murder scene had been tainted by mishandling and mislabelling by police technicians and may have been switched.