Newly Unsealed Records Revive Questions About an Accomplice in the O.J. Simpson Case
Newly unsealed federal records examined by The New York Times describe how convicted drug trafficker Joey Ippolito became a government informant with information about O.J. Simpson's disposal of the murder weapon that was never recovered.
LOS ANGELES — More than 30 years after Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were found stabbed to death outside her Brentwood condominium, newly unsealed federal court records have revived questions about whether O.J. Simpson had help disposing of the murder weapon.
The records were examined by The New York Times in an investigation published Oct. 18. They include a letter from an assistant U.S. attorney to a federal judge seeking a lighter sentence for Joey Ippolito, a convicted drug trafficker, on a prison escape charge because Ippolito had become a federal informant.
In the letter, Ippolito was described as a source who “had become privy to many facts relevant to the [O.J. Simpson] case,” including Simpson’s “disposal of the murder weapon.” The knife used in the killings was never found. Prosecutors received the information after Simpson’s acquittal in October 1995.
An informant with ties to Simpson’s circle
Ippolito, a convicted drug trafficker with reported ties to New Jersey’s DeCavalcante crime family, knew Simpson through Al Cowlings, the longtime friend who drove Simpson during the televised 1994 Bronco chase. Ippolito died in 2006.
His brother Sam told the Times that Joey left their Los Angeles apartment on the night of the killings to help a friend, then returned around midnight with what appeared to be blood on his hands and a bag containing a heavy object. According to Sam, Joey asked him to dispose of the bag while he showered, and Sam threw it into a dumpster at a nearby construction site. Sam said he never determined what was inside.
Questions the records raise
Sam later recanted when he sought payment for the story, a reversal that would normally sink a witness’s credibility. Federal agents who examined the claim after the 1995 trial nevertheless found him credible and believed he was privy to details about the murder weapon that had never been made public, according to the Times report. Neither Ippolito nor his brother testified at Simpson’s trial.
The records also suggest prosecutor Marcia Clark was never told about the claim, raising questions about what the trial team knew. During the trial, Simpson’s shoe prints and drops of his blood were found at the crime scene, and no physical evidence tied anyone else to the killings.
“You would think that there could not possibly be anything new, and now, for the public, there certainly is,” said legal analyst Rikki Klieman, who covered the trial for Court TV. Klieman also cautioned that Sam’s account amounted to embellishment by the brother, and that there was no real reason to trust his word. Simpson died of prostate cancer in 2024, and the Los Angeles Police Department has told Fox News the case remains open.
Reporting based on coverage by The New York Times, QNC News, and Fox News.
