Exactly 30 years ago, Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman were killed. O.J. Simpson was criminally acquitted but later found civilly liable, and as a result, the former football star was no longer welcomed at the prestigious country clubs where he once played golf and was a pariah to many.
However, he maintained a relationship with one group: his golf friends in Las Vegas, who are now speaking out with Inside Edition about their relationship with O.J.
“Society has cursed him, has doomed him, or whatever. We embraced him,” Navy veteran Tremayne Dunn says.
Dunn and his friends are members of a golf club called In The Cup. They recruited O.J. and played regularly with him, despite his notoriety as an accused but acquitted double murderer.
“I don't think it demands justification, we were privileged to meet him. I feel privileged to have known him. and I'm grateful, I'm glad I can call him a friend. and as far as I'm concerned he did not do it so why should I judge,” Dunn says.
They play at public golf courses around Las Vegas. The members of In The Cup include retired police officers, firemen and corrections officers.
“Here's this sports icon, legend, and all of a sudden he's playing with common folk, us, every day. We grew up envying this guy, now he's playing golf in our golf club,” Dunn says.
O.J. became the club’s top golfer.
“He won our championships so he got respect from us. He was just like one of the guys,” one club member says.
“He was a gentleman and he was loved by all,” another member says. “That’s what it was about. It wasn’t about, ‘Oh he was a double-murderer,’ no,” another golfer says.
When the friends spoke with Inside Edition Wednesday about their friendship with O.J., none of them realized it was the 30th anniversary of the murders of his ex-wife Nicole and Ronald Goldman.
“You get stuck back in those days you get a chip on your shoulder for the rest of your life,” another golfer says.
O.J. died in April .
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