A convicted drug smuggler with mob ties who died in 2006 gave federal authorities information about the 1994 Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman killings, and his brother told reporters that the two men helped O.J. Simpson dispose of the possible murder weapon, according to a New York Times report on Sunday.
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The newspaper reviewed documents that have just been unsealed after 30 years involving Joseph Ippolito, who escaped from a federal prison in Florida in 1994 and traveled to Southern California, where he had managed an Italian restaurant in Santa Monica before his arrest.
Joseph Ippolito was a close friend of Simpson confidante Al Cowlings and also a friend of Simpson’s. After he was arrested again following his escape, Ippolito began providing federal authorities in New York information about mob activity, but also about the Simpson and Goldman killings, including the alleged location of the murder weapon.
The NYT said the newly unsealed records show that the federal authorities shared that information with prosecutors in Simpson’s 1994 criminal trial, but it came when the trial was almost over and was not used, nor was Ippolito called as a witness.
Sam Ippolito, one of Joseph Ippolito’s brothers, initially told the NYT that he disposed of a bag containing a large object and Joseph’s bloody clothes that his brother had given to him after going out to “help a friend” on the night of the murders. The surviving brother also said he saw Joey Ippolito call Al Cowlings and tell him that he had just been “helping” Simpson.
However, Sam Ippolito later recanted his story when the newspaper refused to pay him.
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Simpson was acquitted of the murders in 1995, but was found liable for the deaths in a civil trial in Santa Monica in 1997. He died in 2024.
The Los Angeles Police Department’s Media Relations Office said the Simpson case “remains an open and ongoing investigation … the department has an obligation to continue to pursue justice in this matter. At a point that new evidence is found, detectives will follow those investigatory leads.”
Marcia Clark, the lead prosecutor in Simpson’s criminal trial, told the newspaper that she was not aware of Ippolito.
“If anyone had spoken to him and found him to have relevant and credible information, I surely would have been informed,” she said. “The fact that I was never so informed establishes he had no credible or relevant evidence to provide.”
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