Throwing the Book at O.J. Simpson

Goldman moved to the Phoenix area with his second wife, Patti, a decade ago. (He was divorced from Ron's mother in the 1970s and raised Ron and his sister, Kim, almost entirely by himself.) About a year ago, the Goldmans moved into a brand new "adult community" with a guarded gate set in the middle of rocks and gravel and desert. There are one-story strip malls and power lines and construction sites and hard-put-looking horses and the blazing sky overhead.

Inside the gates, the land turns to an oasis of irrigated green lawns and golf courses, a spa and little circling streets with nearly identical one-story brown houses with tile roofs. The only sound outside his home on a recent afternoon is the whir of air-conditioning units.

Inside, there is modern art and tiled floors and a curved sectional sofa and floor-to-ceiling windows that give onto a tiny rock garden and a brown fence.

It is from here that Goldman has settled into his pursuit of Simpson. His anger is not foaming or hysterical, but cold, methodical and relentless. He sits on the sofa, in shorts and an open shirt, the handlebar mustache still in place, his gray hair swept back from his forehead, and talks in a house that is completely silent save for his voice.

He is talking of his loss, as an explanation for the thing people are so amazed by: That a book that O.J. Simpson wrote describing the murder of Ron and Nicole is now listed on Amazon as being authored by the "Goldman family."

"The reality of the past 13 years is that it's always a part of daily life. It never, ever goes away. I don't think it should. . . . You remember part of it every day in some form. The days you'd think are positives -- holidays, anniversary, birthdays, someone talking about the achievements of their 30-year-old son -- it only reminds you of what is not there, what was not accomplished.

"That's there all the time. That's part of what continues to motivate me to pursue this monster. To let it go would be tantamount to saying, 'It doesn't matter anymore.' "

Still, it has to be said that Simpson has run circles around Goldman's attempts to hold him responsible for his son's slaying in much the same way he once eluded tacklers on the football field.

First, Simpson was found not guilty of the murders in the racially polarizing criminal trial. (In 2001, a Zogby poll found that 80 percent of whites thought Simpson was guilty, vs. 26 percent of blacks.) True, Simpson was found responsible for the murders in the subsequent civil trial, and ordered to pay $33 million (the amount has since ballooned with interest to nearly $40 million), but that has largely proved to be symbolic.

Quick, how much do you think Goldman has taken away from Simpson?

"Less than $10,000, all told," he says.

Ten years of work. It adds up to about a grand a year.