PERSON: Fred Goldman

Fred Goldman is the father of Ron Goldman, who was murdered with Nicole Brown Simpson in 1994. His family won a civil lawsuit against O.J. Simpson in 1997.

Born in Chicago in 1940, Fred Goldman had two children with his first wife, and moved to Southern California after remarrying in 1987. He suffered a heartbreaking loss in 1994 when his son, Ron Goldman, was found murdered along with Nicole Brown Simpson. Former football star O.J. Simpson was charged with the murders, and while he was acquitted in a criminal trial, he was later found liable for the victims’ deaths in a civil suit. Fred Goldman and his family have since told their story in books and sought to claim their full share of the civil settlement.

After the trial, Goldman dedicated himself to improving the criminal justice system by becoming a director with the nonprofit Safe Streets. The Goldman family also shared their loss and personal struggles in the 1997 book His Name Is Ron: Our Search for Justice. Although the family received a $450,000 advance for their story, Fred Goldman insisted they weren’t doing it for the money. “Doing this book will give us the vehicle to spend more time pressing for judicial reform in this country and to speak out on behalf of all victims’ rights,” he told Publishers Weekly.

In February 1997, the Goldmans won their civil suit against O.J. Simpson. They were awarded $8.5 million in compensatory damages, with another $25 million to be split between them and Nicole Brown Simpson’s family, but they had a hard time collecting the money. They were able to seize Simpson’s Heisman Trophy, and sold it for roughly $250,000 in 1999. Around this time, Goldman was named the president of GlobalTrak International. He later worked in real estate and in retail sales after relocating to Arizona.

— biography.com