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Hello and welcome to Real Crime Profile. This is Jim Clemente, retired FBI profiler and former New York City prosecutor.

Today I have with me Laura Richards found a director of Paladin National Stalking Advocacy Service.

And Lisa Zambetti casting director of Criminal Minds where Jim Clemente is my colleague and the cast victims and killers and everything in between.

Today we're going to start a new topic on this podcast. We're going to go into the series, People vs. OJ Simpson.

And what's amazing about this case is that it is something that most of the people in the United States, if not around the world, were aware of when it went on.

But what we found during the course of this was that there was a major division within the country between people who believed that OJ was not guilty and people who believed he was.

If you look at it based on the evidence, people seem to go one way. If you look at it based on emotion or race, people seem to go another way.

So it was a very divisive case. And in my mind, it was for two reasons. One, it's very difficult to convict a celebrity of anything.

They have money, they have fame, they have, especially when you have somebody who's charismatic, they have a lot of argument.

Special treatment, and they can afford the best defense or five of them, for example, the same team.

Yeah. And they're also used to being in the public eye. They know how to comport themselves.

Yeah. So there are certain benefits that seem to endure when you have money and fame. And I think in this case, we saw the results of that.

So we're going to start talking today about episode one.

I actually want to jump back and ask you guys where you were when this all kind of broke.

Was it on your radar at all? What did you think when you first heard about the killing?

And, you know, were you aware of it, Laura?

I was definitely aware of it. I was at the university at the time studying for my psychology and sociology my first degree.

But I think that it was something, obviously, over here that got a huge amount of coverage on every station, wasn't it?

Yeah. It didn't get quite the same coverage back at home. And then obviously as things played out, I remember definitely watching the trial.

And certainly what stood out was the last part of the judgment and seeing OJ's face.

That was the thing that really resonated with me. But probably over here it would be maybe the Bronco and the Chase with LAPD in hot pursuit and how that played out.

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