Kim Goldman admits that she considered killing O.J. Simpson when she saw him alone following his acquittal in her brother's murder trial, but then realized she is just not that kind of person.
Nearly 20 years since her brother, Ron Goldman, was killed along with Simpson's ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, Kim has written about the ordeal and the subsequent "trial of the century" that resulted in O.J. Simpson's acquittal in her new book, "Can't Forgive: My Twenty-Year Battle With O.J. Simpson." In the preface, she details an encounter with Simpson and what went through her mind.
"I was driving in a strip mall and this figure walked in front of my car, and I knew it was him,'' Goldman told Savannah Guthrie on TODAY Friday. "I was 100 percent confident. I studied him, I watched him, I knew that swagger, and I put my foot on the pedal. I white-knuckled it, I was revving the engine, and I thought, 'I could take him out and nobody would ever know.'"
But Goldman says she just couldn't go through with it.
"I thought of my dad, and I just couldn't put him through that, and I'm not a killer so that wouldn't be a part of me anyway, but I definitely fantasized it," she said. "There was nobody around. I thought, 'It's just him and me.' I had all that pent-up rage and anger, but at the end of the day, that's not who I am."
Simpson is currently in a Nevada prison after being convicted for armed robbery and kidnapping in an unrelated case in 2008 in which he was sentenced to 33 years. Goldman has written him letters in prison, hoping to see him face-to-face, but a meeting has not occurred.
"I needed to see him small,'' she said. "For so long, he had taken up so much space in my life and in my head. I needed to diminish him in size and see him in shackles and see him in an orange jumpsuit and have me be the one to finally walk away and let him watch me walk out the door."
Goldman wrote in her letter to Simpson that, "I'm not going to accuse you of anything, I just want to come visit and talk, well, mostly listen,'' which was not her ultimate intention.
"It was a little conniving, and I knew I needed to do that to soften him and hopefully have him give me permission to come, but it was all for me to just put him in that place and compartmentalize him, and that was important to me,'' she said. "Even writing the letter was a good exercise in doing that."
Simpson's prison sentence, even if it was not related to her brother's murder, has given the family some sense of justice.
"It's justice for different reasons,'' Goldman said. "There's a little part of me that thinks, 'Finally, he's locked away.' I think us publishing the, 'Yes, I Did It' book pushed [Simpson] right over the edge, but for me having him behind bars maintains some control in my life. That was sort of where I was able to breathe again because he wasn't out raising havoc, and I was always a little nervous that he was going to pop up any where, so I like that he's locked up. I'm thrilled with that."
Goldman also writes about having had suicidal thoughts in the midst of the lurid trial.
"I couldn't manage the pain, and everywhere we went, everybody was talking about it and had an opinion about it,'' she said. "I couldn't escape it, no matter what I tried to do, and I just thought it would be easier sometimes. I'm so thrilled I don't obviously feel that way any more, but the thoughts are in there. It took some time for me to get rid of them, but they're gone."
She also admits to getting frustrated when people ask her why she cannot find closure nearly 20 years after Ron's death.
"My brother's gone, and every day I'm reminded of his loss, and I've worked really hard to find a good, healthy balance in my life,'' she said. "I'm an advocate for victim's rights, I counsel teenagers, I'm raising a beautiful 10-year-old. It's important for me to find a healthy way of coping. Writing was incredibly important to me. For as long as my brother's gone, the loss will be here, and there's no way to find closure in that."
Follow Scott Stump on Twitter and Google+.