OJ Simpson case: No confession found on thumb drives, police say

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. (FOX 9) - Bloomington, Minn. police say they "did not locate any information of evidentiary value" after being asked by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) to search several thumb drives that investigators believed might contain a confession from OJ Simpson in the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.

What we know

According to an application for a search warrant filed in Hennepin County, officer George Harms applied for a court warrant to search for the imaging of thumb drives, so that, "full forensics examination can be conducted on all thumb drives to try and obtain the recording."

The search warrant was filed on the grounds that the thumb drives  "constitute evidence which tends to show a crime has been committed, or tends to show that particular person has committed a crime."

Evidence obtained

According to the filing, on March 3, 2022, Harms was investigating an assault that had occurred at a home on Lyndale Avenue South in Bloomington, for which he drafted a search warrant to collect evidence at the scene.

Several items of evidence were collected after the search warrant was executed, including a backpack with ammunition. Iroc Avelli was formally charged in the case, which is still pending.

On June 14, 2024, Harms received a call from LAPD detectives, who said that Avelli and his attorney had met with detectives, and said that located in the backpack seized during the search was a thumb drive that contained a recording of OJ Simpson confessing to the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.

Detective Mojarro of the LAPD has since requested that Harms look inside the green backpack for any thumb drives for the recording.

Nothing found

An update provided by the Bloomington Police Department says that in July 2024 all six thumb drives were imaged by a Digital Forensics Examiner, and a readable version was created.

According to police, detectives did not locate any information of evidentiary value for the LAPD.

Background

Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were found dead outside Brown Simpson's home in Los Angeles in 1994.

Months later, following an infamous police chase, Simpson was arrested for the murders.

In 1995, the case went to trial, becoming. Simpson, represented by a group of high-profile attorneys including Johnnie Cochran, was ultimately acquitted of the murders by a jury.

However, Simpson was found liable for the killings at a civil trial in 1996 and ordered to pay $33.5 million to the Brown and Goldman families.

Simpson would never serve time for the murders but was arrested years later following a robbery in Las Vegas over sports memorabilia. That case led to a 33-year prison sentence for Simpson in 2008. He ended up serving only nine years behind bars before being paroled in 2017.

Simpson died on April 10, 2024.