A New York Times investigation published October 18, 2026, reported newly unsealed federal records and allegations concerning whether Joseph “Joey” Ippolito helped O.J. Simpson after the 1994 killings of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. The material does not establish that Ippolito took part in the murders, and the account from his brother has been challenged and partially withdrawn.
Sam Ippolito told the Times that his brother returned to a Los Angeles apartment around midnight on June 12, 1994, with what appeared to be blood on his hands. He said Joey had left earlier to help a friend, carried a bag containing a heavy object, and put his clothes inside it before showering. Sam said he disposed of the bag in a dumpster near a construction site on Doheny Drive. He also claimed he overheard Joey tell Simpson’s friend Al Cowlings by phone that he had been “helping” Simpson that night.
The Times’ account said Sam Ippolito maintained the allegations for months, then sought payment from the newspaper and tried to retract his statements. He reportedly said he could no longer tell what was real and what was not. Friends and relatives of Joey Ippolito, who died in 2006, disputed the suggestion that he participated in the killings. These caveats leave the brother’s claims unconfirmed.
The investigation also described a federal prosecution memorandum from December 1996, recently unsealed at the Times’ request. It characterized Joey Ippolito as a useful source who had information about Simpson’s alleged disposal of the murder weapon, which was never recovered, and an attempted flight from authorities. The newspaper reported that information from Ippolito was shared with Los Angeles prosecutors during Simpson’s criminal trial, but he was not called as a witness.
David Kelley, the federal prosecutor who described Ippolito as a “remarkable source of information” in the memorandum, later told the Times he did not believe Ippolito was involved in the killings. Former Los Angeles prosecutor Marcia Clark told the paper she did not know about Ippolito and said she would have been informed if he had provided credible or relevant evidence. Cowlings did not respond to the newspaper’s request for comment before publication.
Ippolito was a convicted drug trafficker who escaped from a Florida prison in May 1994. He was arrested in August 1995 and later became a federal informant, while Simpson’s televised murder trial was approaching its conclusion. The newly surfaced records and the brother’s account raise questions about possible assistance after the killings, but the source material offers no independent confirmation that Ippolito helped Simpson or took part in the crimes.
Simpson was acquitted in 1995 in the criminal case over the deaths of Brown Simpson and Goldman. He was later found liable for their deaths in a civil trial. Simpson died in April 2024 at age 76. The Los Angeles Police Department told the Times that the double-murder investigation remains open.
