The Truth About Our Sister's Life

KNOWN AS ONE OF THE WORLD'S MOST FAMOUS MURDER VICTIMS, NICOLE BROWN SIMPSON WAS SO MUCH MORE. HER SISTERS SHARE INTIMATE DETAILS OF THE WOMAN THEY KNEW, LOVED AND LOST

- JANINE RUBENSTEIN

Dancing. That's how Nicole Brown Simpson's siblings like to remember the woman who brought light to the world in the 35 years she was here. In fact it’s what they imagine she’s up to right now. “Dancing in heaven. That’s what she’s doing,” says her sister Tanya matter-of-factly. Nicole’s sister Dominique has even gotten glimpses of her late sibling over the years. “I’ve had lots of dreams about Nic,” she says. “She’s always in her jeans and a leather jacket, always happy, dancing, social. And she’s always still alive.” Those visions are as lucid as they are joyful. But even in her dream state, Dominique says painful reality creeps in. “I’ll be looking [at Nicole] and thinking, ‘Why doesn’t anybody say anything? She’s not supposed to be here.’”

On June 12 Tanya, 54, Dominique, 59, and oldest Brown sister Denise, 66, will mark the 30th anniversary of the brutal murder of their sister, a woman better known for her tumultuous marriage to football superstar O.J. Simpson and the gruesome way her life ended than for how beautifully they say it was lived. An adoring mother to her two children, Sydney, now 38, and Justin, 35, Nicole spent the majority of her seven-year marriage to O.J. smiling to mask the pain of verbal and physical abuse—torment that was vividly revealed to the world during O.J.’s 1995 trial for the murders of Nicole and her friend Ron Goldman. Though acquitted in the so-called Trial of the Century, O.J. was later found liable in a wrongful-death suit filed by the Brown and Goldman families in 1997 and lived the rest of his days in infamy until his death from cancer earlier this year.