The Los Angeles Police Department had been dispatched to the home of Nicole Brown Simpson nine times by the year that O.J. Simpson pleaded no contest to spousal abuse. Over three years passed before Nicole finally filed for divorce from the retired football star. But the cycle of abuse did not end with their marriage. Just as he had threatened, battered, and abused Nicole during their marriage, he continued to do so after their split.

O.J. had beaten his wife badly enough over the years that she wound up in the hospital, where she lied to a doctor that she’d fallen off a bike rather than expose her husband. Yet as it turned out, she didn’t have to protect him. The LAPD would continue to do so prior to the night O.J. nearly decapitated her with a knife, killing Nicole and her friend Ronald Goldman in cold blood. The people of Los Angeles would continue to protect O.J. after that.