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LOS ANGELES - Facing a firestorm of criticism, media tycoon Rupert Murdoch today scrapped a new book and TV interview in which OJ Simpson offered a hypothetical account of how he would have killed his ex-wife and her friend.
In a dramatic reversal days after his News Corp. announced plans for the book and a Fox television special, Murdoch, the News Corp. chairman, said in a statement he decided "this was an ill-considered project" and apologised for any harm caused.
The book, titled If I Did It and originally due to go on sale on November 30, was touted as a first-hand account by the former football star picturing himself at the scene of the 1994 murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.
Announcement of the book deal and TV special last week sparked a torrent of outrage from members of the publishing community, as well as media commentators and relatives of the murder victims, who accused Murdoch's media empire of seeking to cash in on tragedy.
"We are very sorry for any pain this has caused the families of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson," Murdoch wrote in his statement.
The book was to have been preceded November 27 and 29 by a two-part, prime-time Fox television interview of Simpson conducted by his publisher, Judith Regan, whose HarperCollins imprint, like Fox, is a unit of News Corp.
Fox said the taped interview featured Simpson, who has always maintained his innocence, describing hypothetically how he would have carried out the slayings had he been the one who committed the crime.
"I'm going to tell you a story you've never heard before, because no one knows this story the way I know it," Simpson wrote in press materials for the book.
A Fox network spokesman said there would be no further comment from the media company.
Simpson, also a former television pitchman, was acquitted of murder charges in 1995 at the conclusion of a sensational criminal trial. Gavel-to-gavel proceedings were broadcast inside the United States and out.
Despite the acquittal, a civil court jury in 1997 found him liable for the deaths and awarded the victims' families US$33.5 million in damages, which Simpson has vowed never to voluntarily pay.
Little of the judgement has ever been collected.
Attorneys for the Goldman family, who said last week they would try to seize any compensation Simpson received for the book deal, could not immediately be reached for comment.
Under fire for doing business with Simpson, Regan issued a four-page statement last week in which she said she only agreed to publish his book and interview him in hopes of getting him to confess to the murders.
Regan insisted that Simpson was not paid, but rather she "contracted through a third party who owns the rights, and I was told the money would go to his children."
Simpson's Florida-based attorney, Yale Galanter, was quoted in the latest issue of Newsweek magazine as saying he was surprised and angered by the announcement of the book deal, adding: "I definitely would not have approved this ... I wouldn't have done it for a gazillion dollars."
- REUTERS
