Ronald Goldman (1968- 1994) was brutally murdered by the aging ex-football player Orenthal Simpson along with Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson. During the investigation and ensuring trials, media attention, publicity, and sympathy focused largely on Nicole and her relationship to “OJ” Simpson. The Goldman family wrote this memoir and historical account to give an identity to the killer’s other victim, Ron Goldman, “a real person with talents and faults, promises and disappointments, hopes and dreams.” As they state in the book’s introduction, “we cannot allow him to remain the forgotten victim.”

His Name Is Ron: Our Search For Justice is a detailed, personal account of the Goldman family’s grief and anguish over the loss of their beloved Ron, and their struggle to seek justice against the person who ended his life. The book is written in the voice of Ron’s father Fred Goldman, but includes perspectives and private thoughts of other members of his family – his sisters, his brothers, and his step- mother Patti. The account is chronologically organized, and the reader lives through the Goldmans’ experiences from the first moments they learn of their son’s death, through the funeral and their reminiscences about Ron’s life, through Simpson’s arrest, the long criminal trial, and the subsequent civil suit at which Simpson was found guilty.

Because this is such a personal account, it offers a dimension to the case that no other book has done. We experience first- hand the family’s unspeakable anguish at their loss; their anger at the cruel antics of their son’s killer as he mocks them with his behavior; the Goldmans’ anxieties at being hounded by the press; their weariness at the plodding pace of months of court proceedings; the agony of witnessing the autopsy photographs and hearing details of their son’s murder discussed day after day; their disgust at the demagoguery of the defense attorneys and revulsion at the race – baiting tactics; and then the horror of watching their son’s killer walk away free after an obscenely - short deliberation by the jury. As made evident by the book, Simpson’s actions throughout the trial were never those of an innocent man. Such a person should have been horrified at the prospect of trying on the gloves that had been worn by his wife’s killer, gloves still stained with her blood -- instead of turning it into a joke. What’s more, had he been innocent, he should have been deeply grateful that Ron Goldman died trying to save the life of his ex-wife and his children, instead of being contemptuous of his family.

The civil suit gives the reader the relief of seeing some justice being brought to bear. Here Simpson was potentially subject to monetary damages for unlawfully causing the deaths of Nicole and Ron. The trial was presided over by a no- nonsense judge who had no intention of letting his courtroom be turned into a circus. The defense was required either to accept evidence admitted to the criminal trial or to specify how it considered this evidence to have been fabricated or contaminated. Unable to do the latter, the defense was left with a weak case, as its tactics proved ineffective and its witnesses were impeached. The defense was obliged to let Simpson testify, and we watch as he is caught in lie after lie. One highlight of the trial came when 30 new photographs came to light of Simpson wearing shoes of the kind used by the killer, shoes he had bitterly denied owning. The defense was left with the ridiculous claim that all the photos were faked (including photos printed years earlier). What's more, the only witness the defense could marshall in support of this claim turned out to be a high-school educated photocopier repairman who had no expertise whatsoever. Finally, through a unanimous verdict, Orenthal Simpson is found guilty of the murders of Ron Goldman and Nicole Simpson.

This book offers a unique perspective on the Simpson murder case, not only because of personal involvement by the authors, but because of the intensity of their involvement. No one other than members of the Goldman family sat through every day of both trials (even the defendant absented himself from the civil trial on some days in order to play golf). As a result, many tidbits of information are offered in this account, and for that reason (as well as for others), readers deeply interested in this case ought not overlook this book. It is at times difficult to read – much of it is heart- wrenching, and its tone is one of grief, anguish, anger, and rage. But the ending offers some catharsis, and one hopes that writing the book likewise served a cathartic function to members of the Goldman family. Ron and Nicole’s killer has been shown to be guilty, and character being what it is, Orenthal Simpson now lives in a prison cell for a related crime of armed robbery -- one that likely would not have occurred had the Goldmans not been so single-minded in their pursuit of justice. ( )