Los Angeles Police Testing Knife That May Have Been Found In O.J. Simpson Property

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The Los Angeles Police Department announced on Friday that it is testing a knife that may have been found in a property that once belonged to O.J. Simpson.

Simpson, once one of the most famous football players in the country, stood trial for the 1994 murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown, and her friend, Ron Goldman. He was eventually acquitted, but is currently in prison on a separate robbery charge.

Simpson's murder trial attracted unprecedented media attention. Prosecutors and the police were famously unable to find the murder weapon.

But earlier this year, a retired LAPD officer gave his superiors a knife that he said had been given to him in the late 90's by a construction laborer who said he'd worked in the demolition of the Simpson estate, the authorities said.

"We need to vet that story," Captain Andrew Neiman, n LAPD spokesperson, said in a press conference on Friday. "We don't yet know if it's accurate. We need to determine if this is evidence, and the only way we can do that is to challenge the people involved as to how this was recovered and who was involved."

Neiman declined to name the retired officer who surrendered the knife, but he said the officer told investigators that he was given the weapon while working off-duty as a security guard for a film production near a property that once belonged to Simpson.

The officer, Neiman said, kept the knife at his private home for years before alerting investigators to it's existence because he believed the case was closed. The spokesperson said that the Brown and Goldman murders remained open because nobody had been convicted of it.

"I would think that an LAPD officer, if this story is accurate, would know that anytime you come into contact with evidence, that you should submit that to investigators," Neiman said.

The officer cannot face administrative sanctions because he is retired, Neiman said. Investigators are trying to decide whether criminal charges are warranted.

The LAPD's elite Robbery Homicide Unit is currently testing the knife for serology and DNA traces, Neiman said. He declined to provide a timeline for the investigation.

The legal principle of double jeopardy prevents prosecutors from retrying Simpson for the Brown and Goldman murders after he was acquitted of them.

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