Sports agent keeps lawyers guessing about O.J. Simpson's clothes

The suit O.J. Simpson wore the day he was acquitted of murder charges hangs in the bedroom closet of a house south of Fresno.

Or maybe it doesn't.

It depends on the mood of the balding, bespectacled former sports agent who owns the house and maybe the suit.

"I've had it in my possession since the morning after the verdict," Mike Gilbert declared at the start of a recent interview.

Twenty minutes of circuitous conversation later, he backtracked: "When I told you that before, I wasn't under oath."

The once grand legal battles of Simpson's double murder case, which began 15 years ago today with the slayings of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman, have come to this -- an argument over a jacket and pair of trousers.

The case that transfixed the country has largely disappeared from cable news and dinner conversation. It made a brief return last year with Simpson's armed robbery and kidnapping conviction.

But it never left the docket of the Los Angeles County Superior Court. The wrongful-death lawsuit won by the victims' families more than a dozen years ago remains a pending matter, and the brownish-green suit an open issue.

Goldman's father and sister, whose dogged pursuit of their portion of the $33.5-million jury verdict has kept the case active, turned their attention to the "acquittal suit" last year after Gilbert appeared on the "Dr. Phil" show.

Promoting a book about his soured friendship with Simpson, Gilbert said that he had the suit, that it was worth at least $50,000 and that he would give it and other items to the Goldmans to atone for the help he gave a man he now believes is a murderer.

But the Goldmans say Gilbert refused to return their calls or produce the suit. This quickly led to another kind of suit -- the type written by lawyers. The Goldmans demanded the clothing and anything else Simpson had given to Gilbert after the slayings.

The outfit worn by Simpson during what was then the most-watched moment in U.S. television history "might have significant economic value," wrote one of their lawyers.

"The stylishness of the suit became emblematic of his invincibility to the justice system. It was a suit of armor. This was not a man who was beaten down," said lawyer David Cook.

But with a judge poised to take the issue up Monday, there are questions about whether the garment is the same one Simpson was wearing when he and 150 million Americans watching on TV heard the words "not guilty."