Sam Ippolito told The New York Times he once dropped a bag into a dumpster at a construction site on Doheny Drive. His brother, he said, ordered him to do it.
Sam now believes that bag may have held the weapon used in the 1994 killings of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.
He thinks he may have unintentionally helped get rid of it.
His brother, Joseph “Joey” Ippolito, was a connected drug dealer who moved through Los Angeles high society. He later became a government informant.
Sam described a night he says he has never forgotten.
Joey left the family home, then returned with his hands covered in blood and a bag holding a heavy object.
Joey stuffed his clothes into the bag and jumped in the shower, Sam said. He then told his brother to ditch it.
Sam also told the Times he later watched Joey phone Al Cowlings, the best friend of OJ Simpson.
According to Sam, Joey explained on the call how he had been “helping” Simpson that night.
Paper evidence backs part of the story.
The Times obtained a 1996 federal prosecution memo that detailed Joey Ippolito’s cooperation with the government.
Prosecutors called him “a remarkable source of information.” They wrote that his knowledge of various crimes would “likely to result in significant prosecutions.”
The first case listed in the memo was the Simpson murder trial.
“Ippolito became close to several individuals at the center of the Simpson/Goldman murder case,” it stated.
The memo then spelled out what he allegedly knew.
“Ippolito had become privy to many facts relevant to the case, including Simpson’s alleged domestic violence, the Simpsons’ narcotics usage, Simpson’s attempted flight from justice, and his disposal of the murder weapon,” it read.
Ippolito’s route to that inner circle began at an Italian restaurant he managed in Los Angeles, where celebrities regularly ate.
He sold drugs through the connections he made there and grew close to Cowlings, known as AC.
Cowlings drove the white Ford Bronco in the slow-speed chase that followed Simpson’s attempt to flee. Millions watched it live.
Ippolito’s own run from the law ended differently. A drug case put him behind bars in 1992.
He broke out in 1994, and authorities recaptured him in August 1995, as the Simpson trial dominated television, newspaper and radio coverage.
Federal prosecutors called him “extremely reliable.” Ippolito still never testified at the trial.
That trial ended in Simpson’s acquittal, and the case was never criminally resolved. A civil jury found Simpson responsible for the deaths in 1997.
He published “If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer” in 2007 and died in 2024 at age 76.
Sam’s story has since changed. He tried to recant his claims unless the Times paid him, the newspaper reported.
He also told the paper he could no longer remember what was real and what wasn’t.
Marcia Clark, who prosecuted Simpson, told the Times she had never heard of Joey Ippolito. She said she would have learned of him if his accounts carried real weight.
“If anyone had spoken to him and found him to have relevant and credible information, I surely would have been informed,” she said. “The fact that I was never so informed establishes he had no credible or relevant evidence to provide.”
